Sunday, May 20, 2001
Jason Miller Chased Demons In His Plays, Movies and Life
 

By Joeseph X. Flannery

Jason Miller, my friend, died a week ago this afternoon while eating brunch and reading Sunday papers with Dana, his girlfriend, at Farley's, his favorite watering hole.

It was a massive heart attack and he probably died before he hit the floor.

I was devastated when I heard the news. I got to know Jason in 1972, the year his play, "That Championship Season," brought him fame.

Jason was a complex individual, haunted by demons, real and imagined. No doubt, he was a genius with words who should have been enshrined in the Pantheon of greatest American playwrights, but he drank too much, much like some of his heroes: actor John Barrymore, the subject of one of his plays; playwright F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom he played in a television drama, and author Ernest Hemingway, all of whom liked their liquor.

Jason had other talents. He played Father Karras in "The Exorcist," a film about evil spirits taking possession of a child and the efforts of Catholic priests to chase them away.

That film was based on a real exorcism that intrigued Jason. Before the filming began, he read a secret file on the exorcism kept in a vault at Catholic University. No doubt, that inspired an awesome performance that won him a nomination for an Oscar. Few actors do that in their first film.

A bit of Father Karras rubbed off on him. In a like manner, bits of every character he invented seeped into his soul.

To be sure, Jason was unorthodox. At his peak, he had fame and money but neither impressed him. He didn't buy expensive homes, clothes or fancy cars. Indeed, he never had a driver's license. Nor did he like wearing socks.

The rich and famous did not impress him. He bonded better with ordinary people, which is why he returned to Scranton.

Before leaving Hollywood, Jason dumped furniture from his Malibu home down a cliff and into the Pacific Ocean, making sure he would not change his mind about going back home.

But he couldn't always elude fame. I remember the time the Pennsylvania Society of New York awarded their prestigious Gold Medal to Jason.

He arrived in New York in grungy clothes, which set him apart from the people in the crowded lobby of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. A few hours before the dinner, a companion from Scranton, Bill McAndrew, asked where he put his tuxedo. "I don't have a tuxedo," he said. He had planned to wear an old suit but Mr. McAndrew told him every man in the ballroom would be wearing a tuxedo and he had to wear one, too. He wasn't happy but reluctantly sent his friend to rent whatever was needed.

Later, I dropped by Jason's room and walked in on another crisis. Jason had cut himself shaving and he panicked because it wouldn't stop bleeding. Meanwhile, Mr. McAndrew was trying to get him into his tuxedo while dodging drops of blood.

Eventually, however, the bleeding stopped and Jason got to the ballroom, accepted his medal and gave a great speech.

Jason was a voracious reader, as his apartment showed. Books were on tables, chairs and even on the floor. Some were open and some had markers in them. Clearly, they were not for decoration. They were books of masters that Jason liked to revisit from time to time.

Jason graduated from the University of Scranton and earned a master's degree in drama from Catholic University. He then headed for New York, a city he loved.

However, getting attention as a playwright did not happen overnight. He worked as a waiter, a doorman, a welfare investigator and a messenger boy. And when he became desperate, he sold his blood to a blood bank in Greenwich Village.

Meanwhile, his wife, Linda Gleason, helped by giving away cigarette samples on New York sidewalks.

Joe Papp, head of the New York Public Theater, got to know Jason as an actor in one of his plays. Jason asked him to read a play he had written about a high school basketball team having a reunion 20 years after winning the state championship.

Mr. Papp liked the play and agreed to have the New York Public Theater produce it off-Broadway. The New York theater critics agreed it was the best drama they had seen in years.

The day after the first show, Jason became famous. Over the years, Jason lived on new writings, acting and royalties.

Before he died at 62, he wrote a television script about his former father-in-law, comedian Jackie Gleason. The television network wanted the script re-written but Jason ever the perfectionist -- refused to change a word. So the network will have another writer finish the script.

Jason once told an interviewer his tombstone should carry this message about life: "It's all a paper moon." Ironically, he was cremated so he apparently won't have a tombstone.

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