How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am Read online

  I was on location in another country with a most unusual director on a movie. He always seemed angry and agitated. One day I asked him what was bothering him. He said that I and the other two leading actors had motor homes, and he had something significantly smaller. I said, “You can use my motor home anytime you want.” I didn’t sleep in the motor home, so I had no problem sharing it, particularly if it would calm him down.

  Sometimes when I would be in my motor home with someone, he would burst in, not speak to anyone, open the refrigerator, guzzle down a large bottle of juice, then storm out, still without saying a word.

  We once had a scene where there was a violent shoot-out. There were explosives rigged all over the bedroom as Farrah Fawcett and I crawled across the floor—Farrah, bare-legged. I said to the director, “This feels a little too violent.” He said with disdain, “It’s in the nature of the shot.” Farrah ended up bleeding from about twenty places on her legs.

  At the party to celebrate the completion of filming, the director brought a woman who was dressed as though she might be a prostitute. He danced wildly with her while holding a bottle of scotch, like in a bad movie. Then he joined the producers and their wives, the other actors, and me at a table with his date, still not speaking. Not exactly the boy next door, not even close.

  For reasons known only to him, he would say to his assistant, referring to me, “Ask our star to come to the set.” In a fight scene an actor accidentally broke my nose. It didn’t really hurt, so I said, “Let’s keep shooting.” He said, “You’re showing me something.” I have no idea what I showed him before that, but he stopped referring to me patronizingly as “our star.”

  Then there was the producing couple who said about a movie I’d written, “We’re going to do your movie.” Two weeks later I heard they weren’t going to do my movie. I phoned and said to the guy, “I thought you were going to do my movie.” He said, “When we say, ‘We’re going to do your movie,’ that doesn’t mean we’re going to do your movie.”

  I once read an entire movie script I had written to a producer at his home. I played about thirty roles, men and women. He fell asleep about three-quarters of the way through, woke up at the end, and proclaimed, “I’m going to make this movie!” Later, when he became head of a studio, he did make the movie. My agent, who was negotiating the deal on my behalf, suddenly left the agency business and joined the studio that he’d been negotiating with. He then proceeded on more than one occasion to be openly hostile to the movie. When it was finished, I heard that he told the studio head, my former producer, that the movie was a catastrophe. Happily, when the studio head saw it he loved it.

  Once I was sitting at a screening of this same movie with the director and my former agent, now studio executive. In one scene there was an audio cut, something common in movies, where a character on-screen is describing someone. The audio continued over a shot of the man he was describing, who was sitting in a car on a stakeout.

  My former agent called out angrily from the back of the screening room, “The audio is still on from the previous screen!” I responded, in a little angrier tone than he had used, “It’s supposedto be!”

  I don’t know if that guy is still in the business, but I haven’t heard his name in decades.

  I once worked with a movie director who told me in a meeting before we began filming that he tends to scream at people. When I stared at him, he said, “I wouldn’t scream at you.” I suggested it wouldn’t be in his interest to scream at anyone. When we began filming, he began screaming, and he was soon fired. It didn’t help his cause that when he filmed a scene in which it was supposed to be raining, it was raining on only one side of the street. Clearly, screaming wasn’t his only problem. I heard he had gotten some strange injections in Europe.

  When I was making the movie Catch-22 in Mexico in the late sixties, some of the people working on it got into a scuffle with some of the local Mexican guys. I was told that the Mexican police who were assigned to our movie asked our producers if they should speak to the local people or kill them. The producers opted for speaking. Years later, I was making another movie in Mexico. I asked a young Mexican woman assigned to the movie as a translator out for dinner. She told me she had just broken up with her boyfriend, having learned he was married, but she felt obligated to tell me he was very jealous.

  I said, “You learned he was married?! What right does he have to be possessive of you?”

  She again said he was very jealous, and then added he was a policeman. I immediately remembered what I was told about the police years earlier, but I had too much pride to act as though I was concerned. Somehow, though, I managed to turn our proposed dinner date into a lunch with her—and her sister.

  When I began the movie I was shown an incredibly luxurious penthouse suite with a balcony that seemed to overlook all of Acapulco. You entered through a stairwell on the road. I said, “I can’t stay here.” Everyone looked at me, baffled. I said, “There are bandits in the mountains right behind the stairwell. They can easily come down out of the mountains and do whatever.” They reassured me sufficiently that I chose to stay there. During the movie, bandits came down out of the mountains, stole the car that was assigned to Farrah Fawcett, and killed her driver.

  Why I’m Getting Increasingly Skeptical

  As I’m sure is clear by now, I was able to move ahead in show business by believing my version of what was happening and not someone else’s just because that someone happened to be in authority.

  I’ve seen it everywhere. From the President of the United States to the man who unsuccessfully tried to fix our refrigerator, it’s not unusual for people to not know what they’re doing.

  This, of course, is true in personal relationships as well. If a significant number of people see you a certain way, there’s probably truth in the perception, but if it’s one person who has an opinion of you that no one else seems to share, that person needs to look more at themselves. I know of so many relationships that have gone bad because people were unable to do that. That should be a goal for all of us. It’s easy to point fingers. It’s obviously much more difficult to take responsibility. “The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth” may be the biggest challenge for all of us.

  When I was a boy, I was told it was a good idea to put my savings into a savings account where my money would earn interest and someday turn into significantly more money than I started with, so I gave the same advice to my son when he was fifteen. He put the money he had accumulated from gifts from various relatives over the years into a savings account at our local bank, and we let it sit. When we went to withdraw the money from his savings account, we were looking forward to seeing how much interest he’d earned. We were surprised to see his account held less money than he had put in because the bank had charged him $15 a month for an inactive account, more than the interest the bank paid, which was less than 1 percent.

  So my son paid the bank for taking his money and investing it for their own gain. They made money off my son and charged him for it.

  That ought to be illegal.

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve been more skeptical of things than most people, but in the last thirteen years or so, working for NBC and CBS News, my skepticism has quadrupled—at least—beginning with stories about myself that I’ve read in the papers or seen on the news that have no truth to them at all.

  Reports had me attending Robert Blake’s wife’s funeral in Los Angeles in 2001. I haven’t been to Los Angeles since the early nineties. Mrs. Blake was known to have put nude photos of herself on the Internet to attract male clients—not a group I’d want to be associated with.

  Once, at a party, I was told by a journalist that I had written a very angry letter to someone complaining that I wasn’t recognized sufficiently at an event. I had no idea what he was talking about. I asked him to give me a source. He looked into it and then reported to me it wasn’t an angry letter, it was “a series of irate phone calls.” I don’t think
anyone in the history of show business, including Joan Crawford or Bette Davis, has made “a series of irate phone calls” about not being recognized somewhere. The fact is, I prefer to not even go out. Yet that story was making the rounds. In fact, I’m widely known for my lack of irateness. Irate is just not one of my things. I’m not saying I don’t have things. I’m just saying, irate is not one of my things.

  I was recently sent a biography of me to check before an event I was hosting. It said my mother’s last name was Moretsky. That’s not true. It said her father’s name was Emanuel Moretsky. That’s not true. It said I made my film debut in an uncredited role in Disney’s 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I not only was uncredited, I wasn’t in it. If the picture was released in 1954, it was probably made in 1953, when I was still in high school and then started college. It said I hosted Saturday Night Live, and before the show the writers and I decided to play it as if I had missed dress rehearsal and was clumsily ad-libbing my way through the sketches. It said the comic scenario was taken a bit too literally by the audience, and I was never asked to host again. That Saturday Night Live is one of the shows they put out on the Best of Saturday Night Live DVDs, and, of course, I have been asked to host the show again. It said that among other books I wrote is one titled Spilled Milk and Other Clichés. I’ve never even heard of the book.

  Not that long ago I read an article in the New York Daily News about the second President Bush that stated he had wanted to marry another woman before he met his wife, Laura. The article said the woman didn’t want to marry him because she had wanted to marry Charles Grodin, and she hadn’t gotten over that that didn’t happen. This was a woman I had gone out with, but I had no idea she wanted to marry me, and I seriously doubt that she hadn’t gotten over me when she met the future president, because the last time I saw her was at a party at her apartment and she was sitting in a corner kissing another guy.

  What Did You Say?

  Maybe it’s because the last book I worked on was about learning from our mistakes that lately I’m thinking more about mistakes I and others have made. First, the others.

  I remember once meeting the movie director Robert Altman. The meeting was set up because he liked improvisation in his movies, and I had a reputation for being good at it. Five minutes into the meeting he said to me, “I know I should like you, but I don’t.” I know that was because he didn’t sense even the slightest bit of deference from me. Again, no one has either felt the slightest bit of superiority from me, either.

  I told Herb Gardner about my meeting with Robert Altman. He said, “That’s strange, because when I was laid up with my back, he stood at the foot of my bed and talked for about an hour about backs.” I said, “Well, he’s comfortable in the position of authority.” Herb, who was seldom at a loss for words, simply said, “Oh.”

  I believe Robert Altman was an extremely gifted director, and I’ve never heard anyone say one bad thing about him. Quite the contrary. But I found there was that need to feel slightly superior, which in my mind is a flaw many people have. Not a way to win friends and influence people, at least not with me.

  A television executive in New York told me he’d call me back in six minutes. It’s been a couple of years now, and I’m still waiting. However, I try not to take these things personally. I know if they’re happening to me, I’m sure I’m not alone.

  I’ve learned over the years something that should be obvious to all of us, but I don’t think it is. It’s much easier to feel offense than to know we’re offending, because the hardest person to see is ourselves.

  I was talking to a producer in Los Angeles on the phone about a play of mine he chose not to do. It was all very pleasant, actually. I’d never met the man, so I was surprised when he said at the end of the conversation, “I’ll call you next week. I don’t want a week to go by without hearing your voice.”

  Well, a lot of weeks went by without him hearing my voice. I called him about three months later about another project, and when he got on the phone he quite seriously said, “Boy, you don’t give up, do you?”

  I try to find things amusing whenever possible, and in a short time I found that funny. That’s not to say I don’t also find it offensive. I’m sure he had no idea he was rude.

  In a later conversation, when I called him on behalf of a friend, I told him I was going to put the above story in a book, but I wouldn’t use his name. He urged me to use it, but I feel it will make him look foolish, which I don’t want to do, especially since more than one person has told me he’s a very nice guy. Sometimes we obviously don’t know what’s best for us.

  In my most recent conversation with him on the phone (I still have never met him), he interrupted me and rudely said, “Let’s cut to the chase.” I was calling him about a script I’d put together from transcripts about Brandon Hein and the consequences of the felony murder rule. I wanted him to have readings of it once a week when they didn’t have a play on, as his theater is close to where the crime took place. I’d already had readings of it in New York. He wrote to me speaking glowingly of the play, but for reasons I couldn’t follow chose not to do it. His salutation was, “Love ya!”

  There’s always been a feeling that there’s a lot more show business phoniness in Los Angeles than in New York. I wouldn’t be a good judge of that, because I’ve never been out or around much on either coast, but in my limited experience I’d say it’s true.

  That doesn’t mean there’s not appalling behavior on both coasts. I had occasion recently to call the head of a theatrical agency in New York about a friend. Before I could even get to the reason for the call, he said to me, “You know, when you were a commentator for 60 Minutes II, they auditioned two of my clients to replace you.”

  That was highly unlikely, since before I resigned from the broadcast I had just been given a very substantial raise, but even if it were true, why say it? In a later conversation he went on to show that his insensitivity during the first call wasn’t a fluke. I’m sure he has no idea how offensive he is. There are many people who feel the need to establish themselves as superior because, whether they’re aware of it or not, they feel inferior.

  Perhaps the most offensive thing I’ve ever had said to me came from an executive at MGM who released my movie Movers & Shakers. Richard Graff asked me on the phone, “Do you have a match?” I said, “A match?” He said, “Yeah, burn the print, nobody wants to see your movie.” Later I learned the studio made money on the movie because of its low cost and because enough people wanted to see it that almost twenty-five years later it’s still being shown on cable.

  I did have the satisfaction of calling Alan Ladd, Jr., the head of the studio at the time, and telling him of my conversation with Mr. Graff, whom I’m sure got an earful from his boss.

  Some people cross a line so egregiously that retribution is a must.

  Proceed with Caution

  On several occasions I’ve offended people, and I have no idea I’ve done it. My first memory of this was when Laurence Olivier came backstage to meet me after seeing a play I was in. I don’t remember if he had his title then. He was with a woman, and I talked with him about the grind of doing eight performances a week. He said, “It’s not for us to enjoy, it’s for the audience.”

  Later, I heard the woman was appalled at how I spoke to Sir or not Sir Laurence. I have no idea what she was referring to. Laurence Olivier didn’t seem appalled at all. I think it probably offended her because I treated him as an equal, which as I’ve said is how I’ve always treated everyone. This makes me popular with doormen, for example, and sometimes less popular with people who expect you to look up to them. I don’t look up or down at anyone, just straight ahead, and my feelings about everyone have nothing to do with their status, only their character.

  Several decades ago I was sitting with a group of people that included two world-famous composers. One of them was a close friend of mine. The other was famous for Broadway musicals. My friend said to the other composer
, “I’m thinking of writing a Broadway musical. Could we have lunch sometime? I’d like to pick your brain.” The Broadway icon acted as though he didn’t hear my friend, but clearly he had.

  When the Broadway composer didn’t respond, I said, “He just asked if you’d have lunch with him.” Again there was no response, but later I heard that over the years whenever my name came up in this composer’s presence he makes his feelings about me clear, and they’re not good. Obviously, I had offended him, but I still think I was right to speak up.

  About five years ago, a friend of mine who was a major league baseball pitcher called me from his car on the way to a ball game. He said the name of a future Hall of Fame pitcher who was sitting with him. Probably because I was focusing on our conversation, I rudely neglected to say something flattering to the other pitcher. A few years later I met the Hall of Famer at a gathering, and I apologized. He told me to forget it, but it was clear he hadn’t.

  Some recent events come to mind. Once I was hosting a local musical show and introduced an amateur singing group, which by the way was excellent, by saying in a misguided effort to be amusing, “Because you don’t have to audition for this group should in no way reflect on its quality.” The audience laughed, but the group was extremely offended. I feel very bad about that. I’m no longer asked to host that event.

  I was once hosting an event at the Maritime Aquarium in my area. I began by apologizing in advance if I offended anyone, because that was not my intention.

  I chose not to do any fish jokes, because I couldn’t think of any and had no great desire to try. I then introduced the new head of the aquarium as “probably the most offensive of us all.” I don’t think that offended the lady, because she knew we had just met. There really was no opportunity for either of us to unknowingly offend.