Jack-A-Palooza

(With Dad's birthday just passed, and Father's Day not far away, heading into this three-day weekend, I wanted to share this, which I wrote for the memoir class I took recently with Sara Benincasa.)

Catharine & Jack, Christmas, 1995

My father was born in Texas in 1929, and died in California in 2007.  I believe he was rather startled by both events.

Dad was one of those people who always seemed a little puzzled by life in general.  He did achieve a considerable success as a writer for television series and movies-of-the-week, and a single feature film that managed to do exceedingly well at the box office, and in fact lives on, on cable television, premium movie channels, and video-on-demand. 

Still, my father never quite mastered success. He never fully embraced it.  He was never really gracious or elegant at it.  He treated success and professional praise as if he was being stalked by a woman he picked up in a bar one night, that wouldn't take "no" for an answer in the bright light of day. 

He somehow managed to snag my mother at a party one night, though what, exactly she saw in him, I still cannot image. I cannot help but believed liquor was involved.  My father was, it is true, charming, witty, and intelligent.  But he wasn’t really “a catch”.  He was a less-than-tall, less-than-employed actor, attractive in a rather ordinary way. My mother was a beautiful and successful theater actress. She had ridden into to town on the wings of a Broadway touring company. She was beautiful and brilliant, if a bit spoiled and petulant. She had run away from an impetuous marriage to a New York business man who wanted nothing more than to make her happy. 

My father, on the other hand, did not want to make my mother happy. His attitude toward being loved was similar to his attitude toward being successful. He was unable to accept either. So he ended their affair, with me already on the way.  The idea of “doing the right thing” by his pregnant ex-girlfriend was not something my father was even prepared to entertain.  He’d already moved on, was sleeping with my mother’s former best friend (though she would go to her grave not knowing this, as he chose only to confide to me in adulthood), and had no intention of going back, baby or no baby. 

Rules didn’t apply to him. Social boundaries didn’t apply to him. Things like mores and standards didn’t apply to him. Being proper and manners didn’t apply. I’ve no doubt his mother taught him all of these things, the way she did with her other children.  I’m just pretty sure he didn’t think she was talking to him. 

Growing up, we would sit around the table and listen to the adults tell the most horrible jokes – offensive, racist, awful, vicious – some of them about real people. My mother, for all her sarcasm and sly wit, would have cringed at that kind of inappropriateness.  But when you’re immersed in it, you become desensitized, inured, immune.  Years late, my half-sisters and I would construct the Sowards family motto, which my father quickly embraced, once he’d heard it – “If it gets a laugh, it’s not in bad taste.” 

My father used to tell us all the time that he was going to be the only person to “get out of this alive”.  Meaning life.  He also told us that, if he did go, he was “taking it all” with him.  But I think he truly believed that somehow, when the time came, he would find a loophole or a backdoor or a cheat code that would get him an extra life, like in Donkey Kong.

After all, this was the man who invented the Kobayashi Maru test – an unwinnable test that, regardless of what decision you make, what path you take, you and your entire crew are destined to die.  Except one guy actually beat the test.  He did it by cheating. And he was the hero of the movie.  People sat in the movie theatre, watching “Wrath of Khan”, thinking it was a clever little plot twist, designed to show us Kirk’s bad-boy nature and to reveal a part of his character we have heretofore only suspected.  My sisters and I sat in the theatre and saw it for what it was – an escape plan.  Somewhere in his mind, my father was pretty sure that, if he could just get in there and invert that fly wheel, he’d figure out a way to cheat the test.

So when he got the diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease), he was a little shocked. When the doctor gave him the period at the end of the sentence – “terminal” – he was dumbfounded.  Not one to entirely give up on a legacy, he said that, henceforth, ALS would no longer be called Lou Gehrig’s Disease, but rather, Jack Sowards’ Disease.  When I asked him how he figured he’d warranted that, his reasoning was pretty simple:

      “Finders, keepers.”

Hard to argue with that kind of perfect logic. 

My father had always said he wanted to die suddenly, of a heart attack, in bed with a beautiful woman.  He died in bed, but it wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t during coitus.  He was in a coma – had been for days – during the first week in July, 2007.  My sister, who was now his full-time caregiver, had had his bed moved into the living room, because it was cooler than the bedroom, where the windows faced full west.  In the end, the closest he got to a party was when, on the Fourth of July, a small group of family and very close friends arrived with steaks and beer and some sparklers and ice cream. We sat on the screen porch, ten feet away from my dying father, broiled steaks, drinking beer, talking about the best memories, the funniest, most inappropriate jokes, and doing “Dad” impressions all day.  There were so many Dad impressions, in fact, that we began referring to the event as “Jack-a-palooza”.  Every few minutes, someone would spontaneously yell out, “Gahhhd-DAMM-it!”, in the same sing-song-y intonation Dad had used to say it.

Maybe we were hoping we could mock him out of the coma.  My father was never one to let a straight line go, or even a punch line, without trying to top it.  But he didn’t try to top it this time.  He let our jokes lie on their own. My sister spent time between Dad jokes, alternately slipping spoonsful of liquid morphine and chocolate sorbet – first, a teaspoon of one, then a teaspoon of the other -- carefully into his slack mouth, trying to stay ahead of the painful cramps that go along with ALS, 1while ensuring that the last thing he tasted would be the thing he loved most – chocolate.

Is it you?

He died four days later, on the 8th, after my sister had sent all the vigil-keepers home.  Once we’d all cleared from the house, he let go and slipped away. Maybe the audience had to leave before he could wrap up the performance.  Still, I think somewhere inside, he was still a little perplexed – by his life, by his death, by his children, by the women in his life who chose to love him.  It was all a mystery to him, one he never figured out. 

I’m a firm believer in reincarnation, and I do wonder if my father is slated for a comeback. Surely, he didn’t master what he came here to learn, unless telling off color jokes and mastering a pithy one-liner can be considered a spiritual dharma. I look at my grandson, born three years and one day after his great-grandfather’s death, and wonder to myself, “Is it you?” Sylas is also puzzled by life, but then again, he’s four.  The kid can’t tie his shoes yet. 

Still, he is inordinately fond of chocolate.

Leonard Nimoy Will Never Truly Die for Me.

Some time in late 1980, my father, Jack B. Sowards, was approached to write the screenplay for the next attempt to bring Star Trek to the big screen. The first attempt, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, had been a box office disappointment and had cost Paramount Pictures a small fortune to make.  Though it would, through cult standing alone, eventually make back its money (and then some), the motion picture arm of Paramount had little taste for trying to bring the franchise to the big screen.

Enter Paramount Television.

Television executives at PPC, who had an ongoing relationship with ST creator, Gene Roddenberry, refused to give up on the idea that Star Trek could play to a film audience successfully, and would regenerate interest in the characters and the premise of the story.  They suggested making a second feature, but this time, producing through the television arm. Paramount had proven in the 60s that with some ingenuity and clever budgeting, they could make a science fiction space travel series on a relatively small bankroll.  The powers that be at Paramount agreed to give them another chance, and hired television showrunner Bennett (known for his penchant for coming in on budget) to oversee the production.

Bennett quickly set about collecting Star Trek's actors to participate. Almost all immediately, readily agreed.  Except one - Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy had never made any bones about being glad to move away from Spock, and had only participated in the first feature reluctantly. He had moved on, was a writer, a photographer, an artist and a poet.  The constant airplay that the three seasons of the television series provided him were enough to provide him with the ability to pick and choose how and when he worked, and he had moved on to other series work, as a regular (Mission: Impossible, In Search of....) and as a guest star (Columbo, Night Gallery). He didn't need Spock anymore, and wasn't anxious to don the ears for what might be another box office letdown.

Thus, when Harve Bennett approached my father to write the screenplay, he told him there would have to be a new Vulcan character, because the old one wasn't available.  My father (being my father) wasn't about to quit so easily.  "Get me a meeting with him," he told Bennett. "Just a lunch. I will get him to sign."

A week later, he was sitting across a table from Leonard Nimoy himself, the latter having agreed to a brief, half-hour, hard-out meeting with Bennett and my dad.  My father listened carefully to Nimoy's rational explanation for why he did not want to rejoin the cast.  Then he said to Nimoy, "What if I could give you a glorious death scene in the first 10 minutes of the film?"

Silence.

Then Nimoy said, "The first ten minutes?"

"Yes."

"A glorious death scene?"

"Explosions. Fire. Sizzling control panels. The works."

He pushed the first draft of the first 20 pages of what would become Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan across the table. Nimoy agreed to read them.

He'd captured Nimoy's attention.  Nimoy was no fool. He knew that, should he sign on, no producer or writer in their right mind would actually agree to kill Spock off in the first 10 minutes. There had to be a catch. And, of course, there was one. But Nimoy was intrigued by a writer who seemed to be more in tune with the original concept of the show than the high-fallutin' movie producers and screenwriters who had botched the first film.  My father knew what made the series great, and Nimoy was able to see that and understand that it could be great again.

The first twenty pages of the film, for anyone who knows the movie, contain the Kobayashi Maru scene, where Spock does indeed "die" in the first ten minutes of the film. For those not familiar with the movie, it's a simulated death during a training exercise. But once Nimoy had read the pages, he was onboard. He signed the next week, and the rest is, indeed, history.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan opened in theatres in the U.S. on June 4, 1982, and went on to gross over $14 million dollars that weekend, the largest opening weekend in history at that time.  In its first release, it made $97,000,000 worldwide. And it spawned the resurgence of the franchise, which later went on to make four more films featuring the original cast members, plus three additional television series, and features made from those series.  And J.J. Abrams' remakes still continue to rake in the cash. STII:TWoK "saved the franchise", as my friend, Tony Serri, once said.

Those first 20 pages were the hook for Nimoy, who would, through the films and his appearances on the spin-offs, make peace with Spock, come to love him in fact. Without Spock, STII:TWoK would not have been the film it was. It would not have provided my father with a lasting legacy as a screenwriter.

I'm sorry Leonard Nimoy is gone. He was an artist on a lot of levels.  He took great pictures, and wrote lovely poetry, and saw the beauty in everything.  He was funny and smart and eloquent.

Safe travels, Mr. Nimoy, and may you find a new adventure waiting for you on the other side. You live on in the series, in the films, in your pictures, your paintings and your poetry.  To me, you are tucked into a casket pod, lying on a steamy, just-baked, fern-filled planet, waiting for right moment to regenerate.

(Note: For the sake of expedience and focus, I have truncated the story somewhat. A more detailed account can be found here, in this HuffPost blog by Robert J. Elisberg, for those who are interested. And it is an interesting story, because Nimoy was so key to the success of this film. No one knew that better than Nimoy himself, except for maybe my dad.  I encourage you to read Elisberg's account.)

Retro-Chron: Land of the Beautiful (Squished Flat) People

First published here in November, 2010:

A couple of days ago, I walked from the office where I'm temping to the Century City Mall.  It's warmed up in Los Angeles again, and it was about 90 degrees out. I had the iPod on, and that always has a strange effect on me when I walk. Usually, I walk in the city the way a city-smart person walks -- alert, aware of my surroundings, conscious of what the strangers around me are doing. When I'm wearing the iPod, I generally only pay attention to the city, not the people. The buildings, the street, any physical obstacles, walk/don't walk signals, automobiles (but not the people in them) -- these are the things that catch my eye in between the measures and the rests.

Two days ago, I noticed an inordinate number of dead things on the way to the Mall. There was something in the road that resembled a little hedgehog (probably a baby porcupine), prickly and crushed in the street. A few yards away, an earthworm that had gotten caught on a busy sidewalk in the searing Indian summer sun. And then a bit further down, a bird, fallen, crushed and decomposing in the carefully sculpted landscaping outside of the Sun America building.  All of these casualties can lead one to only one conclusion.

This city will run right over you, if you're not careful.

Today, I had occasion to drive through Beverly Hills on my way somewhere else. You can't mistake driving through Beverly Hills.  The people have a look about them.  Even the ones in their cars look different if they're coming from Beverly Hills.  Walking down Rodeo Drive, you see the most beautiful women. They're all wearing the same uniform -- tight ponytails, calculated to show off the work of their brilliant plastic surgeon (and the work is beautiful -- not that hideous, rubbery-lipped, pug-nosed atrocity one usually sees as L.A. plastic surgery), tight t-shirts to show off their hours in the Pilates studios, expensive, well-cut designer jeans to show off the hours of yoga and spinning. Big sunglasses, wildly expensive jewelry, wildly expensive shoes, all of them seemingly desperate to be looked at, yet all of them looking exactly the same.

And all of them looking just ever-so-slightly unhappy.

I'm wondering where I'm going to be living in a month or two. I'm fat, I'm getting old, a plastic surgeon hasn't been within miles of my face, my shoes are from DSW, my shirt and jeans are from Target, I'm driving a banged up Hyundai... and... I think I can safely say that I am miles happier than the vast majority of these women.

Why?

Because they failed to be careful, and this city ran right over them.

L.A. will poison you if you let it.  It's a beautiful place, full of beautiful people, and it runs on one of the most glamorous industries around. The most beautiful people come here and they work to make themselves even more beautiful, by Hollywood standards. This city tells you there is one standard only for Beauty -- the Hollywood kind.  And maybe, if you're a studio executive or an agent or an actress, you buy into that lie.  But there are a lot of us for whom Los Angeles isn't an entertainment mecca.  It's home. It's not home because we came here with a suitcase full of dreams and a heart full of hope.  It's home because we were born here, raised here, just like so many of the emigres here call Duluth, Minnesota or Syracuse, New York home.

We're not here for the glamour.  We're here because here is where we have always been. We know this city -- know it like the back of our hands.  This city can't lie to us.  It can try, but we'll see right through it. This isn't a mecca for anything. It's just a place where people come, hoping their lives will be better and happier and more affluent than the place from whence they came. Or it's a place where people stay because it's everything they've known or want to know. Or it's just a place they move to so they don't spend the better part of every winter digging their way out of 22 inches of snow.

It won't make you happy, and it won't make you forever young. If you are beautiful, it might make you more so (with the right trainer, the right aesthetician and the right plastic surgeon), but it won't care one way or the other. It will tell you what you have to do to make it love you, you'll do it, but it still won't love you.

Let's face it -- L.A. is a bad boyfriend. If you let it, if you show it you care what it thinks about you, it will use you and abuse you, then step on you and leave your decaying, surgically enhanced carcass on the sidewalk, just like that baby porcupine.

Those sad ladies in Beverly Hills, wearing their little Rodeo Drive uniforms, with their Botoxed foreheads and their tight ponytails, will never understand that. Those of us who are from here, who belong here, who can survive here... we already know.