Seeking Mike

And Margie? "I met her in a bar," Moriarty told the tabloid. "She's tough enough to stay in the ring with me."

Charming. Moriarty plans to give us all a chance to know and love her as Vancouver's first lady four years from now when he runs for mayor. "I know a lot about Canadian politics," he said. "I lived in Canadian bars for six years."

This was not Moriarty's first appearance in America's best newspaper. Readers who pay good money to be scandalized were pleasantly outraged when he dumped his wife of 20 years to take up with Calabrita in Halifax, events faithfully detailed by the Enquirer in 1996.

It's not just the tabloids, though -- Moriarty's Canadian political activities were detailed recently in the Wall Street Journal. As reported by the Journal, last summer Moriarty published an enthusiastic editorial in the Globe and Mail newspaper endorsing right-wing Canadian political leader Stockwell Day. "Moriarty's like Charlton Heston and the NRA. He's visible," the Globe's Val Ross told the Journal. "He's deeply exotic to us."

But the National Post, a competing newspaper that doubles as the Stockwell Day Fan Club, refused to run a similar Moriarty endorsement. Evidently the Post thought a Moriarty endorsement would be the equivalent of an ad by Cocaine Dealers for Bush. "If he wasn't a famous actor, who would pay attention to him?" grumped a Post editor to the Journal. As it turned out, nobody. In Monday's Canadian election Moriarty's man Stockwell finished a distant second to the Liberal Party. (The vote was held Monday. The votes were counted Monday night. Canada can be so small-town sometimes.)

Entertainment editors have had no such reservations about Moriarty. Whatever his status in the movie biz, he's definitely good copy. In one recent story he detailed his plans for a new film called "Hitler and Christ," a sort of "My Dinner With Andre" for a pair of deranged drifters. Sounds ideal, but it's a two-hander. Does Crispin Glover ever visit Vancouver?

I placed a call to Moriarty's agent, requesting an audience with the future mayor. A week passed with no response -- evidently I would have to go out on the hunt. The limo driver told Shandel he'd dropped Mike and Margie off at a Starbucks on Vancouver's Robson Street. That's about as specific as saying it was a clothing store on Rodeo Drive -- the intersection of Robson and Thurlow alone has Starbucks on two of its four corners.

Still, I check them out, one at a time. Another problem quickly surfaces: The teen wage slaves in green aprons don't know from 10-year-old "Law & Order" episodes. The closest they get to "Law & Order" trivia is Julia Roberts' cute boyfriend, Ben Bratt. There's certainly no point in mentioning "Bang the Drum Slowly" (Moriarty and Robert De Niro, 1973) or "Holocaust," the 1978 miniseries that earned Moriarty an Emmy. The star-struck young baristas could certainly tell me if Sharon Stone had been through recently. Michael Moriarty? He'd be lining up for his latte with the ordinary citizens he loves.

So much for shoe leather. I've about given up on my quest when one day I awake to find two messages on my machine. The first is from Moriarty. "I've got more than enough coffee and I'm ready to talk," he says. "Call me."

Message No. 2 is from Marge. "Please call Mr. Moriarty as soon as possible," she rasps, sounding exactly the way her namesake did in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

The messages are a few hours old. (I'm a late sleeper.) The delay could be fatal for my hopes -- Moriarty is notoriously changeable. He told the Wall Street Journal he had no political ambitions, shortly after telling the Enquirer of his plans to be mayor of Vancouver. While I dozed, Moriarty may have formulated a new state religion and then dumped it to launch his campaign for pope.

When I call, Marge answers. "Just a minute," she says. I hear her hissing across the room. "Come to the phone!"

Finally, he does. But I've slept through my window of opportunity. Moriarty's dose of caffeine has worn off and he is no longer in the mood to chat. "Interviews don't go to the core of my life," Moriarty tells me. "Everybody knows my life -- it's an open book. The unofficial Michael Moriarty Fan Club. I'm bored of talking about it. I really only want to write commentaries now -- I did one for the L.A. Times. I wrote one for the Vancouver Sun as well."

Saw that. "Vancouver after dark: The big time beckons," read the headline on the Oct. 5 editorial. "This is the story of two cities. My cities. New York and Vancouver," Moriarty began. There followed a warning to Vancouver not to go down the deceitful trail of Rudy Giuliani: "The details of his destruction of the human centre of that city, including the Disneyfication of Times Square, are well known," he wrote.

Moriarty then mused on the economic prosperity of Alberta, the wealthy province next door to British Columbia that sits happily on a massive pool of oil. "Well," Moriarty opined, "there is a big oil well sitting right in front of Vancouver's eyes and you only have to see it. It is called the Night."

After sketching a portrait of Vancouver as a new urban Mecca for sleepless global swingers (presided over, no doubt, by the mayor and his glittering consort), Moriarty finished big. "Grab the oil," he urged. "Grab the night."

"The other day I saw a small procession of the fire department [including] a couple of old but charming fire truck antiques. On the side of the antiques was written: 'BYTOWN FIRE DEPARTMENT.'

"Well, bye town! Hello, city!"

Moriarty paints a seductive picture, for sure. True, Vancouver is not presently the City That Never Sleeps -- more the City Tucked in Wearing Little Feety Pajamas by 10:30 at the Latest.

But we yearn for more. We want to be wanted by those Hollywood tourists who breeze through so quickly and carelessly. And how better to win their love than to choose one of their own as our civic leader?

"I'm the American Winston Churchill," Moriarty once said. Break out the brandy and cigars, Vancouver. Our finest hour is yet to come.

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