Read When I Stop Talking You for Free Online

business, after all.) These are people who do not make a product, perform an essential service, or, as my father would say, have an inventory, so even the most successful of them are haunted by the following thought: "Who really needs what I'm making?"
    If you go to a movie set a week before wrap, you will see the biggest stars in the world on the phone in a panic. "What do I do next?" "Who wants me?" It's not that these people are unusual-it's the situation that's unusual. The on-again, off-again nature of the work would test anyone.
    So what do I do? I help. I take the pressure off. I handle the mundane concerns so the actor or director or writer can do what only he or she can do: perform, create. An artist who attempts to get into business-to do what I do, produce or deal or whatever-is an artist who has stopped being an artist. Most important, I do not treat artists like children. I do not patronize. Some people on the business side of entertainment do patronize. They feed off the insecurity of the situation: Your fear is money in their wallet. These are sharks. But other people help artists through that bad stretch after they have finished and before they have started again-these are the David O. Selznicks and Bryan Lourds, the producers and agents who built Hollywood.
    I learned a lot from the improv exercises, too. For me, this was less a matter of becoming another person or character than learning to trust the logic of my own mind. Sometimes, when you're up against it, maybe this is an old Bronx thing, you just have to open your mouth and start talking. I can't tell you how many jams I've gotten out of by talking, seeing where the words take me. "What are we going to do about it?" "Well, I'll tell you what we're going to do about it…" And I open my mouth and see what happens. That's improv.
    For me, the end of the Playhouse School came during dance class-or, to be more specific, when Jimmy Caan and I went to buy clothes for dance class. This was Martha Graham's workshop. It was legendary-every student had to take it. Jimmy's father drove a fruit truck and took us to Capezio on Broadway in that truck. We get out-and we were street kids, you'd never peg us in a million years for actors-and go up to the showroom where they sell the clothes. A saleswoman puts a tape measure around my waist, chest, shoulders, then comes back with a stack of stuff, slippers, tights, whatever. I put it on and look at myself in the mirror, and I'm like, "Whoa! Wait a minute. If I walked down the street in my neighborhood like this, they'd kill me." And here's the kicker: They would be right to kill me! I would deserve killing! So I look at Jimmy, and say, "Nope. Uh-uh. Can't do it. No way."
    I go to the class in my jeans and T-shirt. I'm surrounded by dancers, these beautiful butterflies. I never felt so big in my life. I was Sylvester Stallone trapped in a painting by Edgar Degas. Martha Graham comes out, elegant, floating around, and says, "Where are our tights and dancing slippers?"
    I shrug and say, "I can't wear that stuff."
    "In my class," she says, "you wear my clothes."
    "Look at me," I tell her. "I'm never going to be a dancer. I don't want to buy the clothes."
    She puts her hand to her chin and cocks her hip and sighs. "Okay. Let me see you walk."
    Now, by walk she did not mean walk. She meant ballet walk. Up on your toes. When I get across the room, turn, and look, she throws up her hands and says, "You, sir, are a klutz!"
    This was the dividing line, the moment of truth. Jimmy Caan put on the slippers and tights, so his name appears in the credits as Sonny Corleone or whatever, whereas I, being filled with normal human shame, did not put on the slippers and tights, so my name appears in various credits as producer.
    Years later, I produced Martha Graham on Broadway. Did she remember me from class? Of course not. It's opening night. I sent her ten dozen roses, filled her dressing room with flowers, then showed up in my tuxedo,