March 27, 2008
A while ago I studied acting with Mark Blum at HB Studios. Mark helped me make a breakthrough as an actor: he told me to use my own voice. To start from myself, and to create the work from there. This made my acting, and actually all of my creative work, a lot more organic and real. And as I continue to follow this train of thought, I trust more and more that the idiosyncrasies in my work aren’t a problem at all; in fact, they’re what makes it worthwhile.
Like a lot of “breakthrough” stories people tell, this really only makes sense if you’re going through the struggle yourself. You have to have intimate knowledge of that devil inside you that keeps telling you to be like someone else or to play to other people’s expectations. (Often you imagine these expectations, but that’s another story) And you have to learn technique, just like everyone else, so you have the strength and versatility to support what you want to do in your own idiosyncratic way. And you have to do the work.
In a few weeks, at the George Street Playhouse, Mark will perform in Roger Is Dead, written and directed by Elaine May. Ms. May is a seminal comedy genius who started with the Compass Players, made her first big splash with Mike Nichols (you can see them in this live commercial for GE), and who went on to write screenplays (Primary Colors, Heaven Can Wait) and direct movies (The Heartbreak Kid, Ishtar). And did I mention Marlo Thomas is in the cast?
I’m itching to do my own work. I got a sweet little taste this week performing with improv group Punching Hal, and I want more. But until I get something I can sink my teeth into, I’ll study the work of masters.
February 21, 2008
I just saw some awful theatre. It was an evening of one-acts, and they were generally badly acted, badly written, and badly directed. The actors, untutored in or incapable of the art of behaving truthfully on stage, were in most cases abandoned by playwrights or directors who had no idea of how to hold an audience’s attention. (I mean: you have to keep up the pace, and monologing actors shouldn’t stare at the floor while they’re talking. Gunshots and shouting ought to happen for a reason. And a tall box draped in green fabric makes a crap stand-in for a beanstalk.)
But before I left the house for my night of ennui, a popular link on YouTube caught my eye. It showed a giant girl (that is, a giant marionette of a girl) getting up and moving about. You could see a score of puppeteers (marionetters?) in Georgian-era red coats, swarming around the girl, heaving on ropes, but they weren’t distracting; nor was the construction crane holding the doll upright, because the doll was beautifully made and moved with intention, mystery and elegance.
Sultan’s Elephant Gallery.
Video of the Little Girl Giant.
Alright. The folks who made The Little Girl Giant are clever and well-trained and someone gave them a lot of money to do what they did. But you don’t need that much of the first two to tell a story well. You just need the imagination to see why the following is true, and the sense to know why it isn’t enough:
From an interview with the event’s creator:
You are careful to divulge as little content as possible about your shows. Is this to keep the dream alive?
I am very keen on the element of surprise. You can see this throughout my productions. In an open-air show, if I want to make a strong image appear on the right, I distract the public’s attention to the left. I hypnotise them so that nobody, even when it is in the open, understands how an enormous machine could appear from the left so suddenly. It’s like the big bang: it has appeared, that’s all. I value this effect tremendously: it’s like when you give somebody a present they’re not expecting and they are overcome. I hold the theatre in my arms and wish to offer it to people just at the right moment. I believe that this almost childish desire to please people by surprising them is a deciding factor in my work […]
Good Art is Hard. We all know that. But I wish that the basics, like truth, causality, and structure; surprise, tempo, and balance… were taught properly in school, just as we’re taught good grammar and a sound vocabulary. Oh…never mind.
But, really, I’m not complaining. Really. I lost three hours to these bad shows; but one of them was odd and hilarious and fun. And the thought of that little girl giant makes me happy beyond words; I mean, my sound vocabulary doesn’t half do it justice. Not half.
Maybe someday I’ll get to see it for myself. Maybe someday you’ll be there, with me.
January 23, 2008
I saw Cloverfield. Online listings say the movie is one hour and twenty-four minutes long. I don’t know. But I watched all of it, right down to the green PG-13 screen that appears just before the theater lights come back on.
Then I walked out on to 42nd street and headed for the McDonalds. I ordered an apple pie. The counter man corrected me, asking: “Two apple pies?” Sure. It was a buck forty-two. I thought it was ninety-nine cents, but no matter. I gobbled the first pie standing inside the entrance, holding my bags. Then I went out on to the street and looked at the cops on the horses. I wanted to ask them would they protect me if the Cloverfield monster really came. I mean, what a stupid question, of course they’d try. But they’re not idiots. We all know what happened seven and a half years ago. Trying isn’t enough. Still, it occurred to me to ask. And I found myself throwing a dollar in the cardboard box in front of the homeless guy at the base of the stairs on the NRQW platform. He was holding a cat, which needed a bath, but it looked healthy, if tired. I felt pity, or affection. And I was thankful for the guy upstairs with the drum machine and the synthesiser; and watching a mother and her adult daughter stilt down into the station on their high heels was particularly sweet.
I waited on the NRQW platform for only a minute or two before the train came. I had time to eat my second pie, and see the sign. “DANGER Third Rail is Alive.” Well, obviously. It was a paper sign, taped to a steel support beam. Maybe they’d been doing track work and the power had been off. And when you turn it back on, you hang a sign, so everybody knows.
The movie scared the daylights out of me. I wish I hadn’t seen it alone. It’s much nicer to have her to comfort when something awful happens, holding hands tight as if you could squeeze the fear out, crush it into a safe, tingling nothing. It would have been good, too, with someone else, just a friend, both of us pushed back into the synthetic velour of our seats, each tentatively aware of the other, wondering: is he scared? More, or less, than me?
The movie didn’t make complete sense. Liberties were taken. An awful lot of power stayed on. And the subway tunnels were unreasonably dim–your eyes adjust, after all. And what about that Third Rail? Maybe it’s off, maybe it isn’t, but Every New Yorker would debate the matter before hazarding a stroll on the tracks.
And just how long does a video camera battery last these days, anyway?
But the joy of the movie was that it left so many other more interesting questions unanswered. Scary stories always do. Cloverfield is smart enough to have the characters speculate because they’re scared, and their lives are at stake, and something has got to make sense. But while they speculate fruitlessly–no lucky guesses help explain the
story–we all want to know: where did it come from? Why is it here? What Does It Want, for God’s sake, and what’s it going to do next? We, the audience, only get an answer to the last one, and hardly a complete answer at that.
Seeing a scary movie with someone else is comforting. It draws you together. But walking out of the movie by myself I found my world brighter and more precious–bless the cat and the man with the box!–and I had time to stop and watch myself feel that way. And I felt the freedom to write it down without hurrying off somewhere else. And so, I hope, I have shared a little bit of the feeling with you.
Or would it have been better if we’d held hands?
I don’t know.
October 29, 2007
I passed this bike on the street the other day.
I think I know who made it. I’ve seen them hanging out on the street with their crazy choppers. Sometimes they even ride them.
Making a bicycle like this takes guts, persistence, and love, because: how could you make a bicycle like this, and not expect to ride it?
I don’t spend any time at all with the Black Label bicycle club. I don’t talk to them on the street, even when they admire my girlfriend’s pit bulls. But I like what they make.
Selected mad bicycles: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Wikipedia article on tall bikes.
Documentary on Black Label
March 13, 2007
I can’t help myself, so filled am I with delight at some of these pictures. It being just before I’m really, really supposed to be in bed doesn’t help; I get punchy and easily excited. Anyhow:
DAILY MONSTER : OPEN SOURCE BLOT 01
Is a tribute to Stefan G. Bucher’s monster-drawing performance art project, which may be found here, and which I first blogged about some time ago.
Amongst the tributes I was particularly taken with was Jonas Forslund’s monster bug. It’s the fourth one down.
January 22, 2007
Directed by Alberto Lattuada, starring Alberto Sordi, Norma Bengell, and Ugo Attanasio. Originally made for 1962 release, now re-released by Rialto Pictures with English subtitles by Tommaso Cammarano and Bruce Goldstein (2006).
I saw Mafioso tonight at the Angelika Film Center and fell in love with the low-key lighting, the velvety black and white photography, and the multitude of finely-calibrated comic performances. The sound at the theater was set a bit loud, which emphasized, for me, the narrow dynamic range and distorted timbre of the audio track. But the elegance of the camera work and editing more than consoled me. (Even with a couple of focus errors.)
The film tells the story of Antonio (”Nino”) Badalamenti, a Sicilian boy who has made good in the big city of Milan. We meet him in the factory where he apparently serves as a punctilious time-and-motion man. But that’s just the set-up, because Nino is about to take his wife Marta and their two daughters back to Sicily to meet the parents–for the first time, because until now, he’s apparently been the best sort of company man, devoted to his wife but never taking a proper vacation.
Nino’s a different guy back home, and therein lies a lot of the comedy. But it was the film’s dark tone throughout that delighted me the most, along with the sharp, human characterizations of the supporting cast.
And, by golly, Lattuada, along with cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi, set up some lovely shots, including the opening montage, the encounter with the black cat, and a split-second flash of Nino’s wristwatch that’s practically a throw-away. Each one of these moments underlines Nino’s psychology in a way that wasn’t clear to me–and yes, perhaps I’m a bit slow–until I had a few minutes to process them.
In a sense, this is what delights me the most about a good story: everything’s obvious, but only in retrospect. While I’m watching, I’m utterly engaged, trying to figure out what just happened, what’s happening now, and wondering, for the life of me, what will happen next. When the story finishes, I smack my head and say: Well, obviously!
The plot of Mafioso isn’t that complicated. But Nino’s reactions to his circumstances are. And the visual world not only supports the script and the characters, it’s lovely to look at.
For me, that’s a good movie.
January 21, 2007
Wow. Since finishing Film #10, I’ll meet you by the train, my sister broke her elbow, I hosted friends from out of town, I flew to Florida to play nurse-maid and to cook, and I vacationed in Long Island amongst the frosty vineyards of the North Fork.
When I got back this afternoon, I spent some time surfing the ‘net, and found the delightful Venue Songs of They Might Be Giants. The band doesn’t seem to be able to stop writing songs (for better and for worse), but I enjoy the framing device a whole lot.
December 28, 2006
Discovered Dony Permedi’s short animated film, Kiwi. The drawings and their animation are simple, but I love the story, and I admire how simply it is told.