My Mother Was Nuts

  Finally, in 1982, the Marjorie Ward Marshall Dance Center was completed. All of us went back for the dedication. We smiled, reminisced, and cried through the whole ceremony, wishing she could have been there with us. In a way, she was.

  By then, however, she was in a coma and we knew time was running short. She lingered through the holidays, and that’s when Ronny got the call. We had never talked about death or dying when we were growing up. As my mother would have said, it was an unhappy subject. Poor Ronny didn’t know what she was supposed to do next. Since I wasn’t there, I’ll let her describe what happened:

  RONNY: We don’t know shit. But I find a letter saying she has left her body to researchers at USC. I call the number on the thing. Well, it’s the holiday, so nobody’s there. What do I do with the body? I don’t know. Meanwhile, Garry’s housekeeper Maria is crying hysterically. She called her sister Lupe to come over. They cover the mirrors and are both wailing. I had my kids come over. And Tracy. Then my daughter and Tracy go in the bedroom and fight over my mother’s necklace, which I think is a diamond.

  I still don’t know what to do with her body. I keep calling the number at USC. Someone finally answers, but they transfer me, and then I get another person, a lady whose name was Mrs. De-Witt. I said, “I don’t know what to do. She died and left her body to science, but apparently science is closed for the holiday. What do I do?”

  She put me in touch with her son who ran a mortuary. Soon two guys came in a station wagon, put her in the back, and off they went. I didn’t get a name or a number. Then a few days later Garry and his family returned from Hawaii and he asked, “Where’s Mom?” I didn’t know. “Did you get a receipt?” No. “A name of who took her?” No.

  Eventually someone called and said USC was open and they had taken her there. I thought that was that, they’d keep her. But a few months later they wrote a letter and said, All right, we’re finished with her. Where do you want the remains sent? I had no idea. Now we were back to the same question as before: What do we do with her?

  My sister left out a tiny part of the story. Mrs. DeWitt’s son ran the Clinton Mortuary. Ronny heard DeWitt and Clinton together and thought it was a good omen since my brother had gone to DeWitt Clinton High School. I don’t know. People make strange connections under stress.

  We had my mother cremated and hosted a small service for family and friends. My brother scattered some of her ashes at the Marjorie Ward Marshall Dance Center at Northwestern, which was nice, and my father put some of her ashes in their front yard among the roses, which, as he knew, my mother hated.

  That left one last request. Many years before she had let us know that she wanted her ashes thrown out over Broadway. I volunteered. I flew to New York with Tracy and my brother sent a candy tin to Artie’s containing the ashes in a Ziploc baggie. Then Tracy and I went up to Lorne Michaels’ seventeenth-floor office overlooking Broadway. I opened the window and removed the tin from my purse.

  It was a chilly day out, as I recall. I felt a slight but steady wind as I stuck my hand out to gauge the direction my mother was going to blow. What did I know? I didn’t want her blowing back at me or into Lorne’s office. And how was I supposed to do this? All at once? Little by little?

  I grew sentimental about her life and the life she had given all of us, including me, the accident, the bad seed. I thought about the letter she had written me way back when, the one addressed “In the Event of My Death.” She had known about the quarters I stole. I’m sure she had known much more than that about me. She was nuts. But she was also something else.

  After a deep breath, I shook the baggie in the open air and watched as the ashes swirled in the sky over Broadway. It struck me that, once again, she was dancing. I turned to Tracy, then back toward the sky, and all of a sudden I felt the need to say something. I wanted to say good-bye to this quirky woman whose creativity and passion had brought joy to so many lives, including mine. But what was there to say?

  She had wanted to entertain and she had been very entertaining. Then the ashes were gone. The dance was done. And you know what? At that moment the words came to me. My mother had written a song that we sang at the end of every recital, and this was the end of her show. So there in Lorne’s office, as I dumped her ashes into the sky over Broadway, I sang the song again:

  Remember the fun we had friends

  Remember the singers sweet

  Remember the dainty dancers

  And don’t forget though we’ll never meet

  That we like to entertain you

  And now that we are through

  We hope you’ll remember us, friends

  As we will remember you.

  —MARJORIE MARSHALL’S DANCE REVIEW

  CHAPTER 33

  Peggy Sue Blues

  Art Garfunkel and Penny on vacation in Barbados

  Carrie Fisher / Tracy Reiner

  IT HAD BEEN ONE of those years. Tracy had dropped out of Bennington, fallen in love with Francis Ford Coppola’s son, Gio, and run off to Europe with him. (Francis sent books, I sent money.) I finally bought a house of my own, a probate in the Hollywood Hills that Jim Belushi and Tracy’s ex–musician boyfriend, Jonathan Melvoin, lived in while the wallpaper was taken off, new floors put in, and other work done.

  I spent a week or so in London visiting director Miloš Forman, who was prepping his movie Amadeus. We had sat next to each other at an event in New York for dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and choreographer Twyla Tharp. I thought he was funny, and he’d never heard of Laverne & Shirley. Once in London, I decided to quit smoking. It didn’t make me the greatest houseguest. Miloš said, “Why don’t you visit someone you hate?”

  Well, I joined Artie on the Simon and Garfunkel tour in Australia and New Zealand. Jimmy and Jonathan sent me a postcard there: “Roses are red, violets are blue, wish you were here, glad you are not!” I dropped ecstasy in St. Bart’s, rented a house for the summer in the Hamptons, drifted away from Artie, enjoyed a lovely relationship with Saturday Night Live bandleader Howard Shore (he bought me a bike and suggested I get healthy), and then I sort of got back together with Artie (but not really).

  Paul and Carrie also got married, and I sailed up the Nile in Egypt with them on their honeymoon. And that was all before my mother died. Then, after saying good-bye to her, I stayed in New York, where my plans to do absolutely nothing for a while were interrupted by Lorne. He asked me to be on his new comedy series, The New Show. He asked everyone: Steve Martin, Gilda, Carrie, Buck Henry, John Candy. All of us said yes. No one refused Lorne.

  Booked on the third show, I appeared in skits with Raul Julia and Randy Newman, who was also the musical guest. I also danced with the Dynamic Breakers, a group of street dancers, and surprised people with some unexpectedly slick moves, including kick-throughs, the Worm, and a head spin. At forty-one years old, I still had a lot of kid inside me.

  I went home to L.A. where I still had a ton of work yet to do on my new house. Tracy helped me unpack the boxes that had been in storage since we had moved out of Encino. I puttered around. I loved the views that stretched from downtown L.A. to the ocean. But as I put down roots, I found myself asking an unfamiliar question: “Now what?”

  Randy Newman, knowing I was best when I was busy, pushed me to work with John Ritter in the TV movie Love Thy Neighbor. “You should do something,” he said. “John is funny.” Suddenly Randy was my guidance counselor. As things turned out, though, I needed more advice than he could provide.

  In March, producer Larry Gordon called and asked me to go to the Academy Awards with him. He had produced Terms of Endearment with Jim, and he needed a date for Hollywood’s biggest night. I accepted. I had visited Jim on the set of Terms. Even though I can’t think of anything more boring than being on someone else’s set, I was interested in watching Jim work. It was his first movie, and he was on his game. I knew that I’d learn something.

  At night we went to Jack Nicholson’s, and Debra Winger was there. Jack was always enterta
ining. After a few hours, some cheerleaders for the Houston Rockets basketball team came over, which pissed off Debra, who in turn pissed off Jack, and it ended as one of those nights.

  Terms of Endearment dominated the Academy Awards, winning five Oscars, including Jack for Best Actor, Shirley for Best Actress, and Jim for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was extraordinary and well deserved, especially for Jim. Later, following the Governor’s Ball, I went to a party at On the Rox, the private club above the Roxy on Sunset, and I saw Debra there. She had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress but didn’t win. Others from Terms had also been nominated and not won, including John Lithgow and Polly Platt. But you’re only human, you know?

  I sat down with Debra, knowing she must have felt like shit, and we talked and smoked for what seemed like the rest of the night. She told me about the next movie she was going to make, a romance called Peggy Sue Got Married. Somehow I had already read the script about this woman who goes back in time and falls in love with her husband again. I liked movies with themes that gave them universal appeal like Peggy Sue’s main question: “If only I could go back in time, would I do the same things?” People could easily identify with those kind of stories.

  “Why don’t you direct it?” Debra said.

  Her question surprised me.

  “I don’t direct,” I said.

  “Well, maybe you will,” she said.

  Debra went to Ray Stark, whose company was producing the movie, and said she wanted me to direct. They were a group of hard-nosed movie veterans with their own definite views, but because they wanted Debra, they agreed to let me direct. But make no mistake about it, they never wanted me. Unfortunately I was too unsophisticated about the business to know that.

  I started to work up ideas. I got out pictures from my junior high reunion and compared them to those in the yearbook. Some people looked similar. Others were totally different. I entertained the idea of double casting to make the stars stand out even more. I spoke to Tom Hanks and Sean Penn. I had access to practically everyone thanks to the joint birthday parties that Carrie and I had started to host a few years earlier. We had done two or three of them by this time and they quickly became A-list events.

  I also had deep contacts with the people who worked behind the camera. I spoke with Oscar-winning cinematographer Gordon Wills, who was shooting Perfect. I’d heard he sometimes took over for the director, which was fine by me. I was going to need help. I also talked to production designer Dean Tavoularis, whom I knew through Francis. He’d won an Oscar for The Godfather II and received four other nominations. Not too shabby.

  Like a coach, I began to put together a team, and as I did a vision began to emerge. I read the script with actors and met with the writers. Debra was there with her dog, who she loved very much. I remember they kissed each other and were very affectionate. I don’t ask.

  But three weeks into pre-production I was summoned to a meeting with the producers at the studio. I had no idea why, and it turned into an unfriendly inquisition. I was completely unprepared for such a turn. It was like being in front of the KGB. Did you talk to Dean? Did you talk to Gordon? Did you have a meeting with so-and-so? Did you let Debra kiss her dog? The questions went on and on. I felt like I was being accused of a crime. I had no idea what was happening.

  I was officially fired a few days later. I met Howard Koch at his office. He was a large man with a long face and silver hair combed to the side. He got straight to the point. They thought the movie was too big for a first-time director. They would find me another movie, he said. Something family-friendly, like Annie.

  I didn’t want another movie. “You knew I was a first-time director three weeks ago,” I said. “What changed?”

  I went home and retreated to my bedroom. David Geffen and a few other influential friends called on my behalf. My brother sat on the edge of my bed and tried to cheer me up, but as he said, “There’s nothing to cheer about. I can’t even say you’ll get even. You were fired.”

  I did get paid, though I didn’t understand why. “I didn’t do anything,” I told my brother’s partner, Jerry Belson.

  He told me to stop complaining. “That’s my dream in show business,” he said. “To get hired, fired, and paid for doing nothing.”

  In the aftermath Debra Winger dropped out, Kathleen Turner stepped in, and Francis Ford Coppola took over and used Dean Tavoularis as his production designer after I’d been given the third degree for merely talking to him.

  “What happened?” Francis asked later.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  And I didn’t.

  The whole thing just hurt.

  At the end of December, I went to see A Passage to India with Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston. The state of California had just passed a law prohibiting smoking in movie theaters. Jack and I smoked anyway.

  Jack and Anjelica and I decided we wanted to have a New Year’s party. None of us, it turned out, had plans, though actually organizing it was a careful negotiation as we were all a little territorial. Jack wanted it at his house, Anjelica wanted it at hers, and I wanted it at mine.

  Finally, Jack got producer Lou Adler to open his Sunset Strip nightclub, On the Rox, and we had a party there.

  It quickly became the party. Jim Brooks, Deborah Winters, Warren Beatty, Debra Winger, Harry Dean Stanton, Tim Hutton … everyone came. I was surprised at how many famous people had nothing to do on New Year’s. We stayed up late and then a bunch of us went to Canter’s deli in the morning for breakfast. As I recall, Sean Penn and I were the last to get dropped off there.

  My New Year’s resolution was to get out of town. I needed a new backdrop, a change of scenery. I found a willing accomplice in Joe Pesci. I knew Joe through Robert De Niro, whom I’d met years earlier in Hawaii when I was with Rob. Joe had come to Carrie’s and my birthday parties. He was living in the Mayflower Hotel in New York but needed to be in L.A. for a movie. It was perfect. We swapped places—sort of. He ended up staying at my house for three years.

  I’m serious. He overlapped with Jim Belushi. My niece Penny Lee also lived there. Others camped out, too. One morning she walked into the kitchen and found Joe and ballet great Mikhail Baryshnikov eating breakfast. Baryshnikov made her eggs. Once, Joe called to tell me the toilet was broken. I said, “Are your fingers broken? Call someone to get it fixed.” I think that’s when he began to think of it as his house. He still does.

  He wasn’t alone. At another point, Louise Lasser and Michael O’Donoghue occupied different guest rooms. Michael and Mitch Glaser wrote the Bill Murray movie Scrooged there. Friends knew my door was always open.

  New York turned out to the refresher I wanted. I did a reading of Eden Court, a light comedy about two couples living in a trailer park. Melanie Griffith, John Goodman, and Guy Boyd were already committed to the Off-Broadway production, with Barnet Kellman as the director. Following the reading, they asked me to be in it, too, and I said sure, why not? I hadn’t done a play since I lived in Albuquerque. I thought it would be fun to work in front of an audience and be around people who stayed up late and smoked, like me.

  Before rehearsals started, though, Melanie got pregnant and dropped out, and John jumped ship to the Broadway musical Big River. Ben Masters replaced John, and Ellen Barkin stepped in for Melanie. As we got ready for previews, the play’s author, Murphy Guyer, hated one of us each week. The play was at the Promenade Theater on the Upper West Side. I was excited about getting in front of an audience. Having come from three cameras, I knew the audience would tell you whether the material worked and exactly where the problems were. You didn’t need tons of previews; all you had to do was listen the first night.

  I liked hanging out in the theater. I was reminded of my days with the Civic Light Opera in Albuquerque. Developing the piece onstage exercised new muscles and let me apply the experience I had in a new way. Since I wasn’t in the opening scene, I would listen from the dressing room and tell Ellen
where she was walking through her laughs. “That’s a joke,” I said. “Let the audience laugh. Take the butter dish, put it in the refrigerator, and then go on to the next.” She has credited me for teaching her comedy.

  My own entrance was a challenge that I worked on. I came in from nowhere, with no warning, and had to get the audience’s attention without angering them, as I went into a long speech. I played it as if I were out of breath and struggled to get the words out. “You’re not going to believe … what happened …” Gradually, I crossed over to Ellen and, as I did, I brought the theater with me. Later, Ellen told me that she hadn’t ever seen a performer direct an audience like that. She hadn’t spent eight years doing a three-camera sitcom.

  The New York Times critic Frank Rich singled out Ellen’s performance (“If it were possible to give the kiss of life to a corpse, the actress Ellen Barkin would be the one to do it”) and praised the rest of us, including Barnet’s direction. The problem, he said, was with the script. I knew that was the case. During previews, I had brought in friends to help fix it—Jim Brooks, my brother, everyone in the world. I was like, Why do you think they call Neil Doc Simon? If something doesn’t work, you fix it. But the writer wouldn’t change a word.

  In the meantime, I starred in an off-stage drama of my own. Backstage one afternoon, Ellen noticed that my breasts were larger and my clothes seemed more snug. “Are you pregnant?” she asked. It turned out I was. I hadn’t been thinking about it because I wasn’t with anyone at the time. I thought it might be Artie’s, but I wasn’t seeing him anymore. It must have been Immaculate Conception, I told myself. I didn’t know what to do.

  What I did was talk to everyone who I trusted or who might have been involved. Those who had children said, “You did it already.” Others pointed out that I could afford to raise another child. Money wasn’t the point. I barely had five dollars when Tracy was born. I debated the issues. Did I want Artie in my life forever? Did he want a child? Did I want a child? Would I be able to live with myself if I didn’t have the baby?