My Extraordinary Ordinary Life (23 page)

Madison has always been an insatiable reader … who loves to draw and paint and build things, like her dad.

Madison sits under one of her many creations.

Madison and Jack hiking in Telluride, Colorado.

My mother: my confidante and favorite traveling companion.

Our daughters came along at just the right time in my life.

My father in his
Coal Miner’s Daughter
cap going off to fish. He loved getting out on the lake.

Jack and me on the farm with our dog Patch and our cat BB.

Our dog family on the farm. Rigby visits from California and Maude visits from Texas. Nigel thinks he’s a dog.

… CALIFORNIA …

… 9 …

The appointment books I’ve saved from my New York years are filled with hopeful, handwritten entries: a meeting with John Huston on East 61st Street to discuss his next film,
Fat City
; an appointment for “Breck shampoo”; a few hours set aside to do “test shots in the park.” I did not get the part in John Huston’s film, and I no longer remember what the test shots were for, or whether the Breck booking was for a TV commercial or a print ad. Several times I wrote “THE JOHNNY CARSON SHOW” in capital letters, underlined and circled, across the top of a page. I had gotten an audition with the
Tonight Show
producer, and I was thrilled when they booked me as a musical guest. But each time I was scheduled to go on, I came down with some sort of ailment—a sore throat, stomachache, swollen glands. Appearing on that show might have been the biggest big break in my musical career, but it never came to be.

By now I had pretty much given up on the idea of becoming the next Joni Mitchell. Yet I still carried at least one guitar with me to every audition, even when I was trying out for dramatic roles. It was no different in the spring of 1971, when I met with a young director named Michael Ritchie to discuss a part in his film
Prime Cut.
During our interview I told him that I was a singer-songwriter, and he asked me if I could write a song about any topic he named.

“Sure,” I said.

He looked over at his drink, sitting on the table, with a cherry stem sticking out of the top.

“Okay. How about maraschino cherries?”

“That’ll do,” I said, pulling out my twelve-string. “Why don’t we write it together?”

We worked for the next few hours and came up with a pretty fabulous song. Actually it’s one of my favorites, “The Maraschino Red Blues”:

Put one more cherry in my ginger ale
,

Smoke another coffin nail
,

Oh sweet, sweet cherry number four
,

I ain’t coming back here no more....

By the time we were finished, Michael wanted me for his film. I was up for the part of Poppy, an orphan waif who is rescued from white slavery by Nick Devlin, a mob enforcer played by Lee Marvin. My character was supposed to be young and scared, and I
was
young and scared, so I guess you could call it typecasting. There was only one more hurdle: The studio wanted to fly me out to Los Angeles for a screen test.

I had only been to LA once before, for a brief visit, and I was still thrilled by how everything seemed so green and shiny and new. At the end of a long New York winter I was astonished by the sunshine and palm trees; even the grass on the freeway median strip looked lush and green. I landed at LAX with one suitcase and two guitars, wearing a flowing skirt and tapestry boots—the cool, funky-girl look I had perfected in New York. But I blew my cover as soon as I arrived in Studio City and started jumping up and down when I saw Mary Tyler Moore strolling across the street.

The screen test at a producer’s house in the Hollywood Hills was just a formality, and it went well. I was more intrigued by the tall, young filmmaker operating the camera. Gary Weis would later go on to fame as the creator of short films for
Saturday Night Live
(including one of me twirling my baton in slow motion). But back then he was a cute, wild-haired guy just starting in the business.

Gary and I instantly hit it off. He took me to the beach in Santa Monica—not a great place for a redhead, but I was happy to watch him surf. He also invited me to visit the studio he was sharing with another artist named William Wegman and his soon-to-be-famous Weimaraner, Man Ray. I was fascinated by the work Gary and Bill were doing with photography and the new medium of video, but I felt more like a voyeur than a participant in their world. I still thought of art as something you put on your wall, and I wasn’t sure how posing a dog on a big white box fit into the equation. I had a lot to learn.

Shortly after, I was officially offered the part in
Prime Cut
—my first real film! But there was one thing that made me hesitate: The role called for at least one nude scene. It wasn’t an unusual requirement in those days; everyone seemed to be running around naked in the movies—and even on Broadway. So I figured if I wanted to be an actor, I’d better get over it. I called my parents and told them the good news. I’d gotten my first part in a movie, and it starred Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman. Then I told them the bad news: I wouldn’t always be wearing clothes. After much deliberation, we decided that this was a wonderful opportunity, and the good far outweighed the bad. I packed my bags and never looked back.

Filming started in Calgary, Alberta, in the summer of 1971. I loved working with Lee Marvin, and he was actually very protective of me. But he was a prodigious drinker, and he warned me to avoid him when he was inebriated. When we first met on location, I blurted out, “Lee, you have the greenest eyes!”

“Yeah,” said Lee. “And whenever you see them turn blue, stay away from me.”

It was true. When he’d had a few too many, his eyes turned ocean blue, and everybody gave him a wide berth. But mostly he was a good guy, and very professional.