Auditions...

I had my audition for the "wise and witty" wizard yesterday in Hollywood.  The one for the new video game.  I rather doubt I'll be called back.  Not because the reading went badly, quite the contrary, it went fairly well.  But because when I got there I noticed it was me and about ten other guys that looked like variations of Ian McKellan's Gandalf from Lord of the Rings.  Tall, grey-bearded, long, flowing, white hair...every last one of them.  And me.  So unless they change the concept of their wizard to a Buddy Hackett/Ed Asner/Bob Hoskins kind of guy...well, it doesn't look good.

Monday I have an audition for, believe it or not, the role of Howard Cunningham in  "Happy Days, The Musical," at a a large Equity house out here.  Can't remember exactly which one it is.  That, I would think, is a little more down my alley.  Heading over to my friends, Don and Donna, to look at some sheet music today in preparation for that.  Donna was, for many years, a professional singer of the highest quality, so she has tons of sheet music.

I haven't had to do the '16 bars of music, short monologue' thing for quite a few years.  Should be interesting.  In fact, the last time I think I was actually asked to audition for a musical in the conventional manner (most of the time, I was simply hired because the producers knew of my work) was way back in my NYC days.  In fact, I don't even have a standard audition song I can pull out of the trunk and use.  Most actors have a bunch of tunes they've worked up that they can fall back on.  Not me.  Haven't auditioned in ages, so I don't have one.  I'll be putting that together this weekend.

Plus, as is my habit, I'll go online and find out all I can about the play.  Best to come in at least a little prepared, I'm figuring.

It's finally cool and agreeable here in The San Fernando Valley again.  Nice breeze, acceptable temperatures. Of course, next week we're heading to Missouri where they're experiencing a massive heat wave.  With any luck that will break before we get there.

Incidentally, the reading for the new video project, the wizard thing, was a variation on Gandalf's final stand at the bridge in Khazad Dum when he faces The Balrog.  "You cannot pass!"  So, if nothing else, I had fun pretending for a bit to be Gandalf, in that, one of my favorite scenes in the three films.

Another good day.  Another chance to be grateful.  Another day with Ange and the puppies.  All is as it should be.

See you tomorrow.

The Incomparable Anthony Hopkins...

Netflix is a great thing.  Over the past two nights Angie and I have watched Steven Spielberg's wonderful Amistad, the film about the captured African slaves and their subsequent escape and apprehension.  Like Empire of the Sun it is one of Spielberg's lesser known films and absolutely beautiful.

It was a joy to re-watch for a number of reasons, but the biggest is Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams.  What a detailed, layered, bottomless performance he gives.  Tremendously impressive.  His final summation before the Supreme Court of the United States is, in itself, worth the price of admission.  That segment of the film should be shown in acting classes across the country.  He treats the long monologue (about ten minutes, I'd say) like an aria with inner built climaxes and grace notes and pianissimo sections and a final chord of resolve.  It is a highly musical piece of acting, not just because Hopkins is a joy to listen to, but because of the way he leaves no moment unfilled.  This is a great actor at the very top of his game.

A few months ago I happened to catch A Lion in Winter with Hepburn and O'Toole.  Hopkins is in that and, I believe, it's his first screen appearance.  He's watchable albeit clumsy in that film.  It's a cool thing to see that even great actors get better.

Over the past couple of days I've signed with two new agencies...Pinnacle Commercial Talent and Schiowitz and Connor.  The former for commercial work, the latter for theatre work.  It's a comforting and satisfying thing to realize that someone else has faith in you aside from yourself out here in LaLa Land.  I haven't signed with an agency since my NY and Chicago days...William Morris in NYC and later with Shirley Hamilton in Chicago.  But between then and now I've lived about seven lifetimes, not all of them good, and it's tremendously uplifting to be back in the saddle.

And here's an odd but interesting thing...I was asked to come in and read for the role of "a wise and witty wizard" for a new video game today.  It's quite a lot of money, frankly.  But of course, life being what it is, they shoot on the day Angie and I are to be in Missouri having our engagement party.  Well, we decided to go ahead and read for it anyway and see what happens.  I say "we" because Angie, with her decades of experience in the casting world, has most definitely become my professional advisor.

My nature is to whine and bitch about stuff.  It just comes naturally.  I'm an instinctive whiner and bitcher.  A character flaw, to be sure, and one I am constantly monitoring.  And yet as Angie and my closest friends out here, John Bader and Jim Barbour, keep telling me, I have, in eight months, done pretty damned well for myself.  I have been inordinately lucky and have had a lot of things fall in my lap.  But I, like so many people, am afflicted with the disease of "more."  I always want more.

Today, considering all that, I have every intention of sitting back and enjoying my lot.  It is time to be grateful. Without gratitude, the rest is senseless anyway.  One of the reasons Angie and I are such a great match is because of these two sides of our personality.  She will forever see the glass as half full.  I love her for that.  I, on the hand, well, you know...

The weather guy is promising a respite from this intense heat in the San Fernando Valley today.  You know, I just might lay out and get a tan.

See you tomorrow.

 

The 99 Seat Venue...To Be or Not to Be.

They have this thing in Los Angeles called the "99 Seat Equity Waiver Contract."  Ostensibly it is supposed to let actors do work at a small house, get paid $15 a performance to cover gas, transportation, etc.  It's a stipend, really.  It is a well-meaning concession from Equity, the professional stage actors' union.  Most of the time, as far as I can see anyway, it doesn't work.  Not because of anything Equity did; their idea is almost altruistic in it's inception.  No, it doesn't work because the owners and management of the 99 seat theaters themselves prey on the ambition of the actor to make money.  Or, to be fair, at the very least to break even.

Theatre, like art, is not a democracy.  It can't be.  It is and always shall be an extension of Darwin's survival of the fittest.  This is no one's fault, it's simply supply and demand.  We have community theaters that fill that void without the intrusion of Equity.  The local dentist wants to play Willy Loman, fine.  He can "try out" for the local production of Death of a Salesman.  And the next day the local paper can write, "Saul Goldblatt was astonishing in the role of Willy Loman.  His work as an actor is every bit as good as his work at filling molars."

So what happens, and this is not just Los Angeles but Chicago, too, and as far as I know, NYC, is the producers of the theater, the owners, the management, want more.  They know something very basic.  That the aspiring actor, regardless of his or her talent, will often times pay to act.  Even more, they will pay for the mere prospect of acting.

In Los Angeles the going rate seems to be about 75 to 100 bucks a month.  The actor pays this and is then considered part of a company of professional actors that mount plays in the theater.  The question then becomes, is this professional theatre?  No.  Actually, technically speaking, it's not even community theatre.  The local dentist, Saul Goldblatt, didn't even have to pay $100 a month to do Willy Loman.

A friend of mine who used to be the "financial manager" with a 99 seat theatre here in LA, told me to not think this way.  He says it is best to consider the money spent as an "investment."  This is not a bad rationale.  Okay.  Let's run with that for a second.  If it is an investment, what is the return?  The possibility to do a demanding role at some nebulous point in the future?  Slim as that possibility might be?  What if the actor is simply not very good?  Or downright bad?  Will they still get the shot of doing something they love to do?  Say, play Willy Loman?  Highly doubtful.  They might, however, get to play the waiter in that play.  Show up for six weekends in a row after several years of paying the monthly dues so they can say the line, "Will there be anything else, sir?" in front of 99 people?  Hardly seems sane, does it?

And yet, that's the way it often turns out.  And more, the guy that plays the waiter with the one line after several years of monthly investing of $100 a month, feels delighted to have gotten the chance.  It's a whacky business.

So what is the alternative?  The theater has to pay the rent, after all.  It has to pay for the electricity and water.  It has to pay the bills.  It is hard to imagine any theater in America subsisting entirely on ticket sales.  It's just not feasible.  It's not practical.

Many theaters, not all, mind you, but many, will take just anybody willing to pay the 75 or a hundred bucks a month.  Talent or background or training is simply not a factor.  "You got 75 bucks?  You're in."  Of course, in the short run, this works, because the bills get paid that month.  But in the long run, the old capitalistic supply and demand rears its ugly head and the theatre fails.  Why?  Because there is no one, frankly, very good in the company.  And maybe some friends and family will pay $25 a ticket to come see Esmerelda play Joan of Arc, but the bulk of the theatre-going public will not.  Particularly since Esmerelda just isn't very good.

The truer 99 seat theaters in LA, and there ARE some, offer something for the investment aside from the nebulous promise to use the actor on stage at some unspoken time in the future.  They offer classes.  Acting classes, movement classes, Shakespeare classes, vocal training, dance, voice-over classes, commercial classes, career advisement classes, etc.  And this is included in the sum.  So while waiting for the chance to play Iago one can, at the very least, train.  Work on the craft.  Get better.  Make strides.

Alas, this is rarely done.  Again, a few do, but not most.

So it becomes a kind of catch 22 for most theaters of this size.  They have to stay open, they have to pay the bills, but they can't get any real talent in to do the work they are there for to begin with.  There are a lot of bitter actors around the city of Los Angeles because of this.  But its silly to be bitter, really.  The theaters have no choice.  They have to follow this equation to stay alive.  Theater subsidy, sadly, does not exist on any workable scale in this country.  In Britain the annual arts subsidy is approximately 2 billion dollars.  In America, the NEA has a budget of about 5 million.  Staggering.

Naturally, it would be nice if the theaters said upfront that this is the case.  Sadly, most do not.  They play on the actor's ego, the actor's dreams of glory, the actor's fertile imagination.  They paint a picture of shining moments of pure acting in front of an adoring full house.  Once that is done, the $75 is as good as in their pocket.  Again, this is some, not all.  The 99 seaters with a conscience say upfront, "We're barely making it.  We want to do good work.  We think you're a good actor.  We want to use you in this company.  But we all need to throw money into it.  And you'll never get it back.  But we'll do this and this and this for you.  And maybe, just maybe, you'll get the opportunity to do some satisfying work at some point that others will appreciate."  That's about the best one can hope for.  Be honest upfront, only take actors that are good (to do otherwise is simply not doing anyone any good, least of all the actor himself) and stay true to the mission.  But as a friend of mine always used to say, "Why, that's just too much like right."

There is no clear cut answer to any of this.  The owners have their problems, real problems, indeed, with the daily bills.  And the actor has his problem, again, a very real problem, of deciding whether to throw good money after bad.

So finally, the actor must ask himself a very personal and telling question.  Is this important enough to me that I don't mind paying someone to DO it?  Maybe so.  And if the actor is honest enough with himself to truly assess his talent and concludes that he's not really a great actor and probably never will be, then the 99 seat company is probably the way to go.  But if the actor honestly assesses his worth and concludes he's really good, then he'll do just fine regardless of where he acts.  Like nature, real talent always finds a way.

See you tomorrow.

Looking For Richard

I watched Al Pacino's remarkable documentary, Looking For Richard, last night and it spoke to me on so many levels it's difficult to know where to start.  I'm reminded of Alec Baldwin's quote on the opening page of David Mamet's book about acting, True and False, "I agree with virtually nothing Mr. Mamet says in this book and I think every actor in the world should read it."  Baldwin, incidentally, is also in Pacino's Looking For Richard.

I have always been fascinated with 'process,' for lack of a better word.  How an actor gets to where he's going.  When I was younger it was the most important thing in the world.  One thing about Method work that is unfailingly useful is it lets actors communicate easier because of the universal language.  This seems a small thing, this agreement over language, but in the end, as I recently discovered with my own play, Praying Small, it can come in very handy.  Actors and directors should have a common reference so as to be able to communicate with each other.  Otherwise, terms that might mean one thing when using a certain process can mean something else to another actor.  Stanislavski's three books do at least one thing well...they formalize a language.

Looking For Richard is a great example of a gaggle of actors trying to grasp a complicated piece of stage writing and all be on the same page, sometimes literally.

Pacino had essayed the role of Richard III three times before making the film.  The final one being his much-acclaimed star-turn on Broadway.  Clearly, he has had a lifetime fascination with the role and the play.  Olivier called it "the closest thing to a one-man show Shakespeare ever wrote."  That's probably one of the reasons Pacino likes it so much.

It's one of Shakespeare's more complicated plays.  Not so much for the acting, like in Hamlet, but for the Lancastrian-Yorkist relationships and political history involved.

In the film Pacino is trying to make the audience understand how he, Pacino himself, approached the role and interpreted the character.  He surrounds himself with a crew of savvy actors - Baldwin, Harris Yulin, Kevin Spacey, Estelle Parsons, Kevin Conway and many others.  Even poor Winona Ryder, looking completely lost, turns up for a scene as Lady Anne.

On another level Pacino wants to present the play so the average American can understand it.  Not sure why he thinks this is important, but he does.  Shakespeare was, of course, meant to be understood by the average blue-collar, or more appropriately, blue-tighted guy in 1590, but not so much in 2010.  And Richard, we must remember, was early Shakespeare, written when he was a young man, still trying to master his craft.  Trying to make Shakespeare readily accessible to the masses in 2010 is daunting, to say the least.  To bring The Bard and his soaring poetry to the inner city streets of NYC or Chicago or LA...well, that's as doomed to failure as the civil rights policies of Johnson forty years ago.  And that comparison is meant to be apropos, in case you're wondering.

But I digress.  Back to this process thing.  I was struck dumb as I watched this group of very fine actors sitting around a table and endlessly discussing the play and its ramifications.  Hour after hour they would talk.  And talk passionately.  Trying to understand what Shakespeare "wanted."  I remember a quote again from Olivier in his book 'On Acting.'  He says at one point, nine times out of ten when a young actor would tell him he couldn't find the "truth" of a certain scene or monologue, Olivier's constant advice would be to do the scene "twice as fast."  The truth will come, he says, if you just stop pursuing it so relentlessly.  In other words, he was saying, just do it.  Stop thinking so much and just do it.  The revelations will present themselves.  Again, it is important to remember that Shakespeare DID NOT WRITE subtext.  He said exactly what he meant at all times.  And Method work is built on subtext.  This is one of the reasons Brando had such a dickens of a time with Marc Antony in Julius Caesar so many years ago...he was searching for the subtext and couldn't find it.  It was all cleared up one day when Geilgud, playing the role of Cassius in that film, pulled him aside and told him exactly that.  Brando was aghast.  But Brando being Brando, immediately grasped it and suddenly began giving an electric performance.

So what we have in the documentary is the Method Richard.  Now, Al Pacino is one of the great American actors of all time, with or without his Method background.  He is the cream that has risen to the top regardless of his approach.  Unlike Brando, he has steadfastly remained true to his training throughout his life.  It has served him well, needless to say.  One simply can't argue with success.  Brando, eventually and publicly, denounced Method work, saying Strasburg and his ilk taught him "nothing" that he didn't already know.  The Actors' Studio for many decades held Brando up to be their shining example.  Only years later was it revealed that Brando barely had anything to do with The Studio.  In fact, he found Strasburg to be an "old windbag."  His teacher of note, he admitted, was Stella Adler, not Lee Strasburg.  And in turn, Adler is on record as saying, "I merely pushed him in the right direction.  I taught him nothing."

Process.  Approach.  Style.  It's all semantics in the end.

When I was rehearsing Praying Small recently, the director and I could not have been at further ends of the spectrum when it came to process.  He simply couldn't understand that I was not the least bit interested in finding the "honesty" or "truth" of a scene or moment.  It just didn't interest me because I knew it was there already.  I didn't need to do anything to "find" it.  It was never lost.  Instead, I was far more concerned with discovering the physical "map" of the play.  He would look at me agog and somewhat condescendingly as I simply said, "Okay, at this line I'll be here doing this and then when this line comes I'll be over here doing this in this manner."  He found it appalling.  I, on the other hand, was dead set against wasting invaluable rehearsal time endlessly talking about the play itself.  I just wanted to do it.  I knew that the playwright had already done all the "truth finding" FOR me...the playwright, in this particular instance, happened to be me.  But that doesn't matter...it's the same with all plays.  And in Richard III SHAKESPEARE has already done the homework...he's already FOUND the truth, the honesty, the moment to moment thought process.  All the actor has to do is plot out his own personal road map.  It is the same with every play written since the dawn of man.  The writer has done the work.  We, as actors, only have to google map quest and decide the quickest way to get where we're going.  It's as simple as that.

In the final analysis, everyone is very good in the acting of the piece, particularly Kevin Spacey as the loyal but ambitious Buckingham, sort of the Secretary of State for President Richard.  The actors, off and on, spent FOUR YEARS working on the piece.  But it was like baking brownies from scratch and having them eventually taste exactly like the ones you can buy in a box and make in a half hour.  Was the play better served because of the inordinate amount of time spent discussing it?  Perhaps.  But I doubt it.  What if Pacino had gathered this same group of extraordinary actors together and said, "Okay, we have one week to do this."  Would the final performance be that much different?  I doubt it.  

He constantly takes the camera to the streets and asks the average Joe walking down the sidewalk what he thinks of Shakespeare or Richard or Hamlet.  The average Joe, not unexpectedly, repeatedly answers, "It's all gobbledeegook, I don't understand it."  Pacino sees this as something that needs to be fixed.  I see it as a testament to the genius of Shakespeare.  He was not MEANT to be understood and universally grasped by everyone in 2010.  Five hundred years from today I'd like to know what the average Joe on the streets thinks of Neil Simon.  Doubtful he'll find him the least bit amusing.  Genius is not meant for everyone.  That's why it's genius.  The very fact that not everyone "gets" Shakespeare is the very reason Shakespeare towers over every other English-speaking writer in history.  Sometimes things that seem too 'smart' for some people is because they ARE too smart for some people.  Art is not a democracy.  Never has been, never will be.  Art, by it's very nature, is exclusive.  Propaganda is meant for everyone, not art.  That's why Rembrandt didn't paint pictures to be hung in the lobby of the local bank.

In the end, I very much agree with Baldwin's assessment of David Mamet's brilliant book on acting, True and False.  I completely disagree with nearly everything in Looking For Richard.  And yet I think every really serious actor in the world should see it.

Al Pacino as Richard III.

See you tomorrow.

"He only does big things..."

As an actor, I have spent a lifetime stealing from other actors.  Good actors, mind you, but stealing.  I don't feel at all bad about it.  Stealing is not imitating.  It's something altogether different.  Although imitating can be fun, too.  Just not so useful.  There's the whiff of mendacity if one imitates, however.  But stealing, outright theft, is another thing altogether.

I mention this because I watched the film Patton last night.  A movie made in 1970 starring George C. Scott as George Patton, the flamboyant, American, WWII icon.  It is a sterling performance from Scott and I don't just mean his usual vocal pyrotechnics (which he does as well as any actor working in the latter part of the twentieth century).  I don't know a lot about the history of the film (although I do know that Scott was the second choice...Rod Steiger initially turned it down) but I suspect one of two things happened; either Scott quite consciously gave a performance of massive scope or they shot so much footage they pieced together this enormous quilt of a role.  I think probably the former because Francis Coppola wrote the screenplay and it was more than likely too tight to fuck with too much.

Scott swings almost every club in the bag.  The only aspect of the character he is unable to play is romantic love...which he sort of does anyway with his obsession with making war.  He is, at times, petulant, child-like, arrogant, sensitive, empathetic, ambitious, daring, vulnerable and war-like.  There is a scene in which Karl Malden, playing Omar Bradley, scolds him for his insensitivity toward his men by putting them in the path of the Germans simply to outshine his nemesis, the British Field Marshal Montgomery.  Scott lays on a couch and listens and pouts like a twelve-year old.  It is a remarkable piece of acting in this raging portrayal.  Later, riding his horse in circles and chatting amiably with a gaggle of reporters, he does the same thing, speaking outlandishly like a child to his cohorts.  These sudden shifts, showing other angles of the character, don't seem much at first, but they're clearly extraordinary choices.  Scott is no accidental actor.

I mentioned to Angie as I was watching the movie (which I have not seen for more than fifteen years, probably) that I think I've stolen more from Scott than any other actor I can think of, even Brando.  His impeccable diction (he's a stage actor first), his romance with the consonants 'D' and 'T,' his unusual choices when it comes to raising his vocals, his unpredictable flights from rage to conciliation.  We, the audience, never get ahead of Scott, we're never quite sure where he's going with something...it is textbook great acting.

I saw him onstage once in a very bad play called The Boys of Autumn about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn grown up.  Tom was a hermit living way out in the Ozark woods and Huck was on the run for being a pedophile.  Talk about skewering your sacred cow.  Anyway, the other actor was the very fine John Cullum,but it is Scott that holds the stage.  Planted like an immovable oak tree in the very center of the stage, with Cullum blocked around him, he was frighteningly powerful.  His voice, the trademark growl, was like an out of tune tuba in the theatre that night.

The thing about Scott that I love is that he is unapologetically a stage actor, a prime example of my theory that there is no "over acting" or "under acting" but only honesty and dishonesty.  Other stage actors that do film simply soften their stage persona for the camera...Kevin Kline comes immediately to mind...Scott doesn't bother to do this.  Pacino has apparently reached this decision, too.  He doesn't soften his work anymore, just sets the bar super high and jumps.  We either follow or we don't.  I, for one, love to follow him.

By all accounts, Scott lived a tremendously chaotic personal life...a binge drinker, socially inept, arrogant to the point of alienation, shy yet demanding...but every single time I have seen him, even with bad writing, he towers over every actor around him.  He did a play called Inherit the Wind on Broadway many years back with the fine actor, Charles Durning.  Durning at one point in rehearsal apparently turned to him and said, "For the life of me I can't figure out what it is that you have that I don't, but if I could I'd bottle it and make a billion dollars."  I couldn't agree more.  Only once, in his entire career in film, have I seen another actor take the stage from him and that, of course, was Brando in a quirky, little film from 1981 called The Formula.  Scott is his usual bellicose self, keeping us guessing as to why and when he will explode, but Brando is the very definition of sly and realized early on that he couldn't match Scott in this aspect, so instead he plays opposite him in a smarmy, underplayed, busy performance that manages to match Scott not through strength but through fascination.  He's always DOING something, little things, fixing a salt shaker, winding his watch, polishing his glasses, wiping his upper lip, distracting himself...he understood instinctively the only way to stay on screen with Scott was to play to Scott's weakness as an actor, that is to say, doing little things.  Scott only does big things.

Another glorious day in Los Angeles.  The sun is already up and inviting.  The air crisp and cool and promising some action later on.  I'm turning my attentions to Praying Small today, making it into a screenplay just for the shits and giggles of it.  Angie is off to the special effects warehouse (her new job) to be a 'factory girl.'  We have a running joke that someday soon I'm going to dress up in Navy Whites and come carry her out like Richard Geer does in An Officer and a Gentleman.

She fixed a dinner last night fit for a king.  If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, Angie made it into my heart long ago.  Aside from being beautiful, smart, funny and sexy, she can cook like it aint' nobody's business.  I smile as I write that because I know she will, too.

On a personal note, my mother died 23 years ago today.  I shall think of that today.

Off to Missouri in less than two weeks for our engagement party.  Personally, I'm looking forward to those little weenies in bar-b-q sauce.  I'm told someone is on that.

See you tomorrow.

A Night in the Mountains...

Angie and I travelled up to the mountains (well, I call it 'the mountains' cause it seems rather high) to have a wonderful dinner of bar-b-q pulled pork and watch a jazz concert yesterday.  I ate way too much (it was way too good, so there) and then we drove over about a mile to the outdoor concert.  The jazz quartet was really good, the evening was entitled 'a salute to old blue eyes' which seemed to come as a shock to the quartet.  Apparently no one had bothered to tell them they were saluting old blue eyes and at one point the pianist said, "This is turning into a Sinatra night with all these Sinatra requests."  Nonetheless, it was great stuff.  Afterwards we went back to Don and Donna's place (Don and Donna Diekens, two of our dear friends out here in LA) and were introduced to Wii.  We did some Wii boxing (which is like a Jane Fonda workout) and then some Wii bowling (which brought out the competitive nature in me.  A lot of fun.  I really enjoy hanging out with Don and Donna.  They live in an absolutely drop-dead beautiful apartment in a gated community up there in the mountains.  Donna is a former show-biz type, terrific singer, and Don and her have been together since World War I.  Great couple, really funny and smart people.

Setting up a picture perusal with my new commercial agent, the really funny and professional Joan Messinger, this Tuesday.  Finally getting that stuff done and ready to be sent out.  Fingers crossed.  I think I'm going to enjoy working with Joan as my agent.  She's top of the line out here in the commercial business.

Angie's brother and his wife are coming into town from San Diego today.  We're going out to eat tonight at some very famous burger place here in town (I forget the name).  I've met him once before, nice guy, so we're looking forward to that.

In the lull here between signing with the new agents and actually starting on new projects so there's not a lot to report on the professional front.   Next week things should start hopping again.  So it's chore day here at the Peabody/Morts residence.  Mundanity at it's very sweetest.  Maybe I'll re-tar the roof.

See you tomorrow.

RV Dreams...

I've been getting a lot of offers to do stage work recently.  Just when I decided not to do stage work for awhile. Isn't that typical?  The Coach in Richard Greenberg's TAKE ME OUT, a new comedy project of transcribed I LOVE LUCY episodes at The El Portal Theatre (they want me to take a look at 'Fred Mertz'), a couple of others.  Just not interested, though.  After my last foray onto the stage and the daily bloody skirmishes with the director to get quality stuff on the stage, well, I figure I'm due for a rest.

Tomorrow I have meetings with both my new legit agent and my new literary agent.  Both came from contacts made during Praying Small.  I'm hoping for the best.

Once again we had to postpone my final commercial shots for the new commercial agent yesterday.  We're taking another stab at it today.

Angie and I visited the public library yesterday (my favorite place on earth, the public library) and I picked up the last five "Spenser" books by Robert Parker.  I've been a fan of this series since about 1985 when a buddy of mine first introduced them to me.  I love them.  Parker is the natural successor to John D. McDonald, I think.  His Spenser is sharp-witted, smart, sensitive and brutal.  Love the juxtaposition in the character.  Parker died last year so these are the last of the series.  If you're not familiar with them you can always count on two things in every book...a great gourmet recipe (Spenser is an amateur chef) and a blow-by-blow fistfight (he's also a former professional boxer).

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do next.  As I said, I'm holding off on doing any stage work because of the foul taste left in my mouth with the rehearsal process of PS.  This "Dinner Theatre for the Homeless" idea that my buddy, Melanie Eubank, has come up with is definitely something I'd like to do.  Not as an actor, of course, but I wouldn't mind contributing some short plays.  Service Work, we call it in some circles. Altruism is always a good thing for people like me.  That is to say, for people that have a natural predisposition to selfishness.  It gets me out of my head, which can sometimes be a very crowded and dangerous place.

The plans for the August engagement party are rolling along nicely.  Angie is checking into a lot of different karaoke outfits in Springfield.  I'm the one that really wants that.  I figure there will be a lot of drinking at the party and I was looking for a way to occupy my time while others did it.  Not that being around drinking bothers me too much anymore, but after a while it just gets kind of boring for me.  Listening to people speak a little too loud and repeating themselves over the course of an evening can get a tad tedious.  So I figure I'll be the DJ instead.  I've become an old fogey, I guess.

We're getting married, Angie and I, in November and our plans at this point are to rent an RV and drive over to the Grand Canyon and take a look around.  I know it sounds a little white-trashy, but that's what we wanna do.  We'll take the puppies with us and just take out.  No set agenda, no careful itinerary, just take out and see what happens.  If the Grand Canyon bores us we'll head up north and see what's up that way.  Although I'm told the Grand Canyon is quite a spectacular hole in the ground.

Looking forward to seeing a gaggle of people I haven't seen in ages at the engagement party.  Not since the halcyon days of SMSU.  Back when our biggest worry was the next scene we were doing in Howard Orms' acting class.  Or the next theatre history test in Dr. Mac's class.  Or the next mainstage show with Dr. Bradley.  Ah, to be young again.  My buddy and one of my two best men, Johnny Bader, is attending the party.  The other best man is Jim Barbour.  I've known them both since the eighties.  We've been through the wringer together, to say the least.  Anyway, John and I are planning on driving over to the now Missouri State University, formerly Southwest Missouri State University, and look around my old stomping grounds.  Maybe take a look at my old apartment (a few of us lived in what was then known as the "Belmont Apartments" which was essentially a den of iniquity).  A lot of tequila was consumed in that apartment.

So...more pictures today (I'm beginning to feel a little like Fabio), some rewrites on the new piece, maybe a short walk while Angie is off doing her thing, playing with Franny and Zooey, the most spoiled dogs on earth, and then a night of new Netflix.  Speaking of which, I've learned it is wise to keep a sharp eye on the Netflix.  If not, I end up with some movies or documentaries I have no interest whatsoever in seeing.  That happened last week.  Although at the time I ordered it, The History of the Little Big Horn seemed fascinating but by the time it arrived I'd sort of lost interest in Custer and his plight.

See you tomorrow.

Laurence Fishburne in THURGOOD at The Geffen...

Angie and I saw THURGOOD with Larry Fishburne yesterday at The Geffen.  It officially opens on Tuesday so we saw the last preview.  Full house, standing O, of course.  It's a ninety-five minute piece with no intermission.  A complete one-person show on the professional life of Thurgood Marshall, the late Supreme Court Justice and liberal lion.

It's a good piece.  Devoid of sentimentality and very much an intellectual exercise but a very good piece of theatre.  Fishburne has already done it at The Kennedy Center (where I imagine it must have been seen by President Obama) and on Broadway.  Apparently he rehearsed it originally at The Geffen (Fishburn, naturally, lives in LA so it was probably done that way to make it convenient for him) and then moved it east.

Clearly, Fishburne is a trained stage actor.  I've seen movie stars on stage many times and usually they fade and diminish with the demands of the stage.  There have been exceptions...Gene Hackman was towering in Death and the Maiden, Hoffman was a tiger in Death of a Salesman, Jack Lemmon very much a stage actor in Long Day's Journey into Night, Pacino, of course, very watchable on stage in Richard III,   And I've seen what are essentially stage actors that do film work: James Earl Jones, Michael Moriarty, John Malkovich, Kevin Spacy, Kevin Kline, Ian McKellan, Brian Dennehy.  But most of the time when an actor that works primarily in film takes the stage, it's embarrassing.  Not so with Fishburne.

He has the voice and presence to do Thurgood.  He is at home on stage and doesn't look or feel the least bit out of his element.  This is a guy, after all, that tackled Othello.

The set design is most impressive in its simplicity.  A long, polished, wooden conference table, a few chairs, a backdrop of a huge, white plaster American flag upon which various images are shown, a beautiful, wooden, parquet floor.  And a ton of sound effects used to shepherd the audience from one notable event to the next.  I wish my director for Praying Small could see this piece...he'd finally see when its appropriate to use sound effects.  They were not just thrown in haphazardly to garner cheap laughs, but used sparingly and judiciously to actually move the play along.

Fishburne also does something very difficult to do when traversing a one-person piece.  He occasionally talks not just at the audience but to the audience.  He acknowledges their existence, so to speak.  He plays on the laughs.  He uses the laughs as a diving board to the next moment.  It doesn't sound hard, but trust me, having done a few, most notably Harry Truman in Give 'Em Hell, Harry, it is.

It didn't hurt that the audience seemed to be made up of the most politically liberal bunch of old folks (it was a matinee, after all) in all of Los Angeles.  He was most definitely preaching to the choir yesterday.

But the most impressive part of Mr. Fishburne's play was his command and ease of and on the stage.  One never gets the idea he's in water a little too deep for him.

It was a very good piece of theatre, not emotional, almost entirely intellectual and historically-driven, as one might expect from such a subject.  The language and paring down of certain landmark court decisions made simple by the presentation and writing (the script by George Stephens).  Clearly the creators and Fishburne himself went to lengths to avoid any mawkish emotion.  In the final analysis the entire piece appeared to be something The History Channel would be proud of.

And, as Monty Python used to say, on an entirely different subject, more pictures today, hopefully.  Bearded and clean-shaven pictures for the commercial agent.  New 'outfits.'

Overcast and unusually cool today in Los Angeles.  A break from perfect weather.  Doing rewrites on the new piece today, teaching a bit, taking a walk in Griffith Park, a good day.  Another good day.  I've come to rather enjoy good days.

See you tomorrow.

Bits and Pieces...

More pictures today for my commercial agent.  From our last session (the 'goatee sessions,' I like to call them) we got about forty or so good shots.  We need about thirty five more from today's session.  I've grown a short and neatly trimmed beard and after a few outfit changes we'll shave the beard (more precisely, I'll shave the beard) and then take some more clean shaven.  It's very strange.  Not the copious amount of pictures, that's fairly standard, but the fact that we've only found one spot to actually take the pictures so that the lighting and the background is absolutely perfect.  That is to say, in our hot and dirty tack room.  Yesterday I journeyed over to Studio City to my photographers place (he couldn't leave to get over here) and we searched for an hour or so in vain for the perfect spot to take shots...somewhere where the lighting and background was exactly right.  We couldn't find one.  So it's back over here today and into the hotbox for more photos.

I was talking to a couple of buddies yesterday and the day before about this whole commercial enterprise.  I wanted some insight as to whether it's all worth it or not.  I'll keep names out of it.  One friend of mine, a young guy here in LA, said he didn't really pursue the commercial stuff too keenly, but he did it when he could.  Mostly he pursues film work, he says.  Having said that, he made approximately $22,000 last year doing commercial work.  Another buddy, a guy with a really good commercial agent out here, said he worked a total of four days on SAG commercials last year, nationally run commercials, and made $47,000.  So although perhaps not million dollar sideline jobs, it's very lucrative nonetheless.

Got my first check yesterday from some TV work I did a couple weeks back.  Not a huge check, but my first one.  Angie and I have decided to frame it.  We were delighted.

The engagement party plans are in full swing.  It should be a fun and auspicious weekend in Missouri this August.  Angie and her mother are having a lot of fun planning it.

Had my buddy, John Bader, over Friday night for some pizza (off my diet, but what the hell) and we watched Oliver Stone's old picture, Born on the Fourth of July.  I hadn't seen it since it came out years ago.  Back then I remember being quite moved by the film, a very powerful film, I thought.  Upon reviewing it, not so much.  It seems so heavy handed now.  A dead-on script without any real surprises.  I've been noticing that a lot lately with films I go back and watch again.  For a long time in Chicago I sort of stopped watching movies.  Lots of reasons for that, one being a complete lack of interest.  I was teaching all the time and when I finished the last thing I wanted to do was watch more histrionic acting.  So I stopped watching a lot of movies.  Consequently, now when I go back and watch a film I have a different perspective.  Very few hold up.  The exception is one I watched from start to finish a couple of weeks ago...Jaws.  I'm convinced that may be the perfect movie, scene by scene.  It holds up incredibly well.

Today we've got tickets (courtesy of our friend, Glenna Norris, a fine actress out here in LA) to see Larry Fishburn in Thurgood at The Geffen Theatre.  The Geffen is where my buddy, Jim Barbour, recently did Nightmare Alley.  It may be the most beautiful regional theatre I've ever seen.  When Glenna came over the other night to give us the tickets she mentioned in conversation that she had started her professional career at The Old Creamery Theatre in Iowa.  That's where I started, too.  She was about three or four years behind me.  In fact, she lived in the same company house that I did.  Small and incestuous business, this theatre world is.

The late Mick Denniston, from Springfield, MO, used to send his favorite up-and-coming actors to The Old Creamery (a professional theatre he helped found) and I think I was actually the first one he sent there.  After me, he sent another dozen or so over the years.  Glenna was one.  It was while there (1984-85) that I met Bader and my buddy, Jim Petersmith, also out here in LA now, and cultivated two life-long friendships.

I've decided to write a short play for a new project here in LA called "Dinner Theatre for the Homeless."  It's a program being started by my dear friend and talented actress and playwright, Melanie Eubank.  She asked me if I'd like to get involved a few weeks ago and I've been thinking about it since then.  I think it's an incredibly good idea.  She attends an uber-liberal Lutheran Church here in The Valley and the pastor there is very committed to bringing professional quality theatre to the indigent.  As is my habit, I've been letting the idea sit on the back-burner of my mind for a few weeks, percolate, as it were, and now I'm ready to write it.  Probably about a twenty to twenty-five minute piece.  Three characters.  I'll start as soon as I'm finished blogging, in fact.

Life is good.  It's a daily struggle sometimes.  But we're both incredibly happy together with a world of possibilities before us.  Our puppies, Franny and Zooey, are a constant source of amusement for us.  We don't go out much these days for a number of reasons but that's good.  We've both had more than our share of "going out" so an evening at home, a nice dinner, a good film, some pleasant and smart conversation, a cold glass of iced tea, an early night in bed with a good book...hard to believe, but I can't really think of a better way to spend my evenings.  Time, indeed, waits for no one.  Life is what we do while we're making other plans.  And lately, life and the making of plans, has been indescribably sweet.

See you tomorrow.

Southwest Missouri State University.

So Angela got our airline tickets to Springfield yesterday.  The engagement party is on.  She's happy about this.  And if she's happy, I'm happy, generally speaking.

Springfield, Missouri, holds a lot of memories for me.  I did two stints there as a student: 1979 - 1981, and then again from 1983 - 1984.  I haven't been back since then.

They were formative years for me, to say the least.  Milestone years.  Like most people that have had the experience of undergrad, there are images indelibly imprinted on my brain from those days.  Most, of course, have to do with plays I did there.  Some have to do with people I met there.  And still others have to do with dreams I dreamt there.

I was first introduced to William Shakespeare in Springfield, Missouri, as incongruous as that seems.  1980, I think it was.  I was cast in the tiny role of Curio in Twelfth Night.  It was the beginning of a life-long love affair with Shakespeare.  There was an actor, I've long forgotten his name, that played Sir Toby Belch in that production...as I recall, he wasn't even in the theatre department...who absolutely entranced me with his performance.  A whole new life opened before me as I watched him.  And it was perhaps the first time I realized (I was so youthfully arrogant back then) that there were things I simply couldn't do yet as an actor.  I wasn't good enough.  What a realization for a young actor.  Years later, when I was doing Brutus in Julius Caesar in New York, I often thought of that performance.  There I was doing that wonderful play in that wonderful role with The New York Times and The Village Voice in the audience...to ride on top of that language, that incredible language, over the course of an entire evening, is something unbelievably satisfying.  And the yearning to do it started right then, back in 1980, watching that performance.

My first stint there wasn't terribly memorable in terms of growth as an actor.  I was still very young and couldn't really get cast in the shows I wanted to do...rightly so, I suppose, since there were upper-classmen who had paid their dues for the big roles before me.  One moment that did stick out, however, was through a class I took with the legendary Dr. Leslie Irene Coger.  Oral Interpretation (I don't think they even TEACH -that anymore in school) was the class and my final consisted of writing and performing a one-person show.  I chose to do a forty-minute show on the life of Frank Sinatra.  I completely lost myself in it and Dr. Coger was incredibly supportive.  She held my work up in that show as an example of what she was trying to teach.  Later I used that work as a template, of sorts, for several shows I did in NY...Golden Eggs and Farley and Daisy.  And even later during my national, Equity tour of Give 'Em Hell, Harry.  One-person shows are a bitch if you don't know what you're doing.

My second stint there was much more successful in terms of landing good roles: Ken Tally in Fifth of July, McMurphy in Cuckoo's Nest, Vernon in They're Playing Our Song and Jimmy Winters in Oh, Kay!  Bob Bradley, the head of the department, Mick Denniston, the AD at Lander's Theatre and Dawin Emmanuel from the music department, all became mentors for me.  Bradley was a walking encyclopedia when it came to theatre.  Mick was someone I could relate to personally and Dawin simply snatched me up after seeing me in a play and said, "You're going to study with me now."  How fortunate I was to have met these people.  Mick and Dawin, sadly, are no longer with us, but Bob Bradley is still there and apparently attending our engagement party in August.  He was the first director to really let me run with a role.  Complete trust.  I shall forever be grateful.  He was also the first to encourage me as a playwright and even directed a show I wrote called The Flagger.

Springfield is also where I first met Angie.  And that was, as time was to prove, quite fortuitous as well.

As Angie has pointed out since then, we didn't really hang out a lot because I was part of the 'bad boy' set and she was not.  There was always controversy following me in those days.  Actually, in the days that followed, too, but my penchant for being outspoken started there.  As she has pointed out many times since then, "people either loved you or hated you.  I loved you."  Lucky for me.

I met some people there that are still good friends of mine:  Joe Hulser (who directed me in a Sam Shepherd play called Holy Ghostly) and lives less than ten minutes away from us here in LA, Dwayne Butcher, whom I still stay in contact with and Robert Fiedler, with whom I later spent a lot of time in NYC and who, sadly, passed away about a year ago.

It was during these years that I grasped the idea of being a professional actor.  It was no longer something unattainable.  I could do this.  That in itself was a seminal moment for me.

Howard Orms, Mike McElheney, Byrne Blackwood, Linda Park-Fuller, all teachers that made a mark on my psyche.  All extraordinary in their own way.

I look forward to toddling over to Craig Hall and Coger Theatre (if it's still called that) and looking around, remembering the old days.  Tent Theatre, the professional Summer Stock intertwined with the school, is over for the summer, so we won't be able to see that.  But we'll see whatever show is playing when we get there.  We'll arrive on a Thursday and leave the following Monday, so there should be time to see something, at least.

We're hoping to have a grand and intimate party on that Friday night at Rex and Rosemary's beautiful home in Springfield.  Rex and Rosemary are Angie's stepdad and mother.  They've been to visit us a couple of times here in LA and are fun and smart people.  I enjoy being around them.  We're trying to put together a karoake night (Angie and I don't drink so long cocktail parties aren't really fun for us anymore).  So we thought karoake might be a fun thing to do.  Still working on that, though.  Angie's close friends (and, by proxy, my close friends) Carolea Love and Mary Wilson (their non-married names) are organizing the whole thing and I have no doubt it will be amazing.  Back in the day I did plays with both of them, Company and They're Playing Our Song, respectfully.  I remember them both as having incredible voices and being very fine actresses.

We also plan to have an evening with Angie's Dad and Stepmom, who also visited us here in LA...really great people, too, and I look forward to seeing them and catching up.  Angie's dad is the very definition of 'laid back.'

So now that the airline tickets are purchased there's no turning back.  We're gonna have a party, as the song goes.  It should be a corker.  Many old friends will be there.  People I haven't seen since, well, 1984.  Hard to believe I haven't been there in 26 years.  And Angie tells me Rosemary is getting napkins made with our names on them...if that's not an auspicious reason for being in Missouri again, I don't know what is.

And on a purely personal note, I really look forward to having a family again...

See you tomorrow.