A Carlin Home Companion (22 page)

I was a freak. And now he was going to find out.

I continued. “Well, it's this weird thing that happens where I feel like I can't breathe, and my head gets a bit spacey, and I feel like I'm going to die.”

“Okay,” he replied.

“And, well, it's happening right now. It happens a lot when I'm in the car. I just need someone to talk to me for a few minutes while I drive so I don't feel so alone right now.” There, I'd done it. Now he knew I couldn't drive by myself without thinking I was going to die. I felt alone, and stupid, and broken.

“Okay, so where are you right now, and what do you see?” he asked me.

And for the next twenty-five minutes, this really smart, funny, soulful, cute, normal guy talked to me, asked me questions, told me about his car, and made me feel not too crazy.

I was in love.

This was crazy. It had been only about two months since I walked out of my eleven-year marriage, and I knew what I was supposed to do—learn to be single, forge a path by myself, be like Mary Tyler Moore and have an apartment in the city, a career I could find myself in, and fling a hat into the air. But there was Bob with his grounded perspective, his commitment to doing a job right, and his normal family. He loved Japanese films, knew all the words to Tom Waits's songs, and could cook a damn good marinara sauce from scratch. He was the kind of guy who would rescue a dog wandering in the street and find its owner and make sure it got home safe and sound.

There he was—the man of my dreams—something Mary Tyler Moore had spent seven seasons searching for—right in front of me. How could I turn my back on all that?

Once my mom found out about Bob, she was not shy about sharing her opinion about the situation. “You need to be dating lots of men. Play the field. Find yourself. I mean you JUST left Andrew!” On paper she was absolutely right. No doubt about it. She spoke from experience. She'd been with my dad for thirty-two years, since she was twenty-one, and never really had a life unattached to a man. She'd spent most of the last three decades mostly alone, while he was on the road, and she'd never had a whole world to herself. She wanted that for me.

My dad, as usual, took my side.

“But he's not Andrew, he's a good guy—solid, self-sufficient, no bullshit, treats her well. Who says there are rules about this kind of thing? She's happy for the first time in a long time. Let her be happy.”

The good news was that I didn't have to choose between happiness and independence. I found that with Bob I had no choice but to have both. The minute I'd toss any of my unconscious codependent bullshit behavior toward him, he wouldn't swing at it. He didn't even know how to play the game.

One night about a month into our relationship, he'd made plans to go and hang out with his guy friends at a bar. When I asked if I could go, he said no. He wasn't hurtful or cold, just calm and matter-of-fact about it. I started to cry. I felt rejected, ugly, and worthless. He looked at me like I was crazy (because I was) and told me that it really was okay to not be together 24/7, that we could love each other
and
have independent lives. He suggested I go out, make plans, and do things without him, too.

I had no idea how to do that. I didn't know how to pick what movie I wanted to see, or what meal I wanted to eat, or what career I was supposed to have, without sending any thought I had through the what-would-Andrew-or-Bob-or-my-parents-think? inner filter first. Although I'd lived a life attempting to be separate from Andrew for the last few years, I'd still been doing it in reaction to him. I hadn't done it
for
myself; I'd done it
against
Andrew. I knew there was supposed to be a separate Kelly in there somewhere, but I didn't have a clue how to find her.

 

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Right Foot Forward, Left Foot Back

B
Y 1994 MY DAD
had been on the road for more than thirty years. He was tired—tired of having to squeeze his home life into a few days a week; tired of the asshole businessmen sitting next to him on airplanes; and tired of bad hotel turkey sandwiches. He wanted to do something that wouldn't take so much out of him.

What he got was a sitcom—
The George Carlin Show
on Fox TV. Dad played George O'Grady (his grandmother's maiden name)—a much-less-enlightened, not-quite-as-worldly, and way-more-cynical version of my dad, who would've become a New York cabbie instead of a comedian. Dad was excited to be off the road and to get a chance to stretch himself by writing solely for this curmudgeonly character while immersing himself in an ensemble of comedic actors. He'd always yearned to be part of something, contrary to his very public stance about groups: “People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a ‘common purpose' 'cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they're going to visit at 3:00
A
.
M
. So I dislike and despise groups of people, but I love individuals. Every person you look at, you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking.”

Mom was also thrilled about the Fox show because she would finally get to spend more time with Dad. She had been a latchkey spouse without a partner to play with for decades, and she was tired of it. In the early 1980s she was so lonely that she considered leaving him. When he realized that she was serious, he started making more of an effort. Suddenly there was a whirlwind of dinner dates, movie dates, and trips to exotic places like a cruise on the Mediterranean and the Nile. But it could never be what she wanted. How could it, with my dad always catching another flight on his way to another gig to catch up with the everlasting back taxes he perpetually owed the IRS?

This TV show just might solve all that.

I, too, was happy that my dad got the show, and not just because I'd get to see any number of movie stars roaming the Warner Bros. lot where the show was taped. It was pretty much the best day of my life when, one afternoon, Warren Beatty rolled down his window to check me out while I stood outside the commissary—that's bucket-list material. But mostly I was happy for Dad because he deserved the financial reward and success of a Roseanne Barr or a Jerry Seinfeld. I was conscious of how hard all the traveling was on him, especially on his heart. I was always worried about his heart. Three years earlier, in 1991 in Las Vegas, he'd had a third heart attack.

I said to him as he recovered in the hospital, “You know, Dad, you could just move to Big Sur, write books, and sit with Mom and stare out at the ocean for the rest of your life if you really wanted to.” He smiled his sweet I-know-you-love-me smile and then patted my hand as if to say, That's a nice thought, but you know it'll never happen.

Even though this sitcom wasn't close to allowing him to retire in Big Sur, I thought that if the show was a hit, he could slow down eventually and just maybe live a little longer.

Selfishly, I was also excited about the show because I wanted to be part of it. At age thirty-one, I was ready to assert myself in the world and catch up to my peers careerwise. I was really behind. My fellow Crossroads graduates were eight years ahead of me and fully immersed in success. I'd thrown a whole decade away shoving coke up my nose, mothering Andrew, and having panic attacks on freeways. I wanted to prove to the world that I was not the lost child I felt like, but an adult with talent and something to say. I needed a break, and quietly, in my heart, I hoped that this show could be that break.

The year before the Fox show, in June of 1993, I graduated from UCLA and turned thirty all in the same week. My mom threw me a huge surprise party on a boat in Marina del Rey, which she filled with friends from every decade of my life. I felt like a debutante (sans tiara and crinoline), like I'd finally arrived. Where? I did not know. I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I “grew up.” I knew that I wanted to write, but I didn't know what that meant. I toyed with the idea of advertising (potentially lucrative but too soul crushing), journalism (not lucrative enough and possibly soul crushing, or soul affirming), short stories (likely soul affirming, but zero chance of being lucrative), and screenwriting (potentially very lucrative and soul affirming if I ignored the thousands of unproduced screenplays being written by people in coffee shops all across America).

Around that time Bob's best friend, Tom, moved to Los Angeles, and the three of us often sat around, dreaming up ideas for sitcoms that my dad could star in. It was the golden age of sitcoms—
Seinfeld
,
Mad About You
,
Home Improvement
,
Roseanne.
If you could find the sweet spot of a great premise with quality writing and acting that tackled social and domestic issues, you could win the Hollywood lottery. Every young comic in town was honing their stand-up act or doing one-person shows in hopes of being snatched up by the sitcom gods.

Bob and I began to write sitcom spec scripts together. The spec script is the foot-in-the-door-please-notice-me work to show agents and show runners that you are funny and understand the format and characters of the show. Bob, having come up in the world of TV news production, didn't have much experience in that world. When I met him, he was a sound guy, and by 1993 he had become a camera guy. But he was smart, well read, watched lots of films, and had a wicked sense of humor. We figured if we could make each other laugh, we had a good chance at making others laugh, too.

When
The George Carlin Show
went into preproduction, Sam Simon (
Cheers
,
Taxi
, cocreator of
The Simpsons
) became the coexecutive producer along with my dad and Jerry Hamza. As the show runner, Sam's job was to run the writers' room and help shape the overall feel and story arc of the show. Sam was the cream of the crop. When he moved into our Brentwood offices to begin working on the show, Bob and I were very excited. We wanted guidance and really wanted to learn. Sam was gracious enough to oblige, and he read our spec scripts and gave us honest feedback. It felt great to have him in our corner. When there was free time during his workday, he'd regale us with his tales from showbiz and his life. My favorite was the one about how, when he was a kid, he walked in on his mom screwing Groucho Marx.

Being around the office, hanging out with Sam and my dad during those preproduction months, made me feel like I was a part of something again, like when Mom and Dad and I had been on the road in the seventies, and doing the HBO shows in the eighties. It was nice to be in the family business again.

Mom and I were not technically part of the show. She was not attached as a producer like she'd been on the HBO shows, and although I was working part-time for my dad, it was only to book interviews and travel for his concert gigs. But Dad made it clear that Mom, his brother, Patrick, and I were an essential part of his emotional support team. We were welcome anytime to hang out and watch the process.

In the fall of 1993 the show began shooting on the lot of Warner Bros. Studios. The first day I went there was to watch the table reading of the first episode. As I walked across the lot, there was a palpable buzz in the air. This was the home of Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
, Joan Crawford in
Mildred Pierce
, James Cagney in
Yankee Doodle Dandy
, and Bugs Bunny! Most people think growing up in Los Angeles around famous people makes you jaded. That's not the case, at least not for me (or my dad, for that matter). Because I had showbiz ambitions, this kind of stuff affected me even more. These were what my dreams were made of. And here it was right in front of me.

As Mom and I arrived at Stage 17, Dad excitedly introduced us to all the actors, writers, and some of the crew. There were also some suits from Fox. When Sam came around, I said hi, but he ignored me. I thought little of it. But then the next day, when I went to watch rehearsals, the same thing happened. He walked right past me with no “Hello” or “How ya doing,” just a neutral look on his face, as if I were invisible. This kept happening for months. I saw him joke around with the actors, the writers, his assistants, but not me. All the warmth we had shared was gone. Was it something I'd said? Something I'd done? I searched my mind for anything that would have caused him to give me the cold shoulder. It turned out it wasn't something I had said or something that I had done. It was something I
was
: George's daughter.

Maybe it was weird that Mom and Pat and I
were
there hanging out. Maybe he wasn't used to our brand of family. But that's how Dad did it—we were part of his life—all for one, one for all. Sam, I found out, had a real issue with nepotism, and I guess he didn't want me getting any ideas about writing for the show. At least that's what I heard.

I get it. In some ways I see his point. I remember how I felt after shooting
Apt. 2C
—I felt like a “Hollywood cliché”—empty and worthless. I never wanted any job or opportunity unless I felt qualified for it. I mean, who wants to be a Frank Stallone?

But damm it, I knew I could do this. After a few months Sam finally acknowledged my existence again. He walked by and gave me a slight nod—miracle of miracles!

*   *   *

After the first season finished, Dad became disillusioned with the weekly grind and secretly hoped it would be canceled. He hadn't realized the beast he would be dealing with—eighteen-hour days. In order for the show to live up to his exacting standards, and be true to who he was, he needed to put in a lot of time and effort. He was both writer and actor. It was his name on that show. There went all that free time to be with Mom and have a life. There went him getting to slow down and take care of his heart.