Early one morning in June 2000 I got a telephone call from my American dad,
Jay Landesman. This is how it went.
Jay: Have you got a minute?
I could tell by his tone of repressed excitement that he was in the grip of
that thing I had come to fear the most: a new project.
Me: Well, actually I’m a bit . . . Jay: Do you know a good script-writer?
Me (alarm bells going off): Why? Jay: Big news . . . I’m doing the movie of
Landesmania!.
(Landesmania! is the name of a book about my dad’s life that he paid a friend
of his to write.)
Me: But you’ve already written two film scripts about your life . . .
Jay: Them? Ahh . . . they were just . . . well, first drafts.
Me: And who’s going to make this film?
Jay: Nic Roeg is directing! Sandy Lieberson is producing!
(Nic Roeg is the British director of such films as Performance, Walk-about and
Don’t Look Now. Sandy Lieberson is the producer of Performance and many
other films.)
Me: Jay, take a deep breath and tell me exactly what’s going on.
Jay: I’m having drinks with Roeg next week and . . .
Me: Does Roeg know you’re having drinks?
Jay: Yes. Sandy Lieberson is setting up a meet.
Me: Does Roeg know that he’s directing the movie of your life?
(Pause.) Jay: No, not exactly. But the Landesmania! script would be perfect
for him.
Me: What script? Jay: That’s why I called. Do you know any good scriptwriters?
Me: No. Click. My father never got a script to Nic Roeg. Yes, drinks had been
arranged with him. But only inside my father’s mind.
My dad has had an interesting life. He’s never had a job that bored him. He is
an original man, a man who has opened minds and emptied a few rooms in his
time.
In America in the late 1950s, he started a theatre/nightclub called the
Crystal Palace, in the city of St Louis, where Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce and
Barbra Streisand appeared. He’s taken tea with Bette Davis, cocktails with
Bessie Smith and LSD with Timothy Leary.
His is a life that many would envy; I know I do. And yet my dad has never
thought of himself as a success, for one simple reason: he isn’t a big name.
His life has always lacked the imprimatur of celebrity.
But Jay must be one of the best-known unknowns in the world. He’s had two
volumes of autobiography published, both by respected firms, and has been
the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles. He’s appeared on
radio and television and his name turns up in studies of the beat generation
and in showbiz memoirs. So this is a man who is not unknown. He’s not what
you’d call a nobody. Yet he’s not a somebody. And that makes him feel like a
nobody.
MY mother, Fran Landesman, started her career as a songwriter in the early
1950s and has enjoyed considerable success. Two of her songs, Spring Can
Hang You Up the Most and The Ballad of the Sad Young Men, are jazz
standards. Everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Chaka Khan has covered her work.
She now performs her poems and sings to small but adoring audiences.
My mum is always begging me to come to her gigs and she insists I will love
it. In the past I would go and I never loved it. Actually, I felt a mixture
of horror and embarrassment. My brother Miles accompanies her on guitar and
it’s one of the worst acts in showbiz. She recites poems, which she does
well. But she also sings, which she does badly. As a performer she moves
like the Bride of Frankenstein; as a singer she sounds like Shirley Temple
being strangled. Amazingly, people love it.
Shortly after Jay’s phone call I get a call from Mother. Fran doesn’t bother
with the usual pleasantries: inquiries about her grandson/me/ my wife/my
work or anything like that. Fran gets right down to the point, which is
always Fran.
Mother: I’m doing a gig really near you guys and I thought maybe you and
Maxine [my wife] would like to come along?
Me: Well the thing is . . . Mother: Oh come on, it’s not that far from you.
That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? But her tone suggests that what she’s
really saying is this: You selfish, lazy, shit-of-a-son . . . why won’t you
come to my gig? I always support you in your work and it wouldn’t cost you
anything and it would mean a lot to me and I haven’t got long to live and
you never come to my gigs . . . so would it kill you to come, just this once?
Me: Everything is about you, you and you!
Mother: I just asked if you’d like to come to my gig! Me: That’s what you
said, but your tone of voice was trying to pressure me into going . . .
you’re trying to make me feel guilty. And besides, did it ever occur to you
that we might be tired, with the baby and all?
Mother: You’re f****** crazy! Me: You’re f****** self-obsessed! Click. Of the
two, my mother has always been hungrier for success than my dad – or at
least more open about it. She has been on television numerous times, had six
books of poetry published and has even appeared on Desert Island Discs. She
has enjoyed a great deal of success, attention and acclaim. For decades her
public and her peers, including Stephen Sond-heim, have told her she’s
wonderful. And yet it’s not enough. She wants more attention, more praise.
My mother is 80 years old and when she grows up she would like to be a star.
At first I thought it was funny that she was turning into Norma Desmond, the
crazy silent-movie star from Sunset Boulevard. She would sit on her bed and
tell me about last night’s performance and, throwing her head back, declare:
“They loved me . . . They loved me!”
Then I started to notice that my dad was turning into Norma Desmond as well.
Feet up on his desk, cigarette dangling from his mouth and with a martini
glass in his hand, he’d tell me: “They’re gonna go wild when they read this
script! It’s the best thing I’ve ever written. Here, take it home with you.”
And Miles made it three: “Cos, man, you gotta listen to this demo we’ve made.
It’s a number one!”
I like to think that I’m not like my family, that I don’t have their craving
for attention and public affirmation. I like to think I belong to that small
group of people who look at the absurd frenzy of longing that surrounds the
famous, who see the seductive allure of success, and say: “No thanks.”
Then there are times when I think: You old phoney! You know you want fame. You
are just like your family; you crave it, you need it, you dream it . . . but
you don’t have the balls to go out and grab it!
The thing is, I don’t want to end up like my dad, feeling like a nobody just
because I’m not a somebody. To base one’s sense of self-worth on such
shallow criteria is the dumbest thing a smart person can do. And yet I do
it. It sneaks up on me. Here’s how it happens.
Step one: Envy. Someone I know has been given a column or radio programme. Why
didn’t they ask me?
Step two: Self-pity. The reason is that I’m crap/useless/too old/too American
and most important of all I’m not a big enough name!
Step three: Self-loathing. Look at yourself . . . 52 years old and what have
you accomplished? And all because my life lacks the validation of a form of
celebrity I don’t even believe in. At times like these I fear I’m turning
into my dad. MY parents arrived in London in March 1964, two loud,
middle-aged American bohemians in the land of the stiff upper lip. Or so
they thought. But what they found was a very different England in the
making, a loud, brash, yeah-yeah-yeah, youth-driven England. They had
arrived just in time for the great party that was Swinging London and
couldn’t believe their luck.
Jay found a dilapidated Georgian house in Islington and a nearby school for
Miles and me. Slowly they began to make friends with people and the city
itself. On sunny days you’d find Jay lounging in a park soaking up the rays
and reading Variety; there’d be lunch with Robert Rauschenberg, celebrity
encounters at parties (Marlene Dietrich and Jay discussing the fine art of
French polishing), exhibitions to catch, new plays to see and people to meet.
Jay’s diary entry of July 20, 1964, describes a typical afternoon in these
early London days, out drinking with the gay Labour MP Tom Driberg and his
Filipino houseboy.
“We pub-crawled with Tom D. Ended up in a pub that could well be called the
Spare Nobody Bar. Lesbians, transvestites, young Danish sailors powdered
from head to toe, whores, ageing pederasts and young couples all in good
humour. Tom D said it helped him to keep in touch with his constituency.”
In December 1964, The Sunday Times carries a profile of my family by Hunter
Davies that begins: “There’s a very way-out Salinger family just arrived in
London called the Landesmans.” It makes us out to be a crazy American
family, with bizarre decor and a neurotic relationship between Mother and
me. Okay, maybe we are a little crazy, but we’re close. We go to the library
together. We shop together at the market. We help Jay fix up our new house
by tearing down plaster, scraping off old wallpaper and removing rubbish.
Fran makes curtains and sews pillowcases. We’re all building a new life
together.
On Sunday mornings we go to Petticoat Lane so Jay can scout around for
bargains, and in the evening we have the big family treat of the week: a
meal at the Wimpy bar.
It’s hard to convey what a thing of wonder a Wimpy bar was in 1964. We tasted
our American past in its burgers, fries and milkshakes and saw our British
future in the eccentrically sliced frankfurter they served; it resembled a
miniature pink accordion.
My parents liked us. Miles and I weren’t regarded as children to be raised and
fussed over, but as a curious form of entertainment to sit back and enjoy.
We were a double act, a mini-revue. Jay writes about us in his diary like a
theatre critic at work. We were “funny . . . sophisticated . . . charming”.
In one entry he pays his children the ultimate critic’s compliment: “They’re
the best show in town.” When the era of those Wimpy meals ended, I no longer
really enjoyed going out to dinner with my parents. The self-conscious-ness
of adolescence would change everything. Dining out was suddenly an ordeal to
be endured, a banquet of family embarrassment.
Part of the problem was that Jay had this unconscious need to act out his
troubled relationship with his mother. His desire for attention often became
acute at the dinner table. At the age of 14 he had a nervous breakdown that
was triggered by a plate of prunes (Jay felt he wasn’t getting his fair
share). So the slightest sense that he was being ignored in a restaurant led
to a primordial cry for attention and affirmation from some poor waitress he
wanted as a mother substitute.
He once said to a waitress in an Angus Steak House: “Madame, do you realise
your aggressive delay in bringing my black forest gateau has undone 32 years
of psychoanalysis? If I relapse into a preoedipal stage, it will be your
fault!”
Such outbursts invariably led to people looking at us. We were the loudest
family in any restaurant. Our American voices seemed to shatter the quiet
background hum of English whispers. I started to see us as I imagined others
saw us – a loud, crazy American family – and I would bury my face in my
hands and squirm in my seat. And that’s how I was to spend the next 45
years. MEMBERS of my family have always been a little self-centred. People
in show business are; it goes with the territory. That’s to be expected and
tolerated. But somewhere along the line, their self-centredness grew into an
all-consuming self-absorp-tion. They stopped pretending to be interested in
other people and talked about themselves all the time.
Going to visit my parents with Maxine became an ordeal. It was like going to
the theatre and seeing a one-man show and a one-woman show . . .
simultaneously. We would sit there at the dinner table as Fran and Jay
talked about their careers, their plans, their future projects, and we would
smile and make encouraging noises as they read from their works in progress
– and often their past works – and discussed their reviews and their letters
of rejection/ success. I would look at my wife, and the look on her face
said: My God, what sort of family have I married into? And when he could get
a word in, Miles would mention the names of illustrious music-business
people who were interested in hearing his latest demo.
“Do your parents ever talk about anything but themselves?” Maxine once asked
in the early days of our marriage. It did not take her long to discover the
answer.
Here are some of the other signs that got me wondering about my parents.
In 2003 my mother got hit by a motorcycle while crossing a road. I came to
visit her and I was shocked by her appearance: she was covered in bruises. I
wanted to talk to her about her accident and how she was feeling, but all
she wanted to talk about was the gig she’d done before the accident.
Fran: You should have seen that audience – I had them eating out of my hand.
Me: And how are you feeling now? Fran: Fine. That gig was one of the best I’ve
done in ages. You should have been there!
Then there was Jay and his book Landesmania!. When I first learnt that Philip,
a friend of his, was writing the biography, I was pleased for the old man.
And then I discovered that Jay was paying Philip to write the book and I was
shocked. It was like discovering that one of your parents pays for sex.
I figured that the book would never find a publisher. But then I discovered
that Jay was intending to publish it himself. It was like learning that your
dad pays for sex with two people at the same time.
The book appeared in 2004. The opening line went: “Who is Jay Landesman and
why does the 20th century owe him a favour?” So far it has sold 200 copies.
After the Landesmania! project I thought there was nothing that could surprise
me. And then along came the Jay Landesman Museum. The idea was simple: Jay
was going to create a museum dedicated to the life of Jay Landesman. For a
certain number of months, Jay would open the house so the public could come
and visit and see what an interesting man Jay Landesman was.
Exhibits for the Jay Landesman Museum would include: a) His entire collection
of Neuroti-ca, a literary underground magazine that Jay started in the
1940s. b) His collection of 1960s destruction art, including a large
mattress that resembled a gaping octogenarian vagina. c) Photos of Jay (as a
young, handsome man). d) The complete correspondence/ plays/biographies/
press clippings of Jay Landesman. e) Jay Landesman’s collection of hats.
Miles and Fran thought it was a terrible idea because they feared having
strangers roaming around the house. Jay loved the idea because he thought it
would show people how to live a more interesting and fulfilled existence by
studying his life. Jay arranged for a man from the Association of
Independent Museums to look over his place and proposal. I don’t know
whether he thought it was a good idea or if he thought Jay was a lunatic,
but he rejected the idea on the grounds of public safety: there were not
enough fire exits from Jay’s basement den, where the bulk of the exhibits
would have been.
When the museum project collapsed, Jay was not downhearted, because an old
project raised itself from the dead. Somehow he had met a German film
producer living in Hackney who liked his screenplay for Spring Can Hang You
Up the Most. This was a film based on Jay’s unpublished
semi-autobiographical account of his and Fran’s life in New York among the
beat generation. Jay phoned to give me the news.
Jay: Got a minute? Me: Actually . . . Jay: I’ve found this terrific German
director who wants to do the Spring screenplay! He says he can get Joe Pesci
to play me and Drew Barrymore to play Fran.
Me: What films has he made before?
Jay: His last film was on German bunkers in world war two.
Me: Sounds perfect. Jay: I think so too . . . Click. Here’s the thing that
worries me: was I a shitty son for not being more supportive of my parents?
I thought I was supportive, but they don’t agree. Jay once criticised me for
being such an awful, undutiful son.
“You never gave me any appreciation . . . you never wanted to go out and drink
with me . . . you never . . .”
What kind of son would they have preferred? I can imagine him. He would go to
every one of his mother’s gigs and bring his wife, his ex-wife, his friends,
his ex-lovers, his children, his casual acquaintances and colleagues from
work. He would stand transfixed by her performance and at some point he
would shout from the back of the room: “Hey, everybody, that’s my mom up
there!”
He would go backstage with flowers and tears in his eyes and would say to his
mother: “Remember how years ago you said, ‘I’m going to be a big star’, and
I laughed at you? Well, I’m not laughing now because you are a star . . . a
magnificent star!”
He is the son who would help his dad with everything: his latest film
script/volume of memoirs/press releases. The one who would deliver advance
copies of his father’s memoirs to literary editors and who would give copies
to friends for weddings, birthdays and bar mitzvahs.
But they got me: Mr Sensitive. The King of Cringe. The son who hid on the
outskirts of the audience, sweating, fretting . . . who squirmed at the
back, pretending he had no idea who the crazy poet lady on the stage was.
Maybe I wasn’t the adoring fan they wanted, but I hope they know that I was
the adoring son.
For a time I lost sight of the other Fran and Jay. The mum who took care of me
when I was a sick child and tucked me into her bed, brought me cinnamon
toast and tea and read wonderful stories that made me want to be a writer.
And there was Jay, simply the funniest guy in the room, whizzing the family
off to a pop festival and getting us front-row seats in the press section.
For a while they were monsters of egotism, but I’m glad to say they’ve changed
since then and become the wonderful mom and dad I always wanted them to be –
and for that I’ll never forgive them.
© Cosmo Landesman 2008
Extracted from Starstruck: Fame, Failure, My Family and Me by Cosmo
Landesman, published by Macmillan, £14.99. Copies can be ordered for £13.49
including postage from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585
