He tried to dance with another young woman, but she quickly got fed up and pushed away from him. Now he was hurt. And remorseful. “I fucked up,” he said.
I said, “James, it’s a corporate event. All your employers are here. You know, you’ve got to tone it down.” It was a work night. I invited him to spend the night at my place in Manhattan, but he wouldn’t come with me. “At least let me get you on the seven train.”
“No I need to walk. I need to be alone.” He was spiraling. I didn’t want to leave him, but he insisted.
“You know where I live,” I said. “Buzz me. Come over when you’re done with your walk.”
He never buzzed me. The next day at work, everyone was saying: “Where’s James? He was fucking that speaker last night. Maybe he went home with that speaker? Maybe he went home with Agnes Nixon?” I was calling his pager. Nothing. I was genuinely worried. He finally came in. He looked like shit. He reeked.
“Where were you last night, James?”
“I slept in Central Park.” A crazy and dangerous thing to do even now, but in the 1980s? Certifiable.
That was James. He lived in the moment. He taught me a lot about how important it was, for your art, to do that—to tap into that child within and just play. But acting is a business. Through my friendship with James, I learned that the adult within us needs to keep an eye on the inner child.
Before Loving, I didn’t know I had innate talent. Even when I was enjoying myself working, doubt shadowed me: Could I do this? Was I good enough?
I put myself in the position to see if I had it, and something happened. I showed up and I put the work in and I got a reaction. I made something happen.
Luck also played a part. Any successful actor or writer or artist will tell you that luck is a crucial factor. But the only way to get lucky is to be prepared for luck to find you. Writers write. Actors act. If you’re not constantly applying your talents to your craft, no one is going to stop you on the street and say, “Hey, come write this TV show!” Or, “I want you to star in my movie.”
Loving was job training; it was preparation. But above all, the show gave me confidence. This whole business is a confidence game. If you believe it, they’ll believe it. If you don’t believe it, neither will they. Today, when I’m in the position as a director to hire actors, I don’t feel entirely comfortable hiring someone who doesn’t emit confidence. If an actor comes in, and I feel flop sweat and need from them, there is almost no chance I will hire them. Not because they are untalented, but because they haven’t yet come to the place where they trust themselves, so how can I trust they’ll be able to do the job with a sense of ease? Confidence is king.
Actors are like athletes in that sense. They have to want to be the one to step up to the plate when the game is on the line. The brilliant actor Shirley Knight taught me that actors need to have an arrogance about them. Not in public or in their private lives, but when they work. Actors have to have that drive, that instinct that says: this role is mine.
Leaver
Agnes Nixon and Doug Marland, who created Loving, were nice people. The operating producer, the nuts-and-bolts producer, a man named Joe Stuart, was not. He would make young female actors weep. It was: You’re getting fat. You need to do your roots. You’re breaking out. But it wasn’t just women. Anyone summoned to Joe’s office left shaken. Joe rarely showed himself on set or in the halls. You saw him, it was almost always in his office, and it was almost always bad news. He was the grim reaper of Loving.
We were in the second week of shooting the show. We’d done eight shows already and I was still without a contract. I’d been featured in the two-hour premiere, so they couldn’t easily replace me with another actor. It would be confusing to the audience. So I was in a rare position as a fairly inexperienced actor: I had leverage. And my agents were trying to use it to get me more money.
I finished getting my notes after the dress rehearsal. Seven minutes before they called “places” to shoot the show, I was in the makeup room. Joe appeared in the doorway and asked to speak to me. Gulp. He took me aside. “We’re having a difficult time finalizing your contract.” He told me that the network’s upper management was advising him to cut bait and recast the role. I was shocked. He continued, “Do with that information what you will, and have a good show.” And with that he turned and walked away.
Have a good show. He was basically holding a knife to my throat.Have a good show. I was so intimidated that it wasn’t until much later that I realized it was all calculated. He didn’t want to pay me a dime more than he had to, so he was trying to get in my head and make me worry about my job security.
It worked. I went to take my place on the set. My heart was pounding. I didn’t want to be fired. I got through my scene distractedly. I called my manager the moment we were done. “I just got warned,” I said. “Close the deal. Wherever you are. Close it. I don’t want to have that happen again.”
My manager said he thought we could get more.
“Close the deal,” I said.
I was on the set, trying to work under duress in the real world. Managers and agents and sometimes writers operate in the theoretical world. The real world is a pressure cooker. I couldn’t endure this again. I was sure of that.
I ended up getting $600 per episode and then an automatic bump of $50 per show for the second season—the sweetest deal of any actor on the show. It wasn’t because of my talent; it was only because I was hired last. I had leverage.
Joe didn’t love that; he resented me for it. But after our run-in at the beginning, I rarely saw him. He never said anything to me. He was not a friendly guy. He didn’t speak. He wanted to intimidate and be that man everyone feared.
Every thirteen weeks the producers had an option to renew each actor’s contract. In the year and three quarters I was there, attrition was high. We’d see auditioning actors in the hallway with scripts in their hands and we’d try to see the names on the scripts so we knew our fates. If the actor resembled you, it was, Uh-oh. A look-alike. It’s gonna be me next. I’m getting fired. We got into the habit of calling the show Leaving because so many people were canned.
Characters came and went. Patricia Kalember, the gifted actor who played my former fiancée, Merrill, was fired with no warning. I blinked and someone else, some hardworking colleague, had been dumped on the side of the road. No warning. No reason. Just . . . gone. I made it quite a ways. I had one more thirteen-week cycle before my two-year contract was up. My manager, a wonderfully supportive man named Leonard Grant, called and asked what I wanted to do. I said, “I like having a job. I’m enjoying myself. Learning a lot.”
“It’s velvet handcuffs,” Leonard said. “You’ve got to get out of daytime, or else you’ll wake up and it’s twenty years later and it’s all you’ve ever done.”
He was right. We agreed I’d give notice. After two years I was done. I made a plan to ride out two more weeks and then we’d let them know.
My character was married at that time to Edie, played by Lesley Vogel. Nice woman. Pretty, though in the year we worked closely together I never saw her without makeup. It could have been a complex shoot early in the morning, and she’d show up with a full face on.
On a Friday, Lesley and I got called into Joe’s office.
“Have a seat,” he said.
We sat.
“We’ve greatly appreciated your contribution to the show. Story-wise, we’re going in a different direction. We won’t be renewing your contracts.”
He stood up, meaning: conversation over. It had been ten seconds, maybe. I looked over at Lesley. Her face was frozen in shock. We stood. We’d barely sat on those chairs before we were up. Because it happened so fast, it was almost as if it didn’t happen. I stood there. I shook his hand and said, “Thank you.”
It’s like if you fall, and someone sees you, and you cover your embarrassment with, I’m okay, I’m okay. It’s not until later that you really assess the damage—your skinned knee, your bruis
ed rib. In that office, I was punched in the face, and he didn’t even bother to close the door first. He fired me, and I actually THANKED him. Damn. I wish I hadn’t done that.
I walked into hair and makeup. I hadn’t taken my makeup off yet. I saw my good friend John O’Hurley. (We were both married to the same woman, Lesley, on Loving.) He was there, munching on an apple. He took one look at me and said, “What’s wrong?”
“I got fired,” I said.
He dropped the apple. “What?”
I told him what Joe said, exactly. We’re going in a different direction. A way of saying, “We’re going away from you.”
I had tickets to see the Arthur Miller play After the Fall that night. I went, but I wasn’t really there. When anyone since has asked me how I liked the play, I say: I have no idea. Despite very much wanting to see Frank Langella and Dianne Wiest work, I only heard muffled sounds of actors on a stage. Even the cruel irony of the play’s title was lost on me at the time. I was inside my devastation. I wasn’t expecting to get fired, but it wasn’t unexpected. We did call it Leaving, after all. But that was lost on me, too.
I licked my wounds in private that Saturday. I was filled with self-pity. Woe is me. I looked out the window, forlorn. I was fired. I thought I was getting pretty good, but obviously I’m not good because I just got fired. I was getting angry. I was feeling terrible about myself. I had a couple of drinks. I brushed my teeth and I looked at my face and frowned and thought: Poor baby. You got fired . . . poor baby.
And then I remembered the conversation with my manager. I was going to leave anyhow. Two more weeks and I was giving notice. So why did I feel this way?
It was sort of like I was going to break up with a girl and she beat me to the punch. I didn’t want to be the one on the receiving end. I wanted to be the one in control. I wanted to be the one who knocked.
It was my ego. My ego had been hurt.
The next morning I said: You have to get over yourself, go do something. I bought fifteen rolls of film and shoved them into my camera bag. I wanted to get out of my head. I walked into Central Park with my Nikon—but barricades were everywhere. The stupid New York City Marathon was under way. And now all these people were in my way and I wasn’t going to be able to take pictures of the park!
I started snapping anyhow. The first picture I took was of these two fat cops. They were huge. A sign for the runners was posted above them. It read: MEN THIS WAY, WOMEN THAT WAY. I took that picture. It was a pretty good picture.
The motorcade carrying Mayor Koch and the race organizers and VIPs passed. The racers on wheelchairs flew by, and then the elite runners. A guy with one leg crossed the finish line on crutches. An able-bodied man collapsed twenty feet before the finish line, and a couple of others picked him up and dragged him across. The scene was moving, heroic. I got chills.
I was there for six hours, taking photos of every kind of person. Each one of them had toiled and trained and endured. And finished.
I forgot my troubles. I forgot to eat. An old woman crossed the finish line. She was eighty-three if she was a day. She ran twenty-six miles. Twenty-six miles! That was the distance from Long Beach to Catalina. How could anyone manage that? Let alone dudes in hula skirts and teens in funny antennae and a guy in full clown makeup and a waiter carrying a tray. Triumphant. Amazing.
What the hell? How did they do this? I could never do this.
I could never do this? I heard myself admit failure before I’d even tried. Another elderly runner hobbled across the finish line, arms overhead, victorious. I was twenty-seven. If I put my mind to it, why couldn’t I do it?
I couldn’t think of a good reason. I vowed to myself, “Okay. Next year I’m going to be in this race.” That was that. I set a goal for myself. Without it, I might have pouted for weeks. Now nothing was going to get in my way, except maybe actually having to do it.
I planned to sublet my apartment in New York and go back to LA for TV-pilot season (January–March), the time of year when producers cast new pilots for series that will, with luck, air in the fall.
Before I left New York, I was invited to the Loving holiday party, and I went to say good-bye to all my friends from the show.
At the party, I turned around and there was Joe, wearing an expensive suit and a smug look. He was standing there with his wife. He furrowed his brow and said, “Bryan, I thought you’d be long gone by now, back to Los Angeles.”
Not: Happy Holidays. Not: Sorry about the way things turned out.
I said, “Fuck off, Joe.” Well, that’s what I wanted to say. What I actually said was, “Nope, still enjoying the city! Merry Christmas.”
Oh well. At least I didn’t thank him.
Murdering Maid
I quickly got cast in a guest-star role on a show called Cover Up. The premise was undercover CIA agents masquerading as fashion models. Really.
Prior to my arrival, the show had been on hiatus because of a horrible tragedy. During a break between scenes, late at night, the star, Jon-Erik Hexum, got bored and started playing Russian roulette with what he thought was a safe prop gun. He shot a blank load into his temple, and ended up brain-dead. He died several weeks later. In shock and grief, they shut down the show for a number of months. When CBS revived it, they had a new actor take over for Jon. I was hired for the first show back as a guest star.
I had been told that the female star of the show, Jennifer O’Neill, was nice, and she was. But I think she was still coping with the loss of her costar, so it was tough going at first. I went to shoot an important scene with her, and the script supervisor told me he was reading Jennifer’s off-camera dialogue. She was still at lunch. I said, “Get her back. Please.” On camera or off camera, you’re there for your fellow actor, giving it your all every take. That’s my philosophy.
They got her back, and she was not happy. I tried to play off that unhappiness in the scene. I’m not sure it was effective, but I had to play the hand I was dealt.
I had four different roles on Cover Up, including a newspaper guy, a blowhard, a mustachioed reporter, and a maid . . . who also happened to be a murderer. I had a skilled Hollywood artist make me up like a woman, and I remember looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, You are the ugliest woman I have ever seen.
My manager, trying to raise awareness about my work, put out an ad in Variety with pictures of the four characters I played. The text read: 4 your consideration.
Meanwhile I was auditioning for commercials like a maniac. I ultimately did spots for Excedrin and Preparation H and Coffee-Mate. My mother could never remember if the coffee-whitener product I was selling was Coffee-Mate or its rival brand Cremora. She’d call and say, “I saw your Cremate commercial again! I use that when I don’t have cream.”
I’d answer, “You like the taste of cremate, Mom?”
“I do!” she’d say. “It’s rich!”
When I started getting a lot of guest-star roles, I’d make postcards and send them to casting directors to alert them. Watch Bryan Cranston in Matlock this week! Don’t miss Bryan Cranston’s guest turn as Tom Logan in Baywatch! Tune in to Amazon Women on the Moon for a special treat: Bryan Cranston stars as Paramedic #3. I knew 99 percent wouldn’t watch, but they would see my name. They would see my face. And they would get the message, even if only on a subliminal level. This guy works a lot.
Runner
In my role as Murdering Maid, I brought actor Javier Grajeda, who played a detective, hand towels. We got to talking as they were setting up a shot, and I told him I wanted to run a marathon. It happened he did, too. We lived close to each other, and we were both starting from scratch. We signed up for the New York City Marathon and started training together. The race was in November. We had a lot of miles to run before then to get ready. We started with short jogs in March, and then we got into a running class, which helped. We did long training runs before dawn. No excuses. No I’m not feeling well, I’m too sore, I can’t make it today. You knew the other guy was goin
g to be there, so you dragged your ass out of bed. We got into it.
When the time came to fly back to New York for the race, we were as ready as we could be, but at the last minute Javier got a job he couldn’t turn down. Good for him. But I wouldn’t have a partner to help push me through the race. Oh well. Then I heard from my friend and former on-screen sister from Loving, Lauren-Marie Taylor. She was going to run. So we decided to do it together.
At the start of the race in Staten Island, women and first-time runners stood on one side, men on the other. Lauren-Marie and I stuck together and we blazed through the crowd, right up to the front of the line. Today, elite runners are separated from amateurs, but in 1985 everyone was mixed in, and we found ourselves standing in a group of elites, feeling mortal and earthbound next to their sinewy grace, warthogs among a herd of gazelles. Just before the starting gun sounded, an elite runner standing in front of me suddenly pulled down her running shorts and underwear and squatted to relieve herself. We were jam-packed, and I couldn’t step away, so I simply straddled her trickling yellow stream as it came toward me.
The gun went off, and Lauren-Marie and I watched the elites blast off and recede into the distance. We ran together for a while and then I moved ahead, wishing her luck. I’d found I could only run consistently with someone who matched my natural gait. Too slow or too fast and I’d burn out.
I got to Brooklyn and I was flying, adrenaline pumping, and I remember hearing the splits as I was running. I was averaging a six-minute mile at mile-marker five. That was too fast. I needed to slow down. Mile ten. I was feeling good! Mile fifteen. Just okay. The course takes you from Staten Island through Brooklyn and Queens, and then back into Manhattan around mile sixteen. Manhattan gave me a boost. Finish line ahead! But “ahead” was actually pretty far away. The course takes you off Manhattan to the Bronx, oh crap, then back into Manhattan. By mile eighteen, I was tanking. I was running in mud. I grabbed Dixie Cups of Gatorade from the side of the road, and I tried to give myself pep talks. Come on, Bryan! I said aloud. I tried to absorb the energy of the crowd. They had inspired me at the outset, but nothing could help me now. I obsessively did the arithmetic—how far I had come and how far I had to go—thinking math might somehow ease the pain.
A Life in Parts Page 13
