Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

Girl had some serious heart. A full mastectomy at nine — holy shit. If we can find a way to bottle your courage, he wrote back, the two of us will never have to work again. He said he’d probably be in LA sometime in the next few months and would absolutely take her up on her offer. I’ll supply the crumpets, and my friends Fortnum & Mason will take care of everything else. “Hervivor”—that made him smile. She’d been through the ringer, that one, but still had hella spark, hella gumption.

He’d call Ryan to arrange a visit to the set, even a sitdown with the casting folks. Made him smile.

. .

Funnily enough, there were just a couple things he could tolerate entertainment-wise during chemo/radiation. One was Glee and the other was the movie All That Jazz . (Who’d a thunk?) Amid all the nausea, weakness & general tsuris , he even managed to drop Ryan Murphy a line to tell him as much, something he probably never would have done if his kids weren’t such fans of the show. He didn’t know Ryan, but got a lovely note back the very next day saying how moved he was that Michael had taken the time. He said he’d love it if he dropped by, that the cast would be “absolutely thrilled.”

Next month, he would be in LA making a film with Larry Fishburne. He asked Cat, Why don’t we put out a feeler about you doing a guest thing? She said, Naw, they wouldn’t want an old broad. He said, Don’t be so modest, they’d kill to have you on the show. They’re looking for guest stars in your age group: you’re their next choice after Betty White. She laughed. But she was an actor, which meant she was worried about being rejected. That’s just the way we are, no matter how many awards they give us. Professional hazard.

— You loved what it did for Gwyn. Totally revived her career.

— Is that what you’re saying, baby? That my career needs reviving?

— Of course not. Wrong word. [light/fun] Refreshing . Your career needs refreshing . Refresh the page.

–[sexy, like a horse rearing up] Ho ho!

— I think it’d be fun . You could have fun with it. Gwyn went in and had fun , it was contagious, & suddenly she’s singing on the Grammies and touring with Cee Lo. Ryan’s writing her a musical for chrissake.

–[sassy/blood up] Is that what I’m supposed to be doing? Touring? You know, maybe you’re right, maybe I should be touring. Or better yet, why don’t we see if I can do Dancing With the Stars .

— Come on, Cat, you just won a fucking Tony .

–[all Welsh & fiery] Or maybe I should just latch on to Beyoncé. Isn’t she Gwyn’s bestie? Chill with Gwyn & Jay-Z and do fuck-all ——

As an actor, he got it, that fear of being shot down thing, or even the living up to Gwyneth thing. Probably dumb to have brought up. But does she really think I wouldn’t protect her? Afterall, he was Michael Douglas, and knew a few things. His wife was still hurting after all the crap people wrote on the Internet (Oh She Bipolar NOT!!! Just spoiled & beautiful can be the Problem sometime she wonts attention What a way to get it!!)(It may very well be that she is in the process of being replaced with a younger woman. Given his history, this would not surprise me in the least)(she is Roman Catholic he is Jew they are lost christ is the only one who brings peace)but he knew she’d have a blast. Maybe he’d approach Ryan — if he didn’t spark to it, that would be that. Catherine would never know.

Ryan Murphy, Glee’ s creator, was some kind of multifarious genius. A few years back he had a show on cable called Nip/Tuck , a superlatively sophisticated “plastic surgeons gone wild” soap that MD thought was inordinately, outrageously great. It was super-sexual, super-smart, super out-there, & for a while (to his mind) there was nothing on HBO or anywhere else that could touch it. The show didn’t just break taboos, it diced, sliced, fucked, & burned them, then fucked them again. (His favorite arc was Famke Janssen as a transexual life coach who was sleeping with her stepson.) It took a moment, but Ryan made the seamless transition to network— Glee— where the zeitgeist (and the money) was. And just when Glee was becoming a cultural phenom, off he went to direct Julia in Eat, Pray, Love . Didn’t seem to be anything the man couldn’t do.

Glee was fun & frothy & rude, with that kick musicals always gave him. Watching it with his kids was a gas. But where did All That Jazz come from, & why now? Why would he find himself reveling in that chronicle of a death foretold, during chemo no less? Michael had always been riveted by Fosse, he related to the drugs and Ziegfeldian crash&burn grandeur, the eyes-wide-open chronicle of self-destruct, he was held in thrall by the outsized, nakedly romantic, hypersexually sustained self-takedown. Art as intervention. . he felt deeply the trajectory of Fosse’s career as well: from unknown dancer to unknown actor to wham! genius of American dance blam! Academy Award-winning film director who worked maguslike without a net but never (not really) fell to earth. In the cold heat of Fosse’s shadow, Michael was humbly reminded of his own (supremely successful) professional life: from unknown actor to unknown-then- wham! — known TV actor to blam! Academy Award-winning producer to Academy Award-winning actor — albeit it sans defining genius, at least in his own eyes. If anything, the actor’s genius resided in the shrewd custodianship of his instincts. He had no problem acknowledging that somewhere in there was real talent, but had privately fretted over his creative quotient for years. Since the cancer (all the awards & past acclaim aside), he’d begun believing (with some chagrin) that his entire legacy was in danger of slipsliding away into a sort of mega-televisionistic triumph, a Cuckoo’s Nest producer’s credit & a HERE LIES GORDON GEKKOwritten on his grave. Hey, Michael, not fair to compare, he’d say, becoming his own life coach. And to Bob Fosse no less! What’s more important? A man’s work or how he lives and loves? You came back from the dead. You’re shits and giggles rich. Your wife is beyond beautiful & you love her like you thought you could never love a woman before. Two beautiful kids whose rollicking wildhearted innocence feeds you and breaks your heart . . . . so eff being a fuckin genius, it’s too late anyway, you’re old old old, you’re done. Time to rest on the laurels and smell the cancerfree roses —

— NOPE.

Sorry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …

Still mesmerized:

still covetous:

of Fosse’s psycho panache .

That petite, coiled athleticism ; those god-perfect reflexes; that aesthetic of the twitchy, animal-pawed psychosexual dance. Michael never told anyone, but he’d always wanted to move like that— who wouldn’t? — black derby, black bodysuit, black malice/mischief pulsing thru intricate, ladder-hanging routines, the impossible legerdemain that made it look easy. (Hell, Michael Jackson wanted to be Bob Fosse.) The actor ached to dance like him, had that closeted, heavy, sell-your-soul yearning, the way some people would kill to be able to sing. To be a rock star. . . . . Michael was almost religiously enamored of that distinctive, distinctively American genius of how Fosse moved, glided, hunched, lurched, swaggered, carom’d, winked, locked, loaded & sprung, the soaring sex of his fight and flight, the ravenous twinkling gaiety (his passion for dance surprised Catherine when she learned of it, & was the thing that really won her over). More than anything, MD admired the balls-out vulnerability of the man, the fearless transparency, the diamondhard chestpained breathless rockface nobility of shared sheer risk. No one knew it, but his decades-old man-crush was the reason he took on the role of Zach, the director in A Chorus Line ; the offer to embody his hero was irresistible. Nicole Fosse was a dancer in the film, and he spent as much time as he could talking to her about her dad.