I Said Yes to Everything: A Memoir (34 page)

M
ary Beth and I had gone to a Gloria Steinem luncheon where one of the speakers was Marie Balter, a schizophrenic woman who had been raised in a dark Dickensian home in Boston and spent most of her life in mental institutions. She met a fellow patient, fell in love, and battled her demons to get well and to marry him. It became our biggest hit, a TV movie called
Nobody’s Child
.

Who was the cinematographer? Only Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman’s longtime collaborator. Sven and me, Sven and little Lyova Haskell Rosenthal. Sven made my heart melt. We flew hand in hand like a Chagall painting, my feet off the ground, lovers in heart, art, and soul. Sven told me Bergman had seen
Tell Me a Riddle
and really liked it. My mouth falls open as I write it. Bergman. Of course I tried to copy him in
Riddle
; he must have recognized that.

I was watching a very good play on television. The actress in it was doing very beautiful interior work as a shy, retiring woman. She looked familiar and I waited for the credits. It was an unrecognizable Marlo Thomas.

I called a friend, who gave me her number. I said, “I will never underestimate anyone’s talent again,” and offered her the part of Marie
Balter. She was superb. She went to Boston to spend time with Marie. She went to the mental institution. With Sandra Seacat, her acting coach, Marlo worked on Marie for months, plunging into the schizophrenic experience. The sound, the movement, the walk. On the morning that Marie is allowed to go out the front doors of this Gothic mental hospital, where we were filming, it started to softly snow. A miracle. Marlo opened the big doors into a wonderland of beautiful whiteness. She put her hands out to receive this blessing on her face, her hair, her mouth. Her joy. And Sven Nykvist, the great Bergman’s cinematographer, was there to preserve the moment.

Marlo won the Emmy; I won the Directors Guild Award for TV Director. Directors voted for me! I was a fellow director. I’d earned their respect.

•   •   •

I
was directing
Nobody’s Child
when my Aunt Fremo was dying. I was in Vancouver; she was in New York. I could have made it. The truth was I didn’t want to see Fremo die. I
couldn’t
see Fremo die. I didn’t want her pain to be my last image of her, to carry always in my head and heart. I didn’t fly back for her funeral, either. I didn’t want to see her in a coffin. She was buried in the clothes I suggested she would like, her long leopard-print silk pajamas. With a final slash of red lipstick on her lips.

T
his is the documentary that changed me and my marriage. There are men who need to control their wives or girlfriends as personal possessions, limiting who they can see and where they can go and how they behave. The threat of punishment, physical and otherwise, is ever present. Sometimes the episode ends with passionate lovemaking and passionate regret, sometimes even tears from the boyfriend or husband—“Sorry, sorry.”

A part of me felt very close to these women.

I wondered about my relationship with Arnie. How controllable I was with him. How he’d tried to charm me back when I’d left, and his hatred and rage when I didn’t give in to him once again.

But the women we interviewed in halfway houses, running from their lovers, were running for their lives. They were there with their children, unable to contact parents and friends, and living in terror. Other women, because of children or money or sometimes even age, couldn’t escape. And how many women have you heard about on the evening news who have been murdered by their husbands as soon as they got an order of protection? The women in the groups we met all
knew better than to risk their lives and the lives of their children with an order of protection.

In men’s groups, I met some fascinating men, the abusers mostly middle-class men with histories of domestic violence. One, a charismatic, handsome kid, said, “I can spot the woman I can control the minute she steps into the room. Out of hundreds, I can find her.”

“Why do you do it? You’re so handsome, charming; you could have anyone.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Because I can.”

We were shooting in the Midwest, and “the girl” was working on the film.

I was facing too many truths spoken by women, courageous enough to divulge the hidden torments of their lives with their husbands or boyfriends. Real. Terrible. Protecting the men who were abusing them, years of it. Living with fear and danger. Children growing up with their mothers unable to protect themselves. I realized I’d been permitting this bizarre flirtation between Joey and “the girl” to ruin my sense of myself as a woman. How dare I do that to myself, after all I’d fought through? To turn into a victim myself.

If my relationship with Joey was over, it was over. I’d live. But I would not demean myself by accepting this romance, this flirtation, allowing it to permeate my life and diminish me! I’d never cared if Joey had a girl, I knew it was a one-night or even a one-week stand, but this indulgence, this tease was intolerable. It was over.

I was as bad, as cowardly as the women who wouldn’t leave if they could, to tolerate the two people I was closest to wallowing in romanticizing their friendship, each getting out of it what they needed—in her case attention and attraction, in Joey’s worship—and fooling themselves into a holy duo by not touching or kissing. A turn-on if ever there was one.

And what was I? A civilized victim.
Battered
lite. Making this
film about women who couldn’t fight for themselves taught me a lesson. I was so angry with myself. So clear for the first time in more than three years.

We were in Minnesota then. After the work was finished that night, I asked “the girl” to go to the diner with me. I sat across from her in the dark booth. “I want you to stop flirting with Joey,” I said.

She looked at me, then down.

“You’re wrecking my marriage. Stop it.”

The tears started down her cheeks. I watched her cry. “Stop it,” I said again, clear, cold. She nodded.

Joey got his cappuccino, but no pink laughs, no wet eyes, no glistening eyes, no appreciative nods, no gales of sighs, approvals, no charm, tickles, sighs, loving concern. Gone.

We rented a house in Westhampton that summer. Joey hated it. We had visitors, but not “the girl.” She stayed away. Milton Justice and I played tennis, often. Grim. Joey stared out at the potato fields, at our lawn, at the stream, under a tree. He burrowed down in my lap. “Why?” he cried. “Why can’t I have it all?” He was crying.

Joey nearly went crazy that summer. The romance went out of his life. She stopped seducing, the light went out of her eyes, and the light went out in his eyes. “Ahhh-ohhh,” he’d cry in my lap in Westhampton.

“Yes, yes.” I’d pat his back, bitter at being his comforter. Not really sure if we could make it. Not sure I wanted to. Stunned that I’d lived with it so long. By fall, without the reciprocal flirtation, the air suddenly went out of the balloon and it fell to the ground, limp and airless.

Now in New York City, under stormier skies, we were in the middle of our newest life together.

W
e’d moved from the Harry Belafonte building to the Beresford, a building that faced Central Park on the east, the Museum of Natural History on the south. Another rental till we had the money to buy an apartment and found the one we wanted to buy.

We gave our first big New Year’s Eve party in that apartment. The only apartment we ever had whose windows were on the park. So when midnight struck, the fireworks went off in the park and lit up the windows of the living room. We all stood there, our mouths open like children, going, “Ahhhhh, ohhhhh.”

Belinda was enrolled in Rodeph Sholom Day School; she could walk to school from the apartment, a little Thai girl singing Hebrew songs in chorus.

One spring night, Joey and I had one of our huge, loud, yelling fights. I slammed the bedroom door on him and went to bed, furious. As I lay there fuming in my white nightgown, eyeshades, and earplugs, it seemed I could hear music through the earplugs. I took them out. It sounded like it came from my living room. I pushed up the
eyeshades and opened the door. Loud music, louder still as I walked barefoot down the hall.

There, in the foyer, were three young people: two boys and a girl, a trio. Cello, violin, and clarinet playing Bach, transported from where?

Joey was smiling, watching me watching them.

“Where are you from?” I asked. “Heaven?”

“Juilliard,” one said. “We were playing on the street, and he hired us.”

“They’re a present,” Joey said.

Three young strangers, pouring out their hearts, Bach’s genius, in my very own foyer.

See, that’s why I’m in love with him.

P.S. The thing with “the girl” was over. He was in love with me again.

Months later, in the city once again, I asked “the girl” to come over. Joey was lying down in the bedroom.

When he saw her, he became angry. He didn’t want her anymore.

“She’s my friend,” I told him.

“No!” he said. “She is my friend. That’s the way it is.”

And so “the girl” has stayed in our lives, and she’s our friend now for life.

W
e found the script for
Staying Together
, written by Monte Merrick, and went to John Daly, a formidable, good-looking Brit who was making big inroads in Hollywood producing independent films. Suddenly he showed up in New York, we had lunch, and the movie was a go—just like that. We cast Sean Astin, Dermot Mulroney, and Tim Quill as the boys. Melinda Dillon played their mom; Jim Haynie was Dad. Levon Helm was in it, and Stockard Channing. Daphne Zuniga played Dermot’s love interest. My very own Dinah, as Sean’s first sexual encounter, was a waitress in the family’s fried chicken restaurant in their small town, in our case Ridgeway, South Carolina. It was a happy set, a happy movie. Happy Joey, happy Lee, happy, cute, sweet adorable actors.

Catherine Keener was Dermot’s girlfriend then, hanging around the set in a short skirt, leather jacket, and beautiful long legs. Catherine became a fascinating actress and a leading lady of independent films.

Levon, Melinda’s love interest, was and is a music icon. Dermot is a cellist. Music filled our days and nights.

On the last day of shooting, Joey led the mayor of Ridgeway and
the businessmen of the community on a drunken golf foray, supplying each golf cart with a beautiful girl serving piña coladas. Joey was a favorite of the Good Old Boys.

John Daly was a generous and easy man to work for. I handed over a cut of the film to him after we worked on it for months in New York. He changed nothing. We were relieved and grateful. The Academy was giving us a big screening, so we hopped to California and stayed with Brenda Vaccaro and her new husband, Guy Hector.

The day of the screening, I put a tape of the film on just to check it. Our musical score had been removed, replaced by a tinny carousel tune, repeating and repeating itself throughout the movie. I burst into tears. My beautiful movie was wrecked. It was shocking. Every film needs the right music to sustain it, particularly a romantic comedy. And the talented composer who wrote our score, Miles Goodman, had written especially charming music, loving and moving.

I phoned John Daly. He was adamant. He loved his carousel sound. I was literally on my knees begging. I’d do anything he wanted if just for tonight, for the industry screening about to take place in a couple of hours, we could restore the music written for the film.

There was a silence. Tears were streaming down my face. “I’ll put it back if you bring me five thousand dollars before five this afternoon.”

“Five thousand before five?”

I called our business manager, Hersh Panitch. “This is life-and-death,” I told him. “Can you deliver the cash to him?”

“It’s done!” Hersh said.

I called John. “The five thousand is on its way. Please, John, promise me we’ll have our music in it for tonight!”

“I’ll see,” he said.

So Joey and I went to the Academy screening not knowing what we’d find when the lights went down.

It was our music, thank God. John was given accolades for producing such a charming piece. We smiled and nodded at each other. “I couldn’t have done it without John,” I said.

“I couldn’t have done it without Lee,” he said.

But the
Los Angeles Times
review was lukewarm, and John had completely run out of money. With nothing left in the till to promote or distribute our lovely film, the whole charming experience folded in on itself like a big wilting parachute.

T
here is another Christmas, Virginia: We turned our Academy Award–winning documentary
Down and Out in America
into a movie for television. Playing the young couple with children living in a welfare hotel were Jeff Daniels and Christine Lahti. Kathy Bates played the sister-in-law they move in with.

Tony Pierce-Roberts, who shot
A Room with a View
and other Merchant Ivory films, was our cinematographer. He wanted to get away from shooting period films, and when he read this gritty story he figured he could give us a month of his life.

We shot
No Place Like Home
in Pittsburgh. At the time their steel mills had shut down. There were huge mile-long abandoned factories. There were lines of men in suits with briefcases lined up for jobs like fixing cigarette machines. There were broken brick buildings where the walls were down and you could see the blue paint of what had been a bedroom wall, a yellow-painted square of kitchen, with curtains blowing out of a windowless window. It was a perfect environment for
Down and Out in America
and
No Place Like Home
.

Joey produced, I directed. We rented a nice brownstone and took
our new poodle, Dude, who came after Nusski. Mary Beth was with us in production. I still love it. Most of it.

I feel the conversion from doc to movie was at its most successful here. The actors were marvelous; Christine won the Golden Globe. Christine and Jeff let the whole out-of-work phenomenon in Pittsburgh seep in. They sank into their parts and into the reality of suddenly losing your job—Jeff fighting with his brother while staying with the brother’s family and having no place else to go but a shelter, and then a welfare hotel. True story, folks, and happening today, right outside our windows.