THINGS A HERO WOULD SAY
Things a Hero Would Say
12/7/18
I’m about to go to William Goldman’s funeral, a man who mentored hundreds of screenwriters. Some of them are Tony Kilroy, Brian Koppelman, Aaron Sorkin. I’m a twenty-eight-year old nanny who works six days a week, has a terminal illness (okay that’s a little dramatic, I have a chronic illness that will become terminal in like twenty years) and barely writes anymore. All week I’ve been imagining horror scenes of how this funeral goes. What’s funny is, this is the exact thing I’d write to Bill about.
Bill, I’m going to a funeral for a dear friend of mine, and lots of Hollywood types will be there. I’m intimidated. They’re all fancy people, Oscar and Tony winners, and I could be their nanny. I’ll just stand in the corner.
Bill would likely write back something like:
excuse my language, kiddo
but fuck em
They don’t know what they’re doing any more than anyone else
Sorry to hear about your friend.
- bill g
William Goldman and I emailed back and forth for eight years, from when I was sixteen to about twenty-four. We met because of my dear terminal illness, cystic fibrosis. I made a wish through the Make-A-Wish Foundation to meet Bill because I loved The Princess Bride so much. We were email buddies. We’d get together with my parents about once a year for dinner on the Upper East Side at his beloved Cafe Boulud. The last four years of his life he was ill, he wasn’t able to do email anymore, and we lost touch. I miss him. The world lost a literary giant, and I lost my favorite pen pal. To make myself feel better about the topsy turvy, upside-downy way my last four years have gone, and to hear from him again about how his last four years went, here’s me and Bill writing again. These are fake, I wrote everything to come next. I’ll never know what he would’ve actually said but he always told me I had an ear for dialogue, so. Let’s assume I get pretty close. I will run this by Susan or Mike Lupica to see how close they think I got, and will rewrite based on their notes.
I wish I’d told Bill about my first (only) job in television.
Bill! Got a job on a TV pilot! True story. I got this gig through: a girl I went to high school with’s— boyfriend’s dad’s— best friend.
He’d say:
Kiddo! That’s marvelous! That’s how everybody gets their first job. First of many, don’t worry.
I wish I’d told Bill when I started coughing up blood, though I definitely wouldn’t have mentioned it and would not have emailed about it. But if I had:
Oh, I’m okay. Thanks for asking. I coughed up blood a couple times which was scary.
Well Jesus kiddo, what are you emailing me for? Shouldn’t you go to the doctor??
It’s not that serious unless it’s a cup or more of blood, and mine wasn’t nearly that. Just a few coughs and then it stopped.
Jesus Christ (sorry). That’s rough stuff. Hang in there. Take it easy! Don’t work so hard.
Trust me, I’m not. I haven’t done any grad school work in weeks. I’m behind in every class. Just resting.
Good. That’s how grad school should be. How’s your real work?
Not really working. You?
Just fooling around. Nothing big. All is well.
I wish I’d emailed Bill about my midlife crisis.
Bill, I just turned 26. My life expectancy is 36. I’ll likely?—probably??—maybe???— live way past that, but other people with CF haven’t. A little girl with CF just died at age 7. I’m old, Bill. I’m 26 and over the hill.
Listen, kiddo. You’re not fucking old. I’m fucking old. And never forget— nobody knows anything, not even the doctors. You’ll outlive them all, goddamnit.
I wish I’d told Bill that I married that director I’d told him about the last time we had dinner. I picture me, him, Susan and Orion all going out to dinner. Bill always had opinions about directors. He’d say:
Bill (to Orion): Are you still directing? How’s it going?
Orion: Actually, I’m working as an editor right now, for an online media company.
Bill: Is that so? Listen. The life of a director is unbelievably hard. Nobody ever wants to make your movie. You gotta deal with so much shit as a director. And the vast majority of directors are assholes, truly, pardon my language. You gotta really want it.
I wish I’d written to Bill when I was hospitalized five times in grad school. I was sick as hell. I would’ve said:
ME: Bill, I’m sick as hell. Back in the hospital again. The food sucks. There’s germs everywhere. Invisible little terrorists trying to hijack my current infection with their own. Every germ is an actor trying to be a star, Bill! It’s the worst. My boyfriend is here. He borrows my car and drives an hour to see me every night. He works four jobs (!! I know— I try to get him to quit at least one)— so he gets here after visiting hours. We’re proper Catholics, you know, so he sleeps on the most godawful uncomfortable visiting chair in my room. I’m not writing. I hate it here. The food sucks. Did I mention? Please get Dániel Boulud to make a move into hospital food.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Burke
He’d say:
Burke— I’m so sorry to hear you’re sick.
(Here’s where he’d tell me a fascinating story about someone else who was sick, like somebody who was sick when working on a movie or something? I don’t know what the story is because this email never happened. Maybe he’d tell me here about his own cancer, which I think he got at around this time. But maybe he wouldn’t, he was a pretty private guy.)
Bill died of pneumonia and cancer complications on November 16, 2018. It’s got me thinking about my own death. What am I gonna die of? Will it actually be CF, or in some cruel twist of fate, will I die in a car crash? or from eating E. Coli-laced romaine lettuce or something? I had a friend with CF who honestly died from breast cancer, how cruel. She had a new set of lungs, a wonderful husband and beautiful life, and out of nowhere and unrelated to CF, she got breast cancer and died.
Bill, I’m sorry to hear about the pneumonia. It kills me that I can’t visit you (maybe you don’t want visitors now anyway?). If I got pneumonia, I would die. I’m pretty sure you want me to outlast you, so. It’s only fair since you’ve got sixty years on me. Please beat this and I’ll see you soon. I’ll bring baby Sundance.
(That’s a joke, obviously. I don’t have a baby named Sundance, I just thought it’d be a funny joke.)
I wish I’d written to Bill about how hard New York is.
Bill. I hope this email finds you well. New York is really hard. We’ve been here three years, I did an internship (why? It’s slave labor), I nanny six days a week, I get sick and stop working and am stuck at home, totally depressed. I hardly ever want to write anymore. Writing fills me with fear. I barely finished one one-act play in two years. I’m not doing what I came to New York to do. I’m watching my friends become professionals and pass me by. I’m worried that everyone who believes in me bet on the wrong horse.
Bill: too sick, doesn’t respond.
In the movie of my life, this is a pretty good turning point. The dreams that once seemed so possible are far away. My Obi-Wan died before I could seek his counsel. Now what? Where do I take the story now, Bill? What if I’ll always be a nanny and I’ll always be sick, and writing stays stuck in the hobby-zone? Bill thought I could really do it, he thought I really was talented. That I should keep shooting the ball. In this dark night of my soul I think, well what the hell else was he supposed to say? I was a sick kid when we met through Make-A-Wish. Who’s cruel enough to tell a sick kid the real truth?
To honor Bill and all the good advice he wasn’t able to give me before he died, I’m writing every day for a year. 365 days minus Sundays. I started the day of his funeral. I’m tracking it on Instagram @writingmywritingdown (Bill, have someone in Heaven explain Instagram to you). It’s sexier to write every single day for 365 days but I already missed a day, and it was a Sunday, so now I’m taking Sundays off in an effort to save face. Plus, God took Sundays off, and I’m not a better writer than He is.
Okay. I went to the funeral. I’m adding this paragraph, having gone to the funeral. Scott Frank was another one of the writers Bill mentored and he did the most remarkable thing. I had been hoping Bill would tip his hat to me somehow at the funeral, a secret, selfish wish but there it was. Mr. Frank, at one point in his speech, had all the writers in the room that Bill had ever helped stand up. I stood up. In that moment, at least, I wasn’t a sick kid or a nanny or behind on any life list. I was a member of a cool club. I was what I wanted to be, what Bill thought I was, what my disease can’t take away. A writer. The New York Times said about Bill, “Goldman wasn’t the voice of his generation, and he didn’t try to be. He was a voice, though…” A voice, his own voice, a voice that spanned three decades of his own adventurous, stupid-courage, genius storytelling, a voice speaking to me through eight years of pen-pal-ship and fancy dinners on the Upper East Side. F*ck em. Keep shooting.
