I stand, stoic, by the door. John and Elaine take two vacant chairs at the wooden lip, their stomachs kiss the vacancy usually left open for the bartender’s ancient cash register. No bartender in sight. No one seems to mind. The packed bar is one of many lower east side digs that serve as a kind of purgatory for artists and poets, all of whom have ditched their “free love” hangups and now feel they’re too old to change the world but still young enough to be mad about it. It’s 1973.

Once John and Elaine get wound up tight enough, springs unfold, releasing kinetic energy that lasts for days, weeks even. I’ve seen them go on seventy-two hour benders about Aristotelian unities of drama, non-submersible story elements, Bergman vs Bresson, New York esoterica, history of the Bowery, and toxic masculinity—a subject that Cassavetes can go on and on about. Elaine has finished writing the first draft of her script that she and John have poured themselves into. It’s called Mikey and Nicky. Elaine’s brilliant comedic stroke muddled up by Cassavetes’ borderline psychotic thirst for truth and raw acting technique. Cassavettes is spinning yarns about his experiences on the set of The Dirty Dozen before digging into Elaine’s directing style. He folds real-life into his dream machine. Elaine would later tell me that John, “…is the only adult she’s ever met who verbalizes daydreams in real time and like a child, doesn’t distinguish it from reality.”

“Everyone has a secret, Elaine. They may not realize it—and that’s the hard part—directing is sometimes actualizing truth that may not even be there…” John goes on and on. Elaine’s fist tightening and kneading at her temple—her eyes seem illuminated from within. The bulb that turned on months ago, still burns bright. Mikey and Nicky. Mickey and Nicky. Mickey and Nicky. She talks about her two characters like they should show up at the bar any minute. Nothing can touch her in this post-first draft state. She is on fire with both eyes on the ball. Not even Cassavettes, with his manic rants and pot-boiling confidence, can dissuade her to change a few lines here and there. She has a reservation about her. A plate of armor that weighs heavy on her shoulders despite so much life packed into her tiny frame. She looks like a boxer leaning on the ropes—taking hit after hit.

I bet Cassavetes is laying it on her thick, reiterating notes on her latest draft of Mikey and Nicky…

Elaine catches my eye as Cassavetes raises his arm in a pontificating gesture. Fifteen to twenty feet of space collapses instantaneously. She smiles at me and winks. Writing is like boxing. You train non-stop and never take a day off. That’s what Elaine told me. John’s arm lowers back into a defensive position. Elaine’s fist slams the bar wood and she fires back at John. She doesn’t stop for the next hour or so—until last call.

I have to hand it to her. I wonder if I could have handled Cassavettes. Husbands is one of my favorite films and a huge inspiration for The Comedy. I wonder if Tim could appreciate Cassavettes. It’s gonna be an all out experiment already with no script and just a few scenes in mind. I’m nervous but ready to take on the challenge. If I can get Tim and Eric to channel something similar to the dynamic that Cassavettes achieved with Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk—I’ll be fine. What is that great phrase that John kept saying on the drive here?…a dark night of the soul…thats it. A dark night of the soul—thats what John said in reference to Nicky. I want that for Tim in The Comedy. There is a glaring moral ambiguity that I know Tim will embody on his dark night of the soul.

The bar crowd is now huddled outside. We suck back lucky strike cigarettes. I don’t smoke and neither does Elaine, but you smoke when John is around. He passes cigarettes out like matches. He has the whole crowd smoking too. John believes, whole-heartedly that smoking precedes ideas. John trips over the curb and falls to the ground. He screams out…laughing all the while…

“Fuck, my shoe! My sole broke. Hahaha my sole broke!”

He gleams at Elaine and rips the sole of his shoe off and chunks it into the street.

“I’ve found it! I know how to play Nicky, now! I’m soulless! You see? I’ve got no soul! Nicky has no soul!

I’ve noticed that John is never present, in the sense that his train of thought is nearly always a second or two ahead. I caught up with him once, but he has since doubled down in defense to my encroachment on his stamina and emotional vitality. His mind races, steadily, about five miles over the speed limit. Now, I just talk when appropriate and mostly listen for as long as I can manage—until John moves onto his next victim.

My adoration for Elaine has grown exponentially after observing her way with John. She’s got him and knows it. In 1973, and maybe for all of time, a woman is hated and abused for putting herself out there too easily but punished for not putting out at all. That’s John’s challenge as Nicky and what he has to illicit out of Peter Falk as Mikey. John knows that Elaine’s got him for the part. Elaine knows that I know it and John has trouble figuring out that I know that Elaine knows it. Keeping face is my only virtue over John. He hates a poker face and says stoicism is the death rattle of acting. It’s my John Cassavettes survival strategy in battling against emotional racketeering. John is feeling too sober and gets pushy. He zeros in on me…Nicky is already seeping through his pores.

“When are you going to let me in, huh?”

“I don’t know, John, I guess when you finally give up on me.”

“What’s your secret?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Everyone’s got a secret.”

“I’m not an actor.”

John laughs hysterically. Elaine tosses her half smoked lucky strike into the street and stands between John and me. John trudges off. Elaine beckons…

“Okay, Okay, let’s call it a night.”

“I’m walking!” says John.

“Walking where?” asks Elaine.

“Home!”

I yell out, “That’s twenty blocks away!”

“I’ll run!”

“It’s three in the morning!”

And so he does. John Cassavettes sprints home through the filth and squalor of 1970’s time square—a lucky strike bobbing from his lip. The sound of his sole-less shoe clap clap clapping into the neon lights.

Elaine and I silently take the subway up four blocks and split up once we hit Penn station. I take the L train back to Brooklyn and walk three blocks to my brown stone apartment. I lay on the couch and rewatch my current favorite film, Claudia Weil’s Girlfriend. I always make an effort to stay awake up until my favorite scene where Melanie Mayron shuffles through her roommate’s film slides and comes across a few unexpected nude photos. As I nod off, I chuckle to myself. An eager feeling surges through me like a sip of warm bourbon. I’m about to direct a dark comedy starring Tim Heidecker and I can’t wait to rip this scene off. It will be perfect...tonight was perfect. John’s not so bad. I see how he manages to get so much out of his actors. I want to direct like Cassavettes this time around and if anything goes wrong just remember, “…what would Elaine do?”

Rick Alverson, Elaine May, and John Cassavetes walk into a bar…