The Importance of Being Ernie: Read Online Free PDF Page A

Stan and I were directed to keep our eyes glued on a TV set, engrossed in a program, while Newman entered the front door.
    “Ignore him, no matter what he does or says, just keep watching the TV,” ordered McCarey. Easy enough, I thought. We did that all the time with our real parents.
    Take one: Newman made his entrance and paused behind the sofa where Stan and I were sitting. He says, “Hi, boys!” We give him nothing back, ignoring him. Then he waved, still trying to get our attention, and we stayed riveted to the TV as instructed.
    McCarey’s voice yells out from behind the camera, “Cut! Let’s do it again. Barry, keep your eyes on the TV.”
    I replied, “Huh? Uh ... okay.”
    Take two: Newman enters, tries to get us to look at him. Once again, I am focused on the TV.
    “Cut!” screamed McCarey. “Barry, you’re not looking at the TV like I told you to do. Now let’s get it right this time!”
    Take three: Newman enters and ...
    “ Cuutt! ” We didn’t even get to the part where Newman says Hi.
    McCarey emerged from the darkness, his eyes bulging, jowls jiggling. He gets right in my face and snarls, “Barry, you keep looking away from the TV! Don’t do that! Do you understand? Keep your eyes on the TV! Please! ” Then he retreated into the darkness behind the camera like a pissed-off ghost.
    Take four: McCarey bellows, “ Action! ” ... “ Cut! ” McCarey reappears again, looking like he wants to slap me silly. By this time I am ready to slap myself silly. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong; I had never, before or since, looked at a TV as hard as I was doing it that day.
    Before McCarey could throttle my neck, Newman intervened. The star said, “Leo, take it easy, he’s just a kid. Listen, I’ve got an idea: You’ve already got a master shot where you see me enter and come up behind him, right? All you really need is the boy’s close-up to show that’s he’s watching the TV and ignoring me. Let’s just shoot that now and let the kid rest. It’ll work out when you edit.” The star was already thinking like an award-winning director, which he later became.
    Not wanting to waste more time and money, McCarey agreed to Newman’s suggestion.
    We began my close-ups with high hopes. After one take, it was back to the same old nightmare with McCarey screaming, “Barry, you’re still not looking where you should be looking; your eyes are all over the place!”
    Newman, ever the hero and cool dude, decided to crawl inside the empty TV cabinet off-camera and give me something interesting to focus on. To make his live presentation more entertaining, a prop master delivered a hand puppet to Newman so he could wave it at me.
    While the whole hubbub was unfolding off-camera, I sat there thinking: There is Paul Newman, a major movie star, waving a hand puppet at me from inside an empty television cabinet. Weird.
    A couple more aborted takes ensued. Finally, there was an eerie quiet from behind the camera. I heard urgent, unintelligible whispered words offstage and one of them sounded like seizure . I didn’t know what the word meant, but it didn’t sound good. Then McCarey, Newman, and my studio teacher approached me. The teacher felt my forehead and gently asked, “Barry, are you all right?”
    “I feel fine,” I replied. And I did, too, except for the embarrassment of Newman’s puppet show.
    The three adults hovered over me. Their expressions weren’t showing frustration anymore, only grave concern. I heard a voice in the darkness behind the camera whisper, “Call an ambulance.”
    Moments later, my mother and I were being whisked away, sirens blaring, to the nearest hospital. In the ER, the doctors ruled out seizures as the cause for my wandering eyes. I seemed to be healthy as far as they could tell.
    After that, the hospital’s ophthalmologist was called in to perform some tests. His diagnosis: astigmatism. That explained why my eyes were randomly darting back and forth, like a broken