I Am Not An Animal!

I Am Not an Animal!

Yesterday I told the story of Jerry Stiller and his casting in the co-leading role in my story made into an HBO anthology of subway stories. The tale of the production and debut is worth another story. To begin, the story itself was about my days of riding the early morning train into Manhattan to work every day. I was very regular on my inbound schedule and quite irregular on whichever train I could catch home in the evening. Fundamentally, I took the very early train because it was such an easier commute. It was easier to find a parking space at the station. It was easier to get a seat in the car of my choosing. It was easier to get from Penn Station over to my office on Park Avenue. Many thought it was about my career ambitions, but it was more about the dislike of crowded commutation. And yet at my bank I became legendary for getting in at 6am every morning. Bankers hours were already becoming less the norm, but 6am was still pretty extraordinary. One senior officer, known as an early riser, cemented my reputation by telling everyone that he only had goal left in his career, and that was to beat me into the office just one morning.

At 5am at the Rockville Centre train station the newspapers were already delivered, but the proprietor didn’t arrive until 6am. The morning ritual was to slide a Wall Street Journal out of the wire-bound stack and leave two or three quarters on top (the price changed over the years). I would then ride the train with the work boot crowd, always standing at the same door position that would leave me off near the most convenient stairway at Penn Station. The others who rode that train were equally regular and most mornings we all recognized one another and each other’s train habits. As I finished the Journal somewhere in the tunnel under the East River (the ride was a scheduled 36 minutes), I was in the habit of folding the paper neatly and leaving it on the seat for another later rider while I stood by the doors. After a while I began to notice that an older man would go over as I got up and take the Wall Street Journal and tuck it under his arm. I was glad someone was getting value out of my used paper. After a longer while I began to gesture to him when I got up and I would hand him the paper so that he had less distance to go and not have to scurry past me every morning. After a few months of this dance, this older gentleman asked me a question. He asked me about some financial transaction or another that was in the news. It was a rhetorical question that needed more of a nod or a smile than a wordy answer, but it began to establish a rapport and it was his way of showing me that while he dressed in a work-a-day manner, he was very well read and informed about the world.

Our daily discussions grew more and more involved and it became clear to me that this man was, indeed, very well informed and quite knowledgeable in the ways of finance and markets. We had only shared first names, but we were friendly and saw each other almost every day. He began personalizing his observations, telling me he owned a lot of this stock or that one. I sensed he thought I was humoring him and that I didn’t really believe him as to the extent of his portfolio. Then, one day he showed me an envelope full of dividend checks of noteworthy amounts that had the names of many of the stocks he had discussed and referenced as holdings of his. To be honest, I was quite surprised because these were large dividend checks and they implied that he had a very large portfolio.

That prompted me to ask him his name and what he did for a living, and he told me his tale. His name was Herman. He had started out as a securities analyst but quickly tired of “making other people rich”. He looked for a job that would pay the rent and still allow him the free time to do his own investment analysis. He found school teaching. The days were short, the evenings were free and he had three months of summer for longer involved analytical projects. Over the years, Herman became a vice principal of a school in Manhattan that taught on a split shift. He was in charge of the early shift and the Principal relieved him at midday. He then went over to the offices of Gruntal & Co. near Grand Central, where he whiled away the afternoon watching the tape until the market closed. We became friendly enough that he shared his Gruntal statement of his total $9 million portfolio with me. I was in awe, which was the intended effect. I began listening to his comments with newfound respect.

What happened next in the relationship I must leave to your watching of Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground – The 5:24. It is a true story with only a bit of stylization added by me as storyteller, by Lynn Grossman as screenwriter and by Bob Balaban as Director. Jerry Stiller played Herman and was a better Herman than the real Herman. I was played by Steve Zahn and modesty does not allow me to comment about whether he was a better me than me.

When I was called by HBO to watch the film, I noted that it was a fourteen minute clip. I thought for some reason that I was now left with only one minute of fame in my account. I thought I would screen this like a Hollywood director, but instead was handed a videotape and shown to a secretarial chair in front of a nine-inch TV. I had to watch the piece twice to have it sink in. I went from being aghast at how my story had changed to being impressed by how it was embellished and honed by dialogue.

I was invited by HBO to attend the planned premier on the big outdoor screen at Bryant Park on a warm August evening. I got to watch my creation on the big screen under the stars. My story was the third one in the anthology and it was rated by the New York Times and the Daily News as the best of the ten (I have the clippings to prove it). When I went up to the bar at the post-screening party that night, I was accused by someone trying to get ahead of me in line of being a producer since I was still in my working gear of a dark suit and tie. I looked at the barmaid and said with an air of defiance, “I am not a producer, I am a writer.” It was not quite John Merrick in his famous line from The Elephant Man, but to me it came close.