All in the Family - The Making of Town Diary - Corner of First and Exes

"Whenever you want to marry someone, go have lunch with his ex-wife" 
-Shelly Winters, who had three ex-husbands and a lot of ex-lovers**

Around the time I met my ex-wife, Maureen, I also met a young actress named Annie. She had auditioned for the first play I directed,  a silly whodunit called  Kidnap Kaper.  It was written by a bitter older British actress, whose name I have thankfully forgotten. We'll call her Brit.

Brit was one of those actresses who clearly had been known for her looks at one time, but that, her only real asset,  had faded. Now, she ran this hole-in-the-wall theater in Hell's Kitchen,  and tried to relive glory days that weren't all that glorious.

I had already cast a girl as the young ingenue when Annie walked in. Annie's headshot was so bad I thought she was more like forty than the 24 year old beauty she was, all red hair and energy. The other girl was good; Annie was perfect.

Unfortunately,  Brit was also a redhead,  and Annie clearly reminded her too much of the young starlet she no longer was. She hated my choice, and proceeded to make Annie's life miserable during rehearsal. It got so bad that I insisted she put a stop to it, which led to a blowup about a week into the show. When she tried to fire Annie,  myself and the entire cast quit.

Annie, like Maureen, was Canadian by birth, and they  grew up pretty close to each other (albeit years apart) in  Southern Ontario.  We all became great friends, the three of us going out together whenever Maureen (who still lived in Ontario at this point) was in town.

Annie went on to study with famed acting guru Sandy Meisner in Bequia, and later LA.  It was near the end of his life, but the training clearly made Annie not only a better actress,  but eventually, a very good acting teacher herself.

Annie had moved to LA, and we would hang whenever I was out there. This was before Facebook,  but we kept in touch the old-fashioned way,  by phone or, later, email.

I wrote the character of the lead character's ex-wife from personal experience.  Maureen and I are great friends to fhis day, but in the script,  I wrote her from the tempestuous days leading up to our divorce.  I also added kids who were not big fans of their mostly absent dad, something Maureen and I did not have.

I sent the script to Annie without telling her anything.  The phone rang a few days later.

"She's Maureen, " Annie said, referring to the  characters. I explained that it was based on Maureen,  but that I had tried to hide it. Annie laughed.

"You did a bad job of hiding it," she said. "Don't worry. I can definitely play Maureen."

Indeed,  she went on to do a great job. We flew her in from LA,, and it was worth it the days we shot her scenes. It didn't hurt that she (like some others) did not particularly like our lead (much more on that later), and the Method actress in Annie made her avoid any 'friendly' contact with the actor beforehand.

The scenes were tough for me. I had to push Jack to shoot them more sympathetic to her than he would have, as his experiences with exes were not the same as mine. They are among the best scenes in the film.

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Another 'first' was John S, who would play the reckless younger brother of the lead character's best friend, Frank Ryan. Jimmy Ryan was the younger brother dependable Frank always got out of trouble.

My first theater company as Artistic Director was in Allenton,  PA., where I did three one-acts around Sam Shepard and Patti Smith. The main part of the evening was Cowboy Mouth,  which Shepard and Smith co-wrote and performed together at times around their crazy days living together at New York's Chelsea Hotel.*

The Chelsea Hotel came up a few times in my life.  My good friend Kevin O'Conner lived there, and I dated an actress who lived there who had an "imaginary friend.'  What can I say? She was cute, funny, and though we had to set  place for him when we had dinner - in or out - at least I didn't have to feed him. Besides,  a life spent with actors and film people makes you a lot less judgemental.

There were "favorites" at the local theater company,  but I passed them all over to cast John S. as Slim, the Shepard character described as a "rock and roll hero with a cowboy mouth."

John S. was then a student at Muhlenberg College under a truly under-rated theater teacher and director,  Charlie Richter.

I had seen John S. in a student production and been impressed with his charisma and energy.  His background was as an athlete,  but his instincts were great.  Although he was a raw talent at the time, I knew he would be worth a little extra coaching. He was.  Every performance was fresh and real.

John S went on to work in other film and TV, and eventually,  Broadway. My only regret in casting John S. is that, in retrospect,  I gave his character some of the cheesiest dialogue.  He overcame it, for the most part, but his talent would have come through more if I'd done a better job.

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It was great working again with John S. and Annie, but I went to the well once too often when I reached back into my past to try and cast the lead with an excellent stage actor I had met years earlier. In fact, casting the leads proved difficult on a number of levels.  While I had planned to address that casting here,  explaining the background on John S. and Annie took up more space and time than I thought, so it will need to wait for the next post.

Brevity,  you are no friend of mine.

* Ok, I did cover much of this story of working with John S back in a 2009 post. However, I find that readers don't like flipping back and forth, and I won't assume that every reader was around when I posted the original over five years ago. A little about my time with Actors' Collective, which will be covered in next post with actor Don, is also covered in that post. Besides, here, it is about both of these folks working with me on Town Diary.

**Shelly Winters had an interesting relationship with my mentor, Stan.

Hit The Road, JB

“What I really want to do is direct.”
-Popular NYU Film School T-Shirt

The popularity of the T-shirt derived from the fact that if you walk up to any PA on a film, they will tell probably tell you that this is only a brief stop for them – pretty soon, they will be directing. Most of them never will.

I wasn’t even thinking about directing when I found myself as a Set PA on “The Fan”, a movie where Lauren Bacall played a movie star who is stalked by an overly-zealous fan. If the DeNiro-Snipes film comes to mind when you hear this title, don’t be alarmed – that film was remake of this one.

“The Fan” would be the only film I would ever PA on. I was never particularly good at taking orders, and as PA, everyone is your boss. Also, at 25, I felt I was a little “old” to be low man on the totem pole. As a result, I usually took better positions on lower-paying jobs than lower positions on higher paying ones.

Yes, I got to see Lauren Bacall. From what I understand, friends call her Betty. P.A.s don’t call her Betty. P.A.s don’t call her at all. Not that she was a snob. She would sometimes spend time talking to the Grips or Electrics. As a matter of fact, both those groups, which are usually filled by bigger, burlier young guys, seemed to get quite a bit of Betty’s attention. Old enough to be their mother, she still was every bit the flirt.

I once asked one of the grips if he had ever acted on her flirtations. “Are you kidding,” he said. “She slept with Bogart. How are you gonna top that?” Indeed. I think I would always expect her to ask, “You know how to whistle, don’t you?” Wasn’t a problem for me, as I was not the object of her attention.

I got the gig on “The Fan” from a recommendation of someone on “Q”, and that was pretty much how most film jobs came along. As a freelancer, looking for work became part of the job. Wednesday’s were Showbiz Magazine. Thursday was BackStage. Both listed theater and film jobs. Once I started working in film, Thursday also became Hollywood Reporter day. Picking up these magazines was like clockwork. I even knew which newsstands had BackStage on Wednesday nights.

I got work on a play stage-managing “Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone” for a company called The Actors Collective. This was a really talented group of actors, most of who were currently working on soap operas and wanted an outlet to do real work. Soap operas were how they made their money. These plays were their lifeblood.

I have two memorable experiences from that company, who I stage-managed for two other plays after that first one. The first one was load in for the set. The set designer had a concept of 8 interlocking platforms. To build these, he ordered eight 3/4 inch sheets of plywood. The theater we were working in was on the 6th floor, and when these sheets – and the accompanying lumber, arrived, the only people there were the lead actor, Don, and me. Don was all of about 5’ 9”. We soon discovered that the 4x8s wouldn’t fit in the elevator. Smarter people would have sawed them in half, or waited for help. Don and I carried them up 6 flights. I still hate that set designer.

The other memory was the summer vacation we took after the first play. As I said, these actors made good money from the soap operas, and one had a summerhouse in Cape Cod. We all spent a week out there, and I loved it. It would become my favorite summer spot, and, in weird way, lead to me getting married.

There would be time before that would happen.

I was living with a choreographer/dancer named Patricia. Typical Irish girl – long red hair, freckles, the whole nine yards Typical dancer as well – woke to coffee and cigarettes. She was tiny and slim, yet always worried about her weight. She would buy a plain muffin, then cut it in half; half for breakfast, half for lunch.

Our meeting was typical as well – typical New York artist, that is. I met her at an audition. We went out on a date, and she told me she had to move out of her place – her female roommate was a jerk. We wound up at my place, had sex, and she moved in. That was fine by me.

Roommates are a way of life in Manhattan, rents being what they are. Roommates came, and roommates left. Sometimes, you were the roommate to leave. Changing jobs. Changing apartments. Changing lovers. It was all pretty much the same.

One of those Thursday mornings, we were sharing a muffin and a copy of BackStage when I saw a notice for a production manager for a production of “The Hobbit” in Pennsylvania. After I replied to the notice, I found out it was in the Lehigh Valley. A resume sent and a brief phone conversation later, and I was offered the job.

There was never any real thought of saying no because of my relationship with Pat. As a dancer, she would take a road show with a dance company if it came along, and we both understood that. In an odd way, I had a feeling that if I left, our relationship was over. It was one of those relationships that was comfortable, but with no real sparks. We were already more like friends who slept together than lovers. As it turned out, she returned to Massachusetts and took up full time choreography soon after I left, and she sublet our place for me and arranged to put what I hadn’t taken with me in storage. While I saw Pat a few times after that, I never saw that apartment again.

So, I picked up and arrived in Bethlahem, Pennsylvania. I had never been there, and waited a diner for the producers to pick me up. They were a few hours late.

The producers were a hippy couple who had been doing a puppet show of the Ring Trilogy for years. Now, they wanted to do a live, musical version of it with actors. They were the nicest people in the world, and they took me into their home – a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Fresh air, quiet, and not a subway in sight. Talk about culture shock.

While it was different, I was liking it. We mounted the show, with kids playing the hobbit roles. I still remember our Frodo, a handsome African-American kid who was all of about 14 years old. One matinee, he had a horrible show, and the kids in the audience booed him. I thought he would be devastated, and I went backstage to cheer him up. I asked if he wanted to go out between shows and get some dinner. He was still taking off his make-up, and his back was to me as he looked in the mirror. He turned around calmly and said, “Thanks, but I cant. I have a date.” I found out later that he was doing most every little girl in the play. I didn’t worry about him much after that.

During the course of that play, I met Louise. She was a RN, who lived in Bethlehem and worked weekends at a hospital in Philadelphia, She would work two double shifts so she could spend the rest of the week with her young daughter, who would spend weekends with her folks or her dad. Louise’s ex-husband. Louise was the first, and only, woman I dated that was older than me. She was in her early thirties.

Louise loved theater, but basically thought actors and theater people were too ‘flighty’. She should have trusted her instincts before we hooked up. Pretty soon, I had moved out from the farmhouse and was living with Louise. New roommate. New room.

Louise introduced me to Charlie Richter, the theater director at Muhlenberg College. Charlie was a local legend, and he deserved to be. He was nothing short of a genius. He could easily have made a name for himself as a director in New York. He was happy at Muhlenberg, where he pretty much had free reign to do what he wanted. That was a lesson that wasn’t lost on me.

Charlie and I talked a lot about avant-garde theater, a subject we could bore people with for hours, and we frequently did. He mounted a play based on the stories of the students who played themselves, much like “Chorus Line” was conceived, except it depicted where they saw themselves years forward. One actor, who was very raw, stood out. His name was John S., and he was this big jock, but with a presence that you can’t teach.

I soon learned that the woman who ran the local theater company was looking to step down. I made no attempt to hide my desire to take over, and presented a plan for the next year. It would be entitled, “The Rock and Roll Theater of Sam Shepard and Patti Smith” and feature three one-acts: Killers Head (by Shepard), Cowboy Mouth (Shepard and Smith) and a staged adaptation of Patti’s song “Horses”. Much to my delight – and the surprise of some – they bought it. Charlie’s encouragement had a lot to do with it,

I had never directed a play, and now I was going to direct three, albeit they were one-acts, with only a handful of actors who had any training, and they were students. The project certainly had some level of pretentiousness, looking back on it, but that’s the excitement of youthful projects. They have that gutsy, we-cant-fail attitude. You see it in a lot of first feature films: rough around the edges, but exciting enough to make up for it.

Having been a stage manager for a long time really came in handy. I had sat next to some really good directors through some bad rehearsals, so I knew not to be discouraged when things got tough.

One thing about a small town theater company – they have their favorites. I was told who were the best actors and actresses were, and I pretty much ignored it. I had their “best” actor, Steve, do the one-man opening play, “Killers Head” a 10 minute or so play with a guy blindfolded in an electric chair, opening with “Yeah, today’s the day I buy the horses. I’ve decided.”

For the main play, “Cowboy Mouth”, which Shepard and Smith wrote together when they lived together at the Chelsea Hotel (and they also performed together before Patti’s singing career got off the ground), I cast John S., who I saw in that play at Muhlenberg, and a butch woman who worked for Bethlahem Steel during the day. She was great. He was, well, rough, He never had to carry a play. He was a jock, and I got into the habit of starting rehearsals by running lines while he, the actress, myself and my stage manager jogged. Not being an athlete, it almost killed me, but he got to understand pace and cadence.

The plays were certainly different for the audience accustomed to “Annie Get Your Gun.” Cowboy Mouth opens with Cavale (Smith character) repeatedly cursing our Slim, and ends with a Giant Lobster and suicide. Together with “Killers Head” and “Horses” (in which a guys girlfriend waxes poetic about him being stabbed), we had our share of walkouts. Still, we got two reviews, and one of them was very favorable. The other taught me a little lesson.

In “Killers Head”, I insisted to Steve that he should let the irony of the situation play: a guy sitting in an electric chair talking about a new pickup truck and horses and the future. The one thing I told him to do was not to play nervous – don’t play the obvious.

On opening night, possibly because of nerves, possibly because he didn’t trust me, he played the whole thing shaking – just what I didn’t want. The one reviewer that hated the evening said the following “ “The only shining moment was when director (JB) had actor Steve infuse just the right level of tension as he sat awaiting his fate.”

OF course, I had visions of staying on for a while and doing many more shows. I figured if Charlie could make a go of it there, I could build a real company there, like Mamet (and later Gary Sinese) had done in Chicago, outside the glare of New York.

Alas, it was not to be. Neither was domestic bliss.

I kind of took to being “surrogate dad” to Louise’s little girl. I would pick her up at school on Monday’s before her mom got home from Philly. Mind you, I had never had a drivers license, and still didn’t. Also, I had don’t very little driving in my life – mostly taking those lessons for a license, and practicing with my dad years earlier. I failed two road tests. When I picked up her daughter and a friend one day, her daughter said, “Great. John’s driving. Its more exciting with him.”

I failed the domestic test as well. One of the girls I cast in the other one act (“Horses”) was a busty, leggy dancer. Ah, dancers (insert sigh). I couldn’t resist.

Louise was neither amused, nor understanding. Pretty soon, bags packed, it was back to New York.

“Woah Woman, oh woman, don't treat me so mean,
You're the meanest old woman that I've ever seen.
I guess if you said so
I'd have to pack my things and go.”

- The Genius of Ray Charles