It's All In the Playing

by Shirley Maclaine

  Everyone shook hands all around. Then Charles stood there.

  “Well,” I began, wanting to break the ice, “how did you enjoy working with my favorite actress Meryl Streep? If there’s such a thing as genius, I would have to say she’s it.”

  He blinked again and swallowed. I wondered what was troubling him. Up to then I hadn’t known about his interviews on TV relating to working with Meryl.

  “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t enjoy it very much.” He hesitated. “It was difficult.”

  Hmmm, I wondered. He’s pissed off at having been kept waiting, and the most cooperative professional in the business he found difficult. He was certainly honest. Maybe he would be good for Gerry.

  I didn’t press the Streep question. Under the circumstances, it would have been unfair.

  Charles sat down. He pulled out a package of cigarettes and said, “Well, would you like me to read for you?”

  Well, I thought, he’s not that far off base. Either he’s extremely secure or he wants the part very much.

  We began. Colin and Stan read other parts while I played myself. Charles had a sensitive command of the character as we went scene by scene. By now I had heard each scene played by about twenty-five actors. It was a pleasure to see and hear an actor who looked and sounded in character. At the end of the reading, Charles lit a cigarette.

  Stan and Colin sat there diplomatically thanking Charles and quietly discussing their reactions. Because I had been acting with him I was somehow on the other side of the decision-making table at this moment. I felt awkward, because the one question I wanted to ask was whether they felt he was too young to play opposite me. He was thirty-nine. Gerry, as written, was five years older than I when I was forty-five. I decided to voice it anyway.

  “What about the age difference, Stan?” I asked.

  Stan came right to the point. “Well, Charles,” he said, “can you play older?”

  Charles came right back. “You’ve got the wrong man,” he answered.

  I looked back and forth between the two. Did he really look that much younger than I or was this my own personal concern?

  “Shirley,” said Stan, “you two look the same age. It’s nothing the audience will even think about. You look really wonderful together.”

  Charles nodded, but didn’t smile. Okay, I thought. If it doesn’t bother him or anyone else.

  I looked at Charles. “Do you want to play Gerry?” I asked.

  “Very much,” he answered. “I should have been extremely disappointed had you chosen another actor.”

  Well, I thought. That’s that. We’ve got our Gerry. I just have to be careful of keeping him waiting….

  We had several more rehearsals with Charles so that we could get his input on the script. I liked working democratically, with everyone feeling free to give me an opinion about what I was doing. His input was valuable, particularly in regard to the British class system and the speech Gerry gives in the House of Commons and to the English press relating to Third World poverty. Dance himself came from a needy background and worked his way up, remembering and identifying with those who were disenfranchised. This aspect of Gerry was what motivated him to devote so much of his talent and energy to achieving power so that he could help change people’s lives for the better. Up to now Dance hadn’t asked about Gerry’s true identity. He had the British sensitivity to privacy and anyway probably didn’t really care. As for me, I hadn’t talked to Gerry in some time and wondered if he had seen that the English papers had announced that Charles Dance was playing him. Dance was scheduled to come to America for wardrobe fittings, makeup tests, and more rehearsals.

  I wondered if he would ever want to know who Gerry was.

  Chapter 7

  Colin, Stan, and I went back to America to find a David, who actually had a larger part than Gerry. And we hadn’t even begun to zero in on him. In my thinking about casting for David, I had early decided it had to be someone enormously sensitive with that very particular sensitivity that allows one to find one’s own way. Yet he had also to be strong within himself. He was not going to be easy to find, but the leeway we had was that his part didn’t begin shooting until January, a good seven weeks into the schedule. We discussed possibilities ad infinitum. Casting David was crucial to me and central to the whole theme of the subject. At last I became semi-settled about it—at least in my head.

  John Heard is one of those actors the public doesn’t recognize, but within the business we all know he’s brilliant. He’s an actor’s actor. He is not John Hurt, or William Hurt. He is John Heard—a man with a last name that aptly expresses his need to be listened to. His life-style is as legendary as his talent. So is his intelligence. So when he walked into my apartment in New York only forty-five minutes late, I felt privileged. It was Colin’s reaction to John that was the most fun for me. Stan wasn’t present.

  In real life John looks like a WASP traveling salesman. In “reel” life he can look like anything. He photographs much taller than his five-foot ten-inch frame and more massive than he actually is. He walked in with a growth of beard (to indicate nonchalance?), shuffling along with the thick “Limb” script under his arm. He slumped over and glanced at us furtively without settling his gaze on either one of us. He tossed the script on my coffee table and sat down, leaned back, put one leg over the other, and laughed as if we were silly-assed people to want to put him in our movie. Colin bristled, but John tickled me, probably because he was so irreverent.

  “Well, John, I really admire your work,” I said.

  He laughed again, as though that made me a jerk. There was no conventional “thank you,” no comment of any kind—he just leaned back and chuckled secretly to himself again.

  “Okay,” I said. “I see. So what did you think of our script?”

  “I didn’t read it,” he answered. Colin bristled again.

  “Why?” I asked.

  More chuckles from John. “Because,” he said, “I couldn’t lift it.”

  Colin blushed crimson. But I was really warming to this guy.

  “Then why are you here?” I asked.

  “Because my dentist appointment got canceled,” he answered.

  Oh, boy, I thought, this is going to be more than amusing.

  “I’m fat and bulky,” he went on. “You don’t want me.”

  I thought I’d join the game. “Why don’t you have your dentist sew up your mouth then?” I asked.

  John flashed that childlike shock of one playmate recognizing another playmate sooner than either expected. Colin wasn’t sure what was going on.

  “John”—Colin decided to participate—“did you come here because you’re interested in doing this?”

  John chuckled again.

  “I mean,” said Colin, “do you know what this is about? Do you know anything about David’s character? Has your agent read the script?”

  “I fired my agent,” said John.

  “Oh,” said Colin. “How about your manager?”

  John leaned back on the couch and looked out the window. “If I said there was a flying saucer on the windowsill you wouldn’t bother turning around, but if I said there’s this funny disc-shaped craft with Donald Duck ears, you’d be up and out of your chair in a flash, right?”

  “Not necessarily,” I replied.

  Colin and I looked at each other. What did he mean? Was our script not funny enough? Had he read it?

  John did his secret chuckle again. Colin took the bull by the horns.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s read. Maybe you’ll get the sense out of it as you go.”

  John shrugged. “Okay, man,” he said. “But my teeth hurt.”

  “I thought your dentist appointment was canceled,” I said.

  “No,” said John. “My girlfriend can’t cook. She makes carrot salad for my mother so my family will like her.”

  Oh, brother, I thought. This is something Woody Allen or maybe Albert Brooks would understand. Or maybe the guy was just scared in
an interesting way…. It did take a certain kind of left-field intelligence which I wasn’t sure I possessed to understand him, and Colin apparently didn’t even want to—but, as I reminded him later, he wasn’t the director.

  John picked up the script and lifted it slowly to his shoulder as though it were a ten-ton boulder. Then he chuckled and opened it to the first page.

  “Some directors say I chuckle like this when I’m insecure.”

  Yes, I really liked his off-the-wall honesty. Even Colin was disarmed for a second. We turned to John’s first scene and he began reading and acting his part. I felt a little premonitory shiver run down my back. I knew some actors were really good at cold readings, but the good ones usually weren’t. What we were hearing was an actor reading with in-depth understanding and a comprehension of metaphysics and spiritual principles. Had he been kidding us? I said nothing, just kept on going although it was hard for me to concentrate on my own part because he was so unexpectedly brilliant. Finally I couldn’t stand it. I stopped the reading and looked at him. I punched him in the arm. He looked at me.

  “You’re a friggin’ liar, John.”

  “I am?” he said.

  “Yes. You’ve studied the script backward, haven’t you? How can you be this good without knowing it beforehand?”

  “Oh”—he stopped me—“I’ll never be this good again. Don’t worry. I’m a fake. You know, I run between the raindrops.”

  “But did you read it?”

  “No,” he said, “because I would have told you the truth if I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.”

  I looked deep into his eyes. He chuckled again.

  Just then the doorbell rang. Because John had been late, my appointments were overlapping. It didn’t faze him in the least.

  “John,” I said, “this is Bella Abzug. She is here because she wants to read for her own part. Can I put you in the den to finish reading this thing?”

  John shrugged. He stood up and shifted his weight back and forth and put his hands in his pockets and ran his tongue over his lips. Then he pulled his fingers through his floppy hair and pushed the curls forward as if to make sure their unkempt style would remain intact. This was a complicated and spellbinding crazy man. He shuffled back to my den, sat down with the script, and I closed the door in order to give Bella the respect she so richly deserved.

  Bella knew we were looking for a “Bella” and had been reading actresses, but she thought she should do it. What better way to protect the investment she had made in the character she had invented for herself. I was not enthusiastic, based on how much theatrical discipline I knew it would take for her—or anyone—to do scenes over and over.

  Bella had been a close personal friend since the McGovern campaign in 1972. We had had our personal ups and downs, but she has always remained, and I believe she always will, a friend who will be honest with me as I will be with her. She is earthy, witty, more than compassionate, and possessed of an intelligence that blazes with clarity. She is also pragmatic, ambitious, and loves to be the focus of attention. That is precisely why she is so charismatic. Besides all of that, I love her deeply.

  She entered my living room dressed in a color-coordinated red-white-and-blue business suit, patriotism being the mood of her day today since she was thinking of running for Congress again.

  “So? Why am I here?” she said as she walked toward Colin and me. “You people summoned me, right?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “We’d love for you to read for us.”

  She saw the script on the table, picked it up and flipped through it. “So you want me to read this?”

  “Well,” I said, “we’d like you to audition. You said you were available.”

  “But I’ll blush,” she said, “and I’ll be awake all night wondering if I get the part.”

  “That’s show business,” I said.

  Colin smiled at the interplay between the two of us, registering every nuance that might be valuable on the screen.

  “My God,” said Bella, turning and looking at herself in a wall mirror. “I’ll have to read my own lines, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “And you’ve already okayed the script, so you can’t object to the dialogue.”

  “God,” she laughed, “then I’m going to be more intimidated by you than ever.”

  I smiled mischievously. “Then you’ll know how other people feel about you.”

  “Be nice now.” She paused. “You know how I need you to be sweet to me.”

  She gave me that pout that she knows always melts my heart. We both knew, but it worked anyway.

  The phone rang. It was Stan.

  “Hey,” I said, “everything’s going great. We’re reading for Bella now.”

  “Okay,” he said. “When you finish with the Bellas, call me.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “We’re reading the real one.”

  “You’re what?”

  From across the room Bella yelled, “Call my agent.”

  “Shirley”—Stan spoke determinedly into the phone—“you know what discipline this business takes, even for an experienced actress. How would she even know how to repeat the same scene over and over and retain the emotional pitch?”

  I turned away from Bella. “I don’t know, Stan,” I said, “but she wants to try.”

  “Okay. Call me when it’s over.”

  I hung up and Colin and Bella and I went to work.

  We picked up the script. I played myself. Bella played herself. And all the while each of us retained the emotional memory of the exact events as they had actually occurred. It was an exercise in recognized illusion. I have never had an experience that so thoroughly brought home to me the truth that we each act our lives, we each project the image we really wish to convey—the appearance of spontaneity notwithstanding. There were so many choices for Bella and me to make in expressing ourselves: the choice of wardrobe, hairstyle, makeup, body movement, all vital but relatively finite. But when it came to emotional intent, vocal tone, facial expression, and so on, to say nothing of what we did and said, the choices became literally infinite. I realized that if I were to invent a character like Bella Abzug, I couldn’t possibly do as definitive a job as she had done herself. Each movement of the strong hands, each wrinkle of the high-cheekboned experienced face were strokes on a personality canvas that she assuredly painted herself. And as I watched her acting lines she had actually spoken and heard myself doing the same thing, I had a kind of double vision in time. Which was the past and which the present? I was aware of how I had said these very same lines years ago. So was Bella. And both of us were also aware that we had been acting them then.

  There we were, walking the lines through my kitchen into the dining room. The same dining room. She helped me set my table. The same kitchen, same table. She sat down as I tossed a salad. AU the while we read our lines; portraying ourselves, re-creating what we had done so many times together.

  And as we indulged in this Pirandello adventure I slowly began to make a professional assessment. Bella in real life was too strong for “reel” life. It was astonishing. She was actually bigger than life—too much for an entertainment piece. For news or documentary coverage she was perfectly in sync with her attuned image. But for a prime-time television entertainment miniseries, I knew it wouldn’t work.

  The strangest part of it, though, was that she was very convincingly real in playing herself. There wasn’t a fake note in her performance—which is saying a lot for a politician! But the truth of the person she conveyed as herself was simply too strong for television. In fact I began to assess my own performance of myself in a different light. I had never been faced with this issue before. Was it possible to be too much oneself? Too real?

  We finished the reading. Colin and I needed to talk together. Bella respected that.

  “I know,” she said as she straightened her hat and strode toward the door. “Don’t call us—we’ll call you. I’ll see ya later.”r />
  She let herself out. Colin went to the window.

  “Strangest casting experience I’ve ever had,” he said. “Don’t know what to make of how good she was. But will she translate to television? The expression too much for TV may be apt here. She’s so great as a politician on TV. I’ve seen her. Strong, sometimes strident, but colorful and riveting.”

  He thought a moment longer. “I know what it is that’s bothering me.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve written Bella as a friend and foil for Shirley. It’s about Bella’s reactions to Shirley’s metaphysical and spiritual search. And those reactions are earthy and comic. Now it’s true that that is how she is. But in real life she is so much more than that. Since we are portraying only that reactive comedic aspect of her, essentially the grandness and stature of her political personality overwhelms the limitations of the character we reduced her to be. In other words, she’s overqualified for the part.”

  I looked at him and gulped. “Great,” I said. “But how do you tell a person they can’t play themselves?”

  “Very carefully,” he answered with a grin.

  I went to my den to retrieve John Heard. I could see he had almost finished the script. He looked up at me with an expression of sheer disbelief on his face. Maybe he hadn’t been lying after all. Maybe he was experiencing for the first time the full impact of a script about trance channeling, reincarnation, extraterrestrials, and spacecraft that land. He spoke first.

  “I’m supposed to be in love with an extraterrestrial?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered. “Maybe not love in the sexual sense, but certainly in the sense that she changed your life.”

  John didn’t chuckle. He just stared at me.