I'm Not Dead... Yet! (48 page)

“Huh?”

“Can you operate today?

“Uh, no.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Uh, no.”

“How does Wednesday look for you?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess I could do Wednesday.”I was a problem-solver from Hollywood. I had a problem. I wanted to solve it. Explaining to Karla...

...well—I’ll do it in movie terms:

Imagine the wide shot!

You see the entire hill and here comes the tractor coming right at you! And without CGI, it flies over the lens! Awesome shot! (Not such an awesome birthday present. I also found out something I never knew about Karla. She’s not a fan of groomed fields. She thinks weeds are beautiful.)

I had surgery on my shoulder on Wednesday. It didn’t go well. One of the screws used to keep my shoulder in place was too long and was coming out of my back. So Karla insisted that we go down to Charlotte and see the sports medicine people who work on the Carolina Panthers. They took X-rays and other imaging tests and saw that my cup was shattered and the screw was too long but I had also torn the ligament and muscle off my shoulder and it had taken up a new living space in my bicep. The Sports Medicine Doctor would try his best to pull that back up and re-attach it to the shoulder when he operated on me, but no promises on that one. Unfortunately, he couldn’t operate until the cup with the screws had healed and he could get the screws out and could start from scratch.

A ton of people told me I should sue the surgeon who did the initial shoulder surgery in Boone, N.C. But, how could I ever do that? I basically forced my way onto his schedule (let alone was the fool who rode a tractor down an ‘E’ ticket ride back at the homestead, having been specifically told and warned not to take the tractor up the hill). He did his best. Yes—he was a hand surgeon and didn’t do shoulders, but
I picked him
—he didn’t pick me.

I was in pain for about three months until the Carolina Panther surgeon decided that my broken cup was healed and ready to be operated on. It was quite an ordeal. I heard he had my body flopping all over the table when he was trying to get that long screw out of the bone. But he fixed my shoulder. I looked at it as if I was still doing films and this was just another stunt. No problem. Let’s get it fixed and move on. And that’s what happened. I still can’t hold the phone up to my ear with my left hand because my left shoulder can’t take it for more than 30 seconds but hey—whose fault is that? Unfortunately, I had to chalk up two more major surgeries to my list of hospital stays based to my stupidity.

I did lose all tractor rights going up the hill.

And a cow?

Well, we learned about miniature Jersey cows… Our remarkable neighbors, the Storie family, quietly decided to take the Benson family under their wing in all things farm related.

Lyric’s miniature Jersey yearling which she named “Run Lola Run” and our little four month old bottle fed bull calf “Vincent’s Starry Starry Night” finally arrived from Virginia. Their first night in our pasture we heard plaintive mooing echoing through the valley all night long. When we looked down in the morning little Vincent was gone. The Stories knew before we did. They showed up in our pasture with a group of nine people and spent twelve hours with us searching for our wayward Vincent. Marvin Storie raised cows and he said it was only natural: Vincent went looking for his mother’s milk. Our cow penning team on foot found Vincent two miles away across The Blue Ridge Parkway in another farmer’s herd of cows. Twelve hours spent helping their new neighbor. In L.A. you’d be lucky if a neighbor spent five minutes looking for your lost dog.

North Carolina Mountain hospitality
Storie
-style came again when a huge tree from the Blue Ridge Parkway fell over onto our driveway. We just happened to be looking out our window as it fell and it was a spectacular sight. (I’m always looking at things like a director and how it would photograph, rather than the immediate fact that we were trapped on our hill with no way in or out.)

Within minutes, without us making a single phone call, Marvin Storie and a truck full of men appeared down where the fifty foot tree fell. Using chains and chainsaws they cut the tree into moveable pieces. Before we could walk down the hill they were stacking the wood to dry for use in the coming winter. For our use. Not theirs. There was absolutely nothing in it for them; except the peace they felt
helping others in need
.

But the story of our first months in Boone, N.C. represented my heart having to face two more major surgeries—which meant more trauma and more anesthesia. I started to know what someone like Brett Fauvre felt like every time he got up in the mornings...

I didn’t mind leaving the beauty and peace
of our family home in the Blue Ridge Mountains to shoot a television episode or two in Los Angeles, knowing I was keeping up my working professional status as a professor and adding to our newly downsized income.

Only a few weeks after Karla and I moved to Boone we were saddened that Frank Borkowski left his position as Chancellor of Appalachian State for personal reasons. But I was not naive. I summed it up shortly into my first year at USC in Columbia: “There’s as much backstabbing in academia as in show business—only the stakes are so much lower.”

When I got the call to direct
8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter
starring John Ritter, I wasn’t sure what to expect on set. I knew he was a talented physical comedian, and I loved his dramatic crossover performance in
Sling Blade
. But it was the beginning of the second season on his show, and sitcom actors can be set in their ways. The day work began I asked him to try something a little different, and I got a rare and welcome response: “Sure. Let’s try!”

We were kindred souls—riffing on outrageous ideas. We started completing each others’ sentences. With a little work (reeled in from outrageous to hysterical) my time with John Ritter ended up being some of the most satisfying moments in my entire directing career. Like me,
he wasn’t afraid to fail;
he wasn’t afraid to
try
something that was surely doomed if not performed with 100 percent commitment. John gave that 100 percent with complete joyous abandon. Oh, how I loved him.

Karla and I laughed about the irony of us moving 3,000 miles away to finally find my perfect creative partner in television comedy. (And of course, thinking back—my parents were right. I did find my perfect fit…) I only had the opportunity to direct two episodes of
8 Simple Rules
—but they may have been the best ten days I’ve ever had on a sitcom. A week later on September 11, 2003, John died of an aortic dissection, likely caused by a undiagnosed congenital heart defect. I was not there that week, but I had the honor and privilege of directing the last two episodes of
8 Simple Rules
John Ritter completed.

There is no geographical boundary for talent
and I had a few gifted students in my classes at App State. I noticed I had problems getting up one flight of stairs just to get into the theater department’s building. My breathing was becoming more labored.

I tried playing basketball with some of the faculty members but I found myself at mid-court blacking out, still standing, but not knowing where I was when I came back to my senses, while a bunch of old hackers would say, “We’re too good for the
One On One
movie star!” I couldn’t jog, let alone run. As a matter of fact, I became so symptomatic, sometimes I could barely walk,
but I never missed a day of work.
..

Open Heart
,
the musical we had been working on since 1999, was picked up by fantastic producers. It would have its New York premiere at the historic Cherry Lane Theatre,

directed by my great friend Matt Williams,

and developed and produced by Artistic Director Angelina Fiordelissi (a remarkable woman).

It would star Karla DeVito,

Stan Brown (my former student at The University of South Carolina; a man who could sing better than any male singer I had ever been on stage with)

and… me.

I took my own advice: ‘Surround yourself with smarter and more talented people.
)

I was overwhelmed; so excited and pleased, but I was a mess physically. I needed another surgery and knew it—but the musical, and everything it represented, was so important to me.

I really didn’t know that my second surgery was a calamity. As far as I knew, I was in need of a third. I didn’t grok my place in the overall scheme of life and death. I only knew I had to keep moving forward and try to overcome all obstacles in order to get better. But honestly, I didn’t even know what ‘better’ meant. Hell, I just learned what grok means. (Great word…)

The audiences loved the show.
Open Heart
dealt with the importance of that last minute in a person’s life. Time. If we knew exactly when we were going to die, would we treat life differently?