My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life

by Adam Nimoy

  “Because you’re closer to them and can see them.”

  “Yeah, I can see them, I mean, really see them. That’s why, sometimes, I just don’t get the monitor. It’s like sitting in house seats at a play and you’re tenth row center and you’re watching the whole thing from your iPod. You’re trying to watch these great performances on this little screen. I mean, it makes no sense to me. It’s like I’m one step removed and what’s the point? And then you yell direction at, say, two people making love and you’re ten yards away sitting at the monitor? ‘A little more romantic maybe! How about a little more tongue in that kiss? Give her a little more tongue!’ I mean, I just don’t get it. And when the camera assistant measures the focal distance from the camera to the actor, where does he measure to? When he walks that measuring tape out to the actor, where does he stop?”

  “The nose?”

  “The nose? I don’t think so.”

  “The eye?”

  “Yes, the eye. We focus on the eye because the eyes have the truth, the eyes are windows to the soul, and that’s exactly what I’m looking at when I stand next to the camera because I’m just looking for a little truth. All I want is the truth. And I have a harder time seeing it if I’m looking at a TV monitor off the set. If the camera is moving or it’s a stunt scene or there are a lot of complicated elements involved, yes, of course, you sit at the monitor. Sometimes you have two monitors with A and B cameras going at the same time, and that really drives me nuts. My son, Jonah, can keep his right eye steady while his left eye drifts off to look at something else. I think Homer Simpson can do it too. But I can’t do it. So, as much as I can, I’m by the camera. And you should be thinking about standing by the camera. Because when you give a helpful note to an actor and right then and there you see a change in performance, I guarantee that’s going to pump up your energy level because there’s nothing like it. And when you’re standing there, when you’re standing next to the camera and you call ‘Action,’ I urge you to remind yourself that everything you’ve done in your life has led you to that moment, standing there, totally focused on the actors, being in the moment. It’s a powerful feeling and most actors will appreciate it when you’re right there with them.

  “I was once working on a show and the star was one hell of a mean motherfucker. And the first day of shooting, we’re doing some scenes in his apartment and I’m standing by the camera watching everything and after a few shots this actor, the star of the show, yells out, ‘We have a director! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a real director on the set! We have a man who actually watches performance!’ And I’m feeling, like, real good about this. Real good. And during the rest of the shoot we were out on location. And because that actor was a mean sonovabitch who looked hungover every morning of the shoot, that man kicked my ass all over this town. Because this guy had done a lot of TV and a lot of movies and he was a very good filmmaker in his own right and we had a lot of action pieces and some of it was definitely over my head. In fact, I learned a lot from watching him direct himself, shooting through smoke and fire and shit. But even when we were just shooting regular dramatic scenes this guy was now tearing into me.

  “We were shooting one scene where I asked a guest star to turn more to camera and this sick dick came right up to me, right in my face like literally two inches away, and looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Are you directing my actors? Are you directing my actors?! Don’t direct my actors.’ And he was a good-looking guy with the most beautiful eyes. I swear he had turquoise eyes with just a dash of yellow. I stood my ground and said, ‘I’m just asking her to open to camera. There’s no problem here.’ And I didn’t blink and I didn’t take a single step back. And finally this guy turns and walks back to his mark. And I turn to the camera operator who was also a tough mofo but we had become friends because he respected a lot of what I was trying to do. So I turn to the camera operator, and on the sly he winks at me and gives me the thumbs-up. That’s another way to stay awake, when your adrenaline starts flowing when the star of the show tries to cut you to shreds in front of the entire cast and crew. But that’s also why I always bring an extra pair of underwear.”

  Max from Zurich: “Who was the guy?”

  “After all that, after everything I’ve just told you, all you give a shit about is who was the guy? Fuhgetaboutit.”

  Max: “But who was he?”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  Max: “Why won’t you tell us?”

  Chorus: “Yeah, tell us.”

  “I’m not going to tell you because it doesn’t matter. I never name-drop an actor I’m talking about, because I want you to focus on what I’m trying to teach you here. That and the fact that if I trash someone, I don’t want it ever getting back to them and then back to me.”

  Max: “Yes, but if you give us the name, it will be easier for us to remember the lesson.”

  “Let me think about it for a minute. Ahhhhh . . . no. And hey, Max from Zurich? You know I love you because you’ve shot some very good film. But you wanna survive this class? Here’s a little extra-credit homework for you to do: Remember that Swiss girl from Basel I told you about, the one I dated in college? Find her. Find Beatrice. Tell her I still love her. Tell her to come home.”

  A TOAST TO LEROY

  DAD’S SEVENTY-FIFTH birthday is coming up. His wife, Susan, is throwing a party at their house and she’s asked some of us to give a toast to Dad.

  There are many people at the party who I don’t know. Bill Shatner is there and I can’t think of a single instance where he remembered who I was when our paths crossed. And so, when I see him, I usually go up to him and shake his hand vigorously and say, “Mr. Shatner, I’m one of your biggest fans!” Or when I’m really putting him on, I’ll say, “Mr. Shatner, you’re one of my biggest fans!” because people on the street would get so excited, they’d say that to Dad all the time. And then Bill will look at me like he thinks he should know me from somewhere but just can’t quite place the face. That’s when I put him out of his misery and introduce myself.

  After dinner, the speeches start. I’m up after my sister. She talks about how much she enjoyed joining dad in some of his hobbies, like photography, and how much fun it was back in the ’70s to fly across country with him in his single-engine plane. When it’s my turn, I begin by saying a few brief things about my life with Dad, like how sweet it was to be in that Christmas Parade the first year Star Trek aired, after we didn’t even make the cut as bystanders the year before.

  “Another memory that I always find amusing is that in one of the first newspaper articles on Dad, the reporter repeatedly referred to him as Leroy Nimroy. And Julie and I always loved that name and sometimes when we would talk about Dad, we’d refer to him as Leroy. And so, when I think about the life of Leroy Nimroy, the first thought that comes to mind is that he is a true Renaissance man. An actor, a director, a writer, a photographer, a pilot, a recording artist, an art collector, a philanthropist, and an all-around handyman. On Father’s Day a couple of years ago, I gave him a complete tool kit to use in the New York apartment. Two weeks later, he calls just to tell me how many times he’s already used it. Mr. Fix-It. Mr. Home Improvement.

  “Dad was also a very good pilot, and he learned to fly in the UK in the early seventies when he was making a TV movie over there. And he put in enough flight time to get an instrument rating, which essentially means you can fly the plane by instruments alone when there’s poor visibility. And I never once felt any fear when I was flying with him. One of my favorite memories is when he picked up Julie and me from UC Santa Barbara, where we were both going to school. He flew up on a Saturday morning to take us home for the weekend. The airport is right next to campus, which is very convenient, but it was raining heavily that day and the runway was flooded. On the first try at takeoff, we literally skidded sideways down the runway and I was like, ‘Dad, maybe we ought to wait till it clears up and the runway dries off.’ But a little water was not going to stop Leroy N
imroy and he turned right around and made a second attempt and in minutes we were airborne.

  “One of the things I always admired about Dad was that he was very patient with the fans. He was always willing to take the time to give an autograph or have his picture taken. And I remember when we were walking through some airport in the early seventies, an attractive woman threw herself at him and started kissing him. As I said, Dad was very patient with the fans.

  “There was one time when I did see Dad lose his cool and Dad, I’m wondering if you even remember this. We were in Las Vegas—I think it was that trip to see Nancy Sinatra. We also saw Johnny Mathis and we were seated at a table right next to the stage, we were so close we could see the sweat on Johnny’s forehead. Sitting next to us was a couple in their fifties and they were clearly bombed and anytime there was a pause in the middle of a song when Johnny would take a breath, this couple would jump in and say things like, ‘You never sounded better, Johnny,’ or, ‘Your voice is like gold, Johnny, just like gold.’ And once, when he was near the end of a song, in a very emotional crescendo and you could see Johnny was really in the moment, he paused, and this couple started in, ‘We’ll always love you, Johnny.’ ‘Yeah, Johnny, forever.’ And it was so ridiculous that even Johnny had to laugh. And during the intermission, the guy leans over and puts his hand on Dad’s arm and slurs something like, ‘Wasn’t Johnny terrific? Mr. Nimoy, we are very big fans of your show.’ And Dad turns to this guy and with a real tough voice says, ‘Sir, get your hand off my arm.’ I had never seen Dad do anything like that before, and for a minute I thought there might be some real trouble. But this guy immediately realized Leroy meant business because he backed down right away.

  “And I want to talk for a minute about Dad’s theater career because he played so many great roles, my favorites being Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother, in his one-man show, and Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, which I really loved because he did that play as summer stock on the East Coast and it was like being in a traveling circus with this crazy, zany group of very talented people. Dad was so much fun to watch and always seemed to really enjoy playing that role. And I was also a huge fan of his work in Man in the Glass Booth and Equus, because those were easily some of the greatest performances I have ever seen in my life.

  “And in terms of his recording career, well, if it weren’t for Dad and Bill, we wouldn’t have Golden Throats and the huge cottage industry that has sprung up from that.

  “And I just want to finish by saying that Dad has been a huge inspiration to me in my own work. I teach directing now and my students are always caught up with the technical side of filmmaking. And what I tell them is exactly what Dad told me when I started my own directing career. On my first television episode, Dad sat down with me and we broke down the entire script. And just like my students, I started by asking, ‘Where does the camera go?’ Dad replied that all first-time directors get obsessed with the camera: ‘Where does the camera go? Where does the camera go? Where does the camera go?’ And then he said, ‘The camera goes where the camera goes. The real question is, what is the scene about?’ And I can’t overemphasize the impact the gift of that simple lesson has had on my life. Because once you figure out what the scene is about, once you dig deep to discover what’s really happening in your story and in the scene, then where the characters go becomes clearer and where the camera goes to capture the action of the characters becomes increasingly apparent. And that advice has been my mantra for years and it has served me very well both on the set and in the classroom.

  “So Dad, for that and for all the roads we’ve traveled and all the experiences we’ve shared together, here’s to you on your seventy-fifth. I love you and wish you many more healthy and productive years to come.”

  NUMBER NINE, NUMBER NINE, NUMBER NINE

  WHEN I FIRST moved out of the house, during the early days of my recovery, I would often wake up in the morning feeling down and broken, thinking about all the things that had happened, all the things I had said and done, all the mistakes I had made, all the things I had lost—mostly about the things I had lost—mostly about the failure of my marriage and about not being at the house with Maddy and Jonah.

  I would then roll out of bed and to make myself feel better I would take my old man out of the closet in my mind and give him a good thrashing for all the hurtful things he has said and done through the years, all the injustices. Day after day, I would go through the litany in my head and judge and criticize and condemn him. All to make myself feel better. It’s amazing how some of us hold on to our hatred and resentment just to make ourselves feel better. It’s taken these past three years of the step work and the meetings and the commitments and the shares to begin to steer away from that habit, to try to reconfigure the warp in my mind.

  Not long ago, Dad sent me a six-page letter containing a long list of complaints dating back twenty years. I was shaking as I read it. I filed it away and did what I usually do these days when confronted with this type of situation: I did nothing. “Don’t just do something, sit there.” “Restraint of pen and tongue” is another AA saying. His letter was just too overwhelming, and I didn’t want the negative engagement that we’ve had so much of in the past.

  My brethren in AA were supportive of my do-nothing approach. But things were churning inside me, and it didn’t feel good. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have taken “contrary action” and made an amends to him right away. He was clearly very unhappy about a lot of things and maybe, once again, it may have had little to do with me—or not. I don’t know. I can’t be sure.

  Weeks later, since we hadn’t talked in some time, I called Dad on my birthday just to say hi and check in with him. After we got through the niceties, he immediately asked if I was going to respond to his letter. I told him I wasn’t really sure how to respond as it contained grievances going back twenty years.

  “We’ve been through all this before and in the past it’s only led to more conflict, so what’s the point? We only have so much time together, Dad, and going back to the anger and resentment and mistakes and miscommunications seems like such a waste.”

  “Don’t you have a list of things you think I did or didn’t do?”

  “Oh, yeah, I have a list, just as long as yours if not longer. But I’m in a place now where I really don’t care anymore. These things have nothing to do with the here and now and I’d rather just let them go and move on. The fact is, there are some things on your list that were mistakes I made and I do take responsibility for them. But all I can say is, I’m sincerely sorry.”

  “Which mistakes are you referring to?”

  “I’m not going to say because I don’t think it really matters. The stuff that happened in the eighties and nineties, there’s really nothing I can do about those things except to honestly say that I’m sorry.”

  When I say stuff like this, when I don’t try to take him head-on, when I tell him I care about him and want to try to reconnect with him, the Tenement Street Kid from Boston usually goes silent, while he seems to be processing the information. But I know he isn’t satisfied with any of this because his anger and resentment keep coming back.

  “What do you want, Dad? Just tell me what you want.”

  “I want clarity about some of the things that have been going on over the past twenty years.”

  * * *

  Several months pass. Last week, Chris Kelton called to check in and find out what was going on. I told him I was finishing my book but was still wrestling with some of the stuff about my dad. He suggested I think about using the fourth step and the ninth step as a way to approach the issues. I told him I wanted to reread those steps and think about it.

  Then he called me the next day to say he’d been up in the middle of the night thinking about all this. He said he’d been thinking about the six-page letter my dad sent me. I told Chris that I already made a blanket amends for those things, that I didn’t want to go into detail with my dad about all the issues, but that I sincer
ely apologized for hurting him.

  Chris said that the best way to make a ninth-step amends is to go through the letter with my dad and let him have it out, let him get it all out. He said that I should sincerely apologize for each and every grievance and resentment my father has against me even if it’s unfair or exaggerated or totally fabricated. The point is to let my dad get his feelings out and deal with his resentment, which would then hopefully allow him to start to have positive feelings toward me. Chris firmly believed that this was the only way to set him free and, in the end, to free myself.

  In a way, this kind of made sense to me.

  But in another way, it made me sick. Chris went on.

  “In terms of your own recovery and in dealing with an issue that has dogged you all your life, I think you should sit down with him and let him go through the entire list and anything else he has to say and make your amends. In the strictest sense, it’s the most effective way to do your ninth step. Even if it’s difficult for you now, in the end, it’s to your benefit.”

  I’m listening to this while I’m trying to put gas in my car and no matter how many times I try, the pump is not working properly and I’m getting very agitated.

  “Chris, I hear what you’re saying and I gotta think about this, because this is really painful for me and I’m not sure I can do it. Really, I hear you and I know you’re probably right. The problem I’m having is that I’ve done this before. I’ve gone to his house several times to try and patch things up and it never changes anything, I just can’t seem to get through to him.”