Trailer Park #8

My final day on the set was April 12, and it was a short day. I had to come out of my (Dewey Knox's) trailer and yell at a drunken Terry (played by a sober Tyler). It was a night shoot, and we were pretending it was well after midnight, when in fact, it was just after dark. The sequence was this: I yelled some rough equivalent of "Get off my lawn", Tyler invites me to perform an act most generally thought of as impossible, and then the scantily clad Doreen (played by the scantily clad Dinah) comes out of her trailer to yell at Terry (Tyler) as well. Her husband Sean (played by her former classmate John), comes out of their trailer with a coat to wrap around Doreen, and back in they go.

This was filmed a number of different ways, and Tyler cut his hand pounding on the rusty exterior of one of the trailers, so I expect to hear he'll soon accept a lifetime engagement playing Capt. Hook.

I quit smoking a few weeks back, and this surprised many on the set, including Patrick (co-director), who said I smoked more than anyone he ever met. Not smoking makes breaks and downtime meaningless, changing them from something eagerly longed for to something to be endured.

After channelling my non-smoking grumpiness into the grumpiness of Dewey Knox, I next had to do a little ADR--for those of you not versed in the arcane language of film, ADR stands for Another Day Ruined--no, no, I'm kidding, I kid, I'm a kidder, you know that about me...it means Actors Don't Read...no,no, just a joke, again with the kidding, I kid because I love...it means, and I am serious this time...uh, something about recording lines, dubbing or looping, I guess. Stand by...

Ok, just googled it, and it means Additional Dialogue Replacement. I thought it meant Additional Dialogue Recording. Whatever it's acronymic  meaning, the upshot is that you stand in front of the screen while a scene you've previously filmed rolls by, and you record additional words which are then  inserted into the scene. The scene was the exterior Michigan shoot from February, with all of us scrabbling on the frozen lake for a bunch of money that was flying around. The directors felt like there wasn't enough grunting and stuff to fill the moments, so several actors were rerecorded for extra noises, and so I stood there in front of the mic and grunted and made exasperated noises, and such like, all the while biting my sleeve because in the scene I had a glove dangling from my mouth.

After ADR, I then went to a trailer where some young videographers recorded me answering questions about the whole process. I think I sounded stupid and pretentious--as I was talking I was thinking to myself "Oh, just shut up you arrogant dweeb!" I hope they decide my video contribution isn't needed.

Then, as promised, I picked up my newest little pal... a young (month old) guinea pig, black and white like a Jersey cow, and I adopted him. Or her. Turns out the only way you can tell if a Guinea Pig is male or female is to read " Twilight" to them and see they like it. You can also set them in front of the TV and tune in to the Lifetime Channel, and go away for a while. If you come back and they've created rudimentary tools and used them to commit suicide, you'll know you were dealing with a male.

So, anyway, I christened the rodent "Dewey" after my character. The production was nice enough to include a cage and some food, and after waving bye bye to the admirable and dedicated crew, Dewey and I hit the road, getting home around midnight. Didn't tell Dani I was bringing home a new member of the menagerie. Earler, I'd mentioned to Frederick Lewis (the professor who conceived the whole process of Trailer Park) that my wife had no idea that I was bringing home a guinea pig, and in fact, had threatened me with death whenever I mentioned that I was gonna do it. Frederick looked at me with those wise eyes, and said, " That's how you've decided to play it, eh?" I said " Yes, I am going with the completely blind-siding her with the guinea pig option. After carefully considering all the alternatives, this is the one I've chosen." 

This harkens back to a time-honored truism I discovered many years ago, that no matter what dumb-ass, idiot fool thing we end up doing, it began somewhere earlier that day as a damn good idea. 

I arrived at this amazing life-fact years ago, when my then girlfriend Glenda told me how her dad's brother got liquored up one night, and called her mother (the uncle's sister-in-law) at 3am and asked her if she'd mind giving him a blowjob. Of course, the answer was no, and he quickly hung up the phone, but not before she'd yelled " Ed, is that you?!" Many recriminations and allegations followed, a permanent rift opened in the family, all over a question that began earlier in the day as a damned reasonable request. 

I could see Ed sitting alone in his house trailer (it sort of has to be a trailer, don't you think?), drinking beer after beer, stacking the cans on the card table in front of him, and as the wall of cans rose up ever higher, he kept revising his plan--"should it be a blowjob, and maybe just a handjob? How about I don't call her at all--nah, that's no good... how about I ask her to dinner instead...no...I really think blowjob is the best option here..." and so on, into the early hours until, finally, " Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do! I am gonna call her up and ask her if she'll do this perfectly innocent thing for me, and even if she says no, there is no way this could ever come back to haunt me--she would never tell my brother what I said. This is the perfect plan, the best way to proceed with this business. And right after this next 12 pack, I am gonna pick up that phone and dial her number."

One imagines Ed on the phone, smiling, his face shiny and red, glowing with anticipation, and then, as he heard himself say the words "Dolores, suck my dick" to his sister-in-law, suddenly realizing how horribly awry it all had gone, and in a sober, blindingly clear flash saw the end game of all this, the unhealable breach between his brother and himself, the hatreds and embarrassments that would last even unto the grave.

How could this have gone so terribly wrong? It had seemed so perfect just five minutes ago!

Anyway, by the time I got Dewey home, Dani was asleep, so I took his/her cage into my little office, and installed her/him there. The next morning, while Dani was in the bathroom getting ready for work, I got out of bed, tiptoed into the office,  took Dewey out of his/her cage, and carried (let's settle on "it" for now) into the bedroom, and put it on my chest, under the blanket. Dani came in to kiss me good morning, and I pulled down the blanket just a little, and said " Meet Dewey!" I don't think she saw the guinea pig at first, and thought I was making some Ed-like request, until Dewey whistled and after an initial frozen moment, she finally laughed and said, " You really did it, didn't you?" 

Of course, now, a week later, Dewey and Dani are best pals, and Dewey couldn't possibly care less about me. When I come in, it hides in its little house inside the cage , but it whistles and gets excited when Dani enters the office. 

So anyway, whenever I see my little guinea pig ignoring me and  loving my wife instead, I'll think of Trailer Park, and of the wonderful young artists I met there. It's been both fun and educational,  just like the Lifetime Channel. 

Twitter

Gave up on Twitter the other day. Just don't see the point. I saw only marketing bullshit or the usual "drinking coffee...yay" pointlessness--both areas of extreme annoyance to me.

Trailerpark: Behind the Scenes - Guinea Pigs!

guinea pig fu!

Items of interest, or not...#2

1. I believe sleep apnea is a totally made up medical problem, like PTSD or chronic fatigue disorder, or you know, cancer. I don't deny it exists, I just question whether it is a problem. Oh, the doctor explains it all to you, all the risks, and the treatment options, but I can't help but believe it's the equivalent of William H. Macy's car salesmen in Fargo, trying to push "that TruCoat, that's good stuff there."

2. Someone recently said new housing builds in Central Ohio has increased 42% over last year. Hmm...perhaps, but wasn't last year's something like 875% down from the previous year? I'm no math guy, but I think that translates to maybe one guy's garage getting built in Obetz.

3. Douchebag update--Remember when I mentioned that around Oscar time Mickey Rourke was talking about wrestling WWE star Chris Jericho, and that suddenly these plans got squelched by some last minute career management advice by his new handlers? At the time, I posited that you can't keep a dedicated douchebag down--Rourke has always aspired to a career like Pacino's, but carries himself publicly more like Mr. T. He doesn't seem to get that a career is more than the movies you do (based on his output in the 90s, he better hope so)--it's also how you carry yourself when you are in public. Class begets class, and dignity  dignity. If Pacino attended monster truck pulls and made appearances at county fairs, he wouldn't have the cache he has now.

Well. The Mick couldn't help himself . The other night he attended a Jericho match and when it was over climbed into the ring and pretended to knock him out with one punch. Douchebag meter just jumped a few ticks. Can Wild Orchids IV: The New Beginning be far behind?

4. Are there more annoying creatures in the world than foodies? Probably there are, but not by much...shoe fetishists maybe.

The Three Musketeers #1

The Three Musketeers--May 28-June 28. This is the first production of the 2009 Actor's Theatre season in Schiller Park. And it will be something of a milestone for me--it was 20 years ago that I first stepped on the stage in Schiller Park, in what was then known as Actor's Summer Theatre's production of Othello. I was 30, and playing Iago, a role I'd dreamed about since I first read the play in high school. 

I remember the audition as one of the most grueling I'd ever been through (and it still ranks up there, after over 100 other shows). After the initial monologues, we did cold readings, in my case mostly for Cassio, with an Iago tossed in here and there, but it was evident the director saw me more as a Cassio type. When he called a few days later to invite me to call-backs, he said " You'll be reading for Cassio, maybe Roderigo..."and here he broke off, and I heard some muffled voices off the phone, and he came back and said, "Oh, and maybe some Iago too." Turns out his stage manager--and girlfriend at the time--was advocating for me as Iago.

I hung up the phone determined to get Iago. I read and reread the play in the days leading up to callback, and I doubt I was ever as focused on getting a particular role at auditions as I was for that. I don't recall actively deciding to downplay my readings as Cassio, but it is true I didn't bother preparing anything for it, either. I started off reading for Cassio, which is a good role, but one I knew I could do in my sleep--earnest, romantic young officer..zzzzzz...I wanted the bad guy, badly.

Gradually, the Cassio scenes dropped off, and the Iago scenes started coming more frequently. This audition process was nothing like the current regime's routine, which is 2 monologues, and maybe a speech or scene from one of the plays, and you are out of there in a hour. No, this audition, which was conducted by a Ph.d student from OSU, lasted well over 5 hours. It just kept going. Now and again, the director would call out "the following 5 names are excused" and the herd would thin out. At the end of it all, it came down to me and another guy for Iago, and it became dueling Iagos. First him, then me. Alternating scene after scene. We did the whole play, every Iago scene. Other actors came up to read the other roles with us. It was a nightmarish audition. Now, many years later and long experience as a director, I recognize the classic signs of directorial impotence. He just couldn't make a decision. So he put it off.

I was new to the company, fairly new to town. Othello was the 2nd play I'd auditioned for in Columbus, the first being All My Sons at Gallery Players, in which I was cast as one of the neighbors. The other prospective Iago was a founding member of the company. And on we went, hammering it out, scene after scene. I felt sorry for Wesley Coleman, who was playing Othello to both of us, and was getting quite a workout. It finally ended after we each did the epilepsy scene, where Othello goes into a seizure and Iago gloats while the Moor is unconscious.

I later learned that scene is what got me the role. When Othello passes out, instead of laughing and gloating, as is usually done, I froze, then walked slowly up to his body, pushed it with my toe to see if he would come out of it, and when he didn't, I began to dance a little Irish jig around his body.

 Through the process of exploration in rehearsals, I had gradually stopped doing it, until one day the artistic director dropped by to watch a runthrough, and asked the director why I wasn't "jigging" anymore. She asked him to ask me to put it back in. He laughed, " She said to tell you that's why you were cast in the first place."

The 1989 Othello in Schiller Park was an especially important show for me. It rather put me on the map in the Columbus theatre scene, though that map may be a little one, and leads to nowhere in particular. I went right from  Othello to back-to-back shows at CATCO, and back to Actor's Summer Theatre the following summer, as Claudius in Hamlet. By then, the Dispatch, in a feature story on the season's offerings, listed me as one of the company's "stalwarts", as if I'd always been there. 

Othello was also important, because I made several important friendships from it. Most notably, Wesley Coleman, who played Othello. I plan to write more about him in future posts. He died in April 1999, ten years ago, and for the ten years between our meeting and his death, he was a fine and warm a friend as ever I had. 

Our friendship became cemented during a rehearsal when I challenged his reading of a line. We had pretty much started teasing each other from the start, insulting and baiting each other. We were both pretty vain about our voices, and our line deliveries, and one night as I listened to him speak " I pray you, in your letters/ when you shall these unlucky deeds relate...", I noticed he emphasized the word "shall", which is off the iambic beat. The accented word is "these", so I went up to him during a pause and said, " You know, you're saying that line wrong." He turned to me, puffed up his 6'2" 275 lb. frame, and his deep, James Earl Jones voice, said, " What...did...you...just...say...to...me?" I said, " You're hitting "shall", and it's off the beat. You should be hitting "these"--'you shall THESE unlucky deeds relate."  To quote Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, he gave me the "frowning of a lifetime--and he meant it to sting." But I started laughing, and he did too--though he never changed his reading. Throughout the rest of the rehearsals, whenever he came to that line, he would turn toward me as he hammered the word "shall" into my face, reminding me he was his own man.

  

 Iago 1989

But more on his own man in later posts.

Othello also introduced me to Mary Ann Best, who played Desdemona, and who would be my long-suffering companion for seven years. And to Vicky Bragg, who has been a dear friend for lo these 20 years. And to quite a number of other people who have been constants in my life ever since, and for whom I am grateful to know.

I wasn't intending to do this, but perhaps I'll start a little bit of reminiscing of my 20 years of Shakespeare in the Park. Unless I get a wave of comments begging me to stop. But perhaps I will look at you all and say "Shall!"