by Sol Stein
“All of it.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, not now, would you, Ben?”
“Scout’s honor.”
The Pencil looked skeptical. “True?”
“On my life.”
“At least you could swear on something worthwhile.”
“On your life then.”
Alex’s wrinkles beamed, a boy rewarded. “How long will it take to get his money in?”
Forever. There’s no way I can take Manucci’s deal. I said, “Alex, truth time. You haven’t taken another job, have you?”
He was as good as the best of actors. He waited a beat before replying. “If I left I’d feel like a coward. I expect to die down the hall, in my chair, in my office. A long time from now.”
I held his resignation out to him.
“Throw it in the wastebasket,” he said, getting up.
“Thank you, Alex.”
“Don’t thank me. Just make payroll, do two comedies in a row that your backers will love, and I’ll be a happy man forever.”
I accompanied him to the door and watched him trek down the long hall to his office, a blur of a lovable man. How had I dared say to him truth time. The truth was I’d just sent back a very commercial comedy because the idea of doing another one bored me. Once I’d read Gordon Walzer’s The Best Revenge, it had opened a door into my past I couldn’t close.
10
Ben
Louie used to say experience is what enables you to have a guilty conscience when you do something you know is wrong because you’ve done it before.
I should have sent Walzer’s The Best Revenge back the day I read it. The bastard had written the kind of play I’d hoped to write. Ardor is bad for business. The professional in me argued: When was verse drama a hot ticket? This is not for theater parties. The scalpers won’t line up for it. Let someone else do Walzer’s play, off Broadway, on the cheap.
I put the script in my desk drawer.
A month later Charlotte had said, “What did you do with the play Bertha Goodman sent over? Did you take it home?”
“It’s right here,” I said. “In my desk.”
“It’s not going to get better lying there. When you want to do a play, you head for the phone like sixty. Bertha’s called twice. Why don’t you let me return it?”
“My instinct won’t let me.”
“Instinct? I remember your instinct about Meryl Streep.”
*
Meryl Streep came to see me on February 14, 1979. All of Broadway knew I was casting the female lead for a play called Other People. I had in mind a younger Jane Fonda, or a Diane Keaton type who can hold a live audience in the theater, but nobody suggested Meryl Streep, possibly because she hadn’t had the lead in a hit movie yet or been in a noticeable Broadway part, and maybe because she was very pregnant at the time. Charlotte was soft on pregnant women. Or maybe over the decades she had come to recognize the difference between aspiring hopefuls and great actresses on the verge.
When my waving hand offered Meryl Streep one of the upholstered armchairs to sit in, she declined with that self-effacing nod that has become so familiar to us and let herself down into the straight-backed chair in which Charlotte usually took dictation. “It’s easier for me,” she said.
I was instantly caught up in the details of her face. The individual features were imperfect, but the whole of it was like a reservoir with dangerous unseen cracks. Bette Davis, when young, had seemed like that. What Streep said was, “I apologize for not doing this through my agent or lawyer,” she said, “but I want to play that part.” She said want as if it were the apogee of desire and necessity, ordained by the universe and incontrovertible.
Like a klutz I nodded in the direction of her burgeoning midriff. “What about…?”
She smiled a mock-deferential smile that the whole world has now seen. “Babies get born,” she said. “This one will be before rehearsals start.”
I was always a sucker for a woman who exuded authority. I said, “I don’t doubt you have the range. Your age is right. But I was hoping to get some of my financing from a studio and you know what they’d say.”
Anger flushed her face. “I’m not bankable,” she said.
I swear I remember her words exactly. “Mr. Riller, I can’t bend my choice of roles to superstition. Paul Newman and Jack Nicholson are damn good actors, but they don’t carry a flop. You know Jane Fonda is too old for this part. I want to play it. Tell your studio financiers they can put Betty Boop into the movie version. I’m sure a producer with your experience doesn’t have to rely on what pygmies think.”
“I can’t ask you to read for it,” I said.
Meryl Streep stood the way a heavily pregnant woman will, in two motions, out of the chair and then up. “You can ask anyone for anything.” She took a slip of paper out of her purse. “I’ll expect you to call soon.”
When I walked her to the door, I said, “I hope I have a play one day that’s got a scene like this in it. You played it to perfection.”
*
You think an impresario doesn’t have night sweats?
“What’s the matter, Ben?” Jane said, shaking me awake.
I tried to talk.
“Catch your breath first.”
“I’ve caught, I’ve caught,” I said loud enough to wake the kids down the hall.
“What could you have been dreaming?”
“Never mind what I was dreaming, I’ll tell you what it meant. Why shouldn’t I cast Meryl Streep in Other People? She wants to do it. That makes it unanimous. Who cares what the schmucks on the Coast think? I’ve got enough investors east of there to finance this play twice over. She’s perfect for the part.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” asked sensible Jane.
So after weeks of churning uncertainty I called the number Streep had given me. The operator referred me to another number. It was her agent’s phone. I told him I was ready to offer her what she wanted, the lead in Other People.
You know how agents laugh when they are about to twist your balls? He said she’d have to work forty weeks on Broadway in my play to make what she’d been offered for six weeks’ work in a new movie. She wasn’t available for Broadway. Out there in fucking Hollywood the great actress with the funny name was suddenly bankable.
Alex is right, why does anyone in his right mind get involved in this business?
Jane says it’s the turn-on of discovery, the excitement of holding in your hands something that, once it’s a hit, everyone wants to be part of it. You take the head of a Fortune Five Hundred company who comes to New York with his wife or his bimbo and what does he want? Seats to a show, even if he has to pay a scalper to get them. Ask him in the secret itch of his soul would he like to trade places, produce a Broadway show? He may build skyscrapers in Houston, but when he hits the Big Apple he wants to build what I build. Even actors who’ve made it on the Coast say they’d give their left tit or their right ball to star in a Broadway smash. In showbiz it’s the top of Everest.
*
You want to know what that desire tastes like, listen in. My secretary, Charlotte, has Walzer’s agent Bertha Goodman on the line.
“Hello, Bertha, Ben Riller here.”
I haven’t said anything of substance yet, but I’d bet Bertha’s blood pressure is fluttering her heart valves. Why is he calling? Does he like the Walzer play?
“Hello, Ben. To what do I owe this?”
She has to be thinking: If he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t call me, he’d just send it back.
“I’ve read the Walzer play.”
What have I said? Nothing. I haven’t committed. I can hear Bertha’s breathing on the phone.
“I like it,” I say.
The first whiff of success. She’s torn between wanting to hear the rest and quivering to call the author and tell him, “Riller likes your play!” Take it from me, the reason she’s so anxious to pass on the news is that the electricity she is now receiving becomes voltage she will send straig
ht into the author’s heart. Walzer’s chest will vibrate like one big tuning fork. My opinion has become transformed into her power. The author was wise enough to seek protection under her wing. Now, with a few words, she has the possibility of changing his life forever.
The first hint that a play may get done produces a reaction equivalent to hearing the first three numbers of a six-number lotto jackpot and you’ve got those three numbers! Dummy, consider the odds of getting the other three! “Riller likes your play,” and they all become instant believers: This one will go all the way.
“I’m glad you like it,” Bertha Goodman says, pretending studied calm.
“Before I commit,” I say, and in the interval before my next words are spoken, Bertha is sliding down an incline toward a precipice as in a dream gone haywire. It isn’t definite. “Before I commit, I’d like to meet Walzer, see what he’s like.”
Bertha swallows air as if she’s been underwater for too long. “Of course,” she says.
I name a time. She says Walzer will be there. Conversation over. For Bertha Goodman and Gordon Walzer a new life begins.
For a minute I put my feet up on the desk. I’ve produced seventeen plays and it’s still a thrill when the engine starts. Opening night is a long way off. Six hundred gowns accompanied by six hundred tuxedos will be attending your hanging or beatification, and you won’t know which until long after midnight when your press agent’s spies read the next morning’s reviews to him on the telephone. I love it.
*
I woke up in the middle of the night and found myself having a conversation with God about Meryl Streep. Dear God, I was saying, I’m supposed to be decisive. If I’d said yes to her right then in my office, I wouldn’t have had to settle later for an actress who with her whole body couldn’t convey what Streep can infuse in an audience by the lifting of one part of her upper lip. With Streep, Other People would have run two years. If it had run two years, I’d be beholden to You for my good luck and wouldn’t be looking for miracles in the wrong places. I’d have been up to my neck in happiness by this time, getting out a second road show, lining up the rest of the foreign productions, I wouldn’t have had time to get involved in The Best Revenge—God, are you listening? Show business is a hill of ice, and when you’re on top all you see is the little figures climbing up toward you with pickaxes. From now on I promise to look up, not down. Believe me, I’ll recognize You.
Maybe I never thanked You enough for giving me fourteen out of seventeen hits. Why are You slamming me with everything in Your arsenal? Is it because I didn’t say yes fast enough to Meryl Streep before her picture hit big? How about we do the Meryl Streep interview over again and this time I’ll make the right decision as soon as she’s in the door? I’m sure You’ve wanted to do some things over again, how about giving me this one chance?
All right, if You feel You can’t set a precedent, how about encouraging me to go forward by, say, letting The Best Revenge be a hit. Commercial comedies don’t need Your help. Here’s a chance for You to invest in what I’m sure You believe in, real quality. What do You say? I’ve never asked You personally for anything before, be a sport, help me this once. Get me off the hook and I’ll put on a revival of Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral or, if You prefer, a festival that will make Oberammergau look like amateur night in the sticks. Is it a deal?
I was sitting up in bed, in the dark, Jane fast asleep, waiting for a response, when I heard Louie’s voice. Save your breath, he said. It’s the Devil who negotiates. God never made a deal with nobody.
*
The first time Ezra ever asked to read a play was when I decided to do The Best Revenge. “Stick to law journals,” I told him. “You don’t know fuck about theater.”
“I want to read it for libel.”
“It’s fiction. It’s made up. Don’t be a pain in the ass.”
That’s how Ezra gets his way. You give in to get rid of the nuisance, a lawyer’s trick.
Two days later he barged in, plunked The Best Revenge down on my desk as if it was a stack of subpoenas, and said, “Ben, find another play. There are a million of them out there.”
“Ezra,” I said, “why don’t you divorce Sarah, there’re a million better-looking women out there.”
“You twist logic like a corkscrew.”
I went around to Ezra’s side of the desk close enough for him to feel my breath. I said, “I want to do The Best Revenge as much as a man wants to do a particular woman he’s in love with, even you can understand that. I’m off and running. Don’t get in my way this time.”
“What do you mean ‘this time’?”
“The other time was long ago. I wrote a play, remember?”
“Oh, that.”
“You kept me from showing it to Louie.”
“You kept it from him, Ben. Not me. Taking on Walzer’s play for the wrong reason—or even the right reason—doesn’t make it a commercial play. Jumping into something this offbeat isn’t like you.”
“Bullshit, it’s more like me than anything I’ve ever done.”
“The others smacked of success the minute you got your hands on them. This one’s fancy. Fancy means upscale. Upscale means problems. All I’m saying is find another play.”
“Who’s going to do The Best Revenge if I don’t?”
“Now that is super-idiotic. Social responsibility is something you’re supposed to grow out of. Besides, what makes you think you’re the only theater maven in New York? If the play’s good, someone will do it fine. Maybe someone who is not dependent on other people’s money. If it’s not done on Broadway, then maybe it’ll get done off Broadway, or off off Broadway, or in Minneapolis, and you won’t get hurt.”
“I’m not a coward, Ezra.”
“Neither am I. If I were, I wouldn’t have taken you on as a client when Duckworth told you to take your business elsewhere.”
“They were charging me for their research time. Why should I pay them for what they don’t know? Besides, I liked the idea of hiring you, Ezra.”
“Sure, it keeps all the actors, directors, and investors who want me to sue you from hiring me.”
“Nobody’s suing me.”
“I’m not talking today. I’m trying to save your ass tomorrow. I’m talking as a friend, not as a lawyer.”
“Ezra, be reasonable for a moment. If another producer does The Best Revenge in Siberia, will the first-string critics come?”
“If you did it, they’d come.”
“Off Broadway is not my scene.”
“But the risk would be so much less!” Ezra said, losing control of his voice.
“Name one,” I said.
“One what?”
“One goddamn functioning producer with a brain who can put on a verse drama by a new playwright and make a hit of it.”
Ezra didn’t say a thing.
“You can’t name one,” I said, “because there aren’t any.”
“That’s not your responsibility,” he said.
“What’s your responsibility, Ezra?”
“You,” he said.
“That’s a great curtain line, Ezra.” As I sometimes do with actresses, I smiled the kind of smile that is supposed to cure anything, and held up my middle finger as I went out the door, leaving Ezra in my office.
Why was it that the second I closed the door, I felt a wind tearing at my axis, the mistral inside my chest a premonition that if I took one more step I would tumble into a pure void like a doll in outer space?
Comment by Ezra
Very theatrical exit, Ben leaving me stranded in his office.
It was from Louie that Ben got his instinct for theater. When Ben and I were twelve, I went up to the Riller apartment to bring the word that my father, the bastard, had taken off for good this time. All Louie had said was, “I got two arms,” and he put one around me and the other around Ben.
Louie always had messages for Ben, for me, for the world. “If you want to know people,” he once said, “find
out what causes them a secret shame.” When Louie died, Ben and I found his, in a metal box in his dresser, filled with tickets. “Hey, look,” Ben said, trying to joke, “he must have seen a lot of movies, look at these stubs.” I read the names: Provident Loan, State Street Loan, Milwaukee Loan. Eight hundred thirty-four pawn tickets. And a notebook. The last date on any of the pawn tickets was just a few weeks before the first entry of the notebook: “Manucci, $300, thank God.” We were eighteen, still kids. Ben stayed in the bathroom a long time, letting the water run so I wouldn’t hear him.
Another time, Louie said, “Boys, of course the Bible was written by sinners. How else would they know?” And about women Louie always wanted the last word. “Boys, you follow your pecker, you’ve got a schmuck for a guide.” And, “If you’re lucky like I was and you find a smart woman some day, please don’t try to teach her to light matches.”
Jane used to be the silencer on Ben’s pistol. If he was about to go off half-cocked, she’d find a way to stop him.
“Jane,” I said to her on the phone, “Ben’s not listening to me. You know this new play of his is in deep trouble.”
“Oh, I know. But I also know that if Ben wants to chase whales, Ezra, he’ll chase whales.”
“He can’t afford a mistake now, Jane, his cash position is execrable. He can’t risk this kind of gamble, you know that.”
“What kind of gamble?”
“How many verse dramas have shown a profit on Broadway in the last fifty years? How many have been produced altogether?”
“Ezra, Ben used scrim imaginatively in the fifties. He dropped all four walls in more productions than anyone else. He hired Crawford when everybody said she couldn’t possibly make a comeback at her age. And he’s always succeeded.”
“Jane, you’re overlooking one essential difference. The other times he was somehow able to convince his loyal pack to invest. This time they’re not buying in because they look at the script and can’t understand it.”
“They have no business asking to see scripts. They’re investing in his judgment, not theirs. Ezra, when you cross a bridge is it because you’ve examined every strut yourself or because you have faith in the bridge builder?”