Thursday, June 30, 2011
Last Tango in Los Angeles: Gratitude.
Last Tango in Los Angeles: Gratitude.: "My wife and I had a lovely dinner last night in our backyard. She made homemade pesto from our basil plant in our flourishing garden (we al..."
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Gratitude.
My wife and I had a lovely dinner last night in our backyard. She made homemade pesto from our basil plant in our flourishing garden (we also have three different kinds of tomatoes, six stalks of corn, radishes, squash and lemon cucumbers growing abundantly there). Then she grilled some chicken breasts, sliced them up and placed them on top of some gnocci and tossed the whole thing in the aforementioned pesto. She tossed a salad (also with fresh goodies from the garden), heated some focaccia bread and brewed some iced tea. I set the metal and glass, antique table back there and we dined under the stars. Well, it wasn't quite dark yet, but you get my meaning. The horses were a few yards away and the puppies were sitting patiently near the table watching with culinary fascination the way dogs will. While eating we casually discussed our hopes, dreams, and plans. And in the middle of it I suddenly realized what a perfect, uncompromised life I was leading.
I had a buddy when I lived in New York who used to always say, "In New York everyone yearns for three things...the perfect job, the perfect apartment and the perfect relationship. The rule is, you can only have two of the three at one time in this city."
As I sat in the waning dusk last night, eating the perfect meal with the perfect wife in the backyard of our perfect house it occured to me that I may have broken the sound barrier at last. And that's the trick. To realize you've done it.
Now it would be easy to be maudlin about this realization, but that's not what happens. As the old song goes, 'It's a quiet thing.'
Gratitude is a very important part of my life. It has to be. The alternative is simply too dreadful. Oh, I sometimes go days, even weeks, without proper gratitude. It's just who I am. It's part of my make-up. So sometimes I have to make a conscience effort to push myself into gratitude mode.
Of course, being grateful is not the same as being satisfied. We're human, all of us, and we're always wondering what's over the next hill, around the next bend, on the other side of the forest. And we plan for it, for all the contingencies that may or may not happen.
For example, my wife and I live in a very nice little house in a very nice little neighborhood. But there's a big house on a lot of property not too far from us that I always fantasize about. "If only we lived there..."
And I am currently smack dab in the middle of two large and explosive writing projects, projects that are paying me very nicely with money that make our life more than comfortable, projects that will, in due time, make quite a splash, hopefully, in this silly world of show-biz in which I find myself living. And yet, now and then, I still get a little resentful that past writing hasn't landed me in better stead. That old devil, envy, sets in.
And sometimes, and I'm only being honest here, I meet someone casually, or I see someone on the street, someone staggeringly attractive, perhaps, and I think to myself fleetingly, what if I were with that person, what if I had hitched my wagon to that star? And then I see my wife, my perfect match and, what's more, my soul mate, and I am astonished at myself for even thinking something like that.
All of these things ran through my mind briefly as we sat outside eating our inostentatious, peasant Italian meal, breaking good bread and talking to each other in unhurried, gentle conversation.
Being content and being satisfied are two different things, I think. I wallow in my contentment sometimes. But I am rarely, if ever, satisfied.
And this extends to not only personal ambitions. No, not at all. I'd like people to step out of my way and let me fix the world, or at the very least, let me fix the small things in the world. And I'm always a little surprised when they won't.
Of course, this is part of my make-up, part of who I am, this desire to be not only the actor in the play, but to direct, design, light and produce, too. Sometimes, I'm sure, this submerged egomania on my part is less than flattering. I manage to hide it sometimes, not always, but sometimes, and people generally are probably not aware of the raging control freak existing right beneath my skin. But it's there and usually only my wife hears my ridiculous ideas about how to control everyone and everything and make everything better for everyone involved.
I suppose this is not as unusual as I tend to make it out, this driving need to tell everyone how to do things and how to live a better life. And make no mistake, in reality I don't know any of these things. I'm fully aware of this on some level. But it doesn't stop me from feeling that way. It doesn't stop me from occasionally allowing the 'asshole' gene to surface. It doesn't stop the unattractive pompousness living nefariously within me to fight tooth and nail to emerge.
The good thing is, with age does, indeed, come wisdom. At least in some small portion. Maybe wisdom is not even the right word. Maybe 'trial and error' is better. I have made nearly every mistake imaginable on my journey to sit in this chair, at this keyboard, in this house, next to this perfect mate. I even made up mistakes that weren't yet recorded in the history of the world. I set new records for making mistakes. But, fortunately for people like me, I have an uncanny ability to pretend they never existed, that they were never made, that I have a perfect win/loss record, so as to allow me to make them over and over again in my mind.
This ambition, this desire for more, this inability to be satisfied is not always a bad thing, of course. It can be, I think, if allowed to overwhelm everything else in one's life. But if properly managed, it's just another part of the puzzle, another part of just getting by.
I reemember an Oscar broadcast many years ago. The winner of the Best Documentary Award were two exiled German Jews, two individuals no one had ever heard of, lucky souls who had escaped the Holocaust and then, years later, made a documentary about it. A man and a woman. The man took the microphone first and thanked yet another group of people no one had ever heard of and we all used this time to get some more pizza or another beer or some more buffalo wings as we waited for the stars in the big categories to be announced. Then the woman took the mike and said something very simple. She said, "I'd like to thank God for allowing me to understand how beautiful it is to have a nice dinner with someone you love on a quiet night in your own house. For allowing me to not know pain and want and horror. For allowing me to understand gratitude."
At the time (and still today for that matter) her little acceptance speech made a profound impact on me. I've thought about it many times over the years, especially when the chips were down and my life seemed perpetually out of control. It made me realize how very close we all are to catastrophe, to terrible and accidental monsters, to unplanned hardship, to loss and grief. And how unspeakably lucky some of us are to have a nice dinner with someone we love on a quiet night in our own house.
What a huge thing that is.
See you tomorrow.
I had a buddy when I lived in New York who used to always say, "In New York everyone yearns for three things...the perfect job, the perfect apartment and the perfect relationship. The rule is, you can only have two of the three at one time in this city."
As I sat in the waning dusk last night, eating the perfect meal with the perfect wife in the backyard of our perfect house it occured to me that I may have broken the sound barrier at last. And that's the trick. To realize you've done it.
Now it would be easy to be maudlin about this realization, but that's not what happens. As the old song goes, 'It's a quiet thing.'
Gratitude is a very important part of my life. It has to be. The alternative is simply too dreadful. Oh, I sometimes go days, even weeks, without proper gratitude. It's just who I am. It's part of my make-up. So sometimes I have to make a conscience effort to push myself into gratitude mode.
Of course, being grateful is not the same as being satisfied. We're human, all of us, and we're always wondering what's over the next hill, around the next bend, on the other side of the forest. And we plan for it, for all the contingencies that may or may not happen.
For example, my wife and I live in a very nice little house in a very nice little neighborhood. But there's a big house on a lot of property not too far from us that I always fantasize about. "If only we lived there..."
And I am currently smack dab in the middle of two large and explosive writing projects, projects that are paying me very nicely with money that make our life more than comfortable, projects that will, in due time, make quite a splash, hopefully, in this silly world of show-biz in which I find myself living. And yet, now and then, I still get a little resentful that past writing hasn't landed me in better stead. That old devil, envy, sets in.
And sometimes, and I'm only being honest here, I meet someone casually, or I see someone on the street, someone staggeringly attractive, perhaps, and I think to myself fleetingly, what if I were with that person, what if I had hitched my wagon to that star? And then I see my wife, my perfect match and, what's more, my soul mate, and I am astonished at myself for even thinking something like that.
All of these things ran through my mind briefly as we sat outside eating our inostentatious, peasant Italian meal, breaking good bread and talking to each other in unhurried, gentle conversation.
Being content and being satisfied are two different things, I think. I wallow in my contentment sometimes. But I am rarely, if ever, satisfied.
And this extends to not only personal ambitions. No, not at all. I'd like people to step out of my way and let me fix the world, or at the very least, let me fix the small things in the world. And I'm always a little surprised when they won't.
Of course, this is part of my make-up, part of who I am, this desire to be not only the actor in the play, but to direct, design, light and produce, too. Sometimes, I'm sure, this submerged egomania on my part is less than flattering. I manage to hide it sometimes, not always, but sometimes, and people generally are probably not aware of the raging control freak existing right beneath my skin. But it's there and usually only my wife hears my ridiculous ideas about how to control everyone and everything and make everything better for everyone involved.
I suppose this is not as unusual as I tend to make it out, this driving need to tell everyone how to do things and how to live a better life. And make no mistake, in reality I don't know any of these things. I'm fully aware of this on some level. But it doesn't stop me from feeling that way. It doesn't stop me from occasionally allowing the 'asshole' gene to surface. It doesn't stop the unattractive pompousness living nefariously within me to fight tooth and nail to emerge.
The good thing is, with age does, indeed, come wisdom. At least in some small portion. Maybe wisdom is not even the right word. Maybe 'trial and error' is better. I have made nearly every mistake imaginable on my journey to sit in this chair, at this keyboard, in this house, next to this perfect mate. I even made up mistakes that weren't yet recorded in the history of the world. I set new records for making mistakes. But, fortunately for people like me, I have an uncanny ability to pretend they never existed, that they were never made, that I have a perfect win/loss record, so as to allow me to make them over and over again in my mind.
This ambition, this desire for more, this inability to be satisfied is not always a bad thing, of course. It can be, I think, if allowed to overwhelm everything else in one's life. But if properly managed, it's just another part of the puzzle, another part of just getting by.
I reemember an Oscar broadcast many years ago. The winner of the Best Documentary Award were two exiled German Jews, two individuals no one had ever heard of, lucky souls who had escaped the Holocaust and then, years later, made a documentary about it. A man and a woman. The man took the microphone first and thanked yet another group of people no one had ever heard of and we all used this time to get some more pizza or another beer or some more buffalo wings as we waited for the stars in the big categories to be announced. Then the woman took the mike and said something very simple. She said, "I'd like to thank God for allowing me to understand how beautiful it is to have a nice dinner with someone you love on a quiet night in your own house. For allowing me to not know pain and want and horror. For allowing me to understand gratitude."
At the time (and still today for that matter) her little acceptance speech made a profound impact on me. I've thought about it many times over the years, especially when the chips were down and my life seemed perpetually out of control. It made me realize how very close we all are to catastrophe, to terrible and accidental monsters, to unplanned hardship, to loss and grief. And how unspeakably lucky some of us are to have a nice dinner with someone we love on a quiet night in our own house.
What a huge thing that is.
See you tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Attending a Free Play Reading on my 'Dark' Night...
My friend, John, joined Angie and I last night for a reading of a new play at The Zephyr Theatre in Hollywood. The play was called 'Bob' and was quite clever. Reminded me a little of an old Terrence McNally one-act called 'Adaptation.' With a dollop of Woody Allen in his 'Without Feathers' days. A witty, unusual and apparently, brand new, play. With some innovative staging I could see it becoming an entertaining evening of theatre. I'm glad I made the trek over to see it. The evening was part of a bi-monthly play-reading series from The Echo Theatre Company.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about a group of actors sitting in a semi-circle, one of them reading the stage directions, and simply speaking a script out loud in a public forum. For one thing, I can't really think of a better way to do it, introduce a new piece of writing for the stage, that is. But it seems a tad cruel to the playwright, who spent so much time and effort and energy and creativity on the piece to have it presented that way. It's sort of like spending years making a film and then only have the trailer shown.
Now, that is not to say I haven't done it myself. I have. A couple of times, in fact. But I never really liked it and it is certainly not a very good barometer of how the play might be recieved in actual performance mode. I prefer a 'staged' reading. That is to say, blocking the actors to suggest a full stage treatment and using minimal lighting and sound. I did this with my last full-length, Bachelor's Graveyard, although I used a good deal of sound and music for that one. I think, in the final analysis, it gives the audience a much fuller, richer idea of the actual merits inherent in the script and also safely guides the entire proceeding away from 'oral interpretation.'
Oral Interp, as it was known, is probably not even taught in academia anymore...those reading this in the business that are over 40 will no doubt remember it. It is the performance of literature, taking writing meant only for the page and transferring it to the stage in a minimalist fashion. As my buddy John said last night, "Oral Interp was generally considered the lowest level of entertainment back in those days." He's right. It never quite got the respect that other classes got. And no one ever said, "I don't want to be an actor, I want to be an oral interpreter." Plus, and I'm just guessing here, there's probably not a lot of money in oral interp.
So when one goes to one of these readings, actors all sitting immobile on the stage, script in hand, turning the pages (and if the play is not going well, the audience becomes uncomfortably aware of how many pages are left to turn), pausing for 'stage directions,' using what was called in 'oral interp' terms as 'offstage focus,' at the mercy of the audience's imagination, it can be a rather static experience.
Fortunately for everyone involved, audience and actors alike, this piece, 'Bob,' was at times an extremely witty, language-driven, flat-out absurdist comedy. And, like most comedies, it felt a little ashamed of itself by evening's end and tried to dress up briefly as it's more respected cousin, the drama. It needn't have done so. Being a comedy all by itself was just fine with everyone. I call it the 'M*A*S*H Syndrome,' the inexplicable need for writers to justify their comedic writing by introducing a moment of solemnity right at the very end. GB Shaw used to pull that little trick all the time and may be the one aspect of his writing I never liked. Anyone who knows even a little bit about writing for the stage knows that comedy, GOOD comedy, is infinitely more difficult to write that standard 'drama.' However, I suppose, collectively, the run-of-the-mill audience doesn't know this, so the playwright feels obliged to tack on a 'serious' purpose to their work. A more subtle version of the 'crying clown' image, if you will.
And while comedy often feels the need to do this, pure farce never does. "Dying is easy, comedy is hard," as the old quote goes. That's one of the reasons I've always felt farce was the way to introduce the younger generation to live theatre. When done well, it's just pure, unadulterated fun and who could not enjoy that?
Our premminent comedic playwright of the twentieth century, Neil Simon, did this, too. Always slightly turning the comedy at the end of his works to suggest a larger purpose, a deeper meaning, a more poignant turn. Not to say this doesn't work sometimes. 'Lost in Yonkers' is devastating because of it. My point is, sometimes it feels apologetic rather than intrinsic, as it did in this new work, 'Bob.'
Nonetheless, any time a play can generate genuine, out-loud, wheezing, belly-laughs from an audience simply by saying the words out loud, well, that's pretty impressive all by itself. And this new play, 'Bob,' did that quite a few times. There was some very, very funny stuff in this odd, little piece and, frankly, I'm happy I heard it.
But sometimes these 'readings' can be the very essence of boredom. Last year Angie and I traveled over to a theater in NoHo to see a play about... well, I don't know what it was about, something to do with a mentally-challenged young girl who painted 'pretty pictures.' If I had had a very sharp razor near me I might have been tempted to end it all somewhere in the middle of the first act. It was two hours of my life I shall sincerely regret not having back as I approach my final moment on this earth. It was so bad I started getting the dreaded 'church giggles' in the middle of it. You know...the nearly overwhelming urge to just burst into unpremeditated laughter at the sheer awfulness of it all. We attended this dismal piece of sloppy writing at the behest of the Artistic Director of that theatre who told us, "I was weeping uncontrollably by the end of the reading when I saw it in rehearsal." Can't say as I blame him. I was doing a little clandestine weeping, too, when I saw the damned thing.
Fortunately, this was not the case last night. In fact, more than a couple of times, I found myself doing some hefty guffawing. And that's really saying something.
Look for it at a theater near you sometime soon, because I think it deserves a full staging. 'Bob' by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. Part of the free public reading series hosted by The Echo Theater Company, one of the more prestigious small companies working today in Los Angeles.
See you tomorrow.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about a group of actors sitting in a semi-circle, one of them reading the stage directions, and simply speaking a script out loud in a public forum. For one thing, I can't really think of a better way to do it, introduce a new piece of writing for the stage, that is. But it seems a tad cruel to the playwright, who spent so much time and effort and energy and creativity on the piece to have it presented that way. It's sort of like spending years making a film and then only have the trailer shown.
Now, that is not to say I haven't done it myself. I have. A couple of times, in fact. But I never really liked it and it is certainly not a very good barometer of how the play might be recieved in actual performance mode. I prefer a 'staged' reading. That is to say, blocking the actors to suggest a full stage treatment and using minimal lighting and sound. I did this with my last full-length, Bachelor's Graveyard, although I used a good deal of sound and music for that one. I think, in the final analysis, it gives the audience a much fuller, richer idea of the actual merits inherent in the script and also safely guides the entire proceeding away from 'oral interpretation.'
Oral Interp, as it was known, is probably not even taught in academia anymore...those reading this in the business that are over 40 will no doubt remember it. It is the performance of literature, taking writing meant only for the page and transferring it to the stage in a minimalist fashion. As my buddy John said last night, "Oral Interp was generally considered the lowest level of entertainment back in those days." He's right. It never quite got the respect that other classes got. And no one ever said, "I don't want to be an actor, I want to be an oral interpreter." Plus, and I'm just guessing here, there's probably not a lot of money in oral interp.
So when one goes to one of these readings, actors all sitting immobile on the stage, script in hand, turning the pages (and if the play is not going well, the audience becomes uncomfortably aware of how many pages are left to turn), pausing for 'stage directions,' using what was called in 'oral interp' terms as 'offstage focus,' at the mercy of the audience's imagination, it can be a rather static experience.
Fortunately for everyone involved, audience and actors alike, this piece, 'Bob,' was at times an extremely witty, language-driven, flat-out absurdist comedy. And, like most comedies, it felt a little ashamed of itself by evening's end and tried to dress up briefly as it's more respected cousin, the drama. It needn't have done so. Being a comedy all by itself was just fine with everyone. I call it the 'M*A*S*H Syndrome,' the inexplicable need for writers to justify their comedic writing by introducing a moment of solemnity right at the very end. GB Shaw used to pull that little trick all the time and may be the one aspect of his writing I never liked. Anyone who knows even a little bit about writing for the stage knows that comedy, GOOD comedy, is infinitely more difficult to write that standard 'drama.' However, I suppose, collectively, the run-of-the-mill audience doesn't know this, so the playwright feels obliged to tack on a 'serious' purpose to their work. A more subtle version of the 'crying clown' image, if you will.
And while comedy often feels the need to do this, pure farce never does. "Dying is easy, comedy is hard," as the old quote goes. That's one of the reasons I've always felt farce was the way to introduce the younger generation to live theatre. When done well, it's just pure, unadulterated fun and who could not enjoy that?
Our premminent comedic playwright of the twentieth century, Neil Simon, did this, too. Always slightly turning the comedy at the end of his works to suggest a larger purpose, a deeper meaning, a more poignant turn. Not to say this doesn't work sometimes. 'Lost in Yonkers' is devastating because of it. My point is, sometimes it feels apologetic rather than intrinsic, as it did in this new work, 'Bob.'
Nonetheless, any time a play can generate genuine, out-loud, wheezing, belly-laughs from an audience simply by saying the words out loud, well, that's pretty impressive all by itself. And this new play, 'Bob,' did that quite a few times. There was some very, very funny stuff in this odd, little piece and, frankly, I'm happy I heard it.
But sometimes these 'readings' can be the very essence of boredom. Last year Angie and I traveled over to a theater in NoHo to see a play about... well, I don't know what it was about, something to do with a mentally-challenged young girl who painted 'pretty pictures.' If I had had a very sharp razor near me I might have been tempted to end it all somewhere in the middle of the first act. It was two hours of my life I shall sincerely regret not having back as I approach my final moment on this earth. It was so bad I started getting the dreaded 'church giggles' in the middle of it. You know...the nearly overwhelming urge to just burst into unpremeditated laughter at the sheer awfulness of it all. We attended this dismal piece of sloppy writing at the behest of the Artistic Director of that theatre who told us, "I was weeping uncontrollably by the end of the reading when I saw it in rehearsal." Can't say as I blame him. I was doing a little clandestine weeping, too, when I saw the damned thing.
Fortunately, this was not the case last night. In fact, more than a couple of times, I found myself doing some hefty guffawing. And that's really saying something.
Look for it at a theater near you sometime soon, because I think it deserves a full staging. 'Bob' by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. Part of the free public reading series hosted by The Echo Theater Company, one of the more prestigious small companies working today in Los Angeles.
See you tomorrow.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Screenplays and Sam's Club...
I love going to the theatre in this new play I'm doing, The Interlopers, Gary Lennon, playwright, directed by Jim Fall. Mostly because I have a small role. Used to be, the last two plays I've done, in fact, I'd start to get all tense and surly around four in the afternoon because I knew I had an evening of warfare in front of me. In both pieces I literally never left the stage. In this one, however, I do my quick scene with some wonderful actors, a big, long, fourth-wall-breaking monologue, and that's pretty much it. I spend the rest of the show backstage texting and bothering the other actors.
But that's not it, entirely. The real reason is I love hanging out with this group of actors. They're a lively, smart, funny bunch. Everyone gets along famously and there are no marauding egos prancing about making everyone nervous. Other actors reading this will know what I mean. Everyone's a pro.
Before heading off to The Bootleg (where we're doing it in downtown LA) Angie and I decided to visit Sam's Club to pick up a few essentials. Actually, we really wanted to get some flea medicine for the dogs and maybe some hot dogs. Two hours later my wallet was shy about 20,000 bucks. Or so it seemed like.
Incredibly, I'd never been to a Sam's Club and I was unprepared for the vastness of the place. Afterwards, my wife observed that I was now a 'genuine suburban husband' because of the trip, but I didn't really take it in because I was still trembling from the beating my credit card had just taken.
I can certainly understand why people are attracted to Sam's Club. Everything there is sold in bulk so as to insure less expensive prices. The problem is one starts to get a little loopy from all the 'savings.' For example, we bought enough hamburger to feed the entire city of Fargo, North Dakota at 7 cents a pound. Or something like that. I mentioned casually to Angie that I'd like a jar of dill pickles for the burgers...we got one that weighs approximately the same as a Ford Flex. We had to borrow the store's dolly to get the dill pickles to the car and when we did it tipped to one side like the Flinstone's car when the ribs are delivered.
My wife decided we needed some dish detergent. So we purchased a bottle roughly the size of the Statue of Liberty. We did, in fact, get some hot dogs. The smallest package we could find. Four hundred hot dogs at a penny a dog.
In any event, we finished up the Sam's Club adventure and then drove home with our emergency lights flashing. We had to drive on the side of the freeway because the car would only do about 14 miles an hour at top speed. Plus we had all that hamburger bungee-corded to the roof. And the goose neck trailer we rented for the hot dogs was bothersome.
Angie said, "Well, we've got all this meat, why don't we invite some friends over for a cook out? Who would you like over?" I said, "How about the citizens of Kenya?"
On the plus side we're stocked up until the 2016 elections.
I like Sam's Club, I've decided. Angie's family has been going there for some twenty years (that's where she got her 'membership card.' One has to be a 'member' to get in. As a new member I had to learn the secret handshake. It's sort of like being in the tri-lateral commission for people who live in mobile homes).
Back to the screenplay today. I've been attacked by the dreaded insomnia again and part of the reason for that is the screenplay. So many ideas. I watched a fascinating old interview the other night with the late Billy Wilder. His advice to the writer was to never explain in narrative form the POV of each shot. Just tell the story through dialogue and let the director do the heavy lifting. Problem was, Wilder himself directed most of the stuff he wrote, so I don't quite trust that advice. I don't know who will be hired to direct this piece, so I'm taking no chances. Of course, whoever it is always has the option of simply ignoring everything.
The thing is, writing for the screen is all about the image as opposed to writing for the stage which is all about the words. Words, in a perfect world, are the least important aspect of writing for the screen, it seems to me. Hitchcock once said the perfect screenplay would have no words whatsoever, only images that told the story. Not silent film, but images and sound to tell the story. It's something I try to keep in the front of my mind as I work.
In any case, it's another glorious day in Southern California. Another day to create and bask in the sunlight. And, oh, we never did get the flea medicine. They were out.
See you tomorrow.
But that's not it, entirely. The real reason is I love hanging out with this group of actors. They're a lively, smart, funny bunch. Everyone gets along famously and there are no marauding egos prancing about making everyone nervous. Other actors reading this will know what I mean. Everyone's a pro.
Before heading off to The Bootleg (where we're doing it in downtown LA) Angie and I decided to visit Sam's Club to pick up a few essentials. Actually, we really wanted to get some flea medicine for the dogs and maybe some hot dogs. Two hours later my wallet was shy about 20,000 bucks. Or so it seemed like.
Incredibly, I'd never been to a Sam's Club and I was unprepared for the vastness of the place. Afterwards, my wife observed that I was now a 'genuine suburban husband' because of the trip, but I didn't really take it in because I was still trembling from the beating my credit card had just taken.
I can certainly understand why people are attracted to Sam's Club. Everything there is sold in bulk so as to insure less expensive prices. The problem is one starts to get a little loopy from all the 'savings.' For example, we bought enough hamburger to feed the entire city of Fargo, North Dakota at 7 cents a pound. Or something like that. I mentioned casually to Angie that I'd like a jar of dill pickles for the burgers...we got one that weighs approximately the same as a Ford Flex. We had to borrow the store's dolly to get the dill pickles to the car and when we did it tipped to one side like the Flinstone's car when the ribs are delivered.
My wife decided we needed some dish detergent. So we purchased a bottle roughly the size of the Statue of Liberty. We did, in fact, get some hot dogs. The smallest package we could find. Four hundred hot dogs at a penny a dog.
In any event, we finished up the Sam's Club adventure and then drove home with our emergency lights flashing. We had to drive on the side of the freeway because the car would only do about 14 miles an hour at top speed. Plus we had all that hamburger bungee-corded to the roof. And the goose neck trailer we rented for the hot dogs was bothersome.
Angie said, "Well, we've got all this meat, why don't we invite some friends over for a cook out? Who would you like over?" I said, "How about the citizens of Kenya?"
On the plus side we're stocked up until the 2016 elections.
I like Sam's Club, I've decided. Angie's family has been going there for some twenty years (that's where she got her 'membership card.' One has to be a 'member' to get in. As a new member I had to learn the secret handshake. It's sort of like being in the tri-lateral commission for people who live in mobile homes).
Back to the screenplay today. I've been attacked by the dreaded insomnia again and part of the reason for that is the screenplay. So many ideas. I watched a fascinating old interview the other night with the late Billy Wilder. His advice to the writer was to never explain in narrative form the POV of each shot. Just tell the story through dialogue and let the director do the heavy lifting. Problem was, Wilder himself directed most of the stuff he wrote, so I don't quite trust that advice. I don't know who will be hired to direct this piece, so I'm taking no chances. Of course, whoever it is always has the option of simply ignoring everything.
The thing is, writing for the screen is all about the image as opposed to writing for the stage which is all about the words. Words, in a perfect world, are the least important aspect of writing for the screen, it seems to me. Hitchcock once said the perfect screenplay would have no words whatsoever, only images that told the story. Not silent film, but images and sound to tell the story. It's something I try to keep in the front of my mind as I work.
In any case, it's another glorious day in Southern California. Another day to create and bask in the sunlight. And, oh, we never did get the flea medicine. They were out.
See you tomorrow.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
"Missed it by THAT MUCH..."
I've been going back and forth on the phone with a strange gig offer the last couple of days. Friday I got a call (I didn't answer so they left a message) about doing a quick scene in a film. The shoot was scheduled for Monday. At least I think it was for Monday. The girl who left the initial message (I have no idea how she got my personal cell number) seemed very nice but had an almost indecipherable Asian accent. I literally had to listen to it five or six times in order to make out what she was asking. In fact, I finally gave the phone to my wife and asked her opinion, too. She listened a few times and we eventually surmised I was being asked to shoot a scene in a film. Hm. Okay. So I called her back. Usually this sort of thing goes through my agency. It was a struggle, considering the language barrier, but I finally understood she wanted me to shoot a short, (page and a half) scene. I asked her what the pay was (nothing to write home about, as it turns out...it was either five hundred grand or five acres of land or five hundred clams...hard to say, really) and, I suppose as added incentive, she said I could 'have all the pretzels I wanted.' Excuse me? "You eat, free eat, all free eat, and on set, all pretzels you want. Eat free, pretzels free."
Well, how could I turn that down? So I said fine. I tried to ask her how she'd gotten my personal cell number but the question and the answer were impossibly convoluted, so I just let it go.
Okay. So a couple hours go by and she calls back. After endless conversation filled with me saying 'what' and 'could you say that again, please' I gathered she wanted me to send some 'redshots' to her. Ah! I got it. HEADSHOTS. She wanted headshots. So I sent her my website.
I asked, "Are you offering this gig or asking me to read for it?"
"I no...free eat all day. What is 'gig'?"
"Never mind. I'll send my site."
Late last night I got this text: "You too young. We need old, very old. You too young. Old is best. Young is bad. Sorry. See you in next movie."
I have no idea, but I sincerely hope she's not Steven Spielberg's go-to gal. I never did get the name of the director. I tried, but it was just too garbled. After a few more 'excuse me's' I just said, "Okay, let's move on. Where is the shoot?" This was a trial, too, but I finally got it. Somewhere in Pasadena. I think. Might have been El Paso, Texas, but I went with Pasadena.
Of course, in the end it was all moot because 'I too young, old is best.' I had tried to give her the number to my agent but she kept saying, "No, that not your number."
"No, it's not my number. It's the number to my agent. He negotiates contracts for me."
"No, that not the number. I call the number. That not it."
Okay. Whatever.
I have to admit, though, I'm a little sorry to miss the free pretzels. And also, I'm delighted to be called 'too young.' But after putting so much effort into the actual communication part of all this, I'm a little sorry it didn't pan out.
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday here in SoCal. It's so great to wake up, have some strong Kenyan coffee, step out in the backyard and talk to the horses (we have a new one, by the way, a young beauty named 'Simon'), the mountains surrounding me, a universe away from the dreary, inhospitable world of Chicago, reveling in the idea of being 'too young.' I'm going to the store today and buy a ton of pretzels. Two can play that game. I can get my own damn pretzels.
See you tomorrow.
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Review.
A very nice notice from the formidable Los Angeles Times came out yesterday for the play I'm doing, The Interlopers, by Gary Lennon. In fact, it was downright glowing. The only slightly negative comment in the review involved the acoustics of the theatre, although the critic seemed to think it was a volume problem from the actors, which it may have been slightly, but not entirely. The Bootleg Theatre in downtown LA where we're doing the piece is a wonderful theatre, wonderful space. But it's a barn. The stage itself is huge. Jim Fall and our designers did a tremendous job of minmizing this problem by moving everything forward and cutting off the length of the stage with four scrims and a back curtain, but it's still a barn in the final analysis. Consequently, it's a very deceptive space in terms of acoustics. Adding to this sound complication is the fact that halfway up the stadium seating is a low hanging series of beams that tend to trap the sound out front. The back of the audience is at a decided disadvantage. Another added hurdle is that it is June in LA and it's hot. So we have to, obviously, run the air conditioner which further muffles sound quality.
Strangely, the review seems to indicate our director (Jim Fall) is responsible for this because he's directed a lot of films. This is ludicrous, of course. In the final week of tech, Jim became uncomfortably aware of the acoustics problem and did all but beg the actors to speak louder, to push it out, to simply project. He was fully aware of the problem. The problem was, after weeks of rehearsal at one volume, some of us found it difficult to adapt to a new set of interior instincts and play a different ballgame. I had a couple of people in the audience the night the LA Times were there. One said he had no problem at all with the volume and one (my wife, actually) said she did. Personally, I purposefully took it up a notch and didn't have that much adjusting. But there are some gifted, instinctive actors in this lot and their inner-compass told them, rightly so, that to take the volume up for the folks in the back would also make the first few rows uncomfortable. So everyone tried to strike a happy balance and frankly, I think we did. Actually, this is a fairly common problem in live theatre, especially if one is working without body mikes. Everyone on stage is perfectly capable of projecting, we are all well-trained, but we were all trying to find that perfect balance so as to not come off as shouting during otherwise naturalistic scenework. Our instincts, again rightly so, told us this would be disconcerting for some.
But in the end, volume always trumps in the theatre. If they can't hear it, it doesn't count. It had nothing to do with Jim directing us to 'talk softly.' Quite the contrary. If I had to guess, I think he gave the volume note about 55 times, all told. To suggest the play couldn't be heard because the director has done a lot of film is like suggesting the play isn't moving because there are too many funny lines. There is simply no connection between the two.
In any event, it's all quibbling because it's a wonderful review. Also more than a bit unfair because I really think Jim is one of a handful of truly great directors I've worked with over the past thirty years.
It reminds me of a review I recieved years ago. I was doing the play 'Deathtrap' for the fourth time...I had already done the role (the young playwright and murderer, Clifford Anderson) three previous times in three different productions and I was, well, getting a little bored with it. So I suggested to the director (I think this was at Arkansas Rep) that I play it with a slight stutter, very slight. For one thing I thought it might make him more vulnerable, less threatening, and consequently more shocking when the audience discovers he's a sociopathic killer. By that time, after three productions, I think it safe to say I knew the play and the part inside out.
When the reviews came out, one of them said, "Mr. Morts might have made a fine Clifford Anderson had he bothered to learn his lines." He had completely missed the point of the stutter and what's more had simply assumed it was because I was reaching for the lines.
Oy.
So we're up and running again this weekend. And I so enjoy this cast. They are really a rare bunch; complete professionals and just about as easy-going as it gets. Seasoned pros, all of them. And a pleasure to play with.
So here's what I'm going to suggest: I think we need to hire another actor, one with a big, booming voice, a James Earl Jones type voice, to sit in the fifth row and whenever a quiet, emotional moment in the play comes around, have him repeat all the lines very loud, with perfect diction. No inflections, just sort of bark them out. Sort of act as an interpreter. Just sit there and with no explanation whatsoever, simply bellow the lines out during the soft spots. I think it could work. Oh, sure it's unconventional. But in the end possibly a very satisfying theatrical experience.
My other idea is to use the scrims. Instead of throwing projections of various images up on them, we cut all that and put the lines up there, like sub-titles. I think that could work, too.
We're going in early for a quick speed-thru today. I'll suggest it then.
See you tomorrow.
Strangely, the review seems to indicate our director (Jim Fall) is responsible for this because he's directed a lot of films. This is ludicrous, of course. In the final week of tech, Jim became uncomfortably aware of the acoustics problem and did all but beg the actors to speak louder, to push it out, to simply project. He was fully aware of the problem. The problem was, after weeks of rehearsal at one volume, some of us found it difficult to adapt to a new set of interior instincts and play a different ballgame. I had a couple of people in the audience the night the LA Times were there. One said he had no problem at all with the volume and one (my wife, actually) said she did. Personally, I purposefully took it up a notch and didn't have that much adjusting. But there are some gifted, instinctive actors in this lot and their inner-compass told them, rightly so, that to take the volume up for the folks in the back would also make the first few rows uncomfortable. So everyone tried to strike a happy balance and frankly, I think we did. Actually, this is a fairly common problem in live theatre, especially if one is working without body mikes. Everyone on stage is perfectly capable of projecting, we are all well-trained, but we were all trying to find that perfect balance so as to not come off as shouting during otherwise naturalistic scenework. Our instincts, again rightly so, told us this would be disconcerting for some.
But in the end, volume always trumps in the theatre. If they can't hear it, it doesn't count. It had nothing to do with Jim directing us to 'talk softly.' Quite the contrary. If I had to guess, I think he gave the volume note about 55 times, all told. To suggest the play couldn't be heard because the director has done a lot of film is like suggesting the play isn't moving because there are too many funny lines. There is simply no connection between the two.
In any event, it's all quibbling because it's a wonderful review. Also more than a bit unfair because I really think Jim is one of a handful of truly great directors I've worked with over the past thirty years.
It reminds me of a review I recieved years ago. I was doing the play 'Deathtrap' for the fourth time...I had already done the role (the young playwright and murderer, Clifford Anderson) three previous times in three different productions and I was, well, getting a little bored with it. So I suggested to the director (I think this was at Arkansas Rep) that I play it with a slight stutter, very slight. For one thing I thought it might make him more vulnerable, less threatening, and consequently more shocking when the audience discovers he's a sociopathic killer. By that time, after three productions, I think it safe to say I knew the play and the part inside out.
When the reviews came out, one of them said, "Mr. Morts might have made a fine Clifford Anderson had he bothered to learn his lines." He had completely missed the point of the stutter and what's more had simply assumed it was because I was reaching for the lines.
Oy.
So we're up and running again this weekend. And I so enjoy this cast. They are really a rare bunch; complete professionals and just about as easy-going as it gets. Seasoned pros, all of them. And a pleasure to play with.
So here's what I'm going to suggest: I think we need to hire another actor, one with a big, booming voice, a James Earl Jones type voice, to sit in the fifth row and whenever a quiet, emotional moment in the play comes around, have him repeat all the lines very loud, with perfect diction. No inflections, just sort of bark them out. Sort of act as an interpreter. Just sit there and with no explanation whatsoever, simply bellow the lines out during the soft spots. I think it could work. Oh, sure it's unconventional. But in the end possibly a very satisfying theatrical experience.
My other idea is to use the scrims. Instead of throwing projections of various images up on them, we cut all that and put the lines up there, like sub-titles. I think that could work, too.
We're going in early for a quick speed-thru today. I'll suggest it then.
See you tomorrow.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Screenplays and Documentaries.
Building this new website was quite a bit more challenging and fun than I originally thought but actually getting it up and online turned out to be sort of nightmarish. That's where, oddly, it got complicated for me. For one thing, a buddy of mine, as a favor to me, had purchased the domain name cliffordmorts.com some time back and then lost the code or password or whatever...so that site turned out to be useless to me, however well intentioned. So I had to go with cliffordmorts.org, which makes me sound like a Forbes 500 company. To make matters worse I didn't see the fine print that says it will take up to 72 hours to get it posted so when it didn't appear I bought another domain, cliffordmorts.me (a tad egocentric) and then had to go back and cancel that one. It was all rather maddening. And although I had successfully navigated the actual website building part of it, I was terribly confused about how to get to the next step. But I think all has been worked out and am now simply waiting for it to post.
Of course, at first I had way too much information posted in the site. Eventually I pared it down to just the nuts and bolts. I was reminded it was a 'business' site, not a 'fan' site. One reason for this is, aside from Franny and Zooey, I have no fans. This was a hard pill to chew. Well, to be fair, there was that portly lady in Roanoke, VA, back in the mid-nineties who kept coming back over and over to see me onstage. She was a fan.
Today it's back to the 'German' script for me; expanding, flushing out, connecting the dots. Writing is indeed rewriting. Fortunately for me, with both of my projects, I have very understanding producers (the guys who sign the checks) and they realize that it's a process, and sometimes a long one at that. With the exception of Jack Kerouac, writing is rarely accidental.
The 'German' script started out as a short film (about a half hour or so) that the producer wanted, in a perfect world, to shoot this fall and then submit to various festivals...Berlin, Toronto, Sundance, etc. However, after reviewing what we have on the page so far, he made the unexpected decision to film a full-length. Consequently, our contract had to be renogotiated which could turn out to be a cool thing for me, assuming I can write the damned thing.
The other project, a stage piece, is now in the hands of my other producer who happens to be in France at the moment. He suggested that we could, perhaps, work on it there if I would fly over. I counter-offered that we meet in Van Nuys. Paris seems a bit out of my budget at the moment, I told him. I mean, really. Paris? "The rich, they're not like you and I."
Angie and I happened to catch the old film, 'Get Shorty,' last night. Hollywood loves making movies about itself. They seem to be under the impression that everyone in the world thinks making movies is as interesting as they think it is. But it was a fun little film to watch, mostly because Travolta is always good and Gene Hackman is of course seemingly impossible of being bad on film. But the one thing they get right in that film is everyone's instatiable appetite to be in the movie business out here. And I guess it's true. Everyone, and I mean EVERYone, has a screenplay or an idea for a screenplay out here. I think if I were to question our mailman today he would admit to having a screenplay tucked away somewhere.
I was watching the documentary channel a while back and they were showing a piece called 'Overnight' about the vile young man that wrote and directed a film called 'Boondock Saints.' Aside from being endlessly fascinating (akin to a car wreck), it gave me an insight into just how insidious this business is on the highest levels. This guy, the writer and director of the piece, is just shameless. A guy so egotistical as to be comic. He has no background whatsoever in the entertainment field, not as an actor, a writer or director. He's a bartender at a 'hip' club. And somehow, against all odds, he gets his screenplay into the 'right' hands, in this case Mirimax. And they like it. And overnight (hence the title) it becomes the hottest property in Hollywood.
His journey to get the film made is appalling. Simply appalling. Not so much because of Hollywood's treatment of him but rather his unbelievably swelled head that comes out of it all. This guy has no sense of the history of film, no appreciation of great movie-making, doesn't know the difference between Citizen Kane and Porky's, and what's more, doesn't care. In addition, he and his cohorts, a bunch of losers that were once in a garage band with him, truly believe they are all 'geniuses.' It is a case of someone actually believing his own press. And Hollywood does love hyperbole.
In any case, he self-destructs, as one might imagine. And sadly, the viewer is rooting for him to self-destruct. He's that horrible; a sincerely awful human being. And here he is, having written a violent screenplay of some sort, suddenly being handed hundreds of thousands of dollars, sitting in an office somewhere and talking to studio executives in dialogue not even David Mamet could have written. The whole thing made me physically ill. Although it doesn't come right out and say it, the documentary implies he's now bartending again somewhere.
Eventually, Mirimax dumps him, mostly because he's just astonishingly ignorant and vindictive, but he somehow gets the movie made anyway with half the budget. I'm tempted to Netflix it just to see what the fuss was all about. I looked it up online and most critics compared it unfavorably to Quenton Tarantino's stuff, which at least has an irony and smirk behind it. I'm not a big Tarantino fan, but I don't actively dislike it for that very reason...Tarantino has a sense of humor.
If you get a chance, take a look at this documentary...'Overnight.' I told Angie it literally made me want to take a shower after I'd seen it. It is evrything bad and discouraging about the business of Hollywood. It is a shining example of how and why mediocrity is celebrated in this town.
And finally, I saw on the news that Glen Campbell has Alzheimer's. I hope he doesn't forget the words to 'Wichita Lineman' 'cause I really like that song. In fact, I like it so much, it nearly makes me forgive him for single-handedly destroying the original 'True Grit.'
See you tomorrow.
Of course, at first I had way too much information posted in the site. Eventually I pared it down to just the nuts and bolts. I was reminded it was a 'business' site, not a 'fan' site. One reason for this is, aside from Franny and Zooey, I have no fans. This was a hard pill to chew. Well, to be fair, there was that portly lady in Roanoke, VA, back in the mid-nineties who kept coming back over and over to see me onstage. She was a fan.
Today it's back to the 'German' script for me; expanding, flushing out, connecting the dots. Writing is indeed rewriting. Fortunately for me, with both of my projects, I have very understanding producers (the guys who sign the checks) and they realize that it's a process, and sometimes a long one at that. With the exception of Jack Kerouac, writing is rarely accidental.
The 'German' script started out as a short film (about a half hour or so) that the producer wanted, in a perfect world, to shoot this fall and then submit to various festivals...Berlin, Toronto, Sundance, etc. However, after reviewing what we have on the page so far, he made the unexpected decision to film a full-length. Consequently, our contract had to be renogotiated which could turn out to be a cool thing for me, assuming I can write the damned thing.
The other project, a stage piece, is now in the hands of my other producer who happens to be in France at the moment. He suggested that we could, perhaps, work on it there if I would fly over. I counter-offered that we meet in Van Nuys. Paris seems a bit out of my budget at the moment, I told him. I mean, really. Paris? "The rich, they're not like you and I."
Angie and I happened to catch the old film, 'Get Shorty,' last night. Hollywood loves making movies about itself. They seem to be under the impression that everyone in the world thinks making movies is as interesting as they think it is. But it was a fun little film to watch, mostly because Travolta is always good and Gene Hackman is of course seemingly impossible of being bad on film. But the one thing they get right in that film is everyone's instatiable appetite to be in the movie business out here. And I guess it's true. Everyone, and I mean EVERYone, has a screenplay or an idea for a screenplay out here. I think if I were to question our mailman today he would admit to having a screenplay tucked away somewhere.
I was watching the documentary channel a while back and they were showing a piece called 'Overnight' about the vile young man that wrote and directed a film called 'Boondock Saints.' Aside from being endlessly fascinating (akin to a car wreck), it gave me an insight into just how insidious this business is on the highest levels. This guy, the writer and director of the piece, is just shameless. A guy so egotistical as to be comic. He has no background whatsoever in the entertainment field, not as an actor, a writer or director. He's a bartender at a 'hip' club. And somehow, against all odds, he gets his screenplay into the 'right' hands, in this case Mirimax. And they like it. And overnight (hence the title) it becomes the hottest property in Hollywood.
His journey to get the film made is appalling. Simply appalling. Not so much because of Hollywood's treatment of him but rather his unbelievably swelled head that comes out of it all. This guy has no sense of the history of film, no appreciation of great movie-making, doesn't know the difference between Citizen Kane and Porky's, and what's more, doesn't care. In addition, he and his cohorts, a bunch of losers that were once in a garage band with him, truly believe they are all 'geniuses.' It is a case of someone actually believing his own press. And Hollywood does love hyperbole.
In any case, he self-destructs, as one might imagine. And sadly, the viewer is rooting for him to self-destruct. He's that horrible; a sincerely awful human being. And here he is, having written a violent screenplay of some sort, suddenly being handed hundreds of thousands of dollars, sitting in an office somewhere and talking to studio executives in dialogue not even David Mamet could have written. The whole thing made me physically ill. Although it doesn't come right out and say it, the documentary implies he's now bartending again somewhere.
Eventually, Mirimax dumps him, mostly because he's just astonishingly ignorant and vindictive, but he somehow gets the movie made anyway with half the budget. I'm tempted to Netflix it just to see what the fuss was all about. I looked it up online and most critics compared it unfavorably to Quenton Tarantino's stuff, which at least has an irony and smirk behind it. I'm not a big Tarantino fan, but I don't actively dislike it for that very reason...Tarantino has a sense of humor.
If you get a chance, take a look at this documentary...'Overnight.' I told Angie it literally made me want to take a shower after I'd seen it. It is evrything bad and discouraging about the business of Hollywood. It is a shining example of how and why mediocrity is celebrated in this town.
And finally, I saw on the news that Glen Campbell has Alzheimer's. I hope he doesn't forget the words to 'Wichita Lineman' 'cause I really like that song. In fact, I like it so much, it nearly makes me forgive him for single-handedly destroying the original 'True Grit.'
See you tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Last Tango in Los Angeles: Into the Wilds.
Last Tango in Los Angeles: Into the Wilds.: "We finished what I think was a very good opening weekend for this new play I'm doing, The Interlopers. Lots of laughs early, turning to sni..."
Into the Wilds.
We finished what I think was a very good opening weekend for this new play I'm doing, The Interlopers. Lots of laughs early, turning to sniffles later in the evening. I'm assuming, although no one told me this, there was press in the audience. So...we'll see what we shall see this week as the ink dribbles in.
Although I have a relatively small role in the play, I was still there for all of the marathon techs and dress rehearsals and previews, etc. So I didn't have any time for the writing projects on my plate. And I've learned through the years the longer I put off the writing the larger it becomes in my own mind until it seems overwhelming. That's probably a fairly good metaphor for life as well.
The producer for the 'German' project (a new screenplay) is in town now for further discussions and rewrites on the script. We met yesterday and went through a large portion of it line by line, scene by scene, and although we're happy with the overall shape and feel of the thing, there are some changes he'd like. Which is fine. In this business one rarely hits it out of the park on the first swing.
While waiting for the meeting and the inevitable rewrites, I started working on my long-overdue website. I think it safe to say I'm not a technical kind of guy when it comes to computer stuff. Yes, I know a bit, a little bit, but I've never bitten off this much before, this website thingee. Surprisingly, I've been having a ball doing it. I found a program that allows me to use a rough template and then fill in the blanks. This particular site allows one to add a whole assortment of bells and whistles to the website. My wife has had to constantly remind me that it's for information purposes only. Once I got started with it, I was having fun making it look quite snazzy. She's right, of course, so I had to go back and take out all the 'bling.' It really should be quite cut and dried...'here's what he looks like, here's what he's done, here's how to contact his representatives'. That's pretty much all that should be there. Very drab.
The good thing is I now know how to do it. Today I'll purchase the domain name and plug it in. I'll link it to this site once it gets up.
We have re-doubled our diabetes regime as of late. I finally broke down and bought a blood glucose level tester, or whatever the hell it's called. Once I started taking regular readings the more bamboozled I got. It seemed no matter how stringent my diet was it didn't seem to be making a lot of difference. So we decided perhaps I wasn't getting enough exercise, which is no one's fault but my own. As it happens, we live just minutes from some beautiful hiking trails up and around the small mountains in Griffith Park. I have been negligent in making use of them. I wish I had a great excuse but the truth is I've simply been inordinately lazy. Plus when we do take out for a long walk up in the hills, Angie suddenly becomes Jim Thorpe and treats the whole thing like an exodus from the Holy Land. One gets the idea she's being pursued by the Canonites. She's quite the devoted 'hiker.' I, on the other hand, prefer to stroll aimlessly, stopping here and there to take in the sights, occasionally lying down amidst the wildflowers, and generally acting like Winnie the Poo. Of course, this is completely counter-productive. The whole point is to get the heart rate up and actually exercise. I start out with the best intentions but then at some juncture slow down and just sort of amble. All the while my wife is leaping and running like Bambi's mom in the fire.
We'll give it another shot today. The cool thing is taking our dogs, Franny and Zooey, along with us. They are in puppy heaven when we take these long walks. They're both undeniably house dogs and the notion of being out in the 'wilds' makes them indescribably happy. Franny immediately adopts the persona of Buck in 'Call of the Wild' and Zooey smells everything so thoroughly I'm sure she's on sensory overload.
So the new routine has been two long walks a day. I go back to see the doctor in July and we'll see if it's helping any.
My nutritionist tried to warn me about this damned 'glucose checker.' She told me I would run the risk of becoming a slave to it, obssessive, constantly poking my fingers to see if there's any improvement. She said, "It will lessen your quality of life." I should've listened. But we had to do something to monitor it because I was becoming so easily fatigued and, although I certainly feel better than I did a year ago overall, I'm sure it's not normal to take six or seven naps a day and spend an hour or so every night fantasizing about eating pudding. My fantasies used to be a great deal more risque.
I love routines. Change has always seemed to me so unnecessary. Lots of reasons for that, none of which I'll go into at this time. But I also know change is the only constant in life. So the routines have to change sometimes. I've always thought for someone who abhors change so much I've chosen an odd profession. On the other hand, having been raised in the very definition of 'dysfunctional family' I was uniquely qualified to become an actor. The theatre is the greatest dysfunctional family in the world. It positively overflows with dysfunction. And I found myself well-equipped for it, strangely.
So it's off to the badlands this morning, the treacherous trails of Griffith Park. I tell my dogs solemnly every time, "Oh, sure, lots of puppies go up in them there hills. But not too many come back." They seem less than impressed.
See you tomorrow.
Although I have a relatively small role in the play, I was still there for all of the marathon techs and dress rehearsals and previews, etc. So I didn't have any time for the writing projects on my plate. And I've learned through the years the longer I put off the writing the larger it becomes in my own mind until it seems overwhelming. That's probably a fairly good metaphor for life as well.
The producer for the 'German' project (a new screenplay) is in town now for further discussions and rewrites on the script. We met yesterday and went through a large portion of it line by line, scene by scene, and although we're happy with the overall shape and feel of the thing, there are some changes he'd like. Which is fine. In this business one rarely hits it out of the park on the first swing.
While waiting for the meeting and the inevitable rewrites, I started working on my long-overdue website. I think it safe to say I'm not a technical kind of guy when it comes to computer stuff. Yes, I know a bit, a little bit, but I've never bitten off this much before, this website thingee. Surprisingly, I've been having a ball doing it. I found a program that allows me to use a rough template and then fill in the blanks. This particular site allows one to add a whole assortment of bells and whistles to the website. My wife has had to constantly remind me that it's for information purposes only. Once I got started with it, I was having fun making it look quite snazzy. She's right, of course, so I had to go back and take out all the 'bling.' It really should be quite cut and dried...'here's what he looks like, here's what he's done, here's how to contact his representatives'. That's pretty much all that should be there. Very drab.
The good thing is I now know how to do it. Today I'll purchase the domain name and plug it in. I'll link it to this site once it gets up.
We have re-doubled our diabetes regime as of late. I finally broke down and bought a blood glucose level tester, or whatever the hell it's called. Once I started taking regular readings the more bamboozled I got. It seemed no matter how stringent my diet was it didn't seem to be making a lot of difference. So we decided perhaps I wasn't getting enough exercise, which is no one's fault but my own. As it happens, we live just minutes from some beautiful hiking trails up and around the small mountains in Griffith Park. I have been negligent in making use of them. I wish I had a great excuse but the truth is I've simply been inordinately lazy. Plus when we do take out for a long walk up in the hills, Angie suddenly becomes Jim Thorpe and treats the whole thing like an exodus from the Holy Land. One gets the idea she's being pursued by the Canonites. She's quite the devoted 'hiker.' I, on the other hand, prefer to stroll aimlessly, stopping here and there to take in the sights, occasionally lying down amidst the wildflowers, and generally acting like Winnie the Poo. Of course, this is completely counter-productive. The whole point is to get the heart rate up and actually exercise. I start out with the best intentions but then at some juncture slow down and just sort of amble. All the while my wife is leaping and running like Bambi's mom in the fire.
We'll give it another shot today. The cool thing is taking our dogs, Franny and Zooey, along with us. They are in puppy heaven when we take these long walks. They're both undeniably house dogs and the notion of being out in the 'wilds' makes them indescribably happy. Franny immediately adopts the persona of Buck in 'Call of the Wild' and Zooey smells everything so thoroughly I'm sure she's on sensory overload.
So the new routine has been two long walks a day. I go back to see the doctor in July and we'll see if it's helping any.
My nutritionist tried to warn me about this damned 'glucose checker.' She told me I would run the risk of becoming a slave to it, obssessive, constantly poking my fingers to see if there's any improvement. She said, "It will lessen your quality of life." I should've listened. But we had to do something to monitor it because I was becoming so easily fatigued and, although I certainly feel better than I did a year ago overall, I'm sure it's not normal to take six or seven naps a day and spend an hour or so every night fantasizing about eating pudding. My fantasies used to be a great deal more risque.
I love routines. Change has always seemed to me so unnecessary. Lots of reasons for that, none of which I'll go into at this time. But I also know change is the only constant in life. So the routines have to change sometimes. I've always thought for someone who abhors change so much I've chosen an odd profession. On the other hand, having been raised in the very definition of 'dysfunctional family' I was uniquely qualified to become an actor. The theatre is the greatest dysfunctional family in the world. It positively overflows with dysfunction. And I found myself well-equipped for it, strangely.
So it's off to the badlands this morning, the treacherous trails of Griffith Park. I tell my dogs solemnly every time, "Oh, sure, lots of puppies go up in them there hills. But not too many come back." They seem less than impressed.
See you tomorrow.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Last Tango in Los Angeles: Father's Day.
Last Tango in Los Angeles: Father's Day.: "I have a couple of close friends who are fathers. Which always surprises me because I knew them when they were mostly just sons. I don't ..."
Father's Day.
I have a couple of close friends who are fathers. Which always surprises me because I knew them when they were mostly just sons.
I don't know where they learned to be fathers. Maybe watching Oprah over the years, maybe some book that's passed around in secret, maybe endless viewings of old 'Little House on the Prarie' reruns, I just don't know for sure.
But they're both pretty good at it as far as I can tell. One is a new father. He has a two year old and his wife is pregnant with another child right now. We spent a good deal of time over the years being less than perfect human beings together. We wallowed in our political incorrectness and jointly celebrated our myriad conquests over the years. We stayed up late together and got up early, daily swaggering through our narrow lives always keeping a crusty veneer over anything remotely resembling vulnerability.
We leapt in and out of romantic entanglements like a night in a bouncy room, steering clear of anything out and out crass but at the same time firmly clutching, like some sort of ephemeral trophy, our pride in ducking the commitment bullet time and again. Wearing our bachelorhood like a shiny pendants.
Today, he doesn't take calls on Saturdays and Sundays because that time is 'baby time.' Today he routinely sleeps on the floor beside his daughter's small bed when she has trouble drifting off. Today, everything in his life that does not directly impact his baby girl holds a distant interest on his 'to-do' list. He works to make money so he might spend it all on her or her future. He plans for schools and play trips and even college in all his spare time. Whenever we speak I hear first about her and then, when he's done boasting, about him. Nothing comes before his daughter, nothing. He is half the man I used to know, not because he's half the man but because he now only has half to share.
My other buddy adopted two little girls, both with special needs. Not serious, overt, physical special needs, but the kind of needs that come from growing up in foster homes and feeling unloved. The kind of special needs that come from living without immediate grown-up protection and approval. And love. He and his wife adopted them and are making a beautiful home for them. He, too, learned somewhere how to make them the explosive priority in his life somewhere along the line. Don't know where. This is a guy that matched me nearly tequila shot for shot on the sawdust floors of New York City's dingiest bars for about a decade, all the while arguing violently about the place of art in our lives and in the world, shouting down mediocrity and drawing up war plans for life without compromise. Now he matches their outfits before they go out and gently scolds them with ten minutes of 'quiet time' if they get a little rambunctious. Now he's a guy that carefully monitors what they watch on television, which movies they see, what words they hear.
And both of them know, by heart, dozens of songs from Hannah Montana and Barney. They could sing them if awakened in the dead of sleep on a winter night at three in the morning. They are both armed to the teeth with reassurance.
And because I am perceptive to the point of clinical diagnosis regarding the slightest facial tick or change in countenence (it's what I do for a living), I sometimes see fleeting and shadowed fear and concern and protectiveness wash over their faces, my two close friends, as they cluck and wade through their little ones. And I am astonished.
I've known them both for a good many years, well over a quarter century, and these are minute muscle configurations I've never once seen allign on their faces before. It's new face, a new thought-pattern, a new concern and it often takes me completely off guard. And I realize it is the face of a father. Not the face of my friends, my goaded and cynical, life-charging friends, but the face of a man with babies. It confuses me and makes me envious and surprises me and makes me think about it later when they've gone.
It is the face of inevitability. Of responsibility. Of love and self-sacrifice. Of total devotion, come hell or high water.
Today my two father friends are on my mind. My sleep-deprived, love-swollen, agenda-planning, face-lined friends, both battling, against unspeakable odds, to make a perfect world in their little corner of the universe for their kids. Both constantly second-guessing themselves, right out in public for everyone to see, both shouldering an unimaginably heavy boulder made up of choices and decisions, their eyes searching down one road and then the other, blindly trying to choose the one less traveled, the one less threatening, the one less painful, the one that will be kinder in the end to their daughters. It's an awesome and humbling sight.
Happy Father's Day to my two, old warrior friends. Happy Father's Day to you and your young families. Happy Father's Day to you both. Happy Father's Day, Jim and Jeff.
See you tomorrow.
I don't know where they learned to be fathers. Maybe watching Oprah over the years, maybe some book that's passed around in secret, maybe endless viewings of old 'Little House on the Prarie' reruns, I just don't know for sure.
But they're both pretty good at it as far as I can tell. One is a new father. He has a two year old and his wife is pregnant with another child right now. We spent a good deal of time over the years being less than perfect human beings together. We wallowed in our political incorrectness and jointly celebrated our myriad conquests over the years. We stayed up late together and got up early, daily swaggering through our narrow lives always keeping a crusty veneer over anything remotely resembling vulnerability.
We leapt in and out of romantic entanglements like a night in a bouncy room, steering clear of anything out and out crass but at the same time firmly clutching, like some sort of ephemeral trophy, our pride in ducking the commitment bullet time and again. Wearing our bachelorhood like a shiny pendants.
Today, he doesn't take calls on Saturdays and Sundays because that time is 'baby time.' Today he routinely sleeps on the floor beside his daughter's small bed when she has trouble drifting off. Today, everything in his life that does not directly impact his baby girl holds a distant interest on his 'to-do' list. He works to make money so he might spend it all on her or her future. He plans for schools and play trips and even college in all his spare time. Whenever we speak I hear first about her and then, when he's done boasting, about him. Nothing comes before his daughter, nothing. He is half the man I used to know, not because he's half the man but because he now only has half to share.
My other buddy adopted two little girls, both with special needs. Not serious, overt, physical special needs, but the kind of needs that come from growing up in foster homes and feeling unloved. The kind of special needs that come from living without immediate grown-up protection and approval. And love. He and his wife adopted them and are making a beautiful home for them. He, too, learned somewhere how to make them the explosive priority in his life somewhere along the line. Don't know where. This is a guy that matched me nearly tequila shot for shot on the sawdust floors of New York City's dingiest bars for about a decade, all the while arguing violently about the place of art in our lives and in the world, shouting down mediocrity and drawing up war plans for life without compromise. Now he matches their outfits before they go out and gently scolds them with ten minutes of 'quiet time' if they get a little rambunctious. Now he's a guy that carefully monitors what they watch on television, which movies they see, what words they hear.
And both of them know, by heart, dozens of songs from Hannah Montana and Barney. They could sing them if awakened in the dead of sleep on a winter night at three in the morning. They are both armed to the teeth with reassurance.
And because I am perceptive to the point of clinical diagnosis regarding the slightest facial tick or change in countenence (it's what I do for a living), I sometimes see fleeting and shadowed fear and concern and protectiveness wash over their faces, my two close friends, as they cluck and wade through their little ones. And I am astonished.
I've known them both for a good many years, well over a quarter century, and these are minute muscle configurations I've never once seen allign on their faces before. It's new face, a new thought-pattern, a new concern and it often takes me completely off guard. And I realize it is the face of a father. Not the face of my friends, my goaded and cynical, life-charging friends, but the face of a man with babies. It confuses me and makes me envious and surprises me and makes me think about it later when they've gone.
It is the face of inevitability. Of responsibility. Of love and self-sacrifice. Of total devotion, come hell or high water.
Today my two father friends are on my mind. My sleep-deprived, love-swollen, agenda-planning, face-lined friends, both battling, against unspeakable odds, to make a perfect world in their little corner of the universe for their kids. Both constantly second-guessing themselves, right out in public for everyone to see, both shouldering an unimaginably heavy boulder made up of choices and decisions, their eyes searching down one road and then the other, blindly trying to choose the one less traveled, the one less threatening, the one less painful, the one that will be kinder in the end to their daughters. It's an awesome and humbling sight.
Happy Father's Day to my two, old warrior friends. Happy Father's Day to you and your young families. Happy Father's Day to you both. Happy Father's Day, Jim and Jeff.
See you tomorrow.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Interlopers by Gary Lennon, opens tomorrow nig...
Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Interlopers by Gary Lennon, opens tomorrow nig...: "So we open this new play, The Interlopers, this Friday. Tomorrow, in fact. And I have to say, I have not worked with a finer bunch of ac..."
The Interlopers by Gary Lennon, opens tomorrow night. Bootleg Theatre. Los Angeles.
So we open this new play, The Interlopers, this Friday. Tomorrow, in fact. And I have to say, I have not worked with a finer bunch of actors and crew in quite some time. There are no weak links. There is an old adage which applies to the theater, "A show is only as good as the weakest actor in it." And, although perhaps a bit harsh, it's true. And to be completely honest, there is usually a weak actor. I am beside myself with satisfaction to note there is no weak link in this bunch, a startlingly talented group of artists. I am, quite frankly, delighted to be involved.
From the top on down, playwright Gary Lennon has written an astonishingly original love story. Jim Fall is directing with a sensitivity rarely seen in this sometimes garrish business. Diarra Kilpatrick, Trevor Peterson, RD Call, Tara Karsian, Paul Ella, Leandro Cana and Darryl Stephens are, quite simply, as good as it gets. The show is impeccably cast.
Long-time readers of this blog will no doubt be a tad surprised at my unabashed optimism. But it's all absolutely true. Having done about 120 or so professional productions over the years, I have come to deeply appreciate it when a cast comes together like this one. Everyone is on the same page, everyone is, well, just good at what they do. In addition, it's the funniest bunch of theatre artists I've run across in a long, long time. We just finished two marathon rehearsals incorporating all the tech stuff, lighting, sound, projections, costumes, transitions, and I can't remember laughing so much during this unavoidably tension-laden juncture of a production.
I thought about this a bit last night and I think one of the reasons this is the case is because I see no second guessing taking place. There is an inordinate amount of trust in this piece. Trust of the writing (which is top notch), the directing (which is most definitely assured and muscular), the acting (which honestly just doesn't get much better), and the tech (which is all there when it should be there and what's more, perfectly pitched to the play itself).
Now, the unvarnished truth is, ninety nine percent of the time in this business, there's usually that one guy that's disgruntled, a little Napoleonic, a bit of a control freak, that poisons, however slightly, the whole shebang with his (and when I say 'his,' I mean 'his' or 'her') attitude. Reminds me of a stage manager I once had, used to always say, "Wanna hear an actor bitch? Hire him." Well, not so here.
My wife said to me yesterday, "I have never seen you so calm during a rehearsal period." She's right. And it is precisely because everyone is so damn, well, GOOD, at what they do. Now granted, I'm not carrying this show as I did the last two I did here in LA, but that's not it, either.
In the last thing I did here there was that one guy that, for whatever reason, was under the misguided impression he was running the show, that his work was far more important than everyone else's, that he alone possessed the secret formula to a successful play. And of course, over time, this attitude infects the entire proceeding with a layer of negativity. This happens more often than not with younger artists, that haven't yet learned that they are responsible for mowing the grass in their yard only, that other people will take care of their own lawns.
And usually the only thing to do is to say, at some point during the process, 'Hey, just stop. I've got this. This is what I do. You do what you do.'
I have no idea whatsoever if we have a hit. I think we do. But one never knows. We have a preview tonight and we'll probably get an inkling as to where we are. And of course tomorrow night in front of a full house. But over the years I've developed a sense for these things, through sheer trial and error, and if I were a betting man, I'd put money on this one.
Another aspect I've noticed over the past couple of weeks is the clear difference between ego and confidence in this bunch of artists. It's a fine line, but unmistakable. When casts like this come around it's such a pleasure to just sit back and enjoy it. Yes, there's ego, there's always ego. But it comes from someplace. It comes from a history of excellence. It's good ego, positive, assured, not annoying. It doesn't come from fear. Everyone's lawn is spectacularly manicured.
I was chatting for a brief moment with Gary, the playwright, last night before I left. He said, quite casually and off hand, "I think everyone knows just how they fit in." That's a deceptively powerful statement. To the layman it may seem self-evident. It is not. It is a pronouncement of awesome confidence. In fact, it strikes to the very heart of the business of theatre...'everyone knows just how they fit in.'
RD Call, one of those actors that's forgotten more about acting than most of us ever learned, is giving a performance so grounded and intrinsic as to be sort of frightening. He's a force of nature, a quiet volcano that erupts now and then and makes us involuntarily gasp. Tara Karsian, in a supporting role both heart-breaking and hysterical, absolutely owns the stage when she steps on it. And in addition, has that wonderful ability to undercut a line like nobody's business. There's always that glimmer of chaos and mischief in her eye that keeps one riveted. Darryl Stephens (whom I'd met a year or so ago when I was doing Praying Small) has taken a role that would, in lesser hands, be a cliche diversion, to a sort of tragic understanding. It's a remarkably intelligent performance. Leandro Cana, a very big guy with the soul of a small guy, does one of the hardest things to do onstage, be terrifying and gentle all at once. Quite a coup. Paul Ella, a new actor to LA, is in possession of one of those rare things in the theatre, the mysterious 'likable' factor. You just LIKE this guy, no matter what. Again, a small thing to the layman, a huge thing to the actor. And finally, Trevor Peterson and the extraordinary Diarra Kilpatrick in the two leading roles are seemingly incapable of being dishonest on stage. Trevor is doing something damned near impossible, playing shy but powerful all at once. And Diarra, one of the most talented young actresses I've seen in about ten years in this business, is miraculous. There's the old cliche about actors 'becoming' their characters. A misunderstood process most of the time (thank you Lee Strasberg) but in this particular case I suspect Diarra is in no danger of being recognized on the street as her character in this play. Her nightly transformation is, quite simply, stunning.
And there you have it. A very rare love letter to my fellow partners-in-crime. And all from the heart.
Our director, Jim Fall, is known as one of our finest, fearless, original film directors working today. He tells me he doesn't do a lot of theatre anymore, although like most true artists, he adores doing it and in some ways finds it more satisfying than film. Well, his lack of time to direct live theatre is our loss. He's got the eye. And very few people have 'the eye.' I can count on one hand the number of directors I've worked with over the last century or two who legitimately have 'the eye.'
I don't usually plug a project like I've just plugged this one. But I mean every word. This one is what theatre is supposed to be like. The kind of project that makes us all remember why we do this in the first place...the kind of play that makes us want to devote our lives to this silly business. It's kind of like playing golf all your life in the hopes of that one, great shot. Doesn't make sense to a lot of people. And that's okay. because it makes sense to us. This one is that one, great shot. The one that makes us get up the next day and play again.
See you tomorrow.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Last Tango in Los Angeles: A New Brown Car
Last Tango in Los Angeles: A New Brown Car: "The New Car...except brown. We've been having problems with our car lately. We've got a Saturn. Gently used. In fact, we got it about ..."
Saturday, June 11, 2011
A New Brown Car
The New Car...except brown.
We've been having problems with our car lately. We've got a Saturn. Gently used. In fact, we got it about a year ago. We traded our truck for it because the truck was using enough gas to heat the city of Wichita every week. I must admit, up until lately the Saturn has been a great car. But recently there have been some concerns.
First of all, it's leaking oil. Now, I know very little about cars. In fact, I'm the guy that once crumpled his own fender because I had a flat tire and couldn't remember if the jack attached to the fender or bumber. I had a 50/50 chance I figured and went with the fender. I was wrong.
But it's leaking oil. At least I think it's oil. It's dark and stains our driveway and it smells like the battle of the bulge. If it's not oil then we're being vandalized nightly by a very bad abstract artist.
Second of all, it won't start every now and then. The engine won't turn over because it's not getting, um, lightning bolts from the battery, or something like that. This happened yesterday.
We'd pulled into our bank's parking lot to do a little banking and turned the car off and then it wouldn't start. Angie, ever the quick-fixer, quickly asked a guy in a pick-up if he had some jumper cables. Thankfully, he did. Problem was he was as crazy as a shit-house rat.
He pulled his big truck over and attached the cables while I stood by trying to look masculine. He started talking about a girl who had just dumped him. He seemed to think we either knew this girl or were aware of the whole back-story. Angie, thinking fast, immediately began to pretend she did in fact know all about this unfortunate development in his romantic life and offered up pithy condolences. I, of course, just stared at him like a shot rabbit.
"The young ones, you'd think I'd know by now to steer clear of them."
"Huh?"
"Oh, yeah. She just walked away from me without a word, without a 'how do you do."
"Right. It's red on red and black on black, right?"
"Oh, she was a devil. A real princess. Stabbed me right in the center of my back."
"Yes, that must have been terrible. Uh, ready? Go ahead and try to start it, Angie."
"But I got her number. She'll be sorry. In fact, I've already lined up another bitch. Taking her out tonight, in fact."
"Uh, huh. Okay. Hit the gas, Angie."
"It's the young ones that get you. Right, buddy? Them damn young ones."
"Oh, yes. Well, thanks for the jump, buddy, and, uh, good luck with the new bitch."
I've never had a real knack for conversing with nutcakes. My first reaction is always a bit succinct. "Oh, shut up." Usually not the best course of action. But we got the Saturn started and came home.
So, I guess we have to start seriously thinking about either dumping some money into the old car or just get a new one. I told Angie I either want a Toyota Cruiser or a four-door Jeep. Not because I've done any research on these two vehicles but because they look a lot like big Matchbox cars.
I do know this, however, it is very important to have a least one reliable car in Los Angeles. I'm darting off daily to auditions these days, some big, some not so big, so it's paramount to have a reliable car. And, of course, we can't really afford a new one. Well, actually, we can, but that money has been ear-marked for other things, like new Playstation games and a trip to Gettysburg and new hair care products for Angie and a new flat-screen and some whole chickens from the Armenian Market.
I've never really been able to get close to people who know a lot about cars. They bore me. I tend to stagger and faint when the conversation drifts toward cars and their mysterious inner workings. My eyes roll up into my head and a wave of bored dizziness washes over me. I drop to the ground and convulse when they start talking about transmissions and viscocity and ball bearings and clutches. My father and brother could talk endlessly about cars and engines. When they did I would stand in a corner and quietly weep.
I've been known to deeply embarrass myself and my family by blurting out, "So, have you heard the new Mandy Patinkin CD?" when the backyard talk veers toward engines.
Be that as it may, we need a new car and being the male partner in the marriage it's my god-given duty to look up the options. I'm looking at brown ones. I've decided I want a brown one. Brown is a sturdy color for a car. Oh, and one that sits a little high up. I like to be high up. I like to look down at other cars on the freeway. And one that will peel out. Not that I would peel out, but I'd like to know I could if I wanted. And one that has that little camera that lets you see behind you when you back up. Not that I'm really all that interested in what's behind me when I back up, but because it's like having a little movie screen in your dashboard. In fact, I'd like to ask for one that saves the image so I can watch it later when I'm alone, sort of re-live the whole backing out experience. It's like making your own little home movie while leaving your driveway. And one that has a snooty British woman that talks to you from the GPS. For some reason I find I trust directions from British people more than Americans. Not so much the French. I don't trust the French will give me reliable directions. And comfortable back seats. I'm always a little concerned I might have to sleep in my backseat. I had to do that once in graduate school, locked out of the house by accident, and it haunts me to this day. It seems important to be able to stretch out and get a good night's sleep in the back seats should something similar happen again. And one that can outrun a tornado or tropical storm if I find myself being chased by one on the highway. I don't want to have to pull over and take my chances. I want to outrun them. I want to be like those over-actors in the movie, Twister, and shout things like, "It's a class 5 big one! Gun it! Let's get the hell out of here!" In fact, sometimes I do that in perfectly fine weather just to liven things up when I'm stuck in traffic.
I've written all these things down, listed in their order of importance, numbered paranthetically, with exclamation points after the ones that really matter. Like the color brown. That's a deal-breaker. It's brown or nothing as far as I'm concerned. I can sway a little on the tornado speed, but not the brown.
See you tomorrow.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Examining Good and Bad.
Brando
While waiting for tech stuff to be done yesterday in rehearsal I sat out on the nicely appointed wooden porch off the side of the theater chatting amiably with a couple of the other cast members. One was my buddy RD Call, a wonderful actor with whom I share the stage in this new play we're mounting, The Interlopers (Bootleg Theater, Los Angeles, June 17 thru July 23). As often happens with actors, we began talking about past performances, on both screen and stage, that we've admired over the years. RD has been around the block a few times in this wacky business out here in LA.
In any event, it turns out RD ran across Brando a few times in various capacities over the years. He told a few great stories about meeting him, Brando's singular eccentricities, his effect on other actors when they met him; I was enthralled, of course, being the Brando-phile that I am.
It's very telling when you meet and work with other actors that have the same sensibilities about what's 'good' work and what's 'bad' work. It encourages me. The first theater company I worked with when I moved out here was not quite like that. Whenever I spoke to the artistic director there and the conversation drifted to the same subject, he began to speak rather worshipfully of the work of 'the great Carol Channing in Dolly!" or 'the amazing Gwen Verdun in Damn Yankees!" Both perfectly nice performances, I'm sure, but not exactly what I'd characterize as life-changing. I began to suspect it might not be a good fit.
It's important to be on the same page in this business, to work with like-minded people. Not that it, ultimately, changes anything, but it's nice to have the same reference points. With this guy I would mention Brando ("Oh, he got so FAT!") or maybe Olivier ("He spoke so FAST!") or perhaps Richard Burton ("Liz Taylor was DIVINE, wasn't she?") and it just didn't quite hold the same gravitas for us both. Again, not that it matters when the rubber finally meets the road and the houselights dim on opening night...good work is good work, regardless of one's personal convictions.
Last night I was in bed early because my neck and shoulders were very sore due to an unfortunate traffic mishap earlier in the day. But my wife shares the same sense of nostalgia when it comes to classic film and iconic performances so she stayed up watching that old chestnut, Towering Inferno, on one of the uninterupted cable channels. She hadn't seen it for some two decades and was fascinated with the gaggle of star power in it. And I must admit, although a fairly forgetable movie, it is interesting to see the likes of Newman and Bill Holden and Steve McQueen handle the stilted dialogue like the great professionals they were. Newman, who always had a finely-tuned ear for crap did a lot of angst-ridden eye-shutting throughout, tilting his head upwards toward the heavens, eyes tight shut, and sort of whispering his lines as though maybe that would help change the fact that they were nearly unutterable in their idiocy. It's a valiant effort.
As I was sitting out with RD it became apparent we were both big fans of the stunning mini-series in the late eighties, Lonesome Dove. In fact, RD came damn close to actually doing it. He was up for a large role in it, but upon being offered it, had to turn it down due to another film committment. All these years later, he said he still regrets it. Can't blame him. It is, in my opinion, a watershed moment in television, and one would be hard-pressed to find a better performance than the one Tommy Lee Jones delivers in that piece. Simply awesome work. Not to mention Duvall's Emmy-winning turn.
So I always find a bit of comfort knowing that someone else sees what I see. It's probably a slight character flaw in me, but I tend to choose friends, like anyone else I suppose, based on our shared perceptions.
I remember shortly after I arrived in LA, I was invited to this staged reading. The aforementioned artistic director highly recommended it, saying he 'wept uncontrollably' throughout when he'd seen it in rehearsal. So Angie and I trotted over to give it a look. It was, of course, appallingly bad. In fact, it was my first inkling of why theatre in this town has gotten such a bad name. Simply jaw-droppingly awful. We sat there in a state of tharn, like Richard Adams' rabbits in Watership Down. I, too, fought the urge to weep uncontrollably although for entirely different reasons, I'm sure. In retrospect, it was probably good I'd seen it, however.
I rememeber turning to my wife later that night and saying, "You know, I may have a little trouble getting my work done here." And, of course, that turned out to be uncomfortably true.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, "Sports, politics and religion are the three passions of the badly educated." He might have included theatre in that sentence. My point being just because I don't like something doesn't mean someone else will. Theatre, like music, is entirely subjective. As is film, as is television, as is dance, as is any artform, really. And that's the miracle of it, in the final analysis. I recall in chrystaline detail seeing Brando in Last Tango in Paris when I was an undergrad and being stunned, absolutely stunned, with his performance. Yet the young actor watching it with me, a good friend of mine, said, "Oh, I just don't buy that young, beautiful girl getting the hots for that overweight older guy." To my way of thinking he had missed the point entirely, yet it was his opinion and perfectly valid. Subjective. The film, Berolucci's best in my opinion, was well into the realm of impressionism and consequently his take on it was every bit as sensible as mine.
As I get older I have less passion or patience for the discussion of art; what is and what isn't, that is to say. As a young man in New York I would spend endless hours at various coffee shops in that city arguing vehemently with friends about what I thought was good work and bad work. Today, I'd just as soon have an emergency root canal done. One artist's path is simply not always shared. And it took me awhile, but I've come to believe that's a beautiful thing. The legendary Carol Channing's portrayal of Dolly Levi may only be amusing and diverting entertainment for me, but it is life-affirming and miraculous to someone else. Marlon Brando's slice of genius in On the Waterfront may be the very reason I do what I do, but pedestrian and artistically unsatisfying for someone else.
And that, I believe, is a good thing. A very good thing.
See you tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Bookshelves
Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Bookshelves: "My wife and I, ever the careful and vigilant shoppers, are still searching dilligently for the 'perfect' set of bookshelves for our front..."
The Bookshelves
My wife and I, ever the careful and vigilant shoppers, are still searching dilligently for the 'perfect' set of bookshelves for our front room. It's become an obsession, really. It fills our thoughts and daydreams daily. It has become the source of endless conversation, this quest for the holy bookshelves. Well, we may have found some. We saw them in a store yesterday afternoon, circled them warily, eying them with apprehension, occasionally darting in to pat them or run our hands quickly over the grain of the wood. We don't want to rush into anything yet at the same time we don't want to appear cautious should we decide to make them our own, assert our dominance over them. This morning we're going back to them to give them another once-over.
The thing is I would never have thought in a million years I could be so absorbed by such domesticity. Many years ago when I bought a vacuum cleaner for my first apartment alone in New York, I found myself sort of depressed for days because it seemed to herald a new era of adult behavior on my part. An unwelcome era, at that. Back then, anything remotely resembling something my parents might do saddened me no end. I fancied myself a rebel, a renegade, a man without a country, a loose cannon who sneered at the idea of a vacuum cleaner in his apartment.
I hid the vacuum cleaner from sight, tucked it away in a hall closet behind a plastic bag of empty beer cans, denied its existence. It became a symbol of encroaching adulthood that I found myself ill-equipped to accept. I bought it a few blocks from my second story walk-up in Astoria, Queens, and carried it, shame-faced and disgruntled, back to my bachelor's pad where I quickly used it to vacuum the rug and then hid it just as quickly in the musty closet and tried, unsuccessfully, to forget it.
I was thinkng about that long-ago, discarded vacuum cleaner yesterday as we sized up the new bookshelves. I'm not sure when or how it happens, this sudden recognition of one's surrender to the mundane, the acceptance of living comfortably, the pardigm shift that occurs in the brain when one is no longer satisfied with furniture left on the curb but rather begins to embrace the idea of buying furniture that is part of one's life. This is not a literary exaggeration; for years I furnished apartments through late-night scavenger hunting for old couches and chairs and kitchen tables left on the street. Back in the day, that was considered quite noble, in fact. It was a source of boasting.
"Cool couch, Man."
"Yeah, found that on 44th and Lex a few nights ago at four in the morning. Took me an hour to drag it home."
Well, those halcyon furniture days are gone now.
It's all part of aging gracefully, I suppose; learning to surrender the glory of youth and accepting the sturdiness of middle age. Old Thomas Wolfe was onto something when he famously insisted you can't go home again. It's true. You can't. Oh, you can visit sometimes, a night out with the boys, an irresponsible evening of slovenly behavior, a stubborn, unhealthy night of ignoring consequences. But that, too, is really a mirage, a few hours of denial. No, the truth is, eventually the vacuum cleaners and the bookshelves become the reality and the smoky, smirk-filled nights of tequila shots and psuedo wisdom become the dream. Man cannot live on presumption alone.
And, really, I don't mind it at all. Now, granted, I've lived a life of hedonism for the most part. 'Twas a badge of honor for nigh on two decades. But things happen, people slow down, arrogance subsides, children are born.
A few of my old friends and I are planning a two-week getaway in the fall. To the battleground site of Gettysburg, in fact. Not Mardi Gras, not the beaches of Miami, not rafting on the Colorado river, but a walking tour of a chapter in our high school history book. And what's more, we're all terribly excited about it. In fact, of the four of us going, three of us don't even drink any more. In the midst of setting up this Burmuda shorts-laden trip, I asked another buddy of mine to go, too. Called him on the phone. I outlined our plan. He said simply, "I have babies." And for a very brief moment I felt every day of my fifty years on the earth.
Growing up is not so bad. Even for scofflaw, ne'er-do-wells like myself. It just takes some adjusting to. It just takes minor shifts in one's thinking. The knee-jerk response to life wavers almost imperceptably from 'fuck you' to a heavy sigh. Acceptance is the key. As my wife can tell you, I doggedly hang on to many things adolescent. But I'd like to think they're the small things in life. And now, in complete reversal, the things of my youth, the attitudes and disdain of an orderly world, are tucked away mostly, hidden in a closet behind a plastic bag of empty Dr. Pepper cans. The bookshelves and vacuume cleaners of my life are right out front now, worked for and paid for, a part of my carefully matched living room furniture, color co-ordinated with my hardwood floor, as solid and comfortable as my marriage.
No, Thomas, you can't go home again. But you can make a new one. A better one. One of your choosing. One that matters.
See you tomorrow.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Dresser
Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Dresser: "Sir Donald Wolfit. The famed British actor/manager. Although better than I used to be I still have an uncanny ability to screw up all thi..."
The Dresser
Sir Donald Wolfit. The famed British actor/manager.
Although better than I used to be I still have an uncanny ability to screw up all things technical.
We have Direct TV here at the house. And one of the things with that package is one can record certain programs on the DVR and watch them later. I particularly like to record films on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and watch them later, especially old classics I haven't seen for some time. Last night I was searching for a film I'd recorded some time earlier and found I had a bunch of crap recorded as well, stuff I would never watch but seemed a good idea that the time, like the original Star Trek or a documentary on Amish midgets in WWI. So I decided to delete a bunch of it. In the process I accidentally deleted a whole gaggle of films I had recorded that I really wanted to see at some point or another.
One of the few left, however, after my brutal purging of the DVR, was 'The Dresser,' with Albert Finney and Tom Courtney.
I'd sort of forgotten just how very good both Finney and Courtney are in that 1983 film. I found myself smiling throughout the movie, mostly at the wonderful depiction of British theatre in the 1940s. Ah, what a wonderful and lost lifestyle of the itinerant actor. It was a time and place we shall never see again. A whole existence gone now. Reams have been written on that time on the British boards. The script for The Dresser is a little more lightweight than I remember it being, but still wonderfully satisfying, based on a play by Ronald Hargrove. Peter Yates directed.
The leading character of 'Sir' is allegedly based on the late character actor, Donald Wolfit, who can be seen in a few supporting film roles of the period. In fact, I was thinking of adding the role 'Mr. Davenport-Scott' to my resume just for fun. Casting directors would be clueless, of course. Most of them here in Hollywood have never seen or read a play. "I have been told stories, dark and mystical, about actors standing on a platform and acting out characters for a handful of people, no camera anywhere near."
One of the standard cliches about Los Angeles that has absolutely proven to be true is the bottomless ignorance of the film and TV people out here, the casting directors, studio executives, screen writers, etc. "I see here you have Willy Loman on your resume. Now, is that the Willy Loman in 'Saved by the Bell? Screech's friend?"
I actually saw a while back in a trade paper out here of a project being mounted, this is true, of old episodes of 'Hill Street Blues' to be performed on stage. No doubt the producers thought they were doing 'the classics.' I can just hear them now. "Well, the language then was so much different. It's important for our actors to learn how to handle that kind of language. Because, you know, if you can do the tricky dialogue from 'Hill Street Blues,' why, you can do anything.'
It's easy to get jaded out here.
But back to 'The Dresser.' I told Angie as we were watching, if there were any period I would like to have lived in, it would be that time depicted in the film, the traveling touring company, the working actor, decade after decade, assaying the roles of Shakespeare nightly on a host of small town stages throughout the British Isles. The time of the young Olivier and Gielgud and Richardson. When the corner butcher spoke knowledgeably about his favorite Hamlets, his fond recollections of the various Richards or Lears or Iagos he has seen over the years. When people had passionate feelings about such things, much as today's public compares and contrasts different first basemen they have seen over the years.
There is a direct, unbroken line still today. For example, I worked with Michael Moriarty who worked with Ian McKellan who worked with Olivier who worked with Terry who worked with Keats who worked with Garrick who worked with someone...all the way back to Richard Burbage, Shakespeare's original Hamlet and Shylock and Lear. And the same can be said with film, actually. I'm doing a new play at the moment, still in rehearsal. In it is a wonderful character actor named RD Call. RD has worked with Nicholson who worked with John Huston who worked with Bogart who worked with Barrymore who worked with Garbo who worked with...and it goes on and on. I love that unbroken feeling of connection.
In the midst of it all, so beautifully depicted in 'The Dresser,' is that near worshipful attitude toward Shakespeare himself. Completely foreign to most actors and directors in Los Angeles, of course. That unspoken acknowledgement among stage actors of his genius, no conversation brooked; that he was head and shoulders above any dramatists before or since.
Years ago I was doing 'Julius Caeser' in New York. A few of the old-timers in that production would speak lovingly of the dozens of parts played through the years, the great Shakespearean roles tackled, the great performances they have seen. I remember one old actor telling me of his experiences with John Gielgud in a production of 'The Tempest' he had been a part of. I chuckled at his imitation of Gielgud on the first day of rehearsal. Gielgud was directing. Speaking to the actors, "If I were you I wouldn't bother writing down any of the blocking I give you for a few weeks. I'm quite certain I shan't be using any of it."
Another time I was doing a play, a new play, in a large regional theatre in upstate New York. One of the actors had done Othello with Olivier at The National in the sixties. He approached Olivier, who was playing the moor as well as directing, about a line he was having trouble saying believably. Olivier said, "Dear chap, it really doesn't matter. I can assure you no one will be watching you whilst I have the stage."
I remember Moriarty telling me about working with Katherine Hepburn in a TV production of 'Glass Menagerie' in the seventies. Michael was play The Gentleman Caller (which he won an Emmy for) and the great Kate was playing Amanda. Sitting around off-camera, waiting for various scenes to be lit, they would speak sonnets out loud to each other to see who had the best breath control. Hepburn asserted the problem with actors today was they had no breath control. One must be able to say an entire sonnet in one breath and still have plenty of air left at the end, she said. Michael told me he was utterly astonished at her breath capacity, and she was well into her sixties by then.
I remember talking to the old character actor, Ron McLarty, years ago who had worked with Ralph Richardson in the mid-sixties in London. He told me he noticed Richardson carrying around a tattered, clipped, piece-meal script. Finally he asked if he could take a look at it. Richardson showed him and Ron noticed all of Sir Ralph's lines had been cut out and the only thing left in the script were the lines from the other actors. Richardson said, "Oh, I know my lines. They're not important. But I have to know the other lines equally well so I might listen better."
I recall seeing a documentary on Olivier on the BBC some years back. Sir Larry was asked his opinion of 'Method Acting.' He gazed disdainfully for a moment at the interviewer and finally said, "If the audience doesn't see it, it doesn't count."
Ah, well. As I said, if I could live another life in another time, it would be as a supporting actor in Great Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. I can't imagine how anything else could have been so very satisfying.
See you tomorrow.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Wig
Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Wig: "We have a thrift store near us, a good one, not the usual dirty, dusty, chaotic type affair that one usually associates with thrift stores...."
The Wig
We have a thrift store near us, a good one, not the usual dirty, dusty, chaotic type affair that one usually associates with thrift stores. It's very clean and extremely well organized with a massive selection of used clothing and knick-knacks and kitchen ware and books, etc. We really like it. We pop over there every now and then to see what they have and yesterday we were rewarded with several fun and interesting items. Now, as nice as it is, it is not our all-time favorite thrift store. No, that title belongs to one over in NoHo, just a few miles from us, called 'It's a Wrap.' That thrift store is our favorite. Because 'It's a Wrap' has a contract or agreement of some sort with all of the studios in Hollywood and gets their hand me downs. Amazing clothing to be had there for a song and a dance.
But this other one, the one we dropped into yesterday, is much larger and has a much more pedestrian selection of goods. And on Fridays, the usual inexpensive prices are an additional half off.
The first thing I found there yesterday were some brand new, 18 ounce training gloves. Boxing gloves. They're like new and I hung them up in the office. They also have a huge selection of hard back books, all for a buck, and I picked up ten or twelve. Angie was off in the kitchen ware area picking up some stuff. That's when I came across the wig.
It's a short, grey/white wig perfectly matching my hair, or what's left of it anyway. It was all tangled and messy but I put it on and walked over to Angie. She was aghast. So for three bucks we bought it. Turns out it's a 'Tony of Beverly Hills' wig, which online goes for about 200 bucks. She combs it all up and puts it on and, presto-change-o, we were astounded. Now, obviously, it looks like I'm wearing a wig. But that wasn't the point. It gave me a real idea of what I might have looked like had I not been cursed with male pattern baldness.
Frankly, I really never gave a lot of thought about going bald. It never concerned me too much. I think, in retrospect, I would rather have NOT gone bald, but I never took the time to fret over it. My concerns about going bald were entirely professional, not vanity related. In fact, I remember the first time I really noticed it was an inevitability was about 1993 or so. I was doing another Arthur in 'Camelot' up in Pennsylvania and the photographer was taking shots from the balcony of the theater. A few days later I got a look at his 'proof sheet,' and there, unmistakably, was the evidence of my early balding.
As the years went by, it slowly receded and finally left altogether. A little shocking, I suppose in hindsight, because I had always had a very full and thick head of hair. But, unlike a lot of people I know, it honestly didn't bother me too much.
Yesterday, however, putting it on after Angie combed it out, I was given a quick glimpse into the 'what if.' Kind of like Michael Landon in his 'Highway to Heaven' period.
I recently lost a gig, one I wanted rather badly in fact, because I looked older than I am. I alluded to it in an earlier blog. It was for the male understudy in 'God of Carnage' here in LA. I would have been understudying James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels. It came down, after a couple of weeks, to me and another guy. They went with the other guy, obviously. Now, I wanted the gig not because I think it's such a great play, I don't. But it was a 'run of the production' contract and it would have been a couple of grand a week for doing pretty much nothing.
So my agent was informed that it was down to the two of us and we had to wait a whole weekend for the final decision. On Monday they called him and said, "Well, Clif is clearly the better actor but the director thinks he looks a little old to play the roles." I found this particularly disappointing because both Gandolfini and Daniels are older than I am, I think.
Now, as it turns it out, it was a good thing that I didn't land the gig because something else came along that I otherwise wouldn't have been available for had I done it. Nonetheless, I was a tad crestfallen.
Now that the show is closed I can write about it in this blog. I did a little checking and found out the understudy never went on for either actor. Ah, well.
But back to this wig business. I would never wear one in real life. I've always held the toupee in mild disdain. William Shatner and Burt Reynolds always come to mind. Who, exactly, does one expect to fool? And for what reason? It is the very height of vanity. Charlton Heston was legendary for never taking his wig off and swearing right to the end that he wasn't wearing one.
There are others, Connery, Malkovich, Patrick Stewart, who aren't the least bit concerned with showing their baldness in public but occasionally don a wig for a part. And then there is Nick Cage, who's rugs are becoming downright distracting.
I have, over the years, become quite comfortable with my loss of hair. I recently did a gig, Adding Machine at The Odyssey Theatre, that required me to grow it long on the sides...my hope was that I could get it long enough for a really bad 'comb over.' But I didn't have enough time to get it long enough.
I suppose, if I had my druthers, I would just as soon not have gone bald. Especially after putting the wig on yesterday. I once read somewhere that the gene for baldness comes from the mother's father. Well, that can't be true because my grandfather on my mother's side had a thick head of hair at the time of his death when he was in his late seventies. So, I don't know. Again, I've never given it a lot of thought.
I wore the wig around for awhile yesterday, long enough in fact that Angie finally said, "I don't like that gleam in your eye. You are NOT going to wear that thing in public." And that was the end of that. The truth is I was playing with the idea of wearing it out to dinner or something to see if I could get away with it.
I remember an interview on Letterman years ago. The guest was Bruce Willis, also famously bald. Letterman asked him about it. Willis said, "You just gotta be cool with who you are, man. That's all."
I liked that.
See you tomorrow.
Friday, June 3, 2011
The List
Angie and I have decided we need new friends. Not because there is anything at all wrong with our old ones; in fact we love our old friends, absolutely love them. No, it's because it seems all our old friends are having babies. And babies, for the most part, put a real crimp in social functions. Babies are the bane of our social existence. For one thing they're not old enough to drink. For another they're horrible conversationalists. And finally, they go to bed entirely too early.
I have never felt very comfortable in the presence of babies. I think somewhere along the way I lost my 'baby gene.' I tend to see them as short human beings that can't walk very far without aid and this is a mistake. I don't like to hold them or carry them around. Now don't get me wrong, I perfectly understand the practical application of having babies. They come in handy down the road. It's necessary to be patient with them now so that in twenty years or so they can do the normal things that most humans do, up to and including being wildly ungrateful and generally disappointing.
Also, I'm apt to think babies in general are just sort of arrogant. They have a sense of entitlement to them I simply find inexcusable. And I've also noticed they never apologize. This irks me.
And then of course there's all the unnecessary noise. They seem altogether incapable of using their 'inside voice.' And frankly I don't see the logic in that. It's incredibly uncivilized, not to mention out and out rude at times.
They interrupt. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence or an amusing anecdote. They just burst into a wail with no thought of courtesy or decorum whatsoever. And then, as though nothing at all untoward has happened, they just stop and smile innocently. I think this is an indication of a devious mind.
I've searched for a wooden sign or doormat or something saying, "Babies Not Welcome Here" to put next to our front door but I can't find one. I did find one that said, "Actors Not Welcome Here," however. I almost bought it with the idea that I would scratch out 'Actors' and write 'Babies.' Angie stopped me at the last second.
So, long story short, we're in the process of finding new friends. We have a list of criteria, too. In fact, whenever I come across someone that might possibly be eligible for 'new friend' status, I pull it out and start checking things off:
1) Are you a Democrat? (This is a deal breaker most of the time, I'm afraid. If they answer 'no' I'm fairly certain there will be trouble down the line. Also this one question eliminates a bunch of others such as 'Is your IQ over 110?' Or, 'Do you consider yourself empathetic?' Or, 'If we were on a crashing plane with one parachute, would you use it yourself or give it to me?' Now, Angie and I do have a few Republican friends but, in our defense, they're usually Republicans that other Republicans don't really care for.)
2) Do you have a pick up truck or access to one? (This can sometimes be overlooked if the answer is 'no,' but a 'yes' goes a long ways toward friend inclusion.)
3) Do you or your spouse own and wear a lot of sports team apparel? (This is almost 100 percent effective in weeding out idiots.)
4) Do you have a book, any book, on your nightstand? (Nooks and Kindles are acceptable here.)
5) Are you particularly good at something? ('Organizing a room' or 'Taking care of babies' are not acceptable answers.)
6) Do you tend to look at social events as an excuse to dance? (This, too, can quickly sort out the undesirables.)
7) Would you describe the score to 'Summer of '42' as 'haunting and beautiful?' (No brainer here.)
8) If you were on a desert island with one TV that only showed two channels, one a continual loop of 'West Wing' reruns and the other non-stop viewings of 'Dancing with the Stars, ' which would you choose? (Again, this goes right to the heart of things.)
9) Do you listen to other people and then respond or do you wait for them to stop talking and then state your own opinion? (This is very close to #1, actually.)
10) If the ghost of George Gershwin entered your house, sat at the piano and started playing, would you sit and listen appreciatively or call the police? (This is actually more telling than it would appear on the surface.)
So there you have it. The truth is I think people should be flattered to even get so far as to be ASKED the questions on the list. Many don't. Oh, and there is a number 11, but that one is obvious: Do you now or have you any plans in the immediate future to have babies? But that one goes without saying, of course.
In any event, Angie and I have put an ad on Craigslist for these new friends. No response yet, but we're hopeful.
See you tomorrow.
I have never felt very comfortable in the presence of babies. I think somewhere along the way I lost my 'baby gene.' I tend to see them as short human beings that can't walk very far without aid and this is a mistake. I don't like to hold them or carry them around. Now don't get me wrong, I perfectly understand the practical application of having babies. They come in handy down the road. It's necessary to be patient with them now so that in twenty years or so they can do the normal things that most humans do, up to and including being wildly ungrateful and generally disappointing.
Also, I'm apt to think babies in general are just sort of arrogant. They have a sense of entitlement to them I simply find inexcusable. And I've also noticed they never apologize. This irks me.
And then of course there's all the unnecessary noise. They seem altogether incapable of using their 'inside voice.' And frankly I don't see the logic in that. It's incredibly uncivilized, not to mention out and out rude at times.
They interrupt. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence or an amusing anecdote. They just burst into a wail with no thought of courtesy or decorum whatsoever. And then, as though nothing at all untoward has happened, they just stop and smile innocently. I think this is an indication of a devious mind.
I've searched for a wooden sign or doormat or something saying, "Babies Not Welcome Here" to put next to our front door but I can't find one. I did find one that said, "Actors Not Welcome Here," however. I almost bought it with the idea that I would scratch out 'Actors' and write 'Babies.' Angie stopped me at the last second.
So, long story short, we're in the process of finding new friends. We have a list of criteria, too. In fact, whenever I come across someone that might possibly be eligible for 'new friend' status, I pull it out and start checking things off:
1) Are you a Democrat? (This is a deal breaker most of the time, I'm afraid. If they answer 'no' I'm fairly certain there will be trouble down the line. Also this one question eliminates a bunch of others such as 'Is your IQ over 110?' Or, 'Do you consider yourself empathetic?' Or, 'If we were on a crashing plane with one parachute, would you use it yourself or give it to me?' Now, Angie and I do have a few Republican friends but, in our defense, they're usually Republicans that other Republicans don't really care for.)
2) Do you have a pick up truck or access to one? (This can sometimes be overlooked if the answer is 'no,' but a 'yes' goes a long ways toward friend inclusion.)
3) Do you or your spouse own and wear a lot of sports team apparel? (This is almost 100 percent effective in weeding out idiots.)
4) Do you have a book, any book, on your nightstand? (Nooks and Kindles are acceptable here.)
5) Are you particularly good at something? ('Organizing a room' or 'Taking care of babies' are not acceptable answers.)
6) Do you tend to look at social events as an excuse to dance? (This, too, can quickly sort out the undesirables.)
7) Would you describe the score to 'Summer of '42' as 'haunting and beautiful?' (No brainer here.)
8) If you were on a desert island with one TV that only showed two channels, one a continual loop of 'West Wing' reruns and the other non-stop viewings of 'Dancing with the Stars, ' which would you choose? (Again, this goes right to the heart of things.)
9) Do you listen to other people and then respond or do you wait for them to stop talking and then state your own opinion? (This is very close to #1, actually.)
10) If the ghost of George Gershwin entered your house, sat at the piano and started playing, would you sit and listen appreciatively or call the police? (This is actually more telling than it would appear on the surface.)
So there you have it. The truth is I think people should be flattered to even get so far as to be ASKED the questions on the list. Many don't. Oh, and there is a number 11, but that one is obvious: Do you now or have you any plans in the immediate future to have babies? But that one goes without saying, of course.
In any event, Angie and I have put an ad on Craigslist for these new friends. No response yet, but we're hopeful.
See you tomorrow.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
That Way There Be Dragons
Once again I find myself up and toiling at my blank screen, unable to sleep until I've incorporated my latest ideas into this new project I've been commissioned to write. I used to view my insomnia as something to be alarmed about, but over time I've come to realize it's simply the price of doing business. Until I've gotten down on paper (figuratively) the new things that have come to me during the night, I really can't sleep. And oddly, that's perfectly alright. First, because I've discovered I'm a morning person by nature, astonishing as that may be. And second, I prefer writing without distraction and four a.m. is certainly a time without distraction. I like to warm up by blogging a bit, getting the fingers loosened up, taking the brain around the track a few times, wrapping my mind around the new ideas.
In addition, I seem to be at my least cynical early in the morning. As the day wears on and things begin to crowd in on me, reading about the latest Republican shenanigans, seeing what natural disaster occurred overnight, checking my emails from producers about my previous day's work, I begin to lose sight of why I do what I do.
Also, the piece I'm working on now has at its very center a large and all-encompassing theme of injustice. Consequently, it is important to approach it fresh every day. I'm the type of guy that gets all righteous about injustice in even its smallest incarnations. An ex-sponsor of mine used to always tell me things that make us bitter and accusatory about other people are usually the same things we abhor in ourselves. He may have been on to something. Although, like most people who have been sober for many years, there was always just a smidgen of smugness in his pronouncements that irritated me no end. He was part of that loutish group of ex-drunks that think the simple act of not drinking for years at a time entitles them to a civic medal of some sort. I've never felt that way about it. In fact, quite the opposite. I've always been of the mind that not drinking for a long period of time is probably a lot closer to normal and pedestrian rather than super-human and parade-worthy. Lots of ex-drunks get very agitated at this line of thought. "But, but, but...we DON'T DRINK! We are SPECIAL!" Uh, no. No, we're not. We're righting a wrong, not inventing the wheel. We're correcting a character flaw, not instigating a virgin birth.
Anyway...
Speaking of over-indulgence, I had a rehearsal yesterday for this new piece in which I'm involved, The Interlopers, written by Gary Lennon and directed by Jim Fall (plugging, plugging) and after we finished I was standing outside the rehearsal hall waiting for my wife to pick me up (we're a one car family these days) and a young guy, maybe 30 or 35, staggered by me, clearly three sheets to the wind. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon. As he got close to me, he abruptly stopped and glanced up at me. He'd been sort of reeling from one side of the walkway to another. He was well-dressed, clearly not homeless, or if so, not for very long. He'd had a shave and haircut recently, and he didn't appear to be too dirty or dusty from his travels. But he was obviously very drunk and his eyes weren't quite focusing. So he looks up and says, "What?" Not belligerently or aggressively, but more like an actual question. I hesitated a second and said, "That way there be dragons." He appeared to think about that for a second, shook his head a bit, and kept going.
I thought about that guy for a long time yesterday, off and on.
This Saturday night my wife has organized a sort of old home week at a local restaurant. Lots of old college chums that have all moved out to the city of angels for one reason or another. This sort of thing always makes me feel a bit ambivalent. On one hand, it's always nice to see old acquaintances. On the other, I always feel a little like that guy on the sidewalk. "What?"
I suppose it's a question of self-worth. Recently I had a meeting with a big-money-producer-type-guy that was interested in having me do some writing for him. As I was preparing for the meeting, I gathered together all sorts of reviews and critical evidence of my past successes, awards, nominations, hard copy notices, that sort of thing. Angie saw me doing this. Eventually, she said, 'You know, you don't have to do that. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. He wouldn't be asking for this meeting if he didn't know your work." As is my usual pattern I had to mull that over for a few days before I could answer her. Like that wayward young drunk on the street yesterday I was preparing myself mentally to ask that inevitable question, "What?" The thing is, the question is no longer necessary.
As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, recently I've become sort of obsessed with the career trajectory and writings of Truman Capote. For some reason I'm utterly fascinated with his journey from wunderkind to sad, old parody. I read a chapter of his prose in something like 'In Cold Blood' and then I read a chapter from George Plimpton's oral biography about him. And I try and understand how such a staggering talent could have deteriorated into what he became in the end. And then I realize he must have spent at least a decade figuratively staggering from sidewalk to sidewalk, encountering people along the way, and asking each and every one of them, "What?"
Now, Capote was certainly not the first, nor will he be the last, great talent to implode under the pressure of his genius. Faulkner, Hemingway, Poe, Inge, Williams, Dorothy Parker, the list is frightfully long. Sometimes it seems addiction and writing are two sides of a coin. Clinically, there probably isn't any evidence to confirm this, but statistically there most certainly is.
Great actors are in the same boat, sometimes. I very clearly remember reading a passage from Richard Burton's journals, published after his death, in which he writes, and I'm paraphrasing, "I was a far, far better actor at 25 than I am at 50. No one knew who I was at 25 and I could observe people all day long without interruption. It is the actor's most valuable tool. I no longer have that tool at my disposal." There is also an interesting sentence in Brando's autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, along the same lines. "I used to become other people when I was young, now I pretend to be other people."
That way there be dragons.
See you tomorrow.
In addition, I seem to be at my least cynical early in the morning. As the day wears on and things begin to crowd in on me, reading about the latest Republican shenanigans, seeing what natural disaster occurred overnight, checking my emails from producers about my previous day's work, I begin to lose sight of why I do what I do.
Also, the piece I'm working on now has at its very center a large and all-encompassing theme of injustice. Consequently, it is important to approach it fresh every day. I'm the type of guy that gets all righteous about injustice in even its smallest incarnations. An ex-sponsor of mine used to always tell me things that make us bitter and accusatory about other people are usually the same things we abhor in ourselves. He may have been on to something. Although, like most people who have been sober for many years, there was always just a smidgen of smugness in his pronouncements that irritated me no end. He was part of that loutish group of ex-drunks that think the simple act of not drinking for years at a time entitles them to a civic medal of some sort. I've never felt that way about it. In fact, quite the opposite. I've always been of the mind that not drinking for a long period of time is probably a lot closer to normal and pedestrian rather than super-human and parade-worthy. Lots of ex-drunks get very agitated at this line of thought. "But, but, but...we DON'T DRINK! We are SPECIAL!" Uh, no. No, we're not. We're righting a wrong, not inventing the wheel. We're correcting a character flaw, not instigating a virgin birth.
Anyway...
Speaking of over-indulgence, I had a rehearsal yesterday for this new piece in which I'm involved, The Interlopers, written by Gary Lennon and directed by Jim Fall (plugging, plugging) and after we finished I was standing outside the rehearsal hall waiting for my wife to pick me up (we're a one car family these days) and a young guy, maybe 30 or 35, staggered by me, clearly three sheets to the wind. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon. As he got close to me, he abruptly stopped and glanced up at me. He'd been sort of reeling from one side of the walkway to another. He was well-dressed, clearly not homeless, or if so, not for very long. He'd had a shave and haircut recently, and he didn't appear to be too dirty or dusty from his travels. But he was obviously very drunk and his eyes weren't quite focusing. So he looks up and says, "What?" Not belligerently or aggressively, but more like an actual question. I hesitated a second and said, "That way there be dragons." He appeared to think about that for a second, shook his head a bit, and kept going.
I thought about that guy for a long time yesterday, off and on.
This Saturday night my wife has organized a sort of old home week at a local restaurant. Lots of old college chums that have all moved out to the city of angels for one reason or another. This sort of thing always makes me feel a bit ambivalent. On one hand, it's always nice to see old acquaintances. On the other, I always feel a little like that guy on the sidewalk. "What?"
I suppose it's a question of self-worth. Recently I had a meeting with a big-money-producer-type-guy that was interested in having me do some writing for him. As I was preparing for the meeting, I gathered together all sorts of reviews and critical evidence of my past successes, awards, nominations, hard copy notices, that sort of thing. Angie saw me doing this. Eventually, she said, 'You know, you don't have to do that. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. He wouldn't be asking for this meeting if he didn't know your work." As is my usual pattern I had to mull that over for a few days before I could answer her. Like that wayward young drunk on the street yesterday I was preparing myself mentally to ask that inevitable question, "What?" The thing is, the question is no longer necessary.
As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, recently I've become sort of obsessed with the career trajectory and writings of Truman Capote. For some reason I'm utterly fascinated with his journey from wunderkind to sad, old parody. I read a chapter of his prose in something like 'In Cold Blood' and then I read a chapter from George Plimpton's oral biography about him. And I try and understand how such a staggering talent could have deteriorated into what he became in the end. And then I realize he must have spent at least a decade figuratively staggering from sidewalk to sidewalk, encountering people along the way, and asking each and every one of them, "What?"
Now, Capote was certainly not the first, nor will he be the last, great talent to implode under the pressure of his genius. Faulkner, Hemingway, Poe, Inge, Williams, Dorothy Parker, the list is frightfully long. Sometimes it seems addiction and writing are two sides of a coin. Clinically, there probably isn't any evidence to confirm this, but statistically there most certainly is.
Great actors are in the same boat, sometimes. I very clearly remember reading a passage from Richard Burton's journals, published after his death, in which he writes, and I'm paraphrasing, "I was a far, far better actor at 25 than I am at 50. No one knew who I was at 25 and I could observe people all day long without interruption. It is the actor's most valuable tool. I no longer have that tool at my disposal." There is also an interesting sentence in Brando's autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, along the same lines. "I used to become other people when I was young, now I pretend to be other people."
That way there be dragons.
See you tomorrow.
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