It's All In the Playing

by Shirley Maclaine

  McPherson told me that John Heard needed a transformational experience. That there were other actors in the world, but he was ready for a breakthrough and that was why he knew he needed to return. So maybe he had drawn me to him?

  I wondered who would transform whom first. And whether the breakthrough would be a crash “heard” around the world.

  To work with John when the cameras rolled was sheer heaven. Sometimes I wished they’d roll all day long so that I could experience that clear, direct, laser-beam talent all the time. His eyes were honest. He never made a fake, uncentered move. And each take was different, exuding its own truth and total understanding. When things don’t come out exactly the same way twice in a scene, you know the person you are playing with is really thinking it through each time. He was a miraculous actor.

  So to watch his approach to life when not on camera was a lesson for me. Colin and I were to conclude later that John was rehearsing all the time that he was not actually shooting. And there wasn’t an emotional reaction or a behavior pattern that he wasn’t willing to try out. It was as though he put himself through the hoops of human diversity just in case he might come across something he could use in a part. He was the quintessential example of “acting out life,” but with predetermined intent. He was quite unselfconscious about experimenting, and viewed the reactions of others simply as grist for his mill.

  If the crew addressed him as “Mr. Heard” and requested that he step two paces to camera right for a focus lineup, he’d step two paces to the left. The crew would be nonplussed, and John would simply study their “nonplussedness” in case he wanted to use it later. There was a childlike quality to his trying out situations and discovering limits. But as a fellow actor who wished I had the guts to be that outrageous, I was onto him. And he knew it.

  Still, the truth is that probably the quality most essential to good acting is that of sustaining the child in yourself, in the sense that children can and do lose themselves utterly in the delight of role playing. And sometimes, when a role is thrust upon them, they enter the drama just as thoroughly but not necessarily with joy.

  Anne Jackson and I had long talks about it as we waited for the set to be lit. She was in her sixties, but, as in all really fine actors, there was this wonderful dichotomy of child and tough adult in her. We like to please the director and, of course, the audience, but when we are honest about it we are essentially attempting to extract loving approval from our parents. When you engage an actor in retrospective conversation about our craft and why we got into it in the first place, the parents always emerge somewhere as prime movers—either positive or negative.

  I guess you could say that about all human beings, really, since we are formed and conditioned by the forces floating in the family. But acting makes it all right to use and work with the child within. Maybe the reason why all of us are a little bit star-struck is because this allows us a return to childhood from time to time, the audience joining the actors in a game of “let’s pretend.” And perhaps this is also the reason why society never really takes actors seriously. They are to be enjoyed as amusing and entertaining, and loved as reminders that innocence still prevails in a cynical world.

  So, as John went through his antics, I think most of the crew secretly felt a grudging admiration that he could get away with it.

  He paced alone between shots, unconcerned that he appeared to be a caged lion. He slobbered food down his face. He burped in the middle of quiet and told obscene stories at moments when dignity was required. He was undaunted in the expression of himself.

  And he was continually attempting to punch holes in our script and in my spiritual beliefs. I loved every minute of it because it honed my way of communicating to a human being who did not find social amenities tolerable. He was not the type of person who would spare my feelings and let me have my “crazy weird beliefs.” He cornered me—now—and said EXPLAIN. And I did. But he never once said it was crazy, because his own sensitivity demanded an open mind. And somewhere in his gut he knew better anyway. Of course he was also Catholic, which meant anything was possible.

  But what impressed me the most was his power—again like that of a child who takes it for granted that absolutely anything is possible. When John left his trailer and walked onto the set, brave men and ballsy women shrank in anticipation that John might perhaps force them to confront something more about themselves they had not suspected was there.

  We were now into a night-shooting week in the Malibu hills. That meant turning our sleep state around completely. We went to work at dark and shot until sunrise.

  Colin had “given himself” a cold because of some career decisions he needed to make. Kevin had gone home and Jach Pursel hung around for a while, until the boredom of the long waits involved in movie-making got to him too.

  Glumly I sat in my trailer, waiting to be called, while outside it was alternately freezing or raining. The only conversation to have in the wee hours was small talk. “What did you eat for dinner last night?” “I think this makeup is more flattering, don’t you?” “Wonder what so-and-so is going to do about the way her friend spends so much time with such-and-such …” and on and on. It drove me crazy in the makeup trailer, so I preferred to wait alone.

  Also I was having a hard time resisting what Tina baked each day. Since Kisuna had left, Tina’s treats for the crew had tripled. And, as everyone knows, food is also a great anodyne for boredom.

  “Have the willingness to align yourself with inner beingness,” I said to myself loftily.

  I was trying, but maybe my inner being was a fat lady.

  “Insist on being yourself, whatever it is,” I continued.

  “Allow people to love you. Learn to accept love,” I said.

  Yes, I was trying. But the pain of looking at oneself honestly was deep. I was seeing so much of my intolerance and impatience, and in that light why should I completely accept love from others when I thought them defective for feeling the way I did?

  I wondered if I had been an overachiever in my earlier years because I was unconsciously avoiding the quest for myself. Had the drive for success simply been a way of diverting attention from the real priority of self-focus? Or had I become successful precisely so that I could look at myself. I was beginning to redefine the meaning of success anyway. I had seen so many people achieve stardom, fame, and material wealth, only to feel so undeserving that they became suicidal. That could have happened to me had I not understood that a spiritual dimension was as much a part of my identity as my mind and body. That understanding had saved my life, because it enabled me to feel deserving of everything I had created for myself.

  Now, as I sat in my trailer, I thought of the film I was making. I hated night shooting. I hated dumb conversation. I hated to be cold. And I hated my inability to sleep during the day. Some spiritually evolved person I was. I was just uncomfortable all the way around because I was seeing so much more of me than I ever had.

  I would try to meditate in my trailer to make contact with my higher self. It was always there.

  “What is wrong with me?” I would ask it.

  “You are impatient with time and too perfectionistic with those issues you believe are important.”

  “Well,” I’d answer. “Perfection is part of my job.”

  “No,” it would say. “Perfection is an addiction to the past.”

  An addiction to the past? Oh, yes, I could see that. How would I know something was perfect if I didn’t compare it to what went before? Okay.

  “Stay aligned with me,” my higher self would suggest. “I will never fail you, because I am aligned with God.”

  Sometimes tears would come to my eyes with the beauty of realization, and sometimes I would decide not to listen to what my higher self was saying at all.

  Colin dropped in late one night. “How’s it going?” he asked, sniffling from his cold.

  “Lousy,” I answered.

  Colin blew his nose and smiled. “Well, it’s al
l in the playing, ya know.”

  I threw a combat boot at him.

  The morning after our first night shoot I returned to my apartment in Malibu and fell into bed at 7:00 A.M. I turned on my sound machine and hoped to sleep until noon. At 7:30 the telephone rang. It was a friend of my housekeeper’s, looking for her. I said she wasn’t in, but she continued to call, saying each time it was an emergency.

  The doorbell rang. There was no one but me to answer it. I let it ring, long and sustained, stubbornly resisting my desire to get up and see what it was. I should have answered it. I worried about who it might have been for the rest of the morning.

  I dragged myself to work at 5:00 P.M., worked all night, and fell into bed again the next morning at 7:00.

  I awoke at 8:30 to pounding right under my bedroom. The workmen had come to repair my pilings. In a fury I walked outside and peered over the balcony.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked gracefully.

  “I’m fixing the piling,” said the workman cheerily.

  “Well, can you come back later? I’ve been working all night.”

  He looked up smiling. “Could I just do a couple more nails?”

  “What should I do?” I pleaded. “What can I say that would make you understand how much I hate it that you are here?”

  “Thank you,” he said nicely. “I won’t be long.”

  I walked back to my bedroom. And then I blew. I slammed the door so hard that the rafters shook. Then I opened it and slammed it again. The doves in their hallway cage stopped cooing. I raced to the front door and opened it and slammed it so strongly that plaster fell from the ceiling. I opened it again and slammed it again. I opened and slammed about five times. I wanted to wake up my tenants in case the pounding hadn’t.

  Then suddenly I saw a man come into my courtyard and ascend my stairs.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Of course there is,” I shouted. “I can’t sleep. So what can you do about it?”

  “Well,” he smiled sweetly, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. I’d like to be of service in introducing God to you.”

  That was all I needed. I had had about as much of God as I could take and it wasn’t helping me one bit.

  “You know something,” I said. “I’m sure Michael Jackson gets more out of your help team than I ever will.”

  I was angry because I thought he knew who I was and what I wrote about.

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “Well,” he said. “I was by here yesterday and you weren’t home. If you would give me your name I’d send you some of our literature in the mail and not disturb you. It looks like you could benefit from what we have to offer.”

  He didn’t know who I was? That made me even madder. I slammed the door in his face and screamed, “Thank you!”

  Wonderful, I thought. Oh my God, have I got a long way to go.

  I never went back to sleep. I sat down and thought about my violence whenever I was working and couldn’t sleep. I remembered the chair I threw against the wall of a hotel in Washington, D.C., because the hotel operator had ignored my “do not disturb” instructions.

  I had ripped the phone out of the wall in a Houston hotel on Terms of Endearment when a power mower went on at 6:00 in the morning outside my window.

  I remembered my plot to put sand into the Australian construction equipment because the rumbling crash of builders at work began every morning at 6:00 when I was on tour there.

  I never had that reaction when I wasn’t working. But if my work sleep was violated, I became violent. That was the behavior of an overachiever, all right. That was a person who didn’t have the confidence to trust that all things were happening for a reason.

  In fact it became a joke with people who worked with me. Whenever I was on tour we could depend on some kind of construction work to begin early in the morning, regardless of what city we were playing.

  Of course my question was: Why did I draw that to myself? And of course the answer was not far behind: to develop patience and tolerance. I created the circumstances in which to accomplish this.

  Stan finally asked me why I looked so tired. I gave him a quick noise-in-the-morning rundown.

  He chortled, sat back, and sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

  “So what’s new in the real world, Stan?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, “ABC is going to do War and Remembrance. Thirty hours of Hitler and concentration camps. Hitler’s become the biggest star in Hollywood. He certainly has the most work.”

  “Wow,” I said. “We just can’t figure out what that monster meant to the human race, can we?”

  “He obviously means a lot of employment,” said Stan, not wanting to get metaphysically serious.

  “Well,” I went on, “the sooner we come to grips with the fact that Hitler was a teacher for all of us, the better off we’ll be.”

  “Nobody wants to hear that, Shirley,” said Stan.

  “You mean we all still need someone to blame instead of taking the responsibility that each one of us participated somehow?”

  Stan looked at me with those kindly, experienced eyes.

  “Who knows?” he said, with the tact that proves he always was and always will be a survivor. “Anyway,” he continued, “ABC is committed to doing quality television now. So they’re doing fourteen hours of Amerika.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You know,” he answered. “It’s the story of the Russian takeover of America. I said to Brandon: ‘Are you that desperate for quality entertainment?’”

  I laughed, trying to picture how doing fourteen hours of the Russians conquering America could possibly contribute to the peace process in the world.

  “Well,” said Stan, “if I had to choose between fighting the Russians and being forced to watch the series, I guess I’d take the series.”

  I stood up. “Yeah, Stan,” I said. “Let’s go get some junk food.” If I was going to be working, depressed, tired, and pissed off, I might as well go the whole hog and do it all with junk food.

  On the way to the catering wagon, our company manager, Dean O’Brien, stopped me.

  “Listen, Shirley,” he said, “you know you will be the prime target for any kidnapping in Peru. So we are going to make sure there’s extra police protection. Those guerrillas could make a fortune holding you for ransom from ABC.”

  I thought for a moment and answered him. “No, Dean. I don’t think so. I’m too responsible. I wouldn’t have the guts to go wandering off into the hills by myself. But John Heard—now there’s your kidnappee. He’s liable to stroll out into those mountains with a beer just lookin’ to get kidnapped so he could tell ’em to hold out for more money from ABC. Or maybe he’d want to know how it feels to be kidnapped. Or maybe he’d want to figure out what the kidnappers felt like …” I started to laugh. Stan started to laugh. And pretty soon we were hysterical, swapping pictures of what John would do with the kidnappers.

  “Can you see The Shining Path trying to cope with him?” Stan sputtered. “He’d drive them bananas!”

  “Yeah,” I said with exhausted admiration, and feeling a whole lot better. “It’s people like John who could really confuse the terrorists. He’s fearless, because even he doesn’t know what he’s going to do next.”

  The night shooting continued. The crew slogged through mud and rain while John and I sat, more or less comfortably, in a truck that was being towed along for the scene, saying our lines and trying to keep warm. A kind of trancelike perseverance prevailed. John and I didn’t talk much in between shots. Melissa had arrived and he had enough on his mind. Yet I never ceased to be astonished at how he snapped into character when the cameras rolled. I wondered if he felt the same admiration for me, especially since the scene we were shooting involved my reaction to an extraterrestrial driving the truck while John’s character (David) was asleep at the wheel. Once when Butler yelled, “Cut,” John opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, �
�Good.” Whether he meant because it was the end of the scene or not, I took it to mean I must have been great. Especially since his eyes had been closed …

  John often talked about being embarrassed that he was posing as a “movie” actor. After the night-shooting period finished, we went immediately into shooting some of the heaviest metaphysical dialogue. This scene took place in daylight (thank God) on the beach.

  “I don’t like this mooo-vie ‘acting,’” said John in his inimitable manner.

  “Well, what do you like better?” I asked, setting him up completely.

  “I’m an unknown, thin, stage actor,” he stated. “I don’t like movies.”

  At that moment the assistant director called for quiet because John’s close-up was lit and ready. He had a two-page monologue scene about God and reincarnation. He had already shot the master, so I had seen him play it. He had toyed casually with sand and seashells as he intermittently looked out to sea and delivered some of the most difficult lines any actor ever had to play.

  The cameras rolled. Butler yelled, “Action.” John went into his casually profound attitude, and suddenly in the distance I heard an airplane. I saw John hear it too. His face began to flush crimson. The plane came closer, and of course the sound of it was more and more disruptive. No one wanted to say “cut” because John had made it clear that was never to happen unless he said so. So we just kept rolling. Finally the plane was so loud and John’s face was so flushed with anger that he couldn’t go on. He blew. He threw up his arms.

  “What the fuck kind of plane is that,” he shrieked, “that will go overhead on my fucking close-up! I mean, man, THIS IS MY CLOSE-UP!”

  Very understandable. But my sides ached from holding in the laughter. John could not have been more upset. He bolted from the sand and went for the first thing he could kick that wasn’t human. It happened to be an apple crate used to prop up chairs, lamps, and short actors. John smashed his foot into the apple box and withdrew it. Hopping around on one foot he went on a rampage around the set. The crew moved cautiously back and all I could think of was how much he didn’t care about “mooo-vies.”