Becoming Superman
Page 30
I called him into my office to find out what was going on. Tired from a long day of shooting and agitated by my inquiry, he began talking. The longer he talked, the more alarmed I became, not so much by what he was saying as how he was saying it. His sentences got tangled up in themselves, not syntactically but conceptually. He would start with A, diverge to B, switch to a completely unrelated C, then zip back to A as if the digressions somehow proved his point but which actually made no sense. I knew what stoned looked like, but this wasn’t it.
Then he said he was scouring the newspapers for secret messages meant just for him, and that if he could only figure out what the messages meant, everything would be fine, just fine.
I’d heard the phrase my blood froze a million times, but it wasn’t until this moment that I understood what that actually felt like.
He said he was getting other messages encoded in TV newscasts; that the FBI was watching him; and that sometimes he heard voices telling him things about people. I let him continue a while longer to make sure I was hearing him right, that he wasn’t pulling my leg, then stood and thanked him for coming by. When he left, I shut the door and sat heavily, my head nearly between my knees. A phrase I learned while getting my psychology degree floated up from whatever deep recesses it had been hiding in all these years: paranoid delusional behavior.
I’d gone into the conversation assuming that there might have been issues with drugs or alcohol. But the problem wasn’t the presence of mind-altering chemicals, it was the absence of them. The star of the show I’d struggled for five years to get on the air was on the verge of a psychotic break. He didn’t need chiding, he needed diagnosis and treatment. He needed help.
At the end of the day I went to see Michael in his trailer and tried, gently but firmly, to explain that he needed to see a doctor. He refused to listen, insisting there was nothing wrong. His biggest concern was that the mysterious they had gotten to me and were poisoning me against him.
The walk back to my office was the longest I can remember. Now what the hell do I do?
We lacked the legal authority to force Michael to receive treatment if he refused to do so on his own; I wasn’t a family member, and no judge or doctor would put him under involuntary observation because he hadn’t demonstrated that he was a danger to himself or anyone else. The awful part was that somewhere deep inside, Michael knew he had a problem. Over the next few days I found that he could even discuss it for brief periods before sliding back into delusional behavior. He’d talk about how he was getting messages from the FBI and the CIA, I’d say he knew that wasn’t true, then he’d nod and say yes, that’s right, he’s not getting messages, then he’d start talking about the last one he received. He was fracturing but hadn’t yet broken. He was also very good at hiding his condition and could appear quite normal when he needed to put on a good face for the studio or his family. His actor’s ability to shape-shift helped him in front of the cameras but would make it even more difficult to intervene.
Writing Michael out of the show for a few episodes wouldn’t help because that wasn’t enough time for him to start the long process of finding the right cocktail of meds to treat his condition. Nor could I make the nominal star of our show just disappear for the rest of the season. The only other option was to shut down the show. We might be able to recast and go back into production fast enough to save the rest of the season, but that would mean asking Warners to carry the cost of holding on to the crew while we were down, a dubious prospect at best. It’d be cheaper to let us stay shut down and put out a truncated season, which would almost certainly result in cancellation. But I couldn’t see any other solution, so after bringing fellow executive producer Doug Netter into the loop, I waited until Michael had a light workday, when he was at his best and most self-aware, and told him what I thought needed to be done.
“No,” he said, “absolutely not. Don’t do it. If you pull the plug even for a little while, Warners will kill the show. Don’t let me be the reason all these people are put out of work.”
We went back and forth for nearly an hour, with me giving every reason why we should shut down and Michael arguing why we shouldn’t. At one point, he laughed and said, “We both know I’m the crazy one here, so why am I the only one making sense?”
We fell quiet as Michael looked out the window, pale and tired but as determined as I’d ever seen him. It was already dark. In another hour the crew would wrap for the day and pour into the parking lot for Friday beers with the staff and cast, a Babylon 5 tradition.
“Let me do this,” he said at last. “Let me try to get through the rest of the season. If I fall down, then yeah, maybe you’ll have to shut down the show, fire me, kill the character, whatever. But you don’t have to do it right now. There are only a few episodes left, I know I can get through this, swear to God. Let me at least try. You can always pull the trigger later. Just give me a chance so all these people don’t get fired.”
Let me try. Whenever those words are spoken by someone I care about, I always do what I can to back their play. Certainly if he could finish the season on his own terms, it would be easier to convince him to seek treatment. So I agreed on the condition that if we got even the slightest indication that he was going into the red, we’d do whatever was necessary to get him the treatment he needed. He thought that sounded fair.
Since his symptoms were exacerbated by stress, I adjusted the remaining scripts to move other characters into the foreground, shaving off some of Michael’s hours and reducing the weight he had to carry as the lead. This had an immediate benefit, and Michael began to exhibit fewer symptoms. His situation would have been almost manageable had there not been a personality conflict with fellow actor Jerry Doyle, who’d figured out that there was something wrong with Michael. Despite not knowing the full extent of the problem, Jerry took every opportunity to wind him up like a cheap watch just to watch him spin out.
Despite Jerry’s antics, for the first time in a long while Michael actually seemed to be enjoying himself, and took great pride in proving that he could make it to the end of the season.
A few days before we finished shooting our last episode, I invited him into my office to chat. Maybe it’s not as bad as it looked, I thought. Maybe he’s better, and we can squeak by with him on a second season. But fatigued at the end of a long day, he again began manifesting the same delusional behavior. After he left, I walked down the hall into Doug’s office and shut the door, agonized by what had to be done.
“We can’t bring him back,” I said. “He’s not going to get better without treatment, and that’s going to take a long time. He can’t do that and be the star of a weekly show with all the pressure that involves. We got blindsided by this and dealt with it the best we could, but we can’t bring him back in good conscience until and unless he’s better.”
To avoid needlessly upsetting Michael, we decided to hold off on that conversation until we received definitive word about a second season; if we didn’t get renewed, we’d all be out of a job and Michael wouldn’t feel singled out.
The pickup came a few days before Michael was scheduled to appear at I-CON, a science fiction convention in Long Island where he would be feted and applauded for his work. Doug and I kept the information to ourselves as Kathryn and I flew off to I-CON to support Michael and keep an eye on things. He loved the attention of the fans, and I was happy that we’d held back the conversation so he could enjoy this moment.
At the close of the convention, Michael, Kathryn, fan liaison Rowan Kaiser, and I climbed into a van for the long freeway drive back to the airport. Twenty minutes into the trip I heard what sounded like a motorcycle roaring up alongside us. I looked out the passenger side. No motorcycle. Looked left and behind. No motorcycle. But the roar was coming from somewhere, and it was getting louder, fast.
Then I glanced through the front windshield just in time to see two airplane wheels starting to descend in front of us.
The driver jammed on the brakes as
a small private plane made an emergency landing, missing the van by inches. The plane swung wildly from side to side, bounced hard onto the freeway, then screeched to a stop as we swerved around it.
Michael looked at me, eyes wide. “That was real, right?”
“Very,” I said.
Once we returned to Los Angeles I broke the news to Michael that we’d been picked up but couldn’t bring him back. A part of him knew that continuing into season two wasn’t possible, but that didn’t make the situation any easier. To give Michael a goal to work toward during his treatment I told him that if his condition improved, I would bring him back, even if only briefly, to tie up his character’s story. I had already written a scene I wanted him to shoot for that purpose, setting up a more elaborate appearance later.
Michael expressed his appreciation, but also his concern. If news of his condition got out, it would kill his career. Nobody would ever hire him again.
“As far as I’m concerned this is just between you and me, it’s nobody else’s business,” I said. “You’re my friend and we’ll deal with this privately.”
Kathryn and I offered to assist with his rent and living expenses after he returned to New York, where he would have the support of his family and friends, including Sandy Bruckner, head of the B5 fan club and Michael’s de facto convention liaison. As he went through various medical regimens designed to deal with his disorder, we stayed in touch as much as possible to keep an eye on his progress, hoping that everything would work out in the end.
Meanwhile, I had to get season two on the rails. The hardest part of being a showrunner is that you’re always the first one on deck, writing scripts while everyone else is on hiatus, and the last off the boat, finishing postproduction long after shooting has wrapped. To all intents and purposes you get zero time off. So while the cast and crew lounged on beaches or climbed mountains, I fired up the computer and got to work.
Chapter 28
The Christmas Ambush
For the role of Babylon 5’s new commanding officer, Captain John Sheridan,* we chose Bruce Boxleitner, best known for his work on Tron and Scarecrow and Mrs. King as well as several westerns. Bruce was the prototypical square-jawed, hard-nosed hero, an honest and honorable man who leaned into the straight-shooter image as much behind the camera as in front of it.
In addition, the actress hired to replace Patricia Tallman left to pursue other opportunities, which freed me to bring her back and get several crucial parts of the story back on track.
There was just one last hole that needed to be filled. In the season one finale, one of our characters, the second-in-command of station security, was revealed to be a traitor and shipped off the station. Since it was a fairly small role I wasn’t looking for a star, just a good actor, so I was surprised when Jeff Conaway—one of the stars of Grease as well as the hit series Taxi—auditioned for the part.
“He needs the job, he needs something to restart his career,” Casting Director Fern Champion explained while Jeff waited in the hall for his audition. After being fired off Taxi for drug abuse he’d floated in and out of the business, doing occasional one-off roles but never landing anything permanent. “He finally went public about his addiction and entered treatment. He says he’s clean now and willing to do whatever’s necessary to restart his career, but I gotta be honest, you’re taking a chance if you hire him and those issues come back in the middle of shooting.”
I think we’re all entitled to one Really Big Screw-Up in our lives; I’ve certainly committed more than my share. But during the audition Jeff was clear-eyed, sincere in confronting his past mistakes, and uncomplaining about having to start over. So I pushed the other producers to hire him, and a few weeks later, Jeff came on for what would become a four-year stint on Babylon 5.
With the series receiving solid ratings and plaudits from fans and reviewers alike, Warner Bros. reluctantly concluded we knew what we were doing and largely stopped giving us notes. This allowed me to delve into some of the issues I wanted to address: making Ivanova the first lead character of the Jewish faith as a regular in a science fiction TV series; presenting gay marriage as something so commonplace by 2259 that it’s no longer even worthy of comment; and examining the death penalty and religious issues in ways that were tough but respectful.
This approach led to Babylon 5 receiving two Emmy Awards, the Saturn Award, the E Pluribus Unum Award from the American Cinema Foundation, the Universe Award, the Space Frontier Foundation Award, and dozens of others.
The oddest recognition the show received came the afternoon Bruce Boxleitner attended a White House labor conference with his wife, actor Melissa Gilbert, who was then president of the Screen Actors Guild. “We were waiting for the meeting to start,” Bruce said, “when the door opens and [political adviser to President George W. Bush] Karl Rove comes in. He blows right past Melissa, grabs my hand and says ‘I just want you to know that Babylon 5 is the best science fiction show ever.’
“Then he added, ‘And the president thinks so, too.’”
I still don’t know how I feel about that.
Out of all the awards the show received, the most important for me was the Hugo Award. As a kid in Newark who had to decide which science fiction books to “borrow” from liquor stores, I always looked for the words Hugo Award Winner on the cover. It was an indicator of excellence recognized around the world. I used to dream of one day winning a Hugo, and I was humbled and honored when my scripts for Babylon 5 received two of them in a row.
Having grown up on Harlan Ellison’s words and his work, admiring him from afar, I never imagined that we would one day become close friends. The four of us (including Kathryn and Harlan’s wife Susan) traveled as a group, went to movies, and appeared together at conventions . . . though I did think it odd that whenever we convened for dinner there was almost always a third party present: a friend of Harlan’s, another writer, or a celebrity who was a fan of his work (including a founding member of the ’60s rock band The Turtles). One afternoon, after the fifth and sixth wheels had left and it was just the four of us gathered around the table in Harlan’s Art Deco Pavilion, I asked him about it.
Harlan hesitated. Despite his reputation for crankiness, Harlan was one of the most gracious souls I have ever known; he didn’t want to hurt me but he was also incapable of being less than forthright when queried. “Do you know what the definition of a bore is?” he asked at last. “It’s someone who brings to a conversation nothing but his presence.”
I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. He was right. I’d learned long ago how to ask prepared questions during interviews, relay instructions to crew members, and give practiced talks at conventions, but I’d never learned how to hold a normal conversation by initiating topics, asking spontaneous questions, or giving more than the briefest, most perfunctory responses. If I knew that a particular subject was going to come up with someone I was seeing the next day, I’d spend the night before preparing a canned first reply and a second response to what I thought they would say in return; once that ammunition was gone I would fall back on yes or no answers to even the most leading questions. Conversation was a performance I watched rather than an activity I participated in. Harlan’s comment made me think back to all the parties and dinners where the conversation had stalled out when it came my turn to pick up the slack. That was why there was always a third party at dinner; Harlan wanted to make sure there was at least one person present with whom he could have an actual conversation.
I couldn’t even bring myself to be offended. He could have easily come up with a dozen different replies to my question that were soothing and diversionary and utterly untrue. Instead he came back with something that was as hard for him to say as it was for me to hear. The question now was what to do about it. When you spend your formative years avoiding contact with people, sitting at family dinners that are marked by silence or violence and where nobody wants to hear your opinion, it’s hard to pick up the skills of a raconteur.
Well then, if the version of you they see isn’t real, if the persona isn’t the person, then who are you when there’s no one else around?
The answer, even after all this time, is: I don’t know. That part of my heart is sealed off from the rest of me. I’m not sad about it, I don’t brood about it, and except for what’s expressed for the first time in this book, I don’t generally talk about it. It is what it is. The only thing I can objectively point to and say that is a part of me hangs in my closet as I write these words: a custom-made red-and-blue uniform with matching boots built to the exact specifications of the one George Reeves wore in Adventures of Superman. I’ve never worn it, I just like knowing it’s there, at the edge of the rack where I can see it.
After the departure of story editor Larry DiTillio at the end of year two, my intention was to set aside a chunk of the third season’s scripts for freelance writers. But Warners failed to give us an advance script order, and the pickup came later than usual, putting us behind schedule before even a single word was written. The only way to hit our airdates would be if the first batch of scripts was written fast and landed on the stage ready to shoot, without the need for revisions. I couldn’t trust that to outside writers so I wrote the first five scripts as a stopgap measure to get us up and running. Once filming started, however, I didn’t have time to teach freelancers how to write for our show, and there were no other creative producers on staff to whom I could hand off that responsibility, so I kept going.