Tucked in a calendar with some of her other memorabilia, I recently found a letter that I had written to my mother throughout the filming of Sybil. I had written it as part of my preparation, a kind of emotional razor blade to scrape myself raw. In the letter, I tell her how important she is to me, how I am doing what I’m doing because of her, how the only reason she isn’t doing the work that I am is because she didn’t have the mother that I do. And at the end of the letter I write simply, Please come get me Baa, please come get me. I remember writing it, remember writing those words before I stepped into the last shot of the day, knowing that Coulter was coming to pick me up because I was too tired to drive home. And yet I wrote that plea to my mother without understanding why.
I had lived inside of Sybil, felt her longing to know who she was, to know the parts that had protected her and the parts that she was afraid to meet. Did I start to know my own selves as I became more capable of calling on them in my acting? When I walked off the stage, away from the work, did I lose the ability to hear them freely, forget they were even there, becoming a version of Sybil’s shell? I don’t know.
At the end of the shoot I wrote another letter. This one was to Lee Strasberg. I know now what you meant. I’ll never forget. Ever. Thank you.
Years later at an Actors Studio celebration with Lee.
17
The Bandit
ONE ROASTING-HOT DAY shortly after Sybil had wrapped, I decided the only way to make my stale, airless new house livable was to remove the sun-bleached fiberglass awning that stood over the minuscule back patio. Coulter was in Montana helping his friend shoot second-unit photography on Terry Malick’s Days of Heaven, meaning he wasn’t around to talk me out of it, or frustrate me by not offering to help. It was Princess who stood by my side, looking up at this stupid sheet of reinforced plastic, nodding her head in total agreement. It had to go.
After finding it impossible to live in Joy’s garage, Princess had moved out and married her boyfriend, a small-time rock-and-roller. But when she discovered, a few months later, that he’d been sleeping with a checkout girl from Hughes Market, she ended the relationship and was now scrambling for a place to live again. My sister had worked in a clothes store and a bar, tried to become a model, an actor, then a real estate salesperson—studying to get her license at the same trade school in Sherman Oaks as Baa. But no matter what was going on in her life, whenever there was a birthday or a holiday, or a task to accomplish—like demolishing the multicolored awning—then there she was.
I’m not really sure why we thought that this bit of aggression was the answer to everything but for whatever reason, we were fully committed. And while Baa played with the kids (both of the boys looking as ragged as the yard), Princess and I climbed to the roof, tools in hand, and began yanking the impossible-to-move awning. Let me just say this: My sister and I could have opened a business together—the Sisters Fix-it. Nothing was too big or too disgusting: dead rats, bugs, walls that needed demolishing or rebuilding, you name it. But this frigging awning almost killed us. We were crisp from the sun, our hands were torn to shreds, and I, for one, was sore all over—mostly from lying on the asphalt tile roof and laughing. God knows what kind of carcinogens were being sucked into our lungs as we spent the day hoisting and tugging, planning and figuring, being what we had always been. Sisters.
When the day finally slanted toward evening and the awning hung straight down, only half-removed, we collapsed onto the small stretch of crabgrass which was generously referred to as the lawn, both of us spread-eagle, looking up at the sky. I felt defeated by the hopeless mess that was now my backyard, disheartened by the greasy-smelling structure I was living in, until Baa sat down at my side. Looking at the day’s work she said, “Just sell the damn place and chalk it up to ‘Oops, I made a mistake.’ Go find someplace else to live.” It was like being given a get-out-of-jail-free card. Even before I had finished unpacking, I could simply sell it. How about that? I wasn’t trapped. I hadn’t been looking in the right direction, that’s all. There were no bars on the other side of the jail cell.
And as if deciding to sell my house had flipped the switch again, the moment Princess and Baa—using their new real estate expertise—put my now mostly awning-less house back on the market, everything began to spin. My newest and most supportive agent, Susan Smith, called with a “guess what?” tone to her voice, saying that I’d been offered a film. No auditions necessary.
The offer came from Universal Studios and director Hal Needham, who had been one of the primary stuntmen on The Way West when I was nineteen, doubling for Kirk Douglas. Since then Hal had moved from performing the stunts to choreographing stunts, to directing the second-unit photography on several movies with big action sequences, to now directing his first film, which he was offering to me. But before he sent me the script to either accept or decline, the star of the film—a newly minted sex symbol—wanted to give me a call, presumably to explain what was not on the pages I was about to read. And though Susan thought the screenplay was an undecipherable piece of poop, she felt that starring opposite the man who was on his way to becoming one of the most popular actors in America made it worth considering.
How can I write this? I walk around and around but can’t make myself sit down and start. Can I find some truth in the shreds of my memory, or the gibberish in my journals, in the letters I wrote and never sent, or the letters he wrote and I kept? Can I paste it all together and make any sense out of it? And how can I dish out these thoughts, this reassessment of a time that was so private and confusing, when in my mind’s eye, all I can see is the press circling around, like sharks smelling blood? I want to protect him from that, from their ongoing titillation with him, protect him from me. But I can’t. I’ll write it. Maybe I’ll leave it. Maybe I won’t. Problem is, even if I delete it from the page I can’t delete it from my mind, my history, or my heart. If I write it down maybe I’ll understand it, finally.
August 26, 1976
I’m on an airplane on my way to Atlanta for five weeks. I’m to do a picture with B. Reynolds called Smokey and the Bandit. The script stinks but when I talked to Burt he told me we would “improv” our way through it. I can’t figure out why he wants me. I don’t seem like his kind of leading lady. He said he hadn’t seen Stay Hungry but always liked me in Gidget. What?? And that’s why he wants me to sit opposite him in a car for five weeks? I feel guilty about leaving the kids, of course. I hope they’ll come to see me. Coulter is still in Montana. Everything always happens at once. I just sold the house. Was it for enough money? I don’t know. I guess if you make a mistake it’s not the end of the world.
August 27
I arrived in Atlanta yesterday thinking he would be here to meet me. Wrong. He doesn’t arrive until today. He called this afternoon, ‘Hello, Burt Reynolds movie star here. What are you doing for dinner tonight?’ I tried to spar with him on the phone to cover my nerves. God, Field, get a hold of yourself. This was the conversation.
‘Pick you up at 8:00, or someone will. I won’t be able to come to your room to get you.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s hard for me to walk through that lobby.’
Oh, of course, I thought. How stupid of me.
‘You drive by the hotel at 8:00 with the car door open and I’ll dive in.’