Father Knows Less Read online

Because I drove to work every day, a strange phenomena for me—not driving, going to work every day, I bought a used convertible that seemed appropriately “Hollywood.” Top down, I drove each morning to Warner Brothers, past the guard at the gate, top down, waving good morning, and feeling for all the world like Cary Grant in 1948. The best part of the day!

  The show now had a staff. I don’t know … six, seven, eight writers. A head writer. A head writing team. They would run the show. Though the show was my creation, I’d never “run a show,” so I would, with the lofty title of something like Associate Producer, simply be one of the staff writers. Understand that every writer on staff had a producer credit. At the top was Executive Producer. Then Associate Producer. Then Assistant Producer. All the way down to just “Producer.” The titles meant nothing except they entitled them to a larger salary, since they were also now producers as well as writers, even though they weren’t producing. When I worked on All in The Family, there was The Producer, Norman Lear, and then there was everybody else. We in fact did not have a roomful of writers. There were two story editors. And then just plain old writers. Who worked at home and sent in the scripts when they finished them. I wrote most of my episodes from my beat up old desk in Connecticut. Pretty good show, considering. When my episode was shot, I flew out to L.A. and sat on the set like a playwright and did the rewrites needed. Alone. I could call in help from the story editors, if needed. With the Something Wilder staff, they never saw any rehearsals until the dress run-through. Notes were sent constantly up to the writers’ room about what was not working. A mad rewrite was done on the basis of the notes and sent back down.

  “The bedtime story scene with Gene and the boys isn’t working. Charming but not funny.”

  “How about if he’s had a garlic pasta for dinner and they can’t stand his breath?”

  “Garlic’s always funny.”

  “I think Cosby did garlic with his son.”

  “Allergies!”

  “What?”

  “The boy’s blankets were washed with a detergent that Gene is allergic to, and he keeps sneezing during the story.”

  “Gene can sneeze funny.”

  “Which is funnier, sneezing or garlic breath?”

  “One of life’s great questions!”

  “Give him both!”

  Not until that run-through did we see the show on its feet. And then, like herd of sheep, we moved en masse from one scene to the next. It was as if “the writer” was this seven headed monster. Working on All in the Family as I had worked in the theatre, I could sit on the set and watch and feel when something worked or didn’t. Then tinker and adjust and find something better. Here, you had seven different writers, all with different takes, who were coming in to see it too late in the process. And, who after the network and studio execs got finished with their notes, were largely irrelevant to the process. Committees can’t write plays. Even TV plays. The best TV shows have had the voice of one writer. Seinfeld was all filtered through the brain of Larry David. That’s why all the characters sound like him. Have his New York, angst-ridden, insecure, warped view of life. And it works. David Kelly’s shows, like ’em or not, are a product of David’s brain. Boston Legal may be good one week and weak the next, but for the last minute or so alone, with James Spader and William Shatner just talking and smoking cigars on the office veranda, it is worth it. West Wing was worth it for the infusion of Aaron Sorkin’s manic wit. The advent of the multi-staffed show (particularly with comedies) has homogenized the process. All the shows sound alike. They even have the same rhythm. Group writing (except for sketch humor, which is based on caricature, not character) just doesn’t work. I often imagined what Arthur Miller would have had to put up with if Death of a Salesman had been staff written.

  “Arthur, when Willy’s wife says to his sons, “Attention… Attention must be paid to this man.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it’s a little heavy.”

  “She’s not trying to be funny. She’s trying to get her boys to show some respect to their father. He’s in trouble. He needs their respect.”

  “I know. I know. Respect is good. But … I mean … Yes, Curt, what’s your take?”

  “How about, ‘Come on kids, give dad a break.’”

  “Too general. Yes, Sally?”

  “How about… Dad’s depressed. You know, a hug… a joke now and then…”

  “Nooo, too on-the-nose.”

  “I think it’s the word attention. It’s so…”

  “How about… just… ‘Wake up guys! Dad needs some love!’”

  “I like that. ‘Wake up guys… Dad needs some love!’ It’s quick. It’s direct. The word ‘love’ gets me more than the word attention. Attention is a downer word. What do you think, Arthur? Arthur? Where’s Arthur?”

  While I was in the writers’ room rewriting dialogue that was projected from the computer onto a large screen in the room, Julia had to do full-time parenting. Thanks to old cereal boxes and her exquisite imagination, she produced a bevy of handmade toys. With scissors, glue, and Cheerios boxes she fashioned everything from airline pilot’s hats to dueling swords. And after a weekend trip to San Francisco she asked the boys what they wanted to make next. “The Golden gate bridge!”

  “Honey, I’m not sure we have enough used cereal boxes to make that.”

  “Mommy, you can do it.”

  “We’ll empty out the full ones!”

  It’s amazing the things you can do that you don’t think you could do because your kids just know you can do it.

  Julia made the bridge. It spanned the entire length of the large glass coffee table. It was a wonder of pop art. Eat your heart out Red Grooms. When Barnet saw it at dinner, he sent the set decorator over to copy Julia’s cereal box toys to use in the show.

  Her finest creation came soon after. One Saturday evening we took the boys to the Hollywood bowl. I think more for the phenomenon than for the music. Sam and Gabe had never seen a classical music concert, and even if they became restless, we knew the setting itself would stimulate them. But that night, Izak Perlman was playing. And they were entranced. And when we got home, both of them said that they wanted to play the violin. The next day, Julia got out the scissors and, you guessed it, cut up cereal boxes and made two violins. Not just profiles of violins—cereal box violins worthy of Guarneri. With sound boxes and frets and strings made from rubber bands and chopsticks for bows. They gleefully held them up to their chins and sawed away, humming tunes as if, for all the world, they were Itzak at the Bowl.

  Something Wilder premiered on a Saturday night in October. I wanted to be out of town. So, we all went up the coast to a funky old motel-resort north of Ventura. The San Diego to Seattle Amtrak train came right though the middle of the resort. We booked a little bungalow on a hillock over the ocean. At eight we watched the show. It was odd, to say the least, watching a show ostensibly about us, that had been rung through the rewrite wringer so many times that it could have been about a family from Mars. At 2:00 a.m. I woke the boys so that we could watch the train rumble through the resort on its way north. It came right on time, at 2:12, blaring its horn, and we all screamed and waved and watched it disappear down the track toward San Francisco. Gabe turned to us.

  “That was better than the show.”

  The other shows, the new shows premiering with Something Wilder were big hits. Friends. ER. And the network decided they wanted, needed, to bolster that audience. Dadoo, i.e. Something Wilder had been designed as a “family show.” But young adults were watching Friends. They wanted young adults, i.e. single men and women who wanted to watch other single men and women spend their time trying to hook up with other single men and women—so they changed Something Wilder into a show about a married couple, who acted like they were single. Huh? After the first few episodes, the kids all but disappeared. (Along with the teenager next door and the black plumber). It was now about this “hot” couple who kept getting involved in absurd dilemmas. Donald Tru
mp’s then-wife Marla Maples did an episode playing a vamp who tries to seduce Gene on a camping trip. The new wife, now played by Hillary Bailey Smith—a consummate comedian—was a great partner for Gene. But a show that suited the new premise should have been conceived for them. A kind of updated Thin Man. A sophisticated, tippling, high-living husband and wife in the fast lane. This show had one foot in the old premise—older Dad trying to raise kids—and one in the new—zippy couple getting into trouble. As charming as Gene was, as dexterous as Hillary was, the ship was sinking in its own contradictions.

  It morphed into a kind of a sex farce. Years ago the British made a series of sex farce movies, Carry on Nurse, Carry on Sergeant. They’d take a milieu and people it with inept characters, busty women, double entendres and stupid chases, and—it’s a laugh riot. Our show became a kind of Carry On Dadoo.

  It had started with me writing a sweet scene about the lovely little things we go through bringing up our children. It was my life. And it somehow became a television series. Except … my life had been rewritten.

  F … nuance.

  A lot of shit hit a lot of fans during this year, and I ended up actually being fired from my own show. I was still on the payroll, but my input on the show was no longer welcome. But, I learned something wonderful from my wife. And from my kids. First, take the money and run. Perhaps money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy freedom. With all the free time I had, I wrote a play. And the play was done that summer at The Williamstown Theatre Festival. And it was an exhilarating experience. And twelve years later, the play was expanded and produced again and done in Tokyo, Japan. Another exhilarating experience. But … but, more important, had I not written another word that year, I was able to spend an enormous amount of time with my family. There’s the old cliché that goes, “No successful businessman ever looks back on his life and says, ‘I only wish I got to spend less time with my kids.’ Most of the people I saw in Hollywood worked hard. Really hard. And they didn’t see much of their families. They didn’t see their four-year-olds build a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge out of cereal boxes. They didn’t get to go to the Hollywood Bowl to see Itzak Perlman and then have their boys decide on the spot that they wanted to play the violin. They didn’t take them bike riding along the beach in midweek, when it wasn’t crowded. They didn’t lie on the floor with them in the middle of the day, on an old Navajo rug, and play “Ha”—a game where you put your heads on each other’s stomachs and keep saying “Ha” in order, until one of you bursts out laughing and is eliminated. We were very lucky. It was all a game of “Ha.”

  I’d been eliminated from my own show. But I was laughing now on the floor with my family. They taught me it was all right. They were proud of me. That’s it. They were proud of what I’d done. It didn’t matter that the show wasn’t what it should have been. Not to them. They were proud of me. And let me know it. And it got me through it all. As Arthur Miller said:

  “Attention. Attention must be paid.”

  SCENE: THE PATIO OF A RENTED HOUSE IN STUDIO CITY, CALIFORNIA.

  (Samuel and Gabriel are sitting under a large sheet draped over a rosemary bush—a place they call “Rosemary House.” They are pretending it is the cockpit of a 747. They are naked, as is their habit on a warm day in California. But they do wear pilot’s hats, fashioned by their mother out of Rice Krispies boxes. Julia comes outside to call them in.)

  JULIA

  Sam, Gabe, Dadoo says that Jack Lemmon is coming for lunch. You have to get dressed.

  SAM

  Why?

  GABE

  We always eat without our clothes on.

  JULIA

  Not today. Not for Jack Lemmon.

  SAM

  Why? He’s never seen a naked boy?

  JULIA

  It’s not so much that you’re naked, Sam, it’s just that you tend to stand up on your chair and your penis is hanging over your plate. It’s not … appetizing.

  SAM

  I won’t stand on my chair.

  GABE

  He’ll sit. Sam, you’ll sit, okay?

  SAM

  Okay.

  JULIA

  Okay, but just in case, you have to wear shorts.

  SAM

  Oookay.

  GABE

  Okay.

  (Gabe knits his brow. Thinking)

  Mom?

  JULIA

  Yes?

  GABE

  Who’s Jack Lemmon??

  CHAPTER SIX

  NO PENISES AT THE TABLE

  It was bizarre! Even though my services were no longer needed for the series, finished scripts for each week’s episode would be delivered to the house every Thursday morning. They were saying, “You’re still on the team. But stay in the locker room.” A check for said services would arrive in the mailbox on Thursday afternoon. On Friday evening I went to the filming of the show and watched a company of consummate actors play out a farce—an echo of something I’d once had in mind.

  I got used to it—the way you get used to a beloved pet dying. It gnaws at you, but it doesn’t take over your life. The job of a writer is to write. And so I kept writing. Other things. The house was leased until May, so while in L.A. I fashioned other series ideas (Hope springs eternal) and worked on the rewrite of a screenplay about a grandfather and his grandson on a road trip across the U.S. The old man has Alzheimer’s and his dying wish is that he meet the old Hollywood star, Alice Faye, whom he once invited to his college prom. She refused with a lovely note, and ever since he has been dying to meet her. His grandson fixes up grandpa’s old Indian motorcycle, and off they go to L.A.

  Jack Lemmon had taken to the script and he was coming over for lunch to read through some scenes and discuss it… after Julia’s admonitions that the boys must wear shorts at the table. We’d had guests for meals before, and the boys’ nakedness at the table seemed more charming than off-putting, until one somewhat conservative couple, who not unsurprisingly had no children of their own, thought that nakedness had its place—but not at the dinner table.

  “Yes, I explained, but we compensate by always going to bed fully dressed.”

  We weren’t going to take any chances with offending Jack. After all, it wasn’t a social visit. It was business. And as Oscar Wilde once said, “Nudity and business should never mix.” The boys wore shorts. I explained to the boys who he was, and soon after his cream-colored Rolls Royce pulled into our driveway.

  He was ebullient and charming. As energetic as Ensign Pulver in Mr. Roberts, as quirky as “Daphne” in Some Like it Hot, and as sweet as “Bud” Baxter in The Apartment. Julia made some croques monsieurs for lunch. Samuel piped up.

  “They’re French. We ate them in Paris.”

  “You were in Paris?”

  “Yes! We also ate moule e frites”

  “They call french fries, frites. Isn’t that silly?” added Gabe. Jack widened his eyes and screwed up his face and said, in his best “Daphne” voice,

  “The silliest thing I ever heard.”

  After lunch, Jack and I read some scenes and chatted, and when he left, I told the boys that we’d watch Some Like It Hot some day soon. It became the boys’ favorite movie. They saw it so often they almost memorized it. And there was nothing as silly and fetching as Gabe’s imitation of Marilyn Monroe singing in her breathy-sexy voice, “I Wanna Be Loved by You.”

  Soon after that meeting, friends out from back east came to visit for Thanksgiving—one of my oldest friends, Danny, and his wife, Freke, and young daughter, Samara. While Julia did the Universal tour with the girls and the twins, I took Danny for lunch on Sunset Boulevard for a glimpse of the Hollywood scene. We sat an overpriced outdoor café and reminisced about our first meeting, on a game show in New York called Let’s Play Post Office, where fictitious letters from famous people were revealed line by line to the contestant, as they tried to guess who wrote them. We wrote the letters, filled with funny clues and usually ending with a pun on the celebrity’s name
. Dan wrote one for Ernest Hemingway, pleading with his tailor to make him pants with wide belt loops because he was a man “for whom the belt holes” were famous. (For Whom The Bell Tolls?) (Groan) And I ended the Robert Kennedy letter about a touch football game refereed by an incompetent woman named Kay with, “So, what are we going to do about our ref Kay? (RFK?) (Groan) No job we’d had since was as much fun. But sitting here now, older fathers of young kids, finally making a decent living and basking in the glitz at a Sunset Boulevard bistro, we asked ourselves, “Are we lucky, or what?”

  “Absolutely! At our age, Mozart was dead.”

  “ At Mozart’s age, we were unemployed and chasing crazy women.”

  “We finally settled down. It’s amazing isn’t it.”

  “No, Don Giovanni’s amazing. This is pitiful!”

  We laughed and sipped our seven-dollar ice teas. I looked up to see Jack Lemmon crossing the street to our café.

  “Jack!” I yelled as if we were long lost friends.

  I escorted him to the table, introduced him to Danny and invited him to join us. He was on his way down the street to another lunch, but he chatted a moment and danced off. It was as if I’d planned this just to impress Danny.

  “So, when does Marilyn Monroe stop by?”

  “She’s dead, Danny.”

  “Yes, but that would really impress me.”

  It was getting chilly in late November, but we kept the pool heated. Steam rose up from the water as we swam and ignored the fortune it must have been costing us. We had an Exiles’ Thanksgiving Dinner with our houseguests and a bevy of New Yorkers who had moved to L.A. in search of work and sunshine.

  The boys dressed for dinner, pants and shirts! And asked,

  “Are we going to have turkey out here?”

  “Of course!”

  “Do they have turkey out here?”

  “ Yes, they fly them in. Or sometimes they fly in themselves.”

  “You mean, from Massachusetts?”

  Danny jumped in. “Do you know what you’d be eating if you were having Thanksgiving in Turkey?”