Imagine you’re a frustrated copy editor. A lot of your peers really enjoy their work at the copy desk, but you find it unfulfilling — you only took the job in the first place, after all, because you thought it might lead to a reporting gig down the road. But things don’t always work out. It’s nine years later, and you’ve started to believe the proverbial ship has sailed (or sunk, depending on how you look at it). It seems like it’s getting harder and harder to get up in the morning, to come to work only to correct yet another goddam reporter who thinks the plural of “medium” is “mediums.” You begin to wonder if your creativity has dried up. For just a moment, one morning, you realize you actually want to weep. But the tears, they won’t come.
Then Anne Bancroft dies. You think back to “The Graduate,” to what it meant to you when you saw Dustin Hoffman’s face when he was underwater. And then you think of Mrs. Robinson, how you could never quite hate her. It wasn’t right how they made her seem like such a witch at the end. She was lonely, too. We all have our disappointments.
But you’re going to do right by her. You have to. Sure, you can’t write an obituary — they won’t even let you be in charge of movie listings, for crying out loud, even though you could do it twice as well as that pothead they hired last year — but you do get to come up with a headline for that Anne Brancroft obit that came over the AP wire. And that’s no small matter, you think to yourself.
You take a breath. What were the lyrics to that song again? “Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mrs. Robinson?” That’s not much of a headline.
But there’s that part about DiMaggio — Jolting Joe has left and gone away, or whatever it was. Maybe a play on that.
“Anne Bancroft has left and gone away”? That’s pretty good. She’d like that.
Still, that’s just your first try. You can do better. Was Bancroft religious, maybe? ‘Cause there’s that religious part in the song, about how “Heaven Holds A Place For Those Who Pray.”
That’s really pretty awesome, all by itself. Too bad the slot editor is an atheist. Still — maybe you could slip one by him, like with a play on the other religious line, “Jesus loves you more than you will know.”
Let’s see. “Jesus loves her more than she will know?”
Nah. Probably can’t mention Jesus in the headline.
Wait, what about “Fans loved her more than she will know”? That’s kinda touching.
But, still, it just doesn’t feel right, you think.
Oh, wait, what about the poster? Remember, with her leg? How about a play on that? Maybe “The Actress Who Had A Leg Up on Stardom”?
It’s clever. But a little tacky. Bancroft had class, after all.
Time for some more coffee. You take a sip. Why is this so hard? Maybe you should just give up — slot in “Famous Actress Dies” or something. No. She’s too good for that. You both are.
There’s gotta be something in the song, you think — go back to the song. You get up from your cube, stare out the window. Start singing to yourself. Wait — shit — that’s it! The chorus! It’s so obvious!
There’s that part where Simon and Garfunkel croon, “Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.” Why not just that? Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson. It’s so simple, but it says everything. Everything. You type in the headline, sit back, and rub your eyes. You’re smiling, for the first time in days. You think about maybe calling that girl you met at Chili’s on Friday, even though she did see you eating the nachos.
You get your stuff together, get ready to head home. But first you want to check out the competition. You don’t normally want to know what other headlines are out there, but it’s different this time. It means something this time. On Google News, you discover that a lot of people liked your headline — there are variations of it all over the web. Doesn’t matter, you figure — it just means it’s the best. You’re just about to shut the computer down when you stumble onto a headline from the Belfast Telegraph. As it dawns on you what it says, you feel something in the back of your head snap.
“The Oscar-winning actress who hated being called ‘Mrs Robinson’ dies aged 73.”
You look back at your headline, now posted on the Web. Too late to change it. Everyone would think you the fool if you tried. You go outside, get in the car. Head home and heat up dinner. It’s leftover turkey from when your sister visited a couple days back. It looks pretty dry, you think. And it’s so gray. You stare at it for a while, waiting for it to get cool enough for you to eat. And then you just stare at it some more.
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.
