Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [93]
Elaine answered back, “Well, I think it was hostile of you not to correct me for a solid year.”
And so it began . . . a forty-year friendship.
At one point, Elaine moved into my house on Angelo Drive for six months. It was very early in our friendship, so we were still being pretty careful with each other. Actually, I was careful. She complained constantly that there wasn’t enough surface space for her papers. And she smoked. We were like Felix and Oscar. She was Oscar and I was the one with the broom and the dust pan.
It was during the third week of her stay that I met David Geffen. What a force he was. He was just hitting his stride as a movie and music mogul, and I had never met anyone who was so sure of who he was and where he wanted to go. And going out with me was one of the things he definitely wanted.
So we made a date.
“But I’d rather not go into your house if Elaine May is there,” he said.
It seems they had met—and fought—at a restaurant a few nights before. Great. What a houseguest—a complainer, a smoker and now my dates don’t want to come into my home.
So, for a couple weeks, I would meet David in front of the house. Then one night, when I thought Elaine was out, he came inside. I ran up to get my coat, and when I came back downstairs, there they were in the living room, the two of them, chatting away. And they were both complaining about me.
David eventually became a part of my life, and he won Elaine and me over with the sheer power of his energy and optimism and love. And he was an obsessive. Perfect.
But even when Elaine is inciting a domestic comedy, she’s like a sister to me. We have worked together, lived together, strategized together, played together and cried together. When my dad died, everyone tried to comfort me by reminding me of what a great life he’d had. But Elaine was the one who said the very right thing.
“This is awful,” she said. “There is no consolation. It’s just horrible.”
Exactly. That’s exactly how I felt. And by her understanding that feeling, she actually comforted me.
But of all the things Elaine and I do together, the thing we do best is laugh . . . like hell.
In 1990, we co-starred in a movie, In the Spirit, written by Elaine’s daughter, a gifted actress herself, Jeannie Berlin. As with any project, we needed to promote the film, but Elaine is famous for never doing interviews. So our producer and dear pal, Julian Schlossberg, landed on a great idea: Elaine and I should do a faux interview, with me as the eager journalist and Elaine as my reluctant subject. We loved the idea, turned on a tape recorder and began to improvise.
What follows is that conversation, as it appeared in Interview magazine.
Marlo: Elaine, I know you’re nervous about being interviewed, but it’s just me, and you’re a highly articulate person who makes her living putting words together, so I’m just going to throw the ball to you and let you run with it O.K.?
Elaine: Great.
Marlo: What was it like working together?
Elaine: Great.
Marlo: Was it fun working together?
Elaine: Yes.
Marlo: Were there any surprises in our working together?
Elaine: No.
Marlo: Well, there must have been some surprises.
Elaine: Oh. Well, maybe there were.
Marlo: What were they?
Elaine: What do you mean?
Marlo: I mean, you know me so well. Did anything I do surprise you?
Elaine: Oh. Yes. I was surprised by the power of your acting.
Marlo: Thank you. In what way?
Elaine: It was so very good.
Marlo: What about our friendship?
Elaine: It was fine.
Marlo: Do you recommend friends working together? I mean, there are some people who think you shouldn’t mix business with friendship. Or that if you give a friend a dollar, if you loan money to a friend, it will ruin that friendship. Would you recommend taking that risk?
Elaine: Well, I think a dollar is such a small amount to lose.
Marlo: No, no I mean . . . I shouldn’t have said a dollar. I mean, you know, people lend money to friends, right?
Elaine: Yes.
Marlo: Then, somehow,