The Sheila Variations

QUOTE

"In war anything is better than indecision. We must decide. If I am wrong, we shall soon find it out and can do the other thing. But not to decide ... may ruin everything."

--Ulysses S. Grant

From Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films

One of the many film-making books I have on my shelf is Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films. Perhaps this is only a book that an obsessed cinephile like myself would love, or perhaps not.

It is a book-long interview with Kazan, going over each one of his films, a chapter devoted to each. In-depth discussions of his relationships with various DPs, his development of each script, his feelings about the performances he was able (or unable, in some cases) to get. The interviews in this book were done in the early 70s.

What this book proves to me is: Whatever Elia Kazan does not know about directing isn't worth knowing.

To my taste, his main contribution to the "scholarship" of acting/directing, was this simple statement: "Acting is turning psychology into behavior."

I remind myself of this constantly, if I am struggling with a part, with a choice I need to make in anything I am working on...

Remember: Turn your psychology into behavior.

Too many actors stay in the psychological. I have fallen into that trap myself.

Kazan always reminds us that everything must be SEEN. Psychology MUST be turned into behavior. Which is why the scene in the park in On the Waterfront is so rightfully famous. (Kazan discusses it in-depth in the excerpt I will post, momentarily)

Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint are obviously falling in love, in a very hidden un-spoken way. Yet somehow, we must SEE their feelings ... even if they have no words to express what is going on. Brando was the kind of actor who understood that kind of stuff instinctually, and so what did he do? Eva Marie Saint drops her glove. He picks it up for her, and they continue walking, and he does not give the glove back. They stroll along, and he fingers the glove, stroking it, and then he tries it on.

The moment is breathtaking. To this day, it is one of the most honest and startling moments I have ever seen in a film.

She wants to get away from him, because she is a good Catholic girl, and also because he is the enemy of her family. She should not be seen with him.

He can feel that she wants to get away, but he wants to keep talking with her ... so he kidnaps her glove, so that the conversation will be prolonged.

But even deeper than that, there is this sensuality in how he touches that glove, in how he tries ON the glove (it literally made my toes curl when I first saw it as an adolescent - I wanted to BE that glove).

With her, he can let out his sensitive side. He can be vulnerable. So him trying on the glove ALSO has the connotation of a man allowing himself to express his "feminine" side.

But again: the genius of the scene is its subtlety. It does not bang you over the head. it does not scream at you, "DO YOU GET IT??"

Another thing I find so extraordinary about these interviews, is Kazan's humility. He definitely takes credit where credit is due, but if it wasn't his idea, he never takes credit for it. He obviously LOVES actors, and is a little bit in awe of them. Of what a genius actor can do.

Here are some excerpts from the chapter dedicated to On the Waterfront. Interview questions are in bold. And I've added emphasis to some of Kazan's words because ... well, because it's my blog!

Since Waterfront is such a classic example of your work, I'd like to go into detail with you as to how you approach each directorial choice, from idea to release print. We've already talked about the script, so let's move on to the cast.

I had a problem right away. The actors had to be in the same league as the scenery. They had to be as real as the Hoboken locations. You rarely get that with actors. I was very close to the Actors Studio then. I not only started it, I was still teaching there. I had guys like Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint and a whole bunch of others. They were more people than they were actors. Rod Steiger looked like somebody in a hurry, that's all.

After finding leads who would look like they belonged on the New Jersey waterfront, I had to surround them with bit players who would also look real. The problem, of course, was the Screen Actors Guild. That was murder. I don't know what arrangements we finally made with SAG in the end, but there weren't many of their people around. So I was able to use a lot of real longshoremen.

The next problem was getting actors out into the cold, which was not as easy as it sounds. A couple of days I had to go to the hotel and pull Brando out by the hand. It was not only zero degrees on the waterfront, but the north wind was blowing off the Hudson and the actor's faces, therefore, without makeup became like the real thing.

In casting the major roles what were you looking for? What was the essence of Terry Malloy for you?

He wants opposing goals, ambivalence. He was at war within himself. He's the only character that's that way in the whole picture. That was crucial. Brando was that. He had so much shame in him – from God knows what. He had the ability to project the inner struggle of conscience. That's the essence of the story, Terry's inner conflict. It had to genuinely be there in the actor playing the part. Another fellow whom we considered and whom I like and who was ready to accept the part was Frank Sinatra. He would have been brilliant.

Did you always look for the essential quality of the characters in the actors themselves?

Unless the character is somewhere in the actor himself you shouldn't cast him. The person has got to have the essential qualities, the mainstream in him. Otherwise you fake and never get a truly good performance.

With the priest played by Karl Malden I was looking for the ability to believe and advocate certain simple, clear values. Karl couldn't stand sophisticated distinctions. I started him off, and I knew him intimately. I still do; he's a close friend of mine. I knew that Karl was that guy. What do priests really know about life? The waterfront priests know more, but they're still dealing in absolute right and absolute wrong. Karl deals that way too.

With Rod Steiger you could just smell it. You could look at him and say, "Here is a guy who is going to make it." I just smell the soul and see what the hell is there.

Eva Marie Saint was a true-blue girl who didn't think she was pretty, didn't think much of herself. Her role was crucial. If I hadn't found a truly innocent, devoted girl, a girl who had something in her that resembled the simplicity and faith that well-brought-up Catholic girls have, I'd have been in trouble. I'd seen Eva in a play in which I didn't think she was exceptional, but I thought her quality was exactly right for Edie. It turned out I was right.

There's always some luck in casting. You make guesses based on your personal, subjective responses to people. Sometimes those guesses turn out good, sometimes they don't. Nevertheless, I think it's crucial to cast people who inside all the fronts and manners and agreeabilities and adaptabilities are like the characters you are casting.

You do the same thing with the smaller roles?

Yes, to whatever degree possible. Like the old actor, John Hamilton, who played Eva Marie Saint's father. I'd known him for a long time from around the street. There was this sense in him of I'm a failure. I'm not going to make it. So much goodness and so much pain.

What was your next step after the cast was set?

I had three readings at the Actors Studio with all the actors who had speaking parts. I made all of my basic, general observations to each of the leading players … I warned them that it was going to be rough on location and cold. Mostly I said general things like no makeup, but I also told each of them what to work on in their part. It was valuable.

Can you tell me more about the process of the reading?

Before each scene I would tell the actors involved the kind of place where I intended to play it, such as a rooftop. Then I would have them read it, just to relate to each other, just to listen to each other. Listening is awfully important in the theatre, but it's even more important in films. More often than not you're photographing a person listening. If a scene is good, what little is being said has an effect on the person listening, particularly in On the Waterfront, where the whole point of Brando's character was that not only was he inarticulate but that he was only semi-conscious, that he was unaware or only partly unaware of the struggle going on inside himself.

Listening is more than just hearing the words; it's a total process. You not only listen with your ears but you take in the person's intention. You listen in the deepest sense of the word. It's a total response to the person, not only to what he says, but to what he's trying to do, what he means. I stress that a lot. Very often in my movies you will see people being photographed who are not talking.

Can you describe the process from one reading to the next?

The second reading had to do more with my introduction to what their main objectives were. I would do just enough to get them going on the right track. You don't tell them each station nor all the curves along the way. You don't tell them the ambiguities or the temporary reversals. But you put them on the right track so they're doing the right thing. I would make the reading start casually and then say, "You see, this is what you want and because" and so on.

Would you fit that into the "spine" for them?

I wouldn't do it up front because that is revealed increasingly as it goes along. There are things each day that reconfirm the original goal, the original objective that I set for them. You must never go faster than they are. You never feed them more than they can eat and digest. You should never talk about the significance of the movie. That is the result of all the other factors being right and has nothing to do with their performances. The significance is a result of their performance. Drawing charts is a dangerous thing. It becomes a lesson in logic, everything must fit into that. It can make a performance very mechanical. But you sure as hell better know where you're going.

In other words, you may do it for yourself whether you do it for the actors or not.

I do do it for myself. I used to take copious notes. But I always acted very offhand about that because what you're trying to do is wake up that element in the actor. You reach into him and find the spine in him and arouse that and get him to enjoy playing that. That's very important – get him to enjoy playing that.

But if you say the spine is so and so and this is related, and the actors take notes, watch out. As soon as an actor starts to write a lot, you're in trouble. He shouldn't write, he should just begin to behave the right way, and like behaving that way.

For example, when Brando began to enjoy Saint's innocence and find it attractive; instead of putting him off, he began to like it. At the same time it made him feel guilty. His behavior followed automatically without my saying anything.

The worst thing you can do is say to an actor, "What you're doing is this and that's right. Now keep doing that." Don't do that. They're doing it already. That's very ticklish. You're dealing with behavior, not cognition. Once you've got it going in the actor it's amazingly solid. They don't lose it. If he or she finds the behavior strain in them awakened, you don't call attention to it. It's very bad to do that. You are careful not to get them to put it into words for themselves. I saw a lot of brilliant guys in the theater when I was a stage manager make great speeches. They should have published the speeches instead of putting the show on. Directors show off a lot, it's a terrible thing. If you could direct a whole movie without a word of direction, you'd be better off because then the actors would be doing it spontaneously.

Sometimes, like in the taxi cab scene, which I get so much credit for, I didn't do anything. I read it once, but the scene is so good, the personal intentions in it are so clear, and the actors are so gifted, that I did nothing. The actors knew it all. It's so human and so basic.

Was there any scene you had difficulty with in the reading?

A key scene in which it was essential to get things going right was the one in the pool hall at the beginning.

You had to get across the fact that Terry and Johnny Friendly liked each other. It may seem like an insignificant scene, but if you don't get all the relationships going correctly at the outset, the rest of the picture is meaningless. I had to stress over and over again that Johnny likes Terry. He likes his stupidity, he likes the fact that he's agreeable, that he was a fighter. He finds him cute, he likes his inarticulateness. He's physically fond of him, he likes his muscles. That came out very well in the moment when Lee Cobb got a headlock on Brando and horsed around with him. You also have to make it very clear that Terry likes Friendly, too. He's grateful to him. So when the break between them comes, it's a break between two friends.

Do you tell the actors those things at the reading?

Yes, I would tell them quite a bit, but you don't have to tell them too much because when you say the right things, they are very stimulating to a good actor. When you start talking too much, it's usually because you're floundering around and don't know yourself.

The values in Waterfront are extremely clear. All I had to do was call these very intelligent men and women's attention to what was already there. I also did another thing. In a hopefully casual way, I took them aside and talked more generally about what the problems were. I did that with Brando, for instance, and he got a tremendous impetus from that.

Do you ever play the actors off against each other, using the private things you know about them?

I'm very sly about those things. I'm not ducking your question, but I don't really like to talk about that too much. What I do is talk to the actors about each other, not their acting but their personal lives.

I'll bring something up before an actor plays a scene, something seemingly off-handed about the other actor in the scene.

For instance if I want Brando to do something, I'll say, "Look how thin Eva Marie is." Or I might call attention to her costume. "She looks perfect today; she looks just like a little Catholic schoolgirl." That may wake him up to something about her. A director doesn't have to do much, but you have to do things that go to the core of the actor's problem.

Once I called attention to Steiger's camel hair coat – a brilliant touch which, by the way, Steiger thought up.

When you're working with pros like Brando, Steiger, and Cobb, do you ever run into the difficulty of an actor saying, "Oh, man, don't give me that director shit!"

They've never said that to me, though I imagine they must have felt it at times. Brando might negate something I suggested, but he would not ignore the basic principle I was aiming at. He might not like my idea, but then he would do something else that was better. A director should never feel that he has to win an argument. Not everything you say is going to be right. But hopefully everything you say is going to be stimulating. And if one thing doesn't work, go right back two minutes later with something else. You don't have to win. You don't have to be the boss man.

Can I push your memory and ask you to pick a scene that you recall from On the Waterfront and describe the process of getting the actors to reach the moments you had worked out on your own?

There's a scene where Edie comes across the roof looking for Terry. He has a pole with which he's making the pigeons fly in a certain pattern. There's hardly anything in the text at all. She just wants to talk to him. We know that she's come for a purpose. I made her intention clear to Eva. We also know certain constraints Edie has. I made those clear to her as well. Brando's mystic and mysterious personality helps with that because he's not immediately reachable. I counted on that without calling her attention to it.

I made clear to Brando how guilty Terry feels in relationship to Edie. I only had to say it once. It's obvious in the script, and he was very aware of it anyway.

I tired, then, to give him something to do that would make Terry not immediately accessible to her without him having to "act" it. So he has a pole and he's guiding the pigeons around. When she walks over and wants to talk to him, he sees that she's there to tell him something important but that it is hard for her to speak. He could avoid the confrontation, which he'd rather do, by talking about hawks and playing with pigeons.

I didn't have time to make explicit to Brando that his dialogue about hawks was like telling Edie, "Don't judge a man by what he does in this terrible city, because it's a question of survival here." Brando knows that and if you make it too clear it becomes obvious and corny. The whole scene works off his avoiding a conversation by playing with the birds. As the scene goes along, they move over to the cage and then I point out to her that as he handles the other birds and offers her an egg, things happen.

Actually there's a little boy in the scene as well.

Yes, Terry's able to avoid her further with the little boy. She finds him charming because of the way he plays around with the kid. And when Terry offers the egg, she can feel the sensitivity, the goodness in him. One thing which is bewildering her, which I pointed out only once, is that on the one hand he's rough, dumb, and crude and on the other hand, he's so gentle withal. Brando has that within himself. Again, you don't have to tell him to be both crude and gentle. You've cast the role right so the guy's got it. You don't have to tell her anything either.

I directed the scene by using the business that Budd Schulberg had written, which is the offering of the egg, the way he handles the bird – which Brando liked to do – by his lack of shyness with the boy, which contrasted with his shyness with her, and by giving the boy a tough 10-year-old attitude that girls are somehow inferior, and by accentuating the boy's role in the scene. Actually I directed the boy more than I did either of the leads. You have the scene almost doing it for you by the business you've set up. You know very clearly what values you want but when you don't have to stress them you don't.

In a scene like that how do you define Brando's objectives?

My God, you don't have to define them. They're obvious.

His objective is that he wants the girl to like him, and he also feels guilty about her brother. If you talk too much about the guilt, you play that which you don't want to play. That was the damnedest movie because I did a lot of talking for a while at the beginning, but I did very little afterwards because the movie sort of played itself.

But clearly the objective can't be to be guilty.

No, I didn't say that. I said he feels that. You have to distinguish between what a character feels and what he's trying to do. What you stress is that you want to get close to her, get together with her, get her to like you. But you don't even stress that too much because it's all in there, and if you stress it too much you take away from the naturalness that Brando had. Really and truly once I set up the business with the pole and the boy and the egg, the scene played itself. Terry's able to stay with Edie, remain at her side and still avoid the confrontation. That's how you get the ambivalence in the scene played out.

This is the kind of scene you see a lot where someone wants something but can't move towards it directly.

The best kind of scene is where what they want – the object – is present. So it's not just a matter of speech.

The object, the girl, is there. He wants a look from her, he wants understanding from her, a certain tone of voice. The way to avoid her is there in the business.

And then it almost plays itself.

That's why sometimes in the scenes that are best directed, the actors will say, "You didn't do anything in that scene." But you did. You put that pole there, you chose the roof. You made him put the egg actually in her hand.

One of the nice things in the scene is after he gives her the egg and she looks at it. Then I told Eva, "Look at him." I didn't have to tell her what she feels. If I had, she would have tried to show me that he was sweet and you'd get terrible stuff. How can you look at a pigeon's egg and then look at the boy who gave it to you and not play it right? You can't.

So you've done the emotional direction by giving the actors physical actions. That's the way I always work. I was brought up as an actor in the Stanislavsky Method. This has to do with objectives, with conscious emotions and objects, objects, objects.

Did you know what you wanted ... in the cab scene?

What I wanted was to show the moment when a man suddenly thinks of what he could have been, like everybody does at some point in their lives. I wanted Terry to be reproachful, but gentle.

If it were just reproach you'd get, "You son of a bitch, I could have been a champ!" But if you say this to your brother, then you do it mournfully, and it's moving. I did have that much in mind. Brando and I thought so much alike in those days. We were so similar in our tastes and feelings that there were a lot of times when he did what I wanted right off the bat, and often he did it better than I thought it could possibly be. He's a genius. He's the only actor I've ever worked with whom I would say that about. And his genius was profound because it had to do with humanity and not mere brilliance.

You described watching Laurence Olivier work. You said he'd sit there and pick up an ashtray and say, "No, that's not right."

Then he'd pick it up with one hand, pick it up with the other, pick it up with both hands …

What is that kind of precise moment-to-moment external, physical work all about?

Brando never did two takes quite the same because he knew he had to be alive on each take. Olivier's system, in those days at least, was exactly the opposite. In a sense, he was directing himself. If he did the externals correctly, they would mean what he wanted them to mean. Hopefully, if he did them correctly, he would also feel correctly. There is something to the behaviorist kind of approach.

I'm explaining something to you, right?

If I do it sitting forward, there is some suggestion that I'm anxious for you to understand. If I do it lying back, there's some suggestion that you can take me in an offhand way and that I'm showing off. Or if I squirm around, it suggests that I want to get this interview over with. Every position means something. Once you start to think that way, there are values in it.

My problem, being the kind of director that I am and working with the kind of actors I work with, is to put those things in so they influence the actor without his knowing it…To the actor I only stress his objective.

My objective right now is to get you to tell me everything you can about directing. If I were setting it up, I might put you in a different kind of chair.

No, not you might, you do. You control the externals, just as much without my knowing it. The externals are essential. In other words, the form means a lot. I'm a formalist as well as I am the other. I think the ideal director uses both. With a guy like Brando it was easy. And you don't just do it with props. You use everything.

For example, remember when he comes back from testifying, he walks down a row of extras and they all snub him? I chose extras that he didn't like. So when he walked by them he played it as if, "The hell with them. I'm glad I did it." That's using the externals.

Let's go back to the specifics of the film. The first scene is the introduction on the dock. There's a very wide shot, which you hold on for a long time.

The point of the introduction is that the whole waterfront, which is wide and enormous, is in the grip of one fist, one little clique, one little clubhouse. I could have put the entire scene inside the office. But I did it this way because it dramatized what I thought was the situation there. So it wasn't casual. It was a specific choice I made.

In the next scene Terry has to set up Joey Doyle. His objective, I suppose in the simplest terms, is to get Joey up on the roof.

No, it's to carry about his boss's orders. Can you see what happens the moment you state it that way – all the feelings that get evoked by your choice of objective? The feeling that he's not himself, a feeling that he belongs to somebody else, a feeling that he wants his boss's approval, a feeling that he's tied up in a situation that he has no choice about.

I told Brando the objective, but that alone is not enough. How you dramatize the other elements of the scene is through picturization, and that has to do with the art of cinema rather than the art of directing actors.

In the introduction the actors come out of the cabin in single file and walk to a certain point. Terry goes one way and the rest go another. Before they go, Friendly claps Terry on the back. Watch the way Brando walks – he did it himself – in sort of an abashed way, his head down. N

Next I cut directly to a high-angle shot. Brando is on the ground holding a pigeon and he shouts, "Hey, Joey." The reason I did that was to dramatize that Terry had suddenly made a decision: "I'm going through with it." But I wanted to show that he wasn't comfortable, that he was straining against it. By shooting down on him from a high angle, the point comes across automatically. That's picturization. That's cinema.

I made the mistake of oversimplifying the objective. How do you get beyond the text so that you can conceptualize a scene in a richer way?

Part of it is to leave the instinctive part of yourself alive. Behave like an artist, not like a bookkeeper. Don't be a guy that's right. Don't be a professor, be an artist. You get on the set and you see this little boat house and you say, "Yeah, that's it." I don't know why. Maybe later you'll figure out exactly why you responded that way. And above all don't tell anyone.

I wasn't thinking about telling the actors or even about how you shoot it. Rather, I'm talking about the concept – that this is a scene about Brando acting out orders from his boss as opposed to it being about his getting Joey up on the roof. As you said, it evokes all kinds of feelings.

Don't evoke those feelings. Don't go into complications. Not to the other person or yourself. By the way, one good idea is better than two good ideas. As a matter of fact, one good idea is better than three brilliant ideas. Get it down to one good idea. Don't try to play several things in a scene – things in an actor that are ambivalent – get them objects that suggest it. Or make the scene work in a way that reveals it. Don't try to do two things in every moment. If you want ambivalence, do one thing and then later do an opposite thing. Don't complicate it. Make one strong, simple statement. This is the least ambivalent movie I ever did.

The scene in the taxi. You may not have had to articulate the ambivalences as clearly for yourself, but they were all there.

But one way or another everything's played out. Terry says, "What you did to me. What I could have been." He actually says that, I've done other movies where things were not said at all.

The next scene in Waterfront is when Terry hears the news that Doyle is dead. It's a terribly important moment. It is the first blow of shame to hit Terry.

I started on the sneering faces of Two Ton Tony Galento and Tami Mauriello and panned over to Terry. He just stands there. Brando doesn't have to act much because of the contrast between his face and theirs. Again, you set it up so that the sequence of pictures tells the story. The fact that Brando does act brilliantly is gravy. But if a lug had been in his place, we'd still have made the point through the contrast of images. I'm telling my inner story all the time.

When an actor becomes terribly aware of the objective, there may be a tendency to leap at it.

It's worse than a tendency. There's a danger that he'll play it inhumanly – mechanically. You're telling the inner story through external things, which is what directing is. Directing is turning psychology into behavior. If you don't do that, all you have is people walking around feeling…

In the scene in the pool hall where Terry comes in to protest…

He doesn't know what he wants to say, that's another thing that's important. Protest is an intellectual word and suggests knowledge. All Terry wants is to be reassured. I wanted to make him not a bright guy. It's very, very important that someone who's not used to thinking is made to think, who's not used to feeling anything like guilt is made to feel something like guilt. That scene is critical.

Another thing that is important is that on that level of humanity people do not know their objectives. Most of us don't know what we're doing until after we've done it. Then we may psychoanalyze ourselves. But in life very often we respond angrily or we cajole, we scold, we insist, and it just suddenly comes out of us. Sometimes with actors who are not as good, when they're not giving me what I want, I tell them what it is.

When Terry's sent by the hoods to spy on a union meeting in the church basement, the church is attacked. He grabs Edie and rescues her. That begins their courtship. They walk, he sits on a swing in a children's park, and they talk. In terms of your homework, the justifications …

You've done all that by now because you had a scene between them before. The rest of it is done by the fact that the hoods bang on the windows, that Terry sees her, and you tell him to grab her and pull her out.

Terry and Edie met the day after Joey's murder. There's a scene on the docks, the shape-up. Mac, the foreman, starts giving out assignments. At the end he throws the tags in the air. Everyone races to grab one like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Terry and Edie meet over a tag.

It's a big shock to see the sister of someone whose death you've caused…Edie's in physical danger, and he doesn't want her to suffer. Before the hoodlums showed up, his attitude all through the church scene showed that he wasn't impressed with the union leaders or the priest. You also feel that part of his attitude is an act – not an act exactly – but it's the way that character, Terry, was brought up to think. I had to be careful there, because all you had to do was glare at Brando a few times and he got defensive.

Did the problem ever arise where you had to prevent the actors from playing the end of the scene at the beginning?

Always. You always have to be aware of that danger. There has to be a sense of discovery in a scene. The scene is in the script because the character couldn't get to where he is at the end except for that scene happening. Just the fact that he has to pull her out of physical danger there does a lot.

Also, he has to handle that girl, touch her.

The whole idea – nothing you have to explain to Brando, although I did – was these girls are either whores or they are virgins. A good girl you don't fool around with and the other girls are bums. That doesn't mean the good girls are angels or anything. But they're virgins when they marry. The guys look up to them for that reason. He relates to her in that way. When he can't stand the sight of that decent girl being subjected to physical danger, he rescues her. But he's also playing out his guilt. It's like he's making up for what he's done to her brother. I don't remember if I explained that to Brando or not, but it's so obvious it doesn't need much explaining. It's not that the script's obvious, but it's played out very carefully in steps.

But in terms of not playing the end of the scene before you get to it – I'll go back to the scene in the taxicab during which Terry clearly makes a discovery.

A lot of that, Jeff, has to do with starting right. Remember I told you about the first couple of readings? You make them listen a lot. I'm looking at you and I'm listening to you. I'm taking you in. I'm not playing my action. I'll take it off you, see what you've got to say. How do you feel about that?

Just fine. My question is, When does Terry discover that Charlie has been using him, wrecking his life? Does it really happen in the scene, or is Terry just facing up to it and talking about it for the first time?

The conversation is awakened by what happens in the scene. But it's not really a discovery in the scene. That would be false. That he's a failure is always in the bottom of Terry's heart and stomach. By the way, all Brando's behavior and disposition in the first part of the film is that of a man who's a failure, who's scornful of himself. There's a conscious sense of guilt not only from the fact that he helped murder somebody but he also feels guilty with respect to his own potential, which he had betrayed all through his life. It makes the conversion much stronger when you stress that.

Let's go back to the opening courtship scene between Terry and Edie.

I think if he hadn't rescued her from that violence, she wouldn't have walked with him. That's what I mean about the script being well-constructed.

But then I had to somehow answer the question as to why she stays with him. Edie knows that from the point of view of propriety and public opinion, she shouldn't. Even though she wants to. He wants to keep her with him, but he doesn't want to exert any force. He wants to approach her gently. That was a time when Brando saved me. Eve dropped her glove by accident, and he picked it up and put it on his own hand. I could never have thought of that. When she reached for her glove, he got there first so she had to stay with him. At the same time, he could play it cool, as though he didn't know he was keeping her. Also, there are all kinds of sexual overtones implicit in the gesture.

How would you state the objectives in that scene?

You can say that you're trying to get her to like you or you're trying to apologize to her. But there's a case, I think, where you find it exists without articulation, because of the circumstances, because of the past, because of who he is and who she is. If they just sense it, you don't have to say it and it's better not to. I'm very leery of stating objectives.

I had to find some way to bring them together and hold them together despite the fact that she would not necessarily like him and would not necessarily like to be seen in his company. I made them walk in a way that reflects that.

In the beginning of the scene they're not close to each other. Another thing I did was put it in a playground. The setting returns them to a state of innocence. When the hoods started hitting the windows of the church, it again arouses his shame and guilt. I took them to a place where those kinds of feelings would exist least – in a park, a playground. That's why he sits on the swing.

What did you want the scene to say?

That they are brought together overcoming her reluctance and also his. With Edie there is an object, he is able to express, however indirectly, his shame. In a sense, he confesses to her without ever saying a word. His behavior says, "God, I'm sorry about your brother."

Is that something you would ever say to Brando?

I might have told him, "You want her to know that you're not a monster, that you're sorry about her brother." Often as soon as I would do that, he would cut me off. When he heard enough, he'd walk away. I knew he'd gotten it. It was obvious. And he would start to behave naturally.

Was that scene played as written? It feels so real, as if invented on the spot.

There are two things operating.

First, I always try to move actors through scenery not in front of it, so they actually touch things. If they're in front of everything, the scenery might as well be a painted backdrop.

And second, Brando does something special. Sometimes it drives you nuts. He never says a line the same way twice. He changes the rhythm so the other person is forced to listen, sometimes frantically, to see what is being said. He is, in a sense, marginally improvising everything. He keeps a certain element – ten percent perhaps – of improvisation in every scene with my encouragement. When he did it too much, as he did in some other people's pictures, he was a pain in the ass. But when we worked together, he kept it within limits and it always gave his scenes a feeling of surprise, of being alive.

The other actors felt emboldened to improvise as well. If he said something unusual, they'd answer in kind, and I'd let it go as long as it stayed within the intentions of the scene.

All of the scenes are close to "as written" but no scene is exactly as written. What is writing? In movies saying the precise dialogue is usually not that crucial. I try to stick pretty close. I protect everything essential, and usually I protect the text, but if he hit a prop at different times in different takes, I didn't say that on this word you must touch this object.

Edie plays a brief scene with her father then goes back to Terry up on the roof. They do the business that we talked about before with the birds. He invites her for a drink and takes her to a bar. They sit at a table, and he tells her his history. Right in the middle of it he stops and says, "…But what am I runnin' off at the mouth for? What do you care…?"

Brando did that. It was not in the script, and it was not my idea. It's brilliant, a sudden flash of life. He's so in it.

It's a spontaneous articulation of Terry's inner life – the mixed feelings he has and the sense of not being worth much.

Yes, that is it. You hit it on the head. He's full of shame. He's betrayed his whole life.

Why are you smiling?

Because you only got half of it. It's interesting that you got, "What do you care?" There's another part which is …

Of course. He's saying, "Please care."

It's telling that Brando would do that. He was always hoping that people would care about him.

It's the most dead-on kind of flirt.

Yeah, except he did it well and unexpectedly. I don't think even he expected to do it. If a thing like that is planned, it can be terrible. It's very interesting when you reverse your directions in a scene, even for a minute. The whole scene is about his wanting her to care, then he says, "I don't care if you care."

He goes on talking about the dog-eat-dog world, how nobody cares about anybody. They dance, and then a huge guy comes in and tells Brando that Friendly wants him.

What's good about that scene is the end of it when Terry and Edie have to go through a wedding party to get out the door. I don't know why it's good. I don't know why I thought of it. That movie is well-directed. It really is.

We haven't talked about Karl Malden yet. He is, in some ways, a much simpler character than the others.

I believe I got what I wanted. It's been misunderstood a lot. I was born Greek Orthodox, and when we moved to New Rochelle there was no Greek Orthodox church. My father was religious, as some businessmen are. He made me go to Catholic church and catechism school. I hated it. I went to confession once, and I really resented it. I had a lot of dealings with Catholics, and I've always had it in for them a little bit, although I like a lot of Catholic people and have lots of Catholic friends. I thought their religion was simplistic, mechanical, and slightly hypocritical.

Anyway, I wanted Father Barry, the priest Malden played, to be a rigidly ethical man who in any circumstance would always tell you what is right. I knew Malden as well as I knew anybody, and he had that quality. Priests are like that in those working-class communities. I would talk to myselk and say, "That's the way the priest should be." When I got Karl, there wasn't much more directing to do.

It's funny because you said before that you hate cigarettes as a prop.

It doesn't tell much. Eating tells more.

Father Barry smokes all the time.

That's to make him a waterfront priest. The man on whom his character is based smoked a lot and drank a lot of beer.

How did you help out newcomers like Eva Marie Saint on this picture?

You make sure the actor doesn’t feel that he's being judged. You stay on his side of the camera, sometimes physically during rehearsal, but spiritually at all times. You make him feel like a friend who is helping you solve problems, which is in fact what he's doing…

Another thing that is very important is to bring the crew and the actors together. There's usually a terrific barrier between them. Brando was great with that. He liked the crew better than the producer and the other dignitaries. You get the crew and the actors kidding around at lunch on the first day, and by the second day they're all friends working toward the same goals. The director's personality sets the tone for all that. It's one thing I do well.

In Waterfront I have the feeling that maybe even from take to take you would throw a new stimulus into the environment.

I always did that. But when you're shooting in an environment that's functioning irrespective of you, you cannot control everything. Cars drive by. There are noises all around you. You have to try to make an asset out of everything that could possibly be a difficulty.

We're talking about the scene where the sling drops on Dugan and kills him. At the end of the scene Malden makes his "Christ in the shape-up" speech.

That's the most criticized moment in the picture because the body looks as if it's ascending to heaven under the guidance of an officer of the Catholic Church. It looks like some sort of symbolism, and I suppose it inevitably is. No one believes me, but I had no idea when I shot it, that the scene would look symbolic. I was naïve not to think so, but the truth is that's the way you take a dead body out of the hold of a ship. You can't carry it up the narrow steel ladders.

The scene ends with the black guy giving Joey's jacket back to Edie, the one Dugan had been wearing.

Poor working-class people never throw anything away. In cold weather a good warm garment is a valuable thing. And it's a token. He's actually saying, "Here, he'd want you to have this."

That's played in a three-shot; then the black guy walks out, and Terry and Edie stay in the frame. What you are left with most is the confusion and conflict in Terry, though he doesn't seem to be doing anything.

What is so good about that moment is that it makes the audience try to read him just like you're doing now. It's important that the central figures in a drama never be totally clear. You should try and figure them out. When you're casting, talking to an actor and you can't quite figure out what he or she is thinking, it's usually a good sign. It's a quality that all the really good movie actors have. In drama and in life there are many moments when you're bewildered. Bewilderiment is a very dramatic thing – you don't know what will come of it, which way it will turn. All Brando had to do was look at Eva, and she brings out his guilt.

When Terry kisses Edie you feel the utter desperation of a young man in love. It's like he wants to swallow her.

People like Terry Malloy are by prejudice, by training, and by the brutalized society that they are brought up in taught that sex and love are separate. Making love is something you do to a girl, not with a girl. Terry never felt any love for anybody before. He was always on guard, and the macho thing is to put everyone down. What you say is true. Brando's got that quality in him, and also Eva arouses it. She makes you feel tender and concerned about her. You hope she's going to be all right.

Terry is a desperado, a tough. He even says to Father Barry that she's the only good thing that's ever happened to him. She is a repository for his goodness. If she will kiss him, if she will love him, then he must be a good guy.

That's absolutely true. I couldn't say it as well.

Later, Terry is up on the rooftop with his pigeons. A cop is there as well. Terry spots him and says to the kid, "Jimmy, suppose I knew something, say a mug somebody put on somebody … you think I should turn him in?" He says, "A cheese-eater! You're kidding!" Then Terry goes over to the cop, and the cop does a beautiful con job on him, working on him to testify before the Crime Commission. He follows Terry to the pigeon coop and sets up the scene in the taxicab. He says, "Didn't I see you fight in the Garden one night … against a fellow called Wilson…?"

That was a beautiful piece of writing. I get a lot of credit for that scene and the one in the cab, and I had nothing to do with either. One thing which I can take some credit for is that you feel that Terry partly knows he's being conned. That's another ambivalence of Brando's. I saw it and encouraged it. Some other actor would have just played Terry as dopey. Brando never made the character dumber than he was, he never condescended or patronized the character. He's a terrific artist.

Then you cut to a scene where Friendly, surrounded by his cronies, puts Charlie on the spot. He says, in effect, "Go handle your brother." When Charlie says he can't, Friendly replies, "You can't have it both ways."

I set the scene up like a kangaroo court – absolute silence – with Friendly and his thugs just waiting to see what Charlie would do.

The next scene is the famous one in the cab, and you've already disclaimed any responsibility for it.

There was no way to ruin that cab scene. All you had to do was get those two guys saying those lines. The only thing that was added was a sound Brando made, something like, "Oh, Charlie, oh, Charlie." That was really a terrific contribution.

We had a lot of trouble that day because we were supposed to shoot it with rear projection.

Sam Spiegel might be good on story construction and script, but as a mechanical producer he was often delinquent. When we got to the set, there was no rear projection equipment. So Boris Kaufman, the cameraman, suggested putting a venetian blind in the back of the cab and shooting straight into the back seat. Then on the sides of the frame, he caught a piece of the windows and had flickering lights going by.

Actually it was a blessing because if you had seen the street outside we would have had to have more street noise. But it was a really desperate day. It took most of the morning to solve the goof on the rear projection. Then there was another problem.

Brando was being psychoanalyzed while we were shooting the picture. One of our understandings was that I would let him off at four o'clock so he could go to his analyst.

So the last shot I did that day was Rod Steiger's close-up and I read Terry's lines to him. Steiger was good enough to do it, but he never forgave me. He thought I treated Brando better than I did him. I sure as hell did! But it didn't hurt. I knew I would only be on him for a few reactions, and I had promised Brando anyway.

Sometimes it's important for a director to withdraw himself a little bit. If you've got the characters going good and then you talk about it, they get to thinking about satisfying you instead of playing the scenes. I was smart enough that day or troubled enough by my technical problems not to do anything. Steiger never got enough credit for something he did brilliantly. Throughout the scene you feel an older brother's concern for his younger brother. At the end of it you feel Charlie's sadness because he feels his brother has condemned himself and that he, himself, has been put in an awful spot. Steiger is very touching in that scene. If he has done anything better, I have not seen it.

In a way it's a shame that it all worked so well because it would have been interesting to ask you how you went about getting that scene.

I think it's more interesting to realize that I didn't do anything. That it was set in motion long before. That they were aware of the elements in the scene, which were that you have to make your brother do something that he doesn't want to do and your brother is in danger. Steiger knew all that without my telling him. And Brando knew everything. How Brando understood that emotion – having to do with his dignity, the fact that he could have been something – I don't know. When he said, "Oh, Charlie", the melancholy and depth of pain were just terrific.

Part of that feeds off the fact that Charlie has pulled a gun. Terry puts his hand on it.

He did it so gently. It looked like he was putting his hand on his brother's arm. That was beautiful. I could never have told him to do something as good as that. They were both tremendously talented.

In the following scene Terry breaks into Edie's apartment. She's cowering on the bed dressed in a white slip.

My wife used to hate those slips. She said, "You keep putting women in white slips. What have you got about white slips?" … Actually I always did like white slips.

Terry slams through the door and she says, "Get away from me." He says, "Edie, I need you to love me. Tell me you love me." She replies, "I didn't say that I didn't love you. I said stay away from me." He kisses her, and while they embrace, there's a call from off screen … He runs out, and she follows him. They discover Charlie's body hanging on a hook.

I wanted to get across the brutalization – he's just meat.

Was it written that way?

No, that was my idea. There was a hook in the wall there. That was some night. The crew was going to leave Spiegel. They called him a Jew bastard to his face. They were a largely Catholic crew, and they couldn't stand Spiegel's chiseling pettiness. They were going to kill him. If it wasn't for me, they were all going to go home…

Was it particularly difficult to work when everyone around you is ready to kill?

No, they were a nice bunch of guys. Also, I felt the same way about Spiegel. That side of him was intolerable. It was a tough picture to do, though, and I don't blame Spiegel as much in retrospect as I did then. After 7 or 8 weeks of that cold, everybody's nerves were on edge.

A number of things are striking in that scene. First, you show Charlie hanging on that hook in an enormous wide shot. He's in the corner of the frame, and as a truck pulls by, the headlights reveal him. You look and think, "Is that what I thought it was?" Secondly, what Terry does when he sees Charlie hanging there is amazing. He barely touches him. He puts his hands on the wall on either side of him and leans toward him but doesn't look at him.

The idea of not taking him down, the fact that there's nothing you could do, really gives you the sense that it's all over.

When Terry lifts him off the hook, he drapes Charlie's hands around his own neck. It's like an embrace.

All that stuff is Brando. He's so full of feeling.

Edie pleads with Terry to get out of town, go inland, get a job on a farm or something. He won't go. "You always said I was a bum. Well, not anymore. Don't worry. I'm not going to shoot anybody. I'm just going to get my rights." All through the picture she'd begged Terry to do the right thing. Now that she's in love with him and he's determined to dowhat is right, she switches over and tells him to watch his own ass, be expedient.

That was part of the intention. She's concerned about him now, so she wants to save him. Remember, Edie was born and raised on the waterfront. She knows he's going to get it. But the more significant part of it is how he changes. What he's done has made a man out of him.

There's one thing that I stress a lot that many authors and directors disagree with me about. They may be right. I may be wrong, and I say that truthfully.

I put a great stress on the idea that in a good film or play the protagonist changes. He's not the same at the end as he was at the beginning. Tennessee Williams disagreed strongly. He said it was the "drama" that I'd learned in my lefty days. That it's an emotional correlative of the political notion that, "Now I see."

But I do believe that events cause people to change, that heroes are made by events as much as events by heroes, and that in difficulty a person gets stronger, harder and more resolute. I myself have only learned from pain. I never learned anything the other way. So the significant thing to me was that Terry said, "No, I'm going down and get what's coming to me."

This takes us to the last scene in the picture. Terry bellows at Friendly, "I'm glad what I done … I was rattin' on myself all them years and didn't know it, helpin' punks like you against people like Pop and Dugan…"

That's where the parallel people have tried to draw between my HUAC testimony and Terry's falls short. I never felt that.

I always felt my situation had values on both sides. I was always wavery about it – informing on your peers is not an easy thing to do. In making Waterfront I drew from what I had been through in my life. It's what any artist does. But I never meant any parallel between Terry and me because the issue in the film is terribly clear. The corrupt union bosses were brutalizing and exploiting their fellows. It wasn't even another class. And they knew they could count on the code of silence to protect them. Terry was right to smash it.

You have mentioned a number of times how much you love Brando as a man and an actor, how his sensibility was so much like yours. He seemed like a perfect extension of you. That scene could have been terribly melodramatic. What makes it work is all the physical and emotional pain revealed by Brando's performance. Despite the fact that the issues are simple, he pays very dearly, and we feel for him.

That's right. I believe in courageous acts, but when you perform courageous acts, you often get the stuffing kicked out of you, and you've got to be ready to take it. You may not come out of the beating the same man. When he yells, "I'm glad what I done" to Friendly. That was an important choice. It made it into a real political act. I made him proclaim it to the world. That was the way I felt.

You had Friendly and his cronies on the same little houseboat where the picture started. Terry's on the gangplank between that house and the pier. Behind him the rest of the workers start to assemble, watching.

In a sense the fate of the waterfront is being decided. By doing it that way Friendly can't back off.

Friendly goads Terry to get him onto his turf, and finally he charges. He and Friendly fight. When Terry starts to win, Friendly calls for his gorillas, and they stomp the hell out of him. You did most of that action off camera around the corner of the house.

You gather that's important, don't you? Not only because it suggests more than showing the violence, but it's shot from the point of view of the jury. The other workers are more than an audience. They're going to make a choice. The victor is going to be the leader of the union.

Edie and Father Barry show up with a couple of longshoremen. Terry's lying there, semi-conscious in a pool of his own blood. Father Barry gives him a snow job, and we watch as Terry makes his decision. He says, "Get me on my feet." His physical acting is superb.

Sensational.

1953 – 2003 HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, to ON THE WATERFRONT

Here is an entry from my old blog, which seems appropriate, today. I wrote it in honor of the 50th anniversary of On the Waterfront. It became a long ramble about what inspired me as a kid, what those old films meant to me, who I looked up to, which giants had shoulders I tried to clamber onto:

So this year is the 50th anniversary of On the Waterfront.

On the Waterfront, as everyone knows, (and if you don't, then you SHOULD, and if you haven't seen that film: then shame on you! Go and rent it NOW) was filmed entirely on location in Hoboken, NJ, where I now live. Hoboken was, obviously, quite a different town in 1953. It was a rough place. There were over 200 unsolved murders in one year, around that time. My friend who works at City Hall in Hoboken told me that. It was an anarchic place, a hard-bitten place, a place of poverty. Right across the river from New York City, but it might as well have been Detroit.

Hoboken is now completely over-crowded, with an average of 3 bars per block, it's over-built, buildings going up everywhere (but they haven't built more parking lots, so anyone who has a car in Hoboken is completely screwed, quite frankly.)

Hoboken is the kind of place where, on a Friday night, if you walk down Washington Street, you are bombarded with the mating rituals of early 20-somethings who are drunk. Girls who all look alike (like all the girls on "The Bachelor") strutting down the street in their regulation-black, all shrieking on their cell phones, saying things like, "Well, we waited for you at the Black Bear … where ARE you?" In grating voices, where everything, even statements of fact, come out as questions.

The real Hoboken-ites, the locals, the people who grew up there, have been pushed further and further to the periphery of this town. There is a lot of class resentment.

It's a big Italian town. (Obviously. Frank Sinatra grew up here.) You can still find little off-the-beaten-track Italian restaurants, (you have to venture off Washington Street) where the food is phenomenal, the waiters all clearly were born and raised in Italy proper, and the red wine comes in a basket, and you don't have wine glasses, you have little chunky clear-glass cups.

But the I-have-my-first-job-in-Manhattan-and-my-parents-bought-me-an-SUV-for-my-graduation-from-the-Fashion-Institute crowd has taken over. The parking spaces in Hoboken were designed for small cars. The SUVs take up two and a half spaces. Again, I look at the double-parking, sometimes triple-parking, and thank the good Lord I do not have a car in this town.

Anyway. Tangent over. What I really want to talk about is On the Waterfront. Let me set up the day for you all.

Yesterday, I went into Manhattan to have lunch with an old flame.

My relationship with this man only lasted six weeks, and it was a long time ago, but it had a huge impact on both of us. (He's the one who took the photo of me at the top of this new blog - the one where I'm running through the field.) He and I would hang out endlessly at diners, all hours of the day or night, drinking coffee, eating stacks of pancakes, and talking about John Cassavetes. Who we revered. And Marlon Brando. And Gena Rowlands. And Elia Kazan. He and I dressed exactly alike. Flannel shirts and corduroy pants. Mod-grunge. It was that kind of relationship.

So here he is. In Manhattan. We were trying to decide what we wanted to do, and he said, "Well, seeing as it is you and me, I think we should find a nice diner." So that's what we did. We went to the Moonlight Diner on 23rd and 9th, and ate a stack of pancakes, we drank bottomless cups of coffee, and talked about Cassavetes. Among other things. It was great. I love it when things don't change. I haven't seen this guy in years, although he did call me on September 12, 2001, to make sure I was okay. I heard from people on that day who I haven't heard from since the first George Bush was president.

It means the world to me that some things stay the same. I would be lost without continuity.

Then he and I took a meandering walk through Chelsea, my arm hooked through his arm, and talked about our careers, and what we're excited about, and what we're afraid of. He goes back to LA tomorrow. So we said goodbye. It wasn't all that bittersweet, although I had thought it might be.

I made my way back to Hoboken. The day was beautiful. Sunny, bright, but with a crisp wind. The streets of Chelsea were nuts … pedestrians clogging the crosswalks, bicycles zipping through traffic, everybody in their tanktops, and sunglasses.

I got out of the PATH train and started up Washington, when I ran into John, my friend from City Hall. I haven't seen him in a year or so. "Hi, John! How are you? What's up? Blah blah blah…"

He said immediately, "Have you heard of Budd Schulberg?"

Hmmm. Sounds incredibly familiar. I know that name. "Uh … writer, right? Wait a sec … I know that name…"

"He wrote On the Waterfront."

"Oh! Right! Of course!"

"He's in Hoboken right now. For the 50th anniversary of On the Waterfront. They're doing a TV special about it, so he's doing a walking tour of all the locations of the movie."

"You're kidding me!"

"He's right around the corner. Want to go join the tour?"

Do I want to go meet Budd Schulberg???

Nah, I got a lot of stuff to do. I have laundry, and I have to go check my emails.

Of course I want to go join Budd Schulberg's walking tour of Hoboken, on the 50th anniversary of On the Waterfront!

John and I turned onto 1st Street to go join the crowd.

There were news cameras, a tall guy holding a massive boom, and reporters clustered around the edges, scribbling into their notebooks. And in the center of it all was this little old man, the man who wrote the screenplay for the movie that changed everything. I cannot imagine my own life without On the Waterfront. It's like Citizen Kane. Or Star Wars. Or Easy Rider. Our world has been irrevocably changed because somebody made those movies.

Budd Schulberg is 89 years old now. He walks with a cane. He has a shock of white hair, and a warm smiley face. Not too many wrinkles. Just around the eyes. I took one look at his face and got very very moved. I'm moved right now just writing about it. He wrote that script. He was responsible for that script. He is a great man. A great great man.

I saw On the Waterfront in junior high school, when I first started getting serious about being an actress.

My passion was the Actors Studio. The characters of that place were as real to me as my contemporaries. Elia Kazan was real to me. James Dean. Shelley Winters. Harold Clurman. Marlon Brando. I read everything I could get my hands on.

I was 15 years old and read Harold Clurman's great book The Fervent Years, about the Group Theater in the 1930s. I read both of Shelley Winters' hilarious autobiographies, which are basically one long name-drop. I read Carroll Baker's autobiography (merely because she had been in one notorious Kazan film: Babydoll, and I wanted to hear her anecdotes about him).

I watched all of those old movies, wishing I could seep my way into the screen, and be on those sets, live in that time. I watched Rebel without a Cause countless times. I watched Streetcar Named Desire. I was obsessed with East of Eden. I rented Baby Doll. I watched Place in the Sun (one of the greatest movies of all time).

Mike Nichols says that when he is getting ready to shoot a new film, one of the ways he prepares, is to watch Place in the Sun. It is obvious why. You must remind yourself constantly of the greatness of others, and learn from their greatness. Standing on the shoulders of giants.

Place in the Sun is generally described as a "perfect film". Not too many films are. There might be a great movie, with one boring extraneous scene. Or some great performances with a so-so script. There might be a great story, with mostly great acting, but one actor who is not so good throws off the whole thing. Standards for perfection are set very high, as they should be. Mike Nichols wants to be in the company of those who did everything right. He wants to look at Place in the Sun and remind himself of what WORKS on film. A film where every note is in tune, where every element also contains the super-structure of the whole, where every smaller part works together with the larger part, where nothing goes wrong. The music is right, the script is right, the acting is right, the telling of the story is right, the production value is right (and not just right, but part of the theme of the piece), and … above all of that, is the "magic" factor. Which you can never plan for or manufacture. Everything may be in place, everything may look right and perfect, but there is no magic. Everything, while very well done and appropriate, somehow does not add up to a magical whole. This is the Holy Grail for film directors, Mike Nichols included. A Place in the Sun is not only filled with perfectly-tuned elements, but when all of it is added up, you get magic.

Anyone who wants to work in film (actors, directors, writers, cinematographers, costume designers) should study that movie. Obsessively. If you do not, then … I would say that you're not as serious about your work as you should be. Mike Nichols taught me that.

All of these anecdotes LIVED in my mind as a hungry ambitious adolescent actress. I didn't care as much about contemporary actors. My real gods were back in the 1940s and 1950s.

Then, when I was 13, I saw Dog Day Afternoon while I was babysitting. (I was probably way too young to have seen that movie! I didn't get a lot of it. The sex-change operation thing went completely over my head. But what I did get was the power of Al Pacino's performance.)

Now how can I talk about this … I don't need to fear hyperbole, because the impact Dog Day Afternoon had on me was so profound that I truly was a different person after seeing it. It was that big. That film changed my life forever. One indication of how the film affected me is: I actually considered writing a letter to the real character, the guy Al Pacino's character was based on, now in prison. I wanted to write to him. I don't know what I wanted to say, but I just knew I wanted to do something. That character LIVED.

The soul does not grow in a linear step-by-step way. There are events in life that quantum-leap you forward, skipping steps, skipping phases, your soul suddenly expands to three times its former size. Watching Dog Day Afternoon was one of those moments for me. A soul-growth moment. It actually hurt. I walked around for days, aching. Now I look back on it and see that that was a growing pain. My soul had done a quantum-leap, in one evening, and it hurt. I would press down on my chest with my hand, trying to comfort my own heart.

Al Pacino was new to me at that point. I, of course, had not seen The Godfather films. I would have been 10 years old. So I watched his performance in growing … horror. And identification. I could not believe my own eyes. I immediately went out and did a little research on the guy, and learned that he was also from the Actors Studio. I felt myself nod like a wise sage, when I got this information: "Of course that's where he's from. Of course." His background was the same mythical background as my other idols: Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, James Dean.

Dog Day Afternoon marks, for me, the moment when I got serious about acting. As a life-choice. As a life's work. As an art-form. As a craft to devote my entire life to. This was not just having fun in the high school play, and loving applause. This was what I wanted for my future. I wanted, someday, to be able to act like Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. And for that, I needed to get my ass to the Actors Studio. I want to do THAT kind of work. It seemed of a piece with Brando in On the Waterfront, James Dean in Rebel, Montgomery Clift in Place in the Sun. It was the same kind of acting. It looked like life. But not in a boring every-day-life kind of way. It looked like life lived large. It was unpredictable . It was never about the words being said. It was all about what was going on underneath. It was intensely theatrical. And so real it could clutch at your heart and make it difficult for you to breathe.

I wanted to be in the ranks of those people so badly that it ruined my appetite. I had never before experienced need like that, ambition, ruthless ambition.

Dog Day Afternoon lit the fire beneath me.

Over 15 years later, I got accepted into the master's program at the Actors Studio.

On our first day of orientation, we all sat in a large circular room, where eventually we would have workshops with teachers such as Ellen Burstyn, Marilyn Fried (sister of Marty Fried, a guy who was famous in my mind … a huge character in all of the autobiographies of Actors Studio people from the 1950s), luminaries of the Actors Studio. The adrenaline in that room was so intense that I thought I might have a heart attack. Our dean (James Lipton – or should I say: Will Farrell?) told us he wanted each of us to stand up and tell why we were here. What had led us to this point. What was our path.

When it was my turn, I stood up, and told about babysitting, and watching Dog Day Afternoon.

To me, it was an equation as simple as A to B.

So ANYWAY:

All of this was racing through my mind as I stared at Budd Schulberg. How much his work meant to me, how much that film meant to me, how formative it was, and how … much a part of me that kind of work is. And there he is: 89 years old, being honored and acknowledged, walking around the streets of Hoboken, telling stories about the shooting of that film. "Yes, and here is where we…"

Everyone clustered around him, leaning in to hear him, he was very soft-spoken.

We were standing on the very corner where they had filmed the famous taxi scene. (Maybe the most famous scene of all time! "I coulda' been a contender. I coulda been somebody." By the way: watch that scene again. People imitate that moment, but they imitate it incorrectly. Brando was a larger genius than can even be understood. When people imitate it, they put the emphasis on "been" in the second part of the line. "I coulda' been a contender. I coulda BEEN somebody." Fine. You could interpret it that way. But that's not what Brando does. Brando speaks the line with this emphasis: "I coulda been SOMEbody." Said with that emphasis, the line moves out of self-pity. And into tragedy. It's not about what might have BEEN, it is about the SOMEBODY he never got a chance to be.)

One woman asked Budd, "Did you have any idea when you were filming that scene how incredible it would be? How important it would be?"

Budd, with a warm smile, said immediately, "Absolutely not."

Everybody burst into laughter. The reporters scribbled manically.

Budd said, "You can't. You just can't work that way. You just have to work at getting the job done. We had to move on to the next location right away, after shooting that one, and we didn't have much time, so we just shot it, packed up, and hurried on to the next place."

Unbelievable.

A guy who was in the crowd, an old man, stepped forward and said, "I played the taxi driver in that scene."

The taxi driver has no lines, if you recall. You just see his face, his eyes, looking into the back seat at the family drama unfolding. The town of Hoboken had said to Elia Kazan and crew, "Sure, you can film all over Hoboken if you want, but you have to use locals as extras." And that's what they did.

Kazan was one of the first directors to shoot stuff entirely on location, rather than on a movie-lot, he also was one of the first directors to scope out locations beforehand, make friends with the people in the town, and hire up locals to play background. As opposed to hiring aspiring actors to be the background. That is one of the reasons why On the Waterfront still holds so much WEIGHT. All of those dock-workers at the end are real dock-workers. They are not actors. It makes all the difference in the world. The faces of those men … actors, in general, do not have faces that look like that.

So here steps forward this Hoboken local guy, who was not an actor, who Kazan had chosen to be the taxi driver. There he was!

Everyone stood back to beam at him, to smile up at this little old man, who once upon a time, had participated in the filming of that great movie. Budd Schulberg looked at him, and nodded vigorously, remembering.

"You only see the taxi driver's eyes in that scene," Schulberg said. "We wanted it that way. But yes, of course I remember you."

The taxi driver guy had an ear-to-ear smile. I felt like weeping. It was a very powerful moment.

Hoboken has changed so much that the guy who was leading the tour, a guy from City Hall, had to keep reminding us: "Here is where they shot that scene … of course, at that time, the waterfront was all docks … there was no park, or fountain…"

After the walking tour of Hoboken, with Budd Schulberg, I floated home. Mind racing. It was a beautiful gift. To see him, to be in his presence, and to be reminded of that film. I think it's about time I saw it once again.

Kazan

One of my first great acting teachers, Kimber Wheelock, used to reference a Kazan quote all the time:

Kazan was once asked why he had left acting to become a director. Kazan replied, "As an actor, I was like a violin that could only play 2 or 3 notes."

Kimber used this as an example to us: KNOW who you are. KNOW your instrument. The greatest asset an actor can EVER have is NOT talent, but self-knowledge.

Kazan was able to look at his talent (and he obviously had a gift ... anyone who ever saw him act never forgot it) - and say, "I do not have a good enough range to really make it. I might as well find something else to do."

Along those lines, here is a quote from Elia Kazan:

"I don't have great range. I am no good with music or spectacles. The classics are beyond me. . . . I am a mediocre director except when a play or film touches a part of my life's experience. . . . I do have courage, even some daring. I am able to talk to actors. . . . to arouse them to better work. I have strong, even violent, feelings, and they are assets."

The Weekend

The weekend with my friends was everything I could have hoped for. It was so exciting, waiting for them to arrive, I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve. I had lit candles, uncorked some wine, put away the random piles of paper which inevitably clog around my desk ... Everything was ready.

I love these girls. They are ROCKS in my life. Forever there. And yet ... they're not like rocks at all, in that they are constantly changing, evolving ... and our relationships have never been static. Obviously, a lot has changed since we were in grade school together, but the friendships have grown into adult bonds which enrich my life completely. I am very fortunate in that I have many friends, from all the different phases of my life: college, the Chicago years, grad school friends, work friends ... but there is just something about those childhood friends. The high-school friends. I feel I could not get along without them!

The 2 of them arrived bearing enough food for a week (I said, "Uh ... we do have grocery stores here, guys!"), sleeping bags, a blow-up mattress, trial size shampoo and conditioner, Beth had clothes hanging in the back of her car, and they had also brought me my very own pumpkin, straight from Rhode Island.

I love my pumpkin.

We were all quite giddy. Giddy to be together, but also giddy because they were on unfamiliar turf, and I was in the unfamiliar position of hosting THEM. Usually it is the other way around.

I poured some wine, in my new wine glasses, and we toasted.

We basically blabbed our heads off all weekend.

Maybe 2 hours into our visit, there was a brief pause, where we were talked out for the moment. And Beth said, immediately, "What if we've already run out of things to say to each other?"

I took them up to my roof, to show off the spectacular view of Manhattan. We carried our wine up there (of course) -

It was a beautiful night. Could not have been better. The city had put on its finest array, showing off for my two friends. It glittered, it unfurled across the horizon, it took our collective breaths away. There was a light wind. We sat, we drank, we talked about everything. We talked about the view, but we also talked about our lives. All of THAT information is confidential!

But life was good. Life was SO good.

And, of course, we laughed like maniacs.

A small moth drowned in Betsy's glass of wine. Beth picked it out with her fingers, and then we encouraged Betsy to continue drinking.

And so she did.

As we all would have done.

We talked late into the night. We had no plans for the next day. Which was part of the greatness of the visit. We felt no obligation to race about DOING things. That was not the reason for the visit!

Then came lights out.

Darkness.

Silence.

Beth broke the silence, saying, "This is ridiculous. I am smiling in the dark."

We just ROARED. We all were just so HAPPY ... and the image of Beth lying down on the blow-up mattress, grinning ear to ear in the darkness...

Too funny.

The next morning, I made pot after pot of coffee. The rain came down lightly, sometimes the sun shone ... a lovely day. We did not get out of our pajamas until ... I'm thinking 1 pm? We sat around, we drank coffee, and we TALKED. It was great.

Usually, when I come home to visit Rhode Island, and I get together with those guys ... it's only a couple of hours. We meet up on Beth's deck, we drink wine, we have food, we hang out for 3 or 4 hours.

So it was luxurious to have an entire weekend.

Finally, we went into the city. We went tattoo-shopping in the East Village. Beth suddenly decided she wanted one, and she was afraid, so I took her to St. Marks Place (Tattoo Row), and we shopped around. Tattooing did not end up occurring.

I bought enormous pink sunglasses, as a goof. When I say enormous, I mean enormous. I looked like a caricature drawing of Gloria Steinem. I wore them walking down the sidewalk, and noticed people trying desperately not to judge me. And we were in the East Village, where everybody looks like a freak!!

We went to Dempsey's Pub, where my sister bartends. I strolled in breezily, with the glasses on. Siobhan, behind the bar, saw me come in, obviously did not recognize me, and obviously immediately thought: "Who is this lunatic freak coming in my bar" and she said to me, "What's up?" in the funniest tone possible. She was trying to be polite, trying not to openly gawk at the ridiculous glasses, but she also was keeping her distance from the obviously crazy woman (who she did not even recognize as her sister.)

"Uh ... Siobhan? It's me."

We went down to Battery Park City at sunset time.

We sat on benches, staring out at the Statue of Liberty. I'm not really good at describing the beauty of nature, but ... the sky, the sunset, these low dark-grey clouds, moving across the horizon, with a pale blue wash of a night sky stretching above ... with this teeny almost-not-there sliver of a moon ... We just sat and watched night fall, completely entranced with it.

Sometimes we talked, sometimes we didn't.

It was so beautiful. Just so beautiful.

Betsy asked if Ground Zero were near ... so we walked up to go to Ground Zero.

We stood. We looked. It was night.

Floodlights.

It still is ... a stunner. How large the hole is. How enormous the space is.

The cross. Towering above all.

People selling cotton candy. I wanted to run over and knock over their kiosk.

Betsy had not been there before. Beth and I both had. It was important for Betsy to see it. To make it "concrete". Again, for all of us, the journey is: how do we understand this event? How do we get our brains around it?

It was very special, to be there, at that space, with my 2 dear friends.

Dinner at Puck Fair, where my friend Wade was bartending. A good time. Excellent food. Much laughter. I wore the glasses in the bar. Like a jackass. Beth couldn't even look at me.

Sunday morning: again with the coffee and lying about in pajamas.

We ended up descending into SUCH a girlie pursuit: pulling out a couple of the books I have on astrology, and reading out loud to each other pertinent astrological information.

Pisces, Taurus, and Sagittarian.

I read Beth her Taurus information, and there was one bit, one "trait" I read (which I will not reveal here ... right, Beth??) and Beth literally was ROLLING around on the floor laughing.

We actually learned a lot about each other, thru this astrological nonsense.

Things to work on, challenges we face ... all taken with a grain of salt, of course, but interesting nonetheless.

I did a command performance of my "74 Facts" piece for them, since they will not be able to come next week.

Then ... they packed themselves up ... and I stood on the sidewalk, and waved ... as they drove off.

I felt ... so full. So happy. So ... BLESSED. That's really the word. Blessed.

Blessed to have them in my life in this way. After all these years.

A moment of silence...

for the passing of Elia Kazan.

One of the all-time greats.

Every actor, every director worth his salt, owes him an enormous debt of gratitude.

I will do a tribute to him perhaps tomorrow ... I have tons of books by and about him on my shelves.

I saw "On the Waterfront" when I was 12 years old. The impact it had on me cannot be measured. Cannot be expressed.

I am quite sad. What a great great man and artist.

This weekend...

Two of my dearest friends (from high school and beyond) are driving down to Weehawken to be my first house guests this weekend.

Normally, they host me ... Beth has gatherings on her deck, whenever I go home to RI - so I am thrilled to return the favor.

Beth and Betsy are dear friends, dear dear friends, hilarious women - I have known Betsy since I was 10 and Beth since I was 12. We have segued into adult friendship beautifully. Their friendship is essential to me. We will miss Meredith, who couldn't make it down, but we will just have to say "Next time!"

I must flee now, to go prepare the space!

Diary Friday

In the fall of 1999 I had a brief relationship with a guy who I will call "The Deli Guy". He worked at the deli counter at A&P, and my friends kept saying, "So … how's Deli Guy?" and it just stuck. The story of the relationship is long and absolutely insane. But that's for another day. At the time of this entry, I didn't really know him at all, we had gone out maybe twice … and he invited me to his brother's wedding. It would be our third date. I went primarily because I wanted to see his family, I knew I would get a lot of clues into Deli Guy's personality from seeing who they were.

I ended up having a cosmic experience that had nothing to do with him, which I clearly have a very difficult time articulating to myself in the journal.

It's a long ramble. But the memory it describes is precious to me. So herewith, is the next installment of Diary Friday.

September, 1999

"You wanna go to a wedding on Sunday?" "Yeah, sure, your brother?" "Yeah, how did you know?" "You told me." "I did?" "Yeah …" "Well, so you want to come?" "Sure." "I think you'd look good in a dress." "You do?" "Yeah. Although when I last saw you at the A&P, I loved what you were wearing?" "You did??" (I had looked like such a slug.) "Oh yeah. The overalls? I LOVED those." "Well … I do have dresses." "Yeah, so I'll squeeze you in." "Into the dress?" "No, into the wedding." "Oh, okay."

Jen was listening to my end of this conversation as she was unloading her groceries and cracking up over the "squeeze you in" confusion. I was like: "I can squeeze into my own dress, thank you very much …"

Then he started rhapsodizing about my eyes in conjunction with my baseball cap and overalls, and then stopped himself. "Okay, I'm gonna go now. I'm getting' goofy."

Then there came the wedding – the weird experience at the wedding – which forced me to accept the reality in front of me instead of attaching myself to what I wanted to be happening. I had a couple of self-pitying moments but then – they seemed futile and silly. What was going on was what was supposed to be going on. (It all goes back to what Kimber always used to say when we were rehearsing a play and it wasn't going as well as planned: It may not be the play you want, but it's the play you got.)

I hadn't gone into this wedding-date with any hyper-specific expectations. Mostly I just wanted to stay as aware as possible, pick up on everything I could, take pictures, and LEARN. Be as relaxed as I could be, so I could receive as much information about Deli Guy as I possibly could.

And then I realized some of my other expectations, only because they did not manifest: like slow dancing with him. Etc. etc. And I realized at one point that a part of me was wishing that he was a different person. Which is ridiculous. And unfair.

I am who I am, and he is who he is.

I don't want to start any kind of editing process, or self-consciousness. I am into him precisely for the reasons that were (are) driving me crazy … And that's that. If nothing else, the guy is honest.

Once I relaxed, I felt no more self-pity. I felt ACUTE self-awareness, awareness of "the pattern" – or I should say "my pattern" – But it wasn't accompanied by the self-destructive whining of "Poor me", or "Look what always happens to me." I had more distance. I became curious about my own life. I sat there at the table, watching everyone slow-dance, knowing NO ONE, feeling so separate from everyone, and so connected to myself – at the same time. And I was so interested in my own life – in a kind of ironic detached way. I could see it. My life. For what it was. There it was. All in front of me.

Interesting not in terms of dramaturgy, or "Oh, this would make a good play", not like that. It was interesting in terms of thematics – (I know I sound like such a cerebral asshole, but that was my experience). The themes of a life – the recurring themes – the pattern, still discernible in the chaos (The Goldberg Variations) … You never lose the pattern, but you need to have clarity of thought and good ears to pick up the theme at times.

And the wedding, for me, was one of those times. One of those times where my mind cleared, and where my ears picked up the pattern of my own life.

So, onto the facts of the case:

Deli Guy slept upstairs through the whole reception.

I talked with Michael and Eve, who were wonderful to me. I can't even say how much. I liked them both so much. I liked them separately and I loved them as a couple. He is a fireman, she is a physical therapist. They really seemed to get a kick out of each other. One of those couples with a great couple-vibe. Watching them dance together, I started to feel unbelievably wistful.

No, that's not right.

I didn't feel – I guess I did feel wistful – but I was more separated than that. I was just watching the dancing, mostly watching the two of them. And I wished I was out there, too. I love to dance. But that was not my situation. I had some time of feeling so far outside everything that it was almost out-of-body.

I am so not describing this.

Basically, I was having a cosmic moment. Sitting on the side of the dance floor, watching all the couples dance. Feeling MY LIFE. Seeing it. MY LIFE. Almost as though it were separate from me. And my self-pity and wistfulness went away a little bit once I got all cosmic. And it felt like what was happening was clearly supposed to be happening.

Yeah, I would have loved to dance with him, out there with Michael and Eve – but that wasn't the reality in front of me. Why invest in a fantasy? The moment seemed so real, so vital: It felt like the epitome of my life. I have had that experience (sitting on the sidelines, watching all the couples) countless times in my life. And here it was again, only this time, I was actually on a date. That's what I meant earlier when I said the theme still exists, regardless of the changing circumstances.

It wasn't a moment of "Woah! Look at what always happens to me! I am always alone! Even when I have a date, I'm not out there on the dance floor!" No. Maybe because I'm finding my way back to God … I felt like something from outside of me was trying to give me a message. It was like I finally was open enough to listen for God. He was trying to speak to me. Or – he was speaking to me – only not in any human language – It was more like he was showing me my life – with love. There was this chorus of "Accept accept accept" – over and over, pulsing through me. God is not a punishing God. He is love.

Something like that.

The theme of being alone watching all the couples happens too much to me for me to go the victim route. Clearly, God has a plan – Something's going on here that has nothing to do with a self-pitying stance. Whatever's happening is way deeper than that.

I went up and checked on Deli Guy. He was so fast asleep that his behavior didn't actually seem like it belonged to the sleep category. It was like he was under hypnosis or his body was there but his self was out on the astral plane somewhere.

Which was what he needed to do. He was taking care of himself. He completely abandoned me, but he needed to take care of himself.

He was lying on the couch in his tuxedo. Or, at least, his body was. I sat down beside his head, squeezing in on the couch. I was still in my cosmic place. (I sound so hysterical. I never talk like this. Astral planes, cosmic places … ) Receptors alive … I felt very mellow, even though I knew no one at this wedding – including Deli Guy, really, and he left me at the reception – awkward, lonely, etc…but I felt really mellow, once the self-pity left. I got out of myself. I was not "replete with very thee". I accepted the moment in front of me.

And, I got this sense, this feeling, as I sat next to him, that his brain was on fire. That somewhere within him he was burning up. And I suddenly felt so cool – cool temperature-wise, I just knew my hands would cool him down, so I put my palm on his forehead, and left it there, letting the coolness go down into his hot brain. He never woke up, but I kept pouring coolness into him.

Then I left him and went outside to be with myself. I had no idea where I was. Out in NJ somewhere. No clue.

The reception hall was surrounded by trees. We were way out in nature, big empty parking lot, woods all around, night-time, lots of stars, and a great moon. Way high up, clouds rolling over it, big tall dark pine trees, and I wandered thru the parking lot, staring up at the moon, watching it disappear behind the trees, and then the clouds, and then re-appear again. Cricket sounds. I stood there, closed my eyes, soaked it in. Nature.

Cool night – darkness – clouds – stars – trees – crickets – woods –

I was standing in the gravel lot, taking it all in, looking around me, with this major party going on behind me inside. But all sound was muffled outside.

On the other side of the lot (which was surrounded by woods), I suddenly saw this beautiful tranquil smooth "path" of grass, leading up into the darkness of the woods beyond. I felt like it was beckoning to me.

And it's funny: I saw it, and I heard it call to me, and I had a moment of thinking about it, like: "Wow. That path just called to me. Hm! Cool moment." I was distanced from it in a way, and then in the next moment came the thought: Why don't I just answer the call?

So I did.

It took me a couple of seconds to come to the decision: "Let me follow that path." – which is interesting to me. What else do I have to do? Why do I feel obligated to go back into that reception? Because I'm "supposed" to? Why? And, when I decided to follow the path, I felt like I was experiencing what it was like to be Jen, a lot of the time. When nature calls, she answers unquestioningly. At least it seems so to me.

I teetered on my high heels over the gravel to the path. It was an upward slope of clear grass going up into the woods. Everywhere else around the lot was thick with trees, no way in. (It was all very Blair Witch.) So this swoop of grass was like the yellow brick road. The grass was thick and beautiful, and the second I got into the woods, it was like I was in another world. The reception was a million miles away. My LIFE was a million miles away.

I will cherish my time in the woods forever.

I felt close to everything, and also like I was soaring above everything. The reception really disappeared for me then. I was in the woods – the moon peeking thru the trees – me in my strappy heels. I came to a clearing in the trees. It was a pretty big space – dark and mysterious – grass underfoot – not dirt –

Jersey had been having intense floods that day. The National Guard was everywhere, the phones still weren't working. People missed the wedding because of roadblocks. And I really wanted to lie down in the grass, but I assumed it would be muddy and wet. I squatted to feel it, and it wasn't wet at all. It was lush thick grass, but not wet.

Everything was unexpected and perfect.

I lay on my back in the tall grass (wearing my little spaghetti-strap dress) – in the woods – with dark trees all around me – crickets high up – close – far – the moon playing peek-a-boo with the clouds – and the sounds – the sounds of the night were coming up thru the earth into me. It was also like I fell up into the sky. I fell up there with the moon.

The whole thing was RICH.

I have no idea how long I was out there.

And I wasn't missed when I finally went back in…Of course I wasn't! Deli Guy was still sleeping and no one knew who I was anyway!

It was BEAUTIFUL. To not be missed.

Lying in the grass in my little dress – with that soaring moon – and the Blair Witch trees all around me –

In looking back on it (that, and also my time sitting on the side, watching all the couples dance) – I felt something profound going on. I felt like if my life could be boiled down to its essence – if you could strip away the ballast, the non-essentials – and you looked into the pot to see what was left, what had survived the alchemical turbulence – those two moments would remain. Those two moments would be there. They say: SHEILA.

They are me. They say ME.

And – because I got that sense – as it was happening, which is so rare – because I got that sense that these moments contain my essence, I stopped judging. I stopped thinking that something else should be happening. I accepted.

I don't know what it all means, beyond what I just said. But it has stayed with me.

Later in the night, sitting at the table with Michael, he said, "Where's *****? Smoking a cigarette?" (Judging.)

I said, "No. He's upstairs sleeping."

5,000 things went over Michael's face. Confusion – alarm – annoyance – also concern for me. He was a sweetie, this guy. He said again, like he hadn't heard right, "He's sleeping?"

I said calmly, "Yeah."

I didn't judge Deli Guy. I felt disappointed, and also slightly embarrassed about being ditched so publicly, but it didn't manifest in me wanting to wake him up so that I could have a slow-dance with him. He needed to sleep. He got overwhelmed. Too many people. Family issues. His father shot himself a month ago, in front of the family. A month ago. So Deli Guy checked out of the situation. Self-preservation.

Michael took it all in. Then said, "And how are you doing with all of this?"

"Oh, I'm okay. I just took a really cool walk in the woods. It's okay."

He just STARED at me. He did not know what to say. Then he said, "You are so brave."

I burst out laughing. "I am?"

"Jesus CHRIST. Yes! You don't know anybody here, you don't even know him … and he goes and falls asleep … and you're just … you're just hanging out … I have to tell you. I could not do what you are doing tonight."

I laughed again. "I don't know what else to do! I guess he needed to sleep, y'know?"

From that point forward, Michael (and then Michael and Eve) never left my side. They took me out onto the dance floor with them, so the three of us danced together … we went to get drinks together, we took breaks and sat at the table together … we talked … books we were reading, what we do for a living … They completely took care of me. I wish I knew where they lived. I'd like to send them a card. I felt like, when I was with them, "People are good."

Deli Guy's cousin Jimmy (who could be cast as an extra on "The Sopranos") drove us back to Hoboken after the wedding. Jimmy's a fireman. Tough guy, also sweet sweet SWEET. Sweet with Deli Guy. Everyone was sweet with Deli Guy. Clearly a family concerned.

"If you should ever need anything…"

Jimmy has a tiny red convertible. A hot-shot car. I sat in the back. He put the top down. He drove like an absolutely MANIAC. It was glorious. Nighttime – that huge moon – and the wind blowing on us so hard we had to scream at each other. I sat in the back, hair going nuts, screaming out loud in joy. "WOOOOOOH!" Deli Guy grinning over his shoulder at me.

We were having such a great time driving that we lost the car we were following. We probably, actually, sped right by them – They must have been like: "Guys! You're supposed to be following us!" Waving frantically at us as we careened off into the night.

Then there was Deli Guy's clothes chaos … left his bag of clothes somewhere – We had to stop by the church first – but we got lost – random – running into National Guard roadblocks everyhere – soldiers and humvees. Weird.

I eavesdropped on the conversation going on in the front seat. It was killing me. Cousins. That long history. Jimmy's dad is Deli Guy's godfather.

Jimmy: "I'm not an educated man, but I'm a very lucky man. I have the best job in the world and I feel lucky. I thank God every day for my life."

Jimmytalking about spoiling his niece – who's one year old – buying her sneakers, buying her everything – and ignoring his nephews. He has to remind himself to get them gifts, too. "There's just something about a little baby girl, y'know? You just want to give her everything!"

Jimmy was asking Deli Guy what was up in his life. Deli Guy gave him the details. Living at the Y in Bayonne, wrote a book which he carries around in a plastic bag, broke. "I'm f***in' broke, man."

Jimmy: "Yeah, but you're doin' what you gotta do, man. That's all that matters. And you got your girl –"

I'm the Deli Guy's girl? Who knew?

So we got hopelessly lost, but then suddenly I thought I recognized a 711 – and then I saw a roadblock which looked familiar – called out over the shrieking wind: "Jimmy! The church is a couple blocks down this street –"

We get to the church. No one there but the National Guard. The church parking lot is full of army jeeps.

So we didn't get Deli Guy's clothes back. We moved on. I leaned over the back of the front seat: "You guys – can we just take a moment to revel in how amazing it is that we actually found the church? Even though it came to nothing – let's just take a moment."

Jimmy loved that. It made him giggle.

Then Jimmy dropped us off … and something weird happened. Deli Guy had this strutting moose-at-Yellowstone confrontation with a random kid on the opposite sidewalk. "What are you lookin' at, man? You wanna get into it with me? HUH?"

I was so pissed. I saw red.

He got all sheepish with me, but still defending himself. "He was looking at me!"

That's a big deal to him. Being looked at. He feels like people can see inside his head.

I flipped out. "So what? What are you, 8 years old? So the man looked at you! So what? It's one o'clock in the morning and you're wearing a tuxedo! Maybe he was looking at that. And even if he wasn't – who cares? So he looked at you! Big deal."

Deli Guy said, "You sound just like my brother. He's always saying that to me – Just walk away. Just walk away."

"You should listen to your brother. That was just so bullshit right now. You f***ing freak me out. What are you gonna do – get into a huge fight with someone, with me standing right there? In my teeny little dress? You would put me at such a risk? You are out of control, dude." I was pissed off and completely freaked. Adrenaline racing.

Finally he said, "I'm really sorry. It won't happen again."

"It better not. It better not."

Despite that one glitch, the evening was fascinating. Not because of Deli Guy, although he is very interesting. It was fascinating because of what was revealed to me about my life. Watching the couples dance, sitting on the side, and lying in the grass out in the woods.

I won't forget it.

See the Redhead Perform

So I have another PSA for those of you in the New York arena.

I will be performing a piece I wrote, "74 Facts and One Lie", at the Sunday night cabaret of the Irish Arts Center. I will be one of ... an indeterminate amount ... of "acts" going up that night. It's a forum for people who have written their own stuff. The Irish Arts Center is a very cool place. I took riverdancing there, from an Irish woman who was not a day over 80, and not an inch over 3 feet tall. And could she dance!

Anyway, it will be an honor to perform there!

Here are the DEETS:

When: Sunday, October 5, 2003, 7 pm

Where: The Irish Arts Center
553 West 51st Street (in between 10th and 11th)
New York, NY 10019

Price: $5.00

Also, there's a bar, so you can drink as you watch. Sounds like it will be a good party.

So please: if you have the inclination, come on out to support me in my off-Broadway endeavors.

Bring Crystal back

So today, "the Academy" is going to announce their choice (or, rather, the person with whom they have just negotiated for 98 hours straight) for host of next year's Academy Awards. Word is, that it may be Billy Crystal again.

I realize some of you don't give a rat's ass about any of this, but I DO.

Billy Crystal was a great host, a reason to watch the show. He always made it fun. He commented on the ridiculous-ness of it all, and yet he didn't hold the entire thing in contempt. I love Billy Crystal.

He came and did a seminar at my school - well, it was part of the Bravo "Inside the Actors Studio" series, and that's where I went to graduate school - and Crystal was lovely. One of my favorites. A real guy. Funny as HELL, yes, but his humor was all about generosity. He was so generous with us. Looked us in the eye when he talked to us. He made us LAUGH. He also had his wife there, his kids, and his uncle from Queens who he acknowledged as "the funniest man who has ever walked the earth."

Crystal talked a lot about the Oscar-hosting experience. How much he loved it, how much he loved live performance -- how doing stuff in front of real people turned him on in a way that performing in movies never could. After all, he started in stand-up. But he also spoke of the stress of that particular job, the months of his life spent in preparation - and so, one year, after a long conversation with his wife about it, he decided to give up on the hosting for a while.

But now ... perhaps the tide has changed!

I hope so. He's a national treasure.

Also, if you haven't, see the film he directed - 61*. About the battle between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle to break the Babe's home run record ... but it's about so much more than that. Love that movie. Love it love it love it.

Update: It's Crystal.

Anecdote:

Crystal said he has one tradition whenever he appears at the Oscars: He carries a toothbrush in his jacket pocket.

As a child growing up on Long Island, the 55-year-old said he'd rehearse Oscar speeches in the bathroom mirror while holding his toothbrush like an award.

"I always carry it" while hosting, Crystal said. "It's not the one I grew up with as a kid — I'm doing better than that — but it's a great remembrance to not forget where your love of performing started."

As a poor artist-type myself ... I take stories like that to heart. Beautiful!

Beethoven or Mozart?

Great post over at Cold Fury about music.

I love Mike's writing style. I feel like - even if his name wasn't on the piece, I would think: Huh. I bet Mike wrote that!

Beethoven is a rocket to Mars (the God O’ War planet, by the way, and not for nothing do I make that comment), and Mozart is a finely-tuned Ferrari. Beethoven is all brute strength and power and anger and the sweetness of purest blistering rage, and Mozart is every good thing that God ever made, with all the warmth and achy longing and bittersweet feeling that God intended when he cursed us Men with Women.

Go over there and read.

Toys to Baghdad

As I am sure many of you are aware of, Chief Wiggles has set up a toy drive for Iraqi kids.

Please, everyone! It wouldn't take that much time ... and think of the joy a simple jump-rope or some hopscotch-chalk would bring!

Here are the toys you should NOT send:
Any guns of any kind
No violent action hereos
No violent toys
No barbie dolls or dolls skantily dressed
No toys that shoot something, no projectiles
No water guns
Let's just keep it simple, simple toys, just the basics, these kids have nothing.

Some suggested toys that would be good to send:
Construction paper, markers (probably not crayons, because of the heat)
stuffed animals
bubbles
jump ropes
sidewalk chalk
matchbox cars
yo yos
frisbees

If you follow the link above, and read down through the Comments, a lot of people have great suggestions of culturally sensitive cool toys that would be good to send.

Take the "should" out of that sentence

Please forgive the rambling ... I haven't quite articulated what I wanted to here. This will be an issue I will revisit. (Okay, I have already touched up this post a number of times...)

I just read this review of Secondhand Lions (the upcoming film with Robert Duvall and Michael Caine) in National Review. Now, I do not, primarily, go to National Review for my film reviews. Of course not. That would be ridiculous. But I was there to read Victor Davis Hanson's most-recent piece, I also just saw the preview for Secondhand Lions, so I read it.

It's a good review, and an interesting take on the film. But the final paragraph ends with the sentence, "This is the kind of story that Hollywood should be telling." and that got me going.

Now please don't write to me and say, "But it was National Review!! What did you expect?" I know all that.

I feel like making a point here. A personal point.

This is the problem I have with social-issues conservatism.

A sentence like "This is the kind of story that Hollywood should be telling" is too broad. To say something like that, you have to be consciously ignoring aspects of reality. Hollywood DOES tell stories like that! They already DO.

But making films that the whole family can go see, that can promote a version of family values, is not ALL that Hollywood should be doing. I don't want every movie out there to be rated G. I don't want every movie to have some social agenda, some uplifting purpose. I don't want a movie to be a pamphlet. If that were the criteria, then genius films such as Midnight Cowboy would never be made. Sophie's Choice would be out because the woman was immoral, living in sin, drinking her life away, sleeping with 2 men at the same time. Taxi Driver would be out. Too violent. No real uplifting lesson at the end.

Yes, children should have plenty of good old high-quality G-rated films to see. Yes. Films that teach lessons, films that are well-done.

Like Bug's Life. Wonderful movie. I loved The Rookie. I actually own The Rookie. You don't need to have an R-rating to make a high-quality thought-provoking movie.

But I, as an adult, do not want to have every single issue forced into a G-rated frame.

Hollywood should be making all KINDS of stories, because America is a huge nation, filled with people who have all different kinds of interests. And so Hollywood DOES make all kinds of stories, because America is a huge nation, filled with people who have all different kinds of interests. They make action movies. They make chick flicks. They make challenging issue films. They make comedies. They make teen-romance movies. They make war movies. And they make family films. Some fall flat on their faces because they suck, quite frankly. It is just as easy to make a terrible "family film", no matter what uplifting social message is in it.

Not everybody WANTS to go see something like Secondhand Lions, and so Hollywood should not spend all of its time trying to pander to the people who do. It's a big country out there. Lots of room for lots of different kinds of movies.

I love The Rookie, as I've said. But I also thought Requiem for a Dream was great, albeit WILDLY upsetting. Hollywood doesn't have any MORE of a responsibility to make a movie like Secondhand Lions than it does a Requiem for a Dream. Sometimes I'm not in the mood to be uplifted, thank you very much. Sometimes I like a little bleakness, a little "there is no hope", a little "that's the way life is, kid, deal with it." That is an aspect of the human condition, too.

I don't think Hollywood has the responsibility to uplift us. Some people love uplifting films, comedies, and so that's the movies they go see. Good for them! I'm glad Hollywood doesn't feel that it is its duty to constantly crank out bleak nihilistic "Requiem for a Dream" re-runs. I'm glad that there are myriad choices for me to make. I can go see "Blue Crush." I can go see "Pirates of the Caribbean". I can go see "Adaptation." I can go see "Bring it On".

There are lots of stupid action movies, yeah, a lot of cardboard-cut-out plots, but there are also many other choices. I saw American Splendor. I'm going to see Lost in Translation tonight.

Hollywood has the responsibility to try to make good films. And that's IT. They win some, they lose some.

Diary Friday

And now for the next installment of ... Diary Friday.

I am moving myself out of the mortifying terrain of high school for the moment. I just can't deal with those memories today. This is an entry from a hilarious trip my sister Jean and I took to Ireland to visit our sister Siobhan.

What I describe here, or at least the last episode in this entry, is one of my favorite memories ever.

November, 1998 Ireland

The Stella Maris Hostel: One of the guys talking to me about the ferry [to the Aran Islands] from Galway-- thick brogue-- He saw the look on my face, stopped himself, grinned: "Can ya' understand me?"

At first they put us in this room that would have to be seen to be believed. Light blue stained walls, awful overhead lights, FILTHY -- and about four random bunk beds strewn about. No sheets. Ripped-up mattresses. Jean was still in a glowering mood [because we had accidentally ripped the bumper off of our rent-a-car], so she threw her bag down, and sat on one of the bottom bunks. "Fine. This is fine." Totally resigned to fate.

The entire place smelled of cabbage.

It was only 7 or 7:30. We had hours to go before bedtime. I had about three books in my bag. All visions of a cozy B&B with a bedside lamp, and a big puf-a-puf bed vanished. Now all we had was stripped bunk beds (four of them), dirty overhead lights with dead bugs trapped inside, and cabbage. I couldn't read in this room!

And we were no longer sure that we would even make it to Rossaveal in the morning. The guys downstairs made it sound like a journey up Everest's north face.

They had pity on us and moved us into another room -- just a little bit better. Outside: a round tourist-info building up against the sea wall. But from our view, it looked like a vat of some kind of nuclear waste.

Finally, the bumper debacle dissipated and what took its place? The giggles. Every time we looked at the nuclear waste dump outside we would lose it again. Jean and I thrashed about in our freezing room, laughing like maniacs. We couldn't stand to stay in the room.

We asked the guys downstairs for a wake-up call. What were we thinking?

We took a walk along the sea. Looking out into the darkness. Out there in the cold-- out there somewhere -- were the Aran Islands. People living their lives out there ... as we speak. Makes me feel homesick. The smell of the salt air. Jean and me walking along, wolfing down crackers, putting off going back to that bleak room.

Finally we came back to the Stella Maris -- got our books -- and went down to the pub next door. It was only 9or so, maybe earlier. Jean had In the Time of Butterflies, and I had one of my airport books: The Notebook, which a friend had raved about to me. That's the last time I read a book HE recommends. It SUCKED. I could not even bear it.

The pub was dingy, like an old living room. Dusty rug, crackling fire, smoky air, couches, the bartender playing cards with someone. A bunch of rowdy giggly short-skirted Galway girls huddled over by the fire, celebrating a birthday, drinking, smoking, making constant cell phone calls.

Jean and I sat drinking, and reading. Communing peacefully. It's such a different bar scene than in the States. Mellow. Like you're in your own house. Then the Galway girls left, we took their seats by the fire, and it was just us four people in the pub. For hours. The TV on with no sound. Jean and I reading, drinking Guinness, Jean having an enraptured reading experience, and I, to put it bluntly, was NOT having an enraptured reading experience. When we left the next morning, I left the book in a drawer in the room, with a note: "Warning: This book is AWFUL."

Added to the graffiti in the bathroom: "Sheila and *****, Nov. 1998"

Why did I do this? Sort of as a joke. Sometimes it comes to my mind, that across the ocean that graffiti still exists. A fantasy, too ... of ***** and I getting together in the future, and traveling to Ireland ... and me tracking down that graffiti to show to him ... as what? Proof of my clairvoyance? My psychic powers? I have no idea. For some reason -- it makes me want to giggle. Those random words written by ME in the Stella Maris Pub, Salt Hill, County Galway, Ireland ... I mean, it's comical, on some level ... in a sort of bitter way. Making a joke out of my own life (or lack of life).

Finally -- past midnight -- up to our dreadful room. It was so freezing that we climbed into the lumpy double bed with all of our clothes on, and socks, and mittens, and hats.

Jean read to me, and then we both fell asleep.

We woke up two hours past the time we had asked for a "wake-up call". I bolted upright like a lunatic.

"Jean? What time is it?"

Something felt wrong. Too much traffic outside, too much light.

We lay in stunned paralysis for a moment, trying to comprehend the turn of events. It was twenty to 9. The ferry from Rossaveal left at ten. And everyone had made us afraid about the difficulty of the drive. Would we ever get to the Aran Islands?

Then came the turning point moment.

Jean: "Sheila. I think we can make it. If we get up and go NOW."

And that's what we did.

The Tazmanian Devil O'Malley sisters, tossing our shit into bags, shoving hats down on our sleepy hair, racing down the stairs ... Those guys were SO not around. Jean called out, through the sleeping hostel lobby: "Thanks a lot for the wake-up call, guys!!"

And ... we MADE it. Even with stopping to tape up the bumper, and the damn wheel hub fiasco -- turning around to go get it -- me running across the street to grab it. And the road was SO not bad. The guys at the Stella Maris made it sound like it would be a dirt road, and that we would need 4-wheel drive. We certainly were out in the middle of nowhere, bleak, all Gaelic signs, but the roads themselves were fine. "Fields" on one side, filled with rocks. More rocks than dirt. Brown and grey chopped-up rocky land as far as the eye can see. Grey ocean crashing to our left.

And then -- an hour behind schedule -- we made it. We were on the ferry to the Aran Islands. We could hardly believe that we had MADE it. We DID it.

And I must just jot down some of the funny things from our Saturday night in Dublin-- Kiely's and then Rio's.

Jean took off her sweater at Kiely's, tank top underneath, basically all for the benefit of the Adam Ant look-alike across the pub, who remained completely unaware of her display.

The boys we met that night decided to take us to a place called Rio's. I remember as we all emerged from Kiely's, Brian was sort of the ringleader. Jean and I were walking with him. I said, "Where's the accountant?" and Jean said, "Where's the guy with the little glasses?" and Brian said, to an invisible audience, "Oh, listen to ya'! You've got little names for all of us, have ya'?"

We all piled into our car. With the taped bumper. I was on Cahul's lap. Siobhan was BURIED in men in the backseat. A hilarious drive into Dublin. All of us talking at once. Jokes, repartee, laughter, witty comments. Great company, those Irish boys.

Then: Rio's.

CHEESE-ball Dublin dance club. Packed. Silver reflective surfaces, club music blaring.

Jean and I stood in line to check our coats (a mistake!). Our passports and tickets home were in her purse, which she also checked.

A small muscled bald man insisted on bonding with Jean while we were in line. He basically fell madly in love with her. Immediately.

Irish men all immediately remember and assimilate your name. They say it back to you right away. It's a beautiful thing. Very good manners. "So ... tell me, Sheila..."

Later in the night, after the fuse blew at Rio's, and the entire dance club was out on the sidewalk, with their pints of Guinness, and everything was hilarious and out of control, and Jean and Siobhan and I had bonded with these other guys, suddenly Baldie emerged out of the throng and shouted joyfully at Jean, as though they were dear old friends, who hadn't seen one another in years: "JEAN!!"

Baldie was all about line dancing. He assumed that because we were Americans, we would be able to line-dance. He was dancing with Jean when the power went, twirling her around, and I heard him say something about "the prom". Ha ha. His vision of America: line dancing and proms.

So, we walked into Rio's, checked our coats, and me, Siobhan, Jean, and Brian hit the dance floor. Cheesy music, cheesy strobe lights, so much fun. Brian dancing was so adorable. He was completely dancing for himself, totally unself-conscious. Our new friend from Tipperary.

He gained our love back at Kiely's when we were discussing the "ring of Kerry". Brian said, "Well, to be perfectly honest with ya', it's more like the trapezoid of Kerry." We loved him from that moment on.

We all danced for maybe two or three songs when a fuse blew. All lights and music went out, and the entire place was plunged into darkness.

Brian totally owned it. He felt responsible. He was embarrassed. He was trying to show these three crazy American girls a good time and look what happens! He was sort of laughing and apologetic, "This never happens!!"

My heart cracked! We assured him (through the pitch black) that we were having the best time of our lives. It was an adventure. The whole night was wacked, but once the lights went out, it reached a whole other level of insanity.

Baldie and Jean took to the dance floor in the darkness. There was no music, but they kept line-dancing away. People kept drinking. The noise-level was outrageous. There was a general atmosphere of camaraderie, hilarity, humor.

Finally, someone came along and told us all that we had to evacuate the building.

A mild form of Irish pandemonium ensued.

A throng clustered in line to retrieve our coats, in the pitch dark. The poor coat-check girl blundering around in the black. Everyone continued to smoke and drink and whoop it up IN THE DARK. Jean and I lost track of Siobhan. We also lost track of the crazy group of boys who had taken us to Rio's. Baldie continued to love Jean, completely glued to her side, making witty smart-ass comments. He was making us cry with laughter.

We were going nowhere in that line. Jammed together in a mad mob. Jean yelled out, "HEY. SOMEONE GRABBED MY ASS." Baldie prepared to get into a fist-fight to defend Jean's honor. Jean promptly got totally paranoid right after her outburst that she had pissed off a group of "Dublin girls".

Finally we reached the coat check area, only to be confronted by an Irish fireman (Lord help us and save us), holding a flashlight, ushering us out a back door.

"But what about our coats?" I said, right in his face. Obnoxious American behavior. He waved me by, unperturbed.

And then came the party on the sidewalk in front of Rio's.

The entire nightclub had poured out onto the street. A fleet of fire trucks lined the block, lights flashing. It was a cold night. No one had coats. Everyone had brought their drinks outside with them. Everyone, that is, except for Jean and I (we still couldn't find Siobhan) -- we still had an American dread of "open containers". The guys we met on the sidewalk were so shocked and bemused that we had left our beers in the club. "They'd have kept you warm, y'know?"

Pandemonium. Firemen running around. Garda running around. One dashed by us and Jean exclaimed, joyfully, "Garda!" Swirling lights. A huge crowd of shivering drunk people. Laughter. Noise. Everyone was bonding.

We all got separated. We had no idea where Siobhan was. I lost Jean. I wandered around looking for my sisters.

Siobhan later described looking for us, finally resorting to yelling my name out into the crowd. "SHEILA!" And some random guy she had never seen before offered, "Oh ... I think I saw her over there."

We howled about this later. Like: everyone knew our names!

I found Jean finally. We huddled up against each other shivering, be-moaning the fact that our passports and tickets home were trapped in the doomed night club. We met up with two or three other amusing Irish men on the sidewalk, and we were all about: "Our passports! Our plane tickets!" And one of them said to us, gently, in an "I'm not judging you, but you should know --" tone: "It'd probably be best to not carry those things around with you." So gentle!

Then Siobhan re-appeared. Glamorous Siobhan with her black velvet boa and her long curly hair.

A drunken convivial group, all hugging one another to keep warm, began singing "American Pie". And -- beautifully -- it caught on. Until the entire crowd from Rio's, lining the sidewalk, joined in ... and we all ... every single one of us ... sang along. Everyone knew every single word. We sang as loud as we could. People danced, people had their arms round each other ... We worked together as a group, all slowing down, as one, during the melancholy last verse.

"I went down to the sacred store
where I'd heard the music years before...."

One of my favorite memories of all time: singing American Pie with the large group of Irish revelers, because the fuse had blown.

Jean was so cold that this one guy put his arms around her, hugging her to keep her warm. He hugged her for about twenty minutes. Siobhan blatantly took a picture of it. We asked him to take a picture of the three of us, clustered on the stairs. Jean was blithering at him about how the "night flash" worked. Suffice it to say that Jean was obsessed with the "night flash".

The guy's friends were making jokes about "flashing", every time the words "night flash" came out of Jean's mouth (which was many many times.) "Oh, don't say the word 'flash' to him!" "Now you've done it!" "Oh God, she said it again!"

I said as he aimed the camera at us: "Come on! Flash us!" This was a huge hit with the group.

Jean and I stood in front of one of the fire trucks, surrounded by all our new friends. Baldie continued to follow Jean around, making her laugh. That is the way Irish men court women. They keep the ladies laughing. Siobhan took a picture of all of us, and there was something hilarious, too, about Siobhan documenting all of this craziness -- her leaning in, aiming her camera, and pressing the night flash.

One of the guys said to us, ruefully, "My wife just had triplets. She doesn't want to see my face for a while."

The entire atmosphere was so different from New York. I was trying to imagine how a crowd at a Manhattan night club would react in a similar situation. But in Dublin there were no diva fits, no flying into huffs, no outrage at the inconvenience ... Instead, we had the night flash and "American Pie". I could have stayed out there on the sidewalk all night. It was beautiful!

We completely lost Brian, Taidhg, Cahul and Steven. They disappeared. But we found other friends.

They let people back in to retrieve their coats. Jean was our emissary. She described going back into the darkened night club, she got our coats, and she was told to go out through the dance floor. And the entire fire department was sitting on bar stools, lounging about, smoking cigarettes, so blasé: "Hey, how ya' doin'?"

Why is that image so damn funny to me?

While Jean was inside, I somehow hooked up with five other guys. I started talking to one hottie wearing a fleece hat. He asked my name. "Sheila." All of his friends started chanting, in a warm approving chorus, "Sheila! Sheila!" Nodding to one another, like, "Ah, that's a good name."

"So ... Sheila..." said Fleece Hat Hottie. Immediately saying my name back to me, like all Irish men do.

Of course he assumed I was Irish, and the second I got out more than three words, he stopped me, excited, "You're from the States?"

"Yup."

"Where from?"

"Rhode Island?" (said with a question mark...)

He leapt right in, eager to show his knowledge. "Okay -- here's how it goes, Sheila, right? You have Rhode Island -- then Cape Cod -- then New York."

"No. No. That's not how it goes. Cape Cod comes first. So it goes, Cape Cod, Rhode Island, New York --"

He was so intent on me. He took it in. "Ah, yes. Of course. That's how it goes." He had lived on Cape Cod. He had this beautiful flirty humorous intent energy.

Jean said it was so funny, coming back out of Rio's, and seeing me surrounded by five men, deep in conversation, as though we had known one another all our lives.

"You know what Sheila means to Australians, don't you?" Fleece-Hat said, leering at me in a lecherous and utterly friendly way. He made me laugh.

And finally: off we went. Totally high from our adventure. My sisters and I, as we pulled away from Rio's, were still laughing, re-living funny moments, roaring about the night flash.

Jean suddenly called out, when we hit an intersection: "Look! It's those guys!"

There were our "night flash" friends crossing the street. The new father of triplets, and the others. We beeped, waving at them, manically, as though they were our DEAR friends. They stopped, turned, squinted into our car. When they saw that it was us, the crazy American girls they had been hugging to keep warm, they got these huge delighted smiles on their faces (oh, my heart ... People!... I love people ...)...Then, as a joke, they made this big show about how cold they were, hugging themselves, because they had kept us warm.

We literally could not have had a funner night.

Read other Diary Fridays here, should you so choose.

The Chestnut Army

Last night, with a sky that looked like impending doom, and a wind that literally blew me down the street, I went and got groceries. And struggled my way, against the wind, up the hill home. It actually was kind of fun. There was no rain. But the wind was a formidable opponent.

The only really dangerous thing I had to deal with, in terms of Hurricane Isabel, was being dive-bombed from above by falling chestnuts.

One of them hit me on the noggin. I thought it was a bolt from the blue, I thought it was an invisible lightning strike, I shrieked as though I had been electrocuted. Then I saw the shiny hard chestnut rolling on the sidewalk. Like an idiot, I stood and contemplated it for a moment. I love chestnuts. And in that moment, 5 more came hurtling down from the tree and pummeled me about the head and neck.

And that was my experience with the Category 2 gale.

Oh, and since today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, I say about the wind: THAR SHE BLOWS!

I'm descended from a female pirate, by the way.

Recommended Reading: Fiction

And now for the Fiction recommendations. (See the Non-Fiction ones below)

Choosing books out of all the books I love is rather torturous for me. So this is an impulsive, scanning-the-bookshelves-with-mine-eyes and writing titles down spur-of-the-moment kind of list.

Here we go.

FICTION

1. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
One of the creepiest weirdest most subversive books ever written. It stands alone. A century ahead of its time. This is one of my favorite books. The characters live on in my mind.

2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001. I loved Chabon's first novel, Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which he wrote at 22. But Kavalier and Clay is a tour-de-force. The story of two comic-book creators in 1930s New York ... but God. It is so much more than that. It's a love story dedicated to New York City, to comic books, to America. The characters, again, live and breathe. I did not want this book to end. I dreaded saying good-bye to these people. And holy crap, can Chabon write. Don't miss this book.

3. Possession, by A.S. Byatt
I have recommended this book to friends before, and none of them could get into it. But that does not dim my recommendation! I have read it 10 times, maybe more. And I will read it again. Literature and poetry buffs will love it. But it's also a mystery. And not until the very last sentence of the book (which is a KILLER - if you pick up this book, do not peek ahead at the last page -- DO NOT) do you understand the full story. Byatt's a great writer, in an old-school kind of way. I read one great review of her stuff, "Byatt writes as though James Joyce never existed." I laughed out loud when I read that. It's true. Additionally, and on a personal note, this book makes me believe in the kinship of Intellect and Love. For those of us who live primarily in the mind, love - passionate love, being "possessed" by another human being -- can be daunting and difficult. I mean, love is difficult, anyway! This book gives me hope.

4. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I came to this book late, reading it for the first time a couple years ago. I literally could not believe how good it was. The writing brought me to tears at times. The insights into psychology, crime, the MIND (all before Freud, before self-help, before feng shui) are breathtaking. Dostoevsky is a genius. If you have a question about crime that is not answered by this book, then my guess is that it is a stupid question and not worth asking. Just my opinion. Great book.

5. The Dead, by James Joyce
As a Joyce FREAK, I would add "anything by James Joyce" - but The Dead is the place to start. The Dead is the greatest short story ever written. End of conversation.

6. Atonement, by Ian McEwan
I read this one recently. I can't really speak about it articulately because it is one of the most tragic books I ever read. It affected me almost physically. I finished it, and sat still, stunned. I could feel myself trying to block it out IMMEDIATELY, I could feel myself trying to talk myself out of the implications of the book. So all I can say is: this book had an enormous impact on me. Also: The man can write. He is one of the best there is. I consider this one a Must-Read.

7. The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien
Oh, what an incredible book! Tim O'Brien also wrote the famous Going After Cacciato - another amazing book - but I read The Things They Carried first, so I have a soft spot in my heart for it. It is a book of short "stories" about Vietnam. I put quotation marks around stories because that is not exactly the correct term. I kind of don't want to boil this book down. It's too BIG for that. It's too GOOD. Let's just say that it is emotional, very well-written, angry, insightful - It's a perfect book. And the title-essay, The Things They Carried is heart-wrenching.

8. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
A life-changing book. The "Smells like Teen Spirit" of literature. I try not to think about this book too much.

9. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
Yes, I know, I know, the book, on some level, is a big mess. The narration starts out first person: "Call me Ishmael." But somewhere in the middle of the book, Melville switches to omniscent narrator. We are privy to Captain Ahab's private moments, his private thoughts, which Ishmael could not know. We get 30 separate chapters on every different part of the whale. You start off the book with a normal plot, and somewhere along the way, you find yourself in a marine biology class. YES, I KNOW ALL THAT. But still: this BOOK! Oh my GOD! This BOOK!! You just have to GO with it, you have to give up your expectation of a linear plot, and just let Melville take the wheel. I read it in high school and grumbled my way through it, and read it again, a couple of years ago - and found it to be, second only to Ulysses, the most exciting book I had ever read. Not because of the plot. But because of the un-touched mastery and brilliance of the writing. My favorite chapter? "The Whiteness of the Whale". Oh, this book! This is one of those books, like Catcher in the Rye, where I felt like my soul actually grew, during the reading of it.

10. Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh
Harriet was my idol when I was 10 years old, and Harriet remains an idol today. She is why I first took up a pen and paper. She's as immortal a literary character as Anna Karenina. This book is one of my all-time favorites, ever, always.

Recommended Reading: Non-fiction

NONFICTION

1. The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy, by Robert Kaplan I've read all of Kaplan's stuff, but this one is my favorite. He starts his journey in West Africa, then leaps over to Iran, then travels thru India, and then leaps over to Cambodia. His interest in this book is exploring "the frontiers of anarchy". He's a great writer, a great thinker, and he lets the anecdotes speak for themselves. He meets people along the way, he talks to cab drivers, teachers, students, people on the street. He also talks to diplomats, politicians. But the real strength of this book is in the stories, the people you meet in its pages. It's a travel journal, yes, but it's also a socio-political manifesto. Robert Kaplan is a seer. He really is. In this book, he has predicted the world that we now live in. Read it. Read all his stuff.

2. The Soccer War, by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Any time great "war journalism" is discussed, or compiled, this book is on the list, and usually it's in the top 5. For good reason. Kapuscinski was a foreign correspondent from Poland during the 60s and 70s, one of their only foreign correspondents at the time. (Or maybe he was their ONLY foreign correspondent ... not sure). He reported on 3rd world revolutions, and they are all compiled in this book: Africa in the 60s, Latin America in the 70s ... He wrote about Iran. Ethiopia. Angola. Liberia. He used his stories about OTHER totalitarian systems as an indirect way to criticize the Soviet Union, under which Poland suffered, obviously. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, Kapuscinski was finally able to write about that, as well. He's a great writer. Soccer War is his best.

3. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, by William Shirer
A towering achievement. Still unmatched. Masterful. And to have written such a book without decades of perspective is even more astonishing. I also recommend (I know I'm cheating by listing two books here) Shirer's diary of his time in Berlin called Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941. I like that book almost as much as Rise and Fall. It is his personal account of living in Berlin from 1934 to 1941; he describes his growing horror, as he watches Germany and fascism spiral out of control. It's the observation-on-the-street thrust of the book which gives it its power. I have read Rise and Fall numerous times, and there is still a certain mystery to WHY. HOW could this have happened? WHAT was going ON? Berlin Diary is an answer (sort of) to some of those questions.

4. Colin Thubron's "Russia" trilogy.
Now I'm really cheating, listing 3 books under one heading, but they go together and are all quick reads, too. They are travel journals, covering 3 separate journeys through the Soviet Union and its conquered territories. But, as with all good travelogues, they touch on the character of the countries traveled thru, by using personal anecdotes, man-on-the-street comments about what is going on. If you hate this kind of writing, then these books are not for you. The titles of the books, in order, are: <Among the Russians (his tale of traveling through "White Russia" in 1980), In Siberia (taking the train across Siberia, directly following the collapse of the Soviet Union), and The Lost Heart of Asia, which is my personal favorite. If you only want to read one of those books, then I recommend The Lost Heart of Asia. Thubron travels through all the "stans" in 1991 or 1992, soon after the USSR meltdown, and observes stuff like growing Islamic fundamentalism, growing totalitarianism in their own bogus leaders, resurgences of long-buried nationalisms hinting at coming dangers...But really, the reason to read these books is that Thubron is a marvelous writer, a marvelous collector of anecdotes. You will not forget the characters you meet. I think The Lost Heart of Asia is a minor masterpiece.

5. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer
I know everyone probably read this book already, but that will not stop me from putting it on this list. A terrifying read, heart-wrenching.

6. I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 (Modern Library Paperbacks), by Victor Klemperer (volume 2 is here)
This is a 2-volume journal, written by a German Jew during the 1930s and 40s, who lived in Dresden. To be honest, I have only read the first volume more than once. These journals are so valuable, priceless accounts of the day-to-day tightening of the noose for the Jews. At what point do you realize that the water is boiling and you will be scalded? When do you decide: Okay, NOW things are really bad, and now I must leave? Klemperer was tormented by these questions. My favorite part of these books is his analysis of the Language of the Third Reich. He analyzes what fascism does to language. He analyzes it AS it is happening, as he fears for his life every day, as he watches all of his Jewish friends, one by one, disappear in the night for ... nobody knows where. One caveat about the book: In the paperback version, the typeface is so small that it is a bit difficult to read.

7. My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams
The compiled letters of Abigail and John Adams, who, as a married couple, spent more time apart than together. Such was the price Abigail paid for marrying a Founding Father. Oh my God. These letters, these letters. They give me goosebumps. First of all: it's a great love story. They are passionate letters, lonely letters ... John says stuff like, "Your letters are like laudanum". She moans, "I am living like a nun." But alongside of that, is John's firsthand accounts of the Second Continental Congress, the signing of the Declaration of Independence ... Abigail chiding him, "Do not forget about the ladies!" An absolutely exhilarating read. And MAN, could people write back then!

8. An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan, by Jason Elliot
This is Jason Elliot's first book. It came out in 1999. It is his chronicle of his decades-long love affair with Afghanistan. The book is one of those right-time-right-place stories. He had never written a book before, and suddenly, after September 11, you COULD NOT get this book. Bookstores could not keep the book on the shelves, you had to order it. He was in Kabul when the Taliban took over. He traveled with the Mujahidin during their war against the Soviet occupation. He obviously romanticizes Afghanistan, he writes so lyrically of the place, the landscape, the people, the famous hospitality of Afghans, and the "unexpected light" in the air. This is the book which taught me the long long history of that country (besides what I already knew) - going back to Alexander the Great. Again, though, the real strength of the book is not its topic, but the WRITING. I have read this book again and again, savoring Elliot's prose.

9. All the President's Men, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
No lie, I probably have read this book every other year since my first time reading it, which was in junior high. I read it because I had seen the movie, which I find quite amusing, in retrospect. One of my first memories as a child is seeing Nixon on TV, sweaty and grumpy and obviously very important. I remember saying to my mother, "He always looks so mad." Anyway, tangent aside: This is one of my favorite books. I love every page. I love every word. I will read it over and over again. It is a great who-dun-it, a real page-turner. I can't get enough.

10. Lindbergh, by A. Scott Berg
My obsession with Charles Lindbergh came through my love of his wife's writing. I had read all of her journals, and I still read them. I got to know him through her eyes. Berg's biography, which set a new high-water-mark for biographers everywhere, is a stunning accomplishment. Scott Berg won the trust of Anne Lindbergh, a famously reticent woman (except for those journals!) - and she opened up her life to him. She gave Berg boxes of unpublished letters, her unpublished journals, Charles' unpublished notes for his speeches, his own books. It is a dense book, a wealth of information. It is tremendously well-written. The Prologue, a description of Lindbergh's landing in Paris, and what it was like that day, and what it meant, gives me chills every time I read it. It's an unflinching look at Lindbergh's anti-Semitism, but it does not throw out the baby with the bathwater. It is a full look at the life of this extraordinary man. I can't recommend it highly enough.

AND LASTLY:

The following book is usually placed under "Fiction", but it's a true story and therefore deserves to be counted here as well.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
You know how there are entire sections in book stores devoted to "True Crime"? Capote invented the genre. This is a phenomenal book. If you have not read it, then all I can say is: RUN, do not WALK, and pick it up. It's one of my all-time faves.

And here is the link to my Recommended Fiction

Something I forgot...

During the family vaca in August - I noticed a small sign by the side of the main drag in Yarmouth, a fantastically busy thru-way, with motels, beach shops, bike rental shops ... We would drive down this road to go grocery shopping, or get ice coffees.

And every day I noticed a small yellow billboard, placed on two poles in the grass.

The sign said:

Tell your Mom you need a tutor!

(Okay, so the first thing I thought immediately was the wrong-ness behind the entire idea. Not in having a tutor, but in targeting CHILDREN with the sign. Isn't it a parent's job to recognize: "My kid has no idea what he is doing. He cannot read. I should get him a tutor." Is it really the responsibility of a child to realize: "Huh. If I don't pick up on this whole fractions thing, I will be left way behind, and will never get a decent job, and my whole life will spiral downwards into a pit of hell ... Mom! I need a tutor!")

But this is just a tangent for the real problem.

They listed their phone number.

1-Tutors-Is-Us

Tutors IS us?

So ... you guys must just be MATH tutors then, cause I ain't sure that "is" be the correct word ...

Update: Must give credit where credit is due. The memory of the billboard advertising tutors who clearly need tutors themselves was sparked because of this post. I mean, it's almost too good to be true.

Is it too soon?

Is it actually true that Ben and J-Lo have split?

Do I dare get my hopes up that I never ever ever ever ever have to hear about that couple again?

Is it too soon to rejoice, to breathe a thankful sigh of relief?

The Two Johns

I'm sad about the passing of John Ritter and Johnny Cash. Both of them held special places in my heart.

John Ritter in "Slingblade" is one of the more miraculous performances I have ever seen. And his stuff in "Three's Company" remains a guilty pleasure.

And Johnny Cash ... I have a hard time believing he is gone. He was a force of nature, a constant.

Sad.

Update: Mike, over at Cold Fury, has a great tribute up to the man in black.

Good-bye New York

My brother Brendan is an actor and a musician. As well as being a father! He has just made the move to LA, as of yesterday. I miss him already.

He, in commemoration of his time here in New York, wrote a song called "Good-bye New York". It was also significant because he was flying out on September 11. I asked him to send me the lyrics, and I asked him permission to post them, because they are very moving. I think my favorite line, the one that kills me, is "I could hate all of their brethren, But that's not how we do it In this town."

I haven't heard the tune yet, so if I can get some mp3s from him, I will link to them here too.

Good-bye New York
by Brendan O'Malley

Soon I will be
Taking my last train
It's mainly in the evening
That it can all seem in vain
When the pain
Is raining canes on you
But you don't have
Your legs no more
You've got to make your exit
Before slipping out the
Backstage door
So floor it, honey
Unpop that fucking cork
Let's celebrate
Good bye, New York

They may've made
Mountains of your buildings
They made you walk the bridges home
They made you grieve
In tiny boxes
Filled with bugs and
Shit and foam
They blackmailed you
With severed heads
They made unreasonable demands
Without humor, without mercy
Too much tension, too
Much torque
Good bye, New York

I could close my heart
Off to them
Write them off or back them down
I could hate all of their brethren
But that's not how we do it
In this town
They have to wait til Paradise
We exalt our virgins now
Or were they really after raisins?
Either way, I'd have shown them how
From Grand Army Plaza up to Harlem
Flies a scarred and angry stork
Cries, "It is today. They are forgiven-
Here's a new America baby
Say hello - Good bye, New York."

Woah

I am a bit blown away that the Wall Street Journal put me into their Best of the Web for yesterday. I am honored. Humbled.

And everybody's letters and comments have touched me deeply.

It was good. Yesterday was a rough day, for many of us, but it was good to connect with so many.

That's all

That is all for today.

My back aches. My eyes hurt. I have been hunched over the keyboard for hours.

I have a birthday party tonight. A good friend of mine has a birthday on September 11 (some of her photographs are in the FABULOUS book "Here is New York" - a book of photographs taken in New York that day, some by professional photographers, some from people with throw-away cameras ... an amazing book ... for those of us who want to SEE - who want to remember what we SAW). Anyway. She was on the Brooklyn Bridge when the first tower collapsed, and she took the two pictures which ended up in the book at that moment. She is a photographer by trade. She said, "The only thing I knew to do in that moment, in that awful moment, was take a picture. It was automatic. I knew: 'THIS I can do.'"

Anyway. She is having a party because, after all, life still exists, even on this anniversary of death. It will be good to get together with friends, have a drink, sit back, smile, listen to others, maybe even have a laugh.

I just want to say thank you to everybody who has written to me today ... everybody who has left comments ... I have been in contact with an enormous community all day, as I sit alone at my desk ... I have not felt alone all day. It is extraordinary.

I also want to send out my love to my brother Brendan ... who flew to Los Angeles today. I was thinking about him all day, too. Flying on today, of all days. Peace peace peace.

Love to everybody. God bless.

We will never forget. And, to take a cue from Ben Kepple, not only will we never forget, but we say: Never again.

We will not forget what was done to us that day.

God's press conference

The Onion came out with the following piece in the weeks following September 11, 2001. I am sure most of you read it at that time.

God Angrily Clarifies "Don't Kill" Rule

I am still unable to read the last couple of paragraphs without breaking down.

Sometimes it is the comedians of the world who know how to respond, who know what to do, what find exactly the right thing to say. This is an example.

September 12, 2001

Still. Even after everything. It is hard to believe that this greeted us on our newsstands the next day.

Holy mother of God.

There was already something a little off ...

about that morning.

I was running late. Normally I am on the bus, on my way into Manhattan from Hoboken, at 8:45, 9 am. But that morning, I was 20 minutes behind schedule. Because I was late, I decided to walk two blocks north, and pick up the bus at 9th and Washington as opposed to 7th and Washington. Washington is the main drag in Hoboken. Washington is 3 blocks west of the Hudson, but the brownstones lining the street block any view of Manhattan. We were completely unaware, as we gathered at the busstop, that an enormous jet had plowed its way into the WTC.

As has been described ad nauseum, it was a stunning day. A real fall day. Saying "not a cloud in the sky" is not a euphemism or an exaggeration. It is the truth. The buildings of Washington cast long shadows in the morning, long chilly shadows, but the day was bright and blindingly sunny.

I am such a creature of habit in the mornings. I am also barely awake in the mornings. But I had taken an unfamiliar route, I had veered off course, I had chosen 9th instead of 7th, so I felt a bit more aware of my surroundings than I would have otherwise. I could walk down 7th Street in Hoboken with my eyes closed and never ever trip on the buckling sidewalk. Not so on 9th.

I was 3/4 of the way through Catch-22, a book I had never read before, much to the chagrin of ... THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD. I come from a long line of Catch-22 worshippers, so I finally picked it up.

I mention this only because this is a post about what I remember on that morning. And it's weird what you remember. Or what grows in significance later, when you look back on it. I remember that I had my nose in Catch-22, standing in the long chilly shadows on Washington Street, at 8:35 in the morning, 8:40, 8:45 ... wondering, in the back of my mind: Where the hell is the bus?

I do not wear a watch, so I can put together the timing of the events on my side of the river only through a series of guesses. I left my house at 8:30, late for me. I arrived at the bus stop, at 8:45 or thereabouts.

I began to read. Standing on the curb.

Busses during rush-hour, in Hoboken, come one after the other after the other. If you wait 3 or 4 minutes for a bus, it feels like a long time. And if 6 or 7 minutes go by, then you know something is up.

So 6 or 7 minutes went by.

Desultory conversations broke out between my fellow commuters. "I wonder where the bus is." "I should call work ... I'm gonna be late." People stepping off the curb, peering down to the left, squinting for busses. "Maybe there was an accident in the Tunnel," I heard. Then someone arrived at the bus-stop, and I heard her inform a couple of people, "I guess a plane hit the World Trade Center." This was second-hand news. She was not hysterical, just reporting a possible reason for the slow-down of busses.

This was, even though we had no idea of the scope or the magnitude, disturbing to hear. In the same way that anything bad is disturbing news, if you have a heart beating in your chest. A massive earthquake in Turkey or South America. You take a moment to think, "Oh God. How awful. How awful." Fellow human feeling. Some kid shoots up his school across the country. You take a moment: "Oh my God, how terrible ... I hope people weren't too hurt." Hearing about the plane generated a response on that level, for the most part. Perhaps it was a bit more intensified because it was just across the river, and also: we couldn't SEE anything yet. We, as human beings, have a need to SEE. I know that the first thing I did when I finally was let off the bus 40 or so minutes later, still in Hoboken, the first thing I did was run, as fast as I could, down to the water, so that I could see what was happening. I HAD TO SEE.

Not being able to see what was going on just across the river was disturbing and everybody got thrown off. People dropped their change. Strangers broke out into conversation.

I assumed, as many people assumed, that this was probably a "JFK Jr. Situation" (as I called it in my mind). An inexperienced pilot, a small plane ... an accident.

If I had actually contemplated it, and tried to be logical, then I would have soon come to the conclusion that that guess made no sense whatsoever. JFK Jr. was flying over the ocean, on a foggy black night, with no instrument training. He tried to see where he was going (a huge mistake for a pilot), and couldn't because he was looking at a wall of black. But how in the world could someone MISS the World Trade Center on a bright morning? When they are the tallest things on the landscape, dwarfing all else, and visible from miles away? My "JFK Jr." guess made no sense.

But again: I wasn't sitting there trying desperately to figure it out. I had a moment of: "Oh God. I hope nobody was hurt! That is terrible!" and then went back to Catch-22.

It sounds so callous. But we had no information, and no visuals, even though it was happening just across the river.

I did notice, (again, in a desultory casual way) that every person had a cell phone to their ear. And I also noticed that nobody was actually speaking into the cell phone. I didn't make anything of it. It was only later when I realized that that was the beginning of the being-unable-to-use-our-phones phenomenon. Everybody knows somebody who worked in those buildings. Everybody was trying to get through to them, and say, "What happened? Are you okay?" And already, at that early time, before the second plane, people's phones had stopped working.

It must be said that the rest of the country (and the world) had a better view of what was going on in Manhattan than the majority of us actually here did. They were watching on television. They saw what was going on. We were a mile away and we couldn't see shit.

Finally, a bus came. We all piled on, gratefully. At last! We're off to work!

In my memory, the bus lumbered down Washington very very slowly. It seems like we were in slo-mo, but that could just be retrospect coloring the memory. I am not sure what was true, what was not, but I felt like we were chugging along at a horse-and-buggy pace. Why?

Maybe we were actually going slow, because the driver, in contact with the officials at Port Authority, knew something that we, the riders, didn't. Of course, I didn't think this at the time. I was too busy reading Catch-22, and trying not to think about the horrible-ness of a plane crashing into a skyscraper.

A woman sitting behind me had miraculously gotten through to her boyfriend on the phone, who was home, watching CNN, and trying to tell her what was going on. The second plane had not hit yet.

She hadn't yet transformed into the correspondent for the entire bus, as she would do, moments later. She was speaking quietly, privately, trying to figure out, with her boyfriend what was going on. "So ... what kind of plane was it? Is anyone hurt? Yeah, well, there's a ton of traffic on the causeway ... we're completely stopped."

Others were engrossed in trying to dial their cell phones. Some people were zoned out as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

As the bus chug-chug-chugged along Washington, towards 14th Street (and the edge of Hoboken), where it would then take a left, and then a right ... to head onto the causeway leading into the Lincoln Tunnel, I dealt with my own sense of "Something's not quite right about this morning" by reading my book.

I remember the whole Catch-22 part of this morning so vividly because that would be the last pleasure-reading that I would do for well over a year to come.

I came to a certain paragraph in Chapter 36, read it through, and it was then that the bus filled up with screams. I looked up, wildly, just in time to witness the explosion that filled the air behind us. The second plane. May I live a million years and never see such a sight again.

Screams. Hysteria. The girl, already on an open phone line with her boyfriend, stood up and started shouting out to all of us what her boyfriend was saying, her boyfriend watching CNN:

"That was a second plane --- a second plane -- My boyfriend said a second plane just flew into the other tower."

This is when, for the first time, I thought of my sister. Who worked a block away from the towers, which were now both on fire. Black smoke filled the air. Screams through the bus. Panic. People were jumping up and down, plastered against the windows on the Manhattan side of the bus. Crying. Screaming with frustration at how their phones would not work. "GodDAMMIT, why can't I get a signal?"

It seemed 5 million years ago since I had categorized the unknown magnitude in my mind as "a JFK Jr. Situation". America was under attack.

But all the other stuff, all the stuff I live with on a daily basis now (the rage, the rage, the rage at them and what they did) - none of that stuff was going through my mind. I was just trying to call my sister. My parents. My brother.

And praying.

Dialing.

I started praying outloud ... I was not alone ... many people were praying ... as we all feverishly kept trying to use our cell phones. My prayer was all one word:

hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamong
womenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholymary
motherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeathamen
hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamong
womenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholymary
motherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeath
amenhailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedart
thouamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholy
marymotherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeath
amen...

Dial, hang up, dial, hang up, dial, hang up .... hailmaryfullofgrace....
Underneath the established prayer was another prayer.

let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay

It would be hours before Siobhan contacted my parents. She fled from the collapsing buildings, with her sweatshirt over her head, running from the careening wall of dust and debris. She then walked 80 blocks to my cousin Liam's, and was finally able to email Mum and Dad that she was okay. Until then, we waited. No one's cell phones worked. The bus ended up turning around (the tunnel closed) and we all disembarked as quickly as we could, running home, running down to the water, running. I stood with my friend Jen at the water's edge and watched the buildings collapse. Screams filling the air, Jen and I holding onto each other, as tight as we could. A man beside me in a grey suit fell to his knees, howling with grief.

But there I will stop. That morning is still too much with me, late and soon. It is hard to write about it honestly.

I want to get back to Catch-22.

When I finally felt that I could read again (I mean, read a book for pleasure) - it was months later, maybe a year. Fiction seemed irrelevant for a long long time. But, tentatively, I thought maybe I could get into it again, maybe it was time to start living again. I remembered that the last fiction I had been reading was Catch-22, and so I picked it up again. First thing I did was try to figure out where I had left off on that blindingly blue morning. It was painful for me. Even just flipping through the pages made me remember being trapped in that bus on the causeway, with fire filling the air across the water.

Catch-22 has always had a mythical glow around it, for me, because of my father's love of it, my uncles' love of it, it is an O'Malley favorite ... but now ... I picked it up again, and all I could see was the morning of September 11, before we knew what was happening, what was going to happen, that the world, as we knew it, was about to die.

I went to go pick up where I had left off in the book, feeling odd. Almost callous. "Where I had left off in the book" meant to me: Where people started screaming and we saw a pillar of flame in the sky ...

I hadn't remembered where I left off, so I figured it out through reasoning along these lines: "Okay, so I remember the episode described in THIS chapter, so I clearly read THIS ..." (flip ahead) "Okay, I KNOW I didn't read THIS episode, none of it looks familiar, so I must have stopped before THIS ..." (flip back) And in this way I finally narrowed it down to the exact sentence where I put the book down. (I'm freaky like this.)

And, without any unnecessary commentary from me, let me just say, that when I re-read the last paragraph I had read in Catch-22 on the morning of September 11, I put the book down again thinking, "Nope. Nope. Not ready." Eventually I would be, but at that point, I was not.

I also was astonished at what I had been reading on that bus, having no idea what was coming towards us through that blindingly blue sky. But Catch-22 seemed to know.

Chapter 36 The Cellar
Nately's death almost killed the chaplain. Chaplain Shipman was seated in his tent, laboring over his paperwork in his reading spectacles, when his phone rang and news of the mid-air collision was given to him from the field. His insides turned at once to dry clay. His hand was trembling as he put the phone down. His other hand began trembling. The disaster was too immense to contemplate. Twelve men killed -- how ghastly, how very, very awful! His feeling of terror grew. He prayed instinctively that Yossarian, Nately, Hungry Joe and his other friends would not be listed among the victims, then berated himself repentantly, for to pray for their safety was to pray for the death of other young men he did not even know. It was too late to pray; yet that was all he knew how to do. His heart was pounding with a noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside, and he knew he would never sit in a dentist's chair again, never glance at a surgical tool, never witness an automobile accident or hear a voice shout at night, without experiencing the same violent thumping in his chest and dreading that he was going to die. He would never watch another fist fight without fearing he was going to faint and crack his skull open on the pavement or suffer a fatal heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage. He wondered if he would ever see his wife again or his three small children. He wondered if he ever should see his wife again, now that Captain Black had planted in his mind such strong doubts about the fidelity and character of all women. There were so many other men, he felt, who could prove more satisfying to her sexually. When he thought of death now, he always thought of his wife, and when he thought of his wife he always thought of losing her.

Sublime dark

Many others are linking to Auden's poem about "hate for hate's sake". Very a propos.

I would like to print "The More Loving One", my favorite Auden poem, and I think, one of my favorite poems of all time.

The More Loving One
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

From the 104th Floor

A poem by Leda Rodis (age 14). Thank you so much, Val, for posting it. I know just what she means when she says:

It's funny
what you notice:
a pen rolling across the floor
my screen saver flicker and go off
a picture of you
and me
at Coney Island.

(via Beth)

"How dare they"

The Barefoot Kitchen Witch has written an emotional post which has brought tears to my eyes.

I Heart New York

Here is an ode to New York. And to New York's mostly-invisible greatness.

What I really want to write about right now is my moment on the corner of 10th Street and 2nd Avenue.

The evening was beautiful. Cool air, blue sky deepening into sunset, the air fresh and spring-like. The sun going down. People on their bikes. Restaurants with tables outside. Beautiful. An evening where New York looks fresh, and lovely. Like anything can happen.

I stood on the corner of 10th Street and 2nd, waiting for the light to change. I was in my own little private Idaho, but suddenly ... noticed my surroundings.

Behind me, on the Southwest corner of the intersection, was a restaurant called "Rectangles". More specifically: "Rectangles: Yemenite and Israeli cuisine".

Yemenite and Israeli cuisine. In the same restaurant.

So that was thing # 1.

Across the street, diagonally on the Northwest corner of 2nd and 10th, is the famous St. Mark's Church in the Bowery. A 17th century Episcopalian church. I've been to weddings there. But it's also a vibrant performance space, with dance companies, etc., finding a place to work there. A beautiful stone church, set diagonally, with benches around it, people hanging out. People going to an evening mass.

Right across from a Yemenite and Israeli restaurant.

Then, directly across the street from me, on the Southeast corner of this intersection, the famous Second Avenue Deli. The signage looks like Hebrew letters. There is a clock, with Hebrew numbers.

All of these different cultures and faiths converging on one street corner.

As New Yorkers pedal their bikes slowly by, or drink Guinness at the Irish pub 2 doors down ... This kind of diversity is rarely even noticed. Or commented upon.

But in that one moment, I thought: Okay. Hold on. This is extraordinary.

And what is MOST extraordinary about all of these faiths and cultures co-existing on the same corner ... is that it is kind of NOT extraordinary. Nobody even notices.

This is why they hate us so much.

It is the very thing about us that needs to be cherished. If not by them, then certainly by us. Certainly by us. The overall un-extraordinariness of it all.

ABBA and The Man in the Dusty Grey Boots

In the wake of September 11, a couple of shows opened on Broadway, very very September 10th kind of shows. "Mamma Mia", the musical written around the songs of ABBA, and a revival "Noises Off", the show by Michael Frayn, the door-slamming farce

Completely incongruous (I felt, originally) with the mood in New York at the time.

Mood. What anineffective word. There was no "mood" in Manhattan. We weren't in a bad "mood", or a sad "mood". What was going on for us had nothing to do with emotions at all. An entire city of millions of people was walking around in shock. For months. People cried openly in public, women, men, on the bus, on the sidewalk. Sometimes someone would approach and say, "Are you okay?", but usually not. Because everybody else was also staggering down the sidewalk with that same look of terror, grief, and shock ... And the smoke never seemed to stop rising from downtown. In my memory, lower Manhattan kept burning well into November.

So these two wacky shows opened ... and an amazing thing happened: They both became massive hits.

Anyone with a sense of history and human nature will not be surprised by this. People wanted to escape, yes, but the successes of these shows went deeper than that.

People, in their trauma, needed to be reminded that there were still good things on the planet. Things like joy, and hope, and the possibility of human connection. People (myself included) clung to moments of softness, of man's humanity to man.

The spectacle of the selflessness, courage, and love for humanity displayed by the NY fire department (and all of the other firemen, from around the country, who raced to Manhattan to help), and the NYPD and the rescue workers was overwhelming. Overwhelming evidence of man's essential goodness. At the exact same moment of the display of carnage and hatred, we also were witness to some of the most moving displays of GOODNESS the world has ever seen.

I remember in the week directly following September 11, before the adrenaline had stopped racing through my heart, before anything outside of the events of that terrible day started taking up space in my brain again, I was standing in line at a CVS in Hoboken, and a fireman was in line behind me. In his full firemen get-up. His boots were caked with grey dust. The grey dust of the rubble at the WTC.

In the weeks after September 11, the months, firemen were treated like the biggest rockstars in the world. Mick Jagger and a fireman could be walking down 6th Avenue together, and the crowds would mob the fireman.

Again, this, to me, in those desperate dark days, was evidence of man's essential goodness. It was evidence of Americans' goodness as well. People around the world think of us as shallow, light, soft. People around the world don't know us at all.

The vibe at the CVS, with this dusty fireman standing there, buying some bottled water and a snack, was one of hushed stillness. We were in the presence of "it". There he was. He was one of those guys. One of those amazing people who run INTO a burning building as everybody else runs OUT. If I were trapped in a burning room, he would race in, scoop me up in his arms as though I were a little girl, and pull me out to safety. Or, he at least would do his damnedest to pull me out to safety. And he might DIE, he might lose his OWN life, in the attempt to save mine.

There is enough distance between September 11 and now that my ruminations may seem ... simplistic, or overly obvious. But directly in the wake of that awful day, all of this had a vibrant pulsing reality. I read every single tale I could about the heroism of the firemen that day, every last stinking word, because, piled up, it continued to give me hope. I continued to force myself to believe that, in the words of Anne Frank, "people are really good at heart".

The firemen, the men in the dusty grey boots, were the ones who gave that to me. To all of us.

And that's what I felt, in line at the CVS. I felt all of us having those thoughts, those emotions towards this stranger, this man with the grey dusty boots.

I wanted to say something to him. I didn't know what to say. "Thank you"?? That seemed so ... inadequate. After September 11, we had to find a whole new language, to express gratitude. Love. Hope. Humanity.

As is probably obvious, as I stood there in line, my consciousness bombarded with the awareness of the firefighter nearby, I was in tears. But I was holding back, too ... I was trying to keep it together.

If I had done what I felt like doing, I would have turned to this stranger, burst into sobs, taken his dirty hands in mine, and kissed the dusty palms, the fingers. Held his hands against my face. That's what I wanted to do. Instead, I just looked over at him.

He saw my tears, he took it all in, and then he just nodded. Calmly. He nodded, accepting the ... what should I call it ... I guess it would be the "love" that I was throwing at him. He just accepted it. No emotion. Just a calm nod.

The thing with firemen, the thing that makes them so extraordinary, is that they really don't think that what they do is a big deal. Or if they do, then it doesn't manifest itself as arrogance. They respect the foe of Fire too strongly to have big heads about it. They are logical men. Men who stay calm in the face of chaos, men who maintain their reasoning abilities as the walls burn down around them. In a very strong sense, despite their immense humanity, these men have ice water running in their veins. They better! How could they do such a job otherwise?

I don't want a soft gushy sentimental type who weeps when he sees a sunset breaking in my door with an axe. Or if he does well up at the beauty of the sunset, I want him to do that on his day off. When he's in charge of saving my ass, I want a cold logical big man stomping through the flames, with a cool head. A guy who can successfully IGNORE his emotions (of terror, panic) long enough to get me the hell out of there.

And that's how this fireman nodded at me. Other people around him were swirling masses of emotions, and feelings. Not just me. He stayed calm. It is in his blood to do so. But there was kindness in the way he looked at me, in how he nodded.

Afterwards, I went into the park across the street, sat on a bench, put my head in my hands, and wept. It was like a prayer, that crying, those tears. I was so full of rage and grief, but I also was bombarded by the goodness of people ... the goodness of people seemed so bright to me in those days (perhaps because everything else was so dark) that I felt like I needed protective goggles at times. I was thanking that dusty fireman, I was thanking God for him, and for all the other men like him, I was mourning what had happened ... I was a wreck.

This is an unbelievably long tangent. I began this post wanting to talk about humor and joy, and those two random Broadway shows that opened in the wake of 9/11 ... I just wanted to describe how it was, here in New York ... during that terrible autumn.

When "Mamma Mia" opened, on October 18, 2001, Ben Brantley, one of the main reviewers for The New York Times was there. Ben Brantley is not an idiot. He is able to call a spade a spade. In general, I find that he uses his position of immense power wisely and well. He can make or break a show (sidenote: that is WAY too much power for one reviewer!!). But he is a very good writer, a very good reviewer. He's fair.

I kept the review he wrote for "Mamma Mia" (and I know I kept the one for "Noises Off", too, but I can't find it at the moment).

I just read the review right now, right before I began writing this post, and that is why I had to tell the story of the fireman in the CVS.

The tone of the review completely brings back those surreal traumatized "post" days. Ben Brantley is a human being, a New Yorker. His position as a theatre critic didn't separate him from the masses THAT much. Yes, he must try to be objective, but NOBODY could be objective then.

And actually, I don't know if "Mamma Mia" would have become such a smash hit if it had opened before September 11.

Listen to Ben Brantley's criticisms, the flaws he was willing to overlook:

The choreography is mostly stuff you could try, accident-free, in your own backyard. And the score consists entirely of songs made famous in the disco era by the Swedish pop group Abba, music that people seldom admit to having danced to, much less sung in their showers.

...If you take apart "Mamma Mia", ingredient by ingredient, you can only wince. It has a sitcom script about generations in conflict that might as well be called "My Three Dads". The matching acting, perky and italicized, often brings to mind the house style of "The Brady Bunch".

OUCH.

At any other time, Brantley may have taken these embarrassing elements, these critiques, and based his entire review on them. The whole show might have been painted in that bad-review brush.

But the review is glowing. There's a reason that I kept it. Listen to what else Brantley says:

It is a widely known if seldom spoken truth that when the going gets tough, the tough want cupcakes. Preferably the spongy, cream-filled kind made by Hostess. Actually, instant pudding will do almost as well; so will peanut butter straight from the jar. As long as what's consumed is smooth, sticky and slightly synthetic-tasting, it should have the right calming effect, transporting the eater to a safe, happy yesterday that probably never existed. Those in need of such solace -- and who doesn't that include in New York these days?-- will be glad to learn that a giant singing Hostess cupcake opened at the Winter Garden Theatre last night. It is called "Mamma Mia".

Brantley describes the clumsy stupid plot, the "lurid" costumes, the "smirkiness" of it all, but none of that seems to matter to him. The show made him laugh, made him tap his feet, made him forget his troubles ... and that was enough for him. He recognized a necessary catharsis when he saw it, and he needed nothing else to give the play a glowing review. I guess I am so used to tired cynical reviewers, reviewers who have forgotten what exactly it means to be an AUDIENCE. For FUN.

Here's where he starts to really talk about what this clearly GOOFY show made him feel, how it really was all about identification:

"Mamma Mia" often suggests a world in which everyone is the star of his or her own music video, the kind you can create at those small karaoke sound stages at amusement parks.

Crucial to the emotional punch and appeal of these moments is that the singers are not the hothouse exotics of MTV in their overblown sci-fi settings. Every character in the show, as presented here, could pass for normal at a suburban cookout. Which makes the return of Donna and the Dynamos, in finned and ruffled disco drag for Sophie's pre-wedding party, a rousing apotheosis.

They're what they were and what they are at the same time, with acknowledgements of joints that now creak and backs that catch in pain. But the hedonistic spirit is still defiantly present in their voices. And I remembered a middle-aged friend describing the cathartic value of lip-synching to the disco standard "I will Survive" shortly after she broke up with her husband.

Although many of the performers in "Mamma Mia" have voices of considerable power, the show still creates the beguiling illusion that you could jump onstage and start singing and fit right in.

Similarly, Anthony Van Laast's choreography, which includes a fantasy sequence in scuba gear, never looks studied, though of course it is. In the party numbers, you have the impression of the kind of synchronized exuberance that sometimes spontaneously settles onto a dance floor shared by the same people for a long time. It is also reassuring to see an ensemble of so many varied body types. Again, the idea is that they could be you or me.

Brantley closes his review with the following anecdote, which still brings tears to my eyes today.

Reading over it, I realize why I have held onto this, a review of a show I have not seen, for two years now.

[Ms. Kaye's] courtship bid to the adamantly single Bill (Mr. Marks), in which she sings "Take a Chance On me", is the most charming number in the show.

Unbidden, the audience starts clapping along happily with that one. By that point, you've surely realized that whether you're conscious of it or not, you've been listening to Abba music all your life. Mr. Andersson's and Mr. Ulvaeus's hook-driven, addictively tuneful melodies have been heard, in some form, in many an elevator, dentist's office, and supermarket aisle.

They're the sort of songs that seem to belong to some hazy collective memory. And it's amazing how much cumulative emotional clout they acquire here...

"Mamma Mia" manipulates you, for sure, but it creates the feeling that you're somehow a part of the manipulative process. And while it may be widely described as a hoot by theatergoers embarrassed at having enjoyed it, it gives off a moist-eyed sincerity that is beyond camp.

The woman who accompanied me to "Mamma Mia" wore hard-edged black and an air of weary skepticism. At one point, she hissed irritably at me, "I hate the 70s." That was early, though. When the curtain calls came, she was openly weeping and laughing at herself for doing so.

My whole being responds to that; Yes. Yes. Yes. That is why we go to the theatre, that is why we care about theatre, and movies. For that reason. Because sometimes, randomly, you get to connect. You, through a play or a movie, CONNECT. To the rest of the earth, to every other person on the planet. Like E.M. Forster commanded: Only connect.

I can't describe how that occurs, and Ben Brantley was obviously pleasantly surprised that it had occurred for him during "Mamma Mia" of all things - but that's the thing. You never know when such a miracle will occur.

What interests me, what I am noticing right now ... is the strangeness, the apt-ness, of me remembering the man in the dusty grey boots as I read that theatre review from two years ago. How strange.

For me, he is the subtext of every damn line in Brantley's review.

And who can describe why that might be ... I don't know. I just know it's so.

That PBS special

Allison got her hands on a copy of the PBS special about the building of the WTC and the Port Authority before it aired and we watched it last week. Parts of it was quite fascinating and informative. I did not know the full history of the Port Authority, and its switch of priorities, when it got itself into the real estate business. All very interesting.

But the special made me ANGRY. ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY. (Here's the transcript)

You could play a drinking game watching it. Actually, that would make the whole thing more watchable. Here's what you do: Take a drink every time you hear the word "hubris". You would be SMASHED before the first hour was out.

The implication was that those buildings were asking for it. They were asking for it even before they were built. We were asking for it. You know what happens to people who have hubris! The Greeks taught us that! Hubris is punished!

The way all of the "experts" talked, September 11 was a done deal from Day One of the project 30-something years ago. They were talking as architects. They spoke abstractly.

They spoke of symbols. They spoke of globalization (and they all took the position, as if there were no possible fair-minded question about it, that globalization was a bad thing). They spoke of symbols of globalization. They spoke of hubristic symbols of globalization.

One of them particularly got on my nerves. He was talking about blueprints and floor plans, but he smirked the entire time. His political views had been vindicated by the downfall of those buildings. The entire experience of September 11 was, for him, a morality tale, an aesop's fable, a symbolic fairy tale, an allegory.

Kudos to you if you are able to float so loftily above the dirt and grime of REAL EVENTS, and see everything in an abstract way, see everything as a symbol. Great for you for being able to be so cut off. Not all of us can do that, and I, for one, do not WANT to do that. Those buildings were part of my skyline. I took classes there. I went there every week. I knew the security guards, and the woman who sold me orange juice. I took the Path train into the buildings. They were not SYMBOLS. There was nothing abstract about them. They were buildings in downtown Manhattan, filled with people.

During the section where they talked about September 11 ...

Well, I went through a couple of things.

I realized how we never ever see the footage anymore. Footage of those planes going in, of people plummeting, has disappeared. I mean, I know this with my mind, obviously, but to really realize how those images have vanished, how ... I have lost touch with ... the horror of the visual ... So again ... after so much time ... watching ... I re-lived what happened that day. I re-discovered it. Not with my mind. But in my body. That familiar cold horror. No tears. Horror way too deep for tears. Rage. The people falling, one, then another, then another ... somersaulting through the empty air. Husbands, wives, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles.

Growing anger, anger that got bigger after seeing the images. No wonder they have disappeared. GOD forbid that Americans get angry. We have to stay passive, we have to crumple up handkerchiefs in agony, we have to blubber and mourn the loss. But righteous anger is to be avoided. Americans cannot be trusted to handle their anger. Anger is BAD, right? Anger is NEGATIVE. We have to try to understand WHY, we have to try to see the other side's point of view.

Well, you know what? I do see the other side's point of view, and I hate their point of view. It's like that great Dennis Miller quote from his recent HBO special: "You know what? I hated religious fanatics who wanted to murder me on September 10, okay?"

"Understanding" is not the key to everything. You can understand something and hate it with all your heart just the same. As a matter of fact, the MORE I understand the reasoning of the thugs on those planes, and the ideology behind them, the MORE I hate them.

Seeing those images again made me outraged at those of us who chide others to get over it. I am stunned that anyone could ever look at the carnage on that footage (and I saw the whole damn thing with my actual eyes) - and somehow ... not be changed. Get OVER IT? What? Are you out of your goddamned freaking mind? What is the MATTER with you?

There were shots of the air filled with paper. The ripped and torn pieces of paper raining down on Manhattan.

Maria and Cashel, out in Brooklyn, later that day, found a piece of paper, burnt around the edges, on the ground in Prospect Park.

That paper drifted everywhere. When the wind changed, scraps of paper floated out onto the Hudson, floated over the Brooklyn Bridge, floated all the way out down Flatbush ... Relics of the offices that were no longer. Offices that were there at 8:00 am, and now ... nothing. Gone. The towers ... gone? How could they be ... gone? What? No ... No. That can't be. They can't be gone.

Where is my sister? Is she all right? Was anyone in the office where I took classes? Carla? Karen? Where are they?

What?

This isn't a symbol. This isn't abstract. This is real.

I may sound like I'm speaking too simplistically, or too emotionally, but if you saw the PBS documentary, and you feel the same way I do, then you will understand. I wanted to shake them all. I wanted to bludgeon a couple of them, especially Mr. Smirking "We paid for our hubris" architect.

William Langewiesche, a journalist, said about the rainfall of paper:

In all cases, an office fire is many things burning -- partitions, carpets in particular, computer cases -- but paper. Mostly paper. And if you look at the dynamics of the collapse, what you find is that in both cases it was the paper fire that was sustained long enough, because of the amount of paper in there, to cause the steel to weaken, to cause the collapse and the hammering down in both cases. I mean, paper on that day was a constant presence. It rained down on the city, as if in mockery of the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center. "Here, have some of the paper." And it burned, and it brought the buildings down.

Now let's look at that quote again. "It rained down on the city, as if in mockery of the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center."

"As if in". "As if in". Three little one-syllable words, but they can be so dangerous, when put in the wrong hands. Like the hands of Mr. Langewiesche.

"As if in mockery of the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center."

There's so much that is wrong with that.

First off, Mr. Langewiesche is making an editorial comment, albeit in an esoteric above-the-fold way, letting us know what he, personally, thinks of "the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center".

Here's the deal, Mr. L: Paper burns. There was a massive fire from the jet fuel. The paper ignited. The paper flew over the city of Manhattan. THAT is what happened.

But the entire documentary had a subliminal message of "as if in..." throughout.

It had this feel:

The buildings rose. As if in defiance against a world who hated what they stood for.

The steel beams were hauled into the sky during construction, as if in consort with the forces of globalization, reaching its tentacles around the world.

The architects took a lunch break. As if in mockery of the starving masses working the sweat shops in Outer Mongolia.

Jesus Christ. (I mean, obviously, I made all that up, but the entire PBS special should have been called "As If In".)

A cigar is never just a cigar to some people. Burning paper was not just burning paper. The paper burned in mockery at the kind of business that was done at the Trade Center.

I am outraged at those who hold those views. Outraged. Outraged that they remain so detached. Also, that they are proud of their detachment. They are proud of their removal from passion, from emotion. They are more interested in their own clever-ness, in their own phrasology, than in allowing any impact of that day to hit.

Pete Hamill was good. I liked him. He's a real New Yorker. I met him once, and liked him very much. He's an old-school journalist, a real guy. He would never say something so snobby, so stupid, so ... heartless, as "as if in mockery".

Am I making too big a deal?

I do not think so. We speak how we think. Which is why I am often a splutteringly inarticulate freak. I wish I could be more articulate, I wish I could put what is in my heart into words with more eloquence, more grace, but after seeing that documentary I thank GOD that I do not talk like those architectural boneheads.

Jeff Jarvis talks about the "The PBSification of 9.11" here. This goes along with the piece I posted earlier by Chris Hitchens.

Jarvis writes:

Far, far worse, Burns shows, more than once, the most horrifying images from that day, the ones that haunt me most: people falling more than 100 stories from the top of the towers, people fleeing from death to death. Most shows about 9.11 have had enough sense and empathy and civility not to show that and certainly not to dwell on it. But this show has no human heart and apparently sees nothing wrong with setting the deaths of real people to background music.

: For it's not the people who matter. It's the agenda.

After seeing the now-disappeared-from-public-view footage of September 11, after seeing, again, innocent people choosing to fling themselves into the abyss ... a "tribute", making September 11 into a day of tributes to those who died seems, I am sorry, inadequate. It is only PART of the picture. It is too soggy. We need resolve. We need to "stiffen up".

"I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." said Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto on December 7th, 1941. We are nothing without "terrible resolve" after an attack such as that.

We need to remember. Not to dwell, not to sink into victimhood, cherishing our wounds. No. We need to remember, because we will need our anger to get through the tough times ahead. We will need to remember what was done to us, in order to face the challenges. Are we up to it?

Judging from those soggy drips on PBS, no, we are not.

It's indicative of how detached and enraging the special was that the person who seemed the most moved, the most devastated by what happened on September 11, was Philippe Petit, the guy who walked the tightrope in between the two buildings.

Actually, no, there was one other guy as well, a man I have seen interviewed before: Leslie Robertson, the engineer of the buildings. He, to me, seems like a ruined man. There is pain in his eyes that will never go away. It hurts me to look at him. Here's one of the things he said, during the special:

"I-- I have to tell you, I didn't know whether the buildings were empty or whether there were tens of thousands of people in them. I just had no idea. And I was-- I was totally devastated by the fact that all those people were in there and this building that I had designed was perhaps falling on them. The buildings were not so important to me. I-I'm good at buildings, but people are another matter. It was a terrible event. Absolutely terrible."

Now that is language I can understand. A human response.

But back to high-wire man. Here is one of the things Philippe said:

"My love for the towers was in my relation with them -- not as an overall appreciation almost in an architectural sense: my love was for their life they were alive. Not many people know that. The people who build them know that. They were vibrating with the passage of a cloud over the sun, difference of temperature, the wind. And the skeleton was actually making noise. I discovered that. And at times the towers were asleep, hibernating. And at times they wake up and they cry and they almost -- yell for help. I think I loved them from the inside. I didn't find them beautiful and interesting at first sight. But as I get to know them -- as I found out that to build those two monolith you had to had a group of insane designer -- architect -- structural engineer -- builders, hundreds of them for years it became something to love. I love their strength and their arrogance, somehow. They were so overlooking the skyline of New York. Somehow anything that is giant and manmade strikes me in an awesome way and calls me. And I cannot see the highest towers being built without wanting to celebrate their birth, right there."

And here is what he said about September 11.

"I was upstate New York when I heard of the towers being destroyed. A side of me was not believing it. It was a very strange blend of feelings. One was the sorrow, the horror at witnessing human life being obliterated for no reason like that. And I felt something beyond words. I felt almost an alive part of me being squeezed to nothing, being extracted, an evisceration almost. It's an interesting question, when you saw those two giant towers collapse almost cleanly on themself: Where did they go? I have read in some architecture article that they were made mostly of air -- if you consider the space between the solid molecules, the steel, the concrete, the glass, the aluminum -- there was a lot of air. Was mostly air, actually. And they disappeared. It was--. "Where did they go" was part of the disbelief that I was feeling. Because how you can make 200,000 tons of steel disappear? It's unbelievable."

Yes. I agree. It was unbelievable. It is still unbelievable. I still stare at the event in incomprehension. I try to wrap my brain around it. It is hard to grasp. It doesn't get any easier.

It is not that I judge those who have decided to move on. Of course not. Everyone moves on. I have moved on. I miss the old skyline, but I am getting used to the new view. I don't like it, but I have adjusted.

I am talking about those people who have wrenched that horrible event into some symbolic gesture, showing how we were rightly punished for our hubris, that we had it coming all along.

Here is another quote from William Langewiesche: "One of the surprising things, you could call it almost a sad poetic justice, is that the only buildings that were completely destroyed by this collapse were the buildings that carried the Trade Center label, buildings One through Seven. No other buildings, with the exception of the small Orthodox church there that dissolved, were destroyed. And every building that carried the label, died."

Read that again.

And then read it again.

Mr. Langewiesche: "Sad poetic justice?"

Shame on you.

Shame. On. You.

Patriotism

An inspiring and cut-through-the-nonsense post from Jeff Jarvis, about patriotism. Patriotism transcends politics, labels, affiliations.

September 11 changed me. As it changed all of us.

Do not get me wrong: I have "felt" like an American before. Every time I vote, every time, I take a moment to thank God I live in a country where I can do this. Even before September 11. I remember the bicentennial celebrations, when I was a kid. I remember being very proud of our country, and overwhelmed with pride at the onslaught of red, white, and blue at that time. I was brought up by two parents who were HIGHLY into the American Revolutionary war, so I grew up with a reverence for those times, for the founding fathers, for how it all happened. I knew the story. I loved the story.

But on September 11, I became an American.

I am an American before I am anything else.

Jeff Jarvis writes, eloquently:

Patriotism is much bigger than politics. And the definition of patriotism is no longer in the hands of the politicians and pundits. After 9.11, it is in our hands, for we are all Americans and we are all targets on this new battlefield. We know what it means to be patriotic and it has very little to do with partisanship or politics. We know the price of patriotism.

Patriotism means defending the principles of America over politics. Patriotism means being willing to protect those principles where and when its necessary. Patriotism means defending your children and your neighbors against those who would attack us because we are American. Patriotism means being willing to go it alone even when your former friends (read: Europeans) snipe at you. Try that on as a new definition.

A banner moment

Thank you to all who listened to my radio-spot on Friday night, and wrote me letters. I am truly touched.

I myself listened to it in a van-load of women, on my way down to Avalon for the weekend. We were nearly out of range of New York, there was much static, and Brooke randomly discovered that when she pointed her cell phone antenna in the general direction of the radio, the static cleared up. So for half an hour, while the broadcast occurred, Brooke drove down the Garden State parkway, pointing her cell phone at the radio, as though it were a laser gun.

It was so exciting. It was beautiful, too, to listen to it with all of my friends. Friends who have been there with me, through my struggles, through everything ... to be there with me, in my little triumphant moment. At one point, I had tears in my eyes. Tears of pride, I guess. Or just happiness.

It's so important to take those little moments of blessing, and acknowledge them, and say a prayer of thanks for them, AS they are happening.

Hearing me read on the radio, as we all drove towards this fabulous beach house for a relaxing weekend, feeling all of my friends silently listening behind me ... occasionally laughing ... it just was a beautiful moment for me. A "banner moment". A moment to remember.

Another Redheaded PSA

Okay, 2 announcements:

1.
A gentle reminder for those of you in the New York arena:

This Friday, September 5, from 6 - 6:30 pm, I am going to be reading two short essays of mine on 91.5 FM, as part of an ongoing program for new writers called "Everything Goes".

Here is the information for all you New York-area people:

When: Friday, September 5 from 6:00 - 6:30 pm (I know, what a terrible time-slot!!)

Station: 91.5 FM (WNYE-FM)

2.
Tomorrow morning I'm filming. Long story. I will describe what it's all about in detail when I'm done. Should be fun. So that's tomorrow.

And after filming, I am heading to Avalon with 6 of my great girlfriends, one of whom has a family-house on the beach down there. We are all convening at Brooke's house, where we will all pile into the same SUV, and go hurtling off towards the ocean for a weekend of CHILLIN' with the girls.

Lost in Translation

Great profile of Sofia Coppola in The New York Times.

I'm not sure the release date of her new film "Lost in Translation", but I've seen the preview twice already, and I can't wait.

Bill Murray. He has always been one of my favorites. Since Saturday Night Live days.

I don't know why I get this feeling - I saw the preview, and thought to myself: "Wow. Okay. That was a special project."

Loved the profile of Coppola as well.

Fascinating quote from her: "I'm used to people not expecting much from me. ''But then as soon as I start working, that drops away. I don't yell. I'm petite. I don't turn into a tyrant. Being underestimated is, in a way, a kind of advantage, because people are usually pleasantly surprised by the result."

I loved the combination of shy almost-awkwardness - with the will to get what she wants. Exemplified by her relentless pursuit of Bill Murray. She wouldn't even consider an alternative (and he turned it down for months - he is famous for stuff like that). Sofia wrote the script FOR him. For him, and nobody else.

Coppola says: "''People said, 'You need to have a backup plan,' and I said, 'I'm not going to make the movie if Bill doesn't do it...Bill has an 800-number, and I left messages. This went on for five months. Stalking Bill became my life's work.''

Counting the days till it opens...

Let's talk about autumn

Autumn is coming. After what has felt like the longest hottest muggiest summer in recent history.

I wake up, and there is a cool wet breeze on my face through my window. The skies have been uniformly grey. Even the green leaves have started to look a bit different. They obviously haven't changed color yet, but they are preparing to give up the green ghost. They have that: "Okay, I've just about had it" look to them.

I walk to the grocery store in the wet twilight, blurry headlights coming at me, the sound of tires through the puddles, a slight chill in the air.

I hate the summer, as I have made abundantly clear. Autumn is my time. My season. Autumn is when I wake up. I suppose I could work to change that pattern, and try to embrace the summer - but frankly, life is too short. Autumn is only glorious because of the sweating and slogging through the months of hot days and nights.

My friend Kate put it perfectly. We were discussing our shared apathy for the dog days of summer. We focused primarily on how we hate the heat, we aren't sunbathers, we slather 45 all over our bodies obsessively, we get irritated in the heat, etc. But she brought the discussion to another level when she said, calmly, "There's no irony in the summer."

I burst out laughing. I laughed because I recognized the truth in her words.

There is no irony in the summer! Autumn is when subtlety can play a part again, when complexity exists ... when two things can compete at the same time: exhilaration and nostalgia, for example: two "emotions" which I associate with autumn. And they usually go hand in hand.

I don't know what it's all about ... perhaps it's the old sense-memory of being in school for so many years. Autumn is when you get your act together, your days get more structured, school starts. The smell of chalk, the slam of lockers, the ringing bell ... All of that still works on me, somewhere, in my subconscious.

Along with all of this personal stuff, is, now, the approach of September 11.

The beauty of that morning has been discussed, the literally cloud-less sky, the beaming sunlight. The beginning of a crisp autumn day. School starting up that week. The great shift in the energy which comes along with the start of a school year.

A nostalgia for time passing. A wistfulness that the summer is over, and it's time to get down to work. But also: an exhilaration, an energy, a buzz in the air - because it is good to get back to work.

This is my milieu. This is where I feel most like Sheila. I was born in November, so maybe there's a little of that going on ... I was born in the dead of autumn, so of course, I feel that it is MY season.

John Keats wrote "Ode to Autumn" which, I believe, captures perfectly what autumn holds, what autumn's potential is, what the season means to humanity. There may be a more beautiful poem written, I suppose. But I have a hard time believing that there could be.

And so, let's get SHEILA to stop writing, and let's listen to Keats, a master if there ever was one:

ODE TO AUTUMN
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

A couple of must-reads

1.
The piece by Philip Gourevitch in the latest New Yorker, about North Korea. I can't recommend it highly enough, for myriad reasons.

First off: Gourevitch is one of my favorite writers. I also like to think of him, privately (and pathetically), as "my future husband". Well, obviously now that I've posted it here, not so privately anymore.

But all that aside: it is an enormous piece of research, compelling, frightening, very very well-done.

It's an indictment of the regime.

And the photograph to go along with the piece is haunting. It's a satellite picture of Korea entire, North and South, at night. South Korea is filled with big splotches of bright lights, denoting (or should I use "connoting"? Always get those two confused) civilization, obviously. North Korea is literally DARK. Not one cluster of humanity, not one bright splotch. All is darkness.

Really: it's a must-read.

2. The following piece by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, which I found via Andrew Sullivan.

I read it with mounting interest, I haven't read something so clear-sighted in a long long time.

It focuses on, on one level, the failure of writers and poets (our mouthpieces, so to speak) to respond to September 11 in any meaningful way. To not realize that there are some things which cannot be spoken, some experiences which go beyond words. But really, you have to read the piece to get the gist of his points.

Here's an excerpt:

Any event as shocking as this was difficult to respond to perceptively or even sensibly. "Perhaps one of the most upsetting aspects of post-bombing America is the fatuousness of our response," Thomas Laqueur wrote in the London Review of Books, little knowing how much truer his words would be made by his fellow contributors. Maybe there was nothing useful to say, but then writers and performers seldom follow the advice that if you can't think of anything sensible to say, keep quiet. Silence would have surely been better than the cloud of exotic prose which rose like fumes from the wreckage, as sundry scribblers did their best to justify Karl Kraus's saying that a journalist is someone who has nothing to say but who knows how to say it. A comparatively harmless case was Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker recording that "On the morning of the day they did it, the city was as beautiful as it had ever been. Central park had never seemed so gleaming and luxuriant" and so on until the unlikely insight that what he found some way from ground zero was "almost like the smell of smoked mozzarella." Even as good a newspaperman and historian as Neal Ascherson felt he had to flex his literary muscles: "Manhattan that morning was a diagram, a blue bar chart with columns which were tall or not so tall. A silver cursor passed across the screen and clicked silently on the tallest column, which turned red and black and presently vanished. This is how we delete you."

But it was writers-with-a-W who really excelled, doing their best to confute Shelley's grandiose proposition that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. That idea always looked dubious-in practice writers are all too often sillier and nastier in their politics than anyone else-and one or two writers were wise enough to recognise this in September 2001. Bret Easton Ellis said that he was too depressed to make phrases, and Philip Roth refused public comment. If only there had been more like them.

Wheatcroft has written a literary critique, as well as a political and social critique. He's angry. He's very angry. He expresses it well.

At its most extreme, "they had it coming" was used to blame the Americans in general, and even those in the World Trade Centre, for electing the wrong kind of president. "American bond traders, you may say, are as innocent and as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese or Iraqi peasants," the New Statesman said in a memorable leader. "Well, yes and no- Americans, unlike Iraqis and many others in poor countries, at least have the privileges of democracy and freedom that allow them to vote and speak in favour of a different order. If the US often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it. They preferred George Bush to Al Gore and both to Ralph Nader."

Actually, the 3,000 dead in New York must have included people who did vote for Nader, and more who voted for Gore. That was recognised, in a peculiarly foolish way, by the egregious Michael Moore (a stupid white man if ever there was): "Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who did not vote for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes- destination of California-these were places that voted against Bush!" Presumably the terrorist murders were wrong in liberal Manhattan, but would have been all right if al Qaeda had attacked Phoenix or Atlanta. Or perhaps terrorists should find means of attack which distinguish between good and bad, killing the Republicans but sparing anyone who voted for an environmentally-correct candidate.

And that is enough excerpting, for you must go read it yourself.

Redheaded PSA

This Friday, September 5, I am going to be reading two short essays of mine on the radio, as part of an ongoing program for new writers called "Everything Goes".

Here is the information for all you New York-area people:

When: Friday, September 5 from 6:00 - 6:30 pm (I know, what a terrible time-slot!!)

Station: 91.5 FM (WNYE-FM)