It's All In the Playing (26 page)

I wondered if I had been an overachiever in my earlier years
because
I was unconsciously avoiding the quest for myself. Had the drive for success simply been a way of diverting attention from the real priority of self-focus? Or had I become successful precisely so that I
could
look at myself. I was beginning to redefine the meaning of success anyway. I had seen so many people achieve stardom, fame, and material wealth, only to feel so undeserving that they became suicidal. That could have happened to me had I not understood that a spiritual dimension was as much a part of my identity as my mind and body. That understanding had saved my life, because it enabled me to feel deserving of everything I had created for myself.

Now, as I sat in my trailer, I thought of the film I was making. I hated night shooting. I hated dumb conversation. I hated to be cold. And I hated my inability to sleep during the day. Some spiritually evolved person I
was. I was just uncomfortable all the way around because I was seeing so much more of me than I ever had.

I would try to meditate in my trailer to make contact with my higher self. It was always there.

“What is wrong with me?” I would ask it.

“You are impatient with time and too perfectionistic with those issues you believe are important.”

“Well,” I’d answer. “Perfection is part of my job.”

“No,” it would say. “Perfection is an addiction to the past.”

An addiction to the past? Oh, yes, I could see that. How would I know something was perfect if I didn’t compare it to what went before?
Okay.

“Stay aligned with me,” my higher self would suggest. “I will never fail you, because I am aligned with God.”

Sometimes tears would come to my eyes with the beauty of realization, and sometimes I would decide not to listen to what my higher self was saying at all.

Colin dropped in late one night. “How’s it going?” he asked, sniffling from his cold.

“Lousy,” I answered.

Colin blew his nose and smiled. “Well, it’s all in the playing, ya know.”

I threw a combat boot at him.

The morning after our first night shoot I returned to my apartment in Malibu and fell into bed at 7:00 A.M. I turned on my sound machine and hoped to sleep until noon. At 7:30 the telephone rang. It was a friend of my housekeeper’s, looking for her. I said she wasn’t in, but she continued to call, saying each time it was an emergency.

The doorbell rang. There was no one but me to answer it. I let it ring, long and sustained, stubbornly resisting my desire to get up and see what it was. I should have answered it. I worried about who it might have been for the rest of the morning.

I dragged myself to work at 5:00 P.M., worked all night, and fell into bed again the next morning at 7:00.

I awoke at 8:30 to pounding right under my bedroom. The workmen had come to repair my pilings. In a fury I walked outside and peered over the balcony.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked gracefully.

“I’m fixing the piling,” said the workman cheerily.

“Well, can you come back later? I’ve been working all night.”

He looked up smiling. “Could I just do a couple more nails?”

“What should I do?” I pleaded. “What can I say that would make you understand how much I hate it that you are here?”

“Thank you,” he said nicely. “I won’t be long.”

I walked back to my bedroom. And then I blew. I slammed the door so hard that the rafters shook. Then I opened it and slammed it again. The doves in their hallway cage stopped cooing. I raced to the front door and opened it and slammed it so strongly that plaster fell from the ceiling. I opened it again and slammed it again. I opened and slammed about five times. I wanted to wake up my tenants in case the pounding hadn’t.

Then suddenly I saw a man come into my courtyard and ascend my stairs.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Of course there is,” I shouted. “I can’t sleep. So what can you do about it?”

“Well,” he smiled sweetly, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. I’d like to be of service in introducing God to you.”

That was all I needed. I had had about as much of God as I could take and it wasn’t helping me one bit.

“You know something,” I said. “I’m sure Michael Jackson gets more out of your help team than I ever will.”

I was angry because I thought he knew who I was and what I wrote about.

He looked at me quizzically.

“Well,” he said. “I was by here yesterday and you weren’t home. If you would give me your name I’d send you some of our literature in the mail and not disturb you. It looks like you could benefit from what we have to offer.”

He didn’t know who I was? That made me even madder. I slammed the door in his face and screamed, “Thank you!”

Wonderful, I thought. Oh my God, have I got a long way to go.

I never went back to sleep. I sat down and thought about my violence whenever I was working and couldn’t sleep. I remembered the chair I threw against the wall of a hotel in Washington, D.C., because the hotel operator had ignored my “do not disturb” instructions.

I had ripped the phone out of the wall in a Houston hotel on
Terms of Endearment
when a power mower went on at 6:00 in the morning outside my window.

I remembered my plot to put sand into the Australian construction equipment because the rumbling crash of builders at work began every morning at 6:00 when I was on tour there.

I never had that reaction when I wasn’t working. But if my work sleep was violated, I became violent. That was the behavior of an overachiever, all right. That was a person who didn’t have the confidence to trust that all things were happening for a reason.

In fact it became a joke with people who worked with me. Whenever I was on tour we could depend on some kind of construction work to begin early in the morning, regardless of what city we were playing.

Of course my question was: Why did I draw that to myself? And of course the answer was not far behind: to develop patience and tolerance. I created the circumstances in which to accomplish this.

Stan finally asked me why I looked so tired. I gave him a quick noise-in-the-morning rundown.

He chortled, sat back, and sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

“So what’s new in the real world, Stan?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “ABC is going to do
War and Remembrance.
Thirty hours of Hitler and concentration camps. Hitler’s become the biggest star in Hollywood. He certainly has the most work.”

“Wow,” I said. “We just can’t figure out what that monster meant to the human race, can we?”

“He obviously means a lot of employment,” said Stan, not wanting to get metaphysically serious.

“Well,” I went on, “the sooner we come to grips with the fact that Hitler was a teacher for all of us, the better off we’ll be.”

“Nobody wants to hear that, Shirley,” said Stan.

“You mean we all still need someone to blame instead of taking the responsibility that each one of us participated somehow?”

Stan looked at me with those kindly, experienced eyes.

“Who knows?” he said, with the tact that proves he always was and always will be a survivor. “Anyway,” he continued, “ABC is committed to doing quality television now. So they’re doing fourteen hours of
Amerika.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You know,” he answered. “It’s the story of the Russian takeover of America. I said to Brandon: ‘Are you
that
desperate for quality entertainment?’”

I laughed, trying to picture how doing fourteen hours of the Russians conquering America could possibly contribute to the peace process in the world.

“Well,” said Stan, “if I had to choose between fighting the Russians and being forced to watch the series, I guess I’d take the series.”

I stood up. “Yeah, Stan,” I said. “Let’s go get some
junk food.” If I was going to be working, depressed, tired, and pissed off, I might as well go the whole hog and do it all with junk food.

On the way to the catering wagon, our company manager, Dean O’Brien, stopped me.

“Listen, Shirley,” he said, “you know you will be the prime target for any kidnapping in Peru. So we are going to make sure there’s extra police protection. Those guerrillas could make a fortune holding you for ransom from ABC.”

I thought for a moment and answered him. “No, Dean. I don’t think so. I’m too responsible. I wouldn’t have the guts to go wandering off into the hills by myself. But John Heard—now there’s your kidnappee. He’s liable to stroll out into those mountains with a beer just lookin’ to get kidnapped so he could tell ’em to hold out for more money from ABC. Or maybe he’d want to know how it feels to be kidnapped. Or maybe he’d want to figure out what the kidnappers felt like …” I started to laugh. Stan started to laugh. And pretty soon we were hysterical, swapping pictures of what John would do with the kidnappers.

“Can you see The Shining Path trying to cope with him?” Stan sputtered. “He’d drive them bananas!”

“Yeah,” I said with exhausted admiration, and feeling a whole lot better. “It’s people like John who could really confuse the terrorists. He’s fearless, because even
he
doesn’t know what he’s going to do next.”

   The night shooting continued. The crew slogged through mud and rain while John and I sat, more or less comfortably, in a truck that was being towed along for the scene, saying our lines and trying to keep warm. A kind of trancelike perseverance prevailed. John and I didn’t talk much in between shots. Melissa had arrived and he had enough on his mind. Yet I never ceased to be astonished at how he snapped into character when the
cameras rolled. I wondered if he felt the same admiration for me, especially since the scene we were shooting involved my reaction to an extraterrestrial driving the truck while John’s character (David) was asleep at the wheel. Once when Butler yelled, “Cut,” John opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, “Good.” Whether he meant because it was the end of the scene or not, I took it to mean I must have been great. Especially since his eyes had been closed …

John often talked about being embarrassed that he was posing as a “movie” actor. After the night-shooting period finished, we went immediately into shooting some of the heaviest metaphysical dialogue. This scene took place in daylight (thank God) on the beach.

“I don’t like this mooo-vie ‘acting,’” said John in his inimitable manner.

“Well, what do you like better?” I asked, setting him up completely.

“I’m an unknown, thin,
stage
actor,” he stated. “I don’t like movies.”

At that moment the assistant director called for quiet because John’s close-up was lit and ready. He had a two-page monologue scene about God and reincarnation. He had already shot the master, so I had seen him play it. He had toyed casually with sand and seashells as he intermittently looked out to sea and delivered some of the most difficult lines any actor ever had to play.

The cameras rolled. Butler yelled, “Action.” John went into his casually profound attitude, and suddenly in the distance I heard an airplane. I saw John hear it too. His face began to flush crimson. The plane came closer, and of course the sound of it was more and more disruptive. No one wanted to say “cut” because John had made it clear that was never to happen unless
he
said so. So we just kept rolling. Finally the plane was so loud and John’s face was so flushed with anger that he couldn’t go on. He blew. He threw up his arms.

“What the fuck kind of plane is that,” he shrieked, “that will go overhead on my fucking close-up! I mean, man, THIS IS MY CLOSE-UP!”

Very understandable. But my sides ached from holding in the laughter. John could not have been more upset. He bolted from the sand and went for the first thing he could kick that wasn’t human. It happened to be an apple crate used to prop up chairs, lamps, and short actors. John smashed his foot into the apple box and withdrew it. Hopping around on one foot he went on a rampage around the set. The crew moved cautiously back and all I could think of was how much he didn’t care about “mooo-vies.”

His anger spent, the plane droning away in the distance, John came back to his mark and sat down.

“Sorry, everybody,” he said calmly. “I was being ridiculous. Can we go again?”

We went again. The crew, consummate professionals that they are, began to regroup.

“All right, Mr. Heard,” said Brad. “Camera is ready anytime you are, sir.”

John went again and no one was the worse for wear.

In the meantime John had told me that a buddy of his had said that Christ had talked about reincarnation in the Bible. When I asked where I could find it he didn’t know. So, with the weekend coming up, I decided to find it.

I hadn’t a clue where to look. So I did an experiment with myself. I went into a quick silent meditation, got in touch with my higher self, and said, “Where can I find a reference by Christ to reincarnation in the Bible?”

The answer came back: “Most of the references have been discarded, but several still remain. You will find it in the book of Matthew.”

I heard the answer in clear English and it was so definitive I was startled. I went to my bookshelf and pulled out a Gideon Bible.

I turned to Matthew. The page fell open to Matthew 16, verse 13. Jesus is talking to his disciples. He asks them: “Whom do people say that I, the Son of man, am?”

The disciples answer, “Some say that you are John the Baptist, some say Elias, and others say Jeremias or one of the prophets.”

Evidently reincarnation was such an accepted belief at the time that it was a matter of simple discussion—not “whether,” but “who?”

Jesus then asks, “But whom do you say I am?”

Simon Peter goes on to answer that Jesus is the Son of the living God. Jesus confirms that, and then charges his disciples to tell no one that he is Jesus the Christ.

In Chapter 17 there is the description of the transfiguration. Jesus takes Peter and the two brothers James and John to a high mountain. Jesus is transfigured before them; his face shines like the sun and his raiment is white as the light. Then Moses and Elias appear before them, talking with Jesus. A bright cloud overshadows them and a voice speaks from the cloud, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.”