My First Ex-Screenwriting Class

I was enrolling the kids in classes at our local YMCA. Swimming, basketball, ballet - when all of a sudden, I noticed another category of activities. Classes for adults. There were two classes on offer. A storytelling class and a screenwriting class. Why don't I do something, I thought? Of the two, I preferred the sound of screenwriting and taking the class description at its word (all levels welcome), I signed up. I honestly gave it no more thought than this: it was nearby and sounded interesting.

Photo by Ronnie George on Unsplash

When I showed up the first day…it hadn't been unfair to say that all levels were welcome - anyone could go - but everyone there had a lot of experience. I had also incorrectly assumed that it would be a writing class, one that would begin with, for example “An Introduction to Screenwriting” or “the ABCs of writing a scene”. And while the teacher was excellent and you would learn a lot, this is not what it was. It was more of a writing group. Everyone in the class was working on something and they’d bring updated copies of their latest work, which we, as a class, would read aloud and then critique.

It was verrrrry entertaining. It was fascinating. I would have paid to sit and be an observer in the class forever (if they didn't keep insisting that I also had to contribute). In one class, we were given an exercise. We had to write a 5 line scene, with some specific direction. When I think of what I wrote (and then read out), it was…yes, I'd say it was the most humiliating moment of my life. Really bad stuff. I wasn’t blessed with imagination. Making things up is not my forte. That’s why I’m writing here about things that I’ve actually done. I kid you not, I was sitting in the class one day, trying to think of something I could write about, when suddenly I had a flash of inspiration: I could write a play about a screenwriting class! This is the level of imagination we are dealing with (none).

Though I would actually watch a play or sitcom about this particular screenwriting class. In it, there was a retired lawyer, who had made his millions and now owned a bar downtown from which he ran what sounded like a creative commune. Oh and he wrote musical comedies, which we weighed in on with our opinions once a week.

There was a celebrity priest. All of his plays were about a priest thinking about leaving the priesthood and/or having a relationship with a woman. I don’t know if it’s because he was American or because he was a celebrity but he was very good-looking and it was unnerving. I’m not used to them being attractive. I wasn’t having a Fleabag moment or anything though. He still had major priest energy.

There was an Upper East Side mom. A self-described liberal who wrote a one-act play about a mother having an argument with her teenage daughter. In it, the mother was going out to a protest against asylum seekers being housed in the neighbourhood, while her teenage daughter was getting ready for the counter-protest. “This is an argument my daughter and I actually had”, the mom announced, to nobody's surprise. I was so certain she had switched the real life point of views of the mother and daughter for the purpose of the play (she really had used the word ‘liberal’ so much) that I asked, “So your teenager is against emergency accommodation for migrants?”. “No!”, she said . “I am! We sent her to an expensive school and she was brainwashed with their woke ideas. They don’t encourage critical thinking at all so we took her out”. Ah ok, I understand now.

It’s two years since I attended that class and I was just thinking about it the other day, wondering if any of their work ever made it to a stage, when a yellow cab drove by, advertising a new off-Broadway show on its roof: ‘My First Ex-Husband’ by Joy Behar. Because that was another person in our 8 person class, in a tiny room, upstairs at the Y: Joy Behar, comedian and co-host of The View.

I have to admit, I had never heard of Joy Behar before but I can still remember the first time I saw her. She was ahead of me in line for registration and when the young woman behind the reception desk said “Oh I know you. You’re famous!”, Joy asked her “How do you know me?”. “I’m not sure”, the woman said, faltering a bit. “Well, I'm not that famous then, am I?”, Joy shot back. This interaction caused me to look up and though I didn't know who Joy was, you could tell from looking at her that she was famous. The X factor, I suppose and also because she was in full hair and make up. I realise now that she’d come straight from filming The View, though I suspect that Joy Behar is never not in full hair and make-up. She looked like Joan Rivers. She looked and acted so much like Joan Rivers that I was flummoxed as to why her plays were always about Italian Catholic women in the 60s in New York, when she had clearly grown up Jewish in New York.

I’d been harsh on myself earlier saying that I have no imagination because it was clear that everyone in the class was writing what they knew. And Joy was no exception. The internet informed me that she is in fact Italian-American (and it also informed me that she was a very good friend of Joan Rivers).

Joy took part in the class the same way the rest of us did though there were a few things that set her apart, like when she’d pass round copies of her latest script saying “I got my personal assistant to print these”. Or that she’d casually refer, on occasion, to “Whoopi”. “Covid’s back yeah, Whoopi has it”, she’d say. And we’d all nod and try to act cool, saying “Oh God, Whoopi has it? Jees”, as though talking about Whoopi Goldberg’s general health on first name terms was an everyday occurrence for us.

The other thing that set her apart was that I got the impression that her work really would see the light of day. Not because it was better than the rest (everyone was really good) but because she was so determined, driven and well connected. This was an 80 year old woman, not short of a bob, who regularly said things like “I need to work, I have to work”. Others her age might take on a screenwriting class as something to pass the time, to get them out of the house, to keep the brain moving but she was doing it on top of her day job. And not just as a nice little hobby. She was hungry to create and to make it happen.

I bought tickets to the play for me and my first husband and I also booked us a pre-show dinner in the nearby Robert. We live right by Robert but it had been hiding in plain sight on Columbus Circle. On the 12th floor of the Museum of Arts and Design, I hadn’t noticed it till someone on a walking tour I did of the neighbourhood pointed it out and recommended it. It’s now going to be my number one rec for anyone going to see a show on Broadway or at the Lincoln Center. It’s a swanky place, in terms of decor, professionalism of staff, quality of food, views, live music on a grand piano but the pricing is unusually reasonable and the atmosphere is warm and welcoming.

There was an impressive offering of non-alcoholic options and I went for a “Nutty Indulgence”, a creamy cocktail made with non-alcoholic Amaretto. I then had the torchon of Hudson Valley foie gras to start, a butternut squash risotto for main and the molten chocolate lava cake for dessert. I probably could have skipped dessert as we’d been treated to amuse-bouches and complimentary sweets but when you hear the words “molten chocolate lava”, you’re not passing on it, are you?

The play was in a small theatre on West 60th street and it was not a play that I’d heard previously as a work-in-progress. It was in the style of the Vagina Monologues and four women on stage (including Joy) took turns to perform. Each woman played the role of a woman telling us about her first marriage: how it started and why it ended. As well as performing two monologues, Joy introduced the piece and explained to us how she had interviewed numerous divorced women to ask what had initially drawn them to their partner and also to find out where it had all gone wrong. She amalgamated, anonymised and adapted those stories into the eight separate monologues we were about to hear. It was an entertaining performance, sometimes moving and occasionally witty. If you’re a Joy fan, you’ll love it and if you’re not, you probably know already that you won’t.