Lucky Guy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Nine Eleven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Up and at 'em

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Wrap Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

The Real Stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Procrastination

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

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

My ongoing procrastination has become a problem.

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

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

Procrastination.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think I'll make a decision tomorrow.

At which point I'll see you.

Tragedy and Hope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm going to get some right now.

See you tomorrow.

Blackouts on the Stage Should Be Illegal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

The Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Counting Coup with the Tea Party

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

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

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

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

"Yeah, so?"

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

"Yeah, so?"

"Destroying Social Security will destroy our very civilization."

"Yeah, so?"

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

"Yeah, so?"

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

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

"Yeah, so?"

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.