An Apology, 28 Years Later
This posting should really be about Shock Therapy, my friend Tom Baum’s zingy stage comedy that just closed yesterday in Los Angeles, but self-absorbed mutt that I am it’s about how I finally got an apology from an actor in it who by sheer coincidence had put me down at a cast party in San Francisco back in 1980.
It took a confrontation at another cast party twenty-eight years later to get his apology, but listen! This is no sturm-und-drang recounting. I knew I’d have no trouble getting Scott Paulin to say it because, my God, we’re all a generation older, we’ve all got grown kids. Back in San Francisco in the ’70s he was you might say kind of off-puttingly intense, nowadays he’s just another sweet dad, as witness his recent appearance on a particularly mindblowing episode of House).
So, as I said, I cornered him in the craggy fireplace nook and told him that I’d waited twenty-eight years to get an apology from him for insulting me, and watched as he immediately looked stricken. “Oh, what did I say?” he asked, fair question. I said I wasn’t going to go into it (I’m saving the story for another posting), but to keep him feeling guilty I told him I’d also had a crush on him at the time. Not true. Maybe a wee bit true.
“Well,” he said simply and sincerely, “I'm sorry.”
That’s all I’ve ever wanted, I told him. Then Michael came over to join us and we started catching up on the people we used to work with—actor Greg Wagrowski, now a Facebook friend, who appeared in the most emblematic episode of Mad Men; stage director Richard E.T. White, who’s now battling cancer; and the Eureka Theater’s former problematic overlord Julie Hébert who, by some weird twist of fate, is now the consulting producer on what has become my beloved Stephen Gyllenhaal’s steadiest gig.
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It took a confrontation at another cast party twenty-eight years later to get his apology, but listen! This is no sturm-und-drang recounting. I knew I’d have no trouble getting Scott Paulin to say it because, my God, we’re all a generation older, we’ve all got grown kids. Back in San Francisco in the ’70s he was you might say kind of off-puttingly intense, nowadays he’s just another sweet dad, as witness his recent appearance on a particularly mindblowing episode of House).So, as I said, I cornered him in the craggy fireplace nook and told him that I’d waited twenty-eight years to get an apology from him for insulting me, and watched as he immediately looked stricken. “Oh, what did I say?” he asked, fair question. I said I wasn’t going to go into it (I’m saving the story for another posting), but to keep him feeling guilty I told him I’d also had a crush on him at the time. Not true. Maybe a wee bit true.
“Well,” he said simply and sincerely, “I'm sorry.”
That’s all I’ve ever wanted, I told him. Then Michael came over to join us and we started catching up on the people we used to work with—actor Greg Wagrowski, now a Facebook friend, who appeared in the most emblematic episode of Mad Men; stage director Richard E.T. White, who’s now battling cancer; and the Eureka Theater’s former problematic overlord Julie Hébert who, by some weird twist of fate, is now the consulting producer on what has become my beloved Stephen Gyllenhaal’s steadiest gig.
SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE.
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