You Laugh, You Cry

Grief can be a funny thing.

Now, you might not think of grief as funny, per se, but if you're television writer Bess Kalb, it somehow works out that way.

Kalb's latest book, Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, began as an exercise in coping with her grief after the death of her grandmother, but ended up as a celebration of one of the funniest people in Kalb's life.

Kalb explain, "She was - she's far funnier than I am. So I'm glad that I could just sort of write off her coattails, sort of let her speak for me. I get the credit.

"But this is a testament to what an incredibly funny and incredibly smart woman she was. And I'm just so delighted that people are seeing that, that people are as entertained and enthralled by her as I was."

As a staff writer for Jimmy Kimmel's late night show, she is used to writing from other people's perspective, so it was a natural fit to write the book in her grandmother's voice. She says, "I was writing it as a sort of private grief exercise to bring my grandmother back to me after she died. I was missing her.

Bess Kalb: I am a writer. The way that I cope with most things is by writing, and specifically, through comedy writing.

"I am a writer. The way that I cope with most things is by writing, and specifically, through comedy writing.

"And so I decided to write my funniest conversations with my grandmother in her voice with her as a character. And after doing that and sending it to my literary agent, I realized maybe there's an entire book here.

"And I sort of challenged myself to write longer, sadder parts of her story and sort of step outside my comedy comfort zone. And what ended up shaping together was this complete portrait of a woman's life, who I loved and miss very much.

"That's why I'm a great fraud. I'm not actually writing a book. I'm just doing a character. I mean, my job for eight years is writing in the voice of Jimmy Kimmel - and writing for that mouthpiece and that character.

"And now I'm able to sort of inhabit the mind and vernacular and perspective of a woman that I knew very, very well and very intimately, my grandmother. And so I'm doing what I've always done, oddly enough, which is write for a character.

"And even though not all of the book is told in dialogue and told in scenes, I see those longer chapters as her monologues, because I'm still writing in her voice."

The book does move between actual dialogues of phone calls and messages between Kalb and her grandmother, and longer prose chapters in her grandmother's distinctive voice.

Kalb notes, "Maybe this is a way of sharing her, of saying, like, well, you know, these are her lessons. These are her stories. This is her perspective. And if you can have her voice in your head now, then maybe that that will help you going forward.

"This is a story about a woman who grew up-- you know, she was born into extreme poverty and grew up during the Great Depression and was the daughter of two essentially non-English speaking immigrants from Belarus.

Bess Kalb on her grandmother: And it's incredible to me that she was born on a dining room table in a tenement in Greenpoint and then died on South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, looking at the ocean.

"And it's incredible to me that she was born on a dining room table in a tenement in Greenpoint and then died on South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, looking at the ocean.

"It's just an astronomical leap from one stage of life to the next. It's a lot to take stock of. But I tried to map that out as best I could and show how as much as her circumstances changed, she really didn't grow out. And she remained the same headstrong, determined, ambitious person."

The story also takes on the generation between Kalb and her grandmother, with Kalb's mother.

Kalb says, "My mom was my primary source for this book. She was on the phone with me for hours and hours, sort of filling in details and acting as a fact checker. And obviously, I was writing all about her life. So she was the most reliable source for that.

"This ended up being a way to really empathize with my mom. I think I was able to see her as a daughter for the first time and to write about her experience before I was born. It was this sort of fun, therapeutic trick to see the world from her perspective and to see me from her perspective.

"I think I treat my mom very differently now than before I wrote the book, just because I see her. I think it's easy to see a parent as just your parent. But I also see her as a vulnerable child after learning so much about her young life. She's gone from mother to human."

The story that began as a way for Kalb to channel her grief is now before a much larger audience, and Kalb believes her grandmother would appreciate that.

She says, "I think my grandmother is somebody who loved an audience, loved to tell her stories. And now she has a bigger audience than she would have imagined. And her stories are now part of other people's lives.

"And so I feel like I'm repaying her for raising me, taking special care of me my whole life. I get to share her with people and let her keep doing what she does best, which is inspiring people, inspiring women to live the lives that they want to live."

And soon, the audience will be even larger. Kalb explains, "The audience is only going to get bigger. The book has been optioned and it's going to be made into a movie, which is very exciting.

"It's going to be produced by Sight Unseen Pictures, which did Bad Education and Richard the Great, Hugh Jackman-Allison Janney movie, and Dear White People, which is just such a fantastic movie.

"And the director is this amazing woman, Elizabeth Chomko. And so my next project is actually, oddly, circularly going back to my original wheelhouse. Which is I will then make this book, which I started writing as a screenplay, into a screenplay."

As exciting as the prospect is, no timeline has been set for the production. Kalb says, "I think everything's so up in the air. But you know, hopefully, hopefully, we emerge into a world where going to the movie theater and watching stories in the theater is possible."