Excerpt from Bachelor's Graveyard...

Bachelor's Graveyard...now in rehearsal...stage reading with NoHo Arts...May, 2010:

Chip

(Addressing the audience.) Nine years and nine months after this night in Bachelor’s Graveyard we

did all get together one last time. Our ten year high school anniversary. We met on a Saturday

afternoon at a new place in town called Winston’s Pub. Our lives were all radically different by then

of course. I was in from New York pretending to be a big shot writer. Actually, I was waiting tables

at a little restaurant in Chelsea. I’d saved for three months to make the trip. I bought everyone

drinks all afternoon like I had a lot of money and told fantastical lies about my writing career. Big

Jimmy didn’t stay long ‘cause Cherry girl was sick with the cancer even then. Wayne was back from

 prison but looked at all of us like we were strangers. He didn’t seem embarrassed or anything about

what had happened. Just sort of dead. He had two beers and left without saying goodbye. Dave the

Vulcan had just moved back a few months earlier and was working at the nuclear plant. He’d

gained a lot of weight and lost most of his hair and looked ten years older than the rest of us. All

he talked about was computers. He nursed the same beer all afternoon. Eddie Cobb was still living

with his Mom. Unlike the rest of us he looked almost exactly like he did that last night at Bachelor’s

Graveyard. His car was in the shop for a month. We all got a big laugh at that one. He’d been walking

to work everyday at the Public Library where he was the janitor. He was drinking soda pop ‘cause

he had to work that night and he left right after Wayne did. And me, I sat there by myself for hours

after they’d all gone. Sat at the end of the bar by myself, living in my head. I tried to engage the

bartender in conversation. I actually asked him if he’d read any of my books trying to get him to

say something like, "Oh, you’re a writer?" But he didn’t. He just said, "I doubt it," and gave me

another Budweiser and a shot of Jeigermeister. I sat there drinking until late into the evening. It was

 just another bar. I could have been anywhere. New York, Missouri, Tokyo, Africa, anywhere. The

only difference was I had saved money for three months to travel a thousand miles and sit by myself

in a bar a thousand miles away. I must’ve put my forehead on the bar and passed out at some point ‘

cause the next thing I remember my Dad was shaking me and sayin’, "Chip, Chip, wake up. Come on,

son. It’s time to go. It’s time to go home."

Frank Sinatra.

I'm recording a couple of more songs today for NOVEMBERNINTH, my CD of old standards. I think we're laying down tracks (that's recording artist lingo for "singing these songs") for Angel Eyes and My Funny Valentine. I love these songs. All of the songs we've selected, really. Oddly, these songs were not a part of my life until relatively late, that is to say, my teenage years. I was raised in a household that listened to country-western music, which, ironically, I'm beginning to appreciate as I get older. I hated country music way back then. But now, I can honestly say George Jones is one of my favorite recording artists. He has a depth of feeling when he sings that is nothing short of beautiful. Although it is, to be honest, an acquired tasted. He is the Frank Sinatra of country music. His way with a lyric is really remarkable.

When I was in the latter part of my high school years I became very close to my drama teacher, Doug Allbritton, and his incredibly smart and funny wife, Nancy. I used to spend a lot of time at their house. They taught me many things, two of which were how to play Bridge and how to appreciate sparse, jazz-influenced, East-Coast vocals. They taught me how to appreciate Sinatra.

I saw Frank Sinatra five times in concert. Three times in NYC, once in Cincinnati and once in St. Louis. I have never seen or experienced a presence like his before or since. This is a guy that "owned" a stage if ever there was one. And his performances were simplicity itself. Top of the show: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Frank Sinatra." He sang for about an hour and a half. Finished. Never once did an encore. Simply walked off stage and that was it.

For an actor, watching Sinatra perform a song was like going to school. Every single song was like a little one-act play, with builds and valleys and surprises. I don't know if Sinatra did this on purpose or if it was something instinctual. Whatever the case, he did it like no other.

Somewhere in the middle of the concert, Sinatra would always dismiss the orchestra, sit beside the piano, pour himself a short Jack Daniels, light a cigarette and explain to the audience that he was really just a "saloon singer." Then he would sing a few "saloon songs." One for My Baby, Angel Eyes, It Never Entered My Mind, The Gal That Got Away, My Funny Valentine, Little Girl Blue, Empty Tables, Where or When, a few others. It was magical. Sinatra, when he's really acting a song, tends to simply shut his eyes and tell a story. Unless you've seen him live, it's hard to explain this. It's almost as if he checks his rather sizable ego for a bit and gets INSIDE a song.  And most amazing is everyone thinks he's singing directly to them.

I've seen other wonderful singers live on stage (as opposed to dead on stage, I suppose): Mel Torme', Lena Horne, Michael Feinstein, Barbra Streisand, Carmen McRae, Sammy Davis, Jr., Karen Mason.  As amazing as they were, none of them could quite pull off what Sinatra did. Personal storytelling.

Frank Sinatra has always been a staple in my life.  I remember being in a dorm in college, one room over AC/DC was blasting.  On the other side of me, ZZ Top.  And in my room, much to the chagrin of the other young dormers, Sinatra and Nelson Riddle slamming out I've Got You Under My Skin.

I met him once.  Well, not really, but he looked at me and spoke.  When I saw him in Cincinnati I was with a buddy of mine who wrote for the local paper there.  He had press passes which allowed us to go backstage after the concert.  The stage manager was also a friend of my buddy and told us, "When he starts singing My Way, make your way backstage.  He won't do an encore and when he finishes that song he just walks off stage and gets in his limo and drives away.  You can catch him as he's walking out the back."  

So we did.  As soon as Sinatra started singing, "Start spreading the news...," off we went.  We showed our press badges to security (a LOT of security) and stood just offstage waiting for him to finish.  When he did he turned and strode toward us.  I was electric.  My chance to meet Sinatra.  

As he approached I had my speech ready.

"Mr. Sinatra I just wanted to say how much your music has meant to me over the years I've been a fan of yours for many, many years and I just can't tell you enough about how much your music has meant because it's so honest and personal and I've got about twenty of your albums and I listen to your work over and over again..."  I was blubbering.

As he walked by he glanced at me, a slight frown on his face, and said, "Yeah, I know."  And walked out the door and into his waiting car.

"Yeah, I know."  Sinatra had said, "Yeah, I know."  To ME.  Directly to ME.  To Clif Morts.  To ME.  "Yeah, I know."  That's what he said.  To ME.

I had a smile on my face for a month.  Sinatra and I were pals.

See you tomorrow.

Eddie Cobb Hung Himself Today...

Listened to a wonderful reading of my play, Bachelor's Graveyard, yesterday. Five really fine actors: Rob Arbogast, Jon Zenz, Chad Coe, J.R. Mangels and Ryan Keiffner. Rob is playing the lead role. Really fascinating actor to watch. He has a monologue in the play about the Ali/Forman fight of 1974. The rumble in the jungle. The monologue is about 15 minutes long. It's a passionate monologue that starts out as a blow-by-blow account of that incredible (see the documentary When We Were Kings) boxing contest that occurred at three in the morning in Kinshasa, Zaire (the former Belgian Congo) and ends up as a tribute to a failed, fallen decade. I believe that is the moment when the turbulent sixties really ended. Not on new years eve of 1969, but on October 30, 1974, when Muhammad Ali reclaimed his stolen crown.

The monologue is a doozy. A play-killer in the wrong hands. Yesterday as I listened to Rob Arbogast do it I was reminded again what a really good actor can do with words. I was transfixed. He found the elusive, "illusion of the first time."

I knew when I wrote it how hard it was. In fact, I remember doing it myself after I'd finished it and thinking, "I can't even do this damned thing. How can I expect someone else to?" Well, he did. And it was apparent he didn't just pull it out of his ass and get lucky with it. There was a lot of work there. It is one of my favorite moments in the theatre; when an actor nails a piece of my writing so clearly and passionately. Nothing quite like it.

The play's original title was "Eddie Cobb Hung Himself Today." The name comes from a layover flight in Miami years ago. As we waited for our plane to land, there were a crowd of people enclosed in one section of the airport. Next to me were four or five teenage boys waiting for the same plane. I was evesdropping and they were discussing the one friend that apparently couldn't make the trip with them. His name was Eddie Cobb. I was amused to hear that none of them ever called him just "Eddie." It was always his full name, "Eddie Cobb."

The play is about being 18 years old again and, impossibly, having a curious and rather brutal idea of what life has in store for us at that age. About what none of us can see...the metaphoric car wrecks and accidental monsters that await us in life. The idea that the people we love, the people that shape us, can die before us. That they will not always be there. The quick decisions made, seemingly random, that inform the rest of our lives. In some ways, that is what all of my plays are about. I'm fascinated with that theme. Maybe because I'm getting older.

As I mentioned, I attended a gathering on Saturday with a lot of folks I hadn't seen in nearly thirty years. Upon entering, one of the guys there came up to me and offered to take the stuff I held precariously in my arms. We had done a play together three decades ago. I could see in his eyes that he thought I was just Angie's boyfriend, some guy that she was dating perhaps, that happened to just come along. I had obviously changed so much physically that he quite literally didn't know me. It put me in mind of the theme from Bachelor's Graveyard. In an instant he saw not the hopeful, arrogant, desperate, fearless kid he had done a play with so many years ago, but instead saw a balding, aged, somewhat resigned guy that has clearly lived a life chalk-full of accidental monsters and incidental happiness. I was intrigued by his lack of recognition rather than offended. Because it was a theme upon which I dwell in my work. And here it was as a microcosm. Two people going from 22 to 49 in one moment. In an instant recognizing the 27 years of wreckage that life can hand us. And treating it with a passing nod as to its significance.

I never think of myself as a forty nine year old man. When I dream I'm always around thirty or so. I don't know about other people and their dreams. Maybe that's when I felt best about myself. I don't know. When I was thirty I was living in Queens, NYC, jobbing from one theatre to the next, a heavy and unapologetic drinker, secure with who I was and clueless about the ravages of time and the joy and disappointments life held in store for me. Ignorance was indeed bliss.

I am not the only one to obsess on this idea. Songs, novels, poems, plays...I'm certainly not the first to cover it. It's nothing new. Woody Allen recently said in an interview that he works not for awards or recognition, not even for satisfaction in his artistic life. No, he works to keep the images of death at bay. He works to keep from living day to day in constant terror of what happens when we die. He said, "If any of us had any idea how quickly we were rushing toward the void, we would be too terrified to get out of bed everyday." That's why he works. In a sense, that's why we all work.

This is where, of course, faith plays a hand. I don't have a faith as most people define it. I have only resignation. I do not believe in a better place for the dead. I believe in the necessity of hiding and dodging and grappling with the accidental monsters lying in wait today. I believe in the inevitable.

I've recently, not coincidentally, had a few close friends die. Robert Fiedler, an actor I started out with in NYC, Carol Provoshna, a fine, comedic actress with whom I did a lot of work, a buddy from Chicago succumbing to Cancer. They are in the void before me. Making their way through Shakespeare's Undiscovered Country. They were living, laughing, thinking people that I consciously chose to be my friends. I feel certain we must have talked about death together at one point in our lives. We were close. Now they know something that I don't. They know something I don't care to know. They either don't exist anymore or are stepping gently through another journey of which I have no concept.

In Bachelor's Graveyard one of the characters says, "I don't know why there's so much hurt in the world. I wish I did." I'm beginning to think I don't really care for that line. Because I'm glad I don't. I don't know why some are taken and some are not. I don't know why I'm sitting here typing this blog right now when I've misspent a lifetime placing myself squarely in the midst of harm. I don't know why the random, savage and gentle episodes of life have spared me. I only know that people die, people move on, people age, people intersect and sometimes they wander across a determined path and end up eating a fruit salad together at a painted picnic table twenty-seven years later. And they don't even know each other anymore. They go, in an instant, from sharing a joint or drinking the same champagne and laughing about the same oddities to being older, wiser, frightened people in a stranger's backyard.

And somewhere deep, deep, deep inside we think, "Who's next?" At least I do.

See you tomorrow.

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday...

Last Friday I started recording a new CD called NOVEMBERNINTH with my dear friend, Kyle Puccia, noted singer, artist, producer, teacher...he wears a lot of hats. And he's brilliant. Kyle has a state-of-the-art production studio in his home. We churned out the first song on the CD, an old standard called "It Never Entered My Mind." Now, I'm not really a singer. Yes, I can carry a tune, certainly, and I've done about forty or so musicals on the professional stage, but really, in all honesty I'm not a singer. Not like Kyle is or, say, Jimmy Barbour, or any number of friends that are real singers.

The genesis of the idea was to record a few songs for an upcoming anniversary with Angie. Just a casual thing, nothing to get too excited about. But the moment Kyle and I started working it became something cooler. Why don't we just do a whole CD, Kyle suggested. So we are. It's called NOVEMBERNINTH. That's the day I showed up in L.A., knowing only a handful of people with just a trunk full of plays to my name.

I'm very excited about this project, this little CD we're recording with nothing but a piano and a cello. Mostly because I've never done anything like this before. Can't wait to start on the second song. "Angel Eyes."

Initial read-thru today of Bachelor's Graveyard, the third of a Missouri Trilogy, of sorts. Just a stage reading is planned. Kind of get an idea of the piece in front of an audience. See whether or not it might have a production somewhere down the line.

Praying Small is finally cast. A few odd choices, but I'm pleased. I've always maintained that odd is good. I'd rather see odd any day of the week over boring. However it turns out, I suspect Praying Small will be anything but boring. That's the one and only unforgivable sin in the theatre - boring.

From the East to the West, part two of my Missouri Trilogy, is still in the hands of several theaters. I haven't officially given the play to anyone yet, although it appears a fine company here in L.A. called Open Fist will get the World Premier, under the capable hands of Bjorn Johnson, a very good actor/director here in the L.A. area. Although again, nothing is in stone yet.

I'm a happy guy. I don't think I could've written a scenario more satisfying than the one I'm living. Jimmy Barbour told me almost immediately after I got here, "Listen, L.A. theatre, for the most part, sucks. You have no idea how many people are going to be scrambling for your writing." Turns out he was right, as he often is. Jimmy is a very savvy guy when it comes to the "business" of show business.

Angie and I attended an "old home week" get-together yesterday. A bunch of people we went to school with back in the dark ages. Saw and met some people I really missed. And some I didn't. I'm still amazed at how a simple "How have you been" can turn into a list of credits. When I say, "How have you been" I really want to know. I don't want to know, "What's the last thing you did on your resume?" Ah, well. Anyway, it was really enjoyable. And although I'm not very good anymore at small talk and glad-handing, I had a good time.

Picked up a new puppy yesterday, too. Drove all the way to Bakersfield, California, which is just east of Armpit, California, I think. The new puppy is named Franny, short for Francis Albert Sinatra, his full name. And of course we already have a dog named Zooey, so now we have Franny and Zooey. And yes, it's a tip of the hat to JD Salinger, just like you might think. It is my favorite book.

Franny and Zooey are not yet comfortable with each other, but Angie and I predicted that, so we're dealing with it. Zooey has been an only dog for a long time and she's not adjusting well yet. But it'll be okay in the end, I have no doubt.

Today, before the read-thru, all sorts of mundane, domestic, chore-like events are planned: shopping for groceries, laundry, cleaning house. I'm delighted to do all of it. Life, sometimes, is just so sweet and natural. I spent a long, long time living a life that was not at all sweet. But now it is. So why dwell.

John Lennon famously wrote, "Life is what your do while you're busy making other plans." And today, and probably tomorrow, my other plans are beautiful and fulfilling. I am well pleased.

See you tomorrow.

Those who can, do...those who can't...well, you know.

"Where do you get your ideas?" This is the most common question, I think, that people who write for a living get asked. Stephen King, granted, a prose writer, gets this question ad nauseum, apparently. He goes into some detail about it in his book, On Writing. Which, incidentally, I highly recommend.

Tennessee Williams said he always had the title in mind first and the actual story came later. Not surprising, I guess, from the master of titles: Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Night of the Iguana. Now those are great titles. Puts the current crop of titles to shame: Wit, Proof, Art. Come on.

John Irving has said he has no idea what's coming next when he writes. He has a very vague idea, but that's about it.

Hemingway used to say the story was fully complete by the time he put pen to paper, it was just a matter of editing it in his head.

Shakespeare, apparently, stole all of his story lines from historical incident or famous lore of the time.

Arthur Miller, not one of my favorite playwrights, wrote about whatever he happened to be mad about at the time. That shows in his work, I think. Oddly, a writer I find deadly dull for the most part, is also responsible for, to me, the best play of the twentieth century, Death of a Salesman.

Lanford Wilson, a playwright I admire a lot, is firmly in the "write what you know" camp.

David Mamet? Anyone's guess. He's a lot more versatile than people think.

For me it has always been about the elusive muse. And that muse is really unpredictable.

One thing I remember King saying in his book about writing is how happy he was when Carrie first became a financial hit for him. It meant he could stop teaching school and concentrate entirely on his writing. But then something unexpected happened for him. He realized he didn't have the stamina for writing all day, every day. He likened it to being an athlete. He simply didn't have the physical or mental resources to do it. He had to train. When he first quit teaching and sat down to write the next book, he said he only had a few hours in him before it all shut down. Like a marathon runner, he had to train himself to write for seven or so hours a day.

Some very fine playwrights I know spend their days scouring the papers and the internet and the evening news looking for their next subject. I can't imagine that.

I think my next piece of work is going to be an epic, large canvas, love story. The muse is upon me for that. The problem is I don't have time to write it right now. What with teaching, acting in Praying Small, energetically pursuing the next production of EAST/WEST, taking care of A and Z...well, I just don't have the long stretches of isolation that writing requires right now.

One thing that most writers I know have in common is the idea that the work, when they're fully on the right path, "writes itself." This is a phrase I've heard countless times. And I know exactly what it means. When I'm in the middle of something good, something that feels brutally honest, I don't expend a lot of effort, frankly. It just pours out. But when I'm forcing something, forcing all the ends to meet, forcing the characters to get from A to B, well, then...it just doesn't work. It's just academic writing. No point to it at all except maybe to make the theme and plot make sense. That's no good. Without the passion, it simply doesn't work.

There are sections of Praying Small where I remember stepping away from the screen for a few minutes to gather myself. Just too painful. Sometimes a writer can accidentally access a corridor so horrifying as to almost be un-writable. That happened a few times in Praying Small.

I remember the one and only "writing for the stage" class I took many years ago in Missouri. Typically, the instructor had never written a professional play. Yet, as often happens in humanities classes in academia, he was simply perpetuating ideas that have failed. His Ph.D. was his pedigree, not his actual work. It's a sorry state in higher education. Why don't they bring in professional, tried and true, working actors to teach instead of some schmuck who's never been on a paying stage in his life up there mindlessly droning through Uta Hagen's silly, boring, useless book? Why? Because academia applies the same rules to theatre departments as they do to all the other departments in the school. That is to say, education rules. The more degrees one has, the more qualified they are to teach. Well, obviously, theatre doesn't work that way. Degrees mean nothing. Less than nothing. When was the last time ANYONE EVER asked about a degree before hiring an actor? I'll tell you when...never. That's when.

Anyway, this instructor daily spit out worthless information. You must have a beginning, middle and end. Who says? Do not introduce a gun in the first act if you don't use it in the second. Who says? All plays should end with catharsis and tie-up. Who says? The first emotional climax should end act I. Who says? Never do this or that. Who says?

Had a friend of mine once say something cool to me. We were talking about whether Shakespeare had really written everything people said he did. I remember asking him (now remember - my MFA is in Shakespeare studies, so this subject has fascinated me for years), how could he have written on such an astonishing array of subjects with only a grammar school education? He was essentially a small town, merchant's son, after all. Certainly not of the ruling class that had access to higher learning during that time. My friend said, "give me one example when the aristocracy has written or painted or danced or acted or played something groundbreaking? All great art comes from the masses. Otherwise the entire human cycle of creating would simply be endlessly repetitive." He was talking about academia, too, of course. I mean, why would someone want to take a painting class from someone who has never sold a painting? The instructor is simply passing on more ways to fail. He is reinforcing his own pattern of failure. Therein lies the bedrock of why academia, in the instance of theatre, is built to fail. It is taught by watchers, not doers.

I have to make breakfast now for my beautiful significant other and my cute-as-the-dickens dog. See what I mean? No time to write that great love story. Only live it.

See you tomorrow.

The Two Horsemen of The Apocalypse...

Compromise and collaboration have never exactly been my strong suits. I'm embarrassed to admit the number of bridges I've burned over my career refusing to do either. A couple of times that has come back to haunt me. But it's who I am and what I believe and to do otherwise would make me dishonest, to say the least, about my work.

Another character flaw is a life-long inability to keep my mouth shut.

As a playwright, I'm in a unique and rather enjoyable position right now. Praying Small just finished principal auditions and is soon to go into pre-production. And an actual, honest-to-god, tried and true feature film director is patiently waiting for my screenplay treatment of it. A real, flesh and blood, "name" actor has the stage play and also is waiting for the screenplay. Not at liberty to say who that is at this point.

From the East to The West, after having been summarily dismissed by one theatre is being paraded down main street with a marching band at another. It's also about to go on the season with another prestigious theatre in Chicago. A fine director by the name of Bjorn Johnson has taken the helm (google him). And the astonishing actor, John Schuck, is chomping at the bit to play the lead role.

Bachelor's Graveyard is in rehearsal even as we speak with five really talented, blazing young actors. That will only be a preliminary reading but my friend Karesa McElheny, as director, is all over it.

I'm especially pleased (in a sly way, I blush to confess) that it appears Praying Small and From the East to the West will very likely play at the same time in Los Angeles thus competing for what passes for theatre awards out here. Not that awards have ever meant much to me, but I think EAST/WEST will get some vindication, in that regard.

But back to this compromise thing.

I really don't know how to do it. Last night at callbacks I think I chewed a hole in my tongue. I so, so much wanted to put my two cents in. But I made a promise to the director, the very shrewd Victor Warren, that I would not. So I didn't. But, Jesus Wept, it was hard. All night I was fighting the nearly explosive urge to just stand up and say, "Hey! Give me the script! This is how to do it!" A few years ago I might have even done that. But I'm getting older and, God help me, a little more wise I hope, so I didn't. Angie is teaching me the art of patience. And it is an art. If it were me directing I would have stood up a week ago and said, "Okay, I want you, you and you. That's the cast." But Victor is far more calculating than I am and he's following instincts I'm not aware of. I trust him. Bottom line. So I've kept my mouth shut (mostly, anyway).

As for collaborating, good God I'm bad at it. I see everything in my head as it ought to be. There is no reason to collaborate. But that's in a perfect world and the world is not perfect. So again, I keep my mouth shut and try to trust.

Theatre, like anything else, is a microcosm of the real world in which we live. Compromise and collaboration are simply what we have. They are the cards we're dealt. Play them accordingly.

I'm reminded of my favorite line in Scorcese's The Departed when Nicholson asks the bar patron, "How's your mother?" The guy says, "She's dying." Nicholson says, "We all are. Act accordingly."

I honestly don't know how Victor is going to cast this play that is so personal to me. I have added my two cents on the subject in private discussion. He knows where I stand and what I want. He may or may not take that into consideration. I really don't know. And furthermore, I don't know if I'm right. I always think I am, of course, but I also know I'm inclined to be stubborn about this kind of stuff.

Whatever happens, on June 11 I'll be onstage saying my words to a packed house. Playing a role so autobiographical and personal that I have no doubt it will be a watershed moment in my career. That's the hat I'm wearing now...actor. In a meeting yesterday, Victor kept saying, "Okay, I'm speaking to you now as an actor." Or, "Okay, I'm speaking to you now as the playwright." It eventually became a bit schizophrenic and silly. Should make for an interesting rehearsal process.

Compromise and collaboration. The two horsemen of the apocalypse. Two words I have feared and hated for thirty years. And now they are squarely upon my shoulders. Well, then, so be it. Make it so, Number One. Let loose the dogs of war and cry havoc. Or, more to the point, if I don't have something good to say, I'm not gonna say anything at all. Because in the end, what's the point? Why burn a bridge when I may have to turn around and drive over it very soon?

So, to paraphrase Angie, I'm shutting up and smiling. Acceptance is the key. Page 449. There are no accidents. Whether I understand it or not, things are exactly as they should be. That's a philosophy so simple and perfect as to be lunatic. But whatcha gonna do, huh?

See you tomorrow.

On Aaron Sorkin...

Watched A Few Good Men last night. The movie, that is. Hadn't seen it for quite a few years. I was struck again what a fine, fine writer for actors Aaron Sorkin is. To tell you the truth, Sorkin has been an inspiration to me for a long time.

I first saw A Few Good Men on Broadway when it was playing at The Music Box, I think it was. The original cast consisted of my old friend, Tom Hulce, in the Tom Cruise role and Stephen Lang, in a remarkable performance, in the Jack Nicholson role of Col. Jessop. Tom had gotten me a couple of comps to come see it in previews. Actually, he'd told me the day before that he didn't think it would be a hit because the script was "just too complicated for theatre audiences." Fortunately, he couldn't have been more wrong. It was riveting.

Lang, an actor with eccentric sensibilities if ever there was one, did an interpretation so odd and effective as to be mesmerizing. Tom told me later that Lang had spent hours observing the alpha male gorilla at the Brooklyn Zoo in preparation. When I think back on his performance it is easy to see that. He played Jessop so Marine/gorilla-like that at first I thought the role had been woefully miscast. But then I realized what he was doing. And I suddenly realized it was brilliant. Now, a couple of years earlier, Lang had done his Hamlet in New York. It was a barking, commanding Hamlet that, again, was a dilly of an interpretation. I had a couple of friends in that production, too. They told me that Lang had it IN HIS CONTRACT that no actor on stage could "touch" him. Literally. Very odd. Nonetheless, his Hamlet was fascinating. Not the best I'd ever seen by a long shot but certainly intriguing.

But back to Sorkin.

At that time, of course, he wasn't yet THE Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame. He was just a guy who'd written a good play. I've always been a huge fan of West Wing but I hadn't seen a whole lot of the episodes. When Angie and I finally decided to move in together it turned out she was fan, too. So for the first couple of months in L.A. while I was trying to find my footing we would watch old reruns of the show at night. Night after night I was astonished at Sorkin's writing for the show. And he was always the sole writer. No collaboration at all. Later, long about the sixth season I think, Sorkin left the show and other writers started taking a stab at it. The difference is palpable. The Sorkin episodes are breathtaking. The later shows only good.

I've told Angie a number of times I can't wait to meet him. She knows tons of people out here. Tons of actors and celebrities. She's close friends with a few: Richard Dreyfuss, Hal Holbrook, William H. Macy, some others. As a midwestern boy I'm still impressed with all this. So now and then she asks, "Who would you like to meet? I'll set it up." And my answer is always, "Aaron Sorkin."

The West Wing is, in my opinion, the finest network show ever. It's incredibly smart, adventurous, compassionate, interesting and most of all, just flat out great writing. It is cast perfectly. Martin Sheen is my idea of the perfect President of the United States in my mind. In fact, if you ever get the chance to go back and watch The West Wing all the way through it is positively uncanny how it parallels the Obama administration. Bleeding heart liberalism? Yes. But I'm a bleeding heart liberal, so I love it.

Later in my career I did the stage version of A Few Good Men twice, the first time as Dr. Stone, a smallish role that Christopher Guest did in the film, and a year later Jessop himself. Although I was sorely tempted to imitate Stephen Lang's performance I understood it was simply not for me. I instead played it very slyly and full of charm. Much closer to Nicholson's performance although by that time the film had come out and was hard pressed to find a way to handle the line, "You can't handle the truth" without making the entire audience thing of Jack. In the end I decided to throw it away, say it casually, and hit the following line hard.

As you know, Gentle Reader, I just finished a production of my play, From the East to the West, a three-day benefit performance for NoHo Arts. The play is chalk full of overlapping. That is to say, two or more actors talking at the same time. Although I didn't actually steal this device from Sorkin (actually, if anything, I stole it from Lanford Wilson), I used it quite often. In fact a few of the comments following the performance were along the lines of, "Why did they all talk at once all the time?" Because I wanted them to. And it's my play. So there.

Someday I hope to meet Mr. Sorkin. I have a lot of questions for him. All good ones, mind you. But mostly I hope to meet him and simply shake his hand and look him in the eyes and say, "You're really, really good at what you do."

See you tomorrow.

John Lennon, Gertrude Stein and Harry Truman...

Went to see a one-person show last night on the life and music of John Lennon. The songs really reminded me of what a genius Lennon was. Really nostalgic. The script, not so good. The actor, not so good. The music, excellent.

But it reminded me of the one-person shows I'd seen and done over the years. I've done three of them. Golden Eggs, one that I wrote, seamless direction by the sly Jeff Wood, about a young man making a decision about an accidental pregnancy, Farley and Daisy, another that I wrote and again with Jeff directing, about an agoraphobic too afraid to leave his apartment after his cat dies so he substitutes his toaster for the dead pet (back then, hell, I'd write about anything) and Give Em Hell, Harry, a two and half hour marathon show about Harry Truman that I took on an Equity National Tour.

They're beasts, these one-person shows. It's all squarely on the actor's shoulders. Moriarty once told me that a play is only as good as the weakest actor in it. Well, in a one-person piece...you get my drift. If it doesn't work, no one to blame but yourself.

I've seen a few over the years. My favorite, to this day, is Pat Carroll's show...Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein. Saw it way back in the early eighties. Wonderful writing, brilliant acting. I still use it as my litmus test for one-person shows.

I saw Rosemary Harris do a one-person juggernaut about Emily Dickinson. Oy. Script bored me to tears...but Harris was, not surprisingly, great.

I saw Michael Moriarty do one that he wrote years ago, about Jack Nicholson meeting William Shakespeare. Very odd little piece. But Moriarty is, of course, always fascinating. The one thing I do remember about that was his imitation of Nicholson was awful. Sorry, Michael, if you're reading this.

Saw my buddy, Brad Greenquist, do a one-person show years ago in NY about...well, I'm not sure what it was about. But it was long. Love Brad and I think the world of his talent, but God, that night was a long one.

Give Em Hell, Harry was a great experience. Started the play in Rochester, NY, with a little theatre called DCT. Terrible people run the place, clueless about theatre in general, but they gave me a free rein on creating the show. James Whitmore, you might remember, did the piece originally in Washington DC at the Kennedy Center back in 1975.

I watched hours and hours of news footage about Truman, read everything I could get my hands on. A very good director, Dick St. George, was brought in for it. Dick is also a fine actor and, strangely, a year later, I directed Dick in another one-person show called BULLY!, about the life and times of Teddy Roosevelt.

So I'm no stranger to all of this. Last night I was reminded again how hard they are. An actor really has to have some chops to pull it off.

I'm working on a one-person show now, in fact. Not for me, but for my friend James Barbour. It's called 3 UPPER and it recounts a very difficult time James saw his way through in recent years. Very powerful stuff. James is doing the lead in The Geffen's production of a new musical called Nightmare Alley, based on an old film with Tyrone Power. I suspect once that's finished we'll start rehearsing 3 UPPER. My NYC readers should look for it Off-Broadway sometime next season. I promise it will shock and awe you. Some very gritty stuff. And James will be doing the kind of acting he's not known for but he's very good at...remember, he was classically trained, he's not just a musical theatre fluff actor. I'm excited about it.

One final thing. I grew up about an hour from where Harry Truman lived, Independence, Missouri. On tour I remember one review, I think we were in Toronto at the time. It said, "Mr. Morts never quite accomplishes the Missouri accent although his joy in playing Truman is worth the price of admission." Eh? Whatcha' gonna do.

See you tomorrow.

Hickory, Dickory, Dock...

Long round of auditions last night for Praying Small. A lot of good actors. A little female heavy, but a few really fine male actors, too. Oddly, I am thankful I don't have these decisions to make. They are all firmly on Victor's shoulders. I will be interested to see what direction he goes. Early in this process, that is to say, a week or so ago, I told him I was taking off all my other hats and only wearing my "actor's hat." I meant it. The tough decisions are in his court.

I was reminded again why I detest auditions. Of course, they are necessary. But I don't like them. And I'll tell you why. Because the whole process is not designed to find the best actor for the job. It is designed to find the actor that can do something in thirty or forty seconds that will impress. That's like bringing in a bunch of professional singers and see who can sing a high C. Although singing a high C may be impressive, it is hardly the litmus test for a good singer.

Just watch American Idol on any given night. The contestant that can get up on stage and do something extraordinary within the time given gets all the accolades. The singer that gets up and sings a quiet, reflective, fine interpretation of a piece of music is considered sub-par. It's frustrating.

That's a microcosm of all auditions.

The trick is, and Victor, to his credit, did this a lot last night, is to see who can take direction. Even if it has nothing to do with the play itself.

I've always been annoyed with actors that give the same performance at the initial read-thru that they give on opening night. No growth.

I'm reminded of Robert DeNiro. Apparently Mr. DeNiro has a mild form of dyslexia. So his initial readings are stumbling and halting and filled with pauses. He has gone on record to say how badly his auditions were in his early days in New York.

So auditions have virtually nothing to do with finding the best actor. Again, the director's job, and it's a tough one, is to try and look past that. To find out who can really act and who is good at "impressing."

I remember working with Wilford Brimly years ago. Not a good reader. In fact, nearly illiterate. I never asked him, but I'd love to know how he ever got a break to begin with years ago in the seventies when he was doing all those films with Redford and Newman. But give him a little time to work on it, a little time to listen to the lines out loud, and as history has recorded, he gives on occasion an absolutely sublime and simple performance.

So how do we find out who's best for a role? I confess to not having a clue. What often happens is the director has to depend on what he's seen the actor do before. But what if he's never seen anything?

An actor came in last night and gave a dismal reading. Not a very good audition at all. Another actor followed him and read the same scenes. He gave a wonderful audition. But his past work has been pedestrian at best. The first actor has given some stellar performances. A really great reputation and resume. What to do? Go with the actor that gave the best audition, the one that really "impressed?" Or go with the actor with the proven track record that didn't read well? I don't know. And thankfully, I don't have to decide.

But in the end, these are great problems to have. In fact, they're really academic questions anyway. The play is going forward. Victor has a plethora of talent to choose from. I am busy working on lines and wearing my actor hat. The theatre and the company firmly behind the production. It's all good.

There's a story, possibly apocryphal, of Brando auditioning for the Lunts early in his career. He was about twenty-two or so. Hadn't yet made his name with Streetcar. Even then, of course, Brando was a renegade. The story goes that the famous Lunts were casting another tour of a frothy, bedroom comedy, the kind of fare they were known for. Brando's agent, inexplicably, had submitted him for one of the small, frothy roles. The auditions were held in one of those cavernous Broadway theaters in New York. When he walked onstage with the "side" Alfred Lunt asked him to start when he was ready. Brando looked at the script for awhile and then stared into the huge, echoing, dark theater. "Hickory Dickory Dock, The Mouse Ran Up The Clock. Don't you realize there are people fucking dying of starvation in India right now?" And he walked off. Arguably the finest actor of the twentieth century did not get the part.

See you tomorrow.

Auditions Tonight for Praying Small...

Auditions tonight for my play Praying Small. It opens on June 11 at NoHo Arts where I am the playwright-in-residence. I'm delighted to have found a very fine director, Victor Warren. He has a long resume, a very successful writer, actor and director through the years, a former New Yorker like myself and smart as a whip. I have high hopes.

The play has a long history of success. As I have mentioned before, it deals with recovery from addiction. And what seems to happen, in past productions anyway, is that the recovery community latches onto the play through word of mouth (it's ethically not too cool to advertise with AA and NA) and comes out in droves. It's a money-maker.

Doing the lead role myself. I didn't plan it that way, it just sort of fell in my lap. But I'm happy to do it. I almost did it once before in a Chicago production but backed out at the last second. This time is different, though. I really want to do it this time.

I've also agreed to do a role in a night of one-acts called SANITY with the theatre. Haven't read that play yet.

And another play of mine, Bachelor's Graveyard, will go up one-night-only for a stage reading.

And I'm writing a one-act play for the highest bidder at our fund raiser. A charming lady bid on the idea and after the silent auction I spoke to her. The idea is to write a short play about the night a couple met. Then, using actors in the company, we actually perform it for the couple in the theatre. They have snacks and wine and the theatre to themselves. Kind of neat, really. So I spoke to this lady and found out she had bid for not herself but her grandmother. The grandmother is in her eighties and she was a WWII bride. I can't wait to talk to her, get the story, write it, and put it up for her on her birthday which is June 19. This turned out to be not just a good idea for the theatre, but also something inherently good. I like it when things work out like that.

Plus the screenplay for Praying Small. No real deadline there, but things look quite promising on that front.

Just got the new headshots and signed up on ActorsAccess, a casting site out here in L.A.

Meeting some agents and managers out here soon, too. Angie's background as a casting director is proving invaluable in this regard.

Life is full and good. Honest and true. I'm beginning to sound like Hemingway, "And the wine was true. And the man was satisfied. The man smiled. The man was full and good."

So much on my plate. And I really am living the life I've dreamt of for nearly three decades.

I feel like a guy with twenty bucks in his pocket and has just ordered a really good ten dollar meal. I'm gonna eat well and still have ten bucks left.

See you tomorrow.

My First Earthquake.

We get used to things.

Yesterday I lived through my first earthquake. Now, yes, I know it was only a 4.4 earthquake. A tiny one, by California standards. No one around here seemed too terribly disturbed by it.

I sometimes have a touch of insomnia, especially when I have something on my mind like I do now with the auditions for Praying Small coming up. So I had gotten up and was at the computer when it hit. At first I thought a really large garbage truck was driving by outside. There was a low rumbling and the house was shaking just a bit. Then I realized it was four in the morning and the garbage people couldn't possibly be here yet. That was when I knew it was an earthquake. I had just enough time to get up from my desk and start toward the bedroom where Angie and Zooey were sleeping, when it ended. Then I just stood there in the kitchen sort of processing what had just happened.

Today I spoke to a few California people (I don't think I'm one of those yet) about it. They were not too interested in it. Just another shake. Most spoke of it as though it were a slightly out of the ordinary ride on the bumper cars. Angie, for example, wasn't the least bit concerned about it. Zooey didn't even bother to get out of bed. Even the pets out here are used to earthquakes.

Started me into thinking how all of us get used to things.

When I was a drug and alcohol counselor for the wretched Salvation Army, I would get to my office around seven in the morning and have a chance to chat a little with the "beneficiaries" (a euphemism in the Salvation Army for slave labor) as they came downstairs from their cots to have a cold, hard breakfast before they were put to work for 14 hours a day in the warehouse. They were cheerful, mostly. Just another day. Just another back-breaking, unfair, sweaty, endless day of work. I couldn't believe they were cheerful about this. But most were. The were used to it.

Sometimes I try to imagine other people's lives. I guess that's why I do what I do. Some years back I drove through my hometown. Didn't tell anyone I was in town. Just drove around and looked at old spots that I remembered. After a few hours I drove back to Columbia, where I had a hotel room, and then on to where I was going. But I had driven by the house where I grew up. Other people, whom I don't know, live there now. It was dusk and the light was on in the bedroom where I had slept for 18 years.

I remembered being in that bedroom, laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, while my father screamed downstairs in yet another drunken rage. Calling us all names, being demonic. And not being the least concerned by it. I was used to it.

I remember being in Chicago, horrible place that it is, in the depth of winter. I was walking to the library to order something (the public library is the highest place of learning on the planet, in my opinion) and a guy suddenly got out of an abandoned car right in front of me. It must have been about 20 below with the wind chill. He was obviously homeless. I stopped and stared for a second. He did the same when he saw me. No one else on the street. It was really cold. He smiled at me and said, "Want a cigarette?" He had some roles with him. I said, no, thanks anyway, and walked on. He was happy. Being homeless in a mortal winter was not out of his comfort zone. He was used to it.

For many years I would trudge to my studio, teach actors all day, trudge home late at night, fix myself a hot chocolate, watch the news and go to bed. So lonely as to be wooden. Not even knowing I was lonely because I was so far in the middle of it. Get up early and do the same again. An endless cycle of days interrupted by nothing. I was used to it.

Lonely, single people do this everywhere.

I remember driving to a theatre gig some years back. The work was in Dallas, as I recall. As I topped a hill in South Carolina, twilight, Springsteen blaring from my rental car speakers, suddenly I saw a huge backup, cars stopped, pulled over, highway patrol lights swirling, people standing around. I pulled over, turned down my CD and got out and walked up to where the action was. A terrible accident had just occurred. One of the patrolmen was standing and staring at a body of a young man. Maybe twenty years old. Maybe less. Ambulance hadn't gotten there yet. Saw me standing too close. Said, "Step back a little, would you, sir." Then, in reference to the dead young man, "Drivin' too fast, I guess." I turned and threw up. He walked past me and patted me casually on the side of my arm. I walked back to my car and sat there astonished at his lack of concern and stunned at just seeing a dead person. He saw dead young men all the time, I guess. Drivin' too fast. He was used to it.

Just a few minutes earlier, irony of ironies, I had been listening to Bruce Springsteen sing the song, Wreck on the Highway.

So I'm trying to process the idea of people living in this area of the country completely casual about the entire earth shaking beneath them. Millions of people simply stopping for a moment and allowing the universe itself to tremble for a few moments and then return to normal. An acknowledgment, briefly, that something awesome had taken place, but quickly forgotten. They had places to go, bills to pay, people to smile at.

And then there's me. Standing in a dark kitchen at four in the morning, scared and shocked. Not at all used to this. I don't want to ever get used to this. I don't want to ever be that boy again, staring at the ceiling, listening to a savage drunk scream obscenities only yards away, thinking off-handedly about what he might do tomorrow, the brutality barely registering.

I don't want to get used to earthquakes.

See you tomorrow.

O How a Rose 'Er Blooming...

Auditions this Thursday for Praying Small. I'll be going in to read opposite people. I've always thought auditions to be a necessary evil in this business. I dislike them. On both sides of the table. And yet, like democracy itself, they are the best way to do it when compared to other ways.

I don't think we'll be seeing monologues like in a cattle call or anything. The scripts have been sent out to the company members, some 60 strong. Sides will be available at the audition (a "side" is a small portion of the script for the actor to read from). The director has some people in mind for certain roles, I believe, but he's open to changing that, I think, if someone really wows him.

I"m sure as the playwright I'll have some input, especially since I'm also playing the leading role, but ultimately it's up to the director. I suspect he'll have a great deal from which to choose.

Like most actors, I've had approximately ten thousand auditions, it seems. One in particular comes to mind.

I remember auditioning for 1940's Radio Hour years ago for a production in Connecticut. I had already done the show four times by then (eventually ended up doing six different versions of it). I knew the producers were interested in having me do Clifton Feddington in it. That's the sort of M.C. lead role, the character holding the whole thing together. I had just finished doing the role at Mill Mountain Theatre in Virginia. So, understandably, we were all asked to bring in sixteen bars of swing music. I think I brought in Under My Skin. Anyway, it was one of those auditions where they bring in ten actors at a time and then call us up to the stage one by one, the other nine sitting in the audience listening. Not uncommon. So one by one we would get up and sing our best sixteen. About five or six actors into the audition, a kind of frumpy girl got up, never seen her before, she had on a sun dress, no make-up, really very out of place. She was nervous beyond belief. Her hands and legs were visibly shaking. Her voice, when she introduced herself and her song, had a tremble to it. I was a little concerned for her. But that was just the beginning. Her song choice was "O' How a Rose 'Er Blooming," a nineteenth century parlor song. The kind you might hear accompanied by a harpsichord. She sang it with trembling voice, trembling arms and legs, nervous to the point of collapse. Unbelievably, no one cut her off. They let her finish. We, in the audience, were very uncomfortable. Clearly she was out of her league. And then, even more unbelievably, the music director said to her, "Listen, everyone's nervous today. Don't be. We want to hear the best you can do. We're on your side. Start from the beginning again, please, move a little closer to the mike, shut your eyes and pretend we're not here, and sing it again." What? What the Hell?

So she gratefully began again. (Stop reading right now if you have a weak heart.) Same thing. Trembling, embarrassingly nervous. This time they didn't even cut her off after sixteen bars. The let her sing the WHOLE SONG!

She finished, they thanked her from the dim audience seats and we all moved on...next singer up.

I thought it was tremendously odd, but in time I sort of forgot about it. I got the role of Clifton Feddington, went into rehearsals and after four weeks or so opening night came around. We had a really good show. Killed 'em on opening night. Standing ovations, the works. Big opening night party planned at one of the producer's homes in Connecticut.

So there I am standing in the kitchen, drinking my beer, talking to someone, it's about two in the morning, everyone is kinda tipsy, both from drink and our success, when all of a sudden, VERY loud over the stereo speakers, comes "O, How a Rose 'Er Blooming" in all its nervous majesty. THEY HAD ASKED HER TO DO IT AGAIN SO THEY COULD TAPE IT FOR THE OPENING NIGHT PARTY!

Okay, okay, okay, really cruel. Really mean. Just a terrible thing to do.

God help me, I was laughing so hard I had to sit down.

See you tomorrow.

Excerpt from Praying Small

Sam
They say it’s impossible to dream your own death. Or to even imagine it. Because we have no
reference. Nothing to compare what it might be like. And, I think, it’s the same with your life.
It’s a crap shoot. It is truly beyond my comprehension when I try and understand the millions,
the billions of casual, random, haphazard choices that make up my presence. Thousands of
years of flipping life’s coin. Heads and then tails and tails again and then heads and heads and
then tails and another tails and a heads and then a tails and on and on and on. Thousands of
years of that. And at the end stands me and my choices, my coin flipping, my random, casual,
haphazard selections. And they all intersect every so often. And then there’s another person.
Another human being, with the same coin flipping and the same casual, random, savage choices
before them. And they have an intersection, too. And then, even more impossible, the
intersections intersect. And before you know it and with hardly a snowball’s chance in Hell of
doing anything about it you’re suddenly in love and married and a father, maybe, and scared
and a drunk and completely, completely, completely clueless. We cannot save ourselves from
this arbitrary, capricious existence. So we pray. And we beg God, the big crossing guard in the
sky, to make our intersections as painless as possible. Please, God, we say, no more. No more.
Please. That’s enough. Just slow me down, God. Slow me down and let me breathe. You don’t
have to help me, God, I’m not asking that—just please, please don’t hinder me. And if we have
any sense left in our heads at all after a lifetime of casual atrocities, accidental monsters and
incidental happiness we scale everything back. We learn to pray small. We understand,
however minutely, what only the very, very wise and enlightened understand: just give me a
few seconds, no, less—a moment, a heartbeat, a blink of peace. Just long enough to know it
exists, just long enough to smile about it. Please. Can you just do that for me today. (Beat.) The
rest I think I can carry a little longer.

See you tomorrow.

Wise Fools.

Sometime in the next few weeks we're putting up a play of mine that I wrote a long time ago called Bachelor's Graveyard. Now, this place actually exists. It's a graveyard outside the small town of Bachelor, Missouri, a few miles from my hometown of Fulton, Missouri. It's nearly impossible to find. One has to drive on some pretty obscure country roads to get to it. And once, there, one has to park on the side of an old gravel road and climb up through brambles and countryside to reach this little patch of land with very, very old tombstones scattered about. Most from the nineteenth century. Back when I was in high school it was a closely guarded secret as to exactly where it was. Many tried to find it, many failed. It was passed down through word of mouth from one "cool" group of seniors to the next chosen group. I was, I'm proud to announce, in the "cool" group that was given the location.

So our group of friends, Guy Cooke, Steve Steinrauf, Dave Gibson, Ross Olsby, Vince Humphries, Jay Karr, Randy Fuller, Jimmy Pardue, Wayne Waldon, Jim Barnes, Dave Brady...we would head out there on occasion, highly secret, need-to-know only, and take out a ridiculous amount of beer and spread blankets and sleeping bags in and around the tombstones and drink and talk deep into the night, slightly awed and amused to be sleeping on graves.

Bachelor's Graveyard is a fictional account of our last night there and a condensed version of all the things we talked about in that last magic summer in Missouri before we all went our separate ways, convinced we would be friends forever.

I honestly think I had more fun writing Bachelor's Graveyard than any other play I've written. I had fun putting myself back into that eighteen year old mindset. The play is filled with gratuitous cursing and stories about hoped-for sex. It is purposely written with a delightful yet naive and sophomoric philosophy. Ah, I thought I knew so much at eighteen. I really thought I had most of the world's problems figured out. We, all of us, loved to wax poetic on subjects ranging from Hemingway to the new testament to sports and politics. We were, in the true Latin sense, Wise Fools. We honestly believed we knew what we were talking about. That's the whole point of Bachelor's Graveyard, to sit in and listen to those conversations, to be a voyeur on one of those charming and senseless nights, to be grown up and hear something forbidden to adult ears.

The play will be presented as a simple reading. Some blocking, perhaps. Simple lighting. Maybe a bit of sound design.

I've given the play to a few people over the years and asked them what they think. The general response has always been, "This is an incredibly funny play. No one will ever do it."

I handed it to the AD of NoHo, James Mellon, awhile back and one morning he called me and I couldn't make out what he was saying over the phone. He was laughing too hard. He said, "This is the funniest opening scene to a play I have ever read." He was laying in bed guffawing. He said his housekeeper had just come in to check on him because he was yelping with laughter.

He got it.

I was re-reading it myself yesterday. There is a moment in it that is so honest, so embarrassing, that I found myself tearing up a bit. Generally, when that happens, my first impulse is to cut it. My second impulse, and the right one, is to leave it and know I've done something good.

We've got a crackerjack cast, five young actors perfect for it. And a great director with a list of credits longer than my arm, Karesa McElheny.

I remember reading in Elia Kazan's biography that Tennessee Williams used to sit in the back during rehearsals for Glass Menagerie, I think it was, and wail with laughter at this delicate, sad play, really throwing the actors off. He was clearly remembering things as they happened and not what was onstage. I suspect that's how I'll be at rehearsal, too.

One thing about when I was writing the piece a few years back. I used to say to people, "I wish I were eighteen again and know what I know now." Well, after writing this play now I say, "I wish I were eighteen again. And do it all again and see how the dice fall this time."

See you tomorrow.

Excerpt from Bachelor's Graveyard, a new play by Clifford Morts

Bachelor's Graveyard, a new full-length play in one act, will be presented as a staged reading in the
very near future at NoHo Center for the arts under the direction of Karesa McElheny. Here's a teaser.


Chip (Overlapped.)

And so he comes for him. Stomps, step by step, toward Ali leaning on the ropes. Big, heavy, awkward
steps. Like an executioner wearily trudging up the steps of the gallows. Ali peaking through his gloves,
staring at George like a rabbit stares at a hawk, like a mouse stares at a cat, like old, homeless, black men
stare at cops. And George goes to work. This is his house, now. He’s home. (Mimes the body punches
again.) And Ali, twitching like the last kid on a dodge ball team, swaying and twisting on the ropes,
taking those cannon shots on his arms, his elbows, his chest, his shoulders, everywhere but his head.
Twisting like a corpse hanging from a tree branch in the wind. It’s all over. An entire STADIUM of
people gone quiet, an entire WORLD of underdogs watching the last car wreck they ever wanna see,
can’t turn away, can’t stop the pictures, can’t make sense of it all anymore. (Beat. Quietly:) Ding, ding.
(Beat.) Ali walks slowly to his corner. Refuses to sit on his stool. Head down. Looks up. Worry on his
face. Sweat dripping off his chin. Eyes focused on George less than twenty feet away. And . . .
and . . . smiles. And in that heartbeat, that eye blink, that moment of clarity, he knows. He KNOWS. And
for Ali, it’s the best-kept secret on the earth. He’s the ONLY one that knows. He’s smiling ‘cause he
knows, deep in his heart, deep in his soul, so deep in himself only a handful of men have ever been there,
he knows . . . it’s over. He knows the long fight is his. And like a book that repeats itself, paragraph after
paragraph, chapter after chapter, so predictable, so mind-numbing, so sad, and so the fight plays itself out.
Ding, ding. Ali leans on the ropes. Foreman follows. Ali protects his head. Foreman swings. And swings.
And swings. And . . . Jesus Christ, swings. And Ali talks to Foreman, explaining things, teaches school,
lessons of life, talks, pours out his philosophy, makes Foreman understand, recites, demands, scolds,
pontificates, talks to him, puts his mouth right up to his ear, drags him into clinch after clinch and lectures
quietly into his ear. He says, "My name is Muhammad Ali. You’ve been hearin’ about me since you
was a scared, little boy. My name is Muhammad Ali. I been walkin’ in your dreams for years. My name
is Muhammad Ali and, listen good, boy, I want it all BACK." Round five, round six, round seven. Ding,
ding. Big George can’t even walk to his corner without staggering. He’s so tired of hittin’ on Ali. No man
can hit something all night long. Doesn’t matter what it is: a pillow, a tree, a wall. Why won’t he go down?
Why won’t he fall? Why won’t he lay down, goddamnit. Who IS this man? And Big George is praying,
oh, yes he is. Not big prayers, not even to win anymore. George is praying small now, just get me through
another round. Oh, God, I’m so tired. (Beat.) Ding, ding. George pushes himself off his stool. God, I just
want this to be over. I’m just so . . . so tired. Ali. To the ropes. Waves George in. C’mon. This is not over
yet. You gotta finish me. If you want me to lay down, you gotta kill me, George. Can you do that? You
got that in you? Can you kill me? Don’t you know that might isn’t always right? Don’t you KNOW that?
(Beat.) On the ropes. Always on the ropes. He looks like a man leaning out his bedroom window to see
if there’s a cat on the roof. Big George stumbles toward him. This is all cosmically written. God’s puppets.
There’s nothing else for him to do. Just swing. Put his head down and swing. Just swing. (Beat.) And
then. Like a flash of heat lighting in the middle of the blackest night in the middle of the loneliest field in
the middle of nowhere. Ali starts punching. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight perfect shots
to the face. Like a sniper, patient and blindingly fast, firing round after round of ammo. Each punch whips
George’s head from left to right, from right to left, from east to west. Each punch hard enough to knock
out most men alive. Each punch so fast George can only feel them, not see them. And he starts a slow
spin, downward, arms twirling, like a man on a tightrope. He can’t feel his legs. All he can see are lights
in his eyes. He’s in the queer room now. Where alligators play trombones and bats sing choruses of
hallelujia and time slows to nothing. Stay down, George. Stay down. It never really belonged to you
anyway. (Beat. Quiet. Even Dave is enthralled now.) Nine, ten. And Ali raises his hands high above
him. Fists clenched. And walks leisurely around his fallen foe, the fallen despot, all the fallen ghosts,
a fallen decade. (Whispers.) Ding . . . ding. And it was finished. (Pause.) And nobody knew it, not
then, not right then anyway, that it was ALL finished, everything: the sixties, Vietnam, Watergate,
Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nixon, Kent State, The Beatles, Wounded Knee,
Bobby Seales, Civil Rights, Truth, Justice and the American way. It was finished. The end of a fixed
race. And for a few moments, a few days maybe, a few happy, happy moments, everything was as
it should be. The crown had been returned to the king and we were a few and a happy band of brothers,
the Holy Grail was close and God’s Grace was upon us. (Beat.) October 30, 1974. Three in the
morning. (Beat.) And yes, sometimes, sometimes things worked out okay.

See you tomorrow.

On Robert Klein and the Craft of Comedy...

I went to see Robert Klein last night at The Ice House in Pasadena with Angie and my friends, John Bader and Jim Petersmith. He was brilliant. Sixty eight years old and at the very top of his game. An absolutely seamless performance. I found myself at one point pounding the table with my fist and laughing. This is saying something, too, folks, cause I'm a tough audience when it comes to comedy.

A couple of things about Klein. First, I didn't see one single segue in the entire set. I never once noticed him moving to a different subject. You know what I mean, "Speaking of airline food..." Nothing like that. We were practically on the stage with him. Johnny B. had gotten us VIP seats and Klein was literally on top of us all night. The other thing about Mr. Klein, of course, was his razor sharp timing. Fifty years of doing stand-up will do that, I suppose, but still I wasn't quite prepared for it. This guy can take a comic pause better than anyone in the business. Jack Benny was known for his laugh filled pauses. He had nothing on Klein last night.

All of this got me to thinking about comedy in general. Playing it, rehearsing it, understanding it.

I am always surprised when other actors don't "hear" the comic beats while onstage. I have never been very good at trying to describe it. Once, years back, I was doing a silly farce called Run for your Wife down in Florida. During the run another actor in the play came to me and asked how I was nailing all the laughs. Not boasting here, just recounting. In any event, I found that I couldn't make him understand it. The closest I could come was likening comedy onstage to playing a trap set. Drums. I have always been able to hear it. And after lots of thinking about it, that's still the best way I can describe it. One has to hear that in one's head.

Sometimes it's easy. I was doing Guys and Dolls, playing Nathan, in Pennsylvania some time back. Another actor came to me and said, "Why can't I get this laugh on such and such line? I know it's there." I said, "Say the line louder." He tried it that night and had to hold about ten seconds for the huge laugh that followed. Sometimes it's easy.

When I was teaching in Chicago, I always sort of groaned inwardly when a couple of actors would bring a comic scene into class. Because I knew, short of actually getting up there with them and READING the lines myself, I would be very hard-pressed to make them understand how to get the laughs. Plus even when I DID that, it was MY timing that was getting the laugh, not theirs, so often it didn't work anyway.

An old adage: there are people that say funny things and then there are people that say things funny. Onstage, of course, always best to go with the latter.

Case in point: Gene Wilder. It's almost impossible to imitate him. He could get laughs on lines that no other actor alive could. He just said things FUNNY.

Another truism: Just because someone is funny offstage does not mean they will be funny onstage. I've seen this happen again and again throughout my career. "Oh, Bob is SO funny in real life, he'd be PERFECT for this funny role onstage." Hardly ever works. In fact, if I'm at an opening read-thru of a play and one particular actor is getting huge laughs from the company, I can almost bet my entire salary that that actor will not get very many laughs on opening night.

I was doing a show called The Show-Off with Elaine Stritch in New York once and she said something really great about comedy. She said, "I don't care if it's Neil Simon or Billy Shakespeare (she could call him that because I think they dated), it ALL comes down to BA-dump...BUMP." She's right. It always does...UNLESS one has the innate ability to say things funny. Then all the rules go out the window.

I did another show with Nathan Lane in New York. We have since become pretty good friends. Nathan was once telling me that his instinctive comic timing was sometimes a curse. No matter WHAT he said, people laughed. He said he used to get angry about that but now just takes it in stride. He's right. I used to be immobile with laughter hanging out with him. I can't adequately describe it...he's just funny.

I have thought about it many times, this comic timing thing. And reluctantly I have to say, it probably can't be taught. One is either funny onstage or not. Sometimes, an actor has a writer like Neil Simon under him. Big laughs all night long. The actor probably starts to think he's pretty funny. And indeed he may be. But more often than not, it is Simon getting the laughs, not the actor. It's pretty hard to fuck up Simon.

Another interesting thing is this: Comic actors usually make pretty good dramatic actors but dramatic actors RARELY make good comic actors. And of course this brings to mind the old Edmond Keane quote on his deathbed: Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

Twain said humor is based on exposition and comedy is based on surprise. I think that's true. And it's almost impossible to teach surprise.

If you get a chance to see the incomparable Robert Klein live sometime, do yourself a huge favor and do so. He's a very funny, smart, perceptive man. And the man can wail on that harmonica.

See you tomorrow.

On What the Director Actually Does...

Finally have an opening date for Praying Small. The West Coast Premier will be June 11, 2010. The play will run until July 18. I will be playing the lead role as we had planned. The original director, James Mellon, will not be able to do it because of some rather hefty scheduling conflicts. So...I've got to find a director. There are three in the company I'm drawn to, unfortunately one is on a world cruise, one is making a feature film and the last is in Denver.

The ideal candidate, and my first choice, is out of the business and teaching high school english classes in Colorado.

In other news, I'm putting up one of my red-headed step children, a quirky little play called Bachelor's Graveyard, for a reading in the very near future. Gentle Readers of this blog from my hometown of Fulton will readily recognize the title reference.

Also will be playing a role in a one-act for the next mainstage mounting of SANITY, a night of short plays at NoHo.

And for the month of April, I'll be teaching acting classes at the theatre...it is Shakespeare month and the entire company will be working on pieces written by The Bard.

All good things. I'm pleased. But back to this finding a director business.

What exactly is a director supposed to do? What are his duties, his job? It is sometimes a nebulous position. The layman doesn't really understand the role of the director. They don't understand that his vision, his concept, is the driving force behind any play, even more so, I dare say, than the playwright.

Some directors think their job is to block the play. Of course, that's balderdash. Blocking has about as much to do with directing as memorizing lines has to do with acting. It's such a tiny, almost casual, part of the job. Now, yes, if a director is doing The Passion Play on a stage the size of a football field, then yes, it's a pretty important part of the job. But generally speaking, no, it's just not that important.

I once attended a seminar with Mike Nichols, the legendary stage director. He said this, "If you cast the show exactly right, 95 percent of your job is done." Hm.

I recently asked a friend of mine, a very good actor, to think about possibly taking the reins to Praying Small. He gave me a really great, really candid response. He said, "You know, I'd love to work with you as an actor and playwright. I'd probably even have a little fun. But the truth is, I'm an actor. I just don't enjoy being a director that much." I really appreciated his honesty. Most actors leap at the opportunity to direct.

I also don't want to choose someone that doesn't act to direct this piece. A director that doesn't have an understanding of what it is actually like to BE ON STAGE, under fire, in combat itself, does not have my trust. I trust other actors, other stage warriors that have been out there, suffering the slings and arrows. I don't trust administrators who spend half their day behind a desk and another half of their day moving actors around onstage. A director must be filled to the brim with passion for the piece.

Having said that, I recognize that I am not an especially good director myself. I don't like the first two weeks, if that makes any sense. The readthru, the blocking, the finding the beats, the one-on-one actor/director relationship. As an actor, I just wanna skip all that and start working on the acting. I don't have the patience for all of that other stuff. I just naturally assume that other actors understand the play as I do and I always want to skip all the talking and yammering about the "meaning of the piece." I want to just get on with it.

I used to be intensely interested in the process. As I get older, it just bores me. I always have to stifle my desire to say, "Let's stop talking about it and just DO IT."

I'm meeting this morning with a potential director for the play. One of the things that came out of my long meeting yesterday with NoHo was directing approval. I'm really happy about that. Praying Small has had a pretty good professional life both in the midwest (Chicago) and on the East Coast. I have seen quite a few productions of it. Only one director, out of dozens, has "gotten it." I have reluctantly handed the play over to a gaggle of pedestrian directors. I don't want that to happen to this production, especially since I'm playing the lead role myself.

I've got a little time to think about all this and choose the right man or woman for the job.

But you know what? When all is said and done, these are GREAT problems to have.

See you tomorrow.

On the Oscars and Chili...

Well, had a host of people over last night for The Oscars. Fun time. Had ballots at the door, everyone keeping track of their picks throughout the evening. My buddy, John Bader, won first prize with the most correct picks. Fortunate for him, he happened to be a big Hurt Locker fan. I cheated and went on the internet to see what the critics were picking. I was near the bottom of the pack in points at the end of the evening. Serves me right.

The presentation held few surprises for me. I'm so glad Jeff Bridges finally won. He has long been a favorite actor of mine. My favorite Bridges performance is one few people remember: he played The President of the United States in a movie called The Contender. Loved him in that. And of course there's always The Dude.

Even though Meryl Streep didn't win, I liked the fact that nearly every actor there gave her a tip of the hat.

I remember years ago I won an acting award. Chicago. When my name was announced I got onstage and got my award and said, "I refuse to accept this award because of the way the musical theatre community has treated the American Indian throughout the years." Some laughed, some didn't get it.

And the secret to my famous chili? Three kinds of meat: Ground beef, chorozo and smoked sausage. Three kinds of beans. Very thick. The spoon must stand by itself in the middle of the pot when it is finished.

Great time, great friends, great chili.

See you tomorrow.

The Great Equalizer.

I'm not exactly sure when, but soon, Praying Small will go into rehearsal at NoHo Arts. I've covered all of this to some extent. There have been some casting setbacks, theatre availability, that sort of thing, nothing to be concerned about, really. James Mellon, an exceptionally talented director with a long and impressive resume, will be the captain of the piece. The play is a rough and tumble ride through the first year of sobriety of a charismatic and intelligent man crippled with the disease of addiction. Alcoholism is the disease of More. Always wanting more. More booze, more excitement, more laughs, more high, more life. It is the only fatal disease known to man that says to its victim - you don't have a disease. It respects no one and nothing, not education, not intelligence, not common sense, not affluence, not even genius. It is the great equalizer.

I have asked my dear friend, Kyle Puccia, quite possibly the single most talented musician I have ever had the privilege to know, to write the score for Praying Small. He has been diligently doing so. He has sent me three songs to be used; two covers and an original. They are breathtaking.

I have begun, as an artist, to sort of resent my own play, Praying Small. Because it is the one that everyone wants to produce. I have written reams upon reams of other work. I feel a bit like Jimmy Buffet. He once said that no matter what, no matter how many songs he does, no matter the brilliance of his other creations, everyone always wants to hear Margaritaville. Ha.

So I have been sitting here all morning listening to Mr. Puccia sing. I am aghast. He reminds me so much of another genius friend of mine, James Barbour. Last December, Jim did a Christmas Concert at the Colony Theatre. Angie and I attended and sat back and prepared to be lightly entertained by a few Let It Snow-type numbers. Well. Out comes tall, handsome Jimmy who immediately sets about rocking our world. I actually thought that theatre was TOO SMALL to handle his voice once he got cranked up. Kyle is like that. His talent is so enormous I forget, I FORGET, how good he is.

I wrote Praying Small in the basement of a recovery home in Chicago where I was working as drug and alcohol counselor. I would work all day hearing stories about the ravages of this disease, waiting until my clients had left my office, and then quietly lay my head on my desk and weep. Not very professional of me. As an actor and writer, I was simply too empathetic for the job. It destroyed me. I would be so emotionally drained at the end of some days I could barely walk. I had seen and heard the horrors of evil itself. If ever I doubted the existence of pure evil in the world, I don't now. It is addiction. Alcoholism is the physical embodiment of Satin himself.

Once, a few years ago, a director in Pennsylvania called me. His company was producing Praying Small. He had a press conference to attend the following day. He wanted to tell them something the playwright himself had said. He asked, "If you could summarize the play in one line FROM the play itself, what would it be?" I thought about that for awhile. I called him back and gave him a line from the play. Sam, the struggling alcoholic lead character in the play, says one drunken night to his helpless wife:

"I can't wait for you to see the man I'm going to be tomorrow."

See you tomorrow.

On Playing Tennis...

As the Oscars approach, acknowledging actors for their superior work on film (allegedly), I'm thinking back on some people I've worked with over the years that exhibited superior work. People you will never see at the Oscars or for that matter any other awards ceremony. Just working actors, schlepping from one job to another, that have, on occasion done truly superior work. Actors that have pushed my game up a notch. There are only a few. But they deserve mentioning.

The first time it happened was in college. My good friend, now deceased, Robert Feidler, did the role of Brian in Shadowbox, a finely written play about a group of people dealing with Cancer. It was the first time in my young life that I had seen what I considered "real" acting. There were plays being done everywhere when I went to college - one-acts, mainstage shows, musicals, serious drama, scenework in acting classes - just everywhere. But deep down I knew it was all just pretty bad academic-level work. Then I saw Robert in Shadowbox. And I knew it was great work. He was much, much better than anyone with him onstage. Real, honest, amusing, cynical, gritty work. Sometimes acting teachers will say, "Acting is like tennis. If you play with someone better than you are, YOU become better." I wanted to play tennis with this guy.

A few years later I was doing a rather pedestrian farce called Playing Doctor. One of my first professional plays. The two leads were an actor by the name of Steve Schaefer and myself. He was funnier than I was. Up to that point, in my youthful arrogance, I didn't think that was possible. I couldn't figure it out. How could he be funnier than I was? Steve was in his late thirties at that time and I was twenty three, I think. He had mastered the art of wrapping an audience around his finger and making them wait for the next laugh. I learned TONS of comic "tricks" from working with Mr. Shaefer. I have used them for the length of my career.

Some years later I worked with an amazing actress named Katherine Kelly in The Glass Menagerie. In fact, she is the actress pictured to the right. The single most honest actor I had encountered up to that point. I think I was thirty one. I had gathered a lot of tricks in my work by that time. But with her, for the first time, none of them worked. I was forced to go back to the basics: say the lines, be honest, react accordingly, don't do too much, be real. She made me do all that because to do otherwise made me look like Jerry Lewis next to Meryl Streep. That dog just didn't hunt.

And of course then there was working with Michael Moriarty and Jane Alexander. Two actors so good it made me wanna slap my grandma. I worked hard on that one. I remember standing off-stage, in the wings, watching Michael work in front of an audience. I remember turning to a stagehand standing next to me and saying, "That guy does more with an eyebrow than most actors do with a career."

And recently I had the opportunity to work next to an actress in one of my own plays, From the East to the West. Nickella Moschetti. Again, like Katherine Kelly so many years before, I was forced to abandon my bag of tricks and play it straight out. No eccentric diversions. No little tricks. No pretending. She's that good. In fact, I have a new play, a big one, called Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century, that I will begin peddling later this year. It's a massive piece of writing and I honestly think my very best writing. I want Nickella to do it. To play one of the leads.

There are a few others, but not many. The truth is, this business doesn't HAVE that many good actors. I remember the later Howard Orms, my first acting teacher, saying in class one day, "90 percent of the actors in this country are unemployed. And 90 percent of THAT 90 percent DESERVE TO BE." How right he was.

I love playing tennis with people better than I am.

See you tomorrow.

Theatre Stories...

As most of you know, gentle readers, I have long exhibited a dark and quirky sense of humor. Fortunately for me I have chosen a career that allows that. A life in the theatre (thank you, Mr. Mamet) has allowed me to continue a seemingly endless existence of dysfunction. Having grown up in the prototype of a family in dysfunction (awful and overwhelming alcoholism - completely ignored, I might add) I was completely prepared for the lifestyle of the theatre.

As such, I have a thousand stories about the darkly humorous moments of being an actor.

I was doing a play in Virginia, Mill Mt. Theatre in Roanoke, called You Can't Take it with You. As I remember it, there is a role in that play for a drunken countess, or something like that. The actors all came together from various points in the country, some from New York, some from Chicago, a couple of locals. So we start the first read-thru of the play. This lady that's been hired from NY to play that role is, well, horrible. She can't seem to read with any honesty. Sounds like she's just reading it out loud. We all raise eyebrows but let it pass. Next day, on our feet, blocking. She's incapable of doing this. Doesn't understand stage directions. Has no idea where to go when the director says, "Why don't you cross down left on that line."

I happened to be good buddies with the director, Jere Hodgins, and the next day I wander over to his office to find out what's what. He says, "I don't understand it. She was brilliant in the audition. Absolutely brilliant."

A few more days go by and finally he has to let her go. She just can't do it. She's not an actress. She's replaced and the show goes on. End of story.

Not quite.

About a year later, Jere calls me one night. He's laughing hysterically. Finally he says, "Remember that actress that I had to let go last year?" I say, "Yes, so?" He says, "I finally figured out what happened. I just came from a round of auditions and she showed up again. And again, she was brilliant. So I cleared the room and got to the bottom of it. She started crying and admitted it was her identical twin sister who wanted to be an actress. She would go and get the role and then send the sister to the job!"

Funny stuff.

I remember acting and directing a Lanford Wilson play called Redwood Curtain in Rochester, NY. I had become close with one of the Equity Interns there and she was working in the shop one day. Her name was Sheila. So, I'm strolling through the shop, seeing how the set was coming along, and Sheila is there building flats. I stop and talk to her. Now Sheila was from a very rich family, was getting her theatre degree at U. of Rochester, a REALLY expensive school. Some girl walked by and said, "Hey, Sheila, what are you doing?" Without missing a beat, she said, "I'm building FLAPS." She then turned to me and said, "She wouldn't know a flap if it hit her in the face."

I was onstage once with an actor in Texas. Dallas Theatre Center. We're doing a new play and it's opening night. He's playing the lead, I'm the supporting actor guy. Middle of the play. I say my line to him. Pause. I paraphrase and say it another way. Silence. I say the line in such a way that HIS line is included in it. Deafening silence. After about twenty seconds he says, "I have a LIFE, goddamnit. I don't need this constant pestering!" And walks off stage. After a moment of being stunned, I just looked out at the audience, equally stunned, and said, "So you wanna be an actor?" And walked off stage. One of the biggest laughs of my career. The frozen actor had already walked out of the theatre and was heading back to his hotel.

Many more.

See you tomorrow.

"Would you just do my damn play, already?"

I have had a long history of chaos trying to get my work done here and there throughout my writing career. Back in the day, in New York, it was much easier. When I first moved there, in May of 85. I got hooked up with a crew of very good actors and directors. Quite by accident.

We formed a little ragamuffin band of roving artists and ended up doing a gaggle of my plays: Changing it to Brando, Eulogy, Golden Eggs, DAD/SONS, Our Generation, Death in Des Moines and Farley and Daisy. I was very lucky to have fallen in with that dedicated group of artists, most of which have gone on to be people you would recognize immediately from film and television work.

But now, it's a little different.

I blogged earlier about how Praying Small was first discovered in a small, storefront theatre in Chicago. That, too, was a stroke of luck. From there it played all across the country and, I think. will play next at NoHo Arts. Although recent developments, which I am not at liberty to go into at this time, may put that on hold for awhile. Distressing, but out of my hands.

From the East to the West is being shopped around now. There is a very prestigious theatre here in L.A. that wants to do it. Problem is, it won't be till 2011. Naturally, I'm impatient and want it done now. Not sure I have the clout to get that done, however.

I'm sending the DVD and the final draft of the script to a theatre in Chicago tomorrow. That may come to something, but again, who knows. My old buddy, Bob Koch, is AD with Writer's Theatre in NYC in the East Village. He'll get the DVD and the script next week. They have long been supporters of my work and every time I talk to Bob his first question is, "What have you got for me?"

Moriarty wants to produce it in Vancouver. So he'll get the same package next week, too.

And I think there's a better than average chance Steppenwolf will wanna take a swing at it, too. We'll see.

Despite some recent artistic setbacks, I am convinced it is a wonderful play, multi-leveled, honestly written and engaging. A lot of people agree with me. But a couple, just my luck the "deciders," in George W.'s words, did not. I don't mind people not liking my work. It comes with the territory. They have the right to not to like my work.

So today is all about getting EAST/WEST into the hands it needs to be. People with the authority to "greenlight" it, in Hollywood terms.

Meanwhile, I continue to write the screenplay to Praying Small. And that, strangely, is turning out to be more fun than I ever thought possible.

See you tomorrow.