by Jon Cryer
A-a-a-a-a-and that’s it. There wasn’t any more of it. I try to figure out how to extend the monologue, but it’s a little hard to top threatening your brother with murder. I’ve got nothing.
Ben sees that I’m finished and finally manages a reply:
“Gitlo . . . shut up.”
Oh, that fixes everything. Thanks, Ben. I look at Burning Jewel. Nothing. I look at the priest. Nothing. Dad. Nothing. I look stage left. Still nothing.
Then, from stage right, Guy Manning, who plays the lawyer, pops in and shouts, “I got Balford Sartor on the phone!”
Guy actually has this line later in the play. When he says it, I am supposed to run offstage to answer the phone. At this moment, Guy Manning is my favorite motherfucking guy on planet Earth because he’s given me a reason to get the hell offstage.
“God grant me a golden tongue!” I say, and head right. I stop when I hear the booming sound of footsteps behind me, and I turn to realize that inexplicably, almost everyone in the cast is now following me offstage. Gitlo’s sister, Tiger, the maid, my dad, even the priest all seem to suddenly have a compelling interest in answering this phone call with me. I turn to look at them and they all mumble variations of, “Balford,” “Yes,” “Very important,” “To talk . . . yes.” I can’t blame them, so we all head off.
Once in the wings I whirl on my castmates with a fierce whisper: “What happened to Sophie!?” Many freaked-out replies. Nobody knows. Rumors fly. Furious speculation. Then a stricken Guy nearly shouts, “Susan’s still out there!” We all turn to realize we’ve left poor Susan Tracy, the actress playing Mother—the one who was supposed to be out cold—lying outstretched on the chaise in the middle of the stage with no one else there. She’s just lying out there while the audience sits in stunned, bewildered noiselessness. It was like in Full Metal Jacket when the platoon left that GI bleeding out in the middle of sniper alley.
I bark/whisper, “Never leave a man behind!” and exhort Ben and the priest back out onstage to retrieve her. I often quote Raising Arizona in times of stress, and then send other people to fix things. Turns out the guy playing the priest, Kieron Jecchinis, was actually in Full Metal Jacket! He was exactly the man for the job. He and Ben venture out cautiously. Then Ben’s brilliant improvisational mind kicks in as he haltingly says, “Preacher, let’s . . . take Mama . . . upstairs.”
Thanks again, Ben. He and Kieron manfully attempt to hoist Susan on their shoulders, which is harder than it looks, and carry her up the stairs. Ever so slowly.
Out of nowhere a thunderous metallic thump!
I turn to see that the massive riveted-steel fire curtain has dropped to the stage. I know that’s what it is because it says across it in huge letters, FIRE CURTAIN. Apparently James, the stage manager, has decided to put this performance out of its misery.
At this point, the audience must be thinking the play has just ended, or there is a fire. And what an ending: My brother gave up the money, I vaguely threatened his life and got a phone call that everybody in the family as well as our household help and a local clergyman needed to take, and then Tiger helped Mama upstairs. Great stuff. At this point, they were probably hoping for the fire.
The word smattering was coined several hundred years ago just to describe the amount of applause we experienced at that moment. Other words to describe it are hesitant and confused.
The stage manager’s voice comes over the PA with the incredibly smooth, reassuring calm of a BBC newscaster during the Blitz. “Ladies and gentlemen, due to unforeseen circumstances, we must suspend the play momentarily. We will resume shortly. Thank you for your patience.”
Backstage, I’m admiring James’s placid delivery when he spins around and full-on shouts, “Where the fuck is Sophie!”
Now that the shit is, once again, truly going down, I’m disappointed to note that due to the lack of assholes and crazies in our company, there’s no one to become suddenly, eerily calm!
Costumers, dressers, even the wig maker are hastily dispatched to scour the dressing rooms, basement, and wings. I can hear doors being flung open and slammed shut, the thudding footfalls of people bounding up and down stairs in a frenetic search. More rumors fly. Did she quit? Is she out at the pub? Abducted?
“Here she is!” Claire, the wardrobe assistant, appears at the bottom of the stairs with her arm around a sobbing Sophie Okonedo. “I’m so sorry,” Sophie says through intermittent heaves. Turns out the painkillers she took for her injuries knocked her out. She hadn’t even changed into her costume when she went out like a light. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated to anyone who’d listen. “I’m so s—”
“Fuck it!” James barks. “Get out there!”
The cast hastily reassemble onstage. “We’ll start from the line before her entrance,” I urgently say, like I know what I’m doing.
There is an electric moment just before the curtain rises. If we didn’t have the audience’s full attention before, we certainly have it now.
Up goes the fire curtain; I compose myself, work up an angry head of steam, and start in: “You didn’t have to do that, Tiger. You didn’t have to ruin all our lah-ves!”
Dramatic pause.
Nothing.
Seriously, nothing at all.
Are you fucking kidding me?
I do the slow-burn take of all time as I pivot stage left.
From the blackness of the wings I hear a choked sob. Then a sniff. Then the imploring voice of Claire plaintively begging Sophie, “Just say ‘Tiger. . . . ’”
My shoulders collapse in despair. I give up.
Then from stage left I hear a tiny, timid, tremulous, “Tiger . . . ?”
Thank Christ! I turn around. Sophie is standing onstage, but something is off. I realize she is still completely in her civilian clothes. Somehow this trailer-trash Louisiana prostitute buys her clothes from H&M. She cautiously ventures, “Did you . . . took that money, or . . . not?” as though she’s never said any of those words before in her life. The maid chimes in with her line, “What she doin’ here?” Burning Jewel screams, “Git yo ass outta here!?” Sophie gains volume and confidence on her next line; she starts prowling the stage, a bayou hellcat in a sporty, reasonably priced ensemble.
At one point she gesticulates wildly, something she’d always done at this moment, but this time it’s special because all of her civilian bracelets (that she doesn’t usually wear in the show) fly off her wrists, arc across the stage, and clatter to the floor.
But God help me, the audience is rapt. They explode with laughter at the slightest provocation. They gasp at the dramatic revelations, and openly weep at the tragic ending. The actual end of the play is greeted with a standing ovation and hoots of enjoyment.
Oh, well, if that’s all it takes to get you guys interested.
As you may have guessed, because of that night, my new actor’s nightmare is the “something happens that stops the whole fucking show” one. Even though this one turned out okay in the end, it is something I never wish to live through again.
In Sophie’s defense, it’s hard to play a character that shows up only an hour and a half after the show starts. You are required to be there a half hour before curtain up, but must sit around on pins and needles, waiting for your entrance. It’s an odd sort of purgatory. You’re neither in the show nor out of it.
900 Oneonta was eventually nominated for an Olivier Award (the British equivalent of the Tony Awards) for best play. David Beaird lost the category to a play by Arthur Miller, pretty much the only great playwright of the twentieth century who had not been mentioned by that Times reviewer. The play ran long enough to end up at yet another theater, one where, as legend tells it, Sophie missed her entrance again. By that time Eddie Izzard had taken over the role of Gitlo from me.
I suppose I’ll have to read his book to find out how that one turned out.
Chapter 20
Corn? When Did I Have Corn?
Who doesn’t love a good, juicy rumor?
Specifically, who doesn’t love a good, juicy rumor about Carol Channing?
Not I, as I sat among friends one night many years ago. I’d been performing in London on and off for the past nine months and had returned to an America that hadn’t even noticed I was gone. So I decided to do a bit of career resuscitation with a small burst of publicity. The next day I was scheduled to appear on Late Night with Conan O’Brien—this was in the midnineties, early in the show’s run—and I knew that I would be appearing alongside the great singing and acting Broadway legend Carol Channing. Actually, the conversation about the offer went like this:
My publicist: They want you to go on Conan.
Me: Okay. Who else is on?
My publicist: They got a monkey. And Carol Channing.
Me: Great. Count me in.
Mentioning my coguests to my friends around me that night, someone chimed in with the promise of scurrilous Carol Channing dirt. She knew somebody who had been on tour with Channing in a production of the show she’s most famous for, Hello, Dolly! Notice how this particular rumor—I’ll get to it—is already two persons removed before you even read it. Keep that in mind.
What I heard that night was that Ms. Channing, while being an incredibly nice lady to work with, might have had uncontrollable digestive-tract issues. I’ll spare you the gory details of what my friend regaled us with—maybe just teasing you with Channing at one point saying in her unmistakable Kewpie doll rasp, “Corn? When did I have corn?”—but let’s just say it was not the type of unconfirmed gossip about a famous person you want swimming around in your head the night before you’re about to meet said famous person.
The next day I arrived at 30 Rockefeller Center and was greeted by a perky NBC page. Mere moments later, Carol Channing walks up, friendly, gracious, lively, sporting those big glasses that memorably sit on her lollipop head, and wearing . . . a beautiful white pantsuit. White. Like a pesky little virus, the rumor I’d heard the previous night wormed its way into my brain, as I thought, Boy, I sure hope that’s just not true.
In fact, I tried to spin this worry and what I was seeing into something positive: Actually, with that outfit, she’s incredibly confident if she is, I thought. That might just blow the incontinence rumor out of the water!
Pleasantries exchanged, the page said, “Ms. Channing, Mr. Cryer, come this way.” We’re led to the elevator, we step in, and the door closes, after which I am suddenly struck by the unmistakable smell of what I can only call, without mincing any words, poop. We’re talking a stench, something pervasive, unignorable, and not artificial. This wasn’t a cut-rate cleaning chemical, or the lingering after-odor of a lunch left out too long. It was something biologically processed, released organically, and making its home in the atmosphere.
My brain was now working overtime. Oh, no, I’m thinking. Carol Channing—Broadway legend—has lost control of her bowels right before she’s about to go on a TV show wearing a white pantsuit! This woman’s a stage icon! This can’t be happening! It had to be maybe the most awkward and discomfiting moment of my life.
I looked over nervously, and she was smiling. Not a care in the world. But when I glanced over at the page, I was met with a decidedly sheepish look. She knew, too. She knew, too! And still that odor was all over, daring you to transform every muscle in your face into an expression of disgust.
When the doors finally opened, I walked out quickly, while the page motioned in one direction and said, “Ms. Channing, your dressing room’s down this way.” I barely let the page get out of her mouth where my dressing room was before I urgently motioned her aside.
“This is terrible!” I feverishly whispered. “Somebody’s got to do something! You smelled that, right?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Carol Channing just lost control of her bowels in the elevator!” I hissed.
A confused look settled over the page’s face. “Oh, wait, no, no,” she said. “We just brought up the monkey in that elevator.”
When I told Conan that story much later (not on the air, of course), he couldn’t contain himself. He thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. I’m just grateful there was no real crisis and that the only thing helplessly leaking was my overactive imagination. Carol is indeed a Broadway legend, and now that I think about it, a woman of such incredible grace and poise that she never once said out loud or let on with her face what she had to have been thinking: Boy, that Matthew Broderick smells like shit.
Chapter 21
P-Choo . . . P-Choo! P-Choo!
When actors are in high demand they get offers left and right. We may end up having meetings with directors and such, but we won’t have to actually audition. We won’t be asked to prove we can do the part. But those periods are few and far between. The rest of the time actors spend a large portion of our lives auditioning.
Hot Shots! had been a hit, but hadn’t revived the demand for me as a performer, so I auditioned quite a bit.
When people hear I tried out for and didn’t get the role of Chandler on Friends, the prevailing response is that it was the biggest of missed opportunities. That I was “this close” to landing an incredibly popular role. That I could have starred on one of the most beloved and defining sitcoms of the 1990s.
“Oh, what might have been,” they say, when the right response is, “Boy, that show would have been a lot different.”
Actors get roles for all manner of reasons, and they don’t get roles for a similarly wide variety of reasons, too. The subtleties in tonality that land one actor a part while making every other actor not right for that part can be incredibly hard to distinguish, and often come down to a strange mixture of prejudice, talent, luck, and circumstance.
In the case of Chandler, I was doing 900 Oneonta in London and got a call at three a.m. from Marta Kauffman, one of the creators/producers of what was then titled Six of One, an incredibly funny and intelligent woman, yet evidently someone who didn’t understand that the Earth actually rotates, causing night to fall in places that aren’t Los Angeles. But never mind. When Marta calls, I wake up, and she quickly said, “I’m writing this script and I want you to put yourself on tape for it. We have a casting director in London who can do this, but it has to be a rush, because we’re casting now.”
I was groggy when the phone rang, but now I wasn’t. I said, “Okay, great! Can you send me the lines?”
“Well, do you have a fax machine?” she asked.
“No, but I can hook up my computer to the phone line here, and receive a fax on my computer!” Were you to be reading that response of mine in 1993, you might just think I was from the future, so snazzy was my technological capability at that time. What I didn’t grasp, though, was that the British phone jacks didn’t work with my Yank modem jack, and I didn’t have the proper converter. (So much for that snazziness.) But I managed to rig a connection, which took an hour to get working. (Why wasn’t I in War Games, again? Never mind.) The fax came in—it’s now four a.m.—and I got down to the business of prepping for the audition.
The Chandler monologue she sent over was a riot, and I could tell it was a great character. The next day, on very little sleep, I met up with a British casting director, who recorded it, then sent off the tape to Warner Bros., where . . . apparently no one got it. I learned this later from Mark Saks, a friend (and Stagedoor alum) in the casting department there who said that the tape was stuck in customs, and that they’d cast Matthew Perry without ever seeing it. Oh, what might have been, you’ve already started thinking, I can tell.
Well, the reality is, I was terrible on that tape. This is not just me trying to make myself feel better about a lost part, excusing how tired I was, or misinterpreting the British casting director, who didn’t seem to get any of the jokes. This is an assessment with independ
ent verification from my casting director pal Mark, who eventually saw the tape once it cleared customs, and will vouch to anybody who asks that had that tape made it through and been seen by everyone, I would never have gotten the part in a million years.
Besides, here’s the only sane, realistic way to look at that never-was opportunity: Matthew Perry is fucking great on that show! Friends wouldn’t be the same sitcom with me playing Chandler. Matthew’s distinctive line delivery and physicality were a gold mine for those writers, and that was something only he had. (I heard it was based on the mannerisms of a close friend of his.) Matthew deserved every bit of the massive success he got from it, and frankly, it personally feels great to lose a part to somebody who knocks it out of the park. What feels terrible is when the great role goes to someone who fails at it. That’s when you start wondering if the people in charge didn’t know what they wanted, and that if you’d just had the chance to read for someone else, if, if, if, if . . . That’s a spiral you want to avoid.
Around that time I had another, similar situation regarding an audition. I was on a late-night flight from Los Angeles to New York, reading a script for an independent movie. Ah, independent movies: a chance to work incredibly hard in terrible conditions for very low pay on a movie that no one will ever see. Plus, they wanted me to come in the very next morning. That’s woefully little time to prepare, and the situation wasn’t helped by how confused I was by the story, which shifted back and forth in time, and the brazen talkiness of the lines involved—long foulmouthed monologues, one of which I was supposed to read at the audition. Getting in at midnight, drowsy and bewildered, I thought, This is really brutal. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this. I was dreading going in to audition the following day.
Then, in the morning, a call came from my sister. Her mother-in-law had taken ill, requiring her and her husband to go out to Long Island on very short notice. Would I take care of my niece while they made this sudden trip? Yes! I now had a reason not to audition: family emergency!