I'm Not Dead... Yet! (50 page)

My hopes for my third open-heart surgery
were very simple: survive (visualization) and when I would awaken, be able to breathe again.

The surgery went well. After the closing, Dr. Stiegel quickly came out in his scrubs to speak with Karla and twelve year old Zephyr.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, shaking his head, and explained “the pulmonary valve [replaced during the Ross Procedure surgery in 1998]
had been sewn on incorrectly.”

“The valve was bent, constricting the opening to about this big: the size of a split pea. I tried but couldn’t even force my pinky finger into it.”

There was no calcification causing stenosis.

“How could the surgeon have done this?” Karla asked, thinking about the six and a half years of suffering I had endured since that operation.

“Open-heart surgery is more than science, it’s art.” Dr. Stiegel gently explained. “You have to visualize everything—and have the experience to know how placement will be impacted by the closing.”

When I woke up from my third open-heart surgery,
I immediately realized:

I can breathe.

I had asked them not to tie my hands down (and my hands were not tied down) and I had asked them to put the Foley catheter in my bladder after I was put to sleep (which they did) and the nurses in the I.C.U. were compassionate and cared about each and every one of us. (I might not have been able to see, but my hearing was perfect.)

Unfortunately, all of the TV’s in the I.C.U. were tuned to the Fox Channel, blasting the news that Bush had just been re-elected. (I was trying to be open-minded, but it’s hard when you’re down to such base emotions, just hours after surgery.)

Then I got the ‘good’ news:
this
operation was a success, but in the previous Ross Procedure (as my surgeon had explained to Karla), my pulmonary homograft had been sewn so tightly that it buckled and the valve crimped when it was put back into my chest—very much like a water hose when it zigzags on itself, buckling the hosepipe tubing, and no water can get to the nozzle.

In other words,
there was a reason
I couldn’t breathe the moment I was out of surgery six and a half years before—and there was a reason I could breathe
perfectly
the moment I awoke from this surgery. (It’s a relief to find out you’re not crazy…)

People told me I should’ve sued
because my second surgery had a
major effect
on my earning power in show business. It not only affected me, it affected my children’s life. But after waking up and being able to breathe for the first time in six and a half years, I wasn’t going to spend one more minute on anything negative. Time to start anew. Time to conquer this wonderful world!

And I personally don’t believe in suing. I believe in moving on and seeing the beauty around us; smell the flowers, avoid the thorns.
I want to take that time and energy and invest it in love.

Unfortunately, if surgery is as much
art
as it is science, I turned out to be a bad piece of art.

(Dr. Frankenstein: ‘It’s aliiiive!’)

You know you’ve found someone special when they love you…

even if you look like this.

After my excellent surgery
at Carolina’s Medical Center, I decided to help them with a 5K charity run called The Cupid’s Cup to benefit people who didn’t have the resources to get the treatment they needed for their heart (or their loved one’s heart).

Karla and I helped sponsor and co-chair the event. It was a wonderful success and still continues near Valentine’s Day every year in Charlotte raising money for people who can really use it.

If you live in the area and like to run, please check it out.

I ran a disgraceful time of 24 minutes, but “a very good time for a three-time open-heart patient”—at least that’s what Karla tells me.

(Who can disagree with that?) We had a magnificent life now. (Yes! Magnificent, even after 3 open heart surgeries.) I co-coached Zephyr on many of his basketball teams (I was the court jester: I’d make the kids laugh no matter how badly we were getting spanked); I had built a home studio in a closet so I could do voice over commercials from home rather than flying to New York or L.A. and I continued to work on the
Open Heart
musical orchestrations. But I missed teaching and sharing the knowledge and passing it forward...

Not long after my 50th birthday, I went to New York to meet with the NYU search committee. My hopes weren’t too high, because the opening was likely to be filled ‘from within.’

What I didn’t know was that the committee thought I was a ‘perfect fit,’ although, as the department chair Lamar Sanders later told me, the committee said “It’s never going to work—he’s too good to be true.” Their words, not mine. I wouldn’t be so kind...

In the spring of 2006, Karla and I made a quick trip New York to meet with our publishers, Samuel French, about
Open Heart
. I had the morning free before we left, and met Lamar for breakfast. We talked about NYU, and Lamar asked if I would be interested in a future position.

“Sure, call me any time.”

Then in August, Lamar rang me up. “You told me to call any time. Would you like the job?”

Sometimes I think of my heart,
the imperfect but remarkable engine of my body, and realize how, through all my years and all my surgeries, it has never failed me. It has allowed me to have adventures in life.

After a lengthy discussion with Karla and Zephyr, I took the position offered to me by Chair Lamar Sanders and Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell to teach at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in The Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television. And we moved to New York City (even though our home was still in Boone, North Carolina).

In New York, we lived in faculty housing

and I was teaching at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts in The Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and TV.

NYU is a wonderful University. I had talented students who were at NYU only because they wanted to be filmmakers. I also had the pleasure of working with faculty who became friends. I admire the Chair of the Department, Lamar Sanders, whose first question to any problem was always ‘Are the students’ best interests being served?’ The faculty and staff are one of the best I’ve ever worked with and they supported me completely. I had the good fortune to teach varied courses during my stint: Television Production; Directing The Camera; Directing The Actor; Developing The Screenplay; Advanced Filmmaking (a year-long course where each student begins with a short script of their own; and we, as a class, develop the script into a shooting script, which includes everything that goes with getting a film off the ground: fundraising; insurance; crewing; preproduction and finally, production and dailies. And usually, there is a finished film—notice how at NYU we say ‘a finished
film
’—not a finished ‘product’—which is why I have so much respect for NYU).

Every time I looked out at the students, I saw my daughter’s face (a former NYU film student) and I remember how she told me the classes were long, she didn’t have time for breakfast. So I’d set up a ‘craft service’ table in my classes with fruit and granola bars. A small price to pay to keep these young students alert, especially during advanced filmmaking classes that lasted up to nine hours long.

I’d wake up at 5 and workout my heart on the elliptical machine for a half hour. Never an excuse to stop exercising. Never!

Okay, maybe once in a while…

The calibre of talented students accepted into Tisch School of the Arts Filmmaking program is the best in the country. Teaching them the skills of filmmaking can be easy; a no-brainer. Asking your students to always ‘try’ is quite another issue. Asking them to show their unbridled passion, and be willing to fail in front of their peers in order to learn, is asking a lot of a young person in the arts. It’s simpler to hide behind ‘eccentricities’ when studying the arts. Getting past that ‘wardrobe’ and digging deep to help them find their true artistic passion is the key to my style of teaching something as unquantifiable as art. If I were going to ask them to be vulnerable and give 100% without cynicism, I owed it to them to give my all in each and every class and never allow cynicism into my behavior as well.

Sometime in the early winter months of 2007 (loving my job at NYU and was in awe at how much
I could learn from my students
— thrilling!), I had a ‘heart-to-heart’ with my son Zephyr. It was the first time I realized that coming from the farmlands of North Carolina

and leaving all of his friends and basketball buddies behind,

New York City was making him feel… miserable. I grew up in New York City. It’s easy to see the brilliance of the city