High On Arrival (8 page)

We sometimes drove my other cousin Billy’s orange Volkswagen station wagon, which we called OIG because those were the letters on the license plate. At six a.m. we’d drive home— but we’d say that OIG brought us home, because none of us ever remembered driving. Shoes in hand, we’d creep back into the house. Aunt Rosie was always there, in her dressing gown. She’d say, “Laura Mackenzie Phillips,” “Patty Ann Throckmorton,” “Nancy Elizabeth Throckmorton,” pissed off and beside herself with frustration.

What could she do? There was Rosie, recently retired from a personnel job at the Pentagon. She’d recovered from a minor heart attack, moved to her rock-star brother’s mansion, got kicked out, and took unofficial custody of a bunch of wild kids, one of whom was famous. How out of your element can you be? Aunt Rosie did a great job considering the circumstances, but she just couldn’t make us behave. We’d apologize sweetly and swear up and down that we’d never stay out all night again, then we’d go out and do the same thing the next night.

In spite of my cautious aunt and somewhat protective cousins, there were some close calls. My old friend Danny Sugarman—who was the manager of the Doors and would become a pop culture icon in his own right—used to tell the story of the night we met. He was riding home from a Slade concert with Rodney Bingenheimer. Danny was in the front seat with Rodney and the driver, and one of the supporting bands was in the backseat. Apparently I too was in the backseat, making out with one of the band members, when they all decided to get in on it. Someone yelled “gang bang,” and amid my protests the backseat became a tangle of arms and legs. Danny didn’t like what he heard. He said, “All right, cut it the fuck out,” and flicked on the overhead light. The band members sheepishly pulled back, the driver pulled over, and I hopped into the front seat to thank my savior.

Danny was nineteen—five years older than I—but we became partners in crime. He was handsome and fun, extremely bright and full of boundless energy. Between the two of us we had rock ’n’ roll carte blanche. We had our table at the Whisky. We could go backstage at any show. He knew he could count on me to behave myself, so he often brought me out for Chinese food with his father, to show that he was keeping company with a well-brought-up famous movie star. I gave him legitimacy in the eyes of his straitlaced father, who had no idea I was a wild kid.

My days were almost as busy as my nights. My turn in
American Graffiti
was a golden ticket. I was a well-known young actress. My ex-stepmother, Michelle, ended up being the one who took me on the auditions that constantly sprang up at inconvenient times. Michelle, who had a very busy and full life and career, stepped up when my mother couldn’t or wouldn’t. She invested herself in my career and my future. It was incredibly generous, but she did it with her typical matter-of-fact manner.

When she was married to my father, Michelle had been playful and warm, and I was a cute plaything for her. Over the years she’d developed into a cool Hollywood broad. She was also a mother now. She had a better perspective on my questionable upbringing and understood that children need protection and guidance. She did all she could to keep Chynna away from the insanity, and she tried to protect me too, in her own way. As we drove to one of my auditions she said, “Everyone in this town knows how talented you are, but they’re calling you the next Judy Garland, and you’re probably going to die just like her.” Michelle was tough and frank. This was her way of showing love and trying to protect me. Michelle was worried about my safety, but I didn’t take her seriously. The idea that “everyone in this town” even knew I existed was weird and incomprehensible to me. Besides, I didn’t have a real sense that what I was doing was wrong or dangerous. I just thought she was being mean.

My mother wasn’t completely absent. She must have called during this period, because I remember asking her to drive me to some of my auditions. She declined. And for me that was the last straw. It was more clear than ever that her life and her marriage were more important than I was. From then on, whenever she questioned me in a maternal way, asking what I was doing, where I was going, how late I’d be out, my response was—if not in so many words—“Where do you get off grilling me?” As far as I was concerned, she had given up her rights.

Thanks to Fred Roos, I auditioned for
Taxi Driver
and
The Exorcist,
both parts I didn’t get—though in hindsight Jodie Foster’s off-screen blowjob was a little too much for me, and Linda Blair’s head spinning, well, I had better ways to make my head spin. But I landed plenty of parts. I worked constantly after I got the job in
American Graffiti.
While it was in production I did an episode of
Movin’ On,
and a TV movie,
Go Ask Alice
. After the movie came out I did another TV movie—
Miles to Go Before I Sleep
with Martin Balsam—and single-episode parts in
Baretta
and
Mary Tyler Moore
. I also got a part in a film called
Rafferty and the Goldust Twins
with Sally Kellerman and Alan Arkin.

Alan Arkin was a great teacher and a gentle soul. How lucky I was to work with him at such a young age. Much of
Rafferty
was shot in Arizona. We all were there together. Rosie was my legal guardian on the set, Nancy was my stand-in, and Patty was my best friend. I became, at fourteen, involved with a stunt man in his thirties. Rosie, consistent in her distrust of older men, hated him and the trouble she was sure he’d cause. But we girls loved him.

When
Rafferty
came out in 1975 the attention was intoxicating. I flew to New York for the premiere, appearing in one of the first issues of
People
magazine. A profile of me in
Interview
said that I walked around like a young Bette Davis sucking on my cigarettes and flicking the ashes to the floor. I just loved my work. I loved what I did.

In New York I found Dad living in the Stanhope, a luxury hotel favored among celebrities that was on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park. I walked into the room and he said, “Hey, Laurabug, give your old dad a hug.” This was the first time I’d seen my father since he left us to be evicted, but there was no drama, no accusations or recriminations. I was just grateful to have him back. This may sound strange, but it never occurred to me to be mad at him for disappearing. Anger didn’t exist, not for me, and seemingly not for his other children, wives, friends, or Aunt Rosie. Dad was a remarkable man. He was so powerful and charming and brilliant that being around him, being in that orbit, was glory enough. We didn’t expect him to adhere to the social standards of the common man. That wasn’t how he lived. We knew that he never promised anything. It was hard to hold him accountable when he accepted no responsibility. He just was so clearly and consistently himself that for a long time we took him as he was and even loved him for it, in a warped way. Later, my family would have reason to be angry at him on my behalf, and even later than that I would excavate my own ingrown shards of anger. But in those days we all let it go.

Now, in my new incarnation as a press-worthy child star, my father relished the attention I was getting. It matched the high-flying life he and Gen were living, hanging out with luminaries like Colin Tennant, who owned the island of Mustique, and Princess Margaret. Besides, Dad was suffering a bit of withdrawal from the attention he’d received as the brains behind the Mamas & the Papas. He craved the limelight. Hitting the scene with his famous daughter more than doubled the buzz. We led a fancy life, going to Mr. Chow every night and to nightclubs.

When Colin Tennant rented the Kennedy compound on Montauk, Dad brought me out to stay. One of Andy Warhol’s cronies was there with his niece. I got in big, big trouble for seducing the niece. I don’t know exactly how it happened. She and I were friends, about the same age, and one night we started playing some rather innocent but naked games in my bedroom. In the morning her uncle pounded on the door, telling us to open up, while Dad appeared at the window. Her uncle was very upset, shouting, “How dare you? She’s just a child!” I was kinda thinking,
Well, what am I?
After that I wasn’t allowed near her anymore. For the rest of the vacation we’d wave at each other from across the room apologetically.

I didn’t see how her uncle could judge me—he was flamingly gay—but I wasn’t fazed. This wasn’t my first same-sex dalliance and it wouldn’t be my last. Like my father, I let momentary desire carry me like a current—I never drew lines at gender, age, circumstance. Later, when I was clean, I would discover that those lines existed, that they were coded in my DNA. At the time I thought my open sexuality was natural, but in reality it was the drugs. I’m straight.

Reviews for my performance in
Rafferty
were good and led to a pilot deal for a show called
One Day at a Time.
I didn’t even audition. I just met with Norman Lear, whom I knew was the brilliant creator of
All in the Family, The Jeffersons,
and
Sanford and Son
, and the deal was done. At the time, landing the role of Julie Cooper seemed like just another exciting job to me—I had no idea that it would be on the air for the next nine years and would prove to be the defining role of my career. I came from a family with a father who left houses when he got bored or ran out of dough, a mother who was under the sway of a cruel husband, and a brother who was in and out of trouble. I had a recreational drug habit that was quickly becoming a way of life. For all the chaos in my life,
One Day at a Time
would prove a point of stability. It would be, in some ways, the closest thing I had to a home.

7

Originally
One Day at a Time
was built around me, the little starlet who was getting so much attention. I’d been on the scene for so long, in fact, that when Bonnie Franklin heard that she was going to play my mother on the show, her first reaction was that I was too old to be her daughter. Bonnie’s character—Ann Romano—was supposed to be thirty-five. I was only fifteen— two years younger than my character!—so I definitely wasn’t too old, but it had been three years since I’d shot
Graffiti
. I had a very public life. I was such a familiar face that she assumed I was much older.

Shooting the pilot wasn’t momentous for me. It wasn’t a new-enough experience to be nerve-racking or exceptionally exciting, and, as I’ve said, I had no idea how significant the role would be in my life. I don’t remember rehearsing it, shooting it, watching it, or celebrating it.

Needless to say, my lack of awareness was immaterial. CBS loved the pilot, with one exception. In the pilot my character, Julie Cooper, was an only child. CBS’s major note was that they wanted a sibling for me, so Valerie Bertinelli was cast as my younger sister, Barbara Cooper. Later they’d be patting themselves on the back for that wise and show-saving decision.

Valerie remembers the first time we met better than I do. She always tells it that we were in an elevator on our way to the rehearsal hall. I don’t remember the setting, but I know that I was a lot taller than she was and different in every way. I remember seeing a cute little kid—we were only six months apart in age, but she seemed like a young child to me. Not only was she five inches shorter than I was, but I wore platforms that made me almost six feet tall. She wore sneakers. I wore tight jeans and leather jackets. She wore headbands; I wore shades. I was so young, but at the time I didn’t feel like a kid, not with my work schedule during the day and the older crowd I ran with at night.

The encounter may not be burnt on my soul, but I can guarantee that Val greeted me as she always did, with a characteristically sweet and enthusiastic “Hi!” With my seasoned club-kid attitude I probably said something understated, like “Hey. So you’re my sister.” I wasn’t trying to intimidate her, but apparently I did.

Julie and Barbara were basically the sanitized, Hollywoodized versions of me and Val. Julie was a rebel. In the pilot she wanted to go on a coed camping trip. She hitchhiked, she became a Jesus freak, she talked back to her mother, she ran away, and she … well, she may not have done anything terrible, but she sure talked back to her mother a lot. Julie also dated a man twice her age—in that case life was soon to imitate art. She may not have been rolling joints for her father at the age of ten, clubbing on Sunset Strip, or getting high with seasoned pros, but the part wasn’t exactly a stretch for me.

The main difference between my character and me was Julie’s attitude. Her parents had split up, and Ann, her mother, was trying to stay positive. But whenever she tried to bond with her daughters, Julie was like, “Can you get to the point? I got boys waiting for me outside.” I was never rude or verbally defiant— actions got me in trouble, not words.

Also, I definitely thought of myself as way cooler than my character. I didn’t have boundaries. Aunt Rosie had certain rules, but when I walked out the door of our house (which I rented) I could do whatever I wanted, and I did. I had freedom and I had money. I saw poor Julie as trapped in her dorky sitcom world of eye-rolling frustration and teenaged howls of “Mo-om!” Her life was specific and ordered by the powers that be. In that way—in her limited freedom and resources—the fictional Julie was more of a real kid than I was.

Barbara was Julie’s clingy, perky, saccharine-sweet little sister. In Julie’s mind poor Barbie needed to be torn up and spit out on a daily basis. Valerie was straight out of Granada Hills, just as bubbly, clean, and eager as Barbara. Val’s innocence only made me feel more sophisticated, as I felt with most people my age. But I wasn’t all confidence. After all, I was still a teenager and what teenager wouldn’t feel ugly next to Val? My bad skin was a particular source of angst. Norman Lear, the producer, didn’t want me to wear much makeup on the show because my skin was “teenage.” Meanwhile Val had perfect, glowing skin that I couldn’t help envying.

I don’t remember re-rehearsing, reshooting, rewatching, or recelebrating the new pilot that included Val as Barbara any more than I remember the first go-round, but CBS was satisfied with the new ensemble and decided to put the show on the air.

That first season we shot fifteen episodes of the show, and we adopted a regular work schedule similar to that of most sitcoms. We shot one episode per week. On Monday we got the script for that week’s show. We did a “table read,” running our lines so the writers could see what was and wasn’t working. Bonnie felt a responsibility to the character and always gave a million notes on the scripts. She’d say, “Ann would object to this behavior from the girls,” or she’d point out that Ann wouldn’t laugh off every single one of the slimy superintendent Schneider’s advances, day after day. At some point Ann had to try to put a stop to it. Bonnie wanted to bring Ann’s ex-husband, Ed Cooper, played by Joseph Campanella, into the show more in order to highlight the conflicts that arose there. Above all, she didn’t want it to be sitcom fluff—she wanted it to deal honestly with the struggles and truths of raising two teenagers as a single mother. She never gave up. She drove the producers nuts. But she absolutely made the show better.

I had enormous respect for Bonnie’s passion, but I was young and knew my place. Most of my notes were suggestions for how to make Julie’s lines funnier or tweaks to her voice or reactions. I was from a broken family, so this was familiar territory for me. Sometimes, as I got the hang of things, I’d make suggestions about how scenes could be shot. Once, for a tough shot where they needed to look into our apartment but also needed a turnaround shot to see the wall, I suggested that they cut a hole in the wall. The director, Alan Rafkin, gave me the unofficial “Director of the Week” award for that idea.

After two days of rehearsal, on Thursday, we’d move to the soundstage, where the crew would start blocking the scenes for the cameras. This was tedious. We had to repeat scenes over and over so they could time the camera moves up in the director’s booth. I was a teenager about it, letting my boredom show, but I never caused problems. My mother’s instructions to be kind and polite to everyone came to the surface on the set. In an industry where some actors see themselves at the top of a hierarchy, I never saw it that way. I was always equally friendly with cast, crew, and guest actors. I welcomed strange faces and was happy to hang out with whoever was around. To this day, if I run into an actor who was an extra on the show, or a grip, or a gofer, he or she invariably tells me that I made him or her feel like a human being. Later there was much to regret about my behavior during my years on the show, but I was never, ever a diva.

Friday nights we taped the show before a live studio audience. In the afternoon, after a run-through, we’d get into wardrobe. I always made sure Julie looked cool. Often, I’d wear my own clothes—the opening credits had me in my own forest green leotard and tights doing yoga. I’d wear bell-bottom Landlubber jeans with Kork-Ease shoes—huge wedgie platforms with crisscross straps that I had in both pink and red. Under the strappy platforms I’d wear Hot Sox—bright socks with stripes, stars, or rainbow colors. I was the tallest woman in the cast by far, so you’d think those platforms would be verboten, but they liked to joke about my height and weight in the scripts. Pat Harrington as Schneider would tease me that if I turned sideways in the shower I’d disappear, or he’d call me “a Q-tip with eyes.”

We taped the show in front of the studio audience twice— actually in front of two different studio audiences—so that they’d have a couple different takes to choose from when they were editing the show. Performing in front of a live audience never bothered me—I finally had the attention I’d always wanted—and it taught me how to be a better actor. There is no faster way to learn what is working and what isn’t. We could tweak a line through infinite rehearsals, but the true test was simple: did the audience laugh? Performing live taught me the importance of good timing.

Aunt Rosie was my on-set guardian. She was with me all day every day. My cousin Patty worked in wardrobe, and Nancy was my stand-in. All three of them were often in the studio audience to applaud me. On Sunday nights at eight we would watch the show at home together, often with friends, on CBS. (This was pre-VCR, pre-TiVo, in the hard-core days of appointment television.)

I read a lot on the set. My father had given me and my brother Jeffrey a list of must-read books for Phillips children. He wanted his children to be able to discuss literature and art. I dutifully read all of the books on the list, cover to cover, but come to think of it, I don’t remember ever talking to Dad about any of them. The list included
Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Comedians
by Graham Greene, works by Byron and Shelley, and
Cosmic Consciousness: A Study of the Evolution of the Human Mind
, which was written by Richard Maurice Bucke in 1901. Also on the list were
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde and
Orlando
by Virginia Woolf, both of which deal with characters who are determined not to grow old. It was a notion that appealed to my father so much that he and Gen gave my brother Tam the middle name Orlando.

One time I was reading off-list—
Dune
by Frank Herbert— and Aunt Rosie picked it up while I was busy rehearsing and became engrossed. During my breaks I took it back, but Rosie took it back up while I was working. Every time I read a great book, I hate putting it down because it feels like the story will go on without me. As I rehearsed I kept thinking about my book in Rosie’s hands, wondering what was happening on the planet Arrakis. Late in the afternoon, I glanced over at Rosie to see if I could tell by the look on her face whether ill had befallen the hero, Paul. For the first time all day she wasn’t buried in the book.
Dune
was on her lap and she was chatting with Valerie’s mother, Nancy. A surge of tenderness toward Aunt Rosie swelled up in me. She had given up having a life to sit on the set with me day in and day out. She was always there, a constant. I loved her for that and more.

Having family around bore quite a contrast to the days of
American Graffiti,
when I’d shown up in San Francisco all by myself. But Dad was still Dad. I was dying for him to see a taping of the show, and one Friday he and Genevieve said they’d come. I asked Pat Palmer, the producer, to reserve two seats for them and she taped off two chairs. When the warm-up comedian went out to get the audience riled up for the upcoming show, I peeked out from behind the curtain. The audience was full, except for two empty chairs. Dad and Gen were late. The comedian finished and we came out onstage to tape the first scene. I snuck a glance at the audience. The seats were still empty. All night, through both tapings, I kept waiting for my father, hoping he was going to show up, believing against all reason that he would. But he never showed. This happened many times.

Maybe Dad wasn’t eager to see the show, but others were. We’d go to work on Monday mornings and they’d give us the overnights—the ratings for the night before. Back in those days there were only five networks, no cable, no computers competing for audience share. We regularly had an audience of around twelve million people—more than twenty percent of the total audience. It was huge. We were often the number one show of the week. The show was in the top ten, or close to it, for most of its run.

When I watch episodes of the show now, I cringe at my overacting. Why didn’t anybody say anything to me? But I guess the high ratings prove that broad, over-the-top comedy was the sitcom style at the time. I do remember Alan Rafkin saying things to Val like, “Valerie, can you hold up your hand so we know you’re acting?” She took a lot of shit. It was not a critically acclaimed show, but with numbers like ours nobody cared much. The powers that be just said, “Oh, yeah, right, but America loved it.” Our show was another feather in Norman Lear’s cap.

Val and I both went to school on set. We were supposed to do four hours of schoolwork per day, in twenty-minute increments or longer. I kept the same on-set teacher, Gladys Hirsh, from
American Graffiti
through all of
One Day at a Time.
I loved the Waldorf curriculum at Highland Hall and at first brought it with me, but Highland Hall didn’t want a working student who only came to school during hiatus, our three-month break from shooting the show. So when we were on hiatus I started going to Hollywood Professional School while Val went back to public high school.

Hollywood Professional School was an odd place on Hollywood Boulevard a couple blocks east of Western. It was in a rank, dangerous part of Hollywood, a strange place for a school. The building was very old, with cement floors painted institutional gray and green. It was not fancy.

The students were all kids who thought they were going to be stars: ice skaters, jugglers, kids who did commercials, wannabes, and, randomly, Leif Garrett. One girl kept spray paint and a rolled-up sock in her locker. She’d spray the sock and huff the paint.