The Golden One

The Golden One

“Can you write jokes?”

That's what Golds asked me when we got the Cool Runnings gig. Only it wasn't called Cool Runnings then it was called Blue Maaga. Of all the writing we did on that movie (at least 2000 pages over two years) the most important was changing the title, and the only reason I even knew the phrase Cool Runnings was because my brother had sailed down to Jamaica from New York at the age of nineteen, even getting credit for the trip under the banner of "celestial navigation." (Fucking Hampshire College.) He told me “cool runnings” was how the Rastas said goodbye, and I never forgot it. Fifty years later my brother is gone, and Golds taken even earlier.

This month is the 30th anniversary of the release of Cool Runnings. I wanted to write something about it, and maybe I still will but right now I’d rather talk about my old writing partner and dear friend Michael Goldberg aka Golds aka “the Golden One.”

It would be fun to lay down a few paragraphs about his unique Philly stylings, his many summers as head counselor at Camp Akiba in the Poconos (a job he kept for the first two years of our career, just to be safe), his deep love of musicals, or how when he was accepted to the Carnegie Mellon theater program his father took him to celebrate at a diner, and then made him sign a scrap of paper saying that Michael owed him fifteen percent of all the money he made for the rest of his life! And his dad wasn’t even paying the tuition.

I got Golds stories for days. Like the time he came to visit me in one of my twenty rehab stints and got hit by a car as he got out of his, or how he called Debra Winger Debby the first time he met her, which she was not happy with to say the least. I also have my share of regrets, but my biggest is not what I put him through with my addiction and what we would have accomplished had I been clean, but that I did not yet fully comprehend the Chinese food glories of the San Gabriel Valley and specifically Sam Woo Barbecue. Michael would have beef chow fun’d himself all the way to Shangri La!

I could go on but instead I’m just going to share what I read at his memorial, which was probably ten years back or more.

This is what I said as we said goodbye to the golden one.

If in 1999 I would have booked the betting action on weather I would be speaking at Michael’s memorial or he would be speaking at mine, well… I would have a lot of money in my pocket.

I had this play called the Grabelski Concertos. It was about two guys who talk this hipster, be-bop, existential-stoner patois, and in between complain about their girlfriends. It’s a two man show and my fellow actor and collaborator Freddie Parnes was like, we should get my friend Michael Goldberg to direct it, because Michael had directed him in something at University of Michigan where they both went to graduate school.

I’m like okay, cool. Michael reads the play and he’s like, “this is great. You should make a real play out of it.” I said, “what do you mean?” He goes, “well, instead of them both having girlfriends, only one should have a girlfriend, and this girlfriend has laid down the law that if he keeps hanging out and smoking pot everyday with his buddy she is going to leave him.  That’s the inherent conflict. He comes over that day to end the friendship. The question is can he do it or not? It’s a play about a guy having to choose between growing up or staying a kid forever.”  And I’m like, holy shit, this guy is good. “What’s your name again?” And that was that. I never wrote anything else without him. 

Michael wasn’t a writer. He was a watch fixer, and I mean this in the most complimentary way. He could fix a Timex or a Rolex. It didn’t matter. You give him a script with a problem and he would get it ticking again. His skill set was real, not abstract. And though he had strong opinions about what he liked and didn’t, it never got in his way of the task at hand. Whether he was dealing with a big Hollywood producer or some friend who had just written his first play, Michael was all in. He was fascinated and fully engaged with what made things work and had an innate, almost mathematical understanding of story. It was a true gift and he did it with an rare combination of objectivity and subjectivity. Whereas I was (especially back then) personally invested in what I wrote in an ego oriented way, Michael wasn’t, but at the same time he always treated the pages like they were his little children. It made me trust him. He was so supportive, so loving, and got such a kick out of what I wrote that I always knew he had my, and our, best interests at heart.

Golds would take whatever script we were working on home every night, read it, mark it in his crazy chicken scratch, and we would do notes from page one the next day. Before we wrote anything new, we would do notes from the beginning every day. He was relentless. And he had a poet’s ear for sound and language. That’s why we got along so well. He got such pleasure when it flowed and worked and the words really sang. It was always theater and poetry to him. And he was tireless, his work ethic was second to none. There was no resistance to effort. The answer was always in the work. Not in talking about it, doing it.

Michael Goldberg was my writing partner, and I will never have another. That spot is taken. I could collaborate with someone else for the next 20 years, but there is no replacing Golds. We became writers together. Our strengths and weaknesses were divinely matched. We understood each other and and invented a creative language and currency that was personal to us. We were moved by the same things and embodied the same high-brow low-brow dichotomy-- Just a couple of borscht belt Jews who like foreign movies. We shared a creative vision and the whole thing was made from scratch. We earned it every step of the way. There will be no re-creating that with someone else. It was a combination of connection, magic, grace and luck.

Our partnership, our success, Michael’s illness and death and my illness and near death make clear how rare it is to find a true creative partner and how quickly it can be taken. I remember when Golds was diagnosed with cancer at forty, one of his friends said “why you?” Why not me?” was his answer.

Being a conscious, present, loving human being is not for the faint of heart and Michael was all of those things. He was a beautiful, generous, flawed gem of a human soul and a total original. I’m so grateful and honored that I got to spend so much time with him at the height of his powers.