Last Tango in Los Angeles

Happy 70th Birthday Muhammad Ali

2012-01-17T08:53:00.000-08:00

I grew up with a physically and emotionally abusive father. As most abusive parents, his abuse reached an apex when I was younger and smaller. As I grew up and got taller and bigger, the abuse slowed and eventually, when it looked as though I might be able to defend myself, it stopped altogether. This is not a new story.

I'm fifty years old. The first time I remember hearing the name Muhammad Ali was in Juanuary, 1971, when he fought Joe Frazier in New York's Madison Square Garden. The highly touted "Battle of the Century." I grew up in rural Missouri so the mere sound of the name Muhammad Ali grated on my ear. I didn't know a Muslim from muscrat. But I did know this: My DAD hated that "loud mouthed, draft dodgin' nigger." And I hated my dad. So I decided I loved Muhammad Ali.

Ali lost that fight. Frazier beat him fair and square. I collect fight films now as a hobby and I've seen the fight a hundred times. Frazier won it. And his monumental left hook in the fifteenth round should be featured in boxing textbooks.

But more to the point, I learned my first lesson in Growing Up from that fight: lose gracefully. Ali's response to the fight at the press conference, his jaw swollen literally to the size of a grapefruit: "Joe beat me. He's the champion. But I'll be back." Huh? What happened to "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee?" What happened to "I am the greatest?" What happened to "If Joe even dreams he can beat me, he oughta wake up and apologize?" Lose gracefully. And never stop trying.

Some short time later I began to box myself. I joined Golden Gloves. I learned what I could of the sweet science. I competed. I was never really very good, but I won some. And I kept trying.

In 1972, Ali got his jaw broken in the first round against a former Marine that no one outside of California had ever heard of: Kenny Norton. Ali fought the next eleven rounds with a broken jaw. He lost that fight, too. The pain must have been nearly unimaginable. And the fight (which, again, I've seen many times) was VERY close. Another lesson from Ali on Growing Up: keep trying despite adversity. Endure pain. Fight THROUGH the pain. Never let 'em see you hurt. And above all, don't quit.

Later, as with Frazier, he came back to defeat Norton twice. Lesson number three: If at first you don't succeed...face your fears AGAIN. If you know you're better than your failure - take it on again and prove it to yourself.

In 1974, Muhammad Ali fought a real-life, living, breathing boogey man: George Forman. A giant of a man that had actually crippled other fighters in the ring. He'd decimated both Frazier and Norton in previous fights. He'd hit Frazier so hard he lifted him three feet off the mat. He'd knocked Kenny Norton asleep. He beat him like a rug the year earlier and Norton didn't wake up until he was in his dressing room. As often as the movies may portray that sort of thing, the truth is in professional fighting it's nearly unheard of, this knocking the man out thing.

And now Ali, at 32, way, way past his prime as a pugilist, was facing him on the dark continent - the Congo itself, Zaire. Never in a thousand years could anyone expect to find a more compelling match up between men. Foreman could barely put a sentence together back then - he usually just glared at people if he didn't feel like talking. Ali, on the other hand, had done the impossible over the past 10 years: he had gone from Most Hated Athlete in America to Most Adored Human on Earth. And, of course, he reveled in it. He talked about everything - tooth decay, racism, boxing, music, magic tricks, horror movies, shoes and boots, movie stars, politics...anything that caught his fancy. Smiling, laughing, giggling, chortling, merry-making his way through the sweltering pre-rainy season of Kinsasha. Not a care in the world. As the poet, Marianne Moore, called him, ‘the smiling pugilist.’

Of course, that wasn't true, though. Ali often wasn’t smiling in Africa. Ali was worried. Years later he acknowledged his fear in an interview with George Plimpton. "I was afraid for my children," he said, "I was afraid if maybe Big George broke my spinal column or something, how would I feed my children?" It is difficult to imagine the fear that must have enveloped him for those three months prior to the fight.

He fought "The Rumble in the Jungle" against George Foreman on October 31st, 1974, at three in the morning (prime time in America). He gave birth to the "rope-a-dope." He took back his title and knocked Big George to the canvas for ten seconds in the eighth round. He hit him with a series of lightning quick, sniper-like lefts and rights that were almost invisible to the naked eye in their fury and quickness. It was . . . magnificent.

Another lesson: Might isn't always right. Face your fears. Do your best. If you can't go over the wall...figure a way to go around it. Think on the spot. Don't be tied to a pre-arranged plan if it isn't working. Fear is sometimes just and only that - fear.

I met him in New York in 1989. Parkinson's Syndrome had changed him irrevocably by then. There was a hint of the old Ali smile. A glimmer in the eyes. I shook his hand in a diner on 37th and 3rd. He had very big hands. I leaned in close to him and said in his ear very quickly - there were many others trying to touch him - "You helped me grow up and be who I am today." He stopped what he was doing (signing autographs and shaking hands) for just a heartbeat, a blink, and looked full square in my eyes. I had tears in them. He said, "Boy, I was something, wasn't I?"

You were.

You are.

Some are Gone and Some Remain

2012-01-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

One of the many cool things I got this year for Christmas is a new Blackberry Torch. It's a sleek little number, very much in the vein of a Star Trek 'communicator.' As I looked at the online tutorial I began to see the seemingly endless functions it can perform. Now, it's not in the same league as, say, the new iphone, but it more than meets my communicative needs. Frankly, I never thought I really needed the whole fancy-schmancy phone thing. Text and talk...that's pretty much been my basic need when it comes to cell phones. Hell, I'm old enough to remember when they were roughly the size of a shoebox.

One of the things, however, it doesn't do instantaneously is download all of the numbers in my old phone to the new one. I think this might be because my old phone was, well, old. The sim card is ancient. So I guess they're just not compatible enough to automatically upload one to another. Consequently I found myself in the stupifyingly boring position of having to move my phone contacts from one device to another one by one.

And as I did so I suddenly and quite unexpectedly found myself deeply moved. A couple of the numbers are obsolete because the people they were assigned to are dead. One from an apparent drug overdose in an anonymous hotel room in Missouri and another from a quick and senseless one-car accident in the middle of the night on a lonely road in Arizona driving home after taking his daughter to her freshman year in college. Another is very sick these days due to complications stemming from HIV related illnesses. And another is fresh out of drug and alcohol rehab, shaky and scared but doubtless hopeful and fresh, too. And one is struggling day to day, forever optimistic, raising two special needs kids in a suburb in Colorado. Another once as close to me as a brother but now a stranger because we both fell victim to distance, apathy and the breathtaking speed of life.

So I found myself taking this unplanned trip down memory lane as I transferred these lifeline numbers from one phone to the next, numbers I used to call as regularly as breath. On this first day of January, 2012, I find myself attached, professionally and personally, to a whole new set of human beings. And I sit and punch in the new names, the new numbers, the new set of circumstances, the new relationships that capriciously develop, and I try and remember why I'm no longer close to old chums and lovers and family that once crowded my every concerned moment. What turn in the road separated us? When did I, or they, stop obsessing over our mutual well being? How did what was once so important become a plot line in a television show that can be turned off or on at whim? Sometimes it's easy to spot the break. I came here and she went there, or I turned left and he turned right, or I moved on and they stayed stuck. But other times, other quick, lightning flash memories, aren't as easily sorted out.

I despise and am ashamed of the out of sight, out of mind reality of my life. This blog notwithstanding, those few people close to me will tell you without hesitation how fiercely private I am. I have found myself in the fortunate and equally unfortunate position throughout my adult life of carefully choosing those close to me. Consequently once I've made that very conscience choice I think it safe to say I am loyal to a fault. So I was not only mystified but dumbfounded at the parade of faces that came to mind as I slowly and painstakenly gathered the names and numbers from my old life and plugged them into my new life. The process made me feel both emotionally removed and purposely callous all at once. And yet I didn't set out to be either.

But I don't think my particular situation is so terribly different from others. The only constant is, indeed, change. I've never been a big fan of change, though. People grow up, people grow apart, people move away, people die, people fall out of love, people lose hope and people get old. And that's just the way it is and frankly I've never cared for it.

One number after another, each drawing to mind a picture of a relationship. And some numbers, belonging to the dead, gone in an instant with the gentle touch, the swift brush of the finger over the delete button. One moment there, a tangible chunk in my phone, in my life, the next gone, deleted, a memory. A quick picture of sharing a halcyon and laughter-filled era of our lives together and then moving on, the next number, the Los Angeles number, the number with no stakes attached to it, no history or empathy, keep that number, they're still alive, they may be useful, they may be called upon.

I found all of this to be a microcosm of my feelings about moving from 2011 to 2012, a dry and hushed exercise in 'out with the old, in with the new.' At midnight last night my wife and I shared a kiss, spoke quietly about our hopes for the new year, some slender and silly, some magnificent and life-changing and she slipped into our bed to sleep and I continued my epic task of deciding who took the journey from one phone to the next, from the old life to the new, from 2011 to 2012. As I did so, each number held a face, an episode, a moment of genuine care and some made it over and some were left behind. But each one was, for a heartbeat or a lifetime, a great and wondrous symphony or a delightful measure of unusual grace notes in a minor key. Each one conjured up a face and a memory. And even the ones gone, the ones I can't call from either phone ever again, received a warm remembrance.

And so goodbye 2011, you gone and lovely year and hello 2012, you new and clever year, I look forward to the reinvention. My Torch is loaded and ready to go. A little lighter than the one before but full of new tricks and new numbers.

See you tomorrow.

Brando

2011-12-21T06:37:00.000-08:00

Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger in 'On the Waterfront.'

At the risk of sounding impossibly boring, Angie and I have been watching old movies lately. I've seen them, most of them anyway, and Angie has not. So it's fun to watch her enjoy them for the first time. Last night I watched her watch 'Topper' with Cary Grant and Constance Bennett for the first time. Grant was so, so far ahead of his time.

A couple years ago I discovered Angie hadn't seen many Brando films. Like most people, she knew other actors idolized his work but didn't really know why. So I decided to show her some films and give her a running commentary. Sounds terrifically pompous on my part but actually it was kinda fun. She'd seen 'The Godfather,' of course and probably a few others. I think she'd seen 'Streetcar' some years back, too. But she hadn't seen 'On the Waterfront' or 'Last Tango in Paris' or a few others I highly recommended. For the record, I still believe Brando's performance in 'Last Tango' is the finest I've ever seen on film.

So the Netflixing began. We watched 'Waterfront,' 'Viva, Zapata,' 'Sayanara,' 'The Young Lions,' 'One Eyed Jacks,' 'Mutiny on the Bounty,' 'Reflections in a Golden Eye,' 'Last Tango,' 'Missouri Breaks,' and finally 'The Island of Dr. Moreau,' and all the while I kept a running narrative going, trying (sometimes vainly) to describe to the non-actor why actors find his work the yardstick by which they measure their own. Angie's pretty darn sharp and she 'got' what I was saying very quickly. I figured if we were gonna get married it might be sort of important to show her what I was passionate about, and vice versa.

Anyway, as I said, she 'got' it. We watched the taxi scene in 'Waterfront' over and over. I told her I'd seen the scene done by maybe 100 actors over the years in classes. No one even comes close to the power of the Brando/Steiger scene. And why? Brando's eyes. It took me years to figure it out. Why was this scene so incredibly moving? The dialogue is good but not extraordinary. Steiger is certainly very good, but not amazing. It's shot well by Kazan with close, gobo stipes on their faces, the brilliant, jazzy Leonard Bernstein score comes in at exactly the right moment, but that's not it either. What is it? And then one day I was reading an interview with Sir John Gielgud. Sir John was talking about how he offered Brando the role of Hamlet on stage after working with him in the film version of Julius Caesar. Brando, of course, turned him down. But Gielgud went on to say something extraordinary about the famous taxi scene in 'Waterfront.' He said it was the only time in film, or anywhere else for that matter, he'd ever seen an actor call upon an "involuntary physical body function at will." That's the quote. He was talking about Brando's eyes as they seemingly involuntarily flitted back and forth as he admonished Steiger for his disloyalty. I went back and looked at the scene again. Yes. He's exactly right. That's what makes the scene pop. Those eyes, beyond realism and way, way into the realm of absolute naturalism, skittering from side to side like a panicked animal. It's a piece of genius from the young Brando and he probably didn't even know he was doing it. As usual, his instincts took over and his work towered above the actual scene. I've only seen two other film actors aside from Brando for whom I can say that, Merryl Streep and Daniel Day Lewis.

So after 'Waterfront' I escorted Angie through his other films. She particularly liked his work in 'Sayanara,' a middling film but another wonderful Brando performance. Brando, by all accounts, was a very competitive actor when he was younger. In 'Sayanara' he is opposite the super naturalistic James Garner. Brando actually achieves a more 'aw, shucks' persona than Garner. In fact, if you go back and look at that film, Garner, amazingly, looks kind of wooden next to Brando. Angie found his 'Sayanara' performance very endearing.

When we got to 'Last Tango in Paris' a few weeks later, I told her how this was the first time in my life I realized someone was a better actor than I was. Now, don't judge. I was very young (a sophomore in college, in fact) and I was watching 'Tango' for the very first time. When I saw the casket scene (Brando's monologue over his dead wife) I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "I can't do that." Like most young actors, I was arrogant and truly believed I was all that and a bag of chips. Ah, youth. Wasted on the young. It never occured to me there was someone out there who could do things I couldn't do (later in life I had the same reaction to Olivier in 'Richard III' and Meryl Streep in 'Sophie's Choice'). But there it was in front of me: Brando was going so deep that it really ceased to be acting at all, but rather pure behavior. George C. Scott, no slouch himself, got it right when he said of Brando's 'Tango' performance, "He has gone beyond acting and into impressionism."

My wife 'got' it. Over the years I've discovered something constant; actors that understand the subtle genius of Brando's work are, generally speaking, very good actors themselves. Actors who don't absorb the brilliance of his work are, for the most part, not.

The last film in this peculiar canon was 'Missouri Breaks.' Certainly not a very good movie, but yet another fearless performance from Brando. Eccentric, but fearless. Bruce Dern, in his autobiography, tells of a letter he wrote to his friend, Jack Nicholson, after seeing the film. "It was like watching the best actor on the planet take on the second best actor on the planet. I'm sorry, Jack, but you got your ass kicked." In fact Nicholson himself went on to say in one of those Playboy Twenty Questions segments, "When Brando dies every other actor in the world moves up a notch."

I was in southwest Florida with a company called Florida Rep doing a play called 'Lost in Yonkers' the day Brando died. I was very sad. He was the most influental actor in my life with my old friend and teacher, Michael Moriarty, a close second. He may have had massive and inexplicable character flaws as a human being (like all of us), but the work itself was giant. Upon his death his old, old friend, Karl Malden, said of him, "It was as though he had an angel trapped inside him and he spent his entire life trying to push it out." Perfect.

See you tomorrow.

Prostate Commercials, Headshots, Christmas movies and Night of the Iguana

2011-12-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

The Headshot

I shot a commercial yesterday for a new medication supplement for prostate problems. A pill that apparently helps one, um, well, I don't know what it does, exactly, but the pill is apparently 'anti-prostate problem.' So I was hired to give one of those 'I'm not an actor' testimonials to the camera. Well, of course, I AM an actor but had fun pretending to be just a normal, addle-minded non-actor. Truth is, it was the easiest paycheck I've ever gotten here in LA. And as an added attraction, it's an 'in-house' industrial for the advertisers, so it won't even be shown on television with me extolling the virtues of my prostate-comfy butt. I can't name the medication because I signed an aggreement that I wouldn't talk about it, As though the major prostate medication drug companies out there regularly follow my blog.

Angie and I, in an extended fit of middle-aged Christmas cheer, are recording lots of Christmas movies, you know, the normal staples, 'It's a Wonderful Life,' 'Holiday Inn,' 'White Christmas,' etc. But my favorite Christmas movie doesn't appear to be anywhere on cable this year - 'The Homecoming,' which was the pilot for the television series 'The Waltons.' I love that movie. I love the writing, the sparse interaction, the defiant, depression-era characters. Remember, this was before 'The Waltons' morphed into something so sickly sweet as to cause diabetes. This was 70s television at its best. Good actors, good script, great photography. And Richard Thomas was born to play John-boy.

And in still other news, it's time for new headshots. Actors get slightly insane when it comes to headshots. I've known actors to get a sheet of pictures and pour over them for months before making a selection. They show them to everyone: the mailman, the next door neighbor, the third cousin, asking opinions ad nauseum. I understand this. I think it's because the headshot is the ONLY THING an actor controls about his career. The sad truth is, of course, the headshot isn't really that important. Yes, it needs to look like the actor, and yes, it needs to be of some quality, and yes, it should include some striking elements ('the eyes, show them something in the eyes' the so-called experts always say). And all of that is true. But the headshot doesn't do the acting for you. If you're not very good in the first place the greatest headshot in the world is not going to help (unless, of course, you're up for a role in one of the 'Twilight' films). I have a buddy of mine, a very successful actor and acting teacher out here, who always tells his students that the very first thing they should do is get super expensive headshots, upwards of a thousand dollars. He says it is the absolute most important thing in this business. Although I understand his viewpoint, I think it's horseshit. I say, get a good, solid headshot, don't break the bank doing it, make sure it looks like you, and go with it.

It's odd, but every major 'acting' city (NYC, Chicago, LA) seems to have a different style of headshot that is preferred. In Chicago, for example, one would ONLY get what is called a three-quarter shot. That is to say, a photograph that shows three-quarters of your body. I guess this is because lots of fat people in Chicago tried to get seen by just showing their face and when they got to the audition the producers were shocked at how fat they were. So they began demanding a 'three quarter' shot to weed out the fatties. I don't know. Just guessing there. In NYC, when I was there at least, it was a black and white face shot, very close, and then photo shopped within an inch of your life. It was not unusual to see a headshot for a 60 year old man with every single wrinkle taken out so that he looked like a dummy in a window at JC Penny. I never understood this but it was the rage in those days. I'm sure it's changed now. And here in LA, they want color shots, preferrably not 'posed' as in a studio with a solid color screen behind you. No, most of the shots I see are pseudo 'candid' shots of people, close up, color shots of their face, caught unawares in, say, a boxing ring or strolling along the train tracks or standing nonchalantly in front of a barbed wire, chain link fence with animal pelts hanging in the background. This, apparently, really 'catches' the actor and his essence.

I'm always reminded of John Malkovich's headshot outside Steppenwolf in Chicago. That theatre has all of the company members in a big display box right outside the main stage. Anyway, John's shot is of him with his hands over his face as though he were saying, 'Don't, please, don't look at me.' And yes, it is his actual headshot. I suppose if you're John Malkovich it's not important that people actually see who you are in your headshot. I asked him about it once. He laughed. I suspect John feels the same way about headshots as I do: a necessary evil, but certainly nothing lose sleep over.

On the flip side, I have a buddy out here in LA, older guy, character actor, does almost exclusively 'villain' roles. His headshot is the worst I've ever seen. It's an old (circa 1990) black and white shot of him scowling into the camera with an ill-fitting black and white suit on. And he works CONSTANTLY.

My wife and I agree (as an agent for many, many years Angie has a sort of sixth sense about this stuff) that my current shots probably exclude me from a lot of roles. I look too old in them. My hair (what's left of it) is prematurely white. Not grey. White. And although I'm a robust fifty (is that an oxymoron?) my pics indicate I could easily play sixty five. I find this disconcerting. Not to mention misguided. Consequently, what happens a lot for me is I'm always the youngest guy in the room by about fifteen years when I'm called in to read.

So, it's headshot time. I have a couple of photographers in mind. I only wish I had all the headshots through the years of me. Headshots, I've discovered, are a good barometer of what the actor thinks he OUGHT to look like rather than what he DOES look like. I know some of mine, through the decades, are just out and out stupid now.

Attached to the back of the headshot is, of course, the resume. This is where the business I'm in really gets surreal. This deserves an entire blog to itself but I'll mention one I saw a few years ago that made me chortle. I was doing a gig at a theatre in Virginia and the AD and I are old buds. I was in his office at the theatre one day and his secretary brought in a two-foot high stack of pics and resumes. I asked him if I could look through them. He said, sure, and I began going through them. It's kind of cruel but I think I hurt my gut laughing so hard that day. One in particular sticks in my mind. A lot of young actors, for whatever reason, feel compelled to put something called 'AGE RANGE' on their resumes. Ostensibly it is the age of the characters they could conceivably play. Well, this was a picture of a young man, very eager, smiling pleasantly, nice looking, and right under his name on the back on the resume it said 'AGE RANGE: 17 - 95.' Now, a couple years earlier I had done a play called 'Night of the Iguana' in New York and I knew there was a character in that play by Tennesse Williams named Nonno who is 96 years old. I could just imagine this young man getting called in to read for the part. He stomps into the audition room, red-faced with rage. He glares at the producers and says, 'Did you even LOOK at my resume!? Hm? Give it a single glance!? Because if you HAD you would have noticed that I can play 95! NOT 96! 95! I can play up to 95! Why would you even call me IN to read for 96!?' And he stomps out.

Anyway.

Heading down to San Diego in a couple of days to do the Christmas thing with the family. We're taking Franny and Zooey with us. Should be fun.

See you tomorrow.

Christmas Shopping, Christmas Trees and Christmas Plays

2011-12-17T08:43:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Dinner at the Lipps household in Manhattan Beach

Oh, what a difference a month makes. Or three weeks. Or two weeks, four days. Whatever.

The point is, lots of cool things goin' down, G.

My German producer was in LA for a while and we attacked the screenplay relentlessly for a few weeks. He's back in Germany now. At the end of our whirlwind mauling of the script we decided to invite a few crackerjack actors (RD Call, Larry Cedar, Tara Lynn Orr, Micky Shiloah, Paul Elia, Joe Hulser, Trevor Peterson) over to my place and sit around the living room and just read the derned thing out loud. The afternoon went off without a hitch and accomplished precisely what we'd hoped: at the end we knew pretty much what worked, what sounded good, what snapped and popped and what sucked. And more than I'd like to admit did, in fact, suck. But that's a good thing. Best to see this stuff now.

The important thing is that by the end of the reading we both knew we had something very workable, something that, with the right handling and in the hands of a sassy director, could possibly morph into something extraordinary.

In other news, Christmas approaches and my wife and I have been on a holy shopping quest. I'm a terrible shopper. Normally not an indecisive man, I suddenly become Bob Newhart when confronted with a shopping decision. Yesterday Angie and I wandered over to the Sherman Oaks Mall (one of the nicer ones around) and I found myself walking back and forth to two different stores trying to decide between two gifts for her. Several times I visited each store. I'm sure they thought I was casing the joints. But I finally made a choice and bought my wife's Christmas present. At one point I was overwhelmed with a slight panic attack and nearly bought her something really generic just to get it over with (I seriously considered a huge painting of a horse, something we already have, and some cool Pottery Barn coffee cups - a gift that really says 'I Love You' - at one point). But in the end I found something she'll probably like and the flop sweats ceased.

My in-laws, Dr. and Mrs. Lewis, were in town for a couple of days and we took them out to a new restaurant (well, new to us) called OFF VINE and then to the perrennially delightful 'Bob's Holiday Office Party.' The restaurant, while certainly cozy and romantic, turned out to have average food at best and a waiter who gathered our orders and then apparently took a sabbatical in Eastern Europe. We didn't see him for about a month. And when he did come back he announced he was leaving and hinted it might be best to tip him now rather than later. Nonetheless, it is an awfully nice place, but the food, once it finally arrived, left a great deal to be desired. It's always a bad sign when the plates are too hot to touch without rubber gloves because they've been sitting under warming lights for so long.

And then we took them over to the Hudson Theatre to see the play. We were a tad concerned about this. Bob's Holiday Office Party is an equal opportunity offending play. I wrote a long blog about it when we took it in last year. No one escapes unscathed in this piece. Angie and I love it. Just when you think they can't possibly be more offensive, they are. So we worried a bit that Rex and Rosemary (Angie's mom and stepdad), proud Republicans that they are, might be a bit shocked. We needn't have. They loved it and guffawed (literally) all the way through it. In fact, the next day, Rex told me, "I'm so glad you didn't drag us to that 'Streetcar Named Desire' play. I've seen that damn thing a dozen times.'

It took us a little while to get into the swing of the Christmas season this year but we finally got the tree up and decorated. We did it in shifts this year so as not to get burnt out too soon, I suppose. First the tree stand sat there for a few days and then the tree itself, unadorned, stood in the corner incongruously and then finally we put the lights and ornaments on it.

The in-laws (Rex and Rosemary) have rented a big condo in San Diego this year and the whole Lewis/Peabody/Morts clan is meeting there for a traditional Christmas. Which I personally love having grown up in a family that considered Christmas an opportunity to buy each other Jim Beam and cartons of Lucky Strikes. The holidays always culminated in a joyously festive fist fight.

Angie and I are taking a 'suite' nearby so we can travel with the dogs and we're looking forward to seeing the whole gaggle of relatives in one spot for a change.

In any event, the Christmas spirit is finally upon us. The writing is going well, the film I've been shaping for about eight months is now a tangible entity, a thing that's actually going to happen, and the foreseeable future is rife with possibilities. Life is good.

See you tomorrow.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

Chuck Spencer, Kay Johnson, Virginia Cooke, John Bader and myself, Thanksgiving, 1984, Old Creamery Theater. 'The Fantastiks' tour.

Our Thanksgiving plans are always the same - very traditional - we wander over to Manhattan Beach every year to our dear friend's Mark and Tammy Lipps. Tammy owns and operates an exclusive, high-end, boutique catering company. Needless to say her Thanksgiving spreads are sort of extraordinary. They live in a picturesque two-story cottage a couple blocks from the ocean and have a back deck/porch area that back in my college days would be described as 'party real estate.' It's a magazine home, frankly.

In any event, we have an amazing dinner with friends, some we don't see often and some we talk to constantly, and afterwards we play a spirited game of 'Celebrity.' At least we have the last two Thanksgivings.

We like this tradition. We look forward to it. Not only because it's relaxing and fun and terrific eats, but because we genuinely enjoy ourselves. Tammy and Mark are wonderful hosts.

I've had some doozies over the years, Thanksgivings. Many alone in Chicago, many on the road giving thanks with a bunch of actors (see above), some in New York (there was a great Irish pub that opened 'only for regulars' on 35th street - called BREWS - on Thanksgiving...wonderful food, lots of beer, all free - those days are long gone - but I hit that spot a few times).

For awhile in Chicago I volunteered every year in a shelter and dished up food for the homeless on Thanksgiving but I finally realized how hypocritical this was of me...yeah, I helped hand out with one meal. Where was I the other 1,094 meals in the year? Besides, there were always dozens of other liberal-minded, bone-deep guilty, middle class schmucks like me vying for the same mashed potato scooping job. I suppose it never occurred to any of us to come back the next day, Friday, when they didn't have enough people in the shelter for the mashed potato scooping job.

Even in this economy (good Lord I'm sounding more and more like my parents every day) I have much to be thankful for. And not just the obvious things: my wife, my dogs, my comfortable and perfect home, my friends (I don't make friends easily so I only have a few 'close' friends - but they're VERY close because of that), my lifestyle, the fact that I get to make a living doing what I love, my health (I can be thankful for this even with the diabetes - because it's being treated - I do not suffer because of it - I am in a constant state of irritation, but suffer? No.), my wife's health (arguable some days, he says smiling, smiling), my adopted family on my wife's side, all good, honest and sincere people...these things, these items to be thankful for are self-evident.

There is an old saying, "Religion is for people afraid to go to Hell. Spirituality is for people who've already been there." I find that old chestnut useful on Thanksgiving. And apropos. For those of us, a larger group across this country on this singularly American holiday than might be imagined probably, that have spent suffocatingly lonely Thanksgivings in the past, for whatever reason, self-imposed or not, well, the physical reality of a home and hearth-warming, traditional, sincere Thanksgiving is bliss. Absolute bliss.

My wife is putting together an exotic salad of some sort...I'm not exactly sure what it is but it involves kale and pine nuts and a 'ginger sauce.' Anything involving kale and pine nuts is usually something I pass straight to the next guy on my right when at table. And I prefer the 'Mary Ann sauce' to the 'Ginger sauce.' But I'm sure it will be really good despite my protestations. She rarely, if ever, makes anything I'm not sort of dazzled by.

And finally we're coming up on nearly a week without smoking. It's not getting easier for me. I still think of smoking roughly 23 out of every 24 hours. Maybe this whole 'cold turkey' approach was ill-advised. I don't know. What I do know is I don't think this is supposed to be this hard, I mean it's been a week and I'm still right...on...the...edge. Quitting drinking was a piece of cake compared to this mini-nightmare.

Happy Thanksgiving. Be thankful if you can. If you can't, have a cigarette for me.

See you tomorrow.

From the East to the West...again.

2011-11-21T08:15:00.000-08:00

Chad Coe and myself in rehearsal for FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST, North Hollywood, CA, 2010.

Day five. Still not smoking. Unless you count the smoke coming from my ears.

I wish I had a DVD of 'The Insider' right about now. Or maybe 'Thank You For Not Smoking.' Or even the old Bob Newhart film, 'Cold Turkey.' But I think 'The Insider' would be best. I'm at the point now, five days into it, where I need to work up some old fashioned, righteous, pissed off, unapologetic rage. And 'The Insider' would probably do that for me.

Today is my wife's birthday. I'm thinking I'll take her to a hookah bar and buy her shots.

Actually, a highly regarded Los Angeles Theatre Company - ECHO Theatre Company - is reading my play, From the East to the West, out loud tonight over in West Hollywood somewhere. Angie and I will head over that way and take a listen and probably grab a birthday bite to eat. It's a casual thing, mostly so the various company members can read it out loud and get a feeling for it...possibly do it as part of their season next year - that would be the best case scenario.

That play has a long and varied history. Although I've had a few requests to do it as a full production, the venues haven't suited me thus far and I've always turned the offers down. Echo, however, has the talent and clout to do it right, I think. The play was originally written as a follow up piece for a company in Chicago called Actor's Workshop. They had just finished one of two long runs of my play, Praying Small, and wanted another one by me because the critics were being very sweet on me at the time and the theatre needed exposure. For whatever reason, and frankly I don't remember, it never got produced. So it got a reading over at Steppenwolf across town and they loved it. It was being considered for their main stage and a copy of it had been shipped off to Gary Sinise - they thought he might be a perfect 'Harry' in it. And he would have. But again, for whatever reason, it never came to pass. Shortly after that I moved to Los Angeles. Within a few weeks of being here, a friend working with Pasadena Playhouse wanted to read it for their 'Hot Box' series with an eye toward main stage production. It was around this point that my friend, the wonderful veteran actor, John Schuck, became attached to the project as 'Harry.' Again, he would have been superlative in the role. In fact, we had a private reading here at my house with John reading 'Harry.' He was extraordinary. A few weeks later, Pasadena Playhouse went belly up and closed their doors.

Next I tried to get a full production with a small company I was working with at the time in North Hollywood. But the Artistic Director there, a guy with a long and distinguished background as a musical theatre chorus member, didn't care for it and put the kabosh on the production. But not before we had a chance to mount it for three days with an amazing young cast. I took the role of 'Harry' myself. The production was a 'benefit' production for the theatre. We rehearsed it for three weeks, gave a blistering performance - one I'm very proud of - sold out all three nights and raised a buttload of money for this lttle company in NoHo. The AD, who never actually SAW the production (he was on a Caribbean cruise at the time), later said he didn't like it ("It's too dense. Too much in it.") and he wouldn't be producing it ("It would be a great disservice to you to let anyone see this play.").

So. A long and serpentined history. At one point I was thinking Powers Boothe might be a good 'Harry.' He told me he wanted to work onstage again and Steppenwolf was still hot on the project and the idea of putting the legendary Boothe together with the legendary Steppenwolf seemed like a good one. Alas, Powers wandered off to Bulgaria, of all places, for a few months shortly after that conversation to make 'The Hatfields and McCoys,' a min-series with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall.

Then I did a play with the great character actor RD Call. RD and I became pretty close during the run of the show ('The Interlopers') and finally I just gave him a copy of the script and asked if he'd be interested in playing 'Harry' at some point. A couple days later RD called me and said he loved the script and he wanted to play 'Harry' anywhere, anytime. So, tonight, RD Call is reading 'Harry' for me. RD is a powerful actor, tremendous authority onstage, and perfect for the role. I'm very lucky to have him involved.

So, it's been a journey with this piece. Incidentally, my old buddy from Steppenwolf, Pulitzer-winner Tracy Letts, emailed me the exact same day the Artistic Director, the ex-chorus boy, at that little company in NoHo told me 'it would be a great disservice to you to let anyone see this play,' writing, '...this is the best thing I've read in several years, Clif...' There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

From the East to the West is a very personal piece of writing for me, far more autobiographical than Praying Small, although no one ever believes that. Praying Small poured out of me as I wrote it. I couldn't get the words on the page fast enough. It was as though the piece was already written and I was simply transcribing. But From the East to the West was labored over. It was like a birthing. Every sentence was painful to get out. It took me a month to write Praying Small. It took me nineteen years to write From the East to the West.

So...reading the little skit out loud tonight. They might like it, they might not. Whatever happens, I'm glad someone is taking an interest in the piece again. It's a good piece of work, I think, and one I'm proud of.

See you tomorrow.

Non-Smoking Lies and Liars

2011-11-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

I have been in a bad mood for 72 hours now. It's the smoking thing. It's kind of like those 1950s warning films about marijuana, you know the ones, where the young college-aged kids go bonkers after one puff. They become all wild-eyed and violent, their hair sort of stands up and circles immediately appear under their eyes after that first good toke. Well, that's what's happened to me. Only it's the result of NOT taking that puff, NOT taking that first good toke.

When I first started on this venture, this "noble" (non-smoking propaganda in the great spirit of Josef Goebbels) struggle to quit smoking, I told myself I'd quit like The Greatest Generation (fucking idiot Tom Brokaw and his stupid fucking titles and his dumb fucking speech impediment) and just do it cold turkey, not even mention it, just stop, simply move on with my life without cigarettes, suffer quietly, keep my mild discomfort to myself. Well, that lasted about a half hour. I mention The Greatest Generation because the older folks that I knew growing up, Brokaw's fabled generation of people too dumb to complain and therefor somehow considered quietly determined ('They won the war, the big one, double-u double-u 2! Now hand me that sharp stick to poke in my own eye.'), always say things like, "Well, I just stopped." Or, "One day I just said 'that's enough!'"

Morons.

As you can see, 72 hours into my nicotine-fee journey, I'm a bit unforgiving. My wife is also quitting. I'm not sure how wise this is, the two of us quitting at the same time. For one thing, everything she says irritates me. "Honey, are you getting hungry? Want some lunch?" "Do NOT ask me when I want lunch! If it's alright with you, I'll LET YOU KNOW when lunch enters my mind! Is this so hard to grasp?!"

Yes. So you see, I'm not myself these days. And my wife, experiencing the same ugly withdrawal symptoms, is not herself either. Last night we had an argument over cake. I don't even remember what it was about, frankly. I just know cake was somehow at the bottom of it.

Of course, everyone I talk to, people who've done it before me, say, 'It gets easier. Don't worry, Clif, every day it gets a little easier.' They're lying bastards. It doesn't. It's not. They are lying, smug, evil, masochistic little turds, these ex-smoking superior shit-for-brains. It's like a little secret club ('Hey, guess what I just told Clif? I told him it gets easier...told him to hang in there...yeah, yeah, hehehehehe, I know...yeah, he bought it. He thinks it will...hehehehe') that ex-smokers have to join. Well, I'm saying it publicly right now, right here...I will NEVER tell someone it gets easier...it does not. It never will. Stopping smoking is the single hardest, ugliest, most unrewarding thing you will ever attempt, and frankly, it may not be worth it in the long run. THAT'S what I'll say to people.

I'll go on to say, 'Look at all the really smart and cool people who smoked - Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, FDR, Churchill, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, Mae West, Crazy Horse. You know who HATED smoking? The one guy who couldn't tolerate it? Hitler. That's who. Hitler was one of those big, fat, intolerant, oh-dear-second-hand-smoke-near-my-little-fat-gruesome-slobbering-kids housewives that always complain when someone lights up near them. The shameless, chubby, hopelessly ugly hussies who actually ask people who live NEXT DOOR to them to stop smoking for fear their shockingly ugly and retarded kids might breath a whiff of it. (I saw this last night on the news) Anyway...HITLER was the first whining non-smoker in history. Hitler...that's the non-smokers big advocate. The non-smoking poster child. Hitler. Einstein smoked. Hitler did not. Coincidence? John Lennon smoked. Jim Jones did not.' That's what I'll say.

So as I enter day three (actually day four since I ran out of tobacco a day early and in effect stopped smoking the night BEFORE I said I would) I'm not pleased with all the lies, the deceptions, the misinformation, the false truths that have been shoveled, like so much manure, onto my non-smoking lap. Negative attitude, you say? Oh, yes. Yes, you go right on saying that. Non-smokers, I'm finding, are a lot like The Tea Party Movement. They're unyeilding. They don't want 'dialogue' with smokers, they want to destroy them, wipe them out, extinguish them. The smokers are to non-smokers what Socialists are to the Tea Party; a threat to civilization itself.

Again, day three of this horror has put me in a mood to over-exaggerate. I'm sorry. I can't help it. I had hoped the constant reminder of the money I was saving would help my mood. It does not. At this point in the process every penny spent on cigarettes seems like a great investment. In fact, it seems a small, almost laughable, pittance to pay for the peace of mind it insures.

But I remain resolved. I type this blog smokeless. I grit my teeth and continue to suffer. I continue to hate everyone and everything around me. I live in a state of complete hopelessness. You see, I always saw smoking as a privilege, a reward, an extra bonus for simply being human. And if I find out some day that the whole 'smoking is bad for you' campaign is some made up political thing, I'm taking people out. I mean it. I'm taking some people out.

Eighty one hours.

See you tomorrow.

The End of an Era

2011-11-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

Ground Zero swells before me. 'Ground Zero' is what I'm calling the day I quit smoking. My wife and I have decided to take the plunge. It's time. Smoking is and always has been an absolute indefensible habit. The problem is I really, really, really, really like to smoke.

I started smoking, like most actors, for a role. I had to smoke onstage. And back in those days I fancied myself quite the method actor. So I'm doing this show in a semi-professional summer stock gig called 'Tent Theatre' in southern Missouri. The show was '1940's Radio Hour' and I had been cast as a guy named 'Johnny Cantone.' The character was based on a young Sinatra and called for me to chain-smoke throughout the two hour show, even during the crooning ballads I sang. It was June of 1983. I've been smoking 28 years.

I'd actually dabbled a bit in smoking a couple years earlier. I was 'Black Bart the train robber' at Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO, in 1981 and between robbing trains (it was an elaborate, scripted 20 minute show each time) we sat in 'the train shack,' as it was called, and waited for the next train. There were five or six of us, all 'Black Barts,' all dressed in black with our black hats and pearl-handled six-shooters, all taking our turn robbing the train. This is a blog all by itself, actually, the silliness of that summer, but suffice to say this is when I first tried to be a smoker. I couldn't do it. I hated smoking. All of the other 'Black Barts' smoked cigarettes, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I bought a couple packs of a brand I'm fairly certain no longer exists, a menthol cigarette called 'Arctic Lights.' They were like smoking a Christmas tree.

Incidentally, I nearly got punched in the face once as Black Bart the Train Robber. The script we used left plenty of room to improvise and one of the lines I often trotted out while I was ostensibly robbing people was 'You sure don't sweat much for a fat girl!' I don't know, it seemed funny at the time and always got a big laugh from the customer/victims on the train. But one day (I don't know what I was thinking) I said it to a Muslim woman complete with veil and black robes and her Taliban husband jumped up and took a swing at me. Fortunately my cat-like reflexes got me out of the way, but we (me and Black Bart's 'gang') cut the script short and jumped off the train before he could fly a plane into me.

Anyway.

Like most smokers I've quit a thousand times. My longest stint was about nine months. I was living in New York then and there was a Chinese Restaurant on 46th street in mid-town a bunch of my friends and I would frequent. Mostly because they had ass-kicking but awful saki and also gave dirty fortune cookies to the regulars. And I mean really dirty, nasty fortune cookies. I won't even repeat the ones I remember. Very scatalogical fortune cookies. We loved it.

So we were all sitting around our usual big round table, about ten of us, and I had launched into a long, boring story of some sort (much like this one, I suspect) and the guy sitting next to me (I forget who) had a pack of Marlboro Reds sitting on the table in front of him - my brand. And (this is how strong the addiction is) without even thinking about it (remember, I had been off cigs for nine months) reached down in the middle of my long, boring story and lit up. I smoked half the cigarette before I remembered I had quit. Amazing. The next day I had two. And then three. And inside of a week I was a pack-a-day guy again.

One of the things that helped me quit before was a box of straws. Yes, straws. Plastic straws. I buy a big industrial sized box of straws and everytime I had the urge I pulled one out and chewed on it. Not very attractive but it seems to do the trick. So today I'm off to buy some straws. Talk about your oral fixations.

This whole paradigm shift happened when Angie added up the money we spent on our nasty, little habit. She estimates we spend, together, about $3,700 a year on cigarettes. I recently had a friend, Stephanie, who quit after decades of smoking. She used the same approach, daily reminding herself of the amount of money she was saving by not smoking. She would even post the amounts on Facebook. It got me to thinking.

I need new headshots, I need to join a gym. Just two of the things the $3,700 will facilitate. So my plan of attack is to use this as my impetus. I'm going to post the amounts of money I'm saving every few days on the cork board in my office. I think that might be good for me to glance at every now and then. Plus Angie says she wants fancy underwear. That's what she said - 'fancy underwear.' We also want a new Mercedes station wagon but we'd have to give up eating, drinking and paying rent for that.

I have several friends that smoke a cigarette 'every now and then.' I don't get these people. For me that's like saying 'I only take a lungful of air every now and then.' They're freaks.

Although I have very few, if any, 'regrets' in my life (yes, I'd do things different given the chance, but 'regrets?' That's the road to suicide as far as I'm concerned.)taking a drag of that first cigarette back in 1981 is one.

Incidentally, when I first learned to smoke, during '1940's Radio Hour' in 1983, I bought myself a carton of cigs and a six-pack of beer and I drove out to an old country road outside of Springfield, MO, and I taught myself how to do it. I quite literally 'taught' myself. I didn't want to appear to be a non-smoker onstage, serious young actor that I was. You know, holding the cigarette delicately at the end of two outstretched fingers, taking shallow drags, looking uncomfortable holding it, etc. No, I wanted to come across as a lifetime smoker. In my youthful arrogance my plan, of course, was to quit as soon as the play was over. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

Cigarettes, the ones I bought, were $1.35 the year I started smoking. Today I spend $6.00 a pack (American Spirits - Natural). And that's cheap. In Chicago they're inching towards $10.00 a pack. It's now illegal to smoke in public in both Burbank and Glendale. I abhor this law, but I suppose for non-smokers it's deeply satisfying. Currently under consideration is a new law that would make it illegal to smoke in your car in these two cities. True dat. The only place left to smoke legally would be in the privacy of your own home. Of course, I often flaunt the laws and step outside of restaurants all the time and light up. Not because I need a cigarette so much but rather to say 'fuck you' to the stupid, government- invasion-of-privacy laws. I have a strong Republican streak in me when it comes to that.

In any event, tomorrow is the day. I'm finishing my last can of smokes (I buy a large can of American Spirit - $35.00 - and roll my own with this nifty little roller I bought) and Angie is finishing up her last pack (she smokes the 'American Spirits - Ultra Light). We're terrified.

We have an 'e-cigarette' for emergencies. We've decided to keep that plugged up and ready to use for the first difficult week. My mother-in-law, Rosemary, a very vocal anti-smoker, says she'll buy all the nicarette we can chew if we ever decide to quit. We may take her up on it. I also want 'the patch.' But unless it becomes just too terrible, I probably won't go with that. It'll be cold turkey. My old acting teacher and friend, Michael Moriarty, once told me when he quit he kept a pack of cigarettes by his side all the time and whenever he had the urge to light up he would pick up the pack and say to it, "Who's stronger? You or me?" That always seemed a bit masochistic to me, though. I'd eventually just say, "Oh, okay. You are." And light up.

And finally, I'm hoping to rid myself of the perpetual smugness of other smokers who have successfully quit. My good buddy, John, quit 12 years ago. He reminds me of this approximately once every five minutes.

My wife once quit for a long, long time. She did it through hypnosis. Alas, when she started spending time with me, she started back up. That always makes me feel kind of bad, too. Another buddy of mine did it through weekly acupuncture. Personally, I'd like to take some sedatives that knock me out for about three months and then wake up smoke-free. With my luck I'd miss out on a big audition if I did that, though.

And then, of course, there's the diabetes. That's a whole other cup of danger. Everytime I see my doctor the first thing she asks is, "So how's the smoking coming?" The last time I saw her I said, "Great! I'm down to 28 a day!" She scowled at me.

I remember those Yul Brennar PSA spots when I was a kid. They were creepy as shit. He would appear on the television, filling up the whole screen with his shaved head and Eastern European smirk, and say, "By the time you're watching this, I'll be dead. I smoked four packs of cigarettes a day..." First of all, I never believed him. Four packs? When did he have the time? Because 'The King and I' was two hours long, so the math just didn't add up.

I've had three cigarettes while writing this blog today. Good God, I'm going to miss them.

See you tomorrow.

Another day, another Russian Accent

2011-11-13T07:48:00.000-08:00

I've added a few reels to the site. They're to the right of this text. I recently found a new program, free download, which enables me to make reels, etc. The only problem is they have to be posted on YouTube and then downloaded onto the blogger site. Oh, there's probably a way to do it without putting them on YouTube first, but I'm pretty much a slobbering idiot when it comes to this stuff so I can't quite figure that part out.

But the point is, I have so much fun doing it. I feel like I'm on the bridge of the Enterprise trying to save earth from certain destruction when I start messing with computer-related stuff.

So, okay, I go about a week without a single audition. Nada, nothing, zip, zero. And then of course I get a call from the home office and have two virtually at the same time. We do a little shuffling, call the casting directors, and get things lined up.

The first was a film, an 'ultra low budget' thingee. Something about 'Russian mobsters.' Okay. So I slip on my Russian accent and travel to Hollywood for that one. It ended up being in a warehouse - the audition, that is. They were running behind, about a half hour or so, and in comes this guy that apparently had been there earlier but had to leave for some reason. He comes in and tells the monitor that he'd like to go in next. My eyebrows raised. Next? But he left. He gave up his spot. I looked around and everyone had an eyebrow raised. And this guy refused to take no for an answer. "In all my years in this business I've never heard of such a thing," he whined, "You're just going to have to march in there and tell them John Doe is here." And, much to my chagrin, she did. She disappeared into the room and came out and said, okay, you can go in next. Personally, I had another audition to get to, so I wasn't too keen on all this. But, sure enough, he ambled in next.

The reason they were behind is because they were taking a long time with every actor in the room. About ten minutes each, in fact - an inordinantly long time to stay in the room. Well, I don't know what happened in there, but this guy comes out about thirty seconds later and stomps out of the warehouse, mumbling obscenities under his breath.

Times like that I want to just grab people and say, "Alright, listen, here's how life works: you wait your turn. Simple as that. All areas of life, that's what you do. You wait your turn. Generally speaking, people who never learned to wait their turn are either working on Wall Street or in jail." But I didn't say that to him. I thought it.

After the 'Russian Mobster' gig I quickly drove over to one of the studios (doing the whole security check thing at the gate) for a co-starring read on a major network drama. Much nicer scenario, I must say. A bunch of veteran LA actors all sitting peacefully in a waiting room, being nice to one another, one lady was actually knitting. The role was for a priest and one guy had the whole Jesuit priest get up on complete with turned around collar. I, sagely, simply wore a black shirt buttoned up. Not that it mattered, because I'm fairly certain I didn't get it. For one thing I was the youngest guy in the room by about twenty years. For another, I was so harried by the narrow time window to do both gigs, I think I might have done the Jesuit priest with a slight Russian accent.

Later this month the acclaimed LA theatre company, Echo Theatre, will be doing a reading of my play, From the East to the West. In fact, it falls on Angie's birthday, so we're looking forward to that. And my old Alma Mater, Redtwist Theatre Company in Chicago, wants to re-mount Praying Small next season. The AD asked for the DVD of the production we did here in LA. So I sent that off and will see what we will see. That play opened the theatre back in 2004 and ended up running about six months. The following season, 2005, Redtwist (back then it was called 'Actors Workshop') mounted the show again for another four or five months. Suffice to say both productions were critical and commercial successes.

And yet another rewrite on 'the German screenplay.' I'm meeting with the producer again today to brainstorm a bit. He also wants to pick Angie's brain a bit about the whole thing - Angie has seen dozens of films through from start to finish back in the day and has a singular knowledge about, quite literally, what to do next. He's a first time producer and, although the money is sort of in place, the particulars are not.

Los Angeles is in the midst of an uncharacteristic cold snap. I like it. It's very rare one gets the chance to wear sweaters in LA. And I like wearing sweaters. Plus we get to crank up our fireplace every night. I like fireplaces. There's something very comforting about a fireplace roaring in the den with my wife and two dogs nearby. My wife is the fire starting expert in the family. I tried to do it alone last night and after an hour or so of staring at cold logs had to hand over the reigns to Angie. A few minutes later the fire was crackling and leaping. I should never have quit after the Webelows. Sigh.

See you tomorrow.

Barking at Lighted Windows

2011-11-06T06:27:00.000-08:00

An actual fire in our actual fireplace last night, November 5, 2011.

Angie and I decided to test drive our fireplace last night after a year or so of not using it. And it was glorious. We purposely hadn't been using it because the last time we gave it a whirl the whole house filled with smoke and we ran screaming and rolling into the front yard, ducking and covering. So we decided we needed a chimney sweep. I thought chimney sweeps were extinct. But one day shortly thereafter we pulled into our driveway and a tall, gangly guy in a sooty top hat was leaving our neighbor's house. We stared in fascination. He was really wearing a top hat. His van was parked out front and it said "Chimney Sweep" on the side. We looked at each other quickly and then yelled over and caught him. The guy actually looked a little like a young Dick Van Dyke. We got his card and promised we'd be calling soon.

As it turns out we didn't need a chimney sweep. We just needed to open our flu. Or floo. However it's spelled. In France it's probably 'fleiu.'

Yesterday (and today, I think) the day was an out and out rarity in SoCal; it was cold. So as we followed our usual dinner extravaganza plans (we make a big deal over dinner in this house), we decided to give the old fireplace another shot. Only problem was we didn't have any wood. I suggested we burn our ugly patio furniture (which Angie calls 'antique' but I just call 'pathetic') but was quickly vetoed. So we drove over to our local Von's to get some firewood. They were out. Instead we had to look at manufactured 'slow burning' logs ("Up to Three Hours!"). But just as we were about to purchase one, a guy came out with a new shipment of good and true (I was feeling very Hemingway-esque at the prospect of a fire) firewood, which of course we bought immediately.

The fireplace, once we'd discovered the whole 'floo' thing, worked perfectly and was soon 'roaring' in the hearth. We finished our elaborate, nightly dinner perparations and all was right in the world.

There's something about a fireplace with a good, crackling fire that calms and restores. Growing up I never had a fireplace. My parents, thinking God knows what, purchased one of those small, fake, ridiculous, plastic fireplaces and had it installed in my childhood home. It was a huge source of embarrassment. It had some sort of wheel that spun with a red gel over a light in the back and made a kind of humming sound. The wood was a plastic mold and looked nothing like real wood. As an added benefit it put out 'electric heat.' Not much, a trickle of heat at most, but heat. Thankfully they put it in a small, back room in the house so unless you really looked for it, it was mostly out of sight and, thankfully, out of mind.

When I was living in Columbia, MO, I had a black, pot-bellied, wood-burning stove in the middle of my apartment. I liked that stove. Ostensibly one could cook on it, but I never did. I just stole wood from my neighbors and fired it up now and then and drank scotch and smoked a pipe in front of it.

But until now, I've never lived in a house (not counting the myriad places I lived while working as an actor up and down the East Coast) that had a fireplace.

So we got the fire cranked up and we sat down for dinner (thin burgers, grilled, on toasted ciabatta bread with turkey bacon and aged cheddar with thin cut potato fries). After, we sat on our new couch and the puppies leapt up and while my wife read a new cook book I'd just bought for her, watched television until it was time to go to bed. Norman Rockwell would have felt right at home.

I have lived a, shall we say, less than domestic lifestyle for the past three decades, occasionally on the edge of glory, occasionally on the edge of ruin. The deeply satisfying and tranquil scene in front of our newly roaring fireplace was as foreign to me as closing up a bar at 4am on the South Side of Chicago would be to an Ammish minister. And having closed a lot of bars at 4am on the South Side of Chicago, I speak from experience.

This whole 'rocking chair on the front porch' lifestyle gets into the marrow of my bones. It makes me reflective and docile. It allows any regret and resentfulness to seep out of me. It soothes a lifetime of unwarranted rage of perceived slights and over reactions and brings new meaning to living well being the best revenge. It takes the bark out of me.

And I like that. I like not being angry at some silly little thing in the past. And I'm just terrible at letting things go. Always have been. Part of a whole catalogue of character flaws. My wife has, through example, taught me many things but perhaps the most important is this new mindset. And last night as we sat in front of our snapping, popping fireplace it seemed to all come together in my mind.

All my life I've had a fascination with the lights in other people's houses. Driving down the highway in the middle of the night seeing the warm and inviting glow from a small house in the middle of nowhere, wondering how someone could have purposefully chosen to live such a life filled with mundanity, quiet, unassuming and peaceful. And the other part of me, the part sick with fatigue of driving too fast and gripping the wheel too hard and listening to the radio too loud, burned with envy over their chosen life, their calm and happy life, their foresight in choosing that life, that countenance.

I wrote a play years ago which was rather successful in an upstate New York regional theater about this very subject. It was called 'Barking at Lighted Windows.' When I was a kid our next door neighbors had a wonderful, patient and very smart dog named 'John.' And John and I would sit for hours outside, after it got dark, just the two of us, hidden in the bushes, staring and fantasizing about a big, old, crumbling house a few streets away. I thought it was haunted. We called it, the neighborhood kids, for no apparent reason, 'The Hockaday House.' I never saw anyone come in or out of the house. Of course I was young, maybe ten or eleven, and couldn't stay out too long, but I would covertly observe the house, hiding in the tall weeds in the vacant lot next to it, and try and catch a glimpse of any sort of paranormal activity. And as the night came, the lights in the big house would pop on in several rooms, first the downstairs and then the upstairs and then all over the house. I could see shadows moving behind the thin curtains. And as each light came on in succession, John would bark. Just once, as though surprised.

And one night a lady stepped out on the porch with two white mugs in her hands. She looked directly at John and I and called out to the dark, "Would you care for some hot chocolate?" The jig was up. I slowly stood up and walked over to the porch, the operation aborted. She gave me the hot chocolate. We stood in silence for a while and then I said, "I thought this house was haunted. I never see anyone come in or out." She said, "Oh, no. Not haunted. But I'm on disability and my husband is very sick these days." We drank our hot chocolate in the darkness of that mid-summer Missouri night quietly and then I gave her back the empty mug and went home, John at my heels. And that night lay in bed while listening to the alcohol-fueled, noisy disfunction playing out in my own home downstairs, I thought of that big house and that lady that gave me hot chocolate. I never again hid outside and spied on that big house. And John never again barked at the lights as they came on, one by one.

See you tomorrow.

The Adjustment Bureau and The Lincoln Lawyer

2011-11-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

Last night I took a look at 'The Adjustment Bureau' with Matt Damon. Matt's getting a little chubby. He's getting that third-season-Star-Trek-James-T-Kirk look - you know, when Shatner can clearly be seen wearing a girdle under his Star Fleet blouse. Damon is getting that soft look, sort of pudgy. Not your leading man profile at all. His partner in crime, Ben Affleck, whom I saw a while back in 'The Town,' is aging much better, although granted, Damon is the better actor. I guess after staying in tip-top shape for the Bourne films has left him a little apathetic.

Anyway, this is a film that has a lot of promise for the first twenty minutes or so. Maybe longer. It's not bad at all for a bit, chugging along, laying out the exposition smartly, giving us great insights into Damon's politician character. He's about to lose a big Senate election and is alone in a bathroom when he accidently meets a whacky, clever and tender-hearted English chick. They meet cute (she has, inexplicably, crashed a wedding party and is hiding from security in a bathroom stall - a weak MaGuffin if I ever saw one), fall in love, and then he doesn't see her again for three years, although he tries to find her by googling her first name. I could have told him that wouldn't work.

Apparently, in the movie, there are 'case workers' who wear Sinatra-type hats that control the fate of the world. This is where the movie jumps the shark. Just let me say that again, it's so preposterous - apparently there are 'case workers' who wear Sinatra-type hats that control the fate of the world. Okay, that's better. So, some call them 'angels.' But they only have their powers, which include opening just about any door and stepping into another part of NYC (where the film takes place) WHILE they're wearing their hats. Without their Rat Pack hats, they're powerless. It is the way 'The Chairman' (God) keeps them from having too much power. Okeedokee, then.

I'm sorry, I have to write that one again, too. Without their Rat Pack hats, they're powerless.

The movie was written and directed and produced by George Nolfi, who evidently got the idea from a short story somewhere. Movies don't happen overnight. They take years. Especially big budget movies like this one. Nolfi must have given his life, for several years, to this idea about biblical 'case workers' who only have supernatural powers while wearing a gangsta' hat. Which, upon thinking about it, sort of takes on an 'Ed Wood' quality of absurdity and probably wouldn't be a bad premise in a Will Ferrell flick.

So the premise is this: the two are not supposed to meet. It's not part of 'the plan' (fate) outlined by 'the chairman' (God). In fact, if they DO meet and fall in love their respective lives will not unfold as 'The Chairman' wants, which is to say, Matt will not become President of the United States and the English chick will not become 'the most famous experimental modern dancer in the world.' I'm not making that last part up. 'The most famous experimental modern dancer in the world.' Which, to my way of thinking, is tantamount to being 'the most famous ceramic ashtray maker in the world.' Whatever. In any case, she won't be 'the most famous experimental modern dancer in the world' if she ends up with Damon. The best she'll do is 'teach modern dance to six year olds.' Which is meant to be a sad fate, but sort of made me do a double take at the screen. Anyway, the plan will be disrupted. And Damon won't be President because - wait for it - they COMPLETE one another. They won't need all this silly ambition.

Old Terrence Stamp, whom I've always liked, is the bad guy in this, the bad 'case worker.' He's out to give Damon a 'reset' (lobotomy) if they can't get these two love birds apart. The climax of the movie occurs during a long and physical chase through Manhattan. Now, Terrence Stamp, being approximately 85, can barely walk much less chase. But nonetheless it's a rousing chase, mostly because one of the good guy 'case workers' has lent Damon his Sinatra hat that allows the two lovers to enter doors in Harlem and end up at The Chrysler Building. Yep, that's what happened. He loaned his Sinatra hat to Damon for a little while.

Well, all's well that ends well, thank goodness. The Chairman decides to rewrite 'the plan' in the interest of love. And really, who can blame Him? It's clear the way these two playfully slap and punch one another throughout the movie that they're deeply in love.

YEARS of his life, this George Nolfi guy, dedicated to getting this film made.

Now don't get me wrong. Francis Coppola dedicated years of his life to get Apocalypse Now made. It's a life changing picture. A landmark film. A turning point in the way film was made. It was worth every second of those years Coppola waited and planned and begged and scraped and cajoled the studios into letting him make it. It's a masterpiece.

But this? The Adjustment Bureau? Didn't Nolfi know maybe he was off track when he wrote the line, 'Without our hats we're powerless!' Or when he wrote the line, 'Without you she becomes the most famous experimental modern dancer in the world!' Or maybe even the line uttered by one of the angels, 'This is above my paygrade. I'm gonna kick it upstairs to the home office.' Didn't he see the red lights going off?

The plot of this movie relies a lot on cell phones. It is my opinion that cell phones are the bane of the dramatist's existence. First of all, they quickly become silly in the world of film. Example, look at movies made only ten years ago. Everyone is carrying around cell phones that look like WWII walkie-talkies. But more importantly, the dramatist depends on lack of communication and inability to reach out for plot twists. And you can use the old chestnut of 'I've lost my signal' only so many times. No, it's best to not use or show cell phones in a screenplay. Otherwise two things happen, 1) the script is quickly an anachronism and B) the plot and action thrusts are severely handicapped. No, cell phones have really hampered good dramatic writing for the screen and stage, in my opinion.

My wife and I also watched 'The Lincoln Lawyer' the other night. I liked that one a lot more than 'The Adjustment Bureau,' mostly because it was basically a remake of 'Shaft.' Except the cool black guy was a cool white guy. Unfortunately, I can't write a lot about it because we watched it about a week ago and frankly I've forgotten everything about it except the fact that William H. Macy gets killed at one point. And I only remember that because my wife used to be really good friends with William H. Macy and she reminded me of that when he got killed. Otherwise, I can't seem to remember much about it. It didn't bore me, I know that. In fact, I think that was the tag line: "The Lincoln Lawyer - it won't bore you!"

As you can see, I'm in search of a good movie to watch. If you have any suggestions - recent movies preferrably - leave a message. If it's more than ten years old, I've probably seen it.

See you tomorrow.

'Inception' and '2012'

2011-11-03T08:07:00.000-07:00

I watched 'Inception' last night. I have no idea what it was about. But I watched it all, damnit. For one thing, I just don't think I'm as smart as I used to be. Twenty years ago I think I might have loved this movie. Maybe even have understood it. Something about 'going deep' and 'the third layer of a dream' and 'feeling the push' and needing an architect, a chemist and a, oh, I don't know what else. All I kept thinking was, "You know, Leo DiCaprio is starting to look a lot like Van Heflin as he gets older." And, oddly, his dead wife (spoiler alert) had an Eastern European accent for some reason. And Tom Berenger turned up. I thought he was dead. I think Andy Warhol might have directed this film, although I can't say for sure. And the vertically challenged girl who had a small role on a West Wing episode was in it, too. She seemed to speak louder than the others. And...well, that's about it. I think it ended well for everyone. Not sure about that, either. Michael Caine was in it for about 12 seconds. And then not. That kid from '3rd Rock from the Sun' was in it being all serious and shit. I had tried to watch this film once about three months ago but after thirty minutes switched to 'Murder, She Wrote.' I think it takes place at some point in the future but I clearly saw an AMC Gremlin at one point. Oh, and that creepy kid from 'Witness' with Harrison Ford was in it, all grown up. He apparently gets drunk a lot with DiCaprio according to TMZ, so that explains that. And that Japanese fella from one of those two Japanese movies that Clint Eastwood directed, he's in it, too. He grimaces a great deal in it. I think he's a bad guy that becomes a good guy or something. Anyway, I refused to turn it off once I'd started it. My wife walked through the room at one point and said, "What's this?" I just shook my head and wept.

In any event, the movie cost about a hundred and eighty billion dollars to make. Which only made me weep harder.

The special effects were kind of cool, although I never knew why they were happening except to know they were all happening in someone's dream. Which sort of takes the wind out of special effects for me. It's not really happening so who cares? And everytime something really big happened with the special effects the movie cuts to someone waking up from the dream all startled and shit, looking off and squinting, like they do when they go to a commercial break on 'Young and the Restless.' Most of the movie is in slow-motion so when they cut to regular speed, it's like, "Oh. The dream must be over." These guys all have slow-motion dreams, I guess.

DiCaprio is a good actor. I don't think we even know how good Leo is yet. He's been extraordinary in the past. Watch some of his unheralded work in 'Blood Diamond.' One critic called it a "Brando inspired performance..." I can see why. It's a hugely intelligent performance complete with a Brando-esque South African, dead-on accent.

One thing I noticed about DiCaprio is, even though he's aging and is now, oh, I don't know, probably mid-thirties, he still walks like a kid. Odd thing to notice, I know. But he does. He sort of throws his legs out before him when he walks, willy-nilly. As though he's still an adolescent and doesn't realize how tall he's gotten.

Actually, in point of fact,'Inception' cost approximately 200 million dollars to make. That's right, 200 million dollars. And I just kept thinking (during the slow-motion segments, which was about two thirds of the movie) that 200 really good films could have been made instead. Of course, that's not how the universe works, but I couldn't help thinking it.

I sort of liked Danny Glover in the opening segments as the President of the United...wait. Oh, yeah, that was '2012.' Another movie I desperately tried to get through recently. It was also made for about 200 million dollars. True. So, that's 400 really good movies the planet could have had instead of these two sleepers. Or, if you're not a movie buff and don't care about that sort of thing, 400 million dollars that could have fed starving children in Alabama (I'm sure there are some down there).

I always seem to catch '2012' on one of the cable channels (we now have U-Verse and about 1,000 channels) and never see the beginning of it. I always seem to tune in right about the time The Vatican gets wiped out. Coincidence? I think not.

This is another movie that kind of looks promising for a bit and then all of a sudden we're in the middle of The Poseidon Adventure (Shelly Winters: "Oh, Manny, in the water I feel...THIN!"). The difference between '2012' and 'Inception' is the acting. 'Inception' has some good acting, although you have no idea what they're up to, and '2012' is just appalling. At one point in '2012,' thousands of Chinese workers are going to be left behind to be destroyed by a giant tidal wave while the principals in the movie make their getaway in a huge Noah's Ark kind of thing. Oliver Platt, probably the best thing in it, says to the young, black scientist and his simpering lady love, 'If you want to give your tickets to a couple of Chinese workers, be my guest!' Moments before the two young lovers are practically apoplectic at the idea of leaving all the Chinese workers behind to die. But when Oliver Platt says this, they sort of look at each other and smile and raise their eyebrows in a way that says, "Well, he's got a point, the old rascal."

Four hundred good, small, smart, insightful, new, thought-provoking films that could have been made instead of these two shameful behemoths.

Whatever. But I'm telling you, DiCaprio is starting to look A LOT like Van Heflin.

See you tomorrow.

The Tall Weeds

2011-11-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in the midst of my bi-monthly doctor's appointment to regulate, observe and hopefully manipulate my Type II Diabetes, I was told I now have Type I Diabetes - which is the older, crueler step-sister of Type II Diabetes.

I also had a fleeting glimpse into my own mortality which, all things being equal, I could have done without.

I have a buddy, in years past very close, but like all buddies eventually, now far away and emotionally remote, who used to say about stuff like this, 'you're in the tall weeds now.' He's right. I felt the weeds were very tall for a while yesterday. So tall, in fact, I couldn't quite get my mind around them for a bit.

Type I Diabetes means I have to take four shots a day for the rest of my life, all in my stomach. I was given a little pamphlet when I left, with stick figures and cartoon characters representing sugar and insulin and various cells and abstract hyperglycemia drawings. The figures drawn to represent the cells hungry for sugar are particularly cute. One has the hard-working insulin, smiling of course, feeding the grateful cell as it shepherds the sugar through the bloodstream. It's comforting to know there's a whole Electric Company segment taking place inside me on a daily basis, teaching the kids the alphabet and overseeing my blood sugar.

A couple weeks ago I had a battery of blood tests run over at Cedar's Sinai, a hoity-toity hospital facility here in Southern California. Although I can't say I was particularly surprised, one of the conclusions apparently indicated my pancreas was no longer producing any insulin. "It happens," my doctor said. "Sometimes when you're older (that would be me, 'older') the pancreas gives one last push, one last surge and then gives out." So that's what mine did. Like Anthony Quinn in Requiem for a Heavyweight, the old pancreas gave it one last shot, one last fight, with everything on the table, and then gave out.

"How do you feel about insulin?" she asked. "Well, I voted for it in '96 but felt it didn't live up to it's campaign promises," I joked appropos of nothing, just trying to be Reagan-esque about it all ("Honey, I forgot to duck.") She smiled and said I would have to go to 'the pens.' The pens are the syringes. They're called 'insulin pens.'

While Angie and I waited for what seemed like hours and in fact WAS hours, I kept picturing the 'insulin pens' in my head. After a while they took on a diabolical shape in my mind. Finally, a very petite and earnest young lady called us in and showed us how to inject myself. I almost wrote 'inject ourself.' And that's because during the wait I think Angie was more upset about the whole ordeal than I was. She kept saying 'this is a GOOD thing, this will mean you won't feel so bad all the time.' But I'm observant if nothing else, and I could hear the faint strains of the whistle as we both quietly padded by the graveyard. So the earnest and petite RN showed me how to stick needles in my stomach. How to carefully acquire three or five cc's of insulin and then, at a 45 degree angle, push a needle into my stomach. This is where the fleeting glimpse-of-mortality-thing took place.

Fitting that this entire episode happened on Halloween, because it certainly had a grotesque quality to it.

I remember some years ago in Chicago, a friend had a bunch of us over for a Super Bowl party. The beer and sodas were in the fridge, of course, and as I entered his house, he said as much. "Just help yourself," he said, "beer and whatever else you want is in the fridge." So I wandered into the kitchen and grabbed myself a Dr. Pepper. And I noticed as I grabbed my soda that there on the inside shelf of the fridge, next to the ketchup and soy sauce were vials of clear liquid, small ones, with little rubber tops, scientific-looking, slightly dangerous - insulin bottles. They seemed to say something ominous, just sitting there out of place among the Dijon mustard and half-empty jar of dill pickles. They seemed to carry an importance not altogether welcome in that atmosphere of football and corn chips. They seemed to say, "Even today, right in the middle of all this laughing and joviality and witty friendship, I'm here to remind you that you're broken."

I learned long ago that self-pity has a shelf life. That way there be dragons. So I allowed myself a half hour or so, as we were driving home from the doctor, and then put it aside. One image the doctor left me with was particularly on my mind. She said, "If you're out at a restaurant, just excuse yourself right before you eat, preferably once the food is actually in front of you, and slip off to the bathroom and give yourself an injection." For some reason this image made this whole Type I Diabetes thing real for me. The tall weeds were suddenly very tangible.

So last night, once the last trickle of trick or treaters had left, Angie prepared my shot. I injected it myself. It didn't hurt, really. I took a handful of my stomach, pinched it between my fingers and slid the needle into it. Fortunately I've become a huge, fat pig the last few years and it wasn't difficult to grab hold. It was the fourth shot of the day, ostensibly, the last one, with 10 cc's of insulin, 'to be given at bedtime.' I did it standing alone in the kitchen, quickly, not thinking about it, just following the directions of the earnest, petite girl nurse. And I thought to myself, I have to do this four times a day for the rest of my life. Which meant absolutely nothing to me. Kind of like a prisoner's first day in jail, "Well, I'm here for the rest of my life." What does that even mean?

Angie tells me of a lady she knew back in Missouri when she was younger - someone named Sharon - who, after a troubled time with Diabetes, lost her legs and finally died. She's mentioned this a few times, actually. Well, I have my legs, they're just fine, thank you very much, and they don't seem particularly concerned with my Diabetes. They don't act up in any why whatsoever and they most certainly don't seem to be in any danger of being 'cut off.' I listen to this story, depressing as it is, and I think, 'well, maybe my diabetes is a less violent strain, a type not quite so malignant.' Of course, that's just hooey, it's all the same strain.

It's going to take a while to incorporate this whole sticking-myself-with-a-needle thing into my lifestyle. A whole different set of rules are on the table now. And I despise rules, always have. So it'll take some concessions on my part, obviously. And I'm fond of my legs. I often use them for walking. So I'll figure it out. I'll make it work. And as I reached into the fridge to grab our cannister of Trader Joe's coffee this morning I noticed the two vials of clear liquid, sitting there, unassuming, next to the hot sauce and the mayonaise, silently reminding me that something just got rotten in Denmark. And the weeds in my own kitchen were too high to see over.

See you tomorrow.

Halloween, Green Screens and Coyotes

2011-10-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

Halloween is tomorrow night as everyone knows. We don't do a lot when it comes to Halloween, although Angie does have a giant, plastic pumpkin out front indicating we at least acknowledge its existence. We still have yet to buy candy for the gaggle of trick-or-treaters we'll undoubtedly get. I suggested to my wife a few days ago that we should get something out of the ordinary for Halloween - to give to the kids, I mean. And, no, I didn't mean anything clever or anti-candy. I meant COOLER candy AND a little something extra, a little something off the beaten path. Something they wouldn't normally get. The grocery stores are full of standard candy; bags and bags of your normal, everyday candy - Snickers, Hershey's, M & M's, what have you.

Last year I was completely caught off guard by the singleness of purpose our trick-or-treaters exhibited. I quickly became intimidated by the voraciousness of their approach, their hungry eyes and baleful, pleading voices. Instead of jumping into the psuedo-holiday spirit, I felt like I was being fleeced. My feelings were justified when, toward the end of the evening, we had a few adults dressed up in simple masks come to the door demanding candy. They looked to be in their mid-thirties. But, hey, times are tough so I let it go.

But this year I want to get something out of the ordinary for the little buggers. Yes, some candy of some sort, but something useful as well. I'm thinking reading glasses. There is a 99 cent store not far from us that has reading glasses for a buck. All different types, of course; 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, etc. We usually get around a hundred kids, if last year was any yardstick. I'm thinking maybe we go ahead and get some candy to throw in there, some little bags of tiny Butterfingers, perhaps, but we also throw in a pair of reading glasses. Angie hasn't signed off on it yet, but I think she's considering it. Anything to shut me up for a while.

Last night I wrested control of the TV clicker for a bit. While my wife made an amazing dinner of Mexican stuff, I watched Battle: Los Angeles. And I loved it. I suspected I'd turn it off after a bit, disappointed with Hollywood as usual, but I didn't. Decent script, good work from a handful of unknowns, and wisely, a director who steered clear of almost any sort of dialogue and just put a bunch of explosions on screen. It was sort of a Black Hawk Down meets Aliens. Plus I like the fact that one of the newspaper headlines in the movie said, "BURBANK UNDER ATTACK!" Which, with the exception of the headline, "GEORGE W. BUSH EMBRACES HINDUISM!" may be the most incongruous headline I've ever seen.

I also got a call to come audition for a new film yesterday. Well, not a call exactly, but an invitation. But here's the thing - it's a 'green call.' I'd never heard of this before, but Angie had. It's where I get the script and set up and shoot the scene myself and then send it to NYC or wherever and the producers watch it. It's a terrible idea and one, apparently, we're seeing more and more of. Eventually, all actors will be required to have a camera, studio, mixing board and green screen in their own homes. Hell, I can barely afford a computer. I decided not to play ball. I won't be auditioning for this film.

All three of my scripts currently on the table have entered the land that time forgot. That is to say, they are all on some producer/director laptop somewhere waiting to be read, reread, or optioned. This could take anywhere from 12 to 30 years. In the meantime, I'm making Raman Noodles and the California Lottery MegaMillions a lot of money.

When it comes to getting a film made, Hollywood works in dog years.

So, in an odd reaction, I spend a great deal of time these days being angry about the response to Occupy Wall Street movements around the globe. I gnash my teeth a lot. I subject Angie to long, passionate diatribes about the end of justice as we know it. I fantasize about being an all-powerful Deity with the ability to smash Citibank with one clenched, metaphorical, cloud-like fist. And I post as many pro-OWS stories as I can find on Facebook. Sad, I know. But I'm waiting to hear about these damn scripts and I can't help myself.

Speaking of dog years, I also find myself taking extraordinary enjoyment from our two dogs, Franny and Zooey. Angie and I live on the cusp of Griffith Park and the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. We are literally yards away from a myriad of trails and hiking jaunts leading up into the mountains. Yesterday, while taking a long walking excursion with Franny and Zooey, we happened across a rogue coyote, just sashaying around by himself in the middle of the day. Our dogs are small and perfect mid-morning snacks for a coyote. Thankfully, I saw him from a distance and called F and Z back into our protective circle before he spotted them. And then spent the rest of the day, being bored and powerless about the script development, fantasizing about an epic battle between myself and this ghoulish coyote, a hand-to-hand, or hand-to-paw, titanic struggle as I fended him off, protecting my dogs from an unstoppable, giant canine. In my fantasy I win, but come away bloodied and wounded but with a lifelong gratitude from our puppies. And every so often, during this fantasy, I check my cell phone to see if any of the three producers might have called.

My wife is not entirely comfortable with me when I'm between gigs. I think she finds me to be a little unreasonable. For one thing I don't live in the real world. She notices that I can't seem to stay interested in anything for too long, about 9 seconds or so. And I routinely promise her ridiculous things, like a brand new car or a trip to London. And then I check my cell again. She much prefers it, I think, when my mind is occupied.

Now, this reading glasses idea. I really am convinced it could work.

See you tomorrow.

Becoming Paul

2011-10-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago I was sent in for a one-liner on a major network television show. Just one line. The character even had a name: Paul. I was sent to an office in Hollywood (when I say 'sent' I mean my management set up the reading and I sashayed over for it) and upon arriving sat with ten or fifteen other men of a certain age and waited to go in and be captured on camera saying the one line. So I did. I waited and after six or seven of the other guys my name was called and in I went. Even carried my script with the one line meticulously yellowed out, so I could see it better. Highlighted so I wouldn't confuse it with another line on the page.

But before I could go in and interpret the line, infuse it with all the subtext and facial expression it so richly deserved, I had to sit and wait my turn. Apparently the line could be read by a vast ethnic quiltwork of characters. The producers were opening it up to a whole spectrum of race and age types. As I walked up the short flight of stairs to the waiting room, I noticed black, white, Asian, Latino and a guy in a wheelchair. Which made sense, because the line certainly didn't indicate one had to run or jump while saying it.

Actually, it was two lines. The first part was very short. "Um, excuse me." That was the first part. The second part demanded a little more exploration, sense-memory work, substition, varying shades of intensity. The second part was, "Is anyone else here concerned with his lack of experience?" This part of the line was obviously the chunk that would separate the men from the boys. It was the part of the line where the rubber met the road. This was the part where my thirty-some years of training would pay off. I was undaunted. I can see where a lesser talent might be intimidated by this part of the line. I was not.

Others in the room, probably not as far along as I was as an actor and not yet comfortable with their craft, wrestled with it right up to the last moment, their lips moving silently, saying the tricky line over and over, getting it JUST right in their heads, building a backstory for the character, Paul, who utters the line, finding a nuance perhaps unthought of by anyone else in the room, putting themselves THERE, in the moment, making the line their own, OWNING the line, really. One man next to me in a chair, said the line over and over to himself the better part of fifteen minutes. Occasionally he would glance back at the script he held tightly in his hands, just to make sure he didn't stray with the tense, or God forbid, add anything to the tightly constructed piece of writing. When his name was called, just before mine, he sprang to his feet and practically jogged into the room. He was ready. The line was so firmly embedded within him, it was as though he'd written it his own damn self. He was like a sleek, powerful racehorse pushing at the gate, eager to run, run like the wind, and say that line with the conviction of a Brando or a Streep or an Olivier. The line didn't stand a chance in his mouth. I've seen this type of confidence in a waiting room before. In New York once, I auditioned for the part of Iago in Othello. It came down to three of us...it was for a major Shakespearean producer. I didn't get it. But the guy that did had the same confidence as this guy. He WAS Iago. He attacked Iago like a Tazmanian Devil. Iago was a mere hurdle to be jumped for this guy. He wanted it more than me, I guess. He became Iago. But I was younger then, and not quite so prepared for the awesome talent one has to contend with in this business. And the same was true for this guy. Paul was his. In his mind, he already WAS Paul. And that open-ended second part of the line, the part open to a dozen or more interpretations, the complicated part of the line, "Is anyone else concerned with his lack of experience?" was meat in his hands. Just bloody, uncooked, seasoned MEAT ready to be cooked in his hands, his brain, his creative soul.

There was another guy there, too. He was a little smug for my taste. He wasn't reading for Paul. No, he was reading for "The Guy at the Basketball Game." Huh? Why was he there with us 'Pauls?' And frankly, after a bit, he explained to no one in particular that he didn't particularly care to be lumped with the assorted 'Pauls' in the room. Clearly, he felt he was a little higher on the food chain as 'The Guy at the Basketball Game' than we 'Pauls' were. We all glanced about, a little wary now, we Pauls, not quite certain where this guy stood in the hierarchy of things. Not Paul? And not WANTING to be Paul? What was going on?

After a bit the casting associate came out. I'll call her Susan, although that was, in fact, her actual name. Susan was about 12 or so. So 'Susan' comes out and tells us a little about 'Paul.' Turns out, according to the breakdown Susan got, 'Paul' is maybe a college professor, maybe a tweed jacket kind of guy, an intellectual of sorts. I glanced around the room. A few crestfallen faces. I could see their pain. They owned tweed jackets, they had outfits that indicated an 'intellectual' Paul, but instead they had worn 'business' jackets. I could see the five stages of grief wash over them. Clearly some agents were getting some speed-dialed calls immediately after the reading. "Bob Jones, please. What? No I will NOT hold! I just walked out of this audition for 'Paul!' Yeah, over here in Hollywood. I'm wearing a suit. A plain, gray suit. Neutral tie. And guess what the casting lady just told me? Okay, I'll tell you. She said Paul was 'A College Professor!' Maybe. She said, "MAYBE Paul is a college professor." And I'm sitting there, I'M SITTING THERE, in a business suit! You tell Bob, I HAVE a tweed jacket. I HAVE a bow tie. I COULD HAVE combed my hair to indicate a COLLEGE PROFESSOR. I have fake glasses. Horn-rimmed! HORN-RIMMED, COLLEGE PROFESSOR GLASSES! But tell Bob it's too late now. Too late, I say! I read the goddamned line looking like a BUSINESS GUY! What? No, I can't hold. Just give him the message, okay?"

Anyway.

The guy waiting to read for 'The Guy at the Basketball Game' soon revealed why he was disdainful of the Pauls in the room. As Susan finished her quick speal about who Paul 'maybe' was, he quickly said to her, before she could exit into the room with the camera, "Uh, excuse me. I'm not here for 'Paul.' (I swear he smirked) My agent said she called you and you said I could come in and read early for 'The Guy at the Basketball Game' because I have another audition later. 'The Guy at the Basketball Game' has three lines so I'll probably be taking a little more of your time than the 'Pauls'"

Ah! There it was. He was there to say THREE lines. Not just the measly one and half that we Pauls had. You could smell the superiority on him. His arrogance permeated the room of Pauls. Some of us, the less confident Pauls, visibly shrank in their seats. They were in the presence of someone who had THREE lines. I, of course, was unfazed. Even though, and I'm only saying this because it's true, I WAS a little intimidated by 'The Guy at the Basketball Game.' He, in some earlier secret meeting of the casting associate and the casting director and the producers, had been chosen as someone who deserved THREE lines instead of the ONE AND A HALF that Paul had. And he had just spit out all that information IN FRONT OF US right into the room there. The information laid there on the threadbare carpet like a sizzling piece of star power. I can see how a less confident actor would blanche at such an admission. And even though I suddenly felt a little awe-struck at the additional two lines The Guy at the Basketball Game had, I tried to stay focused. I fantasized, just a little, about what his lines might be, The Guy at the Basketball Game. But I MADE myself snap out of it.

Eventually, Susan called my name. She came out, glanced at the sign-in sheet and said, deceptively casually, 'Okay, uh, Clifford?'

I got up and followed her, not too closely, not too eagerly, just a simple, medium distance follow. My face revealed nothing. I specifically didn't glance in the direction of The Guy at the Basketball Game. Now was not the time to suffer a crises of confidence. Just stay focused, go in, be peppy but not inferior, strong but not overbearing, eye on the prize, eye of the tiger. Plus I had an ace up my sleeve. I had on my 'college professor' glasses. Entirely by coincidence! Not thought out, just something I decided to wear at the last second! Oh, ho, a delicious moment. I had beaten the odds, fate had intervened. I, through no deliberate action of my own, had DRESSED SORT OF LIKE A COLLEGE PROFESSOR!

When Susan had mentioned that 'maybe' Paul was a college professor I don't think I'm imagining anything when I say there were SEVERAL clandestine glances my way. "He's wearing something that might be construed as a 'college professor,' the faces said. What information did HIS agent get that mine didn't? Is he pre-cast? Is he the 'Paul' they wanted all along?' No, I don't think I'm making any of that up. I could see it in their eyes. Even The Guy at the Basketball Game looked at me with a little new-found respect.

I don't usually boast in this blog but this one time, I'm gonna let it out...I ATTACKED Paul. I SLAM DUNKED Paul. I would put my Paul up there with any fucking Paul ever done, anywhere, anytime. I mean that, too. I'm not just blowing smoke. I fucking NAILED Paul!

When I finished (Susan: "I don't think I need to see any more." I swear by all that's holy, that's what she said: "I DON'T THINK I NEED TO SEE ANY MORE!" Huh? Huh?) I strolled from the room, not too smugly, but with a nearly imperceptable smile on my face, strolled past the 'business dressed' Pauls, past The Guy at the Basketball Game, past the smell of fear and defeat infesting the room, past all the 'wannabe' Pauls and swaggered, not overtly, just a HINT of a swagger, and down the short set of stairs and into the welcoming, cleansing, heat of Southern California. It was done. As Luke, the physician, said when our Lord Jesus Christ took his last breath, "It is finished." And it was. It was. Paul was mine.

There are days I really hate this fuckin' town.

See you tomorrow.

Occupy Wall Street and the Futile Insurrection.

2011-10-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

There is a quote I rather like, and I'm paraphrasing, "Never doubt that a small, passionate band of men can change the world. Do you know why? Because it is the only thing that ever has."

I was thinking of that last night as I was surfing the web and getting all the reports of the arrests and tear gas and alleged police brutality in Oakland and San Francisco and Phoenix in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Almost at the same time I watched a story on NBC news about the high price in overtime being paid to police officers in the major cities because of the uprisings. And, the police union declared they would sue any individual who injured an officer while being attacked by the police in these gatherings. Which, even in it's ironic grotesquery, amused me. Apparently the overtime costs in NYC alone are closing in on 3 million dollars.

So as my wife and I watched a bit of television last night at the end of a long day, my mind kept wandering. I kept trying to put myself in the shoes of the police, the city administrators and mayors, the local governments opposed to the demonstrations. And asking myself, "Why is this particular movement, unorganized and shoddy at times as it is, garnering so much malevolent resistance?" And I began thinking on the phrase used to describe the NAZI's following the holocaust: the banality of evil. The cops are not to blame in the clearer, bigger picture, really. They are, as tedious and worthless as it sounds, simply following orders. Of course, as history has proven time and again, it is a defense that doesn't hold water. Nonetheless, it works at the time. Until later, in 20/20 hindsight, it is condemned. However, always too late for the average Joe who's had his head bashed in.

So those of us, the fabled 99%, well, what are we to do in the meantime? And with whom, exactly, should we be angry?

Often times the criminal spends his jail time being angry with the cop that arrested him rather than the judge who condemned him. It's a pedestrian anger, an ill-conceived anger, a sophomoric response. And yet, sometimes it is the only tangible anger possible.

Declaring war on cops is not the answer, as satisfying as that approach might be. Occupy Wall Street must engage the larger issue. The people and institutions the cops represent. The cops are only the drones. The queen ant is congress. Bought and paid for, Democrats and Republicans alike. There is but one weapon left, and frankly, it was always the only weapon, really: one vote, one man. Although the OWS movement is quite noble on a grass-roots level, it is ultimately inconsequential. It is a no-win situation, good for stirring the water but in the final analysis, moot. There must be an electoral revolution. One man, one vote. Oust Ceaser. Vote Louis 14 out of the palace. Overturn Tojo's Diet. Strip the fascists of their power legally. And demand the one thing, in the end, that will resolve the current horror: regulate Wall Street and end political lobbying once and for all. Clean house.

When the Nixon tapes were released in the late eighties, there was one segment, largely overlooked, that scared the bejesus out of me. The conversation in late July, 1974, between Nixon and Halderman in the Oval Office when Tricky Dick asked what steps needed to be taken to MILITARILY hold onto power. Awesome. Nixon wanted to know, as Commander-in-Chief, if the United States military would follow his direct order to seize absolute power in Washington, DC, and disband both congress and the courts as an emergency measure. Simply astounding. The idea was discarded in the end of course, but the thing is, NIXON CONSIDERED IT.

Of course, perhaps even scarier than the idea of a bought and paid for congress, is the idea of a bought and paid for fifth column, a national press taking orders from the almighty dollar, an entire system of free press being manipulated by a nation in the throes of a plutocracy. This is called propoganda. And it is the single most terrifying result a democracy can face. Once the press is corrupted, a nation is stricken with an incurable disease because information, not money, is the final step to absolute power. Once information is taken away, all resistance is, indeed, futile.

Like the peasants before the Bastille, the Occupy Wall Street movement doesn't stand a tinker's damn of a chance. But also, like the peasants before the Bastille, the inhabitants of the structure are eyeing them ever-so-warily. Politicians across the country, from mayors to representatives to senators to the president himself are, late at night, when no one is watching, when the rubber meets the road, actually pondering the unthinkable: money or votes. Because money has always insured votes. Always. And now, unspeakably, that particular philosophy is under scrutiny. What if...what if money, in this case, does NOT insure votes? Which way do I step off the fence? What if, heaven help me, I have to make a choice? What if one man, one vote actually WORKS this time?

No, cops are not the target. Although I personally believe in Machiavelli's concept of power corrupting, they should not be the target. The target should be November, 2012. The weapon that must be picked up, the rusted sword lying on the ground, unused for decades, maybe more, is the Constitution of the United States. It hovers over the bought politicians and the unsavory, greed-stricken, cowering bankers, traders and regulators and lobbyists like a hot sun threatening to burn Orpheus to the ground. One man, one vote. November, 2012. Therein lies salvation. Not in the day to day, senseless struggle over inches at the political Maginot and Seigfried lines. November, 2012.

There is a phrase often used in boxing gyms around the world: kill the body and the head will die. It is not meant to be metaphorical. But I can't think of anything quite as apt at the moment.

November, 2012.

See you tomorrow.

Cars and Screenplays.

2011-10-27T06:52:00.000-07:00

For a few months there I put aside a screenplay I had been working rather dilligently on because the producer was in Europe doing an entirely different project. Also, I coudn't make the damn thing work in my head and just needed some time away from it. And aside from a few small things, nothing much was happening on the acting front. So in an effort to remain constructive I did a couple of things: I wrote a pilot for a new series I'm attempting to get off the ground and pulled out my old chestnut, Praying Small, and turned it into a screenplay. The pilot was a labor of love because it is about boxing. Boxing in the 1960s, to be precise. And Praying Small was less difficult than one might imagine because it is so episodic to begin with.

So imagine my surprise when I threw it out there on the end of my pole and suddenly I'm struggling to land a really, really big leaping, turning, twisting, giant, open-water swordfish. Which is exactly what happened almost immediately. Naturally, it wouldn't be prudent to go into details yet except to say it's in the hands now of a highly visible producer and a very recognizable star type at this very moment.

My wife and I always joke about something she said right after I moved to Los Angeles. We were yapping back and forth about some acting gig that was on the horizon. It didn't pan out. But in the middle of the conversation (and I'm taking this completely out of context) she said, "Listen, honey, the only way you're gonna make a dime in this town is as a writer." She didn't mean it the way it came out, but that's what was said. These days, of course, that has proven not to be true, thank God, but I always drag it out and remind her. We laugh about it, of course, because it wasn't meant the way it sounded. I bring this up because we laughed about it again last night after all the Praying Small stuff was going down in back and forth phone calls and texts and emails.

I've always known Praying Small could be a very powerful piece in the right hands and productions in Chicago, New York and here in Los Angeles over the years have proven me right. I also knew it wouldn't be a terribly long leap to turn the damn thing into a screenplay. So while I was procrastinating and avoiding the other project, the one I couldn't make work in my head, I sat down and started writing non-stop on Praying Small for a few weeks. I sent it to a producer/director here in Hollywood last week. This week I get a message saying, "I love this script and I want to produce and direct it." I love it when a plan comes together.

So last night I get a call about the script going to yet another producer (to add to the budget) and the afore mentioned star. I said, 'Let me clean it up a bit and make sure the formatting is just so.' Which is what I did last night for several hours. And upon re-working it I realized what a tight script it is for the big screen. I don't know why I didn't do this years ago.

Funny story: one of the actors who had performed in one of the stage productions of the piece wrote me some time back (I was still in Chicago, in fact) and asked my permission to rework the script into a screenplay. Since at the time I had no inclination to do it myself I said, 'sure.' About a year later, after I'd come to LA, I asked him if he'd ever done that. He said yes. So I asked if I might see it. He said yes and showed me what he had written. It was EXACTLY, word for word, scene for scene, the same script except at the end the main character is seen walking through a park playing frisbee with a dog with the words 'Fade to' written before it. I said, 'Well, I see you've really opened it up.'

In any event, I'll know more next week how it all stands.

Off this morning to read (again) for a guest starring thing on 'Parks and Recreation.' It's a funny show, I've always thought so, and I wouldn't mind doing one. Not as funny as 30 Rock, but funny. So...we'll see. It's an AFTRA contract and like just about any actor in LA will tell you, AFTRA is, well, um, a bit ghetto when it comes to unions.

I started watching a film last night called 'Stone' with DeNiro and Edward Norton. Norton is always interesting to watch even when he's not ('The Illusionist' comes to mind) but I was reminded all over again how very, very good Robert DeNiro is in the right role. He's a marvel of subtlety in this. I have always contended that one of the great American screen performances is his Michael in 'The Deerhunter.' It is one of those performances that, no matter how many times I see it, I see something new in DeNiro's work in it. I didn't finish 'Stone' because, well, I got sleepy. But what I saw was good. Very good.

And finally, we're looking at new cars. Well, not NEW cars but new to us. And yesterday, just for shits and giggles, we were talking to a dealer about an incredible 750i BMW. We didn't test drive it because I suspect if we had all my defenses would have crumbled and I would have written the check on the spot, even though it would have bounced. Angie, although impressed with it, too, simply said, 'It's too much car for us.' And when she said that I had another of those terrible moments of clarity making me realize I'm fifty years old. She's right. It is too much car for us. After talking to the dealer awhile about what kind of deal we could make we wisely moved on to looking at a Volvo. The Volvo is not too much car for us. But as we looked at the trim, spare, utilitarian Volvo, my eyes kept wandering over to the big, black, smokin' BMW, my youth zipping around in my head, my mind's eye imagining myself behind that dark wooden wheel, my wife beside me, maybe taking a daytrip up to Santa Barbara or heading over to Vegas at the spur of the moment, no cares, no responsibities, finding myself on a deserted stretch of highway and crankin' that big, black bastard up to about 105. The Volvo was nice, though.

See you tomorrow.

Filming on Location in the Wilds of Michigan

2011-10-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

On Location Filming 'Confirmation' in the U.P. of Michigan.

During my week in Michigan filming 'Confirmation' I was reminded of a Dustin Hoffman story, possibly apocryphal, about him on a film set early in his career. Hoffman knew the value of absolute naturalism even though his background and training was on the stage (he has gone back to it over the years - Willy Loman, Shylock) and would engage the crew, whoever happened to be closest, in fact, in everyday, normal, unaffected conversation and when the time came for 'action' would simply turn into the scene and continue talking. Of course, his focus was still there, his intensity regarding the scene and the arc and intention. But his actual physical delivery was completely natural. To the uninitiated this may sound easy. It is not always so. Especially as the 12 and 14 hour days begin to mount up. At that point one of two things begins to happen: either the focus starts to dissipate or it becomes too much, too sharp as the actor tries to adjust the 'drama' him or herself. It becomes necessary to remind oneself that adjusting the 'drama' is not the actors job when it comes to film, it is the director and the editor's job. Film is not shot in sequence, of course, so it's necessary to always know exactly where one is in the story; what has just happened and what has yet to happen, in other words. And that, of course, is just the tip of the iceburg. Other things come into play on top of that such as that ol' devil-sent, continuity. Matching the shots. "Let's do it again, Clif, you used your left hand to give him the cup of coffee in the medium shot. You used your right hand in the over the shoulder shot. So we need to pick one." Oh. Damn. Okay. So in addition to all of the 'naturalism' concessions, one has to do it exactly the same way in all of the subsequent shots. None of this is new. Just sayin'.

As the long days wear on, it's easy to let one thing become more important than the other. It's easy to become so caught up in the 'matching shots' that one forgets the reason for the film in the first place: to tell a dramatic and watchable and identifiable story. And then, in an effort to get back on track, one can start forgetting about the technical aspects all over again. It's a fine line.

Film acting is boring. There, I said it. It is. It's boring. Mostly it involves waiting for the camera to turn around, waiting for the lighting to be reset, waiting for the next location, waiting for the slight sight line adjustment, waiting for airplane to go over so the shot can continue, waiting for the sound guy to readjust for various movement and blocking, waiting, waiting, waiting. And then when all of the soul-sapping waiting is done, be able to focus and nail it clearly take after take after take. Film acting is uncomfortably close to solving a long and tedious math problem sometimes.

And then comes the scene or the moment when the camera comes in close, the crux of the film, the big dramatic potshot and often times, because everyone is a pro, the director doesn't have the time or the inclination to let the dust settle for a second and pull the actor aside and remind him, "Okay, this is the three seconds we've been working toward for the past three days." The actor must know this and adjust accordingly. Just the way it is.

It was a good 'shoot' as they say. An old, very old, Jesuit camp rented for the occasion in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, beautiful countryside, crisp, cold weather. My final 'martini shot' for the last day was in the pouring rain, doing a shot over and over until it was just right; saying my line and then ambling over to a 1959 Ford pick-up, turning for one last, wry smile and driving off into the storm. It was about 35 degrees and I had only a t-shirt on. It was an important shot so we did it until we were happy with it, the night wearing on, the temps dropping, the rain coming down harder and harder, the overtime mounting up. And finally, after what seemed an eternity, long about ten-thirty, we were satisfied. I asked to do it a couple more times for good measure (accompanied by a couple groans from the crew) and we wrapped for the day.

Most of my scenes were opposite a tremendous, young, sixteen year old actor named Thomas Phelan (remember the name - he's gonna be a major star, I predict - a young DiCaprio in the making). The film itself is G picture - sort of like "Shiloh" without the dog. The director, Michael Breault, kept the thing moving briskly and quickly. He instantly excised any unecessary emotion or 'profundity' from our work, thank goodness. Michael also kept a great deal of levity and casualness on the set. I appreciated that. He was also a very generous director, always asking me how I thought the scene should be played, considering it, and sometimes even shooting the scene two ways, mine and his, and then promising to figure things out in the edit. He was under no obligation to do that, of course, but Michael clearly loves actors (his is a theatre background, too, working for a time as the AD at Circle in the Square in NYC) and trusts them. At least he trusted young Thomas and myself. The day after I wrapped, he had some eighty 13 and 14 year old extras on the set. I wished him luck with that, he rolled his eyes, and I jumped on a plane.

Michael also didn't believe in letting actors watch the 'dailies' on the set. I didn't see a second of the work on film so frankly I have no idea whatsoever how it looks. But I did get to see how it looked as they set it up and I loved all of the deep brown and sepia colors he was using. Very old-fashioned. He had me in an old, dirty, white t-shirt (much to the chagrin of the lighting guy). The character ('Gus') is an old, crusty, war veteran, living out the rest of his life in relative solitude as a summer camp cook away from civilization. I kept thinking of Robert Duval in 'Tender Mercies.'

I particularly liked the catering on the set. They couldn't very well fly an entire company out to do it so instead they did something very smart; they employed an army of local housewives to cook. Consequently the meals on the set were like dinner at The Waltons everday. Very tasty.

All in all, a really fun experience, and actually, boredom and all, I really look forward the next one. Which, thank my lucky stars, will be sooner than I expected. More on that as it pans out.

See you tomorrow.

Green Light

2011-10-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

A long and fruitful meeting yesterday with the producer of the indy film I've written. One final swooping, balls-to-the-walls attack on the script and then we're off and running. He wants to 'get this thing moving.' Couldn't agree more. I discovered the budget was considerably more than I first anticipated, which was a pleasant surprise; a pleasant, intimidating surprise.

This entire project to date has been an extraordinary process for me in that I have only once before been commmissioned to write something not my original idea. That occurred in Kentucky long ago and involved American Indians singing showtunes so it's best to not think about it. Nonetheless, I was payed handsomely for it so all was not a total nightmare.

But this has been different. I got an opening shot, a vague idea of the relationships, a pervading theme...and that was it --- go. Quite an experience. The script, which is far from finalyzed, has undergone somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 drafts.

Once we nail down the shooting script (about two weeks, I'm guessing) we'll start searching for the perfect director and bring him on board for pre-pre-production meetings. And then I relinquish control of the writing and start concentrating on the acting (naturally I wrote myself into it). All tremendously exciting and new for me. This is Hollywood at it's most guerrilla.

Writing someone else's vision has, for me, not only been fascinating, it's also been an academic puzzle for me to solve. That is to say, anyone can say - and they often do - that they are a 'writer,' or a 'playwright,' or 'I write screenplays. And frankly, they're right - they (we) DO write these things. But to take another idea altogether, a vision not passionately owned and nurtured from genesis to splashy omega, well, that's a horse of a different color. I've had to actually, well, write. Not just try and make my fingers keep up with my brain, but actually write the damned thing. I have, over the past six months of living with this project, at times felt overwhelmed, underwhelmed, patronizing, fearful, superior, inadequate, and finally, just stubborn, sort of like a math jockey repeatedly assailing a singularly complicated formula on a chalk board and wiping it clean every now and then only to start over. The unexpected part of it was after the initial slight indifference (because it wasn't my idea to begin with) I actually became, against my will really, absorbed by it all. And because these were not my characters (some of them, anyway) I felt justified in making them not only ignoble but also felt no remorse in killing them off whenever I damn well felt like it.

When I first became a fan of John Irving, the novelist, in the early eighties, one of the things about his writing that struck me was the fact that he had no problem killing off his protagonists. No one was ever safe in his books. Just when the reader began to feel comfortable with a character, to understand to a certain degree the character's flaws and foibles and paradoxes, Irving would just up and kill him or her. He's a perpetually unpredictable writer and after my initial irritation with his distant and omnipotent approach, I grew to love and admire his work. Still do. I'd go so far to say that, in my opinion, he is our greatest living American writer, although I'm sure there a many who would disagree. But I honestly think so. He is our Dickens. The twists and turns of his plot manipulations boggle the mind. No scenario is too taboo for him. If the human heart can experience it, he can write about it. And often does. But not in an uncaring way; he is every bit as gentle and perceptive and detailed about, say, brutal, wire-hanger abortion as he is with confused, perplexing adolescent love. I adore his writing. And, like many of the writers I admire, he now and then writes a paragraph so perfect and beautiful as to take my breath away.

But I digress...

I'm off to Michigan for a week to shoot this new indy so I won't be able to work on the script for a bit. That's fine. The producer wants to do a line-by-line analysis and then give it back to me and take a last run at it. So he's got a week.

This is one of three writing projects being juggled at the moment for me. The other two are projects of the heart. And both are still in a positon to explode under the right circumstances. But unlike this one, they are a far cry from being 'green lighted.'

And the roosters are crowing in our little green acre of Los Angeles. It's dark out still but the edges of the morning are back lit by the sun and another day is taking unsuspected shape. I'm off to see a gaggle of six-year-olds play organized flag football this morning. Something tells me this is going to put me in a very good mood.

See you tomorrow.

A Productive Day

2011-10-13T05:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was one of those days that a lot got done. Intentionally, or otherwise, a lot got done.

I like days like that.

I was up early, five-ish, so I could make what are known as 'the generals' at The Mark Taper Forum. Normally, I would never do a cattle call audition. I did enough of those in my NY days to last me a lifetime. Broadly speaking, they're kind of tough on the self-esteem. One lines up early in the morning to get a 'time slot.' And then one tries to find something to do to pass the time until that slot arrives. At least that's how it always was in New York.

Not so in Los Angeles I learned yesterday. If there were ever a specific moment at which to point to forever prove this is a film town and not a theatre town, yesterday was it. I had managed to cajole my friend John to join me for the auditions. My agent told me that The Forum has a long history of casting through their generals and, as I've mentioned, I don't exactly have a fan base out here. That is to say, I'm virtually unknown. It's not like the old days on the East Coast when I had gigs lined up a year in advance. It's a different ballgame now and I scramble for jobs just like anyone else. Working on the West Coast has been like starting over from scratch for me. It's like I'm 24 again sometimes and just starting out in NYC.

So John and I get there around 8 in the morning to sign up for a slot at 9. When we arrived there were three people in line. John's an old NY theatre veteran, too, so we were both a bit shocked, to say the least. Around ten till nine, a few more people showed up. Turns out, John and I got the numbers 2 and 3 slots, respectively.

The Mark Taper Forum and The Center Theatre Group are the big dogs in town when it comes to stage...The Geffen, Music Theatre West, Pasadena Playhouse, Reprise and a couple of others closely following. The Old Globe, too, if you count San Diego.

It was an actor's dream to actually get there, sign up, go in, audition and walk out, all before ten a.m. But that's what happened. I can remember standing in the rain for hours in NY waiting for a sign up slot. Hundreds of starving actors ahead of me even though I'd gotten there at six in the morning.

Amazing.

When we finished we had a hearty and terribly unhealthy breakfast in Burbank and then came back to my house. John wanted a website (he's throwing himself into his career these days after sort of a 'hiatus' of doing commercial work almost without exception for the last couple of years - highly lucrative but not so satistying). So I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon designing John's simple but classic website. Now, of course, I'm not a web designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I found a very user-friendly site that helps the uninitiated do it. So by 6pm, we had ourselves a very cool website which John will be posting within the next couple of days. Here's the temporary link:

http://www.wix.com/clifdmts/john

During this time I finally got the word about a film audition I've been waiting to hear about. Plus the sides. That happens today at noon. Very exciting and one that my wife and I have been looking forward to. More on that as it pans out.

John stayed for dinner (a two hour, labor intensive 'Mexican Casserole' with everything in it except an actual Mexican). Angie is, quite possibly, the most talented chef I've ever run across and it was lip-smackin' good, this Mexican Casserole. Fortunately, she loves cooking. And she's really, really good at it. On more than one occasion I've opened the refrigerator door and exclaimed there was nothing to eat only to find myself sitting in front of a feast an hour later made with nothing but 'stuff' found in the kitchen.

Afterwards, in John's continuing 'attack the career' mindset, we designed his new business cards online and ordered them.

I love days where things get done. We seem to spend so many where things don't get done. And by 'we' I mean all of us. Sometimes it seems we're on this little hamster wheel, running full speed ahead and when we get off, we've nothing to show for it. I remember reading a passage in Marlon Brando's book, Songs My Mother Taught Me. Not a very good book, considering. But in it, every now and then, Brando would write something fascinating. In this particular passage he says, "As I look back I realize I could never have been successful at anything but acting. The reason is not because I think I'm talented or anything of that sort, but rather because I have an attention span of seven seconds. I've timed it. Seven seconds exactly. That's the longest I can stay excited about something. Which, of course, made me a perfect candidate to be a professional actor."

I know precisely how he felt.

See you tomorrow.

One Year

2011-10-11T06:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my wife and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. It happened to coincide with two things: the start of a decidedly un-fun 'Dr. Oz Cleansing Diet' and the table read for the new film I'm doing in Michigan, of all places, called "Confirmation." I'll be in the U.P. for approximately a week playing the role of a gruff, aloof war veteran who has shut himself off from the world and is now a cook at a private summer camp. The guy (the character's name is 'Gus') gets involved with a rebellious youth against his better judgement and ends up teaching the young man a valuable lesson about loyalty. It's not a bad script, filming on location at a remote camp in Michigan with a fun and irreverent director. Of course, I'll be surrounded by 12 and 13 year old actors all of which will be flown to Michigan with their parents but I'm hoping for the best. Needless to say, the film is G-rated. But then again, so was 'E.T.' Dogs and kids - always a possibility of disaster there. I have, through the years, worked extensively with both. I enjoy the dogs a little more, I'd have to say.

It was an interesting table read. Like a good soldier, I brought my script along. Not the kids. Oh, no. They all had their laptops and i-pads and alien technology in front of them. I felt like a dinosaur. An actual script at a table read - the nerve of me.

My rather unusual contract states I'll have a 'log cabin,' to myself; 'rustic but comfortable.' Before the table read one of the producers told us 'cell phones will be sketchy' because the area was so remote. Although, he continued, 'there is one land line.' Hm. Sounded a bit like the beginning of a bad plot in a B horror movie.

Realizing too late this was the case, our anniversary was also the beginning of our 'Dr. Oz Diet,' which my wife has actually been looking forward to while I've been dreading it like the first day in a new Gulag. So even though I had some flowers delivered we didn't have a big, beautiful, candlelit meal like I wanted. Instead we had, and I'm not making this up, sliced apples and sour kraut. For lunch yesterday I had a huge plate of cut vegetables and for breakfast something resembling Russian gruel without the explosion of flavor.

I've never been a diet kinda guy. I've been exceptionally lucky most of my life because I never really had to diet. But I'm in the tall weeds now, age-wise, and I can't avoid them any longer. Thus the 'Dr. Oz Diet.' Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, my wife approaches them kind of like Patton approached Sicily. She is relentless in her preparation. Our refrigerator and cabinets are full of things I can't pronounce much less eat. And that schlepp, Dr. Oz, seems to have gone out of his way to include exotic foodstuffs in the diet. Sunday at our local grocery store I overheard my wife asking the manager in which aisle might she find the 'canned otter entrails in butterscotch paste.'

This past year has been a doozy, I'll say that. For longtime readers of this blog you might recall we were married in a mall by 'Reverent Chuck' (who was also the vice president of his local Harley Davidson Club). It was a conveyor-belt-type wedding, in and out, a quick 'for sickness and in health' speech by Reverend Chuck who also had the San Diego Chargers game playing in the background and every now and then would pepper the marriage ceremony with 'Oh, for God's Sakes, just THROW THE BALL!' Nonetheless, we both wept. Mostly because the Chargers lost big.

Our photos from that day are odd because my head was shaved for a role. Angie, naturally, looked great and was excrutiatingly beautiful. Our photographer had to do some fancy trick shooting so as not to get the Harley Davidson trophies in the background. I wrote the vows myself and when we were done, Reverend Chuck gazed at both of us tenderly, tears wellng in his eyes and said poetically, "Is that it? Are you done? Can I finish this now?" We were both terribly moved.

I'm not an easy guy to live with. I could go on and on about that but suffice to say perhaps Angie's greatest gift to me is that she makes it LOOK easy to live with me. It is not. I'm a troublemaker. Always have been. I make trouble. I can't help myself. And yet my wife daily rises above it all and takes exquisite care of me. And that's just pretty darn cool.

I remember our big, lavish dinner after the ceremony with Reverend Chuck. Our dear friend Tammy Jackson-Lipps arranged it all. Wonderful food, great wines, stunning table arrangements, the spread stretching about forty feet or so through our backyard, the horses nearby watching with curiosity, about thirty of our closest friends in attendance. And Tammy gave a little toast. My two Best Men, Jim Barbour and John Bader, did the same and Angie's Women-in-Waiting, or whatever the bride's counterparts are called, also raised a glass and spoke a little. But Tammy's short speech has stuck with me. She started and ended her toast with the words, 'Marriage is hard.' And then in the middle she explained how beautiful and magical it can be. And then she repeated, to make sure we both grasped the essence of her toast, 'Marriage is hard.'

I have often thought how wise and generous that toast was. Without slapping us around, she outlined briefly and pointedly just what to expect. Really she was telling us that all of our dreams and hopes and aspirations and fantasies were now within reach. We were a team now, Angie and I, and the odds of our lifetime happiness had just advanced exponentially. She was telling us that joy and daily satisfaction were within our reach now, shockingly close, in fact. But it was not free. It comes with a price. And we needed to be willing to pay it. Every hour of every day we have to pay it. And it's not easy. Simple, perhaps, but not easy. But if we did pay it, if we did make the sacrifice of putting each other ahead of ourselves, if we did think in terms of 'we' and not 'I,' if we did trust in the idea, the possibility, the beauty of unconditional love, well, we needed to strap in and take the roller coaster ride of our lives. And we have. We stray, we demand, we fight, we argue, we love, we apologize, we regret, but we make it work. And lo and behold it has turned out to be the best year of my entire life. And not because I've accomplished anything wonderful, not because I've done great things, not even because I've done anything remotely good. But because I, we, both of us, go to bed happy and wake up happy every single day. And that's more than I ever, ever expected out of life.

See you tomorrow.

Capitalism - A Love Story and Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

I suspect, after watching 'Capitalism - A Love Story' by Michael Moore last night, that more than a few of the original organizers of 'Occupy Wall Street' were influenced by it. Although the documentary/film has the usual sarcastic and cynical tone of most of Moore's features, this one felt a little different. I think Moore filmed mad.

Let me explain. In professional boxing there are few maxims, a few absolutes that are generally considered unbreakable. One is 'Kill the body and the head will follow.' Another is 'No one can beat the heavy bag.' And yet another is 'Never fight mad.' The most recent example of the latter is the famous ear-biting fight with Tyson and Holyfield. Tyson fought mad. He lost control and, well, he bit Holyfield's ear off and lost the fight.

So this is the pervasive feeling I got from 'Capitalism - A Love Story.' When I was younger, high school in fact, I was a member of the Speech and Debate team. Forensics, we called it. Mostly I did the acting part of it -the creative part: Duet Acting, Solo Monologue Acting, Improv, whatever. And I carried a whole buttload of trophies home, for the record. But once, I recall, I debated. Me and this other guy, can't remember his name now, were a team, a debate team. It went like this: we were given a subject a half hour before the debate and we had exactly thirty minutes to prepare. We were, unlike today with the entire internet at one's disposal, allowed to bring a small, metal box, carefully weighed, with our research material crammed into it. The tricky part was we had no idea what subject we would be debating so we had to choose our material wisely. Most debaters, ourselves included, would cram the box with old TIME or NEWSWEEK magazines. Sometimes, to the really serious debater, a ludicrously detailed, handwritten series of 4 by 5 cards with facts on every hotbutton subject possible. We weren't that serious. We just had a bunch of TIME magazines in our box.

In any event, I quickly discovered I wasn't very well suited for the 'debate' part of 'speech and debate.' I would inevitably lose my temper. I would, in effect, 'debate mad.' I specifically remember being penalized for starting a rebuttal like this: "Alright, now you listen to me, you fat, little, four-eyed punk..."

So this is the feeling I got while watching 'Capitalism - A Love Story.' Moore was filming mad. Unlike his brilliant 'Roger and Me' or even his frightening 'Bowling for Columbine,' this film is recklessly angry. Which, in the end, it really needn't be for Moore is, to a greater degree I suspect, preaching to the Choir. I'm guessing the CEO of GM or Goldman Sachs or AIG or Bank of America didn't rush out to watch this documentary. And yet Moore shot it as though they were going to. Consequently, his trademark absurdist interviewing and partisan bent feels strained and forced, like a comedian having an off night.

Now, make no mistake, I'm in the choir. I don't need convincing. I, like most of liberal America, have conjured up images of nefarious back room deals drenched in cigar smoke, fat cat CEOs with evil handlebar mustaches and ill-fitting, three-piece suits setting out to screw the American people just for the sheer hatred-filled fun of it. The rational part of me knows this is not true, at least not literally, but nonetheless I can't help myself. These guys, these companies, did a bad thing, an amoral thing. It is undeniable. They were bailed out to the tune of 700 billion dollars with Americn taxpayed money and then they screwed us. The government gave them a blank check with no rules attached, just a verbal promise they would 'do the right thing.' And, of course, they didn't. Why would they? There was absolutely nothing to be gained, profit-wise, by doing 'the right thing.' So they went right back to screwing us with their newly acquired chunk of 'found money.'

There is, however, one section of 'Capitalism - A Love Story' that not only caught me off guard but absolutely fascinated me. And that was the 'secret memo' sent by Bank of America to its largest shareholders outlining (I think it was sent in 2005 before all hell broke loose) their plans for a 'financial coup de'tat.' The memo brazenly outlines Bank of America's assessment that we no longer live in a democracy but rather a plutocracy, which is to say, that the one percent of the wealthiest Americans now control the country, Republic be damned. The memo goes on to say the only thing to be feared would be if the 99 percent rose up and 'voted as one.' Because the one thing they couldn't control was the 'one person, one vote' part of the American democratic system. This idea, while farfetched, also scared the hell out of them.

As I continue to visualize my idea of the privileged, let-them-eat-cake, cigar-chomping, sail boat-buying fatcats of Bank of America and Goldman Sachs wandering from window to window, looking down at the Occupy Wall Street crowds below, much like a frantic Saruman in Lord of the Rings when the Ents attacked his tower, I can't help but wonder what they're really thinking. Are they the least concerned with this little peasant uprising? Or do they feel completely insulated from any retribution? I'd love to be a fly on the wall durng a high-level meeting about this in one their ivory towered discussions. If they even have a discussion about it. Or is it too inconsequential still? Do they really even care?

Obviously for any real change to take place laws would have to be repealed, rewritten and then enforced. And we've seen, all too clearly, that the United States Congress cannot be counted on to upset the apple cart. Although initially voting down the 700 billion dollar bailout, they quickly reversed themselves and gave Wall Street exactly what they asked for. And more, they gave it to them without any, I repeat, ANY reservations or prerequisites. After the initial vote, Congress, clearly seeing which way the wind was blowing, caved a mere three days later after some very heavy and threatening lobby work from the banking institutions. It was one of the saddest days in American history if not the saddest day.

In the other film I've seen regarding this travesty in our history, HBO's 'Too Big to Fail,' the banks are represented as a sort of Tri-lateral Commission, planning and scheming to economically rape the American working class. Which they do. And this well-written film espouses the Machiavellian credo 'the ends always justify the means.' This placed our President, George W. Bush, in a perfect position to implement his final nation-killing decision, sadly only one in a long line of nation-killing decisions. He appeared on national television imploring the American people to support the big bank bailout. If you go back and look at that speech, it's right out of Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator,' Bush's eyes darting about, trying to hide an emerging smirk, stringing together preposterous sentences defying any and all logical thought. And of course it worked.

I think, in the end, history will be kinder to G.W. Bush about Iraq and Afghanistan than we suspect. But with the 20/20 vision of hindsight it will be very harsh regarding his final act of treachery, the selling off of the American middle class. At least I hope so.

In the final analysis I fear the Occupy Wall Street movement and Mr. Moore's cautionary documentary, Capitalism - A Love Story, are most likely simply annoying gnats flitting about a sleeping grizzly; soul-stirring and rightous in their outrage and demands but ultimately unthreatening. For the banks and Wall Street aren't doing anything illegal. They made sure of that. They're only doing what we, the huddled masses, gave them the legal right to do: take away all our stuff and then leave us to die.

See you tomorrow.

Lucky Guy

2011-10-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

Above - with the fine actor, Powers Boothe, following an invitation only reading of 'ABSOLUTE TRUTH.'

It's been a short second since I've blogged. The reason is simple. I've been too busy working on other projects. Three writing projects and a couple of acting projects, to be precise. I have entered an unexpected phase of my hot and cold career lately in that I find myself writing big things, long things, complicated and time consuming things that will, in the end, not only generate substantial income but also dictate my day to day life. The acting stuff (I used to be 'an actor who writes.' These days I find myself squarely in the category of 'writer who acts') is paying the bills but the writing stuff is sustaining the dreams.

I'm not sure exactly when or how I fell into my particular habit of writing, but I seem to be at my best early in the morning. For example, it is now 4:50 in the morning. I feel fresh, relaxed and clear-headed and pushing at the gates to get going. Odd, since most of my life was about getting to bed right about now.

One of the bi-products that surfaced after I made a cognizant pardigm shift in thinking some years back (read: stopped drinking enough to kill a bull elephant every night) was the astonishing realization that I'm a morning person by nature. I like the morning. I feel at my best in the morning. I am acutely aware of the myriad possibilities spread before me like an impromptu banquet.

The downsize is I'm ready to hit the hay around 7:30 at night. Just about the time Alex Trebek rolls out the final Jeopardy question I'm ready to put my face mask on. This is one of the things my wife found 'cute' early on but now finds annoying.

Speaking of my wife, this Monday, October 10, we'll celebrate one year of marriage. And what a year. Good Lord, what a year. The best of times and, well, the best of times. How she manages to put up with my eccentricities, which border on a need for clinical diagnosis at times, is beyond me. Nonetheless, she does. And not only does she allow me my personality quirks and disorders, she makes it fun. That's about all I can say about that. I'm learning to be prudent.

I just finished a film in San Pedro a couple weeks ago. It's called 'Sunken City.' A throw back kind of script. A few times during the filming I began to feel a little like Mike Connor in 'Mannix.' Except my suit was nicer.

In a week I head to Michigan, the U.P., to shoot the exteriors in a new film called 'Confirmation.' The location stuff is a remote camp in the apparently beautiful (I've never been there but my mother-in-law, Rosemary, who has traveled almost as much as Christopher Columbus tells me so) part of Northern Michigan and then back to LA to do the interiors for a week or so. In fact, I just learned yesterday I'll be lodged in a 'log cabin' for the shoot there. It's a good role - the gruff, but loveable, ex-military high school teacher. Kind of like Lou Gosset Jr. in 'Officer and a Gentleman' except without the karate and the potty mouth.

I just finished another reading with the gruff but lovable Powers Boothe. I love talking to Powers. It's sort of like talking to a film encyclopia. He knows everyone, has worked with everyone, and has an opinion about everyone. Smart guy and, of course, a very good actor.

And along the way I've done what I never expected to do, which is turn down some theatre gigs, good ones, at that, so I that I might be in a position to do more film work. And speaking of which, the next gig, following the gruff but lovable, ex-military high school teacher, looks to be a 'sleazy lawyer' (although I've read the script and he doesn't seem all that 'sleazy' to me) in a Lifetime movie to be shot in and around LA this winter. Of course, that's not in the bag yet. Until the contract is dried and the money is in the bank, I've learned, through trial and error, to not count on anything in this business. I still have to read for it. But it looks very promising and also it's a chance to work with a good buddy of mine who happens to be a wonderful director. My wife and I have our fingers firmly crossed for that one, hoping for the best and always expecting the worst. A credo I've become all too familiar with in this town.

The screenplay I've been commissioned to write is finally complete after about 187 drafts. In addition to being exceptionally challenging, it also made me learn to write for the screen. Literally. I think it goes without saying that writing for the screen is a different animal than writing for the stage. For film one is literally 'writing images.' Not words, but images. Took me awhile, but I finally grasped that long about the 104th draft. In any case, it's done and I'm happy with it. I meet with the producer next week before heading to Michigan to discuss what we have.

I also spent a lifetime or so turning 'Praying Small,' my most successful stage piece, into a screenplay. But I really can't count that as work. More a labor of love. That, too, I think, is pretty good, albeit a little wordy.

And finally, a television pilot. I just finished that one. Angie and I have a dear friend in the television biz and I'm going to put it in front of him soon and see if there's anything there to pursue. It's the best, most natural, most exciting writing I've done in quite some time and it involves a subject I'm most passionate about and, I'd like to think, anyway, somewhat knowledgeable: professional boxing in the 1960s. Again, it's a subject off the beaten path, to say the least, but one that stirs me. To be perfectly honest, it's a piece of writing I've been waiting decades to put on paper, metaphorically speaking. Actually, it's not 'on paper' at all but sitting firmly and securely in my computer.

I'm a lucky guy. Always have been except for a brief decade I spent being unlucky in the bowels of Chicago. And frankly, all of Chicago is a bowel as far as I'm concerned. I heard a good line in an otherwise bad film the other night. Some chick said, "You're my angel. You've rescued me simply by being alive." I knew instantly exactly how she felt. Because the same happened to me. I was blind and then I saw. I met my wife.

And finally, I've found myself inordinantly preoccupied with, no pun intended, with Occupy Wall Street, the movement taking place all around the country at the moment. It has awakened in me a sense of injustice, a sense of indigination. I don't really know what, if anything, this movement hopes to accomplish (my wife constantly points this out to me - "They don't even know what they want") but the fact that they're angry about being the ox and yoke for a privileged, well-paid few speaks to me on a very basic level. I, like the stalwart and brave-hearted hundreds freezing their asses off tonight on Wall Street, feel betrayed. And I feel I cannot keep up a constant chatter of patriotic blather and still live with the knowledge that the big banks and the corporate innkeepers of this nation are getting unspeakably rich on the backs of the dwindling middle class. Anyway. I could write reams on this, but I'll exercise discretion here and not. Suffice to say, if I still lived in New York I'd be very cold and laying in a tent right this very moment.

But I'm a lucky guy. And I have more to write this morning before my perfect wife and my perfect dogs, Franny and Zooey, awake. I have miles to go before I sleep (which, as I mentioned, comes about 7:30 or 8:00 these days, it seems). I have a road less taken to explore. I have to fire up the Pandora and stare for few endless minutes at an unyielding white piece of paper. I have to hope for a little while that someone else thinks that what I'm about to write today is as interesting as I think it is.

I wouldn't have it any other way. Because I'm a very lucky guy.

See you tomorrow.

Nine Eleven

2011-09-10T07:15:00.000-07:00

Like the rest of the country I watched and listened to the events unfold in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania ten years ago this weekend. As I recall, I was teaching then and cancelled all of my classes. I sat by the television (and the radio - for some odd reason I had them both on) and tried to make sense of the information crowding my brain.

I had already moved to Chicago by then and a couple of days after the attack I was on Michigan Avenue, near the huge, now defunct, Border's Bookstore across from the old Water Tower. A television reporter stopped me on the sidewalk and did a quick 'man on the street' interview. They wanted to know if the incidents in the previous few days would effect my Christmas shopping; if I thought the economy would suffer because of the devastation. I said I hoped not and kept walking.

I lived in New York City from 1985 until 2000. I was not that long gone from the city when it happened. While I can't exactly say the WTC was on my beaten path, I had certainly been there a few times, once even eating in the restaurant there, Windows On The World, I think it was called. And many years ago, shortly after moving to NYC, I had waited tables at a place very near the towers, can't even remember the name of it, and took the subway there everyday. I didn't like the financial district in NYC, especially on rainy days. This was the eighties and 'power unbrellas' were big then. These were huge umbrellas that yuppies carried around. They were a constant source of irritation to people who were not carrying one because they were so big and they tended to poke people in the face while walking on the street. It was purely a yuppie thing in NYC and mostly the young, dumb and rich carried them. Hence their presence in the financial district.

I remember Chicago, of course, always envious of New York and constantly in comparison (every business in Chicago used the tag line 'Better Than New York!' it seemed), was reporting for awhile that the fourth plane, the one that fell into a muddy field in Pennsylvania, had been heading for some target in Chicago. Of course that wasn't true, but they repeated it quite a bit for a week or so on the local news. Turns out that plane had already turned around and was heading for one of two sites in D.C., one quite possibly The White House.

Like nearly everyone else in the nation I remember wanting swift and violent retribution for the people responsible. The American public, for the most part, didn't know anything about Osama Bin Laden or AL-Qa'ida. I had been in NYC for the first attack on The World Trade Center in 1993 and had no doubt heard the name then, but, like the rest of the country, assumed we had qualified people working on that and the name didn't register or stick with me in any concrete sense.

At that period in my life I was living a very insular existence, self-exiled and reclusive. So I didn't discuss my feelings about the attacks with anyone else for a long time. But I watched almost compulsively as the talking heads replayed it over and over during the next few weeks. I watched to see if I could recognize anyone I knew in the dust and panic of that day, anyone fleeing the towers covered with white soot. I didn't see anyone.

And like most extraordinary events in my life, I experienced a delayed reaction to it all. In fact, it wasn't until the first anniversary of the attacks that I really began to get a grasp on the import of that day. And finally the oft-repeated phrase, 'everything changed,' began to make sense to me. Everything had changed. I did everything alone in those days, I ate in restaurants alone, I drank alone, I spent my evenings alone. I would teach during the day and spend comfortable nights by myself in my darkened apartment. It was a phase that was to last many years. But something had been taken from me, from us, that day. A sense of detachment had been yanked away. Our false sense of isolation had been removed - for me, both personally and as an American, whatever that might mean.

Now, ten years later and 1750 miles away from Chicago, my wife and I have watched three or four specials on the event over the last few nights. It somehow seems more real to me now than it did ten years ago. And the thing that keeps occuring to me is that the horror of that day for so many was also the beginning of the end for my own period of forced isolation. It is almost allegorical in its timing. Like many, I suppose, who can mark the moment in their lives when they heard that Kennedy had been shot, or when the astronauts landed on the moon, or the chaos and panic of Pearl Harbor, the images of Nine One One take me back to a stretch of time that marked an apathetic loneliness in my own life, an era of quiet, personal anarchy. And, almost against my will, I found myself being forced to think of the tragedy of other people, other lives, distant pain. It became impossible to consider the idea that I was the center of my own little universe. The images from the television screen, leaping out and clawing at me, simply wouldn't allow my self-inflicted compartmentalization to continue, try as I might to let it be so.

In the final analysis, this is what I remember about that anonymous and explosive day in September. The first glimpses of a life outside myself, of casting off a firmly embedded sense of isolation. I ached for the families that lost husbands and wives and fathers and mothers that day. And surprisingly, I began to feel connected again. Connected to a whole nation of grieving, imperfect people.

Today, when I watch the same images again, the atrocity of people being forced out of the upper floors of the towers, leaping to their certain deaths, I am filled with a moral outrage. Ten years ago I was filled with something else, a numb anger, perhaps. And again, I begin to understand the oft-repeated cry, Everything Has Changed. Because Everything Had.

See you tomorrow.

Up and at 'em

2011-09-08T06:02:00.000-07:00

Up early and ostensibly working the new screenplay. I say 'ostensibly' because I'm really not. But I will when I finish blogging.

104 yesterday in The Valley. When it gets that hot, plans have to be adjusted, to say the least, and consequently I spent the day watching old fight films I've managed to record off of Uverse...mostly old ALI films from the seventies. I'm weird that way.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm an expert on only one thing in my life...heavyweight boxing in the 1970s. An odd thing to know so well, but there you have it.

I have this reading coming up with the wonderful actor Powers Boothe next week. Powers and I did another one a few months ago and that was fun so I decided to do another for the same director when he contacted me.

The week after that another Indy film, this one down in Long Beach, I think. Small role. Haven't even read the whole script.

So hopefully the intense heat will stay away long enough to get a walk in this morning before retreating into the solitude of air conditioning. Once that's done I'll pull out the new writing and have a go at it all day. Angie's been a bit under the weather so I'll be quiet and studious for the most part. Her allergies have gone super nova, apparently.

All of the 9/11 programs are coming on these days due to the 10 year anniversary. It hardly seems 10 years since that horrible day. I was lucky. I didn't actually personally know anyone in the towers that day. Many NY friends did, however. I did know a guy I had done a few plays with and his wife died that day. But I'd never met her.

Of all the terribly images of that day, the one that haunts me the most are the 'jumpers,' the ones that couldn't stand the heat and decided to leap. I see those images from the footage today and I'm still just appalled, stricken.

Angie and I watched the new HBO documentary out about the day...the one that Martin Sheen voices. Quite good, but it kept us both up after we'd seen it.

And I don't have the same sense of outrage at GW Bush about it anymore now that I know more of his reasons for his odd reactions to the attack. Knowing how much he wanted to get back to DC after the attacks and the secret service kept him in the air, I mean.

I was a bit shocked to learn, however, that Rumsfeld wanted to immediately carpet bomb Iraq that day with no evidence whatsoever that they were involved. That's a bit scary. Even after Cheney, of all people, told him Afghanistan was the place to concentrate on. But thinking back, I, too, wanted immediate revenge. Now, of course, I realize how savage and futile that would have been.

It certainly changed everything, that dreadful day in September of 2001. For me, for everyone.

But the sun is coming up, the dogs are eyeing me with anticipation, and life is stretching out before me. Everyday is so very good.

See you tomorrow.

Wrap Party

2011-09-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

I went to my first actual 'wrap party' last night (see new photo right) following the completion of THE PARTY IS OVER, the new comedy I did with Cathy Baker, produced by Steve Robman and featuring a whole gaggle of very talented twenty-somethings. I sat with Cathy over dinner and drinks and finally had a chance to talk to her about some of her work over the years, specifically FOOL FOR LOVE, the Sam Shepard piece she did with Ed Harris at the beginning of her career. The play was directed by Shepard at The Magic Theatre in San Francisco and then moved to Circle Rep in New York and, well, the rest is history. It's a legendary production in theatre circles, famous not only for its quality of work but for the iconic poster attached to it - the one with Elvis tongue-kissing the elated female fan.

Shepard directed the play in the small space in San Francisco (a 99-seater) and Cathy said they were all sort of shocked when they were told it was moving to Circle Rep in New York. The Rep wanted to recast (Harris had just made THE RIGHT STUFF and was starting to get a bit of a name but Cathy hadn't done any film or TV yet and no one knew who she was) in NYC but Shepard held firm and said they could only have the play if the original cast stayed in place. Cathy told me she thought NY was going to 'eat them up' but on opening night there was such a tumultuous greeting from the opening night audience she knew they were in something special.

I was living in NYC when it played at Circle Rep and I could kick myself for not seeing it. She stayed with the play for the long run but she said Harris left after only six weeks to pursue film stuff. It is one of my favorite Shepard plays.

The director of the movie, Vahe Gabuchian (very talented young filmmaker) put together a six or seven minute 'compilation' reel for the party...just quick snippets of scenes from the film (it's a 'full length,' not a short) and I must say it looks super cool. When asked by a friend the other day what the film was about I had to think a moment. It's an odd one, to be sure. The best I could come up with was 'a thinking man's AMERICAN PIE,' if that makes any sense. I have a smallish role in it, but very, uh, entertaining.

Steve Robman (google him) produced. Steve is a very successful television and stage director and turns out we have dozens of mutual friends in the theatre biz in Chicago and New York. He directed quite a bit at The Goodman back in the day and we both know a lot of the same Chicago actors.

It's completely a youth oriented movie - I think Cathy and I were probably the oldest ones involved and that's counting the crew as well. The three lead actors, all in their early twenties, looked really good in the compilation we saw last night. In fact, the whole thing looked really good. Look for it sometime in 2012.

Angie and I are continuing with our new 'health kick.' Essentially this means we're cutting back on cigs and bread and potatoes and taking killer walks up into the mountains. Sunday we walked a place called 'Fryman's Canyon.' I saw my life pass before my eyes. I now call it 'The Widowmaker.' I'm told it's not an especially difficult hike, but it nearly closed the curtain on me. Within the first five minutes I had sweat completely through my shirt. I have a long, long ways to go with this new 'get in shape' stuff. Fortunatly, while climbing The Widowmaker, Angie let me stop now and then and take huge, gulping breaths. I pretended I was stopping for Zooey's sake (she's our 12 year old dog) but, much to my chagrin, Zooey seemed to be doing just fine and was impatient with my stop and start technique on The Widowmaker.

Los Angeles, thankfully, is in the middle of a heat wave right now so I've been spared a repeat trek for the time being. We're taking the long 'Oasis Walk' in our own neighborhood until the heat breaks. The Oasis Walk is a long one, too, but it's all flat and it circles around the 'Los Angeles River,' which is not a river at all but just a big concret waterway. Over the years, however, foliage has grown unimpeded all around and in it. It's really quite accidentally beautiful.

The work on two, count 'em, two screenplays continues. One sucks and one is looking okay. The one that sucks has me completely bamboozled. I have no idea what to do with it. The one that's okay, however, has me rather excited. I'll continue working it today.

Angie and I were also talking to another screenwriter last night at the wrap party. He recommended a book called 'Your Screenplay Sucks.' I'm going to try and pick it up today at the library. I asked him if he'd read 'Save the Cat,' the book that impacted me so much when I first started writing my screenplay, and he had pretty much the same opinion of it that I did, which is to say, initially impressed and then sort of offended by its continual references to writing a script that makes money rather than writing a script that means something to you.

Life is good. Angie and I are coming up on our one year anniversary. We were married on October 10, 2010, and we haven't quite decided what to do to celebrate. I want to take a three week trip to Europe but Angie reminded me we don't have any money, so we're probably going to go with a three hour trip to Van Nuys, which I'm told, is quite lovely this time of year.

See you tomorrow.

The Real Stuff

2011-09-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I auditioned for a 'guest starring' role on the television program, 'Parks and Recreation.' This is a program I've seen a few times. I like it. It's in the style of 'The Office' or 'Reno 911,' lots of 'takes' to the camera, breaking the fourth wall, etc. Some witty writing, good, loose, free-wheeling acting style, a clever and smart show.

Before I went in for the read, I did my homework, of course. I took a look at some of the recent, 3rd season shows, got a feel for the humor, studied some of the plot lines...and then memorized my stuff and drove over to Hollywood and did it for the casting director (who, incidentally, was great, very pleasant). The character calls for someone with a 'bad haircut.' And of course when I walked in I saw all these character actors, roughly my age, with, well, bad haircuts. Some had done their hair in a sort of 'comb over,' some had rugs on, and some really DID have bad haircuts.

This sort of thing makes my eyes roll up into my head. It's what I call the 'lab coat' syndrome. That is to say, some time ago I was called in for the role of a Doctor in some show or movie (can't remember now what it was, frankly). And when I got there, every last guy in the room had a damn lab coat on. A couple even had a stethascope slung around their shoulders. Another time, when I first got to LA, I was sent out to a read for a music video shoot (I was naive then - these days I never accept those auditions) that required a 'priest.' When I got there, everybody had on a priest's outfit. Every last one. A couple of the people there actually WERE priests.

I refuse to buy into this phenomenon. For one thing, it's embarrassing. And for another, it's just dumb. I imagine a conversation like this in the Casting Director's office after the audition: "Well, hm. Both were very good actors, I guess. But the one guy, well, he had that lab coat on. My gut tells me to go with him. He LOOKED like a doctor, after all."

Balderdash. I simply can't believe the casting of roles in this town is as infantile as that. But on the other hand, maybe it is. Well, I won't get those roles, then.

Now don't get me wrong. If the role is described as a 'businessman,' yes, I will wear a suit to the audition. If the role is a 'cowboy,' yes, I'll wear jeans and boots. But that's about it. Any further becomes humiliating.

It all reminds me of one of my first professional gigs. I was in my early twenties, living in NYC and I was offered and accepted a job in Kentucky at a summer stock theater. Actually turned out to be a good thing because I made a few lifelong friends from that gig. But anyway, one of the shows they were doing that summer was a 'frontier musical' set in the 1830s in Kentucky. To this day it is the worst piece of writing for the stage I have ever encountered and that is really saying something. But that's beside the point. In a letter, a couple of months before I left NY to head down to KY, I was asked to 'bring all my buckskins.' The letter went on to say for me not to worry because I would be financially compensated if the theater decided to use 'any personal buckskins' on stage. I wrote back, "Let me get this straight. You want me to bring ALL my buckskins?" They must not have found that amusing because they never answered that letter.

A couple of my friends who have been in LA for quite awhile, been in the trenches, kicking and biting to get roles, tell me this is a relatively new thing, this 'dressing up as the character' silliness. And, what's more, there are, now and again, in the breakdowns ('breakdowns' are the information sent to agents and managers so that they might submit their clients more suited for the available roles), actual instructions to WEAR clothes that might fit the character. Again, I simply ignore these instructions. It indicates an appalling lack of imagination on the casting director's part. Of course, none of the 'real' casting directors ever ask for this, the CDs that cast on the big time level, I mean. This is something only the ham and eggers do.

All of this is further complicated by the plethora of 'reality shows' out there. I never go on those auditions, either. Nothing could interest me less. So, these 'reality based' programs throw their hat in the ring of breakdowns. They routinely call for 'real doctors' or 'real cowboys' or 'real midgets with one leg slightly longer than the other and who work as a fireman.' The sad thing is, hundreds of midgets with one leg longer than the other who work as firemen actually show up. It's a tough town.

I have to memorize a long, long monologue today for a feature I'm shooting next week. I hate memorizing words. I think Brando had it right. Just put an earpiece in and have someone read the words into your ear during the shoot. Of course, he was Brando and people let him get away with that. I'm not, however, so I have to learn these frickin' words. And that's what I'm about to do right now.

See you tomorrow.

Procrastination

2011-08-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

I think if I had to name the one thing in my life that constantly defeats my best laid plans it would have to be procrastination. I'm not sure exactly why this is. Possibly an advanced case of laziness on my part. Maybe fear of the unknown. Possibly forgetfullness. Whatever the underlying reason, it is a decades old character flaw. And every now and again, I awake in the morning with fire in my gut, eyes blazing, determined to change the pattern. Like this morning. "That's it," I say to myself. "No more procrastination."

I think procrastination for the single person is one thing, but procrastination for someone part of a couple, a team, a civil union, a marriage...quite another. Because then my character flaw not only effects my own life but my wife's life, too. And then it becomes not just a character flaw but a 'thing.' And a 'thing' has to eventually be dragged into the light and 'talked about.' And once it's 'talked about' then it becomes an ongoing 'incident' that has been identified and labeled and listed as 'something to be fixed.' At that point it is a problem.

My ongoing procrastination has become a problem.

I've decided to join a gym. In fact, we went gym shopping yesterday. It is down to two. One is in downtown Burbank and has a pool, yoga classes, up-to-date weight machines, pilate classes (whatever that means), and a host of other self-improvement stuff. The other gym is closer but all it has are some weights and a big bag (in the 'boxing room'). I decided to go with that one.

But it was a long time coming, this whole 'joining a gym' thing.

Procrastination.

For one thing, I've been very lucky my entire life when it comes to 'working out.' I didn't need to, really. At least not outwardly so. I have always had the kind of metabolism or genetic make-up or whatever that insured I didn't get an unsightly premature gut or saggy 'man breasts' or any of the other countless ills that aging brings (the balding and greying thing is an entirely different story, however). And fortunately, I didn't have to work out to fend them off. But now, at 50, this is changing. My body is betraying me. After decades of abuse it has decided this is the year to pay me back. Thus, the gym decision.

At first my wife and I were discussing joining the gym with all the bells and whistles. They have a 'family plan' that we were going to subscribe to. But then I decided the other gym had all I needed and I probably wouldn't use all the bells and whistles anyway. Plus my wife has never been a gym person herself. She prefers running in the morning and doing yoga in a separate and individual class.

The other thing that came to mind is that I don't have any gym clothes. I have to get some today. You know, gym shorts, shoes, etc. I have a lot of old t-shirts so that's covered. But I don't have the other obligatory apparel.

When we visited the gym to look it over yesterday I asked the girl at the counter if someone could show me how to use some of the more 'new fangled' machinery. I'm prehistoric when it comes to being in a gym. The last time I joined one all they had were heavy rocks to carry around. She gave me an odd look and said, 'Well, sure, I guess.' I'm sure she was thinking that this gym already featured old equipment, how is it I wouldn't know how to work them? I didn't want to tell her that the last time I joined a gym people were still doing jumping jacks.

I have never met, not once in my entire life, an interesting person that works out. Oh, I've met people I consider smart and fascinating that work out now and then. But people that obsess over it? Never. Not once. They have been, to the man, pretty boring and dumb. Part of that, I'm sure, has to do with the whole narcissism thing. But I don't know. So I've been rationalizing by telling myself I'm only going to try and get rid of the gut and the upper body deterioration. Just sort of combat the aging process a little bit. Just pop in to the gym a few times a week and keep the wolves at bay.

But then I think of my lifelong history of procrastination. And I hear myself saying, 'I'll work out tomorrow.' In addition, I see myself working out like a madman for a little while and then deciding not to do it anymore. I'm childish that way. For one thing, I don't really care for pain.

So, I'm at an impasse. I have to decide whether or not to join this gym, to put some hard cash on the counter, to disrupt my lazy, life-of-the-mind existence, to get off my fifty year old ass and do something productive.

I think I'll make a decision tomorrow.

At which point I'll see you.

Tragedy and Hope

2011-08-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

Tragedy has struck our household. The coffee pot, the actual coffee container, has sprung a leak. It won't hold coffee. The leak is near the bottom, a little below the one cup mark, so just making a cup of coffee is impossible. This is dire. Plus, we have the kind of coffee maker that does not allow foreign objects to take the place of the coffee container. I can't just stick an old Dr. Pepper bottle under there.

So it's off to get a new coffee maker today. Sooner rather than later. Everything else is on hold. Life as we know it will cease until this epic tear in the fabric of life is corrected. The earth has figuratively stopped spinning as I wait for the stores to open. My eyes have glazed like a shark's, moments away from ripping into a human leg, swimming innocently, unaware.

Fortunately, I discovered this horror as I was filling up the pot with water. At first I couldn't quite get my mind around what was happening, it was too monumental. The water spewed from a small hole near the bottom of the pot. I stared at it, frozen with shock, the meaning of it all failing to get a foothold in my conscience thought. I simply stared as the water streamed out of the hole, like a broken fire hydrant, unable to connect the dot to dot ramifications of this jagged-edge sepuku gutting my morning routine.

At times like this, the human mind ricochets around at light speed. "Houston, we have a problem," is the first thing that slammed into my brain. Second, I realized I would have no coffee this morning. A silent, Meryl Streep-esque tear silently made its way down my cheek, serpentining around the disfigurement of the muscles around my face due to the unpremeditated contortions made by my sudden and violent weeping. And then, pausing in an oasis of unexpected sanity, I contemplated the last complex-compound sentence.

Coffee in the morning has become, over the past decade or so, one of the great and holy joys in my life. Without it, the cosmic apple cart of my soul is upset. As a devout creature of habit I have come to rely on that morning cup of coffee the way a way a Republican gleefully relies on all the vengeful passages in the bible. It is something I need, damn me. Nothing else makes sense without it.

Coffee is as American as violence. It is our birthright, the latter day manna of our lives. Without it we're nothing. We're pretenders. We have no drive for greatness. All of our delusions of grandeur are whisked away and replaced with dread and pessimism. Coffee in the morning, that old devil sent, that caffiene jolt of undeserved rightousness, is the very bedrock of who we are. Nothing to look forward to, no sense of euphoria as we take that first, careful sip of steaming, black confidence. A day without coffee is like a day without resentment. It is necessary to our distorted image of superiority.

But, like a wounded Navy Seal, my mind darts and zips and staggers, hunched over, in agony, searching for a quick fix, a solution to this mind-numbing violation. Like a pedophile Christian minister, I try and find immediate justifications, a way out, a substitution, an explanation, anything that will fill this unspeakable void.

And then it came to me: Starbucks. Starbucks sells coffee. They have coffee at Starbucks. They give it to you in cardboard cups. No questions asked. No forms or background checks. Just a ration of coffee in a non-glass container. No suspicious glances, no sly comments about why you're there, no judgemental stares, slightly askance, as to why you're not making coffee in your own home. Just a quick exchange of dirty money and then, passed through the slot like a chunk of black horse, charred smack, the life-sustaining cup of java. The 'movin' kinda slow' Joe. The stuff that dreams are made of.

And they open, these Starbucks warrior angels, at some ungodly hour like three a.m. or something. They are there, first thing in the morning, the sun barely tipping the scales, ready to feed the beast, to calm the phantoms, to rectify the damage, to capture the dragons. They call themselves coffee shops but they are not. They are miracle makers, dream satisfiers, visionaries, wonder builders, hope outlets. And like the true heroes they are, it's all part of a day's work. Starbucks...the final stop before destiny.

I'm going to get some right now.

See you tomorrow.

Blackouts on the Stage Should Be Illegal

2011-08-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

Angie and I wandered over to the The Odyssey Theatre last night to catch a new play, END DAYS, produced by my old buddy, Ron Sossi. It's a quirky little piece, written by Deborah Zoe Laufer, and it put me in mind of some of Albee's later work, skipping and darting about without any real ambition, it seems, when suddenly, near the end, it comes together in one's mind and one can see where the piece is going. The difference being Albee is a super smart playwright - Ms. Laufer, less so. Having said that, however, it's not a bad piece of work at all taken in its entirety.

I have just about had it up to my eyeballs with episodic writing for the stage. I abhor blackouts. I abhor long scene changes. I abhor seeing actors tiptoe about in plain sight, lights dimmed, acting invisible, completely out of character, doing little transitional things like setting a table or picking up trash from the last scene, and then the lights come up and the action begins again. Who started this mind-numbingly silly way to present a play? It's ludicrous.

Of course, I realize it's been around for centuries, this episodic 'time out' way of moving a play along. Some of Shakespeare's greatest soliloquies were written to hide a scenechange happening upstage. That was then, this is now. But that's not it. I've just finished two plays, both of which I truly admired the writing, take massive body blows to their integrity because of long, attention-killing scene changes.

Ultimately this has to fall on the shoulders of the director. No getting around it. I have no idea why directors don't eschew this sort of thing. Transitions are the life or death of a play, simple as that. The less of them, the better. Episodic work should have no breathing space. The transitions, regardless of how it must be done, should be seamless, almost like cross-fades, effortlessly sheparding the audience from one place to the next, almost without their knowing. Blackouts, on the other hand, should be legally outlawed from the theatre. They are a throwback to another time. They kill plays. And, generally speaking, only substandard playwrights write them. I realize all plays can't adhere to Aristotle's Unity of Time (although I wish they would...it's far and away the most difficult way to pen a script), but at the very least, get rid of the blackouts. And don't try to 'hide' transitions in 'brown outs.' It's senseless. It's the 'elephant in the living room' for live theatre. Yes, I fully understand the concept of 'suspension of disbelief' but, good Lord, what ever happened to common sense? We can see the stage! It's not as if the lights dim, the scene changes, the lights come back up and the audience gasps in awe and wonder at how it happened, how they were magically transported to another place and time. I say get rid of them all, even at the cost of sacrificing realism. And while I'm on THAT subject, there is no such thing on the stage anymore. That idea died with the Russians around 1900. It is the age of film and television, for heaven's sake, and theatre cannot now, nor ever will be able, to compete with the inherent realism in film. No one is fooled. In fact, they're offended.

So I say, no more blackouts or brownouts or blueouts or lengthy scene changes of any kind in live theatre. It's sophomoric. At the very most, under any circumstances, a cross-fade is the most a director can get away with. Why loose an entire audience for the sake of one or two massive scene changes?

Now, I, too, have reluctantly written episodic theatre pieces. With my play, PRAYING SMALL, it was unavoidable. It was the only way to tell the story I wanted to tell. But I specifically wrote the play so that all the transitions happened with a cross-fade, not a blackout. I had a terrible time of it trying to make the director of the play here in LA understand that. He wanted these massive, cumbersome, obvious, silly, long, theatre-rattling scene changes with lots of diverting music and sound effects as though the audience wouldn't notice. It was a fearsome argument trying to make him understand how self-defeating this was. Eventually, I won that argument but not without a bunch of senseless debate and yammering. One would think this stuff would be self-evident, but it is not. And I'm not sure who to blame for this silliness. Academia, I suppose. Academia could screw up a one car funeral. For whatever reason, directors are taught all across America that blackouts in the theatre are acceptable. Well, they are not. Again, they KILL a play.

Okay. Done with that. Aside from the poor directing, there were some very fine performances in this piece. Andrew Ableson, Loren Lester, Zoe Perry, Abigail Revasch and Charlie Saxton all comport themselves admirably up there on the boards. I enjoyed every single on of them at various points throughout the evening, particularly the very natural Loren Lester, who has a way of delivering a line with a very easy, unharried, energy. Much harder than it looks. That kind of work is difficult as hell. If it weren't, everyone would do it. And everyone doesn't. It's the kind of work that makes non-professional actors say to themselves, "I could do that." They can't. It's the result of years, decades of work. Kudos to Mr. Lester. Good stuff.

I must admit, this is the kind of production that could easily be elevated to the status of 'great' if only a good director would step in for a few days and eliminate all the blackout crap. But as it stands, it doesn't have a chance. Regardless how good the actors are, they are defeated at every turn by the clumsy and unnecessary scene changes. Too bad, really, because there is truly some fine work being done on that stage.

The tragic part of all this is that it is not an isolated incident. It is, unfortunately, the way of all theatre these days, it seems.

END DAYS tackles some pretty hefty ideas. Intelligent design versus logical progression. Jesus versus Stephen Hawking. Indefensible Judeo-Christianity maxims versus common sense. God versus fate. To anyone with a little education, these would seem to be foregone conclusions, a moot argument, but one only has to follow politics these days to realize they are not. We have three front-running Rebublicans who all believe the world was created six thousand years ago, and what's more, that this should be taught as fact to our children. So, as astonishing as it may be, it is not a foregone conclusion. This battle is still raging and at this point, I'm sorry and aghast to report, the outcome is still very much a mystery. And yet, Ms. Laufer has the saavy to make her imagined Jesus and Stephen Hawking characters quite flawed and silly, too. Jesus rolls his eyes a lot at the blind allegiance given to him and the Dr. Hawking character (both played by the same actor, by the way) is obssessed with capitalism, concerned with making a buck off his book, The History of Time. It works, too, dramaturgically. It keeps the play from wallowing in too much self-seriousness. And Ms. Laufer clearly has an ear for dialogue, particularly in the first act. But she reaches her catharsis about a half hour before the play ends and then tries, unsuccessfully, to stretch it out. This is one of those plays that could easily be done in about ninety minutes instead of the two hours it actually takes to unfold. The greatest mistake a playwright can make is letting the audience get ahead of the actors. That's what happens here. Her climactic second act becomes pedestrian because we've already figured out where she's going with everything.

The play was first produced in 2008, won a number of awards I've never heard of, and apparently was well received by a whole array of literary critics. I can see why that would be. I suspect this play is a lot more adventurous on the page than on the stage.

END DAYS, Odyssey Theatre, through October 16, 2011.

See you tomorrow.

The Work

2011-08-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I shoot a scene as a very loud and aggressive drill sergeant for a new television thing with Ridley Scott (he's producing, not directing). I've been a fan of Mr. Scott and his work since Alien. Or maybe since Bladerunner. Whichever came first. The director's cut of Bladerunner is a piece of genius, the studio version, not so much. In any case, I doubt he'll be on the set in his capacity as a producer, which is too bad. It's a small role, but I'm hoping it will be fun. Yesterday the costumer and I got everything worked out.

My credit card took a major beating yesterday as we had our old Saturn completely refitted. But it was necessary. It was starting to sound a lot like the truck in The Beverly Hillbillies. And after all the repair and maintenance work, we had to take it over for the mandatory, California 'smog check.' Friday we're getting the tires 'rotated.' All of this car stuff sort of depresses me. Puts me in mind of Central Missouri, where people treat their cars with the same enthusiasm the rest of the country reserves for their children.

Nonetheless, there's no getting around it, LA is a car culture and the sooner one accepts that fact, the sooner one becomes a bona fide West Coaster.

The shoot for the new Indie with the wonderful Cathy Baker is the week of September 4th. Today I've got to get that patch of dialogue under my belt. It's a fun and clever script and I'm looking forward to playing with it a bit.

Also, the up and coming director/writer Jeremy Lanni sent me his new 'thriller' and we're going to do another 'industry reading' in September. Again with Powers Boothe and my buddy, Larry Cedar, of Deadwood fame.

And this Friday I go in for yet another read for the play, Underneath the Lintel, a one-person play, being produced with the Ensemble Theatre Company in Santa Barbara. The director is being, shall we say, VERY attentive to who he eventually casts. He's already scoured every decent, 50 year old actor in LA and NYC. He keeps calling me back in, so that's a good thing, I suppose. As I said before, it's one of those gigs that definitely falls under the 'be careful what you wish for' category. So, so, SO many damn words to learn should it happen.

I've done three one-person shows over my career; Golden Eggs, Farley and Daisy and, most recently, Give 'Em Hell, Harry, about the life of Harry Truman. With the 'Harry' piece, I had about four months to learn it after which I went into rehearsal, the piece firmly under my belt already. For me, learning that many words, especially in my advance age and with my addled brain, is more daunting than ever.

So the 'Lintel' piece scares the bejesus out of me. On the other hand, a few months in Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful spots on earth, would be really cool. Although should it happen I'm not sure I'd be of the right mind to enjoy it all. I'll be too panicky about the script.

In any event, if it happens, I'll do my best, of course, and if it doesn't, well, I'll live with that, too. I have some friends out here, film people, guys that would rather cut off their right arm before they did an actual 'play.' One said to me a while back, 'Why do you keep doing that stuff? It's a dead art. It's like cave painting.' There may be some truth to what he says. But I'm an anachronism when it comes to live theatre; I still think it's important. In LA it's tantamount to practicing voo-doo in some people's minds. I've touched on this subject many times in this blog and to be perfectly honest, I'm torn sometimes. I definitely have a problem with 'friends and family' small theatre. And, to be perfectly honest, that's what a lot of theatre in LA is, especially with the smaller theatres. It's a shame, really, but undeniable. Back in the day, during my time in New York, it was surrounded with a very noble quality. Theatre, ANY theatre, was treated with unreserved respect. Not so much here in the City of Angels, although there is some startling and exciting work being done on the small stages now and then. Mostly, however, there is not. Most actors look at theatre work on the small stages as a way to get noticed by film people. And there's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, I'm just not sure it's a healthy way to approach the work.

But I've beaten that poor, dead horse quite enough over the past couple of years. I have one friend who says he only does theatre 'between real gigs.' Those are his words, 'real gigs.' It's discouraging, to say the least.

My favorite playwright, the late Lanford Wilson, has a line in his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, 'Tally's Folly.' It goes like this: 'The work. The work is very much to the point.' I've taken that line to heart over the past couple of decades. Doesn't matter where it occurs...the work is still very much to the point. At least for me it is.

See you tomorrow.

Counting Coup with the Tea Party

2011-08-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

I suspect things are going to get very ugly in the upcoming presidential election. Uglier than we've seen up to this point in our history, I think. There is a division, a pair of battle lines, the Maginot and Siegfried political trenches being drawn, that I've not seen before. Yes, there are always dirty politics at work, name-calling, sneak attacks, scrambling for the moral high ground, but nothing like this year.

As usual, the Republicans will start it because, well, they're Republicans and that's what they do. But the Democrats will very shortly be forced to wrestle in that mud, too. In years past, I've sort of enjoyed, in a 'wreck on the highway' sort of way, the coming political skirmish. This year, not so much, because I know how ugly it's going to get. Most of it will fall squarely on the shoulders of the Tea Partiers, but not all. For whatever reason, I've noticed the Democrats aren't as good at slinging shit as the Republicans. They just don't seem to have the stomach for it. For one thing, for as far back as I can remember, the Republicans just don't have many smart candidates. And I mean that literally. The guys they nominate are usually a bit challenged in the smarts department. The one exception may have been McCain, but once he became the front-runner, his campaign was pretty much hi-jacked by the GOP leadership and even though he, himself, was a fairly bright individual, his platform became dumb.

And then you have the Tea Party, fueled by the Christian Right. This is a whole new bottle of piss in the fray. These guys rely on the inexplicable party line of, "Yeah, so?" It's maddening. Not to mention an intellectual quicksand of sorts.

"There is evidence, incontrovertable, that the earth is NOT six thousand years old, but rather about five billion years old."

"Yeah, so?"

"Not taxing the very wealthy is not only counterproductive, it's inherently unfair and self-defeating."

"Yeah, so?"

"Destroying Social Security will destroy our very civilization."

"Yeah, so?"

"We must maintain separation of church and state. It is the very reason we exist as a Republic in the first place."

"Yeah, so?"

You see, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to have any sort of reasonable dialogue with these people. It's like trying to talk a gangbanger out of killing you, raping your wife, and torturing your children at three in the morning on the south side of Chicago...can't be done. Civility is thrown to the wind. Reason itself is dead. These folks, these Tea Party pirates, are a very dangerous lot. Not because they're introducing anything new in the world of politics but because they are incapable of logic, of reason, of intellectual give and take and most importantly of compromise on any level. For all of America's braggadocio about doing things 'our way,' the truth is our very foundation is compromise. It's how our government works. Compromise is the bedrock of who we are.

But it's even deeper than that. The Christian Right hates those who differ from their beliefs. They hate them. Do you understand how powerful that is? They hate people that don't agree with them. It's almost impossible to get one's mind around that. In this year, 2011, we're dealing with a sizable political faction that not only refuses to bring debate to the table, they want their opponents to die. Because they hate them. It's mind-boggling. The historical parallels to 1932 Germany are so clear and recognizable as to be beyond belief. One only has to do a tiny bit of research to see this. Not even a lot of research. Just a trip to your local library and about an hour of reading. And the response to this?

"Yeah, so?"

I think this election will prove to be a savage turning point in our political process. It will be akin to a chapter in the old testament, when the Luddites have to finally take a stand against 'evil giants from the mountains.' Never before, not even in the early seventies when Vietnam hovered gargantuan over everything political, will there be such malignancy in our process. One only has to look at the group of Republicans scrambling for position; Perry, Bachman, Palin. It's truly shaping up to be a playground, gradeschool fight with the third grade bully. It's a horrible thing to say, but the Democrats have to go back to school. They have to learn to play dirty. They have to accept the idea that drawing blood is not only desirable, but practical. They have to learn to kill, not just wound.

I have read about the first white men the American Indians encountered as Manifest Destiny reared its ugly face in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in this country. The Indians would meet the interlopers, the white men, on the field of battle and attack. Only instead of killing, they would 'count coup.' That is to say, they would touch the surprised white settler or cavalry soldier on the back of the neck with a stick rather than kill him. The rules of combat would then demand that the white man excuse himself from battle for they had been touched, eliminated from the field of skirmish. Human life was too valuable to waste on actual physical conflict. It made perfect sense and the Indians had been settling their disagreements for centuries this way. Only the white man, intent upon their Manifest Destiny, didn't understand this. They shot to kill. They took the debate to a level previously unimagined. They slaughtered an entire people in their ignorance and greed.

I think this is a good metaphor for what's about to take place in this upcoming election. The Democrats have to understand that the Tea Party folks and the Christian Right are not counting coup. They're shooting to kill. And the political left has to understand this before going into battle. There will be no prisoners, no mercy and no quarter. Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin and their ilk don't want to steer our nation to a new ideology, they want to destroy their desenters, eliminate debate, kill those who might engage them in civilized debate. They want to lead a political manifest destiny.

Sad as all of this is, I don't think we can avoid it. Politics will not be business as usual this time. It will be sick and ugly and stupid. And confronting stupid is far, far more dangerous than confronting a division of opinion. War, poverty, diversity, economic crisis, distrust, anger, moral outrage...these obsticles can cripple a nation, but they're as old as communication itself. But stupid? Therein lies the death of all things.

The left cannot count coup with the far right this time around. If they do, they'll be massacred. The left has to learn to fight and kill with a heretofor unimagined zealousness. They have no choice. The nation will not survive another Christian Right Chief Executive. It is that dire. We would no longer be who we were.

See you tomorrow.

The Dog Beach

2011-08-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

Angie and I took our dogs, Franny and Zooey, to the dog beach yesterday. There's a couple around, apparently, but we took them to the one in Long Beach. Zooey, who turns 12 this year, had been to one before but Franny, who is 18 months old, never has.

The dog beach, much like dog parks, are wonderful things - unbridled, absolute and rampant joy for the dogs. The one thing that makes dogs act a little wonky at times is territorialism. They want to protect their space. You see, dogs have to have a job. They need a job. And often times their job, in their minds, is to protect the house, the land, the trailer, the shack, the yard, whatever. They truly think this is their job. It is why they get fed and are kept around. Of course, that's mostly not true, but that's what they think. For example, our dogs are under the impression that everyday around 4:00 a guy in a uniform and a pith helmut tries to break into our house. Same guy, everyday. They must keep him out. So far they've been successful. Not once has he made it past the mailbox. While they are otherwise happy, passive, loveable, kind and playful dogs, for that minute and a half or so, they gather their aggressive resources, dig deep into their genetic memories and bare their small teeth and stand immovable and determined at the front door, growling and posturing. Once the pith helmut-wearing scofflaw has retreated, they once again become the tail-wagging souls they really are. They've done their job for the day.

But at the dog beach there is no territory to defend. The dog beach doesn't belong to anyone so it's okay if other dogs and people hang out and walk around. They couldn't care less. In fact, they go out of their way to be as friendly as possible to all the other dogs and their owners. The dog beach is sort of the living embodiment of John Lennon's song, Imagine, except the lyrics apply to dogs.

Franny had never seen the ocean. He was a little bamboozled by it. Not threatened or frightened really, just wary. Zooey, having been there before, plunged right in without even a how-do-you-do. I remember the first time I saw the ocean. I was about 23 or so. As I sat and gazed over the Pacific, I remembered a line George Burns once used about it, "It's smaller than I thought it would be." That always makes me laugh.

To be honest, I was a little grouchy yesterday on the way to the dog beach. There are some professional things going on, career things, that aren't moving fast enough for me and I was having a hard time letting everything go yesterday. But the moment our dogs hit the beach, wild-eyed with joy and surprise, it all ebbed away.

Later, as Angie and I sat having lunch at a curbside restaurant, the dogs sitting at our feet, we began talking about 'what's important' in our lives. She asked me what I thought was important. I said, "this."

We've decided to make the trip to Long Beach and that stretch of doggy inhabited sand a regular thing in our schedule. Maybe twice a month or so. And I think it's worth it. Our dogs are, generally speaking, a pretty happy pair but I've never seen them quite SO happy as they were yesterday. For that alone, we'll return.

There's something terribly euphoric about watching a bunch of dogs play together. There are no agendas, no ulterior motives, no envy or mean-spiritedness, no cynicism or passive-aggression, just moment-to-moment fun. I liked that a lot. And the owners, in an unpremeditated minute of surrender, sort of fell into the same trance. At least we did. It would be nice to see that more often in life.

Today, the start of the new week, it's back to memorizing the next chunk of words for a new film I'm doing in a couple weeks and then once finished with that, laying out my 'scenes' for the new screenplay (which has me stuck at the moment) and then off to read for another possible gig. But in my mind, I'm still at the dog beach.

See you tomorrow.

THE RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

2011-08-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

The biggest surprise that came from watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes was realizing that James Franco runs like a girl. And, oddly, it's sort of endearing. He's not bad in this film, not great, but not as bad as I've seen him be countless times before. And there are a couple of action sections in the film in which he has to run flat out. And he runs like the fat kid in 6th grade that always got picked on.

My buddy, John, and I ventured to beautiful downtown Burbank to see the matinee yesterday. Huge theatre. A handful of people. Incredible sound. Huge screen. I don't go to a lot of movies in the theater anymore, I'm showing my age here, but I prefer to wait till I can see them on cable or Netflix or what have you. I simply can't abide talking and distractions that come from seeing a film in a theater. Yesterday that was most certainly not the case, I'm delighted to say.

I think I've seen every incarnation of the Planet of the Apes franchise; The original six or seven movies, the Mark Wahlberg fiasco, even the Saturday morning cartoons of the late seventies. I was never obsessed with them like some people were, but I always liked the tight fitting timeline attached to the original films, the symmetry and backstory, that is to say. And of course, the inescapable social overtones of race relations just underneath the surface of all the earlier films.

There were several aspects of this new film I found quite appealing. I liked the way Rupert Wyatt took his time setting up the story. It's well into the film before the FX people take over. There doesn't seem to be a rush to get to the money shots. There is a sequence in 'jail' in which Caesar, the intelligent chimp, takes the time and smarts to establish himself as the Alpha Male. I liked that very much. Wyatt took a page from Speilberg's JAWS for that, and wisely so. That is to say, he doesn't 'show the monster' until about two thirds into the movie. He trusts the audience enough to allow the suspense to build betting we won't lose interest because it's not 'scary' enough early on.

At one point the film veers dangerously close to exploring the relationship between Franco and the love interest of the film, Freida Pinto. Both actors are only slightly better than cut-out pieces of wood, so the director wisely steers clear of any real interaction between them. I suspect Ms. Pinto has reached her zenith as an actress in this film.

So, thankfully, the story quickly shifts back to Caesar (Andy Serkis - also Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films) and his exploits. Serkis is quickly finding himself to be the most unsung actor since Lon Cheney.

The film is as formulaic as one might expect. Good guys, bad guys, 'all is lost' one moment, a last-minute change of fortunes, a final battle, all straight from the book 'Save the Cat,' the screenwriter's bible of penning the perfect, big-money, formula-driven Hollywood movie. That's not to say it's bad. It's just predictable.

One of the problems I had with the film (and this is quibbling, really) is the lack of really nasty-awful antagonists. There are several in the film, the worst, arguably, being Tom Felton of Harry Potter fame. He's a lower echelon bad guy, not to mention an embarrassingly bad actor, but at least his bad guy credentials are intact throughout. He's a sour puss and ends up being uncharacteristically killed by the apes for being so. 'Uncharacterisic' because the apes don't really kill that many people, they just throw them around and scream at them, mostly. The 'main' bad guy, David Oyelowo, seems more like an annoying boss than anything else. The kind of guy we've all worked for at one point or another, a tad bi-polar, some days okay and other days a real pain in the ass. But hardly the kind of guy to go down in the annals of villains in the cinema world. He's the CEO of the research tank where Caesar comes from. Even though he's kind of sassy, he hardly deserves the unreserved hatred the apes feel for him in the end. He, too, gets killed but the audience doesn't experience any great catharsis from it because he's really not all that bad. What he really deserves, like most bosses in the world, is a good ass whuppin'. And then there's Brian Cox, who it seems is in about every third movie put out these days. He's also sort of slippery as a bad guy. Not really horrible, but just a bit greedy and uncaring. Plus he's far and away the best actor in the film (not counting John Lithgow, who does a Flowers for Algernon kinda thing in the film to show his range).

So, anyway, Ceaser (who eventually TALKS, which, I have to say, caught me off guard) gets all the apes from the animal control center (jail) plus the local zoo apes (prison) and smacks around the San Francisco police department on the Golden Gate Bridge. This is where the FX people really earn their money (and incidentally, the final credits list about 1,000 people involved with realizing the apes...I think it may be the most people I've ever seen listed on a film in the credits). They beat up the whole police force and smack around their horses, too, for good measure.

For awhile I kind of got the feeling the movie was going to be sort of a cross between Marley and Me and THEM! But thankfully, the director veers away from the whole 'mistreatment of cuddly animals' theme and instead goes for kick-ass anarchy, instead.

My friend, John, said upon leaving the theater, "Well, I wasn't too impressed. I knew how it was going to end." And I guess there's something to be said for that statement, but the cool part about this particular installment in the 'Apes' franchise is HOW the story is told rather than the story itself. And of course the film is left wide open for a sequel.

So I liked this thing. Not loved, but liked it. The apes are really ape-like, which, come to think of it, might not be a bad promotional sentence for the film: "THE RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES...the apes are really ape-like!"

See you tomorrow.

Reading

2011-08-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, Angie and I discoved a little thrift store over in Burbank that sells brand new and nearly brand new books for a buck. Hard covers. Yesterday, for example, I picked up a few new Bob Woodward books, a Steven Ambrose and a David McCullough. I've gotten huge tomes there on Orson Welles, Brando, Olivier and Woody Allen. New hardcover fiction from Robert Parker and Nelson DeMille (two of my guilty reading pleasures). New coffee table books, normally priced around 50 to 70 bucks, brand spanking new, for...yep, a buck. I love this place.

Through the years books have saved my life. During times of great emotional discomfort I've always been able to turn to books. I remember a particularly stressful break-up years ago in New York...I stayed in my apartment for weeks reading ALL of the Tales of the City series by Armisted Maupin. When I emerged, weeks later, I was fine. Books. Once again, they healed and comforted.

I was lucky. Early in my life my mom taught me the value of reading. She never forced it on me, she simply read to me. An early example of this was the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck. Nightly she would open the book where we'd left off and I was transported to China in the 19th century. Another was A Wrinkle in Time. And also nearly all of the Jules Verne books (Twenty Thousand Leagues..., Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Secret Island). It was a natural progression for me to start reading by myself as I got older. And unlike a lot of kids, I never saw it as something being thrust upon me, but rather a privilege, a gift.

I remember finishing Jack London's A Call of the Wild when I was about twelve or so, too excited to sleep because of the glorious story I'd just been a part of. The same was true of Kipling's Jungle Books. I can remember finishing Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove and the following morning, picking up the book again and starting over, something I've done with no other book. I recall being lost in another world for weeks at a time as I took my first foray through Middle Earth with J.R.R. Tolkein. I relish the time I spent with Blackthorne and Toranada in Clavell's Shogun. I very clearly remember the fear as I turned the pages of The Hound of the Baskervilles. I can still see myself putting the book down, pages splayed, and pushing my head in my pillow to muffle the sound because I was laughing so hard at John Kennedy O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces. I remember weeping alone in my room as I read the closing pages to the adolescent novel, A Day No Pigs Would Die. And later, I can picture myself in confusion and awe as I finished Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, wondering how he'd managed to peak into my own life without knowing me. I can still feel the rush of adventure as I curled up nightly with the rabbits in Watership Down, cheering them on, and later, being unable to shake off the deep sadness I felt when Lenny is killed in Of Mice and Men. And as I got older still, the beauty and grace I finally grasped when I finally put down Wolfe's Of Time and the River, finally realizing how fotunate I was to live in the rural south during my formative years.

Reading saved my life. The joy of reading saved my life.

When I was teaching full time a question I often heard was 'what is the most important thing a young actor can do for himself?' My answer was always the same: read. Read everything. Read all the time. I don't care what it is; comic books, cereal boxes, newspapers, doesn't matter...read. Just read.

I guess I'm showing my age, but I am simply appalled at the lack of knowledge I see in young artists today. No idea who Herman Melville is, or Hemingway or Faulkner. No idea why they're important or, for that matter, what they had to say and why they said it.

I can remember being in 11th and 12th grade and hanging out in my drama teacher's classroom after school everyday for a couple of hours while he did paperwork, graded assignments, whatever. His room was filled with plays, crowded together in bookshelves that covered all the walls. It was my first inkling of how woefully ignorant I was when it came to theatre. I would pester him, demand answers, question him relentlessly..."Death of a Salesman...' What's that about?" "This Streetcar Named Desire play... That's a weird title. What's that about?" And on and on.

I made it my mission to learn what every play in that room was about. And a few years later I discovered Shakespeare. And began devouring that, too. And that's a whole other story for some other blog, discovering Shakespeare and leaping on the bandwagon of his genius.

The point is, not only does literature - reading - have the capacity to save our lives...it changes who we are. It shapes us and eventually plays a massive role in who we become. It certainly did me.

Every time Angie and I trot over to this thrift store, the one with all of the dollar books, I get excited just walking into the place. Where will this trip take me? What new journey am I about to embark upon? What book am I going to find that illuminates a dark corner I never even knew existed? And finally, what am I about to discover about myself?

See you tomorrow.

Road Rage

2011-08-10T07:33:00.000-07:00

You know, I never really understood 'Road Rage' until I moved to Los Angeles. It always seemed to me a very indulgent sort of reaction. I mean, you're sitting down, there is music, or maybe a talk show, playing on the radio. You're connected to people via your phone, hell, even the internet is available as you sit comfortably in your air-conditioned, plush seat, waiting for the traffic to clear or whatever. It's southern California, so the weather is usually very nice. Yes, sometimes people drive a bit foolishly and maybe you're cut off once or twice a month. But it's all part and parcel of the hazards of driving in the twenty first century.

Well, none of that matters or is true.

Having lived fifteen years in NYC and ten years in Chicago before coming here, I never really experienced traffic like what I've seen here. The simple, inescapable fact is this: there are too many cars here. In New York I would occasionally become irritated in the back of a cab because I needed to be somewhere at a certain time and Manhattan can get very backed up, particularly around five and six o'clock in the afternoon. And midtown can be a real headache once the theatre district lets out. But otherwise, nothing to really get too exasperated about.

In Chicago, my biggest peeve was the irregular bus schedules. I didn't, or rarely, anyway, drive much in Chicago, and found myself taking the bus fairly often. Unlike LA, it's quite socially acceptable to take the bus in Chicago. The problem is Chicago busses run on some alternate universe schedule, coming when they feel like it, and are always, ALWAYS, late just when you need them the most. I have been known to spew expletives at ne'er-do-well bus drivers, which is pretty much all of them, in Chicago. But I was never really surprised because Chicago is the most corrupt, mismanaged city in the world. Chicago spends all of its time trying to convince people who don't actually live in Chicago how great it is. It isn't.

But here in LA, it's a different ballgame altogether. Last week, Angie and I drove down to San Diego for the opening gala at The Old Globe Theatre. It was a Saturday afternoon, around 1:00, generally speaking a fairly good time to travel in LA, and we immediately ran into bumper to bumper traffic on the 101 and it stayed that way FOR THE ENTIRE TRIP. Now, normally, San Diego is about a two hour trip from LA. We did it in four and half hours. By the time we got there I was shaking with rage. Who were these people? Why were they all driving at the same time on Saturday? Why was there never more than one person in the car? There was no accident on the freeway that we could see, just a gillion people out driving on the highway with the sole intent of making my life miserable. It's as though they had planned it, called each other the day before in a massive conspiracy. You see, these are the nonsensical things that go through the mind after sitting in traffic, not moving more than a few inches, for hours at a time.

And another thing that happens is a complete lack of empathy for those who HAVE had an accident on the freeway. After being backed up in traffic for what seems like weeks, by the time you get to the actual accident that caused the back up, you just look over at the poor saps sitting by the side of the road, emergency blinkers on, chatting with some other schumck that back ended you, and you think to yourself, 'How could you be so STUPID to have an accident HERE?! What the *%#! were you THINKING?!'

Some road rage incidents are actually treated as landmarks of a sort. We were driving over in Burbank the other day when Angie said, "This is where Jack Nicholson got out of his car and beat somebody's car with a golf club." I slowed down and looked at the intersection with new respect, thinking Jack Nicholson was the greatest human being since Ghandi.

In Los Angeles, people get out of their cars all the time and have fist fights. Often, one will get out and the other will lock all the doors. Usually, I suspect, because that person was being an idiot and doesn't want to get beat up because he KNOWS he was being an idiot.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with that. I think there ought to be exceptions in the laws for such behavior. You get out of your car and slap some 72 year old Asian woman silly for cutting you off, halting traffic, making an unauthorized left turn in front of you, slowing down to read a sign, turning on a blinker and then never actually turning, driving in two lanes at the same time thus not letting people pass her, stop in the middle of the street waiting for a possible parking place (in which she'd have to parallel park, something she couldn't do in her wildest dreams in the first place), drive while looking around like a monkey on crack wondering where the hell she is, or any other driving no-no's. So when you get the chance, you simply put your car in park, get out, stroll up to her car, which she has stopped in the middle of the road for no apparent reason whatsoever, and give her a good wallop upside the back of the head. Later, in front of the judge, you explain what happened. He says, "Well, I don't see the problem here. That old Asian woman had it coming, obviously."

Of course it doesn't happen that way. Poor Jack Nicholson got into all sorts of trouble beating that car with his golf club. All I can say is, if I had been the judge I'd have given him a heart-felt handshake and possibly a coupon for Bob's Big Boy.

Yesterday I had to drive over to Hollywood for some stupid commercial audition at four o'clock. Hollywood is no place to be in a car at four o'clock. By the time I'd gotten to the studio, having screamed myself hoarse at the thousands of nitwits jamming traffic, I barely had a voice left for the audition. And what voice I DID have left was tight and angry after what I'd just gone through. So I ended up talking about shampoo much the same way Jesse Ventura might. I was the angriest spokesperson in history. I looked straight into the camera and bellowed, red-faced and choking, about how soft and light your hair feels after using it.

Here's the solution: cops should pull people over at random. Just hit the lights and siren and pull them over. Go up to the car and ask them where they're going. If it's a stupid answer, something like, I'm driving over to Hollywood during rush hour to pick up a big bag of M and M's, just shoot them. Really. Oh, don't KILL them, just wing them. A shot to the arm or right into the thigh. A new LA ordinance. Or...if it's a dumb reason, but not a super dumb reason to be on the road, something like, 'I'm going to dinner at a restaurant and I'm trying to get there for the Early Bird Special,' taze them. A quick jolt. Just enough to make them realize they're an idiot.

Also, the moment anyone turns 65, take their driver's license. Just up and yank it away. No sir, it's the bus for you. Sorry. Call it the 'Soylent Green' law.

And Armenians in luxury cars. Have a special license for them. One that only allows them to drive between midnight and six a.m.

And mothers with babies in the back seat. No driving for them. Anytime, anywhere. Just stay at home. Sorry, but it's for everyone's good. That damned baby doesn't need to be anywhere.

And no motorcycles. In LA it's legal for a motorcycle driver to zip in and out of traffic, around stopped vehicles, on the white line, the highway shoulder, whatever. And they all grin smugly while doing so. Well, that's just detrimental for the general public's emotional well-being. So, no more motorcycles at all. You wanna drive your motorcycle? Go to Utah.

And no foreigners. They rarely know where they're going anyway, so it won't be a big deal for them to stay home.

I think this is a good start. As time passes, other rules should be considered, too, of course. Eventually, only people who have lived in LA at least three years, are between 30 and 50 years of age, speak only English, are male, have at least three other people in the car with them and no babies, and are on the road for an emergency, life and death reason, will be able to drive here. I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Anyone who doesn't like it can move to Chicago and stand on a streetcorner for two or three hours waiting for a bus.

See you tomorrow.

A New Film

2011-08-09T07:52:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my agent sent me a script for a new independent feature, sort of a cerebral 'American Pie,' if that makes any sense. A funny, witty, very clever script with the wonderful actress, Cathy Baker, attached. The role was the kind of part that Dabney Coleman would have done if it were twenty years ago. So I toddled over to Studio City and did the read and, in fact, Ms. Baker was in the room along with the producers and the director.

I've always admired Cathy Baker's work as an actress, particularly in 'Picket Fences' and a film she did with Michael Keaton called 'Clean and Sober.'

In any event, I read for them (a long, surreal monologue my character delivers toward the end of the film) and that was that. I knew I'd pretty much nailed it (sometimes actors can sense this...sometimes not), but I didn't hear anything immediately so, as often happens, I simply put it out of my mind and moved on to the next project. Sometimes, for various reasons, the producers will see a number of actors read for a role even though the role is already cast. Well, this is a very funny, very odd role, so I naturally assumed it was probably already cast.

Yesterday afternoon my agents called and told me they'd offered the role.

We shoot in September. It's what's called a 'low budget SAG' contract, so I'm certainly not going to get rich doing it, but nonetheless, it looks to be a lot of fun, at the very least. And it's a really quirky, eccentric piece of writing, intelligent and memorable stuff, so I suspect I'll have a good time doing it. Think the aforementioned Dabney Coleman in an old movie called 'Amos and Andrew.' It's that kind of role.

I suppose it's a busy time for film auditions (two more today), because they seem to be pouring in. A little while back I read for the new 'Batman' movie (didn't land it) and shortly thereafter things picked up quite a bit in the film world. That's the funny thing about this business, it can be dead for weeks, even months, at a time, and then all of a sudden I find myself bopping all over LA reading scripts. Angie says that's just the way it is. The work here seems to be quite 'seasonal.'

Also had an inordinately long callback for the play in Santa Barbara, 'Underneath the Lintel'...a one-person show. I suspect I'll hear something about that today, too. And to top things off, I was called in for 'Daddy Warbucks' in a production of that old warhorse, ANNIE. It's being done down south of LA somewhere. Nice, little Equity contract...but we'll see.

Any spare time I can find is spent re-writing the new screenplay (the producer is in Germany at the moment, talking to additonal investors) and waiting to hear about my new play going into workshop at The Old Globe. We haven't quite nailed down the exact dates for that, but it's starting to look like October. Once that opens here in LA, we're hoping to transfer it to NYC, possibly Manhattan Theatre Club. But, again, it's early and anything could happen.

So, things are busy and satisfying and I couldn't be happier about it. A far cry from a year ago this time when I had just finished a production of my own play, Praying Small, battered and bruised, discouraged and cynical.

Last night, in a celebratory mood, Angie and I sought out a new diner very near our home and were pleasantly surprised at how good it was. We're diner people, really, coming from the wilds of Missouri, so we're always delighted to find a new 'Joe's Place.' And once home I watched the ALI-FOREMAN fight in Zaire in 1974 that I'd recently saved from our new U-verse.

I've seen the fight about 50 times and still find it exciting. Angie...um...less so.

So it's off to do some more play-acting today. Unlike the rest of the country, suffering through blistering and unrelenting heat the past few weeks, LA has been quite temporate. Before dinner at the diner (nothin' could be finer') we took a very long hike on the paths around Griffith Park and The Equestrian Center with Franny and Zooey; Franny zipping around at full speed, exploring every little nook and dale, while Zooey trotted along stalwart beside us, holding up like a champ despite her advanced age (she's 13...that's 91 in people years - she pauses at every tree shadow and takes a short rest).

Life is good. The sun is shining. The world is in constant turmoil but here in our little corner, like Frodo's Shire, it's lovely and hopeful and green and peaceful and tranquil.

See you tomorrow.

Writing Screenplays.

2011-08-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

I don't pretend to really know anything about writing screenplays other than the fact that I know what I like when I watch a movie. On the other hand, that's how I felt many years ago when I first started writing stage plays.

I've taken no 'screenwriting classes' (although it probably wouldn't hurt). I've had no formal 'training' when it comes to this sort of thing. I don't really even know a lot of the language and abbreviations and insider code words for the writing of a screenplay. I've not sat at the feet of screenwriting masters. I've not poured over Billy Wilder films or Sergio Eisnenstein or Hitchcock (although I did take a class on Hitchcock in undergrad school which I found utterly fascinating), studying the beats and arcs with a magnifying glass. I haven't done any of that. Well, not really done it, I mean.

What I have done, however, is watch a lot of film. I've seen a lot of movies. And I've studied, passively, perhaps, just how and why they're good. Or, to be more accurate, why I thought they were good. One man's trash is another man's treasure when it comes to cinema.

I've made it a point to watch the old masterpieces...the films that turned out great despite the fact that there was no blueprint for making them.

There are films I return to, films I find as interesting and exciting today as when I first ran across them thirty years ago on a Saturday afternoon in the basement of my house in small-town Missouri on what was called 'Bowling for Dollars.' Films like On The Waterfront, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Searchers, Dr. Stangelove, Lawrence of Arabia, 2001, It Happened One Night, Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, Olivier's Hamlet, The Apartment, Annie Hall, From Here to Eternity, Cool Hand Luke, In the Heat of the Night, Streetcar Named Desire, Sparticus, Singin' in the Rain, North by Northwest, Stagecoach, and so many more. I've seen them over and over. I've tucked away in my mind the moments of brilliance in them, the unexpected plot turns, the odd camera shot, the crystal clear dialogue. That has been my training, my film school.

And, like all of us, I've seen a hundred bad films for every great film. I've slogged through the failures to find the extraordinary.

And now I find myself in the odd position of writing a screenplay with a multi-million dollar budget, a screenplay that's already been 'greenlighted,' a film that's simply waiting to be made, waiting until my untrained fingers can put it on paper. I find myself in the unsolicited position of writing pages and pages everyday, zipping them off to a far-away producer, waiting for notes and thoughts and suggestions, and then diving back in, shaping, rewriting, changing, re-inventing. It's quite heady, really. And all of this completely unpremeditated. It worked like this: the producer saw a play I had written a year or so ago and decided then and there he would like me to write a screenplay for him. Some fourteen months later, out of the blue, he contacted and commissioned me. And suddenly I found myself leaping over hundreds, thousands perhaps, of other aspiring screenwriters and writing with an actual production date set in stone. Good Heavens.

Another thing I've done, which, oddly, has proven to be almost more of a hindrance than anything, is gathered up dozens of 'how to' books on screenwriting. I've always contended, my entire adult life, that the greatest education in the world is not at any school, regardless of its prestige, but in the nearest public library. So off I trundled to the local library, picking out volumes of screenwriting tomes.

There is one in particular I read (it came highly recommended) called 'Save the Cat.' When I first started reading it I was absolutely enthralled. I couldn't put it down. Here was a 'how to' book that quite literally, page by page, gave the reader a tried and true 'formula' for writing a successful screenplay. It came with dozens and dozens of examples of successful screenplays that used the exact 'formula' for movies that this book encouraged. Actually, 'encouraged' is not the right word...demanded. The book, quite a cheeky book, remarkably, claims this is the ONLY way to write a screenplay. It tells you exactly what needs to be on page 25, page 55, page 70, page 110 and finally on the end page of 120. It has pithy names for different stages of the screenplay ('Save the Cat' refers to the early scene in which the protagonist of the story does something unexpectedly 'nice' or 'noble' in order to subliminally get the audience to root for him or her). And to be sure, there are lots of things to learn from this book. The problem is, the more I read, the more I began to wonder where the passion for writing was, the inspiration, the creativity, the originality, the sheer REASON for writing. In the final analysis, this is a 'how to' book about making money, not writing. And there's certainly nothing wrong with making money. But I began to wonder if that was the reason to write a screenplay. That is to say, should that be the professed GOAL at the outset. Yes, it would be nice to write a script, have it filmed by wonderful actors and a brilliant director and a professional crew and then find an audience that is willing to shell out twelve bucks to sit in a dark room and watch it, but is that all there is (to borrow a phrase from Peggy Lee)? Is that the light at the end of the tunnel? Is that what the writer, at the expense of all else, should strive for?

Well, in a way, yes. But to write with that in mind is lunacy, I think. And I found the more I read 'Save the Cat' the angrier I got with it. To defend why the book works, the writer continually refers back to other screenplays that have followed his advice and he then tells the reader how much money each script was sold for and how much money it made at the box office. Again, nothing wrong with that. IF that is the ultimate goal. I read this book very, very carefully, to be sure. And yes, the top two moneymakers of all time, AVATAR and TITANIC, follow this formula for writing screenplays like clockwork. It's as if the scripts for these two (and many others, by the way) blockbusters actually came as a direct result of reading this book. And let's face it, it's hard to argue with success.

But finally, I decided my cinematic education should come from whence it originally came...the films themselves. So instead of peering endlessly at screenwriting 'how to' books, I decided to simply go to the source and read the screenplays themselves. So I went back to the greatest university on the planet, my local public library, and picked up All Quiet on the Western Front, Meet John Doe, Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Sounder, On Golden Pond, Arthur (the first one, the brilliant one, not the icky new one with that Russell Brand guy that always makes me want to take a shower and get clean after I watch him be profoundly unfunny), The Candidate and The Magnificent Ambersons and All About Eve. And finally, quite possibly my favorite screenplay ever, Magnolia.

And when I had finished, I began writing MY screenplay.

This time next year we'll see how that worked out. I have a long and uninterrupted history of not playing by the rules, so I may just get my ass handed to me in a handbag. It wouldn't be the first time.

See you tomorrow.

The Formula

2011-08-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

I watched a bad movie last night and I was completely enthralled. The film is called 'The Formula' and it's from 1980 and it stars George C. Scott, Marlon Brando and John Gielgud. It's about NAZI's and oil and synthetic fuel and, oh, I don't know, it really doesn't matter because it has George C. Scott, Marlon Brando and John Gielgud. In ONE movie.

The movie itself is pretty much a mess; hard to follow, gaping plot holes, scooby-doo reveals, etc., just too much information in the final analysis. But there's Scott, in a rare leading man performance, holding it all together with a forceful, very typical George C. performance.

Early on Scott, playing a weary police detective, meets Brando, a billionaire oil tycoon, in a scene in which he explains the murders, clues, suspects, whatever to him, trying to get a handle on who he is and what he's dealing with. And immediately it's acting magic. Watching Brando LISTEN is more exciting than watching most actors ACT. We tend to forget that the reason Brando was generally considered to be our finest American actor was not just because of his slumbering volatility and his realistic, heretofor unseen naturalistic screen behavior, but also because he did EVERYTHING better than other actors including the simple act of listening. He's genuinely engaged in these scenes, carefully reacting, however subtly, to every tiny utterance of Scott. He finds unexpected interpretations of even the most mundane dialogue. Scott, who was never in the same league as Brando in terms of unpredictability, had one of the most forceful, juggernaut-type personalities ever put on screen (see PATTON). He's a force of nature with anything he does. (I had the great privilege of seeing him onstage many years ago along with John Cullum in a not-so-well-written two character play called The Boys of Autumn or The Boys of Winter or something like that. My buddy, Greg Orosz and I saw it together and afterwards I remember we talked about Scott's overwhelming PRESENCE onstage. Poor John Cullum, a very fine actor in his own right, never stood a chance.) Watching Scott with Brando is like watching Nolan Ryan pitch to Babe Ruth. And an interesting side note - they are the only two actors to ever turn down an Oscar; Scott because he didn't believe in 'competition in the arts' and Brando because, well, something to do with Hollywood shooting too many Indians.

A little ways into the film Scott has a scene with John Gielgud. For the uninitiated, Gielgud was one of the 'Big Three,' (along with Olivier and Richardson) one of the three greatest Shakesperean actors of the twentieth century on the British stage - or ANY stage, for that matter. He and Brando had actually worked together in the fifties in the film JULIUS CAESAR. Gielgud was so impressed with the young Brando that he offered to direct him onstage in HAMLET shortly after the film was made. Of course, by then, Brando was done with the stage and turned him down and a few years later Gielgud directed Richard Burton in the role. But it's fun to watch Sir John in this film (a year later he would win an Oscar for ARTHUR). He's a technical wizard of an actor, making the simplest things like coughing or sipping tea or walking with a limp utterly fascinating. He has way of speeding through his dialogue, very British, and then suddenly and unexpectedly BARKING a line out catching the audience off guard. He and Scott clearly respect each other and they play the scene like Borg and McEnroe in a long volley leaving poor Wendy Hiller, the third actor in the scene, lagging far behind. The interesting thing about watching Gielgud is noticing his complete lack of respect for 'the pause.' He doesn't like them. And when he finally uses one, it's frought with power. Watching him in this scene is like auditing a short Master's Acting Class. One can almost see Scott surpressing a smile at his work.

The film culminates in a scene in which Brando and Scott confront one another over the McGuffin of the movie, the hidden formula for the synthetic fuel. Of course, by this time, no one gives a hoot about the formula but we keep watching simply because these three titans of the craft keep throwing a dazzling array of curve balls, sliders, fastballs, knuckleballs, change-ups...well, you get the point.

Most likely, for anyone not fascinated with great acting, this film is devastatingly dull. But for those of us interested in watching three of the best actors of the past 100 years, it's tremendously compelling.

I've read that Scott and Brando got along famously and played endless games of chess during the filming...Scott constantly accusing Brando of cheating. Which he probably did. The same can be said of their onscreen work together...Brando keeps cheating. And winning. Because Brando, like no other actor, understood there are no rules in acting, there is only what works and what doesn't work, what is fascinating and what is not fascinating. It's one thing to watch him outshine a pedestrian actor in a scene, but to watch him take on Scott, one of the very best, and still come out on top is something else entirely. It reminded me of a letter the actor, Bruce Dern, wrote to Jack Nicholson after he watched a movie called 'Missouri Breaks' with Brando and Nicholson in the leads - and I'm quoting, "Just finished seeing Missouri Breaks. I felt like I was watching the best actor in the world against the second best actor in the world. Sorry, Jack, but you got your ass kicked."

My final thought on the film is this: I was curious to see how these great actors handled substandard writing. The dialogue is so bad in this film, in parts, as to be laughable. But after seeing it and thinking back I realized the writing seemed bad only when OTHER actors in the movie were saying it. When Scott, Brando and Gielgud took hold of it, it seemed like Pinter, Williams, Miller and Albee all in one script. Made me realize that acting nearly always trumps writing. It's the old adage...A good actor can sometimes save a bad play but a good play can NEVER save a bad actor. These three guys could have been reading the dictionary and I suspect it would have been interesting to watch.

In other news, entirely unrelated, I had a curious audition yesterday...got a call back for next Monday. I found out late yesterday afternoon that the role (a large one, to say the least) is down to two actors. Myself and a very well-known film guy. A little premature to comment on it right now, but I'll write about it next Tuesday...regardless which way it falls.

See you tomorrow.

Uverse - It's What's For Dinner.

2011-08-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

In what can only be described as a hostile takeover we got a new cable/internet service called 'Uverse' a few days ago, which is done entirely with something called 'fiber optics.' We were not given a choice. Our old, apparently outdated Direct TV was 'a thing of the past,' we were told. Everyone in our neighborhood was being forced at gunpoint to get this new 'Uverse.' Cablemen in brown shirts, with Sam Brown leather holsters wandered our streets, pistol whipping kids and old ladies, forcing us to worship a cable god we didn't believe in, jamming this new technology down our peasant throats. Oh, we protested all right, we demanded our civil liberties, our basic human rights, we begged for for cable decency, but all for nought; we were told to stop whining, young parents slapped around on the sidewalk, fiber optic specialists wearing wire-rimmed, circular eye glasses and jack boots forced their way into our lives and installed this new twenty-first century voodoo without so much as a How Do You Do.

And, you know, I kind of like it.

In a pathetic attempt to apologize for their technological bullying, we got HBO and Cinamax for the rest of our natural lives, or six months, whichever comes first. We got a guaranteed rebate of hundreds of dollars, hard cash money. Of course, we have to wait seventeen years for that. And, like all new religions, we got the assurances of the high priests, in this case the cable guys, that our god was better than the old god, that this new god had more spells and potions than the old god, and that the new god cared for us more than the old god.

One of the cool things with this new set up is a channel called 'classic boxing.' It plays, nearly non-stop, great fights from the past including dozens of old ALI fights. I've been mesmerized with it, recording everything I can find. I'm glued to it in much the same way my wife is glued to OWN, Oprah's new network. So while she sobs in one room I can relive my youth in another.

Plus I like the 'On Demand' feature. I can watch any number of old films at the drop of a hat. Of coure, I could do this with Netflix, too, but with that I always had to wait a couple of days. With the new god, Uverse, I can do it immediately. The selections are limited and there are lots of old chestnuts in there that I probably wouldn't watch even if I were sloppy drunk at 3am on a Tuesday morning with nothing else but infomercials on, but nonetheless it feels powerful to have that option. I feel blessed by the new god to know I can, at any time during the day or night, watch 'Oh, God!,' (John Denver was robbed, ROBBED, I tell you, of his Oscar) or 'The Coneheads,' or 'Star Trek - the Motion Picture,' which still holds the title for most antiquated movie name ever thought of. 'Motion Picture?' They might as well have called it, 'Star Trek - the Organist Will Come To Your Own Home To Play The Incidental Music.'

And as for this 'fiber optics' thing...I have no idea what that means. Were the old 'optics' big, Anaconda-like tentacles that draped and swirled around your house? Were the 'optics' just too big before? Yes. Now they're mere 'fibers,' evidently. Can't even see them. Tiny, little optics no bigger than a world-killing new virus.

When we had it installed a few days ago I thought the cable guy might be moving in with us. He was here for hours. Days. Weeks. At one point he crawled under our house and made a fort with old sheets and window fans. We left for a weekend of R and R at Big Bear, in the mountains, and came back and he was still under the house, talking to other cable guys on his walkie-talkie..."Where are you now?" "In the front yard. You?" "I'm in the kitchen now." (Pause.) "Where are you now?" Etc.

Before he left he gave us a set of encyclopedias, which I thought was nice, until I realized they were the set up manuals for the new cable. Then he warned us not to read them while operating heavy machinery, gave us one last slap across the face to let us know who was boss, and left.

But it's all over now, the new god is firmly in place, the old god but a memory. Even as I write this I have the option of watching 'Son of Flubber' at the flick of a remote if I wanted. Just the empowering knowledge that, should I so desire, I could spend the day watching 'Carwash" makes me aware of just how powerful this new god is. Right this very second 'Silver Streak' is blaring in the background.

One of the more fascinating options on our new remote, which looks a lot like a ray gun, is the 'seven-second skip-back' button. I can push it whenever I want and re-watch the last seven seconds of whatever is on the TV. Which came in handy last night as I was watching 'Basic Instinct.'

See you tomorrow.

A Look Back

2011-07-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

Silly business, this business I'm in. Interesting, passionate, funny, sometimes hysterical, noble, self-rightous at times, far too serious at others, but always bordering on the silly.

I'm going in today to read for the producers of a new feature film, a thing about corrupt police officers, which is a subject close to my heart because I've always believed all police officers are corrupt to some degree, if only in their desire to be a police officer in the first place...power corrupts, etc. This is the call back. It's a small role, to be honest. In fact, so small my character doesn't even have a name. The role is that of the 'Bald Detective.'

My buddy, RD Call, told me ahwile back, "Never take a role that doesn't have a name." Hm. Well, he may be right. But sometimes you gotta go where the money is. The brutal truth is, you can make more money saying three lines as 'The Bald Detective' than you can playing Othello, Lear, Hamlet and Richard on tour for a year. Just the way it is. Big sigh.

Ostensibly, this blog was started to document my trip through showbiz and its myriad hurdles and oddities and opportunites in the City of Angels. And most of the time, I stick to that general premise. Although, now and again I use it to muse on other things, too. Someday, in a perfect world, I'll finish my journey and scrape together the blogs about my humble (humble? Hell, nearly invisible) start and end with something that will justify my geographical move out here. In a perfect world. We'll see. If, indeed, that happens in some way, shape or form, I'll try and gather them all together in book form and publish it as a literary documentary of sorts, a trial and error report of just how it happened, a 'buyer beware' chronicle of my trek, a personal 'this is what happened to me' narrative.

When I first started my little 'hamster in a wheel' journey out here, I couldn't get arrested, much less land a part. I endured a weird and anxiety-ridden stint with one of those 'pay to act' companies over in NoHo, ending badly, but my goals were accomplished nonetheless, that is to say, I got representation out of the whole sordid business. But the entire incident left a bad taste in my mouth, the hucksters running the joint, the fact that someone else made a lot of money off of my writing while I didn't make a penny, and I mean that literally, not one penny, the whole idea of luring young, idealistic young actors and actresses into a theatre company, charging them money to be there, and then never actually letting them perform, but rather use them to paint sets...well, it all bothered me, from a moral standpoint, very much. Fortunately, as time passed, I realized that experience was the exception, not the rule.

And to be fair, I'm sure I could have handled the experience with more diplomacy than I did.

But then things got a little better. My newly acquired agent began working his tail off for me and other ventures presented themselves in due time. And even though I didn't land a lot of the gigs I was sent out for, I got to know the casting directors...VERY important in this silly business. And casting directors, I've learned, at least most of them, have long memories. They should because that's their job. And even though an actor might not sign for the gig he's auditioning for, there's a better than average chance, if he's any good, he'll be rememebered for a future gig that he IS right for. That's how it works.

And as time passed, things continued to get better. I realized in this town, much more so than, say, Chicago or New York (two other towns in which I spent a lot of time) it's WHO you know, not how GOOD you are. Which, taken at face value, can be a little disconcerting, but once I grasped the reality of it, I adapted quickly and set out to play that game. It's really just human nature and not all that mysterious, really. People would rather hire and work with people they know. It's that simple. It's not nearly as nefarious and nepotistic as one might think. It's just a natural impulse. So the whole idea of becoming 'better' at what one does is not nearly so important as 'being seen' by the people who make the decisions about what one does. Eh?

The other odd thing that happened, in terms of my work as a writer, is the stuff that came my way because of the few things I've managed to get mounted here in LA. Strangely, although none of my writing gives any indication of this, I've been sought out to write scripts based on OTHER PEOPLE'S stories. Hm. Again, not what I foresaw but welcome nontheless. And it's given me the peace of mind to pay the rent, the bills, and feed my family. And for that alone, I'm intensely grateful, if not a little surprised. And thankfully, those gigs are all paying off in spades.

My wife, who's been in this LA industry stuff for a long time, so long in fact, she's somewhat gun shy of it all, told me from the outset, "You have to be patient, you have to let them get to know you, it'll all happen, just not overnight." And of course, she's once again proven to be right. I don't like 'waiting for things to happen,' though. I'd prefer to have it happen overnight. A character flaw, to be sure.

Of course the residual effect of all this has been that I've made a lot of new friends. People whom I respect, who do the good work and fight the good fight, people who have somehow managed to remain not only sane but downright noble in the midst of this ridiculous business. And I was surprised, although I'm not sure why I should have been. I guess I became so jaded and cynical and wary after my first dealings with that small theatre company across town, I just assumed everyone in LA was of the same ilk. Not true. Thank goodness, not true. There are good souls and bad souls everywhere, in every business, not just this one. It's a truism I should have expected but for some reason didn't. My natural, knee jerk, reaction to bullshit was on high alert. I'm sorry for that now, not because it hurt my burgeoning career, but because it placed me in a very negative space for a long time, needlessly so as it turns out.

All in all, I can't complain. Things are exactly where they should be ("And whether you realize it or not, the universe is unfolding exactly as it should"). I have a really terrific couple of agents for theatre and commercials, and the best manager in the world for TV and Film. I have two very exciting writing projects seconds away from being launched. I'm reading, daily, regularly, for major film and TV stuff. I may not be landing them yet, but I will, I will. I went in for a network commercial the other day and the casting director said, "Ah, yes, I've heard about you. Great to finally meet." Huh?

I'm coming up on my two year anniversary in this town. And, to be fair, only a year of that counts because I didn't have any representation before that, and without representation an actor is just another fleeting face drifting through the sickly sweet aroma of ambition and dreams in this town. It's been a great ride so far; funny, noble, scary, instructional...some of the bumps in the road have been kind of ugly, others just mere bumps and others still, a buttload of bumpy fun.

As Mr. Sondheim says so eloquently, 'Move on. Stop worrying where you're going, move on. If you can know where you're going, you've gone."

Give me more to see.

See you tomorrow.

One Project Ends, Another Takes Flight

2011-07-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

This is our last weekend of The Interlopers, the play I've been doing by Gary Lennon the past six weeks or so in downtown LA at The Bootleg Theatre. I've enjoyed myself with this one. For one thing, I have a rather smallish role in it. So, and this probably sounds awful, the pressure was off. Instead it fell upon two wonderful young actors, Diarra Kilpatrick and Trevor Peterson, to carry the piece. Remember those names. You'll be hearing them again soon, mark my words.

It was also a great experience because of the level of talent involved. To the layman this might not sound so important, but trust me, it is. Working with like-minded professionals is far rarer than one might imagine and it is pure bliss. (Did you say bliss?) RD Call (who will be doing one of my pieces in the future, I have no doubt), Tara Karsian (the anchor of our production...hm...maybe not the ANCHOR...that sounds...well...anyway, she's been delightful), Leandro Cana, Paul Elia, Daryl Stephens and Ralph Cole, Jr. I really can't say enough. Consumate pros, one and all. And very, very good at what they do. And of course, our fearless leader, Jim Fall, who took the script and breathed life into it with some deeply felt direction. Outstanding work.

But it's time to move on to the next adventure, which appears to be a writing project. A new play we'll be workshopping at The Old Globe next month. More about that as it unfolds. I will say this, however...it's gonna be a barn burner. And personally, I love a good burning barn in my life.

It's always a little sad to close a show that's so much fun to do. And, as I've said before, it's not a common sentiment. I've discovered over the last 100+ plays I've done that the opposite is usually true. By the time the show closes everyone is chomping at the bit to get on to the next project. This one, The Interlopers, is the exception to the rule. We, all of us, love doing this piece and what's more, we love working with one another. I shall be a little glum to see it's passing.

Next week I'm part of a talented cast of actors doing an invited audience reading of a new screenplay called USED BOOKS at Elephant Stages here in LA. The script is from Jeremy Dylan Lanni and it stars the perrenial actor Powers Boothe (I've long been an admirer of his work) and Edie McClurg (one of the funniest actresses working today). I look forward to it. It's a gentle and funny script. A quirky piece, sort of along the lines of the film SIDEWAYS in terms of the style of humor.

After that, Angie and I are heading down for the GALA OPENING of my buddy Hershey Felder's new show BERNSTEIN about, well, Leonard Bernstein. He's opening it at The Old Globe in San Diego so Angie and I will kill two birds and also catch up with her brother, Kenny, and his family while there. I love San Diego so it should be fun. Who knows, maybe we'll even get the time to go to the zoo. The last time I visited the San Diego Zoo (one of the best in the world) was 1984. I'm due for another visit.

And some filming coming up when I get back. More on that as it unfolds.

"There's nothing more satisfying than a good plan," as Gus McCrae says in one of my favorite books, Lonesome Dove. Well, we gots some good plans. It's all good, Dude.

See you tomorrow.

'Wait for Father to get Home.'

2011-07-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Over the years I think parents, particularly wily, scheming, plotting parents, have learned that for a child, waiting for punishment is infinitely more effective than actual punishment. It's a tried and true old behavioral adjustment technique used the world over by parents who well might have trained with the CIA's Black Ops Division. It's also a trick used by millions of grade school teachers over the centuries.

It's a simple, yet singularly savage, approach to punishment: simply make the child wait for his or her consequences. For example, let's say a dish is broken by careless behavior at nine in the morning. Okay. Instead of punishing the child at that time, tell the child he's going to have to wait for 'his father to get home' at five in the afternoon to receive his or her punishment. It's worse than waterboarding.

Anyone in the recorded history of time who has had to wait for his or her 'father to get home' knows the anguish involved. It's utterly terrifying. Impossibly nerve-wracking. A long, seemingly endless walk up the gallow steps. Far, far worse than actual punishment. For the mind embellishes. Oh, yes it does. It conjures up ghastly images of a come-uppence so severe, so shockingly inhuman, as to incapacitate. An entire day of imagined horror to come. If the Spanish Inquisition had discovered this technique, the entire world might be Catholic right now. All they had to do was arrest a non-believer, a heathen, strap them to a table and lean down and whisper quietly in the religious renegade's ear, 'wait till your father gets home.'

This past weekend we had what came to be called 'Carmageddon' here in Los Angeles. The city was tearing down some old bridge that crossed the 405 (LA's most populous freeway) and the road was going to be shut down for some 60 hours or so. The local press and television channels (LA's local television news is like watching a high school assembly - it's just shockingly unprofessional) were predicting a catastrophe of epic proportions: cars backed up for 20 or 25 miles on the other freeways trying to get to where they were going. Our smarmy mayor, who would feel right at home on a used car lot, was all over the television warning of massive backups, half-day travel times, crazed commuters running naked and bleeding in the streets, car pool travelers throwing themselves off waterfalls, arrogant drivers, refusing to stay at home but instead out driving around for no reason at all, causing a system-wide breakdown of civilization itself. We, the sensible few left in the City of Angels, held our breath all week, making incredibly complicated plans as to how to get out of our driveway, hoarding water bottles for the long and dusty hike over the Hollywood Hills that we might have to make to get to the dentist.

It was the large-scale version of 'wait till your father gets home.'

Well, as everyone knows by now, it was a bust. Nothing happened. People traveled normally, without any fuss whatsoever. Streets were, if possible, even less crowded than usual. No one was disturbed in the least.

And that's the way it is. Waiting for the consequences has always been far worse than the actual consequences. It's the story of my life. And it usually takes years and years for someone to come to grips with this age-old truth; it certainly did me.

I have learned (I'd like to think, anyway) a valuable and stress-solving maxim as I morphed slowly, ever so slowly, into an adult: deal with problems as they come. Don't wait until they become so large, so impossibly gargantuan in my mind, that they are virtually overwhelming. My mind is my worst and most treacherous enemy a lot of the time. It's a dangerous place to go sashaying about alone. It has the ability to make monstrous mountains from the smallest, nearly invisible molehills. It lives forever in that childish terror of waiting for father to get home.

For people like me, the 'immediate apology technique' is not only helpful, it is sometimes life-saving. It has become my ace-in-the-hole for stressful situations. And it's so easy and simple that the logic flies in the face of reality. Try it. It costs absolutely nothing, and what's more, you don't even have to mean it. Sincerity is helpful but not necessary. "I'm sorry." That's it. That's the long and short of it. That's the secret to a sane life, possibly the first step to wisdom. "I'm sorry." Doesn't matter what it is. Some moron slams his cart into yours at the grocery store: "I'm sorry." Your boss, in a fit of unreasonable fear, yells at you in front of your co-workers: "I'm sorry." Your daughter or mother or best friend or colleague doesn't talk to you for several weeks because of some imagined slight: "I'm sorry."

It is the unwritten commandment. "I'm sorry." And here's the cool thing: it costs nothing. Nothing at all. An expulsion of breath. A quick muttering. A blip of honesty. And the truth is, we usually ARE sorry. Perhaps not for what we did but for what we caused, however minor, however insignificant.

And another added benefit is this: it makes you popular. People love to be apologized to. Makes their day. Gives them a lift.

Today I'm going to try and slip it into every conversation I have. "I'm sorry." No matter where I am, what I'm talking about, who I'm talking to..."I'm sorry." I'll let you know how it goes.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: That Way There Be Dragons.

2011-07-17T06:29:00.001-07:00

Last Tango in Los Angeles: That Way There Be Dragons.: "Sometimes I think it helpful to step back for a second and look at things. A blog, by its very nature, is somewhat egocentric, I think, so ..."

That Way There Be Dragons.

2011-07-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think it helpful to step back for a second and look at things. A blog, by its very nature, is somewhat egocentric, I think, so I thought I'd try and take a clear-eyed view of things for a second. It is easy in this town to lose sight of the strides forward one makes and just as easy to self-flagellate and get frustrated. I had a conversation with a young actor yesterday and he was very concerned with the lack of what he perceived to be his 'inability to get noticed.'

I guess it is important to be 'noticed,' although I'm not altogether sure what getting 'noticed' means. Does it mean people with greenlighting (a term I often hear in LA) abilities see you? People with the wherewithal to snatch you from obscurity and place you in a spotlight like a latter day version of what's-her-name being discovered in Schwabb's drugstore sipping a malted? I don't know. In fact, I'm not even sure what a 'malted' is.

But I do know this. Some people exude, simply radiate, good 'energy' and others, well, don't. When I first got to LA, I got involved, somewhat accidentally, with a couple of people who ran a 'pay to act' theatre company. In the end, it all worked out quite nicely for me because I got a much needed chance to get my writing seen in LA which otherwise would have been a bit more difficult. LA is like NYC in that many are of the mind that if you didn't do it in LA...you didn't do it. Nothing to get all sassy about, it just is. So best to embrace that rather than resent it.

So I got involved with this 'pay to act' company and immediately got a false impression of the artistic climate of Los Angeles. It was (and I imagine still is) a rather creepy and autocratic way to get things done and seen. The theatre company was tied up in a strange way with religion, a skewed kind of religion, but religion nonetheless. And the more loyal one was to the religion, the more apt one was to become a mover and shaker in the theatre wing of this 'pay to act' company. Of course, I had no other experience to compare it to in Los Angeles, so I thought, well, maybe this is how it's done. It IS LA, after all. That was over a year ago, though, and the other night I had dinner with my buddy, Joe, who has been in LA for about 20 years, slugging it out in the trenches of theatre and film, and he said, "You know, I was a little scared for you at first 'cause you got involved with those guys and everyone knows they're not 'quite right.'" My friend, Joe, is diplomatic.

Now, I've always held organized religion, ANY religion, in the lowest possible esteem. I see virtually nothing positive about it. It is, in my view, simply a way to widen the gap between 'us' and 'them.' A way to fill a lack of self worth through a mob mentality of exclusion. All religion, even the wacky kind often glorified in Los Angeles, fits snuggly into the clinical definition of a cult. And there I was, in the very midst of it, seconds away from purchasing my ticket to Guyana. Now, of course, I'm being sarcastic, but you get my drift. Religion and theatre are, by their very nature, enemies.

So it took me awhile but I managed to grasp a low-hanging branch and pull myself out of that spiritual quicksand. Now I look back at it and shudder with the knowledge of my own ignorance.

And I harbor no animosity toward the experience. Maybe a little amused at my own naivety, but no animosity.

It was unfortunate that that was my introduction into the performing world of Los Angeles, but ultimately a good thing, I think. Because after that everything else seemed simply glorious.

The thing is, and I was thinking on this after my conversation with the young actor yesterday, ultimately the truth wins out. The metaphorical cream always rises to the top. All great truths are simple, as Tolstoy wrote.

It is best to see the signs and heed them, I told him. See the signs the mind posts, the signs saying, 'That way there be dragons.' In other words, best to rely on the instincts and good judgement one learns in life before one gets to this skewed world of Los Angeles. In the end, regardless of what one might hear, weird is still weird. But it is easy not to think something is weird if enough people tell you it is not. And even though I tried very hard to think of that first theatre experience as 'not weird' I couldn't silence the small voice inside that kept demanding that it was. And of course, it was. I was just too eager to think it wasn't. I wanted to be 'part of something.' I wanted to 'fit in.' I wanted, very badly, to think someone else's opinion held more gravity than my own. And that, always, always, always, is simply not the case and never will be; my opinion may be unpopular, but it is ultimately mine and mine alone. So, incredibly, the suggestion I 'join the church' so that I might be able to be a part of the theatre did not at the time so odd to me. Astonishingly, I almost did it.

But, as I said, it's a year later now and I've moved on to working with actual artists, people doing work for the sake of excellence, aiming toward telling new and soul-searching stories because the story deserves to be told and not because the story prepetuates the 'message' of the church.

Even today I still chuckle at the sheer lunacy of that.

So my advice to this talented young actor was to say simply 'beware.' Trust your instincts. Recognize the shams before you. They may be dressed up as opportunities, but in the end, LA is no different from anywhere else in the world - weird is still weird. Listen to that small voice inside telling you, 'this is not quite right', there is something akimbo about all of this. My work onstage and in front of a camera should not be tied in any way to someone's psuedo-spiritual journey. If it is, the work immediately ceases to be pure and becomes, in the truest sense of the word, propaganda.

Beware. That way there be dragons. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. All great truths are simple.

These truisms are just as valid in Los Angeles as they are in Detroit or Chicago or Louisville or Dallas or New York or Mokane, Missouri.

As the play I'm doing now, The Interlopers, illustrates, all subjects are on the table and there is only one rule - redempton. Redemption in all its myriad meanings. Singular redemption, social redemption, inner redemption, moral redemption, pureness of quest, work for work's sake, truth for truth's sake, redemption inside the story itself. And, much like the founding fathers of this country understood, church and state cannot mix for one will eventually suffer and die, theatre and church also cannot mix, for one will swallow the other and the work will, inevitably, become tainted. The one thing theatre can never allow itself to do is preach to the choir. Otherwise it, too, becomes just another Wednesday night PTA meeting, another breakfast with The Rotary Club, another Sunday School class with a narrow agenda. It is the beginning of the death of creativity. And, most horrifying, it is the end of original thought.

The theatre should exist unto itself, never bowing to those intent upon using it as a newsletter, a sermon, an outlet to propagate pre-esisting, premeditated philosophy. The theatre is the great question, not the great answer. And if it ever strives to be otherwise, well, that way, indeed, there be dragons.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: New Trails.

2011-07-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Last Tango in Los Angeles: New Trails.: "My wife took Simon the horse out for a ride yesterday. Simon is the new horse in our backyard. He's the culprit responsible for eating my ..."

New Trails.

2011-07-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

My wife took Simon the horse out for a ride yesterday. Simon is the new horse in our backyard. He's the culprit responsible for eating my carefully tended corn right to the ground a couple of weeks ago. Somehow he got out of his stall and went right for my corn that I'd planted some two months ago. It was the middle of the night and his stall hadn't been secured and the corn was right there and...well, he was hungry.

Simon is a gentle horse. He's been smacked around in the herd quite a bit and has lots of bite marks around his neck (that's how horses keep each other in line, apparently...they bite each other on the neck). I know how he feels because I've got a lot of bites around my neck, too, remnants of a lifetime of getting out of line. Anyway, Simon tried at one point to buck her while crossing the swinging bridge that leads into the trails behind the equestrian center near our home. He wasn't used to being alone (without our other horse, Petrone, that is) and wandering into uncharted territories. Again, I know just how he feels.

Yesterday, I turned down a beautiful role in a very complex, intense play called 'Way to Heaven' at The Odyssey Theatre here in LA. It's where I did 'Adding Machine.' It was a tough decision, but one that had to be made. I don't like turning down roles that I like. But, as my manager pointed out to me, it is a bad time to tie myself down to a long run at this particular moment. Things are heating up considerably in the film and TV world and to take myself out of the game right now would be a very bad decision, financially and otherwise. Still, it irks me.

I have so many irons in so many different fires right now to comment on them all would be exasperatingly premature so suffice to say, the decision to not do the play was definitely the right one. Although, I must say, the play's subject matter - the Holocaust - is one particularly important to me. Back in the mid-nineties in NYC I adapted the writings of Primo Levy into a play called 'If This is a Man' which ran for quite a while at The Kraine Theatre in the East Village. Primo Levy was a Jewish, Italian chemist who survived Auschwitz and wrote several books about it subsequently.

Later this month Angie and I are heading down to The Old Globe in San Diego to workshop a new play of mine. Also we're catching our good friend, Hershey Felder, and his opening night of his new one-person show about Leonard Bernstein. Not coincidentally, Hershey is producing my new play.

But back to poor Simon and that journey over the swinging bridge into the undiscovered country of new trails leading into the bowels of Griffith Park.

I've never liked change of any sort. It's part of my chemical make-up. I like things to stay exactly the same, always. Which is an odd character flaw for a guy who has spent his life in the theatre. Everything begins and ends quickly in this business. People float in and out of my life like shadows at dusk; best friends for three months and then not a word for years. It's part of the lifestyle. Nothing to be done about it.

But I don't like it. Like many, I've discovered, especially as I get older, that I'm a creature of habit. Anything that disrupts my carefully negotiated little schedule and I begin to feel adrift. I've often thought I might have made a very good assembly line worker. I would have been, if nothing else, comfortable with that line of work. Getting up at the same time everyday, doing the same work, coming home at the same time, only now and then, perhaps on the weekends, would I venture into the world of the unplanned, the vicarious, the unexpected. And as Sunday night approached I would feel the safety of knowing that Monday would bring a re-entry into the mundane. Change, for all its brew-ha-ha, makes me nervous.

It's a Rainman kind of streak in me that I've grown satisfied with through the years. And oddly and weirdly I find myself now, at the grand old age of fifty, in a position of not having any of that premeditated comfort of sameness. I hardly ever know what's going to be my life focus from one month to the next. My passions are scattered often and relentlessly.

Fortunately, and possibly life-saving, I have my base, my home, my family (and when I say 'family' I mean the one I chose, not the one I had thrust upon me like a practical joke in particularly bad taste). No matter what swells I have to endure on that fickle ocean outside my front door, once I'm within my chosen walls, all is well again. Like Simon, I don't like swinging bridges leading into a bunch of mysterious, dusty trails that I'm not familiar with. I don't like taking roads less traveled. And I don't like knowing I have to. I want to buck a little, like Simon did, and dig my heels in and demand the same trails I've always walked. I don't like looking ahead and seeing all the different ways I might go and not having the slightest idea which one is right.

So Angie got back from her ride and told me about Simon's little episode of bucking. I asked her how she dealt with it. Did she fall off? Did she turn back? Was she scared? No, none of the above. You know what she did? She talked to Simon gently and quietly and had him walk in a circle for a little while, just a few minutes, and let him know everything was alright. Just walk in a circle for a bit and get his bearings back.

And I realized suddenly that that is exactly what she does with me. She brings me back to a place of safety and has me sofly tread about in a field in which I'm comfortable. She takes me back to the meals I like, the couch I sit on, the home and hearth I've come to know as mine. Fortunately for me, my wife understands that, like Simon, I don't like change. So she dresses change up and makes it look like something I might like. She disguises the peas and mixes them in with the potatoes. And she does it so subtly, so naturally that most of the time I don't even know I'm in the middle of change until it's nearly over. And like Simon, my fears are allayed before I have a chance to dwell on them. When I'm frightened of the unknown I am guided into a well-known emotional and mental circle all the while listening to soothing and practical advice, quietly given. And again like Simon, after a short while, I'm ready to try the new trails, the roads never traveled, the unforseen future.

I think everyone needs to do that now and then. Just slow down and maybe walk in a thin circle for just a few minutes. Be reassured that although the bridge might be swinging a bit, it's still a bridge and it still holds us up. Hear whispered encouragement about the myriad choices before us. Because those trails are not so scary, really. Not at all. We just haven't been on them yet.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: A Lesson in Humility.

2011-07-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

Last Tango in Los Angeles: A Lesson in Humility.: "Yesterday I had a long rehearsal for a short film I'm shooting soon, tomorrow, in fact. It's an odd little script, but quirky and amusing. ..."

A Lesson in Humility.

2011-07-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a long rehearsal for a short film I'm shooting soon, tomorrow, in fact. It's an odd little script, but quirky and amusing. Something I don't get to do too often on film: absurdism. It's being directed by a very nice, polite to a fault, young graduate student. He had seen another film of mine at some point and asked me to do a role in his film. We quickly got the business stuff out of the way (it's just a short film, not much time involved, so I didn't even bother to forward anything to my agents - besides, I was flattered) and set the time for filming.

But then, much to my mild irritation, he called a rehearsal. At first I said no. I hadn't agreed to a day of rehearsal. For a short film? Nah, I thought, not worth it. But he persisted. Very politely. So I finally said, okay, I'll give you a couple of hours, but not all day as he originally wanted.

So around noon yesterday I traveled over to Pasadena and sat and did a table read of the piece. I was clearly the 'ringer' for the project, brought in to play the part of the loopy, silly, antagonist in the script, the 'working pro' around the younger, fellow graduate students also asked to do the piece, being treated with entirely too much cautious respect.

And as I sat there going through the eight page script, I realized how important this was to all of them, how passionate they all were about it, how grateful they were of my participation. And I had a very clear flashback of my days in school. I had written a one-act play, not a very good one but I didn't know that back then. I was directing it myself and had obtained permission to present it one-night-only in the studio theatre at college. I cast my buddies Robert Fiedler, Jeff Cummings and Dwayne Butcher in the play, all good actors. The play was about a half hour long. I rehearsed them hours and hours for it, days in fact. We poured over it. We discussed it. We placed every line under a microscope. We dissected it. We treated it as though it were Lear, Hamlet and Othello all bound together in one play. We wore our passions on our sleeves like undisguised war wounds.

And I remembered all of this and suddenly I felt very arrogant for being such a prick about reluctantly agreeing to their rehearsal. After a bit, the young director (who also catered lunch and had sent me several emails asking what I did and didn't like so he could get exactly the right thing) said, well, I guess we've taken enough of your time. They were going to keep rehearsing, continuing to go through the script, find every comic beat, over and over. I thought about that play, that little one-act that Bob, Jeff, Dwayne and I had done back in 1983, and I said, nah, no worries, let's just keep working till we get it the way you want it. And we did.

I wish I had one tenth of the single-minded devotion these young guys have for their craft. I envied them their naivety and confidence about what they were doing. They were making Citizen Kane, The Searchers and The Godfather, they were writing the final word on films. The fire flared in their eyes as they set shots, laughed at timing, brainstormed ideas, tried different camera angles, all as if none of it had ever been done or tried before.

I finally did have to leave after a few hours, but the truth is, I would have stayed all day if I could have. To be in the center of that unbridled pureness of intent, completely devoid of cynicism, clear-eyed and certain, not ashamed to show how important this was to them. Well, it was a dose of humility. And I was the one grateful in the end. Because it made me remember when I was that age and unafraid to wear my passion openly. I had not yet suffered the slings and arrows of the oft-repeated word, NO. No one had yet to say to me, 'you can't do that.' So I didn't know I couldn't.

In my blog yesterday I lamented the idea of 'working for free.' And yes, sometimes it is necessary to say no, I'm sorry, but I don't do that. But sometimes, sometimes, as in yesterday, working for free pays for itself. It pays for itself by being allowed to breath in that idea of work for work's sake. Excellence for the sake of excellence.

Now I haven't the slightest idea if this little film will be worth anything. Doesn't matter to me. The point is we're trying, me and these idealistic, young graduate students. We found ourselves believing in something, even if for a few hours. And most importantly, I found myself transported, quite unexpectedly, back to a time in my life when the work, the work itself, was the goal, not something to 'get through' so as to justify the paycheck.

Well worth it. Indeed, a welcome and humbling trip back 28 years or so when I, too, thought nothing was impossible.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Fun and Astonishment in Hollywood.

2011-07-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Fun and Astonishment in Hollywood.: "www.cliffordmorts.com 'What's hard is simple. What's natural comes hard.' A lyric from Sondheim's song 'Anyone Can Whistle' and proba..."

Fun and Astonishment in Hollywood.

2011-07-09T07:15:00.000-07:00

www.cliffordmorts.com

"What's hard is simple. What's natural comes hard."

A lyric from Sondheim's song 'Anyone Can Whistle' and probably as good a phrase as any to have carved on my tombstone.

Couple of interesting projects coming up. One is a one-night-only, invited audience to a reading of a new, comedic screenplay by Jeremy Dylan Lanni's 'Used Books.' I'll be reading about eight or nine roles in it and will share the stage with Powers Boothe and Edie McLurg, both actors I admire. Also Bruce French, Peter Jason and my buddy, Larry Cedar. Should be fun. It's a very funny script.

Powers' work as Jim Jones in a 1980 TV movie called "Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones" is still stamped permanently in my brain. Powers won an Emmy for that one and deservedly so. And Edie's work as the principal's secretary in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" still makes me laugh out loud all these years later.

On the 30th Angie and I are heading down to The Old Globe in San Diego to see our friend, Hershey Felder, open his new one-person show, 'The Art of Leonard Bernstein.' Big to-do with a formal, sit-down dinner afterwards. Angie's brother, Kenny, lives there with his family so we'll kill two birds with one stone and hang out with them for a bit, too. And being the sucker I am for a good zoo, maybe I can convince her to make a day out of that, too. The San Diego zoo is one of the best in the world, I'm told. I was last there in 1984 during a long, fun, chaotic, nihilistic trip to the west coast with a buddy of mine.

I'm shooting a short film on Monday and today get the rare opportunity to actually rehearse it for a couple of hours...a rarity when doing film. So I'll take a jaunt over to hot and beautiful Pasadena today.

Another full house last night for 'The Interlopers,' the play I'm doing for a couple more weeks at The Bootleg Theatre downtown. I must say, this cast and crew have thoroughly spoiled me. I adore them. I've mentioned this before, but it's one of those very seldom moments in the theatre when everything came together and clicked. Great actors, funny people, sensitive direction, great script, good space, satisfying experience. It just doesn't happen that often, unfortunately. I have a small role in the piece and I couldn't care less. I'm having too much fun.

I recently learned (I'm always the last to know anything) that Chaz Bono, perhaps the most famous transgender in the country at the moment, came to see the play the other night. He left quickly after the play and had some problems with the language, I'm told. Said to someone that the term 'pre-op' is not used anymore. Huh?

Other members of the transgender community have seen the play (a lot, in fact) and have had the exact opposite reaction, weeping by play's end and testifying to its authenticity. So, who knows?

Tuesday I have a callback for a Sci-Fi film that could be a lot of fun should I land it. Fingers firmly crossed. I would get to shoot a scene in a helicopter. That would be one for the diary.

I had an interesting conversation with one of my cast members last night. She told me she's 'getting itchy to do some real work again.' She was talking about film. I'm always a little surprised to hear sentiments like that. I've always felt exactly the opposite. The 'real work' for me has always been the stage. The money work has always been film. Granted, I'm a walking anachronism.

A buddy of mine, a guy who works constantly in film and TV, a very recognizable face, once took me to task for a blog I wrote over a year ago about the difference between film and stage acting. He said, "Don't slight film work, it's very, very hard. You'll realize that someday."

Well, I've done quite a bit of film work since that conversation. And I stick by my earlier assessment. Film work is a hundred times easier than stage work (gasping and wide-eyed disbelief from the peanut gallery). I realize it's very unpopular to say that in Los Angeles. Whatever. It's still true. I maintain that the difference between stage acting and film acting is tantamount to reading a novel or reading a comic book. One requires a commitment of time, thought, care, premeditation, interpretion, stamina and grit. The other requires a certain amount of luck that what you're rehearsing (essentially all film acting is rehearsal caught on camera) gets captured on celluloid (or digitally). And yet...and yet, to say out loud that stage acting is the 'real work' is met with undisguised reactions of horror not unlike saying something critical about the Catholic Church in 14th century Europe. It's just not done. It's out and out heresy. Los Angeles worships at the altar of the Great God Cinema. And rightly so. It's big business. And, to be fair, every now and then it is art. No other word for it. I defy anyone to watch, say, The Deer Hunter or Citizen Kane or The Searchers or Jaws or Cinema Paradisio or Magnolia or On the Waterfront and say that's not art. It's a group effort, yes, but the final product is art. Movies like that, as rare as the Hope Diamond, transcend the human experience. They move and provoke thought and demand opinion. They leave you a different person, for good or bad. What better definition of art? And continuing to be fair, at its very, very best, the theatre can't really even compete. But films like that are almost accidental, it seems to me. They very nearly fall under the category of the monkeys and the typewriter. Eventually, given infinity to do it, they'll write Hamlet.

Again, a very unpopular assessment in this town and one that will probably someday bite me in the ass. So be it.

I got a call yesterday, out of the blue, and this producer guy wanted me to come in and do a quick scene for a film he was doing. One scene. 'Very quick,' he said. 'No more than five minutes,' he said. No money involved. And this is a budgeted film with a few major stars attached. He just needed a pick up scene. I have no idea how he got my number. Anyway, I forwarded the request to my management company. They quickly called him on my behalf and asked about the money. He said he had none, that he was 'at the end of his budget.' He just needed a small favor.

My manager wished him luck and said no. He got agitated. Said, "I don't want to work with him anyway." What the hell? What are these guys thinking? Try that with a plumber. "Hi, listen my name is Bob and I need my plumbing fixed. It's not a big problem. Just a little toilet issue. Won't take you more than five minutes. Just a quick job. As a favor. But I can't pay you anything. I've used up my plumbing budget for the month. So if you could just take a few hours out of your day and come over and fix this toilet for free, I'd be grateful."

And THEN...and THEN...when the plumber says no, this guy gets upset. "What?! You won't fix my plumbing for free? Why, you bastard!"

Good Lord. Hollywood.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: This Goofy Business.

2011-07-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

Last Tango in Los Angeles: This Goofy Business.: "www.cliffordmorts.com I have been lucky enough to have a whole flurry of auditions sent my way via my various agents the past week or so. ..."

This Goofy Business.

2011-07-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

www.cliffordmorts.com

I have been lucky enough to have a whole flurry of auditions sent my way via my various agents the past week or so. Plus a couple that simply landed in my lap. And one producer called me in and just offered me the job (I particularly like those).

This ultra busy period started about two weeks ago. I had two back-to-back auditions down around the Culver City (Sony) area and I walked out of both in a bit of a huff. I don't usually do that. In fact, I'm fairly forgiving, I'd like to think, when it comes to auditions. But in both cases (and it was purely coincidental that they happened on the same day) I arrived (both were 'agent submissions' which, in effect, means you've been given an exact time to read) and was told I would have to wait a 'couple of hours' because they were running behind. Well, I have a long history of intolerance when it comes to this sort of thing; the idea, however unpremeditated, that 'your' time is more important than 'my' time. So in both cases I gave the monitor my pic and res and left, essentially saying 'a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an entire day of sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a lobby on my part.'

But then things took a turn for the better. A week or so ago I read for a new Sci-Fi movie set in the future after a military Armagedden of sorts. I read for the world-weary leader of a bunch of scrambling, amoral band of thieves. It was at a place I've auditioned before, a place I don't particularly like. This place just seems to suck the energy out of me. There are a bunch of rooms there, all rented out by various production companies, and one has to sit in the lobby area in the middle with dozens of other actors waiting to get in the door of the assorted projects being cast there. I like to think I'm fairly empathetic. And this lobby is just filled to the brim with a chaos-theory crashing of id, ego, insecurity and desperation. It unnerves me and consequently I don't ever recall having a good read there. But for whatever reason, this time I did. It was a fairly long scene, read with the PA, and they asked me to do it three separate times. The second time they asked me to read it 'like Michael Caine' complete with cockney accent. So I did. It turned out well and yesterday I got the callback notice through my agents.

A few days ago I ventured over to Pasadena for a short film. I walked into the room and the director had a tall stack of resumes in front of him. I took a seat so we might 'talk a little' about the role. Finally, he said, 'I know your work. No reason to read this. Would you like to do it?' I said, sure, and that was that. We start filming next week.

The business has changed enormously in the past five years, I'm told. Actors who are household names, who used to only accept 'offer only' meetings, now have to read and audition just like the rest of us poor schmucks. The jobs are getting scarce. Which bamboozles me because it seems to me there are about 500 channels now and one would think the exact opposite would be true. But it's not. The 'stars' have to get in the trenches and battle it out for parts just like the rest of us. And when I say, 'stars,' I don't mean people like Johnny Depp or Jennifer Anniston, of course. I mean people who have done a ton of work before, people easily recognizable by the average citizen, people with a buttload of TV and film stuff under their respective belts. I sincerely doubt Depp has to auditon for much anymore.

In any event, there are inevitably auditions that go well and others that don't. That's just the nature of the beast. Who can say why? And they can turn on a dime. The energy is just wrong sometimes. Or something in the room is not right, a feeling, a vibe, whatever. And the reading just falls flat and lifeless. And other times, again for no apparent reason, it all just clicks and everything feels right. It's a funny business.

Yesterday I had a singing audition. Went in, sang my little ditty, which went quite well, and then committed suicide on the read. Why? No idea. Just happened. Was the text bad? No. Was I unprepared? No. Was I too nervous? Not really. Who knows. It simply is.

And then there are the ones that are just weird. Couple of days ago I had a read in Hollywood. I got there at my appointed time and signed in and looked around. It appeared to me as though someone had posted an audition notice at the nearest drug and alcohol homeless shelter. There were four or five guys sitting around, approximately my age so we were all reading for the same part, waiting to be called in. They were running a tad behind so the actors were piling up. Which is common and no big deal. But as I looked around I began to wonder what in the name of Zeus was up. One guy, around sixty or so, had a dirty t-shirt on, some daisy duke shorts and flip flops. Another was wearing an ill-fitting suit and had no teeth. Another was trying desperately to chat up anyone who walked in the door. He had the entire script written in tiny scrawl on the back of a Chinese food menu and his pictures and resumes bound together with duct tape. He was wearing dirty shorts and some old tennis shoes with holes cut in the front of them so that his toes stuck out, sort of hand made sandals. Another guy, also in his sixties, was in a corner doing a sort of marching in place thing, trying to simulate riding a bicycle (which the scene required) and shouting, and I mean shouting, his lines. He was standing there doing this little aerobic thing and shouting his lines and then, in a squeeky, womanly voice, saying the other lines in the scene (which, frankly, I thought he did better than his own). At one point he turned around and saw me gaping. "What!" he said. I turned my head and bit the inside of my mouth.

The toothless guy came over to me at one point and asked if I'd like to read through the scene.

"Um, well, there's only one part."

"Yeah, well, you read the other part."

"No, thanks."

He glared at me and then sat beside me and said, "I never seen you before."

"No, probably not."

"Hm. Nope. Never seen you before." He kept glaring. Thankfully, they called me in right about then and I was spared his goofiness.

When I came out after my audition the door banged against the old man with the daisy dukes. He had been listening with his ear pressed against the door.

"Excuse me," I said as I opened the door.

He gave me a wild-eyed, crackhead stare and rubbed the side of his head where the door had popped him.

"That's not how I'm gonna do it," he said.

"No, I would imagine not," I said and scampered for the exit. As I passed the shouting man he began slamming his head against the wall and saying under his breath, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no..."

It all reminded me of a story my former acting teacher, Michael Moriarty, once told me about working with Robert DeNiro. They were doing a film called 'Bang the Drum Slowly' and there is a scene in which the terminally ill character DeNiro was playing had to vomit in a bathroom stall. Michael was watching off-camera. Before every take, and there were 10 or 12, DeNiro would take an iced tea spoon, one of those inordinantly long ones, and jam it into the back of his throat thus causing his gag reflexes to activate. He was trying, obviously, to make it completely real. Michael told me that as he stood and watched he said to himself, "You know, I'm just not that serious about all this."

So I finally made good my getaway. I told Angie later, 'This was agent submission only. WHO REPRESENTS THOSE GUYS?!"

All in all, however, I really can't complain. This business is a numbers ggame; 100 people see you, 5 or 6 like you. Simple as that. Most of the time it has nothing to do with how 'good' you are. You're either what they want or not. And that's it. That's the long and short of it. No reason to get your panties in a bunch. It's not personal. You're just not the guy.

Once one learns that indifferent truth about auditions, it's all just another day at the ball field.

See you tomorrow.

Social Butterflies...

2011-07-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

We could not have attended two more disparate Fourth of July gatherings yesterday, Angie and I. First we ventured over to Hollwood to our friends, Gary and Jorge. They have a delightful little bungalow just a block from Melrose with an entirely enclosed back and front yard. The whole Interlopers cast (the play Gary has written and I'm currently acting in at The Bootleg Theatre downtown) was there and of course, I adore this cast. A funny, smart, irreverent bunch. Gary and Jorge also had a number of other friends over for BBQ and frivolity. Everyone there was in some way or another connected with the LA film and theatre scene it seemed, consequently it was a witty and gregarious bunch. My kind of folk. We left just as they were starting up a spirited game of 'Celebrity,' one of my favorite party games. Unfortunately we had to take out before we could play because we'd made a committment elsewhere as well.

So we headed up into the Hollywood Hills for a gathering at our friends, Phillipe and Tara. Tara and I did my play, Praying Small, together just about exactly a year ago today (she was brilliant in it) and Phillipe and I are currently neck deep in a film project together. They've just moved into a new house in the hills and we were anxious to see it. Actually (this is true) it is the old Ronald Reagan house when he was married to Jane Wyman (before 'Just Say No' Nancy). I happen to be a huge Ronald Reagan fan even though I agreed with virtually nothing he ever said or stood for. I can't help myself, I just liked the man. That was his great political gift, I think.

Anyway, we braved the narrow, winding roads up into the hills to find the new place. And believe me, they are very narrow and very winding. And once we found the new house we were awe-struck. It's stunning. Absolutely beautiful. It is, I daresay, the perfect house. Inspiring, unobstructed views in all directions, a wonderful tear-drop pool and jacuzzi off to the side, a large and sprawling house (Phillipe and Tara have two toddlers) with spacious and eccentrically spaced rooms, a large 'play area' out front for the kids. It's just an incredible house.

Of course, being the parents of two small ones, they have a whole slew of friends with small ones, too. So Angie and I weaved our way into the party dodging kids left and right, none of which came above our knees. Phillipe is Dutch by birth, British by accent and German by career, so the place was full with jolly, European expatriots. We sat by the pool chatting with Phillipe and Tara and marveling in the surroundings. I simply cannot imagine a more perfect house for a new family. And of course Phillipe and Tara are the most gracious of hosts.

We ate heartily at both destinations and came home early in the evening stuffed to the gills, a very satisfying Fourth of July. Angie watched fireworks on TV (which always seemed a bit removed to me) and I lay down exhausted in the bedroom watching, what else, the History Channel, featuring Revolutionary War documentaries.

From hipster to young parents, from Hollywood grunge to wading pools, from young, idealistic intelligencia to wary, watchful, smiling moms and dads. I had to smile at the incongruity of it all. And, oddly, we felt equally at home with both, although we conceded chasing kids around is well into our past.

Los Angeles is a funny place. It is not as socially connected as, say, Chicago or New York. People scatter and scrape for their own well-deserved piece of life's pie, emmersed in their own worlds, taking time now and then to bring peope into their carefully contructed lives and careers. No one just 'pops in' in this city. Angie and I are the same. Homes and houses here are bases, places to rejuvinate and restore energies before venturing out again the next day for another round of wheeling and dealing in paradise. That's just the way it is.

In other news, in addition to these two massive writing projects in which I find myself barely keeping my chin above water, the auditions (as an actor) are gushing in at an alarming rate and my calendar is getting filled with ink-stained 'write ins.' Angie is acting as my organizer these days because god knows I can't. If it were up to me, I'd be hopelessly confused as to where I'm supposed to be and when. In fact I have two today, one in Pasadena and one in Culver City. I think. I'll have to ask her. Mostly I just get the information and get in the car and go where I'm told.

This is the kind of schedule and life I've wanted since I got here nearly two years ago. And now that I have it, I'm frequently overwhelmed. Be careful what you ask for...

Life is good.

See you tomorrow.

Fourth of July.

2011-07-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

Another Fourth of July is upon us tomorrow. The tempuratures are expected, here in Los Angeles, anyway, to be around 100 degrees for the day. Angie and I are flitting around to several cook-outs, fireworks displays, etc. We're quite the social butterflies this holiday weekend.

When I was a kid we had a houseboat at the Lake of the Ozarks in Southern Missouri and that was where we spent our Fourth of July, usually. We docked the boat at a place called 'Yacht Club Marina' which was a high-falutin' name for a rather run-down, little joint that docked a bunch of barely floating boats at the end of a scraggly, winding cove in a deserted part of the lake. For the uninitiated, however, if you said you were spending the Fourth at 'Yacht Club Marina' it sounded rather impressive.

The fun part of all that, though, was the bottle rocket wars we had when the sun set on 'Yacht Club Marina.' To this day I'm surprised I have all my fingers intact after these impromptu battles. We would light a bottle rocket, wait till the fuse was centimeters from the rocket, then toss it into the air with sure-minded agility so that it twirled once and then took off at the exact moment it was pointed in the direction of the enemy. Unbelievably careless. And yet, I don't recall anyone ever getting hurt or burned or otherwise injured.

This was the game we youthful ne'er-do-wells played while our parents got blind drunk and passed out on the rusting houseboats listing in the muddy cove.

As a professional actor, most of my Fourth of July memories are of doing plays at some theatre somewhere. Holidays for actors usually means two shows that day.

But the one Fourth of July that stands out in my mind had nothing whatsoever to do with fireworks. A buddy of mine in Chicago, a fellow C.A.D.C. counselor, called me a week or so before the fourth, and asked me if I would consider cooking ribs and burgers and chicken all day if he gave me five hundred dollars to buy it all. Huh? Well, he said, there's this homeless shelter on the North Side of Chicago and he wanted to give them a good Fourth. So I said yes.

Over the next week or so I begged, borrowed and stole as many BBQ grills as I could get my hands on and then got an old pick up and went around the city the day before picking them up. Around four in the morning on the day of the Fourth, with the help of a couple of friends, we started firing up the grills and slow-cooking the ribs. Slowly, as the morning wore on, smelling the ribs and burgers, the inhabitants of the shelter started filtering out to see what was going on.

Actually, everyone got in the way of the cooking, surrounding us, pushing in to see the grills, excited and surprised at the prospect of a great meal, and finally I had to put some Frank Sinatra on the boom box to clear them out so we could work. I discovered that cranking up Sinatra during his Vegas period really loud has the effect of scattering inner-city youth.

In any event, the day went off without a hitch and long about noon we had ourselves a feast. After everyone finished eating and wrapping up everything they couldn't eat and cleaning up and taking all the grills back to their respective owners, it was well into the night and I was exhausted.

And that is the Fourth of July I remember most fondly.

The point being I always find it remarkable how satisfied I am when I 'get outside myself' and do stuff away from my 'comfort zone.' I am virtually guaranteed a good day when I do it. Even if it's a small thing, a phone call to offer encouragment, a kindness not necessary, a deed, however small, designed to make someone else happy. Yes, it's corny and yes, it's not a new concept. But it works for me. I spend so much time living in my own mind, I sometimes start to think the universe actually does depend on my existence in order to keep spinning. And once that happens it is almost a certainty that I'll shortly find myself disgruntled and ill at ease with everything around me.

It's a funny thing, this doing-stuff-for-other-people business. The idea itself, 'service work,' altruism, is not appealing to me. I'd far rather do something that makes ME happy. And yet, oddly, it always makes me much happier in the end to do exactly the opposite. Not sure why this is, it just is.

And, oddly, it has nothing to do with making myself feel more 'moral' than someone else or more 'noble.' No, it simply takes me out of my self-centered life and thinking for a few seconds, a few hours, a day, whatever.

I highly recommend it.

A heartfelt happy Fourth of July to everyone. Be safe.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Gratitude.

2011-06-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

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..."

Gratitude.

2011-06-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Attending a Free Play Reading on my 'Dark' Night...

2011-06-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Screenplays and Sam's Club...

2011-06-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

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.

"Missed it by THAT MUCH..."

2011-06-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

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.

The Review.

2011-06-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

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.

Screenplays and Documentaries.

2011-06-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Into the Wilds.

2011-06-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Father's Day.

2011-06-19T10:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

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.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Interlopers by Gary Lennon, opens tomorrow nig...

2011-06-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: A New Brown Car

2011-06-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

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 ..."

A New Brown Car

2011-06-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

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.