Raymond Saunders

As I have said before, my favourite Mamet essay collection is Writing in Restaurants.  One of the entries is titled Notes From a Catalog For Raymond Saunders. I had no idea who Raymond Saunders was, so I looked him up. He is an American artist who is still with us. I recognized one of his pieces because it also serves as the cover art for a publication of Mamet's 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Glengarry Glen Ross.

The essay is episodic. It opens with a story Mr. Mamet has told before. His leather bag has a broken strap so he goes to a cobbler to have it fixed. The cobbler tells him it is an expensive job and the bag has to be sent away.

"Should I leave it with you for a week?" Mamet asks.

"No. Go get a cup of coffee. Come back in 15 minutes."

It sounds like a joke but, upon reflection, reads more like a life lesson. In business, as in life, we are ruled by laziness. I have no idea who that cobbler was but he likely didn't want to be burdened with such a laborious job at that moment and told the young Mr. Mamet that it had to be sent away. A split second later, he changes his mind. One can almost picture the cartoon angels and devils sitting on his shoulders.

Mamet, McDonald's, and Hallmark Christmas movies

 Last month, my better half persuaded me to watch a Hallmark Christmas movie with her. I don't remember the title, just that one of the characters was an actress, probably based in New York. Her temporal happiness hinged on her getting a part in "a play by David Mamet."

So my ears perked up immediately. My better half, who has heard me mention Mamet's name hundreds of times over the course of our 10-year relationship, braced herself for my commentary. I kept it brief, wondering which of Mamet's plays this fictional actress was hoping to perform. Since the actress was young and attractive - as all Hallmark protagonists are - I thought the play would be Oleanna, though it could have been some avant garde director doing an all-female version of American Buffalo.

I pondered this for a number of minutes, which stopped me from following the movie's connect-the-dots plot. If memory serves, the actress didn't get the part in the David Mamet play, which prompted her to run back to the small town where she grew up to celebrate Christmas, where she met the handsome son of a wealthy rancher who was having some trouble with a greedy banker, whose heart just might melt if he was exposed to the Christmas spirit...

You get the idea.

It's fashionable for the cultural elite to mock the Hallmark films, to decry them as dull and predictable fare that could only be enjoyed by simpletons. There are no plot twists in a Harlequin film. We don't learn, in the end, that Rosebud is a sled or that Bruce Willis is dead. No, the Hallmark movie doesn't promise us surprises. It doesn't pretend to be a roller coaster. It's always claimed to be a merry-go-round. You get on, you go around for a few minutes, and you get off exactly the same place where you started. You're no better now but you're no worse either.

I don't remember the essay, but David Mamet once wrote that if the purpose of eating is to nourish the body, then it's easy to choose the broccoli over the French fry. The 20th century has turned the act of eating into a form of entertainment. This is certainly true and so McDonald's is to dining what Hallmark is to cinema. You will not be surprised at either establishment. You will get what you came for.

So I won't pooh-pooh the Hallmark movies, all of which give actors and writers and crew members opportunities to work. Hopefully, they will move on to other, and better, things.

Happy birthday, David Mamet

 Shteevie: Happy birthday...

David Mamet: yes... and by means... (pause)
Shteevie: Yes?
David Mamet: Yes, if you will... yes... if you will allow me to accept...
S: Why would I think...
DM: Excuse me...
S: ...you wouldn't accept...
DM: Because... yes... if you will... if you will allow me to say... (pause) I'm sorry, my wife has been out of sorts...
S: Your wife...
DM: Yes... she has been... the birthday cake...
S: I didn't...
DM: Excuse me?
(Pause.)
S: I'm saying I didn't make you a birthday cake? (Pause.) Do you see? Do you see? I don't make cakes. I write letters. And I wrote you a letter...
DM: Yes...
S: ...a long time ago...
DM: Yes. And I owe you an apology.
S: You do?
DM: Yes... do you see? Yes... in Vermont... the stoics... you see? In Vermont.
(Pause.)
S: Ghosts.
DM: YES!!!!
S: The ghosts on the hill...
DM: YES!!!
(Pause.)
S: When I was a boy, I had a dream...
DM: Yes...
S: ...a dream about a bear...
DM: Mm.
S: I had written the bear a letter.
DM: Mm.
S: The bear did not write me back. (Pause.) Do you understand? The bear did not write me back. (Pause.) Do you understand?
DM: Yes.
S: Are you sorry?
DM: No.
S: Oh. (Pause.) Happy birthday, you ^$#($#^*& ^(#@&*%^(!!! 

-

Note: He is 74 today!!!

And I finally figured out how to get back into this blog again. Yay!!!!!

The Mamet master class

Yeah, I know I haven't updated this blog in a while. I have a four-year-old who was recently diagnosed with autism. Much of my creative life has been put on hold because of this. I know that sounds like an awful excuse, but when your son shrieks whenever you sit down in front of the computer or if he grabs your pens out of your hands, you pretty much have to make some serious changes to your life.

And now I see that Mamet is teaching a master class on playwrighting. You know, I guess I was cynical at first. My initial thought was that an online course isn't going to teach me much, but that's a lot of bullshit. I'm also a magician and I have learned A LOT from online magic lectures. Why should Mamet's be any different?

So I think I will take the plunge. I realize that David Mamet is one of the most influential people in my life; I've admired and respected him since I acted in two short plays from Goldberg Street in 1992. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I think I'll take it.

Mr. Happiness

I work as a newspaper editor. Sometimes, when I ask a reporter or a correspondent to redo a story, I feel like I might be patronizing them. I'm sure I'm being paranoid. My colleagues are professionals, most of them entirely without ego, and are more concerned (to borrow a thought from the late John F Kennedy) with what they can do for the newspaper rather than what the newspaper can do for them.

But still, I am paranoid. I am one of those people who, if something goes wrong, tends to believe he is, at the very least, partially responsible for it.

So when I tighten up a paragraph or I challenge an adverb or I cut a story by 200 words or if I insist the lede be changed, I can't help but wonder if the reporter says to himself: Who does Shteevie think he is? I'm the one who conducted the interview and spent all sorts of time doing research. How dare he wield his red pen on these words I so lovingly crafted.

Yes, and I am reminded of the story of the reporter and the copy editor who are stranded in the desert. Both of them are delirious from thirst. Eventually, they cross a sand dune and discover a perfect oasis. They run to the water and the copy editor undoes his zipper and urinates in it. Incredulous, the reporter asks: "Why did you do that?" The copy editor's reply: "I'm improving it."

Memo to the reporters I've worked with, work with now, and will work with in the future: I've been in the biz for a long time and I think I'm pretty good at what I do.

Why is that?

David Mamet's one-man play, Mr. Happiness, is about a radio host answering the letters sent to him by his listeners who want help with their personal problems. Mr. Happiness tells his listeners that he's not a doctor nor a priest nor a professor, that many times he is wrong.

He says:

"But in those times when advice I might give - it's only simple common sense - may serve to help you out, you may sit back and say, 'My Golly! You know, it all seems so simple now. What makes that man so smart?' Well, folks, I'm going to tell you. And it's not intelligence . It isn't even insight. It's distance."

To this, I say "Yes! A hundred times yes!"

How many times have you written something you thought was pretty good only to pick it up a couple weeks later and see how much work it needs?

An editor doesn't need that two week lag. He can look at fresh copy and iron out the kinks.


Distance.

The latest addition to my Mamet collection

I have no idea how this collection slipped past my radar screen.

It's yet another collection of essays. I am not sure why it's received the thoroughly unremarkable title Jafsie and John Henry. Perhaps the phrase has sentimental meaning to Mr. Mamet, something that may come clear to me as I peruse this latest batch of offerings. If I was the publisher, I'd probably insist on naming the book for one of the most intriguing essay titles like The Fireman's Child, Poor But Happy or even The New House.

I know enough about publishing to know that authors rarely get the opportunity to pick their own titles. I'm not sure what happened in this case. I have no idea who Jafsie is.

I am angry at myself because this book was published in 1999. I bought his previous essay collection, Make Believe Town, the day it came out in 1997. I drove 125 km to Ottawa to pick up The Secret Knowledge when it came out in 2012. I'm usually pretty in-the-know when it comes to David Mamet's career. For all I know, I think I was the very first person on the Internet to reveal the name of Mr. Mamet's next play - China Doll - which will star Al Pacino. Yeah, I am a Mamet stalker and I google him at least once a week because I always want to know if he's going to be making a guest appearance in my neck of the woods.

But Jafsie and John Henry? It completely slipped past my radar. I discovered it while doing a Mamet search on ebay.

As I've said plenty of times before, I discovered David Mamet through his plays, particularly the short works contained in Goldberg Street. But as I get older, I find myself enjoying his essays more.

In 2014, my new year's resolution was to write a blog post everyday. I solicited titles from my friends and the results can be found at therotatingpineapple.blogspot.com. Sometimes, Mr. Mamet's style crept into my writing (heck, for the month of November, every title was taken from a Mamet play or essay or book.) I don't think writers should be worried about other writers affecting their style. Their own voice will always emerge.

I look forward to reading the essays in Jafsie and John Henry.

New Mamet books on the way

In my never-ending quest to own everything David Mamet has ever written or filmed, I bought two books on Amazon today. One of them is his two-woman play, The Anarchist, which is the Internet gods tell me will arrive sometime around the beginning of spring. I also ordered an essay collection called Jafsie and John Henry: Essays on Hollywood, Bad Boys and Six Hours of Perfect Poker.

On an un-related note, I think I will try to get my magician self hired at the Fourth of July festivities in Cabot, Vermont. According to Mamet's book South of the Northwest Kingdom, it's quite the celebration and I may actually meet him there.

I'll have to keep an eye out for the orange-framed glasses.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago

The 1980s romantic drama About Last Night, which stars Rob Lowe and Demi Moore as a twentysomething couple, is based on a David Mamet play called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The producers changed the name. They didn't think the movie-going public would go to a movie called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Sounds too much like a porno.

-

The stage version of Sexual Perversity has only four characters. Danny and Deborah are the couple in love. Bernie is Danny's co-worker. Joan is Deborah's roommate who may or may not be a lesbian. Bernie and Joan do their darnedest to keep the happy twosome apart.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago is a tragedy. It opens with Bernie regaling Danny with a story of a sexual conquest (that's probably not true.) It ends with Danny and Bernie lusting after women as they sit on a beach. Between those two scenes, Danny meets Deborah, falls in love with her, moves in with her, falls out of love with her, and moves out. He comes full circle. He's back at square one. He threw his love away so he could be what? A lone wolf howling at the moon.

This is tragic. In his four-star review of the film, Roger Ebert writes that "when a big new relationship comes into your life, it requires an adjustment of all the other relationships, and a certain amount of discomfort and pain." Perhaps it's the tragedy of our times that few people are willing to accept that.

I have alienated my friends by refusing to accept it. When my best friend got married and moved in with his wife, I was too stubborn (or too stupid) to accept that he was - to borrow a Biblical metaphor - one flesh with his wife. No longer could he go to a movie with me on a whim. I had to call ahead, make plans, see if the wife wanted to come too. The wife wound up resenting me, then hating me. She probably would have torn a strip off me had I not come to my senses and offered her a full-fledged apology.

So few of us are able to deal with change.

-

About Last Night may be a good movie but it's not a good adaptation of Mamet's play and I wouldn't blame him for disowning it. The play ends in tragedy but the film ends on a hopeful note. Deborah and Danny, estranged after a year, bump into each other at a baseball game. The next thing you know, they're running off together. Cue the happy 80s music. Cue the feel good "awwwws." Let's go get wasted.

The moral of Sexual Perversity in Chicago is "Grow up!" The moral of About Last Night is "Love conquers all."

-

This one time in Campbellford, Ontario, I was talking to Brenda Finley, a Canadian actress who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and, for a while, was the news anchor for CFAC Television in Calgary. She was in Campbellford because she was doing a one-woman performance of A Christmas Carol at the Westben Theatre, which was owned by her brother, Brian.

I asked Ms. Finley what her favourite stage role was. She said there were two. I can't remember the first but the second was Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

"Were you Deborah?" I asked.

"No, I was the lesbian," she said.

"Is Joan a lesbian?"

"Traditionally, she's portrayed as one."

And we talked about David Mamet for a while.

-

When I first read Sexual Perversity in Chicago, it looked familiar. That's because I'd read Bernie's opening speech years earlier in a book of monologues. That monologue describes an encounter Bernie has with a kinky nymphomaniac who wants him to make love to her while she wears a World War I flak suit (whatever that is.)

I tried performing the monologue but it just didn't work. I was 17. I didn't think anyone would believe me when I told them I was having sex with a girl in a hotel room that was on fire. When I was 17, I was a virgin.

Two years later, I'd star in my first Mamet play.

Meet Al Pacino

I got to meet Al Pacino last night. He was at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa doing a one-night-only event. Dressed entirely in black, he regaled a sold out audience with stories from his acting career. A brief montage of Pacino's film work preceded the great man's entrance and – yes indeed – we gave a standing ovation when the lights came up to show him standing front row centre.

He mentioned David Mamet once and I whooped for joy when he did.

Although he was there, in theory, to talk about his life's work, the majority of his time was spent discussing The Godfather and Scarface. There was nary a mention of Glengarry Glen Ross.

After the show, Mr. Pacino proceeded to a backstage area where he would meet and be photographed with the audience members who had purchased VIP packages. There were about 200 people in that little room and each of them got about five seconds with the man. I got my picture taken with him, which I reproduce below.

I'm the one on the right

Here is a brief transcript of our conversation:

Al: Hi.

Steve: Hi, I'm Steve. I'm a big fan of David Mamet.

Photographer: Okay, look at me please.

Al: I'm working with him on a new play in New York.

Steve: What's it called?

Al: China Doll.

Usher: Okay. you have to go.

Steve: I better go, Al.

Al: Bye.

I was going to ask Mr. Pacino to give me a title for Rotating Pineapple, my sister blog where I write a note a day. I didn't have time to ask, but I'm cheating and using China Doll as my title. You can read it at www.rotatingpineapple.com

In any case, here are a few memorable things that happened at the event:

- One 51-year-old lady told Mr. Pacino that he was the sexiest man alive and would love to tango with him like he did in Scent of a Woman. He said he would try to do that during the meet and greet but, alas, it never happened.

- One man called Pacino the greatest teacher he ever knew. He said that in 1992, he was lying on a mattress in a basement somewhere with hypodermics in his arms, severely underweight, wanting to die. Watching Pacino's performance in Scent of a Woman made him want to live and stop defining himself by his disability. I think that his speech sincerely touched Mr. Pacino and reinforced the notion of the healing power of art.

- After shooting the cemetery scene for The Godfather, a young Pacino happened on his director, Francis Ford Coppola, standing next to a tombstone and weeping. Al asked Francis why he was crying and the answer was that the producers wouldn't allow him to shoot the scene again from another angle. "That's a man I want to work for," Pacino said. "If you can cry because you weren't allowed to shoot another scene, you have passion."

- You know that famous scene toward the end of Scarface where Tony Montana is sitting in a restaurant with his wife and his best friend? He's drunk, probably high, railing against his wife for being unable to bear a child for him? Well... Oliver Stone had written that scene to take place in a restaurant but the producers, fearing cost overruns, elected to shoot it in a nightclub instead. The idea upset Pacino. He met with the producers and persuaded them to shoot in a restaurant because Oliver Stone had written in that way and the scene would be more effective if it took place in a high-end restaurant instead of a club. The producers reluctantly agreed, even though it cost about $100,000 more. "And that's how actors get a reputation for being difficult," he said.

I doubt you're reading this, Mr. Pacino, but if you are, I'd like you to know I enjoyed the evening very much and please say hello to Mr. Mamet for me.

Arrested Development

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.

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.

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.


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* 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.

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.

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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.

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.

What does a director do? What is a chair?

I've been trying to chase down the essay where David Mamet says he doesn't know precisely what a director does. I suspect it's either in True and False or Theatre. Well rather than try to find it, I hope that you'll just take my word that Mamet said it and I am going to be silly enough to attempt a response.

I'll start by saying that Mamet surely has a good grasp of the technicality of a director's job. He tells the actors where to stand, where to move, how to say their lines. He collaborates with the set designer and the costume designer and the lighting designer and the sound person. He does all these things. But that's a little wordy for someone's job title.

When Mamet made his statement, I think he was answering it the way a philosopher would. I've dabbled a bit in philosophy and I know a popular exercise on Day One of Philosophy 101 is to ask this question: "What is a chair?" A chair is something you sit on, says the young student. Well, you also sit on couches, does that mean a couch is a chair. You can also sit on beds, desk, carpets, sidewalk curbs, stairs, benches, car fenders and bicycles. Are these things chairs too? No, they're not.

The philosophy class would likely debate that question for a long time until someone solved the problem by saying: "A chair is an object that has been purposely designed for the primary purpose of allowing one person to sit down." That's a pretty ironclad definition for a chair.

What does a director do? Well, I think he's the one who has the overarching artistic vision of the play. It it his job to make the actors and behind-the-scene people conform to that vision. As a rule, theatre cannot thrive in chaos. The director brings order to the show.

This seems like an opportune time to mention that I directed a Mamet play once. The Water Engine. It was not well-received by the small town community that had grown accustomed to seeing the Odd Couple and all those stupid British farces where the first ten minutes of the play are nothing but exposition. Probably another reason it failed is that I am a mediocre director at best.

Perhaps I'll write more about my Water Engine experience later.

I want to play Richard Roma

Back in 1999, when I auditioned for a professional theatre company in Saskatoon, the artistic director asked me what roles I dreamed of playing. I gave him two.

The first thing I said was Alan Strang in Equus, which I think is the greatest play of the 20th century. Equus is a flawless script, penned by the British playwright Peter Shaffer. I think the play is about religious awe and the human need to worship. Detractors of religion say that it is harmful to force religious belief on people. I'm sure that's true. Equus tells us that taking religion away from someone can be just as dangerous. That's my take anyway and I'm a Baptist. I would have loved to play Alan Strang, would have sang that Doublemint jingle and would have done the finale as naked as the day as I was born. Alan's nudity is not pornographic; it is symbolic of Adam's innocence in the Garden of Eden.

I'm 39 now. Too old to play 17-year-old Alan Strang. If I were offered the role, I'd have to refuse it. It would be selfish of me to accept. I'd be putting my own "desire to explore this role" ahead of the audience's need for authenticity. The first thing the audience would say is: "He's supposed to be 17? Come on..." It would take them out of the play and it would lessen the experience. An astute audience member would have the right to feel manipulated and demand his money back. Love the craft in yourself, not yourself in the craft.

My second role of choice was Richard Roma, the on-a-hot-streak salesman in Glengarry Glen Ross. I once joked that I'd play the role better than Pacino. Probably not true but you may as well aim for the stars.

Roma, to my mind, is pure id. I see him as a psychopath. People like Roman are unfortunate side effects of the American dream. Someone once said that it's easy to make a million dollars if all you want to do is make a million dollars. That's what Roma does. We witness him as he bullshits, and possibly seduces, a man in a Chinese restaurant - persuading him to invest thousands of dollars in, what very well could be, worthless property. The next day, when the man shows up at the office asking for his money back, Roma manipulates him and even outright lies to him in order to keep that money. It makes no difference that this could spell the end of the man's marriage, that he may now be destitute. The only thing that matters is Roma's own bank account. His own self interest.

Now this is so NOT me. I'm compassionate to a fault and I have a long history of letting people walk all over me. So the chance to play such a scoundrel would be a real challenge. I think I'd be absolutely fearless in rehearsal. My underlying motivation would be to make as much money as possible. The only people I'd be nice too are the underperforming salesmen, who I'd pity but not really like. Why? They don't pose a threat to me.

I auditioned for that role twice. Once, when I was 21, a small community theatre company in Calgary announced it was going to mount a production. The artistic director, whose name was Dean, held an open audition at the university. About 50 men showed up. One of them said he wanted to play the Alec Baldwin role. Ha ha ha. Joke's on him. The Alec Baldwin role - Blake - is only in the movie, not the stage play. (Incidentally, the late Jack Lemmon, who played Sheldon Levene in the movie, believed the screenplay to be superior to the stage play, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984.)

So we did the auditions and I did my Roma schtick and I guess I did it very well because at the end, when Dean announced he was going into the green room for a few minutes to make his decision, all the other actors shook my hand and told me they were sure I was getting the part. But I didn't get the part. Some other dude did. And then Dean announced that the role of Sheldon Levene would be played by himself. The actors groaned and thundered out of there and yelled "this is bullshit." Many of them felt that they'd wasted their time and that Dean never had any intention of casting anyone but himself.

I don't think that play ever got off the ground. Someone told me that in the end, Dean couldn't get the rights to produce it. Sucks. I guess I was happy to not get the role. That disappointment would have been too great.

I was 23 the second time I auditioned for the role. Calgary's Theatre Junction was putting it on as part of its 1996 season. I called the artistic director, Mark Lawes - who had taught me a voice and diction class at Mount Royal College - and asked if I could audition. Mark was not happy to hear from me. I was a complete shit in his class - a spiteful, lazy jackass who thought he was God's gift to acting. I didn't blame him for trying to brush me off.

I apologized to Mr. Lawes for the way I acted at Mount Royal and I told him that now I was a completely different person and a completely different actor. I told him that I'd gotten my ass kicked hard by the professional theatre world and that I now realized that what I didn't know about acting could fill Yankee Stadium. I pleaded for him to give me a second chance. I also apologized to him personally for the lack of respect I showed him when I was 19. And you know what? Mark accepted my apology and gave me a chance to audition.

I auditioned, doing Roma's Act 1 scene 3 monologue and Mark was kind enough to tell me that it was miles ahead of any of the patronizing shit I did in his voice and diction class (my words, not his.) But while he said I did a good job, he told me that I was a bit too young to play Richard Roma, who the script said was in his 40s.

I was disappointed, but Mark was right. The characters needed to be older so the play would be more tragic. Having a 23-year-old onstage with a bunch of 40 and 50-somethings would have seriously disrupted the balance. The words are written for middle-aged men, not younger men. Having a younger man in there would have been a great disservice to the overall spirit of the play. If Roma was in his early 20s and everyone else was in their 40s and 50s, Mamet would have written the words differently.

This became so apparent to me ten years later when I wandered into a production of Glengarry Glen Ross being put on by a group of guys in their late 20s and early 30s. Levene looked more like a football captain than he did a tired and broken down old man. There was no tragedy. None. If Levene were to get fired, or Moss, or Aaranow - where's the tragedy? All these guys could probably find other jobs in a week. When you're an old man and you still need to work, it's much more tragic. The play struck me as inherently false and I left before it was over.

Well I'm almost 40 now. I've got my eyes peeled for theatre companies mounting Glengarry Glen Ross. Give me a chance, someone? I'll play Roma better than Pacino.

I'm joking. But not really.

David Mamet and Abbey Road

I am the managing editor of a weekly newspaper in Eastern Ontario. My duties include writing a regular column. My column cannot be defined, really. Sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's religious, sometimes it's nostalgic, sometimes it's even a bit offensive.

One of the things I enjoy is working David Mamet references into my column. I did it recently with my piece on Abbey Road. Here it is:

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Abbey Road gets very few jaywalkers.

That’s one of the things I noticed while watching webcam footage of the iconic London road.

For those of us who are completely ignorant of pop culture, the road is iconic because it was featured on the front cover of the 1969 Beatles album, which was named for the road. (If you’ve never seen it, look it up on Google images now or this column will make no sense.) I first became aware of the album when I was in Grade 9 and my English teacher, Mr. Jelinek - a huge Beatles fan - showed it to us. To me it was just a picture of four guys crossing the street but Mr. Jelinek insisted that it was much more than that. It was rife with symbolism. He pointed to a Volkswagen Beetle in the background whose license plate read LMW 28IF. “Paul McCartney was 28 when this picture was taken,"  he said. Actually, Paul would have been 27 but I’ll let it go at that.

Rock musicians might be notorious for planting hidden imagery in album covers but it’s doubtful that the Beatles had the time or the inclination to do that with Abbey Road. According to the BBC, photographer Iain Macmillan only had 10 minutes to take the shot. Abbey Road was a busy thoroughfare and the authorities weren’t too keen on having traffic diverted just so a rock and roll group could get its picture taken. Also, that car and its license plate weren’t planted at all. The car was owned by some poor dude who lived nearby. For years he had to deal with Beatles fans stealing his license plate. He later sold that car to an American collector for 2,500 British pounds. Apparently it still runs.

By the way, there’s actually five people shown on the front cover of Abbey Road - two of them are named Paul. There’s Paul McCartney and there’s Paul Cole, who can be seen standing on the sidewalk on the right side of the album. Mr. Cole, a salesman from Florida, just happened to be vacationing in London with his wife. His wife had wanted to go into a nearby museum and Mr. Cole had elected to stay outside. He happened to be in the right place at the right time when Mr. Macmillan’s camera went click. Mr. Cole had no idea what happened until much later, when he became something of a minor celebrity. When he died in 2008 at the age of 96, newspapers everywhere carried the story. I’m sure Mr. Cole lived a happy life but it must suck knowing that the most significant thing you’ve ever done was just stand there.

(Note: I tried to work in a funny reference to the Beatles song I saw her standing there but was  unable to do so. I hope this bracketed tangent brings a smile instead.)

The album Abbey Road was released in September of 1969 (Paul was still 27) and I guess that Beatles fans ate it up and thought it was fantastic and super. They also decided that the intersection - which features a zebra pattern and is located in the borough of Camden right outside the Abbey Road Studio - is holy ground. In December of 2010, English Heritage gave it Grade II Listed Building Status. I’m not sure what that means but you’re probably not allowed to go there in the middle of the night and tear it up with a jackhammer.

Somewhere along the line, some genius got the bright idea to install a webcam overlooking the crossing, which brings me back to my original point about the virtually nonexistent jaywalkers. It seems that everyone who crosses that street crosses at the crosswalk. I guess it’s because they know that crosswalk has the stuff of immortality in it and they’d like to walk where John Lennon trod. I’m a nominal Beatles fan but if I found myself at Abbey Road, I confess I’d probably want to cross it too. And take my picture. (To prove that I’m just as big a fanboy as the next person, I confess that I did drive down to a café in Vermont once so I could sit at the same table where Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet once sat.)

If you watch the webcam for long, you’ll notice a lot of people getting their pictures taken. You can actually tell when it’s going to happen. A group of people gathers on one side of the road and then waits for a break in traffic. Then they rush onto the sidewalk and pose while their designated photographer snaps the pic. Sometimes cars approach the intersection and they usually wait patiently. I imagine that delays at good ole Abbey Road are just a part of London life.

With fan photos taken at the site every single day, it stands to reason that a few people are going to have some close encounters with traffic. In a 20th anniversary retrospective essay published in The Guardian in August of 1989, writer Tom McNichol tells the story of Arne, a vacationing Swedish newspaperman who was almost wiped out by a motorcyclist while trying to photograph his four companions. Thankfully the motorcyclist was not from Quebec. He would have run right over him.

So a word of advice to anyone planning on taking a picture at Abbey Road: Look both ways before you cross the street.

I’m just speaking words of wisdom. Let it be.

My Mamet collection

Check it out.

(And these are just the books. No movies here.)

Failure: A great teacher (or memories of Rosebud)

Rosebud, a small Christian theatre guild school in east central Alberta, is where I went my first year out of high school. I was told, early on, that I had the makings of a very powerful actor, but I sabotaged my career there by being such an arsehole.

A few people, Royal and Doug in particular, tried to talk to me about my attitude, but I just kind of shrugged them off. What I really needed, I think, was to have some angry Christian dude grab my shirt and throw me against a wall and scream at me about what an idiot I was being. "Rosebud has thrived without you in the past and it will thrive without you in the future," they should have said.

Later, I'd be kicked out of Rosebud and enrol in the theatre studies department at Mount Royal College, where I continued to destroy any chance of success I might have had. I was unteachable and I refused to take direction. Not good qualities for an actor to have. I don't blame them for asking me to leave.

One of the best days of my life was Feb.22, 1995, when I wrote, directed, produced, and starred in a double-feature play called BARBECUED CHOCOLATE CHRISTMAS BALLS AND THE WRIGHT WAY TO LOOK AT LIFE. The play opened at the Calgary one-act play festival and absolutely bombed. We didn't even get polite applause. The adjudicator tried to be positive, told me that she admired my courage, but I knew that I had just lost the respect of everyone in the audience. I left the theatre and "ran away" for a bit. I didn't go home for three days.

I spent those days going to movies (which I saw with movie gift certificates I'd received for my birthday) and eating out of Petro Canada gas stations (I had a Petro Canada credit card.) I also spent a few hours wandering through Fish Creek Park in the freezing cold. During that walk, I looked at myself self-critically for the very first time. I realized (or, since I'm Christian, I guess I should say that God helped me realize) that it's dangerous to think of yourself as a genius. Not everything I write is going to be excellent simply because I wrote it. If you really want to create a magnificent piece of art, then, brother, you're going to have to work at it. And don't ignore other people's opinions because chances are, they can see something that you can't.

It was great. My attitude virtually changed overnight. The next year, I won the best original script award at the Calgary One-Act Play Festival for THREE SCENES FROM A BUS SHELTER. An actress from Mount Royal, who I'd always admired, even agreed to act in it, and this was one of the most flattering moments for me as a playwright. My sister and brother also took roles in that show. Interestingly enough, my sister is not an actress, though she's the only one who has acted in three of my plays.

I've never had a play professionally produced. It's a dream of mine, but not a big one. Still, the guys in Rosebud flattered me last winter by agreeing to do a reading of my fledgling script, MINIMUM WAGE, which was heavily influenced by David Mamet's play LAKEBOAT.

Sitting back in "the Bud", surrounded by all the new technology and seeing all the old faces, made me wonder what life would have been like if I'd had a winning attitude when I was 19. Maybe I'd still be in the Bud. Maybe I'd actually be able to sing (not likely.)

Well, we are our experiences, I suppose. I just felt it comforting to know that there is forgiveness.

My memories of Rosebud are good. The only bad ones are of the stupid things I did.

--

I like to think that the failure of Barbecued Chocolate Christmas Balls was the single greatest thing that ever happened to me. If I could have gone back to the theatre with a post BCCB mindset, I might have developed into a decent actor.