Which Lie Did I Tell? (26 page)

I know, or have interviewed, the other screenwriters in this section. And when I began thinking about just what this section might be, I thought I would try and meet Bergman, even went as far as to contact a representative of his in America. I sort of envisioned it like this: casual, you know, have something set up that would fit his plans, fly over, say, from London, when I was there, go to whatever island he is presently inhabiting, talk for a few minutes.

I think Bergman is the greatest screenwriter. I think a hundred years ago he would have been a great novelist, Balzac maybe. And the more I thought about our meeting, the more I realized something: I was
nuts
to contemplate such a thing. And why? Because I did meet my great writing hero, the man who changed my life,
Irwin Shaw.

I was in my teens once, wanting to write, not really knowing what it meant, if I could, not dating, certainly not dating the girls I dreamed of, a shitty student, C average, used to be tops in school but then all kinds of family madness came crashing down and I was in trouble, and I think I probably knew that.

Which was when a cousin of mine, who did not read much, out of some mystic blue, gave me a copy of
Mixed Company,
a collection of Shaw’s stories.

I didn’t know his stuff, picked up the book, glanced at the first story, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses,” read it, then on to the next, “The Eighty-Yard Run,” then “Act of Faith,” and that day spun into tomorrow and probably it was the tomorrow after that before I’d finished “Sailor off the Bremen” and “Welcome to the City” and “The Dry Rock” and all the others and I don’t think I knew it at the moment of putting the book down—

—but my life was never the same—

—because I had read these wondrous
things,
these vignettes and tables, told with such ease and style—for me, Shaw and Fitzgerald are the great American stylists—and I knew this:
I could do that.

Okay, it’s decades later, and my publisher at Delacorte is
Ross Claiborne, wonderful Ross, and he knows of my feelings for Shaw and one day he says this: “Irwin’s going to be in town,
would you like to meet him
?”

What a thing.

Which is not to say the day dawned without apprehension. I knew I’d be okay—my God, all I had to do was tell what happened and he had to like that—

—but what if he turned out to be an asshole? What if he was embarrassed by his early work, felt he had moved past it? Some of the stories were forty years old. What if he pissed on them, said they were just starters, juvenile stuff, those words that had been everything for me.

We had lunch at the Four Seasons, and as I walked in, I was terrified our time together would be a disaster.

It was.

Not because of him, no, he was just what I wanted him to be, this tough and feisty warrior, grizzled and funny, passionate, who loved sports and loved New York. He was wonderful that day.

I
was the horror show.

I knew this was my one shot, and I needed to tell him what he meant; y’see, I might never meet him again; before the meal was over,
he had to know.
But all the rehearsals I’d done in my mind dried up, and I didn’t know what to say, how to tell him, and at the very start I sensed it was not going to be one of my good days and that only made me panic more, so I gushed and blubbered and embarrassed the man, and I could feel myself slipping down the iceberg and I couldn’t stop. This was the one day when I wanted to be wonderful and it was a fucking nightmare and when it was over I thought, well, thank God, I can’t be any worse—

—and then I did it. We were walking along Park Avenue just before parting and I was talking about how he never made me stop reading, never used the wrong word, that great simplicity of the storytelling, and I heard myself saying these terrible words:
It’s easy for you, isn’t it, the writing?

I still see this sad look in his eyes as he turned to me. And I don’t know what he was thinking but I knew I had disappointed him so badly. I had trivialized the man,
I had ignored his pain.

“It wasn’t easy,” he said very softly.

He went his way, I mine, and I guess that was the worst lunch of
my life, because the one thing we have, everyone who writes or paints or composes, is our pain—pain that we deal with by huddling away in our pits and getting through it as best we can.

I remember in 1957 literally reeling out of a now-dead movie theater on Eighty-sixth Street—because I had just seen
The Seventh Seal.
And I knew I had never seen anything like it.

No one else has told this kind of story on film, at least not this well. The kinds of narratives that interest Bergman don’t have a lot of roles for Sylvester Stallone in them, or very happy endings. His movies tend to be short, without an ounce of fat, and they are peopled with decent human beings trying to make sense of the madness down here. And usually failing.

The reason I never want to meet Bergman should be pretty clear to you by now: What if I said,
“Was it a lot of fun writing
The Seventh Seal
?”

This is the opening of the movie. I can’t come up with many better.