Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny (26 page)

Chapter 45
The Reluctant Interview: An Improv

W
hen Elaine May and I first met, we didn’t like each other. She was directing a revival of Herb Gardner’s play
The Goodbye People
at the Stockbridge Theatre in the Berkshires. I had just started going out with Herbie, and each day we would watch the rehearsals together. Later that night, he’d ask my opinion of what I had seen, and I would give him my comments, never dreaming he would tell them to Elaine. Unfortunately, he did.

Elaine wanted to kill me—here was this girl from Hollywood, swooping in and critiquing her work. But by then the feeling was mutual. I didn’t like her either because, from the moment we’d met, she called me “Margo.” I had just finished my TV series and was pretty well known, so I took her getting my name wrong as a personal—and intentional—knock.

The following year, we were thrown together quite a bit because of her close friendship with Herbie. One night she heard someone call out my name.

“Wait—your name is Marlo, not Margo?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I just assumed you were mad at me for giving my notes on the play,” I said. “I thought you were being hostile.”

Elaine answered back, “Well, I think it was hostile of you not to correct me for a solid year.”

And so it began . . . a forty-year friendship.

At one point, Elaine moved into my house on Angelo Drive for six months. It was very early in our friendship, so we were still being pretty careful with each other. Actually, I was careful.
She
complained constantly that there wasn’t enough surface space for her papers. And she smoked. We were like Felix and Oscar. She was Oscar and I was the one with the broom and the dust pan.

It was during the third week of her stay that I met David Geffen. What a force he was. He was just hitting his stride as a movie and music mogul, and I had never met anyone who was so sure of who he was and where he wanted to go. And going out with me was one of the things he definitely wanted.

So we made a date.

“But I’d rather not go into your house if Elaine May is there,” he said.

It seems they had met—and fought—at a restaurant a few nights before. Great. What a houseguest—a complainer, a smoker and now my dates don’t want to come into my home.

So, for a couple weeks, I would meet David in front of the house. Then one night, when I thought Elaine was out, he came inside. I ran up to get my coat, and when I came back downstairs, there they were in the living room, the two of them, chatting away. And they were both complaining about me.

David eventually became a part of my life, and he won Elaine and me over with the sheer power of his energy and optimism and love. And he was an obsessive. Perfect.

But even when Elaine is inciting a domestic comedy, she’s like a sister to me. We have worked together, lived together, strategized together, played together and cried together. When my dad died, everyone tried to comfort me by reminding me of what a great life he’d had. But Elaine was the one who said the very right thing.

“This is awful,” she said. “There is no consolation. It’s just horrible.”

Exactly. That’s
exactly
how I felt. And by her understanding that feeling, she actually comforted me.

But of all the things Elaine and I do together, the thing we do best is laugh . . . like hell.

In 1990, we co-starred in a movie,
In the Spirit,
written by Elaine’s daughter, a gifted actress herself, Jeannie Berlin. As with any project, we needed to promote the film, but Elaine is famous for never doing interviews. So our producer and dear pal, Julian Schlossberg, landed on a great idea: Elaine and I should do a faux interview, with me as the eager journalist and Elaine as my reluctant subject. We loved the idea, turned on a tape recorder and began to improvise.

What follows is that conversation, as it appeared in
Interview
magazine.

M
arlo:
Elaine, I know you’re nervous about being interviewed, but it’s just me, and you’re a highly articulate person who makes her living putting words together, so I’m just going to throw the ball to you and let you run with it O.K.?

Elaine:
Great.

Marlo:
What was it like working together?

Elaine:
Great.

Marlo:
Was it fun working together?

Elaine:
Yes.

Marlo:
Were there any surprises in our working together?

Elaine:
No.

Marlo:
Well, there must have been some surprises.

Elaine:
Oh. Well, maybe there were.

Marlo:
What were they?

Elaine:
What do you mean?

Marlo:
I mean, you know me so well. Did anything I do surprise you?

Elaine:
Oh. Yes. I was surprised by the power of your acting.

Marlo:
Thank you. In what way?

Elaine:
It was so very good.

Marlo:
What about our friendship?

Elaine:
It was fine.

Marlo:
Do you recommend friends working together? I mean, there are some people who think you shouldn’t mix business with friendship. Or that if you give a friend a dollar, if you loan money to a friend, it will ruin that friendship. Would you recommend taking that risk?

Elaine:
Well, I think a dollar is such a small amount to lose.

Marlo:
No, no I mean . . . I shouldn’t have said a dollar. I mean, you know, people lend money to friends, right?

Elaine:
Yes.

Marlo:
Then, somehow, that changes the friendship. So they say you shouldn’t mix business with friendship. Do you think we should mix moviemaking with friendship?

Elaine:
Is this the same as the dollar?

Marlo:
Forget about the dollar. This has nothing to do with the dollar. I’m just saying that, do you think our being friends made the scenes better or worse?

Elaine:
You mean our scenes?

Marlo:
Elaine, you’re so nervous. You’re listening so hard that it’s making you seem stupid.

Elaine:
I see.

Marlo:
Now, just relax and listen to me. Did we have more fun doing our scenes together because we were friends? For example, in the scene where you had to grab me by the neck and bang me up against the wall, would you have had as much fun doing that to a stranger?

In the Spirit:
With Elaine—up against the wall.

Elaine:
No. That’s true.

Marlo:
Yes. What?

Elaine:
It was more fun grabbing you by the neck and slamming you up against the wall than a stranger.

Marlo:
Really? Why?

Elaine:
Well . . . because you aren’t a stranger.

Marlo:
Aside from that.

Elaine:
There is no aside from that.

Marlo:
You know, if you don’t expand on these questions it’s going to be a very boring interview. I mean, if I ask you why it was fun to grab me by the neck and bang me against the wall, you have to give me a better answer than “because you aren’t a stranger.” What else made it fun?

Elaine:
Well, it was fun . . . because . . . you’re smaller than I am.

Marlo:
We’ve always fought about this, Elaine. I am not that much smaller than you are. I think I’m only an inch shorter, that’s about it.

Elaine:
That’s smaller.

Marlo:
Well, it’s not that much smaller. It’s not small enough for you to have that smug expression on your face.

Elaine:
And you’re weaker than I am. That’s always fun.

Marlo:
I like the idea of myself being weak and vulnerable.

Elaine:
And it’s always fun to take a weak, vulnerable person and slam them up against the wall.

Marlo:
I don’t think you are going to like the way this looks in print. “It’s always fun to take a weak, vulnerable person and slam them up against the wall”? Spoken like a true guy.

Elaine:
I really think it’s unfair for you to ask me if something is fun and then tell me I have to expand on it, and then when I do, you attack me for it. I mean, I barely know what I’m saying. I’m very nervous.

Marlo:
Why? I don’t understand why you’re so nervous. I’m still you’re friend Marlo. This is just like we’re talking on the phone.

Elaine:
No, it isn’t. You don’t call me on the phone and ask me if it was fun the last time we talked.

Marlo:
No, no, but I . . .

Elaine:
You are very direct on the phone. You say, “I’ve been sent two scripts. One of them is a true story of a woman who’s dying and one of them is a true story of a woman who’s paralyzed—”

Marlo:
“—which one sounds like more fun?”

Elaine:
What?

Marlo:
I’m kidding. I’m just making a little joke. Elaine, look at how tense you are. You’re actually clutching your clothes. And you’re not breathing. That’s why you’ve stopped thinking. There’s not enough oxygen getting to your brain.

Elaine:
These are very hard questions.

Marlo:
Are they?

Elaine:
Yes.

Marlo:
All right, here’s an easier one. How do you feel about being a writer and a director in what is predominantly a white-male-dominated world?

Elaine:
You mean . . . is it fun?

Marlo:
No, forget fun. We’re off of fun. I mean, most of the executives, directors and screenwriters in Hollywood are men. So how do you feel about being in what is mostly a men’s club?

With Elaine, doing what we do best.

Elaine:
Can we turn off the tape for a minute?

Marlo:
No. Bella Abzug once said, “Real equality is going to come not when a female Einstein is recognized as quickly as a male Einstein, but when a female schlemiel is promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel.” What’s your feeling about that?

Elaine:
Well, I think there are probably more female schlemiels in high positions now than when I started, although it’s true that there are no female schlemiels in the highest position. But I think that, in time, there will be.

Marlo:
That’s not the point I’m making.

Elaine:
It isn’t?

Marlo:
No. I don’t want incompetent women to rise to the top. Look, everybody knows how I feel about this issue. How do you feel about it?

Elaine:
Fine.

Marlo:
You know, I really worked hard on these questions . . .

Elaine:
And they’re excellent.

Marlo:
Thank you. And I’d like you to work a little harder on your answers. “Yes” and “No” and “Fine” aren’t really good enough.

Elaine:
Well, I just gave you some long answers and you didn’t like them.

Marlo:
Well, they were terrible. Did you like them? You’ll kill yourself when you read the quote about female incompetents being promoted to high positions in time. And the one where you said it was fun to pick up a smaller person and bang them against the wall? You’ll get letters on that one.

Elaine:
Can’t you cut that one out of the interview?

Marlo:
No, I can’t. I mean, I could but I won’t. I’m part of the media now, Elaine. See? You’re sitting that way again. You’re all hunched over and you’re not breathing.

Elaine:
Can we turn the tape off for one minute?

Marlo:
No. What would you like to do next?

Elaine:
Eat.

Marlo:
No. I mean as an artist. Don’t cross your eyes. Just answer me. See, this is why I won’t turn off the tape or edit it. The only meaty part of this interview is your reaction to the questions you don’t want to answer. Now, I’m going to ask you again—would you like to direct? Write? Act?