Still Foolin’ ’Em Read online

PAMUHNASIHSB: Put a mirror under his nose and see if he’s still breathing.

  Bottom line: we can’t be dial-up in a Wi-Fi world.

  And to win this war against ageism, we’re going to have to implement economic sanctions and use our power of the purse and not just to buy those stupid products they scare us into thinking we need. They prey on our fears to sell us things we think we have to order right now because tomorrow could be too late. Snuggies, Rascal scooters, med-alerts, diapers, no-spill cups, elastic shoelaces, ring zipper pulls, anti-scalding devices, and reverse mortgages. Other than reverse mortgages, it’s the exact same list you would buy for three-year-olds. Meanwhile, for anyone in the coveted eighteen-to-thirty-five demographic, they make cars, clothes, electronics—you name it. I’ve got news for these companies: the only reason our kids and grandkids can afford any of your shit is that we lend them the money to buy it.

  You want to know what else upsets me?

  Now you have to say, “What?” People who ask rhetorical questions: STOP! I’m annoyed when they make me a participant in their own monologue. Don’t ask me, “You want to know what I think?,” forcing me to say, “What?”

  Just fucking tell me.

  But of all the annoyances, of all the things that push me over the edge, of all the things that bug the shit out of me, there is one THAT IS GONNA CAUSE MY HEAD TO FUCKING EXPLODE.

  TSA: STOP!

  I’ll give you a hint: if she’s a ninety-year-old grandmother from Des Moines who smells like Febreze, she’s safe. I came close to being restrained when an agent searched an eighty-eight-year-old wheelchair-bound relative of mine as if he were a known terrorist. On the whole, Homeland Security and the TSA are doing a great job, but it’s the attitude. Before one flight not too long ago, I walk up to the security screener at LAX and she says, “Billy, you are the best. I love you. Can I see your picture ID?”

  So I hand over my driver’s license. After looking at it for thirty seconds, she stares back at me. “Five foot nine? I don’t think so. Step over here, please.

  “Now, Running Scared, I liked you with that cute Gregory Hines. Mr. Saturday Night, I didn’t care for. Could you raise your arms while I run the wand over you? Miracle Max in Princess Bride, was that makeup or did you just make your face look like that? My kids love Parental Guidance. Could you take off your belt, please?”

  “How about just an autograph?”

  She cracks up. “You are so funny. Open them up. I need to make sure you’re not carrying a concealed weapon.”

  Meanwhile, five feet away, a man with a Pakistani passport pushing a surface-to-air missile gets waved right past a security guard. The supervisor runs over to me. “Hey, Billy, my wife and I loved When Harry Met Sally.… We watch it all the time.”

  “Thanks. Do you know Verna?” I ask, pointing to the wand now traveling between my legs. “She’s also a big fan.”

  “That’s funny. Step behind that curtain; we’re searching people who fit a certain profile.”

  “Well, that’s not me—I don’t have a good profile,” I say.

  Nothing, stone face. “You bought a one-way ticket to New York with no return flight booked,” he says.

  “I’m flying to New York and I’m not coming back for a month or two,” I explain. “I’m not booking a round-trip flight at this point.”

  “I understand. No problem. We’ll be finished right after a quick thorough search.”

  I think he’s kidding.

  He’s not.

  I keep trying to joke with him as he frisks me a little too eagerly. “I thought you’d buy me a drink first,” I say. “I guess the only people drinking fifteen minutes before a flight are the pilots.”

  “You’re a funny man. We searched Chris Rock last week—he’s taller than you think,” he says.

  The last pat-down actually hurts me as he bangs into the jewels. I start to protest, but the large marshal behind him shakes his head quietly, as if to say, “I wouldn’t.” I tuck in my shirt, put my belt back on, slip on my shoes and my dignity, and walk to the gate, really pissed off.

  On the plus side, he did find two benign polyps.

  So that’s where I am in life. I no longer live in the state of California, I live in the state of permanent annoyance. Remember Billy Joel’s song “Angry Young Man”? It’s a great song, but the lyric “he’ll go to his grave as an angry old man” now has a troubling resonance.

  So I guess that’s what I’m really upset about. The world is moving faster and I am moving slower and technology is changing how everything is done and I still can’t find my fucking keys.

  Iron Balls—My Forties

  Forty sounded old to me. It’s a bad number for everything: pants size, IQ, blood alcohol … forty is just bad. As I approached it, I found myself feeling more anxious and scared than at any other time in my life. My career, despite the bumps and bruises up to this point, was going well, the kids were healthy and happy, and Janice and I were great, so what could be keeping me up at night, besides my reflux? In retrospect, it was simply that life was turning into a 3-D movie with every significant moment getting closer than I would like. I’d look at Jenny, who was fifteen, and she’d suddenly be thirty; Lindsay was eleven, but I’d see her with children of her own. Aches became MRIs, headaches became CAT scans, this hurt more than it used to, that didn’t heal as fast. I was more than half done with my life, and that was not a pleasant thought. Midlife crisis or call it whatever you want, but I felt scared; life was like a speeding train, and I was standing on the platform watching it whiz by. Oddly, despite—or maybe because of—all of this anxiety, my forties would become one of the most fertile and successful times in my career.

  In 1987, I agreed to host the Grammy Awards. I’d grown up around great musicians, and being a part of their celebration seemed like a perfect fit. Only one writer worked with me, and that was Robert Wuhl. Robert is also a fine actor (Arli$$) and a very smart comedian.

  The show came from Radio City Music Hall, and at one point I was to introduce Miles Davis. Miles was a particular idol for me. His innovations and technique were to jazz what Richard Pryor’s stand-up was to comedy. I wrote a heartfelt intro for him and looked forward to his reaction. In the middle of my short speech, the audience started to laugh, and I heard what sounded like wind chimes. I turned to my right and saw Miles walking onstage wearing a suit constructed from pieces of colored glass, with large sunglasses that made him look like a very cool fruit fly. He then played “Time After Time” with his back to the audience. I waited in the wings, and when Miles greeted me I said, “Sergeant Dinkus said to say hello.” Without missing a beat he said, “That Ronald McDonald–head motherfucker. He’d impound my car and drive it to the Hamptons and bring it back with no gas.”

  Backstage, I watched the show near a personal “dressing room” that had been created especially for the legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz. It was elegantly appointed with items the eighty-three-year-old maestro had requested, like precut meat and a doughnut pillow. But before Mr. H. (as I had quickly come to call him) arrived, Michael Jackson took up residence in the dressing room, not knowing it was reserved for Horowitz. No one backstage had the guts to tell Jackson it wasn’t his, especially since he was sitting with Bubbles the chimp, who had eaten all the precut meat and left a gift Mr. Horowitz had not requested.

  When Michael was seated in the audience, I have to admit it was kind of cool to see him but a little distracting. Most of the music stars were eclectically dressed but none like Michael, who seemed to be the general of some bizarre army sitting next to a large monkey. No matter where I looked, that iconic face was somehow in my vision. He was a good sport, which was a relief because Robert and I had created a parody of the Young People’s Concerts television specials Leonard Bernstein hosted, one of which had illustrated how the different instrument sounds could tell a story. I was excited about doing something like this piece. I wanted to expand the role of the host and not simply introduce the presenters.

>   We’d asked Bobby McFerrin to use his genius vocal talents and “be” all the instruments in the orchestra. The sketch began with Bobby creating an ancient kind of rhythm, to which I said, “In the beginning, cavemen would make sounds by banging rocks together, and they could never imagine that someday Michael Jackson would own all their publishing.” It got a big laugh from the audience, but the gloved one laughed more than anyone—except for Bubbles, who thought it was hilarious.

  The next month my fortieth birthday arrived. The day was kind of quiet, and I was gripped by a very cloudy mood. I’m forty, dammit. How the hell did this happen? My young birthdays had always been filled with great excitement. My mom would wake me up at the time I was born and go through the whole story of my birth. We always did something a little special: we’d meet Dad in Manhattan and go to the Roxy movie palace or Radio City Music Hall, maybe meet Uncle Berns at a restaurant in Chinatown, where he would not only speak Chinese to the waiters but also teach me the art of using chopsticks. Now I just felt pissed off, and I didn’t want my lousy mood to ruin the entire day.

  I had, however, planned a big party, so that night we crammed as many friends as possible into the old Spago on Sunset Boulevard. Wolfgang Puck made his usual sensational food, the great jazz trumpet player Jack Sheldon jammed with a sextet, and a bunch of my pals and I got up to sing with him. Gregory Hines sang, Alan King sang, and then we all improvised a blues piece. Rob Reiner started it off, and we passed the mike around and everyone made up a verse. It was sensational fun.

  Then something happened that literally took my breath away. A few large television monitors were wheeled in, and there live on HBO was a filmed happy birthday greeting, hosted by Rob and featuring everyone I loved: Janice and the girls, my mom, my brothers and their families, Sammy Davis Jr., Mickey Mantle, Gregory Hines, and even a classroom of my brother Joel’s students at Long Beach Junior High. Mantle said, “Happy fiftieth, Billy,” and then Dick Schaap’s off-camera voice corrected, “He’s forty,” and Mantle quipped, “I know.” I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Michael Fuchs had put this on the air! I started to laugh and cry at the same time—I must have looked like John Boehner giving a speech in Congress—but it was a joyous, disbelieving wail. When the film finished I felt an enormous sense of relief. I held on to Janice and the girls and then hugged my mom, Rip, and Joel. I realized that I was in a very positive and powerful place in my life, and suddenly everything felt okay.

  * * *

  A few months later, I heard that Rob was developing a romantic comedy with Nora Ephron. All I gleaned was that it featured a man and a woman my age. Rob never mentioned it to me, but I knew from agents and managers that he had met with almost every male actor my age, except me. I was not happy about that, but what could I do? We were the closest of friends, and I thought he was a great director, but if he didn’t think I was right for it, then so be it. I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship by pushing the issue. One day, he called and said, “Listen, I want you for this movie. I had to go through a process with other actors, and you are this guy. I’m sending the script over—it’s called Boy Meets Girl.”

  I read the script instantly, and honestly, it just didn’t pop for me. The idea was great: a twelve-year relationship between a man and a woman who become friends, have sex, it ruins everything, and then they realize they’re really in love. But it didn’t seem fully formed yet. I thought about ways to make it better, and when I met with Rob and Nora, they admitted that they were in a sort of creative stall. I was a fresh voice for them. I told them my ideas for certain scenes and lines, and things started to click. Many of the moments Rob and I had experienced as friends, we felt could become moments for Harry and Sally. Rob’s divorce from Penny Marshall had been a very difficult time for him, and we’d talked constantly, either in person or on the phone. We were inseparable. Often, Rob would have the sort of headache that became, in the film, the “twenty-four-hour tumor,” where Sally said, “Go to a doctor” and Harry replied, “He’ll just tell me it’s nothing.” About a year before, sitting with Rob at Dodger Stadium one night, I’d had an idea for a sketch called “Caught in a Wave.” My idea involved two guys at a baseball game talking about a breakthrough one of them had in therapy and every time he’s about to describe the big moment he had with his shrink, the stadium wave gets to them and they have to stand up, throw their hands in the air, and say “Whoa.” That became the scene with Harry and his friend Jess at a football game talking about how Harry’s marriage broke up. I also suggested the singing machine scene, where Harry sees his ex-wife and the music of the karaoke machine underscores the awkwardness, and Nora put that into the script as well. It was thrilling to collaborate with Rob and Nora, who were so smart and funny and open to new ideas. Then we had to find Sally.

  Meg Ryan had auditioned to play my girlfriend in Throw Momma. I’d thought she was great and a perfect compliment to me, but Danny DeVito had seen her as a tad young and cast Kim Greist. This time, when Meg came in to read with me, we all knew instantly that we were Harry and Sally. She was beautiful, she was adorable, she was really funny, and she had that awkward kind of grace that is found in only the best screen comediennes. I often wonder if Meg had gotten that part in Throw Momma, which I had done just before this, would Rob have cast her? Would he have thought, I just saw this?

  Once Meg was on board, Rob, his producing partner Andy Scheinman, Nora, and Meg and I would have lengthy meetings where we just talked about men and women and relationships and tried to come up with fresh dialogue and create new scenes. I think this process is what made the movie so personal, because what Harry and Sally went through was so real. When Nora brought up the issue of women faking orgasms during sex, Rob couldn’t believe it. “Well, they haven’t faked one with me,” he said. It was Meg’s idea to have a scene where Sally tells Harry about this and, like Rob, Harry can’t believe it, so she fakes one in a public place. I said, “Like a restaurant,” and then Rob said it should be a loud orgasm, with everyone watching her, and then I said, “When it’s done, an older woman says to a waiter, ‘I’ll have what she’s having.’” And that’s how it happened. In retrospect, it may be the longest orgasm in history.

  Once the script was finished, we renamed it When Harry Met Sally … and the cast was completed with the excellent additions of Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher. We started filming in Los Angeles, then moved to Chicago and finally New York.

  Rob was the perfect director for this movie, although sometimes he was too good of an audience. He would break out laughing and ruin takes, but in my heart I knew that if I had made him laugh, we were in the right zone. Early on, I had a very honest talk with him. This movie was so personal to him, I’d been starting to feel a little restricted. I didn’t want to play Rob; I wanted to be Harry. I told him that he needed to move out of Harry so I could move in. He totally understood and gave me more freedom with the role, as well as the best gift an actor can get from his director: trust.

  One day we were shooting at the Temple of Dendur, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’d had this thought that when you start to get really comfortable with someone, you show them your funny “voice.” Usually it’s a silly-sounding character that you use in your “special moments.” You let your guard down and trust the person to listen without judgment, because you’re probably falling in love with them, and they with you. It became the “pepper pepper” scene, where Harry uses this crazy voice and gets Sally to repeat, “I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie.” It was all improvised. At one point—you can see it if you Google the scene—Meg actually looks off to where Rob is standing. Harry then asks her out, in his silly voice, and she tells him she has a date, and then Harry, his feelings kind of hurt, flirts with her by telling her to wear a skirt, that she looks really good in skirts. It’s one of my favorite moments in the movie, and it only happened because Rob was so open to trying ideas and Meg was so damned talented.

  It doesn’t get any better.


  (Photograph © Andrew Schwartz)

  The night before shooting the orgasm scene in Katz’s Deli, Meg was nervous about it when we talked on the phone. After most of our shooting days, we spoke on the phone as Harry and Sally would, discussing what the day had been like and how we felt about the new one coming.

  The orgasm scene was worrisome because she would have to have one thirty or forty times that day. Which would have tied my all-time junior high record. I was as reassuring as I could be, and frankly, being the one sitting across from her, I was looking forward to it.

  The next morning, we met on the set and did a rough quiet rehearsal. She seemed nervous and wasn’t happy with her wardrobe, and she ended up wearing a sweater of mine. Once Barry Sonnenfeld, our outstanding director of photography, was done lighting, we walked onto the set, which now was filled with the “atmosphere.” (I don’t like the term “extras”—that means we ordered too many. “Background artists” is better yet.) Rob’s wonderful mother, Estelle, was sitting at a nearby table. She would be the “I’ll have what she’s having” lady. We started to rehearse, and Meg seemed tentative. First orgasm, so-so; next one like we’d been married for ten years. Perhaps she was nervous about sharing her orgasm with so many strangers. Rob, getting a bit impatient, then asked her to step aside for a moment so he could show her what he wanted. Now I’m sitting across from this large, sweaty, bearded man. It looked like I was on a date with Sebastian Cabot. He then had an orgasm that King Kong would have envied. He was screaming, “YES! YES! YES!” and banging the table so hard, pickles were flying and cole slaw was in the air. When he was done, the background artists applauded and Rob took me aside. “I made a mistake,” he confided. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Meg will be okay. I don’t think you embarrassed her,” I said.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I just had an orgasm in front of my mother.”