It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (46 page)

"I would also like some credit for encouraging you to move out of Northridge (the California equivalent of Oklahoma). Those were not your "peeps".  So I single-handedly changed your look, your ride and your digs - you owe me, pally. I love you."

Post , Post Script:

One of many happy Thanksgivings I have spent is one I spent with Nonie and Danny at their little, tiny house way out in the valley. We all had to eat on the floor in the living room because there wasn't a table big enough for us all to sit around, but the food! The food was, well, it was to die for.  And when I think back to all the great Thanksgivings I have had, right up there with the best of them is Nonie and Danny, the two kids and me sitting on the floor of their living room and just having a great time eating till we got sick. 

Oh, by the way... I'm available for Thanksgiving this year!

OCTOBER 31, 2006 -
ACTOR'S STUDIO

Last night I had the honor of having my play GARY'S GOLD read by the Actor's Studio here in Los Angeles. It was truly a life-changing event.

For those of you who don't know what the Actor's Studio is, Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis started it in 1947. It is a theater workshop for professional actors, directors and writers and is a very prestigious space for anyone to have their works performed at or asked to be part of.  I was asked to join the Playwrights unit last year and had not asked to have any of my works read until last night. Why? I wasn't good enough. I didn't deserve to be in the unit. I couldn't be as well read as these people and on and on and on.

I got a time spot for the reading and was assigned a director. Not only did I get a director but I got one of the star directors at the Actor's Studio, Bob Burgos. On our first meeting Bob sat down with me and we talked for almost two hours. He came to my home and discussed character motivations, comedy, plot, etc. etc. etc.  He ran his list of actors by me and came up with two well-known actors here in LA. We held our first rehearsal last Friday. Before we read a single word, the actors spoke with me for forty minutes trying to find out who these characters were, who Gary was, why I wrote it and what I wanted them to bring to the part.

I guess it's like a composer hearing his symphony for the first time because when I heard these actors speaking my words it was as if they were in my head when I wrote it. These are true professionals. These are people who take ink on the page and turn it into real people, people you care about and want to see more of. They were a joy to listen to.

Monday night was the reading at Actor's Studio. The theater was filled with every playwright and director in town. This is the crème de la crème. These are not TV directors, although some have directed TV and film. These are the theater directors, the creative backbone of this city. The lights came down and my heart started pounding. My head was resting on my left shoulder as the first words were spoken. Here comes the first laugh line... big laugh. My head slowly moves to the upright position. OK, here's the second laugh... big one. The pounding in my chest slows down as the play progresses. I'm watching the audience, no one is sleeping, no one is rustling in their chairs, no one is looking at the ceiling or talking or picking their nose... they are all transfixed on the stage.

The last line is read and thunderous applause.  A director approaches me. "I loved it. I have some notes but man, can you write." Another comes up to me. "Very good work. Who are you again?"  The leader takes a break and we come back for discussion. This is where I sit on the stage and the entire unit throws questions at me. Martin Landau is one of the moderators. He's been in the Actor's Studio since day one; he's seen it all. Everyone is talking, throwing out ideas, giving their opinion then  Landau butts in, "I just need to tell you, I loved it. I was entertained, I laughed, I cried...." I'm sort of looking at him in a coma. I can't believe this is happening to me.

The consensus of the discussion was this; 95% of them liked the piece. Every single one of them had comments, suggestions, changes. In show business this is normal. Opinions are like assholes... everyone's got one. I listened intently to their comments. Some of them are valid some are just plain stupid. I make notes. I'll make changes at my discretion.  Landau wants to read other things I've written. I'm sending him the play optioned for Broadway. (Snicker, snicker...sly, sly)

Bottom line is this; in a setting where 90% of the plays are ripped apart and torn to pieces, my play was accepted with open arms and I was accepted as an equal. Folks this is the first time you will ever hear me say this,  I felt like an equal. I felt like I belonged with these people. I felt like this was my home, not HA-HA's Comedy Club in Ohio.

I left that place with my feet ten feet off the ground. I'm a playwright.  And if anyone in LA is reading this and wants to join a brill
iant writer's workshop, please contact me and I'll give you the number of Carol Morra. If she can turn me into a writer, she can turn water into wine.

OH! Just one final note. When the session was over and the playwrights and directors were all gone, only two people came up to me to talk further about the play, two African American women, a writer and a director.  They stayed with me for almost half an hour talking about the piece and how it progressed and telling me how it felt and where they would like to see it go. And once again, strong, beautiful African American women touched my life. History repeats itself like, Rena, Sheila, Yvonne and Ralph.  I'm telling you today I am truly blessed.

NOVEMBER 14, 2006 -
JOHN RITTER

When I first started out in the business I would do anything I could to get noticed. Being a regular at The Comedy Store was a major coup for me. You have to remember at that time there was no comedy club circuit. All there was was The Improv and a few clubs around Los Angeles. The Comedy Store was a new concept in showcasing entertainment and I was there from day one.

Two people that I was close with during that period were Pat Proft and Bo Kaprall. I've written about Pat but never mentioned Bo. Why? My mother always told me if I couldn't say anything nice about someone I should just keep my mouth shut. What can I say about Bo that won't get me sued? Um... he had nice eyebrows? Suffice it to say we had a love/hate relationship. Bo fulfilled my need to be put down, to be degraded and embarrassed and made to feel less than. He fulfilled a need started by my family and continued by my subconscious. I allowed it. I encouraged it. It was my fault, not Bo's. Mine. I should have stood up for myself, but I didn't and Bo went in for the kill.

Let me give you an example of the kind of thing Bo would do to me. I can say without a doubt it was the cruelest thing ever done to me in all the years I've been in the business.

When I first started doing stand up I was not very good. I was tentative on stage, scared and had no point of view.  But I worked like a champion to get better. I took classes and workshops and read up on comedy and I studied. Eventually I got better and the laughs did come. I worked with a tape recorder, taping every shoe. One night I had placed my tape recorder on a table in the middle of The Comedy Store. I said to Bo, "My recorder is here. Keep an eye on it for me. Will ya?" And then I went on stage to do a set.

When I got home to listen to my set what I heard all but destroyed me. I heard myself doing my act but suddenly there was a break in the recording and something closer to the mike was being picked up.  Bo was seated at the table where my recorder was and began talking while I was on stage. I heard Bo's voice over mine.  I heard Bo calling Stuart Cohen over to the table. "Stuart, come here...sit over here!" Stuart, who has since passed away, was a very powerful comedy manager. He could make or break any act at The Comedy Store and several of us tried very hard to get Stuart to sign us. His opinion mattered a lot and I was constantly trying to get his approval, approval that never came.  In any case, I hear Bo calling Stuart over to the table and I hear Bo asking, "Stuart, so what do you think of Steve's act?"  Now Bo knows my recorder is running but Stuart doesn't so he answers honestly. "He's awful. He'll never work."  Bo laughing and the noise of the tape recorder being moved follows this judgment of my talent.

When I got home that night and listened to my set, those words cut me like a knife. It was like someone had taken my heart and stepped on it. My eyes filled up, I slumped into a chair and replayed the tape over and over and over.  I remember playing it several times. And then, in a manic state, playing it quickly in succession so all I heard was... HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK, HE'LL NEVER WORK until I broke down and cried.

I found myself in a deep depression. I was seeing a shrink at the time and he told me I had to use those words to make a change in my life, to be my challenge.  And so, those words became my cause. I would prove Stuart wrong. I WOULD work. And yet there was always a portion of my brain that said, "He's right. I'll never work."  I fight those words to this day, those feeling of not being enough to be a success.

And so when I say I have nothing nice to say about Bo, there are reasons. But here's the curious thing about him. He did have a nice side, a generous side, a giving side. Bo had been cast in a play with John Ritter. (Aha finally) and they were casting a very small part.  Bo told me about it and got me the part. I think he liked doing things like that because it made him feel more important.

John Ritter was the star of the play. At the time he was living in a one-room apartment on the edges of Hollywood. John was a very kind, sweet, sincere man. He had a terrific sense of humor and was generous and fun to be around. Bo had a sixth sense about who was going to be big and he latched on to them. Rob Reiner was another one Bo had latched on to but for now it was John.

I can't remember what the play was or anything about it. I do remember that I played a thief and had one line. I had one line and then I created some business that got laughs. I took a little nothing part and made it funny. John noticed this and was very complimentary to me.  Bo never said a word.

John, Bo and I hung out for a bit...maybe five minutes in my life... and then John was gone. Like I've said before, it's how it is in show business. You make close friends; intense friends and then you go your separate ways.

Here's something you'll never read about anyplace else. John Ritter had the strangest eye I have ever seen. I think it was his left one. The black spot in the center of his eye , the pupil,  was off center. I don't know if he was blind in that eye or not but I do know that one eye's pupil was dead center and one was slightly left of the iris. I've never seen it again or before in any other person and it didn't seem to bother John at all. 

When John got Three's Company, I knew instantly he would be a huge star. I never saw him through all those years but then I was doing a TV show in Canada and in walks John. "Steve, hey, how are you?"  And the man, who I had not seen in years, sits down and talked to me to find out how I was and what I was up to. It was nice to see that he had not changed. Nice. Really, really nice.

When I had learned that John had died it saddened me to no end. He was really one of the good guys in the business and it's so unfair that he's been taken from us at such an early age. Bo is still with us... but not in LA. He moved back to Minneapolis where he became a successful producer. I can't tell you how strange I find it to be that Bo left LA and I'm still here.  It was Bo that we all thought was going to be the big star. I remember being in a swimming pool with Bo just floating on two rafts. Bo was planning his future telling me about his series and his big house and all the money he was going to have. Then he turned to me and said, "Steve, you'll never be a comedian. You'll work in the business behind the scenes...like a writer or a producer."  As I stood on the stage in Las Vegas opening for Donna Summer, I remember thinking to myself.... "Won't be a comedian, Bo? How wrong you are. How wrong you are."

NOVEMBER 15, 2006 -
ALAN LANDSBURG

Right after I had lost my job at The May Company and had started hanging out at The Comedy Store, I collected unemployment. But that only lasted for a year and I was in desperate need of a job. I would work at anything to support myself as I tried to break into the wonderful world of comedy. I worked in a Photomat booth. I worked as a gardener. I was the assistant to a manager. I did anything. And then one day I got a call from Carol Ita White. Her good friend Sybil Edelman heard of a job with Alan Landsburg Productions. They needed a runner. (A go-for) I ran to the interview dressed in a sports jacket and tie.

The offices were in the strangest set up I had ever seen. They were a series of houses in a compound around a swimming pool. Each house was used for a different purpose. The main house was Alan's office, the back house was the editing bay, the farthest house was storage and so on. It wasn't like any office set up I had ever seen and I loved the casual air the place had. I really wanted this job...  and somehow I got it.