by Nora Ephron
A phone starts to ring.
MILLER leaves the podium and walks to his office at NYPD Headquarters, answers the phone.
Miller.
McALARY on the phone at his desk at the News.
McALARY: McAlary. I hear the police don’t think too much of this rape in Brooklyn—
JOHN MILLER: They think it’s bullshit. But you didn’t hear it from me.
McALARY: I’m on it. I’ll call you later.
McALARY hangs up.
JOHN MILLER: (To audience.) When McAlary called me back later he had a lot of stuff about the Jane Doe—
McALARY: (On phone.) She’s gay, she’s black, she’s scheduled to speak at a lesbian rally about rape this weekend—
JOHN MILLER: (To audience.) Apparently she’d told the police her rapist was a black guy—
McALARY: (On phone.) —and when the cops stopped a black guy for questioning she got pissed and said they only picked the guy up because he was black.
JOHN MILLER: Clearly he was getting his information from someone in the department who knew way more than I did. It was classic McAlary.
Daily News Newsroom
McALARY: Stanley?
STANLEY JOYCE: What?
McALARY: That rape in Prospect Park is bullshit. She’s speaking at a rally on rape this weekend and she told the cops, I’m going to use this in my speech. She invented it to promote a rally on rape. I have it cold.
STANLEY JOYCE: What about the semen test?
McALARY: No results yet. Maybe tomorrow.
STANLEY JOYCE: So wait a day.
McALARY: I’m writing for tomorrow. She made it up, Stanley. She could be arrested.
STANLEY JOYCE: Who’s your source?
McALARY: Who’s my source?
STANLEY JOYCE: Yeah.
McALARY: The chief of detectives. Plus, the chief of department. Plus Miller. You want me to get another source? Who else do you want? How about the Cardinal?
STANLEY JOYCE: So another Tawana?
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) The Tawana Brawley thing had happened a couple of years earlier.
EDDIE HAYES: Tawana Brawley was also a black woman who said she’d been raped, but she was lying.
McALARY: Yes, another Tawana.
MICHAEL DALY: It was a huge story and kind of a precedent for a maybe-she’s-lying scenario.
McALARY: It’s that big.
STANLEY JOYCE: Okay.
Projection: page one of the Daily News: RAPE HOAX THE REAL CRIME by Mike McAlary.
Everyone onstage looks up at the projection and then back at the audience.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) I looked at that column and said, this is going to be a nightmare.
JIM DWYER: That doesn’t make you a genius. We all knew it.
HAP HAIRSTON: If I’d been his editor, it never would have happened.
JIM DWYER: The next day, the police released the results of the semen test—
JOHN MILLER: (At podium.) She tested positive for semen—
McALARY with the editors.
McALARY: Don’t believe it. She tested negative.
STANLEY JOYCE: Negative? But Miller said positive. Which is it?
McALARY: Negative.
The editors look completely confused.
STANLEY JOYCE: So the Department spokesman is saying positive—
McALARY: And the chief of detectives is saying negative—
STANLEY JOYCE: The chief of detectives said this to you? The chief of detectives said, the sperm test is negative?
McALARY: The chief of detectives said this to my guy—
STANLEY JOYCE: To your guy. Who is your guy today?
McALARY: The chief of department. Who got it from the chief of detectives.
STANLEY JOYCE: So why is Miller saying it’s positive? Is he lying? Is he out of the loop? Is he a nut? Which is it?
McALARY: He’s saying what he has to say. (Beat.) Look, the chief of detectives’ office handles the material, they check the evidence, not the PR guy. My sources are the real sources. Which is why—
STANLEY JOYCE: (Finishing the sentence.) —they pay you the fucking big bucks.
The phone rings.
McALARY: —which is why this story is true. And fuck you, Stanley.
McALARY walks back to his desk.
STANLEY JOYCE answers the phone.
STANLEY JOYCE: Mike McAlary has a long record of solid authoritative reporting and we stand by his column.
MICHAEL DALY: The thing is, she was raped.
EDDIE HAYES: She wasn’t raped.
MICHAEL DALY: She was raped.
EDDIE HAYES: She might have been raped, she might not have been raped.
JIM DWYER: Shut the fuck up, Eddie.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) The lawyers were involved. Everybody was in on it. Everyone except—
JIM DWYER: You.
HAP HAIRSTON: If I’d been his editor, I would have said, did you try to contact this woman? Did you talk to anyone in the precinct? Did you go to Prospect Park? Did you call the grocery store she says she went to? I would have said to the editors, do you understand this is sexist, and racist? Hello? Nobody’s antennae went up because they all are white boys. I would have said something—
MICHAEL DALY: Look, he didn’t do the legwork.
JIM DWYER: He couldn’t do the legwork. He came back to work too soon.
MICHAEL DALY: Long story short: the cops fucked up and he fucked up.
EDDIE HAYES: You know what they say about the Irish? The Irish are their own worst—
HAP HAIRSTON: This hasn’t got one damn thing to do with the Irish and everything to do with McAlary looking for a big story, trying to prove he still had it. And all the people in the past who protected Mac from Mac weren’t around.
MICHAEL DALY: Including you.
HAP HAIRSTON: I’m just saying.
A beat.
DEBBY KRENEK: (To audience.) The next day we ran a news story that said the police were saying the rape had happened—
Projection of page five of the Daily News and the headline: EVIDENCE BACKS RAPE.
And on the opposite page, we had McAlary’s column saying it hadn’t happened.
Projection of headline reads: NO EASY TASK EXPOSING LIE by Mike McAlary.
On the television set, a projection of the police commissioner, Bill Bratton.
HAP HAIRSTON: And then everything went nuts. Bill Bratton, the police commissioner, apologized—he apologized in this weird, elliptical, convoluted way—
Bill Bratton: “It’s unfortunate that apparently a member of this department shared some thoughts with others that were reported in the media. I can comfortably offer an apology in terms of, if there was any police role in this, it should not have been.”
A phone rings.
STANLEY JOYCE: (On the phone.) Mike McAlary has a long record of solid authoritative reporting and we stand by his column.
DEBBY KRENEK: But here was the thing—McAlary’s sources in the police department stuck with the story—
McALARY and STANLEY JOYCE at McALARY’s desk.
STANLEY JOYCE: I don’t get this.
McALARY: There was no semen.
STANLEY JOYCE: Explain it to me.
McALARY: I’m telling you what the lab report really says.
STANLEY JOYCE: Doesn’t the police commissioner read the lab report?
McALARY: He’s fucking me. He’s fucking me because he has to say that.
STANLEY JOYCE: Why? Why?
McALARY: He’s running for mayor? He doesn’t want to lose the black vote? How do I know? All I can tell you is, the lab report says—
McALARY: STANLEY JOYCE:
No semen.
No semen.
STANLEY JOYCE: I hate that word.
McALARY: I know.
STANLEY JOYCE: Did you talk to the lawyers?
McALARY: I’m sleeping with the lawyers. I’ve got the lawyers checking every word I write—
DEBBY KRENEK: (To audi
ence.) And then, the petition. A bunch of reporters at the paper signed a petition condemning McAlary. Two of the reporters who wrote the petition showed it to me. They were proud of themselves. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “Do you really want to do this?” I mean, this never happens, reporters turning on a fellow reporter. “McAlary’s column—
DEBBY, REPORTER/PETITIONER: —and the Daily News’s hypocritical performance—
DEBBY, REPORTERS/PETITIONERS: —are a disgrace.—
REPORTERS/PETITIONERS: —No reporter, whether writing an opinion column—
—or a news story,—
REPORTER/PETITIONER: —should be allowed to—
DEBBY, REPORTERS/PETITIONERS: —rush to judgment—
REPORTER/PETITIONER: —without at least trying to hear the opposing views.—
REPORTERS/PETITIONERS: —Without speaking to the victim,——McAlary was allowed to—
DEBBY, REPORTERS/PETITIONERS: —judge and convict her.”
DEBBY KRENEK: The Times wrote about it. Everybody wrote about it.
DEBBY, REPORTERS/PETITIONERS: “We demand an apology.”
McAlary Living Room
McALARY and ALICE in the kitchen. McALARY has the petition.
McALARY: (Exploding.) “We demand an apology!” Just look at all the names. Catherine Ellis. I got her moved from Sports to the Metro Desk. I got her her first freelance magazine assignment. Even had Eddie negotiate her deal.
ALICE: “Without speaking to the victim, McAlary was allowed to judge and …”
McALARY: Carl Marino. I wrote about his book seven times at least, and it’s fucking unreadable. Joe Martinez. How many times did I help you, Joe?
ALICE: What does it matter? As long as you got the story right, right?
McALARY: Tim Bradley—he used to work at the Voice, what the fuck does he know? Fuck!
Daily News Newsroom
HAP HAIRSTON: And then he wrote a third column, which had nothing to do with the tenets of journalism and everything to do with McAlary feeling under attack.
Projection: I’M RIGHT BUT THAT’S NO REASON TO CHEER by Mike McAlary.
And nobody can tell me if I was his editor that third column would have run. Is anyone going to tell me that?
No one is going to contradict him.
A projection of Police Commissioner Bratton.
Everyone turns to look at the television set.
A projection of the police commissioner Bill Bratton, who also appears on all the TV screens in the office: “A rape took place. There is physical evidence that a rape occurred. Unfortunately there was some confusion in the police department about the lab report and its significance”—
STANLEY JOYCE: Confusion?
DEBBY KRENEK: —the confusion being that the chief of detectives couldn’t read a lab report. And he’d gotten confused about semen versus sperm. Turns out sperm is not always present in semen, so the semen test turned out to be positive but the sperm test was negative. It was a disaster.
HAP HAIRSTON: Although we all ended up knowing way more about semen than we knew before, so it wasn’t a total loss.
McALARY: I’m getting smoked.
MICHAEL DALY: What can you do?
JIM DWYER: See if Miller will bail you out. He was a source, get him to say so.
McALARY: He’s not going to do that.
MICHAEL DALY: Did you ask him?
McALARY: Yeah, I asked him.
MICHAEL DALY: It’s not libel if you had a credible source.
McALARY: I can’t give up my sources. They’ll never trust me again. No one will.
JIM DWYER: Ask him again.
McALARY: You think there’s going to be a libel suit?
MICHAEL DALY: Do I think there’s going to be a libel suit? Silence. A beat as it sinks in.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) So she sued for libel. For twelve million dollars. And here’s what happens when you get sued for libel, here’s what happens even if everyone involved knows you got the story wrong—
STANLEY JOYCE on the phone.
STANLEY JOYCE: Mike McAlary has a long record of solid authoritative reporting and we stand by his column.
STANLEY JOYCE hangs up. Stands there for a moment.
Fuck.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) The Post was calling him Mike Malarkey.
JIM DWYER: The Times was trashing him.
MICHAEL DALY: The cops had backed away from the story they’d given him. They put him out on a limb and left him there.
EDDIE HAYES: People were writing stories saying, “This woman is being re-raped in the Daily News.”
ALICE: (To audience.) One morning, I was walking the kids to school and there were big lemon-yellow posters up and down the block with Michael’s picture on them. Wanted posters. WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN. I said to the older kids, “Not everybody is going to agree with what Daddy writes; sometimes Daddy is going to write things and people are going to react.” So we all decided to just ignore it, but the baby kept pointing, saying, “There’s Daddy, there’s my daddy.”
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) They made me his editor again. So now I was the Business editor, and I was the McAlary editor. The lawyers were reading everything the guy wrote. They were making grammatical suggestions. They were editing the column, and then when they got done, Stanley Joyce would bury it in the back of the paper.
Diner
McALARY on a cell phone. He’s having breakfast with EDDIE HAYES.
McALARY: Hap, this is Mike McAlary. Where’d they play me?
HAP HAIRSTON: I’ll tell you, but don’t hang up on me.
McALARY: Okay.
HAP HAIRSTON: Promise?
McALARY: Promise.
HAP HAIRSTON: Page seventeen.
McALARY hangs up.
McALARY: I’m having a major demise.
EDDIE HAYES: They’re just waiting for the lawsuit to sort itself out.
We’ll be fine.
Before McALARY can object—
We’ll be fine. Now that I got Miller to agree to testify, they can’t say it’s libel if you printed what he told you. At some point they’ll fire Stanley Joyce.
McALARY: He’s never going to get fired. He’s like an inkblot, he never goes away—
McALARY lights a cigarette.
EDDIE HAYES: You not eating your bacon?
McALARY: Have it. Here. You want the toast too?
EDDIE HAYES: I’m on a diet. All the bacon you can eat but no toast.
McALARY: How is it possible you can eat all the bacon you want?
EDDIE HAYES: Don’t ask me. There’s a book, I’ll get it for you.
McALARY: Am I ever going to get lucky again? Have I used it all up? Is there just so much and—
EDDIE HAYES: We went to Tough Guy School, we’ll ride it out. What’s the worst that could happen?
McALARY: I could end up a rewrite man on the lobster shift typing press releases and obits all night long. No byline. No money.
Nothing. I’d be one of those zombies I see staggering out of the office every morning looking for a breakfast special of cheap rye and beer chasers. (Beat.) I feel like shit. I’m not sleeping, I’ve got chills. I’ve got the runs.
EDDIE HAYES: Did you have a flu shot?
McALARY: I forgot.
EDDIE HAYES: Go see a doctor. You’ve probably got the flu. You need a doctor, I’ve got a doctor.
McALARY: I don’t need a doctor to tell me what’s wrong with me. Stanley Joyce is what’s wrong with me. It’s a low-grade fever, that’s all. And the fucking lawsuit.
He takes out a bottle of Advil and pops a couple, drinks some water.
McAlary Living Room
ALICE in a wing-back chair.
ALICE: (To audience.) One night we went to a dinner party and I looked across the table at Michael and suddenly realized something was very wrong. He was gray. I just hadn’t seen it because I’d been living with it. The next day we called my doctor and he went to see her. She called me from
Brookhaven Hospital and said they were giving him some blood because he was anemic. I thought, anemic, that explains everything. And then she said she was going to stop by. I didn’t think much about it—she was a friend. She came over and she said, “I’ve got to talk to you.” I didn’t know what was happening. She sat down in the living room and she said, “Michael has an adenocarcinoma of the sigmoid colon with metastasis to the liver and the bladder.” I said, okay, what are you saying, say it in English, and she said, “Michael has cancer.” The next thing I remember, I was running from the house. I got into the car and I just began driving wildly. I had no idea where I was going. There was a church, and I stopped and walked into the chapel. I couldn’t take one more thing. We’d gone through so much, and after you go through so much, life is supposed to be grand. And then my phone rang, and it was one of my kids saying, “Mommy, where are you? What happened?” I snapped out of it and I went home.
Doctor’s Office/Hospital
McALARY and EDDIE HAYES with a DOCTOR.
DOCTOR: We’re going to operate and then we’re going to give you chemotherapy and radiation. It’ll be very powerful, you’ll be nauseous, you’ll probably become sterile—
McALARY: I can live with sterile. I got three kids.
EDDIE HAYES: You’ve got a shot.
McALARY: But the odds—
DOCTOR: Don’t think about the odds. You’ve got a shot. There’s no cure now, but there’s stuff in the pipeline.
EDDIE HAYES: If we can just keep you alive for a few years, some Asian guy will find a cure.
An orderly wheels a hospital bed onstage and when the bed is in place we see that the patient in the bed is HAP HAIRSTON.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) In December 1996 he had his first big operation. I’d had open heart surgery and my sternum wouldn’t knit and they couldn’t get it to knit. I went into St. Vincent’s on a Thursday morning and I woke up on a Sunday. Freaked out. I wasn’t just in Intensive Care, I was in the Intensive Care where the nurse only has two patients. My first call was from McAlary. (Picking up a phone.) Hairston.