TV OR NOT TV … THAT IS THE QUESTION
When my twin boys were four years old, I got my own television series on the air. I hold my children directly responsible.
Before then, I had had a somewhat successful television writing career. I had won an Emmy writing for All in The Family. I had written episodes of The Odd Couple and Sanford and Son, and I even once wrote one for a clunker called The Bobby Sherman Show which was so torturous to write that I came down with a 102-degree fever. I also wrote scads of pilots. The only one ever filmed was called Zero Intelligence about a military outpost near the arctic circle. It never made it on air. It shouldn’t have. I got fired before the pilot was shot. The rewrites were so awful that I was then called back in to rewrite the rewrites. Didn’t help. But I got a taste of the grinder that you get put through when a show even gets close to going on the air. And then I forgot about it.
I got married and had twins and forgot about it. I went back to writing plays and interesting screenplays filled with complicated characters that elicited the same basic response, “We love Lee’s writing, but this is not for us.” Of course it’s not for you—you’re doing Terminator VII!
I had not given up the idea of trying to get a television series on the air; it’s just that it was inconvenient. First of all, I didn’t live in L.A. Some years back I’d gone to a wedding there, filled with studio execs and a non-minister minister who talked like a marriage counselor on Quaaludes, “This partnership is more than a commitment. It is a star-crossed binding of two impassioned souls.” Okaaay. But at all the tables during the reception, the studio execs were making deals! Oh, I thought, “I don’t go to enough L.A. weddings to get ahead in this business.
Second, I was exhausted. I had started fatherhood at fifty one. Though I was blessed with the desire to write and I was full of ideas, my chief idea was how to find time to nap. I cheated. I invented games I could play with my boys while lying down. There was no excuse for my exhaustion. After all, Julia was doing all the breast-feeding. I would’ve liked to have helped but … I was no sloth. I got up every other morning on early patrol and played with the kids until the sun came up. I rocked them to sleep my share of the time when they were teething. But how could I get more sleep? My “lying down games.” My favorite was “Restaurant!” I loved this game. I loved it because I could play it while I lay on the day bed, half asleep, and the boys would come up to me in little striped aprons, holding a little pad and they’d take orders from me for my meal. I sleepily listed the food I wanted for lunch … and they’d toddle off to their play kitchen and whip it up and bring back a tray filled with various pieces of plastic representing grilled cheese sandwiches, soup, and chocolate cake.
My talent came to full fruition that year as I came up with an endless list of games that could be played with my kids while I was half asleep. “Hospital!” I was the patient, and as I lay in a coma they attended to me doing everything from listening to my heartbeat through a stethoscope (buy your kids a real stethoscope—it is the best toy ever!) to performing major operations. I stuffed pillows and teddy bears and baseball hats under my pajamas, and my brilliant team of surgeons cut them out. “When did I swallow that Teddy Bear, I don’t remember that?” And when one child woke up first, I could play “Airplane” with him. He’d sit on my stomach and I held up my hands, thumbs out for the control stick and he’d fly the plane—me—as I rolled and twisted and bounced. All with my eyes closed.
My other favorite thing was to read to them at night. I even read some of the same books I’d had read to me when I was kid, way back during the Roosevelt administration. And sometimes I’d lie with one of them when he had trouble sleeping and listen to a baseball game, the quiet, comforting drone of the announcer putting us both to sleep, until a sudden rally woke me. One night, lying next to Gabe, listening to the soporific sound of an extra inning Mets game, I realized that I had become my father and Gabe … me. Fifty years before, I had cuddled next to my dad, listening to the same seductive noise of the play by play. The circle of life touched me. I found myself getting teary at the thought. I was in heaven!
I realized that this was something I wanted to write about. And because I generally wrote comedy, there must be something funny about this. It’s the writer’s curse. You’re feeling something intensely, and then suddenly you’re pulled away from your experience and you start analyzing it. It stinks. It really does. You never fully experience anything because part of you is always recording it as it happens. And yet you do examine it, maybe, more fully than “civilians.” And once you commit to writing about it, you get to relive the experience endlessly. Not a bad deal.
I wrote a monologue. A monologue about how, having waited so long to have kids, it was so intensely satisfying. I was an older dad, having spent so much time avoiding being one because … well, I just didn’t wanna grow up. Or at least grow old. And being a dad meant … well … being middle aged. I was beyond middle age. I was over fifty now. (It was still called middle age because the super optimists who define those terms figured that life expectancy was bound to reach 100 any day.) I was an older dad. I was not a hot property in the TV world. I had had two successful plays running in New York within two years. But that was ten years before. I was, for all intents and purposes, a dad! I’d saved my money from my halcyon days, and we were getting by. So I suppose I could just indulge in nothing but being a father. And realizing how lucky I was, I wrote a monologue. And then this scene, about taking the boys to their first day at day care, creating a fictional Bill and Annie and Nate and Hal for me and Julia the boys.
INT. BOYS BEDROOM—NIGHT
(Bill is in his pajamas. He kisses the sleeping boys. He stops. He looks longingly at them and then turns to the camera.)
BILL (to camera)
There’s nothing as beautiful as a sleeping child. Especially when you haven’t made love to your wife for a week.
(He moves off to his bedroom.)
INT. BEDROOM-NIGHT
(Bill enters in his Pajamas. Annie is in bed. He gets into bed.)
BILL
Honey? The kids are asleep. (He listens.) Yes. They are. Maybe we could … (nuzzles her)
ANNIE
Bill, I’m not in the mood.
BILL
Well, hell I’m not in the mood either, but both kids are asleep. We don’t get this chance very often. Nate’s gonna want a drink of water in a minute. Let’s get in a quickee.
ANNIE
I’m not interested in a quickie.
BILL
OK, we’ll do a “longie.” If Nate cries we’ll just concentrate. We won’t hear it. It’ll be—
ANNIE (sits up)
Do you know what Monday is?
Monday. Monnnnnnday issssss …
ANNIE
Monday is the first day of school!
BILL
School? They’re only three.
ANNIE
Preschool
BILL
Oh preschool. When I was a kid it was called nursery school. That sounds too childish today. God forbid a child should go to a place that sounds childish!
ANNIE
You’re being insensitive.
BILL
When? Where? Let’s back this up. I’ll start again by asking if you want to make love and when I say the insensitive thing, you hold up your hand OK? The kids are asleep. How about if we …
BILL
What did I say??
ANNIE
I’m worried about them. I’m worried about preschool and you’re making light of it!
BILL
I’m not making light of it. I’m making nothing of it. It’s nothing.
ANNIE
It’s their first day of school. It’s different from play dates with friends. There’s more at stake. It’s more competitive. The kids may be smarter, quicker, more sophisticated. Our boys may be in over their heads.
BILL
They’re not going to Harvard!
ANNIE
You don’t understand.
What don’t I understand?
ANNIE
You play with them at home. You, you, you wrestle with them, you, you …
BILL
Paint …
ANNIE
Paint with them. You tell them wonderful stories. You cook pancakes and cup cakes and …
BILL
Stir fry.
ANNIE
Stir fry with them, but you don’t… I’m not criticizing you, I’m just telling you that you don’t see them much with other kids. You know them from just playing with you. They’re different from other kids.
BILL
Different how? What? Funnier? Nuttier? They probably know more “knock knock” jokes than other kids.
They’re more innocent than other kids.
BILL
Innocent?
ANNIE
Innocent. Sheltered. Naive, sweet, vulnerable. (She turns away and cries.)
BILL
Honey …
ANNIE
We’ve been too selfish. We’ve smothered them with affection. Instead of rushing home for lunch so you could roll around on the floor with them, you should have been toughening them up.
BILL
Toughening them up? Like what? Taking them on a canoe trip without rations?
ANNIE
Street tough. Life tough. They’re gonna get killed in preschool.
(She cries again. Bill holds her.)
BILL
Honey. Honey. They’re gonna be fine. Just fine. Look, there’s no such thing as loving a child too much. Loving a child gives him confidence. When a child has confidence, he can deal with anything.
ANNIE (through tears)
I wish I had confidence that they had confidence.
BILL
Well, let me make love to you. It’ll give you confidence.
(Bill pulls her down to him and kisses her. We hear off:)
HAL (O.S.)
Dadoooo. I want a drink of water!
(Bill stops kissing. Gets up. Starts out. Turns to Annie)
BILL
Save my place.
HAL (O.S.)
Dadoooo!
(Bill reluctantly leaves the bedroom to answer his son’s call)
Writing this scene changed my life—only because what really changed my life was finding a fabulous woman and having children. As a young man, I was reluctant to get married. Too in love with my work. Raising a family would, I thought, distract me from what was important. But acknowledging Mr. Twain, when I was older, I realized how stupid that young man had been and that the love I had for writing was incomparable to the love I had for my family.
SCENE: THE. KITCHEN, FARMHOUSE, MASSACHUSETTS—NIGHT
(Lee and Julia are finishing their dinner. They hear one of the twin boys crying upstairs in his crib in the bedroom. Lee gets up).
LEE
I’ll go.
(He is up, out of the kitchen, and trudging up the narrow stairs toward the crying boy.)
SCENE: THE TWINS ROOM—NIGHT
(Lee enters and moves to Gabriel, who is standing in his crib, crying)
LEE
I’m here kiddo. Dadoo’s here!
(He moves to Gabriel, his arms outstretched to pick
him up.)
LEE
Dadoo’s here.
(About to pick him, up Gabriel screams)
No! I want Mommy!
(Thrown by this, Lee steps back. He thinks maybe Gabe will change his mind. He takes a step toward his son again.)
GABE
I want Mommy!
(He’s got the message. He turns and stumbles down the stairs and into the kitchen)
SCENE: KITCHEN—NIGHT
(Julia looks up as he enters. We hear the baby still crying. Julia looks at him)
LEE
He wants his sainted mother.