I Shudder Read online

  Months passed, and I produced draft upon draft. One morning I found myself seated before a borrowed typewriter, in a tower suite at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. The hotel room had open windows on four sides, looking out to the valley, the hills, and a Diet Coke billboard. As I worked, a monsoon breeze came up and the stacks of pages flew around my head. I felt like either the beleaguered, soon-to-be-hard-drinking, downtrodden screenwriter of any number of black-and-white movies, or a sparkling Disney heroine, a Cinderella or a Snow White, as she’s visited by twittering, animated blue jays and robins.

  About a year in, Team Disney, Team Bette, Scott and I sat in a meeting, discussing Catholic teaching regarding vows of silence, poverty, and chastity, and the specifics of a Franciscan versus a Benedictine order. Glancing around, I saw that I was analyzing papal dogma with a room almost exclusively filled with Jews. At a loss, someone suggested that I should be sent for some hands-on research to a convent. “Yes!” cried Bette, a firm believer in continuing education. “Paul, you really need to go to a convent!”

  So I was shipped, by bus, to the rural Regina Laudis convent on the outskirts of Bethlehem, Connecticut. I’d read that this convent had been the home, for decades, of the actress Dolores Hart, who, as an ingenue, had appeared as a spring-break coed in Where the Boys Are and opposite Elvis Presley in King Creole. Ms. Hart had left Hollywood to become a nun, taking her final vows in 1970, when she told an interviewer, “There is a promise given in a vocation that is beyond anything in your wildest dreams. There’s a gift the Lord offers and He is a gentleman.” Ms. Hart insisted that she’d thoroughly enjoyed her sojourn in California, although in 1959 she’d said, “Elvis is a young man with an enormous capacity of love…but I don’t think he has found his happiness. I think he is terribly lonely.”

  I couldn’t wait to meet such a prescient, ponytailed starlet-turned-sister. The convent was a series of rambling, mostly clapboard buildings set amid trees and pastures, and I was assigned a bed in a gender-appropriate bunkhouse. This was a somewhat cloistered order, meaning it wasn’t an ecclesiastical petting zoo. The nuns weren’t readily available for conversation, as they received no funding from the Vatican and supported themselves by running a farm, a dairy, and a ceramics workshop; they were far too busy to talk to anyone except their husband, Jesus. As a heretic, it occurred to me that a convent could be seen as an extremely sacred, industrious harem.

  Wandering into the surrounding woods, I came upon a shed that showcased an elaborate nativity scene composed of over a hundred hand-carved, nineteenth-century Neapolitan dolls. It was holy yet garish, like the set for a PBS children’s show using puppets for the baby Jesus and his buddies. Back in my dorm, I went through my research. Convents in America, I found, were like charm schools, because enrollment was way down. In prefeminist years, a young woman was expected to get married, and her employment options were limited, so back then becoming a nun could actually be a route to independence. But lately, if you asked your average teenager to abandon boys, fluffy duvets, and downloads of all her favorite bands, she’d rather not.

  Convents and monasteries were closing everywhere, and their land and buildings were being sold and bulldozed. The few remaining abbeys often echoed with teetering seventy-year-old nuns tending to ailing ninety-eight-year-old nuns. Vatican II had caused additional attrition. Once nuns were encouraged to wear more conventional outfits and to work in the community, many decided: Why not just become a teacher or a social worker with a livelier Saturday night? I worried that Sister Act might be the final crude iron nail in the Sisterhood’s simple pine coffin.

  I decided to stalk Dolores Hart. I hoped that there’d been a papal dispensation, allowing her to pray in a sleeveless shell top and a pert, highlighted flip. I skulked around, and eventually found a cottage that turned out to be the convent’s gift shop—so as a gay Jew, I finally felt embraced. The stock was skimpy, mostly pottery, organic skin creams, greeting cards, and several “Women in Chant” CDs, one seductively titled Virgin Martyrs. At first I almost overlooked a tiny, gnarled creature, perched on a stool behind the cash register, like a bat or a long-fossilized chimp.

  “I hate this!” the chimp yipped, and I saw that she was trying to watch a soap opera on a black-and-white portable mini-TV, the perfect accessory for a nun. “The G.D. reception keeps going out!” she cawed. “I can’t see my show!”

  I hoped that this wasn’t what remained of Dolores Hart, so I instantly turned myself into an accomplished investigative journalist. “Good afternoon, Sister,” I began, as if I were suddenly wearing a blue oxford-cloth button-down and a safari jacket.

  “What?” she croaked.

  “I said, good afternoon. I’m visiting. So, is this the gift shop?”

  “What does it look like?”

  I detected an unspoken “asshole” in her remark, and I was taken aback. Weren’t nuns supposed to be wholesome, accepting, and chipper, all the livelong day? “It’s so lovely out here,” I ventured.

  “We’re not ‘out here.’ We’re inside. And it’s cold. What’s wrong with this thing?” She pounded the set with her arthritic knuckles, as if she were boxing its ears.

  “So, how long have you been a nun?” As I asked this, I felt like I was hitting on her, and that we both needed to be holding long-necked beer bottles and scanning the room for someone hotter.

  “Since before you were born, boy. What would you know about it?”

  Maybe this was a wicked nun, exiled for her harsh personality to the gift shop, to heal herself through selling keychains and calendars. I would reach out. “Is it a hard life?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a hard life. I’m a nun. It’s supposed to be a hard life. What are you?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a WRITER.”

  She laughed because, of course, every nun’s a critic. “That’s good,” she said, still chortling. “A writer! I like that.”

  “So why did you become a nun?”

  “Why? Why? I was sixteen. I had eight brothers and sisters. I liked to pray, I believed in God, I had a calling. End of story.”

  I was running out of probing topics, and I didn’t think she wanted to dish about where to meet monks. “So, do you ever wish you weren’t a nun? That you’d chosen a different life?”

  She stared at me, in wonder and disgust. “Only when my G.D. TV doesn’t work!” A final swat caused a grainy image to reappear, and she turned away from me, instantly far more absorbed in a studly young doctor’s flirtation with a heavily mascaraed nurse.

  At five a.m. the next morning, I attended the second-earliest Mass, in a rough wooden chapel, which reminded me of a finished basement or a cedar-lined humidor. As everyone bowed their heads, I did just what I do at any religious service: I sort of respectfully but noncommittally bowed my head and mumbled gibberish, except for the word “amen.” I’m a garden-variety lapsed suburban New Jersey Jew; for my bar mitzvah, I’d learned the Hebrew for my Torah portion phonetically, from a record. After my bar mitzvah, I never went back. Catholicism always seemed more exotic, the way your friends’ parents can seem more interesting than your own; your friends’ parents also have no power over you.

  The Mass was heartfelt, unadorned, and a little boring. The nuns prayed constantly when alone, and at up to eight services throughout the day. The room was icy and dim, lacking any vivid stained glass or theatrical velvet. This is why I’m not a nun, I decided. If you felt truly summoned, this extremely spare and focused existence would be all you hungered for, a personal completion. Becoming a nun reminded me of having a sex change. If you wanted something that extreme, if you felt certain about that degree of transformation, you really had to want it.

  That afternoon, I was permitted a brief audience with, if not the Mother Superior, then someone highly placed in the nun command. She spoke to me through some shadowy grillwork in a central office. She was kind and helpful, although she didn’t waste time. “Welcome to Regina L
audis,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  I paused, and then I told the nun that I was researching a novel about a woman seeking a more pure, prayerful life, within convent walls. I suspected that replying “Oh, I’m writing a Disney farce about a tramp in a habit” wasn’t quite the ticket. I asked the Sister about the convent’s history, and she supplied basic, informative answers. She was accustomed to ignorant outsiders, and she let me down easy.

  At first I decided that deliberately lying to a nun had finally guaranteed my passage to Hell. I thought again, and knew that, as always, I was being entirely self-absorbed, and that the nun most likely couldn’t care less. She wasn’t a cartoon nun, a harridan with a ruler, but someone who’d consciously devoted herself to a difficult life, of sacrifice, contemplation, and service. She didn’t want any of the things I wanted. She wouldn’t pray for an unlimited supply of chocolate-covered pretzels or brawnier shoulders or the ability to fly. We worshiped entirely different Madonnas. I wanted to tempt her, with a Snickers bar or a copy of Us Weekly, just to see if she’d crack. Years later, I did hear about a nun who’d somehow managed to acquire and hide a closetful of designer evening gowns in her otherwise nondescript apartment—she was like a very private, devout Cinderella.

  As I was leaving the convent, on my way out to the bus, I caught sight of an older woman carrying a tin pail of milk from the convent barn. She was wearing high, mud-spattered rubber boots and a down vest over her habit. She was smiling and working hard, and she just might have been Dolores Hart. I decided not to approach her, since she was busy and probably didn’t need to be asked any more questions about Elvis. She’d done something unheard of for an American: she’d been offered the life of a celebrity and, quietly and politely, she’d said no.

  On my ride back to New York, I read a book called Lesbian Nuns: Breaking the Silence and learned that for gay women, especially of earlier generations, religious life had often been a true sanctuary, although the higher-ups would push to separate lesbian couples, citing a ban on “particular friendships,” which struck me as just plain mean.

  I shared all of my discoveries at my next Los Angeles meeting with the Disney people, and the information about the lesbian nuns was deemed especially not useful. My contract expired and wasn’t renewed. Bette had finally abandoned the role and Sister Act was dead in the water, but then, just like with Bernadette on that bleak French crag—a miracle!

  2.

  Whoopi Goldberg accepted the part of Terri, although she asked to have the character’s name switched to Deloris because, I was told, she’d always wanted to play someone called Deloris. I was asked to return, and despite the prospect of more meetings and more notes and, most likely, a discussion of whether to include a sparkly, Day-Glo, strawberry-scented Communion wafer in the Sister Act Happy Meal, I said yes.

  I flew out and was introduced to the movie’s just-hired director, Emile Ardolino, a sweet-tempered, silver-haired man who’d devised a superb camera technique for capturing ballet on many episodes of the PBS series Dance in America, and who’d worked with Scott Rudin on their Oscar-winning documentary about Jacques D’Amboise, He Makes Me Feel Like Dancing. Hollywood had found all of this suspiciously highbrow, so Emile had fought his way to directing the chick-friendly Catskills romance Dirty Dancing. Further casting for the supporting nuns in Sister Act began, and I was included in the process.

  The script called for actresses of all shapes and ages, although the Disney execs still squabbled over which nuns should be “fuckable.” Under Deloris’s supervision, a core group of nuns would form a choir, so the women auditioning were asked to prepare a song. The film’s musical director was Marc Shaiman, who’d worked with Bette for years, and who was much admired for his many film scores; a few years later he’d write the score for Hairspray. For the wannabe nuns, Marc brought in dozens of the most amazing Broadway, cabaret, and recording artists from the past fifty years. Marc, Scott, Emile, and I were all intravenous users of original cast CDs, so let’s not mince words: in that room, Angela Lansbury was Spiderman.

  The auditions became a blissful, one-time-only Gay Jeopardy Tournament of Champions. Susan Johnson would enter, and we’d all rush to compliment her on her work in The Most Happy Fella, a show which had first been produced before most of our panelists were born. We didn’t need a vision of the Virgin, because we saw Mary Wickes, who’d sung opposite Bing Crosby onscreen in White Christmas. A Jedi Master was declared when an actress appeared and Emile, his eyes shining, gushed, “I loved you in Donnybrook!” I bowed to Emile, because I’d never even heard of Donnybrook.

  My rewrites were less rewarding. The studio notes poured down: “Deloris needs to be more sympathetic.” “Deloris needs to teach the nuns, but she needs to learn something, too.” “The movie isn’t about nuns, it’s about friends.” “Could Deloris help a needy child?” “Does Deloris need a dog?” “Can we have a montage where Deloris and the nuns bond while painting a colorful anti-drug mural?” “Can two of the nuns coax Deloris into a threeway behind the altar?” Okay, I made that last suggestion up, but only to avoid diabetes. The Disney notes were always phrased in the most positive, supportive, gee-wouldn’t-it-be-great-if tone, and that was the problem. It was like being trampled to death by cheerleaders.

  The studio deadlocked over casting Whoopi’s love interest. Any sexual content had become all but nonexistent, but there was still a by-the-book police officer who supervised Deloris’s transfer to the convent, while developing the most tame, Disneyfied crush. The question became, should the officer be caucasian or African-American? The studio was in a dither of political correctness, mixed with business concerns. Was interracial love a brave step forward, or would the black audience object? What about the white, southern demographic? How could the studio keep every possible moviegoer happy? Finally a honcho burst into a meeting, burbling, “I’ve got it! I’ve got the guy! I know exactly who Whoopi’s boyfriend should be—Edward James Olmos!”

  I stared at him and asked, “Excuse me. Do you think that if a black person and a white person have a baby, it’s a Hispanic?”

  “Yes!” he shouted triumphantly, and, to this day, I’m not sure if he was kidding. Either way, I couldn’t take the process, or the notes, or the prospect of all those nuns hugging, so I quit.

  After I left, Sister Act was rewritten by half of Southern California. Even as shooting began, writers came and went, and working on the film became a form of jury duty. I’d get occasional updates, from friends and gossip columns, as the star, the studio, and the script erupted. Whoopi, it was rumored, had eventually shipped one of the execs a boxed set of heavy brass balls.

  I was still a beginner, and I wanted desperately to avoid Whining Screenwriter Syndrome. I’d signed a contract and cashed the checks, which were underwriting my work on a new play. No one has ever jammed a gun to a screenwriter’s head, demanding another extended car chase. I was in such Manhattan denial that it hadn’t occurred to me that, at some point, Sister Act would be released.

  I was FedExed a final draft of the script, which was now the product of many hands. Good or bad, it was no longer my work, so I asked to have my name removed from the credits. The studio was concerned, and I got a series of urgent calls, offering me a videocassette of the final cut, asking me to watch it and reconsider. I kept refusing, because even if the movie was terrific, it wasn’t my script. I was extremely uncomfortable about accepting the praise or blame for something I hadn’t written. An exec finally proposed, “Paul, don’t watch the movie alone. Get a bunch of your friends and have them all come over and make popcorn and watch it together. You’ll have a blast!”

  I answered, “You know, I could invite my friends over and bring out a dead puppy. And we could toss it around, but we really couldn’t say it was flying.”

  After that, Disney agreed that I could use a pseudonym, pending their approval. I first went for “R. Chasuble,” explaining to an executive that Reverend Chasuble was a priest in another farce, Osc
ar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest. He was skeptical. I came up with “Screenplay by Goofy.” He wasn’t amused. Thinking aloud, I joined the first name of a character from a story I’d written to my brother’s middle name, and arrived at the blandly inoffensive “Joseph Howard,” which was rubber-stamped by the studio and which still sounds like someone who helped found the Mormon Church.

  Sister Act opened and was, improbably, a great success. It hadn’t been an expensive production and so everyone made money, including me. I had nothing to do with the sequel, Sister Act II: Back in the Habit, but there’s a credit line reading “Based On Characters Created By Joseph Howard.” A stage version is in the works. In interviews, Bette has expressed regret about not appearing in the film. A year after it opened, I ran into one of the original executives assigned to the project, and he said, “Paul, you know, you should really write something for Bette.”

  “I did,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “Sister Act.”

  “Oh, that’s right!” he replied, giggling.

  I can’t vouch for the quality of the original film, for one reason. Sister Act may very well be just fine, but I’ve never been able to watch it.

  As for Dolores Hart, I’ve read that she’s now the Prioress of Regina Laudis, and that she has also, over all her years in the convent, kept up her membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She loves being sent DVDs of all the latest movies, because she’s the only nun who’s allowed to vote for the Oscars.

  I Shudder:

  An Excerpt from the Most Deeply Intimate and Personal Diary of One Elyot Vionnet

  Hallie Tesler

  As this is my most deeply intimate and personal diary, I am assuming that it will one day be introduced into evidence at my trial.