MOVIES
The Right ProfileLOS ANGELES 24 January 2010 |
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I don’t know where I got the idea that I could act, but I always assumed I could. When I was ten I wrote a play about an Indian massacre and talked my school into staging it, claiming the lead role—an Indian chief—for myself. A year later I wrote a Christmas play to be staged for hospitalized children, and, slackening on my star trip, took a supporting part as one of Santa’s elves. (I was the German elf, since I had Santa’s workshop as a kind of United Nations, with elves representing as many countries as there were classmates to be cast.) The one and only performance of that play was covered by my hometown paper, which of course pleased my parents.
Then, for a while, I lost interest in acting. I despised theater kids, who’d burst into song by way of greeting, meantime flicking their ubiquitous scarves. Also, theater acting was broad and embellished, unlike the intimate acting of movies. I loved movies. I always had. But as I dealt with the usual horrors of adolescence, movies acquired new importance. I was touchy, mopey, and mad at the world for reasons I couldn’t altogether verbalize. If I’d known about punk rock, I would surely have embraced it; but I didn’t, not yet, and the only people who seemed to feel as I did were the ones I saw onscreen. I recognized myself when Jack Nicholson exploded in Five Easy Pieces, which often played at the local repertory cinema. The same with Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, another repertory-cinema constant, as was Who’ll Stop the Rain with Nick Nolte, who at one point growled a line I’ve never forgotten: “All my life I’ve been taking shit from inferior people. No more.”
Actors like Nolte, Pacino, and Nicholson helped me through a difficult time; but it never occurred to me that I could join them onscreen until the night I watched They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? on television. It’s a bleak movie that naturally appealed to my bleak state of mind, and halfway though, I thought, Hey, why couldn’t you be an actor? Because, I thought a second later, it’s impossible. But why was it impossible? Other people did it, right? Then I went upstairs to the bathroom and stared at myself for a long time in the medicine-cabinet mirror, trying to decide if I had a face that was screen-worthy. I was fifteen and very uncomfortable with the way I looked, but I tried to project ahead, adding years and lines and weight (I was a twig at fifteen), and if I aged as hoped—yes, I could picture myself onscreen.
It was one of the key moments of my life. Everything that’s happened to me since can be traced to it. I resolved, then and there, that I was going to be an actor—a successful movie actor—and so began to prepare.
Not that I took acting classes or did theater—not right away. In fact, I kept my ambition secret for some time, wanting to avoid ridicule. Only my friend Jay knew, and once I told him, he decided to become a screenwriter, being as big a movie nut as I was. We made plans to leave Virginia as soon as we finished high school. I even had the route sketched out. We would, after buying and departing in a jeep, stop here the first night, and there the night after that, and if we made good time, we should arrive in Los Angeles in as little as three days. The idea of heading alone to L.A. scared me. It seemed so big, so foreign, so far away.
But Jay’s interest in screenwriting was predictably facile, so our scheme to tag-team the movie world soon faded. Plus, I was having doubts about L.A. I read constantly about the actors I admired, and most had gotten their starts in New York. I made notes about their schools and teachers, and sent away for literature about this program and that one. I learned that actors had to have photographs in order to get work, and asked my stepfather-to-be, a professional photographer, to shoot some of me as an experiment, borrowing a friend’s pea coat in lieu of the black leather jacket I wanted to wear but couldn’t find.
But I mostly prepared by watching movies. I wanted to absorb the history of the art form. I wanted to study famous actors of the past. My tastes were very narrow in those days, so comedic actors made slight, if any, impact. The actors I most liked were associated with the kitchen-sink Method school, going back to John Garfield, who emerged from the Group Theater, from which the Actors Studio later sprang. Brando was associated with Actors Studio, and Brando, in my eyes, was the King of Actors. I’d never seen such raw emotion pour off the screen. At the same time, Brando was capable of elaborate impersonations, as most “primitive” actors aren’t, just as actors with a gift for mimicry tend to hide behind it.
James Dean was another actor associated with the Studio, but I had mixed feelings about Dean, who struck me as a Brando imitator. Now I can see that he had a style all his own, though he died before he could fully develop it. And then there was Montgomery Clift, who, despite his limited dealings with the Studio, was nonetheless classified as a Method actor. Brando regarded Clift as his “touchstone” and rival, but I’d only seen a single clip of Clift, on a television special one night. The clip was from A Place in the Sun—a love scene with Elizabeth Taylor—and Clift’s brooding, intense, troubled persona left a deep impression. Then, too, like Brando and Dean, he was considered a rebel, which to me automatically raised his stock. As I’ve said, I was a punk rocker waiting to happen, and Brando and Dean especially had a huge effect on early punk fashion and attitude. As for Clift, he was the subject of the Clash song “The Right Profile,” with lyrics that alluded to the 1956 car crash that mangled Clift's heartthrob looks.
The crash also mangled his already-precarious psyche. Some have said it marked the start of the longest suicide in Hollywood history, and even Marilyn Monroe once referred to Clift as “the only person I know who’s in worse shape than I am.” They died four years apart, both hooked on prescription drugs they were known to share. Of the three great rebel actors of the 1950s, only Brando survived to old age, and Clift is sadly neglected now; but thanks to a couple of recent biographies, he was enjoying a bit of a posthumous comeback around the time I met his brother.
*****
Most of the actors I admired were on record as preferring theater to film, and, intent on following them in every way, I figured I had to start doing plays But there weren’t many opportunities locally, aside from high-school musicals and the snooty Virginia Players, so I applied for a six-week summer program with a theater company in Washington, D.C. The program included acting classes that would culminate in a one-off production. It was inexpensive. It was 120 miles from home and the eyes of snickering peers. I worked to raise the necessary funds, crossing my fingers that I’d be accepted. I was, and I boarded a Greyhound for Alexandria, Virginia, where I’d booked a room at the YMCA.
I hadn’t realized, before I arrived, just how far Alexandria was from Georgetown, where the company held class. But no matter; I commuted every day by bus, occasionally seated next to punk rockers: my first exposure to them. We never exchanged a word. I wish, being curious, I’d braved a few. But I was laser-focused on the business of becoming an actor, and especially obsessed with impressing one of my teachers: a New York native of the Method school.
One day, in The Washington Post, I read an article about Brooks Clift, Montgomery's brother, who lived in the D.C. suburbs and was married to the journalist Eleanor Clift, who would later gain fame as a member of The McLaughlin Group. The article mentioned that, like the year-younger Monty, Brooks had been an actor, as well as a TV director; and it touched on his unusual childhood, much of which had been spent in Europe, where he and his siblings were tutored in the ways of aristocracy, as dictated by their mother, Sunny. She was the unacknowledged granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln’s Postmaster General, Montgomery Blair, whose father-in-law had served in two presidential cabinets, in addition to sitting on the Supreme Court; and Sunny’s vocation, never realized, was to see her children, and herself also, welcomed into the Blair fold. (I would later stumble on a photograph of Montgomery Blair as a young man in a Civil War history, and his resemblance to his namesake, Monty, was eerily striking: but for the century that divided them, they might have been twins. Unfortunately, that photo doesn’t appear to circulate online, but the resemblance between Blair and his "bastard" great-grandson is evident, though less so, in photos of each in middle age.)
I was fascinated by the Post article. I was sure I’d never get to meet Brando, and Dean and Clift were covered by grass, but the brother of the latter—the next best thing—was living nearby and listed in the phone book, address included, as I happily discovered. Should I call and ask if he’d be willing to receive me? No, I decided; he’d probably decline. I charted the route to his house and, a day or so later, caught a series of buses to a comfortably middle-class neighborhood, where I saw three children, all boys, playing on the lawn of what had to be the Clift house. The oldest of the boys was maybe ten and, like the others, tow-headed. I paced past them a couple of times, uncertain of how to proceed.
Then one of the smaller boys spoke to me—I forget what he said—and I stopped pacing and spoke back. I was an acting student, I told him, and I’d seen something in the paper about his uncle. At that point the oldest boy took over, announcing with pride that his middle name was Montgomery.
“And my middle name is Blair,” said one of the younger boys, not to be outdone.
I asked if their father was at home, and the oldest boy waved for me to follow him and ran inside and up the stairs, while I awkwardly waited by the open door. A second later he raced down the stairs and charged past me, into the yard. Then his father descended, wearing shorts and dark-framed glasses. He didn't much look like his brother, I thought, though they shared the same small-boned build and thick brows. He stumbled a bit, coming down the stairs, and quickly sat on one of them—had he been drinking? But he was cogent when he spoke, and nothing about him, apart from his stumbling, suggested drunkenness. I apologized for the intrusion, explaining who I was and why I’d come. He was gracious. He enjoyed hearing from people with an interest in acting, he said. He asked about the classes I was taking and my plans for the future, and I told him I aimed to apply to the Neighborhood Playhouse, a school in New York that had turned out the likes of Robert Duvall. Brooks chuckled. He’d studied with Sanford Meisner, the Neighborhood Playhouse founder, but they never got along, since he, Brooks, had “refused to play the homosexual game.”
“He doesn’t have a voice,” he added about Meisner.
“What do you mean?”
“He had throat cancer, and they had to remove his larynx. You know, I always noticed that people get cancer in the part of their bodies they use the most, and Sandy never stopped screaming.”
In fact, when I eventually auditioned for the Neighborhood Playhouse, Meisner walked past, speaking with an electrolarynx à la Ned Gerblansky on South Park. Brooks recommended a different teacher (not Mira Rostova, who coached Monty, and with whom I later studied), and encouraged me to move to New York.
“It’s a great city,” he said. “You can go there and get a place, and nobody will ever bother you. People leave you alone there.” I didn’t understand what he meant by that, but I looked forward to the day I would.
Of course, we mostly spoke about his brother, since I’d described myself as a huge fan, in spite of knowing practically nothing about him. What was he like? I asked Brooks, and his first word in response was “funny”—hardly the one I would’ve expected for the Byronic Montgomery Clift. (Note to self: It’s okay to have a sense of humor.) He talked quite a bit about a certain Dr. Silverberg (I kept hearing “silver bird”), who was Monty's psychoanalyst and so oddly, unprofessionally close to him (they even vacationed together) that some suspected sexual involvement.
“Most of Monty's friends didn't approve of Silverberg,” Brooks said, “but I think, without him, Monty wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did.”
He invited me upstairs to a room where he kept some of his brother’s belongings. The Post article had mentioned that Brooks had the X-ray taken of Monty’s skull on the night of the accident, which I morbidly hoped would be on display. It wasn't. The only belongings I saw were books.
“Do you read?” Brooks queried.
“Of course,” I said, afraid I seemed illiterate.
“What do you read?”
“Um, like, you know, stuff about actors. Stuff about how to make it.”
He shook his head dismissively.
“Monty read everything,” he said, “and when he was preparing for a role, he’d go, ‘Oh, it’s like that book I just finished.’ He was always making connections like that. And he was an expert in the subject of psychology. He’d read all of Freud, so when he actually came to play Freud, he was already prepared.”
There was a row of books, uniformly sized and bound, on the top of a small shelf, and I had the impression, possibly prompted in some since-forgotten way by Brooks, that those books were Montgomery Clift's personal collection of works by Freud. And I would eventually read Freud, though not for a while. Other writers, beginning with Kerouac, came first. Brooks never uttered the word “literature,” but there's no question that that's what he meant when he shook his head and, a second later, breathed a gift that’s enriched my life as no other, though I left his house empty-handed.
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Great piece, as usual. I always enjoy the brushes-with-fame posts.
No one else would a) care that much about Clift, b) connect the dots to the brother in the DC suburbs, c) actually go visit the guy, and d) charm him enough to be granted entry into the house and the stack of books.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of Clift’s work, and I think that’s what hurts him, historically. James Dean only made a handful of movies, but Rebel Without a Cause is a classic by any measure, a film worthy of his talents. There is no such movie for Clift.
Actors are dependent on the material. As good as Pacino is, he’s also benefited from some really good scripts, directors, etc.
Also: REM’s “Monty Got a Raw Deal” is about him, I think…Stipe is also a fan.
Monty Got A Raw Deal is about Clift? Huh. I didn’t know that.
Yeah, that makes sense about Stipe. I only learned about that song from Googling Clift for this piece, never having been an REM fan, as you know.
But I think there is a defining movie for Clift. I think there are two, actually: A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity. But I know what you mean about Rebel Without a Cause and Dean. The thing is, Dean happened at a point when “the teenager” was, in a sense, being created, and his impact on American culture was so profound that Rebel continues to have an audience to this day. That isn’t true of Clift’s movies.
Pacino started off great — and I mean great — but was then working with directors who could hold him check. When he later started working with lessers, his tendency to chew the scenery took over. Also, I think a lot of actors do their best work when younger, unlike writers, who tend to improve with age.
You know, I was going to hold off on posting this thing, but I spent half the night tinkering with it, as I’d been tinkering with it for a week, and the only way to make myself stop, I decided, was to put the damned thing out there.
Oh, and Simon, if I’d known about that song, I probably would’ve guessed it was about Clift right away. I mean, “Monty” is an unusual name these days, and Stipe is built kind of like him. But I don’t mean this to sound like a boast or anything. I’m always jumping to conclusions.
I don’t have the down-to-the-bone devotion that a lot of REM fans possess, but I do like a lot of their stuff. Monty Got a Raw Deal is probably one of my favourite songs from them; I think when Stipe is lyrically on, he really is on.
I’m going to have to go and have a listen to that thing. I only learned about it, as I said to Greg, when I was preparing this piece. But I’m glad you don’t have that down-to-the-bone devotion. That means I won’t throw myself out of the car when you take command of the iPod on a forthcoming road trip. Which there surely will be.
I’ve heard some of the iPod list for the road trip, Duke. Some of it is scary…
Oh, God. I hope I don’t throw myself out of a window. Asphalt hurts, especially when struck at high speed.
Road trip in the TNB bus!
And if you’re along, I hope you’ll commandeer the iPod, seeing that we have similar taste in music.
You’ve saved me from the asphalt, Ducky.
Yeah, cuz SHUT IT AGAIN? How do you know my Bedhead boys? Whatfunlifewas is in my top five albums of all time (powder my favorite track.) I also used to have quite the crush on Matt. What a brilliant mind.
And I must know why you thanked Milla, as she’s the actress I was referring to in my other post. Too much SSE for one weekend.
I’ll be happy to DJ if it gets me out of driving.
Zara, you leave Kansas alone, or so help me…
I saw Kansas at a strip mall concert. Seriously. One of the worst shows ever. Simon, step away from the ipod.
The one and only one song Kansas song I enjoy is Carry On My Wayward Son, and a lot of that has to do with its connection to Supernatural.
That being said, I really do enjoy it a lot.
No, Ducky, don’t leave Kansas alone. Dust in the wind, indeed!
I love Bedhead. I ever mentioned them in my Largehearted Boy playlist as a big influence on the writing of BFL. But I don’t really know them or Milla. I thanked inspirations as well as friends, and Milla was one of two people on whom Irina is based, though she isn’t aware of it. (She was friendly with the other girl on whom Irina is based, and I heard quite a bit about her.)
Gads, no Kansas on the bus or I’ll torture you with the Butthole Surfers.
I know the Bedhead guys from home. Once, I even tried to convince them that they needed a female singer who played cello. They didn’t go for it.
Are you a fan of The New Year, too?
I’m calling your bluff. REM is so not worth hurling yourself from a moving car in protest of. Old REM is really good. “Driver 8,” “7 Chinese Brothers,” “Catapult,” “So. Central Rain,” “Exhuming McCarthy,” “Welcome to the Occupation,” “Disturbance at the Heron House,” “Flowers of Guatemala,” “Superman,” “Try Not to Breathe”…you really think those songs are awful? “Shiny Happy People,” fine, that’s asphalt worthy. And “Stand.” And “Everybody Hurts,” their worst song. But their catalog is pretty damned good, even considering the “Losing My Religion”s. I’d pick them over U2, their closest rival, any day.
Oh, and when you’re out here, I will subject you to my Bob Dylan-playing-”It’s the End of the World” cover/joke song.
I like The New Year, Ducky, but I don’t like TNY as well as Bedhead, and I don’t know Bedhead as well, I’m sure, as you do.
And, Simon, honestly, you look like you could be on Supernatural. Maybe you should take a pie to the house of the producers when you’re next in the States.
I’d have to go with U2, Greg, faced with a choice between them. Now, mind you, though I never knew REM well, I did like them, once upon a time. Then Stipe really started to bug me, and I’m sure “Everybody Hurts” and “Stand” and “Shiny Happy People” (in particular) had something to do with it (though even Stipe is now on record as saying the last is bad). And if Dylan is mocking “End of the World,” I would gladly submit to being subjected to it.
What do you think of their later stuff, Greg? (sorry for the hijack, Duke… I guess REM has become my Serbia… wow, there’s something I never thought I’d say). So Fast, So Numb is one of my favourites, as is Living Well Is The Best Revenge.
The most unlikely contender ever of a song to become filed under my personal list of Songs That Are More Than Just Songs became just that - and I swear, I’m not making this up to tie into Duke’s comment - REM’s Supernatural Superserious.
And it became that way, of course, in San Francsico.
Duke: I would love that, and thank you for saying so.
I’ll have a pie ready, Simon. Or maybe Ducky can make cobbler.
I’m no longer floored by SSE, having become accustomed to it. I think it’s spread all over TNB, as others will no doubt testify.
Oh, and I never thought I’d hear you or anyone else say that REM has become their Serbia. But you realize I don’t mind hijacking, yes? And I will shortly return the favor.
Simon: The last album I got was Up. Which was good. I just figured I had enough albums of theirs. Like with Elvis Costello. After twenty or so albums, that’s enough.
Duke: “Bad” by U2, one of their best songs…I can’t listen to it anymore. The high-hat is too lousy. Distracting. As I get older, I have become very aware of, and snobby about, drumming.
As long as you keep the bloody G’n'R away from the iPod - I’ll be sweet as bro.
I used to love “Bad,” Greg, but I haven’t listened to it in a long time, so I can’t comment on the drumming, though I don’t, as a rule, like the high-hat. I’m a kick-drum fan myself.
Oh, and Z., does your ban on G’n'R apply to “Don’t Cry”? I don’t mind that one. I also don’t mind some of Lies.
Yes. It’s a total ban. Banned For Life.
Thanks so much for saying those words. I’ve discovered that my tags at TNB don’t produce anything at Google about BFL, but mention of the book in commentary does. Strange.
Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life. Banned For Life.
Root root root root root root.
That was intended to produce laughter, incidentally. But I don’t say that by way of pressure.
Ah, man, what a great story. It’s possible we are the same person. I usually take pie with me when I crash celebrity houses.
And how did I not know that Meisner had an electrolarynx?
I’ll confess, I’m more a Clift fan than a Brando fan. Don’t get me wrong, Brando’s early work was groundbreaking. On the Waterfront. Ugh, rip my heart out. So good. But then he got lazy and cocky and foolish. As a director, I can’t jive with that attitude. And the way he would withhold his performance if he didn’t think the director was “smart enough.” (I personally think he just spread that rumor to explain some of his lesser performances.) He turned into an arrogant prick which is unfortunate as he started out in such great form. (I love any man who’s brave enough to study ballet.)
btw - another SSE? Sunny is the name of Cornelia’s friend. (Insert twilight Zone music.)
I hear the music. And to think that I almost called Sunny by her real name, which is Ethel. But most didn’t know her that way, from what I gather.
It’s true about Brando’s laziness, but, as I somewhat said above to Greg, I think actors in general tend to get lazy, or at least the successful ones. And, let’s face it, a lot of people who work in the movie business are idiots. It must get tiring to work with them, especially if you’re a genius as was Brando. I think that was part of his problem: that almost no one with whom he ever worked was in his league, and he just got bored. But I also think he was always ambivalent about acting, as he was ambivalent about almost everything, and he made others pay the price.
As for Meisner, I think he later switched from the electrolarynx to some other type of mechanical voice. But it’s amazing that he continued to teach even after having his voice box removed. An acting teacher without a voice — how strange is that?
Oh, and I no longer crash celebrity houses, or the houses of their siblings, but if I ever start again, may I count on you for a pie to take with me?
I actually did make a cobbler very recently and tried to take it to Luke Wilson’s parents’ house. I got the address from a friend. Unfortunately, they have a massive security fence around their house. And of course I did this after I had already mailed his parents the script with a letter pitching everything. When I got no response, the most next most logical step just seemed to be cobbler. (Maybe it’s a Southern thing.)
They probably have a restraining order against me.
Have you seen the Verizon ads? Probably for the best that your tactic failed.
Funny; my TV isn’t working at the moment, and even I‘ve seen the Verizon ads. What happened, Luke?
I guess the parents of the Wilson brothers have had many uninvited guests over the last decade, much as I invited myself to the Clift house. Maybe they figured the cobbler was poisoned. What a weird news story that would be, if anyone ever did make poisoned cobbler and deliver it to them.
I hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas.
Oh yes. Those came out after. He should fire his agent. I can’t believe they allowed those to be aired.
I thought about sending a followup cookie basket with something to that effect, Greg.
I changed direction with the character, so it’s really a blessing.
And Duke, I thought about the poison angle, so you have to make sure you eat it with them. Good thing I didn’t take ice cream.
Ah. I’ll be the royal taster, will I? Very well, very well. Anything to get a film made.
As for the ads, it’s got to be tempting to pocket a cool mil or two for maybe three days of work, no?
Yeah, but it should have at least been a good quality commercial, not something that looks like a film school flunky made. His career was already waning.
Was it? I don’t even keep up anymore. Although I did note that he’s looking a tad worse for wear. But apparently that was a decision on his part, to not hit the gym like every other actor in Hollywood, or so I seem to recall reading.
I’ll give you that most people are idiots, but I don’t accept that as a reason to be an ass. Perhaps if Brando had a better attitude, he would have been able to work with more of his caliber. But he blew it by being uninsurable. Coppola jumped through hoops to get him in The Godfather. He had to trick Brando into a screen test (as I’m sure you know - the famous cotton stuffing footage.) At any rate, he did work with some great directors (Kazan, Lumet, Bertolucci). And he could have had his pick of more had he played his cards right.
But I agree. Hollywood is full of morons.
Of all the acting schools, I respond to Meisner the most. Aside from Espers, is anyone even teaching Meisner anymore?
Well, I think the Neighborhood Playhouse still exists, so it would certainly still be taught there. And there’s also Bill Alderson — I know many people who’ve studied with him. (I just saw Alderson in a production of Shepard’s “Fool for Love” last year.)
I wasn’t trying to defend Brando, by the way. Just trying to see things as he might have seen them. His best work was done with Kazan, and notice that Brando begins to significantly go downhill after Kazan pretty much retired from the movie business in the early sixties. Maybe it would’ve happened anyway, Brando being Brando, but I still think there’s a connection.
Have you ever seen Burn!?
Yeah, I get it. A lot of actors really respect Brando, but I’m coming from a director’s pov.
Didn’t know the N.P. was still around. Why did I think it closed? So many have.
(Shepard is a genius. I would love to get my hands on Buried Child.)
I knew Kazan’s wife. She used to be a regular customer of mine at a restaurant I worked in Chelsea. Really nice woman, but people have never forgiven Kazan for his betrayal. Sometimes there would be a little drama if other actors were in, too (we got a lot of that type in this place.)
btw - Have not seen Burn. Good?
And Five Easy Pieces is a badass movie.
Did you tell me if you’ve seen Scarecrow?
Yeah, I haven’t. I know, I know. It’s one of my many embarrassments.
Burn! is interesting. It’s made by Gillo Pontecorvo, who directed The Battle of Algiers. Here’s a link to more information about it:
http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/artandindustry/burn.htm
I was just talking about Five Easy Pieces with Greg Olear the other day. It’s funny how that movie holds up with younger generations. I told a couple of musician friends about it, and one of them got a copy and watched it repeatedly. I think Nicholson’s anger is something he, and other young guys, well understand.
I’m disappointed that there were “scenes” regarding Kazan. That happened a long time ago. No need to hound an old man about it — particularly an old man with a tremendous legacy as an artist. To me that trumps anything he did during the McCarthy years.
Kazan’s was a big betrayal, you must admit.
I will check out Burn. Thanks for the recommendation.
And I’ll bring Scarecrow with me in June when we all descend upon Bakersfield.
Do. We’ll have a screening party.
I knew one of the blacklisted screenwriters, Bernard Gordon, who sparked the protest against Kazan when he was to be presented with his Lifetime Achievement Oscar, or whatever it was, so I’m very familiar with the other side of the story. I also met Morris Carnovsky, who was in the Group Theater and was one of Kazan’s direct victims. Still, for me, art trumps everything.
There’s such a strong correlation between art and politics, though…I realized this when I went to see Arthur Miller’s 80th birthday party at Town Hall, which featured speakers like John Guare, Edward Albee, and other luminaries. They were all active in PEN. I don’t know the details of the Kazan business, but my impression is that he gave up his friends a bit more alacritously than he should have.
It’s true; he did. I’m not trying to defend him, just as I wasn’t earlier trying to defend Brando for his laziness and boorishness. Kazan appears to have panicked, and told HUAC what it wanted to hear in order to keep working. It had nothing to do with principle, as he later tried to make out. He was a cynical bastard.
But I don’t judge art by the character of its maker, which is what I was trying to say, maybe poorly. And Kazan was around ninety by the time his past again became controversial (there was a long period in the middle when there wasn’t much mention of HUAC), and why add to an old man’s physical suffering with taunts and jeers? That was another point I was trying to make — again, maybe poorly.
As always, Duke, a story well told. And a great story, too.
Thanks a lot, Rich. I hope to see you this week, so I can talk to you about the friend we discovered we have in common via my last post. I want to hear that story about staying at her place while she was off working with Spalding Gray.
Great story, Duke. Your knowledge of the minutiae of classic Hollywood continues to awe and impress me.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of Clift’s films, but I’m now clicking over to Netflix to see what I can get from them.
Also, spot-on about the theater kids. The ones at my high school with were exactly like that, and in college they were even worse–far more insufferable than even the writing students (including myself) I had classes with.
Apparently, going by Zara’s comment, theater kids are universally annoying.
If I may, Matt, the two to see with Clift are From Here to Eternity and A Place in the Sun. The latter, which is based on Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, which in turn was derived from a true story, dragged a little the last time I saw it, but the love scenes hold up. Clift and Taylor had unbelievable chemistry.
Oh, and I don’t know that I know that much about classic Hollywood. I just have the kind of mind that absorbs and retains information about anything of interest to me. It’s a pity it doesn’t work for things of little interest, otherwise I could make a killing on Jeopardy!
Yes, yes, From Here to Eternity is a must. As is A Place in the Sun. Good call, Duke.
I like The Misfits, too. Can’t go wrong with Miller. Or Huston.
I was over at someone’s house a few month ago, and The Misfits was playing on TV, and I couldn’t get over how good it was. The first time I saw it, not long after I met Brooks Clift, it bored me. But I was just a kid, and The Misfits is subtle.
However, I think one can go wrong with Miller. Some of his later work isn’t so hot.
I should watch From Here to Eternity. Always wanted to anyway. Also: that’s a great title.
I think I came to the Brando thing too late to really appreciate him. Sort of how a kid who saw all the Austin Powers movies would react to watching Goldfinger for the first time. How can you not watch the “Stelllllaaaa!” business now and not giggle? It’s been satirized so many times. And, of course, while I have stage experience in college and all that, I’m not an actor. If I have to pick my Most Talented American Actor Who Made a Few Great Films But Squandered His Prodigious Talents And Got Really Fat, I’d go with Orson Welles.
Ah, yes, Duke you are right. I forgot about Miller’s later work. Like Mount Morgan road - or whatever it was. About the bigamist. Ugh. I used to work for a celeb who owns all of Miller’s library, and we were adapting it with Nicole Kassell, who did The Woodsman (very good film, btw if you haven’t seen it.) At any rate, the play is crap, and her screenplay even worse. It’s now on hold.
Greg - Welles is overrated, too. Sorry. While I appreciate him inventing a camera angle, I don’t get why everyone bows to him.
But then I’m a peculiar duck.
But, Greg, I think you have acting talent, as I’ve said already, based on the way you read.
Brando’s greatest performance is in On the Waterfront, I think. He brings me to tears in that thing, as Ducky said of herself.
I also appreciate, of course, your mention of a good title, in the spirit of “Eponymous.” But I always think of Welles as a director, not an actor, which is ironic, I know, since I was just complaining about those kinds of limitations in my last post.
But, Ducky, I don’t think Welles is overrated. I used to think that, but then I went back and watched Citizen Kane again, and it really is great. And he was only twenty-four when he made it! And there are a few other great films by Welles — Touch of Evil and F for Fake and even The Magnificent Ambersons, I think, despite its having been butchered by the studio.
As for Miller, I think I’m one of maybe three people who’s seen Everybody Wins, which was a film written by Miller. It features Nick Nolte (but I won’t file that under SSE), as well as Debra Winger, who seems to be playing some sort of variation on Marilyn Monroe. Bad movie.
Incidentally, Matt, should you see this, if you don’t want to go to the trouble of renting a Clift movie, just click on that link from A Place in the Sun that I inserted into the post, if you didn’t already. That’s the only link in the post that really matters, and if I knew how to just post the clip directly, I would.
Eh, Citizen Kane, and the rest. Whatever. (I’m pigheaded, aren’t I?)
I feel like I saw Everybody Wins. I’ll have to google. I feel like I remember Nolte and WInger together in something. I was a huge Winger fan. (Still am.)
I have mixed feelings about her. I’ve liked her in some things and not so much in others.
And, no, you’re not pigheaded, but I daresay you may change your mind one day. I did.
I’ve tried to get it. Seen the movie a million times trying to see what everyone else sees. I just don’t. Maybe I need glasses.
No glasses necessary. If it’s going to hit you, it’ll hit you when it simply does. I didn’t like Breathless the first time I saw it, and then, later, I thought it was the greatest movie ever. Timing is everything.
You know, I have seen From Here to Eternity, actually, but it was over a decade ago and I barely remember it. I’ll have to revisit it.
I like Welles all right, myself. Citizen Cane is great, of course, but my personal favorite is a film he made as an actor, The Third Man. And I like to listen to a lot of his old Mercury Radio productions. Playing his production of War of the Worlds is, along with reading some Poe and Lovecraft, part of the Halloween celebration around my place.
I fucking love The Third Man. What a great, great movie. But the only Mercury Radio production with which I’m familiar is, you guessed it, War of the Worlds. What a fantastic mind, to have conceived something like that.
Yes, Matt, exactly. The Third Man. One of the great acting jobs in cinema, it says here. And the speech about the cuckoo clock? The speech? Welles wrote that himself.
Ducky, have you seen Touch of Evil? The much-ballyhooed opening shot is well worth the ballyhoo, and, other that the fact that Charlton Heston is cast unconvincingly as a Mexican, it’s a creepy flick…the scene at the motel is almost like a David Lynch movie. Great stuff.
It really is. And I agree about the cuckoo-clock speech.
Also, Matt, I’d forgotten to say that I, too, used to read Poe on Halloween. Then I got into watching horror movies instead — the only time of year that I generally do so.
Greg - I’d say most of the flaws in Touch of Evil stem from the studio interference. While the opening shot is well worth the attention and acclaim it’s gathered, my personal favorite sequence of the film is when Welles’s character goes to visit his fortune teller ladyfriend and is told in no uncertain terms that his doom is upon him.
Duke - Some of the Mercury productions have been collected on CD. I’m fishing around for links right now, but it seems that aside from War of the Worlds most of them have been allowed to go out of print. My university library had copies, which is how I first became aware of them. I’ll have to check and see if the city library does as well.
Stupid HTML….I know I coded that right…
Anyway, I did just find this: http://www.amazon.com/Orson-Welles-Library/dp/1433205548/ref=sr_1_46?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264394547&sr=8-46
I don’t see any HTML problems, do you?
Thanks for the link, my friend. Are there episodes you particularly like? Apart from War, I mean?
I liked him as the voice of The Shadow (way better than Alec Baldwin in that middling mid-90s film) and I thought his radio production of Othello was pretty great. Been a while since I’ve heard either, though. I just did a quick search, and it looks like the local libraries DO have copies of some of his stuff…including an entire collection of Sherlock Holmes productions…..hmmmm….
The Sherlock Holmes productions sound incredibly inviting. Oh, and Welles filmed Othello, but I’ve never seen it — have you?
Yes, I have. Had to watch it for a film class when I was an undergrad. Dug it. Been meaning to see it again.
I’ve heard it’s one of his best. I think it was done fairly low-budget. He found it very difficult to raise money in the U.S., so he made a number of later films in Europe, or anyway with European money, and I think that may be one of them.
Yes, I’ve seen Touch of Evil, but again, I’m just not as wowed as everyone else. And The Shadow, wow, I haven’t heard that in years. It was good. I’ll admit to that. And did you hear about the panic War of the Worlds started? People didn’t know it was fiction. I read there was quite a frenzy.
But I think War of the Worlds is another piece of overrated shit. The book, I mean. I guess when it’s put in historical context, I see the relevance, as it’s the first sci fi book and all, but it’s not very well written.
I’ve never made any attempt at reading War of the Worlds, and never will. I’m sure you’re right about it. To read that book would be like watching The Jazz Singer, which I’ve done, to fill in that bit of film history. War likewise seems worthwhile only as a cultural artifact. But I’m glad it produced the Mercury Theater broadcast, the opening of which is brilliant. And, yes, it absolutely created a frenzy. I think the police were waiting in the wings as the broadcast finished, with the intent to arrest Welles for all the trouble he’d caused. I’m not sure if they followed through with the arrest, or if that particular anecdote — about the police, I mean — is even true.
I went on a big H.G. Welles kick a few summers ago, reading War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, and I enjoyed them all greatly. Welles was not the greatest prose stylist, for certain, but he was a good storyteller and oddly prescient about some things, especially in Dr. Moreau.
I have no doubt that he was prescient. A number of sci-fi writers have been.
To return to the subject of the other Welles, Orson, I learned tonight that his Othello was shot, in fact, in Italy, and that the crew was unpaid, which meant that they were stealing time to work with Welles, with half of one scene shot at this location one week and the other half shot in another location the following week, and so on. Did you know all that? Anyway, it’s a wonder that the movie was ever made at all.
This post reminds me that I shouldn’t live under a rock.
I need to venture to L.A. and knock on doors with pies, as Ducky said, and armed with charm and a hankering for knowledge.
It’s fine to live under a rock, Nick. Just as you’re not living on rock. The kind you smoke, I mean.
Stupid joke. Never mind.
I think it’s funny that you had to wear that pea coat because you couldn’t find the leather. The pea coat gives you a fifties look. Though the leather would have too, I suppose - maybe it’s your hair. I’m assuming its the leather from your other pics that you mean - the rooftop ones. Also, it’s remarkable to think of a time that existed that when asked what you read/if you read it would be about books on acting and how to “make it”.
Interesting, as always, to know more about your past.
I’m glad a few people aren’t starting to get sick of hearing about my past. I need to write a Totally Killer-type piece, but my brain doesn’t seem to operate that way. Damned brain.
Anyway, if I look kind of 1950s, that was the idea, since I was most interested by that time in actors from that period. But the leather jacket came later, after I moved to NYC. I don’t think that kind of thing was sold anywhere in my hometown.
And, yeah, I was pretty illiterate as a teenager. I went from reading a lot as a child to barely reading at all in my teens to reading again. And now I’m online so much that I’m back to not reading much. Which really bugs me.
I’ll get that Freedy Johnston CD to you in the mail this week. You can read the liner notes and lyrics. Ever heard of San Francisco-based Tiny Television? I can send that along, too. Great stuff.
I haven’t, Jim, I’m embarrassed to say. What are they like? And many thanks in advance for the Freedy freebie. (Sorry; the alliteration was irresistible.)
Bad Reputation is a great song. Can’t remember what album it’s off.
But do you know Tiny Television? Please say no; it’ll make me feel better.
No, but I’m going to itunes right now.
Ah, yeah, that’s my cup of tea. If you like this kind of music, check out Deadman. It’s a Long Road Home opens my film. (Severe Mercy - album)
I’ll have to check it out. All of it, I mean. And I’m so glad that you didn’t know about TT. The old I’m-not-a-music-encyclopedia anxiety thing again.
Hey, you take that weight off of your shoulders right now. I hate the thought of adding pressure to anyone’s life (we have enough.)
You didn’t add any pressure; Jim Simpson did! [shakes fist at Jim's gravatar]
Damn it, Jim!
Ah, Duke, you’re gonna love TT. I’ll send it along, too. Check out a review here:
http://countrymusicpride.com/2009/12/tiny-television-mission-statement-independent/
You can listen to the album in its entirety, just click on the link at the end of the review.
“there is not a single cliche on the entire album.”
Wow. That’s quite a claim. And I love those lyrics: “Sit back sugar, let your hair down, honey, I took care of the cream. I sold my guitar at an interstate bar just to buy you a ring.”
I’ll have a listen when I can pry myself away from this board for more than a few minutes. A crowbar may be necessary — but that’s a cliche.
Insightful as always, Duke.
I love how timid you were in sharing your dreams, yet ballsy enough to show up on a strangers doorstep. I think you captured something so accurate and truthful about youth.
I’m glad you wrote this.
Thanks, Megan.
That dichotomy, of being timid on the one hand and ballsy on the other, is something that’s stayed with me, I’m afraid. I’m polarized to the point of being clinically bipolar, almost.
I owe you an email, by the way, about my iBook. I spaced on it.
Wonderful.
I love the snapshots of your life that you so generously reveal here. You always surprise and delight. Every word of yours feels so genuine and so well thought out, that I have to read your pieces twice or it feels like sacrilege!
Oh and yes, the pretentiousness of drama students must be worldwide thing. We had them too. In fact I think I may have been the only student in our theatre school that DIDN’T break into song. I think I may have had some scarfs though…
I think they wear scarves because they make good props, no? Otherwise, they’d have nothing to flick when bursting into song. Feather boas aren’t such a good thing to wear to high school, I guess.
Of course I’m flattered that anyone would read anything I’ve written once, let alone twice. Have I told you lately that you’re an angel? But I’m starting to think that I should break out from this “snapshot” business and do something else.
No you haven’t told me that for quite a while now. So I’m grateful to see it written here! You’re a sweetheart.
I wouldn’t like to guess at how many times I have re-read your pieces. Whenever I go back, I find something else in them that I didn’t initially spot. It’s like pulling on a jacket and finding 50 bucks hidden in the pocket.
I don’t think I ever wore a boa to school. But I do have a terrible memory of once wearing a pink crocheted pom pom dress to school and being mercilessly teased about it all day. I thought it was the most beautiful dress ever, but apparently I was wrong. Maybe the resulting trauma was what made me go to drama school….
Z., I realized you’d studied film, but I did not know, until this exchange, that you went to drama school. Something else we have in common. But the nearest I’ve come to the crocheted-teasing thing would have to involve the purple tennis shoes I bought and wore to school just once, hoping to kick off a trend. But I’ve written about that in a previous comment to Erika Rae.
Come to think of it, there was always lots of teasing about shoes. You had to wear just the right ones or risk social death.
Oh I remember your shoe story! It was great!
And yes, I did go to drama school, but only for a year. I couldn’t take all the dramatics!
Yet another thing we have in common.
At least theater chicks were easy.
SOME of them….!
Of course, Z. I mean, you don’t think I… You didn’t really think…
Ha!
No.. I didn’t!
But I think you are right, drama girls always had the reputation of being easy roots.
I think it goes way back. Actresses (and actors) were always regarded as wantons. Many, maybe most, were denied church burials.
There’s a Katherine Mansfield story entitled “Pictures” about an aspiring movie actress that I heartily recommend, by the way. It reads very quickly, and it touches on the “wanton” thing.
Wanton is one of my favourite words. Right next to swoon.
Both terrific words. But do you swoon over wantons?
No, but I have been known to swoon over wontons.
You and Simon and Greg and James — I can’t begin to compete in the pun department. But any discussion about words makes me think of your exchanges with Uche.
The actresses I went to school were really prissy. Maybe because it was musical theatre.
Alot of late bloomers there. But yeah, I guess the straight actresses were more “easy roots”
like Zara said (love that) because it was good for them to broaden their “repertoire”.
Musical-theater types are, generally speaking, the most annoying people in the universe. I knew many, alas. But I only auditioned once for a musical, and made a complete fool of myself.
I love that “easy roots” thing, too, by the way. In my haste, I only saw the word “easy” initially, and later got a laugh at the addendum. It partly makes me laugh just because I can picture Zara laughing every time she encounters the word “root.” She’s such an easy mark.
“Hey, Zara! Root!”
“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”
Root!! Ha! Ha!
My favourite phrase is ’slack root.’
Or even better - Super rooter. Ah HAHAHAHAHAHA.
What a fool I am.
On the contrary. It’s charming.
Root! Root root root root root!
Almost as charming as ‘mole.’
Particularly when preceded by “ya fucken.”
Wonderful, wonderful stuff. Clift was just terrific in From Here To Eternity, which is all I really know of his work. You know who else read voraciously? Robert Mitchum. I’d love to know your opinion of him.
Cheers,
JB
I’m glad you’ve seen Eternity, Justin. (That phrasing is going to read a bit funny.) I was just watching a clip from Eternity (more weird phrasing) while prepping this piece, and Clift really is great in it. He managed to pull off the working-class thing, which was very, very different from the person he in fact was.
I’d forgotten that Mitchum was a voracious reader, but it all comes back to me now. In fact, he wanted to be a novelist. I know that because he said as much to a writer with whom I used to be friendly, Robert Ward, who profiled Mitchum for Rolling Stone. I was really jealous that he got to hang out with Mitchum, who was just fantastic, according to Bob Ward. His persona has aged well. There’s something contemporary about Mitchum, with that jaded quality he had, which I think owed to his contempt for so many of his directors, scripts and so on. He once said of success: “It doesn’t mean you get to do better, it means you get to do more.”
I did a bad movie with one of Mitchum’s sons, but that was as close as I ever got to meet him, alas.
He wrote screenplays, too. In fact, I want to say that he might have started out as a writer, but don’t hold me to that.
I know he set out to be, but he was derailed (as I think he always saw it) by acting.
He did find time to make a sorta good calypso record:
http://tiny.cc/QQapl
Thank for the link, JB. I’ve always wanted to hear that. What a weird notion: Robert Mitchum making a calypso record.
The “jaded quality” had more to do with the pot, I think.
You think? Really?
I was just reading something about the chick with whom he was busted. Lila, I think her name was. Really hot.
That must have created a few scenes with Mrs. Mitchum, huh?
The only thing I know about him is that he was busted for marijuana possession on several occasions. Which made him sort of ahead of his time, in a way.
That’s somewhat what I was saying in my comment to Justin: Mitchum seems contemporary. But I wasn’t aware that he’d been busted for pot more than once. I’ve only seen the pictures of him with that blonde at the police station, and also the one of him swabbing the floor in jail.
Mitchum was also one of the great (if not the greatest) suck-in-the-beer-belly, puff-up-the-chest actors. I apologize for the hyphenated bits. Is there a single adjective for that behavior?
I don’t think there is, no.
I’ve now paused and tried to come up with one, and can’t. But no need for apologies. You’re right: he did puff out his chest and suck in his beer belly, but he was in great shape at the beginning of his career. I liked him a great deal in The Story of G. I. Joe, which follows a company of “typical” soldiers during WWII. (The movie was made, or anyway released, in, I think, 1945.) He got an Oscar nomination for that, back when that meant a lot more than it does now, except in the commerce sense.
I think such an adjective would have to be named for one of its two greatest (read: notorious) practitioners: William Shatner and David Hasselhoff. Personally, I rather like the sound of “Hasselhoffing.”
Have you seen the clip of Hasselhoff Hasselhoffing drunk on the floor? I hope you’ve never Hasselhoffed in such a way — or frankly in any other.
“some have said it marked the start of the longest suicide in Hollywood history” - Jesus, there’s a chilling line for you.
I really like this story, Duke, sad parts aside - poor Clift. And I especially like the Nolte quote, which I hadn’t heard before. It’s a good one; he’s the master of the growl, that guy.
It sounds like Brooks gave you good advice.
In addition to giving myself as a writer? Yeah, he did. And I think, looking back on it, he must have suffered a stroke, which accounts for his stumbling. I was going to mention that in the post, but for some reason I didn’t.
And the Nolte quote — yeah, I think that was derived from Nietzsche. Nolte’s character in the movie is seen with a volume of Nietzsche at one point. That was my introduction to Nietzsche, whose work I would later devour, so I have to thank Brooks Clift for that too.
Weird how the impact of so brief a meeting can last a lifetime, to say again what I just said to RichRob below you. (I’m responding to comments out of order — do you do that?)
That butterfly was flapping again…
Don’t worry, I respond to comments just about as haphazardly as is humanly possible.
In fact, I was going to cite your butterfly piece in my last comment to you, but I spaced. I’ve got butterflies in my head.
They’re a far less deadly variety than the ones that take up residence in the human stomach.
I have butterflies in my film. Seriously, stop with the SSE.
Never!
He said on behalf of the universe.
Like the Count of Monte Cristo, I am the humble messenger of the Universe’s will.
Of course, I wouldn’t lose my teeth halfway through getting the job done.
Oh Jesus.
Just how badly have I just tempted fate?
Yes, you’d better fasten them down before you go to sleep tonight. The Tooth Fairy might come to collect.
I hope it doesn’t look like The Rock.
You know that my father looks exactly like Nick Nolte, right? Except my dad has brown hair. So any line NN says seems like it comes from my dad.
Damn it, Greg, I knew I was going to end up overlooking a comment. I read this some time ago, and thought I’d responded, but apparently not.
Anyway, no, I did not know that your dad looks exactly like Nolte, though Nolte’s had his hair dyed brown here and there, significantly in Affliction, which is probably the only Nolte movie you and I have ever discussed. (Did you mention your dad’s resemblance to Nolte then? Probably, and I stupidly forgot.)
I love reading about how creative people discovered their calling. Amazing the different ways we arrive at our places in life.
A true gift he gave you indeed.
Yes, well. We’re having this exchange because of Brooks Clift, and that goes for any exchange we’ve had prior, and any exchange I’ve had with anyone else at TNB. I wouldn’t even be at TNB if not for him, which is weird to consider, as I never did before this moment. But, yeah, he would be at the root of it.
Uh-oh. I said “root.”
Ha ha. Root.
Thanks, Z. You clearly saw that I meant that for you.
The first line is weird.
Mostly because I’m both reading a book at the moment by Jerome K. Jerome— my favourite writer— about his short lived days as a ‘would-be actor’ and also because just today I was thinking about acting.
I’ve acted in a few things. I love it, but not with anything near the passion or dedication expressed here.
Another excellent post, and I love the pea coat!
I now own one, but I never wear it. It’s not because L.A. is always sunny. It gets a lot colder here than many realize — in the last week, for instance. But the pea coat — I don’t know — it’s too bulky, or something.
Also, the kind of fanatical dedication I had to acting was unusual even among other acting students. I was obsessed. As for the Jerome thing — SSE?
I almost bought a pea coat… in san francisco…
one of the reasons I’ve become incredibly glad to be living in england is my coat. I’m dreading summer. I ended up instead getting a genuine 70s coat. It looks like something Keith Richards would have worn around the time of Exile On Main st… I can’t help but feel cool wearing it…
I know a couple of acting students. it always strikes me that a lot of them just want to be seen to be aspiring actors… obviously some are genuinely passionate about it.
I just like pretending to be other people, affecting different accents, mannerisms etc. I just do it anyway, for my own amusement. Although we had an assignment in my creative writing course where we had to make up a character and become the character next week. I was a rock star (modelled on keith richards…) I was told by a few different people that I was exceptionally good at it…
of course there got to a point where I was genuinely just drunk.
I was all set to write a post on SSE before my laptop died. I’m not going to now, because I’ve llost momentum. But SSE nearly caused me to abandon CCB…
You can post what you have of it here, if you’d like. Your cliffhanger has left me curious.
I’m glad to know that at least a few acting students are still genuinely passionate. There isn’t much encouragement for passion in the present climate. Actors like Clift are, I’d argue, a thing of the past.
But did you wear your pea coat in class? — which sounds more like an acting class, by the way, than a creative-writing class.
I’d think a pea coat would come in handy in the UK. Didn’t Sting used to wear one? I seem to remember him affecting sailor chic at one point.
I turned the SSE incident into a much longer story involving the 2009 Ashes series (cricket tournament between england and australia dating back to the early 19th century). My theory was that Smithson was executing some sort of petty revenge because england won.
okay. I’d written about 20,000 of novel, which was just about the end of Part One. Taking a well earned break I went on twitter, where simon had posted a link to a science related website/magazine. It was an article on ‘brekathroughs of the future.’
one of the items in the article, something which was now a real scientific possibility, was exactly the same as one of the central elements of CCB.
I was so angry and annoyed that the thing I was most proud of— what I was sure was an original and interesting idea— was actually within the realms of scientific possibility.
I decided though to continue on the basis that CCB was more about proving I could write something of length all the way to the end….
I didn’t wear my coat in class, partly because I didn’t want to damage it, and also because I wore a robe instead. It was a ‘Creativity’ class, which teaches us ways of looking at creating ideas via other mediums. sometimes we paint or draw. it’s my favourite class. it’s the most interesting module by far…
I agree. I’m always bitching about the loss of craft. Actors today don’t work on it. They just stand in front of a camera and expect it to come. Or they rely on their looks. Some of the best actors have been the ugliest. Never understood that part of the biz.
Well, it’s a culture completely obsessed with celebrity, Ducky. I can’t imagine a kid watching a movie these days and wanting to become an actor because of it; but I can imagine a kid wanting to walk the red carpet and all the rest of that horseshit.
My favourite jacket, I discoved in SF, is what Americans call a pea coat. A number of Americans commented on how much they liked it (which I, of course, liked as well). The first American to do so was the guy I referenced in my SF Arrivals post who pointed the house out to me on the map.
Clearly, I need to start wearing more pea coats. They seem to attract change.
Nobody wants to work for anything now.
People just expect instant fame or recognition or something…
People tend to be very vocal about their own brilliance. It annoys me. More with writers than actors. I mean with acting a certain bravado is pretty standard.
Fucking aspiring writers are worse— I mean ones who talk about one day writing a novel, or maybe dabbling with non-fiction or this or that…
Talking about it doesn’t get it done, writing it does. And the only way you’ll ever write a decent novel is by practising writing them.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. A real bummer.
Have you read Lucas’s new book? I just caught up on a NPR review of it, and it sounds like our kind of book.
Particularly, Simon, if worn by butterflies, yes?
SF is yet another place that seems a real pea coat place, but it must not be if people there were commenting on your jacket as if they’d never seen before.
Okay, the board is turning into its usual cluster-fuck here, with comments all out of order, but, Ducky, which Lucas do you have in mind? Not George, I hope.
And, James, I think the problem is that fame can happen instantaneously now. It does all the time. So why should anyone have to work at a craft? That’s how I think people see it.
Of course, this might have the effect of weeding out those people who only want to act (or perform in any way) for the sake of celebrity, but it strangely hasn’t.
I was discussing famous Lucases the other day.
We managed to come up with George Lucas and David Lucas, who is a goalkeeper for my hometown soccer team.
Incidentally the reason the discussion was ocurring was because I was with a girl whose second name was Lucas. She, incidentally, is an aspiring actress…
Do you mean her middle name or her last name?
Also, to belatedly respond to your SSE comment: I think it speaks well of your imagination that you were able to conceive of something that can, in fact, be instituted, at least in theory. Though I can see how you might feel scooped.
I just went back to check on what you called your class, and see, to my relief, that you initially referred to it as a creative-writing class, which means I wasn’t reading sloppily for once. But a “creativity” class — yes, that does sound like fun. And I wore many a bathrobe in acting class, sometimes as a substitute for a toga or some such.
second name = last name.
I like to look at it that way too. I tend to look at everything in the way that makes me look best…
‘Creativity’ is a module of the creative writing course. So I study Creative Writing, but that also entails Creativity, which is more about ideas than writing.
But you didn’t look at it that way initially, yes? Anyway, I’m glad you see it that way now. And the novel is finished!
Well, the first draft of it is finished, and that already is a great victory. Most novels end up being abandoned.
How many people are you in your Creativity class? And what other types of exercises have you done? Just trying to get a better sense of it.
james d. irwin, your favorite writer is jerome k. jerome?!??!? that’s awesome!!! i read three men in a boat last year and i am still laughing. holy shit. i didn’t know anybody read him. i didn’t even know people knew who he was. i didn’t even know who he was until somehow i found myself reading his book! maybe because you are a britishy-type person they tell you about him over there? i don’t know, it’s all a mystery. anyway, keep up the good work.
Well, there’s another book I’d like to read but lack the time to do it.
make time my friend. It’s more than worth it.
there is also, in Three Men in a Boat, some of the most beautiful descriptions of English countryside on record. Magnificent.
See gratitude below.
I’ve hardly met anyone who has heard of him. I get excited when I do. He’s incredibly english, and still pretty obscure.
Have you read anything else of his? Three Men on the Bummel is a sequel and some say funnier. I’m not sure, but it is still a damn fine read. Also his essays in ‘The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow’ and ‘More Idle Thoughts…’ are fantastic.
I re-read the first pages of Three Men in a Boat the other day, to remind myself how brilliant it is. He is seriously my all time favourite writer.
I will be looking into this guy before the night is done, I promise you.
Me, too. Thanks for the tip.
he’s very funny, duke. he’s sort of like p.g. wodehouse (who he preceded), only minus the ridiculously ingeniously plots. more episodic. i’ve only read three men in a boat (though i have three men on the bummel in the on-deck circle), but it’s really fascinating… like james says, the descriptions of the countryside are great, really beautiful, and then there’s this hauntingly tragic scene, very scary, in the middle… lots of different tones, he was a real writer, not just a humorist, but as a humorist he was amazing. there’s this great anecdote about trying to get rid of a big wheel of stinky cheese that just goes on and on, escalating… i don’t know, the whole thing is just really great and feels really kind and fun. it’s just a good book, you feel good when it’s over. it’s not mean or acidic or stupid, just fun. they don’t really write like that anymore.
the other book i really like from that time is george and weedon grossmith’s diary of a nobody… have either of you read that? pretty good though more of a satire of manners, more essentially comedic. funny, though.
What era are we talking, James? Since I’m currently too lazy/busy to check Wikipedia. The title Ben mentions sounds 1930s or so.
Jerome K. Jerome was late Victorian era mostly. Three Men in a Boat is, I think, from 1899.
The whole cheese scene is brilliant. It’s all so terribly British as well.
He also has a bit of a dark streak at times. He was a genuinely talented writer, although he mostly wrote humour. Even darker things he writes about humorously…
You both create a very inviting description. And I thought of P.G. Wodehouse right away when it was mentioned that Jerome is (a) funny and (b) English. Wodehouse is a scream, but I have to confess to not having read the Grossmith book.
He’s in one of my favorite bathroom books, The Portable Curmudgeon, from which derive most of the quotes that I sprinkle on the comment boards here. (And here I am, giving away my trade secrets).
Here’s one: “It is always good policy to tell the truth — unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.”
Ha!
But Greg, do you mean steal to feed the comment boards? Good man!
I know someone else who kept a copy of The Portable Curmudgeon in his bathroom. It’s a hoot, that book. I was always flipping through it when nature called.
No, I always attribute. Usually it’s Mencken or Bierce. But I know every quote in that book pretty much by heart. Here’s one by someone whose name escapes me, that relates to Simon’s piece: “Thank goodness the people who prefer San Francisco to Los Angeles live there.”
Ha! A little cross-referencing going on here. Simon did something similar on his piece.
But isn’t stealing more fun?
Greg— that’s pretty much my favourite quote of all time.
Last night I went back and read more Jerome. Not sure if I’ve mentioned this, it’s his memoirs of being an actor…
You said something about his being interested in acting, but I’m not sure that you said he’d been an actor. Good. I’m glad to know I’m not alone.
Yeah, he was an actor when he was in his early 20s.
He wrote a book about his experiences called On Stage— and Off. But he only ever acted in second rate theatres and travelling companies. It’s almost more a book about behind the scenes of that dingy back-street off-West End world…
Actually, I’ve heard of that book. Really! Don’t know where, but it must have come up in all the reading I did about the history of acting and the theater when I was around Jerome’s age.
wish I had a laptop so I could keep this up until the early hours.
sadly I must depart for home and bed. no doubt when i come back tomorrow morning I’ll struggle to find these comment threads in the inevitable comment avalanche that will ensue…
We’ll see about the avalanche, James. I take nothing for granted.
I agree with Matt: your knowledge of Hollywood icons is impressive.
I love that the two Clift brothers were named Montgomery and Brooks. What great names.
“Note to self: It’s okay to have a sense of humor.” ha ha ha Good. I’m glad.
The final paragraph is brilliant, Duke. Especially the final sentence. Amazing. What a wonderful story. I really enjoyed reading this.
Thanks, Gloria. I worked really hard on it — harder than usual, I mean. It didn’t really feel like it was going to come together, because I was trying to combine the story of how I got started as an actor with the story of the visit to the Clift house, which is what, in a way, got me started as a writer, and the visit was such a short one, and the ending especially seemed like it was going to be a problem. And then it just kind of worked out, or so I thought. I’m so pleased that you cite the ending. And I don’t know much about trends in names, but I think “Brooks” and “Montgomery” may have been much more common once upon a time. (Their sister, Monty’s fraternal twin, was named Ethel Roberta — that’s pretty old-fashioned also.)
I tend to have a hard time wrapping things up. I get a little too “and there you have it folks, that’s how it ended!” if that makes any sense. So, when I see a great ending, I note it.
“…breathed a gift…” What a remarkable image.
My name, Gloria, is pretty old. Apparently it peaked in popularity in 1944. I’ve only ever met one similarly-aged white Gloria in my whole life. I might as well be Ethel.
Pulling crazy stunts with your zany red-headed cohort, no doubt.
I think I’ve met two or three Glorias prior to meeting you, though I suppose, technically, we’ve yet to meet at all.
Endings are always tough, I think. It’s like a friend once said about shooting pool: “The eight-ball is never easy.” For me, there’s usually some anxiety as I’m about to finish a piece. And then there are those times when the ending kind of takes care of itself. This was, happily, one of those times.
I will be taking my annual sojourn to L.A. in the coming months. We could meet then! I’ve done this every year since leaving my former husband. This will be my fourth journey to L.A. It’s like the one thing I do every year for myself. Last year, when I met Listi, I was only gone 48 hours. I visited five friends in that amount of time. I hardly slept. This time around, I’m going to try to stay for four or five days.
By the way - are we still on to discuss Bonfire of the Vanities next weekend? If we need to extend it out, it’s okay. I am plugging away at it, but I’m not in love with it. I wish I were. I feel like I’m supposed to be wowed by it. Maybe it takes more than 150 pages for the wow to start. Maybe there’s just a big wow at the end or something.
We’ll have to arrange a TNBoree when you arrive. And, um, yeah, I think we are going to have the extend the deadline on Bonfire. I did manage to finally start it, but it’s slow going, and your preview review isn’t very inspiring, I must say. (I would add an emoticon here, except that I’m temperamentally incapable of using them.)
A TNBoree??? Whoopee!!
I’m going to finish Bonfire on principal. I will not be defeated by this book!! I will not! But honestly? Between you and me (and the thousand million other people who could potentially read this comment [hello people!]): I think it’s written for dudes. I am not a dude. Furthermore, it feels kind of dated. And by kind of I mean a lot. I don’t think we’re far enough removed from the 80s for them to be yesteryear.
Emoticons: my friend Jen popped up on FB chat the other day simply to show me the shark emoticon. It’s done like this (^^^) and I think it only worked on Facebook. I love it. I wish I could use it everywhere. There is no bad time to use a shark emoticon.
Okay, well, I might agree with you about the shark emoticon.
But about the eighties not being yesteryear: Have you been to NYC lately? Believe me, it’s a very, very different city than it was in the eighties.
But it’s strange that you think Bonfire is written for dudes — strange in the sense that I never heard that before, and that so many of those who seemed to like it were, or are, women, if memory serves.
Well, somehow I seem to have accidentally turned off my comment function. Thanks, Gloria, for letting me know. And you’ve never been to NYC? For shame!
Well, it’s not for want of desire. I just happen to be supporting three kids (one of whom is pregnant and married - and 17), as well as supporting an ex-husband’s desire to ruin my life by breaking me financially (I pay him child support.) But, one day. One day. I plan to be ridiculously famous and retarded rich. Then I’ll go to New York.
Ah, Gloria, I was only joking. There are many places I’ve never been, and some are surely places you know well. I only hope that, once you’re ridiculously famous and retarded rich, you don’t forget the little people, like me — especially if you happen to have a vacant apartment in NYC that you’re willing to loan out. [missing emoticon]
I won’t remark on your ex, as anything I say might get a bit inflammatory.
Goddamn, you don’t check the website for a few hours and you miss 140 comments…
Another fascinating read, Duke. I’ve never had any interest in being an actor, but I share your passion for rebels and self-destructive types. There was a time in my life when I just wanted to be these people, regardless of how much they damaged themselves, but now I still enjoy learning about them without my own self-destructive impulses.
These rebels have a hold over us when we’re growing up… For me they were writers; but I always liked Brando and Dean.
I think what attracted me to writing over acting (aside from being utterly devoid of talent concerning the latter) was an incredible shyness. I dropped it in university, but the first 20 yrs of my life were marked by a fear of being watched by other people. I liked that I could write in private, and any time I saw an actor I admired I imagined by him… and then realised it would be hard to be a successful, yet invisible, actor.
See, David? You should never, ever leave TNB for even a single second.
Seriously, though (as comics always say):
In my book, which maybe you’ll read one day, there’s talk about worship of self-destructive types. I think it all goes back to the Romantic movement, from which rock & roll is an offshoot. The Romantics were into self-impairment — in some cases literally.
Anyway, like you, and like one of my characters in BFL, I used to admire self-destruction, but now I don’t so much, since I’ve come to recognize that in some ways I am self-destructive, and it’s not so pretty in reality. Also, like you, I’m actually shy, though I may not seem that way. But a number of actors are shy, and they turn to acting because of it, seeking shelter from behind masks, or they act as a form of exposure therapy.
But I’m also not shy, which the weird thing. I fluctuate constantly from self-confidence to shyness. Maybe I’m a twelve-year-old at heart.
I think the fishbowl-thing is very hard on certain types of actors, and maybe all of them. I was, for ten seconds, famous in Serbia, and got mobbed at a McDonald’s, and it was pretty scary. But that’s a story that needs to be told at length, in my threatened, forthcoming Serbian piece, or pieces.
Thanks for reading, David. I always look forward to hearing from you.
“The A-Serb-ic Pieces”
Did you also attend punning school Down Under, Greg?
Ah, the Romantics… I was always a big fan of Byron. What was he, “Mad, bad and dangerous to know?” That always sounded appealing to me, or at least it did for a long time. I think I’ve outgrown that phase to an extent. Like you, I’m fairly self-destructive. I was single until I was 22 yr old, and lucky to have lived that long… Ever since then, though, I’ve thought to myself, “How would I feel if my girlfriend did something stupidly dangerous?” and that has pretty much slowed me down.
And I’m still waiting on that book. My school shut down days before it was scheduled to arrive, and my Korean skills haven’t been sufficient to track it down yet. But I imagine it’s out there, somewhere, in Korealand.
And I’ve heard of people acting to overcome shyness, but that was never going to work for me… I guess I can understand it, but it sounds too scary. Even now I’m a teacher I can only act in front of children. If there’s another teacher in the class I speak quietly and am afraid to do anything. When they’re outside, I can do a mean impression of a happy elephant or an angry shark…
Yes, Byron was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Which I think means self-destructive, though that expression wouldn’t have been much in usage, if at all, in his day.
I’m naturally irked that the book is now floating around somewhere in Korealand, just because I would love it to be in your shelf at the moment. But such is life.
I always dealt with stage fright, which was occasionally crippling. I still deal with it, but I know now that the suffering only lasts for the first moment or two (sometimes less); then I start to get into whatever it is I’m doing. On movies this translates into the first few hours of the first day of shooting. That’s why I don’t like parts that wrap in a day: because I know I’m unlikely to be at my best. On the other hand, I did a day-player part in a movie a couple of years ago (Surveillance) and didn’t feel much anxiety. But when I do, I’m sometimes able to cover it nicely. Other times, not so much.
Maybe I’ll disguise myself as a child one day so as to see your impressions of a happy elephant or a mean shark. Oh, and your remark about your girlfriend and curbing your more dangerous impulses because of her — that’s the kind of thing parents often say. A portent of some kind?
If you’re interested in Byron, you should read the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia, in which he is a (unseen) character. Great great great play. Saw it with Rufus Sewell on Broadway.
Rufus Sewell — now there’s a name you don’t hear so much of late. How was he? And was Stoppard’s take on Byron sympathetic? Byron is easily lampooned, but his impact on the nineteenth century can’t be underestimated. Even Custer was influenced by Byron, I’m sure of it, though I’m not sure to what extent, if any, he was aware of it. (Though one of his dogs was named Byron, which indicates awareness.) (James Dean’s middle name was Byron also.)
He was outstanding. It’s a talky sort of play, like most of Stoppard’s stuff; Sewell played Septimus, the tutor. The play involves shifts in time. And yes, his Byron was sympathetic, as I recall.
Good to hear on all accounts.
Greg— I’ve just read ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ after you mentioned it on the ‘Eponympus’ comment boards.
Loved it. About to see if this library has Arcadia knocking about somewhere…
It’s a brilliant idea for a play, and the title (as noted in Greg’s piece) is Totally Killer as well, but I’ve only seen the filmed version, and I was a bit bored by it. Great moments, to be sure, but they didn’t fully link up — at least for me.
I only read it. I’d love to see it.
It was right up my street, so to speak. Very bizarre, very surreal.
That it definitely is.
Goddamn… I didn’t get an e-mail to let me know you’d answered my last comment… And with more than 230 comments it took me an hour to find this by myself…
I would very much enjoy seeing you try and pass yourself off as a small Korean child to spy on my class.
I’m sorry about the hour lost, David. I suppose, just for that, I owe you my impersonation of a small Korean class. Don’t think I can do it, huh? But I’m a pretty good actor, I must warn you.
Goddamn my e-mail. I think everything with your name on it goes into the spam folder for some reason… Sorry about that. Perhaps your acting fooled my otherwise trusty e-mail into thinking you were a delicious tin of SPAM.
And if you want to act like a Korean child I’ll send you a box of Hello Kitty stationary, some Pororo sweaters, and basically the same sort of clothes that people generally use to kit out their little dogs.
Yes, it was my acting, David. It especially works on spam guards. If it were up to them, I’d be an Oscar (TM) winner.
I hope to soon receive my box of Hello Kitty stationary, Pororo sweaters, and little-dog outfits. In exchange I can burn you a CD, as per Kip’s most recent post. Well, maybe a number of CDs, some for the listening pleasure of little dogs — or cats, in your case.
Alright, but my gift bags from Korea now include beondaegi (dried bugs they eat as snacks) and dried squid (which smells worse than sweaty ass crack). If you’re not going to eat those then you don’t get the stationary or clothes.
Aw, just wait till you get to Australia, and you can send me kangaroo meat. It would be much easier for me to impersonate an Australian child anyway, as long as it’s not an aboriginal.
Hey man I like this new direction, the pics are cool too.
I like that pea coat and the brood.
I did acting too but I’m not quite brave enough to write
those stories yet.
But you are inspiring me.
This is kinda unrelated
but you I’ve really been
into Dean Martin movies lately.
He had lot of cool.
Actually, I was just reading last night that Monty Clift turned down Dean Martin’s role in Rio Bravo. But they worked together on The Young Lions, and apparently Clift was constantly clamoring for Martin’s attention to the point where he drove the guy nuts. I’m not sure if Clift’s interest was amorous, however.
Anyway, thanks for the kind words, man. But are your acting experiences really so painful that you can’t write about them?
Duke steller piece as per usual.
I love how your writing makes me feel like I am actually living the moments with you. I as well LOVE the pic of you, pea coat and all, which by the way I think is perfect.
I wish I had the courage you did to just go over to Clifts brothers house. I dont think I could ever bring myself to muster up the courage to do such a thing.
My favorite part being “Brooks never uttered the word “literature,” but there’s no question that that’s what he meant when he shook his head and, a second later, breathed a gift that’s enriched my life as no other, though I left his house empty-handed.”
I dont think any other ending would/could have been more appropriate.
Something tells me I’m going to have to start wearing my pea coat more often! And that photo loves you for loving it, I can promise you. It just told me so — ha.
As for the ending, I suppose I feel that’s the thing the reader is most likely to take away from a piece of writing, so it’s always important to get that right especially. With this one, as I said to Gloria above, fortunately kind of did the work for me.
But, you know, I don’t think it was courage that lead to me to Brooks’ house so much as naivete. I hadn’t fully thought through what I intended to say or do, or how I intended to present myself. If I had, I probably would never have gone. Sometimes stupidity is helpful.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting, Erika. I wish I had the time to post more often, if only because it would lead to more exchanges.
duke, every time you read, i think you’re a great actor.
i’ve taken a break from TNB for the past while, and i’m so glad that the day i decide to come back, you’ve got a piece up. makes me feel all cozy and at home.
i love stories that include key moments in people’s lives. and i also love that picture of you. it’s freaking hot.
i wonder if people really do tend to get cancer in the parts of their body they use most. that’s scary. i will probably get it in my lazybone, or wherever they store melodrama.
miss you.
Does that mean you’ll get melonoma?
Seeing as how I live in the skin capital of the world, I probably should tread carefully with those jokes.
You know, Simon, I’ve been thinking recently of something Meryl Streep said after making A Cry in the Dark: that she was very careful about sun screens at the time because Australia leads the world in skin cancer. You’re saying something along the same lines, yes?
I thought NZ led the world for skin cancer rates…
I think it was maybe Down Under generally. But isn’t Oz hotter than NZ? Assuming that there’s an automatic relationship between heat and skin cancer.
No, I think it has more to do with intensity of light doesn’t it? And the fact that the bloody great ozone hole is lying above us.
But is there a relationship between the intensity of the light and heat? No, probably not. But now that you mention it, I do recall reading that about the ozone hole. What, are you guys all using spray deodorant?
We use as much spray deodorant as we can get our greedy little mitts on….
You’ve got to admire them dirty little mitts and their goal to destroy the planet. I mean, they’re just little mitts, but they’ve got a lot of moxie.
My dirty little mitts are always reaching for the aerosols. And the plastic bags. I’m on an anti-planet rampage right now.
Hey, what did the planet ever do for you? 2009, that’s what.
2009? 2009? What’s that?? I’ve erased 2009 from my memory….
You mean you unrooted it?
Well, it tried its best to root me, but I wouldn’t give it up. 2009, what a rooted old year that was.
(apart from from obviously awesome bits - like meeting the TNB gang.)
That lecherous old year. Good on you for resisting. You wouldn’t have respected yourself in 2010.
Ah, Lenore, it’s so, so, so good to see you back here. I feel like TNB should hold some sort of online party to celebrate. And it worked out really nicely that we posted side by side, didn’t it? Although I missed a call from you because I was so wrapped up here. I kept intending to call back, not realizing how much time was passing.
I’m glad you like the photo. I was so fucking awkward at the time, I would never have imagined that photo could be characterized as “hot,” then or later.
I doubt there’s much to Brooks’ theory about cancer, though it was interesting to hear at the time, and I thought it might produce interest now. But you know what I thought you might note? Clift’s bizarre relationship with his analyst. Apparently, Clift was allowed to drink during sessions. The guy was loaded pretty much around the clock, and his friends kept wondering why his shrink wasn’t trying to stop him from drinking. They even went to the shrink, a bunch of them at one point, staging a kind of intervention, and the shrink said, “Monty does not have a drinking problem.”
It’s fascinating to me that, of all the things Brooks could’ve discussed with regard to his brother, Dr. Silverberg figured as prominently as he did. That name came up constantly during the forty-five minutes or so we spent together.
Duke,
You certainly didn’t need any leather jacket in order to look hot. That pea coat worked just fine. I’m pretty sure you could’ve worn a scarecrow outfit and you’e have looked just as good.
“Dean and Clift were covered by grass” gave me the shivers.
It’s amazing where the important life lessons appear. Usually not where you suspect they would.
(As usual, you really write well.)
So true about where the lessons appear, Irene. The advice about acting that was given ended up paying in off in a completely different way.
Glad you liked the “grass” line, and I of course appreciate the remarks about my writing and appearance. The aim wasn’t to look hot so much as to look like an actor. I guess, really, I wanted the pictures to look like movie stills. We went, my stepfather and I, to a number of locations. The photo included was taken at some sort of hut next to a railroad track. I was all about grit.
Duke, what I love about your piece is how it reminded me of that feeling of falling in love with something that will change your life. You know it when you catch a whiff of it, you know it when you follow it, you know it when you obsessively start to track it down like a hunted animal. To aspire to something that you just can’t quite describe even if given the chance. That something in your gut that you want no matter what. You did that here beautifully…
~ r
Aw, thanks, Robin.
It’s true that I knew absolutely nothing about the profession to which I proposed to dedicate to my life, though my reading of interviews with various actors convinced me that I did. I remember talking to my mom about my plans, and she laughed and said, “You’re so green.” It burned me up. I’ll show you, I thought.
But do we ever know what we’re getting ourselves into? I thought I had a fair idea of what it would mean to have a book published, but the last half-year or so has proved me wrong.
By the way, I slipped in a plug about your book a plug the other night at Nick Belardes’ writing workshop in Bakersfield. (He posted on Friday about appearance at the workshop.) I was trying to answer a question, which made me think of something–I forget what–you’d said in your TNB self-interview about the writing process. I wish I could remember what from the interview I’d cited, but I was really rattled by the difficult journey (on account of a violent rain storm) from L.A. to Bakersfield, and my head felt like it had been loosened from my body.
I’m so glad you posted!! Of course, I’m late to the party and everyone has always said everything I wanted to say. But I’ll say it anyway: LOVE LOVE LOVE the picture of you in the pea coat. Swoon worthy!! Great piece, as always. I love these glimpses into your life…you write in a way that makes me feel as though I was there, peeking around you (cause I’m too short to peek over your shoulder) and seeing it all.
Oh, and somewhere up there, you and James Irwin were talking about Jerome K. Jerome. Oddly, a friend of mine recommended I read his book Three Men in a Boat. I ordered it, then read this, and browse through the comments to find you guys discussing it. Can’t wait to read it!
If only I could afford, both in terms of time and money, to buy and read that book just now. Meantime, does this chain of events qualify as still more SSE?
As for being late to the party, I have myself to blame. I bet you read this post earlier yesterday and were unable to post a comment, am I right? If so, thanks for returning and trying again. Unwittingly, I turned off the comment function this morning.
Also, I had meant to hold off on posting the piece, but, as I said to Greg above, I got so tired of tinkering with it that I thought, “Just put the damned thing up, and maybe it’ll put an end to the tinkering.” It didn’t, actually. But I think I’m finally done with it now.
I have to love the caps on LOVE. I LOVE that, Debb. And now that you’ve arrived, the party is really swinging.
I’ll send you my copy when I finish reading it…no reason you can’t share in the fun!
Actually I just read it yesterday….right before I commented. Sorry to disappoint. I’ve just been crazy busy lately.
I LOVE that you love the caps on LOVE. Its because you can hear me saying it, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s because I can hear YOU. And I would LOVE to read YOUR copy of the book. But I imagine you’ve never heard me speak with such emphasis. I do, though. You just have to get me when I’m being fanatical.
I know all about your crazy schedule, so, no, you didn’t disappoint.
Well, you’ve never spoken to me with such emphasis, but I listened to the pod cast of you reading and I heard all sorts of emphasis. It was FANTASTIC!
Speaking of books…I was working at the bookstore tonight and recieved the most random request. A customer, a grown man I might add, walked up to me and said: “Ehm, can you help me? I work with puppets.” I’m still not entirely sure why he needed to disclose the part about the puppets, but he did. Weird day.
So you shall read my copy of the book as soon as I recieve it and read it myself. probably within the month.
I think maybe your customer was euphemizing. But I don’t want to be all gross about it, so that’s as much as I’ll say. But I think it’s FANTASTIC that you provided that detail. And I think it’s even more FANTASTIC that you listened to a podcast of ME READING. But hadn’t you seen that same reading in the clip? Or was it the one with Greg? Either was, it’s FANTASTIC.
I have no idea what my customer was doing…but it was really funny. It earned “Best opening Line of the night by a customer” on our store bulletin board. Big stuff.
I like listening to YOU reading….one of these days I’ll get to hear it IN PERSON and get you to sign MY copy of YOUR book. I listened to the one of you and Greg. Good stuff. Dare I say, AWESOME?!
DARE to SAY IT! I think that, and you, are AWESOME! And I hope you do show up IN PERSON one of these days, and I will indeed sign YOUR copy of MY BOOK!
And CONGRATS on betting BEST opening line by a customer. Even if he was a PERV. But I wish you didn’t have to work so DAMNED HARD, meaning ALL THE TIME.
Darling Duke, I wish I didn’t have to work ALL THE TIME as well. Though, I do have a FULL day off tomorrow. I can’t even begin to explain how nice thats gonna be. Within the next few months I won’t be working so hard..one job may be disappearing.
One of these days I’ll make it to LA and take you up on your offer to take me on a tour of Hollywood Scandals and Murders. I’m looking forward to it. And having a beer with you…maybe not so much in that order, but you know what I’m saying….Soon, Duke, soon.
this is absolutely fascinating. i want more!
when i was in college, i was into “educating” myself about movies and so i tried watching all the classics. just the description of suddenly last summer was enough to suck me in. what, he gets eaten? whaaa??? and it’s weird how you can see Clift’s DTs in the movie.
I was familiar with the Tennessee Williams play of the same name from my period of educating myself about theater, and by then I’d outgrown my interest in Clift, so I never bothered to see the film version of Summer until last year. But I watched it on a computer screen, which was too small for to make out Clift’s DTs, though I’m not surprised that he had them or that they’re visible onscreen. He was drunk around the clock, that guy, and the production of that film was plagued with problems (allegedly Katharine Hepburn spat in the face of the director, Joseph Mankiewicz, immediately after she wrapped), so Clift would have had especially good cause to stay drunk.
It’s nice to meet you, Angela, and thanks so much for the read. I wish I had more to tell, but though Brooks and I spoke for maybe as long as an hour, everything I recall from our talk was included in the piece. But I agree with you: Clift is fascinating. His hidden ancestry alone is remarkable, so that his stardom, artistry, and psychological problems are icing on the cake.
You rocked that peacoat. Better than a leather jacket. More British, anyway. You kind of looked British in that time. Maybe you should have tried auditioning in the London instead of NYC…
Do you ever think of writing BFL as a stage play rather than a film script?
You know, based on my readings, it’s been suggested to me that I adapt BFL into a one-man show or the like, but I haven’t had the time to put any thought into it. And when, a couple of years ago, I took a look at some photos of myself as a teenager, I thought, “My God, you really look English,” which would never have occurred to me at the time. But my lineage is English pretty much across the board (with some Irish and Scottish, natch) so it makes sense.
So good to hear from you. Hope all is well in Wales.
i read this yesterday and went to comment but couldn’t for some reason. maybe it’s cause too many people were reading/commenting at the same time? lilkely.
i simply wanted to say that when i read your posts, i always feel like you’re a man who’s lived a hundred lives already, between the east and west coasts and eastern europe and all the tales like this one where your life seems charmed with unique experiences.
also, my envy of your ability to remember stuff like this from your childhood is strong. i have erased mine with years of Bob Hope (the boston metro-slang for weed) and tons of simply worrying about menial shit that seems to crowd out otherwise important memories with which i can put up on the screen.
Actually, Kip (or Lip, Flip, Slip), what happened was that I’d accidentally turned off the comment function, as I only learned when a couple of people sent me notes.
But, yeah, I suppose I have lived many lives. But that’s also the product of being an actor. And any actor needs a good memory, so maybe I’ve willed myself one, though there are many things I can’t remember. For instance, as I said elsewhere on this board, I probably spent an hour with Brooks Clift, but everything I remember about that hour was included here. What happened to the rest? Maybe Bob Hope has something to do with it.
I thought the comment function turned off because you’d exceeded a page character limit or some such thing. But then I realized you’d had far more comments on other pieces, so then I decided Dubya must have switched off teh Internets again.
Far more comments on other pieces, yeah. Rub it in, RichRob. I have failed!
Funny that you were commenting on my piece at the exact second that I was commenting on yours.
You haven’t failed. I was touting your status as the Tiger Woods of the TNB.
Wait. On second thought…
Ah, you remembered my remark about TG’s perceived dullness on your TG piece, eh? Good man. I was afraid I’d thrown down the gauntlet with that. But there’s no disputing the guy’s greatness as an athlete, and, interestingly, I recently ran my perception by someone who’s met him numerous times and I was told he was, simply, an “asshole.”
But, hey, I’m sure the same’s been said of me.
What an interesting piece, Duke. I admire people who sit down and read the heroes of their heroes. Such a better education than reading Freud at the university, for example. Anyhow, I was happy to find that you’d posted this. I’m fascinated.
Hey, Erika, where’s your gravatar? It doesn’t feel right to respond without your comely face to inspire me.
But, yeah, I was, and still am, an autodidact. As was Clift, incidentally. But I mainly read Freud because, I thought, no education was complete without having done so, and I started to read in general because I was hoping it would make me a better actor. How funny, to me at least, that it finally led in a different direction altogether.
Erika! Your gravatar is back! Inspiration has returned!
I am no longer a nondescript white, bald guy! Woohoo!
You spoke too soon…
I do that a lot.
Good grief. I’m comment 238? I think that makes me the last runner in a marathon, stumbling across the line after everyone else has long since gone home.
Anyhoo. When I realized you were writing about Monty Clift, I thought of the only movie I really know of his, which is The Misfits. And I suspect, that if one is to know a movie, that is a good one. It’s such an amazing coincidence of talent and tragedy rolled into one, and the movie is great.
An Arthur Miller-penned vehicle for Marilyn Monroe directed by John Huston starring Clark Gable, Monty Clift, Marilyn Monroe and Eli Wallach? Sweet merciful mercies. Gable died right after shooting the film, and MM is often blamed for bringing on the heart attack by her erratic insane behavior on set. His death threw MM into an even deeper well, Monty Clift was, well, Monty Clift, and Huston=Hemingway, at least to my mind. It must have been one of the craziest shoots ever.
But your chutzpah in finding your way into this story is remarkable and tender at the same time; I love the youthful innocence of it, sort of politely stalking someone who had connections to a world you wanted to be a part of. It’s so sweetly naive but also brave–I could never do that now, because the dictates of being an adult somehow make it impossible to just waltz into someone’s life–and yet also remarkably moving because Clift’s brother was allowed to remember Monty in really personal, important ways. It’s not like speaking in front of a class telling stories about someone; you had this amazing brief intimacy that changed your life. How impossible and great.
Hey, QB, is your current gravatar taken from a women’s-league baseball card from the forties or some such?
What happened with Brooks Clift could never happen now, I think. The term “stalking” hadn’t become a household expression for, well, stalking celebrities or their kin, and people have become much more guarded in the meantime. Also, as you say, being an adult makes for an entirely different dynamic. I wouldn’t even attempt it — though I have been known, in the last year, to approach well-known people to slip them copies of my book. But none of those people are famous famous. They’re underground-music types.
The Misfits was indeed a crazy shoot, mainly because the Monroe-Miller marriage was in serious jeopardy, and much of the cast and crew took sides. Plus Monroe drove everyone bonkers with her lack of professionalism, showing up hours and hours and hours late on the set. That, Gable’s widow publicly said, contributed to his death in the months just afterward, far more so than the arduous physical stuff the role required. As for Clift, he was drunk most of the time.
But there’s that phone call his character makes to his mother in the movie in which he speaks of injuries and his face being being healed, or something like that, which eerily evokes his real-life accident, and that definitely makes The Misfits something of an archetypal movie for Clift. I think Miller possibly wrote that speech for Clift bearing his accident in mind.
Oh, and I’ve noted elsewhere on the board your ongoing discussion with Steph about Ginsberg. Did you know that TNB contributor David Breithaupt worked as an assistant to Ginsberg?
I’ve tried to send this post three times–if it shows up three times, please! Delete at least two of them. Maybe even all three!
I don’t know David, but I’m coming to learn that this is a small freakin’ world here on TNB! If David was his assistant then he will know my roommate, possibly incredibly well. Peter worked for Ginsberg in some capacity from the time he was in his twenties, right after he graduated with a classics degree and moved to NYC. Which (”Math is hard”) is now 20 years ago. Gulp.
That makes me older than I wanna be.
Anyway, the Gravitar is a photo of a painting hanging in my office, which also happens to be a propaganda poster out of China at the height of their propaganda poster craze. Except that mine is an update from this outfit called MaoPost, whose site isn’t working now or I’d link to it.
Basically they took this photo of me sneering at a wedding and put it on this Woman of the Red Brigade puttin’ down the imperialist running dog. Seriously, best money I ever spent. Makes me laugh all the time. I got one for my husband too; he’s leading both the Chinese Revolution and the French Revolution to freedom from God knows what.
The amazing thing is they’re hand painted in China, by who knows what little old propaganda painter leftover from Mao’s China. Came on a canvas rolled up, and the French guys who sells them were so friendly and awesome that they threw in a DVD of the ballet for the poster I’m in.
But back to Monty’s brother and “stalking.” I’m completely charmed by it. I did things like that, and I think it speaks to our desire to connect with something meaningful without knowing exactly how to do it by other channels. It’s only the young idealists, who, even if they wear a proper rebellious look in their eyes, have the sweetness to pursue their dreams so transparently.
It takes someone who isn’t cynical yet to be so forthright about approaching people. Me, I’m old and suspicious now. But I wasn’t always.
QB: Being comment #238 on Duke’s board is so not the last runner in the marathon. As you have probably already figured out…he’ll break the 500 mark someday, he will, he will.
I’ve done as you asked, QB, and deleted the first two versions of this comment, but it’s such a beaut that I can’t be expected to delete all three. I think I know what the problem with commenting was: the links. I’ve had the same happen to me, though not in a while. Really frustrating to try and fail, again and again, to have something go through.
Having now clicked on the photo of you at your wedding, however, I don’t see you as “sneering.” But maybe I think that because I am myself uncomfortable with having my picture taken (when I’m not acting), and I make similar faces when presented with a camera. It’s, as I regard it, the look of an essentially shy person in a moment of uncomfortable compliance. Then: Get the hell out of here, woncha?
But it’s interesting how a Maoist poster could be mistaken, at least by me, for something as rah-rah American as a baseball-card photo. I suppose both are forms of “state” art, and so are bound to have a certain commonality, however seemingly different the politics.
I, too, am older than I want to be — but aren’t so many of us? And as a teenager, I was very forthright about approaching people who weren’t of my own age group. I think I knew that my youth gave me an advantage with older people, who were inclined to warm to me. I’d walk up to anyone at any time and start talking to them, but, at some point, without knowing why, I stopped doing it. Kind of a pity, in a way, to lose that kind of openness. Maybe this piece was a way of reminding myself of the kind of kid I was.
David Breithaupt, who worked with Ginsberg (during, yes, the eighties), is about due to post at TNB again, I would think, so hopefully you (and Steph) can ask him about Ginsberg then. He’s written about Ginsberg here, but I haven’t checked to see if the piece I have in mind is in his archive. (Some pieces didn’t make the transition from TNB 2.0.) I was tempted to jump into your exchange with Steph, but I somehow felt like I’d get into the way, particularly as, when the two of you kept mentioning Peter, my one question was: Do you mean Peter Orlovsky? Then that mystery was cleared up without my having to ask.
Thanks so much for making such an effort to comment back. I’m honored.
I’m working at it, Greg. I’m working hard at it. But, you know, Zara has already raised the bar to 700. I mean, just when you get close to one goal, another presents itself.
That Zara, she’s a tough one. I’m now afraid that I’m going to be chased up a telephone pole. And Steph did it, too, apparently!
I think that has more to do with the siren’s-song lure of the telephone pole than the menace of our “Friday Night Delight” co-stars.
And if you want to get that many comments, I know just what to do: steroids. Worked for Bonds.
And McGwire also.
As for the siren-song allure of the telephone pole, it at least seems to have given birth to yet another series: a drama. That’s good. I think I can much more easily guest on a drama.
McGwire, Bonds, Sosa…what never gets mentioned, for reasons beyond my understanding, is that the fences at Yankee Stadium were a good fifty feet further out when Babe Ruth played. No one touches the Babe. Period.
Now then:
“Manned for Life”
“Friday Night Delights”
“The Siren Song of the Telephone Pole”
There was a game show, too, but I can’t remember now…
Good God, I misspelled “McGwire”! Thanks for the inadvertent heads-up, Greg. I’ve now made the correction, but what the hell was I thinking?!
Meantime, I was unaware that the drama had been named, but “Siren Song” is excellent. Really Freudian, you know what I mean? It may work on certain minds subconsciously.
You’ll have to refer to Steph for the name of the game show. But Shya seems to have concocted a new one. It’s a board (parlor?) game presently, but maybe it can be adapted to TV.
We’ve just got to get this TNB TV thing going!
I don’t know how to follow with any baseball analogies, so I have this to say: I met Peter Orlovsky only once when I was about seventeen at, of all things, a Buddhist cremation ceremony in Vermont. I don’t remember much except that he was pretty dissolute in appearance, which really doesn’t come as any great surprise.
My roommate was possibly Allen’s lover–certainly he’s gorgeous and smart enough to make an appealing one–but he was not Peter Orlovsky, Allen’s longtime partner. Just to clarify a fuzzy discussion.
And that is a picture of me at someone else’s wedding, thank god, because if I was wearing an expression like that at my own, I’d see the writing on the wall–and it would be “annulment!”
Of course. You clearly said a wedding. How could I have read so sloppily?
Because I do all the time. My apologies.
No, it’s not surprising about Orlovsky’s attire, but, you know, it’s also not surprising that you would have met him at Buddhist cremation ceremony in Vermont. All of that (including the state) makes perfect sense.
I’m the sloppy one, because I’ve been spelling Ginsberg wrong this whole time
and now you guys will know my secret of that I am just not very smart.
But AG really did live two floors above me. Legless pimp - all true.
And I own a vintage copy of HOWL with typos and edits!
And also, Duke, you could have interrupted us on the Ginsberg thread - you would not have gotten in the way at all. I just happened to see this conversation, so I guess I’m the one interrupting. I’m feeling like the awkward commenter tonite - just commenting away with no response - like a crazy person typing to the wind.
This could be a great episode for Overthinkers Think The Darndest Things.
and I never chased anyone up a pole - I flushed someone’s keys.
BIG difference.
Uh oh. Was it wrong of me to chase him up the telephone pole???
I had completely forgotten about Overthinkers Think The Darnedest Things, Steph. That’s such a great title, and I’m sure the show will live up to it.
But, seriously, I misspelled (Mark) McGwire. Do you know how embarrassing that is? So it’s no big deal that you misspelled “Ginsberg.”
And, of course, as with Quenby’s comment, I read yours sloppily, so apologies for having you chase someone up a telephone pole. Yes, there is a big difference between that and flushing someone’s keys.
Honestly, Z., I think it’s a hoot that you did that, and all the other stuff you’ve now copped to doing. I’m glad you were able to take care of yourself. And Nick sounded like a real prat (a word not much used in America, by the way).
I’m glad you approve. That makes me feel a lot better! And you’re right, he was kind of a prat!
Hey, are you stealing my words again?
You know it. Jinkers. Compound. Awesome.
Well, we both stole “awesome.”
Nah I stole it. You are it.
Okay, well. You have been trying to make me blush, and you have succeeded.
Awesome!!
x
I feel like this exchange is complete with an “x” and everything…
So, I feel kind of bad interrupting though to say just quietly to Zara, that there’s nothing wrong with chasing someone up a telephone pole and everything right. I only say I didn’t do same because I simply just didn’t - I only did the key flush. I wish I had chased someone up a pole - I would be damned proud if I did.
I would be, too. Of you, I mean. And Zara can always provide another x — it’s the letter right next to z — so don’t feel like bad for interrupting. I only wish we had footage of the prat in question being chased up the pole.
X X X
Oh god,I’m so very very glad there is no footage of that. Cellphone cameras came along mercifully too late to capture the moment. Otherwise, no doubt I would have ended up on YouTube shouting at poor Nick like a mad fishwife.
Chasing people up poles is just not a very good look, in retrospect.
XXX
Have some more kisses.
Well, you didn’t threaten him with physical violence, did you? I mean, anyone who would run up a telephone pole to avoid a tongue lashing deserves what he gets.
Meantime, here’s something for you in Melbourne, where I expect you are by now:
XXX
I’m really late in adding my comment to the 200+ comments on your board. But better late than never…
I have been so engrossed in reading the comments and your answers to them that I forgot to add my 2 cents worth.
I loved this story Duke - as I love every bit of writing you do. I am fascinated by your knowledge and the experiences you have had and I wait with baited breath for the next installment (and judging by your following, I think I speak for ALL).
And that picture of you, looking so very cool, handsome, nonchalant and at the same time, oozing attitude - how you didn’t become the new Marlon or James beats me!
Well, Jude, if you take another look at the picture, you can clearly tell that I was a mouth-breather. I was never anywhere in Brando’s league, physically or otherwise, and while I did slightly resemble Dean, that was something I started to cultivate.
I met Elizabeth Taylor around the time of that photo — her then-husband was running for public office in Virginia — and I was hoping she’d say, when she met me, “You look like James Dean.” She didn’t, of course, so I lied to a few people that she did.
Meanwhile, as you say, better late than never — but there’s no such thing as late in my world, and the post would have been wanting if I’d never heard from you, Jude. Now it’s complete.
Duke, this was such an inspiring piece. It’s taken me a few days to read due to work getting in the way. I’m glad I finally had the chance to read it.
My favourite line:
“Brooks never uttered the word “literature,” but there’s no question that that’s what he meant when he shook his head and, a second later, breathed a gift that’s enriched my life as no other, though I left his house empty-handed.”
Beautfifully written, and much to think about. Well done.
Thanks so much, Simone. I’m glad work seems to have somewhat lifted. Also, we caper-lovers have to stick together. Little pickled balls, indeed!
I’ll bear in mind, by the way, your suggestion about eggs when I’m next able to afford capers. They’re a bit of a luxury at the moment. The Great Recession, etc.
Caper-lovers forever!
I understand about the recession. I’m glad you’ll keep the eggs in mind. The way I make the dish is: scrambled eggs placed on top of a toasted English muffin, salmon on top of that with a dollop of cream cheese and then sprinkled with capers. Add a dash of black pepper and you’re good to go.
My mouth is watering as I type this….
Mine, too. I blame the pepper. I use it so literally on almost everything I eat (except for desserts, obviously) that friends have been known to say, “Would you like some [insert name of food] to go with your pepper?” Louisiana hot sauce is another favorite, but I’m more sparing with the dosage.
that sounds so good Simone!!
I’ll order anything on a menu that includes capers - it could be anything, as long as a caper is involved.
Can I join the caper club too? Love them. Capers are automatically included when you order a salmon bagel at any café in Auckland. As is the cream cheese…
Duke, I’ve heard that black pepper on banana (squished on toast) is meant to be good. Haven’t tried it though…
Whoa, Jude!
That sounds so crazily good. I may have to try that tomorrow.
But not with capers…capers and bananas - not so much.
You know, I’m not so big on bananas, which I realize goes against my simian lineage. But maybe with capers, I’d reconsider. I’m like Steph: as long as a caper is involved…
And then there’s a swish of balsamic vinegar on strawberries - brings out the flavour.
And what about on kiwifruit? Unlike Z., I love kiwifruit. I even eat the skin, which is supposed to be good for you.
You people are sick. Why can’t you eat normal food??