All in the Family: The Making of Town Diary - It's Going to Be a Bumpy Night

"We all have abnormalities in common. We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theater folk. We are the original displaced personalities."
-Addison DeWitt, All About Eve

There is something that happens to some actors, actors who have struggled as supporting actors, once they finally get to be a lead. I call it the Eve Harrington syndrome. More about that in a moment.

For all the success we had with supporting roles, casting the leads was tough going on a number of levels.

We would have liked a name for the lead role of Brian, but if not, we wanted a very solid actor. Once again dipping into my past, I thought of an actor named Dan*

Dan was a member of the first theater company where I was the production stage manager. He was short, with red hair. The company was an ensemble, and Dan was the lead in a play called Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone by Terence McNally. I remembered being enthralled with Dan's performance as the provocative Tommy - great energy, and a real ease on stage. Like everyone else in the company, Dan was acting on a popular soap opera, and the theater company was a way for them to get back to their legit theater roots.

Over the years, I had become amazed that Dan had never really succeeded as an actor; in fact, years later, I remember running into him waiting tables at the same place he waited tables when I first met him. Ironically, one junior member of that cast did go on to success. The role of "the women" (playing multiple parts, as the name suggests) was played by an actress who was less experienced, but always real and engaging on stage. Her name was Mercedes Ruehl, and she would go on to win an Oscar in The Fisher King.

I was not having much luck finding Dan, so, on a whim, thought I would make the trip to that same Greenwich Village restaurant. Sure enough, he was there. This should have told me something.

I gave him the script.

I did the first series of auditions while Jack was in Chicago. Dan auditioned for me, my assistant, and the casting director.

Nothing. His take on the character was wrong, the delivery was dry. He was a completely different actor than I remembered.

I had told Jack about Dan, and Jack, being generous, said maybe he had a bad day, and he was willing to see him when he got in. I met with Dan and gave him some insight into the role. He came and auditioned for Jack as well.

Again, nothing. 

The only saving grace was that he knew how bad his audition was, so it was no surprise that he didn't get it. To this day, I don't know if I remembered him better than he was (the reviews of him in Tommy Flowers were very good, so I wasn't all wrong) or if years of toiling as a part-time actor had finally taken its toll on him.

After seeing many people, we saw one great audition. It was by an actor named David, who had played a major supporting role in Apollo 13, as well as recurring roles on a number of television series. Since, he as continued to have success as recurring, supporting characters on shows like Covert Affairs, Justified, and Necessary Roughness. 

David gave a great audition for me. I liked him a lot. My casting director and my assistant were not so sure. Specifically, they felt it was more calculated; I saw it as genuine.

In retrospect, he gave the same audition when Jack was there. Jack loved it as much as I did.

My casting director and assistant were still unswayed. However, already Jack and I had gotten into a bit of a rhythm where one of us would like one performer, and the other would like someone else. Here, we agreed! That had to mean something!

Eve Harrington.

For those not familiar with the play and more famous movie, All About Eve, the title character is a conniving ingenue who flatters and woos until she gets to the place of Margo, an established but aging star.

There are many talented supporting actors who spend years watching lead actors get all the attention: superficially, the nice trailer, the better car service, and other prima donna perks; on a more professional level, getting input on dialogue, wardrobe, hair, "motivation," and even how they are shot (a word that comes to mind for different reasons with David).

They understand that as supporting characters, it is not their show. While they might offer an opinion, in the end, they will do as they are told and serve the greater good.

When and if they finally do get to be lead, then, they think, all good things will come to them. I think of Shakespeare characters who think they have been wronged and feel a need to put things right, specifically, Richard III, and how unfair that he, the better choice, has to stand by and watch his more handsome brother be king.

Ok, David didn't kill anyone. However, the two ladies with us, casting director Susan and assistant Christine, were right. David would never be better than that day at the audition hall, and, to boot, he would be difficult. Specifically, he did not respect Jack, as a first-time feature director, and as their takes on the character grew farther and farther apart, David would descend into subtly mocking Jack on set. But, that was later.

In fairness to David, I had seen this before, and I've seen it since. I produced a short for a first-time director who cast his dear friend of many years, a supporting actress in soap operas, to a lead. All through rehearsals, they were wonderful together. Once we got on set, the demands started, and, again, the clear suggestion that she knew more about how the role should be played than the writer/director. Also, she would not be rushed out of hair and make-up, and she balked at wardrobe that we had all approved at the last minute. The same with a female lead in another short who had experienced some TV success - the female writer/director on that film would have to step outside with me and scream in order to not blow up at her on set (or worse).

Much like Richard III above, All About Eve references Macbeth, where what my Shakespeare teacher in high school referred to as "vaulting ambition" becomes the otherwise valiant Macbeth's fatal flaw. After all, it was Macbeth and Duncan who had won the battle, but, through nothing but birthright, it would be Malcolm, King Duncan's son, who would be the next king.

"Stars, hide your fires

Let not light see my black and deep desires."

*Not his real name - you know what that means.

N.B. Sorry about the delay in getting this post up and the long time between posts. I've been busy with work and other personal responsibilities, and taking the time to get this right took some time.

An Ace in the Hole

I was preparing a blog post on my first mob film when I received a link from a student filmmaker to a short he wrote and directed.  It seems a perfect introduction to this genre.

The short was the story of a female drug dealer who plays a game of poker with another female customer for money owed.  It's a heads-up match with a male dealer.

The crime drama has always been among my favorite genres.  Those noirs that graced my television in black-and-white were filled with flawed characters, but what fascinated me most was the struggle to have honor in dishonorable situations.  The actors who embodied this most for me as a kid were Bogart and especially Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum's embodiment of evil in movies such as Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter were riveting and specific, not just a monstrous psychopath but one with depth and dimension.  His chiseled appearance, both in face and body, made him the perfect tough guy in numerous films.  The fact that he had once spent a short time in jail for marijuana possession just made him that much more like a real guy than a movie star to me.

Perhaps my favorite Mitchum role was as a former private detective who can't outrun his previous life in Out of the Past.  Much like Jim in Conrad's Lord Jim, fate seemed to toy with him, offering him redemption from past mistakes, only to take it away from him after he had tried so hard to do the right thing.

In my early attraction to English in grammar school, the concept of the tragic flaw always fascinated me.  My favorite Shakespeare character was Macbeth, an honorable and valiant warrior who is struck down by his vaulting ambition.  That was the phrase my English teacher, Brother Louis, used - vaulting ambition - and it stuck with me,  After all, weren't we supposed to be ambitious?  Ah, but vaulting ambition, that was different.

Classic heroes seemed indestructible, and even in my youth, I never felt that way.  I was never the best athlete, always one of the last kids picked on the team, the last guy on the bench on my freshman and JV football teams, teams I only made because of my grit.  Yeah, flawed characters I understood.

I also grew up in an Italian-American family, and gambling, cards, etc were part of the culture.  I made extra money while attending my Catholic high school by distributing and collecting money for football parlay cards my uncle would give me.  Kids would bet money, fill out a sheet, and, depending on how many teams they picked - they had to pick at least three but could go for more if they wanted to try big bucks - they could win money.  I'd give the money and the sheets to my uncle, and I would get a cut, a small percentage of the money bet.

If you grew up in a working class Italian and Irish neighborhood, this seemed normal.  My grandmother played the Brooklyn number (based on the last three numbers of the race track handle) with the local grocer.    None of us knew real criminals, just small time people getting by with a little hope for the something better.

My favorite columnist was Jimmy Breslin, then with the NY Daily News, pictured below.

Breslin was a crafty and skilled writer who looked like a regular guy, a little overweight, a NY accent, cigar in his mouth and shirt unbuttoned at the top.  He was one of us.

He always wrote from the perspective of the average Joe, including a beautiful piece after JFK's assassination from the point of view of the guy who dug his grave.  He wrote about mobsters real and fictional; the fictional mob boss Un Occhio allowed him to tell stories he heard from his mob informants without using real names.

When I entered a speech competition in high school, my choice to read was entitled Death Waited Here, and started with the line, "Five crosses, five crosses whose shadows lengthen in the evening sun.  Their presence announces that death waited here."

My first short screenplay in the NYU intensive class I took after my operation was about a bookmaker who had gotten in over his head.

When I saw an ad on Craigslist a few months back for someone to play a poker dealer, I was intrigued.  I certainly played my share of poker over the years, and knew how to deal.  I flirted with acting early in my career, but decided that the world could survive without one more mediocre actor, and so I moved to the production side.  I did pursue it long enough to have my photographer girlfriend from college, Sheila, do headshots for me.  One of those is above.

Clearly, pretty boy roles were not going to come my way, and even if had the perfect features to play them (I didn't) , I don't think I would have sought out those roles.  I didn't know those folks.

I did play Jesus in a comedic play my friend CK directed in the late 90s.  The play, written by an established TV comedy writer who was friends with CK, was about a talk show that had Jesus, a hooker (played by Natasha) and a gambler.  I actually lobbied CK to play the gambler, but he insisted that of all the people he knew, I was the one "who most seemed like he thought he was God."

It was scary doing a live stage play where I had to remember a lot of lines for the first time in a long time.  No second takes, no pick-ups.  I coached acting, and coaching is nothing like acting.  I can see very quickly what an actor brings to the table in a scene, and see how to get more out of him or her.  That is very different from doing it yourself.  This is why I always called myself an acting coach and not an acting teacher; everything I gave the actor came from the actor themselves.

In preparing for that stage role, I decided that I had to take a decidedly un-God-like approach.  Playing against text always adds dimension, so I decided on a Jesus who had done one-too-many talk shows, was bored, and a little snippy.  As much as I think I did a good job with it, it was still odd to watch myself on the tape of the performance later.

Now, many years later, this really nice film student named Gabriel met me for coffee where we talked about the role of the poker dealer, and the game itself.  I think he knew it mostly from television and home games, and wasn't familiar with how the game would be dealt.  We talked about it, a little about who the character was an his relation to the two female players, and how he would deal.

Gabriel is clearly one of those directors who thinks he will get more out of actors if they don't know the whole story, because he never gave me the entire script - just my scene.  He kept saying he didn't have a chance to write out the translation (he is French), and I now think that was a ruse to keep the rest of the script out of my hands.  I was amused when I saw the final product, because I never knew one of the characters was a drug dealer.  I don't think it would have changed how I played it, but it certainly didn't hurt.

I was in and out in about an hour and a half - I'm very thankful to Gabriel and his friend who was helping light for that.  He was organized and knew what he wanted.  Oh, Gabriel, if only more of my directors were like you!

I don't expect the final result to have my cell phone buzzing from agents, but it was a lot of fun and I'm really glad that I did it.  If I am ever given a mob film like the ones I worked on to direct, I think I might find a very small character just like this to play in a cameo.

One additional note - I also didn't know the title.  I haven't asked the director if he knew the title was shared by a noir by one of my two favorite directors, Billy Wilder, featured another flawed tough guy, Kirk Douglas.  I'll chose to think it is a happy coincidence.

Even in my radio days, I always hated my voice.  I am thankful this film required no lines on my part.

Below, my latest (and hopefully not last) stint in front of the camera.

http://vimeo.com/48986160

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