Road Rage

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.