The Man Who Heard Voices

by Michael Bamberger

  Several nights later, Jimbo’s was open, and Red was standing in a circle with some of the other New Yorkers. Red wasn’t a party person or a drinker. For him, it was one drink and back to his room. On Mona Lisa Smile, Julia Roberts had told Red she was going to send a limo to make sure he came to the wrap party. He told her not to bother.

  Night was at Jimbo’s that evening with Bhavna. Despite the Ping-Pong table and the tiki decorations and the bean-bag chairs, Jimbo’s felt like a union hall. Night was at home there. People were telling Chris Doyle stories, overtime-pay stories, Unbreakable stories. There were people smoking cigarettes who never smoked during regular working hours. It’s a stressful business, and the green tint to the light in Jimbo’s helped people relax. Night saw Red and walked over to him. He knew on ESP alone that Red had not accepted his earlier apologies, and it was bothering him.

  Night introduced Red to his wife and said to her, “This is the guy I yelled at, and I shouldn’t have.”

  Red was impressed; the director had obviously told his wife about the incident. This apology was public. To Red, that changed everything. He accepted Night’s apology. Night was relieved. He needed Red, and he needed Red to believe in him.

  Paul was an avid reader of obituaries, and one of his favorite phrases was “Ends are never pretty.” I tried to offer some rebuttals—Nelson Rockefeller, for example—but Paul was certain: Ends were always bad.

  Paul was fatalistic and practical, bound to no religion, formal or otherwise. The ease with which Night spoke about faith was foreign to Paul. But they got along famously on the set every day (often to the exclusion of the other actors). They knew each other’s cultural reference points. The guy who played the stiff in Weekend at Bernie’s. How Al Pacino worked with directors (Let’s fucking try it! That was fucking stupid!). The Scientologists and their penchant for crisp blue dress shirts. Night was the ideal audience member for Paul’s improv, for his fake titles and invented dialogue. Night loved Paul’s title for the porn version of the movie: LADIES in the Water. Later, Paul came up with this dialogue for Young-Soon and Cleveland.

  Young-Soon: Mr. Heep, Mr. Heep—you got time for a quickie?

  Cleveland: Not now, Young-Soon. But tell me: Could you look up the word narf for me?

  Night and Paul were both verbal and quick in the extreme, but so different. With Night, everything meant something. Paul used the word strange as often as Night used the word meaning. Paul could see the irony in anything, and Night didn’t want to. Paul read the obit for Joe Bauman, who had hit seventy-two home runs as a minor-leaguer in 1954 and had died in Roswell, New Mexico, the U.S. capital for UFO sightings. He saw the movie possibilities immediately: the minor-league slugger whose body is invaded by a space alien. But coming up with the idea didn’t mean he was going to actually write it. There was no way. Why would he write when people paid him good money just to read lines and make faces?

  Night had more ambition for Paul than the actor had for himself. Paul, with prodding, told Night about his upcoming roles, as a heavy, doing a voice-over, some funny stuff, some independent stuff, a mix.

  “Dude, what are you doing?” Night said. “C’mon—you’re a leading man!”

  Paul shrugged. “I hear ya.”

  “You gotta take only leading-man roles.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to go home tonight, look in the mirror, and say, ‘I am the man, I am the man!’”

  Paul was more likely to go to his temporary home (a suite at the Rittenhouse), turn on the TV, and click his way across the universe, looking for news, of a certain kind. One Lady night, after the death of the great Don Adams, Paul stopped for every clip that showed Maxwell Smart talking on his shoe phone or using the cones of silence or fighting Chaos.

  One day Chrismandu nominated an exception to Paul’s rule about ends. Jackie Gleason, he said, had gone out well.

  “Really?” I asked. “Why do you say that?”

  “He ate what he wanted to eat, and he did what he wanted to do,” he explained. “He died young, but he never suffered. Nobody ever knifed him or nothing like that. He made people laugh, he had plenty of money, then he died. My father loved him.”

  I told Paul what Chrismandu had said.

  “Jackie Gleason,” Paul said. “That’s good. That’s really good. Jackie Gleason. Pretty end. Wow.”

  Some weeks later, Paul did something out of character. Paul asked Chrismandu for his telephone number and address, so that if a producer was ever looking for a stand-in for him, he could suggest Chrismandu. It wasn’t like Paul to enter into another person’s life, to take initiative that way. He didn’t want people entering his life unannounced. But what Chrismandu had said was true: The odd congregation Night had assembled really was like family, at least for a few months.

  Jim Gaffigan, an actor and comedian, heavyset and balding, had one day of work on the movie, playing a pool maintenance man. He had a two-minute scene with Paul in which they examine long strands of red hair that have been clogging up the Cove’s community pool. In a rehearsal, Gaffigan held up the red hair and, in the cadence of his actual line, said, “I don’t know whose hair this is, but whoever it is, she’s related to Ron Howard.” Paul, for a change, was laughing at somebody else’s joke.

  “You’d never see two character guys in one scene in an episode of CSI,” Gaffigan said between takes. He and Paul were the same age, and Paul knew his act. Gaffigan was huge and he towered over Paul.

  “You’re right,” Paul said. “They’d be like, ‘Two character guys too many.’”

  Gaffigan gave Night exactly what Night wanted right away, first take, first shot of the morning, but they kept going because everyone was having so much fun. It was an easy scene for a change. After one take, Gaffigan looked up at the camera and, in the voice of a TV reporter covering a hurricane’s devastation, said, “Never has there been so much male-pattern baldness in one scene.”

  Night was worried that Gaffigan was offending Paul by treating him as an equal, but the opposite was happening. Gaffigan was putting Paul at ease. Being singled out, as he’d been by Horn, made Paul nervous. He had true humility.

  Night looked at Paul and saw the next Gene Hackman, the next Tom Hanks. He imagined more for Paul than Paul was willing to imagine for himself. Either he really didn’t get Paul, despite all their time together, or he knew Paul better than Paul knew himself.

  During shooting, Night called the emotional climax of the script “the mailroom scene,” the “life and death” scene from Cindy’s audition. It brought together all the principals and one actor, Tom Mardirosian, who had little more than a bit part. Tom played Mr. Bubchik, a Jewish man beyond middle age who is mostly an off-camera voice, stuck in his apartment bathroom dealing with gastrointestinal issues. On the other side of the door is his wife, Mrs. Bubchik, played by Tovah Feldshuh, a theater legend for her one-woman show as Golda Meir. The Bubchik apartment was done in extreme Miami Beach—gold everything, with some silver accents. During an afternoon of shooting in the apartment, Night rubbed his temples and said to himself, “I can’t think in here.” Tovah was a saucy, gum-chewing trip, loud and fun and warm, wearing a Pat Nixon beehive hairdo for her character. Night’s direction for her could not have been more direct: “Halve it. Halve it again. Tone it down from there.” Tovah and Paul, working one simple scene with Mr. Bubchik groaning from the bathroom, ate up sixteen takes. At one point, tape was put on the floor, marks for the actors. Paul’s was green and Tovah’s was pink. “Pink,” Paul said, “for the lady.” Tom Mardirosian did not have marks. His character, working for part of one day, never left the bathroom.

  Until weeks later, when Mr. Bubchik reemerged for the biggest scene in the movie, the mailroom scene, the life-and-death scene. Tom had been hired after the read-through, so he was meeting most of the other actors for the first time that day. His costume was pajamas and slippers, as if he had come straight from the loo. Everybody else was dressed, and Tom couldn’t understand why he w
as not. He’d never been given a script.

  The mailroom scene was complicated in every way. Tom, in a voice of comedic manic worry, kept saying to the other actors, “What the hell is going on here? What’s this whole thing about? What the fuck am I supposed to be doing? Am I supposed to just wander around in these goddamn slippers?” The whole thing was one big mystery to him. He didn’t have a single line in the mailroom scene. Yet there he was with all the heavy hitters:

  Mr. Paul Giamatti (Cleveland Heep)

  Miss Bryce Dallas Howard (Story)

  Ms. Cindy Cheung (Young-Soon Choi)

  Ms. Sarita Choudhury (Anna Ran)

  Mr. Bill Irwin (Mr. Leeds)

  Ms. Mary Beth Hurt (Mrs. Bell)

  Mr. Jeffrey Wright (Mr. Drury)

  Master Noah Gray-Cabey (Joey Drury)

  The Rev. M. Night Shyamalan (writer, director, Vick Ran)

  Also:

  The five Perez de la Torre sisters

  The five smokers

  Night gathered the twenty actors in the mailroom and gave a pep talk. It was uncharacteristically brief. “This scene,” Night said, “is all about saving this guy.” He meant Paul. It was an insight. From the script, you would have said the scene was all about trying to save Story.

  For a while, Cindy had been looking for something from Night, some sort of direction, direction he was usually happy to give. Then she realized she was getting it, in Night’s silence. She had what she needed, and now was the time to execute. He had laid it out weeks earlier: You know your lines. You know the role. On the day, whatever happens, happens. Trust yourself. She was ready to do exactly that. Night had faith in Cindy. Now it was her turn to show she had faith in Night, and in herself.

  Several days before the mailroom scene, Night didn’t know if he could have Chris Doyle shoot the movie’s most important scene. All along, Night had planned to have Doyle shoot the scene using a small, lightweight handheld camera, the kind often used in documentaries. It would lend a semblance of reality to a fantastical scene. The mailroom would be crowded, and Doyle, so tiny, could move easily and intimately among the actors, who revered him. The act of photography was something like sex for him, and it showed. The actors appreciated his crazy love.

  But working a handheld camera requires a rock-steady hand, and in the excitement of the day, Night didn’t know if the camera would be too wobbly in Doyle’s fingers; Night didn’t know if Chris would point the camera in the right place at the right time. It was the kind of scene in which you had to make every take count, and Night could not know which Chris Doyle would show up that day. The scene would be emotionally draining, especially for Paul. There were only so many times you could ask him to get completely worked up about the interior life of Cleveland Heep. In the language of the movie, and in everyday life, Night had doubts. The voices were kicking in.

  You can never rid yourself of all doubt. You found that out when you were playing Vick. If you don’t think Doyle can give you what you need, bring somebody else in.

  Chris got you this far. Stay with him.

  It’s too risky. You can’t count on him getting lucky, not this time.

  But what kind of message does it send if you don’t let him shoot it?

  That life’s imperfect.

  “What would you think about a Steadicam shot for the mailroom scene?” Night said to Chris.

  A Steadicam is like a handheld on a much bigger scale. It helps create intimacy; not as much as a handheld, but it’s sturdier. Doyle hadn’t operated a Steadicam on Lady. It requires considerable physical strength.

  Had Night just taken the shot away from him and brought in Pat Capone or somebody else to work a handheld, Doyle might have walked away from the movie and not returned. He could have had a tantrum or gone into a funk. He might have tried to talk Night out of it. But because it was a Steadicam, Night knew Chris would accept the idea. It wasn’t an affront.

  Now Night was doing something out of character. He had said at the start that he would be ruthless, and you have to be to make the movie you want to make. People are always going to get hurt along the way. From the first day of shooting, Night couldn’t possibly keep the slo-mo Lick-Slap Kenny in the movie. The boy would be hurt by being cut, but the movie would be better. There was no debate. But now, late in the shoot, Night put Chris Doyle’s state of mind ahead of the movie’s technical needs. He ditched the handheld and went for the Steadicam shot, to spare Chris. Night knew good karma would serve his movie best of all as the end neared.

  Night never explained to the actors why Doyle wasn’t shooting the scene. They were surprised to see a new man there, Kyle Rudolph, tall and broad, with a no-nonsense manner. It was Kyle’s camera that Bhavna had blessed years earlier on the first day of shooting Wide Awake, and he had worked in different capacities on each of Night’s movies. Doyle was on the set for the mailroom scene, bopping around on the edges, so the actors assumed Kyle was someone the DP had brought in to work a specialty shot, like the scuba crew shooting the pool shots. Beyond that, they didn’t think about it too much. They had other things on their minds.

  Kyle was like Mr. Bubchik. He had no idea what was going on. He had been called at the last minute, and all Night had told him was that he would be shooting the most important scene of the movie. Beyond that, nothing. It bothered Kyle, but Night didn’t want to overexplain it. He thought too much information would bog Kyle down.

  On the day, Night felt like he had on the morning of the read-through. His stomach was in such a roil, he could have been playing Mr. Bubchik with his GI issues. He was popping TUMS and fighting a headache the whole day.

  The scene was all about faith. Faith in the power of a family, a tribe, a guild, groups of all sorts. Faith in our ability to heal others and ourselves. Faith in storytelling in all its forms: biblical storytelling; “the Hindu tradition of storytelling,” as Night’s father put it; the storytelling parents do with their children, easing them into their nighttime dreams.

  Kyle was moving through the mailroom, his T-shirt soaked with sweat, recording shots he wasn’t given the chance to understand. He was a hired hand, and he was annoyed at Night, but none of that really mattered. In its own way, even what Kyle was doing was an act of faith. That was how Night saw it. Kyle was honoring his craft and earning his pay, but he was also helping Night get the shots—if the whole thing worked—that would make you think about the movie weeks and months and years after you saw it.

  The scene required Paul to let go of grief, Cleveland Heep’s grief, and likely his real-life grief, too. It wasn’t actually a “life and death” scene but the other way around. By way of greeting that day, Paul had said to me, “Nipsey Russell!” The obit had been in the Times that morning: the rhyming Nipsey Russell, game-show host and comic, a talk-show regular in Paul’s boyhood, the Tin Man in The Wiz, the all-black version of The Wizard of Oz. Paul was different that day, wandering off to remote places in the warehouse between takes, keeping to himself. No routines. One line, spoken through sobbing, was “I can’t, can’t, can’t.” He can’t let it go. Paul’s face was red, and he was trembling. Watching Paul at work, I thought of his father, gone at fifty-one, his mother left to carry on alone. I thought how devastated I would have been, had I lost my father when I was newly out of college and starting out. When you see the movie, if you see it, you may also think of someone gone too soon. That’s part of Paul’s skill, to get you to feel those things. It’s why Night had cast him. It’s what Night was seeing, the day at the restaurant, when he glimpsed the shoe.

  Night had written a powerful and beautiful scene, and now he was directing it, but he no longer owned it. He had turned it over to Paul in his trembling, to Tom Mardirosian in his slippers and pajamas, to Kyle Rudolph strapped to his Steadicam, to all the others. For the first time, after months of shooting and rehearsals, Paul was not saying, “Yeah, sure, fine.” Paul was acting from his heart, and Night was directing from his brain. Night had already worked through the emotion of it, an
d now he was addressing the technical side of it. He wanted Paul to be in certain places on certain words, and Paul was somewhere else, someplace unfinished and deeply sad. He was doing well just to get the words out. Night’s driving force—it can always be better!—doesn’t work for everybody, or anything close to it. There was a hint of frustration on both their parts. Night had nothing to cackle about. The evening of the death-and-life scene, Night was trying to let go, but it wasn’t easy. It’s not an easy thing for any father to do.

  Paul was on the floor of the mailroom, as the script instructed him to be, surrounded by the “seven sisters,” the five Perez de la Torre sisters plus Anna and Young-Soon. They were there to heal him. The scene had been inspired by a ceremony Night had first seen at a cousin’s Hindu wedding, just as he had seen the young boy talking to himself at a family funeral. The voices had told Night to use a Hindu wedding ritual as a centerpiece of a mainstream, made-in-America movie, and that was what he was doing.

  Cindy placed her hand on Paul’s back, spread her fingers, and closed her eyes. His body was warm and his shirt moist. She could feel his flesh. He was taking full breaths, his back heaving gently, rising and falling, rising and falling. The hands of the other sisters were placed on him one by one, and now there were seven hands on him and everybody had their eyes closed. Cindy was suddenly aware of how alive Paul was, like a sleeping animal in the woods, warming the earth with its body. She could feel everything in the room, in her darkness. She could feel her fellow actors breathing, lights burning, eyes welling, film rolling, sweat rising, Night watching. She had never felt more alive in all her life.

  9.

  In late October, after Night wrapped the movie, I flew to Los Angeles to see Nina Jacobson. She had a sleek office at the Team Disney building in Burbank, on a spotless campus that felt like a sprawling, high-end psychiatric center. There were some homey touches in her office—family pictures, children’s art—and she had a remote-control device to close her door.