As I delve deeper into the enigmatic life of Heff, it seems that his story is one of both tragedy and defiance against the ordinary. A man who sought danger as a moth to a flame, he lived his life with an intensity that few can claim to have known. His untimely demise at the tender age of 40 leaves me in awe of the sheer force of his existence.
It was November 2021, right in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I took off my mask for a drink with Kiki Benzon at The Surly Goat, a bar located in West Hollywood. Thirty years had passed since we last saw each other. Back in the early ’90s, Kiki and I were rivals in the ultra-nerdy North American private school debate scene. She studied in British Columbia while I hailed from Connecticut, and our paths first crossed at a tournament in Boston, followed by another in Winnipeg. After exchanging details about our lives — my writing, my family including my wife and kids, her teaching position in film studies at USC, her recent widowhood — we eventually talked about John Connery Heffernan III.
My fellow debater from high school, “Heff,” accompanied me on numerous past tournaments; it was during one of those events that he and Kiki shared a passionate night. After drifting apart from Heff, Kiki and I still held an unbreakable bond due to our shared history with him. It was as if we belonged to a clandestine society. Anyone who interacted with Heff, even superficially, had encountered his frenzied, yet insightful discussions on literature, cinema, hip-hop, and had listened to him wax lyrical about fast cars, James Dean, jazz, and the terrifying works of Clive Barker. All his acquaintances were familiar with his response to a novel idea or striking artwork: He would exhibit genuine surprise, his eyes widening and head recoiling, as if brilliance was scorching hot. Perhaps this was because his genius truly was.
Back in 2006, I was part of a crowd that couldn’t ignore Heff’s achievement – he earned his permanent spot on Hollywood’s B-list with the screenplay for “Snakes on a Plane”, a movie that became a cult classic thanks to its so-bad-it’s-good vibe and a title that perfectly encapsulates the film. I remember myself and many others talking about it to our friends, saying something like, “Hey, guess who wrote ‘Snakes on a Plane’? The guy I dated/debated with/watched shows with/spent nights with/drank with/raced dragsters with/got high with!
In the passage of time since then, his case had largely grown stale. Here’s what we were able to gather from Google: He had worked together on a comic book and sold a screenplay that appeared to remain unproduced. Approximately two years prior, I discovered his Facebook profile, filled with numerous posts about automobiles, vintage TV shows (he was an avid fan of Magnum, P.I.) and the Detroit Lions.
Our clear move was evident. We needed to force him out of hiding. Around midnight, we bid each other farewell, promising to scour the internet and our past connections for information. I climbed into my hired vehicle, located the Interstate 5, and started driving towards San Diego, where I had matters to attend to tomorrow.
An hour later, my phone rang. I answered.
“Mark?” Kiki said. “John’s dead.”
Racing along the highway, I held the phone close, listening as tears filled Kiki’s voice. She shared the news she’d received from Heff’s brother: “John passed away in 2017.” In her email, his brother was succinct and didn’t reveal any details about how our friend had departed.
After arriving in San Diego, I had a restless night’s sleep and went for an early morning stroll along the beach. The beach was largely deserted except for a handful of surfers and myself. As I stood at the water’s edge, gazing out at the Pacific Ocean, I made up my mind to investigate what had become of my long-lost friend.
After two years of investigation, I’ve come to understand that my curiosity about his death wasn’t as strong as my fascination with his life. Throughout his life, he was a risk-taker and lived dangerously, often enticing others to join him in his adventures. However, towards the end, he had lost everyone close to him due to his isolation. Conversations with those who knew him reveal that he died alone, possibly fulfilling an end he may have anticipated or even desired, with only his vices for companionship.
***
Heff and I first crossed paths when we were both freshmen at The Loomis Chaffee School, situated just beyond Hartford, Connecticut. Given that half the students resided there, we were day students and thus didn’t occupy the highest rungs of the social ladder. The boarding students hailed from affluent areas like Greenwich or the Upper East Side, boasting substantial wealth. However, among fellow day students, Heff held a certain nobility. His family was affiliated with The Hartford Golf Club, and his father, a prosperous lawyer, drove a Jaguar convertible, which he occasionally used to transport Heff. Additionally, it was common knowledge that Heff’s maternal grandfather, Joseph Ryter, had served as a congressman for a term (1945-47), a fact that Heff often reminded us of. The family even owned a summer residence in Old Saybrook, overlooking the Long Island Sound. By the end of our freshman year, I had come to understand who held influence and why.
Heff and I fell in together through our activities: debate, newspaper, cross country. For the first two years of our friendship, his money and class were exciting to me. To a 14-year-old boy whose own father drives a Volkswagen Dasher, having a friend whose father drives a Jag is a big deal. Heff and I also shared a preppy pomposity; we were the kind of boys who dressed our aspirations in suede elbow patches, or would have liked to. He once told me that his mother’s family had been the Von Ryters but had dropped the aristocratic Von; I found that as cool as he hoped I would.
During the final two years of high school, I came to appreciate that what made Heff intriguing was his ability to contradict the norms of his peers. He harbored significant conflict regarding the aristocratic lifestyle he was born into, and as time passed in high school, he recognized that, beyond a particular fashion sense and a carefree enthusiasm for spending his parents’ money, he didn’t fit the mold of a New England prep. He continued to engage in activities typical of an Ivy League-bound student – debating, writing for the newspaper, running track, maintaining good grades – but these weren’t truly representative of him or the person he envisioned himself to be.
As a gamer, I’ve always been more comfortable with the virtual world than the physical one. Heff, my schoolmate, was the total opposite when it came to sports. We trained together for three years, and let me tell you, he never seemed to improve. But when it came to theater and art, Heff truly shone. His drawings were stunning, and his acting was captivating. However, his true passion lay in writing, specifically in crafting strange, experimental stories that didn’t quite fit with our school’s literary magazine, The Loom.
Sarah Larson, former editor of The Loom and now a staff writer for The New Yorker, expresses that John’s tales continue to astound and bewilder her when she reflects on them. “The majority of short-story submissions we received were rich in art but fell flat on the plot; John’s were skillfully crafted, dark, with a shocking twist,” Sarah reminisces. “And the twists could be repulsive.” She recollects one story in particular about an impoverished Appalachian family who resorted to cannibalism for survival.
He faced challenges with his art, along with his fruitless efforts to find a romantic partner, which further solidified his self-perception as a failed beauty. In reality, the educational institution lacked any specific niche or culture that could accommodate the type of man Heff was transforming into: a free-spirited, defiant bohemian. He held a passion for jazz and Frank Zappa, cherished Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and deeply admired Hunter S. Thompson’s iconic work, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Thompson and Kerouac resonated with Heff’s fascination for perpetual travel, his desire to escape the present location, no matter the cost. In their writings, they provided two means for Heff to surpass the sea barrier, to discover what lay beyond: automobiles and drugs, representing physical and mental journeys. As soon as he acquired his driver’s license and access to his father’s convertible, Heff developed a fondness for merging these two elements. For numerous individuals, driving under the influence was an occasional requirement, but for Heff, it became a beloved pastime. According to our classmate Adam Larrabee, “He frequently outran police officers when I was in the car.” This behavior, as he recalls, had the potential to end very poorly.
Heff’s parents nurtured his growing fascination with cars by giving him a Jeep Cherokee, which was considered the trendy luxury vehicle among the wealthy during that period. I don’t recall what eventually happened to that car – I believe he might have crashed it – but somehow, it disappeared, and his parents obtained another one for him. Our classmate, Sam Kenna, recalls that upon Heff’s graduation, his father presented him with a Porsche. It was the very same car featured in the movie “Top Gun”. The model was a Speedster, the one driven by Kelly McGillis’ character. Sam never forgot the night of our high school graduation when Heff allowed him to take the car for a spin. There may have been some alcohol involved, he says, although it could be seen as either beneficial or detrimental.
During moments of intoxication or under the influence, a hidden cruelty would occasionally surface in him. One instance was when Mark Murphy, along with some other friends, were at a weekend house in the Berkshires, and they consumed beer until they were drunk. In the midst of playing in a snowy field with a sled, Murphy recalls paussing for a rest in the snow, face down. “Heffernan urinated on me while he was drunk and acting wild,” Murphy remembers, “and I responded, ‘Dude, you always go too far.’ To him, it was amusing and humiliating – I told him, ‘That was my jacket.’
On most occasions, I rarely witnessed the perilous aspect of Heff. My conservative nature kept me from partaking in reckless acts like getting drunk in a sports car and evading law enforcement. During our leisurely times spent in his bedroom, we were always stone-cold sober. In these moments, he’d switch between playing N.W.A and Beethoven on his CD player. He owned a copy of Beethoven’s Ninth, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm, and I vividly recall our debate over the proper pronunciation of the conductor’s name with umlauts: “Berm”, “Burm” or “Buuurm”? This conversation took place on a lazy Saturday afternoon, but I could never guess what he got up to that night. Monday mornings would bring whispers of Heff’s escapades, yet I remained unaware of the details. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered more about him – for example, that he had been robbed multiple times while trying to purchase drugs in Hartford’s most notorious neighborhoods.
***
In Cornell’s music-themed dormitory, JAM (Just About Music), Heff and Murphy were roommates. Murphy recalls Heff adorning their shared space with posters of Jim Morrison. “He admired Jim Morrison deeply,” Murphy notes. “I recall him often discussing it: ‘I wish to be like Jim Morrison, I want to party, I want to experiment with drugs.’ It seemed his perspective was, in my opinion, ‘I might overdose one day – living a life on the edge.’
Instead of diving headfirst into a rowdy fraternity, Murphy opted for a more tranquil living situation. “I guess he must have found the fraternity I joined to be populated by nerds,” Murphy quips. “He was somewhat volatile. He displayed signs of an addictive nature: drugs, one after another, leading to trouble. … At some point, I realized, ‘This guy and I are quite different. We’re on separate paths.’
If Heff forged strong connections during his time at Cornell, I failed to discover them. However, I did uncover his one significant college romantic interest. When Heff crossed paths with Andra in an English class, he was a 18-year-old freshman and she was a 24-year-old junior who had taken a break from college for several years. He found himself quite smitten. No advancements were made that semester, but when they resumed their studies the following autumn, her marriage was in turmoil, prompting Heff to act upon his feelings.
He really went all out, displaying a youthful charm, to win me over,” Andra notes. They started dating in the spring of 1994. “Our relationship was extremely intense and passionate,” she continues. “It was heart-wrenching when that semester ended because I graduated, and he left for Australia to spend his junior year.” At that time, she was still married and had no immediate plans for a divorce. “But we were deeply in love,” she adds. “We spent every waking moment together throughout the entire semester.
To Andra, he expressed his deepest affection saying, ‘I cherish you beyond compare.’ He requested, ‘If you utter a single word, I will vanish from your world eternally.’ However, he implored her to hold off, to wait for him.
Instead of waiting for him, she didn’t. Years later, when she found herself in San Diego, she decided to drive up to Los Angeles to visit him. “He shared two script ideas with me,” she recalls, “one about teenage vampires and another about planes filled with snakes. I told him, ‘That’s the most absurd concept you’ve ever proposed.’
***
After finishing college, Heff decided to embark on a road trip to California. He purchased an old, big blue van without windows from his neighbor for approximately $1,200 and set off on his journey across the country. This adventure took around three months to complete. With just $500 in his pocket, he found a hotel in Little Moscow, Hollywood, where he could afford to stay. Subsequently, Heff landed a job at the film school of USC, working as the production coordinator. Not long after, he left USC for a production company named Davis Entertainment, where he served as Craig Berenson’s assistant. When Berenson moved on to Patchwork Pictures, he took Heff along with him.
At Patchwork, Berenson and several other creators organized a weekly gathering known as Genre Day Cocktails. Every Monday, they would announce a particular genre for that week, and on Friday afternoons over drinks, anyone was welcome to propose a story within the announced genre. During an action-adventure week, Berenson presented a concept that had unexpectedly arrived from a writer named David D’Alessandro. This script, titled “Venom“, although rough around the edges, caught Berenson’s attention due to its intriguing plot.
Berenson recalls saying, “Let me set the scene – we’re flying from Honolulu to L.A., but it’s too late to turn back now. We’re high in the sky at 30,000 feet and suddenly, a hundred snakes escape. The pilot gets bitten. Now, how would you manage to land? This scenario we’ll call Snakes on a Plane. By any chance, could I collaborate with you on this idea?” At that instant, Heff looked at Berenson and asked, “May I help you with this project?
Berenson recognized Heff’s promise, so he consented to acquire the script from D’Alessandro for Heff to revise. Together, they developed a proposal and managed to sell it to Paramount, prompting Heff to start drafting a complete screenplay.
Berenson stated, “On the day we were supposed to submit John’s second draft, it was September 11th. This event halted every film about planes. I remarked, ‘It’s not completely finished, but we can discuss it again in six months.’ He waited patiently, and later resumed work on his project. Producer Don Granger had acquired the script at Paramount, but they no longer wished to produce the movie and returned the rights to Berenson. However, Granger had moved on from Paramount and was now with Mutual Films, which had a partnership with New Line Cinema. ‘Don then presented it to New Line,’ Berenson remembers, ‘and their executive expressed immediate interest, saying they would make this film without hesitation.’
Ultimately, John Heff collaborated on the writing credits for the movie “Snakes” along with Sebastian Gutierrez, who also penned the 2003 horror film “Gothika”. However, Berenson points out that “Snakes” was essentially Heff’s project from start to finish. Heff wrote the initial drafts, while Gutierrez did the final polishing that brought it to its successful state. On the other hand, the original idea for the movie belonged to D’Alessandro, but he disliked the final product. He envisioned a more artistic and minimalistic film, similar to “Aliens”. As D’Alessandro puts it, “I was trying to write ‘Aliens’ on an aircraft.” Now retired as an administrator at the University of Pittsburgh, D’Alessandro feels that his vision was transformed into something nonsensical, with 37 different types of snakes.
Indeed, it’s accurate to say that the movie “Snakes on a Plane” (released in 2006 and directed by David R. Ellis) leans more towards the campy, shock-value genre rather than a suspenseful, well-crafted thriller. The storyline goes like this: To prevent a witness from testifying against him, a ruthless gangster smuggles venomous snakes in the cargo hold of an aircraft carrying the witness. Once the reptiles invade both the cabin and cockpit, biting numerous passengers and pilots, it falls upon the FBI agent accompanying the witness to protect the remaining travelers and land the plane safely. The characters lack complexity, and the dialogue is devoid of humor. However, the plot progresses swiftly, the special effects are impressive – the snakes are genuinely unsettling – and much like the disaster movies from the 1970s, it relies heavily on its star-studded cast: Bobby Cannavale, Taylor Kitsch, Kenan Thompson, Julianna Margulies, Todd Louiso.
In my view, there’s none other than Samuel L. Jackson, who carried the aura of charisma he earned from “Pulp Fiction” into his role as the FBI agent. It was during that part when he exclaimed, “I’ve had it with these blasted serpents on this blasted flight!”, a line that sparked a video craze, just as the viral potential of videos was taking off, a year following YouTube’s inception.
One way to rephrase the given text is as follows:
***
It’s unlikely that Heff took it too seriously when people criticized him for being a disappointment. In 2006, he was just 32 years old and had written one of the most buzzed-about movies in the world; his future looked promising. However, Snakes on a Plane didn’t open the floodgates to more work. Mason Novick, who was Heff’s agent at the time, recalls him as a guy passionate about cars, particularly Porshes, and skilled at writing humorous, action-packed pulp scripts. Unfortunately, these types of scripts were challenging to get produced.
Novick recalls that he had a screenplay titled ‘A Chance for Both Barrels.’ They managed to sell it about five times, but it never got produced. The narrative, as Novick describes, bore a resemblance to the 1948 Western film ‘Red River,’ directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne. However, in Heff’s adaptation, the main character was a white Rastafarian gunman who arrived in town instead of Chery Valance. Novick remarks that it was an unusual script at the time, and considering current trends, it would be even less likely to get made now. Yet, he acknowledges that it was an entertaining screenplay.
Noah Rosen used to be Heff’s manager, but that changed in the mid-2000s when Heff let him go. When I spoke with Rosen, he took his dismissal in stride, even referring to Heff as a “gentleman.” Rosen added that one of Heff’s good qualities was taking him out for dinner before letting him go, which is something that isn’t typically done; usually, it’s a phone call instead.
The two used to be friends – “He was the friend who always seemed to get you into trouble,” Rosen recounts, “and you found it exciting, yet a bit frightening” – but after being dismissed, Rosen never crossed paths with him again. He kept tabs on Heff’s career, regularly checking studio databases for updates on his activities. However, it appeared that he wasn’t really up to much.
Rosen remarked that Snakes on a Plane seemed to halt his career. He believed the film may have been the factor behind his lack of subsequent work. Rosen is a huge fan of the movie, often referring to it and watching it repeatedly. He wishes there were more films like it, but he’s unsure why the actor didn’t produce any more works.
Heff disappeared, from the business and from the whole Hollywood scene. “I don’t know where his friends went,” Rosen says. “If you had told me he moved away, went back home, that would make sense. But the thing that has to be said is, he really wanted to make movies, man. He really wanted to tell stories, and wrote his ass off and was fucking talented.”
Around that period, Heff met with an accident involving his car under the influence of whippets. As a former girlfriend of his shared with me, “He collided into a 91-year-old’s residence.” After the incident, he sought treatment at a rehabilitation center, only to be left by his fiancée during his stay there. In a post from July 4, 2014, on Facebook, Heff subtly referred to the crash that apparently occurred on a previous July 4, stating, “The Fourth holds significance for me, and it’s a chilling metallic echo – the sound of four-wheel-drive crashing into metal, the steel bedframe of a hospital, and the haunting surreality of my face being separated from my skull, with titanium plates and screws hammered in to keep everything together. Persevering. Alone.
Starting around 2010, Heff began to drift apart from his agent, manager, and everyone who had helped catapult him towards stardom. At that time, he was scripting a comic book series titled “Driver for the Dead“, initially intended as a three-part story revolving around a chauffeur transporting difficult corpses such as a recently deceased vampire to their graves. The comic garnered some interest within the horror and comics communities, as well as among dedicated fans of “Snakes on a Plane“, but it did not achieve widespread success, with the subsequent issues never making an appearance.
As my gaming career slowed down, I found myself lingering around the bustling heart of Hollywood. Starting from 2013, I became a familiar face in the Superior Court of California, Los Angeles County. My court dockets are filled with pages upon pages about arrests, arraignments, probations, and continuances – the sterile, Courier-font chronicles of a life spiraling downward.
***
Heff’s friendships were predominantly online, with individuals he had not met in reality. As put by Jake Reedy, an Australian filmmaker, “I came across his ‘Driver for the Dead’ comic, the graphic novel, and found it quite fascinating. I looked him up on Twitter, we started chatting frequently, moved our conversations to Facebook. Eventually, we became good friends from there.” Reedy was surprised by this well-known Hollywood screenwriter’s willingness to engage with him. “It was always astonishing to me how selfless he was with his time. You always think, ‘This is the man who wrote ‘Snakes on a Plane’, after all!'” Heff would critique Reedy’s scripts in great detail. “I am reluctant to say he was a mentor, but in many ways, he functioned as one.
Additionally, Heff formed an online bond with Dru Brown, another Australian filmmaker who was a friend of Reedy’s. Brown remembers that Heff made a donation to his 2014 movie Kickstarter campaign titled “The Suicide Theory“. On the final day of the fundraising campaign, he contributed $500 anonymously. “He didn’t mention it at all,” Brown shares. “He did it secretly, just before the deadline. I was astounded, saying to myself, ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’ He simply replied, ‘No problem, just create a fantastic film.’ There wasn’t a hint of ego about him. Just a wonderful and supportive individual.
Following the favorable response and acquisition of “The Suicide Theory” by Netflix, Sony Pictures inquired if Brown had any other scripts he wished to direct. Brown contacted Heff and asked, “Do you have anything available?” Heff provided some old, unproduced scripts. One was an older Western script with a horror twist – possibly “A Chance for Both Barrels,” the script Heff sold but never managed to produce after “Snakes on a Plane.
Brown last communicated via Facebook with Heff around three to four months later, which would be approximately in 2016. Later in the same year, on November 16, 2016, Heff posted his final ever message on Facebook. This post seemed to mark the five-year anniversary of their becoming friends on Facebook. Heff wrote, “Happy Friendaversary, Jake!” However, it appears that message might have come across a bit too friendly. He mentioned, “We should probably go shoot some sharks with machine guns from the back of a monster truck or something, just to make sure people don’t get the wrong idea.” Afterward, he planned to watch all the Zac Efron movies he had downloaded. He added, “God, he’s dreamy.
When Heff stopped posting on Facebook, his friends initially weren’t concerned, as they thought it was just one of his occasional social media breaks. However, as months turned into a year, the situation became worrying. In 2020, Brown received a message from Reedy stating that Heff had passed away. According to Reedy, he learned this news from one of Heff’s friends. The story, as told by Reedy, suggested that Heff had unfortunately suffered an overdose. “We were devastated,” says Brown, “because good people like him shouldn’t experience such tragedies.
***
When I enquired about Heff from one of his former defense attorneys, they shared a story with me instead. “I’d say back east, trouble usually appeared as two large men with bent noses and a baseball bat,” the lawyer explained to me. “But in L.A., she stands at 5’2” in a sundress.
In the end, I tracked down the lady who the lawyer seemed to be talking about. Her name is Lori. She first met Heff in 2006 when he resided in Oxnard. At that time, she was employed as a “private dancer,” and Heff turned out to be a frequent customer, consistently increasing his payments for her services. When she inquired about his occupation, he mentioned, “I just wrote a movie,” to which Lori replied, “Have I heard of it?” To this, Heff responded, “A minor production called Snakes on a Plane.” After its release, Lori was quite impressed, commenting, “Wow, that’s cool.
Following the release of the film, Lori didn’t receive any communication from Heff for several years. One day, during a business trip to Pasadena, she encountered Heff at his doorstep. Upon seeing him, she noticed that he had significantly lost weight, lived in a smaller home, and everything around him was different. After rekindling their relationship, Lori ceased her dancing career and began an exclusive romance with him. It was Lori who initiated him into the use of heroin.
I found myself utilizing it,” Lori expresses, “and when I saw him about to engage with it, I sternly voiced, ‘No, this isn’t happening.’ My opposition was strong, but his determination was unwavering. In the end, we gave in together. We were both entangled in our shared addiction, and he had the means, while I aided him in its expenditure.
Between 2010 and 2015, Heff transitioned from using cocaine, pills, whippets, and alcohol to a severe heroin addiction. In the year 2012, he shared a quote on Twitter, which was attributed to the late indie film actress Zoë Lund: “If one can weep for joy, one can also find joy in weeping. That is heroin.” They battled addiction and legal troubles both individually and together. Lori’s recollections of those years were warm yet blurry. “Those years were the best years of my life, being with him,” she says, despite the pain they endured. “We attended different rehabilitation centers for our addictions, and we spent time in jail for separate offenses.
Following the depletion of his funds, Heff turned to devising elaborate criminal schemes as a means of acquiring more wealth. According to Lori, he became deeply engrossed in fraudulent activities. “He was obsessed with fraud,” she recalls. “He wanted to carry out numerous fraudulent acts, particularly credit card fraud.” As she recounts it, this venture ended poorly when the authorities, seeking to apprehend her for a missed court appearance, discovered she was residing with him. “They raided his home, found evidence in his office, and took him into custody,” she says. (I could not find any records of an arrest for credit card fraud or a similar offense.)
By 2015, John was struggling to find work and keep a roof over his head. A former landlord of his recalled, “Mark, I’m afraid I can’t provide the memories you seek. When I knew John, he was a troubled drug addict, spending most of his days consumed by heroin and crack. He was utterly devoted to it and his own destruction. I even grew apprehensive about his actions and ultimately evicted him from my property. I bear him no ill will, particularly given the tragic end he met: isolated and without companionship.
Lori shared with me that Heff had a last chance at improving his life, an employment opportunity in Northern California. At that moment, he was clean and under Suboxone treatment. The job, based in San Rafael, was with a video game company – a perfect match for someone like Heff who loved sci-fi, fantasy, and computers – and it offered a yearly salary of $100,000. “He asked me to join him up there and start a fresh life together,” Lori said. “I replied something like, ‘Absolutely, this sounds wonderful! I’m excited to begin anew with you.’ I went there too, and I was clean as well, taking Suboxone along with him.
However, the job didn’t materialize. Following his celebratory gathering, someone at the company discovered his past criminal history. They then summoned him and stated, “I’m sorry, but we can’t hire you.” This news left him heartbroken, and I shared in his disappointment.
After their joint venture in San Rafael failed, Heff and Lori relocated together to Oregon. However, Lori became depressed and opted to go back to Los Angeles. “That was our final encounter,” she recalls. “I have a snapshot of us, one with him at the airport and all, from the last time I was with him.
They maintained contact through phone calls. He secured employment as a car salesman, as she stated. She expressed concerns that he was still abusing substances. At one instance, she believed he intentionally lost his job at the car dealership in Oregon to claim unemployment benefits. Later in 2017, she completed a court-ordered drug treatment program and wanted to inform Heff about her achievement but couldn’t reach him. Then, she received information from their common friend Ryan – who declined to speak with me – that Heff had passed away. As per Ryan, Lori claimed, Heff’s parents arranged an apartment for him in Virginia, and the day before he was set to begin his new job, he went outside, purchased Xanax from someone on the street, possibly laced with fentanyl, and after a long period of sobriety, he took it and tragically passed away.
***
Upon delving into Heff’s life, I contacted his parents and siblings. His father responded, possessing the same tender, comforting voice as the man I fondly recalled, the one who owned the beloved Jaguar convertible. He informed me that his son had passed away due to “sudden cardiac arrest,” a condition that had also claimed the life of his grandfather and an uncle. Upon inquiring about a grave, he said there wasn’t one. Instead, they honored his wishes by cremating him. His ashes were scattered over Catalina Island, located in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles – a place that held great significance to Heff, as he owned a plane and often flew out to this island, which was his favorite destination.
Lori searched for John’s obituary but couldn’t find one. She mentioned that his family “really tucked it away,” she says. She was saddened by the fact that they didn’t contact her, yet she understood. “I’m certain they hold me responsible,” she says. “In a sense, I wish I hadn’t crossed paths with John. Because I believe he wouldn’t have passed away if he hadn’t known me.
I believe there’s an error here. Heff has always had a fondness for risk, and it seems as if danger reciprocated this affection more than his friends or family ever did. As our classmate Adam Larrabee puts it, “I suspect he always aspired to have a heroin addiction.” This is perhaps due to his admiration for the characters in films like Pulp Fiction and their troubled anti-heroes. However, I might be off base on that point…
I discovered announcements for two Catholic Masses held in honor of Heff. One took place at Old Saybrook, Connecticut, a location where his family owned a summer residence that was known for its secretive high school gatherings. His father reportedly made the request for this service. The other ceremony occurred in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. A woman requested the service there, but I have yet to locate her.
The last message I received from Heff dates back to 2008. At the time, I was penning a memoir about our time in high school, so I reached out to him for his recollections. In addition, I used that chance to express my apologies for an old disagreement. His response was a heartfelt note where he essentially said not to dwell on it. He penned, “It was high school,” he wrote, “and everyone has moments they look back on with regret and wish they could redo, and I’m no exception, not one to judge.
I agree with you – no need for criticism here. I too wish I could speak to him about it directly. There’s a tiny sliver of hope that he might be engaging in some sort of elaborate performance, perhaps living a secluded life near the beach. In my imagination, he spends his days surfing, reading, driving fast cars, and flying small aircraft. At night, he is crafting his next screenplay. He’s still honoring the commitment he made to Kiki, his high school sweetheart, which he outlined in a letter – that he wouldn’t let himself be trapped in a life of boredom or misery, sitting in front of a television. Instead, he had grander plans: “I want my life to sparkle, darling,” he said, “and I’m going to make it sparkle brightly.
This story appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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2024-10-25 16:38