Still Foolin' 'Em (22 page)

I loved talking to comics like Milton Berle and Red Buttons as much as I did old baseball players. After all the years on the road, they were still sharp and almost smelled of the nightclubs they had labored in for so many years. Buddy was interviewed by Rob Reiner in
Don’t Get Me Started,
and it plays as though he was being interviewed on
60 Minutes
. When I showed some footage to William Goldman, the ultimate screenwriter, he said, “He’s a funny Willy Loman.” I started writing the screenplay during the shooting of
City Slickers.
I wanted it to be a story of not only Buddy’s up-and-down stand-up career but also of his relationship with his sensitive brother, Stan. David Paymer was one of the “ice cream” brothers in
City Slickers.
He’s gentle and kind, and also very sharp and funny. He was the very soul of the character I wanted to create opposite the abrasive Buddy. We got along great while making
City Slickers,
and without him knowing it, I started crafting the part for him. When
City Slickers
was done shooting, I showed Ganz and Mandel what I had written, and they came on board to write the screenplay with me. Castle Rock was totally behind the picture. We had a sixty-three-day shooting schedule and on fifty-two of those days I would be in the old-age makeup. The other days I was Buddy in his thirties. This meant fifty-two days of five hours or so to put the makeup on, another hour or so during the day for touch-ups, and almost two hours to take it off properly without ravaging my skin. I don’t know how Joan Rivers does it. That doesn’t count the ten hours of shooting. The math was impossible. It was like a Republican budget plan: the numbers didn’t add up.

We did tremendous research to capture the look and feel of each time period. One day we were shooting in the childhood home of the Yankelman family (Yankelman was Mr. Young’s real name). The set was based on both my grandma’s house and that of our production designer, Albert Brenner. When it was done, we walked the set and I said it was perfect except for one important detail: “It doesn’t smell.” Albert knew instantly what I meant. So we sent out for chicken livers and onions and garlic. We got a take-out order of chicken soup from a nearby deli, and we cooked up the liver and onions and kept walking the familiar concoction around the set. We left open bowls of soup out overnight and rubbed cooked onions into the doorways. We even smoked a few cigars. It was like a mini Jewish Woodstock. The next morning, when the background artists who would play the family came in, they couldn’t believe how great it smelled. “It’s my house!” one exclaimed. Another said, “It’s my grandma’s place.” That’s the level of detail I aspired to and demanded that we achieve.

We started shooting in New York in early November. The leaves in Central Park were perfect—faded metaphors, I thought, for Buddy’s career. The first scenes to be shot were of old Buddy and Stan taking their daily walk and then having a heartfelt talk about the end of his career. The sunlight would be gone by four-fifteen, so we had to really hustle to make our day. We also had to get a night shot of Buddy walking alone on Seventy-second Street. I left the Regency Hotel at one forty-five in the morning to start makeup at two
A.M.
to be on set by seven. We had rehearsed the scene in the park days prior, and Don Peterman, our director of photography, knew the shots, so he would be ready when Paymer and I were done in makeup. Saying “Action” the first time was quite thrilling. The filming was on time, and when we finally finished shooting on Seventy-second Street, I went into makeup to get Buddy off my face. I had “old” hands, which were immediately placed in plastic bags filled with chemicals to melt the rubber and glue. Peter Montagna and Bill Farley, my terrific makeup artists, carefully removed the hairpiece, and when Bill cut a small hole in my bald cap, you could hear a whoosh of hot air escape. I got back to the Regency at eleven
P.M.
, only to leave again a few hours later for a similar kind of day. This went on for nine days. The crew started calling me “Iron Balls,” which is what my urologist calls me now.

End of a long day. Iron Balls gets to go home.

After the first week, Martin Shafer and Andy Scheinman flew into New York for a meeting. After watching dailies with me, they said, “We love the footage. But with a schedule this punishing, you’ll be dead in a week, so we’re going to add ten days to the schedule and the corresponding amount of dollars.” Believe me, this wouldn’t happen today. The studio would let you die and then CGI you into your remaining scenes.

Making
Mr. Saturday Night
was one of the great experiences of my life. I was naturally drawn to directing and knew more than I thought I did about the camera. I guess some of the days with Scorsese breathing down my neck must have done some good. Actually, it was the relationship with Don Peterman and our sensational crew that made this such a wonderful time for me. Seventy-two days after shooting began, we wrapped in Los Angeles, and the moment I said, “Cut, print, that’s a wrap,” I got sick. My body wouldn’t let me get sick during the shoot, so once it was done, all hell broke loose. That was the start of what would be the pneumonia I had when I walked onto the stage of that year’s Oscars.

Kent Beyda, a gifted young editor who had worked on
Spinal Tap
, did the cut with me. We were able to play with time periods and flashbacks, and the first cut was over three hours long, but the story was playing, which was the most important thing. Once we got it down to a playable time, we had our first test screening, and it went very well. The movie was funny and poignant, but I knew it wasn’t the commercial fare that
City Slickers
and
When Harry Met Sally
 … were. As we went on through the testing process, we kept cutting and trimming; then Marc Shaiman wrote a beautiful score and we were done. The early reviews were great, and we had a fantastic evening at the Toronto Film Festival, where the movie got a standing ovation and the respected producer Scott Rudin introduced himself and said, “That’s a big hit movie.” Soon it was time for it to open. The early magazine reviews were positive, and then I spoke to Joe Farrell, the audience research guru of Hollywood; he said he thought the film would do $10 million the first weekend, which for this movie was a very big number. I’m always nervous before a movie opens, but things felt good.

Opening day came, and the reviews were very mixed, some good, some bad. Some critics thought it too sentimental; some said the makeup bothered them. I started to get really nervous. This birth wasn’t going to be easy. We took in only $4.7 million that first weekend, which meant the movie was pretty much toast. All that work, all of that effort and care, and you’re over with after one weekend. We hung around and eventually topped $27 million, but it was considered a box office failure, and I was dazed. I was sad, I was angry, but I was also really scared. I found myself rationalizing a lot, second-guessing our decisions: We shouldn’t have opened in so many theaters. It should have been a slow release to get word of mouth, because once people saw it, they loved it; we just couldn’t get enough people in to see it.
Mr. Saturday Night
has more laughs in it than
City Slickers,
but it isn’t a happy comedy. Seventy-three-year-old bitter Jewish comedians are an acquired taste. I’d had a great run playing a certain kind of a guy. Audiences liked that guy; they didn’t want to see that guy get old.

I didn’t process any of this easily. It was similar to the cancellation of my show at NBC, but worse. Hollywood is a winners’ town. When you’re up, it’s a great place to be. When you are a loser? Well, it’s a self-imposed hell. Getting a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy and David getting a Best Supporting Actor Globe nomination and then deservedly an Oscar nomination took a little bit of the hurt away, but not enough. I was thrilled for David, who totally deserved the recognition, and I took great pride in having directed someone to a nomination, but I was exhausted and disillusioned. After so many good things in a row, why didn’t my audience trust me? I didn’t want to host the Oscars that year. The previous broadcast had been so strong that I thought,
End it there, take a break—you can’t top that one.
Gil Cates, whom I had great respect and affection for, talked me into it, and I did the show with mixed emotions, which is not the way to do anything. I knew halfway through the show that I didn’t want to do it again for a while. Johnny Carson had told me that he did four years in a row, took a year off, and really didn’t want to do it a fifth time, but he eventually did, and he regretted it. I loved hosting the show, but it ate up so much of my time. I needed to do something different. What I had to do, I thought, was get my movie audience back.

It wouldn’t be easy. Even after
When Harry Met Sally …
and
City Slickers
, I always had to generate my own material, and thankfully I had great partners in Castle Rock. But the next string of films I did—
Forget Paris, City Slickers II, Father’s Day,
and
My Giant
—didn’t perform well. Most actors, even the most successful ones, feel that when they’ve finished a film, they’ll never work again. After a few off years like this, I was convinced that I was done.

*   *   *

In the midst of this career angst came the loss of two great friends. In April 1995, Howard Cosell died. I had made my network television debut on Cosell’s short-lived variety show on ABC. He’d always claimed he had discovered me, and I’d even played his wife in a sketch when he’d hosted
Saturday Night Live.
Also, my imitations of Howard and Ali had gotten me started in television. Howard was a very complicated and fascinating person, of course, but in his devotion to Muhammad Ali and Ali’s struggle for vindication from the Supreme Court, he’d had his finest hours. He had become a close friend over the years.

At the funeral service, it was fitting that I sat next to Ali. In front of the closed casket, Ali nudged me and whispered, “Do you think he’s wearing his hairpiece?”

I had to hold in my laugh. “I don’t think so,” I replied.

“Then how will God recognize him?”

“Once he starts complaining, he’ll know,” I said.

We both shared a muffled laugh. “He was a good man,” said Ali—his last words to me that day.

*   *   *

Just a few months later, another sad good-bye. Mickey Mantle and I had seen less of each other over the last few years, and I knew he wasn’t doing well. His drinking had continued to get worse, according to Bob Costas and other good friends who spent time with him. I’d encountered the problem firsthand when I’d invited Mickey to come to the New York premiere of
City Slickers
. I talked about him and my first game in the film, and I wanted him to be there to see it. Also, that night I was being honored by the Anti-Defamation League as the entertainer of the year. The award ceremony preceded the film, and I could see Mickey’s empty seat as I was asked to come onstage and receive the award, which I assumed was a plaque. Instead, a large object covered with a cloth was brought out. The ADL representative explained that, knowing my love for baseball and the Yankees, they were giving me an original seat from Yankee Stadium. The ballpark had been renovated, so these seats were rare. It was the same kind of wooden seat I’d sat in back in l956. Amazingly, it had the number 7—Mickey’s number—on it. I was onstage, overwhelmed by this gift, and I could see that Mantle’s seat was still empty. After the premiere I went back to the hotel, and the doorman told me Mickey was in the bar and had requested that I stop by.

“Hey, you little son of a bitch. Sorry, got held up here. How’d it go?”

I told him about the seat. “A seat? I put asses in them seats, and I don’t have one,” he laughed. I asked him to sign it, which he agreed to do. “Where is it?” he asked.

I explained that he should call the man on the business card I handed him. As I pointed at the name, I could only imagine Mickey with his Oklahoma accent asking for Schlomo Abromowitz.

We said good-bye, and two weeks later the crate arrived at my home in Los Angeles. There it was, my Yankee Stadium No. 7 seat with this inscription: “Billy, wish you was still sittin here and I was still playing. —Mickey Mantle 6/7/’91.”

It was perfect. Cowboy poetry, I thought. I’m looking at it now as I write this. I have a very nice art collection, but nothing comes close to this perfect piece of American folk art. Years later, I bought one of Mantle’s gloves from the sixties at an auction, and I rest it on the chair. It’s my own Hall of Fame.

Mickey’s sons, Danny and David, were recovering alcoholics. Danny had gotten sober at Betty Ford, and in 1994 he convinced his father to go. Finally, Mick checked himself in. He came out of the program a changed man. Mickey and Bob Costas did a televised interview together that was just heartbreaking. Mickey sat there holding a handkerchief, using it to dab at his wet eyes. He seemed so much smaller in some ways, and so much bigger in others. He talked openly about his drinking, admitting that he was an alcoholic and that he now had a good feeling about himself and how he wanted to live the rest of his life. A few months later, I received a letter from him inviting me to play in his golf tournament. He closed his note with “Can’t wait to see you now that I’m sober.”