A Poet from Hollywood Love, Insanity, Stephen Gyllenhaal
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a poet from hollywood love, insanity, stephen gyllenhaal, and the creative process CANTARA CHRISTOPHER A Poet from Hollywood by Cantara Christopher CHAPTER ONE “So, This Isn’t Some Kind of Joke” This is the story of how I tried to turn Stephen Gyllenhaal into a famous poet, then fell in love with him, then fell out of love with him—and how it came to its own end after that and how other things found their beginnings. I’ll begin in New York early December 2005 with the main dilemma I had to face when my brand-new small press decided to publish Stephen’s poetry collection. I was in a Brooklyn bar having beers with Andy Laties—who’s known in the book trade as the Rebel Bookseller—where I explained it to him. “Suppose I do manage to get a reading for Stephen at some bookstore. What I’m afraid is that the room will be packed with girls expecting to get a glimpse of Jake and don’t buy anything.” “Who’s Jake?” he asked. “Stephen’s son. You know, that hot young movie actor. They’re very close. The whole family’s very close. If his dad gave a reading, Jake would come to support him. Stephen says they all would.” To give you an idea of the time, Brokeback Mountain was about to open that Friday. “Oh yeah, that guy. Well, that is a risk,” said Andy. “What do you think you’ll do about it?” At that point, I didn’t know what I’d do about it. I didn’t even know if we were even going to publish his book. I’d sent Stephen the contract to sign back in September, but he insisted he never received it and that week I’d just sent him another. The only thing I knew is that from the moment we rst talked on the phone a few months earlier, I’d entered into a strange relationship with him. Page 1 A Poet from Hollywood by Cantara Christopher That was back in July when my husband, Michael Matheny, discovered three of his poems in a batch of submissions to the literary annual I’d been employed to edit. “Get in here and take a look at these. This guy’s actually good,” he called to me from our kitchen, where he’d set up a makeshift ofce at the table to help me get through the stack of manuscripts. I came in and read them. Yes, they actually were pretty good. At least they were head and shoulders better than anything else that had been submitted. They were written in a youthful style but addressed somewhat mature issues, which made us both wonder about the author. We looked at the name but didn’t recognize it. “I think it’s Swedish,” I said. (I was born and grew up in Minneapolis.) Michael and I read the cover letter, but it was only supercially informative. It mentioned about a half-dozen literary quarterlies that had published the author’s poems. It also mentioned the fact that the author worked in Hollywood and that his two children were actors. We still didn’t recognize the name. The letterhead, however, was one for a motion picture company called Rollercoaster. I decided to Google the name and found it. “There’s a phone number,” I called out to Michael, who was still at the kitchen table reading through the poetry submissions. “Great. Why don’t you give him a call? Maybe we can nd out about this guy.” Michael thought he might be an unusually mature grad student. Because of the address on Hollywood Boulevard—which I recognized because in the 1970s I’d lived about ve blocks away—I thought he might be some middle-aged but established independent lmmaker and manqué man of letters. “And as long as you’re at it, ask him about the fourth line in ‘Blindside’,” added Michael. “What do you mean, the fourth line?” Page 2 A Poet from Hollywood by Cantara Christopher “I’ve read the poem again and it doesn’t make complete sense. I think there’s a line missing. Ask him about it.” I reread the poem as well and agreed. So I called the number and got the recording: “You have reached the ofce of Rollercoaster Productions. We’re not open now, but if you want to leave a message...” Since it was a Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles, this made sense. “Hi, we’re the editors of (here I mentioned the name of the literary annual). We’re reading the poems you sent and one of them doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. It’s the one called ‘Blindside’ and it appears there’s a gap between the third and the fourth line. Do you think you could call us back at your convenience and give us the missing line, or explain your intent? Thanks.” I left our phone number on the recording and hung up, assuming that the best response we’d get would be some assistant who’d either supply us with the answer or put us in touch with the author. And we pretty much forgot about it for the moment. Three days later the phone rang. I picked it up and a young-sounding man said, “Hi! This is Stephen Gyllenhaal.” The brightness and familiarity in his voice threw me, so instead of replying in a professional tone, I answered back just as brightly, “Oh hi, Stephen!” “I understand you’re reading my poetry,” he said. I explained to him that we were considering his submission for publication for the literary annual we were editing. “So, this isn’t some kind of joke,” he said, laughing nervously. “Which poem did you say you’re having trouble with?” he asked. I told him. “Oh, I changed that one slightly.” And over the phone he proceeded to recite an entirely different poem with an entirely different title. I pointed this out to him. “No no, I just changed one or two words.” That should have been my rst tipoff that Stephen was not going to be the clearest communicator. Page 3 A Poet from Hollywood by Cantara Christopher But just as swiftly he turned the conversation to other matters. He explained how he got into poetry writing—it had been prescribed to him by his analyst, more or less, as therapy. I suppose I was a fresh new audience, because he went on to talk about all sorts of things, from Socrates “that old fraud” (he was taking some sort of long-distance course in Philosophy from Columbia University), to the movie business. “Dinosaurs! They’re all dinosaurs!” he exclaimed. I was as impressed as a freshman listening to a professor speaking off the record. We discussed all sorts of topics without mentioning the literary annual or his poetry again. After forty-ve minutes he asked me, “Can I call you sometime?” Of course I said, “Sure.” We said our goodbyes and I spent the rest of the day walking on air. When Michael came home from work that night I told him excitedly, “You’ll never guess who I got a call from!” Who, asked Michael. I said the name. “So,” asked Michael, not as impressed as I was, “did you nd out who he is?” I said no. So right then and there I proceeded to look up more about him when I made a delightful discovery. “Twin Peaks !” I called out to Michael, who by this time was in the kitchen xing dinner. “He directed an episode of my favorite TV show of all time, Twin Peaks!” True, it was from the dismal second season, but it was the episode where I won a dollar bet from Michael that the misunderstood bad girl, Audrey Horne, was still a virgin. “Hm!” said Michael. “So what’s a big director like him sending around his poetry for?” We both stopped for a moment to wonder about that. A week later Stephen called again. He said he’d written another poem he wanted to share, and he did. I listened to it and praised him, and asked him what his inspiration was. He went on, I suppose by way of explanation, to tell me a little bit about his early life and his early career. Page 4 A Poet from Hollywood by Cantara Christopher This time I was ready for him. “I looked you up,” I told him, and I mentioned almost all his directing credits I found online. He was impressed and attered. As I wanted him to be equally impressed with my background, I mentioned my old theater days working alongside playwright-cum-actor Sam Shepard. Then seemingly out of the blue he asked me, “Did you ever see Losing Isaiah?” I suppose it was the mention of Sam’s name which triggered that remark, as his longtime partner Jessica Lange starred in the movie. But before I could even answer he exclaimed, “I hated directing it! But I did it anyway. I saved my marriage, but I wrecked my career. And I haven’t worked since!” Of course, this was not entirely true. Since directing that movie, Stephen had gone on to direct several made-for-TV movies and series episodes. But Losing Isaiah was the lm his wife, Naomi Foner, not only had written but produced as well—she’d been his boss, in other words. I would learn much later what a donnybrook the making of that movie had been.