The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance*, (or, There's Something About Actors)

"We Do Not Rent To Theatricals"**
- Old Rooming House Sign

(SPOILER ALERT - While discussing  the film Birdman, I will try not to give away too much of the plot, and definitely not the ending. That said, it's hard to write this post without discussing what happens in the movie, and that can certainly sometimes harm the experience. If you haven't seen the movie and would like to - you have been warned.)

Do not fear. I have no intention of deviating from the course of this blog, which is the insanity of a career on the production side of low-budget independent film, to indie film criticism. Many folks do it just fine right now, and, on the other end of the spectrum, many more people already do it badly, and I have no intention of competing with either crowd.

This is similar to my early forays in the world of the arts, which was as a writer and actor, a profession that had a similar spectrum. That side of my career when I came to a not-so-different decision that the world did not need one more mediocre actor, which I imagined was the extent of my talent.

My viewing of a matinee of Birdman  came on the heels of  finally finishing my series on Town Diary. Thank you, holiday time in New York, for providing an elder production person with ample free time to go to matinees.

It was only two short posts ago that I mentioned that my original plan for that script was not unlike this one, about the insanity of the backstage life in the theater. Of course, this is a path with deep tread marks in film, going back to the very early days, from the "I've got a barn. You've got the costumes. Let's put on a show" musicals to backstage back-stabbing in movies like All About Eve, to neurosis of the characters in Tootsie, which, while it covers soap operas, is filled with earnest, honest, true ac-tors from the theater world. Both Birdman and Tootsie are filled with characters determined to stay true to their pure art and eschew the crass and commercial (soap operas in the case of Tootsie, and the deluge of comic-book movies in Birdman.)

In fact, many of the characters in Birdman have sympatico companions in Tootsie. Ed Norton's insistence on the truth, and nothing but the truth, has echoes of Bill Murray's playwright ("I don't want my plays done at the Uris Theater. I only want my plays done in a little theater in the Village where the only people who see them are people who come in out of the rain")*** and of course, Hoffman's vain actor ("Nobody does vegetables like me!"). Teri Garr's neurotic actress would be right at home with this group. Where Garr's character famously tells Hoffman of the role he eventually takes, "I can't play her - she's, she's - she's a woman", one actress in Birdman comforts another in this scene.

Lesley: "I wish I had more self-respect?"
Laura: "You're an actress."

Indeed, Birdman is the movie that every film person who comes out of the theater world wants to write and/or direct. When done right - and this film is, for the most part - it offers a world where people are at the same time funny caricatures and real people who demand that you care about them. I got the same belly-laughs out of this that I got out of films like Tootsie and Noises Off and, on the film side, Tropic Thunder, The Player, and, of course, the inspiration of this blog's title, Living in Oblivion.

We are, after all, like family. We will defend our frailties, eccentricities and foibles to the death to the outside world, but among ourselves, we love nothing more than to pick at those same oddities. Undeniably, there is also the shadenfreude of watching others suffer as we have suffered.

Birdman does a very good job with the genre. Still, as I pondered it on the way home (yes, having all this free time leaves me time to not only see matinees, but ponder about them), the question that always troubles me about these films comes back. Sure, we love them but do "civilians" love them as much as we do?

To some degree, this can be said of any profession. If I search the internet, I'm sure there is a blog post of airplane pilots wondering this about Airplane. As with Tootsie, if they are broad enough, of course any audience will enjoy them just as much.

That is a problem with an "indie" film like Birdman. It spends so much time dismissing the crass commercialism of blockbusters that it would be an abject failure if it was broad enough for that audience, where as a film like Tropic Thunder can wear over-the-top blockbuster like a badge of honor.

Here, I started to think that Jack was right; that if we had done, this, it would have had limited appeal. We both loved Waiting for Guffman, but if we were going to be an even more obscure version of that film, there wasn't much chance of success. OK, so in the end we did not have any commercial success with Town Diary, and only limited critical success (Jack and I shared a screenwriting award from a very small L.A. festival).

I have a hunch that a lot of the critical acclaim and love for this film in the indie world comes exactly from this familiarity, and for many festival voters and indie film critics rooting exactly for this type of film and a character like Michael Keaton's Riggan Thomson. Keaton is an easy guy to root for and the parallels to his actual career (walking away from a third Batman the way his character, Thomson, walked away from "Birdman 4") make this a natural for him. The cinematography helps as well, accentuating every line and crease of his face, his receding hair line, the bags under his eyes, his sagging physique (though I would take it - he doesn't look that out of shape).We feel his pain.

Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed this movie, and I'm fine if he and this movie gets awards. It entertained me. What more can I ask? If this was a review, it would get both of my thumbs pumped high in the air like celebratory fists***.

The more I thought about it, it was better than the outline I wrote for that comedy, so maybe, on this point, Jack was right. Maybe the world didn't need another one of these films either. In the end, though the fruit was sweet, it was of the low-hanging variety.

NB - Keaton won a Golden Globe, as did the screenplay






*This is the subtitle for the Birdman, in case you didn't know. Does a movie title really need a subtitle?

** I used to have one of these signs, and I remember them being popular in the homes of my theater buddies. I have never done the historical research necessary to say whether they were authentic or just another self-depricating reference. If anyone out there knows for sure, please leave a comment below.

***Some of the Tootsie quotes are from memory - I love those lines, but some were not on IMDB quotes and I don't have the script. If they are off by a word or two, don't shoot me.

****If you are too young to remember, this is a reference to the old Siskel and Ebert review show, which became a template for so many of those shows to follow. As you might imagine, this show, which began on PBS, had much more insightful criticism than most TV review shows today, yet it was incredibly entertaining. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were reviewers for competing Chicago newspapers, at a time when newspapers still mattered. Neither was very TV savvy in the beginning, and the resulting spontaneity was much more fun than the more scripted shows today. We lost both of them too soon.

I Will Not Be Ignored

Lucky Stiffs was in the can, so it was once again time to try to get my pet screenplay, Never Waver, produced.

JR and I talked about what it would take to produce it ourselves.  JR had the equipment and the talent.  Truthfully, though, it wasn't going to happen.  Even back then, neither JR nor I were ever into making a movie just to get it done.   Trying to make movies on a shoestring didn't start in the digital age.  In those days - we're talking 1992 or so - the big thing was either pre-sales to home video, or films done with credit cards (we're into Kevin Smith time, and all those stories) or the great deferred (everybody works and, theoretically, gets paid later - right).

Movies that break through for little money have a way of making their way into indie lore.  It was 1992, and the famous ones were Kevin Smith's Clerks, and Rodriquez's El Mariachi.  The stories of shooting on short ends (unused film raw stock that was then resold cheaply) and getting equipment using your friend's film school ID were everywhere.  The problem is then, as now, the handful that got distribution received all the publicity, while, for most, to quote my friend and colleague Chris Kelley, the only projector they ever saw was Rank Cintel.  For the rest, there were credit card bills that still needed to be paid, and crew still waiting for their checks.

Lore gets ahead of reality, and the El Mariachi you may have seen in the theater (ok, you're too young to have seen it in a theater, I don't really hate you) did not cost $10,000.

As Ransom Scott says in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Film school kids have that t-shirt that says "What I Really Want to Do is Direct."  While I have a drive to direct, what always attracted me to anything, from radio to theater to film, was writing.

I had sent out the script to people in New York, with little response.  I had done the LA thing (They Also Serve Who Paint Houses).  I wasn't ready to give up,



 I didn't want to make it on a shoestring, and I didn't like the idea of continuing to knock my head against closed doors.



Sorry, couldn't resist throwing in one of my favorite movie scenes, favorite because all of those characters, from Bill Murray's lovable loser playwright to Teri Garr's neurotic eternal acting student ("I cant play her.  She's a...she's a..woman) to Hoffman's too-Method actor are people with whom I was extremely familiar.

I went back to what I knew, and what I knew how to do inexpensively, and that was using the stage.  I decided that I would do a staged reading of Never Waver that I would direct, rent out a theater, and invite literary agents, producers, production companies, and actors I wanted for the roles.

One of those actors was Martin Sheen.  Oddly enough, on one of my LA trips, I actually met Martin Sheen in a coffee shop.  I can't remember which one right now.  Now, I wasn't stalking him.  This wasn't Martin Landau in Mistress, chasing Ernest Borgnine through a parking lot.



I think of that old David Letterman skit "brushes with greatness," where people told stories of meeting big stars that were funny.  The thing is, in our business, you meet big stars all the time, and it really is no big deal.  I was lucky enough to work on a set with Lauren Bacall, sat at a dinner with Tennessee Williams, and  have worked with lots of "name" actors.  It's just not something that phases us.

This was different.  This wasn't about a "name" actor.  This was about being face-to-face with the actor I wanted for my lead.  Of course, I had a copy of my script with me; the entire point of me being in LA at that point was to get my script produced.  I wasn't a fan looking for an autograph, or an actor looking for a job.  I screwed up the courage to walk up to him, briefly told him that I thought he was perfect for the lead, told him the characters name, and said I wouldn't bother him further as I set the script down and walked away.  As I recall, he smiled, and was very polite.

I am reminded of a horror scene an actress/bartender friend related.  She was with her aunt in a restaurant in NY, where my friend worked, when James Earl Jones sat down with his wife for lunch.  My friend's aunt was very impressed, and insisted on going over and speaking to Mr. Jones, who was very courteous.  That wasn't enough.  She dragged my friend over, and introduced her niece as a "very talented actress that you might want to work with one day"  My friend wanted to dig a hole and bury herself as she shook hands, but never so as much as when, reaching for an autograph Mr. Jones kindly signed, her aunt spilled his drink all over him.

This, and the "cool" factor, is why those of us in the business don't bother people in public.  In any case, I never heard back from Martin Sheen.

I was going to get my shot the old-fashioned way.  I was going to earn it.  I managed to put together most of the cast I wanted for the reading, but was still in search of the elusive young girl who is inadvertently killed in a ROTC bombing gone wrong in the 60s.  The girl had to leave an impression, as she causes the protagonist in the film to kill a Congressman/mentor, setting the action of the script in motion.

I finally settled on a model named Natasha*.  She was tall and all legs, and she just had this smile that was infectious.  I could see my protagonist being unable to get her out of his head.  Despite her chosen one-word moniker, she was not Russian - I think she was some Irish-American kid from Queens who thought Natasha was exotic.  Never mind, she was my ingenue.

The reading went well, but was sparsely attended, though many of the major players (those same guys who sent those form letters years earlier) sent whoever was available from their office who couldn't  talk their way out if it.  Hey, I was proud of what we did, and I kept in touch with many of those actors for years, getting some of them cast in films I worked on.

Even in my young, single days, models were never my type; too cold.  Still, there was something fascinating about Natasha.  We kept in touch, and I coached her some on her acting.

This was during a period where I was supplementing my income by doing some acting coaching.  I liked the term coach; I avoided the term teacher.  I don't know that I was able to teach very much to actors, at least not like the acting teachers I had met when I was coming up as a struggling actor, or as my friend Annie was now doing in LA, having studied under the venerable Sanford Meisner in Bequia.  I felt more like a personal trainer who was just pushing them to do what they instinctively knew how to do, but better and more effectively.

One of my students was a dancer at a place nearby called Flashdancers, and, no, it was no relation to the movie, as in the movie, the girls kept their clothes on.  These ladies did not.  One of the girls was - surprise, surprise - an aspiring actress, and she so thought my coaching was helping, she recommended me to her co-workers.  I'm pretty sure there was a period in the early 90s when I coached more strippers than any acting coach in NY.

I don't think they give out awards for that sort of  thing.

If you are wondering at this point what this has to do with a career in film, those connections are to come, one quite quickly, as JR and I were to soon strike up the band one more time and work together on a film that was shot in the Fall of 1992, what I call The Fall of Love, for reasons you will soon discover.


* I made the point many times in this blog that I have no intention of ever embarrassing anyone.  From what I can tell -and I've done some research -  the model/actress has since changed her moniker, or is no longer in the business.  Using her name here in no way will affect anyone's career.

Come In Out Of the Rain

“I don't like when somebody comes up to me the next day and says, "Hey, man, I saw your play. It touched me; I cried." I like it when a guy comes up to me a week later and says, "Hey, man, I saw your play... what happened?"

“I don’t want my plays done at the Uris Theater. I want my plays done at some little place in the Village where the only people who see it are people who come in out of the rain.”

Jeff Slater (Bill Murray) – Tootsie

My career in theater would have made Jeff proud.

There is so much of Tootsie that resonates with my theatrical career, starting with the birthday party for Michael.

Living in Manhattan is expensive, and most of us struggling artists always had roommates, who were usually other struggling artists.

As fate would have it, I lived in a triplex (3 bedrooms on three floors, connected by a spiral staircase). My roommates were a gay woman and a gay guy – both actors. The sexual preference thing worked out perfectly, since there was absolutely no sexual tension in the apartment – none of us were interested in the other. One of our favorite times were our parties – we would invite all our friends, and then watch the wrong people try to hook up with the wrong people (i.e. – My straight male friends trying to hit on her lesbian friends; his gay male friends trying to hit on my straight male friends; her lesbian friends trying to hit on my straight female friends) .

Joe had an audition coming up where he had to present a scene, meaning he needed a partner. He asked me. I had no acting training, and no interest in acting.

“I need someone to do this with me, and my regular partner cant make it. Besides, you work in radio, that’s like performing.” He was clutching at straws. Desperate isn’t pretty, but I couldn’t really say no.

We go to the audition, and it goes well enough. A day or two later, I come home and Joe says : “We got it.” I offer my congratulations, not paying attention to the word “we.” We? Yes, they wanted me as well. Not wanting to be an actor was one thing. Ego was something else. I was in.

The play was done at a downstairs theater in the Village called the Colonnades, directly across the street from the Joe Papp’s Public Theater. I don’t know about coming in out of the rain, but a good deal of our audience were people who couldn’t get tickets to the cutting edge shows at the Public Theater.

Across the street, there were plays by David Henry Wang and Eric Bogosian and Sam Shepard and Eric Overmeyer and Richard Foreman and all the emerging great dramatists. Across the street they could see a young Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Raul Julia, Diane Lane, and Mary Beth Hurt.

At the Colonnades, they got me, Joe, and a play about Michael Servetus.

My theatrical debut was a play about the conflict between Michael Servetus and John Calvin. Servetus was a Spanish theologian who originally joined Calvin as part of the Protestant Reformation, but then broke with Calvin when he felt Calvin’s heart was “darkened by hate.”

I forget the name of the play, but it was translated and adapted from its original Eastern European by a husband/wife team who were incredibly bright. She was a fine director, and the two leads were great. The original play was almost five hours. They “trimmed” it down to a svelte three hours and forty-five minutes, much of which were theological debates between Servetus and Calvin based on their letters. On the “intellectually too deep” scale, the play made “A Man for All Seasons” look like “Rambo”. The comparison continues, as Mr. Servetus meets the same fate as Thomas More.

The Variety reviewer said he felt 'like he had sat through the Protestant reformation.'

It was an ensemble cast of almost 30 (know you know why I got cast – they needed bodies!). I played three roles with multiple costume changes, my favorite of which was a singing bartender who got up on the bar and led a bunch of radical Protestants in a song of protest.

It was also mid-summer, the air conditioning was bad, and I had to under-dress (keep one costume underneath another) to make a costume change, which meant I was dressed for Siberia in a 95 degree theater for about 45 minutes of the play.

For someone more stable, this might have been a traumatic experience that drove them from the theater. However, two things happened that actually cemented my love of theater during the brutal run.

First, in my long span between scenes, I picked up another actor’s book: The Empty Space, by Peter Brook. The book opened my eyes to everything theater could be. It was more than Broadway and fancy sets and elaborate costumes. It could be something raw and honest and powerful. This set as tone me, and the type of theater I subsequently trained and worked in.

The other event was I met a great stage manager, Nancy Juliber. Nancy was a pint-sized bundle of energy, who had become a stage manager when she was out of work and her roommate (a dancer) told her that her dance company needed a stage manager – and they were paying. Nancy lied about her resume and had stage-managed many plays since.

This played right into a dichotomy in my life. I’m a Capricorn, and between that and my Catholic High School training, there was a lot of organizer in me. On the other hand, there was a lot of flakey artist in me as well. Stage manager was a perfect blend.

Nancy and I became friends, and she taught me how to stage manager. I loved it. Even the minutia of creating a production book and marking the stage and timing scenes was great. Better yet, I got to spend all the time with the director, and learn what they were thinking and how they were preparing.

When the play was over, I worked as ASM for Nancy’s next play. I showed up the first day, and she asked me time a scene. I told her I had forgotten my watch at home. She sent me home and told me to come back tomorrow properly prepared. It’s a story too many of my P.A.s have heard over the years, but it set the tone for the level of perfection and professionalism that you were to bring to any project, regardless of how big or how small.

The years from 1979 (when I did the first play) though the mid-80s would wind back and forth between radio, film and theater, but mostly theater.