Leaving them laughing

Comic Johnson Moretti refuses to let terminal cancer shroud him and his friends

Outside, it's a rainy world, the landscape a terrain of mixed ice, slush and deep, dirty puddles, the sky a study in the grey of midwinter meltdown. From the living room of his small Bells Corners townhouse, Johnson Moretti welcomes his visitor into the warmth.

The walls are covered with souvenirs of Johnson's presence in Ottawa over the past couple of decades: Framed pictures of him as resident funny guy/host of CBC-TV's teen show, Switchback. A banner from his beloved Canadian Improv Games for high school students -- alma mater to such subsequent stars as Alanis Morissette, Tyley Ross, Sandra Oh -- dense with a spiderweb of kids' signatures. A mounted newspaper feature on the Eddie May Murder Mysteries evenings, which Johnson produced and acted in for nearly a decade. (Remember the big fella -- just five-foot-nine but more than 300 pounds -- who squeezed helpless laughter from even the stoniest-faced patrons?)

There is also a large mounted photo of a woman on horseback, taken a dozen years ago by Johnson himself. The picture is of his wife Teri, a passionate horsewoman. They have been married 22 years, ever since Johnson left Scranton, Pennsylvania, and found his soulmate in the bright lights of Canada's capital.

There are flowers, too. And numerous cards. And a couple of videos on the life of Jesus.

Johnson, 48, eases himself slowly into his reclining chair and greets his visitor.

"Don't come too close. I have cancer/moose breath." His face breaks into a great lopsided grin.

Johnson Moretti is dying as he lived, surrounded by the laughter that has always been his lifeblood.

After a miserable autumn of rapidly declining health, he learned three weeks ago that he has advanced and inoperable cancer, a tumour in his large intestine that has moved up and ravaged his liver into the bargain. Johnson had to wait nearly eight weeks to get a CAT-scan (the machines were all booked); and he did so at home, despite his doctor's efforts to have him admitted to hospital (where no beds were available) because his pain was so intense and his deterioration so marked.

On Jan. 8, he was given the cancer diagnosis, and an estimated two months to live. He says he has been assured that the tumour developed slowly and insidiously over the past couple of years, and that the delay of this past autumn would have had little impact.

"Once we found out," he says of his and Teri's early-morning meeting with the doctor, "we had our instant cry." Then they made the decision that has shaped their days and nights since: no wasting time chasing illusory cures, no pointless prolongation, no wrapping themselves up in a shroud of unbearable sadness.

With the memory of his older brother's death still fresh -- Robert Moretti died of brain cancer in November 1997 -- Johnson knew he didn't want to follow the same path. The pills and the chemotherapy had sapped him, and he died disconnected from the people he most loved.

"Robert was very funny and eloquent and could talk up a storm. He became this skinny little wreck, and he had no way of saying the things I know he would have said. Everything was hushed and secretive and sorrowful. So when I got my news, I thought, hmm. We have friends who don't live a sorrowful way. We have friends who are just unbelievably kooky and eccentric and comical, people who reach pretty far to get the most out of life.

"So yeah, we could have people rolling in the door here, eyes to the ground, saying 'I'm sorry.' But my answer to 'I'm sorry' is: 'who are you telling that to? Do you figure he doesn't know he's dying?' Us guys who have this thing -- we know. What we need to be told is when the next funny movie is coming on."

Johnson and Teri began phoning their friends, and, after the initial shock and tears, he says he told everyone: "Hey, let's do some laughs. You can have tears if you want, but the better play seems to be let's all just hang tight. Be with me and be around me."

And he wants one thing clearly understood. "I don't represent anybody. I don't lobby for this (way of dying). I don't think the next guy should do this. All I can say is that, from our experience, it's been extraordinary. And we're all laughing."

He hopes to die at home and wants family and willing friends to hang around, to hold him if necessary, when the going gets rough. Even if there are medical procedures going on.

"Your tough luck," he grins, "if it's a rectal exam."

The phone hasn't stopped ringing, and the Morettis estimate that so far they've fielded easily 500 calls and machine messages, including a couple from NFL great Bernie Kosar, who says he wants to speak to the Cleveland Browns' Number One Fan in Canada. Johnson -- described by former Eddie May partner Noel Counsil as "born to shmooze" -- says he will keep answering the phone as long as he can.

Not email, though. "I want only human contact. I've sworn off technology, which I think is wasting time, time I could be spending with my friends. It's just like chasing down those doctors who have these alleged cure-all pills. Every minute I chase those guys down, I'm not hugging Teri or saying to (friend and colleague) Dan Lalande, 'hey did you see that football game yesterday?'"

Like a kid charting an expedition to a candy shop, he tells his visitor about plans for "Eulogy Night," scheduled for the following Friday, Jan. 22, at The Marble Works. Owner Alfie Friedman is laying on free food at the Eddie May troupe's principal residence for a capacity crowd of 150 or so, Johnson's nearest and dearest friends. Counsil is organizing the show.

"To some people, this is the most blasphemous thing they've ever heard. So tasteless. But people lie in their coffins and they don't get to hear the great stuff people are saying about them. So we thought, let's get people to say great stuff about me -- and I'll judge them." The twist is, none of it can be serious.

"They have to make me sound like a saint. By the time my life finishes in their little eulogy, I have to have lapped Mother Teresa."

Johnson can't wait, although there is an unpleasant procedure to undergo -- one that, as it turns out, will make him violently ill for two days -- between now and Eulogy Night.

A neighbour pokes her head through the front door as her husband clears ice off the Morettis' front walk. "This is for you, dear," she says, handing over a fruit basket.

"Was it expensive?" he asks.

"Of coorse not," she laughs, her Scottish accent rippling.

When the Citizen photographer goes to take his leave, Johnson calls out: "Did you make me look handsome? 'Cause if I'm not handsome, if I don't look like Tom Cruise, I'm gonna be some pissed off."

- - -

Friday night, it's a frightening world of freezing rain and icy footing as far as the eye can see. But inside the old stone walls of The Marble Works, it's Eulogy Night and the joint is hopping. Packed and hopping. Local theatre professionals mingle with out-of-town visitors, former colleagues, ex-improv students of Johnson's. Friends.

Host Dan Lalande gets the canonization proceedings going, while Eddie May regular Lorraine Ansell delivers a Scriptural rendering of the life of St. Johnson of Moretti. Ross Wilson, as lizard-like singer Lou Velvet (direct from the Midlife Crisis Lounge), croons -- to chords more familiar as "that's why the lady is a tramp" -- "That's Why the J-Man Is A Champ."

Norm McQueen and Rick Kaulbars perform a routine in which they trace Johnson's life and character, pointing out his cinematic preferences: "This is the man who saw Deliverance and said, 'Could have been funnier.'"

Andis Celms, former producer of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre, now an administrator in Vancouver, has flown in. Recounting Johnson's unceasing pleas to support kids across the country and put the weight of the NAC behind the Improv Games, Celms mockingly charges Johnson: "I want him to put in a good word for me with the big director general in the sky -- because he owes me."

But if you speak to the assembled friends and colleagues, what soon becomes apparent is the reverse: Most feel pretty indebted to Johnson.

Counsil, who recalls the ACTRA awards ceremony 10 years ago where a pink-and-white tuxedoed Johnson swept in with "that Jackie Gleason grace" says he can't envision Eddie May without the large presence of the performer who never stopped giving.

"At the end of the evening, people are tired, and the actors usually make a beeline for the exit. Not Johnson. He never left that stage without thanking everyone in the room. He went from table to table, talking to everyone. He had to know that everyone had enjoyed themselves. And I think he had to get the last laugh."

Canterbury High School teacher Jane Moore, coach of the arts school's championship improv team, has worked closely with Johnson for years, and describes him as "a person who's huge in every way, always making everybody happy."

The day before Eulogy Night, she took him to a matinee showing of Shakespeare in Love, knowing it would be right up his alley.

"At one point, though, the reality of it all just swept over me, and I started crying. I peeked over at him, and he was smiling ear to ear. He said, 'Oh, I'm in heaven. This is so rich.'"

Company of Fools clown-in-chief Scott Florence, who has also been closely associated with the Improv Games, marvels at Johnson's ability to teach improv's life skills, its essential humanity, in unexpected places.

"A lot of people can train those who are quick and smart to do improv. But Johnson takes people of all ages and from all walks of life -- people considered losers and incapable of learning -- and gets them charged and energized and performing."

Ottawa lawyer Jamie "Willie" Wyllie, one of Johnson's oldest friends and the man who introduced him to the wild notion of teaching improv to high school kids, observes that Johnson has always championed the underdog. At the annual Improv Games, "he always had a soft spot for teens who were not necessarily good. He looked for the quality of the kid rather than the quality of their performing ability."

Which may or may not have had something to do with the man's own roots. Growing up one of six kids in a working-class Italian-Irish household -- first in upper New York state, then in Pennsylvania -- Johnson recalls a life poor in material comfort and even regard for learning and education, but rich in laughter (even if some of it, occasionally, was too beer-soaked for his taste. He has never consumed alcohol in any form, nor coffee or tea, nor has he ever smoked).

Adds Florence, "He manages to reach people who are incredibly unreachable. He breaks down barriers immediately, just by being his large, lovable, cheesy self. He's an amazing man."

Indeed he is, says Ottawa actor Beverley Wolfe, who has had frequent Eddie May gigs over the years. "In a decade, I've never heard a single nasty thing said about him, which is a pretty amazing thing in this business. I think it's a classic case of you reap what you sow."

Meanwhile, Eulogy Night, in all its corny and unapologetic tastelessness, is winding down. Johnson has admitted that it is past time for a shot of the morphine that keeps him functioning. As he ends his brief speech and unique farewell, the applause starts -- loud, prolonged waves of it filled with a multitude of motivations: this one, perhaps, recalling Johnson's generosity; that one, his unfailing capacity to create laughter and lightness where none existed; this one over here, acknowledging courage; that one, decency; and, in the end, a whole packed roomful of disparate people clapping till their palms hurt for the unvarnished extraordinariness of the evening and the man at its heart.

Incredibly, the tears -- plentiful, if surreptitious -- are upstaged entirely by brave smiles and even laughter, especially guffaws from the great-hearted guy with the loopy grin in the centre of all the action.

The high point of the evening has been Johnson's gaudy coronation/canonization. There seems to be some confusion between the two, although a "Papal Nuncio" -- name of Cornelius Kelly -- has proclaimed something or other in faux Church Latin.

Funny thing about the canonization, though. For all its broad comedy, in the end, only Johnson has found it wholly ironic.

- - -

It's not as if he doesn't know what people are thinking.

"Some people have asked Teri, 'Is he just saying this, and then when he's in bed at night, he cries and he's worried and afraid?' And she's been giving them the honest answer: No. No, it's not an act.

"Am I afraid to die? Sure. The worst fear I have is the body breaking down. But I just believe I'm prepared to die. I'm not pleased about it. I'm not thinking it's the best gig you can get. But I think with friends ushering me, that moment I leave and the place I go will all be a grand experience."

Johnson's buddy Willie Wyllie has been praying with his friend. "I'm a Christian, with a Christian view of how you get to Heaven. I took him through some of the Scriptures, but he was ready. He's always been a man of faith, although he'd never put a particular label on his God."

Noel Counsil recalls his friend's reaction to the death of a woman, a real Eddie May supporter, who hadn't missed an opening night show for five years. Says Counsil, still in wonder, "He gathered everyone around -- this hardcore bunch of cynical comics -- and he led everyone in prayer. Prayer!"

His buddy's spirituality during his dying days, says Wyllie, is a comfort, but not a crutch.

Johnson himself jokes about the Jesus videos, loves the Roman centurions' costumes, although he is a little suspicious of the movie that cloaked them all in baby blue ("I thought that was a bit, well, light"). But he is also serious as he talks about the sadness of leaving -- how much it hurts to have to say goodbye, especially to Teri -- and yet how serene it also is.

"There's two things. I see a great big room full of people, and at some point, I have to turn my back, and I can't turn around again. Ever. But when I turn my back, I know I have a light to go to.

"So I didn't make it to age 50. I'm going to be 48." The plus is that he's had a chance to say goodbye. "When people call, I suck the love right out of that phone, I'm telling you. When they're done with me, there's nothing left."

He smiles, the grin as lopsided and lovable as ever.

"I can only speak for me. But I woke Teri up at three in the morning recently and said, 'I feel glorious. I've got this clump of garbage in me, but I feel glorious.'

"And I do. It's peaceful, and it's loving. And I think it's working for me."