Still Foolin' 'Em (27 page)

BOOK: Still Foolin' 'Em

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“Let’s talk,” I said.

“Good, I’m standing outside your office.” As he entered, Haskell announced, “This is not a baseball movie. It’s the story of these two men. One shy, one not, teammates who become rivals who become friends. This has to look real. I’ll make it beautiful, but real.” How could I resist? As we cast the supporting parts with such pros as Bruce McGill and Richard Masur, the crucial role of Pat Maris, Roger’s wife, went uncast.

When we were writing the piece, I’d been aware that my daughter Jenny was the right age, type, and personality. A talented young actress, she was currently on an ABC series called
Once and Again.
I told Jenny that I wanted her to read, as long as she was comfortable with the fact that she might not get the part. She said, “I want to earn it. I don’t want you to feel bad if I’m not good enough. I’d like to read.” Mali liked Jenny’s work on the series and thought she even resembled Pat Maris. We agreed to bring her in to test with Barry, but we wouldn’t tell him she was my kid. Jenny and Barry clicked immediately—their look was perfect; they felt like a couple. Their intimate scenes were splendid. When it was done and Jenny had left, Barry said, “Well, she’s great! Who is that?”

“She’s my daughter,” I said.

“Oh shit, I kissed her!” Barry shrieked. I calmed him down. “It’s fine, you were supposed to,” I said. Mali loved her, too, as did HBO, and we cast her in the part.

Rusty Smith, our brilliant production designer, had the mammoth job of turning old Tiger Stadium into Yankee Stadium of 1961, painting fifty-five thousand seats the pale green used in Yankee Stadium that year and then, incredibly, turning it back into the blue Tiger Stadium of 1961 a day later! The fences were realigned and new ones built to perfection; the famous monuments to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Miller Huggins, which stood in the outfield and had made this thirteen-year-old think it was a cemetery, were re-created and placed in center field. Every bit of advertising was removed from the park. We couldn’t have Roger Maris at bat and an ad for the Keith Olbermann show visible in the shot. We had to strip it down so we could build it up. The upper decks of the original Yankee Stadium would be added digitally, so the ballpark I remembered would be whole once more.

To fill out the teams we would be featuring, we held baseball tryouts at a local university. Over eleven hundred men and one woman—“I wanna be Yogi,” she said—came for a chance to be in the film.

With Yogi Berra, Barry Pepper, and Thomas Jane, shooting
61*
.

We had photographs of the real players, but I didn’t actually need anything to remind me—I remembered everything. In fact, the crew started to call me Rain Man. Each player we chose was as close as you could get to a match, not only physically but in ability. The day before we were to start shooting the baseball sequences, we held a team practice at three
P.M.
It was a hot August day, with beautiful mashed-potato clouds hovering over the ballpark. In their vintage uniforms, the 1961 New York Yankees ran onto that heavenly field with the sun bathing them in the most gentle way. Once again they were together: Ellie Howard and Yogi, Whitey Ford and Clete Boyer, Tony Kubek, Bobby Richardson, and Moose Skowron. As a surprise I had invited Yogi Berra and Mickey’s widow, Merlyn, and their sons David and Danny to join us for practice and our preshoot party. Yogi walked in, took a long look at what we had done to transform Tiger Stadium, and with tears in his eyes whispered, “You put the old joint back together” as we embraced. Merlyn’s entrance was equally moving. A lovely woman, she’d had a very complicated marriage to Mickey. They were separated for years but never divorced, even after Mantle left her for another woman. Despite everything Mickey had done to her and the family, she still loved him deeply. She walked in holding hands with her middle-aged boys, and when I pointed to center field, she turned and caught sight of Tom. He had his broad back to us, the summer sun hitting the 7 on it just right, so he looked like he was glowing. Merlyn let out an audible sigh and had to turn away. I called, “Mickey!” and Tom ran in from the outfield as the sound of the ball hitting the bat echoed around the empty ballpark. The boys greeted Tom, and soon Merlyn joined them, and she and Tom hugged and talked. I felt like a proud papa sitting next to Yogi Berra and watching this surreal reunion.

* * *

The experience making
61*
was—apologies in advance—a total “home run.” This was the third movie I had directed and as much as I had enjoyed the other two, this one proved that directing something so personal to you is the best job in the business. I don’t think I ever had a part as an actor that touched me as much as directing
61*
did.

Revisiting the summer of 1961, the time when I had started to find myself, while really finding myself as a director completed an important circle for me.

A few weeks before its debut on HBO, we were invited to the White House to screen the movie for President Bush. Barry and Tom came, as did Jenny and Janice and Pat Maris and Merlyn Mantle and the HBO brass. The president had invited several senators and other dignitaries. We ate a lovely meal on the South Lawn and soon were ushered into the White House screening room. I sat next to the president, who asked me to say a few words after he welcomed everyone. I started by thanking President Bush for hosting us and for the chance to be with so many people I hadn’t voted for. W plopped his initialed cowboy boots on a hassock in front of us, and the movie started. Mickey has some risqué lines in the first few moments of the film, and I worried that the women in the room might find it offensive. “There’s only a few more,” I whispered to the president as Mantle said, “I like women with small hands—makes my dick look bigger.”

“Bring them on,” whispered W.

At a late point in the film, Roger, playing in Detroit, hits his fifty-third home run off a right-handed pitcher named Frank Lary. President Bush whispered to me, “I think he hit that one off Hank Aguirre, who was a lefty.” I was in awe. He was right. On the day we’d shot the scene, our Hank Aguirre hadn’t shown up, and we’d had to use our Frank Lary. “No one will ever know,” I’d said at the time, but W saw it and knew it was wrong. Now, isn’t it strange that he didn’t know there were no WMDs?

When it was over and the lights came on, the president had tears in his eyes. “Well, that’s the best baseball movie I’ve ever seen. Hell, it’s just a great movie.” Before the president had finished speaking, Tom, in his best Mickey, blurted, “Mr. President, I really want to hear what you have to say, but right now I have to pee like a racehorse.”

“Me too,” laughed the president, and we all ran down the hallway of the White House to the men’s room, where Tom and I and the president relieved ourselves. I love this country.

A few weeks later,
61
* premiered to huge ratings and went on to get twelve Emmy nominations, including best movie, best actor for Barry, and best director (which I lost to a young novice named Mike Nichols), as well as an extra-special honor for me: a nomination by the Directors Guild as best director for a movie made for television. Days after the premiere, Johnny Carson sent me a lovely note saying how much he’d enjoyed the movie; he’d also enclosed a DVD of some film from
The Tonight Show
of 1962 that he wanted me to have. There, in grainy black and white, was young Johnny in a Yankee uniform pitching to Mickey in Yankee Stadium. It is a most prized possession.

Also prized was a phone call from Matt Damon, who told me his mother was mad at him for turning down the part, because she loved the movie. “For a Harvard kid,” she’d said, “sometimes you’re just stupid.”

In October 2011, the fiftieth anniversary of Roger’s home run,
61
* would be honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The script and a print of the movie resides in the hall’s archives.

* * *

Jenny got married in September 2000 (the joyous and emotional occasion I wrote about earlier), which was marred the next day when my uncle Berns collapsed at a family brunch. After my father’s death, his brother Berns had become a giant force in my life. No words can really describe him. A Santa Claus look-alike (he actually played Santa in
When Harry Met Sally…)
with a hilarious personality, clownlike abilities, a booming baritone singing voice, and uncommon artistic talent, he was a rock for me. We were always intensely close. I needed his presence so much.

After his collapse, doctors healed his ailing heart with stents, and, fearing I would lose him, I made it my life’s goal to make his life longer. Janice and I rescued him from his cellarlike dwelling, found him a new apartment, paid his bills, got him healthy, and took every worry we could away from him. We basically adopted an eighty-six-year-old son. For a while Berns had been creating stunning drawings of unusual animals. He’d mix up species—a cat with a lizard’s tail, a dog with a fish body—and all were funny and, in a strange way, touching. I gave them to Tom Schumacher at Disney, and he hired Berns as a character creator. They would send Berns scripts from their animation department, and his job was to draw characters based on what he read. It was daunting at first, but soon he found his way, and his work at the age of eighty-six was as valuable as any of their young animators’.

I was very fortunate to be close to all my uncles. Sadly, my uncle Milt Gabler, who was a giant in the recording industry and in many ways a mentor to me, died the following July. I spoke at his funeral, as did my mother, and it was tough to see my aging mom and her sister and brother weeping at the loss of their big brother. Growing up, they were all like royalty to me: young vibrant people who were electric to be around. Now my mind was filled with dread as the running order seemed in place. Milt was the oldest of the six kids. Who would be next? The fifties may be a time of more wisdom about life, but along with it comes the terrible knowledge that people you love will be leaving you.

Uncle Berns in
When Harry Met Sally
—my own personal Santa.

(Photograph © Andrew Schwartz)

After Milt’s death, we found Berns an assisted-living apartment across the street from the World Trade Center and just a few blocks from our New York apartment. “My night-light,” he called the towers. We moved him in on September 2 and wearily went back to Los Angeles.

It was six
A.M
in Los Angeles on September 11 when my daughter Lindsay called from her apartment on the Lower East Side of New York. “A plane hit the World Trade Center. I’m on my roof watching the tower burn,” she told us, disbelief in her voice. We rushed to the television and watched the beginning of the end of the world as we knew it. The horror unfolded as the news of the other hijacked planes filled the airwaves. I called Berns, who was watching the whole thing from his apartment, a hundred yards away. Berns had been at D-day and had seen mayhem like this before, but not on his doorstep. “They want us to look at this; we mustn’t look at this,” he kept saying. He assured me that he was okay. We tried calling Lindsay back, but the phones were out. Then a friend of hers called us and told us to connect to her through instant messaging. We had never used it before, and this was a hell of a way to start.

As we got online, the first tower fell.