Nevertheless Page 9

  6

  The Love Taxi

  The weeks following my father’s death, I spent more time back home with family, which made me realize how much I had missed them. Perhaps unconsciously, I had created this bogus myth that I had crossed some ocean to make my fortune by going to Los Angeles. The truth is that I was simply uninterested in going home, back to a place that required me to explain who I had become. I wanted different experiences now. The one person who had a genuine interest in my life, as well as an insightful perspective, was gone. Meanwhile, my mother floated in a haze of grieving widowhood. My sister Beth was off beginning her own family. My sister Jane was just a kid who fell between the cracks of my reality, which was sad because she was and is such a bright person and is engaged by learning in the same way that I was.

  While I was home for this grieving period, I relied on my brothers, by then ages twenty-three, twenty, and seventeen, to cope and on a wholly different level. I had money in my pocket, so we partied. During the summer of 1983, it was a weird mix of sweet and unsettling to go out “on the town” with them when the town was Massapequa. The white-flight suburbs were now the easiest of places to buy drugs, to get fake IDs, and to walk into bar after bar. By six a.m., we’d hit the Sandbar in Seaford, and I would see some of my friends’ dads. As dawn broke outside, there was Mr. Smith here, Mr. Jones there, my dad’s peers stewed at the hour when my father would have been in the kitchen making breakfast. I thought about how good we’d had it with him as our father, and how alcohol drowns our dreams, silences our beliefs, and relieves us of our responsibilities. Although my brothers and I had some laughs that summer, none of it felt right. I didn’t want any of us to grow up to become the guy sitting on the next bar stool at the Sandbar.

  Tuck had gone down to West Palm Beach to appear at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in a production of The Apple Tree, so I flew down there to join him. He and his female costar were put up in a couple of condos in a swell building by the beach. We spent the days sleeping by the pool, waterskiing, and drinking while attempting to win over some girls who worked at the theater. If mourning your dead father and presenting yourself in a state of overall numbness were an aphrodisiac, then I might have made a better impression upon these women. Some women go for needy men. However, I do not recall any of them taking me up on my offer. I went home to Long Island a week later, still feeling lost.

  When I got back to New York, I got a call from a very young and very beautiful woman named Janine Turner, whom I’d met in LA when she’d auditioned for the Cutter to Houston pilot. She told me that she came to New York regularly and promised to call me when she did. When we met at the old Café La Fortuna for coffee, I told her about my dad’s death, and she was genuinely moved. After she went back to California, she sent me a beautiful and thoughtful letter. I selfishly felt that there weren’t enough people checking in on me during this difficult time, so Janine’s letter made a real impact on me. Janine was only twenty-one and completely without cynicism. Thus, I found myself smitten by what is often the greatest aphrodisiac of all: sincerity. So that’s how Janine Turner became my first show business love. Within a matter of months, we were living together in LA, getting engaged, and then just as quickly heading for a breakup while I was in the throes of my self-destructive behavior.

  Once, while Janine was performing the musical Grease at a dinner theater in Denver, I had, of course, made the necessary connections to procure my illicit pharmaceutical needs. I went to brunch with Janine, her mother, and her mother’s parents, who were out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Everyone sipped coffee or wine while I retreated to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. At one point, Janine’s grandfather leveled me with a look that said, “There’s somethin’ not right about you, boy.” If only he knew the extent of it. Janine and I broke up a few months later. She was an extraordinarily kind woman, but we were too young to be making those plans.

  At the same time, the pilot for Cutter was picked up, and I raced back to LA, excited to be working as a lead in my first prime-time show. We shot eight episodes, but the result was tepid reviews and unspectacular ratings. Even as inexperienced as I was, I knew the show wasn’t working and that something had to give. I learned then that producers never give the prognosis of a show in fear that everyone will start to phone it in. One day a director named Bernie McEveety walked on the set, and a crew member muttered, “It’s the Hangman.” I asked what he meant, and he said, “They bring him on to wrap up the last few episodes under budget.” McEveety, a polite and quiet man, would snap, “Cut, print, fine!” after one or two takes. Within a couple of days of McEveety’s arrival, word came down that we’d been canceled. The excitement of scoring any job as an actor comes with that dichotomy. The movie bombs, the play closes, or the TV show is canceled, and your joy is quickly replaced by disappointment. But you try to remember that it’s not your fault. At least, not entirely. Finding an audience is a difficult task and failure is the norm.

  CBS signed me to a holding deal, whereby one is paid a fee to work exclusively for one company for a period of time. The results of that deal were shows like Sweet Revenge, a TV movie with Kelly McGillis, and The Sheriff and the Astronaut, a very bad pilot from a very good writer named Gerry Di Pego. Di Pego had written Sharky’s Machine, which starred Burt Reynolds, and was a movie I liked a lot. I couldn’t imagine how the writer of that ballsy, gritty script had also come up with this soft, precious TV show.

  It became clear what a small town LA was. While I was shooting these odd little TV projects, I was actually six degrees from some seriously talented people. Di Pego wrote a screenplay that Reynolds had decided to direct himself. Goldie Hawn’s first husband, Gus Trikonis, directed me in a TV movie with Stephanie Zimbalist (whom I adored). Gus had acted in the movie West Side Story, and his wisdom about the business made an impression on me. He told me, “Work is work. Just try to be the best thing in whatever you’re doing.” I tried to take his advice to heart, even though what I was doing seemed weak and wasn’t drawing a significant audience. I gathered, therefore, that it must have been agents, producers, and casting people talking about me and my potential, regardless of my recent work, that brought me the first audition for a project I thought was truly special.

  In the pre–O. J. era, the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case was a big media event, on par with the crimes and trials of Jean Harris, Charles Manson, and the Menendez brothers. In 1970, MacDonald, a US Army surgeon assigned to the Green Berets at Fort Bragg, was accused of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters in their home. The author Joe McGinniss responded to an invitation from MacDonald to tell his story, and ended up writing the bestseller Fatal Vision, in which he submits that his subject is, in fact, guilty and labels him a “narcissistic sociopath.” NBC was producing a TV movie based on the book, and I got a call to audition for director David Greene to play MacDonald. Greene had directed the forgettable TV movie I did with Kelly McGillis and the more well-received Rich Man, Poor Man, among others.

  On an overcast New York day in 1983 as I headed to my audition, the thought of being considered for this job made my head spin. The prospect of working with Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, and Andy Griffith, who had already been cast, was overwhelming. Before the meeting, I headed into a bar down the block. I quickly belted down two Canadian Club and sodas, steeled myself, went to the appointment, and nailed it. When Bloom called me to tell me I’d landed the job, I was deliriously happy. Dramatic acting roles were always the goal, and now a great opportunity to play this cunning murderer was in front of me. But then Bloom informed me that we had an interesting dilemma. The producers of the CBS prime-time soap opera Knots Landing had also called and wanted to meet with me about joining the cast. Knots was perched in the top ten every week and therefore I would simply go along for the ride. Bloom was deliberate and clear. “No question, you should do Knots,” he said. “It’s already a big hit and you will be seen by many millions every week. The TV movie will get aired once with a rerun and b
e gone. The MacDonald role is great, but Knots comes with an added bonus. The role is Julie Harris’s son.”

  Working with talented people is one of the great gifts of show business and an area in which I’ve been lucky over the years. A few of these people, however, have stood out above the rest. Some are famous; others are not. Some are bright, compassionate, and unpretentious; others are not. But no one I’ve worked with during my career has come close to Julie Harris, in terms of the reservoir of humanity, talent, and professionalism that she embodied. It was Julie, and all the feelings that she provoked in me, who made my decision to sign up for Knots an easy one. (And a good one. Later, when I ignored those instincts to work with the right people, bad things happened.)

  Julie appeared on the show for eight seasons as a series regular. She approached the job like she did all of the stage roles that had garnered her five Tony Awards on Broadway between 1952 (I Am a Camera) and 1977 (The Belle of Amherst). She took the work seriously. She was professional every minute of every day. The crew moved around her as if she were the queen. She elevated the work of the other cast members. When I read the upcoming scripts and saw that I had scenes with Julie, I was excited to go to work.

  My character, Joshua Rush, was Julie’s character’s estranged son, who became the love interest of Lisa Hartman, the show’s young ingénue. Joshua was a mess. He had mommy issues and daddy issues. He was a minister’s son who was a preacher himself and eventually jumped off a building. My scenes were a bit overcooked, and I was still trying to figure out how to work around the cast of actors who had built this show into a hit without any help from me. I learned that any screen time on an ensemble show is time taken from someone else. Some of the other actors aren’t so happy about that.

  When the camera rolled, I simply focused on Julie, and she took you where the scene needed to go. When encountering her warm eyes and her soothing voice, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a mother that present, that soulful. But comparing my own mother to Julie was, obviously, unfair. Julie was an actress being paid to express those feelings. Nonetheless, confusing acting with reality can be an occupational hazard. I would make small talk with her in her dressing room, and we became friends. She would occasionally invite me to the Brentwood home where she stayed while she shot the series. After the show wrapped, she’d return to her home in Chatham, Massachusetts, or go off to do a play. Knots was a job. It was a good job. But the theater was her life.

  Manipulating their public relations was a large order of business for the cast of Knots. One day, sitting in the driveway of a home where we regularly shot, Julie sat quietly, knitting. As I was discussing with Lisa and some others the question of which publicist I should sign with, Julie looked up and said, “Oh, Alec. Don’t get a publicist. Let the work speak for itself.” How I’ve wished, over the years, that I had taken her advice. Publicists, and the courting of the media that goes hand in hand with them, have created as many problems as they have solved in my life. If only I had followed Julie’s lead in all things. While Julie taught me that there was nothing to be ashamed of in doing jobs simply to make a living, so long as those jobs fueled other creative efforts, the other actors on Knots were all big TV stars who saw things somewhat differently.

  Working with someone as iconic as Julie, I wondered what impressed her. Julie’s career cut a swath through the heart of twentieth-century theater, film, and TV, and I wanted to learn what memories stood out to her. In her dressing room one day, I asked her what the most special moment of her career had been. What was she proudest of? She paused for a long moment and said, “I’m one of only two actresses to kiss Jimmy Dean in a movie.” Julie had done so in East of Eden, the other actress being Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause. Over time, I asked Julie about Raymond Massey, Claire Bloom, Elizabeth Taylor, and Brando. Of all that galaxy of names and experiences, kissing Dean was what lingered.

  One night in Gleneden Beach, Oregon, where Knots had gone on location to shoot a couple of weeks’ worth of picturesque exteriors, Julie shared her most priceless sentiment with me. I drove Julie back to the hotel after having dinner in Lincoln City. Sitting in front of the Salishan Lodge, I asked her, “Are you anxious to go home?” “No,” she said. Surprised, I asked, “Aren’t you ready for this trip to be over?” Julie said, “I don’t wish anything to be over. To wish something to be over is to wish your life to be over.”

  I wondered if the closeness I had with some people in the business would last, or if it was all just of the moment. Was my home now the set of a show, where a kind of instant familiarity was bred, and was it always meant to melt away? Somewhere in the loneliness and insecurity of being among people I didn’t know while seeking some bond with them, I searched for ways to kill those feelings. I subsequently bonded with others in a more self-destructive way. One night, in my room at Salishan, I lost myself to those feelings. It’s a story I don’t like to tell. I don’t want to tell it. But it’s so real and unreal at the same time. That night changed my life forever. It had its own staccato rhythm, distorted sound, and spasmodic imagery. It went something like this:

  Salishan Lodge, 1984

  There’s that knock at the door that I’ve been waiting on for over an hour and they told me it would be only thirty minutes and they always say it will be thirty minutes, these FUCKING PEOPLE! Why won’t they just do what they say they’re going to do? Motherfuckers. SNAP!!!

  When I called room service, I fumbled for the words, saying something like, “Hello? Room service? This is Mr. Baldwin in Room 224. I have some guests arriving for lunch and I know how busy you can be and I was wondering if you might send over a bottle of champagne NOW!”—punching certain words, as I am slightly deaf when high. “I won’t have to bother you later and I would appreciate that. One bottle of champagne. NOW! Baldwin. Room 224.”

  My hair is a bird’s nest, my black T-shirt sweaty and covered with white chalky crescents. The Today show is on, signaling officially that I’ve stayed up all night getting high and smoking cigarettes, calling people back in New York and LA to keep me company and nurse me through this run. All the while that I’m on the phone, I’m wondering, do they know? Can they tell? It’s getting a little hard to breathe. But Jane Pauley is my center. Jane is my center. Breathe, baby, breathe. I lie down and focus on Jane and she will talk me down. She’s like Naloxone coming out of the TV. If I just sit and focus on Jane, this will pass. Her goodness will counteract all of this shit. Another knock.

  A merciless and unstoppable death squad has been marauding up and down my nerves throughout the predawn hours. By sunrise, it’s clear that they’re going to torch the whole village. I put up no resistance. I am their hostage, simply feeding the troops more drugs and filing for the spiritual bankruptcy that cocaine always demands. Cue “Midnight Rambler,” as the Rolling Stones are always the soundtrack when I’m driving this road. I’m looking at Jane, but hearing Mick. KNOCK, KNOCK!! I’m on my feet and moving across the room like I’m hopping over hot stones. Not bothering to pull myself together, I look through the peephole before I open the door. The sun, with its effortless power to shame, jumps at me. The man’s back is to me and I can’t get a look at him. Could he possibly know something? Fuck. When he turns, he looks like a Rick or a Steve, a bit whiter and older than I anticipated, and that throws me. Is he a fucking cop?! I open the door, the sun crashes in, my heart rate spikes up. CRACKLE!!

  Oh, no. I feel an unfamiliar tingle move over my chest. Forty-year-old Nancy Reagan Country room service Rick assesses me. My eyes are looking everywhere but at him. Then he hands me the champagne bottle, in a bucket, and the glasses. The booze is all I see now and I tip him and he goes and I’m closing the door with my ass so I can open the bottle as fast as I can, because I’m gonna do WHATEVER IT TAKES to solve this. Jane, I’m coming! Don’t finish without me!

  POP!! . . . goes the champagne bottle. Shhhhhh, Jane is speaking. She’s like chicken soup. Breathe. Up it goes and down it goes and I drink the bottle
in four gulps. It’s eight a.m. I’ve been snorting cocaine since around four the previous afternoon. By midnight, one of the two girls I’ve been hanging out with at the crew hotel, about thirty miles away, said something crazy and wonderful. “Our husbands are going on a fishing trip tomorrow morning. They leave real early. You get some more coke and come to my house and we will do whatever . . . you . . . want.” She lays out the offer like we’re discussing subletting an apartment. They leave, presumably to stage their bedtime at home. At around one a.m., I knock on the nearby hotel room door of a guy in the crew who I knew had what I wanted. He was a casual user, not twitchy. He was friendly and together. For him, cocaine was an amuse-bouche among other available relaxations during an evening out. He opens the door and I’ve broken his heart, it seems. “You?” he sighs, in the way that someone signals that they now know a sad truth about you that you both wish they didn’t. “I got these two girls,” I stammer, as if that explains everything. He sighs and leaves to grab the stuff. He shoves it at me, saying, “Don’t come back.”

  I drive from the crew hotel up the coast to Salishan, where the cast is staying. In the car, a rare moment of clarity descends on me and, as is often the case, it’s a movie that screens in my head. A car slows on a dark, leafy road. Inside, a man, a big guy wearing outdoorsy clothes, says, “Bob, did you bring the propane for the stove?” Bob, also big, says, “Shit, I thought you did.” “Jesus, Bob. We gotta go back.” What Bob will go back to, obviously, is his house, which I am settled into for a night of partying with their wives. As they walk into the living room, they’ll find me naked on the floor, drink in one hand and Trivial Pursuit cards in the other, playing a friendly game of Strip Trivia with their spouses. The requisite cocaine lines, paraphernalia, alcohol, and cigarettes are on display.