Me and Donald Sutherland: unfinished business

I was getting ready for bed, the radio was on, and after election and Putin news came the announcement: Donald Sutherland dead at 88. A stab to the heart and catch of breath. No. Not him. Not yet. He cannot go. Sutherland and I had unfinished business, business that was never going to be finished, but which connected us.

In my early 20’s I worked at a theatre a block away from Hollywood and Vine. The walk to work took me past Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. On the other side of Vine Street was the Pantages Theatre, where the Oscars used to be held. I was in love with film and acting, and living the dream.

Not that there was anything glamourous about my job. I was working for the company that produced You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, a musical based on the popular Peanuts strip. Much of my work day was spent at a desk, tapping away at one of those calculators that spool out figures from a roll of paper.

Gary Burghoff played Charlie Brown. We weren’t friends exactly, but now and then we amicably sat opposite each other at a table in the diner next door, having a quick pre-show coffee or sandwich.

All the cast planned to be stars. They returned from auditions with entertaining tales of humiliations or, less frequently, small triumphs. Gary got a call-back, and then the job – the role of Radar in MASH, a Robert Altman film starring Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland. No one knew it yet, but Gary had won the jackpot. He would never have to worry where his next dollar was coming from.

When MASH started shooting, Gary issued invitations to visit him on set. I accepted avidly, for I was secretly in love with Donald Sutherland. I’d fallen for him, and also for London, in Joanna, a British film that had had a mild success. Like me, Sutherland was Canadian, which I imagined made him more accessible than harder-boiled Americans, and I hatched a plan. If I interviewed him, I could write an article and sell it, and instead of balancing figures I could become a journalist. I would write articles about people I admired.

On the set, Gary introduced us. Sutherland was covered in movie blood, in the middle of repeated takes of a scene around an operating table. Polite words were exchanged, and he went back to work. One night he and Elliott Gould came to see Gary in his show, and we all went to dinner. I could barely put two words together. My thoughts were spinning on a loop – Donald Sutherland… I’m having dinner with Donald Sutherland… I went to Griffith Park and watched them film the football game scenes, feeling already that I was climbing up in the world. The golden ring was in sight. I just had to grab it.

I started making phone calls – who wants to buy an article about Donald Sutherland? A half-offer of publication came in from a Canadian newspaper. If I sent them the article, it might work for their weekend supplement.

Sutherland’s publicist approved the interview, but Sutherland had final approval. I was to meet him at the studio commissary for lunch.

Commissary. Wasn’t that the thrilling word… Not café or restaurant or dining room. Only in movie studios did people eat in a commissary. “Commissary” meant “lunching with the stars”. I planned questions while feeling like a giddy teenager.

We had lunch. OMG I’m having lunch with Donald Sutherland… What we talked of is lost in memory. What remains is a sense of the man – at ease, indulgent, undemanding, kind, funny. He agreed to a formal interview at his house.

I hired a photographer. There was no guarantee of selling the article, and now no guarantee of profit if it did sell, but I calculated that photographs increased likelihood of a sale. On the appointed day, the photographer and I arrived at Sutherland’s house. The music of Blood, Sweat and Tears was pouring from stereo speakers. He led us out and introduced us to little Kiefer, playing by the pool. We settled at a table. The sun shone, blazing out its California heat. I sweltered in a tweedy jacket that I imagined made me look professional and stylish.

I asked prepared questions and Sutherland answered in his laid-back manner. Of the conversation I remember nothing other than a moment of high embarrassment. How did he manage to travel back and forth between Canada and the US for work – did he have in place a special arrangement? “Yes”, he answered, “it’s called an argument.”  Imagining Argument to be a form of official document I asked, “What’s an Argument?” Realising my idiocy too late to save shattered street cred, if ever I’d possessed any. The interview ended, and I slunk away in relief.

Then I wrote. For days I wrote, if ‘wrote’ can be defined as staring at a sentence and deciding it’s not good enough, crossing out, starting again, only to find that the next sentence isn’t good enough, that every sentence emerging from the creative well is constipated and banal, stillborn. I wrote, I re-wrote, I wrote again, and all my words died on the page. Within me something died too. What had made me think I could do this?

For weeks I struggled with words, and at the end had nothing to show for Sutherland’s generous donation of time to a journalist wannabe. I did have something to show for the expense of a photographer – two boxes of slides as a detailed reminder of failure. In a banquette at The Pancake House I finally decided to give up. I would struggle no longer. Clearly any writing ability I possessed vanished in writing for publication.  

Life went on.

Years later I was working in London, the city I’d fallen in love with in Joanna. I was Manager at a West End Theatre. Before a show, I stood in the foyer watching the audience arrive. One evening, Donald Sutherland walked in. My breath stopped. Would he recognise me, recognise the failed writer, the pretend journalist?

Of course he did not, nor did I make a move to renew our acquaintance.

Interview articles are like dust thrown into the wind, ephemeral, an entertainment to briefly distract from whatever is going on in readers’ lives. My failure to write about him would have meant nothing to Donald Sutherland, but the ripples of that unfinished article followed me on across years. I had learned something about myself that felt definitive.

It took a long time to learn it was not. Preparing for a house move, I came across a draft of that article and was shocked to find it no better or worse than most of what I read in weekend supplements. Not brimming with brilliant insights, but not an embarrassment either.

I came to recognise what it was that I loved in Donald Sutherland – his creative fearlessness, his openness to the moment, his ease with himself. Personality traits that I valued and saw lacking in myself. I was creatively fearful, questioning and doubting.

I’ve learned to work around my writing neuroses. I was never intended for the City Desk, bashing out lines at speed. I’m slow. Writing begins with me and the page. Just the two of us. The first draft is for myself, with no intention of publication. The notion of “publication” comes with too many eyes looking over my shoulder, too many voices babbling too much analysis.

Now a wonderful man has died, and all I have to finish this business between us are these words. I have finally finished the article.