NEW YORK, OCT. 16 -- Weeks ago, said the members of the Creative Coalition filing into
their annual benefit at the Pierre Hotel tonight, Co-President
Christopher Reeve had said he wanted to be here to present the awards to
the honorees as usual.
"Chris was always determined to be here if he could," said former
president Ron Silver, recalling Reeve's presence at the organization's
very first meeting in 1989. But, of course, Reeve suffered severe spinal
injuries at an equestrian competition last spring.
That didn't stop him from being transported by van to tonight's
event.
"He has good days and bad days," said Silver, who has visited Reeve
at the rehabilitative hospital in New Jersey where he's a patient. "But
he doesn't recognize limits or constraints."
In fact, said Creative Coalition Co-President Blair Brown, Reeve
continued to pay careful attention to the group, which harnesses the
star power of actors and actresses to spotlight issues from gun
control to reproductive rights. "The first time I went to visit him we
were talking about the issues we were involved with," Brown said. "He
was very annoyed at an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times."
The coalition's $1,000-a-head benefit always draws a high-wattage
crowd. Board members William Baldwin and Stephen Collins sparked massive
flashbulb attacks along with Stockard Channing, Katie Couric, Phil
Donahue and Marlo Thomas, Carly Simon, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins,
National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Jane Alexander, Barbara Walters
and the somewhat less glamorous Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York City.
Not to mention the somewhat upstaged honorees Robin Williams and
Geraldine Laybourne, president of Nickelodeon.
But some of the guests had come specifically to cheer on Reeve.
"I'm here for Chris," said his friend Kevin Spacey ("The Usual
Suspects"), who's not a coalition member.
"I shouldn't be here at all," croaked a hoarse Blythe Danner, who
opens this week in Harold Pinter's "Moonlight." But Reeve once played
her younger brother in a play at the Williamstown (Mass.) Theater, she
explained.
Sometime back, "I called him up and said, We're opening a new
recycling center; could you come?' and he came, and of course the kids
all went crazy. He's always been an amazingly giving person."
Finally, after the cocktail hour, the dinner and the strawberry
shortcake, Reeve was introduced by Sarandon, who met him years ago at an
audition for "Picnic" and who praised his "courage, dignity and grace."
There was a prolonged standing ovation as he was rolled onto the
stage in his wheelchair with its attached battery-powered ventilator. He
wore an elegant tuxedo. He nodded and smiled and then told a joke.
"I'll let you in on the secret reason I'm here tonight," he said,
recalling his high school English teacher who told a student who'd
missed a class because of illness: "The only excuse is a quadruple
amputation, but then they could still bring you in in a basket." There
was a slight gasp from the crowd. "So I thought I'd better show up,"
Reeve said.
He thanked his wife and various audience members, including the
board members of the Creative Coalition: "It's obvious they've been
doing brilliantly without me."
"No!" cried a woman's voice from the darkened ballroom.
Then, speaking quite smoothly, he recalled his years at the
Juilliard School with classmate Robin Williams, both of them "trying to
be classical actors -- ha ha. . . . Thank God they didn't straighten him
out.
"When the chips were down and my life was hanging in the balance .
. . I looked over from the bed where I was hanging upside down, and
there was this guy wearing a blue scrub hat with a yellow gown and an
insane Russian accent . . . and I laughed for the first time and I knew
life was going to be okay."
"Hello, bro," said Williams, accepting the award for his work with
the Comic Relief organization. "Yes, I did show up as a Russian
proctologist. The results were good."
Williams praised Reeve's work with the Creative Coalition. "You know,
I'm basically the designated idiot, but this man is informed. . . . He
is like a laser."
Williams's routine managed to excoriate various governmental and
other figures ("they consider tobacco a vegetable for the school lunch
program"), but it also veered dangerously close to sentimentality. "We
did it, bro: We kicked," he concluded.
And then, in case anybody was getting damp-eyed, he added, "You're on
a roll, literally."
