If you ever work with someone of great spirit and talent, and you are one of those people who carry an emergency ration of guilt and shame in your back pocket, then when that great soul is suddenly gone the memories that rush up first will not be the best ones...
I've had some days to reflect on Andre Braugher and his passing, and with time and a bit more effort, I've been able to summon a variety of recollections and some real pride at for a time having the chance to write lines -- some of them good -- for a magnificent actor...
But to honor him and his great skill, I'm going to tell you of the memory that came to me quickly after I heard he had died. It is altogether one my more embarrassing moments on a film set and it is, at my expense and to Andre's credit. So here goes:
As the guy who had spent a year with Baltimore homicide detectives and written about it, my position on the writing staff of the television drama was often referred to as that of "non-fiction boy." I was the ruinous voice who was always explaining what probable cause was or how..
...a veteran cop would answer a radio call or the difference between gun barrel grooving and striations. Annoying enough, but at times, for the actors, I would often write a scene that resulted in a copse of detectives all speaking in the same police jargon..
Journalistically, this is realistic. Cops of all creeds and backgrounds, when standing around a crime scene or jawing in the office, tend to devolve to a brisk shorthand that is the common tongue of urban police work. Dramatically, this results in various actors all sounding...
...like the same person, doing violence to the characters they have worked so hard to envelope and individualize. So comes an episode when I am writing a line for Braugher's Frank Pembleton, a precise, Jesuit-educated philosopher-king of the homicide unit...
...a force of intellectual nature that Braugher had fully inhabited for more than fifty hours of television at that point. Pembleton is telling other detectives that he has raided a home twice but come up empty and the suspect's mother has told them he is no longer staying there.
"We tried up his house twice but his mama said..." I wrote with the voices of about four dozen actual Baltimore detectives in my brain.
Come the day to film that scene on set and Andre appears before me at the video monitors.
"This line here," he says, pointing at the sides....
..."am I supposed to say this?"
"Sure. You tried twice to arrest..."
"I know what the line, but is Pembleton supposed to say this..."
"Any cop would."
"Any cop. Meldrick or Kellerman or Pembleton. They would call the woman 'mama'...
I had stepped right into it. I could now see...
...the headlights of the truck. Hell, I could see the smashed bugs on the windshield. Hell, I was one of the bugs. Andre looked at me and I think I actually blushed.
"I'll go rewrite it."
"No," he replied. "I will make it work."
On the first take, as I slouched in a set chair...
...frowning at the monitor, Frank Pembleton stalked through the squad room and informed his comrades that he had tried up the house twice but mama...
Braugher delivered the line as written, only changing the pronunciation of 'mama,' emphasizing the first syllable, adopting...
...a continental, upper-crust embrace of the word and keeping the moment utterly within character. At least, when the shot concluded, he was charitable enough to look over to the monitors and give me a tight, quick smile....
That is the first big memory in the flood, god help me. And that is the great actor for whom I once had the chance to write words.
My only salvation is that many years later, when I had earned more of my keep writing scripts, I was on a panel in New York with Andre as a group...
...of us were asked to recollect our experiences on "Homicide." And yes, I told this story on myself and made Andre Braugher laugh warmly and long. So at least I have that going for me.
"...know what the line MEANS, but..."
Dropped word
the second syllable, goddamit. Ma-MA. Look it me, once again fucking up the line.
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