I wish I could have attended the seminar David Mamet describes in his book The Secret Knowledge in the chapter entitled Arrested Development. In it, Mamet, who conducted the seminar, was talking to a group of twentysomethings about dramatic structure.
The class was trying to write a story together and Mamet suggested Arab terrorists as the villains. This sparked a minor furor in the class as all these young politically correct idealists objected to what they viewed as racist stereotyping.
There was a time in the 70s and 80s when movie producers were reluctant to cast black actors in villainous roles. This policy was probably reversed when the producers realized that this was even more horribly racist - black actors were being denied meaty roles - that of the villain - simply because of melanin. Indeed, political correctness is not always our friend. Sometimes it is our enemy.
To quote Mamet: "Everything, it seemed, was political, and [the students'] job was to inform the ignorant of it. The Ignorant, in this classroom, [was] myself... A young Idealist broadened his thesis, it was not only the responsibility of the dramatist, he taught, to refrain from stereotyping, but to use every aspect of the drama to enforce upon the public a humanitarian view of the world. Homosexuals, for instance, he said, should be seen kissing onstage whenever possible, was it not an outrage that the part of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire was always played by a woman? Why could it not be played by a man?"
I don't know who this young man is but I wish I could get his name so I could make it a point to boycott any play he might write. Later, Mamet demolishes the poor boy by suggesting that "gays are people too" is a boring thesis for a play. The audience is at the theatre to, firstly, be entertained and, secondly, to be enlightened or possibly challenged. They're certainly not there to congratulate a playwright for his non-prejudiced (read: correct) view of humanity.
I'd much rather watch a play by an ardent racist or sexist or homophobe than by one of these hopelessly naive young'uns. At least I would be enraged (or I could amuse myself by watching the audience be enraged) which is always preferable to boredom.
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Wednesday, 25 September 2013
Note-a-day holocaust post
Throughout the month of September, I've been challenging myself to write a mini-essay each day. I enlisted 30 of my friends to help me by assigning each of them a day and having them send me an essay title at midnight.
My Sept. 24 title was a quote from a Polish holocaust survivor: "The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins."
I mention David Mamet's essay, The Jew for Export, in my essay. As such, I think it appropriate to post here.
-
The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.
*
What in the world can that mean?
*
Want to win an Academy Award? No problem. Just make a documentary about the Holocaust. Or a short film about the Holocaust. Or a feature film about the Holocaust.
Or so they say.
*
In David Mamet's essay The Jew for Export, he refers to Schindler's List as emotional pornography.
The film works, he says, by allowing the audience to feel superior because, after all, they would never treat the Jews the way the Nazis did. He writes: "Members of the audience learn nothing save the emotional lesson of all melodrama, that they are better than the villain. The very assertion that the film is instructive is harmful."
I saw Schindler's List in theatres in 1993. It's the only time I've witnessed a crowd applaud after a movie. I didn't applaud - not because I didn't appreciate it but because I didn't see the point in applauding an artist who was not there to hear it.
I will say that Schindler's List is not the best modern movie about the Holocaust. I ascribe that honour to Roman Polanski's The Pianist.
*
I know next to nothing about the Holocaust save what I see in movies and what some veterans of the Second World War have told me. Every year their number dwindles and I am told that young people today must learn of the Holocaust so that they will not make the same mistake in the future.
*
My favourite book about WWII is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which is actually about the firebombings in Dresden and aliens from the planet Tralfalmadore.
In chapter one, Vonnegut tells about a discussion he had about his book with Harrison Starr, who was a famous movie director at one point.
Starr asked if it was an anti-war book. Vonnegut replied that it was.
"Do you know what I tell people who are writing anti-war books?" Starr asked.
"No."
"I ask them why they don't write an anti-glacier book instead."
The point is that there will always be wars just as there will always be glaciers. And trying to stop wars is as difficult as stopping glaciers.
*
The Holocaust IS going to happen again. That's a fact. It's probably going on right now. As long as there are people who believe different things, we will go to war. We're xenophobic by nature.
As the terminator told a young John Connor, it's in our nature to destroy ourselves.
*
There's an old standby among philosophers when it comes to ending an ongoing debate.
How do you know it's over. The discussion has been going for hours - days even - and neither side is willing to capitulate to the other. How can you tell when one side is victorious if no one is willing to surrender?
The answer: Hitler. As soon as someone compares his opponent to the Nazis, he loses.
Hitler, after all, is the 20th century sobriquet of pure evil. Very few will dispute that. Everyone believes he's the devil incarnate - even the world's warlords who even now are butchering innocent people.
They don't believe that they're not as bad as Hitler, they don't believe they're bad at all.
*
I find it curious that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose Gulag Archipelago may be the greatest account of suffering ever written, was reluctant to publish his book.
"My obligation to those still living outweighed my obligation to the dead."
He must have believed that not humiliating his friends was more important than tribute.
*
Is a book a monument? Is a film? A play?
WWII was fought because a German madman insisted on committing genocide.
WWIII will probably be fought over drinking water.
There are those who would say that robbing people of potable water makes us as bad as the Nazis.
*
In The Jew for Export, Mamet points out that each of us has the capacity for benevolence and atrocity.
*
On Remembrance Day, I will wear a poppy.
My Sept. 24 title was a quote from a Polish holocaust survivor: "The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins."
I mention David Mamet's essay, The Jew for Export, in my essay. As such, I think it appropriate to post here.
-
The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.
*
What in the world can that mean?
*
Want to win an Academy Award? No problem. Just make a documentary about the Holocaust. Or a short film about the Holocaust. Or a feature film about the Holocaust.
Or so they say.
*
In David Mamet's essay The Jew for Export, he refers to Schindler's List as emotional pornography.
The film works, he says, by allowing the audience to feel superior because, after all, they would never treat the Jews the way the Nazis did. He writes: "Members of the audience learn nothing save the emotional lesson of all melodrama, that they are better than the villain. The very assertion that the film is instructive is harmful."
I saw Schindler's List in theatres in 1993. It's the only time I've witnessed a crowd applaud after a movie. I didn't applaud - not because I didn't appreciate it but because I didn't see the point in applauding an artist who was not there to hear it.
I will say that Schindler's List is not the best modern movie about the Holocaust. I ascribe that honour to Roman Polanski's The Pianist.
*
I know next to nothing about the Holocaust save what I see in movies and what some veterans of the Second World War have told me. Every year their number dwindles and I am told that young people today must learn of the Holocaust so that they will not make the same mistake in the future.
*
My favourite book about WWII is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which is actually about the firebombings in Dresden and aliens from the planet Tralfalmadore.
In chapter one, Vonnegut tells about a discussion he had about his book with Harrison Starr, who was a famous movie director at one point.
Starr asked if it was an anti-war book. Vonnegut replied that it was.
"Do you know what I tell people who are writing anti-war books?" Starr asked.
"No."
"I ask them why they don't write an anti-glacier book instead."
The point is that there will always be wars just as there will always be glaciers. And trying to stop wars is as difficult as stopping glaciers.
*
The Holocaust IS going to happen again. That's a fact. It's probably going on right now. As long as there are people who believe different things, we will go to war. We're xenophobic by nature.
As the terminator told a young John Connor, it's in our nature to destroy ourselves.
*
There's an old standby among philosophers when it comes to ending an ongoing debate.
How do you know it's over. The discussion has been going for hours - days even - and neither side is willing to capitulate to the other. How can you tell when one side is victorious if no one is willing to surrender?
The answer: Hitler. As soon as someone compares his opponent to the Nazis, he loses.
Hitler, after all, is the 20th century sobriquet of pure evil. Very few will dispute that. Everyone believes he's the devil incarnate - even the world's warlords who even now are butchering innocent people.
They don't believe that they're not as bad as Hitler, they don't believe they're bad at all.
*
I find it curious that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose Gulag Archipelago may be the greatest account of suffering ever written, was reluctant to publish his book.
"My obligation to those still living outweighed my obligation to the dead."
He must have believed that not humiliating his friends was more important than tribute.
*
Is a book a monument? Is a film? A play?
WWII was fought because a German madman insisted on committing genocide.
WWIII will probably be fought over drinking water.
There are those who would say that robbing people of potable water makes us as bad as the Nazis.
*
In The Jew for Export, Mamet points out that each of us has the capacity for benevolence and atrocity.
*
On Remembrance Day, I will wear a poppy.
Monday, 12 August 2013
The post about poker, or Notes from my Father's Basement
One of my favourite David Mamet essays is Things I have learned from playing poker on the hill. You can find it in his essay collection Writing in Restaurants, but I understand a part of it was published in The New York Times Magazine.
Mamet writes: "Poker is a game of skill and chance. Playing poker is also a masculine ritual, and, most times, losers feel either sufficiently chagrined or sufficiently reflective to retire, if not with grace, at least with alacrity."
Poker is a game of skill and this is why we see the same faces at the championship table year after year at the World Series of Poker. There is no World Series of Roulette or World Series of Blackjack. That's either because those two games are based on luck or because the mechanics of those games lack the drama of poker. Probably both.
Now I love poker and I have only lost big once. This is not because I am a great poker player, it is because I don't play it very often.
I discovered poker from two sources. One was my collection of magic books. I became obsessed with magic when I was 10 and, in my studies, learned quite a few routines that revolve around poker.
The second source was my father who, at least once a month, would host a poker game at our house or travel to another house to play. I always loved it when the game was at our house because those men intrigued me. I never saw them at church or at school or when we went to the mall, they seemed to exist only to play poker with my dad. I doubt my father had anything to do with them that wasn't poker related and this, I think, is the correct approach when it comes to poker friends. One cannot be too attached to them because then, if they have a bad night, you might take pity on them. "I can't believe I lost that hand. How will I pay my rent this month? How will I put food on the table for baby Suzie?"
Well, one cannot take pity on your poker friends because they will use that against you when you play next. Why not bluff on this hand? If I lose, I can put on a sad face and get my money back. No. You cannot be merciful at the poker table. It is the exact opposite of the temple of the Lord.
To quote Mamet again: "I have seen many poor winners. Most are eventually brought back to reality. The game itself will reveal to them that they are the victim of an essential error: they have attributed their success to divine intervention."
Guilty, I say. Guilty.
Listen, I started playing poker with my dad and his friends when I was still in high school. The first time I played, I walked away with $20. The next time I was the big winner and I won $100. I was convinced I was God's favoured son, that I would never lose when I played poker with my dad.
And then came the day when I got cleaned out.
I'd been playing less than twenty minutes. I lost it all on a game of guts, which is a terrible game where each player is dealt two cards (deuces are wild.) The very best you can do is get dealt two aces. An ace and a deuce is second best. I had an ace and a deuce and some nameless bastard at that table had two aces.
Got cleaned out. I retreated to my bedroom to lick my wounds and read a Mickey Spillane story. All night long, I heard the sounds of poker in the next room. Conversation. Cards shuffling. Coins being tossed and raked in. I hated it. I wanted to deal myself back in but I had no money. The next morning, at the breakfast table, my dad said: "You sure got cleaned out at poker last night, son." I think there was an element of reproach in there. My dad was warning me not to play poker with the big boys. They understood the game better than I did and, if I persisted in deluding myself that I was their peer, that I would discover that getting cleaned out was the norm, not the exception.
But what can we say about luck?
Some Christians believe that nothing is left to chance - that every toss of the dice is predetermined by God. To them, trusting in luck is idolatry.
And yet...
Another time playing guts with my dad and his friends, I had a feeling that I was going to get dealt two aces. And I was dealt two aces. And when it came time to bet, I threw my cards face down on the pot, which meant I thought my hand was good enough to win the whole darn thing. Guy next to me told me he could feel it coming, that luck had been radiating off me.
Mamet says: "Any mathematician will tell you that the cards at the poker table are distributed randomly, that we remember the remarkable and forget the mundane, and that "luck" is an illusion. Any poker player knows – to the contrary – that there are phenomenal runs of luck which defy any mathematical explanation – there are periods in which one cannot catch a hand, and periods in which one cannot not catch a hand, and that there is such a thing as absolute premonition of cards: the rock-bottom surety of what will happen next."
My younger brother – who, for a while, nursed an obsession with Texas Hold 'Em and won quite a bit of money in the odd tournament – said he trained himself not to act on these premonitions. "You play the odds and you play the people at the table," he said. He was really saying that, when it comes to cards, prayer is ineffective.
Now I don't like Texas Hold 'Em but the whole world loves it and, if you have satellite television, you can probably catch a poker telecast any time of the day. Poker has become a spectator sport but the kind of poker I like is dealer's choice. Guts. Auction. Spit in the ocean. Chicago. Smoke. Joker's wild. Baseball ("Deal me out," one of my dad's friends would say when this game was announced.) You never know what you're going to play when someone else is handed the deck. The only thing you could be assured of was that it wouldn't be nearly as boring as playing the same game over and over again.
I'd love to play poker with David Mamet and I promise I would resist all urges to quote lines from his plays as they occurred to me. I would not, however, play with his friend, Ricky Jay, who I despise. I hate him because there are three things that I tell myself I do moderately well at – writing, acting, magic.* Ricky Jay may be the only person in the world I know of who could kick my ass at all three.**
Better yet... I want David Mamet to come to Calgary when I am there. I'll invite him to my father's house and he and I and my dad and his friends will play poker all night long and David and my dad could talk about American politics and David and I could talk about theatre and we'd eat way too much sausage and drink way too much beer and later I would walk away from that masculine*** ritual and feel refreshed and – if I came out a winner – redeemed.
-------
* People who know me say that I am very good at designing impossibly intricate townwide treasure hunts for teenagers. I do not mention it here because I doubt Mr. Mamet gives a tin shit about treasure hunts, but he's very passionate about acting, writing and magic.
** False modesty aside. I'm probably a better writer than David Copperfield, a better magician than Al Pacino and a better actor than Kurt Vonnegut. Still, if I were to meet any of those three, I would remain silent and listen to any pearls they might drop me.
*** I think that I am sexist in that I don't enjoy playing poker with women. I don't begrudge them for their presence in the international poker scene but I don't think I want them in my father's basement. Sorry. Planet Man and all that.
Mamet writes: "Poker is a game of skill and chance. Playing poker is also a masculine ritual, and, most times, losers feel either sufficiently chagrined or sufficiently reflective to retire, if not with grace, at least with alacrity."
Poker is a game of skill and this is why we see the same faces at the championship table year after year at the World Series of Poker. There is no World Series of Roulette or World Series of Blackjack. That's either because those two games are based on luck or because the mechanics of those games lack the drama of poker. Probably both.
Now I love poker and I have only lost big once. This is not because I am a great poker player, it is because I don't play it very often.
I discovered poker from two sources. One was my collection of magic books. I became obsessed with magic when I was 10 and, in my studies, learned quite a few routines that revolve around poker.
The second source was my father who, at least once a month, would host a poker game at our house or travel to another house to play. I always loved it when the game was at our house because those men intrigued me. I never saw them at church or at school or when we went to the mall, they seemed to exist only to play poker with my dad. I doubt my father had anything to do with them that wasn't poker related and this, I think, is the correct approach when it comes to poker friends. One cannot be too attached to them because then, if they have a bad night, you might take pity on them. "I can't believe I lost that hand. How will I pay my rent this month? How will I put food on the table for baby Suzie?"
Well, one cannot take pity on your poker friends because they will use that against you when you play next. Why not bluff on this hand? If I lose, I can put on a sad face and get my money back. No. You cannot be merciful at the poker table. It is the exact opposite of the temple of the Lord.
To quote Mamet again: "I have seen many poor winners. Most are eventually brought back to reality. The game itself will reveal to them that they are the victim of an essential error: they have attributed their success to divine intervention."
Guilty, I say. Guilty.
Listen, I started playing poker with my dad and his friends when I was still in high school. The first time I played, I walked away with $20. The next time I was the big winner and I won $100. I was convinced I was God's favoured son, that I would never lose when I played poker with my dad.
And then came the day when I got cleaned out.
I'd been playing less than twenty minutes. I lost it all on a game of guts, which is a terrible game where each player is dealt two cards (deuces are wild.) The very best you can do is get dealt two aces. An ace and a deuce is second best. I had an ace and a deuce and some nameless bastard at that table had two aces.
Got cleaned out. I retreated to my bedroom to lick my wounds and read a Mickey Spillane story. All night long, I heard the sounds of poker in the next room. Conversation. Cards shuffling. Coins being tossed and raked in. I hated it. I wanted to deal myself back in but I had no money. The next morning, at the breakfast table, my dad said: "You sure got cleaned out at poker last night, son." I think there was an element of reproach in there. My dad was warning me not to play poker with the big boys. They understood the game better than I did and, if I persisted in deluding myself that I was their peer, that I would discover that getting cleaned out was the norm, not the exception.
But what can we say about luck?
Some Christians believe that nothing is left to chance - that every toss of the dice is predetermined by God. To them, trusting in luck is idolatry.
And yet...
Another time playing guts with my dad and his friends, I had a feeling that I was going to get dealt two aces. And I was dealt two aces. And when it came time to bet, I threw my cards face down on the pot, which meant I thought my hand was good enough to win the whole darn thing. Guy next to me told me he could feel it coming, that luck had been radiating off me.
Mamet says: "Any mathematician will tell you that the cards at the poker table are distributed randomly, that we remember the remarkable and forget the mundane, and that "luck" is an illusion. Any poker player knows – to the contrary – that there are phenomenal runs of luck which defy any mathematical explanation – there are periods in which one cannot catch a hand, and periods in which one cannot not catch a hand, and that there is such a thing as absolute premonition of cards: the rock-bottom surety of what will happen next."
My younger brother – who, for a while, nursed an obsession with Texas Hold 'Em and won quite a bit of money in the odd tournament – said he trained himself not to act on these premonitions. "You play the odds and you play the people at the table," he said. He was really saying that, when it comes to cards, prayer is ineffective.
Now I don't like Texas Hold 'Em but the whole world loves it and, if you have satellite television, you can probably catch a poker telecast any time of the day. Poker has become a spectator sport but the kind of poker I like is dealer's choice. Guts. Auction. Spit in the ocean. Chicago. Smoke. Joker's wild. Baseball ("Deal me out," one of my dad's friends would say when this game was announced.) You never know what you're going to play when someone else is handed the deck. The only thing you could be assured of was that it wouldn't be nearly as boring as playing the same game over and over again.
I'd love to play poker with David Mamet and I promise I would resist all urges to quote lines from his plays as they occurred to me. I would not, however, play with his friend, Ricky Jay, who I despise. I hate him because there are three things that I tell myself I do moderately well at – writing, acting, magic.* Ricky Jay may be the only person in the world I know of who could kick my ass at all three.**
Better yet... I want David Mamet to come to Calgary when I am there. I'll invite him to my father's house and he and I and my dad and his friends will play poker all night long and David and my dad could talk about American politics and David and I could talk about theatre and we'd eat way too much sausage and drink way too much beer and later I would walk away from that masculine*** ritual and feel refreshed and – if I came out a winner – redeemed.
-------
* People who know me say that I am very good at designing impossibly intricate townwide treasure hunts for teenagers. I do not mention it here because I doubt Mr. Mamet gives a tin shit about treasure hunts, but he's very passionate about acting, writing and magic.
** False modesty aside. I'm probably a better writer than David Copperfield, a better magician than Al Pacino and a better actor than Kurt Vonnegut. Still, if I were to meet any of those three, I would remain silent and listen to any pearls they might drop me.
*** I think that I am sexist in that I don't enjoy playing poker with women. I don't begrudge them for their presence in the international poker scene but I don't think I want them in my father's basement. Sorry. Planet Man and all that.
Friday, 21 June 2013
An excerpt from my play, Minimum Wage
I started writing my play, Minimum Wage, in 1998. There were two things that inspired me. Here they are:
1. I was working as a delivery driver for a printing company in downtown Calgary. The conversations I had and overheard with my co-workers struck me as compelling and musical.
2. David Mamet's play Lakeboat.
I love the episodic structure of Lakeboat. There's no linear timeline, just a series of vignettes that take place among a group of veteran seamen and a summer student. They talk about sex, alcohol, money, abandoned dreams, but there is a through-line in what happened to the ship's cook who failed to report for duty. I think the play is about how we need to have answers for our most compelling questions and, without any hard evidence, we're willing to speculate and accept those speculations as fact.
Minimum Wage owes a lot to Lakeboat. When I did a public reading of it in Alberta back in 2006, I asked my audience if the structure reminded them of another play. Instantly, three young men yelled "Lakeboat." I was both flattered and annoyed. I'm sure David Mamet has spawned thousands of aspiring playwrights trying to emulate his unique "Mametspeak." I'm of the opinion that a writer's own style will come out regardless of who he's trying to copy.
I'm not David Mamet. Mamet, in his prime, seemed obsessed with the destructive side of the American dream. I'm not interested in that. I'm more interested in how our religious beliefs (or lack of beliefs) shapes who we are and how we affect other people. Minimum Wage is about the universal need for redemption and how we don't always seek to redeem ourselves in healthy ways.
It's my dream to see Minimum Wage performed onstage one day. It has a cast of seven men.
Here is a brief scene between Dylan, a recent high school graduate, and Bart, a veteran courier who's been married and divorced four times. It may be the best thing I have ever written.
-
Bart: My old man was a son of a bitch but he gave me one really good piece of advice. He told me once that before you make any big decision - leaving school, moving across the country, getting married, quitting your job - that what you should do is excuse yourself, go into your bedroom, and jerk off. He said it’s because men make their decisions based on the probability of getting laid and that’s not a good way to live your life. So, what happens, after you jerk off, he said, you have this brief window of time where you absolutely don’t want to get laid and you can see with perfect clarity what is the logical thing to do. (Pause.) You tell yourself that this is a good move or that is a good move and then you jerk yourself off and you realize “No, that’s a stupid idea. I was just gonna do that so I could get laid.” (Pause) That window of time saves your ass. (Pause.) That window of time lasts about thirty seconds.
Dylan: Mm.
Bart: Sure. I don’t know how you feel about my telling you this. I was fifteen when he told me that, and not very comfortable about hearing my dad talk about things like that if you want the truth.
Dylan: Will you pass the salt?
Bart: Sure. But you know what? My old man was right. Lord how he was right. Man, I wish I took that advice thirty-thirty five years ago. I could be a doctor now...
Dylan: Who wants to always do the logical thing?
Bart: What?
Dylan: You want to know how my parents met?
Bart: Sure.
Dylan: My dad was working for this bank up north and he won a week long trip to Vegas.
Bart: Yeah?
Dylan: A trip for two.
Bart: Okay.
Dylan: So he’s single, right? Tries calling some friends but no one can go. Then he finds himself in this restaurant and the waitress asks him what’s new and he tells her.
Bart: Sure.
Dylan: She says she’d love to go to Vegas. He thought she was joking. She wasn’t. So he offers to take her.
(Pause.)
Bart: Your mother?
Dylan: My mother. You see?
Bart: Yes.
Dylan: It was impulsive. It was stupid. But they went and they’re still together today. And I’m here too. (Pause.) Sometimes, I wonder how much of our happiness is due to our idiocy.
(Pause. Bart gets up.)
Dylan: Where are you going?
Bart: Make a phone call.
1. I was working as a delivery driver for a printing company in downtown Calgary. The conversations I had and overheard with my co-workers struck me as compelling and musical.
2. David Mamet's play Lakeboat.
I love the episodic structure of Lakeboat. There's no linear timeline, just a series of vignettes that take place among a group of veteran seamen and a summer student. They talk about sex, alcohol, money, abandoned dreams, but there is a through-line in what happened to the ship's cook who failed to report for duty. I think the play is about how we need to have answers for our most compelling questions and, without any hard evidence, we're willing to speculate and accept those speculations as fact.
Minimum Wage owes a lot to Lakeboat. When I did a public reading of it in Alberta back in 2006, I asked my audience if the structure reminded them of another play. Instantly, three young men yelled "Lakeboat." I was both flattered and annoyed. I'm sure David Mamet has spawned thousands of aspiring playwrights trying to emulate his unique "Mametspeak." I'm of the opinion that a writer's own style will come out regardless of who he's trying to copy.
I'm not David Mamet. Mamet, in his prime, seemed obsessed with the destructive side of the American dream. I'm not interested in that. I'm more interested in how our religious beliefs (or lack of beliefs) shapes who we are and how we affect other people. Minimum Wage is about the universal need for redemption and how we don't always seek to redeem ourselves in healthy ways.
It's my dream to see Minimum Wage performed onstage one day. It has a cast of seven men.
Here is a brief scene between Dylan, a recent high school graduate, and Bart, a veteran courier who's been married and divorced four times. It may be the best thing I have ever written.
-
Bart: My old man was a son of a bitch but he gave me one really good piece of advice. He told me once that before you make any big decision - leaving school, moving across the country, getting married, quitting your job - that what you should do is excuse yourself, go into your bedroom, and jerk off. He said it’s because men make their decisions based on the probability of getting laid and that’s not a good way to live your life. So, what happens, after you jerk off, he said, you have this brief window of time where you absolutely don’t want to get laid and you can see with perfect clarity what is the logical thing to do. (Pause.) You tell yourself that this is a good move or that is a good move and then you jerk yourself off and you realize “No, that’s a stupid idea. I was just gonna do that so I could get laid.” (Pause) That window of time saves your ass. (Pause.) That window of time lasts about thirty seconds.
Dylan: Mm.
Bart: Sure. I don’t know how you feel about my telling you this. I was fifteen when he told me that, and not very comfortable about hearing my dad talk about things like that if you want the truth.
Dylan: Will you pass the salt?
Bart: Sure. But you know what? My old man was right. Lord how he was right. Man, I wish I took that advice thirty-thirty five years ago. I could be a doctor now...
Dylan: Who wants to always do the logical thing?
Bart: What?
Dylan: You want to know how my parents met?
Bart: Sure.
Dylan: My dad was working for this bank up north and he won a week long trip to Vegas.
Bart: Yeah?
Dylan: A trip for two.
Bart: Okay.
Dylan: So he’s single, right? Tries calling some friends but no one can go. Then he finds himself in this restaurant and the waitress asks him what’s new and he tells her.
Bart: Sure.
Dylan: She says she’d love to go to Vegas. He thought she was joking. She wasn’t. So he offers to take her.
(Pause.)
Bart: Your mother?
Dylan: My mother. You see?
Bart: Yes.
Dylan: It was impulsive. It was stupid. But they went and they’re still together today. And I’m here too. (Pause.) Sometimes, I wonder how much of our happiness is due to our idiocy.
(Pause. Bart gets up.)
Dylan: Where are you going?
Bart: Make a phone call.
Why I still hate my old acting teacher
When I was in high school, I was stupid enough to pay some quack of a teacher an extraordinary amount of money to "help me become a better actor." I was 16, woefully naive, and believed this man had the ability to inject me with the ability to be "a star."
Acting classes ran almost every evening at his studio in southwest Calgary. On any given night the room was filled with at least a dozen other hopeful actors from every conceivable demographic. There was Natasha, a recent immigrant from Haiti who seemed to spend all her time listening to Janet Jackson. There was Paulette, a thirty-something housewife who tried to get everyone to pay her $10 for a Tarot card reading. There was Abe, a tall and gangling dude who looked like a redheaded Abraham Lincoln (Abe also happened to be 90 per cent blind.) There was Dana, a morbidly obese warehouse worker who never spoke above a mumble. There was Katja and Danny, a teenaged sister and brother duo. There was Bobby, an unfunny comedian who believed our esteemed teacher could make him a comedy superstar.
Every night, our teacher would ask us how much money we'd brought him. He had us all convinced that we'd be earning comfortable livings as actors once we finally paid up. He was a charlatan and a criminal.
The teacher gave us all a dozen monologues (I believe monologues are both useless and boring but that's another post altogether) which we were to memorize and then perform in front of our peers. Our peers would then offer constructive criticism - a process I still consider to be strikingly unhelpful.
One of my monologues was spoken by a gay man who was dealing with his lover's illness. (The man was in his 40s, which makes it pretty stupid to ask a 16-year-old to perform it, but I'll let it go at that.) Anyway, I did my best with the bloody monologue and when it was done, the teacher asked my fellow students if they had any comments. Paulette stood and said: "I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that you're gay."
I actually took it as a compliment.
Still, there was murmured agreement throughout the room. My instructor, who sipped coffee and ate Kentucky Fried Chicken throughout my performance, agreed too.
"It isn't enough to just pretend to be gay," he implored me. "You actually have to be gay."
Good thing I wasn't portraying Malcolm X. My instructor would have told me I have to be black.
I felt like a failure. Later, I got very angry but I didn't realize what I was angry about. I think most people probably have a bullshit detector buried deep in their souls. Sometimes it goes off even though we're not consciously aware of any bullshit being spread. Just being around it can set it off.
Later, while reading David Mamet's Writing in Restaurants, I realized the extent of the bullshit. My instructor, and my classmates at large, were insisting that I had to make myself gay in order for the monologue to be compelling. In fact, all I had to do was commit myself to the words. I had to accept that the words being spoken were heartfelt, that the speaker was not a caricature but an actual human being. Other than that, I simply had to speak loudly and clearly. The audience didn't have to believe "I" was gay. The audience would simply accept that the character is gay because the playwright, the director and the actor give them no reason to think otherwise.
Denzel Washington is not a Muslim but there's no reason to think his Malcom X isn't one in Spike Lee's biopic of the same name.
Alec Baldwin probably isn't a Christian but we believe he is when he channels Jimmy Swaggart in Great Balls of Fire.
And Tom Hanks isn't gay but we believe his Andrew Beckett is in Philadelphia.
Mamet is right. A play should be about a character, not a condition.
In that essay, Mamet talks about the challenge of playing a king. He says the actor's task shouldn't be about trying to adopt a "regal bearing" (which, he rightly points out, isn't necessarily shared by all members of royalty and, in fact, is possessed by those who have no royal blood at all.) Instead, he should simply speak the words, find his motivation, and trust that the audience will accept him as a king because they have been given no reason to not accept him as one.
Kings, like everyone else, have needs and desires that they seek to meet. An actor who goes onstage with the goal of acting kingly will probably fail (and probably bore the audience too.) Instead, the actor should analyze the text to see what the king wants. A service, perhaps. Maybe something as simple as a drink of water.
I wish I could go back in time. I'd kick that old acting teacher square in the balls, take all the money I paid him, and used it to buy a good used car instead. My life probably would have been a whole lot more fun.
Acting classes ran almost every evening at his studio in southwest Calgary. On any given night the room was filled with at least a dozen other hopeful actors from every conceivable demographic. There was Natasha, a recent immigrant from Haiti who seemed to spend all her time listening to Janet Jackson. There was Paulette, a thirty-something housewife who tried to get everyone to pay her $10 for a Tarot card reading. There was Abe, a tall and gangling dude who looked like a redheaded Abraham Lincoln (Abe also happened to be 90 per cent blind.) There was Dana, a morbidly obese warehouse worker who never spoke above a mumble. There was Katja and Danny, a teenaged sister and brother duo. There was Bobby, an unfunny comedian who believed our esteemed teacher could make him a comedy superstar.
Every night, our teacher would ask us how much money we'd brought him. He had us all convinced that we'd be earning comfortable livings as actors once we finally paid up. He was a charlatan and a criminal.
The teacher gave us all a dozen monologues (I believe monologues are both useless and boring but that's another post altogether) which we were to memorize and then perform in front of our peers. Our peers would then offer constructive criticism - a process I still consider to be strikingly unhelpful.
One of my monologues was spoken by a gay man who was dealing with his lover's illness. (The man was in his 40s, which makes it pretty stupid to ask a 16-year-old to perform it, but I'll let it go at that.) Anyway, I did my best with the bloody monologue and when it was done, the teacher asked my fellow students if they had any comments. Paulette stood and said: "I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that you're gay."
I actually took it as a compliment.
Still, there was murmured agreement throughout the room. My instructor, who sipped coffee and ate Kentucky Fried Chicken throughout my performance, agreed too.
"It isn't enough to just pretend to be gay," he implored me. "You actually have to be gay."
Good thing I wasn't portraying Malcolm X. My instructor would have told me I have to be black.
I felt like a failure. Later, I got very angry but I didn't realize what I was angry about. I think most people probably have a bullshit detector buried deep in their souls. Sometimes it goes off even though we're not consciously aware of any bullshit being spread. Just being around it can set it off.
Later, while reading David Mamet's Writing in Restaurants, I realized the extent of the bullshit. My instructor, and my classmates at large, were insisting that I had to make myself gay in order for the monologue to be compelling. In fact, all I had to do was commit myself to the words. I had to accept that the words being spoken were heartfelt, that the speaker was not a caricature but an actual human being. Other than that, I simply had to speak loudly and clearly. The audience didn't have to believe "I" was gay. The audience would simply accept that the character is gay because the playwright, the director and the actor give them no reason to think otherwise.
Denzel Washington is not a Muslim but there's no reason to think his Malcom X isn't one in Spike Lee's biopic of the same name.
Alec Baldwin probably isn't a Christian but we believe he is when he channels Jimmy Swaggart in Great Balls of Fire.
And Tom Hanks isn't gay but we believe his Andrew Beckett is in Philadelphia.
Mamet is right. A play should be about a character, not a condition.
In that essay, Mamet talks about the challenge of playing a king. He says the actor's task shouldn't be about trying to adopt a "regal bearing" (which, he rightly points out, isn't necessarily shared by all members of royalty and, in fact, is possessed by those who have no royal blood at all.) Instead, he should simply speak the words, find his motivation, and trust that the audience will accept him as a king because they have been given no reason to not accept him as one.
Kings, like everyone else, have needs and desires that they seek to meet. An actor who goes onstage with the goal of acting kingly will probably fail (and probably bore the audience too.) Instead, the actor should analyze the text to see what the king wants. A service, perhaps. Maybe something as simple as a drink of water.
I wish I could go back in time. I'd kick that old acting teacher square in the balls, take all the money I paid him, and used it to buy a good used car instead. My life probably would have been a whole lot more fun.
Thursday, 20 June 2013
FAMOUS
In David Mamet’s play Lakeboat, a veteran sailor and a college student are talking about why a journalist should never use the word “famous” when writing about a person.
If the person is famous, the reader would have heard of them. If the reader hasn’t heard of the person then he (or she) isn’t famous. In short, famous is a redundant adjective.
I was thinking of that exchange last week when someone told me that “Mark Cullen, the famous gardener” was going to be at my town’s Home Hardware. I had never heard of Mr. Cullen before so I decided that he wasn’t famous. Then again, I am not a gardener. Also, I can’t name one famous gardener. Not one. If I was passionate about gardens, I’d probably be able to name several. But I’m not.
Pardon me, but do any of my readers know who Dai Vernon is? Or Darwin Ortiz? How about Paul Harris, Bill Malone, Steve Dacri, Jeff McBride or Rudy Coby? Drawing a blank? No problem. They’re all professional magicians. But how would one know that unless one is interested in magic?
Well, you don’t have to be interested in magic to know who David Copperfield is. Or Criss Angel or David Blaine or the late Doug Henning. I’m not a cook but I know who Julia Child is. I don’t design cars but I can tell you who Henry Ford was too.
I guess that means there’s two kinds of fame. There’s the fame that transcends its field and there’s the kind that does not. People in the former category probably make more money. The trade off is they can’t really go anywhere in public without being hounded for autographs.
If the person is famous, the reader would have heard of them. If the reader hasn’t heard of the person then he (or she) isn’t famous. In short, famous is a redundant adjective.
I was thinking of that exchange last week when someone told me that “Mark Cullen, the famous gardener” was going to be at my town’s Home Hardware. I had never heard of Mr. Cullen before so I decided that he wasn’t famous. Then again, I am not a gardener. Also, I can’t name one famous gardener. Not one. If I was passionate about gardens, I’d probably be able to name several. But I’m not.
Pardon me, but do any of my readers know who Dai Vernon is? Or Darwin Ortiz? How about Paul Harris, Bill Malone, Steve Dacri, Jeff McBride or Rudy Coby? Drawing a blank? No problem. They’re all professional magicians. But how would one know that unless one is interested in magic?
Well, you don’t have to be interested in magic to know who David Copperfield is. Or Criss Angel or David Blaine or the late Doug Henning. I’m not a cook but I know who Julia Child is. I don’t design cars but I can tell you who Henry Ford was too.
I guess that means there’s two kinds of fame. There’s the fame that transcends its field and there’s the kind that does not. People in the former category probably make more money. The trade off is they can’t really go anywhere in public without being hounded for autographs.
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