Still Foolin' 'Em (29 page)

I told him about my mom and he said, “Wait here.” A few moments later he returned with an autographed ball from the team saying, “Tell her we need her support.” When I saw Joe Torre after the game, he also signed a ball to her: “Helen, you are our inspiration. We can’t win this without you.” The next day I put the balls in her weakened hand, and she couldn’t believe it. They were great medicine.

It was so hard to watch her struggle to make sense of things; sometimes she was there and sometimes she wasn’t. The worst of those episodes was a Sunday afternoon. The postponed Emmys would air that day, and it was also Game 7 of the World Series. Plus,
61*
was up for ten Emmys. We had already won two technical awards—one for Mali Finn for best casting, the other for sound mixing—but these were the big ones, best picture, actor for Barry Pepper, and director among them. I spent the morning with my mom, and she didn’t know me as her son. “Billy Crystal, what are you doing here?” she asked me. Heartbroken and dispirited, I went back to my apartment, unable to concentrate on the game or the Emmys; nothing really mattered anymore. During the red carpet coverage, one announcer noted my absence and quipped, “Billy’s not here, and we know where he must be: at Game 7 in Phoenix.” No, putz, I was in my apartment mourning the loss of my mother’s memory and feeling terrified of the days to come. This is the definition of a bad day: we lost all ten nominations, the Yankees lost the World Series, and my mother didn’t know me as her son.

She did rally, however, and begin to improve. My brother Rip flew in from Los Angeles to cover for me when I left her for a few days to perform in Seattle at a charity function for children of firemen lost on 9/11. It was sold out, and I couldn’t have canceled if I’d wanted to. With the exceptions of the Oscars and Comic Relief, I had not been onstage as a comedian in over sixteen years, and beforehand, I’d been unsure what to do. I didn’t have an act anymore. My manager, David Steinberg, had suggested having the comedian David Steinberg interview me. It would be like
Inside the Actors Studio,
which I had just done and really enjoyed. David and I met, and we laid out a plan. We’d talk about my life, my career; we’d show some funny clips from my films and the Oscars and maybe take some questions. It would be entertaining and loose, and I wouldn’t have to go out there alone. I hoped we could do an hour or so. Onstage, we settled into our armchairs, and for three thousand people we did well over two hours and never got to the Q & A. I had fun, and the experience got me out of my doldrums and reaffirmed my abilities onstage.

Before returning to Mom’s bedside, I flew to Los Angeles for two days, and while there, I bumped into Des McAnuff. He’d directed
Tommy
on Broadway years before, and I’d been so impressed with the show that I’d asked to meet him, at which point we’d talked about me doing a one-man show someday. He brought that up to me in L.A., and I told him what I had just done in Seattle and he said to bring David and do it at his theater, the La Jolla Playhouse.

I was relieved that Mom was doing better and energized by the Seattle performance and Des’s offer that afternoon, but then Janice and Rip called me from the hospital to say that Mom seemed more tired than usual and that he was flying back to Los Angeles that afternoon. I called her room, but there was no answer. I figured that either they were taking her for a walk down the hallway or she was in physical therapy. Joel then called to say that Mom had just been hit with another stroke and it looked bad. They were working to save her life as we spoke. I kept picturing the phone ringing and ringing with my call as she struggled. Less than an hour went by before Janice called to tell me she was gone.

Rip’s plane had just landed when I reached him. I chartered a plane, and together the two of us flew back that night to help make the arrangements for her funeral. Rip and I had shared a room throughout our childhood, and now, just like we had done for all those years, we slept alongside each other, this time on our way to bury our mother.

At the funeral, her grandchildren spoke, and Berns read an except from a letter my father had written to him during World War II about how much he loved Helen. Joel spoke, and then I told the packed audience how she was my hero. How after my dad died, my mother had kept us together. She’d made sure that all three of us graduated from college, which had been a dream of both my parents’. We never wanted for anything, except for my father to be with us. She was tough and funny and strong. In a way, my mom was a lot like Muhammad Ali, whom she and I had both admired so much. When she got knocked down, she got right up and continued to fight. I told them about her speech to the draft board and how I’ll never forget the tears in her eyes as she read the letter from the draft board with Joel’s permanent deferment. Recently I had asked her what would have happened if she had lost. With a twinkle in her eye, she’d said, “I guess you’d be a Toronto Blue Jays fan.” Through the dark times, she held up the light so we could see where we were going. She was my champion.

Rip went last. He has a beautiful voice, and Mom had always loved it when he sang. Together with Marc Shaiman on piano, he sang a tune called “You’re Nearer,” with Joel and me alongside him, just the way we used to perform for her and the family in our living room. We put her to rest next to my father’s grave, the two of them together again.

You spend your whole life with someone, and suddenly they’re gone. The abruptness of that was very hard to deal with. They say in Judaism that the soul takes thirty days to get to heaven. I believed it. I could feel her around me. Sometimes I’d be sitting alone and I would say out loud, “You’re here, aren’t you?”

I would be driving in my car and I’d swear she was next to me, wanting to tell me to slow down. A few weeks after the funeral, Rip and I went to play golf. Mom had always encouraged him to play, but he’d say it wasn’t for him. One day, he came just to keep me company, and as we walked a fairway together on a cloudless day in Palm Springs, a small rainbow appeared. There was nothing in the blue sky except this rainbow. We both saw it and looked at each other, and when we looked back, it was gone. I didn’t feel her presence anymore after that.

One week after my mother died, my godmother, Laurel Shedler, passed away. She was a very funny woman whom I’d been extremely close to. After all, my folks had picked Laurel to take care of me if anything had ever happened to them. She had called me after my mom’s funeral and I’d told her, “It’s your turn now.” Without missing a beat, she’d asked, “What do you like for breakfast?” Two days later, she died.

The final hurt came on December 21, when, after months of being in a coma, Dick Schaap died. Okay, I got it, God: I must have done something to piss you off. My mom, my uncle, my godmother, 9/11, and now one of my best friends?

For a while there were no smiles, no laughs, no jokes. It seemed all I did was give eulogies or lead memorial services for someone I loved. I was reeling from the pain, weighed down in grief.

That February, my niece Faithe had a baby. We happened to be in New York, and everyone gathered at the hospital. The day of Mom’s passing, Faithe had visited her in the hospital while seven months pregnant. Mom’s left arm had been weakened by the stroke, but when Faithe had walked in she’d freely extended it and touched Faithe’s belly. “It’s a girl, you know,” Mom said. “What makes you so sure?” Faithe asked. Mom then simply said, “God told me last night.” A few hours later, Mom would be with God.

Baby girl Holly (named after my mom, Helen) arrived safe and sound. On our way home from the hospital to celebrate at a local Long Beach restaurant, we slowed down as we drove by our beloved house, now sitting sadly empty and alone. At the moment we were all looking at it, the light in the living room went on. It was the timer, of course. Yet it could have gone off at any other moment, even seconds before or after, but no, it was when we all looked at the same time. It was as if Mom was saying she would always be watching out for us.

A year later, my first grandchild, Ella, was born. She couldn’t have come at a better time. The joy of watching Jenny pregnant and then, with her husband, Mike, start their family helped lift me from the abyss I had an apartment in.

I did two movies,
America’s Sweethearts
with Julia Roberts, and the sequel to
Analyze This,
but my heart was leading me down another path. David Steinberg and I did two performances for Des at the La Jolla Playhouse. We did another charity event in Atlanta, and I was loving being onstage again. I needed it. After that, Des and I had a meeting. He liked what we were doing, he said, then hesitated and added, “I think you should go deeper, and I think you should do it alone.” I’d hoped he would say that. I pulled out the four pages of notes I had written in 1998, for something called
700 Sundays.
I had been making more notes on the idea and feeling more confident every time David and I did the show together. I found I was talking to him less and performing more, and I thought I could create a play that would take my life, with its joyous moments and its sad ones, and celebrate them all. At times, the play would be a humorous and poignant look at my grief. Des read intently as I sat across from him, and when he was finished, he raised his head and said, “This is the show. Let’s do this.” I immediately asked him to direct it. We set aside six weeks to put the show together, heading toward a two-week run and workshop at the famed La Jolla Playhouse.

I asked my friend Alan Zweibel, an exceptional comedy writer, to work with us. We’d started in the clubs together, and there was no one I felt closer to for this project. We rented a small rehearsal space at Pepperdine University, and along with Lurie Horns Pfeffer, our stage manager, we got to work. I brought some jazz recordings and classical pieces to inspire improvisation, and I just started talking, telling Des and Alan the stories of my life—everything from my birth and circumcision (“They cut off the top six to eight inches”) to vivid descriptions of what happened the night my father died. We realized as we worked that my story was everyone’s story and that this would become part of the show’s strength. I just needed to trust that.

New pieces emerged, and older material got a new life. Alan was the perfect addition to the process. He’d ask questions that would lead me to other stories, and on and on. Lurie would transcribe it as best she could. Each new scene was given a large index card, which went up on a board. Before we knew it, the board was full; the show was taking shape. We now had a few days to opening night at the playhouse. In my notes I had said the house I grew up in should be the set and its windows should be screens for my treasure trove of photos and video memorabilia. Using my old photographs, set designer David Weiner cleverly laid out the façade of the house so its windows would be projection screens on which home movies and photos could be seen. In essence, the house became the family album. Next Lindsay and I gathered the photos and edited the home movies into an opening montage. We timed the music to the photos and the film, and then it all went into a computer program. The rehearsals were grueling—over and over again I’d perform the two hours of it for just Des and Alan and Lurie. When we arrived for our first rehearsal onstage, there was my house waiting for me. The opening film montage played in the upstairs windows, and I saw all my relatives in the moments of my most vivid memories. It took my breath away.

Because the show was being created on the fly, I had large notebooks placed in the wings so only I could see the keywords written on them. This way I couldn’t get lost. We rehearsed all day, sometimes bringing in students to watch sections of the show. When we announced the fourteen performances at the playhouse, tickets sold out in an hour. The playhouse has been a stepping-stone for many a Broadway play, most recently
Jersey Boys.
Its patrons tend to be sophisticated theatergoers aware that they are seeing something in an infant form. Still, I’m quite sure there has never been an opening night for a play that had no script, just a detailed eight-page outline. The opening night arrived, and from the moment I went out there, through the front door of my “house,” I was in heaven. The audiences laughed hard, cried harder, and at the end of each show didn’t want to leave the theater. I felt connected to my work and my pain in a way I hadn’t before. Like losing weight on some miracle diet, I could feel the grief I’d been wearing like a tailored suit melt away. I knew why I’d stopped doing stand-up so many years ago, and I knew why I was back. I had something to say.

We made changes during the day and implemented them in the evening’s performance. I asked my good friend Larry Magid to come out and see the show and produce it with Janice. Larry is one of the top concert producers and was the first nightclub owner to headline me. His Bijou, in Philadelphia, was a tiny treasure of a performance space. Thirty years ago he’d told me that someday I’d do a Broadway show and he’d produce it. The time had come, I told him. After our successful run at La Jolla, we flew to New York to look for a theater;
700 Sundays
was going to Broadway.

I spent that summer getting into shape. Dan Isaacson, who had trained me for every movie, became a constant early morning companion. Janice and I had rented a house on the beach, and before rehearsals, once again at Pepperdine, I would do something I hated to do: run. I love working out, I love to play sports, but running just for running’s sake? I’d rather not. Only to handle all that stage time, I needed my legs, wind, and stamina to be top-notch. I was fifty-six years old, and I soon found it second nature to sprint up and down the Malibu beachfront.

When it was announced that the show was coming to New York, we had one of the largest advances in the history of Broadway. We went into previews at the Broadhurst Theatre in November and officially opened on December 5, 2004. Being part of the Broadway community was different from anything I had done. For that whole season, all I could do was eat and breathe the show. Performing it live every night—sometimes twice a day—was tiring, but each audience gave me a special energy, and though it was my own life, I found new ways of telling the same stories. I didn’t miss making movies for a second. There was no one to say “Cut, let’s do it again”; I didn’t have to wait for hours while they lit a set; it was just me and the audience, and I liked the odds.