So That Happened

by Jon Cryer

  As everyone processed the news by creating a low rumbling of shocked voices, Judd showed up, was apprised of the situation, and spoke. “Okay, great,” he said. “I think we all knew it wasn’t working. I’m sorry it came to this, but we’ve got a show to do.” Judd did not seem sorry. Something was up.

  Later I cornered Martin, expressed my deep dissatisfaction with his interpretation of my complaint, and learned that I wasn’t the only one who’d shown up that night with a workplace beef. Apparently, right after I left, both Judd and Justine came to Martin and asked that Janine be canned. Evidently behavior that I had determined was bizarre but well within the boundaries of committed character work was, to my fellow actors, simply too wack job to countenance on a daily basis. Showing up late or not at all? That was apparently okay. I couldn’t help but imagine what Martin thought: Three of his stars show up, one after another, to request one of the others is fired. Did he just go with the majority vote?

  The news, when it got out, was catnip for theater wags, and The New York Times’ Alex Witchel wrote about it in her column by implying that the campaign to oust Janine was cooked up by the three of us. Which was . . . close? I couldn’t exactly call to complain about that one. “Hey, Alex, just a minor error there. I wanted Judd fired.” That would make a printed correction more gossipy than the original item.

  Which leads me to the other aspect of this production that had me dispiritingly shaking my head like a comedy-team straight man with a lap full of soup spilled by his nimrod partner. Witchel referred to Judd, Justine, and me as “the Brat Pack at Carnal Knowledge.” TheaterWeek featured us on their cover with the headline, “Brat Packers Go Off-Broadway in Carnal Knowledge.” Labeling us Brat Packers was essentially the marketing plan for the show in action, and when I heard that it was the promotional idea all along, I thought, Oh, great. They’re going to hate us.

  This was New York theater. This wasn’t a Hollywood movie. What should have been promoted as an important piece of theatrical writing from a satirical master being given its New York stage premiere was instead being associated with a sneered-at moniker born out of a negative 1985 New York magazine piece about hotshot twenty-something actors in one well thought-of movie (The Breakfast Club) and one ridiculed movie (St. Elmo’s Fire).

  And besides, I wasn’t in the Brat Pack! I never socialized with Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, or Judd during the term’s heyday. I didn’t want to be associated with what was perceived as a gimmicky clique that rubbed people the wrong way. Not when I’d been concentrating on a return to my theater roots. Yet here was this play that I was proud of in spite of its internal strife, being sold in a way that was like dangling red meat in front of snarky critics, or confirming the worst fears of theater devotees suspicious of anything Hollywood corrupting their beloved art form.

  The hoopla surrounding the firing of Janine, however, briefly supplanted any concerns I had about how our Carnal Knowledge was being positioned. Death threats have a tendency to do that. Yes, that’s correct. During previews the theater received a death threat on my life from a crazed Janine fan, and again, I couldn’t exactly respond with a composed letter in response that said, “Dear Psycho, I wanted Judd fired. My costars are the ones who disapproved of your beloved Janine Turner, who I think is a celestial being of bottomless talent. Yours, Jon.” Plus, if Judd was then murdered, I would have felt bad.

  It was a strange feeling to go on in a play after knowing that someone has put it in writing that he or she plans to kill you. Almost anybody else in the same situation can hunker down somewhere, or take comfort in knowing that the person didn’t know his address, or where he might be. But if you’re in a play, there’s a specific place everyone knows you’re going to be every night, you’re standing in front of a roomful of strangers, and it’s not as if you act in front of a bulletproof window. Theaters are not that safe. For God’s sake, President Lincoln was shot in a theater; they’re death traps!

  The death threat spooked everybody, and it made Martin, a guy who’d seen everything in his decades in the theater, pretty jumpy. One day my friend Andy, a New York City transit cop, came to the theater to say hi before the matinee. He was standing outside, and as I casually walked out to greet him, I noticed Martin approaching Andy, who’s a big guy.

  “Hello. Can I help you?” Martin asked.

  “Yeah, I’m waiting for Jon Cryer.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Martin, who then noticed that tucked inside this man’s jacket was a revolver. Martin started sweating. “Hey, so why do you want to see Jon?”

  “Oh, we’re old friends. I just wanted to stop by. . . .”

  Now, imagine you’re Martin, racked with unease about the safety of one of your actors, and you’ve just been presented with new visual information about a stranger who wants to see him, in the form of a hidden weapon. The words, “Oh, we’re old friends; I just wanted to stop by,” suddenly sound like something Edward G. Robinson says before he rubs somebody out. And there’s his prey, me, walking into the line of fire.

  A panicked Martin just started pushing Andy, right as I was approaching, and yelling, “Why do you want to see him? What are you going to do? Do you know this guy, Jon? Do you know this guy?”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay!” I shouted. “Martin, I know him! I know him! It’s okay!”

  Considering that Andy had no idea who Martin Charnin was, but knew I had gotten a death threat, that could have gone a lot worse if you look at it from Andy’s point of view. But fortunately everyone lived, we opened, and we got murdered instead by the reviewers.

  The knives were indeed out for “the Brat Pack off-Broadway,” and they were arguably the worst reviews I’ve ever received for anything I’ve been involved in. Judd and Justine got it worse than I did, with the Village Voice calling Justine an assortment of wooden items, a totem pole, whatever. It was weird, because Judd and Justine were actually terrific in the play—once Janine was gone, they both loosened up and dug right in—and after a few weeks of tepid crowds, the word must have gotten out that it was better than the reviews, because audiences got fuller and more enthusiastic. Maybe it was morbid curiosity, people expecting it to be bad and discovering they liked it, but when we heard they wanted to extend the run, we all felt vindicated.

  I even reconsidered my feelings about the way it was promoted. If the goal with the “Brat Pack” push was to get butts in seats—critics be damned—it did do that. Maybe we made some new theater fans that way. Who knows?

  Judd’s rebellions, meanwhile, tapered off somewhat. If the stage manager insisted he be there thirty minutes before showtime, he’d show up twenty-five minutes before. Plenty of time to get ready, but also nodding to the power he knew he held. There were pitfalls to that rebel persona, though, usually in the guise of assholes in bars who wanted to prove their manhood by picking a fight with the tough guy from The Breakfast Club. I saw it happen.

  One night, half an hour before showtime, Judd hadn’t arrived. Twenty-five minutes before, our resident rebel was still absent. At the fifteen-minute mark, no Judd Nelson. Then the stage manager got a phone call: Judd got into a bar fight and was in jail. The word went out to the understudy, who had a night job as a waiter, and this guy had to throw off his apron, jump in a cab, and speed to the theater. Meanwhile, I went out to the lobby, where I knew Judd’s girlfriend at the time—Playboy Playmate Tawnni Cable, one of the headless pinups in our dressing room—was waiting with her plus-one, a guy named Richard Schenkman, who’d been directing her that day in a video for Playboy. I broke the news that Judd wouldn’t be going on that night, but after the show Judd showed up. He’d made bail, and was ready for more, I guess.

  “Let’s go out for a drink!” he said.

  The best thing that came out of Carnal Knowledge was meeting Tawnni’s director friend Richard. We became fast friends over shared interests and senses of humor and the strange coincidence that we lived near each other in bot
h Los Angeles and New York. We agreed to hang out more when we were back in Los Angeles, and Richard made good on that with an invitation to a party that promised an entrée into a very exclusive, iconic showbiz world.

  Scientology!

  I joke. Just turn the page.

  Chapter 17

  And This Is Tuesday, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha

  By the end of the eighties I was pretty disappointed that my stardom hadn’t introduced me to a behind-the-scenes world of sexual debauchery I assumed was de rigueur in Hollywood. Although I got into show business because I loved acting and performing, there was always a secret part of me that wanted the embossed invitation to the hush-hush orgy, the casual Malibu cookout that suddenly turns into a vigorous game of nude Twister, or the night out at the swanky club during which gyrating lesbians pull you into a back room for a private show in which they pass cigarettes back and forth. (I like girls who smoke, remember.)

  And yet I had been unmolested by Hollywood decadence.

  Enter my friend Richard, friend to Playmates, director of Playboy videos. We’d been pals only a few months when he said the magic words: “Hey, want to come to a party at the Playboy Mansion?”

  Um, did Han shoot first?

  This was it! I was going to the notorious home of the twentieth century’s foremost sexual hedonist and nudie-pictures purveyor, Hugh Hefner. Score! It was the infamous Pajama Party, too, when all the girls wore lingerie. So it wasn’t just attending a soiree at the Playboy Mansion—the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view would be scantily clad women! And, boy, I’d heard tales—vivid, mythic tales—about the Grotto, the rock-enclosed Jacuzzi heaven that hosted erotic escapades that defied the imagination.

  I was going to get to see all of this? And maybe get some other senses involved, too? Don’t get ahead of yourself, Cryer.

  I had to buy pajamas, of course. I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to go in boxers and a T-shirt. This wasn’t a come-as-you-sleep party. (Technically that’s a wet dream, but I hate puns.) I bought a cheap flannel combo at Macy’s, figuring the satin look of Hef was not mine to imitate. I was a newcomer. I had to earn the satin. That would come when I was a regular.

  Richard and I pulled up to the mansion in Richard’s 1974 Corvette Stingray, which boasted a vanity plate that read, BONDAGE, and I was too in-the-moment to think about what it looked like for two guys in pajamas to get out of a car that said, BONDAGE. I was all atwitter, because I was prepping myself for the A-list, all-star bacchanal that awaited us behind the security guys with the guest list. This was my Steadicam moment from Goodfellas when Lorraine Bracco gets ushered through the back of the nightclub, introduced to a world of status and power, but that makes me Lorraine Bracco and Richard Ray Liotta, so let’s scotch that comparison. I was excited; let’s just leave it at that.

  The doors open, we walk through into a tented backyard, and my eyes are like a heat-seeking paparazzi Terminator, ready to zero in on all the big names, your Nicholsons, your Beattys. . . .

  The first face I recognize is Ed Begley Jr.’s.

  Okay, not the biggest star, but a talented character actor! He was friendly, too. I introduced myself. Ed was talking to a couple of gorgeous women, and I’m thinking, This is the place where Ed Begley Jr. talks to the hottest babes. Well, then I’m a natural. I can’t lose!

  Next up: again, not exactly James Caan level. It’s Chuck McCann, star of the Sid and Marty Krofft show Far Out Space Nuts. Well, he’s a star to ten-year-olds! He’s cheery, too, having a good time in his bedwear.

  Then we got to some A-listers. Tony Curtis was there, and I almost lost it. I love so many movies he made: Sweet Smell of Success, Some Like It Hot, Spartacus. Now we’re starting to ramp up at this shindig. On one of Tony Curtis’s arms is a beautiful blonde, and on the other, her identical twin. Twin hotties! The evening is heating up. I walk over and say, “Hi, Mr. Curtis, I just had to introduce myself. My name is Jon Cryer, and it’s so nice to meet you.”

  “Hey, I’m Tony,” he said, then indicated to the girl on his left—“This is Monday”—then the girl on his right—“and this is Tuesday. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha . . .”

  The girls laughed, too, a sort of “this is a joke he’s made several times already” snicker. And I couldn’t help but think about the trajectory of a pair of lives in which attractive sisters come to Los Angeles, stars in their eyes perhaps, and wind up sexualized punch-line accessories for an aging actor for whom their twinness is the draw. That must be a strange existence.

  The marquee factor—new or old—pretty much ended at Tony Curtis. There weren’t very many other celebrities there that night. What there was, though, in the department of has-been design, was a multicolored disco floor with a spinning ball. Now, disco floors were cool. Ten years prior. This was 1990, however. You wouldn’t willingly have rented one for a wingding then. They weren’t even ironic yet. What undoubtedly happened in the 1970s was that Hef thought he could save money on the rental of a disco floor by just buying the damn thing, and now he was simply trying to amortize the enormous purchase price of a trendy item bought at the height of the trend by whipping it out for his yearly Pajama Party.

  As you might gather, I don’t look at a dance floor and necessarily think, “Time to dance.” Neither did anybody else, it seemed. There were only two people on the floor, but at least they were both beautiful women. One was a stunner with incredible Crystal Gayle–style long hair down to her calves, halfheartedly swaying, but it was enough to generate something tantalizingly magical. This girl with the glowing mane was moving in a way that looked like slow motion. It felt like a classic Playboy Mansion image to me. Not so iconically classic but no less mesmerizing was the other beautiful woman, who was in a wheelchair. Of late, it turned out, the magazine had made an effort to broaden the types of women they showcased, so in the interests of unclad diversity they’d introduced the Paraplegic Playmate, and here she was—another striking blonde in regulation lingerie—zipping around that dance floor, occasionally showing off a well-timed spin-and-wheelie in sync with the music.

  She was enjoying herself. But she was also clearly drunk, which made for an unusually tense situation in my mind. She’d scoot that wheelchair right up to the edge of the disco floor, then wheel herself back in, and for the love of God, I thought she was going to fall off each time. It was like watching those gym boogie-ers in It’s a Wonderful Life when the floor opens to reveal the swimming pool, and they’re blissfully unaware that they’re now literally dancing on the edge. But she’d also get so close to the Crystal Gayle girl that I just knew that long hair would get caught in the wheels and Crystal Gayle Girl would be pulled down Isadora Duncan style toward humiliating injury. I just kept thinking I was looking at the before scene in a terrible slapstick comedy. Again, I don’t look at dance floors the way most people do.

  I walked away from that scene and picked out of the crowd Screw magazine founder, Al Goldstein, which seemed odd, since I thought Screw and Playboy were competitors. I guess the Pajama Party is some kind of men’s-mag détente. But next to Goldstein was Hugh Hefner himself, and next to Hef was Kimberly Conrad, the woman he was going to marry, or, as the magazine hyped, Hef’s “Playmate for a Lifetime.” (Words that didn’t exactly prove to be true.) Richard introduced me to the two of them, and as they walked away I turned to Richard and said, “Well, she seems nice.”

  “Yeah, she’s okay,” he said. “But the parties used to be so much better before she came along.” According to Richard, the word was, no more Fellini-esque carnivals of sin, and instead, nice get-togethers that ended at reasonable hours.

  My heart sank. “Wait, wait,” I said. “You mean this is never going to devolve into something wanton and libertine?”

  “Nah, probably not.”

  “No devolving? No moment where everybody pops Quaaludes and G-strings are tossed to the wind?”

  “Wouldn’t bet on it.”
/>   “Why didn’t you tell me!” I said. “I expected a den of iniquity!”

  The sadness was brief, though, as Richard began introducing me to Playmates he knew. Boobs have a tendency to distract, and two particularly glorious ones arrived, belonging to the stunning Petra Verkaik, who was one of my favorites of the magazine’s recent centerfolds. Petra wasn’t in a nightie. She was more dressed for a slumber party, in a T-shirt that stopped midthigh, but it was still enough that in chitchatting with her I had to stop every other word I said from being, “Wow.” Petra and Richard were apparently getting set to fly down to Puerto Rico for a shoot, and she said to him, “We’re going to have a great time!” and walked away.

  Richard seemed unfazed by this. “You know, she’s such a game gal,” he said nonchalantly. “If you ask her to go bowling or grab dinner in Koreatown, she’s always up for it.”

  “Richard!” I said. “Why aren’t you married to her?” It seemed shocking that someone that gorgeous, nice, and fun wasn’t his “Playmate for a Lifetime.”

  He seemed surprised at the suggestion. I knew his type was tall and thin, not petite and curvy like Petra, but he just seemed faintly amused more than stirred. I guessed Richard to be the type for whom work was work, and when you have a type, you’re blind to other possibilities. I, on the other hand, was instantly sad when Petra wandered off. But again, only for a moment, because then my eyes drifted across the room and caught sight of an exquisite golden-haired gal in silk pajamas, standing next to another equally va-va-voom blonde. Talking to them was another blonde, but it was Ed Begley Jr., who doesn’t count. He’s more sandy-haired anyway, I’d say.

  No more of this two-girls-with-one-guy business. It was time to actually strike up a deep conversation with one of these dazzling female partygoers, so I walked up with my mapped-out reason to talk to Ed, and luckily Ed’s an easy guy to start talking to. He introduced me to one of the blondes, then referred to the other as “her daughter.” Whoa! Beauty across generations here! It seemed the daughter’s father was an unspeakably groovy, handsome B-movie actor famous in the sixties, and as she and I talked it became clear that her father and Hef were such good chums, she practically grew up at the mansion.