Jerry is looking out the window at the wedding next door. Molly is on the couch with a migraine from the helicopters.
JERRY
What do these people have in common with Barbra Streisand?
MOLLY
What does anybody have in common with Barbra Streisand?
JERRY
What does James Brolin have in common with Barbra Streisand?
MOLLY
They have something in common, evidently.
JERRY
How could they? I mean she’s music and movies and he’s like . . . Love Boat and AAMCO commercials.
MOLLY
They’re in love.
JERRY
I know. I meant—
MOLLY
That’s why people get married.
JERRY
It’s just a strange combination.
MOLLY
I’m sure they are very much in love.
JERRY
I know. But how do those two people find each other?
MOLLY
They’re lucky.
JERRY
He sure is lucky.
MOLLY
They found each other.
JERRY
He is one lucky son of a bitch.
MOLLY
They love each other! They need each other!
JERRY
Why? Why do those people need each other? How do they get so lucky?
MOLLY
Because people . . . people who need people . . . are the luckiest people in the world!!! . . . I don’t know. What are you asking me for!?
DEEP DIVING INTO MALIBU
In the wake of the success of Celebration for Education, Laure and I formed a nonprofit organization called Malibu Foundation for Youth and Families, whose mission is to improve the lives of the kids and families in Malibu. Robyn Gibson joined the board, as did a core group of dedicated parents, school administrators, teachers, and other involved citizens. We held town meetings to hear what the needs and concerns of the people were. Number one on the list was that in Malibu, there was nothing for kids to do after school except hang out and surf. Kids were getting into drugs and trouble with too much time on their hands while their parents were still at work. We set our sights on starting a teen center of some kind. It was daunting to think about how to set up the infrastructure for something like this, with teachers and aides and activities and insurance, and so many unknowns. As a social worker, my dad had worked a lot with Boys & Girls Clubs of America and suggested we talk to them. Laure and I met with Allan Young, who ran the Boys & Girls Club in Santa Monica, and we were blown away! The club served five hundred kids a day with food, homework help, a gym, sports leagues, and dance classes. The place was buzzing with young people energy. Laure and I saw what our dream of a teen center actually looked like. Allan dedicated his life to the Boys & Girls Club mission, serving on the national committee as well as running his club. He knew the trouble kids can get into in every kind of community if they are not given constructive options like going to the club, and he offered to help us get one up and running in Malibu. He told us we needed three things to get started—a piece of land, a building (and the money to build it), and three years of operating expenses in the bank. The last thing you want to do is build a club, have the kids love it, and then have to shut it down. The principal of the high school and middle school agreed to let us have a small corner of the blacktop on the school campus, a perfect spot that kids could just walk to after school. The dad of a kid on our baseball team was a major real estate developer and said he would give us two of the construction trailers he was using at the building site for the landmark Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. I drove downtown to see them. They seemed pretty small, but good enough to get us started. Now we just needed the money. Laure and Robyn went into overdrive on their fundraising and were very successful. With the star power of Mel behind us, and an incredibly important mission that was easy to understand and support, we met with the wealthiest people in Malibu to give our pitch. We continued to have town hall meetings to raise awareness and get smaller donations as well. It was impossible to do fundraising outside of Malibu. It is a very tough sell to ask people to give to the “poor children of Malibu.” But the people who lived in our hometown knew that this club was vital to the youth and families of Malibu and were generous. It was important to have everyone in the community invested in this, both emotionally and economically, so every donation, from five dollars to five thousand dollars, was equally significant.
Mel and I became good friends through all of it, spending a lot of time together with our families. He was very idiosyncratic. He had a shaman of some sort, Dr. Hung, who had him drinking all kinds of weird concoctions, including a daily shot of liquid which came out of a jug filled with dead snakes and vines, which was supposed to promote long life and strong boners. He took me to his country club to play golf and we had a lot of laughs. Robyn and Mel gave us their estate in Connecticut to celebrate our anniversary. It was an amazing English castle on a hundred acres of rolling countryside, complete with sheep, sheepherders, gardens, stone walls, creepy statues, giant fireplaces, and ancient stone stairs that led to an actual dungeon, which they had remodeled into a state-of-the-art screening room. We loved every minute of it. Our families were committed to serving our community and we had good times together making things happen.
