I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else

by Danny Aiello

  Eddie didn’t speak much about it then, but he was preparing for his first foray as a director. His acting career had been spectacular. Eddie reigned as one of the top-paid stars of the day. It was hard to believe he was still in his twenties. He had a lot of pull in Hollywood, which is why he was able to get multimillion-dollar financing for his movie Harlem Nights, which he wrote and planned to direct himself.

  Eddie eventually offered me the part of a corrupt police sergeant. Although Harlem Nights was a crime caper, it had comedic elements, so every character had a larger-than-life feel. Oddly enough, Do the Right Thing and Harlem Nights both used a stuttering character for easy laughs.

  I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing Sergeant Phil Cantone, whom I portrayed as a laughing cop with an evil smile. I made a good friend on that set, Mark Lipsky, who was Eddie’s accountant and producer at the time.

  There were some sly inside jokes. My character confronts Richard Pryor’s character, Sugar Ray. “What are you?” Eddie’s script has me saying. “You used to be a nightclub comic or something?” In real life, of course, Pryor was the most popular comedian around. He had already been diagnosed with the multiple sclerosis that would eventually lay him low, and his face showed evidence of scarring from a freebasing incident when he set himself on fire. But he handled his role with professional expertise.

  Pryor heard that I had a daughter taking her first communion and requested that he act as godfather to my child. I would never have had the nerve to ask him, but I was surprised and gratified when he brought up the idea. Given the hectic quality of his life, it never worked out. I always liked Richie.

  Throughout the Harlem Nights shoot, I watched Eddie shepherd the project with a sure hand. Here was this young kid, given a budget of thirty million to spend, the equivalent of double that amount in today’s dollars. Yet Eddie was cool, calm, and collected. He controlled that set like the show business veteran he was. Harlem Nights went on to make more than $95 million worldwide, so the studio heads were right to trust him.

  But Eddie was still Eddie. We had a scene to shoot at a location twenty miles outside Los Angeles, in the middle of nowhere, with hundreds of people in the crew. In one of the last shots of the day, my character was supposed to be seated in a bathroom stall. The whole scene was MOS, meaning without sound, with music to be filled in later.

  “We’re going to close the door of the stall,” Eddie said. “All we want to see are your feet.”

  “All right,” I said, and found my mark.

  Eddie called in his direction to me. “When I ask you, just dance your feet,” he said. “I’ll be shooting it from outside, you won’t see the camera, but we’ll have a walkie-talkie. I can talk to you from here.”

  He rolled camera, I danced my feet, and Eddie yelled, “Cut!”

  “Okay, Dan, stay where you are,” Eddie said via the walkie-talkie. “Let’s just assume that the music is a little slower, like a waltz-type thing, not a Lindy.”

  One more time. Roll camera. Action. Cut.

  “All right, Danny, hold it, one more,” Eddie said over the walkie-talkie. “Do it as if it was a rhumba, like interrupted steps.”

  Same thing. Roll camera. Action. Cut.

  “Danny, Danny, just hold it a second,” Eddie said. “I have to talk something over with the sound guy.”

  So I remained seated in the bathroom stall, humming to myself, waiting for things to come together. Everyone always does a lot of waiting on film sets, so it wasn’t that rare of a situation. But after about ten minutes with nothing happening, I began to get impatient. I emerged from the stall, hoping I wasn’t going to ruin the shot by doing so.

  I walked out and everyone was gone. I mean everybody. All two hundred or so people in the crew had packed up and left. The trucks weren’t there, the craft people had folded their tent, makeup and hair were gone. There was nobody there but me.

  Then, over the crackle of the walkie-talkie, I heard Eddie Murphy laughing. A practical joke. That was Eddie all the way.

  * * *

  Early in 1989, when I saw the finished cut of Do the Right Thing, my immediate impression wasn’t positive. It was only later that I understood what Spike was doing with it, that the film was never intended to be cinematic realism, but rather represented a sort of urban parable. The comparison I always make is with the Godfather films, which didn’t have much of a true street reality to them but rather had a more heightened, mythic truth.

  If I stepped back and saw that Do the Right Thing was intended primarily as a political statement, I felt its power. When the movie hit the Cannes film festival that spring, I heard the boom all the way across the Atlantic. The movie got nominated for the top award at Cannes, the Palme d’Or. Spike was there at the festival representing his film. The French press lionized him.

  Do the Right Thing opened in the States in June 1989. It became a huge phenomenon, a must-see movie. If a film has such a wide impact, the awards committees sit up and take notice. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced its Golden Globe nominations, and Do the Right Thing knocked down four, for Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and one for me as Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

  That was just the first wave of the flood. For my performance as Sal, I won Best Supporting Actor awards from the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Chicago Film Critics Association, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

  I tried not to think about the possibility of getting an Academy Award nomination. I still felt as though I were somehow not as legitimate as the other actors who had gone to drama schools and went about developing their careers in a conventional way.

  Luckily, I had enough work to distract my mind from the whole awards-season madness. With Do the Right Thing still burning up the box office, the Swedish director Lasse Hallström reached out to me with a part in his new movie. I loved Lasse’s films, especially his 1985 Oscar-nominated sleeper hit My Life as a Dog.

  The role Lasse wanted me for was in a movie called Once Around. The cast featured some great actors, headed up by Richard Dreyfuss, Gena Rowlands, and Holly Hunter. I signed on and toward the end of 1989 readied myself to head to the movie’s North Carolina shooting location.

  It was the night before the Academy Award nominations were to be announced. My wife and I found it difficult to sleep that night. We both rose early, at around six a.m. Sandy couldn’t wait to watch the broadcast announcement of the nominations. All morning she sat glued to the television.

  I didn’t want to watch. I went out to my car and began packing my things for the trip to North Carolina. Even in the garage, I could hear the squawk of the television. It made me nervous.

  “Why don’t you turn it off?” I yelled in to Sandy. “Wait ’til I leave. Whatever happens, we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Of course, the last thing I would have expected was that my wife would listen to me. As usual, she didn’t. Sandy screamed when she saw the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category come up. I made a mad dash into the house. I was in time to see my image on TV and to hear the official academy announcement of that year’s nominees for best supporting actor: “. . . Danny Aiello in Do the Right Thing . . .”

  Sandy and I jumped around like two kids in a sandbox. We both began to cry hysterically, holding on to each other as tightly as we could, as if someone were going to steal this moment from us. One of my first thoughts was of Mom.

  “If only our mothers were here to see this,” I said to Sandy. Sadly, they had both passed before this ultimate recognition of my success.

  The glow of the nomination had spread through my whole being. After telling my wife how much I loved her and how much I would miss her, I was on my way to my next job. On that car trip to North Carolina, I drove alone, talking to myself.

  “You’ve been nominated for an Academy Award,” I muttered. “Are you kidding me? How could this happen? How is this possible?”

  I should have been having the time of my life. I should’ve been
singing all the way to North Carolina. Instead I was overwhelmed. A thousand contradictory thoughts flew around in my head. My mother. My father. All my friends from the old neighborhood.

  Traveling down the interstate at sixty-five miles an hour, I opened the window and started screaming to no one in particular, the same phrase over and over.

  “I was just nominated for an Academy Award! I was just nominated for an Academy Award!”

  Again, I had thoughts of my mother, and because I was alone, I could give those thoughts full voice. “What do you think, Mama?” I shouted into the wind. “Your son Danny was just nominated for an Academy Award!”

  Exhausted after an eight-hour drive, with no voice left to speak of, I arrived in North Carolina. Pulling into the driveway of the house where I would be staying, I saw something unbelievable on the porch: a six-foot replica of the golden Oscar statuette. It was a touching tribute from Lasse and my fellow cast members on Once Around. A huge inscription was emblazoned across the statue.

  “Danny! You are a winner!”

  Standing there to welcome me were Lasse and members of the cast, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, and Gena Rowlands. My head was in the stars and at the same time I knew I had to buckle down and help Lasse make his movie.

  Looming ahead of me, a few months down the road, would be the Oscar ceremony itself.

  * * *

  The distance from Stebbins Avenue in the Bronx to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles ought to be measured in light-years. That’s where the sixty-second Academy Awards were to be held on March 26, 1990. In the weeks before the ceremony, I had found myself at odd moments shaking my head in disbelief. But it was during the flight to the West Coast on the day before the Oscars that a sense of unreality really set in.

  Sandy and I flew out to Los Angeles on MGM Grand Air, an all-first-class service that was briefly famous back then for pampering guests with every sort of luxury. We entered the refurbished Boeing 727 to discover a fantasy land.

  In place of cramped airline seats, the plane had plush loungers that swiveled and reclined. A chef served from an elaborately equipped kitchen, and the drinkers among us had access to a full bar. The bathrooms boasted gold-plated fixtures, and all the flight attendants wore tuxedos.

  From a palace in the air to a palace in Hollywood: once we arrived in Los Angeles, Sandy and I checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel. We had a wonderful suite on the first floor, with a huge terrace overlooking the bungalows below. I have always loved this hotel because there is so much Hollywood nostalgia attached to it. For its flamingo-colored walls, the place was nicknamed “the Pink Palace.”

  The day we arrived, Sandy and I proceeded straight to the hotel’s Polo Lounge. It was like going through the Pearly Gates and gaining entry into movie star heaven. I recalled stories of Marilyn Monroe showing up in the bar wearing a mink coat with nothing on underneath and of Howard Hughes suffering a mental breakdown in one of the bungalows.

  We had been invited to lunch by the film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. The two of them were at the height of their popularity. Being with them at the Polo Lounge was a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming moment for me, and I think for Sandy as well. As they had on their syndicated movie review program, Siskel and Ebert both praised Do the Right Thing and my characterization of Sal Frangione.

  “Danny, you’re a shoo-in for the Oscar,” Roger Ebert told me. To top it all off, the two picked up the bill for the lunch. I was getting my first real taste of movie star life.

  Sandy and I were riding high. Universal Studios took care of our expenses, including the first-class cross-country flight and the hotel. My publicist Jay Schwartz was on hand to make sure everything went smoothly. That night Sandy, my makeup artist Debbie Zoeller, and my buddy Joe Peck went out for dinner at Dan Tana’s, the famous celebrity hangout on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  The evening was filled with compliments and congratulations for my Academy Award nomination. A constant stream of well-wishers stopped by our table. Back then I didn’t know many people in Los Angeles, except for the transplanted New York actors who relocated out there with the hope of getting work.

  For all their smiles and back-slaps, I sure as hell knew many of my acquaintances hated the idea of my being nominated. It was as if I could read their minds. Why couldn’t it have been me? Aren’t I a much better actor than Danny? Of course, none of them would have ever come right out and voiced such sentiments. They just let the resentful thoughts marinate in their minds. Many of these actors I considered my friends. That’s just the nature of show business. It has a way of turning good people into envious people.

  I wish I could paint my time at the Oscars as one of glamorous parties and mingling with superstars. The truth is that I never have possessed the glad-handing gene. I don’t make the social rounds. If people come to me, I am happy to speak to them. But I don’t go out of my way to impose myself upon them.

  I don’t know why I am that way, but it’s been true for my whole life. In Hollywood that year, when I should have been riding the celebrity express, I reverted to type. I didn’t mingle. I didn’t attend the Governor’s Ball, the academy’s official party, thrown for all the nominees.

  On the day of the event, Sandy and I had breakfast on the outside terrace of the Polo Lounge. The feeling of unreality had not relented one bit. I was thankful I had my wife at my side to keep it all in perspective. She was what was real, Sandy and my family.

  We returned to the hotel room and dove into our preparations for the evening. What’s odd about the Oscars is that by all rights it should be a nighttime event, but because of the time difference with the East Coast TV audiences, it’s conducted in the bright light of a Los Angeles afternoon.

  Debbie began Max Factoring my wife. Without resorting to surgical tools she attempted to make me look good, too. I don’t want you to think that Sandy and I travel with our own private makeup artist. By that point, Debbie had worked with me on every movie I did, every stage or television show over the course of the previous five years. She was like family, very close to me and Sandy. She also happens to be one of the best makeup artists in the business. She had to be, since she was somehow able to perform miracles on me.

  One last check in the mirror and we were ready to go. The academy assigns a limousine to each nominee. A good three hours before the event, our driver picked us up and we headed through Hollywood toward downtown and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It took a while for us to get there. So many limos were converging that we were put in holding patterns like jets over a busy airport.

  The approach took forever. As I sat in the back of the car with Sandy and Jay Schwartz, my mind refused to calm down. I thought of the stagecoaches in the Wild West, General Custer at Little Big Horn and the circling Indians. I couldn’t decide if we were the Sioux warriors or the U.S. Cavalry. Just crazy thoughts in a crazy time.

  After what seemed like hours, our limousine pulled up in front of the pavilion. As we emerged the cameras began blasting away. My name was announced by an impersonal voice over a loudspeaker. The fans in the bleachers screamed. Everyone seemed swept up in the excitement of the moment. All this under the brilliant Southern California sun.

  An academy functionary directed me to stand in line to be interviewed by the press. The interviewing reporters were not even looking at me half the time. Instead, they glanced constantly over my shoulder to see if the next celebrity might be more important than I was. After my interview, I watched them and saw that they did this to everyone, not just me.

  We finally entered the auditorium and got Sandy seated. I was whisked away by Jay to the greenroom, to be given instructions on what I could expect to happen during the awards ceremony.

  “If you’re a winner, no long speeches,” one of the show’s assistant producers told me. “Please be brief.”

  Don’t forget Sandy, don’t forget Mom, don’t forget your sons and daughter, I told myself. And, oh, yeah, don’t forget Spike.

  I was i
n great company in the best supporting actor category. Denzel Washington was nominated for the Civil War movie Glory, Dan Aykroyd for Driving Miss Daisy, Martin Landau for Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. Marlon Brando got nominated for A Dry White Season, but as was his custom, the great man didn’t show for the Oscars presentation.

  The greenroom felt like madness, so it was a relief to be guided back to my seat next to Sandy, led there by a beautiful escort in a designer gown. The Academy Awards ceremony is such a sprawling event that it has to be run with military precision. That night, the nominees for best supporting actor were placed together at the right side of the theater.

  I sat there thinking my outsider thoughts. What am I doing here? This isn’t me. I’m not a party guy, a chitchat guy, rubbing shoulders with people I don’t really know. Why didn’t I do what Brando did and not show up at all?

  No one seemed to care that Brando wasn’t present. And if they didn’t care about his not showing, they damn sure wouldn’t have cared if I wasn’t there. I never let Sandy know exactly how I felt about the evening. I didn’t want to ruin it for her. She looked beautiful and seemed to be having a wonderful time.

  Billy Crystal might have been very funny that night, appearing for the first time as an Academy Awards host. I couldn’t tell you anything about it because I was too nervous with all the thoughts buzzing in my head. The best supporting actor award came up early during the evening. Geena Davis, who had won the best supporting actress Oscar the previous year, presented for the category.

  “And the winner is . . .,” Geena said, struggling with the envelope. “Denzel Washington, for Glory!”

  As the applause began, Sandy blurted out the first thing that popped into her head. “It’s political,” she exclaimed. Many people heard her, including Denzel. He only smiled. I’m sure he thought the same thing I did: Well, there’s a woman sticking up for her man.

  Is it believable when I tell you that I wasn’t crushed? I hadn’t allowed myself to think I would win. I told myself that I had gone to the Oscars just to see what all the fuss was about. I wanted to experience the whole business at least once in my life. How many guys like me ever get a chance like that?