I'll Scream Later (No Series)

by Matlin, Marlee

  Bill was going through such a difficult time then, I was grateful that he was able to be there during any of the production. He stayed only half of the time, flying back to L.A. to be with his partner, who was on his deathbed from AIDS. Watching Bill go through the excruciating pain of losing someone who meant so much, and being completely unable to do anything to help him beyond just being there, was one of my hardest times.

  HEAR NO EVIL was, without question, the most physically demanding film I had done. My work with the trainer focused primarily on running. Before I hit the set, I was averaging about six miles a day. I loved it.

  Running created just the right rhythm and space for my mind to work through all sorts of issues and problems. Whether it was life or a scene I was struggling with, if I went running, I had it figured out by the time I got back. I even ran an 8K race while I was there.

  The more time I spent acting, the more I was able to understand and tap into the ways in which my deafness could enhance it. If you’re Deaf, you learn early on to use your face and your body language to communicate instead of your voice. As with just about everything else in life, as you get older and more experienced, you get better. That life experience fed into my acting. David Kelley used to call my eyes my weapon of choice in front of the camera. My eyes are my ears and I put that into my work.

  All that is nuance; this role also demanded that I be concrete and visceral, too. I had to be able to run long distances for many of the scenes; some days it felt as if I were running most of the day. When it was on big, open boulevards, it was easy. Much more difficult were the scenes when I had to run through woods with thick underbrush in the middle of the night.

  Before we wrapped, I had to run, get attacked, get knocked over, and scream over and over. I’ve never screamed so much in my life! And I was covered in scratches and bruises throughout the shoot.

  Most days ended with my edging toward exhaustion, but in a good, this-body-had-gotten-a-serious-workout kind of way.

  It was a long shoot—we started the first week in May and wrapped at the end of June—but was a light, bright time for such a dark, dark thriller…except for one serious tiff with the director.

  In one scene, I’m in a bubble bath when something startles me and I begin getting out of the tub. My body was not supposed to be exposed. When I saw a rough cut of the film, the camera had captured far more than I wanted revealed.

  I was furious! Absolutely no artistic reason justified it: nothing in the narrative demanded it. It was a cheap shot, a bid to show a little skin. When the skin in question is mine, I care deeply.

  I had a few days of extremely testy exchanges with Robert over this. He wanted to leave it in. I wanted it completely cut.

  In the end, the scene was trimmed, then trimmed a bit more. It was still more of me than I wanted out there, and it wasn’t pleasant to have that fight. All of my contracts in the years since have been tightened significantly on this front. No nudity, and no body double either—at least not without my knowledge and consent.

  IF THE FIRST season of Reasonable Doubts was heaven, the second season was not quite hell, but a long way from heaven. The show was struggling in the ratings, and what had been a really good working relationship with Mark began to sour. I began to feel isolated, as if I were an outsider in an old boys’ club.

  It began to feel as if the production revolved around Mark. On too many days I’d get called to the set, then be left waiting with the rest of the cast and crew until he showed up. I felt his character was getting more of the focus and mine was receding. Virtually all of the publicity for the show was falling on my shoulders.

  Signing never came easy to Mark, and trying to learn pages of dialogue and signs each week was wearing him down, too—you could just feel the energy deflating. Our time slot didn’t help the mood on the set either. NBC had put us head-to-head with Roseanne, then the number-one-ranked show in prime time. It was hard not to feel that was a battle we had no chance of winning.

  I was still so new at all of this. The writers would come in and observe, but never really talk to me. I tried throwing a few ideas their way and got a few story lines added that brought in other Deaf actors for an episode or two. But there was no real collaboration.

  At one point Bill heard one of the producers say, “Keep Marlee’s dialogue short, we don’t want so much dead air.”

  You cannot write for me or shoot me exactly as you would a hearing actress. There are differences, not impossible differences, but ones that you need to understand. Children of a Lesser God was a prime example of how to make it work.

  It always starts with the script, and in Children there is almost no air—as I was signing, dialogue kept running, translating everything for the audience but in a way that felt natural. It was written so that you are hearing Bill Hurt’s character’s reactions as well as seeing them. Randa spent hours planning, adjusting shots in different ways, to catch the action between me and the other actors.

  Here’s a simple way to think of it. If a director is shooting two people talking, they typically do a lot of over-the-shoulder shots. The person who is speaking is shot from the back, over his or her shoulder, so that the audience hears the voice, but is watching the other person’s reaction.

  If one of the actors is Deaf, that pretty much kills the over-the-shoulder shot for at least half of the dialogue. So the director has to be more inventive in staging the action.

  Another mistake that’s often made in writing for me is to over-explain, to be too literal with the dialogue for the character translating my signing. It’s a delicate balance between telling the audience too much and not telling them enough—but that’s really the case with all dialogue.

  It is definitely an art, but one that the best writers seem to know how to do intuitively. The brilliant Aaron Sorkin, who would write me into The West Wing, was one. Seinfeld’s incredible Carol Leifer, one of the show’s core writers, absolutely got me and my humor. She wasn’t afraid to use my deafness as comic grist.

  On Spin City, I was lucky to work with the legendary Gary David Goldberg; Bill Lawrence, who went on to create Scrubs; and Kirk Rudell, who helped sharpen tongues later on Will & Grace. And the always clever David Kelley, who, years after we were just sending each other family Christmas cards, wrote me into Picket Fences in a pretty remarkable and crazy way.

  You can look at any of those episodes and they flow seamlessly; the dialogue between me and the other actors feels organic, believable. As an actor, those are the qualities you’re looking for.

  THE SITUATION ON Reasonable Doubts continued to deteriorate. The ratings continued to drop, despite the fact that both years I received an Emmy nomination for Best Actress in a Drama series.

  On one particularly difficult day when tempers were already short, I muttered something under my breath about Mark’s attitude—unfortunately he overheard it. Things turned nasty and we didn’t speak for weeks unless it was the dialogue on the page. Given the number of scenes we had together, that made for an extremely tense set. It reminded me a little of the high school standoff Liz and I had had years ago—not good for anyone.

  We got no feedback from the show’s producers on what they did or didn’t like about any of the performances. I would have loved being a part of discussions on how to improve the show. It seemed the only way they thought I could help was to hit the publicity trail. I was a good soldier on that front. I did endless interviews and I think I hit every talk and late-night show in the universe.

  When I found out the series had been canceled, I was both relieved and devastated. Relieved because I wasn’t going to be fighting with Mark anymore—because at heart I know he’s a good guy and I hated that we were at such odds—and devastated to lose the work. Now what?

  It was time to move on, but whatever I did career-wise, I also had a wedding to plan.

  43

  IN THE SPRING of 1992 I was looking for a house to buy. It would be my first, and though I didn’t know exactly what I wa
nted, I always trust my gut instinct and knew when I saw the right place, I’d just know it.

  In late April, the Realtor called about a house in Hollywood that he thought was ideal. It had the space I wanted and the price was right, I should try to see it right away.

  The house was in the hills above the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, where I had stayed in 1986 when I went to the Oscars for the first time. It was not far from the apartment where I was living so I knew the neighborhood well. It was much closer to Le Dome, where I loved to treat myself to dinner, and Nicky Blair’s, where I had a favorite chopped salad that was the best ever, and a friend in Nicky, which was better still. And it was just about eight miles from the lot where Reasonable Doubts was being shot.

  It sounded perfect. I was due to fly in for a quick break from Hear No Evil, I was missing Kevin, and so I thought I’d come see the house and see Kevin. Since Jack was already in Hollywood, I dispatched him to take a look first.

  The day quickly turned disastrous, though I wouldn’t realize how disastrous until I landed in L.A. many hours late after my plane was rerouted from LAX to Burbank Airport after shots were fired at police helicopters in the skies above the city.

  It was April 29, the day the Rodney King verdict came down, with a Simi Valley jury acquitting four police officers caught on tape beating the black motorist after a high-speed chase.

  For six days the city would riot and burn. National Guard troops would start filling the streets in South Central L.A. and span out from there. Guards wearing fatigues holding rifles could be spotted on rooftops, tanks rolled down the streets I was used to cruising.

  One of the Tommy’s Hamburgers that Ruthie and I used to hit when nothing else but their famed chili burgers would do when we couldn’t concentrate—she on her studies, me on a new script—was in Koreatown on Beverly and Rampart boulevards in one of the battle zones.

  Just as my life was coming together, it seemed the city I lived in and had grown to love was coming apart.

  Jack was trying to deal with my flight change and didn’t realize what was happening until he went to his bank on Wilshire Boulevard, and saw the Big 5 athletic store across the street under siege and then a wave of looters running down the street holding TV sets still in their boxes.

  By the time I landed, I knew there were riots, but it all seemed surreal and I couldn’t quite imagine what that meant. Kevin had left his car at Burbank Airport for me, so I was headed from the Valley back to my place. I realized just how bad it was when the car in front of me started swerving wildly—back and forth, back and forth—as if the driver was making sure no one could pass. I just tapped my horn and the car ahead slammed on the brakes. Four gangbangers piled out, shaking their fists and shouting at me. I can read lips; I knew just how scared I should be.

  I used signs, gestures, anything I could to communicate that I couldn’t hear them, I was Deaf. I kept telling them over and over. My heart was racing and they were looking at me, deciding whether to believe me. I was trying to calculate how quickly I could squeeze through my window and start running. But then they turned and walked back to their car.

  The rest of the drive home was a nightmare. Most of the streets were a maze of panicked gridlock, people driving on sidewalks to keep moving, and the faces in the other cars looked either frightened or angry.

  The city was locked down, and everyone I knew was lying low, waiting for things to break. But Kevin, my new fiancé, was working nonstop. Like every other cop in the area, he was pulling long, frightening hours. At least they were frightening to me.

  Kevin is careful, I know that, but he also never hesitates to step in and do whatever is necessary to carry out his job. We are both perfectionists in that way. So my heart would sink every time he walked out the door in those days, and I would worry until he was home safely.

  It really hit home for the first time what I was signing on for in falling in love with Kevin. This is the reality that I try to push aside to help me cope, knowing that each time he walks out that door to go to work, I never know what kind of danger he could step into or what he will face before the day is done.

  He loves his job, has never wanted to do anything else, and he loves working the streets. But I was thrilled in the summer of 2008 when his latest promotion meant he’d spend more time at the station and far less on patrol.

  The riots passed, though scars linger. For all of us, I hope we never see that rage rise up anywhere in our country again. I hope that we keep searching for ways to eliminate the anger and replant it with hope.

  THE HOUSE IN the hills turned out to be perfect. It had the look of an English country house with four bedrooms and views that did not stop. On clear days I could look west and see the ocean and Catalina Island. Below me was the basin of the city, with downtown rising to the east.

  The two best times of day were the quiet early mornings, before the hum and buzz of Sunset Boulevard penetrated the trees, and the evenings, when the lights of this living, breathing city turned on.

  As soon as I bought it, I dove into redecorating it. I wanted it to be cozy and warm. When I was asked by photographer Michael McCreary to participate in one of his projects to help fund AIDS research, I immediately said yes.

  He envisioned a coffee-table book filled with photos not of celebrities—many of whom he shot as part of his day job as a top photographer—but their favorite rooms.

  I didn’t have to think about which room in my house that would be—what Whoopi described in the introduction as “that room that lets you be you.”

  For me it was the family room, though at the moment that meant just me and Kevin. It had a fireplace that we stoked up when the nights grew chilly, walls lined with bookshelves, and a great destresser, Galaga, the classic arcade game in which my spaceships shot down more than their share of flying insects.

  But the pièce de résistance was a huge wraparound, blue denim couch, as comfortable as your favorite pair of jeans, and big enough to easily seat twenty. It was covered with huge throw pillows, and in the middle of it all sat a weathered wooden coffee table that wasn’t happy unless feet were propped up on it, with a bowl of popcorn within reach. I could just sink into that couch and not move for days!

  A lot of our wedding would be planned on that couch.

  SUPER BOWL XXVII in 1993 was at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena—Cowboys versus the Buffalo Bills. I love football; I also love Garth Brooks, who was slated to sing the national anthem that year.

  That’s something I’d always wanted to do, sign the national anthem at a major sporting event. Jack put in a call to Garth to see how he’d feel about me signing while he sang. He loved the idea.

  It was great watching as they set up the stage on the floor of the Rose Bowl—it might look small when you see it, but up close, it’s massive. We were getting ready to do the run-through when Garth had some words with the producer and walked off the stage.

  The dispute was over whether the network would also air Garth’s video “We Shall Be Free,” which I’d participated in with lots of other actors the year before. An agreement had originally been struck, but now someone up the food chain was getting cold feet.

  The song is a moving portrait of Garth’s hopes for this country. The lyrics beautifully weave together the notion that once we end poverty, war, prejudice, injustice, all the things that divide people and countries, only then will we be free. There’s no condemnation, just a prayer for a better day.

  But word had come down that someone at the network thought it was too political; the network would not air the video after all. Well, Garth told them, then he would not be singing the national anthem. The one thing to know about Garth is that he’s a man of his word, and he expects other people to extend him the same courtesy.

  Someone with the production came over and talked to Jack, alerting him that I might be signing the national anthem by myself. This was definitely not what I had had in mind. I was terrified of stepping out there by myself, Garth-less, in
front of that huge stadium, packed with fans, to say nothing of the biggest television audience of the year.

  How desperate were the producers? They saw Eddie Van Halen there and asked if he would step in and sing. He declined. At some point they even asked if Jack could sing. No way!

  I tried to steel myself, all the while praying that the network would relent and air Garth’s video. At the last second peace was declared!

  Garth sang, I signed, the video aired, and the Cowboys won. It was a great day.

  My bridesmaids

  WHEN IT CAME to a wedding, I wanted the perfect blend of elegance and comfort. We were going to be surrounded by all the people we loved, and I wanted the evening to be like a great party for everyone, the kind that you remember years later.

  The first question, where to hold the wedding, was once again answered by the Winklers. Just as they had opened their hearts, then their Toluca Lake home, to me many years ago, they opened up their beautiful yard for the evening in late August that Kevin and I had settled on as the day we would marry.

  As in all things, they were incredibly gracious. When the wedding planner I worked with wanted to cover their pool to create a dance floor that night—even though it would mean removing the fencing around the pool—Stacey and Henry said absolutely.

  The invitations were hand-painted and my dress was white silk taffeta—off the shoulders but with sleeves capped just above the elbow. The rusching of the fitted bodice opened up into beautiful open folds of the skirt that draped to the floor. Amazing beading was at the neck and the waist. The only jewelry I wore was a pearl choker, and my four-carat diamond engagement ring.

  My wedding planner convinced me to tone down my love of purple a little, so we used pale lavenders and lilacs. The bridesmaids wore plum.

  The tables were covered in chintz and lace, with enough food to feed probably twice the 250 guests who came to celebrate with us.