Springfield, Part III

We picked up the karaoke machine Friday while we were out and about in Springfield.  We hooked it up on Saturday a few hours before the festivities started.  It hooked directly into the TV so there were no extra speakers to run it to.  Mistake.  After the party got cranking a bit (there were about 65 people there) the TV speakers weren't loud enough for it.  In addition, there was constant feedback regardless where one stood with the mike.  So after attempting a dozen or so songs we simply shut it down.  A complete waste of several hundred bucks.  Oh, well.  The party was in high gear anyway and the karaoke was simply an interesting diversion.

Rex and Angie's brother, Mike, tended bar all night and doled out the wine, beer and occasional mixed drink.  Angie and I circulated as much as we could trying to catch up with everybody.  It was difficult to stay too long in one place because we needed to wander about and make sure everyone was happy.  Long about eleven a lot of the family and older folk were calling it a night and only the die-hard SMSUers were still there.  We all gathered around a couple of tables on the downstairs patio of Chateau Del Lago and told old stories.  The temperatures, even at that time of night, were still in the low nineties.

I hadn't really had a chance to eat anything all night and finally settled down with a massive plate of cocktail weenies in bbq sauce (my favorite anyway) that Ken, Angie's dad, had brought.  It was an interesting conversation that ensued.  Of course, we're all nearing fifty now and most of us are sort of upstanding citizens now, for the most part, so I was amused to see the conversation drift toward old stories of being arrested.  There were quite a few.  Nothing serious, of course, just mostly hi-jinx stories of when we were young.

By one in the morning, people began to drift out.  Angie and I were exhausted.  The party had clearly been a great success and I think, I hope anyway, everyone had a good time.

We collapsed into bed and woke really late on Sunday...for us that means around eight.  We're early risers so sleeping that late was really something for us.

The next two days involved eating out (including some famous cashew chicken, which, inexplicably, Springfield has become known for) and a trip over to Ken and Wanda's for some huge, grilled burgers.  Actually, the following morning we travelled over to Mexican Villa, a spot that was there even when we were in college, and met up with a crew of SMSUers for a late brunch.  The waitress, who seemed a tad nonplussed with such a loud group of twenty or so, clearly wanted to be somewhere else.  Nonetheless, a good time was had by all.

Sunday night we took Tammy and Angie's daughter, Lauren, back to the airport and they flew back to LA before us.  On the airport road we encountered, oddly, two runaway pigs in the road.  Not something one sees very often in LA, but apparently not out of the ordinary in Springfield.  People just casually swerved around them as though this were just another two escaped pigs.  No one seemed to think it odd except Angie and I.  After we dropped Tammy and Lauren off and were on our way out the pigs were being arrested and read their rights.

And so it was.

It could not have been a better mini-vacation and engagement party.  All had gone as planned (with the exception of the karaoke debacle) and Angie was pleased and, of course, when Angie is pleased, I am pleased.

So now we're back in LA...auditions are commencing as usual.  Had an odd one a couple days ago.  I was called in to read for a feature film and upon entering realized that everyone in the room was about three hundred pounds.  And me.  So as they all walked into the room to be shot on camera I could hear them yelling and being as bombastic as possible.  I decided I couldn't compete with that and so when my time arrived I did the whole thing like I thought the wonderful old character actor, Dabney Coleman, might have done it.  I don't think I was what they were looking for.

Tuesday I have a big audition for a new musical here in LA that has the possibility of going to NY.  It's a musical version of the film, Garbo Talks, and is being cast by a high-profile casting director here in town that hasn't seen me yet.  So today I'm heading over to my great buddy, Jim Barbour's place, to look through some of his music and get some pointers on the audition.

We picked John Bader up at the airport last night and had him over for grilled steaks.  He was back from several weeks in Iowa.

And now, life back to a semblance of normalcy.  We took a tour of our dream house a couple of days ago.  Our fingers are firmly crossed for that.

Franny and Zooey are parked at my feet as I write this early on a Sunday morning.  Hard to believe just a week ago we were at Chateau Del Lago in Old Springfield.  Angie asked me this week if I would consider retiring there someday.  It's a good question.  I thought about it a lot.

And I decided that yes, I would.

See you tomorrow.

Springfield, Part II

Saturday was, if humanly possible, even hotter than Friday in Ol' Springfield.  Angie and I sat on the bottom patio in Loch House and drank our coffee early in the morning, as is our habit, and by 8:00am were both trickling sweat.  The golfers were still strolling by with groups of gasping and panting and sweating onlookers following them.  I noticed all around the club, in fact, they had these little signs that said "golfer crossing."  At first, quick glance I thought they said "gopher crossing" and was a bit surprised that Springfield should have gotten so benign toward it's gophers.

Fortunately, the Loch House had air conditioning pumping throughout (which must have been like air conditioning an aircraft carrier) so we could always just step in and cool off for a few seconds.

I knew the girls would be coming over soon to commandeer the kitchen.  My best man at the wedding and lifelong friend, Johnny Bader, was driving down from Iowa (he lives in LA, too, but was in Iowa to visit his family and, in particular, his mom, who is in delicate health) so the two of us planned to just scoot around Springfield a bit during the preparations and see what there was to see.  John is about my age and has had the career anyone in the business would kill to have...we got our Equity cards together at The Old Creamery Theatre in 1985 and then both moved to NYC.  He did a lot of stage work in NY with a lot of prestigious theaters and then moved to LA about twelve years ago.  He got a tremendous break early on out here and did a season of The Practice, the David Kelly show that preceded Boston Legal.  He also got a great commercial agent right after moving here and has done about fifty national commercials.  He's made a good living.  John also directed my first play in NY, Changing it to Brando.  Brilliantly, I might add.  John is not, by his own admission, a director, but he's nonetheless very good at it.  In fact, he was my first choice to direct Praying Small here in LA, but he turned me down saying, "I appreciate the offer, but, you know, I just don't ENJOY that sort of thing."  I liked that response very much.

So off we went to see my old alma mater, SMSU (now called Missouri State...you know you're getting old when the name of your college has changed).  The area around the theatre department was exactly the same (with the exception of a god-awful, modern statue that looks like a giant, silver satellite dish parked right outside the theatre itself) as I remembered it.  No one was on campus and the place was locked up so I decided to check the one door that was always unlocked back in my day...lo' and behold, it was still unlocked.  So we walked around Craig Hall and I gave John a running commentary on the place.  Must've bored him to tears but I was neck-deep in nostalgia.

We stopped and had lunch at an old haunt of mine called Ebbets Field, a pub near the campus.  I told the waitress I had been there the night they opened the place in 1981.  She looked at me, quite rightly, as though I were a thousand years old.  She glanced around for the oxygen tank.

The day before Angie and I had driven downtown to take a look at Lander's Theatre where I did a number of plays long ago.  What an extraordinary facility that place has become.  A 570 seat theatre in a building that had been built in 1909...a former Vaudeville House, in fact.  The place has been gutted and is now a state of the art plant.  I commented to Angie and her friend, Beth Domann, who is the Artistic Director there, how amazing the place would be if it could be airlifted, intact, to NY or Chicago or LA.  I hope Springfield realizes what an extraordinary theater they have there.

Anyway, we returned to Loch House to find a gaggle of beautiful women busily creating a whole slew of foodstuffs.  John commented later he had never seen so many "cougars" in one place at one time. They were obviously having a wonderful time and John and I sat and chatted with everyone for awhile.  Tammy Lipps, also a former SMSUer, has since become a highly sought-after catering force here in the LA area, and she was spearheading the arrangements for the party.  She is an incredibly nice and smart woman, not to mention talented, and one of Angie's best friends and also her Bridesmaid.  Tammy and I never met in college because she literally came a week after I left.  All she knew of me were the myriad stories, some not too flattering, I'm sure.  I tended to be a tad controversial back then.  I suppose I still am, in some ways.  A character flaw, to be sure.

Anyway, John eventually left to shower again (we were all showering a couple of times a day because of the heat) and rest up before the 'event.'  Carolea Love (now Clingan), Debbie Doll, Diane Chambers-Stewart, Mary Wilson-Klumpp, Glenna Norris, Sharon Kessler-Chalmers and Rosemary and Tammy were all there helping out.  What a great group of people and all close friends of Angie's.  Unlike myself, Angie has maintained a whole bunch of close friends from those days.  She's that way.  Once Angie befriends someone, that's it.  Friends for life.  Me...not so much.  I tend to lose contact and simply move on to the next thing.  One of the thousands of things I admire about her.

Before John left we set up the karaoke machine and tried it out.  I knew instantly it wouldn't be loud enough.  But it was all we had so we decided to give it a shot that night.  In hindsight, I should have simply turned the damned thing off.

Long around six thirty the Peabody/Lewis/Jarrett clans started showing up.  So many new relatives it will most likely take me about a decade to learn all the names.

Angie's family and her extended family are very close.  It's all completely new to me, this family stuff.  They all seem to actually like each other in addition to being family.  They're all funny and smiling people that adore Angela.  I come from a family of heavy drinkers who barely tolerated each other so this new breed of family sort of befuddles me.  Rosemary and I stood at the front door of Loch House and greeted people as they arrived.  Of the thousand or so Peabody/Lewis/Jarrett folk that came in, I think I actually remember about five of the names.  Fortunately, there wasn't a quiz at the end of the evening.  Angie's Dad, Ken, and his wife, Wanda, two of the nicest people on the planet, came in, along with Angie's brother, Mike and his wife and kids.  Ken and Wanda simply radiate kindness.  In hindsight, it's easy to see how Angie turned out so normal and accepting as a grown-up...if her dad, Ken, and her stepmom, Wanda, and her brother Mike are any indication, I think it would be nigh on impossible NOT to turn out normal, accepting and kind.  As they used to say in my backwards little hometown, they're 'good peoples.'

The ex-SMSUers arrived fashionably late, of course.  Most I hadn't seen in 26 years.  Everyone looked great.  Bob Bradley arrived with his partner, Lou Shaeffer, and astonishingly hadn't seemed to have aged more than a couple of years.  Bob, I'm convinced, has a Dorian Grey deal going on.  Glenn Sneed arrived with Derrick Jarvis, two very funny and talented guys that kept things lively wherever they drifted to throughout the evening.  Chris Coaley showed up with his partner and the ageless Cheryl Miller (Cheryl was the dance guru in our old SMSU days), and also looked great.  Chris was always the best-looking guy in the theatre department, and still is.  Another Dorian Grey thing happening there.

And so the party started to crank up...

More on that tomorrow.

Springfield, Part One.

After a whirl-wind, last minute, packing frenzy last week, Angie and I boarded a plane and flew to Springfield, our undergrad alma mater, for our short vacation and Saturday night engagement party.  Naturally, we stayed with Rex and Rosemary, Angie's mom and stepdad, in their house at the country club.  Not surprisingly, the house is the stuff dreams are made of.  We could probably fit our entire home into Rex and Rosemary's front room.  It is an extraordinary house for extraordinary people.  It is truly the kind of home one expects to see in Better Homes and Gardens.  I was impressed, to say the least.  And not only is the home simply amazing, Rosemary has exquisite taste, not surprisingly, and everywhere one looks in that home is like a snapshot of "the perfect home" in my mind.  The truth is, the very house itself intimidated me.

In addition to it being a wonderful home, it is situated on, I believe, the eleventh hole of a beautiful golf course.  Angie and I would sit on the back downstairs patio every morning and watch the golfers (and there were a lot of golfers this weekend because there was, unbeknownst to us, a PGA tournament this going on) stroll by as we had our coffee.

Rex is a retired pathologist and as smart as a whip.  We both have a blazing curiosity about The Civil War (nerd that I am).  Oddly, he has never read one of my favorite books on the subject, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Killer Angels.  I plan to send it to him today.

So Rex and Rosemary picked us up at the new fancy-schmancy Springfield airport (gone are the pig feet in a jar and in their place one can now purchase a candy bar) and then took us to eat steaks at a great cowboy restaurant not too far away.  After chowing on Flinstonian-sized beefsteaks we drove to the "house on the lake."  It's one of those houses so large and beautiful it really should have a name like "Loch House" or "Tara" or "The Compound."  Not only was Rex a very successful doctor throughout his career but also a savvy investor with an eye for real estate.  Angie's parents, of course, are unimaginably humble and gracious and pretended not to notice how in awe I was of my surroundings.

The only drawback to the trip was the heat and humidity.  Oddly, we left the usual heat-infested west coast of 70 degree weather and flew into a freakish heat-wave in Missouri.  With the exception of our last day in Springfield, the heat index tipped the scale around 110 degrees while we were there.  Incidentally, we flew Allegiant, which takes the concept of "no frills" flying to a new level.  If you ask the stewardess a question it costs five dollars.  The answer itself costs another five.

So Angela and I finally got to bed and slept like the dead after our day of traveling.  We awoke to Hiroshima-like temperatures and started planning for "the party."  I kind of had an idea that we would stick a keg of PBR in the middle of the room, blow up some old balloons that said, "World's Greatest Golfer" that were tucked away in the attic, put some of those celery halves with peanut butter in the middle on a folding card table and that would be it.  Oh, dear God, no.  Obama's inauguration party looked like a day at the bowling alley compared to the preparation that went into this thing.  I loved it.

We rented a karaoke machine for the party (which ended up being a total disaster...more about that in tomorrow's blog) and began gathering food stuffs from all around town.  Angie had five or six of her closest friends come in the following day to spend hours in the kitchen preparing exotic and tasty tidbits.

The temperatures soared all day Friday and we braced ourselves for Saturday and the party itself.

One amusing moment came on Friday when Rex and Rosemary decided to take us to "the club" for lunch.  As I mentioned, a PGA tournament was underway the entire weekend so security was tight.  We just wanted a sandwich or something.  The Golf Course Clubhouse is right around the corner so we drove over and walked into the dining room.  The lady in charge of keeping ne'er-do-wells away from the event stopped us at the door.  She demanded to see our "passes" and our identification (our "papers" in NAZI parlance).  For a moment it appeared she might attempt to tazer Rosemary.  She was a deadly-serious woman, stocky with a lot of upper body strength, and I prepared to throw myself in front of her while the others made a hasty getaway.  Fortunately, Rosemary produced the required documentation and we were allowed to eat a sandwich.  Still, the SS lady was none-too-pleased about it and I kept a wary eye on her during lunch.  Although she didn't appear to be armed, there were a lot of blunt objects around and she still had the mean look of a trained German Shepherd in her eye.  It was touch and go there for a bit and I think if we had ordered desert she might have snapped.

But it all turned out okay and Angie and got to bed late and braced ourselves for the Saturday preparations.

More on that tomorrow.

A Little Trip Down Memory Lane...

Playing the lead in "Oh, Kay!" the 1984 Tent Theatre Production...
My last Summer in Springfield.

Off to Missouri today.  Dear, old Springfield.  Haven't been there since Reagan was president.  A lot of memories in that town.

My first encounter with Springfield was in the Summer of 1979 when I traveled there for 'orientation.'  They crammed a ton of we incoming freshmen into the dorms and gave us some useless classes about what to expect in college.  I don't remember a word of it.  What I DO remember is that all the fraternities were using that time to scout possible incoming pledges so they were all throwing parties.  Not one to miss out on a party, I, of course, attended all of them.  And then, oddly, found myself pledged to the Pikes.  That is, Pi Kappa Alpha.  I have no idea what I was thinking.  I guess at eighteen I was just looking for something to belong to.  It was, after all, the first time I had been away from home and I was timid and a bit confused.  So there I was, a Pike pledge, not having any idea what that meant.

Fortunately, it only took me about six months to realize that wasn't what I wanted.  I dropped out and almost immediately began devoting myself to the comings and goings of the theatre department, although at that time, I was officially a political science major.  I had some vague idea of getting a law degree and eventually going into politics.

Late in my sophomore year I officially changed my major to English and then, a bit later, to Theatre.  An altogether useless degree, really, but fun.  If I had it to do over, hindsight being 20-20, I would have gone straight to New York.  I have never, in thirty years in show-biz, been asked where I went to school or what kind of degree I had.  Unless one goes to Yale or Julliard, it simply doesn't matter in this business.

The first week I was at college I auditioned for my first play, Guys and Dolls.  The rascally Howard Orms was directing and I remember taking a song in for the auditon...it was Who Can I Turn To from Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd.  I actually remember singing it like Anthony Newley, who I had on an album singing the song.  That must have amused old Howard.  Anyway, I didn't have a resume, per se, of course, so I simply wrote down all my high school credits on a sheet of a paper longhand.  And there were a ton of them.  I had been the BMOC in high school and had done all the lead roles.  Howard must have been amused with my imitation of Anthony Newley.  I thought at that age the idea of singing a song for auditions was to do it exactly like it was in the broadway show.  I still giggle and shudder at the memory.

So I fully expected to be cast as either Sky Masterton or Nathan Detroit (both of which I later did as a professional) and was a little shocked to be offered a role in the chorus.  But I took it and thus began my initiation into the theatre department of SMSU with all it's politics and gossip and intrigue.  I loved it.

I developed a mad crush on the girl playing Adelaide in the show...I can't remember her name today.  She was very good, I thought.  And she was an older woman...22, I think.  I played an anonymous gangster in the show.  I didn't have any lines.  I sang in the back row of 'Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat.'  That was it.

But I knew in my gut this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

My buddy and best man at my wedding, John Bader, is attending the engagement party over the weekend.  We plan on heading over to the university and re-visiting some of my old haunts.  I'm sure nearly everything has changed in the past thirty years.

It took me a couple years to get noticed in the theatre department.  And, really, it didn't happen there at all but rather when Mick Denniston offered me the lead role in They're Playing Our Song over at the local little theatre.  After that, things started to look up for me and I happily did a whole slew of lead roles for next couple of years.

I befriended a few people that were to become lifelong friends during that time; Dwayne Butcher, the late Robert Fiedler, Joe Hulser and, of course, my wife-to-be, Angela Peabody.  It was a heady time and each day seemed to promise a new adventure back then.  Three people sort of took me under their wings my last couple of years there, the late Dawin Emmanuel from the Music Department, the aforementioned Mick Denniston, the artistic director with Lander's Theatre, and Dr. Robert Bradley, the head of the Theatre Department.  In fact, Bob (the only one of the three still alive) is supposed to be at our party Saturday night.  It will be good to see him.

I hate travel days.  But that's what is in store for us.  Oh, well, by 7:30 tonight we should be in Springfield.

Time to pack and get ready.

See you tomorrow...actually, probably next Tuesday.

There's...a...place...for us...

DREAM HOUSE.

So yesterday I had my first official "audition" in about twelve years.  That is to say, an audition where I actually sat in a room with a bunch of other people, waited for my name to be called, and then walked in and sang 16 bars.  After so many years of telling my students how to do it, I'd sort of forgotten the angst involved.

I was thinking the day before the audition what to sing...they were asking for fifties "rock or musical theatre."  It was Happy Days, The Musical and I am up for Howard Cunningham.  I'm sure, Gentle Reader, you remember that show.  So I thought, "I really don't think rock would appropriate since I doubt that character sings it in the show, so I'll get some fifties musical theatre stuff and show that."  I took in "I've Got Your Under My Skin" by Cole Porter.  The next decision, of course, was how to sing it.  I didn't think going in and belting it or doing the Sinatra swing thing was appropriate, either.  Ange and I went to the local Burbank Public Library, one of my favorite places in the world, and picked up a DVD of "Musical Theatre Lost Gems."  While not a fan of that sort of thing, I watched it hoping to find some inspiration.  And I did.  There was a clip of Mickey Rooney in Sugar Babies singing a quiet and heartfelt old number from the fifties.  That's it, I thought.  That's how to do it.  And so that's what I took them yesterday, a quiet and introspective 16 bars of "I've Got You Under My Skin."  Not maudlin, not ballad-esque, just rather underplayed and thoughtful.  No idea if it worked...I'll know if I'm called back today, most likely.

I was struck again, all these years later, by the nerves and anticipation in an audition situation.  The other actors there (well, all except my buddy Brad Blaisdell, who was at the audition, too...nothing ever seems to make Brad nervous) were all pacing and mouthing the words to their songs and subtly practicing hand gestures.  I'd sort of forgotten the sheer NEED emanating from actors in that type of setting.  The lyrics from a song in Chorus Line kept coming to mind..."God, I hope I get it...I hope I GET it..."

I was telling my friend, Jimmy Barbour, a while back that if I could make a living out here simply writing, I would.  I guess I've turned a corner in my life, quite unexpectedly, regarding acting for a living.  I don't need it anymore.  I don't obsess on it.  I don't demand it in my life.  If it happens, fine.  If it doesn't, fine.  That is not to say I don't enjoy it, I most definitely do.  But it is no longer all-consuming.  In my twenties I would not have thought that mindset possible.

I was thinking about this yesterday and trying to put my finger on what happened to make me feel this way.  Two things, I think.  One is having lived a rather reckless life for a long, long time, picking up debris and detritus of a life lived consumed by nihilism, and then later becoming a drug and alcohol counselor for inner-city, minority adults in Chicago, I saw first-hand what was really important and what was not.  There's a great line in John Adams, the HBO mini-series I'm watching now on discs from Netflix, that goes sort of like this - Adams says at one point, "I study war and politics so that my son might study engineering and  bridge-building so that HIS son might study arts and music."  As I got older and began to realize I wasn't really the center of the universe and that bad things happened to everyone, myself included; that there was no entitlement in life just because of education or inherent intelligence or money or prestige, that, yes, life was hard, and that singing or acting in front of a group of people was fleeting glory at its most childish...well, my opinions about what was noble and what was not noble began to change.  Heroes aren't the astronauts walking on the moon, real heroes are the guys that get up every morning at five, for years on end, and drag themselves to a job they hate, just to put food on a table, a roof over heads, a shirt on a back.  Real heroes are unsung and unappreciated.  Real heroes are the guys that, figuratively speaking, study war and politics so that their grandsons might study Bach and Shakespeare.

The other, not quite so lofty, reason is that acting is an interpretive art form.  The best one can hope for is re-creation of someone else's labors.  The genesis does not lie in creating for the sake of creating.  This is why writing, these days anyway, holds more joy and satisfaction for me than does acting.

Nonetheless, I'm good at it.  All false modesty aside, I'm pretty good at being an actor.  And yes, I do enjoy it.  But with age, I've gotten it in perspective and, more importantly, I understand that it is, for me anyway, a means to an end: to make a living for my family.  To pay the rent or the mortgage.  To feed my wife and family.  Brando once said he realized in his forties what a childish profession acting was and that sometimes he was simply embarrassed to do it.  But, he said, he couldn't stop because they paid him too much money to do it.  I completely understand that now that I'm older.  It seemed a callous statement when I was younger, now it no longer does.

In any event, I've got another audition coming up soon, then a break from show-biz for awhile as Angie and I head to dear, old Missouri to celebrate our engagement with a party.  That, at least, makes some sense to me.

The sun is coming up.  The temperature today is supposed to be a balmy 70 here in the City of Angels.  Angie and I had a wonderful moment of sincerity last night, quite unexpectedly, in the kitchen.  Moments that are few and far between with any couple.  A moment of satisfaction as we, briefly, understood the meaning of commitment.  And to top things off, we took a tour of our dream house last night.  An incredible place next to Griffith Park that has everything, absolutely everything, we want in a lifetime home.  I was reminded of the scene in Miracle on 34th Street when the little girl stops the car in front of the house she has had in her dreams, runs inside, and sees Santa Clause's cane in the corner.  This is the house we were meant to live it, Angie and I.  Now we just need a million dollars.  I'll see if I can't round that up today.  I've got a little time in the afternoon.  I'll see what I can do.

See you tomorrow.

The Quiet Before the Storm...

Ange and I headed up to the mountains to our friends Don and Donna again yesterday.  They have a great pool and a super cool hot tub that Angie has been dying to "lay out" next to for some time.  Frankly, I've never really gotten the whole "lay out" thing.  That is to say, tanning.  While Donna and Ange were turning themselves meticulously next to the pool like precisely timed omelettes, Don and I went through Donna's music and watched a show on their cool HD TV about how furniture is made. I found an easy tune to sing for the sixteen bars for the "Happy Days" audition and at the same time learned how to make a cherry wood shoe rack.

Afterwards we trotted over to a great little pizza place and gorged ourselves on really cheesy pizza.

The audition for the Howard Cunningham role is literally around the corner from us here in Burbank on Monday, although the theater itself is in Thousand Oaks.  Also today dropping off a pic and res to The Colony Theatre in Burbank (this is where my buddy, Jim Barbour, did his Christmas Concert this past December) for an Equity production of the old chestnut, Bell, Book and Candle.  It's a beautiful theatre, The Colony, and probably the closest Equity house to where we live, so it would be cool to get my foot in the door over there.  I've been told they put up some fairly respectable work over there.  It's not a very large house (the AEA contract is not too lucrative) but it's a great place to work in terms of AEA stuff that's close.

Finally got my site up for LA Casting under the auspices of Pinnacle Commercial Talent, my new commercial agency.  Hopefully, that will come to some fruition soon.

So next Thursday we're off to old Springfield for a few days and the big engagement party at Angie's parent's place.  Angie is very excited about it.  We'll be seeing a ton of old friends and cohorts we haven't seen in ages.  I suspect it will be a whirlwind of activities for us, not the least of which is a promise to attend an "all you can eat" cashew chicken place.  Now, this might not excite the average Joe, but I'm already fantasizing about it.

Professionally speaking, I'm in the quiet before the storm.  I'm up and running with my two recently acquired agencies and both are gearing up to start submitting me for various projects.  Once we return from Missouri I'm guessing things will really start to heat up for me.  I'm ready and eager for this.

The times, they are-a changin'.

See you tomorrow.

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.