The second thing I did with the new Penny Templeton Studio was record my PERSONAL JESUS for my friend Bob's radio show (the first was rehearsing the upcoming reading of HUCK FINN.) Now I'm editing the audio and it's so much fun, especially with the killer Mac app GarageBand. I have a first rough draft, and should have the refined version completed by tomorrow.
It's really neat to hear Bruce Barton portray two different versions of Jesus, talking to each other. I edited the voices so that at points he overlaps with himself which is really funny.
But most important, in Roubini’s opinion, is to realize that the problem is deeper than the housing crisis. “Reckless people have deluded themselves that this was a subprime crisis,” he told me. “But we have problems with credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts.” All of these forms of debt, he argues, suffer from some or all of the same traits that first surfaced in the housing market: shoddy underwriting, securitization, negligence on the part of the credit-rating agencies and lax government oversight. “We have a subprime financial system,” he said, “not a subprime mortgage market.”
In fact, Mr. Stewart regards comedy as a kind of catharsis machine, a therapeutic filter for grappling with upsetting issues. "What's nice to us about the relentlessness of the show," he said, "is you know you're going to get that release no matter what, every night, Monday through Thursday. Like pizza, it may not be the best pizza you've ever had, but it's still pizza, man, and you get to have it every night. It's a wonderful feeling to have this toxin in your body in the morning, that little cup of sadness, and feel by 7 or 7:30 that night, you've released it in sweat equity and can move on to the next day."
Now that I'm renting the Penny Templeton Actors studio for Mergatroyd Productions I have plenty of time available to audition actors for the 2009 installment of JANE EYRE - and I intend to use it. Last year I served up roles to actors on fine china platters, to my everlasting regret. Thanks to my kind consideration, half the cast came to believe that they were doing me a big favor by agreeing to be in the show, and they gave me heaping helpings of contempt and ingratitude. One of the most blatant examples - I always fed the actors during rehearsals. The last weekend of the show, one of the actors invited all the other actors out for brunch - but not me. That's the kind of loathsome creeps I'm talking about.
This time I am going to be much more deliberative when it comes to casting.
First up - I will be auditioning Janes and Rochesters soon. If anybody out there knows anybody they think might be a good fit for the roles, have them send me their headshots, etc. to nancy at mergatroyd dot org. And unlike almost any other Equity Showcase production in NYC, this is a paid gig.
One thing you really notice on dating sites like Plenty of Fish is the free-floating misogyny throughout. It puts me in mind of something that Germain Greer said: "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them." Thanks to Plenty of Fish, and its related forums, we do now.
My most recent run-in with a misogynist was a dude who states on his profile that women are materialistic and shallow. So, dude, if that's how you feel about women, and yet you still feel like you want a live female body to engage in sexual congress with - WHY DON'T YOU GET A HO?
I didn't say that in my response to his email though - I was far too nice.
But maybe the Universe rewarded me for my restraint - directly after my exchange with that dude, I got an email from a bright, cute 25-year-old, who thinks I'm awesome - he said I have a "Mira Sorviono/Laura Linney thing going on."
Dorothy Parker's poems are generally in quite a different mood from Dickinson's...
One Perfect Rose A single flow'r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -- One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret; "My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose." Love long has taken for his amulet One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get One perfect rose.
To lose thee, sweeter than to gain All other hearts I knew. 'Tis true the drought is destitute But, then, I had the dew! The Caspian has its realms of sand, Its other realm of sea. Without this sterile perquisite No Caspian could be.
the Krug-Man - feel his scathing awesomeness, wingers!
Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”
It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.
What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.
Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.
Going to see the new Broadway musical [title of show]. They have a blog, called [blog] (what else?) where they refer to their readers as "tossers."
I got the tickets for free! Yay! Running NYCPlaywrights does have some benefits.
Speaking of which, I finally signed the deal - Mergatroyd Productions & NYCPlaywrights now has a new home at the Penny Templeton Actors Studio Fridays through Sundays every damn week of the year. If this doesn't turn me into a playwriting supernova, nothing will!
Plays planned at the moment:
SCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THIS GUY STRESS AND THE CITY (collection of short plays) EARLY ONE MORNING THE GOOD DEPUTY (if I can get over my "issues") BAGGER OF THE YEAR (rewritten, finally)
Lots of work to do!
The great thing about hooking up with PTAS is that I'll have access to so many new actors - although of course I'll always look first to actors I've worked with in the past who have proven to be cooperative, reasonable and non-sociopathic - there's no getting around it - actors, like men you consider dating, must be hand-sorted.
Here's my daughter chilling with two of the Ladyboys of Bangkok. As you can see, they can be ladies or boys - just like my daughter!
Hah hah just kidding Nome. She's still sore because I said she looked like a 12-year-old boy, from a distance, for a split-second.
We saw TLBOB at last summer's Edinburgh Fringe festival (siiiigh - back in the days when I could afford a European vacation - thanks Jane Eyre) - they had this huge big top tent for the audience - much better-attended than most of the stuff we saw. And they are so popular - this blog, Heavens to Mergatroyd, gets soooo many hits on some variation of search word "ladyboys" - and I guess even more NOW that I posted this.
Hello ladyboy fans!
Many of their fans are from countries like Saudi Arabia and yes - Iran.
I got into a debate with a devout religious guy who informed me:
I know that you will not be going to hell and you are not going to suffer eternal torment. I'm not saying you might not get a smack on the behind, but the terrible things that has imprisoned your mind and spirit such as eternal torment is certainly not what God has install for you in the next life.
The nuns never told us about the afterlife spankings!
I've begun redesigning the JANE EYRE web site in preparation for the new production. The show doesn't open until February, but you can never start planning too soon.
It is important for a director to practice praising. Begin the rehearsal with praise. "It is an honor to work with such fine artists." "This is one of the most beautiful plays ever written." "Look at the beautiful sunshine." "Aren't these words exciting. Let's begin." Your praise evokes enthusiasm, and the actor thinks, "Maybe he will praise me some day." He works in hope of being praised. Praise is the musculature of directing. All the theories and concepts can be thrown out the window; they are a dime a dozen. Any director who has a long career is a good praiser. You can practically measure a director's career by his enthusiasm for what he witnesses.
He is saying in today's NYTimes pretty much what I said a few weeks ago, except that he doesn't offer a solution to this intolerable unemployment situation. But if it isn't some kind of federal jobs program, I don't know what it could be.
ASSISTANCE to individuals and institutions in trouble always raises concerns about the moral hazards of bailouts, especially when a case can be made that people underrated risks or were blindsided in their decision-making. But we have no choice here. The economy teeters on the edge of not just a recession, but also a more profound decline where trouble in any single sector can spread breakdowns throughout the system, driving unemployment to intolerable levels. To sit back and let nature take its course is to risk the end of a civil society.
Until we move more decisively in this direction, other efforts are likely to be frustrating at best and counterproductive at worst. The household is the key to the puzzle. Peter L. Bernstein, a financial consultant and economic historian, is the editor of the Economics & Portfolio Strategy newsletter.
"...love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!
I recently got a copy of Anais Nin's (her first name is pronounced An-EYE-as, her last name rhymes with "pin" ) collection of essays "In Favor of the Sensitive Man." It has some good stuff in it. Nin had always been ahead of her time, but by the time she was in her 60s "second-wave" feminism came along and the times caught up with her. As you can see here:
The new type of young man I have met is exceptionally fitted for a new woman, but she is not yet totally appreciative of his tenderness, his growing proximity to woman, his attitude of twinship rather than differentiation. People who once lived under a dictatorship often are at a loss to govern themselves. This loss is a transitional one: It may mean the beginning of a totally new life and freedom. The man is there. He is an equal. He treats you like an equal. In moments of uncertainty you can still discuss problems with him you could not have talked about twenty years ago.
Nin funfact - "In 1947, at the age of 44, she met and began living with Rupert Pole (1919-2006), sixteen years her junior." Pole by all accounts was quite the hottie. You go, Anais!
Nin was also known as the author of erotica. From Wikipedia:
Faced with a desperate need for money, Nin and (Henry) Miller began in the 1940s to write erotic and pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page, somewhat as a joke. Nin considered the characters in her erotica to be extreme caricatures and never intended the work to be published, but changed her mind in the early 1970s and allowed them to be published as Delta of Venus and Little Birds.
Nothing more satisfying than writing erotica for money. That is some easy money. I haven't been paid for mine since I wrote Wildwood Summer for a gay men's magazine. I'm currently turning that story into a play. I think I'm going to change the title to "Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy."
I've written erotic sonnets as well as another short story, called "Victorian Boots" which is heterosexual but a bit kinky. It was accepted by Literotica.com - but no pay involved, alas. That's one bad thing about the Internet - it's made the dissemination of erotica - not to mention pornography - extremely easy, and so there's lots more of it and so it's not as valuable. Contemporary Nins and Millers are getting bupkis for their erotic narratives. I did find writing "Victorian Boots" therapeutic - I turned a very negative series of events I endured, through the magic of sexual desire, into something pleasurable. Basically that is what kink is all about - turning pain into pleasure.
Ever since I got a shout out from Lightcastle on his/her LiveJournal blog my sitemeter has gone through the roof with all the new traffic. Thanks for those kind words, Lightcastle - I'm glad you like my theatre essays.
Normally I wouldn't read an article about Madonna, because really, I don't care. And it would have been my loss, this time around.
I was in the hair salon and the reading pickings were slim, so I read the article "…Beckoned, by Madonna, Over the Borderline" by Adam Sternberg in New York Magazine, and I have to say, it's a great little essay, a perfect synergy between subject and style. You should read the entire thing by following the link, but I'll give you a little preview:
Yet her ability to surprise us continues to surprise us. A-Rod and Madonna—now, who saw that coming? And yet, of course it’s Madonna. Because this is what Madonna does. Just when an album flops, or a movie tanks, or the upcoming tour’s sales falter—basically, just when you’ve started to forget about her, even a little bit—there she is, reminding you that as long as there is a breath in her chest, by God, you will not forget about her.
My mind is well and truly blown - a blog that is a chapter-by-chapter rewrite of "Jane Eyre" from Edward Rochester's point of view: Edward Fairfax Rochester's Love for Jane Eyre CHAPTER 1: I Must Away to Thornfield, written by A True Janian Reply.
There is an amazing documentary, The Great Happiness Space, showing on the Sundance Channel - they have the best stuff - they also showed "Slings and Arrows" - about a club where women go to pay to hang out with attractive, attentive men. They may or may not have sex. Which is understandable, because most of the women who go to this club are prostitutes, who spend all day jerking off salary men. It's striking how often these prostitutes say that they come to the "host club" to get "healed." These men act as super-great boyfriends, always interested in talking to them and listening to their problems.
But men should take notice of these clubs - these are men whom the women who are paid for sex, will in turn pay to be with. They are in their 20s, all have lots of hair - most of it streaked blond, are slim, boyishly male, not rugged or super-butch, and wear nice clothes and boots. Makes me miss my Korean ex-boyfriend.
Although this phenomenon of male prostitution for women (they DO have sex with them sometimes although that fact is played down in both the documentary and in reviews) seems to be confined so far to Japan only, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it spread throughout the world - wherever women earn their own money.
We've said it before - but it's so important it bears repeating - a question from an actor is not a question. A question from an actor is an innocent bid to draw the director's attention to something unresolved. When the actor asks a question, a wise director doesn't answer the question. The answer to the question is not in the director, the answer to the question is in the actor. Answer the question by asking another question. Allow the actor to resolve the difficulty. He already has the best answer in mind before he asks the question. Here is an example:
ACTOR: Shall I wear this hat? DIRECTOR: What would be best? ACTOR: Well, it's too small. It gets in the way. I don't know where to put it, and if I do put it down, I have no way of getting it off the stage when I leave. DIRECTOR: Let's leave the hat out.
Another example:
ACTOR: How should I do it, on the right or the left? DIRECTOR: Which way is best? ACTOR: If I do it on the right, I can arrive on time. If I do it on the left, I'll be late. DIRECTOR: Well, then do it on the right.
The answer to the question is in the question. The actor's answer will be organic, and by using his solution, the director will avoid imposing anything. Another example:
ACTOR: Are we going to skip this scene today? DIRECTOR: Is there something about that scene that we should give our attention to? ACTOR: Well, I did alot of work on that scene last night and I have some new ideas I'd like to show you. DIRECTOR: In that case, let's be sure to work that scene in.
The question "Are we going to skip this scene?" may be answered "Yes, it's not scheduled!" or "Yes, we're moving on to the last act." But, "Are we going to skip this scene?" is an invitation to draw attention to something. The director does not know what it is; he has to find out. A question from the actor is merely an invitation. The actor is drawing attention to something unresolved.
I got an email from my computer sensei Stan Pokras (he introduced me to my first Macintosh in 1986), discussing the possibility of impeaching G. W. Bush. The idea of impeaching Bush is nothing new - what caught my eye was the designation of those unsure of impeachment as "Impeachment Hamlets."
I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Hamlet was NOT indecisive - at least no more so than ANYBODY would be after he's seen a ghost tell him that his uncle killed his father and he should do something about it. And by doing something about it he means basically that Hamlet has to take on the entire Danish government. I think any sane person would be a LITTLE indecisive about what to do there.
And YES, Hamlet IS SANE. If nobody else saw the ghost of his father, you could make a case that he was bonkers. But Shakespeare very clearly sets up a situation where there are multiple witnesses who see ghostly old Hamlet Sr. - Horiatio, Francisco and Bernardo - in addition to Hamlet. So unless they are ALL crazy, Hamlet is not crazy.
Really, the junk that gets piled on Hamlet, you have to wonder how the play survives at all.
A painter builds with color and line; a musician with tone and rhythm. A sculptor builds with shape. But the actor builds his profession on patterns of belief. An actor is working with the same tool that causes all events. That is belief. Belief is the power that causes things to happen, and actors are exercising their belief power all the time. If one says to an actor "Will you please believe this?" he will do so readily. It is difficult for him to resist the tendency to become whatever is suggested. The actor rises to the occasion automatically. He quickly enters into almost any situation and believes in almost any suggestion just as a child does. That belief power has tremendous force. We say that in the theatre we "make believe," just as children make believe. What belief do we "make"? The actor makes himself believe. Then he makes the audience believe. The actor believes in himself, in his character, and in his work. The audience believes in the characters, in the story, and in the players.
There is a great deal of belief going on around a theatre during a performance. Belief power is pervasive in a theatre, and belief power is tremendously compelling. This is one of the reasons that audiences will sit in the darkness giving their undivided attention to individuals who believe themselves to be other than who they are. The belief on the stage is so compelling that the audience starts to believe these individuals are who they say they are. When an audience believes and the actors believe, we have a tremendous concentration of energy. It is spellbinding. The more the audience believes what the actor is doing, the more the actor believes what he is doing, the more the audience will believe. It's a self-hypnosis of belief. It's a rapture of belief. It's an orgy of belief.
When the play is over, we return to our customary identities. The broker has been believing himself to be in real trouble; believing himself to be wrapped in love; believing himself to be in danger; believing himself to be in triumph, and on and on. When the final curtain falls, he returns to the belief that he is a husband, a golfer, Republican, a father. He has come to the theatre to "exercise" his systems of belief. The more exercise or stimulation his belief systems get, the more exhilaration and pleasure he receives. When he leaves the theatre, he may say, "That was a wonderful show! That was a great play! That was really absorbing!" The reason his spirit is so renewed and enthusiastic is that his belief systems have been awakened and exhilarated. During the course of the performance he contributed so much of his belief that new aspects of his identity have been awakened.
Sonnet 29 I think of thee! - my thoughts do twine and bud About thee, as wild vines, about a tree, Put out broad leaves, and soon there's nought to see Except the straggling green which hides the wood. Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood I will not have my thoughts instead of thee Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should, Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare, And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee, Drop heavily down, - burst, shattered everywhere! Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee And breathe within thy shadow a new air, I do not think of thee - I am too near thee.
I think it's time to find myself a good therapist. Sonnets are not fire extinguishers after all - rather they seem to be rich veins of coal for my own personal Centralia.
One of the bigger expenses of my 2008 production of JANE EYRE was the lighting. It was expensive, time consuming, and a pain in the ass. The lights did look good - but not one single damn critic mentioned the lights.
And that's because really, who cares? As long as the stage is reasonably well-lit, nobody cares about the lights. And at the off-off Broadway level, nobody should expect a light show.
One of the reasons why lighting is so damn time-consuming is because the state of stage lighting is still extremely primitive. The lights are set up by people climbing up and down on ladders to change the positions of the lights and to secure colored films in front of the lights. This is absurd in an age when even city buses have LED displays. It adds a whole day to the technical aspect of producing theatre - which means another day of theatre rental, which is incredibly expensive in Manhattan.
“The way an incandescent bulb plays on the face on a Broadway makeup mirror,” he said, “you can never duplicate that.”
To which I say fine - incandescents in the dressing room. But the stage could be lit by L.E.D.s that don't need to be moved, and could be controlled entirely by computer - color, placement AND motion. No more of this ladder crap.
And of course it won't happen for most NYC theatres for a long time, since it would be expensive and they're all used to the old system. But it will change. And I am currently looking for a modern theatre with L.E.D.s in Manhattan for my next production of JANE EYRE.
And in another case cited by the inspector general, Ms. Goodling blocked the hiring of an experienced prosecutor for a senior counter-terrorism position because his wife was active in Democratic politics. The candidate was regarded as “head and shoulders above the other candidates” in the view of officials in the executive office of United States attorneys, but they were forced to take a candidate with much less experience because he was deemed acceptable to Ms. Goodling.
Back in June 2001, I remember sending an email to some media outlet, predicting that G. W. Bush would go down in history as one of worst presidents. And that his administration would be a complete disgrace.
I wish I had been wrong, for the sake of the people killed in the 9-11 attacks, for the sake of our economy, for the sake of global warming, etc. etc. etc.
I heard someone use the term "gaslighting" recently and it reminded me of a fairly recent incident where someone tried to gaslight me. I was in a bar with a couple of people I knew from a mutual project. One was married, the other was not. And I saw the married one clearly grope the unmarried one under the table. This made me uncomfortable and when I said something about it to the unmarried one, he tried to tell me I only thought I saw the married woman grope him. Because I was drinking. You'd have to be drinking quite a bit to imagine you saw a grope. And they let me drive myself home ten minutes later. So if they weren't philanderers, they were creeps anyway, to let me drive myself home when I was so drunk and all.
I felt bad for this model - she seemed really uncomfortable half the time, and the other half she was almost falling asleep.
Life modeling is hard on older people. I did life modeling when I was in my 20s and I remember that it was usually not a pleasant experience - it's tough sitting there naked in public, holding perfectly still for 20 minutes at a time even when you're young. With these older models, it feels like they're being crucified. Makes it hard to concentrate on pure art out of empathy.
I caught "The Fully Monty" again. It's a good movie, and not just because it's about full frontal male nudity. Although that's definitely a good thing.
I didn't notice the first time I saw the movie, but do they just do the one number? "You can leave your hat on"? That means the show they charged good money for was all of five minutes. I mean, maybe they did other numbers, but that doesn't seem likely since showing the full monty would surely be saved for the grand finale.
A quick google around the internets shows that there sure have been lots of productions of the Broadway musical of the movie:
I spoke too soon - Nutrisystems really does hate women, except Tame Women
The first time I blogged about Nutrisystems and its hatred of women was over a year ago when they ran a commercial implying that while women had all the time in the world to do boring tedious chores connected to losing weight, men's time was more valuable: "what guy has time for that?" This question was asked by a man - some former sports hero, I think.
So just this past month, I changed my tune because they had a spokeswoman ask "WHO has time for that" - making the time thing no longer an issue of male privilege. I really should have held off on praising Nutrisystems, since the spokeswoman is some Malibu Barbie bimbo wearing a hot pink silk lingerie top along with jeans. This woman, apparently some kind of personality, seems to feel she is an honorary guy. This should have been a red (or hot pink) flag: someone off-camera gently tosses her a football. She catches it and asks "how many women could do that?"
Uh - women who aren't paralyzed in both arms?
So really I gave Nutrisystems too much credit for changing the gender in the "time" line.
And it was confirmed for me today. They have a commercial out now which features the schlubby old guy from the first commercial I mentioned AND the Malibu Barbie bimbo. And Malibu Barbie, like any tame woman, does the dirty work FOR the men this time. This time SHE asks "what guy has time for that?"
Malibu Barbie is the spokesmodel for male privilege because they pay her well, but also because she thinks she's an honorary male because she can catch a football and doesn't have time to do things slowly and laboriously the way those stupid women do.
Nutrisystems is not a pioneer in the Tame Woman movement though. This has been going on forever, among right-wing women. But it's no longer considered a backlash, right-wing tactic, now that women are seeping into bastions of liberal male privilege like the NYTimes. The Times used to have only one woman, Maureen Dowd, among its eight regular editorial columnists. Dowd is an outstandingly tame woman. She totally buys into the men-are-from-Mars-women-are-from-Venus dichotomy, and she despises Venusians. The worst possible insult she can dream up for a man is to call him a woman. This is absolute standard operating practice of the Patriarchy, both to keep women in line, and to keep men from being openly gay. She is a loathsome piece of work. Bob Somerby explains why at great length here.
So when the Times finally got another female columnist (not exactly parity, since females compose at least half of all human beings on THIS planet) that could only be good, right? Except it was Gail Collins, who had already displayed her Tame Woman cred by claiming that the reason females aren't given opinion columns as often as males is because women just don't have what it takes, and aren't interested anyway, in batting out opinions on a regular basis. It certainly is NOT because old men are making all the hiring decisions - what a distasteful, un-Tame way to think!
So she was the perfect choice for the Times - a Tame Woman who could be relied on to support the Patriarchy every step of the way - and to blame any problems women might have in getting ahead on women themselves. Gail Collins wishes to be considered an honorary male, just like Dowd and Malibu Barbie bimbo.
Nutrisystems is just borrowing a strategy from the "liberal" New York Times.
Sweet! I just discovered a blog by the supercool Pessimistic Redhead who has the same gripe! Awesome. And I found her post by googling "Nutrisystems Barbie."
"Why yes, I am another Tame Woman, shilling for the masters of the Patriarchy"
I've been trying to get back into working on my play THE GOOD DEPUTY but I'm hindered by the fact that I have a very different relationship with the person who initially inspired it. He's an actor and I was his biggest fan, but we had a falling out to put it mildly.
A year ago, when I thought we were friends, he was being sorely misused and it pissed me off. Actors are misused alot - they're all so desperate to act under any circumstances that they're inclined to allow themselves to be exploited. They're kind of like crack addicts in that respect.
He agreed to be in an independent movie - against his union's rules - about a sexy female robot who goes around getting naked and killing for revenge or something, in a Western-type environment. I read the script but it was so lame I couldn't be bothered to remember most of it. Basically it's another excuse for fan boys to work with young attractive women and get them to take their clothes off for "artistic" reasons and NOT pay them for it. (See blog link above.)
So my actor friend goes to the film shoot in Bumfuk NJ in some rock quarry in the middle of blazing hot summer for no pay. But the worst, the absolute worst, the thing that drove me crazy was that he was cast as an absolute fucking moron. But not just a moron - an EVIL moron. Usually if a character is a moron he is ethically neutral so he can better be played for laughs. I guess the script's author really wanted to push the envelope with an evil moron.
And then the evil moron is killed in a pointlessly nasty way.
I was thoroughly revolted to see such a good actor wasted like that. Although good actors are wasted on bad parts all the time. And of course, the creators of this film have no idea how bad it is - I am certain they are quite pleased with themselves, as mediocrities usually are.
It's so sad - there was a production photo of him in which he looked great, dressed up like a cowboy standing with his hands on his hips - really sexy and charming and sweet yet dignified* - but that photo had nothing to do with the movie. For the movie he was required to look stupid and unattractive. He almost looked like a different person when he was in character.
What is it about me and cowboys? Maybe it's the tight jeans and the artfully slung gun belts and the boots. Or maybe it's because when I was a ten-year-old I discovered why the older girls were so crazy about boys, thanks to the short-lived TV series Alias Smith and Jones. Especially Pete Duel - he helped me get in touch with my heterosexuality for the first time.
I adored my actor friend and hated to see him misused that way. He probably didn't feel the same, though - he was acting, at least. It's the crack addict thing. Although I notice that he avoided telling me any of his lines when I asked. But maybe he wasn't embarrassed, maybe he didn't feel like it.
I never told the actor how appalled I was since there didn't seem to be any point. Instead, I would show those movie bastards - I would write a play for my friend in which he would start out seeming to be dumb but in fact was the hero of the play and not dumb, just uneducated and maybe a bit naive. And the audience would love the character the way I loved the actor, my darling, the king of hearts.
Hah - screw you, movie bastards.
Plus, I would also make it an allegory of the Bush years, so it would work on two levels. I wrote the first act, did a reading at NYCPlaywrights, and although it certainly wasn't a perfect script, I could see it had strong potential.
But subsequent events caused me to realize that no matter how much I cared about this actor and tried to show him I cared by doing everything I could to help him do what he loved most, acting, he did not give a damn about me. He had as much feeling for me as most people have for a houseplant. Unless I'm flattering myself.
So even though I feel like THE GOOD DEPUTY is a worthwhile idea, when I sit down to work on it I am reminded of my ex-friend and it fills me with loathing for humanity.
It's a problem.
*also, you could pretty clearly see that he wore his winchester on the left... especially if you zoomed in and played with the photo's brightness/contrast settings... uh... so I've heard...
Well it looks like Mergatroyd Productions will soon have its own audition/rehearsal/reading space in Manhattan - and NYCPlaywrights will have a regular meeting space to boot - stay tuned for more details!
I was just thinking about good ole Kurt Vonnegut. He was so great because he would say stuff like this:
I find uncritical respect for most works by great thinkers of long ago unpleasant, because they almost all accepted as natural and ordinary the belief that females and minority races and the poor were on earth to be uncomplaining, hardworking, respectful, and loyal servants of white males, who did the important thinking and exercised leadership.
Matthew Arnold and Virginia Woolf caught on the violent aspects of Brontë's work when the former complained that her mind "contained nothing but hunger, rebellion, and rage"
And yet people still read Jane Eyre - lots of people - AND it's considered a classic of English literature. Who reads Matthew Arnold's poems? And he was born into the upper class - no need to worry about hunger there.
But Arnold surely did know how to rock the sideburns.
My friend Bob, AKA The Reverend Bookburn wants to broadcast a radio play format version of my short play PERSONAL JESUS on his Sunday evening show. Cool! I'm putting my cast and sound effects together now!
What's up with this drawing workshop? Every guy they've had model for us has been bald and over 40. I know they have young non-bald men do life modeling there, for other sessions, because I've seen the sketches on the wall. Come on people, where's our young attractive male models?
Although this guy was in pretty good shape, for an old guy.
Nin was also known as the author of erotica. 
There is an amazing documentary, 
