Love Life (24 page)

STRUCTURE:
Poor

It is heavy, portentous and overwrought. It feels dated. One seems to be drowning in limestone (which hasn’t worked as a popular building material since the WPA era).

DESIGN:
Not very good at all.

You can’t even
see
Abraham Lincoln from the street! Also, there are way too many stairs to climb to get to him. We need to see Abraham Lincoln much earlier. He is the star!

The blueprint submitted for our approval also shows a profound lack of understanding of what works in the marketplace. Exhausted stair-climbers do not want to enter a huge, dimly lit room and crane their necks to look
up
to see the statue. The Lincoln statue should be at our audience’s eye level. Also, his hands are too large and completely unrealistic. Everyone knows Lincoln was not thirty feet tall. Looking at this plan, I did not even
once
think I was looking at the real Abraham Lincoln.

I also hated the words on the walls. Way too serious, and a little depressing. People don’t want to hear about dead soldiers and slaves. Can’t it be funnier? Or maybe keep the slaves and soldiers on just one wall and come up with some of Lincoln’s jokes on the other?

COMMENTS:
I think the designer was going for a majestic, dramatic and somberly emotional testament to a human being who faced godlike problems. I suppose you could make a case for those themes,
but would the public really be interested in that? I don’t recommend you actually take the time to review the Lincoln Memorial.
PASS.

Meanwhile, I can also imagine things I love and that
did
get made receiving bad coverage.

PROPOSED PROJECT

TITLE:
Sesame Street

First of all, the title is misleading and dangerous. It brings to mind a road made of extremely hard-to-eat nuts. This being a proposed children’s television show, I don’t think it should be named after both a choking hazard
and
a very unsafe place for kids to play.

SUMMARY:
I found the show’s setting troubling. Why would young children be happy about playing among urban tenements? The show should be reimagined in the suburbs, at a grassy park, with many trees. No one is interested in manholes.

The writer shows a complete lack of discipline by creating an extraordinarily inconsistent vision of the characters. Some are humans and some are puppets! If there are to be puppets, the world should be a total puppet world. Anything else is confusing and possibly frightening. Especially to children.

I found the tone misanthropic. One of the main characters is even named Oscar the Grouch. (I did like some of his dialogue, however. Perhaps just rename to Oscar the Great?)

I was also thrown by the descriptions of the adult characters. One is a young, idealistic black man; one is an old, kind, Jewish store owner and still others are identified as white, Chinese and American Indian. It is a confusing cultural hodgepodge. Young children are free to roam unaccompanied without supervision; these disparate cultures blend seamlessly in harmony and goodwill, while the characters act as mentors and friends to the children. This is completely unrealistic and
unlike any neighborhood in the real world. Children are impressionable. We need not expose them to relationships and experiences they are unlikely to have in their own lives. Recommendation:
PASS.

In spite of this system, obviously gems still get made. But more and more I feel this is in spite of it rather than because of it.

Behind the Candelabra
is a perfect example. Written by Richard LaGravenese, one of Hollywood’s handful of top guns, it was a movie no one wanted to make. Everyone said no. It was “too gay” or “about a star who kids don’t remember” or whatever. Even with Steven Soderbergh directing and two A-listers, Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, no studio would touch it. Even at a rock-bottom budget. For a long while it languished until the producers gave up on its being a theatrical movie and took it to TV, for HBO, and they said yes (although in the rest of the world it did play in theaters). This is another clear indication that television is
the
inevitable future destination for the bulk of smart, unique entertainment.

Behind the Candelabra
, considering its pedigree and tiny budget, one would have thought, was a small bet worth taking. HBO said yes, and that’s why it was nominated for eighteen Emmys instead of eighteen Oscars.

It’s a new world. Change in all our lives and our business, whatever it may be, is inevitable. One can bitch about it, like I just did, or suck it up and roll with the tide, as I always try to. There is almost always an unforeseen silver lining to frustrating and demoralizing new barriers.
Candelabra
didn’t get to be a studio movie, but more people saw it on TV in America than ever would have seen it in a movie theater. Although I enjoyed being a part of its success, what was most comforting was its reinforcement of what I sometimes struggle to remember: Sometimes you can beat the system and a chorus of no’s is rendered irrelevant by a single yes.

T
here came a point
when the water of Long Island Sound began leaking into my small raft at such a rate that I began to consider what my obituary might say. The wild-eyed young production assistant, whom I had bribed to row me out to the middle of the bay for a clandestine rendezvous with a seaplane, fumbled with his walkie-talkie.

“Do you have Rob out there?” a voice I recognized as that belonging to the director of the movie I was attempting to flee asked with panicked suspicion.

“Don’t answer him,” I ordered, and handed the kid another $20.

“Is number one with you?!” he demanded, using the slang term for the star of a movie, based on the actor’s top position on the day’s call sheet.

I shook my head at the kid vigorously. “Just be cool. Don’t respond.”

I needed to find this seaplane. We were bobbing around, whitecaps rising and slopping over the rubber bulwark. If it didn’t appear
soon, my cohort and I would either be rousted by someone from the movie or be forced into the swirling, choppy drink.

“I . . . I . . . have to say
something
,” said the PA. I realized he was probably right. And I didn’t want to get him into any more trouble than he was clearly in already.

“Okay, tell them that they’re breaking up and you can’t really hear them. Tell them you’ll be back right away.”

As I had been lying flat and hiding under a blanket like a defector from East Berlin, I was confident the kid would be fine if he stuck to his guns and didn’t crack under the questioning, which would surely be fairly intense, as the production discovered that I was indeed AWOL.

I hadn’t meant it to become such an ordeal. It was 1987 and my beloved Los Angeles Lakers were locked in an epic, rigorous conflict with their loathed, bitter rivals, the Boston Celtics, for the NBA championships. I was a courtside season ticket holder and never missed a game. When I was on location, the Lakers front office would send Jack Nicholson and me tapes of our missed games via FedEx. Sometimes I even went on the road for important matchups. And there was none more important than game four in the dreaded Boston Garden.

Happily, I was a mere forty minutes away by air. I was making a movie (
Masquerade
) and although I was done for the week, the producers, knowing my Purple and Gold loyalty, had forbidden me from traveling to Boston. If something went wrong and I missed my return flight, I could’ve driven back in time for shooting, but they didn’t care. Faced with such an indefensible and draconian house arrest in the Hamptons, I planned my escape.

We were shooting on the gorgeous but logistically challenging Shelter Island. I had missed the last ferry and was stranded. The seaplane was to meet me as soon as I wrapped at East Hampton Airport
to make the tip-off. I had no time to waste. I had the plane rerouted to Shelter Island, but the charter company had been having a hard time relaying the new coordinates to the pilot, who had been circling over the set, tipping the plane’s wings and waving his arm out the window.

“Do you know anything about this?” shouted my producers.

“Nope,” I said.

I could tell that they didn’t believe me, but without proof their only option was to shoot it out of the sky.

I ran back to my trailer and picked up my state-of-the-art Motorola “brick” cell phone.

“Please get that thing away from the set!” I’d begged the hapless charter representative. “Put it down out on the water. I’ll meet it on Long Island Sound.”

Now, as I began to bail water out of the raft, I saw no sign of the plane. Had it gotten the message? Did it mistakenly return to the airport? Should I head for shore and miss the game or should I risk drowning for the home team?

This wouldn’t be the last time my youthful pre-sobriety enthusiasm and Laker love would put me in a pinch.

In the 1988 finals against the “bad boys” from Detroit, after benevolently attempting to share the wealth and sending some eager, loitering and pretty fans up to the players’ rooms, I was banned from the hotel by Pat Riley. In that era, it was common to have a wonderful contingent of local supporters waiting to greet me in the lobby at most hours. I knew how lonely the road could be and wanted to do what I could to help the boys from Showtime (the team, not the network) have some needed R and R. Coach Riley was not amused. In fact, he took it out on me later during an unspeakably competitive and grueling match on Emilio Estevez’s beach volleyball court, where he
crushed me like a peasant uprising. The dude standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square met a better fate.

Back in LA for the same Detroit final, I hosted one of the Lakers stars at Mr. Chow after a Sunday victory. In those days I played for serious keeps when I was between movies, and I never considered that my Laker pal still had some big fish left to fry in the series. After trying to keep up with me into the wee hours, he returned to the Forum and promptly went into a career-low shooting slump that continued
into the next season
.

I’m glad Riley never got wind of that one.

Had I actually drowned attempting to flee the set of
Masquerade
, my Laker pal might’ve had better stats. But eventually I did secretly meet up with the seaplane and even made it to my seat in the Garden for tip-off. Perhaps as a Beantown welcome, I was seated next to notorious Laker hater and towel-waving former Celtic enforcer M. L. Carr. Every time I rose to my feet for Magic and company, old M. L. stared me down with hostile intent.

Earvin, who sees everything both on the court and off, sent his right-hand man, Lon Rosen, to change my seat at halftime, sparing me the wrath of Carr and the relentless heckling from the Celtic enthusiasts surrounding me.

The game was looking like a blowout, with the Celts up by fourteen. I had been placed high above the arena in the owner’s box. It was so far above the court, and also so close to it, that you could look directly down through the center of the hoops, giving you a surreal angle on the action.

“Sorry about the score, Rob. Looks like it’s over,” said one of the Boston brass.

“Mmmm. I wouldn’t count on it,” I replied, and meant it, in spite of the odds of that kind of a comeback happening on an opponent’s court in a game of that import.

And with that, Michael Cooper took an outlet pass and raced uncontested downcourt. Instead of an easy dunk, he pulled up and buried a long three. One of the greatest comebacks in NBA history followed, and the stage was set for one of the most memorable and replayed shots in all of sports.

In the steaming heat of the rat-infested Garden, the greatest point guard who will ever play the game took a pass directly beneath me on the close sideline. Five seconds on the clock, Lakers down by one. Magic Johnson, one of the NBA’s all-time assist leaders, looked for the open man as he wheeled to the top of the key. Having watched hundreds of Lakers games, I recognized his body language: he was going to the hole himself. Robert Parrish and Kevin McHale, both seven-footers, closed the lane, arms outstretched, a dual ten-foot barrier. There was now no shot to be had, but Magic had committed.