Stories We Tell Page #2

and they got

into some weird discussion

where Dad offered her

a drive home,

and Mom said okay.

Yes, I did offer to drive her home.

I said, "I've got

a Mercedes-Benz sports car

"sitting outside

if you want a ride home. "

Dad admitted that he didn't

have a car there.

In fact, he didn't even drive.

And Mom was the one

that had a car there,

so somehow in the story,

they're both lying

to go home with each other.

And then they made love,

Mick and Diane.

Let me continue by telling you

another of Michael's artistic pursuits.

At about the time

of his marriage to Diane,

Michael decided

to purchase a movie camera

and to record their belated

honeymoon in England.

Watching it, several features

of his work become apparent.

Every time you see a group

of people in my Super 8 movies,

every time you see a few people,

you get interested,

the camera goes away

and looks at the roof

of a house or something,

or disappears in the distance.

This was my way of filming,

not to include people too much.

I gather that Diane

did once say that on that trip,

he spent more time

gripping the camera

than he did holding her.

I had a feeling

they were incredibly different people.

It was sort of amazing

that they were together in some ways,

'cause they were so different.

As excitable

that she was most of the time,

he was calm, or seemed to be.

He was centered

and inside himself,

and she was

so far outside of herself

that sometimes

there was nothing inside.

Michael was a private person,

and Diane was

not a private person.

She really lacked guile.

She did not have two faces

for the world.

I don't know if she showed

different faces to different people,

but I did sense that

she was a woman of secrets.

But they were artfully hidden.

They were subtly hidden.

And because she had

a larger-than-life personality,

you didn't look for the subtleties,

because there was

the razzle-dazzle in front of you.

One of her great...

strengths, I think, was her vitality,

her constant determination

to live life to its fullest.

I don't have anything like that

in my character whatsoever.

I love to play it as an act,

but I can't live it as a human being.

The idea of me jumping out of bed

in the mornings,

running around and doing things

like Diane used to do?

Diane was usually doing

ten things at the same time.

I'd be doing half of one thing.

Diane was so attracted

to his mind,

but she yearned for more

demonstrative affection from him.

Dad says that Mom

wanted to have sex

a lot more than he did.

When I ask him specific questions,

like about oral sex,

Dad tells me

that that is something

that was thought of

as something they did in France.

I sure have never thought

of my Dad as a prude.

He will talk about anything,

and he is not shocked

by anything,

but it's kind of amazing

to think that

oral sex was something that...

maybe it was, I don't know...

but it's amazing to think that...

that that was something

that was so

off the radar for him.

I used to think a night

with a dead wombat

might turn out to be more exciting

than a night with me after you've

been with me for twelve years.

So... who knows?

I was a good husband, I think,

in a providing way,

in terms of my contribution

to the household-running.

Could you give me a list of the duties

of the average husband,

so I could do a check-off?

She did all the cooking,

all the cleaning,

all the taking care of the kids.

He didn't take

any responsibility for us,

he didn't make decisions about us.

It was always,

"Ask your mother. "

Next thing he knew,

he had kids,

and he thought

that he had to be responsible.

So he gave up acting

and started working

at Manufacturers Life

Insurance Company.

Mom was frustrated by Michael.

She saw Michael

as an extremely talented man,

a talented writer,

a very talented actor, singer...

he was all those things.

I think in her mind it was,

"Look at how hard

I have worked

"with very little God-given talent,

"and look at this man,

"who is so talented

in so many ways,

"and he's throwing it away. "

He was a good writer,

but he didn't pursue it.

And we all encouraged him.

He just didn't.

She got frustrated with him,

because she felt that

he was enormously talented

and was too willing

to just do things

for the small audience

of he and Diane and the family.

And while she knew him so well,

she just so enjoyed

his company.

And I think as women,

we do that, right?

It's that we choose the person

we are in love with,

or sometimes it chooses us,

and then there's the rest of life.

In 1978, she came to me

one day and she said,

"I've been offered a part

in a play called Toronto,

"which is going

to take place in Montreal. "

And she said to me,

"What do you think?

"Would you mind if I went off to Montreal

for a couple of months?

"Could you look after

the kids while I'm gone?"

In truth,

he was more than agreeable.

He was delighted.

Like many marriages,

perhaps most,

this one had grown stale.

The passion of the early year or two

had long died.

Their lifestyles

were totally different.

Diane loved parties,

Michael solitude.

Michael loved being alone

and listening to music,

Diane danced to it.

She'd often complained

of his coldness towards her,

and not just in the marriage bed,

but in all their time together.

He knew he disappointed her,

that he had never lived up

to her earlier vision of Mick and Franz,

and he knew he never could.

Dad, can you just take

that line back?

Yeah.

You guys pick up

all these little mistakes, don't you?

He knew he'd disappointed her,

that he had never lived up

to her earlier visions

of Mick and Franz,

and he knew he never could.

So when Diane mentioned

the possibility of acting

for six or seven weeks in Montreal,

Michael was quietly ecstatic

and openly enthusiastic.

Part of going

to Montreal and doing the play

was get out of her life.

She hated living in Toronto.

She wanted to live

in Montreal or somewhere else.

She always thought Toronto

was such a reserved city,

and everybody was so work ethic.

People lived to work,

instead of worked to live,

which has always been

more of the Montreal kind of thing,

so it was a way

of her getting away from that

and doing what she really

wanted to do, which was stage.

Can you talk about the play

that you were in together

in Montreal?

Can you describe

what it was about?

It was a play called Toronto,

and it was about a bunch

of people auditioning.

I can't remember the...

I can't remember what she did...

in this play.

It was about

as unmemorable as they get.

The guy had

written a lot of great plays,

and I guess

he needed some money.

He was writing

about his experiences

in the theater world.

I played the director

of his new play,

and Wayne Robson

and Geoffrey Bowes

played actors

who came in to audition.

And Diane played a reviewer.

I said, "Diane, you're like a kid

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes