Easy Street (the Hard Way): A Memoir (41 page)

By the time the show went into production, what with the filling out of the cast and choosing department heads, all of whom brought with them their own loving family of worker-bees, our little team had grown to some 150-plus. Each and every member of this new and burgeoning family was adored for their passion and their vision. Not only were they welcome, but the opinions and points of view of
what would become the world of this show were also essential. And although, as is always the case, the final sets of decisions were the job of Marc Forster, I watched as he lovingly and humanely embraced the input of each and every member of our team. It reminded me of the magic that is the power and the glory of filmmaking. It harkened back to that epiphany I had on that hilltop twenty kilometers outside of Rome on the set of
Name of the Rose
some thirty years earlier—that is, the thing that made the making of movies and great television into the greatest of all art forms, the coming together of the brightest and the best in the world, all with disparate expertise all coalescing with the innocence, naïveté, and energy of kindergartners to paint one glorious picture, all of which is filtered through one amazing artist, the filmmaker. And if you are lucky enough to get a filmmaker who is brilliant, humble, and loves people, loves what they do, and loves what
he
does—one like Marc Forster—you indeed find yourself in a state of grace. That is what it can look like when it happens how it’s supposed to happen.

You must know by now my intense devotion to these elements, my unwavering belief as to what a privilege it is to be in this, the most elite group who gets to work in these settings. And how, ultimately, we who get to do this are charged with a set of responsibilities that, when regarded with love and true humility, can elevate us to a state of true nobility. People love movies; they love them because they teach us, they move us, and they remind us of our commonality, of how we are not, not one of us, in this alone. This, to me, is sacred. So when I see it sullied, when I see it misused, it saddens and angers me.

Let me talk for a minute about
Sons of Anarchy
.

There was a whirlwind of press about Guillermo del Toro’s next film
Hellboy II
after just coming off
Pan’s Labyrinth
, so this whole maelstrom of goodwill and frenzied curiosity was rubbing off on me even before the movie came out. The difference between what the first
Hellboy
did for how I was perceived in the business and what the second one seemed to be yielding was dramatic and decisive. I was part of kinds of conversations different from those I’d ever before been a
part of. I was talked about and booked for types of gigs different from those I’d ever done before, many much closer to mainstream than the steady diet of guerilla indie that I’d immersed myself into up to that point. Ultimately all this noise put me on the shortlist for a new FX show called
Sons of Anarchy
. But because the pilot episode for the show was already in the can, the lunch meeting that was set up between me and the show’s creator, Kurt Sutter, seemed to me to be about a supporting character who would come in down the road a piece. Much to my surprise, however, Kurt began to explain to me that the network would like to recast the role of the president of the motorcycle club, Clay Morrow, and reshoot the portions of the pilot in which this character appeared. And if they could find the right actor, the network was prepared to green-light an entire first season consisting of thirteen episodes. But because, after making a formidable investment in the original shoot, they needed to be super-sure of the new actor; they were asking whether I would be willing to audition for the studio execs. My response was, as it always is, that upon reading the script, if I felt as though I could be of help to the show with regard to my confidence in my ability to play the character and my enthusiasm for and fascination with the world of the show, then yes, I would be more than happy to audition.

And indeed, the world of the show
was
fascinating. It was a show about a modern-day outlaw motorcycle club, similar to the Hells Angels, operating in Northern California. But the show was ultimately going to be mostly a strong family drama with a superstructure that was borrowed from the bones of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
saga: a prince, whose father, the king, has recently been murdered and who now finds his mother, the queen, married to his father’s best friend and confidant, who has himself assumed the title of king, thus usurping all the power. Interesting idea for a television series. Even more interesting was the notion of playing this character, for Clay Morrow was far and away the most serious persona I would ever have to deconstruct. I mean, clearly up until then all the roles I played possessed a duality, an ability to be self-effacing, whereas with Clay, it wasn’t as if he had no
sense of humor; it was that he had no sense of humor about himself. And even though, in recognizing these traits, I do admit to having second thoughts about whether I could pull this off and balance the idea of trying to do so, of stretching to find this guy’s most singular point of view, in the end I felt that the exercise of discovering where this man lived inside of me could very well be a challenge worth diving into. So I agreed to test.

Kurt wanted to work with me prior to going into the read. He said, “They didn’t see enough gallows humor in that last actor, that these violent guys have all this dark humor to them that, when added to their explosive natures, provides them with real dimension. I want to bring that out in your reading.” So we worked on that. On the day of the test there were at least twenty people in the room watching my performance. Meanwhile, I was scheduled to be on a plane the next day to shoot two movies back to back, one in Detroit and one in Romania, but as I was walking out of the room, all I was thinking about was, “I just nailed this fucker!”

I drove home from 20th Century Fox, which is about an hour drive in rush hour—they always seem to schedule these fucking meetings in rush hour. I know I’m going to get a phone call before I even hit Santa Monica Boulevard, which is two blocks away from the Fox Lot, telling me that I got the show. But the phone didn’t ring. I got home. No call. Half-hour went by—nuthin’. Another hour went by. Finally my manager called and said, “I hope you are sitting down.”

“Okay, I’m sitting,” I said. “Talk to me!”

“They love you,” he said. “But they need you to come in again.”

“Are you nuts?” I said. “I’m on a plane first thing in the morning. All I got time to do is pack for two time zones and then catch some fuckin’ Zs.”

He said, “Calm down and listen to me. They thought you were really good, they loved the intelligence and the humor of the guy, but they’re a little worried you’re not tough enough.”

“Oh really? You want to know how fucking tough I am? Tell them to go fuck themselves. If they don’t know by now how fuckin’ tough I
am, they ain’t never gonna know. Here’s what I know: I’m on a plane tomorrow for two fucking movies. I get the job, I don’t get the job—I don’t give a fuck.” And I hung up.

So my manager, Erik, called them back and told them that. Verbatim. He phoned back in five minutes and said, “I told them exactly what you said. They said, ‘Oh yeah, well, fuck him . . . He’s got the job!’”

There is no question the impact this show had not only on me but also on the network and, indeed, the entire trajectory of cable television, which was already beginning to trend as the new haven for the most original, cutting-edge storytelling in any medium. We came along just as the show that branded FX,
The Shield
, was coming to the end of its magnificent run. So to say that the timing for us to emerge was felicitous would have been an understatement. Not only that, but at the same time as us, other cable networks boasted the likes of
Mad Men
,
Breaking Bad
,
Dexter
, and
Burn Notice
, to name a few. It was a glorious time. And it gave way to the current crop, which includes
The Newsroom
,
Game of Thrones
,
True Detective
,
Ray Donovan
, and
House of Cards
. So our little motorcycle drama made some noise. As to how much noise, I don’t think anyone would have dared to imagine what would ensue.

By the end of season one we were starting to break network records for ratings and viewership that
The Shield
had set. At the beginning of season two we became the highest-rated show in the history of FX. And for the next five years we kept shattering our own records. In fact, every year the
New York Times
business section published an article illuminating what our one show meant to the bottom line of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s sprawling empire. There was joy in Mudville, you betcha.

For my part, I loved going to work on that show, especially in the early going, when riding the wave was fresh and new. Because there were a lot of veterans on that show, myself included, who knew that that kind of success wasn’t a given, that it was rare and that the odds of all the elements that need to align in order to make that kind of
success possible were far and away against us. And I loved the guys: Coates and Rossi, Hunnam and Hurst, Flanagan and Boone, Lucking, Siff, Sagal, and Rivera. And then all the ones who came along down the road: the Kenny Johnsons, the Tim Murphys. And I loved sitting around that reaper table, in the chapel, gavel in front of me, stoagy smoking in the ashtray, surrounded by those guys. It was among the greatest ensembles of actors I ever had the honor to be around. And, indeed, yes: there
was
joy in Mudville.

The bond that existed among our group in the early years, how much all us guys liked being in each other’s presence, was true, and we had some great times. Later, of course, the story went off in a direction that made everybody very uncomfortable, and a palpable stress crept over the set. Working under those conditions affected all, including me. Eventually I could see that I began to become iced out of the group on a story level. It became clear that as this dynamic of the story changed, people around me started to act differently—not just to me, but also differently. So I sensed among the other players that in the environment being created for us, it might be a little bit dangerous to be Perlman’s friend, because obviously Perlman’s not going to be around for much longer. My character was going off in a completely separate storyline from the original core ensemble he once epitomized. Clay Morrow was being set up to be a pariah, an outcast, a persona non grata, and it was beginning to look like there was nothing but inevitability that his very existence was nothing short of intolerable. Funny how a manufactured reality can start to blur its way into reality itself, because ultimately it did. And by the end of the show I wasn’t very close to anybody.

As for the rest, suffice it to say that our collective time characterized itself with dramatic swings from the highest of highs to . . . well, and as I learned so thoroughly in therapy, highs
that
high don’t come free of charge. I mean, clearly, for six years the blessings that were anointed on me for having the luck to land on that show rivaled any I had experienced heretofore. Clearly the show touched off an unbelievable reaction in the public, with people on the six continents I traversed during
that time in a frenzied state to share their enthusiasm with me: “Yo, Clay, great fucking show, dude!” Or, “Yo, Clay, not sure whether I hate you or love you, dude!” Either way, it was intense. And clearly, for six beautiful years I got to be around a crew who had enough heart to get ya to the moon and back. And clearly, FX, et al.—the Landgrafs, the Schriers and the Grads, the Sohlbergs and the Pagones, the LaTorres and the Brochsteins and so many others who had become like family to me—were the smartest, warmest, most visionary set of execs I ever had the pleasure to know, to work alongside. And boy, it got to be fun watching us set new bars year in and year out in terms of audience enthusiasm. Good times. Blessed times. A lotta joy in Mudville!

So I guess ya gotta be ready to take the fat with the skinny. I guess ya can’t expect life to be all peaches and herb. ’Cuz after all, it was the little things that I missed: the joy that comes with the knowledge that collaboration is not only welcomed but insisted upon; the unencumbered feeling that one could take huge risks in finding the operatic nature of these extremely extreme characters and it would be appreciated, cherished even; the pride of ownership that comes with knowing one’s contributions were admired and respected—ya know, the little things. I mean you’d have to be a fuckin’ idiot to think you could get all that on top of the glory of making history every day. And I guess just knowing how lucky we all were wasn’t enough; we hadta be reminded of it every fuckin’ day, like a fuckin’ kid whose nose gets rubbed in the chocolate cake he has the balls to not finish. So, yeah, there were
clearly
some little things some of us missed. And clearly that beautiful, ethereal, magical little canvas I tried to paint in the beginning of this chapter, the one that
Hand of God
exemplified with so much elegance and grace, was MIA on the set of
Sons
. ’Cuz in order for that world to be even possible, the guy at the top, the tone-setter, has to be kind, generous, sharing, and secure enough with his own sense of worth that the creativity of others does not make him feel threatened. It’s a lot to ask, I know. All that and ratings too. Who the fuck do I think I am?!

You must trust me when I tell you how much I have struggled with myself as to how much of this I should write and how much of it I
should simply move on from. But if you’ve learned anything about me in reading up to this point, then you must know the lengths and depths of my passion for this, the greatest art form ever invented. And what a select club it is. And what a privilege it is to be one of the rare ones who doesn’t get left by the side of the road but who gets to participate in something that is this precious, this phenomenal. And when I see someone who is fortunate enough to be welcomed into that most exclusive of clubs but chooses to sully that tradition, someone who never for a moment is humble enough to understand that he or she is a tiny addition who will come and go but instead stands on the shoulders of true greatness, my blood boils.