Doug Wright - Good Night, John Boy

 

So, it's 1974, Dallas, Texas. I'm 11 years old and I'm sitting on this mustard-colored couch and my eyes are glued to a 19-inch Sony Trinitron. [audience chuckle] "Good night, Grandpa. Goodnight, Mary Ellen. Good night, Jim Bob. Good night, John Boy." [audience chuckle] My siblings and I are each allowed one hour of television per week because my staunch Presbyterian mother thinks that if we watch too much, we'll have brain rot or go sterile. [audience chuckle] My older brother has chosen Star Trek, my younger sister Donny & Marie. [audience chuckle] But Thursdays are my big night because I've chosen The Waltons, [audience chuckle] the tale of a depression era family eking it out in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

 

In truth, I'm a little obsessed with The Waltons' eldest child, John-Boy. [audience laughter] He's got this shock of blond hair and this really sensitive face and this sexy mole on his cheek, almost like a beauty mark. And he's not very good at farming. [audience chuckle] He does not like to hunt. He's a writer. In fact, the entire series The Waltons was based on a bunch of books by a man named Earl Hamner. And as a kid I tore through those books and one of them even contained the recipe for John-Boy's favorite cake. It was an applesauce spice cake with whiskey frosting. And for years I insisted to my mother that that was my definitive birthday cake. [audience chuckle] I knew that I had to get in touch with John-Boy or at least the actor who played him.

 

So, I went to the dime store and I got one of those Big Chief writing pads like the one he had on the show, and I sat down to write him a letter. And in it, I told him everything. I told him about my theater classes, and I told him that I wrote stories too, but they were secret for my eyes only, because in them I wrote about all of my failings. That I was probably too sensitive for a boy, that the other kids at school called me sissy, and that most days ended getting beaten up at the bike racks or at the lockers. And I thought he might understand because he was sensitive too. Maybe he even wrote for the same reason. That letter was 22 pages long. [audience laughter] I finally found a manila envelope large enough for it. But I still needed stamps.

 

Now, my dad was a retired Marine, and I wasn't sure he'd be too thrilled if he knew his son was writing mash notes to a male ingenue on television. [audience chuckle] So, I snuck into his study, which was strictly off limits, and I went to his stamp dispenser, and I just start pulling roll after roll after roll. I plaster this manila envelope with him, and on the way to school, I put it in the mailbox. And then I wait. And a week passes. Then two weeks, a month. I get, during that time, maybe a copy of Boys' Life, a birthday invitation.

 

And then, one day, curled up in the mailbox like a scroll, an envelope with the return address Lorimar Studios, Burbank. I tore it open. "Dear Doug, thank you for your letter. I'm grateful you are a fan of the show. Please keep watching. Best, Richard Thomas." [audience chuckle] Terse, I know. But to me it was poetry. [audience laughter] Best of all, he had included a photograph. He's wearing this sort of jaunty knit cap, and I can still see that blonde hair and that sensitive face and that signature mole. And I know I have to do something really special with this picture.

 

So, this time, I sneak into my dad's dresser and I pull open a drawer, and there are all his business shirts, crisp and white, lined up in perfect formation. And I reach in and I pull out the cardboard that the dry cleaner uses to keep them from wrinkling. And I take a bunch of that and I run back to my room and I cut it in the shape of a frame. And I build a little stand for the frame. And then with watercolors, I paint all these little Model T Fords all around the edge of the frame like the Waltons used to drive. And I put John-Boy's picture right in it, and I put it on my nightstand.

 

And the next morning at breakfast, my dad is like, "What the hell is going on? Why are my shirts wrinkled? Where the fuck are my stamps?" [audience laughter] But I keep mum because John-Boy and I are really, I figure, friends now. We're pen pals. And I keep writing him. And even more remarkably, he writes me back. Now it's true, the letters become shorter. "Dear Doug, Thanks, Richard." [audience laughter] But he keeps enclosing a new and different photo. So, more photos mean more cardboard frames. [audience chuckle] And pretty soon, my bedroom is becoming a shrine to John-Boy Walton. He's on the windowsill. He's on the dresser. He's on my nightstand.

 

Now, this doesn't thrill my older brother, with whom I actually share the room. [audience chuckle] So, he says to me one day, "What's the matter with you? Are you in love with him or something?" And I say, "No, he's my hero. And a lot of people put their heroes on the wall." And my brother says, "Yeah, maybe Farrah Fawcett or Joe Namath, but John-Boy Walton?" And I'm like, "You don't understand." And pretty soon, he starts waging passive aggressive war. And he takes his model planes and he hangs them from the ceiling of our bedroom. So, our room becomes this blizzard of Hellcats and B52s, all aiming right for John-Boy, like they want to take him out. [audience chuckle]

 

So, finally, a couple years pass and I'm no longer feeling quite so freakish. And I'm actually starting to make friends in the drama club and on the literary magazine. And I decide I want to invite them over to my house like they invite me to theirs. And a little voice in me says that this photo montage of mine might spell social suicide. [audience chuckle] More than anything, I think I worried that it revealed more about me than I had yet admitted to myself. So, one day, impulsively, I tore down all the pictures of John-Boy. I put them in a shoebox, and I shoved it far under my bed. It was a burial of sorts, a kind of denial, I think. So, four decades pass, and I actually become a writer just like John-Boy. And I'm a very fortunate one. I've had plays on Broadway and I've written some movies, so it's going pretty well. And I'm about as far out of the closet as you can be. [audience laughter] I live in the ultimate gayborhood. Chelsea. And I have two cats, and I have a husband, and my husband, David and I got married in 2008 at the very height of the culture wars. And like a lot of people at the time, we got sucked into a wildly unproductive debate on Facebook with this anti-gay marriage zealot named Diane. [audience laughter] 

 

Diane would write, "Do what you want, but please don't call it marriage and whatever you do, it doesn't belong in the church." And I'd hear that and I'd write in a fury, "Diane, your opinion is mean spirited and ill informed." And she'd write, "Well, all my gay friends know that's how I feel and they still love me." And I'd write, "Well, that's because they're a bunch of self-hating assholes." [audience laughter] So, this went on and on, and my friend said, "Stop it, it's not going anywhere useful." But I kept egging her on. So, not long after that, this producer friend calls me and she says, "So, I'm commissioning gay playwrights to write short plays on the theme of gay marriage. And we're going to put them up commercially at the Minetta Lane Theater in the West Village. And would you be interested in contributing one?" And I thought, “Well, this is perfect. I don't have to write a new play. I'm just going to adapt this Facebook thread.” And the way I figure, the characters are going to be me, my husband David, and our nemesis, Diane. [audience chuckle]

 

So, I adapt the thread as a dialogue and I send it to the producer and she quite likes it. So, it goes into the evening. I'm delighted. The casting director calls me and says, "You're going to be thrilled. For the role of Diane, we have this Broadway Tony winner, Beth Leavel. She's going to be simply amazing. And your boyfriend, your husband, he's going to be really thrilled because he's being played by a true hunk, Kelly Ripa's husband, Mark Consuelos. [audience reaction] And in the role of Doug, how would you feel about Richard Thomas? [cheers and applause] You probably know him best as John-Boy Walton." [audience laughter] "Oh," I say, "I think he might be very good." [audience laughter]

 

So, the first rehearsal is coming up. The night before, I cannot sleep at all. I'm planning it in my mind how I'm going to walk in there, so cool, so relaxed, every inch the professional playwright. I'm going to greet each and every actor and then take my seat and listen to the read through. I walk in, it's a sort of blonde rehearsal room. There's a circle of chairs for the cast. There's this craft services table in the middle with morning pastries and coffee. And there is Richard Thomas. He's older, his hair is gray now, but he still has that really sensitive face and that mole.

 

And I walk up to him and I had barely gotten my name out before the entire story pours out of me like an avalanche. [audience laughter] So, I'm standing there, beet red, waiting for his response, and he says, "Doug. I really wish I could tell you that I remember that 22-page letter, but I don't. And the reason I don't is a lot of young men wrote me asking for reassurance because it was the 70s, the era of Kojak and The Million Dollar Man, and I was the only male lead in a primetime TV show who didn't carry a gun. I held a pen and used it to express my feelings and I had no notable love interests on the show and people often accused me of being sensitive. So, your voice was one of many reaching out to me at the time. And I want you to know why I chose to do your play. My son is gay and I want him to grow up in a better world where he doesn't have to reach out to strangers on the television for approval." [audience applause] 

 

And I said, "Stop it, Richard. I'm going to fall in love with you all over again." [audience laughter] So, it's been almost four decades now and as a writer, I've sort of found a niche for myself writing about outsiders, those people who don't readily fit into society's confines. I wrote about a trans person in Germany and I wrote about a comedian struggling with mental illness. And more often than not, I'm writing to kind of exercise my own perceived frailties, my insecurities, my self-doubts, my darkest fears, all those things that I think alienate me from the rest of the species. And ironically, I find by naming those, it's how I find community. In a lot of ways, I think I'm still that 11-year-old kid crying out in the dark, eager for approval and reassurance that he has a rightful place in the human sphere. So, good night, John-Boy. Thanks.