If I Only Knew Then...

by Charles Grodin

  Right alongside my feeling of pride sits a huge measure of gratitude that my four grandparents made the leap of faith and left their hometowns, thus avoiding the Nazi Holocaust. Then, in 1950, my parents came to the United States-—at first, only to study for a few years. I’ve been heard to quip that they must still be studying. Aren’t we all?

  My father, however, doesn’t seem to be learning anymore. He was always curious and full of advice. I knew something was wrong when he stopped asking me how I got there that day, how was traffic, what’s new at CBS, and a hundred other expressions of concern that could have seemed annoyingly noodgy at the time.

  My mother, in the middle of all this, went through a bout of cancer—getting great and accurate chemo treatment to achieve victory. She was tenacious, she was brave, and somehow she adjusted magnificently to waging a battle without Ben actively fighting at her side. My sole brother (we enjoy that pun), Odey, gets the lion’s share of credit for devotedly accompanying our mom every step of the way.

  My regret is living so far away and not spending enough time with my parents. Dori and I try to explain to our kids, Jonathan and Emma, how sorry we are not to have had enough time with our loved ones who made those fateful decisions years ago that gave us freedom, safety, and comfort here in America.

  As a broadcaster who is usually given precisely thirty seconds to tell a tale, I still feel childishly frustrated that there is absolutely no way to slow the hands of the clock. As the ancient Romans noted, tempus fugit. The best we can do is try to run and keep up.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  Rather than being sorry we did not have enough time, we’ve learned to create time.

  We carve out the minutes for an attentive phone call—with real listening and communication.

  We find the hours for a great visit, and for us now the only way to enjoy Dad in his silence is to see him and watch his face light up when we arrive!

  Devote the days to family, before the days run out. Tell all your loved ones that they are your loved ones. Brighten their lives, and thus improve your own.

  ED BEGLEY JR.

  Actor

  When Chuck contacted me about contributing to this book, I knew that I had nothing to contribute.

  I’ve lived a life without regrets.

  And I say that with absolute certainty. One hundred percent. Not a picomicron of doubt in my mind.

  And then I remembered the seventies.

  I suppose I shouldn’t call it regret. Let’s instead call it the Zabriske Point of my own personal learning curve.

  You can certainly argue that everything in your life is essential to making you the person you are today.

  So, at the risk of sounding pompous (and noting that there is still much room for improvement), I do like who I am at this juncture.

  But did I have to be such a self-absorbed dick for a whole fucking decade?

  And a highly reckless one, at that. Emphasis on high.

  Let me be clear: It’s not like I broke into anyone’s house or robbed a bank to support my habit. But the fact that I didn’t kill anyone even when I was operating a motor vehicle on a quart of vodka a day is nothing short of miraculous.

  And, while we’re on the subject: Couldn’t I have learned the same lessons from my father’s addiction? Or from one of those educational films they showed in high school, or from David Crosby or someone?

  WHAT I LEARNED

  There’s nothing like getting arrested or winding up in the emergency room at Cedars to make you think you might not be a “social” drinker.

  BURT METCALFE

  Producer and Director,

  Television Series M*A*S*H

  I was a seventeen-year-old freshman in the theater arts department at UCLA, with a burning desire to be an actor. Every other freshman actor was envious of my being cast in a major stage production. It was The Philadelphia Story, a romantic comedy that had been the Broadway and Hollywood vehicle for Katharine Hepburn’s rise to stardom.

  I was to play the role of Mac, the night watchman on a big estate. I only had two lines and was onstage for just an instant, but hey: a freshman in a major production—now, that was big.

  At the final rehearsal, the director (a faculty professor) devised and briefly rehearsed a curtain call—the actors reappearing from offstage to receive the audience’s applause after the performance ends.

  The cast was to file in from two doorways, one on each side of the set. As this was an arena stage with no curtain, the procedure had to be carried out in the dark. Being the actor with the smallest role, I’m the last one back from my side of the wings. I was to hold on to the hand of the actor preceding me—remember, it’s pitch-dark—and with my other hand close the door behind me. The director had said this was most important, as he felt the set wouldn’t look good with a door left wide open.

  Opening night, the smooth performance ends with applause. Lights go black, and the cast members begin to feel their way back for the curtain call.

  I hold on to the hand of the actor ahead, still knowing I have to close the door behind me. Now, here’s where I make a fatal mistake. In reaching for the doorknob, I somehow lose the guiding hand in front, but I close that damn door. Still in the dark, I edge my way further onstage to catch up with the group. Unknowingly, I’ve gone just in front of the person I was to be alongside of, and kept moving laterally. As the lights come up, Burt Metcalfe, with his two-line part, is standing all alone, dead center stage, while the entire remaining cast is lined up behind him!

  If only the floor could open up and swallow me whole. Talk about wanting to be dead last.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  Maybe I wasn’t meant to be an actor. Although I did act professionally for several years thereafter in theater, film, and TV, I finally decided to give up that dream and pursue a career on the production side of show business. That seemed to work out better.

  ERNIE ALLEN

  President and CEO, National

  Center for Missing and Exploited

  Children

  I am a native of Louisville, Kentucky. I grew up just three blocks north of historic Churchill Downs, the mecca of thoroughbred racehorses, home of the Kentucky Derby. Many of my early jobs were at Churchill Downs, and to this day it holds a special place in my heart.

  My favorite time at Churchill Downs was not in the afternoon, when the races were run and the grandstands filled. I liked the early mornings. The back side of a racetrack is like a small self-contained city, a melting pot of people and animals. There, each morning, in close proximity, one could find the low-wage stable hands, the exercise riders, the superstar jockeys, the fiercely competitive trainers, the wealthy owners, the veterinarians, and many others.

  Every morning, 365 days a year, it happens. Trainers prepare their horses. Exercise riders and jockeys gallop the horses or give them brisk workouts to build speed and endurance. The stable hands cool the horses after their exertion, bathe them, groom them, and prepare them for the future. It is a unique scene, unmatched anywhere else.

  I was always concerned about the welfare of the stable workers. Most of them were virtual migrant workers, moving from track to track as one race meeting ended and another began, living in cramped quarters on or near the racetrack. Most of them lacked the basic necessities of life. They were of all ages and races, and I was particularly concerned about the older workers, most of whom could not look forward to pensions or an easy retirement.

  One morning more than thirty years ago, I entered the track kitchen, a place where everyone from the humblest stable hand to the most powerful owner came together for breakfast. There were no reserved tables. When someone got up to leave, you sat down regardless of who else might be at the table.

  On this morning I noticed an empty chair next to an elderly, unshaven, somewhat disheveled-looking man. He was wearing a floppy brimmed hat and a heavy coat and was alone. I asked if I might join him. He agreed quietly and I sat down to eat my breakfast.

  We cautious
ly began a conversation and spoke about a wide range of things. We never introduced ourselves. I was concerned that he might have no money and not be able to afford something to eat. At the track kitchen, there were no free refills. So as I rose to go back to the counter and buy a second cup of coffee, I asked, “May I get you something?” He answered, “A cup of coffee would be nice.”

  So I bought him a cup of coffee. We conversed some more, and again I asked if I could get him something else. Again he accepted a refill of his coffee.

  Finally, I rose to leave, wished him well, and headed for the exit. At the door I was joined by a local trainer whom I knew well. He asked me, “How do you know Mr. Galbreath?” I answered, “Who?” He responded, “The man you were sitting with is John W. Galbreath, the chairman of the board of Churchill Downs.”

  I was stunned. Mr. Galbreath was not only chairman of Churchill Downs, he was a multimillionaire, a builder of skyscrapers around the world, a friend of presidents and royalty, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates for forty years, owner of Darby Dan Farm, and breeder and owner of two Kentucky Derby winners and one Epsom Derby winner.

  I was buying coffee, offering a free breakfast, and feeling pity for one of the world’s richest and most powerful men. It was very early in the morning. He had not yet shaved or prepared for his day. He was not dressed as I would have expected one of the most powerful, influential people in the world to be dressed.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  My chance encounter with John W. Galbreath taught me a lesson I have never forgotten. One cannot make assumptions about people based on how they look. I now strive to treat every person with dignity and respect, no matter who I think they are, and to respond to each encounter with another human being with kindness and an open mind.

  As for Mr. Galbreath, who passed away in 1988 at the age of ninety, I will never forget him or our brief time together. One writer called him “the nicest, most unpretentious, most hospitable man you’ll ever encounter.” I can attest to that, and to the fact that my few minutes with him changed my life.

  BILL D’ELIA

  Director, Writer, Producer

  A few years ago, while sitting around the dinner table, my son Christopher, then twenty years old, said that he thought a good idea for a television series would be a behind-the-scenes look at a play being produced. The idea of the nonsense and shenanigans that go on to mount a production of anything seemed to him to be full of possibilities. As we discussed it, I thought that it should be a Broadway play and that we should never actually see the play but end every episode with the curtain going up. That way we would only see the behind-the-scenes soap opera and not the actual play. It was a fun discussion, and the idea stuck with me.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and eventually thought that if we told the story through the eyes of an understudy, it could be a fun and interesting show. And what if the show were a musical? And what if our series was musical as well?

  At the time I was executive producer and director of the TV show Ally McBeal, a show full of fun and musical ideas. I took the understudy idea to David E. Kelley, creator of Ally and a guy who knows a thing or two about television and music. He immediately liked the idea and mulled over the possibility of writing it himself. He decided he’d like to produce it, but we’d need to find a writer. After interviewing many writers and reading lots of scripts, we made a deal with the writer Ivan Menchell. Together we cracked the story, figured out the musical possibilities, and went with David to pitch the series.

  We sold it immediately to the Fox network and began to work on the script. This was great news, and I couldn’t wait to share it with everyone. I told Chris and he wanted to know what that meant, and I told him that I thought we could somehow work on this together. My son Matt called shortly thereafter. Matt was a student at NYU then, studying film. Matt told me that he and Chris were upset with me. Why?

  Well, I’d stolen Chris’s idea.

  His idea? All he did was say, “Hey, Dad, what about this?” at the dinner table. How was that his idea? I was furious that Matt and Chris were furious. In my defense, this is what I do for a living, and we talk about these things at home all the time. The fact that this discussion led me to form a fully fleshed-out idea seemed not to be a problem to me at all. Matt said, “What if you were at the dinner table with a friend? And what if the friend had the same idea? Would you not have included your friend in the pitch?” Chris didn’t want to “somehow work on this together”—the whole idea was for us to create a show and crack the story as partners. I had excluded him right from the start and found another partner. When I stepped back and looked at it, I realized that my sons were right and I was wrong. I called Chris and apologized for what I had done. It still pains me to think about it, and it’s still a very difficult thing to admit.

  And by the way, the show didn’t get picked up by Fox, was then sold to ABC, was rewritten several times, was hailed as “breakthrough television” by at least one network executive, and was never produced.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  Well, I learned many things. First, that as my boys grew into men, I had to grow with them. I learned to see them as equals and friends, not just as my sons. I learned to listen to them as I would any colleague and not as if I always knew best just because I was the dad. Additionally, I learned that they were protective of, and loyal to, each other, and that made me very proud. A side benefit of all that learning: I have a movie in production that Chris wrote and I will direct, and I’m producing a movie that Matt will write and direct. I guess the other thing I learned is that maybe I should have had more kids. They have good ideas.

  ROBERT TOWNE

  Academy Award–Winning

  Screenwriter

  My first exposure to Robert Evans was after I’d written what became known as the garden scene between Al Pacino and Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Francis Ford Coppola was about to show the film for the first time to Paramount in the form of studio head Evans and his wife, Ali McGraw. It was to take place in a little screening room on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. Francis was suddenly rather nervous as he heard something in the hall that attracted his attention. I looked down the hall and there, being wheeled down a crimson carpet, wearing silk pajamas, was Evans.

  Obviously in severe pain, he was wheeled into the room and it was literally, “Oh, my aching back! I can’t move.” It was then, as he was lifted out of the wheelchair into the cushy studio seats that I noticed the little slippers with the gold brocaded foxes on the toes. Before I’d really had a chance to absorb the fact that this was the guy who was going to judge the film for the studio, Evans started to suck his thumb—audibly. Worse yet, he started to hum. I looked over to Francis, and he looked like a basset hound who’d just been kicked in the nuts. In other words, he was thinking what I was thinking: This is a fucking catastrophe and the film hasn’t even started.

  Three and a half hours later the film was over. I had no idea what Evans was going to say. It was public knowledge that he and Francis had had a rough time on the film. But Evans proceeded quietly and clearly: “There’s too much spaghetti eating, there’s too much music,” and so he went through the film, incisive and insightful. I thought, This can’t be possible, but there it was. Drooling royalty is trundled into the room, takes its thumb out of its mouth, and responds with a kind of reflexive brilliance.

  Francis was there arguing with him and I finally said, “Francis, I think he’s right.” I was a little embarrassed; Francis is my friend and I was there for support. I could only conclude that appearances were deceiving and that underneath the slick Brylcreamed hair and black outfits there was this idiot savant who, once you got him in front of the film, was amazing. He was completely in touch with his own feelings, and nothing stood in the way of his expressing them.

  That was the beginning of a relationship with him that led me to Chinatown. I’ve subsequently made fun of our first meeting, how all through the making of Chinatown Evans never understood the script, ne
ver pretended to understand the script—he just liked the title and that’s all there was to it. And over the years, hanging out in his projection room, I became privy to his endless fund of self-deprecating stories, many of which wound up in his book, The Kid Stays in the Picture. How elaborate preparations were made for one of his marriages and the prospective bride backed out of the wedding, and Evans could only kvetch and moan, “What am I going to do? The invitations have already gone out!” How his household staff worried every time he drove himself to the studio from his Beverly Hills home because he tended to get lost anywhere east of Doheny Drive.

  So when it came time to do Chinatown’s sequel, The Two Jakes, we knew who Jake Gittes was going to be, but for the other Jake, Berman, the thought of Evans in the part seemed like an idea whose time had come. We all—including Evans—knew that he had been a terrible actor in his youth, but the Evans that I saw night after night regaling us with these masochistic tales was so charming that I thought it would make a great facade for a character who had, as Jake Berman had, a hidden agenda—a dying man trying to cover it up. I thought it would be wonderful if we could just get the Evans that talked about himself that way in his projection room—on film opposite Jack Nicholson. I made the suggestion.

  Now, all too often the difference between a brilliant idea and a mistake is that you only know which is which after the fact. All the reasons for doing it were great. (And all the reasons for not doing it were great as well.) I broached the idea and Nicholson thought it was wonderful. So I sat down with Evans, who would be not only acting in the film but producing it as well, and I said, “I don’t know if this is going to work out, but if it is we’re going to need to rehearse intensely for two months. Can you do that?” No problem. He could. I asked Jack. No problem. He could as well. I also warned Evans, “If I don’t think it’s working, I want to be free to come and tell you. I need to have the freedom to say so.” Absolutely. He agreed.