Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

True West

THE PLAY OPENED in a ninety-nine-seat house for a run of twelve performances. Access Hollywood reported that scalped tickets were going for nineteen thousand dollars on eBay.

As the curtain fell on opening night, the crowd thundered, screamed, and wept. No one had ever seen anything like it or ever would. At the star’s insistence, the uncharacteristically tearful Jorgia Wilding emerged from the wings to join the cast in deep bows. That bittersweet mix of first and last hurrahs.

Though critics had been barred, many in the audience (culture vulture luminaries) posted Internet opinions — word of Web being that while Kit Lightfoot’s transcendent performance was at times halting, it was more haunting than anything else. Toward the end, representatives from a few national publications smuggled themselves past the box office, yet by the time their reviews ran (breathlessly) — the New York Observer headlined “Long Day’s Journey Into Lightfoot”—they sounded dated and glowingly apocryphal, for production had already triumphantly shuttered, having spiritedly entered the deathless annals of mythic theater lore.

Viv Wembley sent flowers.

The Leno Show

THE BAND PLAYS the Supertramp theme from World Without End as he comes out. The longest ovation in Leno’s history.

For the next five minutes, hoots, catcalls, coughs, and whatnot as the mob cathects then settles upon its collective seat.

“Wow,” says Jay. “I cannot tell you how happy I am — how happy the world is — that you’re back.”

Tsunamis, then tidewaters of applause. Kit humbly smiles and begins to respond — forced to give up, as the audience dam breaks. Awash again.

Second longest ovation in Leno’s history.

Kit’s jaw is clenched, his eyes wet. Bodysurfing the no-silence.

Jay, too, wipes away a tear. “I’m getting very emotional,” he says, sweetly shaking that ridiculous-sized chin. Slightly embarrassed, or playing at such. Now and then it’s OK to be unmanly.

Kit smiles and says nothing. Stop-starts, charmingly stymied. Audience, charmed too — way, way on his side. Still, though, he hasn’t said a word, and they’re kinda nervous about that….

How will he sound? All retardy?

Time now overdue for that first sentence moment —utterance to be reported the next day, the quip heard ‘round the world.

(That one-giant-leap-for-mankind moment.)

Finally, after a great sigh it comes:

“What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

Laughter, tears, ovation! The sentiment funny and true! And he sounds normal!

Just like they knew he would.

… more than anyone could have dreamed or hoped for.

Kiki had six writers spend two weeks brainstorming. Then Cela heard the Grateful Dead song on the radio — her suggestion. Kiki agreed. The writers’ picks were too jokey. This, the most real.

The crowd deftly replays his words in their heads, picking them clean for slurs, impediments, I Am Sam — type aftershocks.

Nothing!

(The collective Eye had already searched for skull craters beneath the chic, barely grown out buzz cut — none visible.)

“I just have one thing to ask,” says Kit.

They hang on his words. You could hear a pin drop.

“Because people worry about my mental faculties.”

All anxiously hold their breath. He’s going to say something… serious —

“You are David Letterman — aren’t you?”

Hilarity! Foot-stomping ovation! The kid stays in the picture!

Now Jay and Kit ease into the familiar, comforting shuck-and-jive What was it like?/How does it feel to be back? shtick.

Ice-breaky stuff to give guest and host (audience too) their sea legs.

Jay says, “Now, one thing the people out there may or may not know is that there was an irony connected to this whole ‘event.’ ”

“Event? You mean, when I got hit on the head?”

Laughter. A man of the people, regular guy. Deserving, courageous.

“Yes!” says Jay. “Mind if we talk about it?”

“That’s why I’m here. But you talk — I’ll listen.” Laughter. “Because, man, I am tired. ”

Applause. Whoop-whoops.

Jay says, “OK. That’s fair. Fair deal.”

“I just flew in from rehab,” says Kit, on a roll. “And boy, is my mind tired.” Laughter: tidewater ripple: tsunami applause.

“Carrie Fisher wrote that for me.”

Jay cracks up.

Kit adds, “And I’m [bleeped] nervous. ”

With the unexpected obscenity, Leno joyfully loses it. The crackling realness of the moment. Rapture from the crowd, then—

A (lady’s) voice, from audience: “We love you, Kit!”

Jay, sternly: “Have that woman escorted from the studio… and immediately taken to Mr. Lightfoot’s hotel room.”

Laughter. Whistles, catcalls. Applause.

A (man’s) voice, from audience: “I love you, Kit!”

Jay and his chin lose it again.

Giddiness, contagion. Punch-drunk love. Admiration for the conquering hero’s return.

Jay gently admonishes the audience like the old friends they are. “All right, calm down now.” Back to his guest. “And I want to talk about the play, True West —what a triumph— [applause begins; Jay deftly thwarts another prolonged salvo by continuing] but… and this fascinates me. You were preparing to do a film when you got [awkward] hit on the head…”

Kit nods matter-of-factly. “Darren Aronofsky. Wonderful director.”

“… now the irony is that you were actually going to play — to portray —a character who was very much like you. A famous movie actor who was normal — at least, relatively! — until he was involved in an automobile accident that rendered him with [awkward for Jay now], well, not ‘diminished capacity,’ but I guess what you’d call a kind of neurological disa—”

“Brain damage,” says Kit tersely.

The audience laughs, though slightly discomfited.

“Oops,” says Kit. “Sorry to be political incorrect.” (In a nanosecond, sharks to blood, the mob registers possible retard-omit of — ly from politically. ) “Politically incorrect,” says Kit, self-correcting without fanfare — and all is well again. Just a case of nerves.

“Come on!” Kit says boisterously, throwing down a challenge to the crowd. “You can say it— brain damage! ”

Raises his arms like a conductor while Jay bashfully shakes his head at the mischief making. The audience reverberates: “Brain damage!”

Not once, not twice, but three times.

Applause — ovation.

They are his.

Together Again

“HOW LONG HAVE you lived here?”

“About a year. It used to be Woody’s — Woody Harrelson’s.”

“Very cool.”

The Taosified beach house sat on two lots, north of the Colony.

She invited him over after seeing him on Leno. Why not? She apologized for not coming to the play. She said, with a laugh, that she was worried he’d have seen her in the audience and freaked out.

“Does Alf stay with you?”

“No.”

A vexing beat as the waves crashed.

“Did you know that Woody’s father is in jail for shooting a federal judge? He’s a professional hit man! People even think he might have been the guy on the grassy knoll.” Kit nodded indifferently. “You look… so great. You were so funny on Leno.”

“I missed you,” he said.

Past tense. The air went out of her. “I missed you too! It’s just… I–I… Kit, it was so hard for me. It’s been really hard! And… I know that sounds so self-obsessed and it’s true. I so fucked this up… and it’s been so weird just to try and stay present, to see that — to see that that’s the kind of person I am, or wound up being, because I don’t even think I’m— Sometimes it’s like, I look back and say, ‘Who was that?’ ”