One writer beautifully recalls meeting her cameraman husband on her film “Mr. Wonderful,” creating a lifelong love story—on the set of a love story.
He was the cameraman.
I was the girl screenwriter.
Mr. Wonderful. Mary Louise-Parker, Annabella Sciorra, James Gandolfini and William Hurt. A studio movie. A Hollywood movie. And the very best part, Anthony Minghella was directing. Truly, Madly, Deeply became an international hit and Anthony chose this script - a script I co-wrote - to be his very first Hollywood film.
It was September, the beginning of Labor Day weekend, September 4th -7th, 1992.
We met on the movie.
It was, you know, movie magic, and he said those three little magic words after we shared a few hours and a couple of drinks at a dive bar on Amsterdam Avenue with a great jukebox that played Van Morrison and k.d. lang and Lou Reed and Marvin Gaye. He said and I'm quoting: "I'll call ya."
I'll.
Call.
Ya.
And yes, I waited by the phone because back then we didn't have little itsy-bitsy cellphones or texting or instant messaging. We had massive phone machines the size of a shoebox; phone machines with remotes the size of a shoe so you could actually stand in a phone booth for hours on end retrieving and replaying your voice messages.
As always, I digress.
I was Velcro-ed to my landline during the long, long Labor Day weekend. I refused to leave my apartment. In my mind, my oh-so-fucking-vivid-imagination, he—Ke —was partying and drinking and carousing and having tons of sex with unnamed women with long legs and short names who he was picking up at bars. For that one weekend, I was playing a duet—Vicki Carr and Ray Milland, Oh dear God it must be him—while nursing White Russians (the drink, not men).
I mustered my courage and showed up on the set Tuesday at around lunch hour so as not to cause too much of a scene.
He was high up on a crane over the 59th Street bridge, having just finished a shot.
I stood there, hands planted firmly on my hips and in a loud voice, a hair short of a guttural shrill, in front of, yes, the entire cast and crew and catering, shouted up to him that he had lied to me, "You, up there on the crane, you lied to me, and I thought you were different from other men. You said you were gonna call and you didn't call, and I pegged you wrong, buddy. So, fuck you. Fuck you hard."
The director, Anthony Minghella—may he rest in power and peace— laughed uproariously, and said out loud, "You, my dear funny Amy, have a set of platinum balls." It was right then and there that I knew that platinum was much more valuable than gold.
The crane came down. He, Ken, said, "I had a friend in from LA." I asked: "Did you just say you got laid?" He said, "LA. Los Angeles, my friend Elliot is in town from LA, we, you know, just hung out."
It took him about, oh, two minutes, and then he said, "I'll never do that again."
And...
He's called me ever since.
Take me back to The Crush Letter No 97
The Crush Letter
The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter curated by Dish Stanley on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?
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