Free Both of Us by Ryan O'Neal

when it comes to the critics, we’re all too human, and when someone whose opinion carries weight has less than flattering things to say about your work, it can hurt.
    JOURNAL ENTRY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1984
    We’ve opened lukewarm. I stop for the trades , Variety and the Hollywood Reporter , to read their box office numbers. I got so disgusted that I went to Dutton’s on San Vicente to get my mind off my most recent box office flop. I bought the new Le Carré and a bio of Teddy Roosevelt by Edmund Morris that was recommended by Doug Dutton. I also picked up a copy of The Leopard , an Italian novel made into a movie by Luchino Visconti, starring one of my idols, Burt Lancaster. When I get home, Farrah’s talking on the phone with her press agent and can’t be bothered. I pace back and forth until she finally pays attention to me.
    Reading through my journals, I wince at some of my childish behavior. I’m aware of these extreme ups and downsin my life. One day I love someone to death; the next I’m wishing that person were never born. This emotional immaturity explains why I’ve always struggled with close relationships. And it was no exception with Farrah. Sometimes she would humor me during an outburst. Other times she’d chastise me. More often she’d just laugh. If I was having a meltdown, she’d watch me storm out of the room without saying a word because she knew in twenty minutes I’d come back in fine spirits. We learned the ebbs and flows of each other’s moods and became adept at intuiting what was needed to get through a rough patch.
    Later that fall, I begin shooting
Fever Pitch
on location in Las Vegas with Catherine Hicks and Giancarlo Giannini. It’s being directed by Richard Brooks, who made
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
,
In Cold Blood
,
Elmer Gantry
,
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
. Brooks is old school and known to brandish his walking cane when an actor doesn’t hit his mark. Actors don’t appreciate a compliment from Richard Brooks, an irascible genius; they covet it. I like listening to his stories, especially about Humphrey Bogart. Brooks wrote the screenplay for
Key Largo
, which John Huston directed. I knew John Huston. His daughter Anjelica was one of the great dalliances of my postadolescence. And my adolescence lasted longer than most. Marriage and parenthood may have ended my childhood, but nothing has ever interrupted my adolescence. So Brooks tells me how one day he’s having lunch with Bogart. This is when Bogart is in the advancestages of esophageal cancer. Most of his stomach has been removed. Remember, Bogart was a smoker. Almost every scene he’s in, you see a cigarette dangling from his lips, and when he does get cancer, it will ravage him quickly. So they’re eating and Brooks says he can hear the faint thud of food dropping into Bogart’s lower abdomen. Now Brooks is an ex-marine who’d fought on Guam and Guadalcanal, places few survived. Bogart looks at him and says, “Can’t you take it, kid?”
    Brooks’s reverence for Bogart is apparent. He tells me about the time he, Bogie, and Bacall were in the limo en route to the Academy Awards. Bogie had been nominated for Best Actor for
The African Queen
, which he made with Katharine Hepburn. Brooks asks him if he’s prepared something to say, just in case. Bogie laughs, saying that he hasn’t because he’ll never win. Brooks hastily scribbles comments on a piece of paper for him, which Bogie doesn’t take, insisting he won’t need it. So Bacall takes the note, and when Bogart’s name is announced as the winner and he stands, she slips it into his tuxedo pocket and says, “Read this.” Of course he doesn’t, and he stumbles through his overlong acceptance speech. Brooks says it’s the only time he ever saw the great Humphrey Bogart flub. “But that was Bogie,” Brooks says. “He was humble. He really didn’t think he had a chance.”
    There’s a lot of buzz about
Fever Pitch
. I begin to feeloptimistic again about my career,