All of those locations have their advantages, and all are dangerous and steamy. I’ve enjoyed sex in two of the aforementioned locations in my life, but having sex in a banger is something I’ve yet to cross off my bucket list. My lunch breaks on film sets, so far, have consisted mainly of devouring barbecued ribs from catering and taking a food-induced nap.
I am a guest star today on 30 Rock, the NBC sitcom written by and starring Tina Fey. We are somewhere in Queens, though I don’t know where. And it doesn’t matter. Everything I need is in a one-block radius: my trailer, the makeup trailer, the wardrobe trailer, the set, and most importantly, the craft services table (“crafty,” it’s called). Crafty is a little cordoned-off section near the set where you can find coffee, water, candy, cookies, nuts, granola bars, fruit, bread, peanut butter and jelly, and more candy, at all hours of the day. We are on location because the scene I am shooting calls for a banquet hall, and the 30 Rock studio, where the show is usually shot, is too small a space.
I am thrilled to finally get to work with Tina Fey. Both of us began our careers with Second City, albeit twenty years apart, and I have been a great fan of hers since watching her on Saturday Night Live. Every word in this script, from start to finish, is hilarious. This is 30 Rock’s last season. In fact, it has one more month to shoot before its ends its seven years on the air.
In 2006, while I was appearing in Young Frankenstein on Broadway, I was offered the part of Tina Fey’s mother on the show. I had to decline because we were in previews and I couldn’t get off the necessary shoot days from the musical. I was, of course, disappointed. Over the years, I had hoped there might be another opportunity to do the show, but one never materialized until last week, when I was offered this hysterical part of Bonnie Badamath (think bad at math), the chairperson at an awards ceremony and women’s event called 80 Under 80, Celebrating Women in Media.
Liz Lemon, Tina’s character, is receiving the top award, but Bonnie is less concerned with Liz’s award and more concerned about her husband, Gary, who has recently ditched her to marry their realtor, who was in the process of selling Gary and Bonnie their dream house.
“I miss Gary so much,” Bonnie cries out. “I put his sweater on a body pillow and took it for a canoe ride.”
It’s not a big part but it’s funny, and I love being on camera interacting with Tina and Jane Krakowski, and taking direction from the brilliant writers and director.
I have been on many sets in my career, and usually pass the time, when I’m not needed in the scene, obsessively going over my lines and making return trips to crafty. I have never learned to use my time productively while shooting a film or TV show and have always marvelled at actors who can. But that requires multi-tasking, and it’s not something that comes easily to me or, by the way, at all.
Many years ago I was a guest along with Steve Martin on Marty Short’s sitcom. Steve would finish a scene on camera and then return to his trailer (Mr. Martin did not have to share a double or triple banger; he had a trailer all to himself) to continue writing his movie script, or his novel, or his play. It didn’t matter the genre because the point is he was multi-tasking. I’d be eating my fifth doughnut while he was completing the first act of an award-winning something. One of my favourite people, Seth Rudetsky, my musical director and a writer, actor, and popular radio personality, can be playing the piano, reading a book, and finishing his weekly column for Playbill all at the same time. It is so annoying and distracting to be on stage with him during rehearsals and watch him read his book as I’m trying to remember my lines, and yet, on cue, he’ll put the book down and start accompanying me. I am so envious at his multi-tasking abilities.
So today I am experimenting. I brought my computer with me, and between takes and during lunch, in my banger, I’m going to write an essay for my book. This experiment is fraught with anxiety. What if I forget my lines because I won’t be going over them repeatedly? What if I get into another mindset, that of a writer, and can’t make the switch back to actor? What if I don’t return to the craft services table in five minutes and all the Twizzlers are gone? I guess you could say I’m doing a little cognitive behavioural therapy on myself. I’m trying to contain the anxiety that comes up when I am not doing the same compulsive thing I’ve always done. It seems to be working right now, until I think about the lines I have to say in the next scene, and worry that if I don’t repeat them ten times in a row, I’ll forget them when I get in front of the camera. If this exercise works today, and I write an essay and remember my lines, I will feel enormously empowered. I will go on talk shows and be lauded as the woman who rewired her brain over lunch and finished her book.
For every Broadway show in which I have ever appeared, whether it’s a one-night-only performance or daily performances during a twelve-month run, I go over all my lines before I go on. I say them out loud, in my dressing room, in the wings, and right before I make my entrance. The brilliantly funny and confident actress Megan Mullally and I appeared in Young Frankenstein on Broadway together. One night before the start of the show, Megan came into my dressing room. We chatted a bit and then, slightly panicked, I announced that she had to leave because I had to prepare.
“Prepare what?” she asked.
“I have to get into character and go over my lines,” I said.
“You do?” She kindly left my dressing room, but I could hear her laughing all the way back to hers. After all, we were in our fifth month of the run. It was preposterous to think I still had to go over the lines.
Noise distractions are a big culprit in keeping me from staying focused. I never knew that sound sensitivity had a name, but it turns out it does: misophonia. I just read about this newly discovered disorder in the New York Times. Misophonia is the hatred of specific sounds—not loud noises, but small irritating noises: someone breathing or clearing his throat, water dripping. It’s something I’ve lived with for years. Someone chewing gum, someone sniffing, the TV on really softly, a goose quacking in the distance, someone clicking a pen, Alicia Keys singing at any volume, anywhere, is enough to make me lose it. The other day I was on a plane and the guy two rows over was turning pages in a magazine aggressively (as I was trying to read a book), and the sound of the pages flipping unravelled me. I had to put my book down and put my hands over my ears as I proceeded to stare him down. He was completely oblivious that his page-turning was turning me into a killer. My mother always snapped her chewing gum, and it felt to me like the sound of someone writing on a chalkboard. My best friend, Deb Monk, was chewing gum when I first met her. I asked her to spit it out, and because she is so loving, she did. In fact, she always spits out her gum when she sees me because she knows my triggers. She is a true friend.
Now that I have a name for my extreme intolerance of certain noises—misophonia—I feel special and legitimate. I read that Kelly Ripa also suffers with misophonia. I wish it was Liv Ullmann who had this infliction. I would then be included in an elite artistic circle of fabulously sensitive Norwegian/Armenian actresses. Anyway, there’s comfort knowing I’m not alone.
By forcing myself to do an activity that is not routine—writing, for instance, when I ordinarily would be going over my lines—I am also slowing down any age-related mental decline. Writing in my banger is a neurobic exercise. Neurobics involve using your senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste) differently from how you normally would. Neurobic exercises activate brain cell activity. Change is good, and healthy for your brain!
Other examples of neurobic activities:
Eating with your non-dominant hand.
Brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand.
Using the Braille numbers in the elevator and at the ATM.
Taking a completely different route to work.
Learning and using sign language.
Rearranging where you put your cosmetics.
I’m willing to try anything that will extend my life, except sorting out my cosmetics. Seriously, I can’t throw away any of
my makeup. Eyebrow pencils, concealers, lipstick, rouge—that’s how long I keep makeup. No one even uses the word “rouge” anymore. I have tubes of lipstick I bought in the ’60s, my favourite being Cherries in the Snow by Revlon. They still make that colour, by the way, and I keep buying new lipsticks of the same shade, but I can’t throw away the half-used original tubes. I might be the only actress alive who still has a stash of Max Factor’s Clown White. And amazingly, I used it recently, on stage with Geoffrey Rush in Broadway’s Exit the King.
You never know when you’ll need clown white. And unlike milk, makeup doesn’t turn after ten days. It seems to have a shelf life of at least fifty years.
But back to neurobics and how to rewire my brain.
Next week, I start French lessons.
Today, I am going to drink my Starbucks coffee with my non-dominant hand.
And tomorrow I’ll take a different route to work.
I will reconfigure my brain, without drugs, without therapy. I will live till I’m one hundred. But if someone doesn’t fix that fucking faucet in my bathroom, I’m going to rip it out of the wall.
Squirrels
Yesterday I hired an animal control company to remove a squirrel’s nest outside my home. The mother squirrel had dragged branches and leaves from my willow tree into an eavestrough beneath my bedroom window. Of course, I knew none of the specifics, like who dragged what where, until Jaime, the wildlife removal expert, confirmed what kind of animal it was. I was thinking possibly raccoon, but that didn’t entirely make sense. A raccoon is much bigger than an eavestrough, and yet how could a small squirrel gnaw off branches from a willow tree and drag them a few feet to the gutter? Jaime took a look from the yard and in one instant yelled out, “Squirrels, and believe me, I’ve got no problem slapping that squirrel’s head around.”
“Isn’t that dangerous? Won’t she attack you?” I asked, completely ignoring the fact he planned to punch out the little guy and make mince-rodent out of her.
He replied, “Squirrels ain’t the brightest animals. Once I slap his face around a little bit, he knows who’s boss and he won’t come back.”
Jaime walked into my bedroom and climbed out the window onto the roof. As he approached the nest, an adult squirrel frantically jumped out of it and onto the adjacent tree. Jaime then put on some gloves and continued with glee and maniacal anticipation to dismantle the nest. Meanwhile, the squirrel, perched on her tree branch, was watching nervously. Jaime took full advantage of the onlooking squirrel. He dislodged one branch at a time and crumbled it in front of the now homeless rodent. He cackled and taunted the squirrel by shaking each branch in front of her. Jaime was the alpha. He was showing the squirrel who was in charge.
Suddenly Jaime stopped and quizzically looked into the nest.
“What’s that high-pitched squealing?” I asked. “Do you hear that?”
“Babies,” Jaime replied.
“How many?” I asked nervously.
“Probably three to five,” he confidently responded.
He took off his gloves, stuck his hand in the nest, and gently removed the first baby. It was pink, about three inches long, and had arms and legs and a suggestion of a tail. Its eyes were not yet open, but it was squealing and squirming in Jaime’s palm.
Jaime stuck his hand back into the nest and one by one pulled out three more babies.
He then took out his iPhone.
“Do you have a dish or a box?” he asked.
“Of course.” I ran down to the kitchen and picked out an aluminum pie plate. (Was that an unconscious act? Was I thinking of squirrel pie?)
I brought the plate back to Jaime. He placed it on the roof and put the four babies into it, then clicked on his iPhone camera. I glanced at the tree and saw that the mother had vanished.
“What are you doing, Jaime?” I asked, feeling unsettled as I stared at the four pink squirrel newborns squirming in the pie pan.
“I’m making a movie. The mother will be back in a minute to get the babies, and I want to film this.”
Good, I thought. The mother squirrel had bolted when Jaime initially approached the nest. How could a mother, in spite of the presence of an evil giant looming over her nest, leave her defenceless babies, not more than a few days old? My maternal instincts were on fire. As a member of Million Moms for Squirrels, it was my duty to stand up for these helpless babies, these newborn and not particularly attractive vermin.
Jaime and I waited for the mother squirrel to return. She was nowhere in sight.
“Oh my God, Jaime, the babies are in an aluminum pie plate. Will they roast in the sun? Should we take them out? What if the mother doesn’t come back right away?”
“She’ll be back. Trust me.”
Jaime placed the plate out of the sun, in the corner of the roof, and climbed back into my bedroom. I grabbed an empty shoebox, climbed out onto the roof, and positioned the box over the plate in such a way that the babies wouldn’t suffocate and would still be seen from the window. The babies were now protected from the sun, though not protected from other potential killers: raccoons, herons, and seagulls—not to mention the elements, rain and wind.
“She’ll be back. Trust me.”
It was time for Jaime to move on to his next appointment. His work as the squirrel exterminator was done. I wrote a cheque for $333.35 and handed it to him as he got in his truck.
“Jaime,” I asked. “Did we do the right thing? If we hadn’t dismantled the nest, would the squirrels have moved on after they became stronger?”
“You did the right thing,” Jaime said. “They would have made a home there and eventually dug their way into the attic. Toronto has thousands of squirrels. Don’t feel bad.”
The pied piper of the GTA smiled reassuringly and drove away.
I did feel bad. And guilty. I kept checking throughout the day to see if the mother squirrel had come back to retrieve her young. I thought of bringing the babies into the house and feeding them with an eyedropper and raising them as pets.
They wouldn’t have been my first pet rodents.
When my sons were small, we had a pet rat named Cocoa. We loved the little guy. He was smart and cute and cuddly. His home was a cage in the kitchen, but often we would let him out to play. He greeted my sons at the front door when they came home from school. He sat on my sons’ shoulders as they did their homework. He could find his way out of a maze that my sons built from blocks. Cocoa lived almost three years, unheard of for a pet rat, whose usual life span is two years. He developed a skin rash that took over his body, and eventually his hind legs became paralyzed. Even though I purchased Cocoa for $2, I spent over $500 on medicine and visits to the veterinarian to keep him alive. When I drove Cocoa away in his cage to be put down, my sons and I cried. Cocoa was a grey rat that looked like he’d been plucked from the tracks of the A train in Manhattan, but we loved him.
I have known other people to raise pet rats, but I have never heard of a pet squirrel, which is kind of interesting, really, when you think that the nickname for a squirrel is “a rat with a tail.”
But now my sons were grown and I’d be nursing four squirrels back to health, only to wreak havoc in my home and nest inside my five-hundred-count Egyptian bedding. And I had better things to do with my time than build a maze out of blocks on the floor. That’s not entirely true. I have plenty of time to build a maze, anywhere, but it seems like a lonely, crazy thing for a sixty-five-year-old woman to do on her own. I would, however, have taken the time to train them to greet me at the door. That would have been charming.
Still, I couldn’t stop thinking of the babies.
By the evening, five hours later, it started to rain. The temperature was dropping and there was no sign of the mother. I went to bed and prayed all night that the babies would be gone when I woke up. Not eaten by a raccoon but lovingly rescued by their guilt-ridden mom.
At 5:30 a.m., I gingerly opened the bedroom curtains. One baby had managed to escape, or the rain had washe
d him out onto the roof. He lay dead a few feet away. The three other babies, all huddled together, were dead in the pan. I was heartsick.
Did I kill them? Was I their surrogate mom and I let them die?
I remembered a book I read to my children when they were little. It was called Are You My Mother?
I could never get through the book without falling apart. In the story, a baby bird hatches from his mother’s egg, just after the mother bird leaves to find food for her baby. The baby does not see his mother anywhere. And so he goes to look for her. He can’t fly, so he walks and walks, looking for his mother. He asks a kitten, a hen, a dog, and a cow if they are his mother. They all reply no. The baby bird eventually is dropped back into its nest by a crane and is reunited with its mom. I bought a copy of the book recently to give to a new mother, and as I reread it in the bookstore, I began to cry uncontrollably.
What’s behind this unbridled show of emotion toward a fictional motherless bird in a book, and four dead baby squirrels on my roof?
Why can I cry at this sight and be torn apart, yet not feel gut-wrenching despair at the carnage in Syria, the murder of twelve moviegoers in Colorado, young soldiers dying in combat all around the world? How can these tragedies not touch my heart, make me want to do something to change these heinous crimes against humanity?
I am so desensitized by images on TV, by self-serving newscasters, by exploitative websites, that very little out there touches my heart. I want to feel in my bones the atrocities committed every day. But I feel nothing. Instead, I glance at the latest headline, shake my head in sorrow for a moment, and carry on with my life, my very comfortable life. Nothing really penetrates for long.
Too much pain. Too much sadness to let in. I cry over a dead two-day-old squirrel but not for twelve innocent people who died by an insane boy’s rifle in Aurora.
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