The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (20 page)

If I could have walked in slow motion toward the
Cheers
table like a cheesy hair commercial, I would have. It felt like I was. I remember these moments in time vividly because usually I walk into a meeting feeling like there’s toilet paper on my shoe.

There they all were, all famous and popular, but they were TV people and
I
was a movie star. So was Ted, but I blocked that out . . .

I ordered orecchiette. When it arrived, I commented that it looked like a plate of dick heads. And they do, literally. Whoever invented orecchiette certainly had a circumcised penis because orecchiette is an exact replica of the end of a circumcised dick.

They all laughed, which reinforced my belief that although I had never been hired to do comedy, I certainly had the chops to do it. Ted and I were flirting with each other, and it was clear we had chemistry. I soon got the offer to do the show, and it was one of the best all-time TV offers in history. My plan was to do
Cheers
for one year, then move on to do comedy movies, so I asked for a one-year contract. The standard is a seven-year contract so that actors don’t have the advantage of negotiating for more money the following years. But in success, every actor renegotiates anyway and gets more money. I somehow got a one-year contract, probably because I was replacing Shelley Long as the female lead of
Cheers
, not a small act to follow. She is an awesomely gifted comedy actress. The powers that be probably thought I wouldn’t be accepted on the show anyway, or some dude in business affairs just screwed up the deal. For whatever reason, much to our surprise, I scored a one-year deal. My plan was in motion and perfect, one year and I’m outta here.

But the first week on
Cheers
it was clear to me that I not only didn’t wanna be out of there but that I’d found, at least as an actor, a home.

I wasn’t that good in the beginning. My character was designed to be a hard-nosed bitch. Although I can be that in real life, I just wasn’t funny on film portraying that. After the second week the writers slyly watched my personal mannerisms, like running into doors, and crying at the drop of a hat over everything happy and some things sad. They saw how in real life I was extremely vulnerable and klutzy. And so Rebecca Howe was shaped. I could see the writers watching me do cigarette tricks, smashing my fingers in the cash register, doing shots of tequila at
Cheers
parties, and dancing, a lot of dancing. These bits would always show up in my character Rebecca Howe’s story lines.

The men of
Cheers
are beyond compare and beyond comprehension. It was group love at first sight for me. Each one was unique from the next, but each one was an extraordinary human being, and a genius actor.

If I had written the script myself of how I would be accepted into this group of men, I couldn’t have written it more perfectly. It seemed impossible. They’d had a hit show for the previous five years, critically acclaimed and awards for all.
Cheers
was not just a well-written and -acted show; it will stand throughout time as one of the top comedy shows in history.

So here’s this girl from Kansas who had done some dramatic movies. A girl who had never done comedy, except for the drama
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. And they accepted me with open arms. Come on! They had to have been terribly nervous about the future of
Cheers
, their futures, the futures of their careers and livelihoods. But they never alluded to it or gave me an inkling that they were anything but confident that I would be an asset to their hit show.

It never dawned on me that my presence on
Cheers
would be anything but successful, but I’m sure it dawned on NBC, Paramount, Jimmy Burrows, Glen and Les Charles, and the entire cast. My blissful ignorance came from my undying confidence that I could do anything and would go to the mat for any of these people.

We were a hit, and we soon rose from number three to number one, but the memory I’ll carry with me throughout my life is how sweet and supportive and generous they all were with me. The next six years of my life proved to be my glory days that I’d never experienced in high school or college or at any time in my life.

When I tell you that every single day at
Cheers
was like Christmas, I do those days a disservice. I became one of the boys along with Rhea Perlman, who’d been one of the boys on
Cheers
since its inception. I will try to articulate the kind of people I spent six years of my life with, but even today, their amazingness amazes me.

THE BOYS WHO BELLIED UP TO THE BAR

Jimmy

In case you aren’t aware of who Jimmy Burrows is, you really should be. Jimmy is the most sought after sitcom director in the world. He is primo on any savvy producer’s wish list. He’s directed
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
,
Laverne & Shirley
,
The Bob Newhart Show
,
Taxi
,
Cheers
(he and Les and Glen Charles created
Cheers
),
Will & Grace
,
Veronica’s Closet
,
Frasier
,
The Big Bang Theory
, and
Mike & Molly
. Phew! That, of course, is not all, but you get the idea. Jimmy came by some of his talent honestly. He is the son of Abe Burrows, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of such legendary musicals as
Guys and Dolls
and
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
.

You can’t not fall in love with Jimmy Burrows. He is genuine, hysterically funny, and an all-round decent, dedicated human being.

His sitcom genius is unparalleled. Jimmy always sets the tone and the pace of the show. He oddly has 100 percent control over his actors without them knowing it. The
Cheers
squad seemed to be an uncontrollable lot of lunatics who never paid attention to anything anyone told them to do, but in reality, that wasn’t the case.

Jimmy is what a real director should be. He grants infinite amounts of freedom to his stars, allowing them to be their creative best, all the while holding his invisible reins and getting them to do anything he wants them to do.

I spent six years on
Cheers
and never once saw Jimmy lose it. He had created an atmosphere of lightness and camaraderie long before I came on the scene. I walked into an unruly summer camp. No one was ever on time (no one meaning the actors, especially the boys). I’ve never seen anything close to it. It seemed strictly unprofessional. Woody might show up an hour late, Kelsey, perhaps three hours. George and John, usually only 20 to 40 minutes late. Rhea was on time, mostly. Ted, yeah, Ted was pretty much on time, but the whack part was that no one cared. Jimmy could have cared less. When I mentioned a few times in the beginning, “Jimmy, no one comes on time,” he would just laugh it off.

About four weeks in I made a “late jar.” Ten bucks had to go into the jar any time one of us was late. The proceeds would go to some “on time” charity. The jar soon filled up, but never caused anyone to be on time. The guys were all very philanthropic and more than happy to contribute to the charity daily.

By week five I gave up and joined the party. I would show up in the 15-to-45-minutes-late category. Except for once, I never got reprimanded for it. The
only
time Jimmy Burrows got ticked at me for being late was when Rhea and I showed up 45 minutes late from lunch. And that was only because the guest star of the show that week was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell!!!

Jimmy is one of the most thoughtful, caring people I’ve come across. All throughout the show, I was desperate for a baby. Everyone in the cast had kids. I got pregnant while shooting
Look Who’s Talking Too
, and everyone, including Jimmy, was elated.

During the shooting of
Cheers
that year I went in for a routine exam with my obstetrician. It resulted in him having to tell me I’d had a spontaneous abortion; the baby had died inside me. I was devastated. Jimmy couldn’t have been sweeter and more considerate and consoling to me. All the guys were like that. It helped me heal quickly.

Jimmy is notorious for giving actors comedy bits:

“Hey Woody, pretend like you slam your hand in the cash register.”

“Hey Ted, when she kisses you, fall against the door.”

“Hey Kirstie, when the Righteous Brothers walk in, fall on your knees, then faint.”

Jimmy is in love with his bits. They make him giggle like a lovesick schoolboy. His arms start flailing around. And he sorta bobs up and down, consumed with exhilaration.

Then the actor does the bit, and Jimmy goes into convulsions, laughing. He is by far the best audience a comedy actor will ever have.

If you know what Jimmy’s laugh sounds like, you can hear it in every show he directs. When I watch
Will & Grace
, I hear that crazy Jimmy laugh. It’s unmistakable and inspires the actors to carry on and know they are funny.

I learned something about the subject of “hire slowly and fire fast” from Jimmy. When guest stars came on the show (the ones hired by the casting director—not celebs, politicians, or sports figures, but just the run-of-the-mill actors who were hired as “guest stars”), they were either funny . . . or gone in a heartbeat. They had one shot in the first run-through to be funny.

The most shocking one was an actress who was hired to play my sister in a few episodes. A model/actress got the highly publicized role. She looked a lot like me, except far prettier. Lots of actresses had tried out for the role, and unfortunately, the one who got the role was publicized in the trade magazines. I’ll never forget the fateful day when we had our first run-through and I heard Jimmy utter, “Not funny.” I pleaded with him. “Give her another shot. She’s a model. Tell her to talk louder. Hell, you can’t even hear her.”

Jimmy just calmly said, “Not funny, Kirstie. She’s just not funny.” I can’t imagine how embarrassing it must have been for her to be fired and replaced. Marcia Cross eventually was cast as my sister. But, you know what? She wasn’t funny. Jimmy is the master of comedy and hastened the inevitable by firing her five minutes in.

That taught me a lot about funny and taking the time to cast properly and not trying to make someone funny. It doesn’t exist, nor does it work. Funny, as Jimmy showed me time and time again, is a combination of timing and an innate ability to make people love you, hate you, wanna sex you up, but mostly just laugh.

Jimmy Burrows made me fall in love with being funny. He validated our cast’s comedic abilities to the point that we had certainty in our craft. Certainty is the single most valuable quality an actor can have, especially when it’s founded in truth. Jimmy gave me a lifelong confidence that I could and should continue to make people laugh.

The Charles Brothers

I don’t think in all of my six years on
Cheers
I ever saw Glen or Les Charles alone. Sometimes—most of the time, I must confess—I didn’t know Glen from Les. They were just “The Charles Brothers.” I tried to make up mnemonics: Glen, glasses; Les, not. Or was it Glen, no glasses, Les, yes?

They were intimidating! The duo happens to be a set of highly intelligent, friendly, yet not giddy men. Glen and Les were the writer/producer cocreators of
Cheers
. When you do a sitcom, you see the director all day every day. The writer/producers are holed up in some windowless room banging out the episodes and punching up the jokes. At the end of a sitcom day, you do a run-through. It’s what the audience sees when they watch a sitcom, but no one is in hair or makeup or costumes and the actors are walking around the set holding scripts. Except if your name happens to be Rhea Perlman and you can learn lines via telepathy, so you won’t need the script for run-throughs.

There are many writers in a show like
Cheers
. Then there are the network execs and the studio execs. Our network was NBC and our studio was Paramount.

At day’s end some assistant director, spelled “g-o-f-e-r,” would line up about 30 director’s chairs in front of the set. Then all the writer/producers and execs would file in and sit in the chairs and the remaining crew would stand in crowds behind the chairs. All of them had notepads to make notes, even if their job was to get coffee. Glen and Les were always center stage. Glen and Les couldn’t have been nicer and more welcoming to me. They were always cordial and conversational. These two Latter-day Saints, Mormon-raised men, were not giddy or ridiculous or loony like our acting troop or like Jimmy.

I was on the show six years and always thought there was a chance that one week the words “Lose the chick with all the long curly hair” would be scribbled on either Glen’s or Les’s notepad.

I ran around muttering, before I’d say hi to Glen-glasses, Les-not, “Oh, lord, or is it the other way around?”

They flustered me! The stupid thing is they actually look nothing alike. Oh hell, maybe they were identical twins. To me they were like black people are to the KKK: “they all look alike.” Of course by this time I could never ask, “What’s your name again?” and Rhea had pointed out who was who a bazillion times. To this day I can’t figure out why or how I constantly confused them. They were sort of like the mighty and powerful Wizard of Oz to me. They are a team, a pair, a couple. They are one entity, which is about the worst thing you could ever say about anyone.

I loved them. I went to parties and celebrations and funerals and events with them. They wrote thousands of lines I ended up speaking, and I’m eternally grateful to them. I still just wish I could figure out which is which. I guess I can say among hundreds of things, the thing that Glen and Les inspired me most to do was to learn how to differentiate and to wear name tags at parties. I’m so glad I’m not the mother of identical twins. I would have to tattoo my children at birth.

Ted

God, I love Ted!! How he didn’t have seizures when I replaced Shelley Long is beyond me. They were the Lunt and Fontanne, the Astaire and Rogers of sitcom world. Beloved by, what, 30 million people a week or more?