My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life

by Adam Nimoy

  And for some reason, Adam, I swear to Allah, as corny as it is, I know, I thought to myself, “Adam loves me that much and I’ve left him on Genesis!”

  Skip forward a couple of scenes where Kirk and the Crew are having dinner and Spock’s old man comes in and berates Jim for leaving Spock, his essence, everything he was, on Genesis.

  And at that moment, it all became clear to me. I thought to myself, I’ve never had a friend like Adam before—he would take a bullet for me, he’s been sent from God to be my Guardian because he’s more powerful than me, just like Spock always protects James Tiberius Kirk’s dumb ass—and Spock never asks any questions—he just puts up with Kirk’s lame, human shit because Spock (not your dad) is like this Buddha who has compassion for Kirk and helps him no matter what and then Kirk, in the end, is failed by his human intellect and ignorance and leaves Spock on Genesis and still Spock forgives him later.

  Dude, I swear, I was watching this lame fucking movie and trying not to enjoy it because I’ve made it my mission to not enjoy any Trek bullshit on your behalf or praise Spock’s work on your behalf because I know you’ve been hearing that shit all your life and because I love you. But there I was watching it and having this lame spiritual experience thinking, THAT’S ADAM AND ME. I’M THE LAME HUMAN.

  And I turned the TV off with resolve, and this is no BS, to make my mission to be a best and most loving friend I can be to you for the rest of my life and tell you I’m sorry for being like Kirk.

  You’ve been a godsend to me, Adam. Through all the lame chicks and my roommates and my bosses and the lame gigs—you’ve been the one solid, nurturing, caring thing, offering me your love, your friendship, the friendship of your children and your family, food, kindness (once, your dad’s ears), patience, a generous ear, a charitable pocketbook, etc.

  You’re like my Spock, bro, and I didn’t mean to Kirk out and leave you on Genesis. I love you. I’m sorry.

  I won’t leave you again.

  Now let’s get some crack and hookers.

  xo

  J.

  M.O.D.

  I’M IN MY directing class. By now, I seem to have totally fooled them into believing I know what the hell I’m talking about. They’ve been shooting and editing short films that we’re screening in class. We look at each film from beginning to end. Then I praise it—there’s always something to praise, even in the worst film. After that, I focus in on the problems. Jeff made a short film about a guy addicted to drugs and his girlfriend wants him to kick. It’s a really good film and I tell him so. Then I focus on the beginning of the film, when the guy wakes up in the morning, goes to the closet, goes through a jacket, pulls something out, sticks it in his mouth. Not yet knowing what the film is about at this point, I don’t have a clue what this guy is doing at the closet. Jeff explains.

  “He’s reaching into a coat pocket, takes out a vial of pills, and swallows one.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know he was taking out pills. I thought he was pulling out and eating a piece of candy that he left in his jacket. I do that all the time. I mean, you know, I’ll be putting on a jacket I haven’t worn in a while, like, maybe all year, and I’ll reach in the pocket and there will be the second half of a Baby Ruth candy bar and I’ll eat it no matter what. I mean, where is the close-up here? You’ve only got the wide shot and we’re so far away from him, he could be doing anything. Then again, I know I can be pretty slow when it comes to figuring out what’s going on, but I got news for you, there are stupider people than me and they’re not going to have a clue either. Why didn’t you shoot the close-up?”

  “That was the last thing we shot that day and we ran out of film.”

  “But you shot the wide of him going to the closet. This is important, folks, because when in doubt, shoot the close-up. You don’t even need the wide at this point, but you do need the close-up. But even more important, where’s the M.O.D.?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? What’s an M.O.D.? Anybody.”

  Soren, the Swede, speaks up.

  “Microphone off the dolly?”

  “Oh, my God. You guys are killing me. M.O.D.! We’ve talked about this, like, three or four times already. When a character is put into a situation and he has to what?”

  Lee raises her hand. She’s from China. I call her “Silent Bob” because, though a very good filmmaker, she rarely speaks.

  “He has to make a decision?”

  “HE HAS TO MAKE A DECISION! Remember, ‘Moment Of Decision.’ That is a critical moment in your movie and you want to make the most out of it, because it adds tension and suspense to your movie and keeps the audience wondering, what’s he gonna do, what’s he gonna do? M.O.D.’s are much more powerful than dialogue because talk is cheap, but what people do, especially under pressure, is infinitely more revealing about their character than what they say. What is this guy’s dilemma making this an M.O.D.?”

  Jeff again.

  “He needs to decide whether or not he’s going to take the pill.”

  “Exactly. And good actors want to make a meal out of moments like that because a good actor knows that this is what’s going through his mind: ‘Should I take it or not? Maybe just one, no one will know, I’ve been real good, been sober for six weeks, what’s one gonna hurt? I don’t have to tell my sponsor, I can hide it from my girlfriend, I can function at work, I’ll just take one and dump the rest, fuck it, why not.’

  “You need to hold us in suspense where he pulls out the pills and looks at them and looks to see if his girlfriend is coming and reads the label and is thinking about it and is torn. Assuming you do have the time and you shoot the master, or the wide shot, which you have, and then shoot some close-ups, you can shorten how much time it takes for him to decide to take the pill. But if you don’t make him wait and think about it, guess what?”

  Jeff: “You can’t make it longer.”

  “You are screwed because you cannot make it longer. And we want it longer, the audience wants it longer, we love it when we’re sitting on the edge of our seats wondering what this poor schlemiel is going to do. And all you need is a close-up on that vial and the words Vicodin or Percodan or OxyContin or just the directions ‘Take as needed for pain’ and most people will know what’s going on here.

  “And if you’re there and shooting this properly with a wide and a tight shot, it doesn’t take that much longer to get the M.O.D. Once you’re lit for the wide, it shouldn’t take that long to jump in and get the tight shot of what?”

  “Of him looking at the bottle, deciding.”

  “Right, so we have a close-up on the vial and on the guy deciding. What else? What else might he be looking at before he makes the decision to take the pill? What else is in consideration here? Something we haven’t seen that shows up in the next scene.”

  “The girl.”

  “The girl. His girlfriend, the one we find out later is trying to get him to clean up. So we might want to see his point of view of her through the door to the hallway and into the kitchen, maybe going about her business making breakfast.

  “Actors love this stuff because it really gives them a chance to work through the internal conflict. It’s your job as a director to find these moments in the script and serve them up to the actor, who will be very happy with you for giving him or her something to play that has some emotional impact.

  “Here’s another example. You tell me where the M.O.D. is and how we’re going to shoot it. I’m back home for the summer after my first year at college. My parents are out of town. It’s Saturday night and I’m driving around in my dad’s maroon Mercedes. I got Brian riding shotgun and we drive through Westwood to pick up Glen and Rick. In twenty years, Rick will be dead from complications due to cocaine but we didn’t know that then. So Rick and Glen get in and Rick has a six-pack in tow.”

  Here I pause and wait to see if any of the students go for the bait. Jeff gets it.

  “Possible M.O.D. here.” />
  “Why?”

  “Because he’s bringing a six-pack into the car.”

  “Exactly. But here’s where the details are important because Rick shows me that none of the cans are open and the six-pack is in a brown paper bag that’s folded up tight. So I don’t make a big deal about it. So maybe it’s a mini M.O.D.

  “So Glen says there’s a party up on Sunset Boulevard. We drive up there and it’s on Thurston Circle, which is like this dead-end street just north of Sunset. And when we get there, the LAPD has already busted the party and there’s a cop with a flashlight standing in the cul-de-sac, announcing that the party’s over and waving cars to turn around and leave the neighborhood. So I make a U-turn and head back to Sunset. And when we’re half a block away from Sunset, a police car makes a right onto Thurston and he’s heading toward us. The street is really tight, because there are cars parked everywhere from the party, and we have to go slow. And just as the cops get to us, the driver shines a flashlight into my car, and he focuses it on the backseat. Brian and I turn around to see what the cop is looking at and there’s Rick with an open beer can in his hand, right up there for the cop to see. We all yell at Rick for being a dumb shit, and when I turn back, the cop is rolling down his window and yelling at me to pull over. The cop’s face is literally right next to mine, our cars are that close.

  Max speaks. “M.O.D.: What are you going to do?”

  “Right on, baby, M.O.D. big-time: What am I going to do? Because while that cop’s yelling at me to pull over, guess what?”

  “Your friends are telling you not to do it.”

  “They’re begging me not to do it. ‘Adam, don’t do it. Don’t do it, Adam. We’re fucked if you do it. Don’t do it. We’re going to go to jail!’ So what am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do? We have the audience right where we want ’em. Now, how do we really make a meal out of this thing? How do we cover it? Where do we put the camera?”

  No one in the classroom moves. It’s after noon, after lunch, and everyone is still a little lethargic.

  Jeff is about to speak, but Cole Faran raises his hand. Cole is tall, has a deep voice, slicked-back wavy hair, a good-looking guy, and he always wears a jogging outfit. And when Cole acts in some of the films these guys produce, he’s very good. Especially when he’s playing a drug dealer.

  “Mr. Faran, tell us how to shoot this thing.”

  “Well, definitely, you have to shoot the cop yelling at you.”

  “Yeah, right, shoot the cop. That’ll get you ten to life. Okay, yeah, you put the camera on the cop. He’s got a pudgy face and a butch haircut and he keeps yelling at me to pull over as he holds that flashlight and shines it in my face. What else?”

  “You have to get the guys yelling at you.”

  “Right. I gotta get a shot of Brian next to me and Rick and Glen in the back begging me not to pull over. Maybe you do a swish pan back and forth from Brian to Rick to Glen. And they’re ad-libbing all at once, saying things like, ‘Adam don’t do it, we’re going down if you do, they’ll take us to jail, blah, blah, blah.’ What else?”

  “There’s a shot of you.”

  “Damn straight there’s a shot of me. After all, I’m the star of this effing movie. Maybe there’s an extreme close-up on my eyes or my hands gripping the steering wheel. If you have the time, you can have a freaking field day with this thing. So what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Because I gotta tell you, and this is a note I might give to the actor; because here’s what’s going on in my mind at this moment in time. It just so happens that five years before, when I was fourteen, I was busted for driving my mother’s car without a license. They mugshotted and fingerprinted me, but that time they let me go. Now I’m nineteen and I’m scared shitless they’re going to stick me in jail. That’s how I might heighten the internal conflict of what do I do, what do I do.

  “But what else? What else can we do to make even more of a meal out of this thing?”

  Lee raises her hand.

  “Yeah, Silent Bob.”

  “Slow motion?”

  “Exactly, you can slow the film down. You can overcrank the camera and slow-mo everything down. That’ll stretch the moment out and no one will complain because you’ll be giving the audience a real good ride. Close-up on me in slow-mo, then my point-of-view of the cop silently mouthing off to me in slo-mo, and then I turn to the boys, and the same thing with them.”

  Silent Bob speaks again. “And you can add some music.”

  “Bingo, like maybe some intense Hitchcock violins from Psycho, or you can go in the opposite direction by using, like, some cool jazzy bass line or something. You see how it works? Even though all of this happened in a matter of seconds, you can keep the tension going by cutting from me to the cop yelling to the guys in the car yelling and then back to me to see what I’m gonna do. All right, let’s move on and look at the other films as we only have about twenty minutes left.”

  Alex jumps in. “So what the hell did you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you pull over or what?”

  “What difference does it make? The point is, you need to be able to get the film you need to make these moments happen because you can’t just make it up in the editing room if there’s nothing to cut to.”

  “Oh, c’mon, man. You can’t leave us all hanging.”

  “What are you talking about, man, this class isn’t about the story of my life, it’s about yours.”

  Everyone starts to groan at this point. I’ve got ’em right where I want ’em.

  “All right, all right. What do I do, what do I do, what do I do? I’ll tell you what I do. I step on the fucking gas.”

  Cole: “I knew it!”

  Barbara pipes up. “Did the cops catch you?”

  “Did the cops catch me? What do you think? Maybe we should take a vote.”

  Soren the Swede speaks. “Just tell us.”

  “All right, whatever. So I step on the gas and drive the half block back to Sunset. I know I’ve got a jump on the cops because the street is so tight, he has to go back up to the cul-de-sac to turn around. I get to Sunset and make a left turn and floor it and my dad’s Mercedes shoots out onto Sunset Boulevard like a rocket. Brian rolls down his window and throws out a joint and some Quaaludes. He turns around and yells at Rick to throw the beers out the window, which he does. Then Brian asks if anyone’s carrying and Rick says he’s got that bag of purple buds his brother just bought and I yell to Rick to toss it but Rick won’t do it because he’s afraid his brother’s going to beat the shit out of him. So I’m driving like a motherfucker around these curves on Sunset and the three of us start yelling at Rick to toss the buds, but he won’t do it, and Brian has to take off his seat belt and lean into the back and he and Glen beat the shit out of Rick until they finally grab the buds and Brian throws them out the window into a bed of ivy. And this whole time I never see the cops behind me, we’re far enough ahead and there are enough curves and I know we still have the lead.

  “And we’re rounding the last bend before we get to Veteran Avenue and UCLA, but this is my neighborhood and I know exactly where we are and I know that Bentley Avenue is coming up. And at the last second I make a hard right onto Bentley and I turn off my lights and take my foot off the brake. And I look in my rearview mirror, and within seconds I see that cop car, lights flashing, race by down Sunset Boulevard, passing Bentley without even seeing us.

  “And the guys in my car are all happy and celebrating and shit. They’re high-fiving and laughing and patting me on the back. And the last cut of this sequence? The very last shot we see in this episode? A tight close-up on me because I’m the only one who’s not happy about this situation, I’m the only one who knows this is totally fucked up, I’m the one who’s finally starting to realize that maybe I’m running with the wrong crowd.”

  TYPICAL CONVERSATION WITH A TEENAGE DAUGHTER #312: LET’S GO TO THERAPY

  IT’S WINTER AND night. I have
to pick up Maddy and take her to therapy. I’m driving to the design studio where she has a part-time job and I call her to say I’m two minutes away. A minute and a half later she calls me and I know she’s outside and I’m not there yet and she’s just going to have to wait. Because I just spoke to her, I ignore the call. Then I get another call from her and I ignore that one too—and there she is out front.

  “Dad, why don’t you answer your phone?!”

  “Because I just spoke to you, and if I’m thirty seconds late, I start getting calls from you, which is ridiculous.”

  This quiets her down.

  “Mom tells me you might want to go in to talk to Shayna by yourself.”

  “Dad, I’m not going in by myself, you’re coming in with me.”

  “I don’t know. I think you may have some things you might want to talk to her about alone.”

  “Dad, I hate it when you do this to me. You either go in with me or I’m not going at all because I have nothing to say to her.”

  At this point I don’t say a thing because it’s just a waste of energy and Maddy’s too headstrong and I never end up changing her mind anyway. So I just let it go. She always says she doesn’t want to go to therapy, and then when we come out, she always high-fives me because we manage to get through so much stuff together.

  As we pass the streetlights, I can see her long brown hair and her white T-shirt under a deep blue V-neck sweater. She’s wearing the necklace I bought her at Tiffany’s for her fourteenth birthday. She’s always wearing that necklace. It’s a silver heart on a long thick silver chain that nearly reaches to her waist.

  I gently squeeze her little pointed nose hoping she’ll lighten up.

  “What should we talk about in therapy?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. Right now we don’t have any major issues and I have so much homework.”

  I pull up to Shayna’s office, and coming out of the building is a man and a teenage girl who is clearly his daughter. She’s walking ahead of him and they’re not talking, they don’t look too happy.