Still Foolin' 'Em (30 page)

The backstage visitors, meanwhile, were an eclectic group: from total strangers like Kurt Vonnegut to my cousin Ira, from Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft to Ahmet Ertegun, from Helen Gurley Brown to Pat Riley and Bobby Knight. Strange combinations like David Letterman and Henry Kissinger, Sandy Koufax and Jimmy Fallon, Bill Clinton and Warren Beatty would step onstage afterward in the empty theater to take a picture with me in the doorway of my “house.”

There was only one thing I didn’t like about live theater: cell phones. I hated the sound of phones going off during the show, always during the quiet moments. Often they would just ring and ring because the person whose phone was going off didn’t want to be pegged as the schmuck. One night a woman in a third row aisle seat was on her phone during the opening moments. I just stared at her as I performed, and soon she whispered into her phone, “I have to go, he’s looking at me.”

My focus had to be precise every minute of the performance. My preparation each day was the same: eat dinner around 4:30, then get to the theater at six. Answer some e-mails, change into workout clothes, and then go to the gym alongside my dressing room. Stretch and do sets of sit-ups and then walk on the treadmill for a half hour or so. Body now warm, I’d go out onstage in the empty theater and run some lines or walk the stage side to side, sometimes lightly running it as well. Once loose, take “batting practice”: stand at center stage and swing at an imaginary ball as crew syncs sound effect of a bat hitting a ball to my swing. Belt them all over the empty theater. (One night I hit the imaginary ball at least five hundred feet, and before I knew it the imaginary commissioner was giving me an imaginary drug test.)

Now relaxed and primed, settle down in my dressing room and play the same CD before every show:
Ella for Lovers.
It’s the gorgeous sounds of Ella Fitzgerald singing beautiful, simple love songs. That CD was the first one I played when we started in La Jolla, and since the run went so well I just kept playing it; the music sets the right mood for me. Seven
P.M.
: I get dressed, put on my makeup. I don’t talk to anyone, I don’t see anyone other than the 1950s photos of my family that adorn the walls of my dressing room, taking me back to the time I’m about to reenter.

Visitors on the set of
700 Sundays.

Eight
P.M.
, they call me to the stage. As I leave the dressing room, I look at the same pictures in the same order, the last one being a smiling three-year-old me, a joyous little boy, and that’s how I feel inside. I’m getting another chance to do what I have always loved to do—make people laugh. One last peek in the mirror. “Still foolin’ ’em,” I say, and then it’s time.

My granddaughter Dylan was born to Jenny and Mike in February, and I was torn about being so far away from the joy of our new grandbaby. Her sister, Ella, was now almost three, and I didn’t want to miss out on any more precious moments. I knew that when summer came, I would close the show and return to being Grandpa.

It was a fantastic year, the show not only becoming the highest-grossing nonmusical in the history of Broadway but also winning a Tony Award, not only for me but for Janice as a producer as well. Most importantly, I found that you
can
go home again, and for me home was onstage, in front of an audience. I was honored with the Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the highest award our country gives for humor. Danny DeVito, Rob Reiner, Martin Short, Robin Williams, Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Jimmy Fallon, Bob Costas, and Joe Torre all made beautiful presentations. Sitting with all my family, Janice by my side, I watched highlights from a career that I’d once doubted I would ever have.

In the fall we took
700 Sundays
on tour. When we were in Phoenix, Lonnie Ali called to tell me that Muhammad was turning sixty-five that day. Would we come over for breakfast and could he see the show that night? Janice and I spent the morning with Ali watching highlights of his career, which were all over television because of his birthday. “Little brother, you looking good. Not as pretty as me, but good,” he joked.

That night, he came to the show, but we didn’t seat him in the audience. His majestic presence can be a distraction, so we put him in a big easy chair in the wings, out of sight of the audience. Ali was decades past being the wide-eyed genius of the ring; instead, he was now a quiet Buddha whose brilliant statements of the past almost paled in comparison to the eloquence of his silence. I finished the first act, and before we went to intermission, I surprised the audience and brought him out to a three-minute standing ovation. I introduced him as the “greatest senior citizen of all time,” and he blew kisses to the crowd as we sang “Happy Birthday.”

Afterward, we made our way to the wings, where he was helped into a golf cart that would take him to his car. He was tired. Would I come over tomorrow? he asked in a whisper. “Why, you want to run a golf course or something?” I asked with a sly smile.

He perked up. “We can, little brother. There’s lots of Jews here.”

Ali is seventy-one now, and every moment I get to spend with him is precious and poignant. In March 2013 I sat with him at Celebrity Fight Night, a fantastic yearly event in Phoenix that raises millions of dollars for Parkinson’s research. This year was even more special. Lonnie and Muhammad were aware that Long Beach had been ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. They’d decided that they would divert some of the funds raised that night, which came to $1 million, to help my hometown. I told Lonnie I couldn’t believe their generosity, and she simply said, “You are his little brother.”

That night, in full view of the one thousand people in the audience, Ali came in late with Lonnie and his small entourage. It’s very hard for him to get around now; Parkinson’s is winning this fight on all cards. His incredibly animated face is most often a frozen mask. He still has the most recognizable face in the world, but it is no longer filled with the joy and confidence I first saw in 1974. Inside, though, he’s still the champ. He sat next to me, and I allowed myself to glance at him and think how so much had happened to us since we first met. He is a fragile man now, and the young man who was feeding his baby when our paths first crossed is a grandfather. I could feel my emotions welling up, but he wouldn’t want me to be sad, because he isn’t. He believes this is what was chosen for him: to be the great ambassador for peace and understanding.

The fighter who wouldn’t fight. I watched him as he scanned the room expressionlessly, though everyone was on their feet greeting him. He looked over and gave me a little smile and a wink. This time he knew who I was.

*   *   *

After Christmas and New Year’s, I took
700 Sundays
to Australia for five weeks and played Sydney and Melbourne. The show got the same wonderful response Down Under, because, after all, family is family. Janice and I then went to New Zealand for a few weeks of a much-needed vacation. We did some fly-fishing, hiking, and jet boating, and we even took a helicopter ride and landed on a glacier and walked on it at nine thousand feet. On my birthday we were staying at a rustic lodge, and I celebrated by herding sheep with a local shepherd and his dogs. I was fifty-nine.

Sydney, Australia, 2005. Don’t try this at home.

When we returned, I was presented with a most difficult decision. Out of the blue, Peter Chernin and his executives at Fox television, Kevin O’Reilly and Peter Ligouri, asked if I would host a talk show at eleven
P.M.
It would be my own late-night show, with a half-hour jump on Leno and Letterman. I had been presented with similar talk-show proposals at other times in my career, both on network and in syndication, but obviously never said yes; this time I was interested.

Hosting a talk show is a daunting job, one I thought I could do, but not necessarily one I
wanted
to do. It takes a special talent: keeping things lively, always looking interested, asking the right questions, listening and not competing with your guests, and, most important, delivering fresh comedy meat to the hungry monster that needs to feed every night.

I was pulled in a few directions. On the one hand, I thought it would be an amazing challenge. On the other hand, it would be all I could do. And if I had a third hand, did I want all the scrutiny that would come with the job? They wanted a five-year commitment, so doing this show would pretty much become my life.

I had a few creative meetings with Kevin and Peter, and, confused but tempted, I set up a meeting with Peter Chernin, a man I very much admire as an outstanding executive, a fearless negotiator, and, on top of that, a really intelligent, regular guy.

We sat down at a restaurant in Santa Monica to talk. He is a very persuasive man, and I was feeling uneasy as he made his pitch. He told me that they had done research that showed a very strong favorable reaction to my doing a show like this. (Damn, he’s making sense.) With an eleven
P.M.
start, for the first half hour we would be competing with local news instead of late-night programming. (Gotta be able to beat the weather report and the occasional car chase.) I didn’t have to have great ratings. (What?) Solid is all they were looking for—at that hour, a few million people. (I could do that, I have that many cousins.) He also guaranteed the total commitment of the network. Peter stared at me with a look that said, “How could you not do this?” The thought of getting into a late-night war with two old friends who were the kings of the kingdom was scary, but still, I couldn’t ignore him.

I pushed forward to my biggest concern.

“How many weeks?” I asked.

“Forty-eight,” Peter replied.

Oooh. That hurt. Peter went on to explain that going up against the
Tonight Show
juggernaut and the iconic Letterman, we needed to be on all the time, especially in our first season. Their numbers were starting to go down. When they went on vacation and showed repeats, we would have fresh shows. Forty-eight weeks. I was going to be sixty years old, with a family I wasn’t seeing enough of as it was. I would have no personal life, something Janice and I had been able to carve out all these years. Janice and I talked about it over and over again. I wasn’t afraid of the work, never have been. But I was afraid that I wouldn’t like the work, and I wasn’t sure I wanted all that pressure. I had an idea though. What if it were done as a seasonal show, like any other? We’d go on in September and end in May. I’d get the summer off to recharge, spend time with Janice and the family. If they were okay with that, I would do it.

In the end, my plan didn’t fly with the affiliates because what would be my replacement during the summer hiatus? Reruns of talk shows don’t mean anything. I walked away without any regrets. Yes, they had offered a lot of what we call “Fuck you money,” but I had learned over the years that if you’re not happy doing what you’re doing, then you shouldn’t be doing it. In any case, if all had gone perfectly well and the show was able to stay on the air, as I write this I would just be handing it over to whoever they felt could get the eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old demographic. Oy.

Grandpa

I am a grandpa. I love being a grandparent, and I like being called “Grandpa,” even though sometimes when I hear it, I think the kids aren’t talking to me. In my mind I’m still the guy from
When Harry Met Sally…,
and to them I’m the guy who takes more naps than they do.

Now, it wasn’t always “Grandpa.” The kids used to call me “Trust Fund,” but I stopped that right away.

Grandpa and Gram—that’s just fine with Janice and me. We’re not the kind of grandparents who hide the fact that we have kids who have kids. You know the types. The ones who have their grandkids call them by their first names because they think that way no one will know how old they are. Who are they fooling? They’re driving Rascal scooters, watching reruns of
Matlock,
and their hair is dyed a color only a Russian circus clown would consider using, and people are going to think they’re not grandparents just because the little one standing next to them calls them Herb and Sylvia?