Stories We Tell Page #4

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,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes