Our Next Car.

Someday soon, maybe not tomorrow or the day after or next week or next month, but someday soon, we're going to buy a new car. There was a time, in fact not very long ago, that I really didn't pay attention to cars. Cars held little to no interest for me. The only time I took notice of cars was when something odd appeared on the car horizon. Like the Smart Car. I began mentally playing the old 'slug your sister in the arm everytime you see a VW Bug' game in my head whenever I spotted a 'Smart Car.' Maybe you didn't play that game, but in my family it was considered the height of sophisticated travel enjoyment. It was the contract bridge of the Morts family. We were a simple people. My family played that game well into our adult lives. Even after I moved to New York City I would slug cab drivers when I saw one. They were always surprised, especially the foreign drivers, and occasionally asked me to get out of the cab.

Anyway, I never paid much attention to cars. I think it had something to do with the fact that my older brother and my dad seemed to never talk about anything else. They were obsessed with engines and fenders and tires and motor fluid and oil filters and transmissions and cubic inches and viscosity (whatever that meant). They were both amateur mechanics (my father worked in a NAPA auto parts store when we were all kids and my brother managed a tire store when he became an adult). So cars played a big part of their lives and, consequently, they bored the bejesus out of me.

This is all changing now that I live in Los Angeles. This is a car culture and there's simply no way of getting around that.

Angie and I talk about our next car purchase a lot. Just yesterday she remarked that she was seeing a lot of Bentleys on the road lately. There was a time I wouldn't know a Bentley from an AMC Gremlin. Nor did I care.

Yesterday we got a notice from our bank informing us we were 'pre-approved for a car loan up to $30,000.' I was so intrigued I actually went on-line to check out some cars that we could buy for less than $30,000.

When I was a kid my favorite car was a 1973 Buick something-or-other. I liked it because it had bat wings on it like the bat car.

Later I liked the Jaguar because a friend of mine's parents had one and I rode in it once and it seemed like a perfect place to spend time. It had seats that warmed your butt and a powerful engine that made a cool sound when you accelerated. Plus it had that hood ornament that seemed really imposing, too.

I also always wanted a jeep. I loved the idea of having a jeep. This is because a high school buddy of mine had one and we often went '4-wheeling' at Hazelrigg's Claypit back in Fulton, Missouri where I was born and lowered. Now, '4-wheeling' was a term used to describe driving a jeep over trecherous landscapes. And Hazelrigg's Claypit was a place just outside of town that was the perfect place to do this. We even busted a few 'oil pans' doing this and then we'd have to race back to town before the oil all drained out. Or something like that. I really never knew why we had to race back to town, but I liked telling people we 'lost the oil pan so we had to drive back to town at 80mph to save our lives.' They were usually impressed.

So today, after much consideration and endless conversation, Angie and I have decided we want a Ford Flex. It's a hybrid, so that's a good thing. Again, I have no idea what that means, but it seems like a responsible thing to want. If we have two cars we also want a Prius, which is good because it runs on ketchup. Oh, I don't know what it runs on, but it gets nearly 400 miles to the gallon, so we want that, too.

But we want those cars only if we're living like normal people. A few weeks ago when I played one ticket for the lottery of 209 million dollars after taxes and I was spending whole days fantasizing about the winnings, I was considering our next purchase. Part of that irrational fantazizing included new cars. One, I decided, would be a new Mercedes SUV - the kind that looks like a matchbox car, or the SUV that was featured in, brace yourself for an incredibly obscure reference here, the TV show DAKTARI - and the other would be a brand new, four-door, convertable Cadillac for Angie. This is because that's what Angie wanted. I used to live in Chicago and any Cadillac was considered 'ghetto.' But that's not the case in Los Angeles, apparently. So she wanted a Cadillac. "A very underrated car," she would say. Okay. Whatever.

All my life I have identified cars by their color rather than their brand name. So I told Angie I wanted a 'forest green' car. "What kind?" she asked. "Oh, I don't really care, but I like the forest green kind." She decided if we went to the car lot to get a car it would probably be best if I didn't say anything.

At the moment we have a perfectly good, nice running, utilitarian type car. It's a Saturn station wagon. It's been very good to us, although it was built in the 1920's or something. We bought it straight out with cash. Before we had a huge red truck roughly the size of a Soviet Abrams tank used to defend Stalingrad. It got one quarter of a gallon of gas every mile. We would drive to the store and have to fill it up again. It had an impossibly huge gas tank and cost about $4,000 to fill up. But we liked it and were comforted in the fact that if we ever needed to pull a house around behind it we could.

Angie has named our Saturn 'Envy,' because she thinks it is the envy of all who see it. She claims that if it's very dark out and one closes one eye and squints it could easily be mistaken for a Mercedes Benz station wagon.

Anyway. I'm looking at cars nowadays with a much more discerning eye. I chuckle at the idea of only wanting a 'forest green' car. I'm much more sophisticated now. These days I want a forest green car with those hubcaps that look like they're spinning the wrong way while you're driving. If I had a car like that I'd be so very happy.

See you tomorrow.

A Night on the Beach...

Today is Valentine's Day. It's a Hallmark Card kind of holiday, no doubt invented to boost sales of some sort or another. I'm just guessing. I didn't google it. Fine. It's the American way. Not being cynical, just musing.

Angie and I spent the evening, a really fun evening as it turns out, at our dear friends, Mark and Tammy, in their really exquisite Manhattan Beach house. Mark is a player with Fox Network and Tammy owns her own exclusive catering company headquartered out there.

We had a couple of friends in from Missouri (ostensibly to see my play, but really just to get away from the horrid Missouri weather for the weekend), Steve and Carolea.

So we all trotted over to Manhattan Beach following the play yesterday (typical matinee, by the way, played to a sea of blue hair).

I love spending time over at Tammy and Mark's place. For one thing, it's a really cool house; there's a beautiful and very private back patio complete with fire pit, hot tub and ping pong table. The conversation is always lively, with a great deal of healthy disagreement over a wide range of topics. And then, of course, there's the food. As I said, Tammy is a high end caterer and we always eat like Louis XIV over there. Or XV, or XVI or whoever it was that had the best food. Last night was no exception...filet mignon was the centerpiece of the evening.

Steve, coming in from Missouri, had never been there before, although his wife, Carolea (whom I've known for about 31 years) spent some time in LA early in her career and had visited the house often. Steve is now a very successful business man in southern Missouri, but back in the day he was the lead singer for a really great, semi-famous rock band called 'The Mistakess.' He is now the very picture of the former rock star complete with a deceptive 'I don't give a fuck' attitude. A funny and smart guy, the truth is he does give a fuck and he's incredibly informed.

These are good people. The kind of people I like to be around. I don't socialize much, I've made no secret of that in this blog over the past year or so, and when I do I like to be around people that challenge me, people that provoke and question me. I like to be around people that have opinions. Odd as it sounds, so many, many people simply don't. Well, not these folks...they do and I love it.

Steve and Carolea had seen my show, Adding Machine, the night before and like many others, didn't quite know what to make of it. I think it fair to say they liked it in a 'big picture' kind of way. Carolea is a true musician, years of training under her belt and a very discerning eye when it comes to this sort of thing. Last night when I called the music 'Sondheim squared' she said, enlightened finally, "Yes! Yes, that's it exactly!"

Steve, who is the kind of guy that doesn't suffer fools gladly, said as we dropped them off at their hotel last night, "You know, I've never seen you live, always on a DVD or something. You're unbelievably good at what you do." Coming from someone like Steve who rarely, if ever, speaks in superlatives, it meant a lot. Made my day, in fact.

Angie and I have been tossing around an idea as of late, a new company we're thinking of forming. Not a theatre company, but an actual business. So I sort of plopped it out there last night to get some reactions. In an instant the evening turned into a massive brainstorming session. They all thought it an amazing idea and were tremendously supportive. So much so, in fact, that Ange and I kind of made the final decision to go forth with it. Now, I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a business kind of guy. Angie is far ahead of me in that respect. So today, we start the actual research, the actual nuts and bolts implementation of this idea. When it is moored securely in reality, I'll write about it. But all in all, we're very encouraged.

So it's Valentine's Day. I won't belabour my thoughts on that. I will simply say this: Never in my wildest dreams, my most outlandish fantasies, my most fervent and halcyon imagination did I ever expect to find someone so perfect, so good, so beautiful and fascinating, so forever as Angie. She has single-handedly and seemingly effortlessly given me the life I've spent five decades searching for. She is my soul.

And a happy Valentine's Day to all of you, Gentle Readers.

See you tomorrow.

The Hill.

Los Angeles is different than New York or Chicago when it comes to a social life. I'm not altogether sure of the exact reasons for this but I suspect the sheer size of this city has something to do with it. And, of course, LA is a car town. You drive everywhere. There's a little store up the street on the corner where Angie and I occasionally get cigs (we're both about to quit smoking...AGAIN...more on that later) or cookies or milk or what have you. It is, I'm guessing here, probably three hundred yards from us, door to door. I walk to it when I need something. Angie drives.

In any event, unlike NY and Chicago, if you wanna meet up with a couple of friends for coffee or dinner or maybe catch a movie, the planning starts weeks, sometimes months, in advance. In Chicago let's say you live in Edgewater and your buddy lives in Lincoln Park and you want to meet for coffee in Andersonville. You call, you set it up, you meet, ba da bang, ba da bing.

In New York, let's say you live in Astoria and your friend is on the Upper West and you wanna meet in Chelsea...you call, you set it up, you meet, wham bam, thank ya' ma'am.

This would never happen in Los Angeles. It becomes an endless series of phone calls, texts, emails, planning, scheduling, waffling, yes, no, how about 4 instead of 3, sorry, but I have a yoga class then, what's your Tuesday look like? I don't know how people do it.

The most common and exasperating excuse is, "I don't like to drive over the hill." (The 'hill' is the small, mountainous barrier between the San Fernando Valley and the rest of the civilized world, apparently.) Sometimes people use that excuse even if they don't live over the 'hill.' They just like to say it. Sometimes a friend will live in Studio City and you live in Burbank and they'll still say it. Los Angeles is the perfect place to live if you're really into isoloating.

The mass transit system out here is treated as one might treat a leper in the second century AD. In New York and Chicago EVERYone uses the subway, the buses, the el, etc. In Los Angeles if one is caught using public transportation, it's sometimes announced on the local news..."And when we come back, Clifford Morts allegedly took the bus sixteen blocks to North Hollywood. We'll have the shocked reactions from local residents."

Here's what a friend of mine often says, "You know, after driving all over the place all day, when I finally get home I just can't stand to go out again." This always gives me pause. I mean, you're DRIVING places, you're SITTING DOWN, you're in a comfortable seat, the window is down because it's in the mid-seventies outside, you're listening to your favorite music on the CD player. It's not like you're in a Flinstones car and you're running to get it started and using your heels to brake. People out here act as if driving is something akin to lumberjacking all day. It's utterly exhausting to them. "Oh, I couldn't possibly drive ONE MORE SECOND. I'm just pooped!"

I think one of the reasons Los Angeles is not as healthy, socially speaking, as NY or Chicago is because of this rampant car culture. When I first moved here a few of my buddies from NY would meet up almost every week at this little diner in Studio City called 'Sitton's.' We'd sit out on the patio, smoke cigarettes, have coffee and eventually eat an egg or two. We'd discuss the myriad twists and turns of our careers, our hopes and dreams, laugh about past misadventures, recount our perplexing love lives, encourage each other, etc. And afterwards we'd all feel connected, we'd feel a part of something. One by one, however, we all stopped meeting up. I asked a friend of mine why we stopped meeting the other day. He said, "Oh, I don't know. I guess we all got tired of driving over the hill." None of us live over the hill.

That's it, you know. There's the rub. That damned 'hill.' It took me awhile, but I finally realized 'the hill' is actually a metaphor. It's a way of saying, 'I don't want to exert the energy to let someone into my life, not even for a few minutes, the time it takes for cup of coffee, not even to meet for a stick of gum." No. The 'hill' is the perfect excuse not to share our lives. It is Frost's good neighbors and good fences. It is the symbol of of our fear, at the risk of sounding dramatic. That damned hill.

The longer one lives out here, the larger the hill gets. Eventually, I suspect, the 'hill' becomes almost impossible to navigate. "I'd love to meet for dinner, I haven't seen you for ages, not since we celebrated Clinton's inauguration, but the hill, you know, the hill, I just can't get over the hill. I don't think I can make it over the hill ever again. It's just been too long. I don't think I can even try. The hill is spreading. It's almost in my backyard now. It's blocked our view. We used to have a glorious view from our front window. No longer. These days all we can see is the hill."

I miss having coffee with my friends. I miss connecting, face to face, sitting on the patio, laughing at stuff only we would laugh at, eating bad omelettes, drinking bad coffee, saying things out loud I would never dream of saying out loud to anyone else. But I've been in Los Angeles for over a year now. And when I stand outside and look around, all I can see is the hill. Sometimes, and this is really scary, I can see the hill in my own living room, my own kitchen, my own bedroom. I'm really beginning to hate the hill.

See you tomorrow.

Sometimes it just is.

I've discovered I really don't like doing this play every night. Don't get me wrong, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just is. A close friend came to see the show last night and Angie and I had a conversation outside the theater with her afterwards. And as we were chatting I said as much. I hadn't actually said it out loud until then. Angie looked at me a little askew.

The reason, I finally realized, has nothing to do with the subject matter or the hopelessness inherent in the text or the difficulty in doing it. It has to do with the fact that there are parts (actually massive CHUNKS of the play) that are either right or wrong. That is to say, there is very little room to play. There is either the 'right way to do it' or 'the wrong way to do it.' That doesn't appeal to me.

One of the reasons I became an actor a hundred years ago is because success or achievement or goals or whatever has absolutely nothing to do with 'right' or 'wrong.' This business, this craft, is concerned only with what works or what doesn't work, not 'right' or 'wrong.'

For example, I was watching an old movie the other day. Gene Wilder was playing the lead role. A line was said, a line that probably no other actor on earth could've said 'funny.' Yet Wilder did. It wasn't a funny line, it probably wasn't even intended to be funny by the author. But Wilder, in his inimitable fashion, said the line in such a way that made me chuckle out loud. You see? There was no right or wrong, there was only Wilder's choice. That's a very small example but it's precisely what I'm talking about.

Try to imagine doing 'Hamlet' and after the show someone walks up to you and says, "Sorry, but you did the role wrong tonight. Try harder tomorrow night." You see? There IS no 'wrong' way to do Hamlet. Or hardly any other role for that matter. And that is exactly the beauty of it, the appeal, the excitement, that 'unknown variable.' But, as much as I don't like it, there IS a wrong way to do this role. And again, it just is. No one's fault, no one is the cause of this...except maybe the composer, but that's hardly to be considered a drawback. The music is every bit as genius as I first thought it to be.

In this play, Adding Machine - The Musical, there is so much of it that is complex rhythm and exact counting. It is necessary because other things can't happen next unless it happens exactly right at that moment. I know that's a bit nebulous, but that's the long and short of it. It's like going on stage every night and doing trigonometry. This is, obviously, by design, hence the title of the play. But I don't like it. I don't like not being able to play INSIDE the text.

I suppose it comes from a deep-seated hatred of people telling me there is only one way to do something. So I naturally, given my pre-disposition and distrust of authority in general, gravitated toward this business. I've spent a career, I'd like to think anyway, approaching roles from a different viewpoint, a new way of thinking about something, an eccentric thought process. Maybe I've been kidding myself, but I like to think so, anyway.

There is room to do that in this play, to be sure. Not a lot, but some. But not nearly enough to give me enjoyment over the evening. Our friend said last night, "Well, it's no wonder you're not having a lot of fun. It's a very depressing theme." Honestly, that has nothing to do with it. It has to do entirely with the practical application of what I do. Not the text, not the subject matter, not even the music, really, but the inability to 'play.' I hate actually 'working' when I go to work.

Now, the audience is none the wiser. So, with that in mind, it really doesn't, in the final analysis, matter how I feel. This is entirely my own thought process. It's not about me, never has been. This is one of the reasons I've always disdained 'Method' work. It's not about the actor. It's all, entirely, every bit, always and forever, about the audience. It's about the $45 they shelled out for that seat. To ever, even for a moment, think otherwise is the absolute height of self-indulgence. It's the closest thing to a crime that an actor can commit, as far as I'm concerned. So many actors actually think it's about them. It astonishes me.

So I guess what I'm saying is, it's best to at least acknowledge that I'm not having any fun doing this. Rather than simply walk around in a sort of morass all the time about having to do it again, simply acknowledge what and why it effects me in such a way. And I think that goes a long way to at least accepting the work and the personal effort on a nightly basis.

Sometimes I feel like I'm going out on the boards every night to compete in a spelling bee rather than interpreting a role. It just is. This is one of those rare occasions when one just has to suck it up and do what is necessary. I may not enjoy it, but I sure as hell appreciate it.

See you tomorrow.

New Review.

“I’m sorry to lose an old and faithful employee, but you see, in an organization like this, efficiency is the first consideration. You will, of course, draw your salary for the full month. We couldn’t do anything less for such a valued and loyal employee. And I’ll direct my secretary to give you an excellent letter of recommendation.”

“Wait a minute. Let me get this right. You mean … you’re letting me go?”

No, this isn’t dialog from Up In The Air, the movie that had George Clooney flying around the country firing people. It’s from Adding Machine: A Musical, adapted from a 1923 play by Elmer Rice. Talk about timeless!

Rice’s The Adding Machine centers on a certain Mr. Zero, a sad sack of a man who finds himself after twenty-five years of old-style accounting suddenly replaced by a machine. Unlike the pink-slipped victims of Up In The Air, however, most of whom a slick Clooney was able to convince that a change would do them good, Mr. Zero snaps and kills his boss.

Clearly Adding Machine: A Musical has other intentions than being your average, everyday musical. Winner of the Outer Critics Circle, Louise Lortel, and Chicago’s Joseph Jefferson Awards for Best New Musical, Adding Machine: A Musical (libretto by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt) is a surreal fantasy with a score that makes Sondheim’s complex melodies and rhythms seem like old-fashioned show tunes by comparison.

Since the adjective “surreal” generally makes this reviewer want to turn and run, it may come as a surprise to StageSceneLA readers that I loved every one of Adding Machine: A Musical’s dreamlike, even nightmarish, moments and composer Schmidt’s complex, often dissonant melodies. Under Ron Sossi’s inspired direction, and featuring a uniformly superb cast, Adding Machine: A Musical’s West Coast Premiere at the Odyssey Theater turns out to be about as exciting a musical event as they come.

Like Adam Guettel and Michael John LaChiusa, composer Schmidt take a while getting used to, but the more you listen, the more his music resounds and resonates. Mrs. Zero’s nagging, cacophonous “Something To Be Proud Of” sets the mood from the get-go, followed by the quite extraordinary “Harmony, Not Discord,” entirely spoken by a quintet of performers, each at a different speed and rhythm, yet all somehow blending into one powerful whole. Then there’s “In Numbers,” with its syncopated harmonies, “The Party” which somehow amidst its racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic slurs recalls the talk-songs of Meredith Willson, and “A Pleasant Place” with an almost angelic chorale singing backup to a post-execution Mr. Zero.

Amidst these weird yet wonderful concoctions, out pop several quite hummable show stoppers, like the Kander-&-Ebb-in-Chicago-mode-esque “I’d Rather Watch You,” the catchy three-quarter time “Ham And Eggs,” and “The Gospel According to Shrdlu,” which seems straight out of a Southern Baptist revival meeting.

Charles Erven’s abstract, deliberately dingy gray scenic design sets the expressionist mood from the get-go, aided and abetted by Kathryn Poppen’s monochromatic costumes, Adam Blumenthal’s striking lighting, and Rosalyn Rice’s dramatic sound design, with its strident factory whistles and perfect mixing of musical instruments and unamplified voices.

Working in tandem, director Sossi and choreographer Natalie Labellarte keep the cast moving in ever-varied patterns, particularly the four-member ensemble, who execute numerous roles while serving as a kind of Greek chorus.

Performances are all-around sensational, beginning with Clifford Mort’s angry, bigoted, resentful Mr. Zero, whose enraged roars alternate with near-operatic arias sung in a rich, powerful baritone. Abandoning vanity, Kelly Lester disappears into Mrs. Zero’s faded shell, sings in a crystal clear soprano, and proves herself as adept in a stark dramatic role as she was in her much lighter roles in That Perfect Moment. The non-traditional casting of Christine Horn as Daisy Devore, Mr. Zero’s co-worker and the object of his affection, proves disconcerting at first given the racist epithet Mr. Zero spits out in his confession, but ends up adding complexity to Zero’s character. Not surprisingly, given the StageSceneLA Award winner’s recent performance as the most unforgettable of The Women Of Brewster Place, Horn dazzles in this very different role, imbuing Daisy with a sad sweetness and vocalizing with a set of absolutely glorious pipes. Horn’s fellow StageSceneLA Award winner Rob Herring makes it three superb performances in a row with his work as the sweetest mother-killer ever to grace a musical stage, once again revealing the heavenly tenor that doubtless contributed to his Ovation Award-nominated turn as the doomed Tobias in Sweeney Todd.

An ensemble of gifted musical theater newcomers (Greta McAnany, Travis Leland, Nick Tubbs, and Mandy Wilson) not only acquit themselves of their demanding vocal tasks with consummate skill and flair, they also execute a variety of supporting roles, including married couples Mr. and Mrs. One and Two as well as assorted accountants, prisoners, a prisoner’s wife, a matron, and a prison guard. The only nit one could possibly pick with this particular group of performers is their uniform youth, making middle-aged Mr. Zero stand out as a tad too much an anomaly in the accounting firm. Alan Abelew completes the cast quite effectively in the show’s sole non-musical track, playing three roles: Mr. Zero’s boss, a Fixer, and Charles, whose job it is to inform Mr. Zero of his post-death future.

There would be no Adding Machine: A Musical without the accomplished work of musical director Alan Patrick Kenny and the production’s marvelous three-piece orchestra—Kenny on piano, Chris Meyers on keyboards, and Scott Director on percussion.

Makeup and hair design (both excellent) are by Catherine Joseph, Jennifer Palumbo is stage manager, and Katherine S. Hunt is prop master.

Adding Machine: A Musical will not be everyone’s cup of tea. If Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound Of Music is as dark a show as you’d care to see, if you’d pick Jerry Herman over Stephen Sondheim any day, if out-of-the-ordinary is something you’d rather opt to skip … then by all means, search out a more traditional show. If, however, you are open to taking chances where musical theater is concerned, Adding Machine: A Musical is simply not to be missed.

ADDING MACHINE: A MUSICAL
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 South Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles.
Click here for current performance schedule, closing date, and reservation line.
www.odysseytheatre.com

--Steven Stanley
February 6, 2011

A no-lose situation.

My disease, the silent disease, that is, type II diabetes, is cramping my social calendar. I probably have a host of other health issues but that's the one in charge of me today. I have to go over to Cedars-Sinai to get some blood work done at the behest of my doctor. The last time I was in for my check-up, everything, all the 'numbers', as she says, were incredibly good. At least the ones she could read without the help of bloodwork. She was very encouraged. Remarkable difference, she said, from when I first came to see her nine months or so ago.

But I don't wanna go to a hospital and sit around for a few hours waiting to get my blood drawn. I wanna be free and run like the wind in the park and dance complicated Pakistani swivel-hipped dances under the stars.

Well, I don't want to be stuck in the hospital, that's certainly true.

Anyway.

I really can't go into too much detail with what I'm about to write next, but it bears mentioning. A screenwriter/producer (well known, with film credits out the ying-yang) type came to see the play I'm doing awhile back. He sent a message to me via our director that I was to contact him. Left his home number, etc. After a bit of confusion in getting the message to me, I finally called him a couple days ago.

He really liked my work, apparently. I won't go into what-all he said, but it was embarrassingly nice. Suffice to say, he really liked it. So we talked for quite awhile. Turns out this man is close friends with Jack Nicholson. In fact, he said he spent Sunday at Nicholson's house watching the Superbowl and he spoke to 'Jack' about 'this terrific performance onstage he had just seen.'

That's all well and good, but of course, it really means very little in terms of getting work. I learned long ago that actors rarely get other actors work. It happens, but not often. Yes, it was nice to know that somebody told the legendary Jack Nicholson about my work, but realistically, that's not really legal tender out here in Lala land.

But what IS legal tender is that this gentleman's son is a major casting guy out here. In fact he's in the middle of casting several pilots at the moment. So he said, "Send over your pic and res and reel right away. I want to personally hand it to my son with a verbal recommendation." Nice.

So I did. Angie, who's been in the wild and wacky film and tv business out here for many years, was tremendously excited. To me, regardless of this guy's stature in the film world (natually, being a dummy about this stuff, I immediately googled him...he's the real deal), I figured it was just another case of someone paying lip service to something they happened to like. But Angie didn't feel that way and consequently now I don't either. She said, "You don't understand. I've been in casting out here for twenty years. This is how things happen." Hm.

There's a lot more to the story, but that's really all I can relate at this point. As a buddy of mine, a very successful tv actor, said when I told him all about it, "It's a very good thing, a no-lose situation. It could turn out to be a small thing or a very big thing, but it's good no matter what." Whatever it turns out to be, at this point it's simply a wait and see kind of thing. More on that if and when it pans out.

It's another stunningly beautiful day here in Southern California. Franny and Zooey are staring at me wondering when the walk will commence. Angie and I have been taking them over to The Equestrian Center and Griffith Park (both literally around the corner from our house) and letting them run free. They love it, especially Franny. They completely ignore, for the most part, the horses and riders we encounter on the trails over there, which is a good thing. It's what I worried about most when we decided to take Franny (who is 13 months old now). He's, uh, easily distracted.

It's all good.

See you tomorrow.

On Turning 50.

In a couple of weeks I'll turn 50 years old. It doesn't seem natural, somehow. Already I'm getting comments from friends like, "It's just a number." And, "Fifty is the new thirty five." I like that one.

Frankly, writing about turning fifty is tough...it's a subject that's been covered by far better writers than I. It's sort of like writing about death or marriage or babies or pets. It's kinda been covered.

Nonetheless, I'm stalwart if nothing else.

I thought about writing about all the stuff one might expect: the body starting to betray me, hair leaving in spots and appearing, quite unwelcome, in others, the short periods of wisdom I'd like to pretend I have now and then, the remarkable, late-stage turn of events with regards to my marriage last year, the life-affirming geographical change from Chicago to Los Angeles, and on and on and on. But I don't think so.

I think instead, like a feckless grad student unable to tackle the real intellectual problem in front of him, I'll fall back on a 'compare and contrast' approach.

When Frank Sinatra turned fifty he was playing Vegas. In fact, he recorded perhaps his finest album, certainly his finest live album, 'Sinatra at the Sands' as he turned fifty. He was also on the 'top ten movie stars' (in terms of income) list in Variety that year. He was, in short, at the top of his game, vocally and otherwise.

When Marlon Brando turned fifty his last two movies had been 'The Godfather' (for which he won the Oscar) and 'Last Tango in Paris' (for which he should have won the Oscar). His artistic comeback was complete and he was generally regarded to be our finest living actor. He was about to disappear to his island in Tahiti full-time and become a living enigma.

When Laurence Olivier turned fifty he was in rehearsal for 'The Entertainer' on the London stage. It was to shoot his career in an entirely different direction. Instead of becoming obsolete like his contemporaries, he became the vanguard of a new generation of the 'kitchen sink' realism school of theatre in Britain. And he was very shortly to take the helm of The National Theatre of Great Britain and begin an astonishing journey of artistic excellence still unequaled in that country.

I think I've wasted a lot of time, frankly. I spent the better part of two decades persuing a hedonistic frame of mind that, although occasionally a lot of fun, didn't exactly pay a lot of dividends. Oddly, I have very few regrets about that. A few, naturally, but not as many as one might expect.

'Wasted' might not be the right word. If one knows one is wasting time while in the midst of wasting said time, is it still wasting time? Not sure. It might just be a conscience choice.

Certainly I'm happier now than I was then. That means something, I suppose. But 'happy' is a relative term, I think. There are still massive moments of unhappiness. But the interesting thing is they are moments, not extended time periods. For example, I recently got royally pissed-off about something regarding the play I'm currently doing. But instead of leaping head-first into the mire and thrashing around in my anger, instead I spent a little time being pissed off and then let it go. Twenty years ago that would have been nigh impossible for me.

It sounds like a little thing, but in actuality it's gargantuan. The relatively new-found ability to simply move on. I discovered some time back that I don't experience anger like most other people...I tend to bypass irritation, annoyance and bothersome and go straight to all-out rage. Knowing this about myself is in and of itself a massive accomplishment in terms of mental health. At the risk of sounding sophomoric, I not only understand but embrace the concept of, "whatever" (spoken as Valley-girlish as possible).

I'm also in deep, deep denial about turning fifty. I don't think I'm alone in this. When I actually stop for a moment and consider it, I know my life is considerably past the half-way point, assuming I live to 77.5 years of age which is the current average for males in this country. I'm guessing insurance companies come up with that statistic.

At fifty, Ernest Hemingway was already making plans for his suicide. Severe arthritis and a host of other ailments were daily making his life more and more unbearable. What's more, he was making no secret of it. He'd written about it a number of times. We just didn't catch it. In 'Green Hills of Africa' he wrote that it was infinitely preferrable to die young as a lion on the brown plains of the serengeti, in a violent and life-affirming moment of glory rather than lay down at last, caged and defeated and old in an indifferent world of zoos and circuses. In the midst of his succinct prose he specifically outlined his own death. Fifty did not agree with Ernest Hemingway.

In his autobiography, John Huston, the hard-living film director, wrote if he could change anything about his life (he wrote his memoirs at the very end of his life) it would be this: "I would drink less hard liquor and savor sweet wines more often." I think that might be as good a metaphor as any as to how I feel. The 'hard liquor' of my life, the rage, anger, blame, shame, resentment and staggering irresponsibilty would be replaced with the 'sweet wines,' the pursuit of comfort, the gentle acceptance of the millions of things I can't change, the company of old friends, the learned ability to simply...be still.

Who knows, maybe fifty is the new thirty five. I don't know. There's so terribly much I don't know. But at thirty five I lived a life thinking there was always something more exciting going on down the road, around the next bend, blazing in someone else's reality. At fifty, I still think that may be the case. The difference is I no longer care.

See you tomorrow.

Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Last night, following the Super Bowl, I watched an interview with Sir Anthony Hopkins (as it turns out, a not very good interview featuring somewhat clueless questions from Piers Morgan). Hopkins is a fascinating actor, to be sure. I've long been an admirer, like most actors. He is unquestionably the standard-bearer for 'naked face' work.

A close buddy of mine was over to watch the game and stuck around to see the recorded segment with Hopkins. We both agreed Morgan had no idea what and who Anthony Hopkins really is. Most of the questions would have been fine had he been interviewing, say, Justin Bieber (At one point, Hopkins was about to launch into a detailed, introspective explanation of his personal journey from atheist to agnostic to believer when Morgan cut him off by asking, "So, do you like being famous?" Good Lord.).

Nonetheless, there were a few gems from Sir Tony. At one point he, like nearly anyone that has any idea of what great acting is about, tipped his hat to Brando, DeNiro and, oddly, Matt Damon.

I also, quite coincidentally, just finished reading a fine biography of Hopkins. He's an odd duck, to be sure. A man who has clearly spent decades thrashing around in his own skin trying to find something to make him feel comfortable in it.

Having said that, however, he is, on occasion, an astonishing actor. I have never had the pleasure of seeing Hopkins on stage. I have never had the pleasure of seeing him tackle the big Shakespearean roles on the boards. I have, of course, seen his film versions of a few of these roles.

His preparation for a role is legendary in the theatre. I suspect not so much for film, but that's just a guess. A glance at his script for King Lear, for example, shows thousands of tiny, tiny notations in precise block script next to his dialogue.

There is a wonderful story of Hopkins auditioning for The National when he was very young. He got in. But first he had to do a monologue for Olivier. Sir Laurence had just finished a spectacularly successful Othello at The National in the role of Iago. When asked what he would be doing that day, Hopkins, standing alone on stage in the lights looking out over the dark theatre, said, "Iago." A long pause from the house..."Cheeky," said Olivier.

Of course he got in and Olivier, years later, recounted the incident in an interview with the BBC. "Yes, that's true," he said. "Only a fool would have done that. Turns out it was very good. Very good, indeed. Not as good as mine, but very good." And years after that, in an interview with Ken Tynan, Olivier went even further. "He could have been the best, I think. He was better than Richard (Burton). He could have been the heir to the sword."

"The sword" that Olivier spoke of was the actual sword that David Garrick used in his famous production of Richard III some 145 years earlier. It had been passed down from actor to actor over the years and finally ended up in Olivier's hands when he did the role in the mid-fifties. Ostensibly whoever held the sword was by default the reigning leading actor in Britain. Not surprisingly, Olivier never gave the sword up...even though legend has it he offered it to Peter O'Toole when he directed him in 'Hamlet.' Allegedly O'Toole, in typical fashion, replied, "I don't need a bloody sword to tell me I'm the best actor in England."

But, alas, as we all know, Hopkins, like Brando, chose not to pursue a life on the stage, although unlike Brando, he occasionally went back to it. He claimed not to 'fit in' on the stage. In fact, even in the interview last night he said, "I never felt comfortable in the theatre community, not like McKellan (Ian) or Judi (Dench)." He went on to say, "All I ever wanted in life was to be a movie star."

Not too long ago I was talking to the brilliant actor, Michael Moriarty, about our favorite film performances. I said (and I still believe this) the best I ever saw was Brando in 'Last Tango in Paris.' Michael agreed it was an astonishing performance. But, he said, the finest film performance he had ever seen was Hopkins in 'Nixon.'

Interesting. Michael and Hopkins are cut from the same piece of cloth when it comes to technique. Moriarty went on to say, "It is Shakespearean in its scope. Hugely tragic. Epic acting." And yes, I agree, it is a towering performance. But the film itself is highly flawed, I think, and that diminishes the performance somewhat.

In any event, my personal favorite Hopkins performance is in a film that not a lot of people saw. It was called 'The Edge' and featured Hopkins and Alec Baldwin in a terrific script by David Mamet. It is Hopkins at his best, doing a slice of 'naked face' work absolutely unparalleled.

Sir John Gielgud weighed in once on Hopkins as well. An interview in the mid-eighties with Dick Cavett, of all people. He said, "Oh, yes, Very good. Wonderful actor. But troubled, very troubled boy. Much like Richard (Burton)."

Hopkins seemed in the Morgan interview to finally be at peace with himself, though. He has never been secretive about his involvement with AA and pointed up that he's been sober for 35 years. He also admitted he had no 'actor friends' at all. He liked to 'stay at home.' He recently turned 73 and had no time for 'negative people.' "God bless you but please go somewhere else with all of that," is how he put it.

I think the chances are slim he will ever return to the stage, but one never knows. Regardless, he's one of the finest actors currently alive on the planet, I think. Along with only a handful of other actors still around, he's one of those guys I really would pay to see 'read the phone book.' He possesses the finest quality an actor can have, the very finest, in fact: no matter what he does, he's never, not for an istant, boring.

And that's really, in the final analysis, what it's all about.

See you tomorrow.

LA, NY or Chicago?

The midwest, including Chicago, my former stomping grounds, has been staggered by this relentless weather as of late. I really didn't enjoy Chicago as a city. Not at all. I lived there for ten years. Before that I lived in NYC for about fifteen years, give or take. I say 'give or take' because easily half of that time I spent 'on the road.' Out doing theatre gigs, that is. And yet, I have nothing but fond memories of NY. Chicago is quite a different story. I simply don't understand why Chicagoans are so fiercely defensive of their city. It's a miserable place to live, geographically. Now, true, it is a very pretty city when the weather is nice. The Loop, the downtown area of the city, is quite diverse, I suppose. And I do agree there are a lot of places to eat in the city. But the weather is nice there very briefly over the course of a year and does one really want to live in a city simply because it has a few nice restaurants? I would hope not.

Artistically, Chicago holds some adventurous venues, theatrically speaking. But unless one works on a continual basis at, say, Steppenwolf or The Goodman, it's nearly impossible to make a living as an actor there. It is, instead, the largest community theatre town in the world. Thousands of actors working for free in small, storefront venues. Yes, some of the work is stellar, but pursuit of a career there eventually means driving a cab or waiting tables or being a secretary and then giving up all your free time to do theatre at night in a fifty-seat house that is usually less than half full. I don't really consider that a career.

Now, of course, one can run into the same professional problems in NY or LA. But those cities offer the one thing Chicago does not: the carrot on the proverbial artistic stick. There is always the chance, even the opportunity, to land the 'break out' role, the big money, the brass ring, the pot of gold barely hidden at the end of the rainbow. Chicago, realistically speaking, doesn't offer this.

One of the things I noticed in my decade in Chicago is that a lot of young actors, fresh out of academia, coddle an ill-advised plan to 'train' in Chicago and then move to NY or LA. Theoretically, I suppose that's not a bad idea. Realistically, it's stupid. If an actor has reached the age of 22 or 23 or whatever and is still thinking with a little more experience he or she might be ready for some 'big gigs,' well, chances are that actor will never be ready. Unless the actor is suffering under a relievable 'crisis of confidence' this approach to a career rarely works.

The major problem is the simple fact that no one sees your work in Chicago. No one of importance, that is.

LA is king of the 99-seat venue. Hundreds of them. Even more than Chicago and NY combined, I'd venture to say. Now, one of my pet peeves here on the west coast is the 99-seat theatre that charges 'dues' for membership. It's a scam. It's a necessary scam sometimes, but a scam nonetheless. Young actors (and even older, more experienced actors) pay around $75 a month to 'be in plays.' I know of one place in NoHo out here that has some sixty dues-paying 'members.' And every now and then they do a play, some one-acts or something trite like that, and just rake in the cash. They don't offer classes for the 'dues,' they don't offer training of any sort, they just take the money and put the actor's headshot up in the lobby as a 'member' of the troupe. Eventually, of course, the actors, most of them anyway, wise up and pull out of the 'troupe.' The company then posts an ad on Actors Access and drags in a whole new gullible gaggle of actors happy to give them $75 to be in the 'troupe.' This scenario repeats itself endlessly year after year after year because sadly there is no shortage of hopeful young actors in Los Angeles.

This practice is not limited to LA but I have to say, I see it more often here than in NY or Chicago. I find it irresponsible, deplorable, and most bothersome, simply cruel. Alas, life is not fair and my kvetching about it doesn't make it so.

Steppenwolf, of course, was the exception to the rule in Chicago. But even the wonderful actors that came out of that institution didn't thrive until they had peddled their wares, via the company, in New York.

In the final analysis, Chicago is the city actors fly over to get to other cities. But I want to be clear: some of the finest actors I've ever met in 35 years in this business are in Chicago. Geography has absolutely nothing to do with talent. But they are, literally and figuratively, spinning their wheels there.

There for awhile a lot of filming was taking place in Chicago. Nowadays whenever I see a film that was shot there (The Fugitive, Blues Brothers, Dillinger) I see a bunch of people I know from that community. They have a line here, a line there. Small roles, one liners, cameos. People I know to be terrific actors. People I've seen do just awesome work on stage in front of about 12 people. And their claim to fame is saying, "He went thataway" in a big money hollywood movie.

After all is said and done, Chicago has become a 'friends and family' city, theatrically speaking. While living there I realized that the audience usually consisted of other actors and family members coming to see little Timmy act. To be fair, a lot of times this is also true of the 99-seat 'pay to act' venues in Los Angeles. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but is that really why any of us do this? I don't think so. Being a serious actor in Chicago eventually becomes a parody of the business itself. "You should have seen my Biff Loman at 'Grandpa's Strasberg Institute of Serious Acting' down on Addison Street. It was incredible!"

There are pitfalls everywhere in this business. I'm sort of picking on Chicago right now, but that city is certainly not alone when it comes to living a life of the mind in theatre. The bottom line is, if you're not sure you're 'ready' for NY or LA so you go to Chicago to 'get ready,' well, it's a cop out. Either you're good or you're not. A few years of storefront theatre is not going to make a difference.

See you tomorrow.

The Art of 'Sucking Up.'

Many years ago in NYC a much older and constantly working actor friend of mine said something to me I didn't believe. He said, "Working Broadway and Hollywood is just like your college theatre department. Jobs are gotten the same way on every level: who you know, who likes you, who you make laugh, who you suck up to, who's seen your work." I thought at the time it was a preposterous statement. Of course, now I realize it's true.

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say there have been hundreds of times in my life when I would be watching a film or TV show and thought to myself, 'How on earth did that guy (or girl) get hired. He (or she) is TERRIBLE!" Well, as cynical and disheartening as it sounds, they knew someone. They were friends with someone.

There was a guy I went to school with. No names for obvious reasons. He was a stunningly bad actor. But terribly funny and charming off stage. He gladhanded everybody. One would always see or hear him in the halls laughing uproarously at something a faculty member had just said, or slapping them on the back and complimenting them on whatever they happened to be wearing. To me it was all too transparent, this unapologetic sucking up. And yet he probably did more mainstage roles than anyone I knew in school at that point. And every single time he was just embarrassingly bad. I don't know what ever became of him, but I suspect his appalling lack of talent finally caught up to him and he stopped working and moved into another line of work.

Since that time I've run across countless actors that do the same thing. But now that I'm older it no longer surprises me. After all, it's the same with everything in life, really, not just the acting business. It's how things work. Certainly it's how things work in my business.

Now this sort of thing doesn't work at the very highest level of film producing. I mean, Tom Cruise may not be the greatest actor that ever lived but he's certainly not a bad actor by any stretch of the imagination. Eventually there's so much money involved in the film industry that gladhanding and sucking up can only get one so far.

The same is true of Broadway. The money involved is just too important to hand a role over to someone who's greatest asset is their ability to kiss ass.

Although I can't say it doesn't happen in TV and regional theatre. I see it all the time. Friendship trumps talent.

Now, I'm not writing from a standpoint of sour grapes. I haven't been in LA long enough to do that yet. I mean, I hardly know anyone, so I can't very well be resentful yet. Nonetheless I see it. It doesn't piss me off (although someday soon, I suspect it might), it just makes me smile knowingly.

My close buds John and Brad did a small budget movie a few years ago. It's just awful. But, John and Brad being talented, they are good IN it. Yet in one of the leading roles is an actor so bad as to be almost unwatchable. I asked them about it. The answer didn't surprise me at all. He knows everyone, they said. He's friends with everyone. He is, off camera, one of the most personable, complimentary people on earth, they said. He's been hanging around the peripheries of the film business for twenty years, apparently.

Now, at this stage of my involvement in the film business out here, I don't even know WHO to suck up to. It's not like I run in the same circles as Spielberg or Scorcese or Anderson or Cameron. In fact, the only circles I run in are Franny and Zooey and they, unfortunately, aren't in the position to offer me a job (Franny and Zooey are my dogs, by the way.)

Even Angie has told me stories like this. She was, for many years, a casting person out here in LaLa Land. Often times we'll be watching something or other and she'll say, "He's a really nice guy, too." To her credit, most of the time she says this, the guy is pretty talented to boot.

But my point is that the entertainment industry, for the most part, is the same as any other line of work. The squeeky wheel gets the most oil. Casting folk are no different than anyone else; all things being equal they'd rather cast someone that blows smoke up their ass than someone they hardly know. It is, alas, the way of the world.

Again, I'm honestly not bitter about any of this, particularly since I'm really most definitely in the fledgeling portion of my Hollywood career. I mean, I would have no compulsions about sucking up to someone if I knew who to suck up to.

It's important for the young actor to see this, embrace this, accept this. It can smooth over a lot of pain and rejection simply by knowing it.

Back at the grind today. Go over the whole script to Adding Machine. Sing the songs out loud a couple of times. Get my head back in the game after a few days off. This is one of those shows that will never exactly be 'fun' to do. It's too severe. But sometimes I do experience a mild catharsis by doing it, which is good. And I do like everyone involved which is a good thing, too.

See you tomorrow.