The Long Goodbye

I came home from work on August 11th to find my husband looking shocked.  He was slowly taking out dishes from the dishwasher and said, “You know Robin Williams,” he started.  “Yes,” I said smiling wondering what the punchline was going to be.  I didn’t expect the next sentence.  “He died and the early reports are that he killed himself.”  “Wait - how? Why?” I asked as millions of people around the world did when they heard the news.   Those of us who do comedy improv, looked on him as our Pavarotti - the man with perfect pitch and timing.  

I was in shock and I hoped that this was some sad prank like the fake internet hoaxes for Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby.  I figured if I waited a couple of hours, the internet would figure out it was all a big cluster fuck and the man who made me laugh thousands of times would be fine.  But once I went to the computer, truth was all too real.   Legitimate news sources were reporting on his suicide.  Suicide - I knew he had a problem with depression but Jesus, suicide?  I was numb.   I mean I’m a very emotional person, but I could barely cry.   I posted my shock on Facebook as many people did and even posted his best moments on Whose Line Is It Anyway? a show that does improv games.   I cried a little more but not the soul wrenching sobs that should have come.   This guy was a comedy legend - what happened?  

As the days went by, and the details emerged it got more heartbreaking - he had financial set backs, his sitcom The Crazy Ones was cancelled - he was deeply depressed.   The depression was the one that was getting me.  I’ve suffered from depression off and on since high school and when people would talk about how selfish he was for killing himself it was obvious they just don’t understand depression.   Some people self medicate with drugs and alcohol.  For me, it was obsessing on my weight, purging, crying and never feeling good enough no matter how pretty and thin people thought I was.  I tried to explain on Facebook that depression is like a cancer of the mind.  You would not say, “But she has such beautiful breasts, they had everything how could they get cancer?!”  It’s the same thing with depression, you can have wealth, success and be considered the funniest person on the planet but once that tumor takes hold of your psyche, it can over power you if it goes undiagnosed and untreated no matter how big a movie star you are.  

I remember in college having crying jags so bad, I was not sure if I would ever stop crying.  It was pretty bad after Danielle was born which really sucked because I had this beautiful baby but just felt like I was letting everyone down.  That’s what depression does, it pulls you into a vortex of self doubt, zaps your energy and you close off from people.  Worse is when people take the “just get over it” attitude because once you go down that slippery slope, it’s hard to pull yourself back up.  You would not tell a person with cancer to just snap out of it, don’t ask a depressed person to do the same thing.  But still the commentators on FOX, Rush Limbaugh (who also self medicated and has experienced depression) commented on how cowardly it all was.  Fucking A - these people had no idea and just because you are laughing on the outside doesn’t mean you’re not hurting on the inside.  

But you learn to cover up and for some people, humor is a great defense mechanism.  It keeps people at arms length if you can keep them laughing they won’t get too close - just keep them distracted by good humor and they will think everything is fine.  When the life of the party actually stops trying to crack you up and is serious, it’s a good sign - it means that they trust you enough to let the walls down and they want you to come in.   So I understood in my own way what is was like to be a funny person and still be someone who could walk off stage after making a packed house laugh and feel unworthy. 

A few days after his death, I was feeling a little better but then word came out that he was also suffering from Parkinson’s which had been recently diagnosed.   That hit me hard because my mother has Parkinson’s and I know first hand how that disease can take a healthy person and make them lose the ability to walk and do things for themselves.   It clicked as to why he might have done this - maybe he wanted to go out while he could still do things for himself.  My mother ate right and exercised and she got it - what was to keep me from getting it too - even if they have not be able to establish a link through heredity?  Shit, is that my future?  Would I want to be a burden to my family?  I sat on the computer that Saturday, tears rolling from my eyes because while I hate what he did maybe that was a saner reason than just depression.   

I needed to shake this funk and the kids really wanted to see a Robin Williams movie.  That night, we watched Mrs. Doubtfire and decided to recreate the cake in the face 

“Heellooo!” scene.  Each one of us - the kids and Max and I got to have a ton of whipped cream on our faces with all the giddy silliness of toddlers.   You can see the video see by clicking here.   After it was edited and posted - I have to say I felt much better because I was remembering him for the comic genius he was not the person who had killed himself. 

I would have left it at that until I saw the Twitter posts from Rob Schneider claiming that the Parkinson’s medicine is what killed Robin Williams. That really fucking pissed me off because again my mother suffers from Parkinson’s and if he was in the early stages then he was probably not taking a ton of medication but then I don’t know that and frankly either does Rob Schneider.   To use the reasoning that he had lived with depression for 20 years without offing himself and then blame the dangers of Parkinson’s medication is stupid and fucking irresponsible.  My conjecture (because I don’t know for sure and won’t make an declarative statement) is that his wife was probably keeping a close look at his medications and would alert a doctor to to any severe side effects or complications beyond the depression he had already been experiencing.  If you use that argument then why isn’t Michael J. Fox a victim of suicide as well?  He was diagnosed in 1991 so by using that logic, he would have been gone by his own hand long ago and yet here he is raising money and doing the best he can with what he has.   

I think in the end, we’ll never really know what happened and that’s the sad part.  It leaves us mourning harder then if it had been a random act of fate like a car accident.  I don’t know if Robin will be our generation’s Marilyn Monroe - it’s still too fresh to figure out and there will always be someone who will try to give you the definitive answer as to why - but unfortunately there is none.   In a more spiritual sense, I’d like to think that maybe the manner of his death encouraged people to call suicide hotlines which kept them from taking the same sad path.   There will be no way to know the number of people his final act might have saved.  

I was running with my earphones and Never Had a Friend Like Me came on from my Pandora feed.  I went from a run to a walk and started to cry.   My prayer is that I’ll be able to hear his voice and not feel loss but a genuine joy that this comic genius brought to the world.  Now when I look at a plate of whipped cream - I giggle.  Laughing with him and not crying because of him is what he would have wanted.    

Tina Fey, Liz Lemon, The OTC and Me

I got misty eyed last Thursday night when my friend Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) decided it was time to move onto the next phase in her life.   She'd been producing this comedy show for seven years and knew it was time for something new.   She's a new mom - in fact she had just adopted two eight year olds and recently got married to a man she's been seeing for a couple of years - so those major life changes in such a short period of time were mind blowing.   The effects of trying to produce a weekly comedy show with egotistical actors like Tracy and Jenna were tough enough, but now with two kids, it seemed that she needed more - from her life and herself.    But being the martyr she is, she was going to shoulder on and take care of everyone else because that what female producers do - we take care of people.   We make the other actors look good, we make sure they have enough to eat, we work on things after our kids have gone to bed with their stuffies having sweet dreams because our dream is sitting there in front of us  barely in reach sometimes and so often at the mercy of other people.   We go to our day jobs which are important - sure, but a little bit of us wonders, "Man what if I could write or perform full time and make a living at it - what if this regular job safety net was gone - could I do it?"   Then the cold reality of the light of day hits and you tell yourself - it's better to strike a balance because in both worlds - your actors and your children depend on you to have the answers and to keep going.   So the dream gets pushed aside to after-hours when it's affordable.   

The ironic thing for me watching 30 Rock was that I have what Liz Lemon spent seven years trying to get - a husband who loves me for all my quirks and two kids who are pretty remarkable so that should complete me.  Yet the idea of producing a show on a network even one as dysfunctional as the fictional NBC would seem like a dream come true.  Even though I've spent the bulk of my professional career working in non-profits and in my own way saving the world - I've always thought I would make a good producer because I've also had to put up with a parade of crazy actors, theater owners, and people who come to see our shows over my seven years at the OTC Comedy Troupe.   Like Liz, I've had actors do outrageous things like call an audience member an "Asian Bitch" because he thought he was being funny and couldn't understand that he had crossed a line.  I had an actress not show up for shows until we were half way through the performance and still expected to go on.   I had another woman who did stand-up arrive to rehearsals late, leave early so she could perform at the open mike at the Punchline Comedy Club.  She would also promote her projects to the audience while I was paying her to do my shows.   The advantage to just being their director and not their mother was when it was obvious that these actors were not going to change their egotistical ways, I could fire them which I did.   That might not seem very maternal but for the good of the "comedy" family, they had to go.  

I could understand why Tina Fey decided that after seven seasons she was done with 30 Rock.   According to an article in Rolling Stone, she was trying to balance raising two children -  one a seven year old and one whose 18 months old.  Those sleepless nights were taking their toll - she was just wiped out at the end of the day.  I can understand that - I went back to doing improv when Daniel was about a year old and I was working full time.   Trying to maintain your identity doing what you love and yet the people that you love need you too- sometimes the guilt can really get to you - and you feel like you're trying to scale a very slippery slope.  Add to it the fact that women in comedy have to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously, and it's not wonder why we're sucking down chocolate and junk food like cheesy blasters just to cope.  

Junk food can help because both Tina and I have had to stomach our share of overt of sexism in comedy.  I remember being in the improv group Mental Floss back in Miami in the late 1980's where half the cast was women and the other half were men and still the attitude was that women would not make up a big part of the show.   In improv, you have set the pieces or games and put in the people to perform in them — so it doesn't matter if it's a man and a woman or two men or two women in the scenes because you make up the action as you go along with a relationship which can be husband and wife, co-workers, puppies -- just about anything.  Yet in groups like Mental Floss, the women would be lucky to get four pieces to the 16 pieces that the guys were doing.   Her experience with the legendary Second City was similar, "We were making up the show ourselves. How could there not be enough parts? Where was the 'Yes, and?' If everyone had something to contribute, there would be enough. The insulting implication, of course, was that the women wouldn’t have any ideas.”  Yeah, I've been at the condescending end of that equation and it pisses me off — it's so arrogant and yet in comedy it's so pervasive - the cards are stacked against us which is why I finally said, "Screw this, I'm starting my own company," which I have twice — once in Miami and currently in Atlanta.  

But even being in charge doesn't guarantee that things will be smooth sailing for me or the other women in the group.  I've had guys come into the OTC Comedy Troupe thinking they could weasel their way in, take over and force me out.   Big mistake - because if you want to really take down a funny woman, you'll have to try harder then being underhanded, because we'll see it before you can act on it - call it women's inituition but we generally have a pretty good feel for who is going to work well and who is going to be an asshole.   I've had guys leave the group because I would not let them do sketches on pedophiles, incest or make fun of the handicapped.  They think it's edgy and I know it's just in bad taste and borders on bullying - but because I won't let them do it makes me "a fascist."  Apparently I just don't know what's funny and those topics should be fair game.   True comedy does not come from putting down people who can't defend themselves or making fun of taboo subjects.  My attitude is that if you don't like it, start your own company and perform for the prepubescents who might laugh but won't have the theatrical or corporate dollars to book you.   

So it's on those days when I've had to sit in an empty rehearsal hall 20 minutes after rehearsal was supposed to start and wondered why I put up with it.   What is it about doing comedy and improv that compels me to sit in a freezing back room in an old church with no heat and breaker that trips when you plug in the heater to wait for a bunch of actors to sheepishly meander in?  Why do I care so much?   I've wanted to any number of times to say - "That's it, we're done - workshop is over - next time show up on time.   Good God, is that too much to ask!?"  I've wanted to melt down like Liz Lemon any number of times, but I know it's not worth it.  So I swallow my pride and welcome them in because maybe we all need to laugh.  We start to goof around and then it all makes sense, laughter makes those shitty life moments bearable.   Those web shows that we used to do at the coffee shop that made people smile when they had a lousy day - that's worth it.   Reaching out to a lonely teen and making them laugh in their room while they watch us on YouTube doing a sketch like drunk menopausal Barbie and having them leave a grateful comment on your channel - that's worth it.   Watching seven seasons 30 Rock that my kids and laughing together - those things are priceless.  Laughter has it's own wonderful power and it's a currency I trade in - dammit, it's what makes me who I am even when I think I can walk away - it's not long before I come running back with my hands in the air wearing a silly hat.   Me, Liz, Tina, Ellen - we're silly people who want to make the world better place by getting people to forget their troubles for a few minutes - because if you can genuinely laugh at yourself, you can't hate and you can't hurt.   You can go further with a strength you never thought you had.  Maybe that's why men and women don't see comedy the same way - for us it's a way to heal  - not a way to dominate or inflict pain like the Three Stooges - call it a girl thing.  If that means a guy might not find my kind of comedy funny then I'm okay with that.  

  

So as the sun sets on 30 Rock, I want to thank Tina Fey for us showing women that you can be funny, strong, silly and a hot mess at the same time.  I always laugh hardest when I realize what a total dumb ass I'm being.  I also know that after spending all that time taking care of other people, you need to take a break and try something new.    As I look at my work with The OTC Comedy Troupe, I understand the importance of new chapters.  While I love performing live, I'd like to move us into developing a series for the internet or a cable channel so our work can live beyond the footlights.   One of the sweetest last images you see of Liz on 30 Rock is with her two kids sitting on director's chairs laughing at the show she's producing.  God, I can relate.  My kids used to love to come and watch the web show - they were my laugh track.   I'm starting to write my own show and develop characters that grow week to week rather than ones that last just a few minutes in an improv sketch.  I'm hoping it will have a successful run even if there are bumps in the road which I know there will be.  But you have to take chances and you have to try something new because staying in the same place will just stagnate you.  I know as long as I have people around who will laugh with me I'll be okay.  I'm probably going to fail a few times before I get it right - that's the scary part.   But that's how you learn and that's what defines you.   Thank you Tina Fey for not being afraid to show me that.