When the line finally flattened into a pure, unwavering tone, no one moved. The absence of his breath seemed to make space for everything he’d ever made audiences feel—laughter that masked breakups, punchlines that papered over layoffs, the warm clink of fictional glasses in bars that never closed. A nurse who’d once been an anonymous blur in a Will & Grace crowd scene squeezed Debbie’s hand and confessed that a single gentle note from him had stopped her from quitting Hollywood altogether. His grandson, clutching a worn remote, pointed at the hallway TV playing Frasier to no one and whispered, “That’s Pop’s show,” as if naming it could keep him here. Messages kept buzzing on silent: actors recalling how he’d steadied their shaking hands, writers swearing he’d saved dying scripts with one surgical note. Yet in that crowded, humming room, the loudest presence was the terror of turning the page on a life built around never letting the la… Continues…