November 5, 2014

I just got back from an unexpectedly gleeful (and meaningful) weekend in New York City.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by the Today Show host, Matt Lauer, to come on the Halloween show as Pat. Matt was also going to be dressed as Pat, and my appearance would be a surprise to his co-hosts. We batted around sketch scenarios for a week or so and then Matt came up with this concept to do a riff on the “mirror sketch” that Harpo Marx famously did with Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy. This itself was a riff on a bit that Groucho and Harpo did in Duck Soup.

It was a perfect idea: funny and quick. I agreed immediately.

I was nervous doing Pat again - I hadn’t done Pat in nearly 20 years. I wasn’t even sure I would fit in (or I guess, need) the fat suit I used to wear under Pat’s blue western shirt and khaki pants. (Talk about frightening!) I did need the fat suit (whew) but we shaved it down a little bit. (Eeek) Thank God I didn’t come up with a svelte fashion model as a character on SNL. I never fully appreciated how forgiving the Pat costume really is. I was very comfortable all around. I could probably do Pat for many years to come and feel quite cozy.

Everyone on the Today Show - every assistant, all the producers, the entire hair & make up department, wardrobe - everyone A to Z - was a pleasure to work with. They were kind and accommodating, full of good ideas, and most importantly, professional and competent. (Well, what do you expect?)

I flew to New York on Wednesday so Matt and I could rehearse on Thursday. My family - Michael and Mulan arrived in the city late on Thursday night. In the wee hours of Friday morning, we got ourselves to NBC. The rest of the Today Show anchors were dressed as other popular SNL characters. Matt was sweet and funny, and we all laughed a lot. My husband and daughter survived seeing me in the Pat get-up and actually seemed to enjoy the whole experience. As they say, a good time was had by all.

We stayed in New York over the weekend, and went to Saturday Night Live’s dress rehearsal on Saturday night. Chris Rock was hosting and Prince was the musical guest. This is the first time I’d been back at SNL since I left in 1994. (Albeit a brief visit for the 25th Anniversary show.) Again, I had an extraordinary time. The thrill of the show - even at dress rehearsal - was palpable. I’d forgotten what an adrenaline boost it is just to be in Studio 8H. How small it is! Of course, even when I was a cast member, everyone who came to SNL remarked on how inexplicably modest the set was. When you watch it on TV it seems vast and ample. But even for me, who’d worked there for years, the studio seemed so incredibly - impossibly - pocket-sized! It’s as if the band & the cast & the musical guests & the host are dancing on the head of a pin, with the help of a seasoned staff of support who work like dancers: cables and cameras and false walls rushing in and out with astonishing precision.

I had many happy memories flood my mind as I watched sketch after sketch. I felt lucky to be there on such an important show night - and to see Prince live, doing an eight minute jam - an unprecedented musical event on SNL. All my personal fraught feelings about the show dissolved, and only the excitement and appreciation remained. I’m so lucky that I got to be on that show. I’m even more lucky to have been able to contribute to its pantheon of comic characters.

Michael and Mulan had never been to SNL, or to the Today Show, or even to NBC. We all had big smiles, and we were all in a good mood start to finish (celebratory in itself.) I got to see Big Media through their eyes. They got to see what my life had been like so many years ago. I wanted to go back in time 20 years and confront my insecure, worried, nervous, jittery self and say, “See! Look at your lovely husband and daughter. It’s all going to work out. Just breathe.”

Now I’m quite content and relieved to be home in my quiet office. I’m elated but exhausted - a good mood inwhich to dive back into writing.

I must say, I was really thrown by the death of Jan Hooks. It was completely unexpected for me. I wasn’t a close friend of hers or anything, but the idea that I’d never talk to her or see her again was deeply disturbing. I only got to work with Jan for about a year and a half on SNL. I have so many lovely memories, not only getting to watch her enormous talent up close, but coming to realize she how kind and thoughtful she was as well. Those things don’t always go together. Jan was funny, supportive, inspirational, professional, and just delightful in every way. My heart is heavy to think of Jan Hooks not in the world. I watched the short film that Tom Schiller made with her and Phil Hartman, “Love is a Dream,” over and over. That both of them are gone seems impossible.

…

Okay. Before I get to movies and books. I did see three plays while in New York. I saw The Real Thing (my first time to see a Tom Stoppard play) starring Ewan McGregor, Maggie Gyllenhaal & Cynthia Nixon. I thought it was the best drama I’d seen on stage in years (Other than King Lear, which I just saw at Chicago Shakespeare Theater - outstanding.) But I guess what I’m trying to say is that I fell into The Real Thing and was mesmerized from beginning to end.

I noticed it got a scathing review in the New York Times. (It opened officially the next night.) I didn’t agree with the review. I thought every actor was perfectly cast and believable and even astonishing. And the writing! I must see Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead, which I can’t friggin believe I haven’t seen.

After the play I learned more about Stoppard. I have to say this: Hitler, and Naziism were a horrendous blot of evil, maybe the worst ever (although there’s a lot of competition for that spot.) It would have been much better if the Third Reich had never gotten power over people. But! All those brilliant people escaping to the English-speaking world. How many great artists would we not have had in the West if it’d not been for Hitler? Douglas Sirk, Fritz Lang, Thomas Mann - the list goes on and on.

Wait. I can’t stop and think about this now, I will lose my whole day to it. Anyway, I didn’t know that Tom Stoppard was born in Czechlosovakia and was able to escape with his parents only a day before the German tanks invaded the country. His family escaped to Singapore. He was only 3 years old at the time. His mother married a Brit after her husband died, and that’s how Tom came to England. God, I love learning about all this stuff. Okay, what I’m saying is The Real Thing is the real thing. Good, funny, brazen, complicated, dark. From what I’ve read most critics think of this play as light and mass-appeal-y. I dunno. To me it was arresting.

I saw Cabaret with Alan Cumming and Michelle Williams. Good fun.

I saw Wicked. I’d never seen Wicked. I don’t know why I had low expectations. I had tears running down my cheeks as the first act closed. It was splendid.

While in NYC we went to the 9-11 Memorial site and Museum. The Memorial - two big water installations in the footprints of the towers with a square opening in the middle where the water runs off into the abyss. It reminds one of the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. The 9-11 Memorial has the names of the victims cut into metal and lit from below. I found it haunting and breathtaking, which is exactly the feeling it should arouse in people.

Our first experience in the museum was not great. We were herded into a big room to watch a 15 minute film about 9-11. I didn’t like it, and Michael - well, he was incensed. Even angry. It’s a film with Bush, Rice, and other government figures talking to the camera - all about what they were doing when the planes hit the towers.

Pataki, the then governor of NY, was in the film. He made a big point of saying that they had a meeting on 9-11 with all the responders and government officials and that “everyone knew exactly what they had to do and how to do it.” Really? It didn’t seem like that was the case.

In fact, the museum itself belies this notion. There was absolute chaos and no one knew exactly what to do, while it was also true that everyone probably did the best they could under the circumstances. The outrageousness of starting the museum experience with self-satisfied, self-congratulatory, not to mention self-mythologizing (!) statements by the government officials, was almost too much to bear.

Okay, breathe.

Truthfully, the Museum is stirring. We spent a long time. We looked at everything leisurely. We were all in a stupor of sadness when we left. I became a little obsessed about the “jumpers.” That’s what they called the people who jumped from the towers. It sent me on a three-day obsession: reading, watching, contemplating. Many people did not want to accept that their loved ones might have jumped. To them, the act of jumping meant they were committing suicide. (Rather than being burned alive.) I think it comes from the prohibition against suicide by most religions. But is choosing to jump rather than be burned alive suicide?

Oh, people. I have to stop writing about this topic. I could write 5000 words about it right now. Maybe I will someday. I’ll say this, there’s a documentary called 9-11 The Falling Man. It’s on You Tube. (I would create a link but I forget how to do that. OMG I’m hopeless.) The documentary is thought-provoking. This is what it’s about: Of all the pictures of people during the crisis on 9-11, one image stood out. It’s come to be known as: The Falling Man.

It’s of a man falling head first, his arms behind his back, his leg akimbo. He appears calm and accepting. Almost zen-like. If you could imagine a person throwing themselves off a 100 story building mindfully, this is it.

The photo touches a deep emotional nerve. (And it was withheld from view - newspapers refused to show it. Self-censored from the beginning.) People react to the picture in extreme ways. Some people are comforted by it - because a person has appeared to make a logical choice given the grim circumstances. But many, many people find the photograph upsetting because they think it indicates suicide. And suicide, no matter how excruciating the alternative is, is taboo.

But here’s what I think is the most fascinating. That picture actually isn’t a fair representation of that man’s fall. He wasn’t sailing calmly through the air to his death, a death he chose. That image was 1 of 12 that the photographer took of him. In all the other photos he’s positioned frantically and chaotically, in the way one would expect.

It was just the way he appeared in that one instant of time.

And that’s what I find mind-bogglingly interesting. How people react.

For me, I feel compelled to watch the jumpers. When I see the footage of people jumping, I am repelled. It’s excruciating. But I also feel a sense of duty to watch. To see them as people, just like me, doing just what I’d probably be doing in that horrible moment. I empathize with them. By forcing myself to watch them, I feel I can take on some of the pain somehow, and lessen it for them (as illogical as that may be.) I don’t think I’m being voyeuristic, what it feels like as I do this is sympathy.

Now I’ve blathered on so long, I am going to force myself to just list the books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen over the last two months (September and October) and not comment on them. Or hardly comment on them. If I can stand not to!

Books read in September and October 2014

1. 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, written by Richard Wiseman.

2. The Love of my Youth, written by Mary Gordon

3. Ozu, His Life and Films, written by Donald Richie

4. Tokyo Story, the Ozu/Noda Screenplay, introduction written by Donald Richie

5. Ozu’s Tokyo Story, edited by David Dresser

6. The Inland Sea, written by Donald Richie (I’m only halfway through this.)

7. We are not Ourselves, written by Matthew Thomas

8. The Art Forger, written by B.A. Shapiro

9. Little Known Facts, written by Christine Sneed

10. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, written by Steven Pinker

11. Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus, written by David Quammen

12. A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, written by Donald Richie

 

Here’s my quick comments: Ebola reads like a mystery novel. Absolutely fascinating and readable.

The Art Forger is riveting.

I’m mad for Donald Richie and his Ozu books, his Japan books, and his own travel writing. I must get back to The Inland Sea.

Steven Pinker always writes the exact book I need to read right when I need to read it. Although having said that, I’m thinking my writing style in this blog entry should be worked on a bit. But I’m just going to publish, dammit! Such an informative book. Grammar information from a neuroscientist! What could be more compelling?

Movies watched in September and October 2014:

1. The Tall T, 1957, directed by Budd Boetticher

2. Good Morning, 1959, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

3. Fame, 2009, directed by Kevin Trancharoen

4. Fame, 1980, directed by Alan Parker

5. Hot Saturday, 1932, directed by William A. Seiter

6. The Torch Singer, 1933, directed by Alexander Hall & George Somnes

7. Tokyo Story, 1953, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

8. The Crimson Kimono, 1959, directed by Sam Fuller

9. Early Summer, 1951, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

10. Mean Girls, 2004, directed by Mark Waters

11. Tokyo Chorus, 1931, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

12. Passing Fancy, 1933, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

13. I Was Born, But…, 1932, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

14. Late Spring, 1949, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

15. How to Marry a Millionaire, 1953, directed by Jean Negulesco

16. Nosferatu, 1922, directed by F.W. Murnau

17. Oh! What a Lovely War, 1969, directed by Richard Attenborough

18. An Inn in Tokyo, 1935, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

19. Tokyo Twilight, 1957, directed by Yasujiro Ozu

20. My Favorite Wife, 1940, directed by Garsin Kanin

21. Some Like it Hot, 1959, directed by Billy Wilder

22. Bigger Than Life, 1956, directed by Nicholas Ray

23. All That Heaven Allows, 1955, directed by Douglas Sirk

24. Magnificent Obsession, 1954, directed by Douglas Sirk

25. Seminole, 1953, directed by Budd Boetticher

26. Chef, 2014, directed by Jon Favreau

27. Gone Girl, 2014, directed by David Fincher

28. Imitation of Life, 1959, directed by Douglas Sirk

 

My quick thoughts: Rock Hudson was really a great actor. I love him so. He’s very good and I don’t know why he’s not remembered as one of the great actors. Just watch Magnificent Obsession, All that Heaven Allows, and Seminole.

I wasn’t a big fan of Gone Girl. Eh. Meh. Blech.

Imitation of Life - another great movie from the Greatest Year of all for Movies, 1959 (also my birth year!) I hadn’t seen it in years and I know every line and every scene and every shot. God, I love that movie so much.

Even though, my favorite Sirk is All That Heaven Allows.

As you can tell, I’m going Yasujiro Ozu crazy. And he’s my main inspiration as I finish my script and prepare for the next steps, so I vowed to watch everything I have of his (which is 23 films) twice more in the coming months.

And Budd Beotticher! He’s soooooooo good.

Oh, I’ve come to the place where I emphasize things using lots of o’s. I think it’s time to wrap up.

My last thought: I was so depressed by the election results that I think I cannot watch any TV news for the rest of my life. I am so down about it. At least Al Franken got reelected. At least we approved our local high school renovation referendum. But Pat Quinn! I liked our Governor. Uh. And all those Senators - uh. I can’t even write anymore.