I Am Harvey Weinstein

"We all have that Barton Fink feeling but since you're Barton Fink, I'm assuming you have it in spades."
-Jack Lipnick, Barton Fink

I don't know about you, but I've gotten pretty tired of seeing Harvey Weinstein's picture on my news feeds. This is a man who seemed, even before this latest news, to have an ego as bloated as his physical presence.

So, instead of subjecting you to the image once again, I used this image of the wonderful Michael Lerner as studio head Jack Lipnick from Barton Fink.

While I have a feeling that he sees himself as something of the Jack Lipnick, dapper studio head, above, what he really should have understood is that young women likely saw him as the image of Jack Lipnick, below.

Weinstein is sixty-five. I will be sixty next week. With all the time he spent around great scripts and great writers and great thought, he seems surprisingly lacking in some basic understanding of the laws of attraction, not to mention basic laws of decency.

I love the movie Atlantic City. For those who don't remember it, an elder Burt Lancaster plays a former mob guy who meets up with a young Susan Sarandon. While I wouldn't say they fall in love, they definitely have a relationship.

I remember discussing the film with a young actress friend. I told her how I could definitely see it, despite their age difference. After all, he was so charming. So dashing.

"Ew," she said. "And so old." She wasn't buying it.

Hollywood didn't start having a woman problem with Harvey Weinstein. Older actors regularly were paired with young starlets in movies, and we were all made to believe that was normal.

It's not.

Right after the scandal broke, Lisa Bloom, an  attorney who was representing him, said, in defending him, that he was "an old dinosaur learning new ways." Translation: everyone used to do this. Translation: this used to be the norm.

While that may certainly be true, it is not an excuse. Not even close.

From everything I've ever read, and from the experiences of some people I know who have met him, he was far from a decent person in the rest of his life, even if you don't consider his treatment of women.

The accounts of what Weinstein did were appalling, from sexual harassment all the way to rape. It's easy for anyone with any decency to see how wrong he was.

One of his accusers, Lauren O'Conner described sexual harassment succinctly:

"I am a 28-year old woman trying to make a living and a career. Harvey Weinstein is a 64 year old, world famous man, and this is his company. The balance of power is me: 0, Harvey Weinstein 10."

This blog is not about people who's power-ranking is 10. Mine is certainly not. We all know enough about Harvey. Let's talk about us. Let's talk about low budget indies.

As regular readers know, I got my start as a stage manager, with a wonderful woman named Nancy. She was a short powerhouse, and no one ever doubted who was in charge when she was around.

I also worked for a political research firm with a boss named Barbara K (name withheld because she is a big exec now). When we were going to a meeting one day, I opened the door for her as we got into a cab.

"You first," she said. "Men only open doors so women have to slide over."

When a co-worker and I were in her office being called out on mistakes we had made, my co-worker, a young woman began to cry. Barbara's reaction?

"I can cry, too, Maria." It seemed harsh to me at the time. I later looked back at it as a lesson to a younger woman. Don't play the "girl" card unless you want to be treated as one.

Both these women were strong, and as kind and as good a friend and a boss as anyone could hope to find.

So, when I got into the film business, I had no problem respecting the women who worked for me. That, and my dad was a true gentleman. You just did not mistreat women.

I remember being 1st AD on a show in the late 80s. My second was a woman. One day, she came up to me and told me of a male PA who had disrespected her.

I could fire him, I told her, or tell him to shut up and listen to you. All that would do would be to reinforce that I, a male, was in charge. Another option would be for you to put him in his place. Then, he has to respect you, and if comes to me complaining, I will have your back 100%. She did, and it worked.

Over the years I have seen so many forms of disrespect on set. Some of it, honestly, is just the basic disrespect that goes on with a crew, the jokes, the ribbing. Intent means a lot. Some of it is outright disrespect, and, sadly, some of it falls somewhere in between.

In the 35MM days, the ACs would carry heavy mag cases. I mean, mag cases I could not carry very far. I watched on one particular exterior as a diminutive female AC I knew carried two cases at a time up and down hill. Still, producers would question me as to whether a female could be a grip, or an electric. This, from men who often not much stronger than me.

I can honestly say that I've never failed to hire a woman because she was a woman - for any position on a film. I once had an (almost) all-female G&E crew. (The gaffer on that shoot - now a very talented and very successful DP, always reminds me when I tell this story that one of our Best Boys was male).

I had a male First AD on a shoot I was producing constantly comment on his 2nd AD's breasts. That one, I had to deal with myself.

Film crews on features over a long-haul are like family - for better or worse. You don't see anyone else, at least not while you're fully awake. Flirting is natural. Dates? All the time. Hookups? Absolutely. I can name a number of G&E guys who regularly dated female crew, often, as it worked out, Hair or Makeup. If that sounds cliche, it's what I saw.

We are all, hopefully, adults. We should know when flirting is mutual, and when it is not appreciated. That does not mean we always do.

I have dated crew people over years. I have dated assistants, but they were my assistants before we were on the shoot, and they were always good at their job.

There were times that I also went out of my way not to be social with women on set, such as actresses. There was a stunning young actress on set who had to do many difficult partial nude scenes, and with a director who was incredibly disrespectful and flirty with her. When she first came up to me at lunch just to chat, I avoided anything but professional conversation. Man, I thought, anything else, and I will look just like the jerk director and his co-producer, who were like over-sexed teenagers.

I mentioned age before, and that is also a factor. At that time, I was about twenty years older than her. I continue to be much older than many of the women I work with, and like to be mentor to both male and female co-workers. It's really hard to do that when your relationship is "complicated."

There was one production person who I worked with who I was attracted to. She was much younger. We had done some things socially - a show, dinner, etc. After one lunch, I told her honestly: I am attracted to you, but I'd like to work with you, and given our age difference, I think that would not only get awkward but reflect badly on her. People would get the wrong impression. After that, we remained friends but there was no more dating.

The answers are difficult, and the answers are easy. There are lines, and, again, as adults, we should know what they are.

I titled this article "I am Harvey Weinstein," so if you thought I was going to leave it with me as a hero of some sort, well, you haven't read many of my posts.

There are habits I have that I inherited from that very respectful father that I need to work harder to change. One is language. My Dad would often refer to a woman in talking with her as "dear" or other terms of endearment. Now, I should point out that while my dad could be a flirt, he would use these terms with a 5-year old girl or a 90 year old woman. They were meant to flatter, and was not about hitting on them.

That's fine to say for a male. However, in the workplace, they are inappropriate, and worse, can denote condescension, even when that is not the meaning. I know I've been guilty of that way too often.

I also realize commenting on this can be a minefield for a male, no less a producer. I've read many, many too many self-righteous columns by men about this problem. That said, this whole business has made me reflect, and should make others do so as well. If that conversation is difficult, it is an important one to have.

My belief in this matter is the same as it is about life. I can only see this from my biased perspective. I am an almost sixty year old straight, White, CIS male. I don't know what it's like to grow up Black, or gay, or trans, or, for that matter, female, and I shouldn't pretend to do so.  I also should not and will not make believe I can speak for them.

We like to think ourselves open-minded, but we need to confront our biases. I think back to my Atlantic City analogy earlier in the post. What I found charming, a woman found creepy. How many other times, that I am not recalling now, have I, unintentionally, given the wrong signal? Handled a situation indelicately? Made a comment that I thought was a compliment that made a woman uncomfortable?

I'm sure the answer is: more often than I would like to admit.

Just the way the death of Sarah Jones made me think even harder about how late I let a PA work without proper turnaround, or if there was any danger in a given situation; all I can say is that I will be more conscious of how I address women; how I deal with them; am I giving them an even chance in hiring.

We are right to condemn. We are right to throw stones when stones need to be thrown, but we also need to tend to those glass houses we live in.

This Post is Dedicated to Nancy

"Perhaps, therefore, ideal stage managers need not only be calm and meticulous professionals who know their craft, but masochists who feel pride in rising above impossible odds."
- Peter Hall, Director of National Theater, England

Before I worked in film, I worked in theater, and my first real experience was as a minor actor in an ensemble play about Michael Servitas and the Protestant Reformation. It was a very long play. One reviewer said he felt like he had sat through the Protestant Reformation. It was done at a hot theater in summer and we wore heavy clothing, but it was there that I discovered the joys of stage managing through meeting Nancy Juliber.

I've told the entire story before, so I will spare long-time readers a complete recount. Suffice to say that Nancy took me on as an ASM on her next play, and I went on to stage manage probably close to a hundred small, Off-Broadway and so-far-off-Broadway-you-couldn't-find-them-with-a-map plays. Some were done with some of the best "downtown" companies and actors and directors.

Every play asked for a bio. As stage manager, you realize that nobody but your family cares about your bio. I always kept it brief. Sometimes it would be just one line - the line that would end all my bios in theater as stage manager and later as director and even the few times I got back to the stage as an actor.

This play is dedicated to Nancy.

I must admit that part of this was my own sense of humor. I loved the fact that if anyone bothered to read my bio, they might wonder who Nancy was. A lost love? The sister I lost as a child? My high school English teacher who inspired me to a life in the theater? At least, I hoped they wondered. More likely, they never gave it a thought.

However, in part, it was a sincere tribute. Nancy taught me how to stage manage, and later got me my first film production office job as assistant office production coordinator on a feature and showed me how to do that. I have talked lots about mentors, but no one contributed more to the direction of my career toward the production side more than Nancy. Indeed, stage managing prepared me for film production in many ways, from understanding how to protect and care for actors, how to make directors feel that subtle suggestions were, in fact, their ideas, and how to remain calm in the middle of storms. All of these skills helped me as First AD and, later, line producer and producer.

I got to thinking of this the other night when I went to see an old friend in a play at Soho Rep in Manhattan in the Anne Washburn play 10 Out of 12. 

The title refers to the number of hours Actors' Equity allows their members to work in a twelve hour period. The entire play is a tech rehearsal of a play we never see. It covers what Jesse Green of Vulture accurately calls "the only part of theatrical life almost everybody hates: the intense, soul-crushing boredom of tech rehearsal."Audience members are given headsets and can hear backstage chatter,  including the lighting and sound designers making adjustments and the stage crew reporting on how things are going.

And, of course,  the stage manager. Although the actress playing the stage manager is seen only briefly, she is, in many ways, the center of the show. The play is, intentionally or not, an homage to stage managers. If there is any doubt, check out the playwright's interview with three stage managers at the end of this post. 

Theater is not simpler or easier than film in many ways, but it is different. Watching this play, and laughing along at every inside joke, I was transported back to a time I remember now with fondness and love.

My first love, and I miss it. Like most first loves, the memory of it is likely way more satisfying than reality,  the bad days and the disappointments conveniently forgotten. 

The show is hilarious, and Gibson Frazier (the actor Upstage Left in period costume), who was writer, lead and producer on the film I am most proud of, brings the same incredible skill set I remember. He also gets to deliver a line that reflects not only the immediate crisis (a difficult actor making tech even more difficult) but, on a larger scale, maybe the absurdity of creating art at all:

“It’s too hard. It’s too complex. It’s too much of a task. It’s going to always lack. There will always be a kind of failure. We have to find a beauty in that.”

The characterizations were very much spot on, with just the right touch of existentialism and dramatic license. I also especially loved the director, played by the always wonderful Bruce McKenzie ( featured at the front of the stage above). Directors are often portrayed as fierce dictators. This director is much more what I remember, a benevolent despot who, in the end, is being blown around by the forces around him just as much as anyone else.

World-weary cynic that he is, he asks:

“With the playwright gone, where’s that little nimbus of panic and criticism right over by my right shoulder? How am I to know that I’m getting everything very subtly wrong?”

That reminds me of my stage directing days.

I would dedicate this post to him. Or to Gibson.

Except it's dedicated to Nancy.

Going and Coming - Mentors Passing On

            "Master Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?

             Caine: No.
             Master Po: Do you hear the grasshopper that is at your feet?
             Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
             Master Po: Young Man, how is it that you do not?"*

When I was setting up a timeline for this blog, I knew there would be a time where I dealt with the death of people who had an affect on me and my career. One of those posts I knew I would write would be on the death of Stan Bickman, who most influenced my work as line producer and production manager.

In the "timeline," I have passed that point. As I started putting this post together, I realized that there was one thing in common when three of my mentors passed - I wasn't there for any of them. I also realized that, to this day, they are there for me, that they had already "passed on" what I needed, hence, the play on words in the title.

We often think of mentoring as it is depicted above; the master-student relationship. In that image, there is the wise master passing on knowledge - in one direction - to the student, directly telling the student what they need to know.

Most mentors impart knowledge more like this example from Charlotte Joko Beck, talking about her days at Oberlin Conservatory wanting to study with the "best" piano teacher in Everyday Zen:

When I went in for my lesson I found he taught with two pianos. He didn't even say hello. He just sat down at his piano and played five notes and then he said, "you do it." I was supposed to play it just the way he played it. I played it, and he said, "No."He played it again, and I played it again. Again, he said, "no." Well, we had an hour of that. And each time, he said, "No."...At the end of three months, one day, he said, "Good."...Finally, I had learned to listen.

How familiar does this sound to those of us in film - or any area? We learn by example, not by words or instruction.

As someone who taught film school (New York Film Academy), and who feels I have taught more on set, the process is not that simple.

Oddly, it is pop star Phil Collins who may have put it best:

"In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn."

I know that I learned a good deal from preparing lessons, and in answering questions from students. The formality of planning lessons forced me to consider what I do in detail, point-by-point, and not just go about doing what I've always done.

On my last shoot, I had to train a production coordinator - she had a great deal of experience producing, but had not specifically done the functions of POC on a feature. As usual, I also had an assistant, who also did not have experience with a lot of the things she needed to do. Having to create and offer a structure was important to me.

If my Zen practice has taught me anything, it is how what seems like the simplest thing - just doing the task in front of us and not having our mind many other places - can be the biggest challenge. Look at your day -how many times are you doing one thing while also focused somewhere else.

More on that another time.

As for the mentors here, they are my father, actor/director Kevin O'Conner and Stan Bickman. I have talked about all three, and will offer links to cover ground I have already covered. Here, in discussing Stan's passing, I also wanted to devote the proper time to mentors, in one place.

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My father. For all of the years I lived at home, my dad was a manager and repairman for an air conditioning and television repair shop in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Later, he would go on to be a construction foreman.

He had offers to run his own business many times, and to take office management jobs. It was not his style - he would have died in an office. He was fine with leading men if he was out there with them. If he had stayed in the military (highly unlikely, as he hated being told what to do), he would have been a platoon sergeant who turned down officer rank.

He always referred to "his men." He could tell them anything, but he would defend them completely to anyone above him. He would never ask them to do anything he hadn't done.

On a personal level, that was what he most left for me. There were other things: I remember him sitting down with me after a long day of work making me do spelling quizzes every day after I failed one when I was in grammar school. He also took interest in anything that interested me, reading many books on Buddhism after I took an interest, though he was never a religious man in the traditional sense.

When I worked at the radio station in college, at WNYU-FM, he would always listen to my show if he were home, just to listen to my breaks, even though he had no love for the music that took up most of my show. When I went into theater, first as a stage manager, he would come at least once to every show, even though he had no great love for live theater.

There were little things, too, like he would never take a drink at work, even though he was often offered when he did repair work. Remember, my dad was from the Mad Men era, where having a drink at work had no stigma. This is why I will rarely have a drink in a work setting, even when it might seem ok and others are.

When my Dad found out he had cancer, he met me for lunch, and said he did not want to go like his father, who suffered for years. He said that when the time came, he wanted me to let him go. Unfortunately, like his father, my Dad was pretty tough, and lived years beyond what doctors thought. By the time he could no longer leave his hospital bed. he looked nothing like the father I knew - my Mom actually thought they had transferred him because she didn't recognize him one day.

Weeks before he died, he made me promise not to come anymore. One feature he still had was his stern eyes when he was serious - and he was serious. He had a way he wanted to remember him. He wasn't asking - he was telling me. Many would disagree, but I honored his wishes, and did not see him for weeks before he actually died.

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Kevin, from his days as one of the original members of La Mama theater troupe, a landmark Off-Broadway theater company. Kevin surrounded by women - not at all unusual.

Kevin O'Conner was one of the best actors I ever worked with. I spoke about him extensively in another post. Check it out. It not only covers his achievements professionally, but some of what I admired about him.

He won multiple Obie awards for achievements on the Off-Broadway Stage. His television and film work was not as impressive, although he did play Bogart for a TV-movie entitled Bogie.

A life-long chain smoker, Kevin developed cancer. Even as he was getting sicker, he still had not lost his love for teaching or acting. His acting students often would ask him to work on their short projects - rarely for any money, and I remember Kevin doing a night shoot on one such project while he was wheezing and coughing from the cancer. As in my example from the other post, it just never occurred to him to say "no."

I was in LA in 1991, and when I returned to New York and looked Kevin up at the Chelsea Hotel, I learned that he had died just a few weeks earlier. The last time I spoke to him on the phone, he never mentioned he was in his last stages.


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Stan Bickman is the person I've talked about most extensively here. Check out this post on how we met, or this one, a faux Stan guest blog post.

He had emphysema, and by the time I knew him, he had one lung and carried a respirator. By the time I hired him as my production manager on his last film, Man of the Century, he was dragging around a tank.

Dianne was his longtime production coordinator, assistant, aide, confidant, and friend. I had left messages for Stan and Dianne for a while, and not heard back. One day. Dianne called. I could hear the tears.

"Stan is dying, John. He is on a ventilator at the hospital, and he has asked to be taken off. He probably won't make the weekend."

I immediately asked where he was, but Dianne cautioned:

"That's why I haven't called you back. Stan doesn't want to see anyone, not you, not JR (John Rosnell, who had introduced me to Stan.). Not like this. He insisted."

Same as the instructions I would get from my father years later.

After he died, I got a nice card from his daughters in LA. It was a thank you card for my condolences, and had a picture of Stan at a pay phone - that's how they always remembered him, on the phone and on the road.

I could not find an online photo, and, sadly, that card got lost in a production office (Stan would have been amused by the irony of that), but the results in Google Image when I entered Stan's name (not counting the men shown - none of them are him) gives a good picture - one-sheets and posters for a lot of B-movies. He would be proud. (Also of the fact that the movie he thought would launch his career, T-Bird Gang, can now be seen in its entirety)

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Besides not being there at their death, they shared other things. All were charming with women, in a gentlemanly manner that was neither offensive nor quite flirting when it was inappropriate. I remember each of them being as flattering to a woman of eighty as a girl of ten as to a starlet.

In many ways, all were products of - for better and for worse - another era.

All were mild-spoken men, which didn't mean they didn't let you know when they were serious. Their educations varied, but all of them learned most of their skills at their jobs.

In one way or another, the Ackroyd tribute at Beluschi's funeral from my Kevin post fit them all - they were good men if sometimes bad boys.

There were obviously others who helped and guided me along the way. As Joko Beck says, "Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need....Every moment is the guru."* Certainly, Nancy Juliber, the stage manager who got me into stage managing and later my first film office job, changed the course of my life, as did so many at that WNYU radio station.

These men stand out for the times I met them in my life, and the fact that what they taught, without saying it, was as much about how to treat people, how to approach work, how to respect your work, as it was any specific task.  It is why I think of them more as mentors in life than teachers of any specific skill, though with each of them, there was the latter as well.

I don't know how many other "students" they have out there, how many others were influenced by them. For me, I know that they speak to me when I need them - and sometimes when I'd rather they didn't. They would all agree with the fact that one of the things you need to learn from your mentors is how to move on from them, to adapt, to be someone with something new to offer the next generation.

You can take the time to teach others. To be a mentor, you owe it to yourself to be the best example of what you would like to see in those that come after, and hope that you are, indeed, up to that task; that they will sort the good from the not-so-good, they will take the best and leave the rest.  As one of my past ADs, Chris Kelley, used to say when I tried to influence him specifically to do something my way and he felt otherwise:

"If you meet the Buddha along the road, you must kill the Buddha."*

So, in this moment, what are you passing on today, grasshopper?


N.B. The internet at its best, and certainly blogs, should be interactive. Along the lines of not trying to "teach" as much as point here, I would love to hear of your experiences, either your mentors or experience as a mentor yourself. Pass them along!








*Although influenced by my Zen practice, I try very hard not to preach. Folks don't come to this blog for instruction in Zen, nor should they. As such, I often make light of issues serious practitioners might see as deeper - my reference to Kung Fu or Serenity Now are ways of avoiding being self-important, without meaning to minimize Zen. Along those lines, Joko Beck's quote is much longer, and the 'Buddha along the road' quote is not meant to be taken literally (though Chris sometimes did when I bugged him), but has a much longer explanation, which you are free to explore.

No Time To Get Confused

“Do I get confused when I have a lot of things to rehearse? Nah. When I get confused it when I have nothing to rehearse.”

- Sparger, speaking to imaginary boy (Kennedy’s Children, by Robert Patrick)


Once I got my first taste of working in theater, I threw myself into it head-long.

As stage manager, I would have one play in rehearsals during the day, and be in performance with another one at night. In my free time, I’d do a shift at the radio station, and go on a voice-over audition (something I picked up from my co-workers at the radio station).

Generally, I could put together enough small checks to support my way of life, which wasn’t elaborate, but did include living in Manhattan, which was never cheap.

Late in 1979, I began studying with Judith Malina and the Living Theater. Some of you may recognize Judith as an actress – she played the little dark-haired woman who dances with Robin Williams in “Awakenings,” she is in Household Saints, was the original Grandma in the first “Addams Family” movie, and, more recently, played the nun who was Paulie’s real mother in the Sopranos (“I was a bad girl.”) Judith and her deceased husband Julian Beck started the Living Theater Company, who was real pioneers in avant-garde theater. By the time I studied with her, Julian was dead and she was married to theater partner Hannon Resnikov.

Working with Judith and Hannon just cemented the idea that I wanted to do non-traditional theater, and I wound up running in circles where I got a lot of that sort of work, both as a stage manager and, at times, as assistant director.

It was my relationship with Judith and with Nancy J. (the stage manager) that led me to two shows that really influenced my path.

In 1980, President Carter reinstated the draft. Judith was (and I imagine still is) an anarchist, and she was invited to be part of the protests that would be taking place in Washington. The idea of doing a revival of Hair came up, and Judith introduced me to Jim Rado and Gerry Rangi, the creators of Hair who also played its original leads (Berger and Claude).

The original “Hud” in the play was choreographing, and a crazy guy named Richard was directing. I was offered the job of production managing, which meant I oversaw the stage management but also did things like arranged for our travel to DC, our performances in NY, kept the books, cut the checks, etc. This would be a foundation for the work I would later do producing theater, and, eventually, doing similar jobs in film.

Hair was a blast. Rado and Ragni clearly didn’t just write Berger and Claude, they WERE Berger and Claude. Rado (Claude) was a nice, middle-class blonde kid who was quiet and all love-and-peace. Ragni (Berger) was an inspired madman. The guy who played Hud was a flaming queen. It made for interesting rehearsals, with lots of arguing, then reconciliation, and not a small amount of smoking, Both Rado and Ragni hated the recently released film, and were determined to get the play back to its “roots.”

We had a lot of young actors, and, to be honest, the production wasn’t very good. The highlight of the NY part of the production was when we lost out Berger near the end of rehearsals. We held auditions, and saw hundreds of people. If you remember Berger, he;s supposed to be like an Abbie Hoffman on overdrive.

In walks this guy, who, if you need a mental image, think Radar O”Reilly: short, wire-rimmed glasses, SHORT hair, suit and tie. No one thought we would cast him, but since everyone had waited so long, we were determined to let everyone audition.

“What role are you reading for.” I asked. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t at the wrong audition.

“Berger,” he said. People on my side of the desk chuckling under their breath.

“And what would you like to sing for us,” I asked.

“Aquarius”. Dear God, no. This was the answer we hated. It was the most popular tune from the show, it showed the least since it was a tribe (chorus) song, and everyone who wasn’t well prepared sang it.

I nodded to the piano player, who played the intro. “Radar” (as I will call him – I really don’t remember his name) begins the song swaying gently back and forth in his corporate attire, much as Pat Boone might.

“When the moon is in the Seventh House,
and Jupiter aligns with Mars…..”

He does the whole first verse like this, and then, at the end of the verse

“…this is the dawning of…”

At this point, he lets fly with a really powerful belt (voice), jumps up on the table, and proceeds to do the rest of the song barefoot and stripping down to his boxers.

He knew he was wrong for the role, and decided he was going to put us on and audition for the company anyway. It took a while before we all stopped laughing, and before he left, we welcomed him into the tribe (but not, of course, as Berger).


The highlight of the production, though, was DC. We are all on chartered buses – the whole company was on one bus. We were scheduled to perform during the protest at some point: there was a make-shift stage, and thousands and thousands of people. I was 23 years old at the time, and most of the cast was younger. The cast was a little awe-struck, and very hyped. There I was with a clipboard and my notes and my bag with all my preparations, trying to make sure everything went smoothly.

Two of our producers were a brother and sister who were radical wanna-bes They were annoying as hell, and they kept pumping the cast up more, much to my chagrin. They were thinking Woodstock – I was thinking Kent State.

Seriously. Its not like I thought anyone was going to be shot, but Kent State was very clear in my mind, and I didn’t want any of these kids intimidating anyone.

One of the organizers jumped on the bus. When he said his last name, I asked him if he had a brother in NY (it was not a common last name). Indeed, his brother was a good friend of mine from the radio station (and is still a good friend to this day). This guy would later become an immigration lawyer who had an influence on my life (more on that in a later chapter).

So, we get onstage, the amplification is terrible, we do our two or three songs, a few of the people in the crowd listen, and its almost time for us to get off the stage. The two idiot producers (they were not the main producers) jump up, grab the microphone, and start with stupid “fuck the man” style stuff. Now, our kids are more pumped up, and as one of the girls in the troop in coming off stage, she gets in the face of a DC cop who is basically just trying to direct them.

I see this and immediately put myself between them so she doesn’t do anything stupid. As is instinctive in potential “fight” situations, I put my arms up in both directions to keep them apart. The arm that kept her away was cool. The arm that wound up in the chest of the DC cop was not. That arm was shortly joined with the other one by way of handcuffs, as I was led off.

Thankfully, Jeff’s brother (the organizer) had been in the area, saw what happened, and would up getting me out of lock-up. I convinced both the cop and his superiors that I had no intention of hitting them, and, thankfully, charges weren’t filed, but it was not fun being in lock-up during a demonstration with people who were actually looking to get locked up.

The other play that influenced me during this period was a play called Chucky’s Hunch. Once again, Nancy was the stage manager, and she wanted me to ASM. At this point, I was already moving up, but she convinced me that this was a good opportunity, and the pay was actually better than some of the SM gigs I was being offered – and chances of getting arrested were minimal.

Chucky’s Hunch was a one-man show that was originally performed at Theater for New Audiences in New York, and then at the Harold Clurman Theatre on Theatre Row. (where I took over as stage manager after Nancy left). A good –and accurate – review can be found at this link: http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?_r=1&res=9F03E2DE1339F930A15750C0A967948260&oref=slogin

The play was a one-man show, and the last paragraph of the review tells you why this was such a great experience for me:

Of course, ''Chucky's Hunch'' is most of all an actor's vehicle, and Mr. O'Connor rides it for all that it is worth. This performance - presumably created in collaboration with the director, Elinor Renfield - is the best work I've seen this actor do. Speaking in a gin-sodden, sandpaper voice that occasionally erupts into mirthless, private laughter, Mr. O'Connor keeps Chucky's past and present in perfect focus. As the character drifts off into sad defeat and mad bouts of panic, his dancing eyes always allow us to see the pugnacious, swaggering and obnoxious hipster that Chucky once was. Most important, he manages to avoid any slobbering self-pity - even when, at the very end, Miss(Rochelle) Owens's script declines into conventional mawkishness. ''Chucky's Hunch'' may be a small play about a small life, but attention must be paid.

Kevin was, to steal Aykroyd’s eulogy of Belushi, “a good man but a bad boy”. He won multiple Obie Awards, and if you mentioned him to any NY actor or stage director at the time, they would tell you what a good actor he was. He lived in the Chelsea Hotel, which was perfect for him.

The good man would often act in the student films of his acting students for free as a favor, would coach them up for an audition for nothing, would do anything for a friend. The good man was easily one of the best actors and stage directors and acting teachers I have ever known. The good man would give you 50 cents if he were down to his last dollar.

The bad boy slept with some of his female acting students, hit on everything that moved, was often “kept” by older women who loved his company and would pay bills, and drank like a fish. I worked with Kevin for years after this, and he never showed up to performance or rehearsal drunk – never. But his well-earned reputation for drinking other times had developed a life of its own, to the point where people thought he worked drunk.

Let me share one Kevin story before allowing this period of my theater life to come full circle.

Years later, Kevin was directing a play that I was producing. We were auditioning, and this guy came in and did Frankie from Leonard Melfi’s “Birdbath” as his audition piece. “Birdbath” is the play “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune” got its source material from, and Kevin had won awards for creating Frankie.

So, this guy starts, and he is awful. Unlike the “Hair” audition, this guy wasn’t faking – he was bad. It was an open audition, which meant we had lots of people and were always behind. I had turned over the actor’s picture and was ready to say “next” when Kevin started giving him notes. Kevin spent ten minutes working on the audition piece with this guy. Hey, maybe Kevin saw something I missed.

When he left, I asked if we were casting him. “Are you kidding” Kevin said, with his gruffest voice. “He was awful.”

“Then why did we just waste ten minutes with him?” I asked. Kevin looked at me a little puzzled. “We did it to make him better.” It seemed obvious to Kevin – we helped because we could. The sense of mentorship would stay with me to this day, and that theme comes up later in my life with a producer and production manager in film.

Full circle? Oh, yeah.

We did “Chucky’s Hunch” with two other one-act plays at the Harold Clurman. One of those plays was “Birdbath,” with Kevin and his original co-star, Barbara Eda Young. The director was Tom O’Horgan, who was also the original director of “Hair”. I got to work with Tom again after that play, but it was fun to exchange stories from my experience with “Hair’ with Tom’s experience with originally bringing it to the stage.

The best moment of that production also influenced me in how I dealt with the artistic process, always being willing to bring up problems even when people didn’t want to hear it. Sometimes, it cost me work. Other times, however, I formed very strong bonds with people who respected that I had their best interests at heart.

Kevin was a second cousin of Tennessee Williams, and Williams came to one performance with his “assistant” (who, not so coincidentally, was a very pretty young man in his early 20s). The producer took everyone out to lunch, and I was invited. I should point out that after ordering my lunch, I didn’t open my mouth again except to eat.

Williams ordered a bottle of Jack, which he finished most of during the meal.

At the time, he had “Clothes from a Summer Hotel” on Broadway. It had just been seriously panned. The director was a long-time collaborator of his, as were a few of the actors. People at the lunch avoided discussion of the play, but it came up eventually.

It was at that point that Williams reflected on how he didn’t like being treated like an icon, and would have appreciated feedback.

“If it was so bad,” he said, “why didn’t anybody tell me.”

This phrase would stick with me into film, and went a long way as to why I never felt awkward telling a director bad news. I learned that it was the responsibility of the people around the artist to be honest, especially when it is difficult.