Mother, Can You Not? (9 page)

Was this the site of a sneak-attack surprise party? Were all my friends about to emerge from their hiding places?

My mother folded her arms impatiently. “Well? What do you think?!”

I looked around, confused. “Um, about the house? It’s lovely. Who lives here? Also, can I use the bathroom?” A fresh wave of hangover-related nausea coursed through my body.

“WE DO! We bought it, and we’re moving from Los Angeles to be close to you! Your father, Roxy, Bella, Murphy, Thor, Mooey Louie, Lola, and Ozzycat! And the fish! Happy birthday!”

I stood there for a moment, stunned.

“Well!?” my mother prompted.

And then I threw up.

O
n February 11, 2011, I was in a gay bar in rural New Jersey, standing next to my mother, while a lesbian stripper pulled down my shirt and tried to lick my nipple. How did we get here?

It all started in 1971 on Broadway in New York City.
Relax, the chapter is only twelve pages, I’m not going to take you through a comprehensive history of musical theater.
At the time, Joe Papp was one of the most important people in American theater, and during my mother’s first year in the directing program at NYU-Tisch, she decided to write him a brassy, deeply personal letter. The note insisted that he hire her to direct a production of Shakespeare’s
The Comedy of Errors,
and further, that her concept for the play would revolutionize theater. To recap, my mother told the man who
was responsible for
Hair,
one of the most controversial, groundbreaking musicals in history, a man whose legacy has enabled five million people and counting to see brilliant, star-studded productions of Shakespeare’s work for free in Central Park…she told this man that
she
was going to define his career.

In a move that I can only imagine came out of sheer curiosity as to what kind of raving lunatic would have the ovaries big enough to write him such a thing, Joe Papp called her. “Hi, is Kim Friedman there? It’s Joseph Papp calling.” Believing it was her best friend pulling a prank, my mother said the following words to a man who, again, is an American theatrical treasure: “FUCK YOU, RICHARD! YOU’RE NOT FUNNY! SO JUST GO FUCK YOURSELF, OKAY?!” And then she hung up.

Miraculously, Mr. Papp called back and eventually gave her a job. Not directing, of course; I believe the official job description read “Coffee Bitch.” But fetching coffee and lemonade for the actors in his productions was her big break and led to a career of directing plays
for Joe Papp at the Public Theater in New York. Unfortunately, the success of that letter taught my mother a dangerous lesson that would inform her behavior for years to come and eventually haunt her then unborn child. Put simply: It pays to take risks.

When it was time for me to start my career, my mom wanted me to apply this same principle that had worked so well for her when she was starting as a young professional in New York. I was too insecure to admit to her or to myself that I really wanted to write, so I was applying for tangential creative jobs in the entertainment industry. “You have to stop being so timid. You need to grab people’s attention; they are sifting through thousands of résumés, and you need to stand out.”

Some of her fantastic job-application ideas:

While I’m fairly certain that hand delivering my application to a theater production company and then breaking out into
A Chorus Line
’s “I Hope I Get It!” in the lobby (another actual idea she proposed) would have stood out in the wrong way, she was right. The job market was terrible, and I was trying to break into the entertainment industry, where even unpaid internship positions have a 1 percent acceptance rate. The acceptance rate for Harvard University is 5.9 percent.

“Don’t be so traditional! You’re whining about how hard it is to get a job? Cry me a river! You think Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs whined? No, they worked their butts off and made something HAPPEN!” Her point was that I should channel ole Zuck’s entrepreneurial spirit and create my own job or, at the very least, do something so impressive that every employer would be clamoring to hire me. For an English major at
a liberal arts college with essentially zero life skills, the question became:
how?

I found my answer in the controversial reality television series
Jersey Shore
.
Naturally.
The show was on the air while I was in college, and I got my mother hooked on Snooki, JWoww, and the rest of the gang during my junior year. After one particularly insane episode, I texted my mom:

I was neck deep in gender studies at that point.

And this was the conversation that spawned my
Gay Jersey Shore
idea.
I may not know how to balance a checkbook, but I can operate a video camera!
The plan during my senior year became: “I’ll create my own reality show, it’ll OF COURSE get on TV, and then I’ll either have my own production company or other companies begging me to come work for them!” My mother was thrilled with my delusional plan.

While the notion of starting a company and impressing potential employers with a professional industry credit are theoretically great ideas, there were a few major flaws with my master plan:

My mother thought it was a “killer” idea, agreed to mentor me through the production elements, and jumped fully on board. I planned to find a bunch of sexually diverse youths with interesting stories, put them together in a house, let the cameras roll, and then
cut together a flashy sizzle reel of characters to sell as a TV show. With no budget, the house in which we would ultimately film several weeks’ worth of utterly insane footage would be ours! My mom, our producing partner Lauren, and I operated the cameras, and my father cooked for the thirty reality-TV hopefuls running around our home. I’m 86 percent sure two strangers had sex in my bed and 100 percent certain that my father was propositioned by a gorgeous transgender woman who loved his (admittedly fantastic) chicken wing recipe.

Long before our house could become a reality TV sex den, I had to organize a casting call to find our stars. My mother’s professional directing credits, combined with the fact that the idea of doing a gay rip-off of
Jersey Shore
was an understandably controversial concept, resulted in several write-ups about our upcoming auditions in local Jersey and Philly publications. In my mind, I was already nominated for an Emmy. Move over
Hoop Dreams,
here comes
Gay Jersey Shore
!

Honestly, the intent was never to exploit the LGBT community—from my perspective, it was shitty that the
only gay characters on reality shows on mainstream television were either homosexual or lesbian (maybe bi), and the complex, diverse spectrum of sexuality was being overly simplified and underrepresented.

In retrospect, a party-centric, booze-fueled reality television show
may
not have been the proper vehicle for a nuanced exploration of human sexuality. And what network was this going to be on? Bravo? Can’t you just hear Andy Cohen? “You love
The Real Housewives of New York
? Well, up next we have
The Real Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Questioning Intersex Asexual Allies of Atlantic City
!”

That said, the local stories about the casting call generated a huge amount of interest, and we convinced several gay bars around New Jersey and Philly to host casting nights for us and even to promote the event with their customers.

On the day of our first casting session, my mother, our producing partner, my dad, and I arrived at a tiny gay bar in Hammonton, New Jersey, with a helium tank, cameras, and a dream. By 6 p.m. the line of hopefuls was two blocks long. By 9 p.m. there were so many
people, it was becoming completely unmanageable, and we forced my dad (who was only there to help decorate) to work.

My poor father was tasked with completing a preliminary interview with candidates before they were sent in to talk to us on camera. His goal was to give us a little background going into the interviews. My shy dad was shouting the following questions over loud club music all night:

While these questions seem innocuous enough, he was getting answers like:

As you can imagine, the people who showed up for what was advertised in the press as a
Jersey Shore
–ish reality show casting call were a little bit wild. By the end of the night, I had been licked, my mother both gave and received a lap dance, and my father took part in a dance-off. Oh, and the police arrived at 2 a.m. to shut down the event. My first casting call was a success! Huzzah!

After weeks of filming strangers in our house, I was convinced I was the next Shonda Rhimes. I edited together a sizzle reel of all the characters we selected, and I managed to convince a real Hollywood agent to try to sell the project! I AM SHONDA RHIMES; HEAR ME ROAR!

Predictably though, the show did
not
sell, and I was back facing potential postgrad unemployment in New York.

Even though it didn’t work out, I am grateful my mother encouraged me to try this. Putting together this project bolstered my entrepreneurial spirit and emphasized the value of taking risks, of having the courage to try things I believe in, no matter how slim the chances of success might seem.

Was it scary for my mother to write a brassy, deeply personal letter to an iconic theater producer? Absolutely. Was it terrifying as a senior in college to march into a fancy Hollywood agency and try to convince people to take my project seriously? You bet! But taking that leap, even though the show didn’t sell, made me realize that failure wasn’t the mortifying, apocalyptic disaster I had imagined it would be. It was sort of an “oh, that’s it?” moment. Then bring it on! And on a practical level, the experience prepared me for a job I would later get at Condé Nast, producing digital video. Though no one ever tried to lick my nipple while I was shooting for
Teen Vogue
.