Send in the Clowns….

My friend Deborah had left instructions for her memorial service, including a list of people to thank at the end. Her little niece struggled to pronounce all the names, including my own, of people she’d never heard of. There was a whole clump of us “drama” friends to thank, as most had written emails or even made videos for Deborah, reminding her that, although she was far away, she was not without friends wishing her well.

Sometimes what you need at any given moment can come from unlikely people.

 

This post is dedicated to my fellow classmates from University High School with who I shared many interesting and now treasured times with in Mario Lomeli’s drama classes, rehearsals, festivals and stage productions in the late 1970s. In particular, I would like to send a special shout out to John Putch, probably the guy I knew the least in my class.

John makes movies. He has made movies since before I first met him in 10th grade. He is still making movies. He writes, directs, and produces. Back in the day he used to act in them as well. He was really, really funny by the way.

His early movies were Super 8mm, and they featured most everyone in our drama class. Most. Not me, fyi. I was either invisible, or just not in his league.  Tho I was definitely a fan.

John, the grown-up filmmaker, recently presented his latest film called “The Father and the Bear,” at an LA film festival, where it received an award. I got to see it on the big screen. I was one of the last of our classmates to see the film I guess, because I didn’t know anyone there except John and our mutual friend Dendrie Taylor, who had a featured role.

The film was a testament to what John does consistently, and consistently well, which is be himself. A great lesson. It’s a sweet movie about a beloved aging summer stock actor who has dementia, and is losing his reason to be. He is brought back for one last encore performance in a fundraiser for the theatre, and everyone is bracing for his failure, but hoping for his success. He sells out the house, adding mounting pressure. I won’t ruin it….it’s worth the watch and it is for sale. But I’ll say this much: there is a community of love which helps our hero ultimately. And seeing her dad get all this help, helps his daughter (played by Dendrie) in her transition, accepting the changes in him and as her role as caregiver.

The star of the film was the theatre itself, Totem Pole Playhouse, which was John’s second home growing up summers in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania. The theatre is still in operation, and Johns dad, Bill Putch, ran the theatre for over 30 years, even rebuilding it after a devastating fire.

John’s mom Jean was a household name in a groundbreaking television show in the mid 1970s, so the rest of their seasons were spent in an entirely different existence: Hollywood. Hence, our meeting in West LA’s University High (aka Uni…); once a vibrant public school which served Westside LA communities such as Brentwood, Westwood and Bel Air.

John kept the worlds pretty separate. We never got a glimpse of life at Totem Pole Playhouse until he created a documentary about his father, and then more recently in these independent movies he makes, all shot in PA. And now more than ever, it’s clear who John really is. He’s John from PA and John from Uni. Or maybe it’s the other way. But there are two halves to John.

Just like there are two John’s now….there’s John the silliest filmmaker I have never known, who’s early films still making me pee my pants, and those films which John makes now which can be very sentimental.

And I’m not even going to get into the John who directs television shows for a living . From the way he tells it, it’s a means to an end anyway. His heart is clearly in a holistic process which is his own.

About 2 years ago I had this good and bad experience when I tried a mini-comeback in theatre.  Years before, I had written a play about my mother and her vaudeville family.  And with the help of two collaborators, we launched a workshop of this hidden gem which had been stuck in a drawer for, oh over a decade. It was a less than satisfying experience.   In fact, it felt like playing with theatre was playing with fire, and I came crawling back to my job in film production, which now seemed to be the easiest job in the world. See, I found myself in a very painful situation when the knives came out. I realized how alone I was as a writer, and how everyone will kill you: actors, director, producer, if you give them the opportunity.

But for a second, I would like to point back to this band of friends from high school.   I have to say that even though I really struggled to fit in at times, they really surprised me in the end. Until perhaps the last semester of high school, I felt I did not rate.  It was not easy being from one drama department in middle school (let’s just say south of Pico Blvd.), and then showing up to another one in high school (north of Santa Monica Blvd.) where most had matriculated from their Jr high in Westwood. This may have all been in my head, except, well it wasn’t.   But they all came out to see my tragi-comedy vaudeville extravaganza in 2015, for better or worse. That surprised me to no end. Seriously, you can really tell who gives a shit when they drive all the way to Venice to see your work onstage after 37 years in a tiny theatre that seats 34.

John was among the friends who came to see my epic vaudeville play. He introduced himself in the ticket line, shook my hand, and said “I’m John Putch.”  And I said “OMG John of course I know who you are!” He mention he was very pumped to see the show,  but then I remembered his movies always had vaudeville characters in them. As I said, my play was fraught with creative conflict — between me + the actor playing me, the actor playing my mother with dementia (who could not remember her lines, yes, Life<>Art), and let’s not forget the director who was channeling my actual mother (that’s not a compliment, by the way). By the end I was practically banned from rehearsals, and there was certainly no face-to-face communication. Only painful emails. At one point, I got a nasty one about where I had sat during the show that night. (“So disrespectful and thoughtless”, according to one producer/actor). I was sitting in the 3rd row. Whatever.

A couple weeks later John and I met for lunch. I had NEVER socialized with John in high school except in a group setting. It was our first one-on-one.

What do you think he said to me? It’s easy, c’mon.

“Why didn’t you direct it yourself?”

I don’t direct.

“Why not?”

I’ve never directed.

“But you know what you want, don’t you?”

Yes, of course

“Well go get what you want.”

I took that home with me to think about.

 

One of the first people in that group of higher drama mortals was Deborah.

I have much more to say about her and her amazing heart, but this will come in other chapters here. Suffice it to say that when that girl had your back, she had it.  And ironically she was the first person to collaborate with me in Lomeli’s class: she directed and I did everything she told me to do. Well in case you haven’t put it together, Deborah left us recently.  Coming up on a year actually.

OK, I’m back. I went away for a sec.

Deborah was a very, very VERY complicated person, and consequently  very Very VERY sensitive.  She lived in Birmingham.  Not the one in Alabama….the one in the UK.  Many of the tribe had not seen her in decades.  However, she and I had remained close since high school and college, and I was one of only a handful who had visited her in her adopted country.  Even before her 2007 cancer returned, when I would see her from time to time, she appeared to need constant reassuring, as if she’d been alone in a desert.  Although England’s hardly a desert, she did seem  marooned there, and worse, in a large industrial city which was not a destination for any of us traveling to the UK.  And now, in light of her diagnosis, I asked what Deborah wanted or needed and she said she needed to hear from people.  And she didn’t mean just once.

So after the vaudeville debacle, but before Deborah’s demise, I went to the UK to see her.  I had been working on a project in Prague, and had promised to come to England on the way home.  She had had it in mind that she would in fact come home, perhaps one way.  She’d mentioned trying to fly home in the spring, but now it was April already.  I really wanted her to just jump on a plane and go for it, but lots of things were making that look like a bad idea.  Now her pain level had gotten “intolerable” (though she would tolerate much greater levels in the months ahead).  Friends she thought she would see once more, she would not in fact ever see again.  That was a difficult thing to come to terms with.  One dear friend from our 70s drama days, Larry, organized a little video shoot in front of our old school. Others who could not make it sent me their on-camera messages to deliver.

On my way home from CZ, I walked into the house in Birmingham with as many visual material I could assemble to fill the empty space. And before dinner, Deborah was laughing, wiping away tears, and asking to play the videos again.  Her partner, Gershon, thought I had brought some strong medicine.  The only problem was that we ran out of it pretty quickly.

“Do you remember,” Deborah says, “the movie with John Putch and Mike Pizzuto when the car slips on a banana peel and crashes???”

And now back to John Putch, the filmmaker. So John and his Uni high sidekick, Mike Pizzuto, used to make these very, very silly movies. They were the clowns. They were the vaudevillians. They even play vaudeville characters in some of their films (and super-heros and others). Look how silly…

I emailed John that night.  When I checked my email in the morning, he had sent the vimeo link to the archive of funny movies, circa 1978-79. Deborah and I were splitting our sides all day and evening. Her husband came to check on us, as laughter had so not been a part of the heavy atmosphere in the old Birmingham house. In fact, he remarked the other day to me about the extraordinary transformation that day.  No one knows but me that it was those old movies uplifted our friend.  The faces of old friends, now young again. A talented bunch of hams I adore.

 

 

Send in the clowns.

Two years later I directed my first play. It was fun, rewarding, and yeah, hard.  There were one or two assholes (ok there was one) but you know I managed.

When John came to see the play I directed, he said “did you get what you want?”

Yes

“Told ya.”

Today I call myself director/writer/producer. Fuck that. Director/Writer/Producer.

When Deborah passed away her body was repatriated to Los Angeles, and we held a memorial. Several folks from Lomeli’s drama class came together and mourned the loss of our friend, and one of the first among us to be taken before her time.  But we were well represented. I was a pall bearer.  Three of us from Uni were in fact. Holding the handle, feeling the weight (or lack thereof),  and seeing my friends holding the other handles was nothing less than profound.

At the end of the services, Deborah’s little niece, Caitlin, came up and read a list of all the folks that her aunt Deborah had wanted to thank….friends, students, colleagues, nurses, doctors.  I get that.  And then the other list, many of who were sitting there in rows 2 and 3.  But for what?  I believe it was for making her laugh.  Getting her through.

 

“Thank you, Beuuu, Diana Tash, Mike Koshi—meetzu,” Heaven help… “Amy, Gary Grossman,” they got easier…” Jamie, Amy, Helen(e) (close enough),  Karen Nyberg, Mickchel Horvat, Larry, Gregg Oohsstrin, Mike Pizzuttu,….” Make way for the clowns…

“And John Pooch.”

(laughter, rows 2 and 3).

Thank you John Pooch.  For not missing a beat.  And for the good advice.

Thank you Deborah for the extraordinary friendship.

Thank you dear friends, as we hold each other up in good times and all other times.