Examining Good and Bad.

Brando

While waiting for tech stuff to be done yesterday in rehearsal I sat out on the nicely appointed wooden porch off the side of the theater chatting amiably with a couple of the other cast members. One was my buddy RD Call, a wonderful actor with whom I share the stage in this new play we're mounting, The Interlopers (Bootleg Theater, Los Angeles, June 17 thru July 23). As often happens with actors, we began talking about past performances, on both screen and stage, that we've admired over the years. RD has been around the block a few times in this wacky business out here in LA.

In any event, it turns out RD ran across Brando a few times in various capacities over the years. He told a few great stories about meeting him, Brando's singular eccentricities, his effect on other actors when they met him; I was enthralled, of course, being the Brando-phile that I am.

It's very telling when you meet and work with other actors that have the same sensibilities about what's 'good' work and what's 'bad' work. It encourages me. The first theater company I worked with when I moved out here was not quite like that. Whenever I spoke to the artistic director there and the conversation drifted to the same subject, he began to speak rather worshipfully of the work of 'the great Carol Channing in Dolly!" or 'the amazing Gwen Verdun in Damn Yankees!" Both perfectly nice performances, I'm sure, but not exactly what I'd characterize as life-changing. I began to suspect it might not be a good fit.

It's important to be on the same page in this business, to work with like-minded people. Not that it, ultimately, changes anything, but it's nice to have the same reference points. With this guy I would mention Brando ("Oh, he got so FAT!") or maybe Olivier ("He spoke so FAST!") or perhaps Richard Burton ("Liz Taylor was DIVINE, wasn't she?") and it just didn't quite hold the same gravitas for us both. Again, not that it matters when the rubber finally meets the road and the houselights dim on opening night...good work is good work, regardless of one's personal convictions.

Last night I was in bed early because my neck and shoulders were very sore due to an unfortunate traffic mishap earlier in the day. But my wife shares the same sense of nostalgia when it comes to classic film and iconic performances so she stayed up watching that old chestnut, Towering Inferno, on one of the uninterupted cable channels. She hadn't seen it for some two decades and was fascinated with the gaggle of star power in it. And I must admit, although a fairly forgetable movie, it is interesting to see the likes of Newman and Bill Holden and Steve McQueen handle the stilted dialogue like the great professionals they were. Newman, who always had a finely-tuned ear for crap did a lot of angst-ridden eye-shutting throughout, tilting his head upwards toward the heavens, eyes tight shut, and sort of whispering his lines as though maybe that would help change the fact that they were nearly unutterable in their idiocy. It's a valiant effort.

As I was sitting out with RD it became apparent we were both big fans of the stunning mini-series in the late eighties, Lonesome Dove. In fact, RD came damn close to actually doing it. He was up for a large role in it, but upon being offered it, had to turn it down due to another film committment. All these years later, he said he still regrets it. Can't blame him. It is, in my opinion, a watershed moment in television, and one would be hard-pressed to find a better performance than the one Tommy Lee Jones delivers in that piece. Simply awesome work. Not to mention Duvall's Emmy-winning turn.

So I always find a bit of comfort knowing that someone else sees what I see. It's probably a slight character flaw in me, but I tend to choose friends, like anyone else I suppose, based on our shared perceptions.

I remember shortly after I arrived in LA, I was invited to this staged reading. The aforementioned artistic director highly recommended it, saying he 'wept uncontrollably' throughout when he'd seen it in rehearsal. So Angie and I trotted over to give it a look. It was, of course, appallingly bad. In fact, it was my first inkling of why theatre in this town has gotten such a bad name. Simply jaw-droppingly awful. We sat there in a state of tharn, like Richard Adams' rabbits in Watership Down. I, too, fought the urge to weep uncontrollably although for entirely different reasons, I'm sure. In retrospect, it was probably good I'd seen it, however.

I rememeber turning to my wife later that night and saying, "You know, I may have a little trouble getting my work done here." And, of course, that turned out to be uncomfortably true.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, "Sports, politics and religion are the three passions of the badly educated." He might have included theatre in that sentence. My point being just because I don't like something doesn't mean someone else will. Theatre, like music, is entirely subjective. As is film, as is television, as is dance, as is any artform, really. And that's the miracle of it, in the final analysis. I recall in chrystaline detail seeing Brando in Last Tango in Paris when I was an undergrad and being stunned, absolutely stunned, with his performance. Yet the young actor watching it with me, a good friend of mine, said, "Oh, I just don't buy that young, beautiful girl getting the hots for that overweight older guy." To my way of thinking he had missed the point entirely, yet it was his opinion and perfectly valid. Subjective. The film, Berolucci's best in my opinion, was well into the realm of impressionism and consequently his take on it was every bit as sensible as mine.

As I get older I have less passion or patience for the discussion of art; what is and what isn't, that is to say. As a young man in New York I would spend endless hours at various coffee shops in that city arguing vehemently with friends about what I thought was good work and bad work. Today, I'd just as soon have an emergency root canal done. One artist's path is simply not always shared. And it took me awhile, but I've come to believe that's a beautiful thing. The legendary Carol Channing's portrayal of Dolly Levi may only be amusing and diverting entertainment for me, but it is life-affirming and miraculous to someone else. Marlon Brando's slice of genius in On the Waterfront may be the very reason I do what I do, but pedestrian and artistically unsatisfying for someone else.

And that, I believe, is a good thing. A very good thing.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Bookshelves

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Bookshelves: "My wife and I, ever the careful and vigilant shoppers, are still searching dilligently for the 'perfect' set of bookshelves for our front..."

The Bookshelves

My wife and I, ever the careful and vigilant shoppers, are still searching dilligently for the 'perfect' set of bookshelves for our front room. It's become an obsession, really. It fills our thoughts and daydreams daily. It has become the source of endless conversation, this quest for the holy bookshelves. Well, we may have found some. We saw them in a store yesterday afternoon, circled them warily, eying them with apprehension, occasionally darting in to pat them or run our hands quickly over the grain of the wood. We don't want to rush into anything yet at the same time we don't want to appear cautious should we decide to make them our own, assert our dominance over them. This morning we're going back to them to give them another once-over.

The thing is I would never have thought in a million years I could be so absorbed by such domesticity. Many years ago when I bought a vacuum cleaner for my first apartment alone in New York, I found myself sort of depressed for days because it seemed to herald a new era of adult behavior on my part. An unwelcome era, at that. Back then, anything remotely resembling something my parents might do saddened me no end. I fancied myself a rebel, a renegade, a man without a country, a loose cannon who sneered at the idea of a vacuum cleaner in his apartment.

I hid the vacuum cleaner from sight, tucked it away in a hall closet behind a plastic bag of empty beer cans, denied its existence. It became a symbol of encroaching adulthood that I found myself ill-equipped to accept. I bought it a few blocks from my second story walk-up in Astoria, Queens, and carried it, shame-faced and disgruntled, back to my bachelor's pad where I quickly used it to vacuum the rug and then hid it just as quickly in the musty closet and tried, unsuccessfully, to forget it.

I was thinkng about that long-ago, discarded vacuum cleaner yesterday as we sized up the new bookshelves. I'm not sure when or how it happens, this sudden recognition of one's surrender to the mundane, the acceptance of living comfortably, the pardigm shift that occurs in the brain when one is no longer satisfied with furniture left on the curb but rather begins to embrace the idea of buying furniture that is part of one's life. This is not a literary exaggeration; for years I furnished apartments through late-night scavenger hunting for old couches and chairs and kitchen tables left on the street. Back in the day, that was considered quite noble, in fact. It was a source of boasting.

"Cool couch, Man."

"Yeah, found that on 44th and Lex a few nights ago at four in the morning. Took me an hour to drag it home."

Well, those halcyon furniture days are gone now.

It's all part of aging gracefully, I suppose; learning to surrender the glory of youth and accepting the sturdiness of middle age. Old Thomas Wolfe was onto something when he famously insisted you can't go home again. It's true. You can't. Oh, you can visit sometimes, a night out with the boys, an irresponsible evening of slovenly behavior, a stubborn, unhealthy night of ignoring consequences. But that, too, is really a mirage, a few hours of denial. No, the truth is, eventually the vacuum cleaners and the bookshelves become the reality and the smoky, smirk-filled nights of tequila shots and psuedo wisdom become the dream. Man cannot live on presumption alone.

And, really, I don't mind it at all. Now, granted, I've lived a life of hedonism for the most part. 'Twas a badge of honor for nigh on two decades. But things happen, people slow down, arrogance subsides, children are born.

A few of my old friends and I are planning a two-week getaway in the fall. To the battleground site of Gettysburg, in fact. Not Mardi Gras, not the beaches of Miami, not rafting on the Colorado river, but a walking tour of a chapter in our high school history book. And what's more, we're all terribly excited about it. In fact, of the four of us going, three of us don't even drink any more. In the midst of setting up this Burmuda shorts-laden trip, I asked another buddy of mine to go, too. Called him on the phone. I outlined our plan. He said simply, "I have babies." And for a very brief moment I felt every day of my fifty years on the earth.

Growing up is not so bad. Even for scofflaw, ne'er-do-wells like myself. It just takes some adjusting to. It just takes minor shifts in one's thinking. The knee-jerk response to life wavers almost imperceptably from 'fuck you' to a heavy sigh. Acceptance is the key. As my wife can tell you, I doggedly hang on to many things adolescent. But I'd like to think they're the small things in life. And now, in complete reversal, the things of my youth, the attitudes and disdain of an orderly world, are tucked away mostly, hidden in a closet behind a plastic bag of empty Dr. Pepper cans. The bookshelves and vacuume cleaners of my life are right out front now, worked for and paid for, a part of my carefully matched living room furniture, color co-ordinated with my hardwood floor, as solid and comfortable as my marriage.

No, Thomas, you can't go home again. But you can make a new one. A better one. One of your choosing. One that matters.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Dresser

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Dresser: "Sir Donald Wolfit. The famed British actor/manager. Although better than I used to be I still have an uncanny ability to screw up all thi..."

The Dresser

Sir Donald Wolfit.  The famed British actor/manager.

Although better than I used to be I still have an uncanny ability to screw up all things technical. 

We have Direct TV here at the house.  And one of the things with that package is one can record certain programs on the DVR and watch them later.  I particularly like to record films on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and watch them later, especially old classics I haven't seen for some time.  Last night I was searching for a film I'd recorded some time earlier and found I had a bunch of crap recorded as well, stuff I would never watch but seemed a good idea that the time, like the original Star Trek or a documentary on Amish midgets in WWI.  So I decided to delete a bunch of it.  In the process I accidentally deleted a whole gaggle of films I had recorded that I really wanted to see at some point or another.

One of the few left, however, after my brutal purging of the DVR, was 'The Dresser,' with Albert Finney and Tom Courtney.

I'd sort of forgotten just how very good both Finney and Courtney are in that 1983 film.  I found myself smiling throughout the movie, mostly at the wonderful depiction of British theatre in the 1940s.  Ah, what a wonderful and lost lifestyle of the itinerant actor.  It was a time and place we shall never see again.  A whole existence gone now.  Reams have been written on that time on the British boards.  The script for The Dresser is a little more lightweight than I remember it being, but still wonderfully satisfying, based on a play by Ronald Hargrove.  Peter Yates directed. 

The leading character of 'Sir' is allegedly based on the late character actor, Donald Wolfit, who can be seen in a few supporting film roles of the period.  In fact, I was thinking of adding the role 'Mr. Davenport-Scott' to my resume just for fun.  Casting directors would be clueless, of course.  Most of them here in Hollywood have never seen or read a play.  "I have been told stories, dark and mystical, about actors standing on a platform and acting out characters for a handful of people, no camera anywhere near."

One of the standard cliches about Los Angeles that has absolutely proven to be true is the bottomless ignorance of the film and TV people out here, the casting directors, studio executives, screen writers, etc.  "I see here you have Willy Loman on your resume.  Now, is that the Willy Loman in 'Saved by the Bell?  Screech's friend?"

I actually saw a while back in a trade paper out here of a project being mounted, this is true, of old episodes of 'Hill Street Blues' to be performed on stage.  No doubt the producers thought they were doing 'the classics.'  I can just hear them now.  "Well, the language then was so much different.  It's important for our actors to learn how to handle that kind of language.  Because, you know, if you can do the tricky dialogue from 'Hill Street Blues,' why, you can do anything.'

It's easy to get jaded out here. 

But back to 'The Dresser.'  I told Angie as we were watching, if there were any period I would like to have lived in, it would be that time depicted in the film, the traveling touring company, the working actor, decade after decade, assaying the roles of Shakespeare nightly on a host of small town stages throughout the British Isles.  The time of the young Olivier and Gielgud and Richardson.  When the corner butcher spoke knowledgeably about his favorite Hamlets, his fond recollections of the various Richards or Lears or Iagos he has seen over the years.  When people had passionate feelings about such things, much as today's public compares and contrasts different first basemen they have seen over the years.

There is a direct, unbroken line still today.  For example, I worked with Michael Moriarty who worked with Ian McKellan who worked with Olivier who worked with Terry who worked with Keats who worked with Garrick who worked with someone...all the way back to Richard Burbage, Shakespeare's original Hamlet and Shylock and Lear.  And the same can be said with film, actually.  I'm doing a new play at the moment, still in rehearsal.  In it is a wonderful character actor named RD Call.  RD has worked with Nicholson who worked with John Huston who worked with Bogart who worked with Barrymore who worked with Garbo who worked with...and it goes on and on.  I love that unbroken feeling of connection. 

In the midst of it all, so beautifully depicted in 'The Dresser,' is that near worshipful attitude toward Shakespeare himself.  Completely foreign to most actors and directors in Los Angeles, of course.  That unspoken acknowledgement among stage actors of his genius, no conversation brooked; that he was head and shoulders above any dramatists before or since. 

Years ago I was doing 'Julius Caeser' in New York.  A few of the old-timers in that production would speak lovingly of the dozens of parts played through the years, the great Shakespearean roles tackled, the great performances they have seen.  I remember one old actor telling me of his experiences with John Gielgud in a production of  'The Tempest' he had been a part of.  I chuckled at his imitation of Gielgud on the first day of rehearsal.  Gielgud was directing.  Speaking to the actors, "If I were you I wouldn't bother writing down any of the blocking I give you for a few weeks.  I'm quite certain I shan't be using any of it."

Another time I was doing a play, a new play, in a large regional theatre in upstate New York.  One of the actors had done Othello with Olivier at The National in the sixties.  He approached Olivier, who was playing the moor as well as directing, about a line he was having trouble saying believably.  Olivier said, "Dear chap, it really doesn't matter.  I can assure you no one will be watching you whilst I have the stage."

I remember Moriarty telling me about working with Katherine Hepburn in a TV production of 'Glass Menagerie' in the seventies.  Michael was play The Gentleman Caller (which he won an Emmy for) and the great Kate was playing Amanda.  Sitting around off-camera, waiting for various scenes to be lit, they would speak sonnets out loud to each other to see who had the best breath control.  Hepburn asserted the problem with actors today was they had no breath control.  One must be able to say an entire sonnet in one breath and still have plenty of air left at the end, she said.  Michael told me he was utterly astonished at her breath capacity, and she was well into her sixties by then.

I remember talking to the old character actor, Ron McLarty, years ago who had worked with Ralph Richardson in the mid-sixties in London.  He told me he noticed Richardson carrying around a tattered, clipped, piece-meal script.  Finally he asked if he could take a look at it.  Richardson showed him and Ron noticed all of Sir Ralph's lines had been cut out and the only thing left in the script were the lines from the other actors.  Richardson said, "Oh, I know my lines.  They're not important.  But I have to know the other lines equally well so I might listen better."

I recall seeing a documentary on Olivier on the BBC some years back.  Sir Larry was asked his opinion of 'Method Acting.'  He gazed disdainfully for a moment at the interviewer and finally said, "If the audience doesn't see it, it doesn't count."

Ah, well.  As I said, if I could live another life in another time, it would be as a supporting actor in Great Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.  I can't imagine how anything else could have been so very satisfying. 

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Wig

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The Wig: "We have a thrift store near us, a good one, not the usual dirty, dusty, chaotic type affair that one usually associates with thrift stores...."

The Wig

We have a thrift store near us, a good one, not the usual dirty, dusty, chaotic type affair that one usually associates with thrift stores.  It's very clean and extremely well organized with a massive selection of used clothing and knick-knacks and kitchen ware and books, etc.  We really like it.  We pop over there every now and then to see what they have and yesterday we were rewarded with several fun and interesting items.  Now, as nice as it is, it is not our all-time favorite thrift store.  No, that title belongs to one over in NoHo, just a few miles from us, called 'It's a Wrap.'  That thrift store is our favorite.  Because 'It's a Wrap' has a contract or agreement of some sort with all of the studios in Hollywood and gets their hand me downs.  Amazing clothing to be had there for a song and a dance. 

But this other one, the one we dropped into yesterday, is much larger and has a much more pedestrian selection of goods.  And on Fridays, the usual inexpensive prices are an additional half off.

The first thing I found there yesterday were some brand new, 18 ounce training gloves.  Boxing gloves.  They're like new and I hung them up in the office.  They also have a huge selection of hard back books, all for a buck, and I picked up ten or twelve.  Angie was off in the kitchen ware area picking up some stuff.  That's when I came across the wig.

It's a short, grey/white wig perfectly matching my hair, or what's left of it anyway.  It was all tangled and messy but I put it on and walked over to Angie.  She was aghast.  So for three bucks we bought it.  Turns out it's a 'Tony of Beverly Hills' wig, which online goes for about 200 bucks.  She combs it all up and puts it on and, presto-change-o, we were astounded.  Now, obviously, it looks like I'm wearing a wig.  But that wasn't the point.  It gave me a real idea of what I might have looked like had I not been cursed with male pattern baldness.

Frankly, I really never gave a lot of thought about going bald.  It never concerned me too much.  I think, in retrospect, I would rather have NOT gone bald, but I never took the time to fret over it.  My concerns about going bald were entirely professional, not vanity related.  In fact, I remember the first time I really noticed it was an inevitability was about 1993 or so.  I was doing another Arthur in 'Camelot' up in Pennsylvania and the photographer was taking shots from the balcony of the theater.  A few days later I got a look at his 'proof sheet,' and there, unmistakably, was the evidence of my early balding. 

As the years went by, it slowly receded and finally left altogether.  A little shocking, I suppose in hindsight, because I had always had a very full and thick head of hair.  But, unlike a lot of people I know, it honestly didn't bother me too much.

Yesterday, however, putting it on after Angie combed it out, I was given a quick glimpse into the 'what if.'  Kind of like Michael Landon in his 'Highway to Heaven' period. 

I recently lost a gig, one I wanted rather badly in fact, because I looked older than I am.  I alluded to it in an earlier blog.  It was for the male understudy in 'God of Carnage' here in LA.  I would have been understudying James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels.  It came down, after a couple of weeks, to me and another guy.  They went with the other guy, obviously.  Now, I wanted the gig not because I think it's such a great play, I don't.  But it was a 'run of the production' contract and it would have been a couple of grand a week for doing pretty much nothing. 

So my agent was informed that it was down to the two of us and we had to wait a whole weekend for the final decision.  On Monday they called him and said, "Well, Clif is clearly the better actor but the director thinks he looks a little old to play the roles."  I found this particularly disappointing because both Gandolfini and Daniels are older than I am, I think. 

Now, as it turns it out, it was a good thing that I didn't land the gig because something else came along that I otherwise wouldn't have been available for had I done it.  Nonetheless, I was a tad crestfallen. 

Now that the show is closed I can write about it in this blog.  I did a little checking and found out the understudy never went on for either actor.  Ah, well. 

But back to this wig business.  I would never wear one in real life.  I've always held the toupee in mild disdain.  William Shatner and Burt Reynolds always come to mind.  Who, exactly, does one expect to fool?  And for what reason?  It is the very height of vanity.  Charlton Heston was legendary for never taking his wig off and swearing right to the end that he wasn't wearing one.

There are others, Connery, Malkovich, Patrick Stewart, who aren't the least bit concerned with showing their baldness in public but occasionally don a wig for a part.    And then there is Nick Cage, who's rugs are becoming downright distracting.

I have, over the years, become quite comfortable with my loss of hair.  I recently did a gig, Adding Machine at The Odyssey Theatre, that required me to grow it long on the sides...my hope was that I could get it long enough for a really bad 'comb over.'   But I didn't have enough time to get it long enough. 

I suppose, if I had my druthers, I would just as soon not have gone bald.  Especially after putting the wig on yesterday.  I once read somewhere that the gene for baldness comes from the mother's father.  Well, that can't be true because my grandfather on my mother's side had a thick head of hair at the time of his death when he was in his late seventies.  So, I don't know.  Again, I've never given it a lot of thought. 

I wore the wig around for awhile yesterday, long enough in fact that Angie finally said, "I don't like that gleam in your eye.  You are NOT going to wear that thing in public."  And that was the end of that.  The truth is I was playing with the idea of wearing it out to dinner or something to see if I could get away with it.

I remember an interview on Letterman years ago.  The guest was Bruce Willis, also famously bald.  Letterman asked him about it.  Willis said, "You just gotta be cool with who you are, man.  That's all."

I liked that.

See you tomorrow.

The List

Angie and I have decided we need new friends.  Not because there is anything at all wrong with our old ones; in fact we love our old friends, absolutely love them.  No, it's because it seems all our old friends are having babies.  And babies, for the most part, put a real crimp in social functions.  Babies are the bane of our social existence.  For one thing they're not old enough to drink.  For another they're horrible conversationalists.  And finally, they go to bed entirely too early.

I have never felt very comfortable in the presence of babies.  I think somewhere along the way I lost my 'baby gene.'  I tend to see them as short human beings that can't walk very far without aid and this is a mistake.  I don't like to hold them or carry them around.  Now don't get me wrong, I perfectly understand the practical application of having babies.  They come in handy down the road.  It's necessary to be patient with them now so that in twenty years or so they can do the normal things that most humans do, up to and including being wildly ungrateful and generally disappointing.

Also, I'm apt to think babies in general are just sort of arrogant.  They have a sense of entitlement to them I simply find inexcusable.  And I've also noticed they never apologize.  This irks me.

And then of course there's all the unnecessary noise.  They seem altogether incapable of using their 'inside voice.'  And frankly I don't see the logic in that.  It's incredibly uncivilized, not to mention out and out rude at times.

They interrupt.  Sometimes in the middle of a sentence or an amusing anecdote.   They just burst into a wail with no thought of courtesy or decorum whatsoever.  And then, as though nothing at all untoward has happened, they just stop and smile innocently.  I think this is an indication of a devious mind.

I've searched for a wooden sign or doormat or something saying, "Babies Not Welcome Here" to put next to our front door but I can't find one.  I did find one that said, "Actors Not Welcome Here," however.  I almost bought it with the idea that I would scratch out 'Actors' and write 'Babies.'  Angie stopped me at the last second.

So, long story short, we're in the process of finding new friends.  We have a list of criteria, too.  In fact, whenever I come across someone that might possibly be eligible for 'new friend' status, I pull it out and start checking things off:

1) Are you a Democrat?  (This is a deal breaker most of the time, I'm afraid.  If they answer 'no' I'm fairly certain there will be trouble down the line.  Also this one question eliminates a bunch of others such as 'Is your IQ over 110?'  Or, 'Do you consider yourself empathetic?'  Or, 'If we were on a crashing plane with one parachute, would you use it yourself or give it to me?'  Now, Angie and I do have a few Republican friends but, in our defense, they're usually Republicans that other Republicans don't really care for.)

2)  Do you have a pick up truck or access to one?  (This can sometimes be overlooked if the answer is 'no,' but a 'yes' goes a long ways toward friend inclusion.)

3)  Do you or your spouse own and wear a lot of sports team apparel?  (This is almost 100 percent effective in weeding out idiots.)

4)  Do you have a book, any book, on your nightstand?  (Nooks and Kindles are acceptable here.)

5)  Are you particularly good at something?  ('Organizing a room' or 'Taking care of babies' are not acceptable answers.)

6)  Do you tend to look at social events as an excuse to dance?  (This, too, can quickly sort out the undesirables.)

7)  Would you describe the score to 'Summer of '42' as 'haunting and beautiful?'  (No brainer here.)

8)  If you were on a desert island with one TV that only showed two channels, one a continual loop of 'West Wing' reruns and the other non-stop viewings of 'Dancing with the Stars, ' which would you choose?  (Again, this goes right to the heart of things.)

9)  Do you listen to other people and then respond or do you wait for them to stop talking and then state your own opinion?  (This is very close to #1, actually.)

10)  If the ghost of George Gershwin entered your house, sat at the piano and started playing, would you sit and listen appreciatively or call the police?  (This is actually more telling than it would appear on the surface.)

So there you have it.  The truth is I think people should be flattered to even get so far as to be ASKED the questions on the list.  Many don't.  Oh, and there is a number 11, but that one is obvious:  Do you now or have you any plans in the immediate future to have babies?  But that one goes without saying, of course.

In any event, Angie and I have put an ad on Craigslist for these new friends.  No response yet, but we're hopeful.

See you tomorrow.

That Way There Be Dragons

Once again I find myself up and toiling at my blank screen, unable to sleep until I've incorporated my latest ideas into this new project I've been commissioned to write.  I used to view my insomnia as something to be alarmed about, but over time I've come to realize it's simply the price of doing business.  Until I've gotten down on paper (figuratively) the new things that have come to me during the night, I really can't sleep.  And oddly, that's perfectly alright.  First, because I've discovered I'm a morning person by nature, astonishing as that may be.  And second, I prefer writing without distraction and four a.m. is certainly a time without distraction.  I like to warm up by blogging a bit, getting the fingers loosened up, taking the brain around the track a few times, wrapping my mind around the new ideas.

In addition, I seem to be at my least cynical early in the morning.  As the day wears on and things begin to crowd in on me, reading about the latest Republican shenanigans, seeing what natural disaster occurred overnight, checking my emails from producers about my previous day's work, I begin to lose sight of why I do what I do.

Also, the piece I'm working on now has at its very center a large and all-encompassing theme of injustice.  Consequently, it is important to approach it fresh every day.  I'm the type of guy that gets all righteous about injustice in even its smallest incarnations.  An ex-sponsor of mine used to always tell me things that make us bitter and accusatory about other people are usually the same things we abhor in ourselves.  He may have been on to something.  Although, like most people who have been sober for many years, there was always just a smidgen of smugness in his pronouncements that irritated me no end.  He was part of that loutish group of ex-drunks that think the simple act of not drinking for years at a time entitles them to a civic medal of some sort.  I've never felt that way about it.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I've always been of the mind that not drinking for a long period of time is probably a lot closer to normal and pedestrian rather than super-human and parade-worthy.  Lots of ex-drunks get very agitated at this line of thought.  "But, but, but...we DON'T DRINK!  We are SPECIAL!"  Uh, no.  No, we're not.  We're righting a wrong, not inventing the wheel.  We're correcting a character flaw, not instigating a virgin birth.

Anyway...

Speaking of over-indulgence, I had a rehearsal yesterday for this new piece in which I'm involved, The Interlopers, written by Gary Lennon and directed by Jim Fall (plugging, plugging) and after we finished I was standing outside the rehearsal hall waiting for my wife to pick me up (we're a one car family these days) and a young guy, maybe 30 or 35, staggered by me, clearly three sheets to the wind.  It was about 3:00 in the afternoon.  As he got close to me, he abruptly stopped and glanced up at me.  He'd been sort of reeling from one side of the walkway to another.  He was well-dressed, clearly not homeless, or if so, not for very long.  He'd had a shave and haircut recently, and he didn't appear to be too dirty or dusty from his travels.  But he was obviously very drunk and his eyes weren't quite focusing.  So he looks up and says, "What?"  Not belligerently or aggressively, but more like an actual question.  I hesitated a second and said, "That way there be dragons."  He appeared to think about that for a second, shook his head a bit, and kept going.

I thought about that guy for a long time yesterday, off and on. 

This Saturday night my wife has organized a sort of old home week at a local restaurant.  Lots of old college chums that have all moved out to the city of angels for one reason or another.  This sort of thing always makes me feel a bit ambivalent.  On one hand, it's always nice to see old acquaintances.  On the other, I always feel a little like that guy on the sidewalk.   "What?"

I suppose it's a question of self-worth.  Recently I had a meeting with a big-money-producer-type-guy that was interested in having me do some writing for him.  As I was preparing for the meeting, I gathered together all sorts of reviews and critical evidence of my past successes, awards, nominations, hard copy notices, that sort of thing.   Angie saw me doing this.  Eventually, she said, 'You know, you don't have to do that.  You don't have to prove anything to anybody.  He wouldn't be asking for this meeting if he didn't know your work."  As is my usual pattern I had to mull that over for a few days before I could answer her.  Like that wayward young drunk on the street yesterday I was preparing myself mentally to ask that inevitable question, "What?"  The thing is, the question is no longer necessary.

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, recently I've become sort of obsessed with the career trajectory and writings of Truman Capote.  For some reason I'm utterly fascinated with his journey from wunderkind to sad, old parody.  I read a chapter of his prose in something like 'In Cold Blood' and then I read a chapter from George Plimpton's oral biography about him.  And I try and understand how such a staggering talent could have deteriorated into what he became in the end.  And then I realize he must have spent at least a decade figuratively staggering from sidewalk to sidewalk, encountering people along the way, and asking each and every one of them, "What?"

Now, Capote was certainly not the first, nor will he be the last, great talent to implode under the pressure of his genius.  Faulkner, Hemingway, Poe, Inge, Williams, Dorothy Parker, the list is frightfully long.  Sometimes it seems addiction and writing are two sides of a coin.  Clinically, there probably isn't any evidence to confirm this, but statistically there most certainly is.

Great actors are in the same boat, sometimes.  I very clearly remember reading a passage from Richard Burton's journals, published after his death, in which he writes, and I'm paraphrasing, "I was a far, far better actor at 25 than I am at 50.  No one knew who I was at 25 and I could observe people all day long without interruption.  It is the actor's most valuable tool.  I no longer have that tool at my disposal."  There is also an interesting sentence in Brando's autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, along the same lines.  "I used to become other people when I was young, now I pretend to be other people."

That way there be dragons.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: New Bookshelves in an Old House.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: New Bookshelves in an Old House.: "Plato is credited with saying something to the effect, 'Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.' Then again, I think he..."