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Neverthelessland [Apr. 14th, 2008|05:03 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | good]
[music |LONESOME VALLEY by Magnolia Electric Co.]

Well, things have been a tad weird lately, but at least said weirdness is not the sort that necessitates capitalization of the W. Here goes:

- My job is going bye-bye.

- The kids’ book I was working on is very likely going away, too.

- Exposition-be-damned, my character has been cut entirely from the film I shot last year.

These are all pretty lousy breaks. However, none are as bad as they sound (or feel): My office already has other options for me, the eliminated kids’ book may only have been postponed, and the movie has put me on the radar with its production team as an employable film actor—the kind who doesn’t even freak out when you tell him that he’s been cut from your movie.  At least, not until he hangs up the phone.

* * *

And now for one piece of very good news, and the probable reason for my continued sanity in the midst of the above ego-bruises:

My own book is going really, really well after five months of constant struggle. Don’t get me wrong, I still hate most of what I’ve written--that goes without saying at this point! Nevertheless, I feel like I’ve finally got a strong idea how the story needs to develop, and even some good leads on how to tell it well.

The book is, at long last, a pleasure to write.  And with a little luck (and a lot of tough love) it will soon be a pleasure to read, as well.

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Whatever You Do, Don't Think About Gangsters [Mar. 14th, 2008|09:46 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |Victorian Splendor, 11215]
[mood | good]
[music |Air Conditioner]

I attended a deeply unironic Tupperware Party in The Bronx last Saturday, where I welcomed Diane back from her recent trip abroad; she and The Republican had gone to Hong Kong and Thailand for a couple of weeks. Now she was in a room full of gay men, Italian moms, babies and burpable cocktail shakers--nothing like being reincorporated into your host society at an event that's at least as disorienting as international travel.

* * *

Diane was able to visit Hong Kong Disneyland during her trip, and she tells me that their Space Mountain kicks our Space Mountain's ass. Indeed, the majority of our post-trip discussion related to this portion of her visit.

It's true, in my family we fetishize every potential travel destination in terms of its proximity to theme parks.

* * *

Last week, I had one of those awful days where the book was the only thing in my brain. Story ideas were bouncing around my skull like Lotto balls, but there was no winning number in sight—I finally forced myself to engage in a purgative screening of BLADE RUNNER, and take some time off from writing. Not for long, just a week. Even that was easier said than done: My choice of “leisure reads” included a book about organized crime in Hell's Kitchen, a book about criminal societies in Polish prisons, and a book about an NBA coach...who once worked undercover in the Mafia.

Still, I did what I could to get clear for a few days. I read BARRYMORE. I started reading some social anthropology books that, for once, had nothing to do with gangsters. Thankfully, I also had some brand-new writing assignments at work, not the least among them will become my first published book! Don't get too excited—it's a kids' guidebook to an online community for virtual pets. But it's money.

And if I play my cards right, pretty soon I'll be writing guidebooks for thirtysomething geeks who think they're Orcs.

You know, my people.

* * *

Tomorrow night the Brooklyn Family Theatre closes for good, with a little farewell show that Phill has been putting together. It's going to be serious. If I don't glue my contacts in, they will surely wash away.
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Barrymore, more, more, more, more! [Feb. 15th, 2008|05:00 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | okay]
[music |Air Conditioner (?!)]

The books I'm using as research for my novel are waiting at home in a decidedly eclectic pile.  Damon Runyon and Raymond Chandler are represented, as well as lots of nonfiction on the culture of organized crime and imprisonment.

But I'm also researching for an acting role in the Spring, which has necessitated a strategic re-envisioning of the family Netflix queue, and the collection of an entire second mound of material, featuring biographies, Shakespeare plays and lots of audio recordings.

The play is BARRYMORE, and the role is none other than John Barrymore himself.  A bit of a meta-role really; I'm an actor playing an actor who is himself rehearsing a part.  Or, more accurately, I'm a fledgling theatre hobbyist playing the greatest American actor who ever walked the stage rehearsing one of his signature Shakespeare performances.  No pressure, huh?

At least I'm not expected to portray The Great Profile at the height of his powers; the play takes place at the very end of the actor's life.  Remember that montage sequence in THE INCREDIBLES where Mr. Incredible starts powerlifting freight trains to get back in shape and reclaim his position as the world's top superhero?  Well, imagine if that didn't work out for the guy.  Imagine if Mr. Incredible, long out-of-practice from his many years spent feigning humanity, went to lift those freight trains...and found he couldn't do it anymore.  Soon enough he just accepts that his powers are gone for good, that he will never get them back.

So help me, that is what BARRYMORE is about.  It's devastating.  Thankfully there's also humor, warmth and schmaltz to cut the poison--but under it all, yikes.  In a way I'm glad I'm in the thing. Being a part of something, putting any kind of work into it, gives you some distance. But watching it? I'd jump off a fricking cliff.

* * *

I'm sick again, or getting there.  That makes three illnesses in less than three months for me, in defiance of daily Airborne.  I'd be creeped out if I didn't know it was my fault--I'm so determined for everything to happen now that it's like I'm perpetually cramming for exams, and often staying up way too late.  Even my job's relative (and sometimes absolute) quiet isn't doing much to keep me from stressing myself out.  I need to slow down...which seems absurd, considering it's the turtle's pace of everything I'm doing that has driven me to speed up in the first place.

* * *

It's my birthday today, so Phill and I are going to check out XANADU on Broadway.  I've been meaning to see it since it opened, the film on which it's based being one of my all-time favorite cinematic disasters.  I'm also a huge fan of shows based on cheesy, ubiquitous movies.  I count the stage productions KARATE KID: THE MUSICAL and SHOWGIRLS: THE BEST MOVIE EVER, EVER as three of the funniest nights I've ever spent in a theatre.  (Yes three: I saw KARATE KID twice.)

Fingers crossed!
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In Pictures [Feb. 8th, 2008|09:29 am]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | curious]
[music |THE GIRL YOU LOST TO COCAINE by Sia]

Andrew D has made his big-screen debut, as Pizza Delivery Guy in the THE AIR I BREATHE.  I joined him and five rows of his friends on the night it opened, and we cheered the screen every time he appeared--to the befuddlement of the remaining audience members.

I'm certain there wasn't a single lead in that film who had as much fun watching its premiere in Hollywood as we did that night at the 3rd Avenue Loews.

* * *

As for my filmness, yes, I finally got to see my scenes in Keith's movie. The good news?  I'm not distractingly awful. The bad news?  Apparently I'm the same gawky weirdo on-screen that I see in the mirror every morning--matinee idoldom is not in my future.

The scene as shown was A LOT shorter than the scene we shot. Huge sections were cut, including the part that nearly drowned the lead! However, all of the edits made the film move better, and I truly had the sense that I wanted to find out what happened next...which is saying something, considering that I already know. 

It was also strangely comforting to have proof that editing out parts of a story you may have sweat blood to get is a cross-disciplinary narrative tradition...

* * *

Ugh, the book. What a nightmare. It's just so slow going, though it's unquestionably getting better. My new motto is, "Write every day...because otherwise this will take you ten years."

Monday night was the worst. I hit a wall, and I didn't even know why--just that I couldn't continue writing no matter how hard I tried. I started picturing my own decapitation as a way of comforting myself.  I finally decided to hold my consciousness hostage, refusing to sleep until I could come up with at least one possible solution to the dilemma.

This resulted in my staying awake in bed until 5am, but the book is moving forward again.

Spoon by spoon...
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The First Day Of The Rest Of The "First Days Of The Rest Of Your Life" [Jan. 7th, 2008|04:43 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | good]
[music |I STARTED SOMETHING I COULDN'T FINISH by The Smiths (Not Even Kidding!)]

My former boss and I were recently bonding about how nuts we get without structure, and though I enjoyed the holiday season's long stretches of HALF LIFE 2 at home with Phill and Rufus, the long stretches at the office between Christmas and New Year’s were maddening. Nobody was here, and productivity itself started to feel pretty counterproductive around all the silence.

Contrariwise, the streets of New York City were crammed with out-of-towners. (You could tell they were out-of-towners because they actually looked up when they walked around; the gazes of the indigenous tend slightly pavementward.) While driving to The Throgg on Christmas, Phill and I whizzed by a group of them, stranded on the East River side of the FDR, trying to collectively manage six lanes of traffic and the divider.

I took this as a kind of compliment, that these people just assume your average New Yorker does crazy shit like that on a routine basis. "Of course they just walk across the highway, Harold! They're New Yorkers!"

* * *

I called a “family meeting” with Phill last week to talk about our finances, our plans for the house, and all manner of subjects that make happy couples tear each other’s throats out.

We did what we could to keep it civil: Wine for me, gin-and-tonic for him, and Spoon’s GA GA GA GA GA on the CD player…an album that starts, appropriately enough, with the song “Don’t Make Me A Target”.

One of Phill's teaching jobs fell through, so the long and the short of it is, we’ve got to pool our money and live cheaply. Meanwhile, Phill is going to do his best to supplement by selling scarves. (Don’t laugh…he’s really selling a lot of scarves. Phill knits to stick.) I'll do my part by pretending we don't live in a city full of expensive cultural facilities and live music for as long as I can.

This is not necessarily awful news, since the spend-a-thon represented by the holidays has made me sick to death of shopping, or at least of actual buying. And I have work to do, besides: The book I'm writing continues apace, night after night.

* * *

The book is like writing my way through a maze, and checking every corridor for egress, only to find that most are dead ends. But when you finally head through to the next section of the labyrinth, it's wonderful, because you know you're finally getting somewhere.

So yes, it's moving along more slowly than I'd hoped (the holidays brought it to a crawl--I only managed to write for thirty of the last sixty days) but I've still made much progress, and I'm now at the magical point where writing the book is what I want to do more than anything.  I even turned down an offer to visit the Garden State Plaza this weekend: I SAID NO TO A MALL, PEOPLE!

As for my snail's pace, I just keep thinking of the protagonist in King's SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.

Spoon by spoon, folks. Spoon by spoon.
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Last Gasp [Nov. 1st, 2007|07:04 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | good]
[music |THE COURTESAN HAS SUNG by The Sunset Rubdown]

My sisters and I have gotten to see a lot of each other lately. We took our famous haunted house tour, tripped the lights fantastic at Mt. Fuji, hit a beer festival on Pier 92, and are now planning to visit with the relatives in Connecticut this Saturday--followed by a til-you-drop marathon of BIOSHOCK, the official video game of our 2007-8 season.

We also caught the New Paltz premiere of EDGAR two weeks ago, arriving with mere minutes to spare thanks to traffic and rain. It’s since played The Dacks, and Phill has one more performance this weekend in West Virginia, so he's out of town tonight. EDGAR's schedule, combined with the dates of the movie shoot, kept Phill and I pretty much apart these past few weeks, and I miss him like crazy. But all that should change soon enough, as I have to write my book in November, and I'm self-banned from socializing on weekday evenings until I’ve produced the first draft, long postponed but now inevitable as hangover-puke.

This may not bode well for my sanity, or Phill's, but it does bode well for our togetherness. Meanwhile, it's all about prepping for nightlife lockdown: Erin and I hit the Park Slope Halloween Parade last night, tonight is the wrap party for the movie. I've even lately visited Victor on his home turf. (Dinner at a pub in the middle of a Target parking lot...how Victor can you get?) When I get alone-time I'm either madly researching my book, or re-watching favorite movies like MULHOLLAND DRIVE and THE WICKER MAN.

It feels like I'm getting ready to spend a month on a deserted island. That or a month in solitary confinement.

Depends on your politics, I guess.
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Strangling A Puppy [Aug. 3rd, 2007|04:24 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | crushed]
[music |APARTMENT STORY by The National]

I'm continuing to write, progressing further on my dare from Gary to finish a novel...kinda.
 
See: Word limits have helped me write lots and lots of prose, but in the end I need a more developed sense of "where" before I can get my "whats" in a row. So what Gary'll have to make do with, most likely, is a cycle of short stories--since writing a whole novel in the world that I'm trying to put together would be like having a wedding in a hall that's still under construction.
 
I'm going to start with a very short story, the fictional equivalent of a parlour party, showing readers only the parts of the world that are finished, and giving them bare glimpses of everything else. As I get more certain of the laws, I can start working on more complicated plots and characters, and longer tales.
 
Let's not forget, either, that as a playwright I've never written anything lasting longer than forty-five minutes. A proper novel may be beyond my progenitive attention span.
 
* * *
 
Phill is working on a new piece himself right now, along with Ethan. It's based on the letters and poems of Edgar Allan Poe. The goal is to focus on the human side of Poe's writing, alongside the macabre. The songs are sounding gorgeous, and curiously romantic. It's called EDGAR.
 
As for Brooklyn Family Theatre, it's...well, we don't know. Everyone on the board has something they want to focus on outside of BFT right now, so it's looking like it's time for us to put BFT in a trunk for a while, or even a garbage can. We're setting-up a meeting with the rest of the board soon that will probably feel a lot like verbally strangling a puppy...if we'll all admit openly that we want to kill it, which none of us seems willing or able to do.
 
What's worse, I recently saw Tada! Youth Theatre's GUMBALL GANG (this brilliant new kids' musical about young sleuths, rife with yuks for the kids and clever satire for the grown-ups) and its cast was loaded with BFT alums, many of whom took their first steps on the stage in our shows. They positively nailed their parts.

After the show there was a Q&A, and the kids were asked where else they did theatre.  One kid, a BFT alum, talked about Brooklyn Family Theatre and even pointed Phill and I out in the audience.

URGH!
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Economy Otherworld [Mar. 12th, 2007|05:49 pm]
[Tags|, ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood |indescribable]
[music |KEEP THE CAR RUNNING by Arcade Fire]

The goal for over a year now has been to learn to write prose, and more importantly, to like it.
 
I’ve always preferred writing plays. I’m drawn to their social aspect.  Rehearsals are obviously social, but even when the play is up and running, it’s an event, like a party, albeit a creepy party that happens over and over again…and is the same each time.

Writing a play is also social in its way, since it’s all dialogue, and you inevitably end up talking to invisible people, and having them talk back.  That can get to be like a party too, albeit a totally crazy party in your head.
 
Alas plays (like parties) are expensive, and they lose money more often than not. I’m perfectly willing to blow some cash to hang out with my friends, but losing money is becoming increasingly unattractive to me, as I enter my umpteenth year check-to-check. So the hunt is on for a way to have my cake and eat it too, being social with my friends while finding a way to be creative without spending the rest of my cash.
 
I’m also feeling increasingly encumbered by theatre. I tried once, for instance, to write a short play about people who had stumbled on a way to merge during intercourse (and I mean into a single, entirely new person). Making this work on stage was problematic, and possibly illegal…but most of all, expensive. Making it work on the page? Certainly not easy, but much, much cheaper. Not to mention all the mental stress it saves me trying to find perverts to act in the thing.
 
There is even a slight chance I could see a payment, however measly, for the publication of a short story, or even a novel…but with ideas that don’t translate to the stage without the intervention of Robert LePage, there is no way in hell I’m ever seeing compensation for another play like that one I wrote in ‘03 about the psychic hairdressers.
 
Hence the idea to switch to prose--less limiting in every way. And while I mention the potential to make money here, rest assured, the actual goal here is simpler: To lose less money…while getting all these ideas THE HELL OUT OF MY HEAD.
 
* * *
 
So I’m writing a novel, as I mentioned before, on a dare. I’ve found that word-count goals keep me very motivated, keep me pulling those ideas out of the hat, or more honestly, the ass. Sunday was spent almost entirely working on the book, which was weirdly unsettling to me. Like a vacation taken absolutely nowhere.
 
I once read an interview with a writer who expressed fear that he would spend all of his time writing, in that world where ‘everything is better than here’. I thought it was funny to think of his inner world as being ‘better’ than the real world, considering how much carnage and pain there was in this particular writer’s work, but he was obviously talking about the vividness and frenzied cool of his world…not its potential as a place one might sip lemonade on a quiet Saturday night.
 
I am finally beginning to understand where he was coming from, even having only written part of a crappy first draft. Unfettered from the requirement of writing something viable (by forcing myself to simply write ANYTHING) gives me that feeling of having one foot in another world, and I like it--not more than anything else, but as much as anything I enjoy, and possibly more than I enjoy playing LEGO STAR WARS II, which is saying something…
 
* * *
 
Sunday was a wash, just the same. My favorite character got killed, and aside from bumming me out, it made me perplexed as to how the hell I was going to keep going with the novel. I keep thinking, “We can’t have nice things…”
 
Tonight I’ll give that chapter another go, and coach my characters at the top like a boxing ref: “Alright boys, I want a clean fight…”
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...And Into The Friar's [Feb. 16th, 2007|04:38 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[Current Location |The Office]
[mood | grumpy]
[music |PARENTHESES by The Blow]

Gary, my official college buddy and former roommate, dared me to write a novel back in November, and I had no choice but to accept the challenge.

I may have given up proving my 'manhood' where romance is concerned, but I’m still rather hetero when it comes to dares.
 
Plus, I’d been trying to switch from plays to prose all year long, with little success. This felt like my last chance to give it a go, and a dare from Gary was just the fuel I needed.
 
Writing ‘the first novel’ turns out to be surprisingly similar to playing Sudoku. Once you get a general idea of subject matter (which took me roughly two months to decide on) it’s a matter of heading off into the (figurative) woods, writing the parts of the book I feel most certain of, hoping that they will, in turn, make me more certain of other parts.
 
I am, in effect, shooting my book out of sequence, but I’m having a lot of fun--which was, in the end, the key. If you spend this long doing something so solitary and cerebral, you might as well enjoy it. And as I’d hoped, it is already proving to be cheaper than producing a play.
 
So what’s it about? Well, imagine GRAND THEFT AUTO as a novel...then make all the men homos. That’s the best I can do to describe it. I doubt I’ll be doing any readings at the Knights of Columbus anytime soon.
 
Incidentally, the auto shop sequence may have to get cut, and I gotta tellya…I’m gonna miss it.
 
* * *
 
My friend Andrew B recently started writing for Vogue, thereby giving the suit he helped me pick out last Spring a retroactive consecration from the fashion elite.
 
I've had two opportunities to wear The Suit in the past seven days. One of them was, alas, a funeral: My babysitter from when I was a little kid passed away.
 
Her name was Mrs. G, and she was awesome. Creative, warm, funny and sweet. She used to work me into my own bedtime stories, as the main character: “Jonathan was in the jungle fighting tigers..." "One day Jonathan went to the circus..." It's probably why I got into theatre.
 
Mrs. G was eighty-five when she died. At the wake, her daughter Jo introduced me around, and the relatives all seemed to be intimately familiar with the five-year-old version of me, even if I didn't know them. They all recalled the bedtime stories, too.

"It's probably why you got into theatre," Mrs. G's eldest daughter suggested at one point.

* * *
 
Back when we lived on Crosby Avenue, Mrs. G's immediate relatives were so close to my mother that I assumed for most of my life I was related to them. This wake was the first time I actually put two and two together, and realized they were family friends--not aunts, uncles and cousins, as I'd assumed. But that mistake points to one of the best things about being from 'the neighborhood'.  That broadening of the definition of family.
 
It's definitely strange to be grown-up now, and friendly with Mrs. G's daughter Jo.   She knew me when I used to play with toy dinosaurs.

Now we're both, you know, people.  We go to pubs and bond over our crushes on Clive Owen and dudes in kilts.
 
* * *
 
The second time I wore The Suit was for a happier occasion: On the evening of my birthday, Jennifer was inducted into The Friar's Club. Dawn and I attended her ceremony.

I was disappointed that the initiation didn't involve an invocation of Cthulhu from the blasted nether-regions of space/time, but I'm not complaining.  The closest I've come to hanging with a secret society since Boy Scouts was opening night of SNAKES ON A PLANE.
 
As for The Friar's Club, it's like a combination between a Catskills comedy club and a Masonic lodge.  One of the few remaining 'gentleman's clubs' in New York City that does not use the term as a euphemism for 'nudie bar', it only recently began inducting women, so it was quite an honor for Jennifer to be asked to join. And contrary to popular belief, its members are not all comics. Only a portion of them. Lots of entertainment industry guys, though.
  
The decor is what I'd call Early 'Order of the Golden Dawn'.  When they closed the ten-foot-tall doors to the Milton Berle Room at the start of the induction, I half-expected to hear Paul Frees say, "Welcome to The Haunted Mansion..." over the loudspeaker, and the floor to start lowering, the paintings to stretch...

Jennifer was so happy.  I was so proud.  We had dessert in the Frank Sinatra Ballroom, then called Gary from the Billy Crystal Bar to tell him the news...
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