Cybill Disobedience (33 page)

“We can’t do that,” I told Howard. “It’s demeaning to black people.”

“It’s just a little smudge,” he argued.

“You know what?” I said. “I am on the advisory board of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Let’s call the museum director and ask what she thinks.”

He exploded. “I lost family in the Holocaust,” he screamed, “and if anybody knows about discrimination, it’s me.”

“Why don’t we use panty hose pulled down over our faces?” I suggested. “That will look funnier anyway,” but he stormed out of the room. The panty hose were hilarious, with the feet dangling like tassels, but Howard never forgave me for my defiance. When he quit the show the next season, he had to be dragged from my trailer, practically foaming at the mouth and shouting, “I’m leaving, but I’m a better person than you are.”

‘Things became Byzantine when Peter Bogdanovich told me his daughters had heard a rumor that my show was too expensive and was about to be canceled. Part of the reason was Jay Daniel, who sometimes demanded extravagant sets and had an expensive predilection for myriad takes of every shot. There’s an adage in the business that film is cheap but time is money, which justifies doing it “one more time” to make sure you “get it” and don’t have to come back later. But that’s not true for a situation comedy with four 35-millimeter cameras moving in a complicated dance across the stage floor between the actors and the audience, each requiring a camera operator riding a dolly, a dolly grip to push, and a focus puller. Video is infinitely cheaper, but film is more aesthetic, more sharply defined, more flattering. We figured out that it cost about $1,000 per foot of film. For at least a year, Carsey-Werner had complained about going over budget and persistently urged that we fire Jay. I defended im but took a stand: “Three takes--that’s it. If the actors get the words right and don’t fall down, we have to move on.”

There was an entire building on the CBS Studio City lot in which every office was filled with people involved in the making of my show. Or so I thought. One day I went in the side door and was walking briskly down the hall, a little late for an editing meeting, when I heard my name called. It was an unpleasant voice from the past, but I didn’t identify it until I turned around. What the hell was Polly Platt doing there?

“Cybill,” she enthused, “guess what? I’m heading up the new feature film division for Carsey-Werner.”

Pause. “How wonderful,” I said, knowing that I was up shit’s creek without a paddle. Who’s the absolutely last person on God’s green earth I would want whispering in the ears of the people who sign my paychecks? It is unlikely that I’ll ever work in a Polly Platt production. The source of Peter’s rumor was apparent, and from then on I used a different entrance to the building, nowhere near her office. A short time later, Polly sent me a handwritten note on Carsey-Werner letterhead, with a little heart drawn next to my name, telling me that her elder daughter, Antonia, an aspiring actress, had submitted a reel of her work to Jay Daniel, who had promised to get her a small part on my show. “Could you help?” the note pleaded. “It would mean a great deal to her, and of course, to me.” The note was signed, “My very best to you Cybill.” I passed the note on to Jay.

When I finally insisted on being part of the show’s budget meeting, I discovered that Jay was blaming me for the high costs. In his considered opinion, Christine was a Xerox machine--she would say a line exactly the same way no matter how many times she did it. I was the exact opposite. I did it differently every time and took pride in surprising myself and the audience. Jay would say that I didn’t even warm up until the fourth take, and he considered himself the master hand, putting together the bits that he liked from each scene. I would often see his choices and remember another, better, funnier take (this was true for all the actors, not just myself). He seldom liked my most outrageous moments and felt that slapstick was appropriate only in isolated incidents, “I will not use your biggest, Lucy-esque takes,” he told me. “I will protect you from yourself.”

In the fall of 1996, for an episode called “Cybill and Maryann Go to Japan,” Jay went over budget creating an unnecessarily large and elaborate Japanese garden, but he said we couldn’t afford a pond that would have provided me with a hilarious Lucy-esque moment (my character, dressed in full geisha costume, would fall in) so I finally agreed that Jay should go. When he left, eight episodes into the season, we were over budget. By the end of that season, we were safely in the black.

Caryn Mandabach, the head of production at C-W, said that the only way the show would survive was to “poach” a great head writer named Bob Myer from his development deal at Tri-Star, who had refused to consider her offer until Jay was gone. And Bob did seem heaven-sent, literally the answer to my prayers, from our very first meeting. “I know that part of the problem has been a lack of communication,” he said. “But I promise I will be the first person you talk to in the morning and the last person you talk to at night. You will be kept so informed, you will get sick of the information and tell me you don’t need to hear any more.” Over time we even developed a private code. I hate it when someone says “Be good” as a parting salutation--I always want to say “What if I ain’t?” So Bob started signing all his notes to me with “Be bad,” “Be so bad,” or “Be ever bad>

IT WAS ALWAYS INTERESTING TRYING TO DECIPHER THE
peculiar logic of Standards and Practices at CBS. In the episode “When You’re Hot You’re Hot” during our second season, Maryann is in denial about the approach of menopause, referring to the herbal potions that Cybill is trying for hot flashes as “bark juice” and “the fungus of many nations.”

Maryann:
“Thank goodness this will never happen to me”

Cybill:
“Probably not. They say alcohol pickles the uterus”

Maryann:
“When you say you’re premenopausal does that mean your ‘friend’ has stopped visiting every month?”

Cybill:
“My ‘Friend’ what are you, twelve?”

Maryann:
“You know what I mean, Aunt Flo?”

Cybill:
“Just sat it out—period, period, period”

In our fourth season, we did another menopause episode called “Some Like It Hot.” We were told not to refer to a woman’s biological cycles as anything other than her biological cycle, and were forbidden to say uterus, cervix, ovaries, menstruation, period, or flow. And why? Years earlier, Gloria Steinem had pointed out to me that the valentine heart was originally a symbol of female genitalia. When I repeated this to Bob Myer he was rightfully intrigued and said he’d like to build an episode around it, having fun with a different kind of “V” day. When CBS read the script, Standards and Practices forbade the use of the word
vagina.
I asked Bob to see if they’d agree to let is use
labia.
Remarkably, they said yes. We wondered if CBS knew what the word meant or thought no one else would. Although the episode got some of our biggest laughs and highest ratings, that’s when the network began to crack down on any element of the show regarding female anatomy or bodily functions. I had the distinct feeling that they thought we were trying to be lewd or shocking, but our insistence on using those words came from political awareness. Knowing the proper names as well as the slang for body parts is one way for women and children to protect themselves from sexual abuse, as well as open themselves to sexual pleasure. It’s astonishing that in daring to describe female anatomy accurately we were breaking new ground in television. At the time, I had no idea that Eve Ensler had won the 1997 Obie Award for her one-woman show called
The Vagina Monologues
. I didn’t know about her hilarious, eye-opening tour into the forbidden zone at the heart of every woman until I read an article in the Arts and Leisure section of the
New York Times
in 1999, a year after my Valentine’s Day episode was aired. I rejoiced at the public acknowledgment that her play was an important groundbreaking work, yet I was saddened that similar groundbreaking work on the Cybill show had gone unnoticed by the press. But, like menopause, the issue of a woman’s identity in regard to her genitals was still taboo in the media at the time we were dealing with it and reaching a huge prime-time audience.

It was Christine’s idea to do an episode about mammography, but the show became a source of contention for us. Last-minute changes were not her thing, and she perceived improvisation as ambush. But even flubs often prove to be the funniest moments. In the episode called “In Her Dreams,” Maryann goes for a worrisome mammogram. It was scripted that she would cry, but when we came to do the scene, I started to tear up too. Working up the emotion for the scene, I had been listening to “Come in from the Rain,” Melissa Manchester’s song about friendship (“Well, hello there, dear old friend of mine...”). I was imagining a breast cancer scare not for Cybill Sheridan’s best friend but for Cybill Shepherd’s best friend, and I started to feel the moment for real. I’ve been there, sitting on turquoise vinyl seats in hospital waiting rooms with loved ones, waiting for scary biopsy reports, and my friends never cry alone--we cry with and for each other. But when Christine saw the tears in my eyes, she went cold Before the second take, Bob Myer came to me and said, “You know Christine doesn’t like these surprises.” Then she had her manager call him. Christine, it seemed, felt quite strongly that we not use the first take when I had cried. In fact, she wanted to participate in the editing to ensure that the first take was not used. Bob denied her request, explaining that we used parts of every take, showing each actor to his or her best advantage.

Early in 1997, Bob came into my dressing room, practically chewing up the furniture and spitting it out with fury. “We’ve just gotten a call from the producer of
3rd Rock,”
he said, who insists that he needs Christine next week.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Carsey-Werner wants her to do a cameo,” he said.

“Why didn’t we know about this earlier?” I asked.

“Didn’t they tell you?” he said. “Oh, those people don’t know how to talk to anybody. I’m going to call them and say they can’t have her now.”

“You do that,” I said, “and furthermore, we want a trade-off: let’s get one of their actors to come on
Cybill.”

A few weeks after Christine did her cameo, Marcy and Caryn sent me a note: “If we would have had a brain in our heads, the right thing for us to do would have been to have told you directly about Christine’s appearance on
3rd Rock.
... We value your work and your friendship more than you know and hope you can forgive us.” I also heard from a Carsey-Werner executive known privately as The Executioner because he was always mentioning his uncle Ivan. (If somebody was being rude to you, he would offer, “Uncle Ivan could bury his feet in cement.”) His note to me was contrite: “I’m sorry if I caused you any problems regarding Christine and
3rd Rock,”
he wrote, signing off, “Your loyal production slave.”

One of my concerns with the direction of the show was that Maryann Thorpe had a new romantic interest, while Cybill Sheridan had zippo. Bob kept talking about the difficulty of finding the right actor to play opposite me, so I suggested that my character date lots of men--they might all turn out to be ax murderers, as they often do in real life, but the odyssey would be rich loam for comedy. For the third season closer, he came up with a story called “Let’s Stalk” that ends with Maryann fearing she has killed Dr. Dick, but in the first episode of the upcoming season she was to discover she hadn’t killed him. Dr. Dick would suddenly appear and be played by a recognizable guest star.

The opening and closing episodes are two of the most important of the year, because of the promotion and media attention, and it’s crucial to have a cliff-hanger that practically ensures the audience will watch to see the resolution when the new season begins. It was a bad idea to have two such crucial episodes dependent on the casting of a guest star, who might or might not materialize. There was always pressure from the network to have cameos, because such appearances generated good buzz, but I objected to the idea when it came to Dr. Dick. I thought he should be seen only in the imagination of the viewers, a device used successfully throughout television history, from the invisible Sam as the answering service for “Richard Diamond” (it was Mary Tyler Moore’s voice), to the off-camera Charlie of
Charlie’s Angels
(John Forsythe spoke his lines), to the ent Maris, sister-in-law of
Frasier.
CBS continued to push for John Lithgow to play the odious Dr. Dick, but he had already turned the role down, sending me flowers with a note that said, “Quite apart from feeling wildly overextended these days. I’m following a firm personal policy of concentrating all of my sitcom energies on
3rd Rock
. If I did any other show, it would be yours, but for the moment, I’m doing none. If it’s any consolation, you’ll never see me turning up on
Friends.”

Timothy Dalton and John Larroquette also declined the honor of playing Dr. Dick. Don Johnson didn’t even bother to respond. Just days before we were to begin shooting, I told Bob Myer, “Forget about getting somebody’s idea of a name. Just cast the best actor.”

“I want you to trust me on this,” Bob said. “We’ll just shoot the segments that don’t require Dr. Dick, and by the time we need him, we’ll have somebody great.”

Everyone knows the joke about the three biggest lies in Hollywood: “The check is in the mail,” “The Mercedes is paid for,” and “It’s only a cold sore.” And they’re all preceded by the words: “Trust me.” Dr. Dick was never cast, the story was rewritten, and we shot in bits and pieces for several months, never resolving the cliffhanger. Bob admitted that he had been badly mistaken in building the opening and closing episodes around uncertain casting and sent this note to the cast early in the new season: