There’s an old story about a terrible production of the play The Diary of Anne Frank.
It was so awful, apparently, that in a scene early on, when the Gestapo comes to search the house, someone from the audience called out, “She’s in the attic! She’s in the attic!”
We’ve all had the experience of squirming miserably in a theater, watching something we desperately wanted to end. Mostly, of course, we’re not presented with the perfect opportunity of Gestapo agents searching a house on the Prinsengracht.
Last year, I saw a terrible play. I had a couple of friends in the cast, so I couldn’t get out of watching it, and I certainly couldn’t heckle from the stands.
I won’t list all of the unbearable things about it except to say that there was a lot of tuneless singing, and every few moments, the action would freeze, and a character would walk downstage into a spotlight and recall an irritating childhood memory. “Mama! Mama! Don’t you want to see me dance, Mama?” That sort of thing.
Worse, I was expected to hang around after the play with a few other invited guests and greet our friends in the cast.
As we waited, we caucused among ourselves, trying to come up with just the right words to say.
“I don’t want to lie,” one of my theatergoing companions said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“What do you mean? Just look the person in the eye and tell them that you loved a play you hated and thought they were great when they were awful?”
“Exactly,” I said. “You look them directly in the eye and tell them what they want to hear — what, frankly, is all they want to hear, which is that you liked the play a lot, loved their performance, and are going to tell all of your friends to buy tickets.”
Easy for me to say, I guess. As my friend helpfully pointed out, I’m an old-line Episcopalian, which, by the standards of contemporary America, means I’m basically a sociopath. I see nothing wrong with lying my way through any and every kind of social awkwardness. I lie at plays, movie premieres, book readings. I lie whenever I don’t have anything constructive to say, which, let’s face it, is a lot of the time for a lot of us.
But mostly, I lie when the person I’m talking to sends off that powerful vibe that says, “I know I said I want your honest feedback, but what I really want is for you to tell me that what I did was a work of genius and that you think I’m brilliantly talented.”
Or, to put it another way, everyone likes to “speak truth to power,” but if you ask power what power wants to hear, it’s that power looks great in those skinny jeans. The truth, whatever that is, can wait.
Years ago, a friend of mine went to the big New York premiere of the movie The Elephant Man. You remember that movie, right? Anthony Hopkins plays a sympathetic doctor who rescues the Elephant Man, played wonderfully by John Hurt, from a life of exploitation in carnival freak shows. It’s a great, dark, vivid picture, and it has a wonderful moment near the end when the Elephant Man, with his huge, deformed head and twisted-up face, is invited to meet the queen. As he puts on his white tie and tails and looks at himself in the mirror — his monstrous, contorted face, and his face and skin covered in folds of pocked skin — he turns to Hopkins and asks, in a heartbreaking voice, “How do I look?”
You could hear a pin drop. The audience was awestruck by the power of the moment.
Except for my friend.
When the Elephant Man asked, “How do I look?” he couldn’t restrain himself. My friend called out, “Truth?”
Silence. Then laughter. Then, the spell of the moment was broken. For the movie to work, you have to believe that at that moment, the Elephant Man looks almost handsome in his white tie and tails rather than what he looks like, which was like an old bird’s nest in formal wear.
My friend ruined the movie for everyone in the theater by forgetting that when people ask, “How do I look?” or, “How was the play?” or, “Did you really love my novel?” the last thing they want is the truth.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
