So, what is important? Two birds were stuck in my house. Well, yesterday afternoon I found one up in my skylight. That’s about twenty feet above the ground floor entry. He was chasing the sky, just out of reach. He was chirping and hopping and I wasn’t sure if he might hurt himself or if he’d be able to figure out that the tall gaping front doorway was a better escape route. I think he came in that way. I tried to lure him with seed. I put one of those seed bells into the wire basket at the tip of a long pole, a fruit picker, actually, now a bird baiter being used to guide a trapped sparrow over the side of this large skylight, over past the edge of the canvas cover that draws over the twenty-by-ten-foot expanse to shut down the bit on the hottest days. If I could get a little thing down to that level, I might be able to draw the canvas back across the opening and keep the bird below so he could see the open doorway, maybe. I left the bird bait with the long tail of a sixteen-foot pole dangling, I left it hooked over the wire cable along one border of the canvas, and went to bed. This afternoon I thought I saw another bird. A couple of rescuers had been hopping on the glass outside probably to guide their friend out to the open, but none of them could figure out that the glass was impenetrable. Now, another sparrow was inside.
Last week I read a script for a new anthology series because filmed for London television in affiliation with one of the cable channels here in the States. I turned it down because it seemed shallow, though intelligently written, not stupid of totally predictable, you know, but not surprising either, really, and certainly not a role for me that demanded much of my obviously vast range and energies. I keep trying to take only material that has a chance of being a special event. There aren’t many special events on television, so the odds are not good that I will encounter many such pieces. But I have made some films that are still being enjoyed and praised, so I no longer feel that urgency that troubled me for so many years before. The birds in my house seemed a much more urgent matter than this script. You see, the script was a revived issue of last Friday. This is Sunday. My agent called to say that the British producer had telephoned to plead with him to get me to read the script again, with its improvements of my character, and to stress for the company that they were very anxious to have me in their film. Sometimes it’s nice to be in demand. As of Friday evening there was no script at my door, though I had been told that it was being “messengered.” It didn’t arrive on Saturday, either. That afternoon the first bird did.
This morning the bird was still hopping back and forth across one narrow end of the skylight and a message was on my answering machine tape from the casting direction of the movie; that is, the man hired to secure the services of the one American actor needed. This fellow turned out to be a “voice from the past,” as he said himself when he finally telephoned back to apologize for the delay because he had the wrong address. The messenger service had failed to find me, of course, and now the man in charge himself was wishing to hand the script to me, only he was lost, too. I was happy to hear his voice. He’s kind, sensitive, and intelligent man who had tried for over ten years to persuade directors and producers to see me, to consider me for good roles in television. A few times, he had succeeded in getting me in to be seen, but never, I believe, did I get hired. I was like the bird in the skylight, just out of reach of the sky, though I could see it right there above me. Some people down below were looking at me in those days saying, “Yeah, he’s Okay, kind of good and not bad looking. We like him, right, but who else do you have? Trapped, fluttering, bewildered but persistent.
Joe showed up with his son. By now I had climbed to the rooftop to see if we could open the hatch on the topmost portion of the glass above the bird. It was designed to crack open six or seven inches to create an updraft, but the damned plastic mechanism, part of it, had snapped off two of the turnscrews that pushed and pulled the movable portion, and I had given up looking for repairmen. It turns out that half the length of the glass was still functioning. While my friend Dick turned the crank down below, I stood over the peak of the expanse on the roof and cheered as it spread open. I wedged into the opening and birdseed bell and we waited for the sparrows to find it and flee through. Jack was on the other side of the big front gate calling my name with a smile in his voice. The script in his hand was supposed to be delivered two days earlier, remember, and I suspected that Jack had made the error. He’d written down the wrong address. SO here was this fellow who had tried to help me for so many years, with his son in the driver’s seat of the car. Marc (I asked immediately if he was a Mark with a “k” or with a “c” because I have a nephew who spells it with a “c” for my uncle Marco, who lived and died in Italy. “Isn’t this nice, Marc, being begged like this? Your dad has tried so hard for so many years, and now here he is on a personal mission. I didn’t mean to make him plead. Who knows, maybe we’ll get a job this time.” Jack laughed and said, “Oh, but the best one was the last, remember? When you came in for that Rocky Marciano film. You would’ve played his buddy, and when the director saw you, hell, when I saw you in those shorts and tee-shirt, I said, ‘Who’s gonna believe this guy? He looks like the boxer.’
“Hear that? Just when you think you’ve heard every excuse possible for being rejected, they surprise you. So, remember, Marc, no matter what they say: You’re too tall, too short, too dark, too fair, too ethnic (What does that mean?!), too warm, too sinister, not sinister enough, too good looking (Phew! ME?), too young, too old, too intense, too serious, too silly…too late! Just remember, none of those reasons is it. THEY JUST DON’T WANT YOU. That’s all. It’s a relief to know that, but it takes so long to find out. I’m telling you. Save you the trouble.” We shook hands all around and they left.
They had lied, of course. Well, you know, that’s what I say when I’m mildly disappointed and amused, yes, at the exaggerated pronouncements and promises producers and casting people make to persuade you, to fool you, actually, as if you wouldn’t notice that almost every word of the original, inadequate script is intact. Why do they bother, I wonder? Do they hope you will, in a weak moment, be tempted to go abroad, give in to the worry that maybe you’ll miss something? I’ve succumbed before. These people don’t that, but I mustn’t forget. The only work that’s memorable is good work. No one remembers or cares, of course, about the rest. So, you do the work always for yourself. You ought to, anyway. We helped the birds for ourselves. For them, to keep them chirping—I like the sound—and to keep them coming back to the bird feeders. I’ve put up feeders all around the property. My latest kick. Birdhouses, too. But they went up too late, so no one moved in. Maybe in the spring. I want them to be free and to be around here.
I want to be free, too. I want to choose only good material, to work because it pleases me, and to know that the work is worthy and memorable.
Thanks to Jack and all the others who keep trying to help me. Thanks to the birds in my skylight, who remind me. Oh, yes, the birds got out and the skylight is closed again.