Teri Garr - Wake Up Call

 

November 18th, 1989, 04:13 AM, my home in LA, my phone rings. This woman's voice says, "Is this Teri Garr?" And I go, "Yes, I think so." She goes, "Well, I just want you to know that I've been sleeping with your boyfriend since August, and that I just caught him in bed with another girl this morning, 03:00 in the morning. I threw all of his potted plants in the pool and I got your number from his phone book." And I'm like, "Who is this? What? Hello?" And so, I listened to this voice, “What’s the [unintelligible 00:01:34]

 

She says, "Yes, my name is Donna, and I was going around with this guy for quite a long time. He always told me, I knew that he knew you. He said that you were business partners with him." I was business partners with him. Okay. So, I went, "All right, that's interesting.” “He would drive me around in your car.” I had a Mercedes at the time and he told me that it was his car. But this girl, who was this aspiring actress, took the initiative to look in the glove compartment and see that it was registered to me. So, it was my car that he was driving her around in, telling her that it was his car. All right. And I said, "Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much for the information," and I hung up the phone.

 

I thought a lot about it. [audience laughter] What should I do? I mean, I was totally blindsided. I'm completely naive about this, but I was starting to hyperventilate. So, that was around 04:00 in the morning. So, around by 07:00 in the morning, I thought, he has left a few things at my house. This was a guy I was having a relationship with. We were actually trying to have a baby together. I was taking those fertility drugs, so I was a little bit crazy from extra hormones. Anyway, [audience laughter] so, he had a few things that he left at my house in drawers. He was practically living with me. So, I thought, I'll just put all these things in a box and I'll take them back to him now, because obviously he doesn't need them anymore.

 

So, I put in the socks and the underwear and there's a few baby pictures and all whatever crap of his that was left in my house. I was just throwing all the stuff in a box. I happened to see a hammer sitting there. I thought, I'll throw that in the box too. I decided that I should take these things back to him. So, I got in my car, I put the box in the car and I started driving up there to Bel Air. And it's like 07:30 in the morning. I now realize how murder can happen, because [audience laughter] I was just so-- Nothing was going to stop me at all.

 

If someone came up to me and said, "Here's a million dollars cash in $10 bills if you stop this car," I'd go, "You'll have to keep your fucking money, because I'm going. [audience laughter] I'm up there and I'm not stopping." So, I pull up to his house, his little faux whatever ranch house, they make a lot of these in LA, [audience laughter] and I look at it, I go. I pull out this box of stuff, and I walk up to the front door and I ring the doorbell. Nothing. Doorbell, doorbell, doorbell. Nothing. Nothing. So, I go, “Well, what the hell?” So, I pull out, "Here's your underpants, and here's your socks, and here's your stuff, and here's your pictures. It's me." Oh, well, there's a hammer in there. What are you going to--

 

So, I pick up the hammer and I start breaking the windows. Break, break, crash, crash, crash, crash. [audience laughter] He lived in one of those houses that had, I don't know what you call it, like Tudor, a lot of little glass on it. Break, break, crash, crash, crash, crash, crash, crash. [audience laughter] Okay, here's the-- and the front door, crash, crash, crash. So, I walk around and I hear nothing stirring in the house. I'm amazed. But anyway, I go to the garage. They have little windows up there. Crash, crash, crash, crash. [audience laughter] On the side of the house, there's some windows on the side. Crash, crash, crash. I get back to the kitchen and I crash, crash, crash and I see him in there like this, like, staggering in a robe, on the phone. So, I think, well, who's he calling? The police? My God.

 

When I see him, I come out with some of my best Valley girl talk, which was like, "Bastard! Son of a bitch!" He was just looking at me. I really wonder sometimes what he was thinking at that moment. [audience laughter] I know what I was thinking. It was one of those moments that just changed my life. I just thought, I'll never be the same after this. It was a big wake-up call. So, I started walking around the back. I figure it's time to wrap this up. He's on the phone to the police or something, [audience laughter] so I guess it's got to be-- Maybe I better haul ass out of there. 

 

So, I walk around the side of the house. As I come around the front of the house, around the side of the garage, there's this cop. It was a fake cop, Bel Air patrol, I don't know what they are. He's got a gun pointed at me. And for the first time in my life, I was very happy about this. He recognized me and he said, [audience laughter] "Oh, Ms. Garr. Are you all right?" [audience laughter] See, I think he thought I was the victim, which, of course I was, but in a different way. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] 

So I said, "Well, I am now." [chuckles] I went back and got in my car and drove away. [audience laughter] That was the end. I went home and I sat around for a while. I was puffing and puffing, walking around my house, thinking, well, I did that. And now, by this time, it's 09:00 AM or something and I've done a lot of work since 04:00 in the morning. [audience laughter] So, I start calling people up to tell them about this. Some of my friends said, "Oh, I told you." "I tried to tell you." And I said, "I don't remember anyone trying to tell me about this guy." But anyway. Some people just they tried to help me, calm me down and I wasn't having any of that. 

 

So, later that day, I decided not to let this stop me from my life. I'm going off with my life, even though this horrible thing has happened and I have all these raging hormones. And so, I had been invited to this art exhibit, art opening gallery. Because I wasn't going to let this incident interfere with my sense of art [audience laughter] and my whole aesthetic feeling. So, I walked into this-- This is a really LA Hollywood story. I walked into this art gallery and there were people there like Anjelica Huston. Oh, I'm drawing a blank. That wonderful model with the gap tooth-- [audience hint] Exactly. Lauren Hutton. Oh, they’re all been there. It was the big A crowd at this place. 

 

So I walk in. I'm just walking around looking at the art and someone came up to me and says, "How are you?" I said, "How am I? I'll tell you how I am.” [audience laughter] So, I told everybody the story. I just broke all the windows in this guy’s house, because-- So then, interestingly enough, all these other women came up to me and started telling me their story. "Oh, you want to hear what I did once?" I'm not going to say if it was Lauren or if it was Anjelica or anybody, but there’s a lot of good stories. This apparently has happened to a lot of women. 

 

So, one girl said, "I went with this guy--" It’s always guys like this. “He was very vain and he had all these Gucci, like Armani suits in his closet, a dozen of them. I snuck in the house one night and I just cut off the left leg of every suit." [audience laughter] I said, "Very creative, very nice, very subtle, very nice." [audience laughter] So, the next girl said, "I just did something. I just put a little hose, I knew he was going away for the weekend. I put a hose in the bathroom window and turned it on and left." [audience laughter] And so, I think, nice and simple. “Very nice. You did that.” [audience laughter] 

 

 But there were a lot of these stories. One girl came up to me, this is one of my favorites, and she said, "I got so pissed off and he started going with this other woman and we were having--”. Everyone’s got this story about it. It was the perfect relationship, of course. It wasn’t, I’m sure. [audience laughter] Anyway, she said, "I went to the house and I went and I shaved my name in the dog’s back." [audience laughter] For the next six months, this woman who's there was like, “Who's Judy?” “Oh, never mind, never mind.” [audience laughter] I thought that was very good. 

 

 So, this apparently happens to a lot of women because of the way men are. No, but I've decided now, because of being in LA and being in Hollywood and hearing all these stories about how the actors and actresses of Hollywood, me being one of them, are naive and narcissistic and self-centered, we don’t see the truth until, of course, it’s right sitting on our heads and going like, "Oh, my God, he’s fooling around on me." [audience laughter] 

 

But here’s the trick. I think in every relationship, after a year or so, everyone gets to the point where they want to kill the other person. It just happens. And the trick is, you have to avoid that somehow [audience laughter] and you have to get just up to the part where you’re going to kill, and then you have to not do it. [audience laughter] Well, I think I recommend the windows. That worked for me very well.