Installment 22 Outlaws and In-laws

Little by little, we're nibbling our way through a batch of anthologies.

From The Outlaw Bible of American Literature:

Taxi Driver by Paul Schrader. Excerpted scenes from the screenplay for the legendary film reveal that it's rich in novelistic interior descriptions that all the "How to write a screenplay on your lunch break" books I read in Tarantino's 90s anathematized. More interestingly, it's a sharp look at gun fetishization. Travis Bickle at the gun range struggles to withstand the kick from the Colt he's using, "as if each recoil from the giant gun was a direct attack on his masculinity." Asked about his Vietnam service, he says "They'd never get me to go back. They'd have to shoot me first." Yet he's not walking a path of peace; he's planning to shoot rather than be shot. One slippery slope of gun preoccupation; seeing everything in terms of shoot or be shot. Just ask those fearful, racist "gun couple" twerps. 

Thieves' Market by A. I. Bezzerides: Early morning at the harbor, Nick, a weary truck driver waits for the banks to open so he can cash a check. Meantime, Tex, a sex worker he desires, keeps him company. She makes a sad but strong case that she's better off in this line of work than she was as a low-paid and sexually harassed office worker; as an independent businessperson she sets her own terms. If you've ever had to stay awake all night in a humble part of town, you'll feel that desperate buzz in your head, and that unwholesome film on your skin, all over again, reading this. Don't trust her, Nick!

Dark Passage by David Goodis: a guy goes to an underground cosmetic surgeon to get a new face. Once anesthetized, he dreams of circus acrobatics, and the dream has a perfect stunner of a punchline. I want to have lunch with the surgeon; I want him to say lines like "I have my own method. I perfected it twelve years ago. It's based on the idea of calling a spade a spade. I don't monkey around" while I enjoy a club sandwich.

Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow: a memoir. Jazz clarinetist Mezzrow laments the takeover of the jazz performance scene by mobsters. Having lived around it, instead of seeing daydream versions of it on the screen, he has zero sentimentality about organized crime, and makes it clear that the scene was a place of legitimate terror. He writes with a rich purple prose that's like salt-and-vinegar nuts; compulsive. "Nobody was safe in this funky jungle... they'd put their dirty grabbers on the one good thing left on earth, our music, and sucked it down into the mud with them."

Angels of Catastrophe by Peter Plate: Durrutti, a drug enthusiast with a serious police problem, tries to score a little something to take the edge off from a pair of gender-nonconforming entrepreneurs, then gets very much stoned and has what is probably a real conversation with an associate who casually confesses to helping kill a cop, the death of whom is causing Durrutti's most pressing issues. The so-called friend refuses to offer any help or advice in this matter, insisting on an every-man-for-himself rugged individualism that is of no earthly use. 

Once more I was intrigued by compellingly sketched side characters: the drug-dealing couple are a sympathetic, though unsentimentalized, trans pairing, struggling along and being the gruff goddesses they know themselves to be. Author Plate makes the cis mistake of being fixated on trans peoples' genitals, but seems to want to give affirming representation.

The Man With the Golden Arm: a peek into the mind of a guilty police captain. What's he guilty about? We don't find out in this excerpt, but "guilt like a dark bird perched forever near, so bald and wingless and cold and old, preening its dirty feathers with an obscene beak." Sounds bad! The captain is 100% committed to the carceral state, but has only just realized that, by his worldview, he deserves to be incarcerated. Perhaps one value of guilt-inducing religions is that they inoculate members against such late-in-the-day realizations. Of course you're just as bad as everyone else!

The Big Hunger by John Fante: Someone in town is filching laundry off the drying line, and the protagonist finds himself sneaking after his gun when he realizes the villain is filching his wife's underwear. This time what ensues isn't hard-boiled crime, but good clean humor, fit for the Saturday Evening Post. A pleasant change of pace that still manages some real suspense, but I'm not sure what landed it in a volume with Outlaw in the title. 

The Asphalt Jungle by W. R. Burnett: A cop browbeats, and beats, and terrifies, a (100% guilty) conspirator into rolling on his crew. It seems to help that they know each other, and have had a cordial relationship heretofore; makes the abuse more of a shock, and the mook more pliable. The cop is a bully, but he's in total control of himself, never giving in to any urge to brutalize for the sick joy of it; keeping his foe guessing and way off balance. 

The Getaway Man by Andrew Vachss: A getaway driver prepares for a big dangerous robbery, then does that robbery. He customizes the car, and functions as part of a tight-knit team. It's a grungy thrill ride, and a celebration of criminals with work ethics.

From Plays in One Act:

Prelude and Liebstod by Terrance McNally: (Content warning: suicide) A brilliant orchestra conductor oversees a performance of a Wagner song. Most of the play is his internal monologue, with interjections from such observers and participants as his wife; the singer; an instrumentalist; and a lustful fan. The conductor is a manic perfectionist, seeking orgiastic extremes of pleasure through exquisitely realized musical performance, and sexual adventurism. He's loveless, cruel, narcissistic and disgusted with life's inability to fulfill his cravings. He drives his performers to do their best work, but he's planned for this night to be his final achievement. In the time-honored fashion of overwrought opera and uninspired student writing, it ends with a surprise suicide. As doltish as I find shocker suicide endings, the play is a remarkable construction, with sick humor transitioning into near-tragic pathos and back again. The conductor's erotic memories go so crazily far, and his hopeless decadence is so unsustainable, that he's fascinating, even if, like me, you find him repellant, a conclusion that is by no means forced by the play. McNally (recently dead of Covid, sadly) lets you evaluate this flawed figure and consider whether it isn't better to be an easily satisfied mediocrity.  

Camp Cataract, adapted by Joseph McPhillips from a story by Jane Bowles: Harriet, difficult and anxious, retreats from her quarrelsome home life to a resort campground, on her family's dime. One of her sisters, Sadie, is a clueless daydreamer who wants Harriet back home, not because Harriet makes anything nicer, but because Sadie's sense of the fitness of things demands that family all in one place. Harriet's frantic navel-gazing monologues go down real smooth with Beryl, an adoring butch server at the camp cafeteria. Beryl tries to run interference when Sadie violates strict orders and shows up at the camp, trying feebly to woo Harriet back home so normal life, more lovely in Sadie's dreams than in reality, can resume. Bowle's work reminds me of Edward Albee and John Waters, so if you're interested in bringing a particularly acerbic variety of that sensibility to your local stage, consider this representation of bewildered lesbian hopelessness.

Waking Woman by Cassandra Medley: An African-American woman pays a visit to a recently widowed neighbor, but instead of offering more than cursory comfort, immediately proceeds to deliver a lengthy monologue about a local teen girl who is pregnant out of wedlock, thanks in large part to the girl's Mom raising the child without sexual information. A fond tribute to the storytelling prowess and complex social observations of African-American women, Waking Women is also an angry critique of the way abstinence-only education denies the chaotic complexity of human sexual urges, and causes more problems (and out-of-turn pregnancies) than it prevents. Religious fundamentalism is contrasted with a less doctrinaire and more accepting Christian faith. It doesn't play like a speech, but like a normal person who can't wait to tell us about a family tragedy in a comic mode. I bet it can really sing in performance.

From Calling the Wind:

Her Mother's Prayers on Fire by Don Belton: A mid-century female song-and-dance crew is poised for mass success, but it all may be about to shatter. Their success is due in part to talent and hard work, but also to criminal connections. Lifelong friendships are under strain, as the lead singer takes up with the group's new mobster manager, to the terror of her cohorts. Belton captures the complex ebb and flow of old friends who have worked and played together, and emotionally supported each other, for their entire lives, yet find circumstances testing their unity. The story is a hard stare at the way people can blow their lives up for a bad whim, or a bad man. 

Wings of the Dove by Hal Bennett: A great woman of the civil rights struggle is very old, enthusiastic about Reagan, and suspected to be not long for the world. A white preacher who was once active in civil rights alongside her, but has drifted into the big white church ghetto, comes a'calling, and invites himself to a dinner or three, reveling in soul food that he hasn't enjoyed in decades. 

I once reviewed a story called Orphan and the Mob by Julian Gough, and Gough's advice to writers was "don't copy Henry James; copy The Simpsons." I think both James and the Simpsons are worth having in your toolkit, but Hal Bennett was doing Simpsons-esque comedy back when the cartoon was a time-filler on Tracey Ullman. Sardonic characters bounce off one another, critiquing one another's folly without violating a sense of community; a community that vibrates with the energy of mutually assured mockery. I'm particularly fond of a lovably pretentious would-be chronicler who slips his own hobbyhorses into the mouths of others. In his account, people interrupt themselves to denounce The Color Purple with suspect timing and vigor. By the end of the story, the grand old woman is vigorously alive, announcing that "I have decided not to die after all," and the white preacher is still slurping at his fried chicken in a way that grosses everybody out.

From Best American Short Stories of the Twentieth Century:

Meneseteung by Alice Munro: In a nineteenth century Canadian frontier town, a woman writes pleasant poetry and enjoys a tentative courtship with a respectable businessman who doesn't really understand the poetry thing, but can speak learnedly about salt mining. The gossipy yet restrained local newspaper plays Greek chorus. 

I'm intrigued by the structure, which Munro divides into 6 discrete chapters:

1. The narrator describes a volume of 19th century poetry, with a biographical sketch of the poet.

2. A description, based upon contemporary newspaper accounts, of the rough and dusty frontier town in which the heroine lived.

3. An (imagined?) account of the heroine's chaste and diffident courtship by an entrepreneur in salt.

4. We learn about the courser side of town, which abuts the heroine's house. A distressing confrontation, possibly a crime. The owner of the salt mine comes to provide a harsh resolution, and attempts to deepen his acquaintance of the distressed poet.

5. Under the influence of nerve tonic, our heroine skips church and has a succession of visions which, Munro tells us, she does not mistake for reality--and that henceforth she will not mistake anything for reality. She is inspired to imagine, and begin planning, a richer kind of poem, less of the feminine motives and polite ironies which delineated her earlier verse; more of salt and terror and tonic visions.

6. A return to reportage from primary sources; specifically, the obituary column of the town paper. Tauntingly, hauntingly, we never learn if the poet ever wrote another poem corresponding to her new vision; only that she became the town eccentric.

The narrator's slippage from dutiful researcher to imaginative psychological storyteller, and back again, is a cunning trick Munro has used in other historical fictions, including Friend of my Youth, the first Munro story I ever read, which I cherish. Munro reconstructs entire lives with concision and intuition. 

From Interzone: The First Anthology:

Kitemaster by Keith Roberts: We're in an alternate version of our world, one where the military sets guards along a frontier border so that the demons don't get in. The way they do this is, they fly up on big kite apparatus and keep watch. So we observe a kite launching in the middle of a scary night storm. Meanwhile, the guy who runs the base hosts an authority figure on an inspection tour. Base commander gets drunk and reveals that he thinks the demons don't exist, and the whole story about demons is a sick hoax to keep people yoked to an authoritarian government. The inspection guy uses a secret radio broadcast linkup with the kite to reveal to the skeptical commander the strange secret of what the kite pilots are really up to...

This story finds the poetry of precise group activity and difficult mechanical operation by simultaneously describing actions in detail, and leaving connections between things loose, so we're unclear on exactly what's unfolding, but we get a keen sense of the atmosphere. There's also psychological insight; the base supervisor may hold the whole system in contempt, but he takes rightful pride in the diligence and skill of his team. This bifurcated job awareness is one I've observed and shared among working stiffs. Workers who strive for excellence, even when only they will notice, are too good for the common run of mass employers.

Submit to Lulu

I'm fascinated by Franz Wedekind's Lulu plays, which are the basis for both the classic Louise Brooks film Pandora's Box and the opera Lulu by Alban Berg. Lulu is the kind of woman men ruin their lives for, and her romances tend to end in syphilis, suicide, or murder. She's often regarded as a femme fatale, but in my view the fatalities owe more to pre-feminist sexism than malice on her part; Lulu keeps bumping up against male expectations that she cannot/will not fulfill, and the men respond very, very badly. The play exists in several versions, since Wedekind had to rewrite his original single-play version to get past the censors, and Wedekind revised the details continually, expanding one play into two. The plays are also filled with odd details that don't necessarily advance the narrative but do lend texture to his expressionistic social critique. As a result, the material is bottomless; every engagement turns up fresh connections and possibilities.

Anyway, there's a scene in some versions of the play in which Lulu browbeats her favorite lover, Dr. Schon, into writing a breakup letter to his fiance. Lulu dictates the letter, and he writes it while moaning about how ruinous this is. Sure, it's a femme fatale moment, but Lulu and Dr. Schon have had a tortured on-again off-again relationship for a long time (he was her foster father before he was her lover; such is the ickyness of Wedekind's world). It only recently occurred to me that they may have done dry runs for this letter-writing domination before. It may be that writing (or transcribing) this letter, which destroys Dr. Schon's forthcoming marriage along with his hard-won reputation, is the most erotically thrilling moment of Dr. Schon's life. Compare and contrast to the depressing fetishes of financial domination and erotic blackmail (don't worry; this is a link to a Salon article, not a smut site). 

One big difference between the silent Pandora's Box and the Lulu plays is the representation of (big spoiler warning) Jack the Ripper, who murders Lulu at the end. In the silent film he's sentimentalized, a Nice Guy with a Hands of Orlac problem. The plays have no time for such nonsense. Wedekind's Jack (who isn't necessarily meant to be Jack the Ripper, but he is a murderer of prostitutes in Victorian Whitechapel so y'know) is pure dirtball. He haggles over the price of a night with Lulu and cuts an absurdly skinflint bargain; it comes across as low-grade sadism. Lulu gives in to this loser because poverty, prostitution, and life on the lam have left her bereft of hope and resources. No more power games; she just wants someone to hold her through the cold night, and without her wiles she's unprotected against the male rottenness she's always fended off before. In the filmed opera production starring the luminous Christine Schafer, it's suggested that Jack's haggling is motivated by anxiety rather than sadism, as if he's half hoping she'll throw him out and he won't give in to the demons driving him, which is a sensible (and probably realistic) compromise between the tortured representation of the movie and Wedekind's utterly non-romanticized Ripper. Still, as I read it, Jack's chiseling is motivated by nothing more than dull-witted sadism, and if I were directing a production, I'd want Jack to be pure garbage person; after all, he was.

I have a sweet tooth for shows like Chris Carter's Millennium, a corny post-Lecter dollop of risible serial killer chic. Its villains are the logical descendants of the baddies in Thomas Harris's novels; they are motivated by absurdly rococo Rosicrucian schemes. Wedekind's Ripper is the antidote to all that claptrap; the dumb, reeking, jizz-stained banality of evil.

Other nasty nuggets from Wedekind's plays:

One act takes place in Paris, where we find that the upper crust men of Paree are all blatant predatory pedophiles, begging a mother they know to let them debauch her young daughter. Mom demures but keeps hanging out with these guys, who apparently debauched her when she was her daughter's age. Their subplot does not end happily.

At one point Dr. Schon's son, who grew up as stepbrother to Lulu, is lying in her lap and boo-hooing to her about how he's always yearned for her. She tersely confesses that she poisoned his mother (while Lulu was still quite young, but already in love with Dr. Schon). They are immediately interrupted by the Doctor. Despite plenty of opportunity, neither of them ever raises the issue again.

Countess Geschwitz, a wealthy lesbian, proves that a woman can do anything a man can do, including ruin her life for Lulu. She dies (of cholera in some versions/translations, but of Ripper slaying in others) after witnessing Lulu's murder, and gets the last words of the play. In the original German the last words are actually a repeated nonsense syllable, "Sch... sch..." A chilling end to a mournful play. English translators insist on rendering this as "Shit!" or variations thereon, with the exception of Edward Bond, who changes the word to "Submit..." Mr Bond is known for his angry leftist politics, and perhaps this "submit" was intended as some kind of sociopolitical protest against exploitation of women/the working class. Or maybe he was drunk that year. Anyway, the poor Countess is the only one of Lulu's circle who never betrays Lulu, even though Lulu repeatedly exploits her and tosses her aside. Apparently the masochistic lesbian is a cliche that modern lesbians are done with, but perhaps it wasn't so musty a hundred-plus years ago.

Oh, there's loads more nastiness where that came from. The Lulu plays by Franz Wedekind. Gobble 'em up. They're delicious. I named my cat Lulu.

Also, if you're not convinced that these depictions of fin de siecle decadence are relevant to today, there's a subplot about overhyped tech stocks ruining peoples' fortunes.

Outside the Cage, Outside the Stage

I used to get The Actor's Nightmare all the time, as I've posted about before.  Then I quit acting, and I started to get a variant: I'd dream that I was in a theatrical production, and I wanted to get out.  I'd be desperate, not to remember my lines, but to quit the show without getting into some ill-defined trouble.

So why did I quit?  Not in the dream, but in real life?

There's many answers to that question, as there are many facets of the problem.

Recently, though, I read something that gave me a fresh perspective on the matter.  I finally bought a copy of Genesis's album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and I was eager to learn anything I could about the backstory of the album's creation.

Sidenote:  My official position is that, post-college, I'd rather listen to Coltrane go to the toilet than waste time on english art-school boys of the 70s as they churn out maximum arpeggios per square inch and lyrics that play like Tennyson freestyling; but it's all a lie, a horrible lie.  I heart Progressive Rock.  Readers may remember Genesis for Invisible Touch, but long before they crafted slick pop songs with Phil Collins on vocals, they crafted ornate fantasy ballads with Peter Gabriel on vocals and Phil on drums.

I'd resisted getting Lamb even though it's reputed to be their finest hour (or 80 minutes) since I already own a few albums by the band, and one's pretty much interchangeable with the other for a non-fanatic. This one, though, really was different.  It starts in a gritty-ish urban setting, and while it eventually gets around to the usual fantasy material, the band manages some tasty atonal free-jazz, along with some stripped-down revisions of their prior lush sound.  It reminds me more than a bit of Abacab, a later album on which they made a clean break with Ye Olde Genesis and surfed a New Wave.  And while the Puerto Rican street tough who figures as their protagonist probably wouldn't listen to the synth-heavy Anglo plunkings of this band, that's not necessarily a fault.  Pynchon's characters mostly wouldn't read Pynchon's books.

Oh yeah but anyway, when they played this stuff live Gabriel put on a big theatrical show, with costume changes and stuff.  So poking around for info on this stuff, I found this website.  It's got a quote from Gabriel's wife at the time, pilfered from an authorized bio of Peter by one Spence Bright.  Take it a way, Peter Gabriel's ex-wife!

"He was angry, and it was a very powerful performance. He totally opened himself and put himself on the line to the world, but he wasn't in his relationship with me. I would say to him, 'Why can't you be like that for me?' I remember sitting in the audience and feeling completely turned on by this guy who I was married to. But he was not able to be that person outside the stage. And that is what has slowly broken down over the years, being able to take that part of himself into his everyday life."

So.  Back in 2000 or so, I was in a play which included a bit of flirting between my character and another.  The stage manager mentioned to me that I became a different person in that scene; "Your whole demeanor is different," she said, and she was right.  I became utterly free and open and flirtatious, in a way that was barred to me in offstage life.  The stage was a safe place to play at such experimental things as "flirting".  It would be years before I decided to take that onstage demeanor into my real life.

I few years ago I concluded that I couldn't sustain that energy, that power, in real life while bringing it onstage at the same time.  In performance situations (including auditions) I became enervated, lacking the will to give my first fruits to the 25-year-old white boys who handle the casting-call scut work in most regional theatres.  I had somewhere better to put my energy, my openness, my Eros.  I put it into my marriage.

Not long ago I dreamt of attending the theatre.  I was a cheerful audience member, enjoying a mysterious pageant upon the stage.  The actor's nightmare has been replaced by the audience member's sweet dream.

*  *  *

And speaking of sweet dreams, here's an old Yes song (more prog rock, I know) featuring Peter Banks on guitar.  Peter was the first of many people to leave/get fired from Yes, and is now the first former Yes member to die.  His death is more melancholy than the death of many other Yes people will be, because he never got to taste much success.  I've read a few interviews with him, and he seemed painfully aware of the missed opportunities in his career.  He made some interesting recordings, though.  Sweet Dreams.

Fat and burned, bloody and cursed

The last play I did in Birmingham was an outdoor production of Macbeth.

The director made it clear that we would be saying “Macbeth” freely throughout the production, defying the moldy old superstition that to do so brings a curse down upon any show that dares utter the dread name in rehearsal.  This cheered me, because I knew that if I went through the rehearsal period without saying Macbeth, I’d be unable to say it when the performance day arrived.

The costumer was a young woman who put all the Thanes (aka warriors) in topless outfits.  Her concept sketches revealed a fantasy of bare-chested beefcake barbarians.  Perhaps she had not noticed the doughy Alabama bodies of the men she was actually dressing.  Some of the younger guys were trim, sure, but many of us, including Your Correspondent, were too tubby and wobbly to inspire much fear on the battlefield.  Pasty saggy man-nipples melting over fuzzy guts; the evidence of our sedentary lifestyles certainly counteracted any Braveheart/300 fantasy our overseers might have had in mind.  And isn’t that comic gap between intent and onstage reality part of the joy of community theatre? 

Instead of shirts we got body makeup.  Intriguing swirly faux-tats, black and beautiful, sprayed on (no showering till after we close!).  Did I mention that we were doing this outside?  In the sun?

The day of the performance the costume designer had us Thanes pose for a few pictures.  Before each snap she urged us to roar like warriors.  We did our level best, and after she took the last of many pix, she sighed, “I love it.  So manly.”  This left me feeling a bit cheap, but that’s probably a small karmic down payment on any number of things I’ve done that’ve left others feeling the same way.

The show ended with a dope swordfight between Macbeth and MacDuff, and our Macbeth got a nasty hit on the forehead.  When I (and many others) detained him after the show to tell him how great he was, we (or at least I) assumed the blood streaming down his forehead was stage blood.  Nope.  He had to rush off to the emergency room, but was gracious enough to stand there and smile while we twittered at him.  He’s a preacher, so maybe that gives him a sense of self-sacrifice, I dunno.  Anyway, one cast member who had warned of dread results should we utter the cursed Name in rehearsal felt himself vidicated.

The show has marked me as well; standing in the sun with my bare shoulders covered in crusty black makeup gave me a memorable burn that remains as a peculiar constellation of freckly glyphs.  A fitting souvenir of my final Birmingham show. 

Gimprov.

During the President W. years (The Oughts? More like the Ought-Nots. Or the Ought-Naughts) I was affiliated with Birmingham, Alabama's only improv troupe at the time, first as a fan, then as a member. Imagine a band hiring new members from a tribute band and you've got the idea, although what kind of ridiculous band would do that? The politics could get ugly, the meetings could be like pogroms, and the shows could be like doing burlesque for The Eagle Forum. Still, there were unexpected pleasures.

Like doing shows at a dark, scary goth club. This club hired the group to perform a couple of times, once before I joined, once after. It turned out the club needed an emergency fill-in for a different kind of performance they'd had a time or two: a dominatrix doing some kind of dominate-tricks (you like that? I just made that up, with my fine mind). She'd gotten shut down by the vice squad or somebody (in Birmingham, Alabama? go figure) and there we were.

Picture the scene: a dark cavernous building with a bar like an altarpiece. The music blasted, the booze flowed, and the hair-bears and suicide grrls welcomed in the weekend with sweat and shouts.

Then the DJ stopped the music so five not-very-goth people could climb up on the tottery jury-rigged stage and make up little comic scenes. It was a bit of conceptual whiplash; people who wanted to drink and dance and meet and greet weren't really keen on this. If we'd been a band, that'd have been different. With music you can listen and/or dance and/or swill liquor and/or chat someone up. With improv you either dive right in and shout "Gynecologist!" when they ask for suggestions, or you try to ignore that weird dribbly theatre thing happening in the corner. There's only two levels of improv-engagement, is what I'm saying. Some people seemed interested in the improv... just not then and there. A few of the goth club attendees later showed up for the regular Sunday night gig at a now-defunct coffee shop, so that was nice, but no one really wanted improv at the loud goth bar on Friday night. They were polite, though, if by polite you mean "offering one of the troupe members $50 to perform light bondage." I was not either of the parties involved in this exchange, BTW, although I was present while it went down. The recipient of this offer demurred, perhaps because the public nature of the offer did not speak well to the would-be john's discretion, or perhaps because $50 is an insult. Later that night I spotted the failed bondage-john in the lobby, which for some reason had a karaoke setup right by the front door. He was doing a drunken rendition of Back in the U.S.S.R. and filling in the instrumental breaks with inscrutable erotic speculations. I'm sure glamourous nightlife has much to recommend it, but it's probably less story worthy.

I took the stage with the group on the second Goth-bar gig, and I loved it. It was as if we were sealed inside a large bubble, protected by audience indifference from the consequences of slow-wittedness. It was a terrific, if hermetically sealed, show. We were doing inventive comedy in which we could really take pride. Some of the crew was frustrated by the lack of audience response, but as a lifelong white Presbyterian I regarded apparent congregational/audience indifference as the norm.

We're watching Lost. I'm not crazy about the glib O. Henry-on-amphetamines approach to character development, but I'm stuck on the show anyway.

Here's an example of why: at the end of Season Four (mild spoiler) Ben Linus turns a big frozen wheel to make some majickque happen. It's a rather Dr. Whoish plot twist and could easily have been flat mystic-shmistic hoohah but for one thing: it's been established that Linus is doing this to save his beloved island, and that as a result he will be exiled from the island. As he turns the wheel actor Michael Emerson commits. We can see just how fraught this action is for him, not in the big goofy prop wheel, but in the actor's seriously strained face. I know nothing about the actor's life, but he knows how to tap into some real pain and manifest it on his wonderful puppet face. And for once the writers didn't go overboard sentimentalizing it and trying to make us fall in love with the character all over again. The actors are better at winning sympathy than the writers are.

Hollering "Uncle!"

We saw a double bill of live entertainment last night. Part one was a folk music group with a former theatrical partner in crime on lovely lead vocals. Veddy nice, and well worth driving to Charlotte for. I'm no music critic, but tuneful, dulcet guitar picking, sweet vocal harmonies, the occasional burst of skilled violin playing... a joy.

Part two was a performance of Uncle Vanya. I should have known what it would be, because the crew that was doing it had made a name for itself with bootleg theatrical adaptations of nerdcore movies. As a recovered Monty Python and Tarantino reciter, I'd rather have bowel movements in public than subject myself to that kind of unimaginative nerd indulgence, but Uncle Vanya, I figured, just might bring out the ambition in Charlotte's budget theatre scene. The useless theatre opiner of record in this town wrote a typically slippery review of it in which he failed to come out and say that the show was a tedious misfire, so... there we were.

Stunt casting! A duo of brilliant local improv/theatre clowns were in the show, one of them playing Uncle Vanya, both of them providing the only relief. They knew how to suss out what their parts were about and inflect their performances with rocknroll manic brilliance that served, rather than undercut, the dramatic possibilities of the text. Everyone else delivered amateur theatrics in the saddest sense. I don't blame volunteer actors, though; they all seemed to be striving to the best of their abilities for something real, and good directors can get something real out of most anyone. Inept shmuck directors, though, becalm the actors and create the kind of artless phoniness we left at intermission last night. Chekhov's words can be dazzling if the actors discover the words and the meanings as they speak it while remaining focused on what they as the characters desire. This production, though, consisted of actors declaiming with no sense of interiority, waving their arms around, engaging in cheap pratfalls that didn't grow organically from or serve the material. Imitating humanity abominably. It often seemed that the director was conducting an R&D experiment, trying to find new ways for theatre to suck. I'm sure the director would try to pitch the whole mess (in fact he did, in his self-serving program notes) as pomo subversion, or Grotowskiesque, if he'd heard of Grotowski. Bollocks. Injecting jokes and pratfalls only works if it's done with Laurel-and-Hardy virtuosity and some sense of counterpoint; some sense of how the gags can illuminate Chekhov, even if only through artfully considered contrast. It was the worst theatre I've seen in Charlotte, and I've seen a few stink bombs.

As we drove home in the dark, a possum appeared in our headlights. It was neither crossing nor dead. It was writhing on its side, streaked with red wet blood, looking miserable. I swerved to miss it; probably would have been kinder to hit it and let it sleep. If I'd had wishing powers at that moment I would have wished for the possum and the director of that evening's theatrical entertainment to change situations, so the possum would be doing what it wishes in good health and whatever company a possum desires, while the director would be ending in unalloyed terror and agony. Too harsh? Yes. But it's what I would have wished.

Edit: Greetings, friends of the director who have found my blog! Yes, my last paragraph is way too nasty, and no, I don't actively wish suffering or death on the director; that was a description of a passing fancy, not a statement of long-term position. Beyond that, hey, it's a negative review. I've gotten 'em too.

Muse Shift

Where've I been?

Suffice it to say that I'm starting a serious new writing regimen, with professional aspirations. Currently, this means slamming the theatre door. No more theatre. I feel strangely elated; I've always been a homebody at heart, so staying chained to my desk makes more sense for me than trekking all over for elusive performance opportunities. Furthermore, all the ailments of the writer's life (uncertainty, loneliness, self-doubt, blindness, agony, spiritual rot, drunken fits) are already with me, so what's to lose?

Rest assured that I am wrestling with numerous literary angels (currently on the docket: Fitzgerald!) in an effort to win their wounds and their blessings. The slapdash writing in evidence on this blog isn't going to be sufficient. New growth begins now.

What I've Been Upta

Attended a big mass audition in Memphis this past Monday.

Set out Saturday from Kannapolis for Nashville, where I was to stay with my parents. Got off to a late start in a rental car, and wound through the mountains in a dark cold pour of freezing rain. Do you remember the old Transformer type toys that had wheels which folded into the car's body as part of the car-to-robot transformation process? This car felt like its wheels were ready to fold up in just such a fashion. I finally got to my parents' house around midnight. Slept.

Sunday morning, awoke after my parents had already left for church. My brother and I had breakfast and walked the dogs, one of whom mistrusts strangers and wouldn't stop growling at me. After one walk together he mostly stopped growling... guess I'm part of the pack now. After lunch with the whole family I headed to Memphis. Trees like black twigs with silver highlights; ice flipping off the roofs of trucks. Ribbons of powdery snow rippling across the blacktop like sand on a windy beach.

Checked into my hotel, which was not the official hotel of the audition, but was a mere block from the theatre. The hotel had a groovy old lobby, narrow hallways, slow elevators and a colorful but creepy parking garage that would earn Dario Argento's location scout a bonus. A microwave in my room, but no fridge. No source for tea water, but the night clerk loaned me her electric teakettle. The internet flickered in and out, and my phone couldn't connect, so I was pretty much cut off from family.

Monday morning I went downstairs to get some lobby coffee, glanced out the glass door to the outdoor pool, and saw that the sky had dumped a load of snow all over Memphis, just in time for my audition. I attended the orientation meeting that morning (off to a late start since a bus of actors was caught in the snow) and got psyched up for my audition, for which I felt well prepared. Mingled a bit with the other auditionees. At 36 I was the wizened old crone of the bunch, shaking a palsied fist at all the twentysomethings.

Once upon a time I would have prepared for an audition by drinking Red Bull ("Can't fly without my magic feather" I was known to say) but now I sipped cup after cup of green tea. Meanwhile I perused the books-for-sale table; lots of challenging and new plays that aren't going to be produced by the theatres attending this audition. They're not doing new works by Maria Irene Fornes; they're doing Grandpa's Covered Wagon Christmas.

The moment arrived, and I auditioned like a green tea drinker instead of a Red Bull drinker. I overheard another guy's audition, and he sounded like a Red Bull drinker.

It seemed to be music theater's night, and most of the folks who auditioned and got many callbacks were singers... I chatted with/eavesdropped on other straight theatre folks, and many of them got no callbacks. The Red Bull guy I overheard was the only straight theatre person that night to get a bunch of callbacks. Back to the magic feather for me.

I attended my callback... it was mostly an informational session about the company, which I'd never heard of but have since discovered is a household name. It was a very, very enticing offer, except that it required being away from home for most of the year... and I'm a newlywed. After much agonizing I've concluded that Robert Bly be damned, I'm putting who I want to be with ahead of what I want to do. I'll just find something else to do.

Tuesday morning. Packed and loaded the car, incidentally glancing down the hall to the parking deck's lowest level to see that it was flooded ankle-deep with snow runoff.

Met an old college friend for lunch; one whom I haven't seen in years. She's looking good, sounding gloomy, so no change there.

Drove back to Nashville, getting into two GPS coffee snipe hunts. The first took me down an unfinished highway, off a ramp before the highway's end, into an area that was clearly a forest a week ago. The carelessly toppled trees and McMansion frames reveal that someone thinks there's still too much wilderness in Tennessee.

The second snipe hunt took me past a large, oddly shaped building. What was that, some office complex? Nope; it was one of the theatres that didn't call me back. After I found once again that "Sally's Fair Trade Organic Coffee, Comic Books and Bebop Jazz Cafe" was another figment of my GPS's overheated imagination, it started to snow again.

I got back to my parent's house, had a nice meal, and collapsed. Andrew Gainey, my late lamented voice teacher, appeared to me in my sleep to give me one of his spirited don't-let-'em-grind-you-down pep talks. Good timing, Andy.

The next day I slouched around my parents' house all day.

The next day I let William Gibson's Spook Country Audiobook chauffeur me home.

Transferring the Curse

Many years ago (I had bangs then) I was cast in a small supporting role in a Shakespeare in the Park production. I was in the first scene as a servant to a Duke. The man they cast as the Duke was a really nice guy whom I've seen do good work in a lot of parts, but for some reason Shakespeare just tripped him out. He'd start one of his speeches and suddenly slide into glossolalia: "That strain again! It had a dying fall. Hum, lumlum lum lum, fffm mum gum mmm mmm, sum pum sumthum bum gum gum bum bum." More or less iambic pentameter mumbling whenever he drew a blank on the lines, which was frequently.

He struggled with it, wanting to get it right but never quite nailing it. He'd fix one passage and forget another. I felt a mixture of sympathy and frustration... in later years I've done a bit of study on techniques for learning and speaking Shakespeare, but at the time we were both amateurs and I had no wisdom to pass on. Still, at least I knew my few lines and was able to spit them out whenever the discombobulated Duke came to the end of his Shakespearean scat-singing.

So opening night arrived, and whaddaya know? The Duke got his speeches out letter perfect. I was quite proud of him. And he turned to me for my first cue: "How now! What news from her?"

And I said: "So please my lord, um mum gum mum mum mum bum."

Somehow he had transferred the curse to me. When I hear the phrase "The magic of live theatre," this witchery is what comes to my mind.

No Comment. Okay, maybe a metacomment.

Our production of Marat/Sade got three exuberant reviews, one from the mainstream newspaper, one from the trying-not-to-be-mainstream newspaper, and one from the local-theatre-review-website-that-no-one-really-looks-at (although I thought the last one had an unusually insightful review, from a theatre professor as it happens).

Good stuff. Ticket sales are hoppin'. But the other day someone posted a negative comment about the show on the mainstream paper's website (I hasten to point out that I heard about this from another cast member, rather than from obsessively rereading the reviews). Once upon a time I would have been completely unable to restrain myself from retorting to the comment right there on the website. I take it as proof of personal growth that I am now able to deflect such inclinations into wry remarks on my blog, rather than tendentious direct takedowns. It would be best, of course, to instantly forget about such trivial things, but clearly I'm not there yet.

Marat/Glad

When I started doing theatre I had a fantasy that it would allow me to participate in complex, multilayered and didactic artwork. I also had a fantasy that it would allow me to get all emotionally exhibitionistic, untrammeled and unashamed.

It turned out, though, that a certain amount of rigor was required. Not only learning lines and blocking, but comprehending and intelligently communicating the playwright and director's overlapping visions. So on some productions that allowed for a blending of my two theatrical fantasies (Angels in America, various Shakespearian items) I was so busy trying to jerry-rig together enough thesping craft for the job that I wasn't able to find ways of infusing the performance with both Brechtian sophistication and Artaudian shamanistic wallowing.

Until now. Marat/Sade, in which I play a mental patient, allows me to let my actual emotional state to shape my performance while giving energy to a complex exploration of revolutionary failures. Plus I get to scare people like I'm Leatherface. Utter self-indulgence yoked to a compellingly multilayered intellectual work.

Brian Eno has stated that he prefers making frames to making pictures, metaphorically speaking, and I find that my ensemble role allows me to be part of a frame. It's a bit like those faux-frame boundaries on old Mad magazine covers, though... the ones with odd little figures running around and pratfalling. Dozens of little bonus gags surrounding the main gag in the picture.

Get Out. Go In.

EDIT, WEEKS LATER: I would like to point out that I have great respect/affection for the director, assistant director, and stage manager of the show discussed here, and my complaints in this post were made in context of a time, place and mindset that blah blah blah disclaimer disclaimer DISCLAIMER ETC.

Is there any value in making actors endure rude or abusive treatment in order to coax more genuine performances out of them? In my current production I play an inmate at an abusive mental hospital, and the various authorities in this production (director, assistant director, stage manager) have exercised a level of hostility that I have not previously experienced in the theatre. It's impossible to tell the extent to which they are being clinical or to which they are merely displacing frustrations onto us. For example, we weren't making our entrances and exits quickly enough, so the assistant director, in the midst of our rehearsal warmups, told us "I'm sick of you people. Get out." And we FLED out the exits. Ever since then we've made our entrances and exits with all the panicked speed our director wishes.

But the assistant director shouldn't be surprised if none of us comes to his birthday party.

It's evident that the hostility is being used to coax us to a deeper level of understanding, to guide us from our relatively pampered and cozy lives into the blinkered and paranoiac reality of the inmates. We sure as hell don't appreciate it, but I suppose we may as well make use of it.

In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (what, that again? Bear with me, it ties in) the cast suffered a pretty fierce level of discomfort, and director Tobe Hooper did play mind games with the actors to increase their mistrust and anxiety. He spread rumors that made the actors dislike one another. Not all of the blows and cuts on the film were faked... some were quite real. The meat that recurs throughout the film was real, and rotting in the Texas heat. It's a cruel way to work and I don't approve of it. And yet the results speak for themselves. The pain and terror is all there on the screen. Unlike most horror movies the film doesn't seem like pure artifice; it seems like a documentation of real terror. It has a shamanistic power that's like nothing else I've seen. We've endured little more than rudeness compared to that, but a little rudeness seems to go a long way towards making us fearful and resentful. I'm not sure what that reveals about us.

And To Think I Hesitated; or, I Don't Post For Weeks And When I do It's About Hellraiser 2

I finally watched Hellbound: Hellraiser II. I've been a fan of the original flick for years, but I was afraid the sequel(s) would do what sequels do: dissipate the vitality of the original by overexplaining enigmas and normalizing the abnormalities that give the first film its edge. And I was right, kind of, but there are mitigating factors.

Hellraiser has a Strindbergian quality; it's very much a character-centered drama. The story could be retold as a realistic noir with only minor changes (which is not to say that the fantastical elements are gratuitous; only that they shape the symbol system of the film more than the plot itself). There are tantalizing enigmas that are allowed to remain unexplained, and I liked it that way. I didn't need to know who the Dick-Tracy-villain S&M Mobsters who function as the malevolent Deus Ex Machina of the film really were.

The sequel, of course, explains who they were, but it doesn't seem like a response to Hellraiser. It seems like like an Adults-Only sequel to Labyrinth or The Neverending Story, in which the heroine goes into a hallucinatory fantasy world on a Quest, where she meets weird creatures, etc. It resonates more with my memories of Eighties kid fantasy flicks than with my interest in Original Hellraiser.


So how is it as an Adult Neverending Story? Not bad, although it's a disservice to the movie to watch it sober. It goes for the overwrought goth lushness of a Ken Russell or Dario Argento film, and occasionally hits the right strident note. The special effects are the kind of Eighties FX trash that I love so, so much more now that I've sat through half a lifetime of CGI. Having a Monsterous Doctor for a villain is fine, but having him say things like "I recommend amputation" as he attacks people is pretty Marvel Comics.

* * *

For the majority of my readers who don't give a rip about Hellraiser: I recently won an award for my performance in last year's production of Turn of the Screw. The award is from a local theatrical alliance that throws a big cargo-cultish awards show, complete with paparazzi-free red carpet. We got to perform a scene from the show for the award ceremony, and I hammed it up shamelessly, which probably netted me more attention (for good or ill) than the award itself.

I just had an audition for a Shakespeare touring company. The director told me (bluntly but kindly) that the company mostly casts young actors, and that the schoolchildren respond strongly to young actors, as opposed to folks who seem more like teachers, generation-wise. But she liked my work, so hope springs. It just doesn't spring unrealistically high.

The Losers' Lounge

We've been in B'ham, fixing up Laurie's house there. We attended a Monday night open-mike standup comedy session at an establishment which I shall refer to as The Losers' Lounge. We arrived late, and as we approached the patio we heard a snippet of a monologue in progress. A guy in his late twenties or so was explaining the following facts:

1. He was recently divorced.

2. He was having a hard time adjusting.

3. And the recurring punchline, he was spending a lot of time in a Lonely Person Activity.

4. He was hurt by the lack of Big Laffs Item 3 received from the mostly young, mostly unhappy-looking audience.

5. He was friends with the other comics, all of whom were sitting at a table up front. He would banter with them whenever he got too flustered.

That was it. No twists, no insights, no unexpected juxtapositions of two distinct frames of reference, just a repetition of those five points, over and over again. At the time I wondered if the whipped puppy attitude he was giving off was the cause or the effect of the divorce. It later occurred to me that he might have been trying to coax a punishing response from the audience. Perhaps he was trying to have his ambiguous feelings of inadequacy replaced with unambiguous, explicit awareness of inadequacy; always a minor relief for the emotionally seasick, and easier to achieve than a bolstered sense of self-worth. Sadly for him, this Southern audience was too well behaved for open heckling.

His protests at our lack of laughter grew terser as he continued; they started out like "C'mon, people, this is comedy! You're supposed to laugh!" and devolved to "Terrible!" Whether "Terrible!" was addressed to the audience, himself, or God On High, I dunno.

A somewhat milder form of masochism shaped the other performances. Primal Whimper Therapy was still in evidence, but it was from younger guys who were mystified by their inability to get with a woman in the first place, rather than reeling from a divorce, so their pain was that of heartache rather than heartbreak. They also had a somewhat better grasp on the whole "Make 'Em Laugh" thing. Still, it felt more like being collared by a succession of mournful, lonely drunks than like being entertained.

There was one young woman in the audience, all alone; a cute girl with arty garb. She smiled glowingly all through the show, and it occurred to me that I had seen her at open-mike comedy acts years before. I felt for her, or for the her I imagined her to be. Having done some tepid open-mike, I'd been approached by somber-faced women who told me "You were really funny." Meaning, "I am really lonely." I thought of them when I saw this woman. Whenever one of the performers bemoaned his inability to find a woman, I imagined her thinking "I'm right here; look at me." But that was my inference; who knows why she was really there. Maybe she thought they were funny.

The host of the show angrily shouted down a young chattering ectomorph in the audience ("Am I interrupting anything?" that kind of bit) but went way overboard; it was obvious the host wanted to do the old devastate-the-heckler routine, but lacking an actual heckler he had to settle for a nonthreatening chatterbox. The Host was mean, not witty, not funny. The young ectomorph, who looked like a sheepish bespectacled bird, sat there and looked blank during the tirade. He was with a group of college kid types, with one older heavyset woman at the head of the group. The host evidently knew her, as he flirtatiously chided her for bringing the ectomorph. The woman had that flash-of-panic-beneath-the-cool-facade look so familiar to anyone who's ever been a twentysomething. Rather than defend Mr. Ectomorph she said "I know, I know" and tried to look archly disaffected. She grabbed her purse and FLED as soon as the focus was off her again. I later overheard the ectomorph speak witheringly of her; he expected more gumption from a Queen Bee than that.

The final comic was a cute little stoner whose dipsy-doodle style charmed Laurie and myself regardless of his (mildly amusing) gags. As Woody Allen observed, personality is more important than material for a standup comic.

If you're in B'ham and this kind of sideshow sounds more to your tastes than it is to mine, here's a hint: the establishment's name is actually a reference to An Animal Sound.

Quick Update

We finally got our marriage license and are debating the level of spontaneity/sense of occasion the wedding should include. It's looking like I'm going to wake up on my wedding day without knowing for sure that it's my wedding day.

I'm in a production of Marat/Sade that promises to pull no punches. Glad to be doing something that blends Gothic excess, agitprop and all-around artiness.

I'm also pecking away at a juvenile novel, trying to write the kind of thing I liked to read. If nothing else it keeps me off the streets.

Recently rewatched Gothic by Ken Russell (inspired to do so after mentioning that Ken Russell should direct the film of Lucius Shepard's uneven but patchily rewarding erotic-political-thriller-in-vampire-drag novel The Golden) and now suspect that Russell is an under appreciated filmmaker. Tacky, tasteless and overwrought, but I think most films should be. Eric Rohmer can handle the tasteful stuff, and I'll watch that with pleasure too, but if you can't capture life with such cinematic delicacy then for heaven's sake go for broke; brilliant tackiness with dimestore psychology and theatrical lighting all over the screen. My kinda flick.

La La La

I'm currently up for a singing role in a local show. It's non-paying but locally prestigious, artistically ambitious community theatre.

I'm in the perplexing position of being half-good at something. I can sing... kinda. In my audition I sang the obscure Cole Porter song "They Couldn't Compare To You" which is a hilarious crowd pleaser, and one of maybe a half-dozen songs I feel comfortable singing anytime, anywhere. The director obviously enjoyed it, so tonight I'm called back for a big singing part in a show that isn't exactly a musical, but has some key songs.

The problem is that learning new music, learning it precisely, and actually, y'know, singing it is difficult for me; nonetheless my last paying gig and perhaps my next non-paying gig involve singing. I can sing just well enough to be an impressive audition if it's a cappella (for me matching an accompanist with whom I haven't rehearsed is like guessing an unseen person's weight) but carrying a full singing performance isn't really in my comfort zone.

It's an interesting demonstration of the truism that a good date isn't always a good mate, and vice versa.

Freaky Actors

I just saw a documentary about Tod Browning, the director of such films as Dracula and Freaks. He worked with Lon Chaney a bunch, and wanted to do Dracula with him; no doubt Chaney would have created one of his famous makeup schemes as part of the character. He died too soon, though, and Bela Lugosi got the job. Lugosi refused to wear makeup and relied on his distinctive personality to create the character.

I found this more inspiring than I can probably convey. Two beloved performers who handled similar creative tasks in ways that suited their individual styles and talents. It gives me hope as an actor; I tend to fall into the trap of thinking there's some answers-in-the-back-of-the-teacher's-edition correct way to do things, and that I don't measure up, but in creative work there's many, many routes to success. Now to persuade North Carolina's casting directors.

Thomas Kinkaide and Kenny G are White Noise Too

In case you're sitting around agonizing about whether you should watch the movie White Noise 2, here's my advice:

After reading this blogpost about the way they monkey with color in the Hollywood filmlab nowadays I've been more conscious of color correction (although it's impossible to watch, say, The Matrix or Fight Club without noticing it) and White Noise 2 represents a nadir of the practice. Everything is trying to look like Seven, except when it's trying to look like Thomas Kinkaide. At one point someone hands the hero a manila envelope full of important documents, and the envelope is a glowing Banana Laffy Taffy yellow, at which point Laurie and I burst out laffing ourselves. (Laurie can't explain how this flick got into her Netflix queue... probably something to do with all the Sci-Fi TV show stars in it.) It was a typical treat-the-audience-like-hicks supernatural thriller, probably worth a watch if you're nostalgic for the most embarrassing X-Files episodes or if you want to gawk at lurid colors.

* * *

On a seperate note, I've been having trouble getting cast lately. No doubt I need to raise my game, but I can't help wondering if the problem is that I'm doing John Coltrane acting, and they want Kenny G acting.

You'll Never Work In This Town Again!

I'm still smarting from my last audition. I'm torn between two theories as to why I got cut in the first round:

1. I'm not nearly as good as I think I am. I wouldn't be the first clueless confabulator in show business. For reassurance I fall back on the testimonials, however insincere or equally clueless, I've received from others. Even assuming that I'm actually any good, I may have lost my edge somewhere along the way. I think I've lost a bit of confidence, and that may show, undermining my auditions with flop sweat.

2. The fault ain't mine. In the audition piece I was given I had a joke which was obviously meant to be a climactic laugh line but which I thought was really weak... last-season-of-Night-Court weak. Actually the whole scene was kind of like that Diane Rehm Show skit I posted a few weeks back, only without all the bile. Kind of a clunky "Fair, polite satire" thing. As my friend J'mel would say, it was very "local," as in a local production suitable only for local hometown-pride audiences. Sounds like a blast, huh? So in order to sell it I tried to invest it with the full force of the character's conviction, channeling everything I've learned from Bill Hicks about smart-alecky white guy ranting (which seemed like an on-target character choice). Maybe it sucked, but maybe it was too strong for what is meant to be a non-threatening little satire. You know, a dainty little wisp of a satire. A meek, harmless little fluffball of a satire. A Satirette.

Another guy did a reading of the same bit, and delivered the line with a casual offhandedness that probably worked better than my attempt to "save" the joke with a big chunk of actorly acting (he also gave a subtle and convincing performance, and might be very good in the role). I suppose professional actors have to learn to deliver lame jokes without any visible tremble of shame.