Never rent a house from an ex-hippie, wealthy, Jewish weightlifter. Especially one with expensive tastes. What did I know? He was polite when he showed me the house. He was naked from the waist up, all the better to display his tattoo—a large Jewish star with the words “Never Again” scrolled beneath it. A political statement on his pect. His salt-and-pepper pony tail hung down his spine. He wore an earring. Small. Tasteful. He led me through the house, pointing out only the valuable things.
“This inlaid end table is the only one of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. This is a Navajo peace pipe. I smoke it once a year to honor my father’s death.”
“You’re father was a Navajo?”
“No, he was a garment worker. He made shirts on Seventh Avenue.”
“I see, then he was fond of Navajos?”
“He never met a Navajo. He was Jewish. He only knew Jews and the Puerto Rican boy who delivered lunch. He never made more than six thousand dollars a year. When he died I was making a million six.”
I still didn’t understand the Navajo connection, but my host plowed on.
“He left me two hundred and sixty dollars in his will. I bought the pipe with it.”
I still didn’t get it, but it didn’t seem worth pursuing. He was on to the next object of value.
“This rug is worth fifty thousand dollars.”
“Uhhh, maybe you should store that. We have four-year-old boys. They’re very clean. Very neat, but they might spill something.”
“No problem. It’s a tough rug. It can take it.”
“But …”
“If you don’t love these things, don’t rent the house.”
“I love them, I just don’t want to hurt them.”
“If you love them you won’t hurt them.”
Okaaay. Now what do I do? In his diffident hippie way he was saying, “It’s all cool man. You love the house. It’ll all be cool. Mi casa est su casa.”
Fine, I thought. I can be cool. I hadn’t really ever been cool. But if it meant renting this neat house, I could be cool. I rented it. A year later when we moved out, I had to go to small claims court because “Mr. Cool” had kept my deposit because he claimed my kids had drawn on his wall. Didn’t touch his valuable rug. Or smoke his Navajo pipe. Drew on the wall. My kids never drew on the wall. In fact the spot where he pointed out some faint marks was too high for my kids to reach. They had never drawn on a wall in our Massachusetts house. Or New York apartment. Why would they do it in Mr. Cool’s pristine house? In a spot they couldn’t reach? Waiting to go to trial, we realized that we would have to wait half a day. We settled out of court. In the parking lot. And Mr. Cool kept enough of my money to buy another valuable knick knack for his home. No wonder he made a million six last year.
But before that happened, we indulged in the house. The master bed bathroom was larger than my first New York apartment. The walk-in closet was large enough not only to walk in, but to hold a decent sized party in. The living room had nothing but white couches in it. Perfect for four year olds.
“Not on the couch! No chocolate on the couch!”
And the pool was black. Everything in L.A. was black. The cars. The office furniture. The T-shirts under the leather jackets. Except us. We were white. And wet behind the ears.
Su casa est mi casa.
I had found a home away from home and called Julia and told her to pack up and come out.
“What’s it like?”
“It’s great. It’s … very L.A.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Well, if you’re living here, you should get the feeling that you’re really living here.”
“But you don’t really want to live there.”
“Right, but since we have to live here, I thought, why not live here in a place that really reeks of here.” If you can hear a double take over the phone, I heard Julia do one.
“Tell me something you love about the house.”
“Uhhhh, well … They have a rosemary bush. We can stuff chickens for a hundred years.”
As it turned out, Julia and the boys loved the house. It was suitably funky. A black pool (of course). And a kumquat tree. If the show folded, we could always write The Kumquat Cook Book. Favorite recipe: Rosemary stuffed chicken with kumquat sauce. And it gave rise to family “knock knock” jokes.
“Knock Knock.
“Who’s there?”
“Kumquat who?”
“I love you—kumquat may!”
Back in the land of “professional” comedy, Barnet and I met with network honchos to go over their notes on the pilot. The NBCers had read the questionnaires filled out at the screening replete with remarks such as: Love him hated her. Love her hated him. They need a dog. The friend isn’t handsome enough. 86 the Friend. Etc. Etc. Based on both the audience survey and network sagacity, as Barnet had informed me, Gene’s wife from the pilot was replaced by another actress. Because they wanted teenagers to watch the show, a teenage next -door neighbor was added as a regular character. Because they wanted “ethnic diversity,” a black plumber was added for the new first episode. And even though the pilot was good enough for the network to order it for series, massive rewrites were demanded.
Because I drove to work every day, a strange phenomena for me—not driving, going to work every day, I bought a used convertible that seemed appropriately “Hollywood.” Top down, I drove each morning to Warner Brothers, past the guard at the gate, top down, waving good morning, and feeling for all the world like Cary Grant in 1948. The best part of the day!
The show now had a staff. I don’t know … six, seven, eight writers. A head writer. A head writing team. They would run the show. Though the show was my creation, I’d never “run a show,” so I would, with the lofty title of something like Associate Producer, simply be one of the staff writers. Understand that every writer on staff had a producer credit. At the top was Executive Producer. Then Associate Producer. Then Assistant Producer. All the way down to just “Producer.” The titles meant nothing except they entitled them to a larger salary, since they were also now producers as well as writers, even though they weren’t producing. When I worked on All in The Family, there was The Producer, Norman Lear, and then there was everybody else. We in fact did not have a roomful of writers. There were two story editors. And then just plain old writers. Who worked at home and sent in the scripts when they finished them. I wrote most of my episodes from my beat up old desk in Connecticut. Pretty good show, considering. When my episode was shot, I flew out to L.A. and sat on the set like a playwright and did the rewrites needed. Alone. I could call in help from the story editors, if needed. With the Something Wilder staff, they never saw any rehearsals until the dress run-through. Notes were sent constantly up to the writers’ room about what was not working. A mad rewrite was done on the basis of the notes and sent back down.
“The bedtime story scene with Gene and the boys isn’t working. Charming but not funny.”
“How about if he’s had a garlic pasta for dinner and they can’t stand his breath?”
“Garlic’s always funny.”
“I think Cosby did garlic with his son.”
“Allergies!”
“What?”
“The boy’s blankets were washed with a detergent that Gene is allergic to, and he keeps sneezing during the story.”
“Gene can sneeze funny.”
“Which is funnier, sneezing or garlic breath?”
“One of life’s great questions!”
“Give him both!”
Not until that run-through did we see the show on its feet. And then, like herd of sheep, we moved en masse from one scene to the next. It was as if “the writer” was this seven headed monster. Working on All in the Family as I had worked in the theatre, I could sit on the set and watch and feel when something worked or didn’t. Then tinker and adjust and find something better. Here, you had seven different writers, all with different takes, who were coming in to see it too late in the process. And, who after the network and studio execs got finished with their notes, were largely irrelevant to the process. Committees can’t write plays. Even TV plays. The best TV shows have had the voice of one writer. Seinfeld was all filtered through the brain of Larry David. That’s why all the characters sound like him. Have his New York, angst-ridden, insecure, warped view of life. And it works. David Kelly’s shows, like ’em or not, are a product of David’s brain. Boston Legal may be good one week and weak the next, but for the last minute or so alone, with James Spader and William Shatner just talking and smoking cigars on the office veranda, it is worth it. West Wing was worth it for the infusion of Aaron Sorkin’s manic wit. The advent of the multi-staffed show (particularly with comedies) has homogenized the process. All the shows sound alike. They even have the same rhythm. Group writing (except for sketch humor, which is based on caricature, not character) just doesn’t work. I often imagined what Arthur Miller would have had to put up with if Death of a Salesman had been staff written.
“Arthur, when Willy’s wife says to his sons, “Attention… Attention must be paid to this man.”
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s a little heavy.”
“She’s not trying to be funny. She’s trying to get her boys to show some respect to their father. He’s in trouble. He needs their respect.”
“I know. I know. Respect is good. But … I mean … Yes, Curt, what’s your take?”
“How about, ‘Come on kids, give dad a break.’”
“Too general. Yes, Sally?”
“How about… Dad’s depressed. You know, a hug… a joke now and then…”
“Nooo, too on-the-nose.”
“I think it’s the word attention. It’s so…”
“How about… just… ‘Wake up guys! Dad needs some love!’”
“I like that. ‘Wake up guys… Dad needs some love!’ It’s quick. It’s direct. The word ‘love’ gets me more than the word attention. Attention is a downer word. What do you think, Arthur? Arthur? Where’s Arthur?”
While I was in the writers’ room rewriting dialogue that was projected from the computer onto a large screen in the room, Julia had to do full-time parenting. Thanks to old cereal boxes and her exquisite imagination, she produced a bevy of handmade toys. With scissors, glue, and Cheerios boxes she fashioned everything from airline pilot’s hats to dueling swords. And after a weekend trip to San Francisco she asked the boys what they wanted to make next. “The Golden gate bridge!”
“Honey, I’m not sure we have enough used cereal boxes to make that.”
“Mommy, you can do it.”
“We’ll empty out the full ones!”
It’s amazing the things you can do that you don’t think you could do because your kids just know you can do it.
Julia made the bridge. It spanned the entire length of the large glass coffee table. It was a wonder of pop art. Eat your heart out Red Grooms. When Barnet saw it at dinner, he sent the set decorator over to copy Julia’s cereal box toys to use in the show.
Her finest creation came soon after. One Saturday evening we took the boys to the Hollywood bowl. I think more for the phenomenon than for the music. Sam and Gabe had never seen a classical music concert, and even if they became restless, we knew the setting itself would stimulate them. But that night, Izak Perlman was playing. And they were entranced. And when we got home, both of them said that they wanted to play the violin. The next day, Julia got out the scissors and, you guessed it, cut up cereal boxes and made two violins. Not just profiles of violins—cereal box violins worthy of Guarneri. With sound boxes and frets and strings made from rubber bands and chopsticks for bows. They gleefully held them up to their chins and sawed away, humming tunes as if, for all the world, they were Itzak at the Bowl.
Something Wilder premiered on a Saturday night in October. I wanted to be out of town. So, we all went up the coast to a funky old motel-resort north of Ventura. The San Diego to Seattle Amtrak train came right though the middle of the resort. We booked a little bungalow on a hillock over the ocean. At eight we watched the show. It was odd, to say the least, watching a show ostensibly about us, that had been rung through the rewrite wringer so many times that it could have been about a family from Mars. At 2:00 a.m. I woke the boys so that we could watch the train rumble through the resort on its way north. It came right on time, at 2:12, blaring its horn, and we all screamed and waved and watched it disappear down the track toward San Francisco. Gabe turned to us.
“That was better than the show.”
The other shows, the new shows premiering with Something Wilder were big hits. Friends. ER. And the network decided they wanted, needed, to bolster that audience. Dadoo, i.e. Something Wilder had been designed as a “family show.” But young adults were watching Friends. They wanted young adults, i.e. single men and women who wanted to watch other single men and women spend their time trying to hook up with other single men and women—so they changed Something Wilder into a show about a married couple, who acted like they were single. Huh? After the first few episodes, the kids all but disappeared. (Along with the teenager next door and the black plumber). It was now about this “hot” couple who kept getting involved in absurd dilemmas. Donald Trump’s then-wife Marla Maples did an episode playing a vamp who tries to seduce Gene on a camping trip. The new wife, now played by Hillary Bailey Smith—a consummate comedian—was a great partner for Gene. But a show that suited the new premise should have been conceived for them. A kind of updated Thin Man. A sophisticated, tippling, high-living husband and wife in the fast lane. This show had one foot in the old premise—older Dad trying to raise kids—and one in the new—zippy couple getting into trouble. As charming as Gene was, as dexterous as Hillary was, the ship was sinking in its own contradictions.
It morphed into a kind of a sex farce. Years ago the British made a series of sex farce movies, Carry on Nurse, Carry on Sergeant. They’d take a milieu and people it with inept characters, busty women, double entendres and stupid chases, and—it’s a laugh riot. Our show became a kind of Carry On Dadoo.
It had started with me writing a sweet scene about the lovely little things we go through bringing up our children. It was my life. And it somehow became a television series. Except … my life had been rewritten.
F … nuance.
A lot of shit hit a lot of fans during this year, and I ended up actually being fired from my own show. I was still on the payroll, but my input on the show was no longer welcome. But, I learned something wonderful from my wife. And from my kids. First, take the money and run. Perhaps money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy freedom. With all the free time I had, I wrote a play. And the play was done that summer at The Williamstown Theatre Festival. And it was an exhilarating experience. And twelve years later, the play was expanded and produced again and done in Tokyo, Japan. Another exhilarating experience. But … but, more important, had I not written another word that year, I was able to spend an enormous amount of time with my family. There’s the old cliché that goes, “No successful businessman ever looks back on his life and says, ‘I only wish I got to spend less time with my kids.’ Most of the people I saw in Hollywood worked hard. Really hard. And they didn’t see much of their families. They didn’t see their four-year-olds build a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge out of cereal boxes. They didn’t get to go to the Hollywood Bowl to see Itzak Perlman and then have their boys decide on the spot that they wanted to play the violin. They didn’t take them bike riding along the beach in midweek, when it wasn’t crowded. They didn’t lie on the floor with them in the middle of the day, on an old Navajo rug, and play “Ha”—a game where you put your heads on each other’s stomachs and keep saying “Ha” in order, until one of you bursts out laughing and is eliminated. We were very lucky. It was all a game of “Ha.”
I’d been eliminated from my own show. But I was laughing now on the floor with my family. They taught me it was all right. They were proud of me. That’s it. They were proud of what I’d done. It didn’t matter that the show wasn’t what it should have been. Not to them. They were proud of me. And let me know it. And it got me through it all. As Arthur Miller said:
“Attention. Attention must be paid.”
SCENE: THE PATIO OF A RENTED HOUSE IN STUDIO CITY, CALIFORNIA.
(Samuel and Gabriel are sitting under a large sheet draped over a rosemary bush—a place they call “Rosemary House.” They are pretending it is the cockpit of a 747. They are naked, as is their habit on a warm day in California. But they do wear pilot’s hats, fashioned by their mother out of Rice Krispies boxes. Julia comes outside to call them in.)
JULIA
Sam, Gabe, Dadoo says that Jack Lemmon is coming for lunch. You have to get dressed.
SAM
Why?
GABE
We always eat without our clothes on.
Not today. Not for Jack Lemmon.
SAM
Why? He’s never seen a naked boy?
JULIA
It’s not so much that you’re naked, Sam, it’s just that you tend to stand up on your chair and your penis is hanging over your plate. It’s not … appetizing.
SAM
I won’t stand on my chair.
GABE
He’ll sit. Sam, you’ll sit, okay?
SAM
Okay.
JULIA
Okay, but just in case, you have to wear shorts.
SAM
Oookay.
Okay.
(Gabe knits his brow. Thinking)
Mom?
JULIA
Yes?
GABE
Who’s Jack Lemmon??