My Mother Was Nuts (36 page)

The following evening I hosted a screening for the cast and crew. Before the film, I stood in the front of the theater and asked if there was any press in attendance. No hands went up. “Good,” I said, and then let everyone there know exactly how I felt about the situation.

At the end of the week, I was in Cuba. As was my habit, I had made plans to get out of the country when the movie opened, and I stuck to them. I flew there with a guy I knew from Texas. I had a script that was partially set in Havana. We went to the Communist beach, which was a pain in the ass. So we changed to the public beach. The hotel where we stayed was beautiful, but I left all my clothes there for the people, who had nothing.

Five days later, I was back in New York, where I made it my job to attend every public event where I might be needed, seen, and photographed. I made it my mission to testify to the safety of New York City and the resiliency of being a New Yorker. I showed up at benefits for firefighters. Patty Smyth and I bought supplies, including new bed sheets and blankets, for our local firehouse, Engine 74. I went to benefits held downtown. I went to anything downtown. I went to the first basketball game at Madison Square Garden, the Knicks versus the Wizards, and while there I watched the clock because I wanted to get up to Yankee Stadium for the World Series game against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Spike Lee saw me getting up. “Where you going?” he asked.

“Yankee Stadium,” I said.

“It’s only the second inning,” he said.

“Yeah, but there’s security galore because Bush is there,” I said, referring to the president.

I went to all three of those home games. I also went to Ground Zero with the firemen from Engine 7, Ladder 1 and listened to their stories, though, as I think about it, they didn’t say much. They kept most of the horrors they saw that day to themselves. I did a lot of hugging and saying thank you. They made me want to go every
place I could to show that it was safe in New York, and I did, nonstop.

I would flash on my mother, me, and the other children from dance class doing our routines on the subway to entertain. I could hear her say everyone should know what it’s like to entertain. In those weeks and months after 9/11, I felt like everyone should know what it was like to be in New York. It was a terrible thing that happened. We had to make it better. People were doing their part. I wanted to do mine.

It was a job that suited me. For the next eight years, I devoted my time and energy to charities and sports. I got involved in helping Blake Hunt, a teenager who was left a quadriplegic after getting injured playing football. I met him at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and followed him on to Beth Abraham, where Dr. Sacks had once worked. I also got involved in helping his roommate, Jermaine Fairweather, a college-bound kid who’d been working at Macy’s when he was shot and paralyzed. Charity work agreed with me. I supported food banks and inner-city kids. I arranged for athletes to visit children in hospitals. My brother had opened my eyes years earlier when he told me that I could give someone a life. It was true—and it didn’t require much effort. If you can’t always provide a new life, why not do little things that simply help improve someone’s life? I know it’s cliché, but after getting so much, it felt good to give back.

And after more than a decade of nonstop movie-making, I finally slowed down. Movies changed, and the kind of heart-warming human dramas that I liked to make were fewer and harder to find. Indie movies were on the rise, but I liked to get paid for my time—and it takes as much out of your life to make a low- or no-budget movie as it does a movie for $25 million. I ended up directing a handful of TV shows, including
According to Jim
and
United States of Tara
, and I made two basketball-related documentaries, one for former Lakers center Vlade Divac that was only shown in his native Serbia, and the other, titled
Crossover
, chronicling the new-school
foreign invasion to the NBA. It was a Showtime project that got lost in one of the network’s regime changes.

I was a fixture at the Lakers and Clippers games. My seats at the Staples Center became a second living room. Phil Jackson, the Lakers’ coach starting in 2000, was more aloof than the previous coach and kept the team private. But I knew Kobe Bryant. Occasionally, we went out to dinner. He was too young to go out drinking with the other players. Unlike Jack Nicholson, who took advantage of his floor seats to let the refs know what he thought and sometimes ribbed opposing players, I went to enjoy games, not run them.

Okay, once I was at a Golden State Warriors playoff game and told Stephen Jackson to walk away from a player who got under his skin. “Do you want a technical?” I asked. “Or do you want to win?” Shaq, Vlade Divac, Robert Horry, and Rick Fox were among my favorite Lakers. Mitch Richmond will always be close to my heart for giving me a championship ring. One of the refs, Bob Delaney, also amused me. He once kicked Dennis Rodman out of a game after Dennis threw a ball at him. Later, Dennis apologized.

“You’re a good guy, Bob,” he said. “You just need to get in touch with your inner freak.”

“I didn’t even know I had an inner freak,” Bob said.

I was in New Jersey when the Lakers won the 2001–2002 title against the Nets, their third NBA championship in a row. It was even sweeter than seeing the Bulls’ threepeat. These were my guys.

In 2004, Tracy met and married Matthew Conlan. A year later, she gave birth to a daughter, Isabella. She wanted another home delivery. This time she set up a baby pool in her bedroom and had Lori Petty filling it with warm water from the bathroom. But after she began to bleed, she ended up having the baby at the hospital. A year later, she had another girl, a cutie named Viva. By this time, her hippie days were done, and she went straight to the hospital.

I stayed home both times. After Spencer, I didn’t want to be involved in any more births. “Just call me with the news,” I said.

A short time later, I was in Sacramento for a Kings game against the Lakers. I had gotten to know the Kings’ owners, Joe and Gavin Maloof, whose father had gone to high school with Mickey in Albuquerque. I was sitting in floor seats that night next to baseball super-star Barry Bonds. During the game, he turned to me and said, “Did you ever think when you were growing up that one day you’d be who you are and sitting here in these seats?”

I paused before answering. I thought back on my life, starting with the Grand Concourse to those days in Albuquerque when I was pregnant and scared and getting married in a suit with a fur collar that I hated, and on to all the improbable things that happened to me after I moved to Hollywood and decided to give show business a shot.

“No,” I said.

“Me neither,” he said.

I guess that’s the way it is for everyone. It’s just how life turns out. It keeps things interesting.

You never know.

Penny with Jerry Belson at the 1982 roast of her brother, Garry
Nunu Zomot

I
N MID-OCTOBER
2006, just a few days before my birthday, Jerry Belson died following a difficult battle with cancer. He was at his home in the hills, surrounded by his family, including his daughters and his wife of thirty-five years, JoAnn, who was remarkable throughout his illness and made sure that his last days and hours were as comfortable as humanly possible. My brother called me, trying to sound strong but breaking down as he delivered the news about his writing partner and friend of forty-five years. “Jerry’s gone.”

Even though Jerry had been sick for a while and, if you asked him, in poor health since shortly after he was born sixty-eight years prior, it was inconceivable to think that he was gone. Everyone felt that way. He was a fresh breath of cynicism and warmth. In a way, I had known him for as long as I had known my brother. I was eight when Garry left home for college, and when I reconnected with him upon moving to Los Angeles, he and Jerry were a team. Jerry was always in the picture, at Rob’s and my house, on
The Odd Couple
, and at my birthday parties.

My brother arranged for a memorial on a Monday afternoon at his theater in Burbank, the Falcon, and everyone turned out. It was
a packed house. Michael Eisner and Hector Elizondo had to watch on TVs in the lobby. It was
that
crowded. Garry told Jerry about it before he passed. “Please don’t be candid,” Jerry had told my brother a few days earlier. It was like them to have discussed what was basically their last show together.

“He thought it would be nice if we got together,” my brother informed the roomful of people. “He didn’t know about Monday, though. I said we had a show every other night. He said, ‘What a shame it would be if I go and the Falcon loses money.’”

There wasn’t a dry eye in the theater—and mostly that was from laughing so hard at the stories people told about Jerry. His brother, Gordon, and several longtime friends spoke about his growing up in El Centro, California. His first agent spoke about discovering this major talent who had only written comic books for his own amusement before trying his hand at a script. His daughter Kristine, the middle of his three children, also spoke on behalf of the family. His sister, Monica Johnson, sat with them, daubing her eyes with a tissue and deferring to others, starting with Lowell Ganz, who recalled being in awe of Jerry when he started at Paramount fresh out of college and with absolutely no experience.

“Not only hadn’t I written a script before,” he said, “I had never met anyone who had written.”

Then, one day, as Lowell told it, he was eavesdropping on Jerry and several other writers, including Harvey Miller, and he felt his stomach sink into a pit of despair. “I thought if you had to be as funny as Jerry to be a sitcom writer I was doomed,” he said. “But later I realized there was a large gap between Jerry and employable.” He went on to praise my brother and Jerry as teachers. He said Garry was instructive and hands-on, whereas Jerry “had the attitude of ‘why should they know what I know?’”

I went to the podium and read a message from Carol Kane and a longer remembrance from Paul Schrader, who recalled phoning Jerry one day, asking if he wanted to get together. Jerry said he was too depressed to get out of bed, but Paul was welcome to come over.
So he did, and once there he got into bed with Jerry. Then Albert Brooks dropped by, found them in bed, and climbed in with them. They talked and laughed for a couple hours, until Jerry was ready to get up. Paul called it one of the happiest days of his life.

“I don’t want to read Paul’s book,” cracked Albert, who followed me up to the stage. Dressed in black, he let out a sigh that captured the way all of us were feeling at that moment. Like, really? “I spoke to him a few days before he died,” Albert said. “He said, ‘I have cancer.’ I said, ‘How’s it going?’ He said, ‘If they give you a choice between chemotherapy and death, pick death.’” Albert told more stories that had everyone laughing hilariously. “He said he didn’t know how much longer he had,” Albert continued. “A day, a week, a year, fifteen years. He didn’t know. I said, ‘Isn’t this exactly like our first conversation forty years ago?’”

Carl Reiner said a few words, as did Rob, who spoke about how all of us had always looked up to Jerry. Rob recalled a trip he and I had taken with Jerry and his wife, JoAnn, to the Dominican Republic. We had gone into town and were walking around when we saw a man with no legs on the corner. We all assumed he was a beggar. But as we stood there, Jerry quipped, “He’s waiting for the sign to change from ‘Don’t Crawl’ to ‘Crawl.’”

Tracey Ullman and Jim Brooks added to the funny memories. My brother also reminded us of one of the best Jerry stories, which was how he proposed to JoAnn. Apparently she gave him an ultimatum: marry her or she’d go to Europe. Needing time to think, he drove her to the airport. There, she repeated the ultimatum. “What do you want? Should I take off? Or should I stay?” she asked. He rubbed his beard. “Can you take off and circle?”

I mentioned that Jerry always said, “I paid for your braces,” a reference to the braces I wore in the movie
How Sweet It Is
, and added, “So you have to give me drugs.” He was a big pot smoker. “Then he’d call me up and say, ‘I’m coming over so hide everything.’ But then he’d show up and beg.” I recalled he had made a guest appearance on one
of the
Laverne & Shirley
talent show episodes, and he’d been incredibly nervous. But he was wonderful—and he was going to be missed.

At the end of the gathering, the memorial, whatever you want to call it, everyone sat still for a few moments. No one moved. We had been ushered into a special place. For many of us, it was a trip back to a special time. We didn’t want to be reminded that it had ended. We wanted to hear Jerry pick up the phone one more time and say, as he always did, “Hey, babe.” We wanted his advice one more time, even though he always said the same thing: “Make it funny, honey.”

We tried. He succeeded. As we testified that afternoon, the many laughs he had created lived on, and would live on, continuing to do their job, providing people a temporary timeout from the harshness and hardship of life. For that grown-up kid from El Centro who had given me so much professionally and personally, that was very cool.