Happy Accidents (21 page)

The set and production offices were housed on one floor of an office building in Topanga Canyon. The show was shot guerrilla-style, with two handheld digital cameras. After we had stumbled our way through the first episode, I had lost all faith in Guy Shalem as a director. The soft-spoken and retiring young man from the rehearsal day was gone, and in his place was this thirty-two-year-old Israeli upstart who would shout senseless direction while never looking up from behind his handheld monitor.

In the middle of a scene where I was telling the receptionist about my vacation, he yelled, “Tell her she’s terrible at her job!”

I looked over to Guy in disbelief and shouted back, “Why would I do that? What has she done to justify my demeaning her like that?”

“Fire her!” he yelled.

I was dumbfounded. It almost felt like he was speaking to us as if we were chess pieces, not actors. When he had that monitor in hand he seemed to be in a zone where we as people did not exist. In between takes, he returned to being the sweet and shy Guy I had met the first day, but I ignored him and gave him no love.

When you’re improvising, you let it all hang out, you’re not editing yourself; it’s a very vulnerable place to be and you count on your director/editor to keep an eye not only on the story but on you as an actor so you don’t look like a fool. I didn’t trust Guy, and the exposure risk made me cranky. The fact that he would be the one editing the show only served to make me regret having agreed to be in it.

Though I felt like I started to find my stride during the second episode, I was still very skeptical about Guy’s abilities and I did nothing to hide that wariness; I was now giving him the stink-eye with every piece of direction he gave me.

Even though I was a bitch with him, he was still nice to me. During a break one day, he smiled cheerily and motioned me into the editing room: “Hey, Jane. I finished cutting the first episode and I want you to watch it.” He left me alone with the remote, and I watched the first episode of
Lovespring International
. He came back in all cocky and “Do you trust me now?” I was not just relieved, I was elated. “I love it. I would have never thought you’d . . . I can’t believe . . .” Words escaped me. From the opening credits all the way through to the end, I was just delighted. It was a show I would enjoy watching.

Looking at Guy’s edits, I could tell he wasn’t afraid to let a scene breathe. Unlike the typical sitcom, in which every moment lands with a thud and a guffaw,
Lovespring International
flowed more like a British comedy, with ample room for the sly and subtle along with the big laughs. I had been afraid the more understated moments would be lost, but Guy had caught them. In terms of my appraisal of Guy as an editor, a director, and a person, the page had turned. I started to understand the wisdom of his style: he was trying to shake us up, so we’d do something different and out of the ordinary. It worked and made for some outlandishly funny moments.

Over time, I developed an implicit trust in Guy and I couldn’t wait to get to work every day. I felt that I had asked the universe for a regular gig, and with it I had also gotten a lesson. By sticking around in one place, I was able to see past my initial impressions and assumptions about someone, and to see as well the limitations of my judgment about how he did things. I was also fortunate that Guy forgave my bitchiness and we became friends.

Lovespring
itself did not have such a happy outcome. The show not only had trouble getting the ratings we needed to stay on the air, but we actually angered the Lifetime network’s loyal viewers:
Lovespring
had replaced one of the several daily reruns of
The
Golden Girls
when we took the (apparently coveted)
11
 
P.M.
slot on Mondays. The network not only received vehement complaints, but angry middle-aged housewives took to the message boards to insult the hair and figures of our female cast members, myself included
.
After thirteen delightful episodes, the plug was pulled on
Lovespring International,
and
I went back to being a jobber.

Me and Guy.

Photo courtesy of Timothy Norris/Stringer/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Looking back, I can see that my guest-spot gigs
evolved over time. When I first started getting them, back in the nineties, I would be in one episode of a show and play characters who were written to be forgotten the minute they left the screen. By the time I was doing
The L Word
, I was being offered characters who would appear in multiple episodes and would be an important part of the plotline. These roles would give me more of a sense of belonging within the cast of the show, or would at least give me more of a chance to grow as an actor and person. Some of them were also very enjoyable, for a variety of reasons.

One of the most entertaining started while I was doing a single guest spot for a forgotten series. I was guest starring with a fellow actor I had seen around town but didn’t really know. As actors are wont to do, we immediately told each other our life stories in between takes. His was an absolute doozy.

When he had been living in San Francisco as a young, deeply closeted gay man, he had wanted help with his inability to have sex with women. He didn’t actually have a problem, of course, because he was gay, and gay men aren’t supposed to want to have sex with women. But he hadn’t figured that out yet, so he went to a female sexual surrogate, a therapist who actually has sex with clients to help them overcome fears of intimacy. I had never heard of this, but apparently it’s legal in some states; you can actually get a license for it.

As the therapist makes love with you, she talks to you every step of the way, explaining what she is going to do, asking you how it feels and if you like it. (His story completely turned me on, and I began wondering if there was a porno movie out there with this plot.) These methods, however, would not work for someone like my friend, whose issue had been that he didn’t want to be gay. When his sex therapist informed him that the following week’s lesson would be cunnilingus, he quit.

Oddly enough, about a year later I got cast on
Boston Legal
to play . . . wait for it . . . a sexual surrogate therapist.

My character, Joanna Monroe, was the former sex therapist of Alan Shore (played by James Spader). She was called back into action because Alan’s friend, who had Asperger’s syndrome, had fallen in love with his blow-up sex doll and needed her help. Her license had expired because, who’d have thunk it, her husband wanted her out of the sex game, but nevertheless, she agreed to help.

I couldn’t wait. I had the story I’d found fascinating the year before to use as background research, and although I was kind of embarrassed because the script called for me to drop my robe and stand virtually naked in a room full of cast and crew who were strangers to me, I was excited to try my hand at being intimate with a clinical bent.

I ended up having fun with the whole run. Joanna Monroe would eventually be busted for prostitution while in bed with the client, and Alan Shore would successfully defend her. I recurred in this role for three more episodes, at the end of which Joanna (with Alan as her lawyer) would prevent her now ex-husband from taking her daughter away from her. (He had this funny thing about his kid’s mother being in the sex trade.)

Despite the fast pace of the shooting on this show, James Spader and I had some really lovely talks, and I found him to be extremely smart and deeply thoughtful. Though I never saw him be anything but courteous to everyone on that set, I could sense that he was not a man who suffered fools. Almost as if explaining what I was thinking, he offered this: “A long time ago I asked myself, do I want to be right or do I want to be kind? I opted for kind.” This little piece of wisdom reverberated through my occasionally bitchy self.

I saw James perform a four-page closing argument in one flawless take. He always had reams of dialogue and he was always off book and word perfect. You had to be when you worked for David Kelley. Though I never actually laid eyes on him, David Kelley’s words were known to be meticulously crafted, and were to be spoken
as written
. Even though I have a lot of improvisation under my belt, I don’t mind in the least speaking someone else’s words. It’s almost a relief. I’m a pretty quick study and enjoy the certainty of knowing exactly what I’m going to say.

But nonetheless, one day on the set, for the life of me, I could not remember my lines. In the scene, Joanna Monroe was testifying in an effort to keep her daughter, when I was suddenly afflicted with a terrible case of actor fog. It was the moment of my close-up, a shot that included an intricate camera move initiated by a line in my monologue, but because I kept blowing the lines, the camera kept having to go all the way back to the beginning position (which was an ordeal) and we would have to start all over. Now, in my defense, I can say the speech was wordy and full of run-on sentences, though I am sure it was written that way intentionally. I kept blowing it, take after take after take, on and on for what felt like hours. The crew must have been frustrated and the cast bored. (Lainie Kazan was playing the judge, and every time I looked up at her I was more thrown off, because she was sound asleep.) And then in the midst of it all, we had to stop shooting, because it was my birthday and someone had brought a cake.

I felt like an amateur. The marvelous actress Pamela Adlon, who was playing my husband’s attorney, will always have my love and undying gratitude for her comforting words, actor-to-actor: “Jane, it happens to all of us. We all go brain dead. Today it’s your turn.”

It was my turn. Happy Birthday!

When I got the call to audition for the role of
the psychiatrist on
Two and a Half Men
, I was excited for about a minute before realizing I couldn’t make it on the day they wanted me to read. Chuck Lorre cast me anyway. I learned firsthand a very valuable lesson: the more unavailable you are, the more they want you.

It was the second year of the series, and as Dr. Linda Freeman I was, at first, the psychiatrist for Jake, the kid played by Angus T. Jones. Before the end of that season, Dr. Freeman would have therapy sessions with both Alan, played by Jon Cryer, and Charlie (Sheen). Eventually, she was sitting down with just Charlie.

This role was layered with irony: as our characters went through the motions, both the doctor and the patient knew full well that any hope for therapeutic change on Charlie’s part was futile. In his constant pursuit of gratification, the character Charlie would return to therapy whenever he ran into a barrier he couldn’t skirt. I, as the therapist, enjoyed dryly busting his chops.

I absolutely loved locking eyes with him and playing these incredibly well-crafted scenes. If we could get through those several-page scenes all in one take, which we managed to do much of the time, it felt like a great accomplishment. Although a few of my appearances were pretaped, most were performed in front of the live audience, which always added a punch of adrenaline.

I would be invited back to the show three, sometimes four, times every year, and I was always thrilled to get the call. The writing was just outstanding and it was a very happy set, and Charlie Sheen was also such a pro. Our scenes could sometimes be up to eight pages long, and I’d work my butt off to learn the lines. Meanwhile, Charlie had not only our scene to learn but the entire rest of the show; he was always in almost every scene, with the show taped in front of a live audience. Twenty-some shows a season for so many years: he was a machine. He was also a kindhearted gentleman who was loved by the cast and crew. He further won me over by texting words of praise to me whenever he happened to catch me in a guest spot or movie.

Though I still longed for my own regular gig, I thoroughly enjoyed returning to see friends.

Friends were also great because they kindly remembered me when they were looking to cast projects they were working on. When I had worked with Paul Rudd on
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
, he told me about some projects he was hoping to produce. One was a TV series about caterers in Hollywood; the other was a movie about energy drink salesmen. We both had wanted to work together again, and he had said he’d be in touch. Then one day, I got the call.

Paul was developing the catering TV series with the creative team behind
Veronica Mars
: Rob Thomas, Dan Etheridge, and John Enbom. I had done a guest spot on that show and I had really enjoyed working with them. For this series, each show would be set at a different catering gig around Los Angeles and would focus on the personalities and relationships of the waiters. Instead of pitching the idea around to get a pilot deal, as is customary in Hollywood, they’d decided to shoot it on their own nickel and shop that around. In June of
2007
, we all got together at Rob’s house in the Hollywood Hills and shot the first episode of
Party Down
. Because they were paying for it themselves, the pilot was shot on a shoestring budget. Between shots we all hung out in Rob’s bedroom getting to know each other and laughing a lot. I’ve found that doing something for fun and almost for free (we each got $
100
for the day) can bring out the best in people. Plus, there’s nothing like undressing in front of folks you just met to inspire humility and togetherness.