January 2008 Archives

Over his entire career, Payton rushed for 16,726 yards, and scored 110 touchdowns. He also caught 492 passes for 4,538 yards and 15 touchdowns. Payton was the NFL's all-time leader in rushing yards and all-purpose yards prior to the 2002 NFL season. As of 2006 he was the NFL's second all-time rusher, and ranked third in rushing touchdowns scored. (Pro Football Hall Of Fame, Class of 1993)

I was never, and I'm not, a great football fan, but I do remember The Chicago Bear's Walter Payton -- I remember . . . he just didn't stop. The defensive tackles were too big for Payton to just run though or over (recruiting agents for the opposing teams made sure of that), so Payton, when he would run into these unmovable objects, would . . . just bounce off and run around them. He flowed like water through the best defensive lines the NFL could throw at him . . .

I need to be like that -- there's ALWAYS going to be obstacles. Big Obstacles. I hit something unexpected, and I sit down. Not for long, but I do stop. No more.

Next time something unexpected gets in my way, I'm gong to think of Walter Payton, bounce off, go around, and not stop until I cross that touchdown line.

To Walter Payton -- Thank You!!!!!!

(Walter Payton, July 25, 1954 – November 1, 1999)

OK -- Cloverfield:

It's New York City 9/11 panic times 1000 heart-stoppingly terrifying with all the thrills of an out-of-control high powered roller coaster ride: NYC gets seriously whacked!!

It's a VERY good movie. It'll set the standard for it's type of film making for a long long time. The editing and style are unusual, but if they tried to make this as a normal big-budget thriller, it would not be even half as good.

See it on a Friday or Saturday night when at least half the audience is 25 or under. See it with someone you can hold on to . . . !

I'm Rudy Giuliani and I Approved This Movie

P.S. For an absolutely hilarious review of the movie, check out Kyle "Plasauce" Plaisance's viewpoint from his perspective while on 3rd shift at Wetzel’s Pretzels . . .

Though it likely will be some time before anyone knows definitively what killed Heath Ledger, he wouldn't be the first young Hollywood actor to fall victim to drugs. (Heath Ledger's Death Puts Spotlight on Abuse of Prescription Drugs, Marrecca Fiore, Fox News, 01 . 23 . 2008)

On the sad occasion of Heath Ledger's death, Bob Fraser posted some timely wisdom on the nature of "rejection" in the business, and how NOT to handle it:

The sad and sudden death of Heath Ledger (and last week, Brad Renfroe) reminds me of a warning I passed along some four years ago, when writing about rejection in You Must Act!

There are 5 VERY BAD WAYS to react to rejection, all of which lead to directly to long-term failure. Any one of these methods will be fatal. When I say 'fatal,' I mean fatal to your career plans – however, the last BAD WAY – (5) – can be literally fatal.

DO NOT try to deal with the inevitable rejection you will face in your career, by using any of these 5 VERY BAD WAYS:
1. Lying to yourself.
2. Lying to others.
3. Listening to other people's lies.
4. Being lazy.
5. Destroying your product.

Bob expands on each of these bad ideas:

After WWII, in the early 50's, Durning started reading Shakespeare and Ibsen and Chekhov with other actors in Joseph Papp's home (Joseph Papp of The New York Public Theatre fame).

Recalling his early days with Papp, Durning says that Papp was "brutally honest but always right," and he also reveals Papp's insight into how to handle Shakespeare's heightened poetic language:

Durning spent most of the 1960s under the tutelage of Papp, whom he remembers as "brutally honest but always right." Durning notes, "He never did it maliciously. If you didn't know him, you might think he was being harsh." The actor recalls one incident in which he wanted to play Hamlet and Papp told him he wasn't good with the poetry of Shakespeare. Says Durning, "I said, 'What do you mean? I'm in all the Shakespeare plays.' And he said, 'Yeah, but you're doing all the prose stuff. You're not doing any of the poetry.' He had me pick up a Shakespeare play and read it, and I asked what he thought. He said, 'More to the point, what did you think?' " Durning pauses before admitting, "I'm still trying to figure that one out."

. . . more to the point, what did you think?

The Triad took away our remaining January Monday evening performances (mostly because the other shows they rent to are cabaret, and they can open the bar), however, the producers informed the cast last week that the show has been extended for one month, through February, i.e., Sunday @ 3PM and Wednesday @ 7PM. This is great -- it's one of the longest runs I've had, and rather than the show getting stale, it's just gotten better, as I expected it would.

For me, this extension gives me a chance to practice really listening and responding to my partners and to practice "being alive" and reacting while I've have no lines, which happens in the last critical scene. In short, this extension gives me an opportunity to better learn how to act, my main goal of these off-Off-Broadway and off-Broadway productions.

Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!!

Denzel Washington recently gave an interview in Backstage where he discusses auditioning, acting and his new film, The Great Debaters, and he talks at one point about a pivotal monologue in the film which a character delivers during a debate -- the character, James Farmer, Jr, played by Denzel Whitaker, shares a very personal story with the Harvard audiance during the film's climate debate scene, about how he felt when he witnessed a lynching.

The monologue is quite dramatic and emotional -- the character is telling something  highly personal, highly traumatic, and there's a couple of mistakes an actor can make with such a speech. One is to treat it just as a speech and the other is to try to relive the emotions you think the character must have had while they were witnessing the lynching while you're doing the monologue.

Denzel Washington provides some clear instruction about how to handle this type of monologue:

There was something about little Denzel; there were a lot of cute kids, like trained seals, who came in. He did the "In Texas they lynch Negroes" speech. It's a pivotal moment in the story where the character goes off book and just shares what he knows. And most of the kids came in with just that: a speech. And he did too. And I said, "Okay, stop. I know you haven't experienced this, but have you experienced something like this in your life?" And he told me a story about a kid who called him a dirty name and he got into a fight. And he almost got upset telling the story. So then I said, "Start the speech. Just tell me like you're telling me that story." And he said it very matter-of-factly. He got it, he did it, and I said, "That's where it's at. And what you just did is 10 times more powerful." (Denzel Washington, Backstage, 12 . 31 . 2007, "The Great One" interview).

I think the mistake an actor can make is getting sucked into the term "felt," i.e., the character is telling a story about how he felt. This is true, but how the character feels is only the end result of what he's really doing.

What James Farmer, Jr is doing is exactly what Denzel Washington told Denzel Whitaker to do -- "share what he knows" with the audience. The two parts of this direction to pay attention to are share and know, i.e., the experience changed James Farmer, Jr, and he learned something from that experience: the character shares what he learned, and it is often the the moment of telling a story about what happened to us that we discover, in that moment, what we learned and how it changed us -- in life, that's the purpose of talking, of sharing . . .