In my case she nearly killed me. Dale observed that I was less than my ebullient self. Not that I moped—my mother’s ghost would haunt me: “Life is a gift. Enjoy it!” But that devilish streak in me was quiet. Apart from the emotional losses, I was struggling to pay off the last of Mom’s hospital bills plus my own bills, which fluctuate like Elizabeth Taylor’s weight. I’ll deny myself for months as I keep my nose to the grindstone, then I’ll rebel, explode and buy a new truck.
Dale was working at Spur magazine. I drove up to have lunch in Middleburg, where the magazine was then located. She regaled me with stories about horse show mishaps and personalities, I regaled her with the latest Hollywood silliness afflicting me. I was working on a project that never did make it to the screen because the producer wasn’t powerful enough nor brave enough to fight the studio. Every time the studio would say change this or change that, he would. At a recent meeting he had handed me the screenplay and said—exact words and only words—“Give me more sad.”
Dale and I howled.
“Didn’t you used to hot-walk ponies at Royal Palm?” she asked once we had exhausted the topic of Hollywood.
“Yeah, they started the place up when I was in junior high.”
“Ever hold a polo mallet in your hand?”
“Hell, no. I wiped down ponies, walked them, then hosed them.”
“You ought to play.”
“Get a grip. You’ve got to be rich to play polo.”
“Nah. You can play sandlot for about what it costs to play golf, really.”
“I didn’t think they allowed women to play.”
“Well,” she drawled, “they aren’t exactly welcoming us, but if enough women learn the game, what are they going to do?”
“Call us all dykes, the usual. Of course, in my case, it’s true.”
We giggled.
“I dare you to take Rege Ludwig’s polo clinic.”
“What do you mean, you dare me?”
“I bet you can’t last the whole week.”
Stung, I replied, “The hell I can’t!”
“Five bucks says you can’t.”
I should have strangled her right there. No, I had to get up at 5:30 A.M., six mornings in a row, to make the 7:00 A.M. clinic presided over by Rege Ludwig, who bellowed, “Get in your two-point!”
The first time I rode in the ring—the University of Virginia Polo Club wouldn’t let us on the grass field—I felt like I was at Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue and all the stoplights had failed. Jesus H. Christ on a raft.
The polo seat is different from the hunt seat. Polo requires a behind-the-motion seat, which means you’re more upright, your legs a bit more forward. While you’re not as behind the horse’s motion as you are with the saddle seat, you’re not as forward as with the hunt seat.
I struggled but I hung in there. By Thursday morning I hurt all over but I wasn’t quite so dazed during scrimmages. I was, however, feeling the first hint of the flu. By Saturday, the final scrimmage and playoff, I felt rotten. I went out and played, but I didn’t do squat. Still, I survived. Dale sent me the five dollars, which I still have.
Rege Ludwig has coached the winning team of the U.S. Open polo tournament twice and he’ll probably win it more times in the future. He possesses an eye that can break down your movement. It’s biomechanics. He tries to make your particular movement at, say, the forehand the most efficient motion you can produce. That sounds simple but it isn’t. An average teacher teaches the basics. A gifted teacher applies the basics to your body and mind. Some people need the carrot, some the stick.
One thing I learned: I was awful. I could hit some, but my riding was inept and that’s putting it nicely.
I tried to join the Charlottesville Polo Club, but they turned me away. There were no women in the club and they didn’t want to be bothered with a beginner. There was nowhere else to go and I wanted to learn. Dale was wise—polo brought back my childhood in some ways, and I was picking up steam.
I called up a bunch of women who rode, and eleven people showed up on June 23, 1988, at an old arena on Garth Road. (It has since been demolished.) The next thing I knew, more women began to show up for weekly scrimmages. Nobody much knew what they were doing, but people like Lynne Beegle, Donna Eicher, Diana Robb and Joyce Fendley could ride, and soon other women came along who could ride, too.
Dr. Herbert Jones lent me three ponies, tack and saddles. Frank Kimball would come over and drill me on my near side forehand shot, a shot I love. He has such a beautiful near side, and he was determined to pass it on to me. Donna’s husband, Jack, was a tremendous help, too, when he wasn’t covering his eyes and laughing at us.
I played polo in the summer of 1988 for a thousand dollars. People spend more on their beer bill than I spent on polo.
Polo isn’t spiritual like foxhunting. It’s intense, even obsessive. If your mind wanders, you can wind up in traction. Because it’s so intense you feel mentally refreshed. The cares of the day or even the decade disappear.
That’s how I came to found the first all-women’s polo club in the United States, Piedmont Women’s Polo Club. They’re still going strong. I rarely get to play with them these days since I’ve moved over to the next county to tree-farm and grow hay.
I envy the generation of girls in school now. They will have the athletic opportunities denied my generation. Sports are such a good way to meet people, learn to handle stress and discharge the tension from your everyday life. If it hadn’t been for polo and foxhunting, there would be dead producers in Hollywood.
Nineteen eighty-eight was a watershed year. I found my childhood sport anew. I found my land in Nelson County, 430 acres no one else wanted. Soil tests told me the soil was good so I grabbed it. It may be one of the smartest things I ever did.
I wasn’t doing much romantically but enough to rile the local homophobes. How dare I date in front of them? I don’t mean hold hands or display affection, I mean go out with some local ladies, date. Heaven forfend.
In my twenties I would have attacked them back. I really can’t do that anymore because that would dignify their ignorance. And as is always the case with such stuff, I wasn’t doing half as much as they thought I was.
Not that I told anyone. I hate to disappoint even my critics.
What a year. The Writers Guild went on strike, which meant I could take no Hollywood jobs. At first I paid little attention because I’d been through these strikes before and I do support the Guild. Absolute support.
But the strike dragged on. Months. It was finally settled in August after five months.
A bold tributary to my income was drying up and I had just committed to buying raw land. I still had to pay rent, too. The horses, thank God, didn’t cost much since I had boarders, which covered most of my costs.
Watching your bank account slip away is a sickening experience but not a life-threatening one. I fear poverty but I know I can live through it. Yes, it’s easier to survive it when you’re young than when you’re old, but God never gives you anything you can’t handle. You must have faith.
I had faith. It was money I needed.
Help came from a small, hairy angel.
79
Sneaky Pie to the Rescue
Oh, the toils of literature. In sneaky Pie’s case, litterature.
By now you have gathered that I’m half cat myself. Good thing, as it allows me free converse with other cats, dogs, hounds and horses.
One blistering August day, I was bending over my black Italian desk, an odd creation that I love, writing checks. Serious literature. I had enough money to last six more weeks. At this point my books were not yet earning royalties, which they are now, thank you, Jesus. Of course, I never know what those royalties will be. Two dollars? Two hundred? Two thousand? It’s always a financial adventure.
Sneaky Pie enjoyed working alongside me. If I sat down, so did she. I keep Baby Jesus’s bones by my desk and often Sneaky would sit respectfully by the Thai funerary urn. Juts was plopped under
the desk. That dog and cat loved each other, engaging in mutual grooming, playing with little jacks balls, chasing each other in the yard.
Distress transmits. Juts rose, putting her head on my knee. Sneaky patted my cheek with her paw, as she would do when she wanted breakfast. Thinking she wanted catnip, I crunched some on the desk. She ignored it, but Pewter, the gray cannonball, hurtled into the workroom. Far be it for her to miss a treat. I gave Juts a Milk-Bone, which I keep in a jar by my desk. She held it in her jaws, not eating it.
I looked at these two loving pairs of eyes and thought, “Flush or broke, I’ve always got love.”
Pie could type. She’d hit the keys of the typewriter. Once a friend visited me with one of those electronic musical keyboards and the cat went wild. It sounded as good as some of what is recorded these days.
She pounded away on the typewriter, stopping to bite the page. As I had a page in there filled with what I thought was deathless prose I was not initially pleased with her performance. That’s all I needed, another damn critic.
I looked at the page, then at the cat as my huge tricolor Corgi, Bandit, strolled into the room. Sneaky leaped off the desk onto Bandit’s back. Bandit raced around the house, Juts in pursuit. Sneaky lived to torment the Corgi, who loved it. She’d hang under Bandit’s belly, too, for a stride or two. Belly laughs, literally.
Thus was our collaboration, the Mrs. Murphy series, born. (Originally I called it the Kitty Crime series, but Bantam changed it to the Mrs. Murphy Mysteries.) Sneaky wanted to write mysteries. Being a novelist, I felt grand and airy about genre fiction even if it does rake in the coins. Genre fiction is a story, plot-driven, with a specific format. Think of it as a sonnet. The beauty of it is that you have a structure. That also robs it of the ability to go beyond that structure.
Sneaky Pie, having no such worries, eagerly mapped out her first mystery, Wish You Were Here. I cringed that it would be too cute. She might be cute. I am not. To my surprise it really wasn’t. Her work is warm—I mean, it’s not gruesome except in spots—but it isn’t adorable.
Bantam was not enthusiastic. They only published the book as a sop to me and with little in the way of promotion.
Still, I was grateful for the small advance Sneaky brought into the coffers. It carried us through until the strike ended.
The mystery took off. She wrote another one. Each one she writes, I think, is better, although I admonish her to pay more attention to the human characters. We fight over this. I also resent being called her secretary, which I have heard her say to other animals.
A major star in Germany, she receives over two hundred letters a week from fans overall. I now address her as Frau Pie.
Even Pewter gets fan mail because of her supporting role in the mysteries, as does Tee Tucker (Bandit).
The first book tour that Bantam sent me on for Sneaky Pie was for Murder at Monticello, the third in the series. Although Sneaky had done a few local signings—especially distinguishing herself at the Book Stack in Staunton one Christmas by rearranging and befouling the window display—we hadn’t gone on the road.
Wisely, I left her home. I had no desire to pay for whatever damages she would incur in bookstores and hotel rooms. Once Sneaky’s patience evaporates, the claws come out.
Her fans are different from my fans. I was surprised and delighted to meet them. Around 80 percent of my fans are female and young, although I’m lucky enough to grow apace with my generation, so there’s a good middle-aged contingent there.
Sneaky’s fans are hard-core mystery readers, often a bit older, and maybe 60 percent of them are female, 40 percent male. They tend to be logical people, people who solve puzzles, people often quite involved in community affairs.
Many of my fans are still too young to be invested in a community. They are finding their way in the world. By the time they’re in their middle thirties and upward then they, too, are people very active in politics and charity work. I count special-interest politics as charity work, because people work long and hard for causes, never receiving a penny.
My readers are fascinating people. Many of them are horse people. I should add here that horse people fall into two groups: the highly literate and the illiterate. Cooky McClung, a delightful writer focusing on the equine world, has two books out, Horse People Are Different and Horse People Are Still Different. Boy, did she hit the nail on the head.
But I learn much more from my readers, I believe, than they learn from me. I especially gravitate toward military men and women and one day was lucky enough to have Colonel Joseph Mitchell find me. Now deceased, this combat veteran of World War II was a provocative military historian. He opened his world and his mind to me. I don’t think I can ever repay the debt. Here was a resource person who’d been there when the artillery fire was thick as mosquitoes. Many of his books are now out of print. If you can find them through book searchers, grab them.
Thanks to Joe, I could be directed to any expert for any war. This proved priceless during the research for Dolley, which was set during the War of 1812.
Joe and his wife, Vivienne, even liked Sneaky Pie. She liked them, too.
Another married couple, big Sneaky fans, made her a small barn with all the creatures from her books in it. She plays with this daily.
I am amazed at the outpouring of love she inspires.
My own fan letters, a far more modest fifty a week, usually contain criticisms. The occasional neo-Christian will take me to task. The occasional radical lesbian will excoriate me for not being gay enough. The politically minded send spirited letters. The horse people aren’t so argumentative. Every now and then I will receive a letter from a literary person and enjoy a chat on style, not necessarily mine, but, say, Nabokov’s. Sometimes a letter will arrive from someone who says I saved his or her life. Thank you, but I didn’t. You saved your life. I just reminded you that life is worth living even when one is suffering.
Remember your Seneca: Scorn pain. Either it will go away or you will.
The great thing about Sneaky’s success was that her efforts allowed me to take a hard look at my involvement in the film and television business. Many of my contacts and biggest supporters had died young of AIDS. People were coming to power a generation too early. That hurt me but it hurts the business too! There is no substitute for experience, regardless of brilliance.
I understand why Douglas Fairbanks Sr. left the film business he helped to create. It wasn’t fun anymore. After The Thief of Baghdad he grew more and more disenchanted.
Hardly at Fairbanks’s level, I think I know how he felt. Since those early days when everyone was young and the industry itself young, the business’s arteries have hardened. By the time I entered the lists, in the seventies, profit was the only motive. I never had to endure the heartbreak of those early people who wanted to really create a film that soared. But when I came into the business, three generations were working in it. Now there are only two.
By the end of the eighties, the early nineties, the studios, committed to the megahit, seldom wanted anything but formula stories. Foreign grosses often determine whether a film was profitable, so we want audiences everywhere to go to our movies. Everyone understands special effects. Well, that’s what we’ve got.
Can I write that kind of movie? Of course. I can write anything for the camera. It may be immodest to say that, but I can. Do I want to write a disaster movie or a testosterone saga? If it would let me pay off the mortgage, I suppose I’d write one, but if I had to make a diet of it, I wouldn’t do it. That’s not why I’m on earth. I want to write about real people in real situations and I prefer the comic tradition.
Being part of the Directing Workshop for Women at the American Film Institute helped me immeasurably. Directing is exciting. I love the idea of being able to manipulate and control the image but I am also smart enough to know I’m not going to be hired to direct. My chances are the same as hitting the state lottery, and gender, once the overriding issue, is now augmented by age. I’m mi
ddle-aged. Everyone is supposed to be thirty-one and hot. Well, I’m fifty-two and hot. But the institute taught me to look at work with a director’s eye, which sharpened my ability to create more visual impact consistent with emotional impact.
Anytime you can stretch yourself, add to your craft, do it!
Besides, everything is cyclical. I may yet get my chance to put something on the screen that is deeply telling and outrageously comic.
If it weren’t for Sneaky, I might not have stepped back and examined film and TV.
I had to find another way, and the financial rewards were lower but the emotional rewards were higher. Sneaky Pie really did come to the rescue.
80
A-list
In Hollywood there’s an A-list and a B-list for work, for parties, for just about everything. A producer might want Brad Pitt for a movie but know the chances of getting him are slim. So she or he will have an entire list of other possible actors.
It’s that way for writers, for directors, cameramen, everything.
Someone like John Alonzo, who worked on Chinatown and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is on everyone’s A-list of cameramen. A kid fresh out of the American Film Institute, New York University, or the University of Southern California, all fine programs, isn’t on any list.
It’s a hopped-up version of the tracking system in high school.
For television I had been on the A-list except at CBS. (For whatever reason I’ve never had much luck with CBS. Maybe it’s because it’s so hard to park there. The running joke used to be, “CBS, the network that dares you to do business with them.”) My work continued to stand me in good stead, although my contacts were dying in terrifying numbers.
Thanks to Sneaky, however, I could and did back away. I don’t know if that will be temporary or permanent. I can’t dissemble about my distress over the business right now. It’s so bad that in most sitcoms, with a few marvelous exceptions, when someone wants to speak a line that’s supposed to be funny, they shout it. That kills wit right there. Wit is always quiet and sly. These days every emotion is signified and underlined three times. I don’t know how the actors stand it, and film isn’t much better. The independent films are better, God bless them, but the studios are out of it.
Rita Will Page 52