Bill
Bill who pitches other people's stories with passion but can't find words for his own story
As a popular psychotherapist in New York City, I see a lot of fascinating clients with complex issues. Bill is a successful theatrical agent/manager in his mid-forties who has a knack for spotting good screenplays and pitching them to producers. Last year he made almost $200,000 in fees and commissions, most of it from getting his clients' work optioned rather than produced. Bill's clients are mostly serious screenwriters who shoot for deeper character as opposed to superficial characterization in their stories. The result is that much of their work never gets to mainstream cinemas or multiplexes. Bill likes actors and screenwriters who get upset when they're reminded of the vast number of slick melodramas and mindless action films that swarm like locusts over the 30,000 movie screens in the continental U.S. He knows that small art houses, like the Film Forum or Quad Cinema in Manhattan, are the only real venues for his clients' work. These days, when his screenwriters show him new material it's as much to get his critical opinion as it is to have it pitched to producers. Bill's actors often ask his advice on how to cope emotionally with badly written parts or idiotic commercials they have to do for the money. He reminds them of Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie when he tells his manager nobody can play a more convincing vegetable than him in a 30-second spot.
Bill has been feeding his passion for good dramatic writing for years. Twice a week he attends Actor's Studio repertoire performances at Circle in the Square in Greenwich Village - on Wednesdays to see the performances for the first time, then the following Saturday to experience the writing and the acting more deeply. He watches five films a week from his library of over 500 videos which is growing so fast he's running out of shelf space. And he goes to the New York Library for the Performing Arts once a week to see videos of plays by Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill and Tom Stoppard, first reading them before he goes to see them. He also sees at least three plays a month on and off Broadway. Occasionally people in the audience notice him taking notes during the performance and probably think he's a critic. Bill is a critic, the best possible kind, who deeply loves and appreciates what he's seeing.
For some time now Bill has been feeling he might be up to writing his own drama. Whenever he's moved by a scene or line of dialogue in someone else's story, ideas start spinning around in his head about something fresh and original that he could write. One day while watching the bedroom scene in Romeo and Juliet, in which Romeo leaves Juliet after they first spend the night together as lovers, Bill got the idea for an updated, satirical version of the scene. His notion was to turn it into a funny, eight minute stage skit loaded with the kind of clever, raunchy wordplay that Shakespeare is such a genius at - something that would play well in a cabaret or Comedy Central type setting, get lots of laughs from the audience and at the same time make them think about the deeper meaning of love. The heart of the satire would be to cast Juliet as an unrelenting skeptic - a cross between Katarina Stratford in Ten Things I Hate About You and Laura in High Fidelity - who challenges Romeo's romantic notions about her and the play and argues that the story is not really about star-crossed lovers but a gang war. Bill also wanted to play with Tom Stoppard's clever dialogue in Shakespeare in Love, in which Stoppard replaces the nightingale and the lark in Shakespeare's original scene with an owl and a rooster. As for doubting Romeo's love for Juliet, the idea first crystallized for Bill a year earlier when he saw The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance. There's a scene in the play titled "When the Illusion Ends He Must Kill Himself" in which a famous actress, Mrs. Kendal, visits Merrick in the hospital and finds him reading Romeo and Juliet. Merrick surprises Mrs. Kendal by questioning Romeo's love for Juliet. Here's the moving exchange between them written by Pomerance that got Bill to believing Romeo was more infatuated with Juliet than truly in love with her:
Mrs. Kendal: Ah, Juliet. What a love story. I adore love stories.
Merrick: I like love stories best too. If I had been Romeo, guess what.
Mrs. Kendal: What?
Merrick: I would not have held the mirror to her breath.
Mrs. Kendal: You mean the scene where Juliet appears to be dead and he holds a mirror to her breath and sees---
Merrick: Nothing. How does it feel when he kills himself because he just sees nothing?
Mrs. Kendal: Well, my experience as Juliet has been - particularly with an actor I will not name - that while I'm laying there dead, dead, dead, and he is lamenting excessively, I get to thinking that if this slab of ham does not part from the hamhock of his life toute suite, I am going to scream, pop off the tomb, and plunge a dagger into his scene-stealing heart. Romeos are very undependable.
Merrick: Because he does not care for Juliet.
Mrs. Kendal: Not care?
Merrick: Does he take her pulse? Does he get a doctor? Does he make sure? No. He kills himself. The illusion fools him because he does not care for her. He only cares for himself. If I had been Romeo, we would have got away.
Mrs. Kendal: But then there would be no play, Mr. Merrick.
Merrick: If he did not love her, why should there be a play? Looking in a mirror and seeing nothing. That is not love. It was an illusion. When the illusion ended, he had to kill himself.
Mrs. Kendal: Why, that is extraordinary.
Merrick: Before I spoke with people, I did not think of all these things because there was no one to bother to think them for. Now things just come out of my mouth which are true.
Bill cried when he first saw this scene in performance at the Actor's Studio. He cried even more when he read the play. Not long after that he saw James Lipton interview Stephen Sondheim on Bravo. Lipton asked Sondheim if he'd ever used a rhyming dictionary when writing song lyrics and Sondheim replied that he did. Well, the following day Bill scurried over to Barnes and Noble and bought a rhyming dictionary. But when he tried to use it he found it totally incomprehensible. What a weird thing to read words phonetically based on their sounds, as opposed to phonemically based on their meanings, or at least what academics say they're supposed to mean. Bill got totally intimidated by the dictionary. He put it aside for months and tip toed around it, occasionally forcing himself to look at it. At one point he thought he'd developed a full blown phobia. So, after avoiding and procrastinating for the greater part of a year, he finally pushed himself to learn how to use the thing which, it turned out, wasn't any more difficult than trying to find a file you've just downloaded using Windows 98. Bill pushed himself not just because he needed to do something original after watching and studying all those plays, but also because, like Merrick, he needed to impress his girlfriend. Here's what he finally came up with:
Juliet and Her Romeo in the New Millennium
FADE IN:
The wee hours of the morning. Romeo is fast asleep. Juliet gazes at him sweetly, languorously. A nightingale sings off stage. Romeo stirs, gives Juliet a long, tender kiss, then moves to leave. Juliet pulls him back in bed.
Juliet
Oh Romeo, wouldst thou leave me with my pony on the go?
For if thou did I'd be obliged to slap it.
And t'would never be exactly comme il faut,
Indeed, I'd be constrained to handicap it.
Romeo
Racy girl, full dressage would lead to insufficient woe,
A prematurely consummated plot because I lingered.
Pray, cool down till I remount incognito,
And be content with fervid equus fingered.
Juliet
Flaccid pilgrim, thou wouldst leave me here in vaginated toil,
All wanting and askew, a panting ingenue,
To work myself into an artless broil,
Akin to hand-pressed, frothied Montagues!
Romeo
Ah Juliet, it ne'er occurred to me in fondest reverie,
That even spirited mares not beg for intermission.
Aye, countless swindled maids must be'n recorded history,
Encumbered and unsated by so minuscule a seat of acquisition
Juliet
Cockered boy, do not peter out on me in phallic bonhomie,
For as you rise to empathize the nightingale doth sing,
Which yet leaves time for lusty-thrusted spirited activity,
By thine uplifted night bird fully cocked, in wanton caroling.
Romeo
Hollow night bird, tis not the nightingale you hear,
But the prudent owl who know'st when to rest,
Too wise to let us our own plot besmear,
By labile minored pleas effused from being penisless.
(Juliet rises in anger)
Juliet
Aye, pleas as soundless as thy hoots for venerated plots,
Whilst nightingales give way to cranky larks,
Who spend long sterile days tied up in knots,
Unsparked by dickering, stage-struck patriarchs.
Romeo
Poor stunted ears mistake the nagging screech of larks,
For the gloried matinals of noble roosters,
Whose fertile-throated calls ne'er fail to mark,
The bawdy barnyard mien of great producers.
Juliet
Alack, the pitied gait of limpest boosters,
Fixed on long-winded plots but weakly proffered,
By err-brained Montagues who would be roosters,
(To the audience, with implike relish)
Yet end stage-roasted capons, fully Stoppard.
Romeo
Oh shamèd stable girl, thou wouldst malign,
The noble-spirited clan of Montagues
Who even in high hubris would incline,
To tender vulvaed Capulets sweet-tongued coos.
Juliet
Hence bid to drink vile potions by a hasty-witted friar,
Then enter stage-struck Romeo fully blindered,
Who doth belie stilled Juliet consumed in wishful ire,
For his scene-stealing heart at full tilt daggered!
Romeo
Oh sacrilege! Thou wouldst impale my loving heart,
For crimson lips and cheeks so fair in everlasting rest,
Embraced in dateless bargain, never to depart
Our own dim nightèd palace ever blest.
Juliet
So quick forgotten thy dispatch of Paris,
Whilst on thy whiny pilgrimage to me,
Hence mewling over Tybalt in frozen animus,
And none of it for me but all for thee!
Romeo
Oh woe is me! Thou speak'st not as Juliet,
Now lost most lovèd night bird,
No greater beauty nature could'st beget
No sound more lovely in a single word.
Juliet
Nay Romeo, thy self-love played to me as purest love,
Doth come from fawning boys too blind to see,
That plots which play as wars can not be love,
That horses as would plots run loving free.
(He tries to speak, Juliet interrupts)
Long winded boy, alight.
Save thy hackneyed story line,
For trophied concubines best served supine,
Akin to hollow-brainèd Rosaline.
FADE OUT
A man sings off stage.
(Tony from West Side Story)
Maria . .The most beautiful sound I ever heard:
Maria. Maria. Maria. Maria...
All the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word
Maria. Maria. Maria. Maria...Maria!
I've just met a girl named Maria
And suddenly that name
Will never be the same
To me.
Maria! I've just kissed a girl named Maria
And suddenly I've found
How wonderful a sound Can be!
Maria! Say it loud and there's music playing,
Say it soft and it's almost like praying Maria!
I'll never stop saying Maria!
The most beautiful sound I ever heard Maria...
Right after Bill showed the skit to some of his clients, a few close friends and some actors whose work he respects, he came to his therapy session in a state of euphoria. "People are telling me I could actually sell it," he told me, "to theater companies that have cabaret or do comedy skits." They also told him he should be writing more satire for the stage, even a full play; all of which delighted me as his therapist because I'd been nagging him to do precisely that for the past three years.
Bill's euphoria was short-lived. It didn't take him long to drift back to his old pattern of hemming, hawing and procrastinating. In his worst moments he gives into dark fits of self-doubt. His mind gets muddled, the passion drains out of him, and he sinks into a heavy torpor that barely covers a deep sense of despair. In other moments, Bill clicks into paranoid mode. He rambles on about his enemies, a special list of people who have wronged him in the past and who can always be counted on for a good fight. These powerful folks are like a squadron of enemy war planes that careen into his head at a moment's notice. Bill's favorite is a poetry teacher at the Writer's Voice who not long ago made him feel like he has about as much talent for rhyme and wordplay as chopped liver. I tell Bill he likes to pick elaborate fights in his head with these people because they distract him, that reverting to his enemies list is the ultimate distraction which not only keeps him from feeling depressed but, most importantly, stops him from facing the challenge of writing. These days, Bill has himself half convinced that his Juliet skit was a fluke and that he'll never manage to do anything nearly as good again. In one session, he used a scene from the film Bull Durham to make his point: "You remember when the Kevin Costner character is in the locker room talking about the difference between the major and minor leagues. Fifty hits a year, he says, one hit a week makes the difference. That's the difference between me and Tom Stoppard. He does it a lot more frequently and consistently than I'll ever be able to." What can a humble therapist possibly say in response to such a fine metaphor?
What I said to Bill, with, I admit, a lot more agita than Dr. Melfi could ever manage with Tony Soprano, is that he has two devastatingly effective ways of sabotaging his creativity:
- He consistently abuses it by nourishing himself on crumbs when he needs a full meal. For example, he took fiction courses at the Writer's Voice for three years when he knew deep down he really wanted to write drama. Then he took a bunch of screenwriting courses and workshops for another two years when he knew he really wanted to write plays.
- Now that he's finally admitted to himself that he wants to write plays, whenever he gets close to doing real work his old tried and proven squadron of enemy war planes dives in like Kamikazes. At the moment of actually writing, he slips into a long, kill or be killed tirade in his head - against the asshole poetry teacher, or that icy bitch of a fiction teacher last year who made him feel like a literary pauper, or that mind-fucker of a literature teacher he had in college, even his poor misbegotten English teacher in high school. Any enemy will do for Bill, anyone who mirrors the knifelike techniques his mother used to make him feel worthless as a child. To borrow Julia Cameron's term in her excellent book, The Artist's Way, these people are Bill's personal crazymakers, perpetually on call to help him smother his creativity. By the time he's finished getting back at any one of them (it usually takes about five minutes for a given tirade to play itself out) he's lost the spark that initially inspired him to write, drawn a complete blank on the dialogue it was leading to, his brain has turned to mush and he feels like a hopeless fool.
The other day in his therapy session Bill let himself feel the despair that lies beneath his crazymaker tirades and admitted he uses them to keep the despair from breaking through to the surface. "One night I was watching a performance at the Actor's Studio," he told me. "Those young actors never fail to move me, the way they go out there as if they own the stage. And they do own it! They move slowly, naturally, live every single moment, take all the time they need to fill the space around them with what's inside them. They even manage to do it with parts not written that well to begin with. How in the hell can they do that without getting stifled or blocked, without apologizing for just being there!?" The best answer I've ever been able to give Bill is that they've always had someone there to believe in them as they work, take risks, make mistakes and learn from their mistakes.
The psychoanalytic literature is filled with stories about people like Bill, Ellen, Susan, Vinny and Michelle. The stories describe people caught up in unbearable thoughts, feelings and horrible unconscious images of themselves that got lodged in them as they grew up, as their true selves were pushed into hiding. Most of us can only catch glimpses of our true selves in dreams or in conscious projections like the picture on the Psychotherapy Group in the Village home page of roses in Monet's garden at Giverny. This picture is what Jung called an anima projection. It comes from someone deeply touched by the beauty of the roses who had to take that picture.
Could Bill ever use the splendor of Monet's garden as inspiration for a story? Will he always be too filled with self-doubt and despair over his own creative abilities to fully take in beautiful things in the world like Monet's roses? Simple external beauties that could help him embrace his own inner beauty so often lost to him himself?