Still Talking (13 page)

In Hollywood power is the ability to get a film made. A few stars have it.

Kevin Costner has it, Eddie Murphy has it, Julia Roberts has it. But the real power is in the hands of a very few kings, the potentates who can grant your destiny, bestow your dream, your fantasy. Phone calls by these men are returned within an hour. They can get important people out of meetings. Nobody disagrees with them. They have reached the top after a series of right decisions, a run of hit movies, and seem to know the secret that nobody else knows. They watch out for each other and can also make sure you never work in Hollywood again. When Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, opens his mouth, all other conversation stops. If Mike Ovitz of CAA sneezes, six people say, “God bless you”-and mean it.

These executives that Edgar needed to like and help him were not impressed by Rugby and Cambridge. Edgar’s British accent was a turnoff. He was not a candidate for that Thursday night poker game or the football betting pools.

He did not care about the Los Angeles Lakers. He was not into whoring around or picking up boys in West

Hollywood. He would never drive a Jeep or use his car to bring cocaine out to the gang in Malibu for the weekend.

To these kind of men Edgar’s producing credentials at Telsun were small potatoes. Nobody cared about the United Nations’ testimonial dinner for Edgar, nobody was interested in the silver cigarette box on our coffee table inscribed by the secretary general, U Thant, In grateful appreciation … . Nobody cared that Edgar had been important at NBC. He was just a star’s husband.

Ignored by the power elite, Edgar became even more intimidating, more superior, made more certain they heard about his English education. And he hugged to his bosom each and every slight, remembering them like a father whose child has been hurt. His attitude became, “I’ll show those bastards.

“

When he went to his office down in Beverly Hills, he sat frustrated and unhappy. He had not learned to work on several projects at once, and getting properties onto a screen is a long, slow dance, a tantalizing exercise in waiting.

The only way I could deal with Edgar was to expect something would happen for him and also to include him in all my deals. From the day of our arrival my comedy career was percolating. In addition to The Tonight Show, I often appeared on the original Hollywood Squares, a big hit show then, and I traveled increasingly to Las Vegas to work as an opening act. In Beverly Hills I found a version of the Downstairs at the Upstairs, a small place called Ye Little Club where I could “write” new material-“I like California because it’s insane. My gardener is a Nazi Quaker. He declares war, and then he refuses to go.”

I also set aside three hours almost every afternoon to push the scriptwriting I had begun in New York. I desperately wanted to make the next step up, to follow Woody Allen, Lily Tomlin, Bette Midler, who were living my expectations.

I loved the intensity, the tunnel vision of the writing process, building something from nothing, giving the characters their own lives until they take over in every situation, reacting the way they must. They become your

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friends, and you see them in your head. Through them you are bringing shape and meaning to your own chaotic life, to the disconnected impressions, memories, insights that are the raw material.

Writing is a fabulous escape from the realities of life. In the last fifteen years I have constantly had a project under way. With George Furth, who wrote Company on Broadway, we did the first draft for The Rose, starring Bette Midler. Hired by the producers, I sat with a writer named Tom Perew and wrote the lines Bruce Willis spoke for the baby in Look Who’s Talking.

In those first months in California I was so inexperienced that I was not surprised when ABC bought my script for a Movie of the Week. It was called The Girl Most Likely to … , and the idea started with a blind date I had when I was a freshman at Connecticut College.

The boy was from Yale, and he was standing at the foot of the stairs in my dorm as I descended-132 pounds of chubby pulchritude dressed in a gray-flannel dress and little gray-flannel shoes to match. He turned to the girl who had fixed him up and said, disgusted, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

All evening he ignored me. It was a weekend, so he had to come by the next day. He arrived for breakfast at 1:45 P.m., just in time to say, “Well, let’s have a cup of coffee; gee, I gotta catch my train to New Haven.” I had been waiting since 9:00 A.M.

I transferred after my sophomore year to Barnard College in New York, and this boy married a girl I knew there and became a doctor. Years later in California that girl called me, and I invited her to a large supper party I was giving by the pool. This same boy walks in with her, fat now and bald, fortysomething. He had no idea I had been 132-pound Joan Molinsky.

He was all over me; everywhere I went, there he was, obviously a cheater, following me into the kitchen to get me alone-“Can we meet for lunch? Isn’t that a pretty dress [looking down my cleavage]. You’re much younger and prettier than on the TV.” There was a lot of “Let me help you”-and his arm would touch my arm.

As his car pulled out of the driveway, I told everybody

the story. “I should have said, `Does the name Joan Molinsky mean anything to you?’-and whipped out a gun and killed the son of a bitch.” My friend Kenny Solms said, “That’s a movie.”

The Girl Most Likely to … went right into production starring Stockard Channing and Ed Asner. Its first showing was seen by 50 million people, a rating record then for a movie written for TV. I wrote the first draft by myself in eight weeks, and ABC had a writer rework it, and then I reworked what he reworked. It became the story of a fat ugly girl who gets thin and beautiful and kills every boy who ever slighted her.

That script came right from the heart.

After six months Edgar’s office had become an unnecessary expense, and he gave it up. At home, my office was in the tiny guest house, and Archie Walker, the maitre d’ from the Downstairs, had come west with us to be my secretary. There was room for only one desk, which Archie used, so Edgar created a setup to make his phone calls from an antique bench jammed in a corner.

Lost in California, Edgar was getting up in the morning, getting washed and dressed, only to wonder, “Now what?” I told him, “Go to a network and get a job, go work at Katz, Gallin.” But Edgar had done those jobs. He said he would feel humiliated as somebody’s assistant.

We decided that perhaps I was the missing piece in his projects, and we should get together as a writer and producer team. I thought The Girl Most Likely to … showed I had solved the secret of Hollywood scriptwriting, and I would have the clout to demand Edgar as producer. He would prove himself in the industry, and I would be guaranteed a producer who put my interests first.

Should I have known better by then? Of course I should.

Edgar and I were hired by Freddie Silverman at CBS to do a pilot for Florence Henderson about a strait-laced girl who inherits a rock band that takes off. After many meetings, many rewrites-everything positive, no serious doubts expressed-the script was accepted. Everybody

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loved it, and CBS set a January shooting date. Florence was canceling engagements. We were ecstatic.

Suddenly CBS changed its mind and canceled the pilot. And the powers that be chose 6:00 P.m. L.A. time on Christmas Eve to make the call, which meant somebody in New York had nothing better to do at 9:00 P.m. on Christmas Eve than telephone California and deliver crushing news. Edgar said on the phone, “Would it have hurt you to wait till the day after Christmas?”

I couldn’t believe it. I had been living with my characters for months and months and months. Now they and I had been rejected. I felt as though close friends had died, and I was starting again at zero.

Yet now I know better.

The decision to cancel our pilot at CBS could not have come out of the blue at the last minute. Those people who had been saying “Great, great, great”-lifting our expectations to the skies-were not playing honestly.

I learned never to put all of my heart and cards on the table-which is hard for me because I am so emotional. I dared not allow feelings to intrude for fear I would be manipulated. I became more and more closed, believing few people at face value. When somebody said he liked me, I wondered, “What does he want in return?”

But if you want something, the way I wanted to establish myself as a writer, you go forward, you work and work for it. In our second year in California, 1973, I went to work alone on a script about a guy who kidnapped the Radio City Music Hall chorus line by mistake. I called it Roxy Haul. I sent it to one of the Hollywood kings, David Begelman at Columbia.

I would still be waiting for Begelman’s return phone call today had I not camped in his outer office, telling the secretary, “I’ll just sit here.

Don’t worry about me. I’ve got my needlepoint. I’ll catch Mr. Begelman on his way to the men’s room.” I sat there for three days.

Because he “loved my spirit,” Begelman saw me. Edgar, as the producer, had done the figures and computed that we could bring the movie in for exactly a million dollars. George Segal and Michael Caine were interested

in playing the leads. Begelman told me to send him the budget, and if it checked out at a million or below, he would give us a go-ahead.

One would think that by now we would be more cautious, but something about show business made us behave like children, and each time Edgar and I had something accepted, we became hysterical with joy. Now, two days later, we did get a call-from our lawyer. Edgar had not included the 10 percent studio overhead in the budget. The cost of the movie was more than a million. Begelman had canceled.

I was enraged at Edgar. I had humbled myself in Begelman’s office for three damn days only to find out that, wait a second, my team made a goof! …

That was my first hint that maybe Edgar and I were both amateurs in the big time.

I could not endure the possibility of a house husband. I did not want to come home and have him tell me what was for dinner. That was not my idea of a marriage. So I persevered with our writer/producer package.

But for all my willingness to play the game in Hollywood, I might just as well have kept my pride. I was no more successful in the movie business than Edgar. I was more and more in demand in Las Vegas-but that increasingly pigeonholed me as a Vegas comic. No acting jobs were being offered.

My new scripts were being turned down.

Edgar handled his frustration by withdrawing into himself. He broke my heart. He pretended he was not suffering, but I knew he was. He was constantly reading books for properties, had ideas, tried to form partnerships with people-he worked on four projects with Larry Kasha, who later produced Knots Landing-but he was miserable. And I was miserable.

With our wounds from Fun City still raw, we could not comfort each other.

Our marriage was shaky.

He resented me for being busy, and I felt guilty for being busy. I would go into the bathroom at night and sit on the floor, leaning against the tub, which is how I pre-

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pare my comedy routines, organizing the flow of jokes. Edgar would be on the bed, impatient, watching Masterpiece Theatre and calling, “Hurry up and come in.” I would have to say, “I can’t. I’ve got to get ready for my Carson shot.” I would be resentful. Then I would feel guilty about being angry-which made me even angrier.

My irritation broke out in the wrong places-“Since I’m sitting here writing, why don’t you pick up Melissa at school?” Then he would do it and come back and tell me he was the only father picking up a child. I wanted to die. But much as I loved being a mother and wanted to be his companion, there was less and less time. I was making the money.

Edgar was not the man I married. I wanted the Edgar in New York when we were happy, the husband who was the breadwinner and held a long gold chain with me at the end of it, romping like a little puppy, the Edgar who handled the heavy business stuff while I was Marla Maples, worrying about what gown to wear.

I did not know the Edgar who more and more was the one who talked to the gardener and checked up on the pool man. To see my husband go to the market-the idea of him pushing a cart-was a nightmare. He would report that Jack Lemmon was there, too-but I knew Jack was between films. I became Edgar’s topic of conversation. Somebody would ask, “How are you, Edgar?”

And he would say, “Joan is just doing so well.” That used to kill me.

We were beginning to lose honesty with each other. Walls were being put up.

I buried myself in the present, worked even harder, and kept on hoping. I never suggested getting help. The word “therapy” then was not in my vocabulary.

If I realized then how much our role reversals could affect the future of my marriage, perhaps I wouldn’t have been blind to the possibilities of therapy. But I was running too fast to see clearly the trouble we were in.

So I would just rant and rave, saying, “We’re miserable. We’re unhappy.

We’ve got to figure out something different. “

But Edgar would put on that stiff British upper lip and say, “There’s nothing wrong. Everything’s fine.”

This state of affairs continued into the fall of 1973. Although my comedy career was booming, my husband was lost and I, a woman who depends on roots in a place that is basically rootless, was, too, in a way. Almost everybody in California is from somewhere else, which means people have no history there. Roots to me mean family, the loyalty one only gets from a family.

Home really is the place where they have to take you in, and I didn’t have a place I could call home since I left New York.

Returning from an engagement at Harrah’s in Tahoe, I suddenly could not make myself go back into that house and rejoin that atmosphere of pain.