Poor Mann's Almanac

Russell Brand

2012-01-26T10:08:00.004-05:00

I have tried to like Russell Brand, but I have failed. I will say, however, he has managed to parlay a minimal talent and a single facial expression into a pretty healthy career, so there's that. In fact, his uni-expressionaism, as we'll call it, brought to mind another face from the massive flea market that is my brain...maybe he could play John Torrington, a sailor from a doomed polar expedition in the mid-1880s, who was unearthed from his permafrost grave a hundred years later...

Pepper

2012-01-05T13:03:00.000-05:00

Tonight we took our 17 year old terrier Pepper to the vet, and had her put down. It's the bitter bargain we make-- there for them at the beginning, there at the end. Over the past summer, she became a very old dog, seemingly all at once--blinded by cataracts, deafer than me, crooked in her back from arthritis. She lost her house-training, and even seemed to lose her personality, which had always been formidable. She trembled much of the time, and often seemed not to recognize us. I have been feeling like Bob Cratchit this evening, looking at the empty place by the fire.

The following is something I wrote about her a few years ago, entitled Our Wedding Dog:

Tonight, I have been sitting in my chair with my little dog curled under my arm, and we have spent a long time looking in each other's eyes, as we have been wont to do for many years. Pepper is 14 years old, a Yorkie/Schnauzer mix, and her formerly brown face is white now, and she spends most of her days drowsing on chairs and couches, or on any convenient lap. She is a stubborn old gal, and if she wants to jump up into my chair, and wriggle and push till she claims half the seat for herself, well, who am I to argue? Such a venerable old lady deserves all that she wants, and mostly what she wants is to be allowed to nap and feel the old clock inside her wind its way down.

We got her the weekend we were engaged. Dani and I were living in an attic apartment on the Hilltop, and the guy in the downstairs apartment raised and trained little terriers, and when Dani and I came home from a weekend's touring performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream (where we had announced our engagement to the stunned cast), he was outside with his kids playing with some little dogs, and when he saw us he asked if we wanted a dog. It seems he had given his mother one of his little puppies 2 years earlier, and when she moved to an apartment complex that didn't allow pets, she had to return Pepper to her son.

I think he was asking out of reflex, just something you say as a conversation starter, especially if you are a dog trainer. But I looked at her, and though it sounds lame, something passed between us. Maybe I was open because I had just gotten engaged to a woman I was deeply in love with, and had just finished a wildly successful weekend's worth of performances, and here was an offer to begin something like a little family. It felt right. I looked at Dani and she laughed--she later said she could tell right away this was going to happen. So we took her upstairs.

I spent a week holding her like a baby, protecting her from my cat Sugar, who was deeply offended that a dog had been brought into the mix. Sugar never warmed to her, and never missed a chance to swat her and send her yelping into another room. That whole week we looked into each other's eyes, bonding the way I imagine parents do with new-born babies. When the weekend came, we had to leave to do another set of shows out of town, and I asked the fellow downstairs to watch her for us. All weekend I worried she wouldn't remember us, that the week-long bonding hadn't been enough, but when we came home, it was like a scene from a movie: Pepper was in the yard playing with one of the neighbor's kids, and when she saw me, she ran top speed and launched into my arms and licked my face all over. That's when I knew she was ours for keeps.

Right away she established herself as my chair companion, and later she became part of our sleeping arrangement as well. Dani on my left, Pepper on my right, under my arm. I became quite used to this--in fact, once when I was in the hospital for a surgery, Dani was concerned I wouldn't sleep without a little creature nestled under my right arm, so she bought a little stuffed dog to tuck in with me during my week long stay.

Pepper has endured many moves, and many comings and goings of other pets, and not always happily. In fact, never happily. I don't think she has quite understood what we thought we were doing bringing all those other critters into the house. Especially Sonny, out Golden, who spends a generous part of his day, every day, for the last 6 years, finding ways to annoy her.

It has always been Mark, Dani and Pepper to our families. When my mother calls, her sign off is "give my love to Dani and Pepper." Family members have actually had her for sleepovers--she used to go with my sisters on their camping trips. Actors I worked with years ago, after getting back in touch, will ask after her health--she had a brief career on the stage herself, playing Toto in WoO, Sandy in Annie, and the family dog in Cheaper By The Dozen. But she's retired now. She lies on her warm blankets and dreams of her former stage glory.

Someday soon, the unbearable will happen. She has a bad heart murmur, and the vet assures us this will be the thing that takes her out. The day I got that diagnosis, two years ago, I drove her home from the vet, after first stopping at the store for some treats. I held her for a while, and we looked into each other's eyes, as we often do. Her bristly intelligent gaze was a bright as the day we got her ( and still is). I felt better that the knowledge of mortality is not a gift given to a dog. They live entirely and utterly in the moment. This makes it easier. We are entrusted with that knowledge for them.

So, these days, I let her have her way. She eats when she feels like it, goes outside whenever she asks, and sleeps when and wherever she chooses. She has given great value, our little wedding dog. She deserves our respect, and our love. Some of us who are childless need an outlet for our parenting instincts, I believe, and Pepper is in many ways my first child.

People Will Come

2011-11-06T10:04:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things in the world: baseball.

One of my least favorite things: any literature about baseball seeking--in rhapsodic, poetic prose--to contextualize or encircle the mystery of it all. Mostly written by men who never played the game, is my guess. One exception: James Earl Jones' speech in Field of Dreams, but I think fully half of the appeal of that scene is a visceral response to the bassoons in Jones' voice.

and to that end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ1dZhh0_RQ&feature=related

REM disbands

2011-09-27T14:15:00.002-04:00

Now that REM has officially called it quits (as opposed to artistically, which happened years ago), Michael Stipe has time to devote himself to his main passion--stalking unsuspecting mortals and drinking their blood...

Workers of the World, Unite!

2011-03-06T10:02:00.004-05:00

Apparently I am hated on two continents. My brother Barry, who lives in Seoul, Korea and is a spy and free-lance assassin for the CIA, tells me his military and ex- military friends over there read my liberal broadsides on Facebook, and despise me to my very core.

This has become a source of pride with me. If only I could be hated in Europe and South America and Australia too! Then I'd be in rare company, with Hitler, Nixon, and Walt Disney.

One guy, an old-school crusty, red-faced, fat-fingered ex master sgt. finds me particularly appalling. Barry reports that he'll see the guy in a bar, and if the guy is staring at Barry for longer than 2 seconds, then that means he's gonna come over and start a conversation with " Did you what your goddamn brother wrote today?" Barry doesn't report whether he defends me or not--I suspect not. But then I wouldn't defend me either.

Barry was home this week, and told me about this, and we plotted out a little scheme--I asked Barry to tell me the one issue that chapped this man's wrinkled old ass more than any other, and he said it was illegal immigrants. So I went on the web, looking for the worst case of illegal immigrant criminality I could find, and after several promising leads (one was a case in which an illegal immigrant shot and killed a man in cold blood, and I thought this might be a winner, but later in the article it's revealed the victim was a pedophile who had messed with the immigrant's under-aged sister--not good enough for my nefarious plans)--I finally found the motherload-- I located a case where an illegal immigrant murdered three people in New Jersey, in premeditated fashion.

So I posted this article to Barry's FB page, along with as many boneheaded liberal comments as I could think of, and my nephew Nathan, who is more liberal than I, chimed in with a few of his own (I had emailed Nathan to tell him about this old master sgt., who hates Nathan too, and it turns out Nathan already knew of him, and calls him Sgt. Non Sequitur)...we are currently awaiting news of the old campaigner's massive stroke.

Barry is in the air, back to Korea, and his clandestine mission to topple Kim Jong il. I expect him to be met at the airport by his CIA handler, a ravishing Korean beauty with some anatomically-based James Bondian name, and one pissed off old master sergeant, trying to articulate his outrage through the profound aphasia his stroke has left him with.

Below is the FB posting--(as you can see, we ensnared one of Barry's friends in our net):

Film work

2011-02-17T22:58:00.001-05:00

A number of my pals are doing lots of film work these days, which I find healthy, though I don't do much of it myself. It is the present and the future of acting, I believe. Stage is the past, but I feel most comfortable there. Sometimes I feel like Chuck Yeager in the film The Right Stuff--all his contemporaries, the generation behind him, actually, began to move to NASA and the space program, while he stayed with the original test pilot program.

I am not sure why I am so ambivalent about film. I have done one feature and one short, and I had a good time doing them, but I'd be quite happy if I never do another one. I know actors in town who do tons of them, and prefer them to stage (which I don't get AT ALL). Maybe it's the narcissism of seeing your image on screen. There are only a few who are immune to that, I suppose, and that notion must be part of it, I guess. It certainly isn't the money--which is always paltry on the local level, if there is anything at all. And it can't be the quality of the roles, either.

I have turned down so many film offers that word has evidently gotten round, because no one offers me film roles much anymore. I find the scripts to be generally awful, derivative, and bigger than the director's stomachs most of the time. They are written by non-writers, mostly. Very young non-writers, mostly. They are just images on paper, mostly. And so they are easy to turn down. Plus, these young writers tend to write roles for young actors, and have little insight for characters over 25.

I would consider them for more than a few seconds if the roles I have been offered were any good, but they aren't. Usually there is a need for a one-dimensional dad, or boss, and I can't be bothered. I am that way for stage roles too. As I have gotten older, and aged past the first and second rank roles (juvenile, hero/romantic lead), I find that most of the parts (film and stage) for actors my age are what I call the "dad" roles. As the producers of new theatre companies and film companies get younger and younger, they skew their choices toward actors their age. Still, these shows need someone to play the "dad" roles. And, my friends, that ain't me.

It's not ego, at least not entirely. I am pretty level-headed about what roles I am right for, type-wise. And I would be happy to plays dads, if the roles are strong. But the scripts are always about the younger protagonist, and these characters need dads and bosses to feed them cues. And that, as I said before, ain't me.

The way I see it, life is too short to be a supporter of other people's dreams, and I have no interest whatsoever in helping others achieve their goals by giving them whatever meager talents and industry I possess. I have had several offers from filmmakers for a featured role of one scene, and I know they are looking for the best possible actor to play this meaningless bullshit--but that's their dream, not mine. If you want me in your picture or play, it better be a strong role. And I mean a strong role before I see the pages. None of that "we'll work it out as we go along" crap.

Money is one of several motivating factors for me, but it isn't the only one. For me it's mostly been about the roles. Acting takes up a lot of time from your life, and it takes its toll in several, less tangible ways as well, and if I am going to commit to a part, it better have enough juice for me. Lots of people better see it too. Not interested in a doing a film role so your pals can watch it with you on your computer. Not interested in helping a film student with his project. Not even remotely interested in doing low-brow gory horror stories, think pieces where mostly 21 year olds sit in coffee shops and discuss their faux Tarantino-esque takes on life and relationships, half-assed detective stories, hit man stories (and ever since Quentin, it seems all hit men are required to discuss pop culture while wearing black suits and ties)...and...and...and...

So. This post ended at lot more sour than I intended. I suppose the takeaway from this post is that I hear "time's winged chariot hurrying near", and I simply don't have enough life left for anything that isn't pivotal.

Dark of the Moon

2011-01-26T01:09:00.003-05:00

We open Dark of the Moon at Dublin Coffman High School in two days...as usual, the past few days have been fraught with last minute set painting, costume adjustments, prop gathering, etc etc etc...but the kids are ready, more than ready, to get this bad boy up in front of paying customers...this is my "From The Director", my thoughts on the play...

From the Director

Dark of the Moon is a supernatural fantasy tale that is made up of equal parts of Romeo and Juliet, The Crucible, Harry Potter, and old campfire tales that travel down the years, growing in embellishment with each telling. At its core is the old Celtic song Barbara Allen, though the playwrights rewrote the story of the song to suit the action of the play. It has a dark heart—one critic said its characters were the characters of the musical Oklahoma, if their true natures were really shown. I consider it a sort of satire of the old morality plays, in which the best people in the community are the worst people in the community—rather like The Beggars Opera, in which thieves and murderers are the cream of society.

The students and I had a number of conversations early on about the human world of Buck Creek, and the supernatural world that lurks on top of Mt. Baldy. We proceeded from the position that this is a “heightened” existence, meaning that it is a fantasy, and makes certain assumptions for the sake of the story that bear little relation to the “real” world—the Christianity depicted in this play is not the Christianity that is practiced in our churches. The wants and needs of the citizens are skewed and are not always logical (witness their dialogue which echoes the repeats and refrains of old songs)—even the mythology of the witchcraft practiced in this play is unlike any other “witchy” stories. This led us to discussions of “given circumstances”, and what constitutes “ truth” on the stage—and our conclusion is simply that, for the purposes of performance, “truth” on stage always trumps “truth” in real life. This is why characters in musicals break out into song at regular intervals, or Shakespearean characters speak in iambic pentameter as a matter of course. It’s why a magical school exists to teach young Britons how to hone their witchcraft, even why three bears keep a traditional house which is ransacked by a blonde child.

The play has survived, since it was written in the 1940s, because, simply, there isn’t another play quite like it. It has been the source of controversy over the years, since a young Paul Newman first played the Witch-boy on Broadway. Back in the 1970s, high school productions of Dark of the Moon were picketed or even shut down. By the 1980s, it became a staple in high school repertories-- Dublin Coffman last performed it in 1989, roughly five years before most of tonight’s cast was born.

At its core is a love story, between Barbara Allen, whose reputation for “easy virtue” has reached beyond her town to the dark beings who live up on old Baldy, and John the Witch-Boy, who, riding his eagle one night, looked down among the human world and was instantly smitten by her. Their story is one of an attempt at redemption, a kind of reset of their lives, a belief that true love can cure all evils. But as we see, it isn’t the moonlight that illumines and defines their tale, but rather the dark shadow from its other side.

You're Gonna Dieeeeeeee!

2011-01-18T22:46:00.002-05:00

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has announced that non-Christians are not his brothers or sisters. So much for that Governor of All The People thing...actually, that sentiment is more in line with his previous job, as the villain in Poltergeist II...

My Year In Review--Theatre-wise anyway Part II

2011-01-09T23:45:00.006-05:00

So. I had a month between the closing of The Miracle Worker, and the start of Born Yesterday, at Otterbein University, where I'd been engaged as a guest artist for their fall production. I spent it watching my half-assed garden wither and die due to neglect, since I was out of town most of the summer. I read the script and wondered what the hell to do with Harry Brock. He wasn't a bucket list role at all, and at first pass, I found the play to be a little dated--though the themes of government bought and paid for are certainly current. But there was a certain Pollyanna-ish streak that ran through it that gave me pause, until I started reading it again. It was, on the 2nd time through, a lot more frank than the film version, or indeed many plays of the same period. The language was pretty salty for its day, and beneath Pollyanna's skirts lurked a certain snide cynicism that has always appealed to me. I started to enjoy the rhythm of the language, that sort of "say, what's the big idea" snappy type of rapid fire dialogue from the old Warner Brothers films.

But what to do with Brock? Like many actors, I suspect, once I have a role it seeps into my every waking thought. This can be annoying, because I miss a lot of conversation in the real world--I am busy enough with conversations in my head to pay attention to ones directed at me by my loved ones. Or they co-join, like two radio stations crowding each other in the same spot on the dial:

SHE: " Honey, would you like me fix some grilled cheese sandwiches?"
ME: "Hmm? Oh, well...maybe, I guess...does Harry Brock know how to tie a necktie on his own, do you think?"
SHE:" I am going to take that as a yes."

Harry began to walk around with me, nudging me in quiet moments. I am not one of those actors who gets totally immersed in a role--not for me the Daniel Day-Lewis model of staying in character all the time and all that. It works for him, I guess, but it wouldn't work for me. It would be too exhausting, and I suspect he does it more for show and effect. I doubt he takes a dump in character, or reads a book in character. He stays in character in public, so people can say "He stays in character ALL THE TIME." It's legend-building. So much silliness goes into the craft of acting, so much humbug and flummery. My immersion is less obvious to people, except to Dani, who always knows when my brain is otherwise engaged.

Let's take a paragraph or two to talk about process. On second thought, let's not. Listening to actors talk about process is as boring as listening to someone talk about their golf game. I will confine myself merely to observing that, having never majored in theatre in college, I never learned how to do the "Such and Such" Technique, or the " This and That" Method. I suppose they have value, at least as points of departure, but I have always trusted my intuition and insight, which I like to think is fairly highly developed. I can "get" people most of the time. Years of practice have endowed me with technical prowess on stage, and once I learned to access whatever inner resources I have, I was able to begin to divine the inner workings of my characters. This came late to me, relatively speaking, but just in time, if you know what I mean. Every play is different, every role is unique, and I don't believe you can apply a one size fits all approach to developing a character. It isn't as if all you have to do is type entries into an Excel spreadsheet and out pops a solution to a character.

So I began with Harry's insecurity. I think everything he does pivots around that pole. I decided he was probably a clean freak, one of those low rent guys who, once he hits it big, spends a lot of time on the surface of things, because he isn't very equipped to focus on the inner things. I read once that Sinatra took three or four showers a day, and changed suits just as often. Harry spent his life as a junk man, and once he made his first million, he tried to get the stink of the yard out of his nostrils, and out from under his nails. I asked for a handkerchief, once we started rehearsals, and worked out ways to always wipe his hands after every handshake or handling of some object. I gradually, over time, whittled that down to just a few times during the performances.

As far as his clothes were concerned, I figured he liked George Raft and that kind of guy, and took his cue to dress from the movies, and probably even hired someone to coach him on how to dress. I loved working with the costume designer of the show, who asked me for my ideas about what to do to emphasize character. That's the way it should be. I hate working with costumers who have a "my way or the highway" approach. Costume is character, in some sense--how a character looks is how he chooses to present himself to the world, and that should never be solely left to the costume designer. We added doodads like cufflinks, and watches and stickpins and all that, and all my suits in the show were first rate. It was important that when Harry looks in the mirror, he tries hard not to see the hard-scrabble man beneath the tailored outerwear.

Working at Otterbein--this was my second stint as guest artist there--is a treat. The young actors always add an extra dash of enthusiasm, and remind me why I fell in love with the whole thing in the first place. In past gigs working with young actors, I could see (sometimes very starkly) the difference between talent and skill. All of them are talented--that's why they got into their theatre departments in the first place--but most of them weren't very skilled yet, and didn't know how best to bring their talents to bear. That comes, I suppose, more from experience than something you're born with.

But the cast of Born Yesterday blew the curve on that particular test. There were some young actors who brought a level of skill to the party that surprised and delighted me. Especially my co-star, Stanzi Davis, who is a 40 year old in a 20 year old's body. She has great poise, on and off stage, an old soul, and has, as they say on American Idol, mad skills when it comes to acting.

So anyway, Born Yesterday opened in late October and ran for a few weekends. We played on a beautiful set, to enthusiastic crowds, and I was grateful for the gig, the money, and the chance to work with such good young people. And I thought that would be it for my year. In fact, I bragged, that once I finished directing the school staff show at Dublin Coffman, I had a nice long Christmas holiday full of nothing but reading and eating ahead of me. But...

Whore that I am, I accepted an offer to perform in A Sanders Family Christmas. This was a production mounted by David Caldwell, a frequent guest director at Otterbein and many other theatres around the country. I had never met him, but knew of him through my friend Don, who went to college with him. He called Don to ask if I sang or played the guitar, and Don told him more of the latter than the former, which is dead true. I got a call from Elizabeth Saltgiver, who works at Otterbein, and who was acting as a managing director for Caldwell's production company. They asked me to send a few picking/singing clips so David could get an idea of my range. She emphasized this wasn't an audition--I was already in the play, but this was they could best determine the role for me. So I sent off a few clips, and was given the role of the Sanders family patriarch, Burl, whose playing and singing chores were much less demanding than the other male role of my type, which was just fine with me.

We only rehearsed 10 days, and played in a chapel in Worthington, which was perfect since the play is set in a Baptist church on the eve of WWII. I had a ball, and got to check off a bucket list item, namely playing guitar in a band, on stage, before an audience. Caldwell, who in addition to directing the piece, also played the pastor, was funny as hell, and two completely different people in those roles. As director, he was all business, slightly aloof, and dead certain of where and how to play certain moments (he's done more than a few versions of the Sanders family plays, of which there are 3). As the Rev. Oglethorpe, he was hysterical, silly, touching and never seemed to fail to land his jokes and more serious moments. His funny moments were so funny, I am ashamed to say I corpsed nearly every time. I couldn't help it. I laughed right along with the audience, but I figured since Burl considers him a man who is bit of a figure of fun, I could justify laughing in character.

While the Sanders Family Christmas was rehearsing, I was also rehearsing the staff show at Dublin Coffman. About 7 years ago, the teachers and principals at Coffman were looking for some way for the Coffman staff to get to know each other on a more personal basis, and hit upon the idea to put on a musical. The first two years they did You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Tom Sawyer, and then I came on board, and they asked me to direct the staff show--they had been directing themselves before that. So, in the last couple of years I have directed Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Honk!, and then, this year, Snoopy the Musical.

It's always a fun, if stressful time, and the payoff is always worth it. You get to see people for whom acting is a mysterious and alien concept suddenly finding it, and making things work quite beyond what they thought they were capable of doing. The shows always sell out, and the money goes to fund classroom projects (field trips, special equipment, etc). The students love working on the show--they crew it, and I always have a ton of backstage and booth help for it. We all found the play to be a lesser one than YAGMCB, so I started augmenting it with moments from the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, and from various Peanuts comic strips. I actually think our final product was better than the original play, though I am sure the authors wouldn't agree. But the little kids in the audience howled with laughter, the older kids loved watching their teachers and principals do something completely foreign to their experience with them, and the actors amazed themselves at how they were able to get it over. Directing them is always challenging, because, when you think about it, all teachers are alphas in their classrooms, and all principals are the alpha alphas, and every now and again I had to remind them that when they come to rehearsal, I am the alpha. Dani came to a rehearsal once and said I was Charlie Brown trying to direct the Christmas play--I turn my back, and the partying starts. But it all works in the end, and the staff always ends things with a great party at the principals house, and the camaraderie is priceless...

So that was my year--a year I began by announcing in a New Year's resolution that I was going to do less theatre... final tally: 7 shows, 3 directing, 4 acting.

My Year In Review--Theatre-wise anyway

2011-01-08T22:13:00.010-05:00

Last January, my main New Year's Resolution was to do less theatre...I wanted to see if maybe I couldn't do a little more writing, a sort of return to my first love (without, you know, the creepy FB stalker thing that most ex's indulge in)--but that was a foolish pledge. In the last 12 months, I have directed 4 plays, acted in 4 plays, and written bupkes. Well, nothing I was interested in sharing with the world, anyway.

All my directing occurred at the high school where I work. We did Tira Palmquist's The Island of Dr. Moreau in January, which was a fantastic experience for the kids involved. They got to create something no other high school had ever done. We took it to the state thespian conference, where the kids were received like rock stars when it was over. They were never better, and I had a rollicking good time working with them. Later that spring, I directed my own little comic 15 minute adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which was performed during an evening of one acts.

Then I left town to spend 5 weeks in beautiful Granville, Ohio, where I was engaged for a 2 play contract at Weathervane Playhouse in nearby Newark, a summer stock theatre that puts up five plays a summer. I had a grand time, for the most part, met some wonderful people, got to play a bucket list role (Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady) and Captain Keller in The Miracle Worker.

MFL was a terrifying experience, initially. Those who know me know I am not much for the musical theatre genre. I respect it a lot more than I used to, but I still find it a little frivolous and too filled with "fabulosity" for my taste. But I always thought Higgins was in my wheelhouse, and a friend emailed me that spring to say she'd recommended me to Matt Trombetta ( the artistic director) for the role. I heard nothing from them and was mentioning to another friend how this tempting tidbit had been dangled in front of me, and then--nothing. She said she was seeing Matt that evening, and would mention it to him. She did, and he contacted me the next day, we arranged an audition, and I got the role, and was offered Captain Keller in the bargain. We set a fair price for my services, which included putting me up for the length of the contract.

I knew my Waterloo would be the songs, and learning them in a 2 week, summer stock format. I had a month between casting and first rehearsal, so I downloaded karaoke versions of Higgins' numbers, and drilled them into my head, every day. I decided against watching the movie (which I had never seen in its entirety), and figured I'd go it my way.

Rehearsals were long and intensive, and I learned a new respect for the musical theatre performer, and what it takes for them to get it all down. My main trouble was that, being deaf as a post, I couldn't hear the piano if I was singing (being profoundly deaf from birth, my life has always been mono, never stereo). Plus they placed the piano far, far away, in our echo-ridden rehearsal room. It was enormously frustrating--one of the few times I have really felt handicapped (another time was when I was fired from a convenience store job in college, because I couldn't hear the people talking on the speakers from the gas pumps). As a result, I was constantly going off rhythm, and slowing the progress of the show.

My pride wouldn't let me back out, however--I think one of the great things about the theatre is that there is always something you need to increase your reach for, and I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd taken the easy way out. Finally, I did the actorly thing--I threw a hizzy, and announced it was pointless for me to continue until they moved the piano closer, in the approximate with where it would be on the stage . I had asked for this before, but no one seemed to hear it (maybe they were deaf too). It took a raised voice and a scary countenance ( I can do both pretty well when I wanna) for people to pay attention, and they moved the piano, and I started to line up with the runway, finally.

Opening night was one of the few times I have ever been stricken with nerves before a show. Though the sound level was better (this was the 2 piano arrangement of MFL), there were still many times when, if I was loud, I couldn't hear the pianos. Throughout the run, I did much of it by guess--I would sing, or sing/talk my line, then listen to the filler notes between the melody to see if I'd timed it right. There wasn't a single performance where I got it all on the bead, but I started to relax and actually look forward to the numbers. Most of them, anyway. I always dreaded " Ordinary Man", because of all the tempo shifts, and all the movement within it. But, strangely, a number of people told me afterward that was one of their favorite moments of my performance. That and "Accustomed to her Face", the final number, which was my personal favorite.

Weathervane has a terrible policy of lining the actors up outside after the show, so the audience can file by and shake your hand. It felt like an inspection line, or like I was a preacher standing by the church door and shaking the hands of the exiting congregation. I have always tried to eschew meeting the public after my shows. I prefer doing my monkey dance, get the applause, and then slip out the side door to my car. I hate all manner of pretentious "talk-backs"--a terrible practice currently in vogue in theatre. To my way of thinking, there is a contract between audience and performer, and I fulfilled my part of it by giving my all on stage. I never slack, I never phone it in. And I have nothing further to add than my performance. If your production needs the talk-back to illuminate the show, then the production is wanting. I know a lot of actors who enjoy talk-backs, but I guess I have always been old school that way. Weathervane doesn't do the afterschool special thing, but you have to stand there while the folks file by, shake your hand raw, and smile while all you really want to do is get to the bar or Rally's for an American Cheddar Melt.

I bring this up because, against my will, I started to enjoy it. I appreciated that people responded to my work so favorably, with hugs and back slaps, questions like "Will we see you in anything else this summer, I hope?"...even the tired old questions most civilians ask " How do you remember all those lines?" (My stock answer to that one is " How do you know I did?") Because Weathervane exists outside the normal theatre hubs of a big city, there is a proprietary feeling that comes from the patrons--it's their theatre, and they have a stake in it. And that's valuable. And the exchange takes on a more personal tone than it does in the cities.

The meet and greet for the next show was an entirely different color altogether, however...

On the final day of My Fair Lady, we did a matinee, an evening performance, and then struck the set, which lasted well into the wee hours. I was determined to sleep in my own bed, in Grove City (about 60 miles away), so at 3 am I said my goodbyes, and hit the highway, looking forward to my one day off, and hit my pillow around 4:30 am-- the roads were so foggy I had to travel about 30 mph most of the way home. At about 9am, I was awakened by a phone call from my pal Tim, informing me that Matt Trombetta, the artistic director and director of The Miracle Worker (which was a week into the 2 week rehearsal), had been killed in a head-on car collision, on the same road I had traveled, about 20 minutes behind me. I dressed and headed back to Newark, too late for the meeting with the board and admin staff, but in time to commiserate with the stunned and grieving company. Many of them had known Matt for years, to the point that he was like family to them.

One of these "family" members, Erika, who had directed MFL, had to step in and finish MW. It was a heroic effort on her part, a sort of focus I can only imagine. That final week of rehearsal was surreal, the usual joy and nerves replaced by a grim sort of realization that we had to get it done. Not for Matt, necessarily. But because in theatre, that's what you do. Theatre people attend. Life exists outside the building, not in it. I will often make that speech to my high school kids--theatre.people.attend. If your mom dies, schedule the funeral for a day that won't coincide with the rehearsals or performance.

And so we got the thing up. To standing Os every night, but I'm sure they were in honor of Matt and our ability to put aside the shock, rather than for our performances (though the little girl who played Helen Keller had some serious chops).

The people in the meet and greet lines hugged us all, and it became a situation where you had to remember why they were doing it. In their minds, we were heroic to get a show up under the circumstances. People would say, " This must have been hard for you.", and I would start to answer, well, the accent was challenging to bring off, then I would realize they were thinking about Matt. But in the adrenalined after-moments of performance, the mind, at least MY mind, wasn't on that at all. I was thinking about certain moments that could have been better, or why wasn't my prop in its place tonight, or "wonder who is at the bar" or "hope Rally's is still open". I didn't know Matt as well as most. My sadness was the sadness of a young life, any young life, suddenly gone-- not for someone who was an intimate part of my world, which he wasn't-- and I moved on as other priorities rose up. Selfishly, I discreetly lamented the loss of future work--Matt and I had discussed my returning in 2011 to direct a children's play, and act in Boeing, Boeing, but those plans were lost on that foggy night.

So, that get us up to July of 2010. Act Two of " Mark's Theatrical Self-absorption" comes up after these messages from our sponsors...

George Carlin - Advertising Lullaby

2010-06-22T00:12:00.000-04:00

George Carlin - Advertising Lingo

2010-06-22T00:11:00.000-04:00

Bad Haircuts

2010-03-06T17:17:00.000-05:00

I have come to the conclusion that the greatest blessing (and perhaps the only one) in growing bald is that you don't have to endure bad haircuts anymore. Every day is a bad hair day, and so you get over it and begin to celebrate it. Well, not celebrate it, exactly, but...tolerate it, I guess. "Tolerate" is a good way to think of it. You can walk down the street, and actually forget about it, till you look at your reflection in a shop window and wonder why your father is looking back at you through the glass--then you realize the truth of the matter, and you sigh, and turn around and go home, and eat a bag of Fritos.

Back in the day, though, my proud, thick head of rich brown hair, with its gentle waves and interesting cowlicks, billowed in the wind like the banner of a triumphant army. Actually, "back in the day" is a perfectly accurate description. A day. A solitary day it did that. Most other days that banner was under assault by my father and his dark legion of tonsorial berserkers. I fought a constant, retreating, defensive action against this barrage of barbers, all of whom had the word "stylist" printed on their shop windows, which was about as textbook a definition of "irony" as I have ever seen.

My first haircut, I am told, occurred when I turned six months old. I was born bald, or nearly so, and my father waited impatiently through the months for the mousey down on my head to develop into a patch just thick enough to take the clippers to. My mother had entertained notions of letting my hair grow shoulder length, the way people used to do in generations past. I have seen pictures of my older male cousins at age 2, with long wavy hair and wearing some sort of communion dress-like thing. These were two guys who grew up to play football and enter body-building contests.

But, this was 1959, and my dad was determined his first born son would have a manly appearance (never mind that like every other 6 month old, I already looked like a retired Trappist monk), so my little baby hair was buzzed off. He got to take his son to the corner barbershop, and watch while his little nipper was propped up in the chair, swaddled with a barber's smock, and terrorized by a large, buzzing electrical shear.

That set the pace for the next 6 or 7 years. Every six months, I was taken to the barbershop, kicking and screaming, and whatever amount of hair I'd managed to accrue was forcibly taken from me. It was a regularly scheduled tonsorial mugging.

One day in my second grade year, I saw a kid with a hairstyle I'd never seen before. He had a nearly bald head, except for two inch bangs. I followed him around during recess, committing to memory every detail of his scalp, till he threatened to go to the safety patrol. When barber time came round again, I suggested this style to my father as a fair compromise--he got 95% shaved head, I got 3% hair. I left 2% for margin of error. To my utter surprise, dad agreed to it. The barber said this style was called The Princeton, but looking back on my Appalachian childhood, it's clear this style was about as Ivy League as a turkey call. Anyway, I had won an important battle. The war was still far from over, but I had established a beachhead (or rather, forehead) of hair.

But there the march of my column stalled. Over the next few years I was bogged down in the mud of either The Princeton, or the Buzz. My hair grew very fast, and unevenly for some reason, so in between haircuts my head usually looked like it had been grazed by goats. It seemed to me dad kept a team of barbers on retainer, in case a patch of hair got loose and threatened to touch my ears. Once I actually asked for a Crew Cut, also know as the Flattop, and that request was cheerfully granted. When you have been a prisoner for a long time, captivity begins to be important to you.

The Flattop was actually a move in solidarity with John Greene, my best friend during my sixth-grade year, my blood-brother in fact (we'd actually cut our thumbs and mixed blood--the Indian way, according to our Cub Scout literature--this was long before such actions would produce hysteria in both the Medical and Overprotective Mom professions). His father had forced a flattop on him, and to make him feel better I decided to get one too. Now it was sort of a greasy, bristly badge of courage, to have a stupid looking head. We were blood-brothers in arms and Brycream, instead of being two hapless boys defined by the unreasonable control exerted by their fathers-- sample from conversation with my father an hour before every hair appointment for over ten years--

Me: "But it's MY hair!"

Dad: No, it's MY hair. It's mine until you are 18. After that you wear it down to your ass for all I care, but till you turn 18--if I let you live that long-- it's MINE!"

For a short while during that same year, my father decided he could save money by cutting our hair himself--by this time my younger brothers were in the same fix as I. There was nothing I could to save them. He must have figured that he could make his sons look like retards as well as any professional, so why not save all that money? He invested in some cruel-looking barbering tools that he ordered from a catalogue that featured the Marqus de Sade on the cover.

On barbering night, he set up a stool in the basement, laid out his instruments on a tray like a surgeon, and went to work. I was the oldest of my brothers--the Abbe Ferrara of this dungeon--and was already broken. I sat passively on the stool while dad clipped and buzzed away. I took myself away, to a happy place where the sun shone on a field of long, tall curly grass, while I ran free and easy, my Jim Morrison-like hair billowing behind me in the Pepsi-scented breeze. Of course, I was snapped back to reality when the clippers went silent and my father held a hand-mirror up to my face, and an inmate from a French tropical prison stared back at me in the reflection.

My brothers, Barry and Erich, being younger and more nimble, weren't as broken and reservation-bound as I'd become. They weren't about to sit on that stool and let dad do to them what he'd just done to me. They had wild and untamed spirits. They began to run--stampede, really--around the basement, whooping and yelping, hoping that by amping up some top shelf chaos, they might be able to escape in the confusion-- but it's hard to create a really good stampede when there are only two of you, and after a minimum of effort, my dad caught Barry by the arm, and pulled him in.

Barry struggled, but was no match for our powerfully built, 6'3" father. Dad had decided Barry would never be broken to the stool as I'd been, so he pinned him between his knees, like a farmer pins a sheep he is about to shear, and went to work. Ten seconds later, he released my wriggling, bleating brother, who ran up from the basement and out the backdoor, and was soon seen peacefully grazing in the yard.

My father turned next to Erich. Cornered, my baby brother's "fight or flight" reflex kicked in. With a bellow, he charged, his little four year old hands curled into claws. Ten seconds later, he too was nibbling the rich green grasses of our backyard, his head looking as if it were covered with mange.

This terrible dance of death between my father and I finally stopped later that year. Dad had given up cutting our hair himself, when he realized that the time he spent corralling and pinning us down could better be spent doing ANYTHING else. The clippers lay dormant for a short while, till Erich discovered how fun it is to shave cats. Talk about the descending ladder of abuse!

Dad took me to a new barber one particular Saturday morning, a guy who'd opened a shop in a little strip mall just outside the Athens city limits. Looking back, that fact seems somehow ominously significant--outside. city. limits.--a no man's land, where a barber isn't bound the laws of civilized society. Where rusty scissors and chainsaw-strength clippers won't be sidelined by some weasly little safety inspector. I was doomed.

I had also been thinking about something I overheard my dad, who was a cop, say to one of his cop buddies--he said most barbers in Ohio, of a certain age, were ex-offenders. It seems the state's reform school system taught most of its juvenile delinquents the trade of barbering, to help them build a solid, respectable life on the outside. This seemed like madness to me. To put these tools in the hands of dangerous, angry men seemed like a massive failure on the part of the Ohio penal system. To let these same desperadoes ply their trade on an innocent boy who only wanted to see if his hair would curl if left to grow for a few years, seemed like negligence of the first rank.

So, I went to the chair as if I were going to the CHAIR. My father sat by the front picture window, and picked up a hunting magazine, and was lost to the eye signals I was trying to flash to him. The barber whipped the smock around me, and tied it with some serious Boston Strangler torque. I placed my hands along the arm rest, half-expecting to be strapped in. The barber sprayed down my head with water--I thought of the wet sponge they use as an electrical conductor. Then, he went to work.

When I came to, my father was frowning down at me. I was still in the barber chair, but someone had removed the smock. I thought at first I'd done something to make him mad, but then I realized he wasn't frowning at me, he was frowning at my head.

"Oh, boy, " I thought, " this is not good."

My father's frown lifted from my scalp, to the barber.

" Thanks," he said, passing over some money. " Keep the change."

By my dad's expression, I knew this barber had done a particularly horrific job on my scalp. I also knew my dad had just tipped him for it. This was just one of many of life's nuances that puzzled me about the grownup world. I was afraid to look in the mirror, but when the barber spun me around in the chair, I was suddenly confronted with a visage that, years later, I would recognize as "middle-stage radiation therapy."

Dad said nothing as we left the barber shop. I wasn't able to. We sat in the front seat of the car in silence for a while, and then he seemed to make a decision. We sped to the exit lane of the parking lot, but instead of turning left toward home, dad gunned the car across the street, into the parking lot of a little private airport. This was one of those airports that had a pretty small runway, designed for Piper Cubs and planes like that. I believe there was a little flight-training academy in residence. It was an odd place for a landing strip, it seemed to me--one missed approach, and you were landing on the Ohio University campus green.

But dad ushered me into the office at a pretty fast clip, as if we were late for something. He spoke to a man he seemed to know pretty well, and they laughed a bit (I was sure I was the subject of that laughter), and then the guy called me over and had me stand on a large cargo scale. Then he weighed dad. Then some money passed between dad and the guy, and before I could say " I am not an animal!" I was strapped into the backseat of a little four-seater plane, and dad next to me. The man, who was a pilot, or least I hoped so, climbed in front at the controls, started the engine, began to taxi down the runway, and that's how I got to have my first airplane ride.

The man yelled back for us to keep swallowing, that our ears were about to pop, and swallowing would help ease the pain. It didn't. Or maybe I didn't follow the proper swallowing procedures, but either way it hurt like hell for a little while. Then it subsided, and as we leveled off, I realized that hideous as I looked right then, I could very well be the coolest kid in Athens County. At least I was higher than any kid in the county, if you didn't count the hippies on campus.

We took a long lazy flight all over the county. My dad was grinning--he'd always been interested in planes, and as a kid had cut out all sorts of pictures of aircraft and pasted them into a scrapbook. He joined a Civil Air Patrol summer camp as a teen ager, and got to fly around in small military planes for a few months. He'd hoped to be an Air Force pilot in Viet Nam, till I came along and ruined his life's dreams. He pointed out various Athens landmarks to me, and for a while we traced above the brown ribbon of the Hocking River, and passed directly over our house, where I fancied I could see my brothers grazing in the yard.

Then we cruised back to the airstrip, landed, and we both shook the pilot's hand as we stood beside the plane, then got in our car and headed home. After a few minutes in which nothing at all was said, dad finally cleared his throat.

"You...uh... don't have to tell the other kids about this, you know. This can just be our thing. They don't need to know."

And I agreed to keep it as just our secret. This was to be, as he said, "our thing." Two guys, two pals, slipping "the surly bonds of earth" together.

When we got home, I immediately ran in the house and told everybody. The outcry of jealousy was exactly what I was hoping for, the mad, clammering rush of my five siblings to dad's side was as good a feeling as I'd ever experienced. In the week that followed, all five got to have their turn circumnavigating the county from the clouds, but for that moment, I was special. I was first. And it was still, even though I ratted dad out as soon as possible, "our thing." The difference was, of course, my brothers and sisters all landed looking the same as ever. Only I landed still looking like a victim of a grievous head wound.

In the years afterward, dad relented on the hair thing, so much so that by high school I had shoulder-length hair for a short while. But it wasn't for me, ultimately. I began to schedule haircuts on my own volition-- but to this day something in me tightens when I meet a barber. I look for jailhouse tats, for a certain Sweeney Todd glint to the eye. I move around a lot, never settling on one barber for too long. Maybe someday, I'll come across a barbershop with a little airstrip across the street, and if I do, I will let the barber do his worst to the dwindling stock of hair I have left, and maybe afterward, I will reward myself with a nice little flight over the Athens county of my baldheaded childhood.

Little League

2010-02-24T17:05:00.002-05:00

Found this while searching through my email for something else...sent it to a professor of mine...it was in response to a question about lessons learned when young, I think...

When I was ten, I was the starting centerfielder for the Athens Medics, a Little League team that was the most amazing team anyone had seen in that town in a long time--certainly more successful than the Ohio University sports teams were in the late sixties. We were undefeated for the three years I was on the team, though I had very little to do with our success during the first two.

I first joined the team when I was eight. It was supposed to be the last year of PeeWee baseball, but you could take a test and if you were skilled enough, you could be drafted up to the next level. You had to score 50% to be eligible for the draft, and the scoring was, as I recall, pretty subjective. They watched you hit, throw, run, slide, and catch, and gave numerical scores. I scored 51%, but I’ve always suspected that I got a break due to the fact that several of the judges were my father’s friends.

Anyway, I was drafted by the Medics, and I was thrilled. They were the Yankees of the Little League in Athens. The coach was a decent, religious man who never yelled, never allowed us to yell, and who drilled us constantly, teaching skills patiently, holding practices much more often than other coaches did. The team had a few ringers on it—a fireballing lefty who was the coach’s son, who was taller then me by half. I idolized this kid, who was three years older than me and seemed much, much older. He was a nice guy, who didn’t abuse the “rookies” like some kids did. His cousin, though, another lefthanded pitcher who came from Indiana for the summers to stay with the coach, was another matter. He was an arrogant, aggressive jerk, and no one on the team liked him, though he was talented. He picked on me a little at first, when his uncle wasn’t looking, but soon he just ignored me, completely ignored me, as if I weren’t worthy of his abuse any longer.

For the first two years of my tenure on the team, I was that sub you have to bring in because the rules dictate everyone gets to play. We usually had the games sewed up by the time I was put in the game. I was always stuck in right field, the position of dreamers and misfits, the place where you were least likely to hurt the team. And I always batted last. And I always struck out. Always. A personal victory could be counted if I actually made contact with the ball and fouled it back. But the coach was always supportive, and patient, and seemed to like me. I was a pretty sensitive kid, easily hurt, and after a while dreaded going to the games, because I knew I was going to fail, and my jock dad would be disappointed.

In the spring of my last year, something changed. I had a growth spurt, and my eye/hand coordination improved dramatically. My father tells me he immediately noticed something was different the first day he and I played catch that spring. I started throwing the ball overhand, instead of the sidearm style most often employed by weaker kids. I could also, all of a sudden, really fire the ball, with a lot of mustard on it. And I caught everything that was thrown my way. I didn’t seem to be afraid of the ball anymore, and most importantly, I was swinging the bat with authority, and made contact.

When practices began, the coach too noticed I was a different player than the timid boy of the previous year. He tried me out at third base, and when I took my first grounder and threw it across the diamond to the first baseman, it sailed five feet over his head and into the far dugout. The coach laughed and said, “ Been throwing with your dad, huh?” My dad was 6’3”.

By the time the season began, I was the starting centerfielder, because I had the strongest arm on the team. I also would play third base when our regular kid was out. I batted sixth, and ended the season with a .502 batting average, and most importantly to me, was the only kid on the team to never strike out all season.

The coach awarded me the Most Improved Player Trophy at the end of season banquet, and put his arm around me, and told the crowd I was an amazing kid, and most hardworking one he’d ever seen. But by the time of the banquet, I never wanted to see him again.

A week before the banquet we were playing the final game of the season, against the second best team. We were undefeated, as were they, and for once we weren’t rolling over the opposing team. Usually we had a 10 run cushion by the final inning (this was before the “mercy rule”), but this game was tight. As I recall, we were leading by one run in the bottom of the seventh inning (the final one in Little League), but the other team was at bat and had a runner on second base with two outs. Unfortunately for the other team, the “everybody plays” rule came into effect for them, and they had to let one of their lowly scrubs bat in this most crucial of moments.

He was a chubby little guy, and as I looked at him standing at the plate, his eyes looked huge, and I could see the fear in them from where I stood covering the third base line. Our coach stood up from the bench, walked halfway to the mound, and began clapping his hands, and repeating to his son, the pitcher. “ It’s OK, Scotty, it’s OK…he’s only a substitute…ONLY A SUBSTITUTE!”

I saw the look in the batters eyes. To this day I can’t describe it accurately. From 40 years away they look hurt, the pressure from a strange grownup, belittling him in front of everyone, his own parents included. I had been that kid for the previous two years. I looked at my coach, and I don’t think I was ever so disillusioned in my life. To think he’d preached these rules about respect and sportsmanship, wouldn’t even let us say, “ Hey batter batter batter” because it was razzing the other team, and we were supposed to be better than that, you don’t razz people, you support your own guys, but here, when the game was on the line, and the chips were down, he stood in front of the world and announced that this little kid was a loser, and nothing to be worried about.

This man used to take me to church with his family, and invited me once to go on a picnic at a local lake with his family. He was a deacon in his church, and a swell guy. And I learned a bitter lesson about people under pressure, how most times the best intentions crumble under adversity. He was a great coach, the best teacher of skills I ever saw, and unwittingly he taught me a lesson about character I’ve never forgotten.

I’d like to be able to tell you the chubby little substitute struck gold, and caught a break and hammered a ball down the left field line, and slide into home for the winning run. That’s the Hollywood ending, the one we want rather than the one we ought to have. No, he struck out on three pitches, the Medics won again, and years later, the substitute could well be writing an essay just like this one, about the time an opposing coach humiliated him in front of the world, and it was that moment that was in his mind right before he chopped up his whole family.

But that’s, as they say, another story. But I will give you a Hollywood ending that’s a true. About fifteen years later, Randy, the jerk from Indiana who used to pick on me, had relocated to Athens permanently, and was playing in a softball league, and got into a violent argument with the umpire, so violent that the umpire was fearful for his safety, and the Athens Police was called to escort Randy from the ballpark, and yours truly, by then one of Athens Finest, got to drag his beer sodden ass off the field and into my cruiser. Life, my dear Dr. Jan, can be sweet sometimes.

The Fatal Glass of Beer 1

2010-02-15T23:09:00.001-05:00

In honor of all the snow we've had--which looks a lot like the snow in this film--I thought I'd post this. I have very fond memories of watching this with my father years ago, and the two of us laughing so hard we couldn't catch our breaths. I seem to remember every movie or TV show I ever laughed at with my dad, which includes all the Pink Panther movies, and Charlie Brown's Halloween show...

Movie Titles With Colons in Them: Bad Idea

2010-02-10T22:46:00.002-05:00

I have never seen a good movie with a colon in the title. Or any punctuation, for that matter, except an apostrophe. It always seems to me that a group of marketers got together in a room and tried to settle on one title, but could only narrow down the possibilities to two, and as a compromise they put a colon in there. Roger Ebert has a list of movie cliches and rules, and that should be in there: Movies with punctuation in the title always suck.

Also sucking is any movie with the producer's name in the title, as in Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon. Or the writer's name.

Our Wedding Dog

2010-02-08T23:22:00.002-05:00

Tonight, I have been sitting in my chair with my little dog curled under my arm, and we have spent a long time looking in each other's eyes, as we have been wont to do for many years. Pepper is 14 years old, a Yorkie/Schnauzer mix, and her formerly brown face is white now, and she spends most of her days drowsing on chairs and couches, or on any convenient lap. She is a stubborn old gal, and if she wants to jump up into my chair, and wriggle and push till she claims half the seat for herself, well, who am I to argue? Such a venerable old lady deserves all that she wants, and mostly what she wants is to be allowed to nap and feel the old clock inside her wind its way down.

So, these days, I let her have her way. She eats when she feels like it, goes outside whenever she asks, and sleeps when and wherever she chooses. She has given great value, our little wedding dog. She deserves our respect, and our love. Those of us who are childless need an outlet for our parenting instincts, I believe, and Pepper is in many ways my first child.

Movie Stars

2010-01-26T12:12:00.004-05:00

Excellent article on the nature of stardom...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/100-years-of-movie-stars-19101929-1876290.html

10 Addictive Bad Movies

2010-01-25T07:16:00.002-05:00

This is a somewhat different list--it reveals more about you than listing your favorite movies--you must list 10 films that, whenever you flip channels and come across them, you have to stop and watch them. Very often these movies aren't Oscar caliber--(who really wants to watch The Piano ever again, anyway?)--but run-of-the-mill, or even, BAD movies...and tell us why they are addictive...

1. Demolition Man--Stallone, Snipes, Bullock--I can't help it, I am powerless before this movie...

2. Oscar--Stallone (again), an attempt at a 30's style screwball comedy, and Tim Curry in his second campiest role...add these together and you have 90 minutes you'll never get back--every damn time it's on...

3. That Thing You Do!--I have been threatened with death if I ever so much as pause for 2 seconds on this film, while surfing...

4. Starship Troopers--again, powerless before it...

5. The Band Wagon--Fred Astaire, the goddess that is Cyd Charisse--this actually is a pretty good film, until it decides it has spent way too much time on plot and story, and just ends in about 150 musical numbers in a row ...TCM has been playing it a lot lately, and I am down with it every time...I even have it DVR'd, but that doesn't seem to make a difference...

6. Idiocracy--about 1/2 brilliance, 1/2 dreck, but if its a choice between this film and The English Patient on the next channel, you know where my surfing stops...

7. Anything with Elvis in it--what can I say--I am not proud of it...

8. Field of Dreams--this is actually a fine movie, but I have watched it so many times, and will watch it countless more times, that my darling wife actually has a seizure when she sees it on the TV-- it is a male chick flick, I get that--" People will come, Ray, people will most definitely come...and watch this speech over and over and over and over again...and sob every time...

9. Natural Born Killers--below-average acting, Oliver Stone at his most self-indulgent, pretentious and obvious in its ...oh, let's call it "theme"...but, Micky and Mallory, if you are on, I am right there with you, hating myself every .4 second shot length along the way...

10. The Matrix--Before you can say anything--NO! It is not a good movie--the acting is either terrible or non-existent, the actors mostly just pose-- the dialogue reads like it was written by a fanboy who had to write an extra-credit project for his remedial english class--the logic of the universe they've created breaks down completely if you let yourself think about it for more than 5 seconds (which is 4 more than it deserves)-- Keanu Reeves-- way too much slow motion-- far more than their fair share of sunglasses ( the next three movies that studio put out had no sunglasses in them at all, because the Matrix took em all...true story--Carrie Ann Moss looks like Keanu Reeve's mother, or at least his hot math hot teacher--Joe Pantoliano--ok, that thing I said about using up all the sunglasses? OK, that wasn't a true story, but consider this: what if it was?--all this stuff is on the negative side. And what's on the positive side, you ask? Well, after some 107 viewings, I've yet to find something, but I will, I promise, just give me a few more years of viewing...

VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes In California Causing Major Slut Spill

2010-01-12T16:43:00.001-05:00

genius

Fairy tale of new York

2009-11-17T02:11:00.001-05:00

My current favorite song...

Dewey's Library

2009-11-14T11:43:00.002-05:00

My guinea pig, Dewey, has been tearing through a lot of books lately. Literally. Or maybe, literarily. His cage is the typical mesh kind, with a door in the center, and I always leave this door open. Guinea pigs, unlike hamsters and other rodents, aren't very curious about new places (much like me), and tend to stay in the cage. When one of us walks by, he'll come to the opening and lean out, looking for a scratch and a snack (though not in that order, I'm sure). Last week, I got the idea to stack some books outside the cage, under the door, so that it lies straight out, like a diving board. Dewey treats this like a porch, and from time to time he leaves the cage and hangs out there. I noticed he was trying to nibble through the wire at the top book, so I made sure it was one I didn't care about.

He is currently chewing his way through Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. He is halfway through chapter three right now, and reports that it is hard to put down.

The News From Mt. HIlligan

2009-11-01T23:26:00.003-05:00

I did a gig for my friend Don Ervin, who put together a sort of Prairie Home Companion stage show for the Circleville Pumpkin Show a few weeks ago. He's always liked my impression of Garrison Keillor, so he asked if I would do a southern Ohio News from Lake Wobegone segment, so I did, and changed it from Lake Wobegone to Mt. Hilligan. The following is my original script, which I departed from quite a bit when I performed it...

Well, it’s been a quiet week in Mt. Hilligan, my hometown, SSE of here, just past the second holler on your left but one, right on the edge of the shadows of the foothills of the mighty Appalachians. The weather was warm all week, just tipping up into the 60s, and sunny, and if you weren’t careful, you stepped outside and thought somehow you’d missed winter entirely, and it was spring, and you feel so grateful that winter hadn’t even laid a glove on you, that it was now the beginning of 6 months of warmth and sunshine and baseball and swimming and picnics and shorts and girls wearing shorts and then you notice the leaves are orange and yellow, and that the sunshine is somehow a little thinner you remember it being in spring, and you realize it’s autumn, and you’ve got six months of dying and death and bone-chilling misery to endure before trudging your way to the garden and making those long straight rows in the field that carries the sweet smell of manure and compost, and dropping into those rows the little teardrop shaped seeds of pumpkins.

My mother, back home, is getting ready for Halloween. Last Saturday, she called over some of the grandkids to help her carve pumpkins, and make great black and orange construction paper chains to string around the tops of the walls of the front room, and she spurs them on with candy, a great bowl of assorted chocolate bars and taffies and candy corn, and by the end of the day they were richoceting off the walls with sugar buzzes, and when they reached peak energy mode, she called my sister over to come and get the kids. My sister would have to spend the rest of the evening dealing with her little sugar-fueled dervishes, while mom would relax in her quiet house, mentally checking off an item from a long list she keeps in her brain—“things to do to get even” for the hell we all put her through over the years. It’s a mother’s curse, and we heard it all our young lives. “ Just wait till you have kids one day!” “ I hope someday your child turns out to be just like you, and then you will come to me on your knees begging me to forgive you for all the awful things you’ve done to me and maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”

I am the oldest of 6 kids, all born within nine years of each other. Our mother spent her entire 20s pregnant, and gave birth by natural means to all of us, and as she is fond of reminding us, all 6 were born with unusually large heads, especially me. She mostly brings this up when she wants something out of me. “ I carried your squirming little butt for 9 months, and when you were born your head was so big…” and I stop her there, because the visual is too terrible to have in your head. I will do anything she asks me to do, to stop her from finishing that thought.

Halloween is my mom’s favorite holiday, even more than Christmas. She loved dressing us up in costumes she made herself, even though we hated these costumes, because they were mostly just household items and articles of clothing that she’d cobbled together at the last minute. Money was tight in those days, with 6 hungry kids and a pretty small income, so it was necessary to find costumes from the closet. You’d think this would be a fun thing to do, to use imagination and creativity to make something like that. But you’d be wrong. Imagination, at least where Halloween costumes were concerned, was not my mother’s strong suit. And with six kids, she usually ran out of ideas by the 4^th and 5^th kid. For them, she’d move into the realm of the surreal—my youngest brother Erich would be costumed as my next youngest brother Barry—she’d give him some of Barry’s old clothes, and stick a pair of his older glasses on his nose. The two youngest sisters, who were called the Irish twins, because they were born 9 months and 10 minutes apart, fared even worse. She would bundle them in blankets, which she called swaddling clothes, and told them they were each the baby Jesus. They were too young to see how stupid this was, but I saw it as my duty to point this out. “ Baby Jesus wasn’t a twin! And besides, he’s not scary. This is Halloween, remember?!” To which my mother would reply, “ I’d find it pretty scary to have 2 baby Jesus’s come up on my porch. Now shut up and get ready”

My costumes were uniformly lame, all through my childhood. I had a big imagination, and huge love for the old horror movies from the Chiller Theatre days. I saw myself as the Wolfman, or the Mummy, and plotted out elaborate costume ideas, but when push came to shove, there was no money to buy the necessary items, so I had to make do with mom’s ideas. One year, she made me wear a brown corduroy winter coat, and a pair of white long johns, and she said I was a gorilla. I tried to point out that I had never seen a gorilla wearing long johns, or corduroy, but she had already moved on my sister, who was wearing a long flannel nightgown and was supposed to go out as a sleepwalker.

The last year I let her design my Halloween getup was the year of my father’s knee surgery. She made him take off the ace bandage that was wrapped around his knee, and she wound it around my head (even though it was still blood-stained from his leaking surgical scar), stuck a baseball cap on top, a pair of sunglasses over my eyes, and said I was the Invisible Man. Oh, and I still had to wear the corduroy coat. That year, my brother Barry had to go out as the Wolfman, which just meant she put a ski mask over his head.

I remember making the rounds of the rural route we lived on, feeling distinctly embarrassed about it all. This was a long road, and the houses weren’t very close to each other. This was also the 1960s, before parents became overly protective of their little trick or treaters. Maybe this was before they HAD to be. But we were turned loose to fend for ourselves, and because the journey in the dark for candy was so long, kids met up along the way and essentially formed gangs in between houses. It was humiliating to see all the great store-bought costumes—ghouls and Frankensteins, and princesses and such—some kids just wore their own stuff, Pop Warner football players would wear their uniforms and shoulder pads. One kid just went as a Cub Scout—we knew that money-wise, his family was in the same boat as ours.

I remember being invited into people’s houses back then—they would be having some little Halloween get-together, and when we rang the doorbell, they would invite us in and make us sing for our supper. We had stand there in a line, and step forward, turn around, and let them guess what we were. Some like the football player and Cub Scout, were no-brainers—but when it came to me, they were puzzled. They were looking for a common theme in the corduroy coat and the long johns, and were drawing a blank.

“ Are you a hobo? “ No ma’am” “ A…sleepwalker?” “ No, that’s my sister over there.” “ are you…” and then they would trail off, their imaginations grinding to a halt. “ I’m a gorilla.” Then the long pause, followed by a general noise of “ Of course! Why didn’t I see that? What was I thinking! The long johns threw me off.” The reward for this humiliation was usually extra candy, and maybe some pennies for UNICEF, which I am ashamed to say I never forwarded to the UN. If anyone from the UN is out there tonight, I apologize, and I’ll be sending you a check for the whole amount sometime in the near future.

Maybe the best Halloween was the scariest one. One year a guy in one of the houses along the rural route dropped apples in our sacks, and our mother, on going through them later, singled them out for inspection. Usually, she went through our sack, ostensibly for a safety check, but mostly to pick out her favorite candies for herself. She was a kind of mob boss, when you think about it—we had to kick up a percentage of our earnings, otherwise we didn’t get to keep any of it. Pretty early on we smartened up, and rat-holed the best stuff in our pockets before coming through the door.

But these apples looked funny to her. She got a knife from the kitchen, and cut the apples into sections, and found they were full of needles. She shrieked, as I recall, and ran to the phone and called my dad. He was a policeman, and was on duty, and the dispatcher passed along the message that he needed to come home immediately. He was there, it seems to me now, in 2 minutes. She showed him the apples, and I remember he went white, and then turned a sort of purple. It was a pretty cool effect, one I would have been proud to emulate as my Halloween costume next year. He came to me and squatted down, and spoke very quietly. He chose me of the 6 of us not necessarily because I was the oldest, but because I had total recall, or so my parents thought. I was forever correcting their stories at get-togethers, fixing the facts when it seemed they’d exaggerated too much. It didn’t make me very popular with them at the time, but it was useful now.

“Who gave you apples along the route? Do you remember the house?”

“ We got apples from a couple different houses”

“ Who were there,” my dad said, staring deep into my eyes. It felt like hypnosis.

I told him all the houses, and we knew the people in all but one. That one was a guy I never saw before. I said he was real old, which to a boy my age meant anywhere from 29-99. My dad said come with me, and I went out into his cruiser, and we drove along the route till we came to the house. “ Is this it?” Yes. I was getting a little scared. By this time a second cruiser showed up, and the cop got out and with my dad, walked up to the man’s porch. They knocked on his door, and the man answered. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but both cops went inside. They came out about 3 minutes later, and the guy looked distinctly different than when he’d answered the door. His clothes were disheveled, his hair wild, and there were some lumps on his face that I could see very clearly as dad and the other cop dragged the guy to the other cruiser.

Dad came back to our cruiser, and I asked him “ What happened?” and he said, “ We arrested him” “ Did he do it on purpose? The needles” My dad frowned then, and looked over at me. “ Some people, “ he said, “ aren’t really all there. They aren’t good people like you and me. They probably can’t help it, but they are bad all the same. That’s why I have a job.”

While it was scary, it was the wrong kind of scary, but there was another part of it that was cool. My dad had kicked somebody’s ass on Halloween—for me! I started thinking of other ways for him to do it, for other holidays. At Easter, he could run interference for me during the Easter egg hunt, knocking down all the other kids who were trying to get my eggs. At Christmas, he could hold Santa’s sleigh at gunpoint till me and my siblings could rifle through the big pack for all the choice toys. This whole policeman for a dad could work out pretty good, if I played my cards right. Usually, it was not a good thing…his knowledge of police interrogation techniques usually had my brothers and I folding under questioning whenever a lamp got broken. He and mom were pretty good at running the good cop/bad cop routine as well. Once they separated Barry and me in different rooms, and each were telling their suspect “ Your brother is selling you out right now, in the next bedroom. Are you sure you won’t come clean?”

But even though it marked a sort of end of innocence, that was a great Halloween. My mom, recovered from her frenzy, had us all bathed, and combed and lined up on the couch, where we all feel asleep almost at the same moment, 6 crashes from a sugar high all hitting at once. There is a picture of us all on that couch, on that night, sleeping together in a tangle like a litter of puppies, and later, when dad came home, they carried us to bed, where, at least in my case, my dreams were full of candy and pixie sticks, and copper pennies, and of a pair of people who watched over us, and doted on us, and were as fierce in their protection of us as they were gentle in their love for us.

And that’s the news from Mt. Hilligan, where the folks there like to say: If you can’t get it here, you can probably make do without it.

Shakespeare: "Macbeth" (Judi Dench) - sleepwalking scene

2009-08-30T22:36:00.001-04:00

Dame Judi, kicking ass and taking names in the scene of her lifetime...the moment beginning at 4:55 is bone chilling...

CATcerto. ENTIRE PERFORMANCE. Mindaugas Piecaitis, Nora The Piano Cat

2009-08-28T00:01:00.001-04:00

This cat, let's be honest here, is terrible at the piano...no sense of tempo, touch or emotion--just a cold, technically weak pawing at the ivories...the good news, though, is that she's better then Joan Osborne...

Feeling Blue ...

2009-08-25T00:00:00.002-04:00

Found this letter in my desk tonight:

My Dear Nephew, November 30, 2004

Have a very happy birthday!

I am sorry I haven’t got a nice birthday card for you but I’ve been thinking about you a lot. One of my friends (from our days at Anchor Hocking) visited me this afternoon, and I told her about our (you & I) trips to the country to see the cows. She thought that was nice and cute. Then I bragged about you and your acting and I showed the snapshot of your dad and his 6 children. Oh yes I bragged about your wife too. So do you suppose she got it that I think a lot of you & Dani? I forgot to tell her how I got our shift foreman to let me go to the hospital to see my first nephew. That was a great day for your Grandma Mann and I. We loved you then & that love just keeps on going.

Well, Mark I hope you will have a great day.

Love you

Aunt Bern

Bern (short for Bernice) has Alzheimers Disease, and lives in an assisted living facility now. She no longer remembers me--though my sister, who works there, said Bern was in her office and saw a picture of our family, and put her finger on my face and held it there for a while. I haven't been able to bring myself to visit her yet, though I think I will tomorrow.

Jeff Black "Easy on Me" live @ Evening Muse 11.17.07

2009-08-15T04:35:00.001-04:00

Jeff Black is my latest musical crush...

BAN BAN CALIBAN

2009-08-08T10:38:00.003-04:00

Been a while since I written for this blog, but I promise more attention will be paid.

There are three performances left of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which I am playing Caliban. The production has run for five long weekends now, and I think everyone is a little over it. During The Three Musketeers, I told my pals in the cast, on the final weekend, that I had “run out of handsome”, meaning I no longer had the oomph to do all the things it took to transform me from the middle-aged, sedentary creature I am to the active, dashing, mysterious Athos. It felt like I’d pitched the performance to run for four weeks, and that last week was a slog to the finish. Couldn’t wait for it to end, though I miss the entertaining folk who made up the company.

Now I am experiencing the same thing with The Tempest. I am running out of monster. Instead of looking forward to getting to the theatre and slogging on all that makeup—which was fun at first—and getting to say all those gorgeous lines, I find myself daily checking the weather reports and praying for rain (this is an outdoor production).

So, I am thinking, in an attempt to jumpstart my enthusiasm, I will jot a few things down about the process of becoming Caliban, the man-monster.

This is a part I’ve always wanted to play, and can now cross it off my list. I’d played Prospero 17 years before, on the same stage, and had failed at it. I was too young at the time, 33, and just didn’t get the character into my bones. The experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and I swore I would never do the play again, unless I was Caliban. The company had produced a couple other versions of the play since then, but I wasn’t interested.

Cut to this spring. My plan was to audition for The Tempest only, and to, in the parlance of the local theatre “suicide it”, meaning I would accept only the role of Caliban. It’s called “suicide”, because you run the risk of pissing off the casting people, by taking the decision out of their hands—I nearly always do it though, because deep down I know that I am only energized by playing the roles I WANT to play. Not for me the buzz of acting just to act. I have never loved doing it enough to do a role I didn’t like.

So anyway, I also listed The Three Musketeers, and suicided it for the roles of Athos and Cardinal Richeleiu, but figured that was going to be impossible. As the rehearsals would run through April and May, my schedule at the school where I work would make it difficult to cast me, because I had many conflicts, and would miss all but about 15 days of rehearsal (last year, in the production of Macbeth, I could only give them 10 days for the role of Macduff). When John Kuhn called me, offering me both Athos and Caliban, I was surprised, but loved the idea of a challenge, playing 2 very physical roles back to back, outdoors in the teeth of the summer.

I am an outside/in actor, always have been, though as the years go by the two directions have gotten closer together. But usually, I need to know how I am going to look very early on. I didn’t want to play a native islander, as is the vogue over the last 20 years. I consider it a very hackneyed approach, to treat the story as if it’s a tale of European conquest of the hapless natives of the New World. I wanted to be a monster, green and scaly and fantastical. Pam Hill, the director, trusted me enough with the character to let me work it out with the costume designer how I would look. This is a positive move, in character with how I think theatre should be as regards costuming. I hate being a meat puppet, forced to wear whatever a costumer has decided I would wear. Especially in Shakespeare. I can pretty much guarantee the costumer hasn’t researched the role as much as me in any show I do, so why shouldn’t I have a say in what I feel my character requires in costuming? I also had misgivings about this costumer in the past—she costumed the 12^th Night I was in a few years back, and had no grasp of the character or the play, it seemed to me. I was Malvolio, and in the scene where he wears yellow stockings, she costumed me in a terrific 1920s era suit—but a yellow suit. So, the reveal of the yellow stockings produced a very understandable “so?” from all concerned. The reason for the yellow suit? She had one in stock, and thought it looked good. Nothing about character. She just wanted that suit walking around on stage. Anyway…

I began sending her tons of pics of creatures and animals and other Calibans, to see what we could cobble together. She liked one pic of a Caliban who wore a unitard, and asked if I was amenable, and I said I was. When it came, it was so hot, I told her I could not wear it for 5 weekends of shows in the summer heat. Anyway, by this time, I was sort of landing on an idea for a look—a sort of hybrid of the narrator/singers from Marat/Sade, and pics of island lepers I’d seen on the interwebs. I also liked the idea of a kind of look from The Fly, in which the character was half man, half fly. Caliban is the son of a witch and a demon—sort of like the Cheneys. So the costumer cut off the long sleeves and one of the legs, and painted the remaining one to look like reptile scales. She also put scales on the chest.

She gave me a bunch of ratty cheesecloth and rope, and a pair of ripped breeches and a torn shirt, and left me to do the rest. I have a set of long rubber finger nails that I applied ( “and I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts”, and I ripped some of the cheesecloth into strips and wrapped them around my hands. Later in the run, I began taping down the ring finger of my right hand, hiding it under the cheesecloth, as if Caliban had lost a finger to leprosy. I used the rest of the cheesecloth to make a turban and a jaw sling that stretched over my head, and under my chin, so I resembled the leper look I’d seen in pictures.

I was also beginning to come round to the view that Caliban was a native islander, albeit one seen through the eyes of an Elizabethan, and backstoried with a demonic, fantasical heritage. His reactions are those of a child brain, a sort of “boy raised by wolves” kind of approach. He had no words to express himself until taught by Prospero and Miranda, and he is certainly a ‘new soul” in his lack of wisdom and foresight. But he is a natural, and survived all those years without his mother by a native cunning and an ear always attuned to the natural earth. And he is enslaved by Prospero, after his failure to control his impulses when it came to the nubile Miranda. Even though this was beginning to inform my choices (GOD, I hate that word “inform” as it used in theatre—so non-specific, so pseudo-intellectual—I heard Jessica Simpson talk about something that informed her choices as Daisy Duke—AAUUGH!”)—I still believed he is more than just a native islander. The language is specific in the play as regards his heritage, and I was beginning to see a marriage of both approaches.

The last addition of makeup was to apply several different shades of green to the exposed part of my body, which takes about an hour all told, and then I streaked it, like veins, with all the colors that appear on the set—reds, blues, oranges, yellows, purples—so he might be a chameleon, if he needs to be, and blend in. For my face, I tried to make it crude and painted—slashes of black for a unibrow and nose bridge, slashes of red around the mouth (we don’t want to imagine what it was he was eating before his line ( “I must eat my dinner”).

Throughout the run, as often happens, the performance changed, grew more detailed within the scenes, and yet simpler. I always remember reading that Sir John Geilgud said a professional actor learns to simplify his performance in a long run, learning how to conserve energy while still producing the same effects. I felt Caliban was too strong and dark in the first scene and needed something to established that he was in fact one of the comic characters, so about 7 performances in I hit upon a bit of business where I try to summon up a curse on Prospero (“ All the charms of Sycorax/toads, beetles, bats light on you!”) and finish with a conjure man gesture toward him, and after a beat during which nothing happens, I repeat the gesture, then give up. This always got a laugh, and set me up for the rest of the show.

The difficulty I had was with the drunkenness. I resisted the director’s insistence that I be more inebriated, because I didn’t want it detracting from the verse. But I found a way to do it eventually, though I confess I always tried to drop a lot of the drunkenness during “The Isle is full of noises” speech, because it just to beautiful to gabble away. I found if I said it simpler, with wonder and a longing for life before the Europeans, it helped with the delivery of it. Made it unfussy, more direct, less singsongy. And I hope, moving, if one can be moved by such a beast.

Physically, the long nails informed (that word again) my movements—I kept them moving, twisting, as if they had a life of their own. I turned one leg inward to give him a sloping walk, a shuffle. Watching my guinea pig gave me the idea of twitching and popping up in surprise or fear. I tried to flinch each time someone tried to touch me. The final physical touch was to create a sense of a “mountainous” throughline—by that I mean in the early scenes I bow and scrape low when I am browbeaten by Prospero, and when I am terrified of the two drunken sots who find me. I fall backward and expose my belly to Stephano when he first comes over (later in the show, when I am nearly passed out with drink, Stephano tickles my belly and I shake a leg like a dog). As his plot to murder Prospero takes hold with his companions, I gave Caliban a taller aspect, nearly as upright as the other two scene partners. Then when his plot begins to unravel, he drops low again, finally all the way to the floor in the final scene, when he is towered over by his finely dressed master. So the shape of the physical performance, if graphed, would look like a single peak of a mountain.

So this was the technical underpinning of the performance. The next post will be a scene by scene description of Caliban’s time on stage. Oh boy, you are all thinking!

Below are some of the pics I used in coming up with my Caliban look...

Sarah Palin

2009-07-10T14:21:00.005-04:00

Just read Todd Purdom's piece in Vanity Fair on Sarah Palin, and while no one despises that woman more than I (even while ashamedly admitting I find her pretty damn hot), I have to say I found the article to be about 50% hatchet job. Which makes it 100% invalid, for me.

There are several examples where he falls back on an old journalistic technique of using the word "many" which is vague and can be misleading. He'll say things like (not a direct quote) " ...which had many people in Alaska wondering why?" My first response is, really? Many? You took out a poll? What are the numbers, please." Even the word "some" --another journalistic chestnut-- is inaccurate and vague. Often it is the opinion of the writer himself, but newspaper style calls for him not to include himself in the story, so he falls back things like " In a move that has some people questioning his sanity..." Some? Who please? If it was relevant to mention, then the names of the sanity questioners are relevant too.

The use of "many" is too open to interpretation, and I don't trust political writers to appreciate the difference. 3 people in 100 is not many when talking about people who cheat on their taxes. 3 people in 100 who are child molesters living on my block is too fucking many!

He often criticizes Palin for her sometimes capricious personality, but show me the politician who isn't narcissistic, self-important, and petty when they can get away with it. Lyndon Johnson was notoriously so--hell, even Lincoln knew how to screw over a person for an advantage. All politicians think the world revolves around them. They used to say, walk into the Senate Chamber and say "Excuse me, Mr. President?" and 100 heads will turn.

There is a peculiar anti-intellectualism in America which is, frankly, getting old. "He's got a lot of book learnin', but he ain't got a lick of common sense." Of course the people who say this don't read, and consider themselves chock full of common sense. Sarah Palin is locked into this feeling...er, feelin'. She seems rather proud of what she doesn't know. The new conservative columnist for the NY Times, Ross Douthat, draws the distinction between Obama and Palin:

"Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard."

Sarah Palin has always been a party of one--the Palin Party. Her history of rising through Alaska state politics on the backs for former mentors and friends is a local legend up there. Many people say so. :)

Purdum suggests she is vaguely conservative,but an Alaskan conservative is a different animal. Up there, they say a liberal is someone who owns a .357 Magnum or smaller. Her core beliefs are whatever propels her forward.

Really? And what politician doesn't reserve the right to change his or her opinion when faced with the possibility of electoral defeat? Can you say the name of that great Democratic Senator, Arlen Specter, perchance?

Anyway, as I say, I have always considered Palin a joke. She is no more qualified to be President than I am. And I, at least, have read a book. And a magazine. And a paper. And can name them. But just because she can't doesn't mean Vanity Fair can just hatchet her at will. Or...does it?

backstage habits

2009-07-10T07:12:00.003-04:00

I have always found the backstage habits of actors fascinating, though I gotta say, much less so these days than when I first started out. These days, the thing I see most of the time are actors walking around or sitting with their Blackberries in hand, intent on whatever it is they are watching or reading. Boring. The level of conversation backstage has dwindled, to my old fogey way of thinking--the amount too. Often these days, there will be a group of actors sitting around, but all are looking down at their phones--if you didn't see the devices in their hands, you'd think by their attitudes that they were at a prayer meeting--heads bowed, hands in laps, lips moving silently. I have even seen them text each other while sitting there--no joke! I suppose that could be useful if you are pissed at someone " Dude--you are sitting nxt 2 th biggest ASS in ths cast!"

Young actors are particularly involved with their phones in a deeply profound way. I watch them come off stage and run to their dressing areas and pick up their phones first thing, even before looking in a mirror (surely the oldest actor habit since the invention of the mirror). I wanna ask--because I am a sarcastic bastard about these things--" Are you a pediatrician? Is there an emergency C-section you may have to rush off to perform at any moment?" Because, honestly, I can't think of any other reason for rushing to your phone in the middle of a show.

I know this dates me, but I don't care. I have always seen the theatre as a bubble, as an escape from the world. Once I show up, around 6:30 for an 8pm curtain, the world can't touch me. If one of my parents dies, I don't wanna know about it till after curtain call. My time there is spent getting ready, getting my head in the performance, silently running lines to myself, or quietly with my scene partners, working on makeup and costume issues, and trying to keep the engine running hot. I don't want to be taken out of that place. I can chat a little with cast members, but always with an ear cocked toward the stage, listening to scenes I am not in, or listening to myself in my head as I go over my next entrance. And if I see another actor who looks like he or she are doing the same thing, I don't butt in to chat. I leave them to their preparations. I am not saying my method is right for everyone, but I can't imagine texting my friends between scenes, or watching videos. It would interrupt the flow of continuity I need to keep things going. And, I gotta say, those actors who I do see texting between scenes?--their performances could probably benefit from a little more attention to the internal intangibles and keeping the world waiting at the door.

My backstage process has evolved over the years. I used to be very chatty, prided myself on being able to be social in the wings, then turn it on the moment I walked into the lights. But you know what? Looking back, I wasn't as good then as I am now. These days, I tend to keep to myself backstage. As I said, I try to keep the engine's RPMs running at a consistent level. That's why a part like Caliban in The Tempest (which I am currently performing), who is only in 5 scenes, leaves me exhausted at the end of the evening. Because I am not just working during those five scenes--I have done them over and over again before going out on stage to do them. I pace around, mutter to myself, stretch, run in place, do any number of things to keep hot. My mantra, to anyone who asks, is " I never warm up because I never cool off."

Back in the day, I use to watch older actors knit, or do crosswords. These were time-honored activities designed to keep busy between scenes without being distracted from their performances. Personally, I approve more of knitting, which is a mindless physical activity that doesn't get into your head--crosswords always took me away from the immediate task at hand. And maybe that's what those particular actors need. To each his own. But in any case, the world could not and did not enter, unlike with cell phones. One old school actor I knew when I first started in theatre, used to sit at his dressing table and copy out his all his lines onto a notepad. Every night. We knew not to interrupt him--when he wasn't on stage, he was writing down his lines. It was a mind-numbing thing to contemplate, but it worked for him.

I don't comment on the use of phones backstage. What would be the point? People would respond with patronizing smiles, and think, " What an old stick-in-the-mud (or whatever the latest word would be :) )--doesn't he know the world has changed, and this is how we roll now?"

I get it. But just because everyone does it, doesn't mean it is correct. Or effective. It's like I tell my kids at the high school--" You have 22 hours in the day to talk to your friends and be unfocused and undisciplined and divide your energies--why not try to devote yourself to just one thing for these 2 hours?"

Great Quote from Bernard Levin

2009-07-09T00:58:00.000-04:00

"If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if youo have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise - shy, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that is the long and short of it, if you belive that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blod, if you li low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surly you have a tougue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinkin idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut, tut! for goodness' sake! what the dickens! but me no buts - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare."

The Red Cross

2009-07-07T18:09:00.002-04:00

Today, they threw my blood away. Yes, the Red Cross didn't need my blood.

A few years ago, a doctor mentioned to me that I had the gene for hemochromatosis, which is a blood disorder whose main feature is that iron doesn't get washed out or dissolved or whatever happens to it through the normal course of digestion. It stays in the body, collecting in the joints and, more dangerously, the organs, causing early death and annoyance. And of course, armed with this news, I promptly forgot all about it.

Flash forward to this spring, when a blood test revealed abnormally high levels of iron in my blood. It was a little unnerving. The doc showed me the sheet full of test results, and my eye immediately went past all the digits and incomprehensible abbreviations, to the bold red ink which, in all caps, sirened ALERT! It even had the exclamation point, though really, the red ink was enough for me. Punctuation was a little redundant at that point. I mean, there wasn't much chance there'd be ALERT?, was there? Or ALERT;

So, I was referred to a gastro-enterologist, which is the specialist who, in addition to your guts and pancreas and liver, also handles this hemo thing. I told her I had hemochromatosis, and after weeks of tests, which included a colonoscopy, an Upper GI, and a liver biopsy, she was able to tell me that...I had hemochromatosis.

There is no drug for this thing. It is something that affects mainly people of northern European heritage (thanks mom and dad--couldn't be Italian or Lebanese, couldja?-- you Scots-Irish-German bastards!), and is the most commonly inherited disease of that tribe, according to Dr. Wikipedia. The treatment is medieval--every so often, I go in and they drain me of a few pints of the red stuff, and that's supposed to set things right as rain, for a while. They don't use leeches, though, but that seems to be the only difference. I tried to go in a give blood back when I first saw the ALERT!, but the Red Cross turned me down after testing my blood. They said it would clot in the bag, and that I needed a prescription for them to do a "therapeutic draw."

So that's what I did today. Prescription in hand, I went to the Red Cross center, did a little paperwork, and then they drained me of a pint of my valuable, iron-laden juice. I watched the nurse take the warm bag of blood, and the tube that connected me to it, and carried them to a large trash can covered with HAZ MAT stickers, and dropped them in.

No chance to feel like a hero here. Even though I was doing it for myself, for my own health, I looked forward to getting the blood donor sticker that I could wear around for a day or two, along with my bright red gauze that, seen together, would announce to the world " This man cares about his fellow man--he donates blood!" I saw myself steering conversations around to it at dinners:

" Do you like your steak rare, sir?"

" You bet," I'd say," The rarer the better, gotta replace some of that stuff I donated, ya know."

Or maybe I'd be on the scene of an auto accident, standing there with the other rubberneckers, and the driver would be bleeding from a head wound, and I'd announce, " Too bad I can't give any blood to help this man--it's too soon after my last donation! You have to wait a few months, ya know."

But no sticker for me. I was lucky they even gave me a cookie. They didn't bother to thank me, and why should they, really? I wasn't doing anything for them. In fact, I was interfering with their proper duties, the collection of blood for local hospitals. Every time they have to bleed me, they are taking time out from the heroes who donate for selfless reasons. Those people's blood was going out to help war veterans, pregnant mothers, children in dire need of the lifesaving fluid.

Mine? They didn't need it. Didn't want it. Threw it away in a dumpster, where it will be hauled out, and either incinerated (a sort of dress rehearsal for my cremation), or shipped along with all the other selfish people's blood to a facility in New York, where some day it will suddenly wash up at Jones Beach (a dress rehearsal for my move to New York).

addictive movies...

2009-06-30T15:45:00.002-04:00

I invented this list for FB, and am sort of curious to see how it spreads--or metastasizes, depending on your view of these things.--it reveals more about you than listing your favorite movies--you must list 10 films that, whenever you flip channels and come across them, you have to stop and watch them. Very often these movies aren't Oscar caliber--(who really wants to watch The Piano ever again, anyway?)--but run-of-the-mill, or even, BAD movies...and tell us why they are addictive... 1. Demolition Man--Stallone, Snipes, Bullock--I can't help it, I am powerless before this movie... 2. Oscar--Stallone (again), an attempt at a 30's style screwball comedy, and Tim Curry in his second campiest role...add these together and you have 90 minutes you'll never get back--every damn time it's on... 3. That Thing You Do!--I have been threatened with death if I ever so much as pause for 2 seconds on this film, while surfing... 4. Starship Troopers--again, powerless before it... 5. The Band Wagon--Fred Astaire, the goddess that is Cyd Charisse--this actually is a pretty good film, until it decides it has spent way too much time on plot and story, and just ends in about 150 musical numbers in a row ...TCM has been playing it a lot lately, and I am down with it every time...I even have it DVR'd, but that doesn't seem to make a difference... 6. Idiocracy--about 1/2 brilliance, 1/2 dreck, but if its a choice between this film and The English Patient on the next channel, you know where my surfing stops... 7. Anything with Elvis in it--what can I say--I am not proud of it... 8. Field of Dreams--this is actually a fine movie, but I have watched it so many times, and will watch it countless more times, that my darling wife actually has a seizure when she sees it on the TV-- it is a male chick flick, I get that--" People will come, Ray, people will most definitely come...and watch this speech over and over and over and over again...and sob every time... 9. Natural Born Killers--below-average acting, Oliver Stone at his most self-indulgent, pretentious and obvious in its ...oh, let's call it "theme"...but, Mitch and Micki, if you are on, I am right there with you, hating myself every .4 second shot length along the way... 10. The Matrix--Before you can say anything--NO! It is not a good movie--the acting is either terrible or non-existent, the actors mostly just pose-- the dialogue reads like it was written by a fanboy who had to write an extra-credit project for his remedial english class--the logic of the universe they've created breaks down completely if you let yourself think about it for more than 5 seconds (which is 4 more than it deserves)-- Keanu Reeves-- way too much slow motion-- far more than their fair share of sunglasses ( the next three movies that studio put out had no sunglasses in them at all, because the Matrix took em all...true story--Carrie Ann Moss looks like Keanu Reeve's mother, or at least his hot math hot teacher--Joe Pantoliano--ok, that thing I said about using up all the sunglasses? OK, that wasn't a true story, but consider this: what if it was?--all this stuff is on the negative side. And what's on the positive side, you ask? Well, after some 107 viewings, I've yet to find something, but I will, I promise, just give me a few more years of viewing...

Russell Banks Extended Interview

2009-06-23T06:33:00.001-04:00

Russell Banks, talking about the Lake Placid Film Forum--at 2:20 he talks about Trailer Park...woo hoo!

trailer park #10

2009-06-18T10:50:00.002-04:00

Well, TrailerPark played to a standing "O" at the Lake Placid Film Forum last weekend, and the book's author, Russell Bank, in whose hands the potential future distribution of the project rested, pronounced it worthy, saying ''The morality of the characters and the themes and tone of the book translated to screen''

Nice! The following comes from the co-directors, who evidently have gotten married and created a joint email account:

First of all, to those who came to the premiere in Athens, thank you and I hope you enjoyed the movie. To those who couldn't make it, I'm sure there will be many other opportunities to see the product.

We just got back from the Lake Placid Film Forum where we were lucky enough to screen the film for Russell, as well as some other industry professionals such as Richard Russo and Courtney Hunt and 300 other audience members. Everyone responded really positively and Russell was absolutely thrilled. He is going to do everything he can to help us get into festivals and hopefully get some kind of distribution down the line. We even did a little Q and A and people were asking how we managed to get such a great cast for a student film, so thank you to all for that. We are currently take the summer to re-edit and make some tweaks and changes, but hopefully we should be able to get some DVD's out to everyone in the fall.

In the meantime, follow the blog, keep in touch, and let us know how everyone is doing post Trailerpark.

And I still haven't seen it!!!

De Mayne's Final Lesson (Scaramouche, 1952)

2009-06-18T10:44:00.001-04:00

My favorite Hollywood swordfighter is Mel Ferrer, who moves so cleanly and elegantly--this clip from Scaramouche, in which he fights Stewart Granger, is a great example of swordfighting for the stage/screen...

Sonny and the Red Shoes

2009-06-09T03:43:00.006-04:00

Sonny, napping with Duckie

The other day, while I was mowing grass out back, our Goldie Sonny got one of Dani's shoes and ruined it. He has a thing for little seams--he likes to very delicately chew the straps from her high heels, or the velcro strap from the backs of my ballcaps. It's as if he likes degree of difficulty--he could easily just shred these things, but he prefers close work.

This pair of shoes of Dani's was brand new, she had had worn them maybe once, and she had a couple of new outfits she was eager to wear with them. I put the damaged shoe on her little telephone desk in the kitchen.

As I was in my truck, backing out to head to the park for a show, Dani pulled into the driveway, home from work. I tried to prepare her--" Before you go in the house, I want you to think about the Sonny you miss when you're away on trips. I want you to think how terrible you felt when he was ill that one time. I want you to see that eager-to-please face that's in there right now, so happy to have you home." Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, and I told her what he did. He hasn't done anything like this in a long time, actually, he's gone from being that evil puppy who scored deep gouges in our drywall with his teeth, and who destroyed countless shoes and pillows and teddy bears, to being an adult dog whose main weakness is that he counter-surfs when you aren't looking, and he likes to shred napkins. All in all, an admirable Golden Retriever.

But not the sharpest tool in the shed. He doesn't often think things through. He has to be a good host when you come through the door--when you first walk in, he is there, wagging and making Scooby noises. Then he disappears for a few seconds, and always come right back with something in his mouth, a gift for you, just his way of saying thanks for being you. Usually it is a squeaky toy, or the pitiful remains of a teddy bear he's shredded, or a bone, or whatever he can get his mouth around in a hurry and get back to you. He once brought me one of our kittens, who dangled from his soft mouth in resignation.

Dani told me she steeled herself before entering, remembering it was her fault that she left the shoes near his napping place, so it was really like leaving crack next to an outreach center. She walked through the door, Sonny greeted her with his usual enthusiasm, disappeared, and came back with-- of course-- the other red shoe in his mouth. One might think he was rubbing it in, bringing the undamaged mate to the shoe, but I like to think Sonny is a "glass half-full kind of guy". He was just demonstrating that there was still one perfectly good shoe, so, you know, when you think about it, everybody wins! Dani stood there for a moment, shocked by his stupidity ( none of us should be anymore), then she started laughing, and dropped down and gave him a big hug. So you know, in a way, he was right--everybody wins!

trailer park #9

2009-06-09T03:30:00.002-04:00

This is a short entry--the premiere of the film happened without me, as impossible as that sounds. Difficult for me to imagine anything happening without me, but there it is--my mom and sister Lisa went down, linked up with Lisa's son Nathan and his wife Amy. They saw my dad and his wife there with another couple--my mom said she didn't see him in the film, which is bad--he was more excited about this thing than I was, in all truth. Hope she just missed him--mom would miss me in a movie unless someone pointed me out to her...

I also had a few former and current students attend as well, which was nice. I get reports that I did a good job--but then what else are they gonna say? " Hey, saw that film of yours--you sucked!"

They had posters of each of the principal characters displayed at Memorial Auditorium, where the premiere was held. Here's mine:

Sigh. They move on to the Lake PLacid Film Forum next weekend, where I'll miss that as well. I'll be sweating like a whore in church in Schiller Park, in my wig and doublet and hose and boots, swinging a sword and trying not appear too winded after each fight...

Just Don't Care

2009-06-07T12:43:00.002-04:00

The Tony's? Don't care. I know I should, being a theatre guy, but I don't. Don't know what plays are up for an award, and don't care. Unaware of honorees and presenters, and guess what--don't care. Couldn't even begin to tell you what shows are running in NY at the moment--and--you guessed it--don't care. Who are the biggest Broadway stars these days? Don't know and don't care.

I read the NY Times online each day, except for the arts section. I dunno why, but I never ever do. I stick with the front page, intl. news, and opinion page--the rest doesn't apply to me at all. Don't care.

I don't judge my friends who do care. We all have things we care about. NY theatre just isn't one of them, for me.

But that isn't all. Fashion--don't care. Celebrity news--don't care. Automobiles--don't care. Blood sports--don't care. Plight of the homeless--sorry, don't care. Abortion--not my bidness, don't care. Hockey--don't care. Basketball--don't care. Tennis--please! Home decorating--obviously don't care.

Don't care. You can't make me care. Just don't freakin care.

Caliban Costume

2009-06-06T05:02:00.001-04:00

I just learned I'll be wearing a Spandex body suit as Caliban in next month's The Tempest. Put...the...donut...down...and...back...away...slowly...

Prerelease...

2009-06-06T05:00:00.002-04:00

Conor Hogan, supervising producer of Trailer Park, sends along this leaked version of the film--

http://senduit.com/cac4fe

The Other Paper Arts They barely take time to buckle their swash

2009-06-03T23:43:00.001-04:00

The Other Paper Arts They barely take time to buckle their swash

Shared via AddThis

Medical Fu

2009-06-02T23:59:00.005-04:00

Had a liver biopsy today, and it wasn't fun, though not as bad as I was given to believe. Back in the mid 90s, while undergoing a series of tests that would ultimately reveal inoperable pancreatic cancer, my uncle described his liver biopsy as the most painful thing he'd ever experienced. He swore if they ever wanted another, he'd refuse. Through the years, I have heard other tales of the painful procedure, one woman describing it as more painful than childbirth.

I am here to tell you that it was nothing like the worst pain I have ever felt. In fact, I barely remember the procedure, thanks to the miracle that is called "the twilight drug"... I have always reacted strongly to anesthesia--a little goes a long way for me, and they always have to revive me afterward, but even though they told me it wouldn't be very strong, more of a relaxing kind of thing, I knew I was gonna be sleeping through the whole thing. And I did. Even though the chattiest prep nurse in history ramped up the degree of difficulty--in the brief span before the doctor came, and before she connected up the good drugs, I learned that she is the oldest of 6, put her mom in a home last year, is the most common-sensical member of her family, has a niece who is 18 and pregnant and lazy, has a nephew who is 25 and just quit his job of 4 years so he could continue a two week party streak with his buddies ( Oh, to be young again!)...kinda got in the way of my chi, as I was trying to ease into unconsciousness...fortunately, my unconsciousness skill set is highly developed, and about three seconds after the drug hit my vein I was gone. I woke up in the recovery room, confused at first and thinking that the procedure hadn't happened yet, and then when I discovered the bandage, enormous relief waved over me that I had escaped pain worse than childbirth. I could have taken it, but why? The miracle of modern medicine!!

Tonight though, it feels like a very big guy hauled off and hammered me in the liver. They took three slices of it, and I thought I smelled sauteed onions coming from the next room.

Trailerpark - Official Full Length Trailer HD

2009-06-01T16:13:00.001-04:00

Here is the official trailer to Trailerpark!

Stavros Flatley: Lord Of The Dance - Britain's Got Talent 2009 - The Final

2009-06-01T12:29:00.001-04:00

This has destroyed me--laughing uncontrollably all morning, erasing the anger of a lost day due to rain...

Day off!

2009-06-01T11:13:00.004-04:00

Had a full run last night, before an excellently sized and dispositioned crowd, and played it well. Got lots of laughs, made few mistakes, the fights got much sharper than they had been, and got applause when they were finished.

At long last, a day off. No work, no The Three Musketeers, No The Tempest. Weatherman called for bright sunny skies, 82 degrees, 10% chance of rain. My plans included finishing some landscaping, taking the hounds for a romp in the woods, making a picnic for Dani and me when she gets home from work. All of which I would have done, were it not for the biblical amounts of rain, house rattling thunder, and Jovian bolts of lightening everywhere.

Sonny, our Goldie, ran out for a pee just before the deluge, ran back to the house, swatted on the door, ran past my outstretched hand that held his snack, and into the living room, where he tried to dig himself under the coffee table. He is afraid of thunder. Right now he is under my legs, with paws over his eyes. It's sort of adorable, but I feel for him. And I am a little awed by the thought that he considers me reliable protection against lightening.

Another Damned Rainout!

2009-05-30T23:16:00.003-04:00

I am accepting full responsibility for this mess--before the last three shows, I have looked at my other 2 musketeers, just before going onstage, and said, " It is impossible that we will have rain tonight"--sort of tempting fate, I guess, except Fate can't seem to resist temptation... the first time, we rained out in the beginning of the second act, last night we got a whole show in, but it rained hard a half hour after we finished, and tonight it rained a few scenes into the first act, and we halted, and waited, along with a massive amount of audience members, who hunkered under the massive trees in the park--then the rain passed, and we squeegeed off the stage, and started up again, got through Act One, and began Act Two, then lightening began flashing all around (no rain though), and as we all carry a lot of small lightening rods on our belts, the show was cancelled, almost precisely in the spot it was cancelled opening night. It is forcing our critics to put in some real time to see a show that barely runs 2 hours.

The pic above is Dani and me backstage, during intermission--she is in her wench costume...

Opening NIght, Redux

2009-05-30T15:37:00.006-04:00

Well, as I feared, rain played hell with our opening night. It rained off and on throughout the day, then the skies cleared about an hour before opening, and we were good to go. There was a fundraiser event out in the audience area, called the Tent Dinner, in which a circus tent is erected over the upper portion of the lawn, and a lot of contributers and mucky mucks come for a dinner and auction (I think) and then afterward carry their chairs down to the lower area and watch the show. We got off to a fast start, and things were rocking along. Lots of laughter and applause from the groundlings--we knew we were in for a fun time, when the Athos, Aramis, and Porthos got entrance applause, meaning the moment we burst through the curtain the audience broke out into applause. Lotsa fun, that.

So, we made it to the intermission, and we could hear the winds beginning to roar over the floor mics, and we knew we were screwed. Act Two begins with a montage of swordfighting, and we'd just finished that when the heavens opened up on us, and a steady rain came down, and the show was finished.

So, last night we strapped up again. It was a beautiful day, blue skies and gentle breezes, and while there was no tent dinner, there was a good sized crowd. We were a little off on some timing things, and there were some excellent costume malfunctions to keep us all entertained--Aaron Deuschle, who plays Aramis, had his hat, wig, and doo-rag blow off during a fight. Zach Hartley, who plays Porthos, lost his footing and fell badly. Later, during one of his fights, his opponent got his sword caught on Zach's belt somehow, and so lost that fight even before it began.

During intermission, the winds kicked up suddenly--it was a cold wind of the kind that must have inspired the old wives to tell of ghost winds that blow ill omens. We were a little nervous, as we hadn't done act two in three days, due to rain outs. There were some timing and costume snafus here and there, but we made it to the end of the show to strong applause and cheers.

Afterward, there was a party at Aramis' house, where I was overserved to a profound extent (even though I was serving myself from a jug of Bloody Marys I'd made early in the day). It lasted till 3:30am--at least, that's when I left a front porchful of hardcore partiers, who were still talking and arguing theatre issues as I drove away.

Today, I rehearsed the first Caliban scene in the Tempest, and came home to do a little gardening and pet cuddling before heading back to the park for this evening's performance.

Here's a link to the review which came in while we were at the party last night:

http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/05/29/review_three_musketeers.html

opening night!

2009-05-28T11:00:00.003-04:00

We open tonight. Maybe. Weathermen all over the city are predicting thunderstorms, hail, lightening, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! Last night, our final dress rehearsal was called off after 4 scenes because of rain...so we went to Gressos instead and celebrated Kristina Kopf's (Queen Anne) birthday...

The drag about the rain, besides losing a rehearsal, which is never good, is all the stuff I have wear and take off...by golly, here's a marching order of preshow activity:

I arrive at 6:15, with the other fighters. I go into the dressing hole--er, room--and get out of my 21st century clothes. I tape both ankles with athletic tape, then strap up the left one with a high ankle brace with whalebone stays, and the right one with a low ankle brace. Then I wrap both knees with ace bandages, and cover them with thin foam kneepads. Then I put on my Musketeer knicker/breeches and a tee shirt. After that, I force on the knee-high boots, which takes supreme effort after all that taping and bracing.

Next I put on my wireless mic. This is a little involved. I have a long piece of thick wire that I have shaped like a horseshoe, except that ends curl down. To one side I have taped the long mic wire with black tape. Then I put the rig on my head, curving round the back of it and over the ears, like a headphone. The mic end is now positioned at my sideburn. The plug end hangs down my back. I run this between my teeshirt and my good ole 17th century puffy shirt. Around my waist I strap an ace bandage that holds the rest of the mic unit (about the size of a deck of cards). I have someone plug the mic wire into the unit, after having first turned it on. Oh, almost forgot--each night we roll a fresh condom over the mic unit, to protect it from body sweat. I am saving all the used condoms on the wall above my mirror. Then I tuck in my puffy shirt, button on my vest, and go up top to the stage for fight rehearsal.

I stretch and stretch, using a program of exercises Angela Barch (fight choreo) taught us back in April. Then I go through my list of fights with my fellow combatants, first just marking it (meaning going through the motions), then doing it up to speed.

By now it is nearly 7pm, and the other actors have arrived and the dressing room is jammed (there are around 25 people in this show, with 70 costumes). At my tiny little table (I will post pics of the dressing hole in the near future), I sit and try to apply a little makeup. Long experience in Schiller Park has taught me to be sparing of it, because it will all sweat off in 10 minutes anyway--actually, it sweats off in the dressing room.

Next I put on my tabard, which is a kind of smock, blue, with the fluer-de lis design on the front. Then I tie a lace collar over the tabard, and then buckle on my sword belt over that.

Now the wig. It is long and straight--not the wig seen in the previous post--and difficult to manage. I put on a wig cap, and then with Angela and Dani's help, we pull on the long wig. It has a shortish ponytail that needs freshening up each day, and all the dangling hair needs brushed out and combed. The ladies pin it all up, arranging strands and spraying down the flyaway bits.

By now it is about 7:45pm, 15 minutes till curtain, and all I have left to do is place my cloak and jacket backstage (these I put on later in the show), jam my too small musketeer hat over my wig, then put on the long black gloves, put my sword in the sword belt scabbard (called a frog), and pace around, getting my brain around the coming performance.

So last night I did all that, 8 pm comes, the show begins, and 10 minutes later we are back in the dressing room, taking it all off, as the rain blows in thick sheets all over the park.

Tonight, signs point to the same result. But the rest of the weekend looks wonderful--low to mid 70s and clear, mid 50s at night--maybe a trifle chilly for the audiences, but perfect for us on stage.

And so begins my summer. For the next ten weekends, from Thursday-Sunday nights, I will be in Schiller Park--the first five as Athos, the dark and dangerous musketeer, and the last five as Caliban, the green and dangerous "hag-born whelp" from The Tempest.

The Three Muskies

2009-05-20T08:39:00.002-04:00

We have a week and a day till opening, and we're getting there, slowly, slowly. Lots of things changed when the set was installed, and we've spent the last three days working out transitions and re-staging fights, and so forth. Monday night, while running off stage on the dark (no back stage lighting yet) I stepped on an electrical extension cord and my ankle buckled and I went flying. For the last two days I have had it taped and braced, and still can't move very well.

Which hacks me off mightily! When I first accepted the role of Athos, I thought I better get into shape for all the fighting it requires. I lost about 15 pounds, stopped smoking ( 5 weeks now), and started light workouts and lots of stretching and flexibility. I was feeling pretty good. In fact, I haven't felt this good in a long time. But I forgot that while I was getting into a little better shape, I still have bum ankles and bum knees. The structure is faulty, even though the surface is getting some new paint. So, I will be wearing the usual puffy shirt, wig, big boots, and so forth, and underneath, I will be swathed in bandages, tape, and braces, on pretty much any part that moves.

It's like I told my father years ago when I first started Arden Shakespeare--I asked him to build a few set pieces for my production of 12th Night--a sundial bench, a period-looking bath, and a a few other items. When I visited him to inspect the stuff, I found them half done, and he was taking his time. My dad is a craftsman when it come to carpentry--nobody better, and he takes great care over everything he produces. I finally had to tell him " Dad, this only has to look good...from a distance...for 3 weeks...then we tear it all down." He was aghast.

Well, that's going to be me. I just have to try to look good--from a distance-- for 4 weeks, and then I can break down completely.

One of my castmates is leaving the production for a weekend to attend a premiere of a film she did that is being shown at the Hollywood Black Filmmakers Festival, or something like that. One of the wenches in the show will step up to fill her role for that time. When this was announced, I leaned over to Dani and whispered "Tell me again why I am missing MY premiere??" Of course, my role in the play is larger and more complicated with the fights and all, but still...

Robin Christopherson as Milady De Winter, and me as Athos

genitalia

2009-05-15T09:31:00.002-04:00

Why is a jerk called a "dick", but a brave guy has "balls?" A wimp is a "pussy", but a real uber-jerk is a "cunt." And both "dicks" and "cunts" can also be "assholes."

You're welcome...

Suzuki Method of Actor Training

2009-05-12T11:36:00.002-04:00

I've been reading a lot lately on the Suzuki Method of Actor Training, and while I'm sure many people have derived great benefit from it's teachings (which include such tenets as awareness of the body's corporal center, the relationship of the feet to the center, the development of energy through off-center exercises, etc), I have to quote Spencer Tracy, when asked about the Method:

"I am too old, too tired, and too talented to care."

Been a little while...

2009-05-07T09:01:00.003-04:00

Haven't posted much lately, but not for any lack of things to say--just too busy, directing The Crucible at the high school by day, and rehearsing The Three Musketeers at night. But soon I will be back, and dear readers, both of you will be happy!

Trailer Park #8

2009-04-19T20:33:00.004-04:00

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

2009-04-19T20:25:00.002-04:00

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!

2009-04-17T18:41:00.001-04:00

guinea pig fu!

Items of interest, or not...#2

2009-04-07T06:41:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-01T10:22:00.005-04:00

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!"

Some Trailer Park stuff

2009-03-29T01:13:00.004-04:00

Here's an article from the Columbus Dispatch about the film:

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2009/03/28/1_TRAILER_PARK_--_somewhat_l.AR0_ART_03-28-09_D8_LEDCFLM.html?sid=101

And here is a video shot on a day I wasn't there-- you can tell because the weather is nice...

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/multimedia/audio_slideshows/2009/03/movie/index.html

Bad Gigs

2009-03-26T11:08:00.004-04:00

Last year, during the run of Macbeth in Schiller Park, a cast-mate announced she'd booked a commercial, and after accepting the general congrats all around, smiled at me and said " I apologize, Mark"

This took me by surprise. Then I realized she must have heard me sound off about commercials at some point. She wasn't really apologizing, of course, just acknowledging that she remembered my opinions of the subject. Which are, when all is said and done, complicated.

First of all, I condemn no one for doing commercials. I recognize they are a necessary evil, and allow actors to make some extra cash, and in some cases, amazingly good cash. No problem with that at all. They're just not for me.

It's just that I didn't get into the performing racket to sell someone's products. I lack the acting talent, I suppose, to be enthusiastic about the Olive Garden, or auto parts. I admire those who can, but I wonder, also, if they aren't wasting their time and talents. Every time I see a douche commercial (and why must I be subjected to a douche commercial??), I look at the actress and think "Four years undergrad, two years MFA, all to sell douche products. Hey mom, your sacrifices for my college tuition finally paid off"

And it isn't really acting, is it? Actors can delude themselves into thinking it is, but it isn't. The objectives are entirely different. Many actors I know have to invent some sort of playable objective so they don't have to face the knowledge that they were not hired because they were talented--they were hired because they had a "look", and that "look" is to be used entirely in service to a dancing doughboy, or a Honda Civic.

However, commercials are one step ahead of the gig I resent the most--the walking costumes. People who hire actors to be in costume at their parties...this chaps my ass! It lacks dignity, and encourages the belief that actors are not "people of parts", to use the old Tudor expression. And yet so many actors are eager for the gig--so you'll see a wonderful actress, for example, with a four octave singing range, one who has trained in the best schools, wearing a Cinderella costume at a Disney party for some spoiled little brat on her 7th birthday. I burn when I see this.

Maybe my sense of dignity is too high. I don't even like taking photos in costume, in character, for publicity purposes. It feels undignified. If the paper wants my picture, they can use my head shot. Or a still from the play--one that wasn't set up for the camera, but rather was filmed while the action was going on.

It's all about money, I know. But that doesn't fly for me. Wait tables, drive cabs, work in call centers...these are honest labors, and don't dilute or cheapen the art form you've chosen to to do. I have been asked several times, recently, if I would be interested in starting up acting classes, and while I like the idea of it, I would feel like a failure if a student of mine ended up performing in a commercial. Maybe I could make them sign a pledge not to, before accepting them as students.

Trailerpark - Guinea Pig Folly

2009-03-26T10:34:00.001-04:00

The crew recording guinea pig sounds--from last fall

Trailer Park #7

2009-03-26T09:14:00.006-04:00

Saturday the 21^st was my penultimate shooting day. I don’t return again until April 12. It was a short day, compared to my other days. I arrived at 2:30 and was on the road home around 8pm. The good thing was that, other than the dinner break, there was little waiting around. Things moved along quite speedily, which is to my taste. I would have been perfect in an old Hollywood film, or a Roger Corman picture—just keep it moving, is my motto. Probably wouldn’t have been good for a Michael Cimino film, or one of those 70s auteurs… too much waiting, too many takes.

I met one of the main characters for the first time. Merri Biehler plays Flora, the character with all the guinea pigs, who eventually burns down her trailer. Odd. I’ve been on this picture since February, and she since January (she was in the first scenes shot), but we’ve never been on set the same time until now. I’ve filmed a number of scenes where I am supposed to be looking at her from my window, but of course I was just looking at an eye-line point, or a freezing grip.

Merri is a very sweet woman, and quite meticulous in her approach. Our styles on set are quite different. She constantly asks questions, seeks clarification, discusses all aspects of the shot and the set-ups, while I usually ask very little. I tend to stay in my own head. Most of the questions I do ask have to do with whether I can change a line, or asking where the frame line is (in other words, what is actually being seen in the shot. They say Brando was a master at acting within the frame—if his left arm was out of the shot, it remained at his side, while the right arm did all the gesturing. He also tended to wear only the costume pieces needed—if he was being shot from the waist up, he wasn’t wearing any pants.)

For Merri and me, it’s just a matter of style—neither is correct nor incorrect.

The guinea pigs were the stars of the day, actually. There were a number of cages set up in the trailer belonging to Merri’s character, and the guinea pigs were being shuttled in and out from their own trailer to the set trailer, presumably to stay warm. They were much noisier than the hamsters from a few weeks ago, and more skittish. Merri and I went to their warm trailer to get acquainted with them, and most protested at being held. One, however, only a few months old, was quite happy to be held and cradled. He made a shimmering, soft, purring sound as I held him against my chest and stroked his fur. He also started chewing on the earpiece of my glasses, which were in my shirt pocket.

While the crew were busy setting and focusing the cameras and lights on the guinea pig cages, the rodents were endlessly entertaining—chasing each other round the pen, scratching and grooming in their high speed ways, yawning and stretching and whistling-- in short, being all a guinea pig can be. Yet, when “action” was called, they all sat there, quietly chewing, resting, doing nothing at all. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I heard the Michigan J. Frog song from the old Warner’s cartoons “ Hello my honey, hello my baby, hello my ragtime gal.”

I suspect very little of my close-ups will be usable from this day’s shooting. My left eye inexplicably swelled up a few days before shooting—looks like Rocky after the fight. Dunno why. Probably pink-eye, which is going round Columbus, or so I hear. Though the eyeball itself isn’t red, but the lid is badly swollen and rimmed with red along the lash line. I used what makeup I could, but it looked like I had a week old shiner. Sheesh!

Tonight, my dad makes his film debut. He’s an extra in the bar scene, and will get to be in a bar fight. I told the directors he is uniquely qualified for this role. He is very excited—I warned him that there will be lots of waiting, but he said that was OK, he was interested in watching the process. There was talk that someone would be leering at a girl, which starts the fight. Dad reeeaaally wants to be the leerer.

I wish I could be there to see it all—but I have a medical procedure (ok, it’s a colonoscopy) in the morning, which requires the usual preamble of fasting and laxatives and misery, so no visiting the set for me. He was really hoping I’d come down for it, and we’d go golfing on Friday. But I’ll be anticipating quite a different kind of hole-in-one. OK, TMI…moving on…

mark's aphorism

2009-03-25T01:52:00.002-04:00

Was watching a show tonight in which a character said he wanted to "die on his own terms", and I got to thinking...no one ever really dies on their own terms, do they? They died on the best terms they could get that day. And the terms get worse and worse.

Slightly Unfocused Political Ramblings

2009-03-22T06:55:00.002-04:00

Ok, it is time someone said it—bi-partisanship is dead, Mr. Obama. I appreciate the attempt, but the fact is, no one wants it. Not really. You were elected to lead. Your party was elected in a sweeping rejection of Republican ideas, ideals, and practices. They are on the refuse heap, politically, for perhaps a generation (more likely just a few election cycles). Keep them there, Mr. President. They have no leaders, not one. When a party sees as its standard-bearer a bloviating radio commentator like Rush Limbaugh, it has officially, terminally, and in a way, sadly, bottomed out. And when a newt like Bobby Jindal is seen as the next Great Brown Hope, well, my dear elephants, in the words of the great Harold Hill, “ Ya Got Trouble.”

Of the last 28 years, Republicans have held the White House for 20 of them. Of the last 15 years, they have controlled Congress for all but three of them. And look where we have come:

Internationally hated (at most) or disrespected (at least) by countries who were nominally our allies. Torture as policy. Civil liberties bent over the table and rogered senseless. A lack of transparency in governmental affairs so pervasive it makes the Nixon years seem like a hippy vegetable co-op. Domestically—need I say more?

Yet the Republicans seem to blame the Democrats for it all. I laugh whenever I hear this, but it is a bitter laugh. Remember how every problem during the Reagan and Bush I years were blamed on Jimmy Carter’s measly four little years? How the Bushies blamed their malfeasances on Clinton? I have heard, recently, Republicans blaming part of the country’s ills on the Clinton years. Ha! Last time I looked-- while stipulating to the personal douchebaggery that has always been a blight on the Clinton terms-- the nation’s economy in those years was strong, the federal budget was balanced, and there were no foreign wars. Former (and boy do I love using THAT word) Vice President Cheney, in a recent interview, performed a most amazing reverse backward jackknife and double somersault dive in the pool of “what the fuck???” by laying most problems America is facing either on Clinton’s doorstep, or on Obama’s. He forgot a certain period of time that occurred, oh, let’s see, between 2000-2008. The man, obviously a student of the Big Lie, knows if you say it loud enough and often enough, it creates an echo, and people start to think they’ve heard it from several places, when in fact it is coming from one source. That’s the way he ran his own secret intelligence shop. One piece of raw intel, repeated endlessly until it began to sound like a whole host of buzz. And then you end up with “yellow cake from Niger.”

Mr. Obama, you’ve only been in office for some 40 days. I appreciate the tone you’ve tried to set. But the Repubs are incapable of gratitude. And really, they can’t be seen as grateful. That would make them seem ballless to Rush Limbaugh. So they have to continue along in their tone-deaf way, rejecting any attempt at economic stimulus as “tax and spend”, which, when you think about it, is a far more responsible way to do government business than “cut taxes and spend”, which is what the recent 8 years of Republican rule accomplished. I think every time a Republican legislator says that phrase, someone should hold them up to the light (and I promise you by doing so they will cast no shadow). Someone should say, “ You, advocating fiscal responsibility??? PLEEASE!”

Soon now, Al Franken will be installed as the Democratic Senator from Minnesota. And the Dems will have 59 votes. 1 vote away from the 60 needed to stifle Republican stall tactics. And I think it will be fairly easy to sway 1 Republican. Easier than if you had to sway a few, though common sense would suggest the opposite. With one guy to get, all you do is say, “ I have one bridge in the budget…, who wants a new bridge in his state? Anyone? A new hospital, named for him?” And the ones who were too slow? Well, their hometown papers will get many stories about how their guy wasn’t taking care of business. Names should be named.

Lately, it’s been reported that Repubs who voted against the spending bill are now touting the projects that are coming to their districts. They are claiming that they’ve been bringing home the bacon. Maybe I am missing something here. These guys put in earmarks for their people, then voted AGAINST the bill, then brag about how they got money for local projects?? Isn’t that sort of like seeing that your kid needs an inhaler, but you refuse to take him to the doctor for it, and then your neighbor hears about your kid and buys the inhaler for him, and then you take credit for making it happen. I know the shame meter is pretty low in Washington, but goddamn!

Mr. Obama, it’s time to take off the gloves. Be ruthless. Demonize the demons and reward the Republican quislings. Frame the debate as a referendum on Americanism. The Repubs have behaved in a most un-American way—shafting the people in favor of the greed of the few, pre-emptive wars, trampling on the Bill of Rights—what’s more un-American than that? Get messy, sir. Get your hair mussed. Your hero Lincoln, and your other one, FDR, were masters at it. Offering discredited thinking a place at the table is irresponsible. At what point do you imagine they are going to come around? Sad to say, but some dogs can’t be rehabilitated. Some dogs are too damaged, and have to be put down. You don’t have to like it. But that’s why you get the sort of big bucks.

The Pope

2009-03-20T22:45:00.005-04:00

The Pope came out today four-square against sexual violence, so, you know, there's that.

Sonny as Optimist

2009-03-19T01:51:00.002-04:00

My 5 year old Golden Retriever Sonny is the definition of optimism. I was watching him sleep earlier, twitching, making baby noises, and then suddenly his tail started wagging, and it thumped so hard it woke him up, and he rose and trotted to find me sitting at the kitchen table, and laid his head on my lap for a scratch. He wakes wagging, sure it's going to be a great day of head-scratching and "good dogs." He never ever wakes up like me, bleary, first words of the day something like " oh fuck."

Dollar a year

2009-03-17T00:15:00.005-04:00

I was shocked to learn that Vikram Pandit at Citigroup and Edward Liddy at AIG have pledged to forgo their huge salaries and serve as $1.00 a year CEOs. The question I have is, how are they going to support their families on a dollar a year? That's insane! Now, I'm not much of a mathematician (or philosopher, or scientist or cosmetologist--I'm not much of a scholar at all, really, just an English major) but even I can see that when you factor in food, gas, water, electric, rent, high-speed internet, Netflix subscription, limo service, and haircuts, $1.00 just isn't going to get it done. Are these men insane? Even it was a dollar a week, something is going to have to give.

It's obvious their kids are going to have to drop out of school and find work to help support the family. When your dad only makes a dollar a year, you have to do your part to chip in. The younger kids could hold bake sales and erect roadside lemonade stands. Mom could take in laundry from the other tenants at the Dakota, as well as from their summer neighbors in the Hamptons.

Not to belabor the obvious here, but just think about how far you'd have to stretch the whole dollar a year thing: there are 52 weeks in a year. It's a complex formula, so try to follow along here--52 into a dollar is...ok, say he was making $1.04 a year. That's 2 cents a week. And there is state, federal, city, Social Security, and FDIC deductions from that. Oh, and health insurance. That's probably 30% of his pay. 30% from 2 cents is...that's going to be at least...you know, I bet it would be more like a 50% bite when you think about it. So these guys are going to be left with a penny a week. Hardly worth cashing the check, but of course, these guys probably have automatic deposit.

I remember, when I was 8, I made a dollar a week in allowance. That's 52 times the salary of the CEOs of two multinational corporations! And that was a 1967 dollar! And I had to feed the dogs and take out the trash-- and maintain a C average in school! The pressure was unrelenting. I remember never making it to Friday with any money left. Too much week, not enough dollar.

Maybe these guys could get a part-time job to fill the hole--something in the 2-3 million dollar a year range. But those jobs are hard to come by. I myself have had no luck even getting an interview for one of those jobs. But then, I live in Ohio. I bet the New York Times has tons of those jobs in their Help Wanted section.

Hats off to Messrs. Pandit and Liddy. I've been there. I know they'll make it through, somehow!

Mark-ology (or rather, Mark-opathy

2009-03-14T18:42:00.001-04:00

Questions from a Facebook Note:

What is your salad dressing of choice?
You mean you get a choice? I just always get Ranch, so the waitress won’t hate me.

What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
Don’t know that I have a favorite—the ones I used to like are all gone now—I like Cap City Diner, because my doctor’s office is next door, so if I get a bad clam, he’s just a jog away.

What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
Pretty much anything with gravy on it…

What are your pizza toppings of choice?
Meats and more meats

How many televisions are in your house?
Three—and there are only two of us in the house…

What color cell phone do you have?
silver

Are you right-handed or left-handed?
right

Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
tonsils, wisdom teeth, gall bladder, heel spurs, polyps, tumors—racking up quite a pile-I wear them in a medallion around my neck like Eric Estrada did his son’s umbilical cord

What is the last heavy item you lifted?
Well, this morning when I went to the bathroom…no no…won’t go there…actually, it would be a 4x8 platform, which is why I am eating Aleve today…

Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
A few times…when I was a kid, I rolled off the top bunk and landed on my head, and spent a few days in the hospital…in college, I was playing a pickup game of tackle football, and faded back to throw a pass, and woke up on the sideline with my brother looking in my face saying “ Man, your eyes are red”—I was hit hi/lo and dumped on my head…had a mild concussion from that, but played in the 2nd half anyway, seeing triple, and trying to tackle the guy in the middle…

If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
Who says I don’t already? My birth certificate has an expiration date.

If you could change your name, what would you change it to?

Yes, it would be Marc Mann

Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1,000?
Yes—hell I’d do it for another bottle of hot sauce…

How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
50 year old men who wear flipflops deserve our scorn

Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
I have had a few contretemps with the Highway Patrol over the years, but as a former cop myself, I don’t consider them cops—they’re just taillight chasers. My beefs with them probably arise from the undisguised contempt with which I treat them.

Last person you talked to?
Dani, obviously. Other than that, I would have to say the clerk at the Certified station, though I don’t know if “ Pall Malls” “ Credit or debit?” “ Credit” “ Thank you” “ mmmph” counts as scintillating conversation.

Last person you hugged?
Dani. Other than her, I try to keep the hugs down to a minimum.

Favorite season(s)?
Spring, summer

Holiday?
Christmas, fourth of July

Day of the week?
Friday

Month(s)?
June

Missing someone?
Not much these days

Mood?
My mood ring says mellow.

What are you listening to?
My Golden Retriever making Scooby noises.

Watching?
Just finished watching Breaking Bad.

Worrying about?
My summer plans…everything is still up in the air…

First place you went this morning?
Certified Station for weeds.

What's the last movie you saw?
At the theater it was Doubt—other than that, I watched Watchmen online a few nights ago.

Do you smile often?
I think I smile all the time, but I’m told I don’t. There used to be an actor in town who did an impression of me directing a comedy--he'd stand there with his arms crossed, scowling, as if watching a bit of comic business, , and then say " Hmph--keep it" and walk on...

Do you always answer your phone?
I rarely answer the phone.

Favorite on-line game?
Don’t play them much to have a favorite.

Its 4 a.m. and you get a text message, who is it?
My brother Erich, who will send me a pic of himself on the beach in Florida—usually when its snowing here….

What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic?
Can you ask for Bourbon?

Do you own a digital camera?
Yes

Have you ever had a pet fish?
Yes. When I was a bachelor. That’s what bachelors do, they raise fish. When I got married, I broke up with my fish.

What's on your wish list for your birthday?
Too far away to start with wishes.

Can you do push ups?
Only if there’s a bet involved, or, you know, a bottle of hot sauce.

Can you do a chin up?
I think, to be accurate, you’d have to call em “chins up”

Does the future make you more nervous or excited?
I notice “dread” wasn’t one of the choices.

Do you have any saved texts?
No

Ever been in a car wreck?
Yes—the last one was in the late 80s, driving a Chevy POS van whose brakes went out, and I screeched into an intersection, was t-boned by a station wagon, and driven into oncoming traffic and where I hit some little Japanese car head-on, and walked away without a scratch. I had expired tags on the van, and an expired drivers license, had run the red light, and when the cop came, I invoked the brotherhood of all former and present policemen, and got off with just a $75 red light ticket, which I paid quite prompty.

Do you have an accent?
When I was a kid in southern Ohio, people thought I was from NY…when we moved to northern Ohio, they thought I was a “hilligan”. So I guess I am in the middle somewhere, though the Appalachian comes out when I am tired.

What is the last song to make you cry?
Watched a clip of a little English girl singing Ave Maria for some Britain’s Got Talent show, and got verklempft

Plans tonight?
Going to see Dani’s show, and as usual when I am at a musical, take out my program and check off each song. I do this when I go to church too—“ Ok, we’ve done the first reading from the bible, sang the hymn…what’s next…let’s keep this thing moving, people”

Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom?
I’ve not only hit rock bottom, I’ve bounced from the impact and hit it again.

Name 3 things you bought yesterday?
Groceries, cigarettes, gas

Have you ever been given roses?
Yes (eyes rolling, give me something that doesn't die in a day)

Current hate right now?
Currently pretty pissed at the Dispatch downsizing of arts reporters, but there are so many other hates I am nuturing…it's a full day of hatred...

Met someone who changed your life?
Dani gentled me. But really, everyone changes your life in subtle ways. Each person is a chip on the stone that results in the sculpture of who you are. Yuck, how wussy was that!

How did you bring in the new year?
At home, making fun of Dick Clark, and realizing I have reserved a spot in hell for doing so…

What song represents you?
Dunno, I should commission a theme song…it would have to be driving and upbeat, like a theme to a 70s detective show, and I would walk into rooms and vault over a chair.

Name three people who might complete this?
Al McClintock, Tim Browning, and Lori Cannon…and all three will do it screaming and kicking ☺

Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?
Only if I could bring collectibles back with me—I’d like to go to Ford’s Theatre in April 1865, and suggest to Lincoln that he stay in and rent a few videos instead…

Have you ever dated someone longer than a year?
A few much longer than a year. A few for a year that seemed much longer than a year.

Will you be in a relationship 4 months from now?
Unless Dani wises up, yes.

Does anyone love you?
Yes, though I wonder sometimes how in God’s name is that possible…I’m no picnic…

Would you be a pirate?
A video pirate, maybe, but that’s about it.

What songs do you sing in the shower?
I am embarrassed to admit that more often I recite soliloquies in the shower. My soapy Othello is currently a long running hit…

Ever had someone sing to you?
Yes

When did you last cry?
Actual card-carrying, snot running crying? Other than as MacDuff last summer, I can’t remember a real weeper lately. But I get verklepmft daily.

Do you like to cuddle?
Yes, but I can’t sit still long. Like a cat that way. Other ways I am like a cat is that I'll sit on the TV and stare at you.

Have you held hands with anyone today?
Not yet

Who was the last person you took a picture of?
A bunch of the kids at Coffman after Scapino closed…

What kind of music did you listen to in elementary school?
My dad’s records, which were folkie stuff like the Chad Mitchell Trio, and for some reason, march music…I can still hum the Stars and Stripes Forever, every note, including the piccolo…I also had a 45 of She Loves You by the Beatles that I played the grooves off...

Are most of the friends in your life new or old?
Actually, a nice stew of both

Do you like pulpy orange juice?
Ack! No! Each morning I pour half a glass of juice, and fill it the rest of the way with water to thin it out, and listen to Dani saying over and over “ Drink your juice!”

What is something your friends make fun of you for?
There is absolutely nothing I do that is mock-worthy, goddamnit!

Have you ever ridden a on an elephant?
No, and wouldn’t if I were offered. No point whatsoever in doing it.

What are you saving your money up for right now?
Saving? Did you say saving? SAVING???

When is the last time you ate peanut butter and jelly?
Last week. Oh yeah, I am saving up money to buy REAL FOOD...

What were you doing 12 AM last night?
Reading my American Heritage magazine…yes, Ann, I know what you are thinking...

What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
“ Shit…Saigon…I’m still in Saigon…”

Babies make terrible spies

2009-03-14T02:33:00.002-04:00

I was chatting with my buddy Brett a week or so ago, and he was mentioning how his house smells of baby shit all the time, and I mentioned that would probably disqualify them as spies. I say it again, should any spy agencies be monitoring this blog (you know who you are)--you must not, under any circumstances, employ babies as operatives.

This should go without saying, and yet I do say it. Babies, while cute and cuddly, make lousy spies. First off, they know no languages, and this seems to me to be a failing of the first rank. They can't understand anyone they're spying on. I don't know a single baby who can speak Russian, or Farsi. You can say a few words in Chinese to them, and they'll smile, but you know they're faking. They don't even know English!! This makes the reports they file utterly useless.

And they cry, often at the worst moment imaginable. There you are, with your new baby spy partner, and you are listening round a corner to some secret meeting between peace protesters, and all of a sudden, your partner starts crying, for no other reason than that he's cranky! And you have to pick him up, if indeed you weren't already holding him, and gently jiggle keys over his face until he quiets down. This is a partner who is not pulling his own weight. Indeed, is incapable of pulling any weight at all. His physical strength is negligible, so forget about any backup when the peace protesters, having been alerted to your presence, start kicking your ass!

Then there is the smell. Anyone who has smelled baby doo doo never forgets it. And there is no predicting when your partner will let loose, either. Actually there is. It's going to be about every 2 hours. Every two hours. You can set your secret combination GPS tracker/flashlight spy watch to it. You will be making a secret drop of spy photos, and your partner will be making his own drop. Count on it. And his will smell much worse than the developing fluid on your microfilm.

The list goes on and on. He is not going to outrun anyone. His analytical skills are laughable. His sex appeal actually runs to negative numbers (even if you have loads of sex appeal yourself, his poor abilities as a wing man resets the meter to zero). He is incapable of playing most games, like baccarat or bridge. He simply lacks the attention span to think even one move ahead.

You can't even use a baby as a prop. He is unreliable in that capacity. You can dress in hemp clothes, cover yourself in henna tattoos, twist your hair into dreadlocks, and put your partner in a baby/daddy sling, and blend in with the other protesters outside the WTO meeting, and just when you are about to draw out from one of them the top secret master plan for liberal world domination, your "partner" will choose this time to point at you and to coo his first word "SPY!"

So, please, for the sake of us all, do not employ babies as spies. Thank you.

Trailer Park #6

2009-03-09T23:29:00.002-04:00

This past weekend was my last full weekend on the film…I have 2 days left of shooting, March 21, and then mid April. And then this boy is done.

Saturday night’s shoot was late, extremely late. My call was 6pm, and when shooting wrapped for the day I made it to my dad’s house at 5am (he lives about 75 seconds from Lake Snowden, so I was crashing at his place this weekend). Of course, DST kicked in during the shoot, so it was really only 4am, so that was OK. I have always heard of pre-dawn calls for film shoots, but very rarely pre-dawn wraps. But this may be due to all the prep work the crew puts into the location since they only shoot on weekends. I suspect that’s 90% of the reason. I think the other 10% is that college-aged people do nothing at 6am, except crawl home from parties. Actually, this is fine by me, as I am not a morning guy myself.

Saturday night was full of scenes of dialogue, which was fairly new for me on this shoot. There are lots of scenes where I stare out windows, or glare at people, but not much of me talking. So it was nice to do some scene-work. Nate Bigger, who plays Leon, was the only other actor called, and we filmed 4 scenes together—one in my trailer, 3 in his. It felt a little odd being the only actors there, as before I have been called with most of the cast…

The weather has been terrible on all the other shoots, but Saturday was a radical difference. Mid 70s temps made it a pleasure to be on set. Plus, I was actually able to see what the crew looked like, since now no one was wearing hoodies and socks caps and mufflers and huge coats. I’m not sure they didn’t look better with all that stuff on, though…

Actor douchebag alert: the night had drug on so long that I ran out of cigs, and during a break was gonna zip off to a carryout and pick some up, but they didn’t want me leaving the location—no doubt concerned that I would head into Athens, morph into Frank the Tank, and lead a bunch of students streaking through the quad. Which I had thought about doing—but with Plan A being kiboshed, plan B was put into effect (note: never say Plan B on an indie set—too many bad associations with Ed Wood). Plan B was sending an innocent young student into town to pick up my fags for me. Which I did. I told him I’d buy a few packs for him, if he was interested in picking up the habit. ( Fun Fact: I get a commission from the tobacco people for every young person I can hook on the demon weed). I also asked him if he could score me some heroin, and some hookers, for later in the evening.

One of the scenes involved me coming in out of the rain into Leon’s trailer, so there was a guy sitting on a ladder beside the door, with a garden hose, creating a rain effect on the windows and doors. I was wearing a rain coat with a hood, and Lauren, of the art direction squadron, kept me spritzed. I tried to keep her from wetting my hair too much. I am using this sort of powdery stuff that clings to your hair and thickens it, making the need for toupees less urgent. I have had it in my makeup kit for a few years, since a show at CATCO in which I had to play a guy with a lot more hair than I have (I hate toupees). It helps fill in the gaps, and makes it thicker. Usually I don’t bother with it if I don’t have to—haven’t needed it for the last 3 or 4 shows, but in this film, I am playing a retired military man, and I am basing my look on a guy I worked with back in the 90s, who was a 30 year man in the military. His hair was cut high and tight above the ears, with a bald spot, and enough hair spray to withstand a hurricane. I have developed something more than a bald spot these last few years—more like a zone, or maybe a hectare. But I wanted that severe looking style. So I sprinkled this stuff on, combed it through, and sprayed it down till it was helmut-like. And left a decent bald spot. Problem is, I don’t think it can withstand too much wetting. I didn’t want brown streaks running down my face from the rain. It would look like Victor Mature in After the Fox. Lauren kept coming up and tying to adjust my hair, but I kept swatting her away—there was nothing to adjust—the whole structure would come down with too much fussing. I told her I had a lot of this goop there, and that combing it would do no good. Plus, I have always preferred doing my own hair and makeup for plays, and am uncomfortable having someone else do it for me. I know my face and hair better than anyone else, and know what needs to be done to it. And, frankly, I am pretty good at it after all these years, though maybe not enough for film close-ups. I don’t even let barbers comb my hair. They cut it, and I stop em there. I will handle it from there. Vanity, I am sure, but also time saving, because I am just gonna change it as soon as I get home anyway.

Sunday’s shoot was just me. Five scenes of me eating and looking at the window with binoculars through various moments of the film. I was called at 3:30pm, and after the late night was hoping to sleep in a little, but woke up at dad’s house around 10:30. About noon, my step-mother had made a massive breakfast of omelets, sausage, toast, and hash browns, and I ate like a starved man. Spent a pleasant few hours chatting with the aged Ps on their screened-in back patio, and then headed to the set. And discovered my first scene was to wolf down a plate of bacon and eggs. Several plates.

Later, we broke for dinner, and it was pizza—very thick crusted pizza. I had to be wheeled out of there on a handtruck. What’s that you say? Why didn’t I just not eat the pizza? O silly reader! Don’t you know me by now?

Our brief good luck with the weather ended, as a big rain storm moved through, with lightening and thunder and wind. We had one scene to go, and I asked Patrick, one of the directors, if we’d have to shut down, as there were lots of tall metal poles standing around, with expensive lights on them, and freshmen and sophomores holding them steady. He said no, if lightening struck, it would probably hit a nearby tree before it would hit a pole with a freshman attached to it. Probably. And anyway, there were lots of freshmen to spare.

In my last post, I noticed that one of the crews had some contention between the DP and his director. Well, that was solved. The DP was fired. As was explained to me, it is a professional production, and sometimes people get fired. Happens everyday. Creative differences. The result was, however, a completely smooth and drama free experience—except where drama was called for, in FRONT of the cameras.

My last shot of the day was an extreme close-up of my face as I eat nuts and make a phone call. We did several takes, serious and goofy, and one in which I crammed a fistful of cashews in my mouth, made an unintelligible phone call, then tossed a nut into the air, out of the frame, and then caught it in my mouth. When Jonny yelled cut, the crew erupted in laughter. And I was still picking nuts out of my teeth an hour later.

So anyway, I have only 2 days left on this shoot. I’ll be sad to see it end—its been a lot of fun, and I’ve learned a lot as well, always nice when you’re beginning your second half-century.

Trailer Park #5

2009-03-04T11:53:00.002-05:00

Trailer Park #5

The past weekend was spent on location, in the trailers at Lake Snowden. I had all interior scenes, and for the first time since I began, I had lines. Well, I had lines before, but single ones, ad libs, sort of, in the heat of action sequences. But this weekend was about interior stuff, scenes with multiple characters, including a hamster. More on that in a sec.

The weather wasn’t much better than Michigan. No snow, but bone cold, made all the more bitter by a knifing wind that gusted to 30 mph, according to the weather bulletins. You’d think that it wouldn’t be a problem, but it was—in addition to the lights inside the trailer, there were a bunch set up outside, at the windows. And the poor grips had to stand there all day, holding the poles steady while the wind cut their bodies down to size. I am sure wind erosion reduced most of the crew by a few inches in height over the weekend.

(above,waiting for a shot setup...below, happy I am not outside in the wind)

I read over my lines a bunch of times before we began, but they were never really drilled down to muscle memory. And this is one of the things I don’t like about film acting. I prefer the rehearsal, drill, repetition, and deepening that you get from stage acting. In film, it seems almost accidental. Do enough takes, and sooner or later the editor will find something that works. They say Brad Pitt’s early performances were all created in the editing room, by piecing together snippets of moments in something coherent. I see what they mean. It is said of Ian Holm that he never performs a take the same way, so as to give the director a wide range of choices with which to craft his film. And this brings us round to the discussion that stage acting is for the actors, while film is for the directors.

One of the reasons I accepted this role was to learn about acting for the camera. I never wanted to do those schlocky slasher movies that always get made locally, because I didn’t think I’d learn much from it. Plus, film is like herpes—it’s always there. No matter what else you do in your career, somewhere, someone has a dvd of your performance in Sorority Hooker Zombies. Or failing that, some small really indie film with homeless people as characters, because for some reason, young filmmakers assume there is a sort of transcendence about homeless people. Angels in our midst, so to speak, from whom we can learn valuable lessons.

Anyway, one of the things I’ve learned is that I am not a “first take” actor. I need a few takes to warm up. Invention comes from repetition, in my case. It all still feels accidental, but I am getting the handle on it. I am learning too that stagecraft has no place in film. Behavior does. I’d always heard that, but now I am getting realtime experience in it. It isn’t so much a dialing down from stage (Orson Welles said there is no such thing as film acting vs. stage acting, there is only good acting vs. bad acting), but rather an employment of things you wish you could do on stage, but can’t, because it wouldn’t read.

(If film is about the eyes, here are a pair of bleary ones)

Film is about eyes, I think. So is stage, but stage also needs movement and gesture. Film is primarily eyes. They are the place we always look for clues in other people. Even our dogs look us in the eyes (and hands), because they express mood. Guarded eyes read flat on film. Think of our favorite actors in film, and they are always the people with very expressive eyes—George Clooney is a good example. But someone like Jennifer Jason Lee, who is a brilliant actress, has beady little eyes with not much expression, and so we don’t get drawn to her like we would Julia Roberts, who has very expressive eyes. Or Audrey Hepburn, who had the most expressive eyes of all. (Re: Julia Roberts, I lost a lot of respect for her when she said, on Inside the Actor’s Studio, that she doesn’t like to rehearse. Lots of film stars don’t. This seems to me to go back to the accidental thing, that sooner or later a take will work for the cutters).

I like to think that there are times, on stage, when I can create the illusion of behavior. But it comes from technique. Learning how to recreate behavior. But in film, that veneer of technique is very visible, so one needs to strip it back to just plain behavior. And that’s a job in itself. The trap for an actor is that they stop doing anything, and what comes out is flatness and guardedness. The trick is to think, and allow it to come out in your eyes. Be specific, because the camera susses out generalities. So, I use the first few takes to gather up what my character is thinking, specifically. My luck, though, the editors will end up using the early takes.

So, we filmed for two days in the trailer belonging to my character, Dewey Knox. It was decorated with some delightfully cheesy things, like a framed patriotic eagle and flag paint-by-numbers picture, lots of old snapshots of guys with guns. The art direction team has done a terrific job, and it is an often overlooked art form in moviemaking. But absolutely essential.

Because there are two crews under the two directors, you get to see different dynamics at play. One director and his DP and crew are pretty much in sync, and the process moves rapidly. The other crew features little contention between the director and DP (or maybe he’s the head cameraman). Their process moves a little slower, more time taken for arguments about lighting and setups. I suspect the end result won’t produce any visible difference. As a stage director, which is my preferred medium of all, I encourage input from everyone—I don’t assume I have all the answers—but once I’ve made my decision, the discussion is closed. I don’t like to revisit it. Like Patton, I don’t like paying for the same real estate twice.

Saturday night we filmed in Marcelle’s trailer. She is owner of the trailer park, and we did a scene where a group of us come in to complain to her about another character who is raising guinea pigs, which is against the rules. My character, an idiot, has bought a hamster, not knowing the difference between the rodents, and tries to convince Marcelle that he found it in his trailer, that the guinea pigs are getting out and multiplying. I come in carrying a bucket from which I produce a hamster and hold it out to her.

Before shooting the scene, I went to a back room where the hamster was being tended by some crew members. Once again, the rodents of the cast got the best treatment. This room had a huge heater, and the room was like a sauna. I went there every time there was a break in the action. My task was to get friendly with the hamsters, and select the one for the scene. There were two, one was tiny and hyper, and the other was fat and lazy. I picked him. The hyper one leapt from my hand and kept running all over the room, jumping over outstretched hands of the crew. The other guy, who we named Vernon (Vernon the Vermin) was quite happy to be cupped in my hands. Eventually we got to the point where he would ride on my shoulder or curl up in my shirt pocket. He was a real film hamster too. Nailed all his scenes, especially his close-ups (which brings me to another Orson Welles-ism: he used to tell his actors “if you aren’t any better than that, we’ll have to go to close-up.” His feeling was that anyone could act in close-up, given enough takes. Even Rin Tin Tin would look like he was thinking something. Again with the accidental take concept.)

Sunday evening, around dark, the wind picked up something fierce, and there was talk about shutting down and rescheduling, but no day was good for everyone. So we soldiered on. I got to engage in a real moment of actor douchebaggery, of which I am justly proud. During a break, I went outside to smoke, and there was a poor miserable grip, standing there, holding a light pole in the gale force wind. I walked up to him and asked him to stand up a little straighter. He did. Then I stood behind him to light my cigarette and I stayed there, using him as a wind break. The nearby crew all laughed, and I told him I’d always wanted to have a douchebag moment like that.

Driving back to C-bus that night, my eyes started burning, and by bedtime, I was in serious pain. It was like the worst soap burn you ever faced…I was up most of the night standing in the shower, trying to flush my eyes. The next day, I was damn near blind—everything was blurry—and my face has swollen up and was beet red. Dani took me to a doctor, who referred me to another who referred me to another. The day was spent shuttling round doctor’s offices and filling out new patient forms—well, dani did, I sat there wearing sunglasses (light was unbearable) and a sock cap half-pulled over them. The upshot was that I am allergic to the makeup they applied over the weekend. I got a shot of steroids, and steroid eye drops, and some anti-biotics in case there was some sort of hamster disease involved. Even today, Wednesday, I am still wearing sunglasses, and things are bleary. I am writing this on Word magnified to 200%.

So I will be bringing my own makeup this weekend, and applying it myself. And nothing around the eyes. My facial swelling has backed off, but it still looks like I had a bad sunburn. Today I will try to drive for the first time—I wonder if there is a sticker I should get—caution, blind guy driving. I am already profoundly deaf—I am damned close to Helen Keller here.

But, that aside, filming this movie has been a lot of fun. I only have a few weekends left.

Thoughts on Cousin Patty

2009-03-04T10:40:00.000-05:00

She lived 75 years. Never married. Lived at home with her mother, stepfather, and aunt all her life. Had no relationships with anyone that I ever heard. No children. Was a devoted member of her church. Her stepfather and aunt died around 10 years ago. Her mother died last fall in her early 90s. Patty took care of them all. A few months after living alone in the suddenly quiet house, she died.

The day after her mother died, we all thought, well, it’s a relief in a way, Patty might just have a life after all. She went to her beauty parlor and had her hair done. The toil of the last 10 years of round-the-clock care for her people was finally over. But her health had been declining for a few years now, but she never focused on that. Everything went to her mother, a large personality who was surely the model for Dana Carvey’s Church lady. Patty passed through 75 years leaving barely a footprint on the earth, an afterthought in most people’s lives. I myself hadn’t seen her in 15 years, though she lived only 30 miles away. There were some close friends who lived in other states, a few relatives she preferred (my sister being one of them). She was pleasant and quiet, and had a nice smile for everyone, even as they were looking past her for her mother.

For years I would get a birthday card from her family, with two quarters taped inside. They never used Kennedy half-dollars because he was a Catholic. The card would be signed “Onalee, Frank, and Patty.” The woman was older than my parents but still had her name written on the cards by her mother.

When her mother died, the word went out immediately. In fact, there had been a death watch. Patty died last Sunday, and I just learned of it today.

I can’t say I knew her well. She was a constant in my young life, one of the older relatives who form a sort of canopy over the life of a child. But we never talked much. Never kissed that I recall—my family is full of non-kissers, something I fight against, with mixed results.

Now, at age 50, that canopy I counted on when young is full of holes. Most of the old ones are gone. A few that remain are distant or insensible (another kind of distance). I find I am now part of that canopy, over the young ones in the family. And I am rather remote from a lot of them. Not by choice, but by the happenstance of living.

I do not grieve for Patty, because I did not know her, really. But I am sad for a life that never really started. I am sad for myself, I suppose, in that selfish way we all secretly share, in that knowledge that as the old ones pass away, they disappear, and we step up to fill their place.

Article

2009-02-23T17:55:00.003-05:00

Here's an article about last week's burn(that's me in the brown, in front of the cameraman):

http://www.athensnews.com/news/campusnews/2009/feb/16/ou-film-students-get-fired-about-feature-film-trai/

Trailer Park #4--Pellston

2009-02-23T11:19:00.006-05:00

Be careful thinking you're too clever. Events have a way of leveling you, but good.

Last weekend,in Athens, on Sunday afternoon, we filmed the interior of the bobhouse scene that I appear in. There are others, but this was the lone scene I appear in the bobhouse. (FYI-- a bobhouse is a small shack icefishermen build over their ice fishing holes, and it stays there all winter, and then when the ice starts to melt, they take all their gear out, and burn it down).

So anyway, the interior scenes were created buy using a raised wooden floor, and 4 theatre flats, clamping the corners together to make the four walls, then removing various sides so the camera can capture the action. This was very cramped going, but the detail was very cool. Lots of gear, tackle, bedding and such, and a hole in the floor that the students filled with ice and snow to look like an ice fishing hole.

My scene consisted of bursting into the bobhouse, pushing through some other actors, then I accuse the the old guy who owns the shack of kidnapping, and then see his partially hidden shoe-box full of lottery money, grab it, but it gets snatched from me, and I go barreling out the door after the guy who took it. Cut. Print.

Not quite of course--we spent four hours doing various permutations of the scene. I wasn't comfortable with picking up the box and having it snatched from me--it just looked like I was holding it out for someone to steal. So I hit upon the idea to grab the box, realize I can't open it with my gloves on, so I begin to pull one of

them off with my teeth when the guy snags the box and bolts. That way, I figure, it could be funny--I rise cursing, but my words are muffled by the glove in my mouth; I go out running with the glove still dangling from my teeth, money-fever having consumed me. The director loved

the idea, so that's what we went with.

Cut to this past weekend. We have driven 8 hours on Friday to get to Pellston, Michigan--ok, more than 8 hours, because we took a wrong turn somewhere in a snowstorm and ended 30 miles away, and had to backtrack, finally reaching our hotel by 1:30am. The next day, we are driven to the location, about 7 miles away, a frozen lake upon which sits our glorious bobhouse. A lovely couple hosted us there, people who had a sweet little A-frame cottage on the lake. They have given over their garage as a warming shack for us, and it is filled with heaters of all sorts (Michiganders are experts on portable heating devices, I discovered). There is also a grand lunch of brats and chili and ravioli, provided by the parents of Andy Poland, the DP, who originally hail from the area. The crew has been on the lake since dawn, setting up generators and camera equipment, and constructing the bobhouse.

The snow is falling pretty steadily, which is a problem. We are here to film the exterior portion of the scene from last Sunday. The stuff we are to film outside the bobhouse leads to stuff we also filmed last week, namely the trailer fire. So, the sequence is this:

(Above, the lake at dawn, before the storm)

1. We burst into the bobhouse and take the money box and run out--interior, shot last Sunday

2. We wrestle each each other on the frozen lake, grappling for the box, which I knock into the air, scattering all the money, which we all dive for, till the character Marcelle (Shelley Delaney) looks out past the cameras, and calls out "fire!"--exterior, to be shot now.

3. We all run to the burning trailer, try lamely to put it out, and give up and watch it burn. Exterior, filmed last Friday and Saturday.

The problem is, it wasn't snowing in Athens last Friday and Saturday. But now, in Pellston, Michigan, it's snowing hard. And, the wind is gusty and sharp, and most of the time the snow is falling at a 45 degree angle. So we have an exterior already shot which is snowless, and one we are about to begin which will look, accurately, like it was filmed some 600 miles north and a week later. And I doubt the budget includes money for CGI snow. I suggested we add some line to the fire footage, something like " Well, at least the snow stopped." Only, you know, not as lame. It'll be interesting to see how it's solved.

Anyway, like I said at the top, be careful of your own cleverness. Because now I realize that I am going to have to spend the entire afternoon with my right hand ungloved, and not only that, it is going to have be digging in the snow, snatching up money. (The money by the way looks very real, until you see the denomination is 6 dollars, and the President's face is Bill Clinton's, and at the bottom it says "SEX DOLLARS").

The temperature as we left the hotel was 10 degrees, and given that we were standing on an ice covered lake means a drop to about zero. Add to that the hard wind, and we are looking at wind chills in the -10 to -20 range.

I refused to complain however--the crew had been there all day, with nary a break. I was not going to be the pansy actor who whines about bad conditions, after the tending and consideration we'd been getting. And I don't have nearly enough in the can to go Christian Bale on anybody yet (you want enough footage already shot so you can't be replaced), so I suck it up. My glove, dangling from my mouth on each take as I barrel out of the bobhouse and tackle the guy who took the box, keeps sticking to my lip. It has become stiff as a board from my drool on the fingers, and it freezes solid instantly as soon as I hit that wind.

The latter half of the scene, where we are scrambling on the ice, on our hands and knees, grabbing the dollar bills whirling around in the wind, is where I finally lost all contact with my right hand. My brain was sending signals, but the message was garbled in transmission. It became this red and white claw--it look more like a small garden trowel than a hand. and there was no place to warm it--because I was enthusiastic about diving for the money, there were a number of takes in which I was on my belly in the ice and snow, and all my pockets were filled with melting snow.

Finally, as "magic hour" approached, the time just before sunset when the light is perfect for film, we began filming wide angle shots, the whole sequence of events, culminating in our running out of camera range toward the burning trailer. On the last run, I stepped on a bubble in the ice (they said the ice was generally a foot thick), and my ankle buckled, and I fell into the pile of snow that the crew had swept from the playing area. As I lay there, making snow angels, I heard the word I'd longed for--"WRAP!"

We went to the warming garage (above), and gathered our gear, and were driven to another location which I forgot to mention. This was about 3 miles from the lake, a horse farm, with a large bunkhouse attached to a veterinarian's field office. This was our dressing room, this was where we stopped at the beginning of the day to change into costumes and get made up. There were a few horses in the pen, and after makeup I went out and passed the time till calltime scratching their ears, and letting them kiss me. I don't pretend they were being affectionate--they were looking for treats.

So anyway, we go back to the bunkhouse, get out of costume, and get shuttled back to the hotel. This is a Holiday Inn Express, but not like the one I stayed in in Athens the previous week. That one was new and pretty swanky, for an HIE. This Michigan version looked like it was a motel that got converted. The appointments were pretty average. But I didn't care. All I thought about all afternoon was getting into the hot whirlpool. I ran to my room, changed into my swim suit in record time, ran to the "spa" only to discover it wasn't working. The water was hot, but the jets wouldn't come on. After complaining at the desk, I saw a gaggle of 10 year old boys running through the halls with wet hair, and I put it all together. I went back to the spa, to the emergency shut off box, and saw that it had been tripped. Little douchebags, those boys. I reset the device, and the bubbles came full bore, and I dove in. My hand came back online in no time. Good thing too--that was my favorite hand.

(The crew's cabin)

After soaking in the spa with a few other castmates, I dressed for dinner, which meant bundle up for a long cold drive. The crew were staying at a rented cabin some distance from the hotel. 30 college kids were sharing this large cabin--sleeping bags all over the floor. There was a nice fire in the fireplace and a huge kitchen, where Mr. Poland, our craft service man, had prepared an amazing dinner of spaghetti, three kinds of sauce, meatballs, and a many bottles of red wine for the table. The crew had already eaten and were in the living room area sprawled out and chatting and joking and having the kind of camaraderie you only get at that age. I miss it sometimes. The cast, all 10 of us, sat at the table downing vats of spaghetti ( ok, I was downing vats) and meatballs, and polishing off bottles of wine in world record time. It was a terrific end to a hard day. After dinner, Patrick, one of the directors, showed a rough cut of the trailer burning scene from last week, and it looked terrific. SOme one teased me that of all the cast, I seem to have gotten the lion's share of the closeups, and I told them perhaps I was the only one giving the directors what they really needed in the scene. As written, it wasn't really a scene about me, but as cut together, it became so. I suspect they'll see this, and make some proper edits to it.

After dinner, I was shuttled back to the hotel--I knew the crew would be up till dawn--and some of the cast we going to get together in the lobby for a nightcap, and I fully intended to join them, but I lay back on the bed, and woke up at 3 am, with the TV blaring some war movie and my phone ringing. By the time I answered it, no one was there, but I suspect it was the desk wanting me to turn down the volume.

The next morning, we loaded up the car, and returned to God's Country. It was easier coming home, because, as we all know, heading south is like going downhill.

Heading North, and then some...

2009-02-19T21:22:00.003-05:00

Heading to Pellston, Michigan in the morning, to shoot exteriors on a frozen lake. Here is the Wikipedia description of this garden spot of the Midwest:

Pellston is a village in Emmet County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 771 at the 2000 census. The village is the home of Pellston Regional Airport. Its motto is "Icebox of the Nation"; Pellston recorded the state of Michigan's record low temperature, a frigid -53°F. in 1933, and every winter is regularly called out in national weather reports, along with towns like Big Piney, Wyoming, Fraser, Colorado and International Falls, Minnesota, as one of the coldest spots in the nation.

When you look at Michigan on the map above, you see that it is shaped like mitten. Pellston is on the tip of the middle finger, which is somehow appropriate. I’ll be able to throw a snowball and hit Escanaba, or very nearly so.

Trailer Park #3--Second Day on Set

2009-02-19T20:15:00.000-05:00

Saturday the 14^th was a day the production had been pointing to since planning began a year ago—the burning down of the trailer. When the production rented the trailers for the Trailer Park set, the dealer threw in a condemned trailer for them to burn, and it was delivered to the “burning ground” on the campus of Hocking College, in Nelsonville. They have a field there where firefighters receive their training in firefighting techniques—there is a 4 story building with a fire escape down one side, and every floor has burned out windows, where they practice tall rescues. The rest of the grounds have little shacks and piles of pallets and so forth.

And there was our trailer, sitting at the back of the property, backdropped by a copse of tall trees.

But, earlier in the day, we’d met at Kantner Hall on the OU campus to rehearse the scramble for the money box that we’ll be doing next weekend. Brian Evans, one of my cohorts from Escanaba, is a theatre prof and fight choreographer at OU (I suspect he was instrumental in my being on this project). We spent an hour blocking the scene, and tweaking it, and running it over and over until it was in the muscle memory. No doubt, some of it will lost by next weekend, but we’ll recapture it with a little rehearsal. Then, while others had a few scenes to film on the set at Lake Snowden, I had the afternoon off.

I drove around Athens a little bit, revisiting old haunts, and marveling how much the town has changed in recent years. A small college town changes its people rapidly, but not so much its look. I grew up there in the late 60s, and for years the town remained fairly unchanged. A few new buildings up, a few old ones down, but essentially the same. Now though, I’ve noticed a significant amount of change. Lots of student apartment buildings have replaced the some long- standing “landmarks” (landmarks to me anyway, with my 45 years of memory). Old local businesses are gone, replaced by chain stores. But even for all that, Athens is a unique little town, the one that most feels like home to me.

So anyway, after driving around for an hour, I headed back to the hotel, by way of Wal-Mart (talk about chain store invasion!) where I bought a bathing suit, as the Holiday Inn had a heated pool and spa. When I got back to my room, which was right across the hall from the pool, I could see it was filled with a large family, and for some reason I had no wish to share their company, so I chilled in my room for a while, watching a rerun of the Godfather for about the millionth time. I checked on the pool an hour later, found it deserted, and grabbing a book and a drink, I took it over. I swam a few laps in the pool, then settled into the spa with my book and drink, until some mom came in with her six year old son. She turned him loose on the room while she talked on her cell phone, and he took one look at me and decided we were best friends.

There followed a scene much the one in Jurassic Park, where the little boy latches onto Sam Neill’s character and refuses to be shaken off. This little boy decided to tell me his life story, while doing laps in the spa. I tried to get him to do laps in the pool, on the far end, but that wasn’t happening. He was happy with his new best friend. A few desperate looks from me to his mom went unnoticed. She was happy with her new babysitter while she yammered on the cell.

Finally, I gave up and drowned the little fuck.

No, no, I didn’t. But I’d be lying if I said the thought wasn’t bubbling there, like spa water.

So, evening comes, and its time for the shoot. My driver—let me say that again—my driver—one more time—my…driiiivvvverrrr—picked me up at the hotel and took me to the OU campus. I dressed and made up at Kantner Hall, then was driven to Nelsonville, where the doomed trailer awaited us. Patrick Mulberger, the director for this sequence, told us we would be directed mainly by the cameramen and the DP, as he would be far back, looking at the monitors.

There was a 4 camera setup, and we blocked our sequences pretty tightly. By EPA rules, we only had a short time for the trailer to burn, then the firemen had to put it out. So the plan was to start off camera, and on “action” we run to our marks, go through all the preset stuff (the same as Friday night, though this time the camera is at our backs), then Patrick would yell “reset”, and we’d run back to the start, wait for “action” again, and repeat this as many times as we could before the time ran out on the burn. (I think it was 20 minutes for the burn).

So Patrick and Jonny Look, the other director, having secured permission ahead of time, entered the old trailer with a road flare each, and a couple of firemen following along. They scratched off the flares, dropped em on the straw-covered floor, and ran out, feeling mighty proud of themselves. Immediately, the three windows of the trailer began to light up from the flames. We got to our beginning places and waited. We’d been told by the firemen that these old trailers only take 15 minutes or so to become an inferno, so we were eager to see it. We waited. And waited. No change. Then the two end windows went dark. Instead of becoming engulfed in flames, it was putting itself out somehow. I made a joke about what a tactical error it was, hooking up the sprinkler system in the trailer. One of the set guys said, quite seriously, that the trailer had no sprinkler system, so that wouldn’t be it. I wanted to say, well what do you know! I assumed these swank double-wides came with all the fixins! But I just smiled and marked him for death later.

The firemen called for more pallets, and bunch of set boys began a pallet brigade, bringing them up to the trailer, and then the firemen (there were firewomen too, but “men” is easier to write) tossed them into the trailer through a hole in the back. Gradually smoke began to seep from under the eaves, and we knew it wasn’t going to be long till we had some action. Then, in rapid succession, the flames leapt up and consumed the prefab chandelier, then moved along the ceiling. You could see the outside of the trailer beginning to bubble, and the smoke blackening and growing thicker by the second. Then the center window exploded outward, and the flames shot up through the window and onto the gutters, and the director yelled “ACTION!!!!” and off we went. I don’t know how many times we did it, but it must have been more than a dozen, and all the while the asst. director, Jill, is counting down the minutes, then seconds, till shutdown. It reminded me of Apollo 13, when they had to do a burn for a specific amount of time.

Finally she yelled “TIME!”, and the director yelled “CUT” and “WRAP!” and the cheering began and we all began shaking hands, and clapping backs while the firefighting personnel put out the burning trailer.

And that was it for the night. After being on set till 2am the previous night, I was back in my hotel room by 10:30pm this time. I understand a lot of the young crew celebrated late into the morning. Ah youth!

Trailer Park #2--First day on Set

2009-02-16T19:59:00.002-05:00

Friday the 13^th , my first day of filming, turned out to be a good day. I drove to Athens and was met at the Holiday Inn Express by Conor Hogan and Jen Taylor, our producers. Jon Farris, my cast-mate from Escanaba in Love, and a number of other CATCO shows, arrived at the same time. He is playing Merle Ring, the focus of one of the main plotlines. Conor and Jen checked us in, and came back an hour later to pick us up and drive us to the set, which is located in Lake Snowden, about 8 miles outside Athens.

Lake Snowden is a small campground, about a mile from Albany, Ohio. In hunting season, it functions as a deer check-in station, and the rest of the time it is open to RV camping and fishing. The lake isn’t very big, but the grounds around it are spacious and a great place to run dogs. Which I used to do, because my father actually lived across the highway from it for many years, and when I was an OU student and living with him, I would romp with his beagle in the park.

The production leased 8 trailers from a company in Circleville, and had them delivered about a month ago. They are arranged along the gravel roads of the park, on one side of the lake. When we arrived, people were on the roof of one of the trailers, putting down sheets of cotton to simulate snow. They had also made a bunch of ice and snow ( how I don’t know—in theatre we would use confetti), and were packing it on the ground in the areas where we were going to shoot. Last week, the park was a winter wonderland—this week, cold, but no snow to be found. So through the magic of movies, a snowy trailer park appeared again.

They dropped us off at one of the trailers, which serves as the green room for the cast. I wish I could say I was taken to my trailer, and I suppose I could, but there were a lot of other people in it. The exteriors of the trailers are decorated for shooting scenes, but the inside of most of them are used for other reasons-- actor’s green rooms, crew green rooms, storage of equipment, guinea pig storage (more on that later)—and a few have been decorated for interior filming.

The bedroom of the cast trailer was a costume room, where my costume was selected (half my own clothes, and half purchased by the production). I was made up, which was really just a little powder for my nose and dark circles, and then the director, Patrick Mulberger, came in, and wrangled us outside to block the first scenes.

The whole weekend’s work, and next weekend’s too, is about filming what looks to be maybe 5 minutes of screen time when all will be said and done. The sequence is as follows: a group of us trailer park residents butt into an ice-fishing bobhouse on the lake, where Merle Ring (Jon Farris) has sequestered himself for the winter. He has a cigarbox full of cash from a lottery drawing he won, and the advent of all that money has thrown his neighbors for a loop. We squeeze into his tiny shack, I spot the box and grab it, someone else grabs it from me, and we all run out of the shack, and scrabble on the icy lake for the box, till I knock it into the air, and all the money showers out. As we are trying to catch the flying money, we notice one of the trailers has caught fire. We all rush to it, I try to organize a little bit of firefighting, but it’s too late. The trailer is engulfed, and the fire department arrives. End of sequence.

So, Friday night was about filming the attempted firefighting from the front. In other words, the camera was placed where the trailer would be, and it would film us looking at the fire. The crew stretched huge sheets of mylar between poles, and bounced powerful lights off it, and the wind blowing against the mylar threw flickering light across our faces that looked like the reflection of flames. We each had a few specific actions to perform in the shot, and I had a few lines, and they filmed us wide-angle, medium, close-up, and from a few other angles as well. It took about 3 hours of filming the same 30 seconds of action, which always ended with an Albany fire truck arriving behind us, and some real firemen running out with equipment.

Then came the waiting. From 9:30pm till 1:00 am I hung out in the trailer, paced around outside, though it was bitter cold. I brought a book, but I kept being distracted by the waiting, which sounds weird, but it’s true. It’s that way backstage in a play for me too—I’ve never been able to do what other actors do, such as read, nap, work crosswords, knit—I just usually pace, and try to keep my head in the game. I’ll chat with other actors now and then, but mostly I just pace. Even when I am chatting I am listening to the play. Can’t do that on a film set—they lock everything down so no noise interferes. Finally, Jill, the asst. director came to get me for some more close-ups, and by 1:30am, I was wrapped. Patrick announced “ That’s a wrap for Mark” and the crew applauded, which was nice, till I learned they applaud every time someone wraps, every day. It’s less about what a good job the actor did, and more about “ good, get this meat puppet out of here, we are moving on.”

The only actor I knew beforehand was Jon Farris, but the rest of got acquainted as we waited. Most everyone already knew each other, so I just listened as they talked with each other. Gradually I was drawn into the conversations, and by the end of the first night we were all laughing and joking, and shivering. This last was because none of the trailers have heat. They aren’t even electrified. There are a bunch of generators all around the set, from which long extension cords run into the trailers, for lamps and space heaters, but you could see your breath in the room.

The park bathroom was open to us, but that was a frosty experience. There was also a tent set up for craft service, which was unheated as well.

When I first arrived, after I had been costumed and made-up, I stepped outside for a look around, and a smoke. When I was nearly done, Jen the producer came to me and said, “ Um, actually, we are not allowed to smoke at Lake Snowden” I looked at her incredulously. This is outside. There are campfire-rings everywhere. Jonny Look, one of the co-directors, just looked at Jen and shook his head, and she said, “ Ok by me”. So the smoking ban was lifted. This prompted a few other actors to come out and light up with me.

Our craft service dinner that night was Quizno’s subs and Red Bull. In fact, all the meals over the weekend were a college student’s dream of what craft service is--Saturday was Chipotles, and Sunday was Papa John’s pizza. Not that I was complaining—except for the Chipotle, which I hate.

Later in the evening, during my purgatory of waiting, I came outside to watch the guinea pig scene. See, the trailer that burns is full of dozens of guinea pigs kept by Flora, an eccentric character in the film. One of the actions of the film for Tyler (left, with his new best friend), who plays the park handyman Terry, is to watch the fire and then notice a guinea has escaped and it runs to him and he picks it up and cradles it. For most of the evening he was using a dead guinea pig—that’s right, you heard me. One of the film’s stock of guinea pigs had died, and it’s body was frozen and used in the long shots. The production had to get Humane Society permission to use this frozen rodent. But when close-up time came, out came the star guinea pig. The stunt rodent was put back on ice, and the real article came out. There were 3 guinea pigs, each with their own wrangler, and a representative from the ASPCA, who was on set to ensure the creature was treated correctly, and also to eat heartily from craft service—I notice everything, my friend!

I told Tyler never in his career will he work with a co-star better tended. They stretched chicken wire around the close-up area, and scraped the ice away, so the little feller wouldn’t freeze his little feet. I was off to one side, watching, and during a break and reset, Tyler looked over, saw the look on my face, and burst out laughing. It was a freakin’ rodent, for God’s sake! They needed all the ASPCA stuff so they could place the disclaimer in the credits “ No animals were injured yada yada yada…” I doubt there will be a phrase like “ except for the one whose frozen body we used…” Maybe there will be a dedication notice at the end of the credits “ For Blinky 2008-2009”

I am determined to get one of those guinea pigs after we wrap shooting.

Trailer Park #1

2009-02-16T18:38:00.001-05:00

For those who don’t know, I am a cast member of the feature film Trailer Park, which is shooting in Athens County, and on location in Michigan. I just completed my first weekend of shooting, and it was a blast. (That's me in the green cap at left...)

First, a little background—this is the first feature film to come out of the Ohio University film department. They have been leading up to this for a number of years, marshalling resources and assembling the right mixture of personnel. Frederick Lewis, the professor and progenitor of the project, told me they had been planning to move into feature production for sometime, and this year all the right elements of talents and personality coalesced. The students usually made 5 or 6 30 minute films each year, but department decided it was time to give them experience in the whole package, so the usual format was scrapped, and everything was bent toward one massive project. Seventy students make up the crew, from co-directors, producers, cinematographer, cameramen, sound engineers on down to grips, craft service personnel, costumes, makeup, and production assistants. They have a few websites to which I’ve linked at the left-hand side of the page, which include pics, blogs, and background, so I won’t spend much time on that. It’s fun reading though.

The screenplay is based on a book of short stories by Russell Banks, (author of The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction, among many others) which is set in a trailer park. Each story features a different resident of the community, and each of the featured characters reappear as minor characters in the other stories, so the work is unified around the life of this particular place. It isn’t about the clichéd trailer trash that we usually see—the characters of this piece are just people at a certain point in the journey of their lives—people who are just starting out in life (a newlywed couple), people who are there after their financial situations have forced them to harbor at the park till they can reboot their lives, and people who find themselves rather at the end of their journeys (my character could be considered one of those, though he certainly doesn’t see himself in that vein). The screenplay is episodic, as one might expect, being based on a series of stories. The writers ( four of them, 2 of which are the directors, Patrick Mulberger and Jonny Look), have chosen to feature just a few of the plotlines, and my character, Dewey Knox, a retired military man, is not one of the main plotlines. But he emerges as the antagonist, or one of them—more on that later.

The crew has been working on this project for a year—writing the script, scouting locations throughout Ohio and surrounding states, game-planning and storyboarding all the shots and set-ups. They meet constantly, organized into cadres and departments, and workshop all possible scenarios. They spent months negotiating with various local governments for access to locations, trailer dealers (the main set is at Lake Snowden in Athens County, a smallish campground/park, and they trucked in 8 or 9 trailers a month back and set em up around the lake, to create the Trailer Park. They have contracts with SAG, and agreements with ASPCA , Ohio EPA, local fire and police agencies, as well as hotels, and food providers. They are in touch will all the union rules of the various guilds, and seem to be on top of their game in all aspects.

I have always avoided doing student films. I’ve seen enough of them to know that the filmmaking looks good, but the stories and the acting are usually lame. Plus, no one is out there writing scripts for 50 year old guys. If they need someone my age, it’s to support a 20 year guy.

(This is why I also tend to avoid working with young theatre companies full of young actors—they choose plays for themselves and their age brackets).It sounds arrogant I know, but I consider what I’ve learned about acting over the years to be more valuable a commodity than to be used as a filler for someone’s else’s dream. Acting is essentially a young person’s game—by the time most actors reach my age, they’ve long since given up banging their heads against the wall and joined society as a productive, if disappointed, member. My head still rings, but I’ve learned to embrace the pain. And I have my own reasons for still playing the game, and I have my own rules, so I long ago outgrew the “ I just want to work” mindset of many actors. It has to be right for me. Life is too short to spend the time and emotional capital on something that doesn’t please me, and teach me.

So I was prepared to pass on this opportunity as well. While I have the normal narcissism of most actors, I never had the need to see myself on film. Certainly not in a film of poor quality and story, that would be out there for all time. Plus, I hate waiting, and on film sets, that’s what you do: some famous actor, I forget who, said “ They don’t pay me for acting, I do that for free—they pay me for the waiting.” Film, unlike theatre, is not actor-centric. It is director-centric, process-centric—long stretches of time are spent lighting and rigging and all that. Sometimes the acting portion seems to be something they attend to after they can’t think of any other technical thing to do first. I know that’s a vast over-simplification, but as an actor, that’s how it feels.

But I realized that while I am conversant in all things theatrical, my film knowledge is scant. And when I learned how large the scale of this project would be, I thought why not get in on it, and learn something new.

The directors had come to see Escanaba in Love at CATCO, in which I performed last fall, and sent me an email asking if I would read for their movie. After an initial, pompous spasm of “ I don’t read for 20 year olds”, I thought, why not? It’s their project, their rules, if I am going to do this I need to come in open, so I said no problem, and even arranged to read in Athens, rather than accept their offer to come to Columbus. So I read, poorly, and figured that was that. This is not modesty. I was awful, not very prepared, and still harbored a distrust and ambivalence about doing film.

To my surprise, they emailed me few weeks later, offered me the role, gave me the details (SAG, meals, driving, etc), sent me the final script, kept me in the loop with tons of emails concerning costumes, dietary preferences, call sheets and location info, and here we are at my first weekend of shooting, though the film has been shooting for about 3 weeks (they only work weekends, another plus for me).

More on the weekend’s activities in the next post:

http://www.trailerparkmovie.com/

http://trailerparkmoviephotos.blogspot.com/

Sketch Idea

2009-02-11T12:11:00.002-05:00

I was emailing my brother this morning, joking about how his extended tour in Korea is taking on Apocalypse Now proportions, and that I'll soon be tasked by my family to go up river and terminate his command.

Then I thought about making a sketch where some Marlowe-like guy gets a mission, during Vietnam, to go up river and find Bob Hope's traveling GI Christmas Tour, and terminate that. Not very topical, I know, but the idea of it made me laugh.

" He's operating beyond the pale of human conduct...still telling jokes from the 1940s...head-lining Anita Ekberg, for chrissakes! Terminate the comedian's command--with extreme prejudice."

Items of interest, or not...

2009-02-11T11:48:00.001-05:00

In my never-ending quest to belittle people who are more successful than I, here are a few items which crossed my screen this morning:

Item #1:

Darrell Sandeen, the actor who played Buzz Meeks in LA Confidential (one of my favorite movies), died yesterday from injuries sustained in a fall. He will be buried in the crawlspace underneath his house. No truth to the rumor that he was last seen with a hooker cut to look like a famous movie star.

Item #2

And speaking of that last line, Halle Berry is, and I quote, “preparing” for a drastic haircut—she’s gonna shave her head bald for a role in her next movie, which is entitled, and I am not kidding here—Nappily Ever After.

According to IMDB.com, her decision to shave the noggin is inspired by a desire to make her 11 month old daughter proud of her career. She said, “"I don't want my daughter to look back at my work and think, 'Mom sold out.' I want to leave a legacy that she can be proud of."

Ok. A few things. First, preparing to shave her head? Is there a process to this preparation? Is she going to look at pictures of Bruce Willis and Telly Savalas and Yul Brynner? Is that part of the preparation? Will she have a coach?

And…Nappily Ever After? Really? I am going to say it again—Nappily. Ever. After. Her daughter will one day think, yeah, I know Mom won the Oscar for Monster’s Ball, and gave a gut-wrenching performance in it, but so what, you know? I never really knew how good she was till I saw Nappily Ever After. I mean, she was BALD, people! Now that is a legacy I can be proud of! And she did it for me! Took a look at all her film offers and thought to herself, “ Now which movie will make my daughter proud of me…hey, here’s one-- Nappily. Ever. After.”

Item #3

Leonardo DCaprio has come out against the Berlin Wall. Yes, let the chips fall where they may, he doesn’t care. This courageous star recently gave a speech in Berlin, and told the crowd that when he was 12, he came to Berlin to visit his grandmother—his oma, as he called her, for those 2 or 3 Germans who don’t speak English—and this forward-thinking, child savant saw even at his young age the significance of the Wall: “…even then I was able to see how a simple wall threatened people's freedoms. My oma (grandmother) took a picture of me in front of the wall the moment we came back from the East side, and I immediately pretended to push the wall down."

Later in the speech, Leo also courageously took a stand against the Holocaust, Nixon’s escalation of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, 19^th century child labor laws, and the Spanish Inquisition.

I love the fact that he used the word “oma”. I wonder if the crowd cheered each time they heard a German word, like a concert audience when the band mentions a nearby local town? And maybe this emboldened him…the speech began to have more German words, each to applause and cheers---and then I—Aufheben (cheers)—walked along the –STASSE (applause and cheers)…looking for a PROSTITUEIRTE! (pandemonium)!

Item #4 (for those counting at home)

My favorite douchebag, Mickey Rourke, said recently he thought he would have a career like Al Pacino’s, and this made him think he was invulnerable. He says, “I wanted to be as big as Al Pacino. I thought my acting ability was enough so I didn't play by the rules, I ignored all the politics, I upset people and in the end I lost everything”

Of course, unlike the situation with most douchebags, with the Mick you need to read between the lines here. What he is really saying is that he was a maverick and a renegade, who didn’t suck ass and play by the Man’s rules—like Pacino obviously did—and so his career tanked.

Item #5

Salma Hayek was visiting Africa recently and picked up a little baby and breastfed him. Not kidding. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzEKVcwx6a4

I understand her number of lunch requests have quadrupled since then.

My only complaint is that she is sharing her main qualifications with foreigners. Aren’t there starving people right here in America? Ohio, for instance. Grove City, if I may be specific? Just off Alkire Road, if you wanna be technical about it?

Audience Participation

2009-02-05T12:29:00.002-05:00

I know this is strange for a performer to say, but I hate audience participation in plays. I am not that crazy about it from comedians or musicians, either. I don't know why--perhaps it goes to my dislike of improv, which is profound. I prefer precision and preparedness, and audience participation offers neither. I see it as laziness from the stage performers--depending on the nervous giggles from the crowd to supply the void when there are no genuine laughs to be garnered. It's akin to announcing local towns to get cheers from the crowd.

I have warned friends in the past that if you see me in the audience, do not engage me. I am not there to be part of your show--I am there to watch you. If you try to include me, I will ruin it for you, I promise. I am at least as clever as you, and perhaps more so. I might top you, or more likely, I will slow your show down to a crawl. Or I might make it my show.

Groucho Marx once attended a performance by Harry Houdini, and was asked to come to the stage to verify Houdini wasn't hiding lockpicks. Houdini didn't recognize Marx, who out of costume and makeup resembled a banker or lawyer. Houdini was shackled from head to foot, and asked Marx to look into his mouth to confirm there were no hidden instruments of any kind.

"Look into my mouth and please tell the audience what you see in there." Houdini said.

Groucho peered in for a long moment, and said, " Pyarhea", and returned to his seat.

So, my performer friends, a goodnatured warning: I wish to enjoy your show as a quiet, anonymous audience member. Engage me at your peril.

True Enough Fact #2--The Beatles

2009-02-04T18:56:00.004-05:00

A pattern seems to have emerged in my life—once every 18 months or so, I get on an unrelenting Beatles kick, and have to break out all my Fab cds and play em, and get morose over the lost years. I watch the old film clips on Youtube, and look at those young faces and smirky expressions, and I feel almost as if I want to warn them “ Look out ahead, things are going to get rough. Two of you will die young, one of you will lose his wife, and all this camaraderie will fade as you mature and get sick of each other’s company.”

I confess, when John Lennon died, I wasn’t as shook up as I was later when George passed. I was 22 in 1980, and while it was a blow when I heard the news, I was young and there were parties to go to, and girls to chase, and college classes to blow off. I was too young to have anything to look back upon with regret yet. I was too shallow to realize that these guys were the background music of my life, and that Lennon’s death meant the end of all that.

Later, when George died, 2 months after 9/11, it threw me for a loop. Bad enough that I was a grim, pale and angry middle-aged guy in the aftermath of an event that changed my country forever, I also lost another bit of my childhood with his passing. People say these musicians live on when you hear their songs, but not to me. I hear their songs and see doors closed and locked forever. More and more it gets to be that way with me when I hear songs from my boyish days. I don’t get that pleasure reliving where I was when I first heard the music—I see, instead, the defeats racked up by Time.

For example, listening to an old Gordon Lightfoot tune, with his beautiful, troubadour –like voice only reminds me how shot that voice has become in recent years, unable to hold a note. It makes me sad for reasons other than he originally intended. All those guys and girls who filled the pop radio charts in the 70s, when I was a teen, are mostly gone now, either out of show biz, or out of this plane of existence all together.

I still get choked up when I see a picture of George Harrison. Though I don’t care for the religion he adopted (or any religion, for that matter), I respect that, unlike the other fabs, he stuck with it till the end. He kept up a level of quality in his music as well. I can tell a Harrison guitar lick at 60 paces.

When the remaining Beatles came back together to release “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, I was mesmerized. It was a haunting experience. I listened to both over and over. The accompanying videos were equally riveting. It was as if those sealed doors had broken open—how often does that happen in our lives? 25 years after they broke up—15 years after Lennon’s death, the Beatles had returned. Maybe only The Beatles could have pulled off such a return. I still get chills. I know some have knocked the relative merits of those songs, but I don’t care. They move me still.

The years have brought me much closer to an appreciation of Lennon. Back in the day, I have to admit, I found him to be something of a pussy—in song, he was forever begging Yoko to take him back, or to forgive him, or kissing her ass in some way or another. Christ, he even called her Mommy! Then he was a househusband for 5 years, after Sean was born. Not a lot to admire from a SE Ohio boy like me.

Now that I am 10 years older than he was when he died, I seem to look upon him with a kind of indulgence. He was working it out, you know? Figuring out who he was supposed to be, in the wake of that insane period of idolatry he and the other loveable Moptops went through. And he never stopped with his music, even if he stopped releasing it.

All the Beatles had their public moments of douchebaggery, but they were kids really, snarky and shouldering big chips as a result of their lower class backgrounds. No band ever went through so many evolutions, so much scrutiny by media and fans. We’ll never see that again. They were originals. And, as I said, they were the soundtrack of my life. The first song I remember liking was “ She Loves You”—my sister and I would sit on our couch and bounce forward and backward to the beat and sing “Yeah Yeah Yeah”, and would change the lyrics to annoy my younger brother Barry, who we called Beej (for BJ)—“ She loves you, be, be, beej…”

Since George died, I find it hard to watch Paul or Ringo as well. They always said John was the brain, Paul the heart, and George the soul. Dunno what Ringo was—the ass? Anyway, once the soul was gone, the rest of it was lost for me. So this semi-regular Beatles kick I’m on is fraught with even more melancholy than usual. So forgive me if you run into me and I am quietly humming “ Rocky Raccoon” and trailing a few tears along my way. It’s a mid-life thing, you know?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D196-oXw2k

and before we "Bale out"...

2009-02-03T11:00:00.002-05:00

I understand Brokeback Batman had to be scrapped when Heath Ledger died...here's a still of Ledger bracing himself...what, too soon?

Christian Bale goes off on Cinematographer...

2009-02-03T10:42:00.006-05:00

I love it when actors get publicly stupid...I have a feeling Bale is like Russell Crowe--"asshole" is their default position, and every nice or positive thing they do is usually on second thought...

http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_audio/020209_christianbale.mp3

Just when you thought they couldn't get any lower...

2009-02-03T10:08:00.002-05:00

Word comes today that Republican strategists on Capitol Hill are having, as their featured speaker on the stimulus package...wait for it... Joe The Plumber. Apparently, in addition to war correspondent, and country singer, he also received a degree in economics (maybe he minored in this at plumbing college). It seems Mr. Wurzelbacher is not in favor of the stimulus package, and I am positive his speech will contain an in-depth, point-by-point analysis of the package, complete with graphics, historical perspective, future projections based on models in the Keynesian as well as Friedmanian modalities.

Or, you know, he might just say " Fuck that stimulus package!"

Remember when McCain told a crowd that Joe was his hero, and, if elected, he planned to consult Joe on important issues? Like Gov. Pappy O' Daniel in " O, Brother Where Art Thou", who, after pardoning the Soggy Bottom Boys, announces " These here boys is gonna be my brain trust!"

Congrats, Repubs! Keep up the good work! Keep on digging--soon there will be a hole deep enough for you all.

When You Are Old

2009-02-03T02:22:00.000-05:00

Reread this favorite of mine, by Yeats...

WHEN YOU ARE OLD

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 5

And loved your beauty with love false or true;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled 10

And paced upon the mountains overhead,

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Trifecta

2009-01-30T22:54:00.000-05:00

Coming home from work today, I followed an SUV that had the redneck trifecta displayed on the back hatch. There was a metallic medallion which read "NRA" positioned just above the license plate. On the left side of the hatch was a decal which read " Put Christ back in Christmas", and on the opposite side was a decal of the Dale Earnhardt number 3. Guns, God, and NASCAR. What's not to like?

Milk

2009-01-30T22:43:00.000-05:00

Saw Milk tonight, and found it to be a wonderfully made film, with a lead performance that is the best of year. Give that Oscar to Sean Penn--do it now, and save a little time during the Oscar telecast. Just when I think he can't surprise me anymore, he creates this living breathing character, who wasn't for one second Sean Penn. He completely inhabits the role, and unlike a few previous performances, such as his grieving father in Mystic River, I didn't see the acting. He covered the cracks.

Rather enjoyed the coming attractions before the movie. They try to tailor them to the audience--if you're there to watch an action picture, you are gonna get three or four action picture trailers. If you are watching an art film, those are the kinds of trailers you'll see. Given that the distributers probably figured a generous portion of the audiences for Milk would be gay, it was a little funny to me that the trailers were two ads for the Metropolitan Opera, and back to back Clive Owen pictures, with lingering emphasis on those baby blues of his.

John Updike

2009-01-30T00:58:00.000-05:00

When I was a student in the creative writing program of Ohio University, an assigned text included the following passage, which rocked my world, and, frankly, made me despair of ever being a writer:

All the warm night the secret snow fell so adhesively that every twig in the woods about their little rented house supported a tall slice of white, an upward projection which in the shadowless glow of early morning lifted depth from the scene, made it seem chinese, calligraphic, a stiff tapestry hung from the gray sky, a shield of lace interwoven with black thread.

At the time, like many young pretenders to literary glory, I had no real voice of my own, and was busy grafting the freewheeling, Tom Robbins-like constructions onto my own small business one week, and the fragmentary prose of Richard Brautigan the next. The common thread of these prose models was that it was different from the prose I'd read before college. Young people like different. They often equate different with good, or better. Somewhere in there, the word "cool" lives. (I have no time for cool writing these days...I prefer precision. It's a maturity thing, I hope). I find "cool" to be easy writing, path-of-least-resistance writing. Which is why it is attractive to young writers, who want to be thought of as innovative, without earning that praise through work.

But then I read the above passage by John Updike, from his short story The Crow in The Woods, and everything changed for me. The precision (that word!) of it, the visual truth interwoven with the abstract concept forced me to understand the job of the real writer. It turns out the years have borne me out as an appreciator rather than a practitioner, but it was Updike who made me understand the pedigree of a real writer.

I didn't read all his books. Frankly, I preferred his short stories. Years could go by between my readings of his work. But let's face it, it was a better world with him in it. When I walked through the bookstores, looking at shelves full of chick-lit, low-rent murder books, and romance novels, I could make myself feel better by remembering the literary world still had giants roaming the plains-- Updike was still pumping them out. Now a hole exists in the world.

Here's to a master, a suddenly absent friend: John Updike 1932-2009.

Douchebag Update on the Update...

2009-01-29T09:17:00.000-05:00

Perhaps there is hope for Mickey yet...word comes today that he is not going to get into the wrestling ring with WWE's Chris Jericho. A spokeswoman sent an email around to the news agencies saying as much, adding that Mickey is going to "focus on acting. "

Notice, though, that unlike most such reversals of position, she didn't deny Mickey originally intended to do it. Neither did she say he was misquoted, or quoted out of context, or was joking. No, she just said he wasn't going to do it, period. Sounds like he has some better representation these days, people committed to save him from his inner douchebaggery. Still, its a long time till Oscar night--stayed tuned for further Mickey Rourke trashiness. Douchebag meter backed off a few ticks...for now.

update on the Mickey Rourke Douchebaggery watch...

2009-01-29T00:01:00.001-05:00

I speculated some time ago that the clock was ticking on how soon Mickey Rourke would return to the douchebag status he held for so long. He was a prime douchebag for the many years he was on top, and then he all but disappeared from view, and now with The Wrestler, and the attendant Oscar nomination for Best Actor, he has a chance to reinvent himself as a serious artist, a legitimate A-list contender. One might think that, like Travolta with Pulp Fiction, the Mick could parlay this into a mid-career renaissance, and change the way people regard him. But, as we all know, very rarely do people rise above their natures:

News came Sunday that he intends to get into the wrestling ring with a real life wrestler, WWE's Chris Jericho. Nice! Excellent way to gain cred going into the Oscar voting season! The douchebag meter has just risen a few ticks.

The Return of Sarah

2009-01-27T17:00:00.000-05:00

This article on The Daily Beast examines Sarah Palin's embryonic plans for 2012. I believe it is absolutely imperative that all right-thinking people keep her in the public eye for four years.

She MUST be the face of the Republican Party. Fellow-travelers in the liberal world decry her as a disgrace, and say she should be discounted, but I disagree. She should be ushered right along into the furnace of public opinion. We need to see her constantly, as a reminder of the utter bankruptcy of the conservative movement, a movement that, though I disagree with much of their ideology, once had giants in it (William F. Buckley, Eisenhower, Goldwater, to name a few).

It should be exposed to all how far their movement has fallen. Let's keep reporting on Mrs. Palin, guys. Let's keep her out front.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/#cheatrow_2505

25 Things

2009-01-27T13:27:00.000-05:00

I wrote this on Facebook, for one of those 25 Things About Me things. Usually, I avoid those kinds of things, but I was free one morning and decided to give it a whirl...(FYI to people who already read this: the original was just 20 things, but I've added a few more, so you can just skip on down...

1. If you work in a corporate setting, and the management asks that everyone write a comprehensive description of their jobs, they want to fire someone. This should be obvious, these "humans" learned it at some workshop on how to fire people without being overt about it--but there will always be someone who says, " This is fucking bullshit!" and writes a half page. Encourage this person's view. He is right, and righteous, and he will be the one who gets fired. Let him wander away from the herd and get eaten by the lions. I once wrote 20 pages of job description. I violated my old writing prof's rule, which says " The way to be boring is to leave absolutely nothing out" I counted on boring. I am fairly certain no one read all 20 pages. And I got a raise. True story.

2. I am a night owl who always wishes he were a morning person. I envy the person who rises before dawn, goes for a run, makes breakfast, does some chores around the house, and then showers and goes to work. I consider that freakish. But I envy it. Going to bed has always felt like giving up on the day to me--so I do it under protest, and have ever since I was a child. Consequently, I average 4 hours sleep per night. At least 2 times a week, those early risers find me also outside in the predawn hours. walking the dogs--the difference is, I haven't slept yet.

3. I hate traveling. My curiosity about other places and cultures is astonishing minimal. Anyway, that's what Wikipedia is for.

4. I hated college back in the 80s, HATED IT, couldn't wait to drop out, even turned down a scholarship, I wanted out so bad. 30 years later, I dropped back in to erase that incomplete on my soul. And I found that while I have changed in many profound ways over those years, I still HATE COLLEGE! HATE IT!

5. I haven't read a People magazine in over 10 years, or any entertainment magazine for that matter. I haven't seen Entertainment Tonight, or any of those types of shows in at least as long. I read the Arts section of the NY Times maybe once a year. I never watch awards shows--it isn't an active dislike, I just can't work up the interest. I don't judge those who like that sort of thing--we all have weaknesses. I just decided long ago to divorce myself from popular "culture." I actually had to ask someone a year ago who Lindsey Lohan was, which I consider a small victory. Even my movie theatre visits have dwindled to 3 or 4 a year.

6. I am Midwestern and I embrace that. When I was young, I wanted to be a citizen of the world, like Hemingway, but ran into a fundamental problem with that goal (see #3). Now I believe if you can't get it in Ohio, you can probably do without it. I have cloaked myself entirely in Midwesternism: I refuse the offer of coffee the obligatory 3 times before agreeing to half a cup, but only if you've already got a pot going. I don't want to put you out. If a relative gives me money for a holiday or birthday, I refuse it the obligatory 2 times before reluctantly pocketing it. I am suspicious of NY and LA. I believe in stoicism. I want people to nut up. If I have fundamental doubts about the universe and my place in it, I assume -- rightly--that no one else cares, and get busy with my lawn care.

7. The death of the City Center Mall grieves me in ways I find astonishing. I can't pass the place without a pang of sorrow. I remember the optimism of its grand opening, how so many friends (some no longer living) worked there. I remember the interesting shops, the beautiful Xmas decorations, the constant activity. Now, when I walk through it, it reminds me of being in my grandmother's house a few weeks after she died--when it seemed as if the house died too, all motion having come to a halt.

8. I hate camp. I hate camping. Just pretty much anything with "camp" in it.

9. Last year I was mentioning Laurence Olivier to a group of my students, and saw the blank looks and realized none of them knew who he was. Didn't even bother mentioning Ralph Richardson. But I decided right there that though they say the world belongs to the young, I am not ready to cede it to them yet. Their horizons are much too narrow to given such a big thing. I am fairly certain I was aware of things not in my immediate orbit when I was their age. I am turning grumpy in my middle-age.

10. Having said that, I enjoy the company of my students, and young folk in general. I like their energy, and optimism--it helps mitigate my ennui and pessimism.

11. I believe if you hunger for fame, there is something elementally damaged about you. But I still hope to famous one day. The number of college theatre students who graduate and head for New York reminds me of WWI soldiers mindlessly going over the top to charge the Hun, only to get cut down a few yards from the trench. I am warm and happy in my little trench, and have no desire to face the fusillade--some call this cowardice, but I call it wisdom. I belong to no pack, no herd.

12. People say money can't buy happiness. The people who say that are idiots. Rich misery is much better than broke misery. I have always believed I have no problems that 10k in my pocket couldn't cure.

13. Having come from a family tree with many alcoholics dangling from its branches, I am amazed I have no taste for booze whatsoever. Or coffee, for that matter. My drink preferences sort of got set by the time I was 10 years old--Pepsi, iced tea, lemonade. Don't understand wine drinking. The making of a highball after work is an alien act to me. If I never drink another beer in my life I believe I'll be ok with that.

14. Speaking of family trees, my mother's side came to America in the late 1600s, fought in Washington's army, got a large land grant to western Maryland, and established 10 generations of uneducated hillbillies on that ground, who had, by the time my mom was born, drank it all away, acre by acre. That side also seems to have had several profound brushes with law enforcement, the most sensational being my great Grandmother, who along with her lover murdered my great grandfather , was acquitted in a sensational trial, and lived to be run over by a train in her 90s. Through that side, I am related to JonBenet Ramsey.

15. As mentioned before, I am a midwesterner. I am also a liberal. These things are not, despite what the national media would have you believe, mutually exclusive. But I confess I am a liberal in the small town democrat mode--not for me the vegan, hemp skirt wearing protesters at WTO meeting. I cringe whenever I see Katrina Vanden Heuvel on the Sunday morning talk shows. I roll my eyes at Hollywood liberals like Tim Robbins. Woody Harrelson's lifestyle makes me guffaw with embarrassment, like watching Lucy Ricardo screw up the chocolate factory. I am green only when it is absolutely convenient, and can impact me immediately, like money. I believe in a woman's right to kill her unborn child (refuse to play semantic games)...I believe in government subsidies for arts, so long as they aren't Piss Jesus...I believe socialism is the most enlightened form of government, and though the world has never really seen it work well on the large scale, you see it all the time in small towns...

16. My favorite epithet for years was simply " Fuck You!"... lately it's become "Fuck Me!" Don't know what this says...

17. I find my belief in God leaking away, like brake fluid.

18.I believe every fight is a fair fight. To my chagrin, I am a hitter. If you hit me, I will hit you back. If you are a diseased 80 year old woman in a wheelchair, and you hit me, watch out, cuz I'm bringin' the thunder.

19. I wish I'd never started smoking, and I hope I never quit.

20. When I learned I was diabetic, my first thought--no kidding--was to all the books I won't get to read because of a shortened life span. When I turned 50, I actually counted the number of dogs left in my life, by relative sizes: I have maybe 3 large dogs left, maybe 1 terrier. The number of cats is nicely fluid, thankfully, cats being what they are.

21. Dogs live in two worlds: Good Dog, and Bad Dog. That's all they know. They assume their default position is Good Dog, but are constantly looking for your affirmation of that fact. Once they've been sentenced to Bad Dog, they do everything they can to get off the schneid, and get back to Good Dog. Most people are like this too, but labor under the delusion that they are more complicated than that. All most us really want is for someone to muss up our hair and ask "who's a good boy?"

22. Except for my parents, there isn't anyone left alive who remembers the little boy I was some 40 years ago. We disappear twice over the years--the last one of course is our own deaths, but before that there is the slow erosion of who we are and were, grains of our past carried off by the deaths of loved ones and friends. For many years there was a phalanx of biddy aunts and rough uncles, all of whom knew me from diapered ankle-biter to sullen teen. But they are gone now. Everyone except my parents knows only the grown Mark. Some day, sooner rather than later, that little boy will disappear forever.

23. Note to non-smokers: you need to get over yourselves. You cannot stop me from smoking. You cannot stop me from smoking where you are. If you don't like it, you must walk, silently, away from me. I am standing right here. I'm not moving. And I may have another while I'm here. And the same goes for vegans. That cig followed a thick, bloody steak. Not remotely interested in your opinion on the matter...and I may do all this wearing fur. Fuck those seals.

24. I am an unabashed watcher of TV, though my tastes are narrow. I like a lot of the shows cable is throwing up there now--Mad Men, Damages, Dexter, True Blood, Burn Notice, Rescue Me, and a few network shows: 30 Rock, 24, House, Law and Order. Hate the CSI franchise, hate shows that ripoff other shows, like The Mentalist (rips off Psych), the new one Lie to Me (rips off House, as did several other shows, starring an enigmatic self-loathing lead, and a supporting cast of people who comment on his self-loathing). No reality shows, ever! Also, refuse to watch any show with an FBI profiler, surely the biggest boon to TV in generations. I bet there were never more than a dozen profilers in the history of the FBI, but there have been hundreds on TV, all psychically damaged by their gifts and way too young (and most under 30, female, and beautiful)-- which is funny, because in the real FBI, you are dogshit till your 40s.

25. I hate contrarians.

So sayeth I.

Riddle

2009-01-26T02:07:00.000-05:00

Fifty is my first, nothing is my second, five is my third, and five is my fourth. I can survive in the coldest weather, but cold will kill me. What am I?