who dat? contest
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actress / scientologist
nancy cartwright
bart simpson
first correct answer:
ericka smith
put on a happy face
So lately I’ve been very busy with rehearsals for Twelfth Night. We open on November 12 but are really deep into rehearsals and I usually go straight from work to the theatre for 5 hours and then home by 11:30pm. It’s tough. I’m tired and never see my girlfriend or friends.
But as I’ve said, this cast is just great. Unbelievable really. Friendly and funny and talented as all get out. One problem with such a high quality cast in LA theatre is that they get jobs and have to either quit or miss rehearsals, depending on the length of the gig. Our Viola is shooting an episode of Chicago Hope as we speak. Toby’s doing some commercial. We lost 2 Antonio’s to big paying gigs. It’s a good problem to have, I suppose, all things considered. And I love the director, but the thing is, I’m not a squeaky wheel in rehearsals. So I get little grease. Toby is a big guy, in every sense of the word, and my rehearsals seem to be all about him. I do my work. Dilligently. I’m in it man, I’m working up there. I still have a long way to go but I’m finding the nuances. I’m using the language. I’m finding the arcs. My relationships are solid. My objectives, set. Flexible but strong. Urgent. Deep-seated. Needy. I’m sitting inside the character. I am. And yet there’s the specter of "the function my character plays" hanging above me, in that: I have to be funny. So everything has to mean more. Be more. And yet, and actors will argue this point ‘til they’re blue in the face, you still have to "be funny". Comedy doesn’t just come from intense need. There is a comic energy that I wouldn’t employ (not nearly to the same degree at least) were I doing John Proctor in The Crucible.
And the play is really great. Here’s
one of my favorite speeches in all of literature. Rapturous. Viola, girl dressed as a boy,
has come to woo Olivia on behalf of her boss Orsino. But Viola has fallen in love with
Orsino, and Olivia is falling for Viola. Olivia asks Viola how he/she would woo in his/her
own words. Viola replies:
Make me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Hallo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O, you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth
But you should pity me.
If this doesn’t cause your heart to yaw a little, I don’t know what will.
But this process. I’m getting a lot out of this. It feels good to be working again. And I think, I hope, it’s going to be a really good production.
Ooh, I just got paged. Let’s see who it is…
…my agent. I’m out of headshots. Blah.
Meanwhile…
…I’m listening to this new Tori Amos double – it’s quite good. I read a positive review that started, "For many pop-music cynics, excess can be neatly summed up in three things: live albums, double-CD's, and Tori Amos records. Damned if To Venus and Back doesn't hit the trifecta." Ha.
Elsewhere…
…the buzz on my screenplay has seemingly slowed to a crawl. Many are still reading it. A couple are still trying to convince their higher-ups to do something with it. I’m sure many have already read and rejected it without contacting me. I’m waiting to have copies of the short film to send to those still in the game to make them laugh and pique their interest in this stee wacko a little.
Which leads me to…
…The short. I was investigating where to get 100 copies of the thing made when Editor Tom called to tell me he’d gotten access to a $30,000 piece of equipment (6 inches long) which will allow him to upgrade his Avid at SONY to 7.0 for one night. Therefore, he can re-digitize the footage at a higher resolution. So I honked and cursed my way yesterday through rush hour traffic and dropped the master back at SONY. Hope it worked. We have our screening on Saturday.
Back at the Hall of Justice…
…Fight Club. A couple people asked me to talk about this movie a bit more. And I was going to. But I sort of burnt myself out on talking about it, arguing with one journaller and sharing ideas with another. I will say, that while it is not a perfect movie, it is a bold and intelligently written and acted film that has obviously hit a nerve. And not in the way that something like Natural Born Killers did, which I did not like. (Thought it was boring, of all things.) Fight Club, I think, has much more to say. Has mined much richer ground than Oliver Stone did. But hey, I love Fincher – big, nasty, sharp visuals always get me, from Stone, to Spike Lee to Scorcese. I love Ed Norton. I love clever dialogue and plot points. And I love films about people going over the edge in a big way. Falling Down, American Beauty. Network. Elmo in Grouchland. All of them.
Finally…
…I just got 98 on the Intermediate level of Minesweeper. Beat that shit, yo.
The Larry King Happy
Song Corner
