Still Foolin' 'Em (10 page)

Craig Tennis, the segment producer, joined us and asked what I wanted to do in my short segment. “Let’s go right to the Ali question,” I answered; that would lead me into the imitation and I’d be okay. “We’re back,” said Johnny. “This Thursday you’re on the Dean Martin roast with Ali—what’s the connection?” At which point Welles said something like “He’s terrific on the show” and patted me on the back. I’d like to think it was his way of saying I’m sorry. Johnny fed me the Ali line, I did the impression, Johnny laughed a lot and said, “Come back anytime,” and I was in heaven. They don’t all turn out like this.

*   *   *

In 1976 Michael Eisner and ABC signed me to a development deal and I put the plug back into the garage door of my building and we moved to Los Angeles. It was hard to leave our families and the town where I’d grown up, but it was time.

We arrived in Los Angeles on the evening of August 2, and that night I went into a supermarket to get some food. In the frozen food section I saw one of the actors from the film
West Side Story.
He wasn’t the cool member of the Jets anymore. He had a belly and a bald spot and was reading the label on a bag of frozen peas with a cigarette dripping from his mouth. “Rough town,” I murmured to myself. The next morning we were awakened by a lot of commotion outside. I opened my door, and Buddy Ebsen was sitting in the yard. They were shooting an episode of
Barnaby Jones,
and the front of our small apartment complex was the location. Welcome to Hollywood.

I was very excited and nervous when, a few months later,
Saturday Night Live
asked me to do a spot on the show, which was to be hosted by Ron Nessen, press secretary to Gerald Ford. That night, Dan Aykroyd did the Bass-o-Matic sketch, where he put fish in a blender and drank it. I did “Face,” which was a funny and poignant monologue where I played an old jazz musician friend of my dad’s who had seen me on television. When I was little, he was the first one to call me “Face,” which became my nickname. Now he’s older and down on his luck, and we have a bittersweet reunion. The hook he kept saying was “Can you dig it, I knew that you could.” It played beautifully; it was great to be back there. And I didn’t do the show again for eight years.

I was soon sent a pilot script for an ABC series called
Soap.
The producers wanted me to play a character named Jodie Dallas. Jodie was funny, he was charming, and he was … gay. There hadn’t been a homosexual lead character on a series, so taking the part was a real gamble. I had been out in public with Rob Reiner many times when people called him “Meathead”; I didn’t want to be the gay guy from
Soap.
But this was a great script. I decided to meet with its creator, Susan Harris; producers Tony Thomas and Paul Witt; and the director, Jay Sandrich, who, following his great run with Mary Tyler Moore, was thought of as the best director in television. They laid out the “bible” for the show. We talked about where Jodie would go as a character—emotional places that had never before been reached with a gay character on television. We went over the pilot, which was two half-hour shows. In the first I had only one line, but in the second, I had a very funny scene with my mom, played by Cathryn Damon. Jodie was caught wearing one of his mother’s dresses, high heels, and a blond wig. When she saw me she said, “Stop wearing my dress—Oh, you wear it belted.”

It was a risky scene, having Jodie dress up like this, but the plans for Jodie were to make him more of a subtle character, a compelling guy who just happened to be gay. I agreed to do the show because of that meeting. Susan Harris was a genius writer, and Paul Witt and Tony Thomas were really smart producers. It felt like we had the chance to do something special and important. Also, now that my stand-up career was taking off, I would be able to go out and be myself on talk shows and personal appearances, so I wouldn’t be trapped in the character.

We shot the pilot and were put on the fall schedule for 1977. The show became the talk of the industry. Religious groups condemned it without even seeing it. It was on the cover of
Time
magazine before it was broadcast. Society’s mores were a lot different then. The lead character, Jessica Tate, who was played by the brilliant Katherine Helmond, was having an affair with a younger man, Robert Urich; women didn’t do that on television. Diana Canova’s character tried to seduce a priest in church (women didn’t do that, either), and then, of course, there was this young gay commercial director who liked to wear his mother’s clothes and was secretly dating an NFL quarterback. Sponsors were picketed, gay groups were initially unhappy, fearing that Jodie was a stereotype, and with all that working against us, we still were a ratings success, finishing in the top ten shows. Suddenly I was in the national spotlight.

That first season, ABC executives were putting me on any show they could, sort of the Billy’s Married (but His Character Can’t Until 2013) Tour. Dinah Shore had a wonderful program that I had been on several times already; I loved doing it because she was so natural and easy to be with. Her producer called me to say that Mickey Mantle was going to be a guest and wouldn’t I like to be on with him? I was so nervous I didn’t know what to do. Then I came up with an idea.

Jodie and his stepfather, Burt (Richard Mulligan).

(© American Broadcast Companies, Inc.)

My dad had shot some great home movies of Mickey, and I still had them. I would intercut those with footage of my brother Rip’s Bar Mitzvah and not tell Mickey anything before we watched it together. I also brought the program he had signed in 1956. My heart was pounding when Dinah introduced me. There was Mickey, looking great and smiling at me as I shook his hand. I took out the program and told the story of how he had signed it but said I had never seen him do it, so could he verify that it was his signature? He laughed and said yes indeed he did sign like that back then, but he agreed to re-sign it. So, twenty-one years later, Mickey Mantle re-signed my program. I then showed him and the audience the home movies. I set it up that these were treasured memories of my hero. Mickey was totally sucked in. We rolled the film; it started with him throwing on the sidelines of the great old park, and suddenly it cut to my relatives doing the bunny hop and eating chopped liver. Mickey and the audience went wild, and after I described all the strange faces of my relatives in the flickering film, it cut back to Mickey, who promptly struck out. He loved it. That was it. We became friends right then and there. And that friendship would lead us to many unlikely encounters.

Playing a gay man in front of a live audience was difficult. My boyfriend on the show was played by Bob Seagren, a former Olympic pole vaulter. We had scenes where we said we loved each other, and the audience would laugh nervously. That was new information for people in 1977, and it made them and me uncomfortable. The lines were difficult to deliver, and hearing that nervous laughter made me angry. I felt they were laughing at Jodie, not with him. Sometimes I wanted to stop the scene and yell at the audience, “What are you laughing at?” But as time went on, and the character developed, viewers at home cared about Jodie, even wanting him to get sole custody of a child he had fathered. In a great cast of insane characters, Jodie, along with Benson, became one of the more sane ones. We continued to build the character, and I will always be proud of the role, but it sure was hard in the beginning. To compound the confusion, I had done a movie called
Rabbit Test,
directed by Joan Rivers. I played the first pregnant man. It wasn’t just that the movie didn’t work; it came out at the same time
Soap
did, so now the gay guy was also the pregnant guy? I try not to look back and think about mistakes, but that was a big one. We should have been more patient and waited for the right movie to come along.

A month after
Soap
went on the air, Lindsay was born. Despite the success of
Soap,
I kept watching
Saturday Night Live
and couldn’t help but dwell on what could have been. As I sit here playing connect the dots with the liver spots on my hands, I think that my twenties were the most tumultuous times of my life. In March, I turned thirty. Oy.

The Elbow

We’re at the movies and I felt it: a sharp jab from Janice, who in her prime could have taken out Metta World Peace on a fast break. I just got the elbow.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“You’re nodding off.”

“No I’m not, I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“Well, everyone’s looking at you—your head was back and you were drooling.”

I glance down at my shirt and there’s a spreading circle of Red Vines juice. I nodded off for thirty seconds and it turned into a mob hit. Nodding off: a new thing to add to the Whitman’s Sampler of fun items I’m developing, like the forgetting of names. That’s always a great one. I try to handle it with the old “Hey, great to see you, long time no see, you know you have such an interesting and rare name, how do you spell it?”

“B-O-B.”

Then you have to fake it. “Bob, I don’t mean that—I mean your last name.”

“S-M-I-T-H.”

It’s better when I’m with Janice as I’m blanking out on whoever it is who can’t be more excited to see me. I can finesse the introduction. “You remember Janice,” I’ll say to the person who is hugging me, and then, of course, he introduces himself.

“Hi, I’m Magic Johnson.” It works every time.

*   *   *

The forgetting of names started a few years ago. We were watching
Do the Right Thing
on television. It’s a great Spike … uh, what’s his last name … shit …
Lee,
whew, movie, and an actor I’ve known for years is on-screen, and I go blank. I mean totally blank. Janice also is dumbfounded at who this actor is, and it’s driving us crazy. This is before Google and all the other aids I now can use when there’s a cave-in in the main shaft. Who the fuck is that? We describe moments we’ve had with him, places we’ve been together, things he’s said to me … nothing. Finally, I call my daughter Lindsay and start to describe the movie, and in two seconds she says, “Danny Aiello.”

“Danny Aiello, of course—man, that was so weird,” I say. Lindsay laughs, and before we get off, I say, “Thanks, Jenny.”

It’s such a stunning moment when it happens, like hitting a brick wall. So now when I can’t remember an actor in a movie or who it is that’s hugging me hello, or what’s that thing I eat soup with, we call it a Danny Aiello. It’s not just me. I find comfort in the fact that most of my friends—whose names I can’t come up with right now—are having the same problem. My doctor says it’s par for the course and not a symptom of anything sinister. He suggests that I have a physical, and I tell him we did one two days ago, and he says, “Did we?”

*   *   *

This nodding off thing is just the latest annoying development in my life.

If I’m at a play and the curtain goes up and I see a secretary alone in the boss’s office, silently looking for something on his desk, I’m gone.

A stately manor with a maid dusting: I’m gone.

If there’s a castle and an accent, see ya.

I can’t help it; it’s just the way my body is now. It’s like I’m an addict and five minutes of public snoozing is my heroin.

Movies and plays are an important part of my life, and now every time I go I’m fraught with terror that I’m going to nod off. On the drive over I start to worry: Will I stay up, or will Janice break another one of my ribs? She doesn’t mean to hit me so hard, but at my age, it qualifies as elder abuse.

*   *   *

Janice and I discuss what to do. “What do you want me to do if you start to nod?” she’ll ask. My answer will depend on how badly I wanted to see this particular movie or play, if my ribs are healed, and do we know anyone in the show? Usually it’s “You won’t have to, I feel good,” even though inside I’m actually looking forward to a quick nap: it was a tough day and I need a chance to catch up because, as usual, I’ve been up all night.

We get to the movie theater, and as we’re buying the tickets, another thing happens that annoys the hell out of me. I ask the person in the box office for the senior discount and they go, “Really, you’re over sixty?” Vanity causes me to say, “Just kidding,” and now I’m mad that I’m out an extra couple of bucks. But on the plus side, maybe the adrenaline will keep me awake.

Once we get inside, I decide to take preventative measures. I order a double espresso. The problem with that is (1) I’m going to miss the second half of the movie running to the men’s room every three minutes and (2) chemicals tend to have the opposite of their intended effect on me. Caffeine makes me sleepy. Aspirin gives me headaches. Pot used to make me energetic, and you don’t want to know what Viagra does.

Broadway plays are worse than movies because they’re not that loud and there are actual human beings onstage, some of whom I know, who can see me going night-night. In the last few years, I’ve never made it through an entire show.

I saw
The Music Ma
 … I know there was trouble, I just don’t know where.