BB SHOT WOUNDS, WHIPLASH, STORMS OF WEEPING,
TRAUMAS THAT SHOULDNT HAPPEN TO A DOG!
THEY’RE ALL PART OF THE REAL-LIFE STORY OF
Mary Hartman's Secret Recipe FOR MOCK CORNBALL SURPRISE
Five nights a week the corny theme music
(strains of every soap opera since time immortal) starts in droning and
groaning and strumming und dragging and pumping up to the organ-rolling angst ad
absurdum. The credits crawl across the
most shameless Saturday Evening Post still life you have ever seen...and a
voice that evokes memories of a call home to supper oh so many summer dusks ago
a quavering, anxiety-ridden voiced calls, MARY HARTMAAN, MARY HART-MAANNN!!..as
untold millions stare blankly.
Let me
tell you an amusing little story about blank stares, says Norman Lear, sitting
behind a mile-long desk in his Hollywood Modern office on Sunset
Boulevard.
Before Mary Hartman was
aired, when I was just showing it to friends at home to get their reactions, my
16-year-old daughter was hooked. Lear has now assumed that fond fudgy manner he
invariably uses when telling one of his endless family anecdotes. Well, Maggie
was just mad for this boy called Devon...I wonder if I should use his
name? Well, why not? as it turns out
it isnt derogatory toward the boy...Anyway, one day Maggie had him over to
watch this show she was so crazy about...Well, the next day my little Maggie comes
to me with a pained expression on her face and says, Daddy, Im worried
about Devon. He doesnt laugh! He just sits there with this...blank stare on
his face!
Frankly, Lear confides, he
was a little worried himself. After all,
watching this show can be something like a Rorschach test and well, if the
person watching with you merely stares blankly, nodding in grave agreement,
while slapstick, mass murder, venereal disease, and general mayhem appear on
the screen you might just have legitimate cause to worry. But this boy Devon seemed to be a bright
enough lad and, being part of that constituency in which Lear professes to have
great faith in the beloved American viewing public he figured Devon would
eventually come around. So I reminded
my daughter Maggie of how many times her mother had had to drag me to the
ballet before I actually was able to enjoy the artistry of the thing, Lear
continues. Dont worry, honey,
Devon will come around, I assured her. Just watch the show with him a couple of more times and I'll bet he
catches on.
To make a Lear story
short, the 'happy father knows best' outcome is that he was right: not only
did Devon come around, now laughing louder and longer than anybody else at Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, but he also does a terrific impersonation of
Loretta Haggers singing country & western.
The networks were not as easy to convince. Despite a batting average that includes All in the Family (the revolutionary situation comedy that made the lovable bigot as classic a character as the whore with the heart of
gold) and several successful spinoffs (Maude, The Jeffersons, and Good Times), Norman Lear could not convince any of the three major
networks that the viewing public was ready for a slightly bent soap
opera. Essentially what the networks
told him was that the American people would not buy a show that didnt tell
them when to laugh. He must, they advised,
abandon his idea of doing a serious parody and instead provide a live
studio response or at least a trickle of canned laughter to tickle the funny
bone of the masses. But Norman Lear did
an unprecedented thing. He bucked the
network system to syndicate his new series to some 90 independent stations
coast to coast. And now he is tickled to
death that in many cities the show is out-rating a competing show that also
mixes tragedy with absurdity of the network news!
According to Lear, Mary Hartman's pilot episode pulled a more-than-respectable 25-31% in the Nielsen poll in
selected cities across the country (which makes the question of whether America
is laughing or merely staring blankly somehow academic). Still, the show has not been without its
problems. Although he will not disclose
exact sums, Lear says he offered the series at veritable bargain-basement
prices a price no right-thinking local station manager could refuse for a
Norman Lear production in order to assure getting the 50 stations necessary
to meet production costs. By the time he
was ready to put the special hour-long pilot on the air early this January,
Lear had lined up a formidable anti-network of 90 stations. But now he was faced with having to, as he
puts it, turn out quality night-time TV on a daytime budget. There was also the problem that in his haste
to get the show into production, he had neglected to put together a bible (the long synopsis) intricate as a novel, that outlines most television
serials several months in advance. The
writers would have to wing it. Since
we started, the poor writers have been so overworked that I told them, Let
me take a crack at it over the weekend, Lear says. I intended to just try a couple of
outlines, but I got so caught up in it I ended up turning out two whole
half-hour scripts.
There is also a
brutal production schedule to contend with, which Lear says is the equivalent
of turning out a full half-hour situation comedy five days a week. This hardly leaves the actors time to learn
their lines and they refuse to use the standard soap opera cue cards, saying
such devices interfere with their emotional authenticity. Then there is the problem of timing, of
getting the show to fit snugly into its half-hour time slot every night (which
is why, when the action runs long, there are no coming attractions, and why,
when it runs short, the American viewing public has coming attractions coming
out of its ears, coming attractions which can seem to comprise half the show
and in one recent case skipped a full episode ahead of the upcoming
scenes)...But it may be the very roughness of the show, its unpredictability,
that accounts for part of its appeal at a time when commercial television usually
comes slickly pre-packaged.
On the nights
that the plot wanders aimlessly or the gallows humour falls flat, it may be
because the writers had a bad day. Still, when it works, it has some of the slapdash vividness of real
life. This sense of the unpredictable of where can it possibly go from here has made Mary Hartman, Mary
Hartman the most talked about new series since the Watergate hearings.
Its viewers seem to come in two varieties: those who love it and those who hate it but
are hooked anyway, some loving to hate it and others hating to love it. ''What really gratifies me, what really freaks me out, as my daughter Maggie might say, about all the feedback
we're getting is that people you might expect to take it seriously are
picking up on the subtle parody part, and people you would expect to view it as
just a camp thing are actually getting involved'', Lear says. And to give you an idea of what he means, he
tells another family anecdote about this cousin of his who claims to have seen
potential mayhem suddenly averted in Bloomingdale's department store in New
York. It seems several fashionable
matrons had one besieged saleswoman backed against the flimsy fortress of a
lingerie counter, when the quick-thinking clerk called out, Mary Hartman,
Mary Hartman! The ugly confrontation
instantly metamorphosed into a friendly discussion about what was going to
happen to Mary Hartman next.
The best
place to find out is the studios of KTLA-TV, the home of the fictional city of
Fernwood, Ohio, in the equally fictional city of Hollywood, California.
No other place in this town (apart perhaps
from the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lobby of the Chateau Marmont, where the
pancake of dowager goddesses from the Silver Screen must be periodically
pounded out of the moldering old upholsteries like mummy dust), better suggests
the history of Hollywood than KTLA's bustling back lot.
Here the cast and crew of Mary Hartman,
Mary Hartman race against their hectic daily schedule in one studio while
next door Donny and Marie Osmond tape Busby Berkeley spectaculars featuring
several high school bands and the entire cast of the Ice Capades.
From the freezing winter of New York a
visitor arrives, jet-lagged, during the worst drought in Southern
California's recent history. He is
waved past the guard at the Fernwood Gate of KTLA and enters into the Day of
the Locust tension-wedded-to-languor of the Reality Warp itself...
"That Donny is such a jerk. Look it him posing for those teenyboppers with
their Brownie cameras. Oh, isn't that
cute: Now let me take one with my friend Penny oh, thank you Donny,
you're so adorable!...Atta boy, Donny, put your arm around Penny and say cheese... "
Debralee Scott,
the sassy young actress with the Vampirella overbite who used to play Hotsy
Totsy, the high school sexpot of Welcome Back Kotter, and is again
typecast as Cathy, Mary Hartman's boy-crazy kid sister, screws up her pug
nose in distaste as she sits at an open-air picnic table across from the studio
lunch van, sipping diet cola through a straw like some drugstore siren back in
her native New Jersey, watching Donny Osmond accommodate his giggling young
fans. ''How much you want to bet he's
a virgin? Look at his snooty tight-assed
sister over there. You notice how she
never takes her eyes off him? You better
believe she's never been laid, are you kidding? That's the way those Mormons are. They dont believe in sex for pleasure it's only to make babies. But if you've
ever noticed, they sure have a hell of a lot of babies...They dont like to
fuck but they sure like to make babies!''
When she is not working or rehearsing, Debralee Scott spends much of her
spare time plotting ways to pry Donny Osmond out from under the watchful gaze
of his younger sister, Marie. ''You
know what I'd like to do with that kid? I'd like to get him drunk and seduce him and show him what the real world
is about!''
The real world? In this reality warp?
The visitor to the set moves on to meet the
star, who is dressed in her Mary Hartman costume. Nobody in the world really dresses this
way, says Louise Lasser, showing off the spotless apron and the housedress
with the puffily optimistic sleeves which, combined with her Raggedy Ann
bangs and long auburn braids, lend the characterization an almost clownlike
poignancy. ''But I chose this costume
for a kind of Alice in Wonderland effect, which is how I think of Mary, in a
way. She's an innocent. I mean, you'd never see Mary running around
the way I do most of the time, in a sweatshirt and an old faded pair of jeans. Mary is still a believer. She was raised to be such a good little girl
and to wear pretty dresses and believe in fairy tales...Thats why she cant
really understand why everything is falling apart around her...''
Seeing her in costume, the shock of
recognition is such that the visitor must remind himself that Louise Lasser is
the daughter of the famous income tax expert S. Jay Lasser; that she grew up
privileged and progressively educated in New York; that she studied philosophy
at the New School and political science at Brandeis before becoming the star
pupil of the esteemed acting coach Sanford Meisner; that she is the former wife
of Woody Allen and garnered raves for her performances in her former husband,
Bananas and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, as well as Ingmar
Bergman's highly acclaimed TV drama "The Lie," long before anyone had
ever heard of Mary Hartman.
But Louise
Lasser will tell you that ''Mary is me I mean, she's who I would be if I
had grown up in a small town and married my high school sweetheart and become a
housewife instead of growing up in the big city and becoming an actress and
marrying a genius. The only difference
between herself and her character,'' the actress says, ''is that Mary has been
conditioned by the waxy yellow buildup on her floor and to actually feel
inadequate when her husband does not ask for a second cup of a particular brand
of coffee. It's like in this scene
we taped the other day, when Mae Olinski (the woman Mary's husband is having
an affair with) collapses in Mary's kitchen from an overdose of sleeping
pills. Mary calls the doctor and he
tells her hell be right over, but in the meantime try to get her to drink
some coffee, and Mary says something like, What kind, perk or freeze
dried?...
Even in a crisis Mary Hartman is the concerned consumer. While on the subject of consuming, the
actress says, ''Can I get you something to drink, something to eat?''
As the star rummages through a compact
refrigerator in her dressing room, she reminds her assistant, a pleasant,
dark-haired young woman named Annie McIntyre, to hurry or she'll be late for
her appointment with the chiropractor. ''Remember, Annie, you may have whiplash, so be sure to do whatever the
doctor tells you, she says. And if you're not feeling better I do not want you
to stay alone do you hear me, Annie?
Promise me you'll come and stay at my house.''
After she has left, Louise Lasser, returning
from the refrigerator, says, ''Poor Annie was in a near tragic car accident
the other day. Two other people
connected with the show also had close calls lately, too...I'm telling you
it's almost getting like a soap opera around here...''
Then after a thoughtful, drifting Mary
Hartman moment, the star remembers the visitor and, concerned that he might not
be getting his proper nourishment, says, ''Eat.'' And the visitor to the set stares blankly at
a small, half-chewed chunk of processed cheese and a moisture-beaded
supermarket baggie containing what appears to be a few leftover slices of imitation meat.
Inside the
studio, Dody Goodman, the original dingbat from the old Jack Paar show, and
veteran character actor
Phil Bruns, who play George and Martha Shumway,
Mary's mother and father, are on the set of the Shumway kitchen. They are taping a scene in which George is
supposed to be giving his favourite daughter Cathy a fatherly little
lecture, while Martha unpacks groceries. They seem to work together with the grin-and-bear-it animosity of an old
married couple.
PHIL (To Debra lee
Scott, who is pouting, back turned, at the sink) Im your father, Cathy, and
I know whats good for you, so why dont you listen to me? What kinda life are you gonna have if you
marry this deaf and dumb guy?
DEBRALEE
(Snotty) Deaf mute Daddy mute not dumb!
PHIL All the same, honey, what kinda life you gonna have with a man who
cant talk, a man who cant (suddenly throws up his hands and storms off
the stage, shouting)...Goddamnit, Im sorry, but I cant do this goddamn
scene with her making all that racket unpacking the groceries while Im
supposed to be talking to.
Debralee. (As
George Shumway, a no-nonsense guy who works on the assembly line with his
son-in-law in Fernwood, stands on the other side of the set waiting to make his
entrance again, he cracks up the cameramen and the grips by rolling his eyes
heavenward with the weariness of an old husband and pantomiming the gestures of
a man jerking off. As usual, his
fictional spouse has the last word.)
DODY
(Dizzy Dody/Martha Shumway voice) Would it make too much noise if I just
squeezed the Charmin, George I mean, er, Phil?
Even Victor Kilian, the elderly character
actor who plays Grandpa Larkin the senior citizen so overlooked he has to
court notoriety as the Fernwood Flasher seems to have retired, after
roles both humorous and villainous, in over 150 films, to the fictional life of
Fernwood.
''How do I like being in this
show? Well, I'll tell you, young man, I
hardly seem to be in it anymore'', blusters the old gentleman who has shuffled
out of his dressing room in his baggy Emmett Kelly pants with a mixture of
indignation and resignation remarkably like that of Grandpa Larkin. ''In the
beginning, at least, they wrote lines for me, but nowadays they seem to have
forgotten Im around...''
Grandpa Larkin is
not the only cast member who feels somewhat overshadowed...Greg Mullavey, the
son of a former Brooklyn Dodgers coach, plays Tom Hartman, Mary's
all-American assembly line worker ex-jock husband. He became an actor when an injury ended his
career in pro baseball (it's not for nothing that he wears that corny red
baseball cap and that old Fernwood High Varsity jacket, says Louise Lasser, who
says she agrees with Truman Capote that most actors are, by and large, pretty
dumb). Mullavey, whose standard
greeting to the visitor on the set is a hearty ''Hang in there, kid'' and a
playful cuff to the arm, says he wants to be able to play this guy Tom Hartman almost by osmosis, and wants to be able to slip into his skin the minute he
slips into his jacket and cap, wants to play him from the inside out...react
rather than act. Although he will admit
that he has had a few hassles with Louise Lasser (and once really blew up
at her on the set), Mullavey, who meditates to transcend a naturally
volatile personality, says that he really loves Louise. ''I mean, we havent slept together or
anything'', the actor wishes to make immediately clear, ''but I really love
her and Im really pretty happy with this gig. The only thing I would like to see is for the
rest of us to get some credit. I mean
it's not an ego trip, but in order to get good parts, in order to get on the
Carson show and things like that, people have to know your name, right? So I have to admit, it does bug me a little
bit when I finally get my picture in Time magazine picture in Time, dream
of a lifetime, right? and a friend clips it out and sends it to me with a
note that says, Who's the unidentified man with Louise Lasser? But that's being talked about, man. I think that's gonna change pretty
soon..''
If certain cast members feel
overshadowed, the writers sometimes feel non-existent, according to Ann Marcus,
the handsome silver-haired woman who heads the three-member team of veteran
soap opera scripters along with Jerry Adelman and Daniel Gregory Browne.
''It really burns me up when people think that
the actors are improvising, Ann Marcus says. I mean, it may look that way
sometimes. Since we're rarely more
than a few scripts ahead of the one being taped, I have to admit there are
times when we don't know exactly where we're going. Not to take anything away from the actors,
either . . . This cast is certainly capable of adlibbing if anyone is and
they are allowed a certain amount of leeway because of the difficulty of
learning lines so fast...But you've seen some of our scripts...I'll have
you know this show is written, damnit!''
Jerry Adelman, a bearish, grey-bearded man who affects the yachting cap
and Mighty Mac windbreaker of a seafaring type, chucklingly comments that in
the first few episodes the writers have taken on impotence, exhibitionism, mass
murder, medical malpractice, and organized religion, but the thing that makes
the sponsors uptight, the most controversial aspect of the series by far is that it bites the hand that feeds it.
The sets themselves are crammed with all the useless gadgets and blatant
brand names that the anal-retentive consumer culture can produce.
In Mary's kitchen, every last dish towel
and leftover crumb of sponge cake is arranged just so, with even the waxy
yellow build-up present and accounted for by the prop-men. (Occasionally the visitor, wandering amidst
the sets, would help himself to a Schlitz from Mary Hartman's refrigerator,
walk across the studio, and settle down in Loretta and Charlie Hagger's living room. From here he could gaze out
over the darkened sets, over the artifacts of Sears Roebuck abundance, over
every aspect of the American home lovingly reproduced down to the last vulgar
detail.
Here it was possible to fluctuate
between the bemused exaltation and the acute depression of a future
archaeologist stumbling upon an uninspired period of better-forgotten
history.) Adelman contends that ''this
environment, which makes light of consumer credulity, is an essential part of
Mary Hartman's characterization. That's how I see Mary. Like
millions of others she's a casualty, floating in an almost Kafka-esque sea of
consumer indirection...'', ''Thats pure
bullshit, Jerry, thats not Mary at all'', protests Ann Marcus, dismissing
Adelman's assessment as sexist with a wave of the hand. ''Mary may be naive, but she's not a victim,
she's not a casualty...She's a real survivor if I ever saw one. Mary can cope. Mary Hartman is actually one helluva strong
woman.''
The writers excuse themselves to
meet a sex therapist. They're sorry they
can't take the visitor along, but it might make the therapist
self-conscious. Are they having a
problem? Ann Marcus says, ''No, but we
think Mary may have one coming up and we want to be prepared just in case.'' More problems for Mary Hartman? Where will it ever end?... Meanwhile, back in Mary's kitchen, another
domestic hassle is underway:
MARY How
come all you're talking about is the fuel pump?
TOM You can worry about two things at once,
but you can only talk about one thing at a time... Dont ask stupid
questions.
MARY You know something I've
noticed?
TOM What?
MARY We're fighting with each other worse
than before we separated. That's not a
good sign, Tom.
''Thats gorgeous,
Louise. I love that look on your
face'', says Joan Darling, the wiry, dark-haired veteran who rotates directing
the show with a man named Jim Drake. ''Just hold that look for a close-up, Louise...you're perfect,
Greg...Remember, though, you're impatient with her, you've still got that fuel
pump on your mind.''
As she makes quick
notations in the margin of a script and tries to wolf down a takeout taco
between takes, Joan Darling is telling the visitor to the set that this cast is an absolute dream to work with. ''No, I didn't say the most exciting thing in my career I said
the most exciting thing in my life'', she corrects the distinction being
significant when you consider that Joan Darling is also a highly respected
actress, an esteemed drama coach, and the former director of the famous
improvisation troupe called The Premise.
These actors were all handpicked for their ability to work well under
pressure, and everyone involved actually takes a proprietary interest in the
show. In fact, a friend of mine, who
happens to be a very good psychologist, recently pointed out that what makes
the show so much fun to watch, what comes across, is the feeling that the
people doing it seem to love it so much and to be having so much fun. Darling does not exactly share the writers enthusiasm for soaps. (Marcus has even
quibbled with the idea that this is a parody of the soap opera genre, preferring to see it as a parody of how the media presents the American
people to themselves. In fact, Darling never thought she would find herself
directing a soap opera, until Norman Lear twisted her arm. ''Originally I approached Norman with the
idea of doing a documentary, a biography of Golda Meir with me playing the
lead. But Norman can be very
persuasive. Watching her direct the
next scene, you know that Joan Darling would have made a boffo prime minister
of Israel.''
Working with Louise Lasser
and 12-year-old Claudia Lamb, who plays Mary's sulky daughter Heather, she
alternately cajoles, chides, and chicken soups the child and the
sometimes childish star, coaxing them through a scene so effortlessly that Jim
Drake was moved more by admiration than professional jealousy to remark, ''Well, it looks like one-take Darling is back in the booth.'' When the cumbersome heads of the cameras are
finally lowered to graze along the cable-cluttered floor (the monitors now
showing random corners of the studio like the static experiments of some
avant-garde video artists documentary called The Life and Times of Mary
Hartman's Trash Can...
Joan Darling sits back in her director chair
and grins as though she has just wiped out half the Arab air force. ''The only drawback about directing a soap
opera,'' she says, ''is that it never climaxes, so its sort of like
screwing forever and never being able to come.''
Jim Drake, the younger director, who is a bit
more diffident and less commanding, may be slightly less euphoric as
well...Toward the end of the week, after a difficult scene for which Louise
Lasser seems to have little enthusiasm, he requests a retake for technical
reasons and the star flatly refuses. ''You can accept bad acting from me so why cant I accept bad
directing from you?'' she argues with a logic that is pure Mary Hartman,
backed by a temperament that is strictly Louise Lasser.
But, as she watches the playback on a
monitor, the star suddenly says, ''Jesus Christ, who the hell shot this
thing? This is just the pits!'' Later, Louise Lasser is sulking in her
dressing room when the actress who plays Grandpa Larkin's court-assigned
social-worker-turned-fiance stops by to compliment her on a scene they did
earlier in the day: ''You were terrific,
Louise, and I liked myself too, for a change''. ''I thought you were bad'', says
Louise. The other actress looks
stricken, swallows several times, seemingly trying to regain the power of
speech. ''I mean, I think you were
good, but you're usually better'', Louise self-corrects, in her unique
that's-what-I-said-but-that's-not-what-I-meant manner, before adding, ''I
think I was worse...It was just a bad scene altogether.''
On Friday, the tension which has been slowly
building all week finally erupts into open conflict. Louise and Debralee Scott are rehearsing a
scene in which Cathy Shumway shows Mary by a sly gesture the length of her deaf
mute boyfriend's penis.
When Louise
Lasser insists that Mary Hartman would push her kid sister's hands down, not
allowing her to complete the vulgar gesture, Debralee, who seems to think that
the star is trying to steal a laugh (or a blank stare), blows up.
DEBRALEE Why, Louise...why do you always
have to be right about everything all the time? Why do you always have to be...better?
LOUISE (Soft as Mary Hartman, but with a hard edge which is pure Louise
Lasser) Because I am...I am better!
Debralee Scott storms off the set and weeps inconsolably for the next
half-hour, as Louise Lasser, who seems to be suffering minor pangs of guilt,
tries to justify her bluntness by saying that ''it takes a long time, you have
to be hurt a lot yourself before you become tough enough to be so hurtingly
honest...''
But the run-in with Debralee
(which has the cameramen, gofers, and grips still shaking their heads hours
later) is just the beginning of a very eventful, very difficult day which will
climax with a surprise appearance by Norman Lear . . . as well as some very
ominous news from Norman's money men... ''Working this show is like the early days of live television'', Jim
Baldwin, the senior member of the camera team, is explaining between sips of
scalding coffee late in the afternoon, as the cast and crew take five.
''Compared to everything else you see on TV,
it may seem new but actually, it's the way we used to do it in the old days
when you didn't have time to set things up and you have to go in and shoot
raw...So if the boom happened to get into the shot or you saw a grip scampering
across the set well, the hell with it, watcha saw was watcha got...When TV
took over from the movies out here a lot of movie people got on the bandwagon
and got into the business, but they weren't thinking television, they were
thinking movies which is an altogether different medium...But that's why
most of the shows you see are so lifeless and slick: it's that movie
mentality, in which you go for a kind of perfection but lose the immediacy that
made live television so exciting. We
used to call it shooting raw or shooting crude, but it's not really crude,
it's just more naturalistic...and I'm damned glad to be working that way
again. It makes it a pleasure to come to
work in the morning.''
Suddenly Jim
Baldwin spots a familiar face and gets up out of his chair so abruptly that he
almost spills his styrofoam cup of coffee. ''Holy shit, it's Norman! What
the hell is Norman doing here? He
hasn't set foot on the set since we started taping this show. He must have realized he has another hit
show on the air and decided to come pay his respects,'' another cameraman
says. ''Something up,'' Baldwin
insists. Lear's first appearance on
the set seems lit by the glow of occasion.
He bursts into the studio, glad-handling stagehands and grips along the
way, and makes a beeline for the heart of the action Mary's kitchen.
There he embraces first the star and then
Greg Mullavey, who stands next in line for the ritual showbiz love-ya-madly
kissy-kissy, while the rest of the cast and crew gather round and Lear tells them, ''I'm as hooked as the rest of America!'' ''Youre all doing such a terrific job''. ''I still say somethings up'', says
Baldwin, watching from the sidelines. ''Norman didn't show up here just to tell us we're doing a terrific
job.''
As it turns out, he is
right. After the day's taping is
completed there is a meeting of cast and crew with Norman Lear's money men,
who announce that despite the success of the show, they are still way over
budget and have to cut back drastically. This means that the already impossible production schedule will become
even more hectic come Monday...
Another thing that Norman neglected to tell
everyone when he showed up earlier on the set was that two production
assistants would have to be fired. This
more than anything upsets Jim Drake. ''Those were valuable people who saved us many times their salaries in
production costs every week they were here'', Drake says, just after
conferring privately with a very distraught looking Louise Lasser. ''To me it seems penny-wise and
dollar-foolish, like what they used to refer to as Black Thursday at CBS when some executive would get the bright idea of cutting corners by laying off
half the mailroom and the next morning everybody would be wondering why they
weren't getting any mail.''
Late into
the evening, a morose Debralee Scott drowns her sorrows in the beery blue of a
local actors hangout called Joe Allen's.
As Rob Reiner, who plays The Meathead on All in the Family, stops by the table to offer his condolences, a production assistant named Susan
Harris is telling the visitor from New York that while she is happy to have
survived the purge, she is not looking forward to going back to work on Monday
morning. With the tension building and
the plot thickening, the reporter is waiting out the weekend like one long
station break.
Somewhere around 11
o'clock the following night, he is cracking cans of beer to stave off the
drought and taking alternate hits on a joint and a Primatene asthma inhaler to
combat the famous smog, when the telephone suddenly rings in room 1205 of the
Holiday Inn in North Hollywood. ''Hi,
it's me Louise'', says a voice that needs (as they say in showbiz) no
introduction. ''I hope I didn't wake
you . . . I just called because I thought we should get together tomorrow
night...Alone, I mean. I've never done
that before without any press agents around, but I think I know the kind of
story you're after, and we could just hang out for a while and talk,
okay?''
The next night, the visitor
hands a cab driver a very intricate set of directions dictated over the phone
by Louise Lasser and tells him he's on his own. The cab winds up into the hills, up steep
Sleepy Hollow roads with the lights of Tinsel Town spilling down into the
canyon below. At the door of a woodsy
modern ranch house, Louise Lasser greets him. Inside, a fire is blazing cosily despite the humidity and the
drought. Everything is going swell, a very intimate Rex Reed pour-your-heart-out Hollywood interview scene with the
scruffy, bearded journalist sitting on the sofa in a posture reminiscent of
Sigmund Freud and the actress all balled up like an animated bundle of Method angst, analysing her character... until this problem occurs with
one of the dogs. The writers of Mary
Hartman, Mary Hartman might transcribe the real life episode as
follows:
(SCENE LOUISE LASSER'S
KITCHEN EVENING) (Water whooshing and splashing every which way as Louise
struggles with a sodden yelping Scotty in the kitchen sink, trying both to calm
and upend the animal at the same time. As the dog panics and Louise struggles, the scruffy visitor looks on
dumbfounded.)
LOUISE This is terrible
. . . This poor little dog is all blocked up...Yeccchhh, I hate shit I mean
I hate smells, any smells! Yeccchhh,
how disgusting! I think Im going
to...throw up...
REPORTER (Bumbling,
trying to be helpful) Can I...do anything?
Get you some toilet paper or something?
LOUISE (Still struggling, distressed) This
poor dog has had so many traumatic experiences lately. First his two best friends passed away within
days of each other and...now this!...Oh, yes, help...paper towels...over
there...by the counter...My friend thought he should stay here with my dog
until he got over the death of the other two dogs, but that was a really stupid
idea because this dog and my Kefir don't even know each other...They
haven't said two words, I mean woofs, to each other since he's been
here...Oh, thank you for the towel...You're very kind, but it's too bad you
don't like animals because this is disgusting. Yeccchhh!
REPORTER Allergies. Can't stand
physical contact or get too close to them...But that's really amazing a blocked up dog! Never even heard of it
before...is that an unusual condition?
LOUISE (On verge of passing out from stench) Yes. I mean, no. Only among long-haired breeds when they have long hair around their
ass and they shit, you know, they get blocked up sometimes, in back...
REPORTER (Moved to unaccustomed candor by
the situation) That's really funny, you know, because before I remember
when we were sitting over by the fireplace and every once in a while you'd
kind of glance over at the dog? Well, I
kept thinking, Aha, she's farting and trying to blame it on the
dog!
(Louise, unamused, forgets
animal. Turns, stung by the
suggestion.)
LOUISE Oh, no...Why would
I do that? I mean, it isn't even my
dog to blame.
(Reporter stares back
blankly...seems to be some sort of reality warp here...everything is getting
blurry...) [FADE-OUT]
Long after the crisis of the canine blockage
has seemingly been resolved, the actress keeps sniffing at her fingertips to
make certain no lingering stigma of the stench remains. As she speaks wistfully of her three years as
the wife of Woody Allen, Louise steps out of her Mary Hartman suit and stands
naked.
Mary Hartman, both victim and
survivor, would be able to sympathize, even if she couldn't articulate it as
well as Louse Lasser does:
''Before I
met Woody, I always felt like Marilyn Monroe, like girls were supposed to be
stupid or something...like it was somehow unfeminine or something to be smart. So I tried to play dumb until I believed it
myself...But it's a funny thing: the smart boys always liked me... Maybe it
was because they were smart enough to see through my whole dumb act, I mean,
can a woman who married Woody Allen really be dumb? That's not dumb that's smart,
right?''
She met Woody Allen in 1966,
at a party at which, she says, they fell instantly in love because they were
the only people in the room who realized what a fantastic existential act it
was for Norman Mailer to stab his wife while running for mayor of New York.
She remembers their four years together as
idyllic. They lived in a brownstone in
New York and spent wild Woody Allen weekends skulking down corridors in the
Museum of Modern Art in trench coats like characters in some French
existentialist film like spies! ''We lived this fantasy of being like Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. My husband was always saying to me, Louise, we're going to be one of the great couples...But it turned out
that only after we separated was it possible for us to work together...Then we
could get down to business...''
She
changes the subject abruptly back to Mary Hartman. ''What do you think should happen to Mary
Hartman next? I have this great idea but I'm not sure I should let it out...You know, though, it's a funny
thing: it was only recently that I
really realized that Mary Hartman is in terrible, terrible trouble...I only
realized it this week, in fact, when things started to pile up and really get
shitty.. Even before the scene with
the dog this had been an exceptionally shitty week. If that fight with Debralee had only been the
worst of it!''
At the closed door meeting
with Norman's money men, Louise Lasser claims that certain other members of
the cast (she can only console herself that they were not the people she calls the good ones personally attacked her! They ganged up on her, the gist of their complaint being that the show
was not Louise Lasser, Louise Lasser, and it made her feel so shitty that
she is dreading going back to work Monday...
''It all had to happen just when I was beginning to feel good about the
show...I mean, I went through some terrible times in the beginning, when I
first agreed to do it. I got very
frightened that I might just be ending my career. Just think about it for a second...Would you
hire the former Mary Hartman? I know I
wouldn't''.
Louise says she felt so
insecure for a while there that Norman, who is very paternal about his
properties, was worried that she might crack under the pressure. ''Things were getting back to him and...I
think he was actually convinced that I was going to crack up and he would be
left with an insane basket-case of an actress on his hands... But now, it's not even me I'm worried
about...because it only dawned on me that Mary is in terrible trouble even for
the heroine of a soap opera even a slightly bent soap opera! And I just this weekend figured out the
possible solution...I cant wait to talk to the writers about it...but maybe
I shouldn't tell you. What do you
think? Should I or not? No, I shouldn't... but I want to, so I
will. This is it: I think Mary should
have a nervous breakdown and be put in a mental institution...Well, what do you
think? Tell me the truth: don't you
think that's really an incredibly good idea...?''
Monday morning, even one-take Darling was not absolutely certain she could hack it, but now it is Monday afternoon
and she isn't worried anymore. The new
schedule, which requires getting the rehearsing and taping over with by a
reasonable time every night (five or six instead of seven or eight or nine, or
even later sometimes) is tough, but Joan brought in the first scene today in
record time and form that moment on, she says, she knew it was going to work
out okay.
''Life imitates fiction'', says the director, handing the visitor to the set a fan letter from a real-life
Mary Hartman who writes to disagree with those critics who claim the show is
just too absurd to be a slice of real life. ''I run my household of five kids, one Saint Bernard, two cats, and
six imported goldfish with a lot of humour'', writes this typical American
housewife (who would like to know if the writers welcome real slices of
life from viewers). If not, I
would have to take seriously my kids regular runaway attempts, the
kidnapping of my 14-year-old daughter by her 34-year-old lover (who just
happened to be her girlfriends father), learning of my 34-year-old
grandmother-hood and my attempted suicide (around the same time) and that would
have destroyed me!
Our tragedies can be
funny if we let them. It's the only
way to survive...
½ Minutes later, Viva
Knight, Norman Lear's producer, bursts in, visibly shaken. She has just received news that her
12-year-old son has been taken to the hospital with a hole in his arm. He was on his way home from school when a
grown man fired a BB gun at him from a passing car. ''I mean, isn't that just incredible? What kind of maniac would want to harm an
innocent little boy'' Meanwhile, a
long-haired prop man is running around the studio with an empty holster flapping
off his belt. It seems the real
.32-caliber gun that was used in the scene in which Mary Hartman meets the mass
killer is missing. ''Somebody ripped off
the gun'', he says, rushing by in a blur. ''Somebody had better notify the police! I swear'', says Viva Knight, ''this is a world
gone absolutely mad''.
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