1. The only safe thing is to take a chance,” Elaine May
Many people think in binaries. Choices, then, can either be safe and practical or risky and frivolous. This way of thinking does not often work well in life, though, which has lots of gray areas in the binary of black and white. This motto of Elaine May’s can teach us to shift our perspective. Chances, risks, can be safe. If you take a chance and it works out, this is wonderful; and if you take a chance and it does not end as you hoped, it is still positive because you have learned something about yourself or the world. A chance really may be the only thing that brings you through the plot of your life to find the climaxes and conclusions of your story. And as scary as a chance sounds when making big life decisions, it could end up being the safest choice you make, bringing you to something great.
2. It is okay not to know what your dreams are.
Many people, particularly young people, think they have to have their whole life in order; they think they have to know what their dreams are and work to reach them actively every day. In my favorite Elaine May film, A New Leaf, Henry asks Henrietta to tell him about herself. Specifically, he asks her to tell him about her work, her hopes, and her dreams. Henrietta replies,
"Well, I work as a teacher and I also do field work and write monographs. My hope is to discover a new variety of fern that has never been described or classified. I don’t know what my dream is. Do you think it could be the same as my hope? Well, at any rate, that is my work and my hope, except for my dream, which I’m not sure of. "
While it certainly is a good driving force to have a dream that propels you through life, not everyone is so certain of what their dreams are. That is all right, because discovering them will come with time. Sometimes, it can even be negative to hold onto a single dream and work toward that outcome solely. Interests and goals change as we come to learn more about the world and our place in it. Toward this end, when working for a dream, it is important not to develop tunnel vision. It is good to have goals or ideas, but to be so set on something can be dangerous. When you get to the end of the tunnel, you may find that there is no light or that you do not want to be at the end of this path; and while it is possible to leave, when you have worked so hard to get down that tunnel and crafted your experiences to make reaching the end possible, backing out can be hard and seem scary. So to avoid this frightful backtracking, which many of us end up doing and which is very possible to overcome, try to keep your peripherals open to other possibilities.
3. Even if you are aware of your dreams, you cannot keep all of them intact, and that is okay.
Elaine May starred in the film adaptation of Murray Schisgal’s absurdist comedy Luv as Ellen Manville. When Harry Berlin tells Ellen that having experienced love should be enough to keep her going in life, Ellen replies,
"You know nothing about women, Harry. For a woman to have never known love isn’t tragic. The dream is still there. The dream…she needs that more than she does the reality. But to have love become a shabby cynical emotion…to watch it change into pettiness and hate…that’s what destroys her."
But in life, which is like comedy (see seven), although perhaps not always absurdist, this is no way to live. You should not shelter yourself or avoid experiences for the sole reason of keeping your pristine dreams and fantasies intact. Even Ellen Manville gives love another chance. Sometimes tragedy will come of watching you dreams dissolve before your very eyes, but this will give you a greater perspective to hold about your experiences and may lead you to new, more exciting dreams. It is also good to have these experiences and find out if your dreams can become reality; if you leave them as only dreams, untouched, then you will for certain never reach them; if you go for them, they may turn to dashed dreams, but they may just become your reality.
4. You should always keep olives and cream cheese in the back of your refrigerator.
Elaine May and Mike Nichols had heard of each other at the University of Chicago well before meeting. Eventually, their paths crossed when May saw Nichols in a production of Miss Julie. He was overacting and dissatisfied with his performance. He looked out over the audience and saw a girl sitting in the third row, staring right at him with such contempt; he respected her a great deal for realizing how bad he was in the face of his great reviews. The director, Paul Sills, finally introduced them. “Mike,” he said, “I want you to meet the only other person on campus who’s as hostile as you are: Elaine May.” Instead of talking to him, she walked over and peered over his shoulder to read the rave review he got in the campus paper. She scoffed loudly in his ear and wandered off. Nichols could not get this interaction out of his head, so when he saw May after leaving the radio one day sitting alone in a train station reading a magazine, he sat next to her and asked, in a Russian accent, “May I seet down?” May did not miss a beat. “If you veesh,” she replied. They improvised an entire skit about a spy, material they later used in public routines, and spoke all the way back to her apartment. She served Nichols a cream-cheese-and-olive sandwich, and that, as they say, is history. They then skyrocketed to fame as a comedy duo, making it in New York with a Broadway show within six months of arriving. Many people who know them have remarked that they are intellectual soul mates. They continued to remain good friends and worked on various projects throughout the years. Anyways, to stop my ramblings (I could go on), you just never know when your intellectual soul mate will enter into your life, so you ought to be prepared for such an encounter with cream cheese and olives; if they are willing to sit down (seet down) with you and enjoy (or at least tolerate) cream-cheese-and-olive sandwiches, you will know. You have to be open to the Russian spy sitting right next to you.
5. You can be a smoker as long as you learn about nutrition.
In a lecture Elaine May gave in 1997 on the art of comedy writing, she explained why she learned so much about nutrition. She said, “I, for example, consider myself an absolute expert on nutrition. I can tell you about fat grams and vitamins and what they do because I was a smoker, and I thought, ‘I’ll never give up smoking, but if I can just learn everything that’s right to eat, perhaps I’ll live!’” Yes, smoking is not the best habit to take up, but over the course of your life, things balance out. When certain areas are not up to par, as long as you take the time to excel in other areas, perhaps you’ll live.
6. Sometimes, you just have to direct.
In interviews, Elaine May has shared that it was never her intention to direct A New Leaf. In a New York Times article written during filming, she said, “You don’t expect just to sit down and write a script like that. You may never see it again as you wrote it. That’s the traditional Hollywood way, you know. No writing is a piece of writing as such. So I’m directing this because I wondered if it could be kept unchanged.” The studio heads at Paramount would not give her directorial approval or say in the actor for Henrietta Lowell, but they did say she could direct and act in it herself (and, of course, all for the same money as she was slated to be paid for the writing credit alone). In the same conversation with Nichols, she explained how she knew nothing when she started. “There’s no way to know unless someone teaches you or you screw up. And when you start a movie by someone saying, ‘You can’t pick a director, but you can direct it,’ you really start knowing nothing. And that was the story of that movie. Every day became about trying to remember just what it was about and not screwing up too badly.” May would argue, I believe, that her efforts at keeping the film unchanged failed. She returned a three hour cut of the film to Paramount (which, by the way, I would just die to see) that they subsequently recut to an hour and forty two minutes; May sued the studio to get her name taken off of the film, but she lost. And while it is true that her vision of the script was changed, heavens, just look at how wonderfully A New Leaf turned out! You have to take chances and take the reins sometimes (it is the only safe thing to do!). Even if things do not go to plan, something wonderful may just come out of it. You have to see if things can remain unchanged and be content observing what surprising changes may come.
7. Life is closest to comedy.
In the same lecture Elaine May gave on the art of comedy writing in 1997, she explained the difference between comedy and drama, stating that the former was much closer to life:
"A comedy is just sort of more like life. You know, in a comedy you meet a guy and in a drama you meet a guy, but in a drama you meet a guy and he likes you and you like him, and you know it’s wrong, but you take him to your apartment and you have sex with him and you break your heart or whatever. But in life, as in a comedy, you meet a guy, you like him a lot, but you didn’t expect to meet him, so your underwear doesn’t match, your bra is ragged, there’s nail polish on your pantyhose so that they don’t run. And you don’t take him to your apartment that fast; you try to postpone the moment for when you can sort of dress up for it, and it’s the same problem with the guy. ‘Cause a guy, in a movie, you know, in a romantic dramatic movie, he’s got a girl in a room and he’s tearing her clothes off and he’s got that look on his face, you know, that look they get in movies when they tear your clothes off, and it’s dark, and he tears her clothes off, and they know it’s wrong but they have sex and he leaves her or she does and it’s a dramatic movie. But in life, as in a comedy, he does have that look on his face and he’s tearing her clothes off in the dark and you do hear her say, “Can I help you undo that?” And you do hear him say, “No, ugh, I can get it!” And she does say, “It’s a Warner’s bra and it hooks in the front!” And, so then, it becomes, and it’s almost the difference, the hitch. As in tragedy there’s the fatal flaw, this is just sort of the flaw."
Life is tough, as they love to say, but life is also like a comedy. Don’t take things too seriously. Find joy and laughter in these comedic moments instead of wasting your time worrying away.
8. You can be a botanist and still get engaged.
In Elaine May’s 1971 film A New Leaf, Henry asks Bo of Henrietta, “She’s not engaged?” Bo, with an incredulous look on his face, replies, “No, she’s a botanist!” There are many gems in A New Leaf, but this is one of many lines that always makes me laugh audibly. Even though Bo is incredulous about Henry’s question, Henrietta does go on to get engaged and even married. You can have seemingly opposite realities in life and make both of them work for you.
9. Strive to put yourself in situations in which you have no experience; that is how we learn and grow.
When Elaine May was talking about the difficulties of making her first film, A New Leaf, in the same 2006 conversation with Mike Nichols, she gave her thoughts on experience. She said, “Yes, I think that is what experience does, it just teaches you what you shouldn’t do. But in the beginning, you think you can do anything because you don’t have any experience, and that really does give you a lot of energy.” It can be, and often is, scary to enter in new situations (to turn over a new leaf) in which you have no idea what to expect or how to accomplish anything, but this also creates space for taking chances and creating great work.
10. Sometimes, you sew yourself into the Grecian nightgown, and sometimes, the Grecian nightgown leaves you with your head through the arm hole.
Let’s start with the former here. In A New Leaf, one of the best moments (of which there are many) comes as Henrietta prepares for her wedding night. She enters the room clad in an awkward looking white dress, which we soon learn is meant to be a Grecian style nightgown. As she sits down and prepares to dine with Henry, he asks her where her other arm is. Henrietta responds, “It’s in the nightgown. It’s a Grecian style nightgown. It fits over one shoulder and the other one goes inside. It’s very uncomfortable. I can barely move my head all the way around.” In this situation, sometimes, you are Henrietta. You end up with your head through the arm hole of theGrecian style nightgown of life; things get messed up and twisted in ways they are not meant to go, and even when you think you have fixed the problem, the end result is not ideal. Everyone falls prey to the difficulties of life at times and cannot seem to do anything right. At other times, though, you are Elaine May in this situation. It may appear as though you do not know what you are doing, but, in reality, you have sewn yourself into the Grecian style nightgown of life. Without telling Walter Matthau, May had sewn herself into the garment for the first take, making it impossible for him to get her out. He tried for ten minutes before he discovered her trick and stormed away in frustration. No matter what appearances may show, sometimes you actually have the control and are working toward the end result you want.
Works Consulted
A New Leaf (dir. May, 1971)
Luv (dir. Donner, 1967)
Luv by Murray Schisgal
Seriously Funny by Gerald Nachman