It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (45 page)

Ah, the glamour of show business.

OCTOBER 24, 2006 -
CELEBRITY SIGHTING FEST

For the last three days it has been a celebrity sighting-fest, some sightings on happy occasions, some on sad ones.

Saturday night I went out to dinner with friends to Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Blvd in Beverly Hills. This is a restaurant that has been around forever and its clientele is a mix of young Hollywood and where old Hollywood goes to die... I mean dine. It starts with the hostess who just happens to be Miles Davis' wife... and she lets you know it. "Can I show you to your seat? As my husband Miles Davis used to say..."  The only other place you ever see this is in Palm Springs where everyone was someone once. You walk into Denny's and the hostess used to be a Ziegfeld Girl or the busboy was head of development at Paramount. It's just weird.  Anyway, back to Hamburger Hamlet. When you walk through the dining room and it's like being at the MGM Cafeteria in 1943 with Myrna Loy and Clark Gable only these diners have bibs on and don't know where they are.  At any given table is an 89-year-old woman with bleach blonde hair, wearing enough jewelry to sink the Queen Mary. And it's very loud in there; everyone is shouting things like "THE BRUSSEL SPOUTS ARE GOOD TONIGHT."

I get seated in a booth. I look up and Nicholas Cage is sitting across the aisle from me...two feet. Now I am not a fan. He makes me uncomfortable on screen. But there is one film he did that I could watch over and over, "National Treasure."  I love that film. LOVE IT! It's an action adventure based on U.S. History. It's one of the smartest films written in many years. I could watch it 600 hundred times. However I digress, this night Cage has neck length hair dyed jet black and is sporting two major tattoos. He's got a script on the table from CAA and I hear him pitching a movie to an actress that no one in our party knew. It was so Hollywood and so strange because you want to stare but you can't. Every so often you give a little look/see. Twice I did that and Cage was look/seeing me. I wonder who he thought I was?

Sunday night I went to Brentwood and had dinner at "A Votre Sante", a very nice, organic, down to earth, Birkenstock and IPod kind of place. I had the falafel wrap, looked up to see Cheech Marin was sitting across the table from me. Eating out in LA is like going on a safari in Africa. You don't know what you're going to see but you're bound to see something interesting.

Monday was a rather somber day. Monica Johnson is a top Hollywood writer. She wrote all the Albert Brooks films... "Mother", "The Muse", "Lost in America" and lots, lots more.  She is one of the funniest writers in town, a sweetheart of a person and a friend for over thirty years. Her brother was Jerry Belson and he passed away last week. Jerry was the creative force behind some of televisions funniest and finest shows. He wrote on the Dick Van Dyke Show, The Odd Couple, Mary Tyler Moore and on and on and on. He wrote the films "Smile" and "The End". His memorial was yesterday and the stars of comedy writers came out to pay tribute to him.  It was the warmest, more sincere expression of love that I have seen in this town in a long time. Gary Marshall hosted it at his Falcon Theater in Burbank. Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner, Tracy Ullman, Albert Brooks, Penny Marshall and many, many more spoke glowing tributes of their dear departed friend. As I looked around the room I could see just how much Jerry was loved. I don't think a single person in comedy was not there. And because of it... we laughed and we laughed long and hard. It's the most fitting way for a comedy writer, a comedian, comedy actor to leave this life; giving them the laughter back that they have given to the world.

(Side note: In my will it is instructed to have my tombstone read. "Willing to sublet." I want people to laugh when they come to my grave not cry.)

The one thing I noticed at the service was how different comedy writers are from comedians. At the service they showed a series of pictures taken of Jerry and his writer friends. They would meet every five years and take the same picture. It was an expression of kinsmanship that you don't see amongst comedians. Writers, although they can be neurotic, are basically givers. They give their words to actors and so they are basically, under all the bullshit, people with the capacity to let others take the spotlight. Comedians are takers, look at me; validate me people. For the most part they are not givers. I cannot imagine a group of comedians meeting every five years to take a picture with it ending with the arrival of the SWAT team. It just doesn't happen.  But seeing those pictures of Jerry and his friends it just reminded me how much I love writing and giving my words to the world. For me, writing really is an act of love. Jerry mastered that art.

The service was three hours long but felt like five minutes. The only fly in the ointment was a rather disappointing reunion with someone I hadn't seen in 25 years, Frank M.  Frank had been brought to LA by Joan Rivers to write jokes for her. He is a rather rotund person, maybe 300 or 400 pounds. At one point Joan and I had the same manager and she told me she'd found the most wonderful writer. I called Frank and we worked together on material I would use in Vegas.  He was a young kid when he got here and didn't have a car. I would pick him up and drop him off at his apartment in North Hollywood. I liked him a lot and knew that he would be a success in this town. He was very talented.

Well, who should sit next to me at yesterday's service but Frank M? I was excited and happy to see him. "Frank. How the hell are you."  And he turned to me as if I was a fly he was about to brush away. "Hello." And sat down. I begin to ask him how he's doing and what he's up to. I'm getting nothing back. And I mean nothing. It was so uncomfortable that I just turned away and spoke to the person on the other side of me. He did not say a word to me the entire service and when we got up to leave he said, "Nice to see you." with such disdain I almost said something.  Now here's the interesting thing. I wasn't hurt. I didn't care. I just felt, "How sad, how very, very sad that someone can change that much." But the truth of the matter is this. It's not him. It's me.

When I make a friend I hold them in my heart forever. If I see them every ten days or every ten years, they are still a part of my history. But I'm learning that most people are not like that. Most people don't hold on to friends that pass through their life. Once they are gone they are forgotten. And so I had been forgotten as Frank moved on in his life. That's how it is, I guess. What can I do about it? Nothing. However, the ones that do care like Robbie and Sandy and Jon and Larry and Monica and Carole and on and on... those are the ones I have to be thankful for.

After the service I got to talk to several people I haven't seen in years. It was so good to see so many of those people again; one in particular was Carl Klineschmidt. Carl was the head writer on The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, my first big writing job. And he taught me everything I ever knew about writing. He was at the memorial service and was as warm and friendly as if it had been 30 minutes instead of 30 years. I saw many other people there as well. This was the core of the Hollywood Comedy Community and they had come together to say good-bye to one of their own. But if a good thing can come out of a memorial service it's to see that even comedy people have real heart. When Gary Marshall summed up the event and was saying good-bye to his dear friend and first writing partner, he cried openly. It was an expression of love that you don't see too often in Hollywood and I felt honored to be present and to be part of it.

Rest in peace, Jerry. God is in for some really incredible laughs.

OCTOBER 30, 2006 -
NONIE BREEN

You've heard me mention Nonie Breen, right? Nonie was a writer on Candid Camera with me. She was the one who laughed during the meeting with Allan Funt and got me in trouble. In any case, Nonie is a friend. She called me from the road and it opened up a whole floodgate of memories.

The day I interviewed with Vinnie Da Bona for the job, there was a woman sitting in the lobby across from me. I remember it like it was yesterday because we kept looking at each other and smiling like we were a couple of moron candidates. I got the gig and on the first day of the job I meet this woman, Nonie Breen, who I had been staring at in the lobby. Nonie was married, at the time, to Danny Breen of "Not Necessarily The News". Years later they would separate and Danny would go on to win a couple of Emmys for writing on shows like "Ellen". Nonie has a kind of energy around her that just pulls you in. At the time we worked together she had two small children and so her desk was covered with kid pictures. Nonie and I just hit it off like we had known each other for years.  I would say to her, "Oh are those the children you're neglecting while you're here?" And she would tell me to "fuck off". Those are the best kind of friends to make, the ones you can torment immediately and cannot only take it but give it right back.  Those are the ones you keep for life.

We worked on this hell of a show for about a month. The conditions were horrific and it bonded us together like inmates on a road gang. We would eat together, hang out together, steal office supplies together... we were a unit.   At this point in my life I had kind of let myself go. I would wear the same six things over and over and I didn't care what condition they were in or what they looked like. I remember Nonie coming up to me on a day as I was wearing my reindeer cardigan sweater.  She wanted to know if I had gotten it on sale at the 99-cent store. Then she added "You're such a good looking guy, why don't you do something with yourself?" "Like what?" I asked. "Oh I don't know, maybe buy some clothes that don't look like you got them from the Goodwill box." This was the first time anyone had told me I looked like I came to work in my pajamas. "Really? Where should I buy clothes?"  And without missing a beat Nonie said, "J. Crew."

The next day off I went into a J. Crew store at the mall. Shirts were $65.00, pants $125.00.  I was buying my clothes at second hand stores for $4.00 back then and I fled J. Crew for my life. I couldn't spend that kind of money on myself. The next day at work I said to Nonie, "Do you know how much clothes are at J. Crew?" And Nonie said, "Give me a break. You're making three grand a week here and you've got no kids. Buy yourself some effing clothes."  Well that night I went over to the Churukians for dinner. Mark Churukian sees me and screams upstairs to his mother. "Hey Mom, Steve's here... you should see what he's wearing."  That was it. Two people in two weeks told me I looked homeless. I'm going to J. Crew.

My first shopping spree at J. Crew was a bit manic, $1400.00.  Two weeks later I went back and spent another $1000.00. This is more money than I spent on clothes in the last ten years. I went to work with my new J. Crew stuff and Nonie was all over me like white on rice. "Oh honey, you look so good. Now, let's work on the hair."  I was no longer allowed to go to Supercuts. I had to go to Beverly Hills.  I must admit it was an extreme make over of the best kind. I felt good about myself. I was getting compliments and I finally had learned that I deserve to look good.

(Here's a little side note. Nonie told me this in 1994. I am still shopping at J. Crew. As a matter of fact Nonie says if I buy one more plaid shirt she's going to set my closet on fire. )

So I've got my new wardrobe and I'm taking Nonie out to lunch. We get to my car and I hear. "That's your car?" At the time I was driving a black Pontiac Trans Am with T-roof, four on the floor and mag wheels.  "Yeah, that's my car. Why?"  And she says, "It looks like something a Puerto Rican teenager takes to the prom."  And from that moment on my car was dubbed the Puerto Rican Prom car.  The writers would tease me about my car. Max Mutchnick was the worst. "Oh nice car, Steve, did it come with dice?"

Carol Propp, of "you should start a book" fame, was also working on that show with us and she had just bought a new Lexus. She took us all down to see it. I sat in the front seat; Nonie was in the back. "Steve. Buy a car like this."  So here's how my mind works. I could not buy a Lexus. I didn't deserve it. I couldn't afford it. I shouldn't have it. I'm buying a Mazda. I take my friend Gary Bernstein with me to make the deal because there is no one better at deal making then this guy. He takes one look at the Mazda and says, "Why are you buying a Mazda? You need something that will keep its value." "Really. Like what?" "Like a Lexus."

He takes me to the Lexus dealership and I drive one off the showroom floor. I call Nonie and she laughing hysterically! "You didn't. Tell me you didn't buy a Lexus because I told you to!"

Now you have to understand it's because of my friends I'm dressed in J. Crew and driving a Lexus. See why I love my friends so much? My friends truly are the parents I never had. They give to me what I always needed and it's why I love each and every one of them to death... and past death.

Nonie is currently touring the country as the Nun in "Late Night Catechism". If she comes to your town, you have to go see her. I went to her show in Pasadena and almost wet myself I laughed so hard.

Post Script:

I sent Nonie a rough copy of this entry to make sure I had all the facts correct. Here's what she wrote back to me: