THE PLAY IS THE THING

And so begins the last chapter of this book. (Or maybe it’s the first chapter of the next one?)

2016 was the year wherein one life ended and this new one began. At this point, Ella was a paramedic, riding at breakneck speed through the streets of Portland, delivering babies on the side of the road, bringing overdose victims back to life, carrying a child who had their face bitten badly by a dog, and other absolutely crazy shit you can’t even imagine. She had already been accepted to medical school, was in love with a great young man, and they were getting married in October 2016. By then, Sophie was already married and was crushing it with her music. She toured with her band, Sophie and the Bom Boms, and was an outstanding performer and singer, thrilling audiences with her shows. She also had a songwriting deal with the infamous Dr. Luke and was writing songs for Britney Spears, Kesha, Conor Maynard, and many other pop stars.

By now, Henry was legislative counsel to the legendary California State Senator Fran Pavley, using his degree to help write groundbreaking environmental laws. But Senator Pavley’s term limit of twelve years ended in 2016, and she asked Henry to run for her seat. He had always played in the political arena, although never as a candidate, but it turned out he was built for the job. And so was Laure. None of us had any experience organizing a political campaign, but we did know how to fundraise, which is unfortunately the most important part of politics. We turned the little house into campaign headquarters. Everyone in Malibu knew Henry and Laure and their contributions to their community, and they were supportive of their hometown boy seeking such a high office like state senator. Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner, Paul Reiser, and so many of our show business friends knew Henry from when he was a kid, and his nickname was “Mr. President” because he was so smart, caring, and charismatic. Henry hired Senator Pavley’s campaign people and Laure raised money. Henry went from debate to debate and fundraiser to fundraiser, a happy warrior offering real solutions to the problems of environmental justice, drought issues, clean energy, fracking, and so many other seemingly unsolvable issues. I did what I could, going to events and talking him up, but Henry didn’t need my help and neither did Laure, so mostly my job was to worry. In June 2016, Henry won the Democratic Primary, fending off other well-funded challengers in a somewhat ugly campaign. (Although what political campaign isn’t ugly?) The district leaned Democrat, but he had a fight on his hands to win in November, and we went into fund-raising mode again to raise the money needed to compete. Henry and Laure were a well-oiled machine, but I was beginning to crack.

On the outside I was saying, “I love Malibu! I have worked as hard as I could, my wife has given a big chunk of her life to make this a better place, and now our son wants to serve the people of this city. There is no better place on earth.” But on the inside I was saying, “Fuck Malibu! I hate this fucking place. Too crowded, too entitled. Ripping up its natural beauty to build monstrous homes and have parties? Fuck this place!” I was torn apart by the dueling voices and dealt with it by going to the ranch and my studio as much as possible. But on the Fourth of July weekend, I finally snapped. I always tried to be away during holidays in Malibu because that is when the entitled assholes really come out to play, but this weekend a friend was getting married, and I had to stay for the wedding. We got home after midnight, and when we pulled into the driveway, the music blaring from our neighbor’s house was as loud as if you were at a disco. And it wasn’t even Kid Rock’s house this time. It was the real estate mogul, the son of the fireman who embodied Old Malibu, now disrespecting his neighbors, as well as nature, in such an arrogant way. I was fuming mad. It was my worst fear come to life, the final killing of the Malibu dream I had for our family. Henry and Laure tried to calm me down, but I became unmoored. By one in the morning, I was out of my mind. With the disco bass beating into my brain, I finally called our neighbor to tell him to shut it off, but only got his answering machine. I called our other neighbors, who were incredibly pissed off that this was going on, but no one could get in touch with the real estate asshole because it turned out he had rented the house to Bono (yes, that Bono), who was having a birthday party for his daughter. Henry and Laure made one more attempt to stop me, both feeling the headline of me being arrested for going crazy at a trendy Malibu party might not be good for Senator-to-Be Stern, but I was too far gone by then. I called the police and told them that there was an unlawful party going on and that I was going over there to shut it down and I hoped they would join me. I hopped in my truck, drove around the block to the house, parked the car in the middle of the street, and headed in. The security guys at the door recognized me and since I was still wearing my suit and tie from the wedding, assumed I must be on the list, so I got in with no problem. I had not been in the McMansion the real estate narcissist had put up in place of the modest home his parents raised him in, and the absolute gaudiness of the place slowed me down for a beat. It looked like a hotel—slate walls, dim lighting, waterfall. The open lobby area had a bar in it, where cool people in black clothing mingled. At the far side of the lobby was a balcony, which overlooked a lit stairway leading down to the pool area where most of the party was taking place. It also happened to look into my bedroom! I lost it.

I started ranting, “Shut the fucking music off!! Families with children are trying to sleep, and instead we all have to listen to this shitty music all night long?! Shut it off! You don’t even live here, you fucking pretentious assholes! To celebrate Bono’s daughter’s fucking birthday at one o’clock in the morning? Shut it off!” (Or something like that.) At first it was hard for people to understand what was going on, so I had to keep getting louder and louder. Security finally came in as I descended the stairs, blocking my way but not wanting to get in a fight with a “guest.” Also, I am six-foot-four and can look pretty insane and scary when I lose my shit, and I was at full tilt. The police came quickly, thank God. They shut down the party, calmed me down, and mercifully let me go on my way, empathetic to how out-of-control and inappropriate that party was and how justified my anger was. I drove back to our house, where Laure and Henry were worried sick, and broke down. “I can’t live in this place anymore. I hate it here so much.” The most beautiful place in the world, that we had worked so hard to sustain and preserve, had been ruined beyond repair. They won. “I give up.”

Two months later, we found the perfect farm in Ventura. Forty acres of tangerines, lemons, and avocados, a house big enough for family to stay with us and even a small guesthouse. With Sophie’s album coming out, Ella’s wedding, and Henry’s election all happening at the same time, we didn’t even tell the kids that we had put a deposit on it. They were all having incredible adventures in their lives, which is everything a parent could hope for, and this was a new Laure and Danny Adventure, the first one without the kids in a very long time. By November, Ella was married, Sophie was pregnant, and Henry was a senator, winning his election on the same day my old buddy Donald Trump became the president (talk about mixed emotions!). When we finally told the kids and my parents about the farm, they were thrilled for us. The farm owners let us bring everyone out to see the place, and they were excited that it was going to be ours. Unlike my first time on our cattle ranch, I did not start a stampede, mostly because this farm didn’t have cows. But it was drizzling that day, lush and wet. Too wet, actually, because when I drove us all out into the orchard to see the beautiful fruit trees, I somehow managed to get the car stuck in the mud. It was about a mile from the house, and I had to hike back to get a neighbor to pull us out with his tractor. My ninety-year-old parents sat calmly in the car while my children laughed at how ridiculous it was that I took us out there without knowing what I was doing. But they should be used that by now. That’s how I roll.

About a year after we moved in, the Woolsey Fire burned through Malibu and my parents had to evacuate their beach side trailer and shelter with us. The stress, the fear, and the eight hours stuck in traffic on the PCH was a lot. The first night they stayed with us, my dad had severe shortness of breath, and I took him to the hospital. He came out a week later, but Laure and I realized that even when Malibu reopened, which wouldn’t be for weeks, it would be too dangerous for them go back and live on their own—too isolated for my dad’s worsening condition, and too much stress on my mother to be his full-time caretaker. They loved and needed their independence, but eventually we convinced them to move into our guesthouse, where they would be totally separate from us but right there if they needed us. They were both Philadelphia city kids, and living on a farm, right across from the ducks and chickens, both confounded and delighted them. My dad was in and out of the hospital for a year, and just after they celebrated their sixty-fifth anniversary, my dad went into sudden decline. My sister flew down, my brother came out, my kids and nieces and nephews and even my dad’s best friend from DC were all there when he passed away in his bed. Watching him pass from this life to the next was transformational for me. (As well as for him!)

I loved my dad with every fiber of my being. He was so fun, so smart, so loving, so emotional, and so fucked up too, a role model for me as well as a cautionary tale, which I guess could be said about most fathers and sons. He worked his whole life trying to make other people’s lives better and safer and more just. We buried his ashes under a beautiful tree near the guesthouse so that he is always near us. My mom still lives in the guesthouse, and what a blessing that has been. All of her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids visit her constantly, and the people who work on the farm love and respect “Ms. Cynthia” deeply, making sure she always has fresh lemons, avocados, tangerines, eggs, and her newspaper brought in from the street. Laure loves her like her own mother, showers her with food, coordinates everything from electricians to doctors, as well as being tech support. Mom loves us all back so freely and shows us how a great life is lived. She has been in and out of the hospital herself a few times, adding to my list of things to worry about, but the opportunity to have so much time with her at this point in our lives is one of the many unforeseen joys that this new life on our farm has brought me.

We have lived here for six years as of this writing, and it is everything I hoped it would be, and more. Between the farm and the ranch, I spend 100 percent of my time in the beautiful countryside of California as a Gentleman Farmer. Of course, I let the real work go to the cattlemen, orchard managers, and Laure—you know, people who actually know what they’re doing. But I am free to make as much tangerine juice as I want, clean horse stalls, lay irrigation pipe, pick avocados, collect eggs, herd cattle, and give tractor rides whenever I feel like it. I still like acting when I am inspired by a part or a project and I should probably direct at least one more film before I die, just for the personal challenge of it, although the job itself might kill me. I have spent my entire life on movie sets, which is crazy, but what is crazier is now I have graduated into being the “wise old man” on set. The crew calls me “Mr. Stern,” tell me their favorite movies of mine, and sometimes look at me like I must have looked at Jack Palance, Robert Redford, and Roy Scheider when I had the honor of working with them, older guys you loved in older movies, still standing and doing it.

I put up an art studio in the middle of the orchard, and my daily commute is now on our dirt road through a forest of avocado trees. Sculpting has become more than a job or an art form to me and moved into something more spiritual. For the moment, I have stopped showing my work in galleries or seeking public art projects. I have been selling myself and my art my whole life, the product always being my creativity, so I am trying something new—doing the work for the sake of the work and not for those kinds of commercial goals. My hours alone in the studio, pushing clay this way and that way until it comes to life for me, have given me time to understand the Tao of Sculpting. There is the moment of inspiration, when the pose and the story flash in my mind. Then I imagine how to physically make it, and what the viewer would feel when they see it. Then, just the work—cutting the foam, welding the pipe, laying the clay, climbing the scaffold, and all of the physical labor it takes to make an eight-foot-tall totem or a couple dancing. Doing the work is what separates the fantasist from the achiever. I respect the commitment I make to myself to see these things through to the end, even though the world would continue just fine if I didn’t make it. The physical labor is good for me. I am an animal and I need to move. But the deepest lesson sculpting has taught me is the necessity of seeing things from all angles. When I am working on a face, I can carve the nose so that it looks perfect, but as soon as I take a step to my left and see it from a new angle, I see that the bridge is too long. Another step to my left shows me another flaw and when I look at it from below, it isn’t even recognizable as a nose. It takes time and focus to keep re-examining something, but if you do it long enough and clearly enough, you will eventually get as close as possible to the truth, the best nose you can possibly make. Don’t fool yourself and think things are perfect, or that you fully understand the situation, if you have only looked at it from your immediate point of view. Take one step to your left and see what it looks like from there. Get on your knees and look at it from that perspective. And while you are there in that moment looking at the nose, look at the ear too, and everything else you can see from where you are, because you will never be there again. The light, the angle, the time of day, and your frame of mind will never be in this exact position again. So take in the moment and explore everything you can see and do right now. Find the flaws and fix them right now. Find the beauty from this angle, and feel satisfaction at your creation and understanding. If you tell yourself you will come back and fix the problem later, you are fooling yourself. Why clutter your mind with the nagging thought that you need to find this perspective again, and do the repair work later? Just finish the work in front of you and move on to the next thing. The way I sculpt has shown me how to see my life, and the world. There are so many perspectives in this world of eight billion people (and countless other creatures, large and small), and I need to always have the humility to remember that I don’t understand the big picture at all, not even close.

Lately I have been writing a musical with CeeLo Green based on my old movie C.H.U.D., a film adaptation of Barbra’s Wedding, a black comedy Christmas movie, and a couple of TV series, but all of those need producers, actors, designers, crew people, and a big pile of cash to get them from the page to you, the audience, and I know the chances for each are slim. Writing this book has been another personal challenge that I did not expect to undertake, and it has been quite a learning experience. Everything else I have written has been fiction, where I ask myself, “What can happen?” Writing this book, the consistent question is “What did happen?” and it has been a fascinating exercise, reassessing my life at sixty-five. I highly recommend it. Lucky for me, the story doesn’t end here. But the book does. So with only a page or so to go before I can call myself a book writer, I guess I need to wrap it up with a few choice words of wisdom, a final message, the moral of the story. Unfortunately, I don’t have any of those.

If I have a cause, it’s empowering children and young people. I was raised to be confident in my abilities as well as understand my limitations, and I have made my life choices accordingly. From my first solo trip across Philadelphia at age four, to canoe camp, hitchhiking as a preteen, and up through my decision to drop out of high school and move to New York on my own at seventeen, I was led to believe that I could handle myself in adult situations. And I could. My biggest hit movies have had the same message—if a kid is raised to believe they can handle themselves in an adult situation, they usually can. Keeping our kids safe while also helping them expand their world should be our Number One goal as a species. By making sure each child has the knowledge they need, a mentor to learn from, and the critical thinking skills to be able to make good decisions and navigate the crazy world we have brought them into, we assure the healthy survival of the human race. None of it means anything if we don’t invest everything we can in our kids.

Save your money! If you are lucky enough to be making money doing what you love, save it! Especially for artists. The goal is to make a living doing what you love, have control over your life and how you spend your time on Earth. Life is long and you are going to need money the whole time, so hold onto it tight. I have talked about money in this book. That is the other half of fame and fortune. I hope it hasn’t been gross to mention how much money I made on individual projects, but it is important to paint a picture of the money part of show business too. Saving money bought me the freedom to spend my time the way I want to spend it, and when you get down to it, there is nothing more valuable than how you spend your time. To me, this is the next step in Young People Empowerment. Invest your money and time into yourself, your talent, and your dream. No excuses!

My life took an amazing turn with Home Alone. Playing Marv Merchants was a ton of fun, but the lasting impact it had on my life is immeasurable. How many people in the world are stopped by perfect strangers who tell them, “I love you. My family loves you. You bring us joy. You are a part of our family holiday tradition,” and all of the other wonderful things people say to me all the time? My face is on T-shirts, kids’ toys, dog toys, shower curtains, and tattooed on people’s bodies. Justin Timberlake himself dressed up as me for Halloween! The kids in Iraq, monks in Japan, tribespeople in the Alaskan wilderness, presidents of the United States—literally everywhere I go, people recognize Marv, connect with me, and share a smile or a kind word. I have spent years trying to understand Marv’s superpower and how to use it for good. I hope the gratitude I feel towards all the fans of my movies comes through on these pages, although the Power of Marv still scares me, and I don’t leave the house that much. The love and attention people show me overwhelms me a bit and throws me off-balance from my regular life and self-image. But it is the blessing of a lifetime to be able to meet anyone, anywhere, under any circumstance, and without doing anything, have an immediate positive connection and elicit a smile. I did get a new lease on life during the COVID19 pandemic and mask mandates, when, for the first time in decades, I felt I could walk around stores and fly on airplanes unrecognized and people watch, instead of being watched by people. I am going to pretend to be immunocompromised for the rest of my life!

On his ninetieth birthday, surrounded by his family and friends, my dad, not one for speechifying, speechified. He said he had thought about it and, looking back over his time on Earth, he had concluded that the most important thing in life is . . . work. He said that of course he loves his family, but his work touched a lot of people, made their lives better, and made the world better. He loved being in the trenches with workmates and, if you add it up, had probably spent more time with them than he had with his family. Dad loved being the contrarian, and the family gave him the proper amount of shit for not picking his family as his most important accomplishment. But I could tell he was only half kidding, and I have been trying to balance that in my mind ever since. My family are the most important people in the world to me. My kids have amazed me every day of their lives. My parents, my siblings, in-laws, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, nieces, and nephews are my blood, literally and figuratively. My grand-kids are delicious and tickle the old parts of my brain, when I was being a dad to little kids—nurturing, playing games, teaching. I am giving myself the time to waste whole days doing nothing but playing with them, and those are truly the best days of my life. And I love watching my kids figure out how to be parents. Seeing them grow into these new roles and responsibilities is a continuation of the miraculous journey of being a parent, as the circle of life continues. But my work has also made me who I am. The people I have worked with, the opportunities I have had, the art I’ve created, the audiences I have touched, the places I have traveled, the lessons I have learned, and the chances I have been given to serve my fellow man have shaped me into the other half of who I have become.

Of course, this is all a moot argument because the absolute most important factor in shaping my life is Laure. Literally none of it would have happened like this if not for Laure. She believed in me, loved me, made our family, and made our home. She does all our financial work, all travel arrangements, takes care of children, grandchildren, and parents, runs the farm, runs the ranch, sells the house, buys the house, cooks the food, fixes computers, feeds the animals, knows the neighbors, gets the truck fixed, and rubs my back in bed at night so perfectly it feels like all is right with the world. So I guess that is the real answer in the work versus family debate, and I am sure my father would have said that about his wife if we had pressed him. But his point still has truth to me—my family and my work are the two sides to my world, and both hemispheres are needed to make my world whole.

As all good book writers do, I will end on a Shakespearean quote, even though I have still never read one of his plays. But this one I actually understand, and it hits home. “The play’s the thing.” Play. That is what I have been doing my entire life: playing as much as I possibly could. I take playing very seriously and always have. It is “the thing,” after all. Playing baseball, football, basketball, tennis, golf, bowling, ping pong, anything where I can throw or chase a ball. Playing Cowboys and Indians, Sharks and Jets. Playing Army. Playing trumpet, and then playing guitar. Playing music in my studio all day long. Playing cards, Risk, chess, Barbies, swimming pool basketball. Acting in plays, playing many parts, playwriting, directing plays, writing screenplays. I have played enormous theaters and my films have played all over the world. Playing with my children. Playing with other people’s children. And now playing with my grandchildren. I have tried to play “the game” and “play ball” but usually end up just playing the fool in those situations. Like every one else, I am playing for time, hoping to keep playing on, and always seem to be playing it all by ear.