Match Director's Blog

मैच news 2009

2009-05-28T23:03:00.002-05:00

More (true) stories from the wild world of commercial production.

Scene 1 - Overheard on set

ACTOR: I was at Sly Stallone's house last night.
ACTOR 2: Yeah, you were a caterer at Sly Stallone's house last night.
ACTOR: At least I was at his house.
ACTOR 2: SERVING HIM DINNER!

Scene 2 - Overheard in Make-Up

MAKE-UP: A girlfriend of mine made a lot of money selling her panties on craigslist.
ACTOR: What do you mean?
MAKE-UP: I mean every day for a month, she would take her panties off at the end of the day, and put them in an envelope.
ACTOR: No.
MAKE-UP: And mail them.
ACTOR: No way! That's disgusting! (pause) How much money can you make doing something like that?
MAKE-UP: A lot.

Scene 3 - On set

1ST AD: Can you come dust off this guy's feet?
MAKE-UP: I don't dust feet!
1ST AD: You need to dust off his feet.
MAKE-UP: Well I'm not going to.
1ST AD: Well it's your job.

Scene 4 - In Holding

PA: So this is a Vick's commercial.
ACTOR: Yeah. Nyquil.
PA: And in the commercial, you... what do you do?
ACTOR: I sleep.
PA: (who has been up since 4:00 in the morning) That sounds like a good job.
ACTOR: It is.
PA: What was the audition like?
ACTOR: It was like, 'OK, lie there, and sleep. OK, now twitch your finger. Not so much. Good. Now drool.'
PA: Wow.
ACTOR: Yeah, I nailed it. (pulling on his sleep-mask) Hoping this thing goes national.

OTHER NEWS
The 48 Hour Film Project starts tomorrow, with 63 New York teams working through an adrenaline and coffee-fueled weekend to turn in their Scorsese-esque masterpieces on Sunday afternoon. If you're in the East Village, come join us for the drop - off party

DROP OFF EVENT
Sunday, May 31, 2009, 6:30-9:30p.m.
Village Pourhouse - East Village
64 Third Avenue at 11th Street
NYC 10003

Films will be screened on June 5, 6, 7 at NYU's Cantor Film Center.

AND FINALLY
Yours truly will be on NPR tomorrow at 11:55am-12 noon ET on the The
Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, the NYC NPR affiliate. You can listen live online at www.wnyc.org

Imma be on the radio, byatches! For five whole minutes! I spent a half an hour today thinking about what I should wear. I asked my friend about it and he said, 'It's the radio, jackass' so, Garfield pajamas.

David

२००९ Update

2009-04-22T23:00:00.001-05:00

Stories from the wild world of commercial production.

Scene 1 - Overheard on walkie talkie:

1ST AD: Can you bring Pete to set?
2ND AD: Which Pete?
1ST AD: Pete to set, please.
2ND AD: Which Pete?
1ST AD: Um, hold on. OK, Pete S.
2ND AD: Which Pete S?
1ST AD: Bob, just bring him.
2ND AD: Bring who? Which one?
1ST AD: How many Pete S's-
2ND AD: There are three!

Scene 2 - Overheard at the craft-services table:

ACTOR: I'm gonna be RICH!
ACTOR 2: No, you're not gonna make shit, because you waived your residuals.
ACTOR: What does that mean?
ACTOR 2: It means you're not gonna make shit.

Scene 3 - Witnessed on set - a narrative

Place: Outdoor corporate plaza in Westchester.
Time: Early morning

The whole shot is this insert shot of a spilled coffee cup on the sidewalk. That's the shot - the spilled coffee, the coffee cup, and a guy's shoes - that's all we're going to see, so we're waiting for the actor to get the right shoes on. Now, the Art Department has spent an hour and a half on the coffee cup and the spilled coffee, but we need the shoes to complete the mise-en-scene, so we're set up, thirty people standing around, waiting for the actor to get out of wardrobe, staring at this coffee cup, and we're all very proud of how good it looks, how artistic, how REAL.

In walks the park janitor. He stops. He takes in the scene. He sees all of us, sees the coffee cup, looks at all of us again, looks back at the coffee cup. He rolls his eyes, and you can almost hear him thinking out loud. 'I mean, I know I'm the janitor, but are you people really that helpless? It's one coffee cup. NONE OF YOU knows what to do? NOT ONE OF YOU is willing to get his hands dirty? Do I have to do EVERYTHING? Fine, I'll clean it up. If y'all are just that BAFFLED, if you're just that HELPLESS, I'll pick up the stupid coffee cup.

The janitor makes his move.

Poor guy didn't stand a chance. Thirty people said, all at once, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa!' and six people instinctively stepped into his path, to block his movement, to physically restrain him if necessary, to prevent him from touching anything.

As they're carrying him off, he's shouting it's his job to keep the plaza clean, and "The coffee's not even HOT any more!"

Funniest thing I saw all day.

But I digress...

Some of you know I'm producing the 48 Hour Film Project in New York this year - it's a great project - I've done it six times as a director/actor etc and it's a great creative experience - really gets the juices flowing. It's a mad, mad weekend, but at that cast party is the most well-deserved beer you will ever drink.

Details below:

Registration is now open for the New York 48HFP, the first and biggest timed film competition in the world
May 29-31, 2009
http://www.48hourfilm.com/newyork

Make A Film in 48 Hours!

The 48 Hour Film Project brings filmmaking teams together to make a movie from scratch. Each completed film is guaranteed a big-screen screening in front of a full audience at NYU's Cantor Film Center.

To be part of the 48HFP, you must register online at:
http://www.48hourfilm.com/newyork/

The winning New York team will compete against other films to represent New York at the 48 Hour Film Project's Filmapalooza – our international screening and awards event. This year Filmapalooza is at the NAB Show in Las Vegas in April, 2010. International winners screen at Cannes.

Entry in the project is first come, first served, and last year we had to turn folks away, so enter today!
http://www.48hourfilm.com/newyork/

Questions? Email New York Producer David Stott at newyork@48hourfilm.com
We look forward to seeing you.
Happy spring,

David

Dave Weighs in on The Clone Wars, Now That It's Too Late

2009-01-17T13:01:00.007-05:00

In sheer story-telling terms, maybe the Clone Wars are best left in the past. Unexplored. Undisturbed. As a piece of dark history, a reference to former greatness, the Clone Wars were fascinating.

PRINCESS LEIA: Years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars.
DAVE: Cool. I wonder what that's all about?

As a flesh and blood prequel, tv show, book, video game and screensaver, the Clone Wars are crap. Maybe it’s just the execution – we'll never know - it never had a chance to stay in the dark because of the big mega-load shit-ton of money to be made. How long can the precepts of story resist that kind of cash? Current estimates put the value of the Star Wars franchise at a skillion dollars. What human being could resist?

Hence Jar-Jar.

A Holiday Story

2009-01-10T15:11:00.003-05:00

I had a busy fall. I spent a month on Martha's Vineyard in a cottage with no heat, working days on an indy horror movie, holding the boom pole over my head, watching the director shout instructions like "Fear! Fear! Panic! Scream! Smile! You suck! Your boyfriend's dying!" then I came back to the city to resume my work in tv and commercial production, which consists largely of driving the director around the city until 4 in the morning, from bar to bar, so he can play his guitar in front of a live audience. Oh yes. 4 a.m. I also bought him socks.

But the best story I've heard on set this season was told to me by a fellow PA named Kevin. Kevin works in production for the money, has no aspirations to direct, and in fact does the job only to pay the rent and to afford an occasional night out with his girlfriend. Kevin is an imposing figure, 6'3", 250. Heart of gold, but very no-nonsense. In his own words:

KEVIN: So I'm working this job, and the Production Coordinator comes up to me and says, 'Kevin, you have to walk this dog. It's the agency dog. The client is very adamant that the dog gets walked five times a day. It needs to be walked now.' I look at her and I say 'fine.' I figure, I'll take a break, walk the dog around the block, visit the park, have a smoke, take my time, no problem.

'And,' the Coordinator says, 'you have to pick up it's crap.'

DAVID: And?

KEVIN: And I said 'I'm not doing that.' And she says 'You have to do it. It's the law.'

DAVID: So? Did you do it?

KEVIN: I didn't. And here's why. If I pick up that dog's crap, I will be known for the rest of my life as 'the guy who is willing to pick up that dog's crap.' I am not that guy. Not for a dog that I don't know personally. If it was my dog, fine, that's the law in New York, you pick up after your dog, but I'm not picking up this spoiled puppy's doo doo, I don't want to be that guy.

DAVID: I don't blame you.

KEVIN: But that wasn't the best part. The best part was this other PA wannabe director was standing right behind me, the words weren't even out of my mouth, when he jumps in with 'I'll do it!' and goes off and happily picks up the agency dog's crap for the rest of the afternoon.

DAVID: No kidding.

KEVIN: They will always ask you to do something terrible, and the terribleness will expand exponentially until you draw the line. You draw the line too early, you're out of a job. You draw it too late, you have no soul left. Balance, Dave. It's the only way.

HOW TO MAKE A FILM IN 48 HOURS

2008-06-26T00:53:00.000-05:00

WEEKS LEADING UP TO 48HFP

Dave: Well, our girlfriends dumped us, our best friends moved to California and the four editors we know are all busy that weekend. Should we do it anyway?
Kyle: Who's going to write?
Dave: I can write.
Kyle: Shoot?
Dave: Me.
Kyle: Edit?
Dave: Can't your new girlfriend edit?
Kyle: She does it professionally.
Dave: Great.
Kyle: She'll be twirling fire at a rock concert that weekend.
Dave: Oh.

WEDNESDAY – 2 days before the contest

Kyle: Are we going to meet to talk about this stuff?
David: I’m playing StarFox.

THURSDAY – the day before the contest

Kyle: Are we going to meet?
David: Later.
Kyle: We're running out of time, aren't we?
David: The Land Master isn’t going to pilot itself, Kyle!

FRIDAY - ONE HOUR BEFORE THE CONTEST STARTS:

Kyle: Should we meet?
David: Probably. Dr. Andross wants to rule the Lylat system, but he just doesn’t have the resume or the political experience to head up such a diverse- Star Wolf, you cock!!! (throws the video controller across the room, pause) What should our movie be about?

FRIDAY - ON THE TRAIN TO THE KICKOFF EVENT

Kyle: You know what movie is really good? Oceans 12.
David: I think we should shoot the whole thing in the subway. That way we won't have to light anything and we might finish early.
Kyle: Shoot on the subway? Isn't that illegal?
Dave: No.
Kyle: Are you sure? You hesitated.
Dave: It’s not illegal as long as you don't put down a tripod.
Kyle: I'm pretty sure it's illegal.
David: Hey, I got a call from the organizers. A camera crew is going to be doing behind the scenes work. They might follow us around.
Kyle: Won’t they get in the way?
David: Probably.

FRIDAY - AT THE KICKOFF EVENT

The guy shooting behind the scenes footage is practically begging for volunteer teams.

GUY: Can you help us out? Please? We really need people.
Dave: Sure.
GUY: Awesome. (turns on camera) So, what makes your team so special that we should follow you around?

LATER

David: Like he’s doing us some big favor.
Kyle: What’d you say?
David: I said I didn’t have an answer to that question.
Kyle: Well I talked to Luis. He said it’s definitely illegal to shoot in the subway.
Dave: He's just saying that.

LATER - SIX FORTY FIVE

Kyle pulls ‘Suspense/Thriller’ genre out of the hat

David: Perfect – we can do our Oceans 11 on a subway type thing.
Kyle: If it were legal to shoot in the subway, which it isn’t.
David: Who are you going to listen to? Me or Luis?
Kyle: Well, Luis is older, and he knows more.
David: Oh.

SEVEN O’CLOCK

Character, Prop and dialogue are announced:

Character: Thomas Ellison, a former attorney
Prop: A string instrument
Dialogue: “I cancelled my plans for this.”

EIGHT O’CLOCK

Kyle and David meet up with Ryan. They spend the next six hours hashing out an outline. All agree the scenes should be improvised.

MIDNIGHT

Script is done. All go home to toss and turn.

SATURDAY
EIGHT IN THE MORNING

Cast and crew assemble. Lots of new faces. Ryan Homchick, fresh off ‘The Seagull’ with Diane Wiest and Alan Cumming, is quite an actor.

Bianca Marroquin, fresh off a starring role on Broadway (Roxie Hart in CHICAGO) is quite an actor.

Ruben Flores, good friend of Bianca’s. Astonishing comic chops.

Brian Athey, ‘The New Kid.’ Extraordinary musician. Even better than Kyle on the guitar.

Michael Lane, neighborhood chum. Couldn’t be more likeable if he tried.

TEN IN THE MORNING

David: OK, everybody. We’re going to shoot all of this on the subway. Don’t worry. If the police come, I will handle it. Thanks for trusting me, LUIS. But first we’re going to rehearse in the park.
Luis: What are you going to say to the police? What if they take our tapes?
David: Are you the director?

ELEVEN IN THE MORNING
Shooting in the park, ‘rehearsing.’

TWELVE NOON
Shooting in the park, ‘rehearsing.’

ONE IN THE AFTERNOON
Shooting in the park, ‘rehearsing.’

Kyle: Maybe we should just use this footage.
David: I don’t know, I really wanted to do this scene in the subway.
Luis: So we could reshoot the last three hours of stuff, or spend the extra time editing.
David: OK, everybody, that’s lunch.

THREE UNTIL TEN IN THE EVENING
Shooting goes really, really smoothly. Very little time is spent on the train.

NINE IN THE EVENING

Luis: Kyle, look. In David's room, there are 18 cords plugged into one socket by a clever system of surge protectors. David has also plugged two additional 1K lights into the same socket. (Pause) He expressed some surprise when the fuse blew.
David: (entering) Can you believe this?
Roommate Sarah: The way our apartment is configured, the breaker box is not in our apartment, but the basement apartment, where the box is hidden behind the neighbors’ refrigerator.
David: Cool. Can we get them to open the box?
Sarah: Well, their English is poor and they don't know how a breaker box works, much less that their fridge is concealing it. And they might be unenthusiastic about inviting strangers into their home at 11 at night.
David: Oh.
Kyle: What are you going to do? You have to start editing.

David powers his editing suite by running an extension cord from the kitchen into his room.

Luis: Good solution. Great thinking. I’m going home. I’ll be back at seven in the morning. You must lock picture by seven in the morning.
David: Piece of cake. Why don’t you give me a challenge?
Luis: It’s illegal to shoot in the subway.
David: You’re just saying that.

ELEVEN AT NIGHT
Dave and Kyle, Editing.

TWELVE AT NIGHT
Dave and Kyle, Editing.

ONE IN THE MORNING
Dave and Kyle, Editing.

TWO IN THE MORNING
Dave and Kyle, Editing.

TWO THIRTY IN THE MORNING
An actor who shall remain nameless drinks a bottle of tequila.

Michael Lane (aka Drunk Actor): Can I watch?
David: Watch the extension cord.
Michael Lane: Huh?

Michael Lane trips over the extension cord.
All three computer screens go dark. The hard drives power down. The CPUs power down.
Kyle and David stare at the screens, willing them back to life.

Michael Lane (aka Actor Who Drunk Too Much): Whoops.

THREE IN THE MORNING
Dave and Kyle, crying.

FOUR IN THE MORNING
Still crying.

FIVE IN THE MORNING
Still editing.

SIX IN THE MORNING

David calls Luis.

Luis: You’re done already?
David: Sort of.
Luis: What happened.
David: Well, the movie needs to be three minutes long.
Luis: How long is it.
David: It’s longer than three minutes
Luis: How long is it?
David: The movie is forty-five minutes long.
Luis: So cut forty-two minutes.
David: So, I don’t want to let you down, or Bianca or Brian or Ruben or Ryan, or the other guy who worked so hard yesterday-
Luis: Kyle?
David: Is that his name? Yeah. I just can’t do it anymore. I haven’t slept – I can’t see straight – I got it down from 180 minutes to 45 minutes.
Luis: You have an hour to cut forty-two minutes out of the movie.
David: I’m going to sleep forever. Good bye.
Luis: Pack up your stuff. We’re coming to get you.

NINE IN THE MORNING

Brian and Luis arrive and carry David on a gurney to the car.

TEN IN THE MORNING, LUIS’S HOUSE, NEW JERSEY

Luis: So, let's see, how do you edit? Are these the right buttons? Oh yes, I remember. Let's see, we can cut this out, and this out, and this.
David: I'm awake.
Luis: We don’t need this shot, or this shot, or this shot.
David: I don’t think all of us need to sit here and watch you edit.
Luis: And this, and this.
David: You guys can do music for the opening, can’t you? And I can work on this.
Luis: But you’re so tired.
David: I hate you.
Luis: You should rest. (pause) You’re going to thank me for this.
David: This really isn’t funny.

THE NEXT NINE HOURS…

are a blur. Cuts are made, music is composed, more edits are made, DVDs and data DVDs are burned, we send Brian off to the train with the DVD. He almost misses the train. Kyle, Luis, Bianca, David and the guy who filmed us all weekend pile into the car at 6:15. Luis drives like a madman towards Manhattan. The Holland Tunnel is closed except for one lane. The clock is ticking. We get into Manhattan. Canal street is completely clogged. Brian calls from the drop off spot, Fontana’s (a bar).

Brian: (on phone) I turned in the DVD, but she says we have to have all the paperwork here, too. In the next eight minutes.
David: We have the paperwork here. The traffic is terrible.
Kyle: What a shame.
David: Hey Kyle.
Kyle: What?
David: You are the smartest, funniest, most talented person I know. I really admire you.
Kyle: What do you want?
David: You’re also in the best shape.
Kyle: So?
David: So how long will it take you to run the last ten blocks to the bar?
Kyle: (pulling on his running shoes) In this traffic?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Kyle saved the day.

Now you can make ours.

WE ARE IN SCREENING GROUP D

Our screening will take place Thursday, June 26th, 9pm
Place: Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema, 143 E. Houston St., New York, NY
Notes: Tickets can be purchased at the door half an hour before the first screening. Tickets will sell out, so be sure to get yours early.

Here's the link. Tickets are $10.

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/tickets/

Hope you can make it --

David and the Match Crew

David J. Stott
Match Production Team
david@matchproductions.com
917.596.4155

BACK IN THE CITY

2008-03-19T16:16:00.000-05:00

(this post rated R for language)

At the end of February I returned to the city after a three month break in Richmond, VA. There were some highlights - Bucka Watson went a 55.66 in the 100 fly, I got to know my nieces, I got to visit with my brothers and my family. I got to see a number of old friends I hadn't seen in a while.

The hard part was that my brothers are doing great. Big houses, nice cars, loving spouses. While I was home I was living in my mom's basement (to the delight of some of the swimmers I coached) and was preparing to move back to New York without any job prospects.

But the big city is where the art is, so I went back, and now I'm here, and it's a good fit. My little production company has just enough clients that I can pay the rent, and I'm working hard.

One of the first things I did when I returned to the city was I called or emailed everyone I knew, trying to reconnect with old friends. I found a new place to live, my new roommates are great, and last week I was fortunate enough to have dinner in New Jersey with some good friends, and Ciaran Hinds was there. Ciaran played Julius Caesar in HBO's series, ROME. I am an enormous fan of the series, so I didn't say much during dinner (I listened). But after the evening was over, we were getting a ride back to New York from our gracious host, and I asked Mr. Hinds what the best part of being on the show was. I figured, I tell people I had dinner with Julius Caesar, I ought to have a story to tell.

His story was a good one. He was in the middle of this multimillion dollar production and during one scene, his character, Caesar, has a seizure.

CIARAN: The director said to me, 'do whatever you want, but stay in the light' because they had set up some lights for me that were supposed to be on me at all times. If they weren't on me, you couldn't see me, and the shot would be ruined.
DAVID: OK.
CIARAN: I said to the director, 'My eyes are closed.'
'I know,' the director said. 'Just stay in the light.' So I'm supposed to have do this with my eyes closed, and act, and be spontaneous, and HAVE A FUCKING SEIZURE, and at the same time, I'm supposed to stay in the light. A few inches this way or that and I'll ruin the shot.
DAVID: (breathlessly hanging onto every word) What did you do?
CIARAN: One of the actors I worked with, simply put out his hands, cradled my head, and said 'I've got you, guv.'

Ciaran worked on Rome for six months. 100 million dollars were spent capturing his portrayal of Caesar. And that was what he remembered: an act of kindness in the middle of all the craziness.

Pretty cool.

The next day, I got up at 4:30 a.m. to work on a McDonald's commercial, and I was proud to be in show business, a business with such a rich and historic heritage, where such moments of kindness can be found daily amongst the daily barbarity of life.

I say it was barbaric because I was working on a fucking McDonald's commercial, trying to get people to stop walking down the street in the middle of Chelsea. Now, you ask people nicely, and explain you're filming, and you're trying to get a shot off, and some of them will hear you out, and graciously slow down. But when they hear it's for McDonald's, they tell you to go fuck yourself and stomp you in the face with their steel-toed shitkickers.

If you've PA'd and tried to lock up a set before, you know what I'm talking about. Legally we are not allowed to stop anybody from walking down the sidewalk. It's a public sidewalk. Our job, however, is to persuade people, as politely as we are able, to please hold up for the next thirty seconds so we can get the shot off without a bunch of random people walking through the shot.

Go ahead. Try to convince an angry half-blind 80 year-old Polish woman to please not walk her dog through the middle of the McDonald's commercial. When you realize after repeating yourself six times that she doesn't speak English and wouldn't care even if she did, well, then you're in the club.

Conclusion: some days you're the king, some days you're the serf.

P.S. On set the next day I was in charge of ice. My job was to stop it from melting. Sweet.

Why The Da Vinci Code Sucked

2007-11-07T23:52:00.000-05:00

1. Tom Hanks’s ludicrous haircut.
2. Tom Hanks and Amelie had no chemistry at ALL.
3. Tom Hanks and Amelie had no opportunity to establish any chemistry. The movie starts and immediately we’re off to the codebooks.
4. Paul Bettany is poorly cast. He flagellates himself convincingly, but he isn’t scary. A meathead should’ve played that part.
5. Alfred Molina’s costume was hilarious. Hi-larious. Nobody cared when he got shot. We were all like, ‘good, you deserve it for dressing like an asshole. (yawns) Maybe the movie will end soon.’

But the biggest problem the movie had was a little thing we like to call exposition. Once upon a time I moved to New York. Once upon a time I did some acting. Once upon a time I learned from an acting teacher (who was a boor and had no bedside manner whatsoever), three very valuable lessons. One, don’t talk on the phone onstage. The phone should not ever be allowed to be more important than the action on stage, the action that is taking place between two human beings onstage at this very moment. This is why we go to see live theatre, to see two people trying to get along and failing. Onstage. Right in front of us.
2. All you can do is go after what you want. You can’t pretend to be sad, or glad, or mad, or pretend to have a limp, or a lisp, or a Southern accent, all you can do is BE the guy (or girl). BE there. Show up for the scene.
Number 3, exposition is for assholes. You’ve all seen exposition in a bad movie or play or in the Da Vinci Code. Books can get away with it – in books sometimes you look forward to it – when Dumbledore finally explains what the fuck is going on, we welcome it. I ‘m not sure why it works in books, perhaps a topic for another essay, but it works in books.
It does not work in theatre. It does not work in film, it does not work in Da Vinci Code, The Movie.
What is exposition, exactly? Exposition is the ham-handed introduction of information into the story or situation that the audience does not give one single crap about. Example: If, in the middle of his monologue, Hamlet said, "To be, or not to be. That is the question. I like lima beans. Also, I can remember the time when my cat Mittens got stuck up a tree. Plus, I like whales."
These questions all fail the 'Who Cares?' Test. Who cares? Nobody.
Tom Hanks expositioned himself through this entire movie, and the blame for this should be laid at the feet of Akiva Goldsman.
Horrible Exposition: "So then the knights templar gathered up the jedi knights and slaughtered them, executing Executive Order 66, which the emperor had dreamed up long ago, in preparation for this very day, should it ever become necessary. Plus, I like whales."
Better: "You can’t say that with perfect certainty, Teabing, because you’re forgetting this other piece of scholarship."

See, it almost works when Tom Hanks and Ian McKellen argue out the exposition, because it gives the actors something to do besides feed us information. The great Suzanne Shepherd (Karen’s Mom in Goodfellas) once told me, 'we do not pay you to give us information. We pay you to tell us a story. We pay you to have an opinion about the things that are coming out of your mouth.' So when Tom Hanks gives us all this shit about the Knights Templar and it’s academic, and he doesn’t care, then we don’t care. I know he has to say it to advance the plot, but the man who wrote A Beautiful Mind ought to be able to figure out a better way to do this. Shame on you, Mr. Goldsman. Shame on you, Ron Howard, for letting him get away with it. Shame on you, Mr. Hanks, for letting them get away with it.
Shame on you all. These are basic lessons that I learned within a year of moving to New York. Tom effing Hanks and Ron effing Howard should have memorized this rule – it should be obvious to them. They are Masters. They are afforded the mind-numbingly awesome privilege of getting to tell stories in the grandest way humanity has ever devised. All the time, 24/7. I do it part-time. I’m a dilettante. I do it on nights and weekends, and I know better.

Disclaimer. Making movies is hard. Trashing movies is easy. Making a movie takes years of planning and financing and a dedicated team of hundreds to produce. Trashing a movie requires a pencil and a bad attitude. Everyone I wrote about here is more accomplished than me. But they should know better.

P.S. What also sucked – at the beginning, Mr. Hanks is giving a speech, and he asks for answers from the crowd: no crowd in the history of crowds has ever given answers as fast as that crowd did. Crowds take some time warming up to you, especially when they're reacting to questions posed by a known expert. Take some time, Ron Howard, establish the scene. Make it real. Real recognizes real.

Be a Movie Star!

2007-11-05T17:59:00.000-05:00

Ever want to be that guy that walks towards the camera, confident, cocky, utterly unperturbed as a building blows up behind him?
Perhaps you’d like to be that funny, comedic, perfectly casual guy who spouts off a hilarious one-liner right before a building blows up behind him?
Perhaps you’d like to blow up a building?
Thanks to Match Productions' ‘Repeatable Explosions Technology,’ you too can go be on a 'real' studio lot, with a 'real' building and a 'real' gas-ball explosion, just like the one Bruce Willis jumped in front of in Die Hard 1 - yeah, the one where he jumped off that building named after that Japanese warrior or something, and it blew up right behind him!
We’ll send the limo to pick you up, let you camp out in a movie trailer while we do your make-up, and even have a few fans on hand to bug you for autographs before your big scene. Then the cameras roll (only the best for you, my friend – we use 70mm film to capture your great moment) you’ll blow some shit up, maybe say something witty, and then go get high on speedballs in the Viper Room! Yeah!
You get 3 days and 2 nights at the Four Seasons Hollywood, five-star accommodations all weekend long, plus liveried limousine service and Zagat-rated catering. Price: $100,000. Couples packages also available.

Why We PA

2007-10-24T21:18:00.000-05:00

We just want to be a part of something that people will see. That’s why we take shitty jobs as PAs on the set of a Snickers commercial. “I worked on that” we say to each other. Or, if you’re an actor, “I read for that.” In associating ourselves with a commercial about a candy bar, we are simply trying to matter. We simply want to participate in something that people have heard of. We, like everyone else, want to be thought well of, and we want our parents to think that we’re doing OK at upholding the family name. I call my Dad whenever I’m on the ESPN set and Jim Kelly walks by. I tend not to call when I bomb thirty auditions in a row. They only notice when you nail one, anyway. “I loved the A&E spot! LOL!” is what I hear from my friends. But the A&E spot isn’t enough. I’ve been in NYC almost five years, and that’s all the tape I got – the rest is indie junk you've never heard of, and never will. And I only got A&E because I knew the director. Sure, maybe I was even ‘great in it’ (your words, not mine) but that was one day of work after five years of trying. What about all the other days I’m sitting here making things people are never going to see? Or the days I’m sitting here making nothing at all? It wears on you. I was lucky to get A&E. It’s all f***ed up.

We are participating and enabling these shitty projects and harmful commercials, perpetuating the evils of the west so that we can one day be in control of them. When we are in control we will either make family films or Girls Gone Wild, and you know what? They pay about the same. Girls Gone Wild probably pays more. Why do you people buy this crap? You hate Simon Cowell but you ALWAYS tune in to see him. What kind of message are you sending us?

When You're 18: Transformers vs. Gobots

2007-08-24T21:09:00.000-05:00

When you’re 18, you have no idea how difficult it is to contribute to popular culture. You are simply a consumer – that’s all you’ve been your entire life (your summer working at Baskin Robbins notwithstanding). I remember in college mustering healthy amounts of disdain for my writing teachers who had ‘failed to make it’ and who were making their livings by teaching instead of going on book tours and selling book rights to their novels for gobs of money. Oh no. Not me. Not gonna happen to me. I wasn’t going to settle for mediocrity like they had. At the time, my goal was to write a book a year, and I did, more or less, during my college years – I finished my third novel in the winter of 95.

I went to grad school right after college and my disdain for my superiors grew. When they didn’t like my writing they ‘didn’t get it’ and I quickly decided it was difficult being the smartest one in the room. I had heard that geniuses were often misunderstood, but here was proof. I was used to it, sure – I had been a highly successful student, all A’s in my creative writing classes and the fact that I put stock in those grades was proof that I was woefully ill-prepared for a life in the arts.

When you are 18, you are consuming more popular culture than you will ever have time to again. I bought hundreds of CDs with my paychecks working at the golf course, I was reading 50+ books a year, I was watching movies every weekend, every night during the summer, and endlessly I would discuss with my friends what song/band/movie/TV show was cool and what wasn’t. In fact, we were so convinced of our 18 year-old opinions that I wouldn’t even call them discussions, since most them sounded something like this.

ME: Transformers are awesome.
DANNY: Yeah, dude. So are Gobots.
ME: Oh my God. You like Gobots? You’re a fag.

‘You’re a fag,’ or ‘you’re a retard’ were phrases that often ended our artistic conversations.

I think about Transformers vs. Gobots now, in the wake of the release of the Transformers movie. Transformers were then, as now, the superior of the two products – they had better characters, better toys, better cartoons and we happily made fun of anybody (see above) who took the position that Gobots were the superior race of shape-changing automatons. I think about it now, and all I know is that both franchises made lots of money. Gobots weren’t as popular, but they were popular enough to keep thousands of people employed to manufacture, market, produce and sell a line of cheap Hasbro toysand a weekly television show. What I would give to be Executive Producer on one of the shittiest cartoons in the history of Saturday morning.

At least it got made. At least it saw the light of day.

ITVF RED CARPET

2007-08-02T22:23:00.001-05:00

(l-r) Annah Boyer, David Stott, Shannon Chirone, Michael Schreiber, Brooke Chirone, Katie Schneller, Bob Schreiber.

THE MATCH TEAM GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

2007-08-02T22:18:00.000-05:00

So, everything you’ve heard about LA is true. All the girls are skinny and ‘beautiful’, the sun is always shining, most of the people are fake. Well, I don’t know if fake is the right word, but in LA you will be rewarded more for the appearance of success than anything resembling, I don’t know, loyalty? Once in a while you will be required to back up the appearance of success with tangible results, but since nobody knows anything, everybody gravitates towards the people who look like they have it all figured out. Make sense?

Last Wednesday, with great trepidation I prepared for my first LA meeting at The Orlando Hotel. I sweated everything, what to wear, how early to get there, what I would drive... And once I got there, what was my strategy? Would I hang back and listen until I was up to speed on the game, or would I charge into the fray, spitting business cards and HOT4TEACHER postcards?

I Google-mapped The Orlando, left twenty minutes early, drove across town, my mind racing. I arrived, found parking near the hotel, stepped up to the doorman wondering if I should have rented a Ferrarri to make my grand entrance. Yeah, that actually crossed my mind.

The doorman opened the door for me. I made my way to the reception desk. I was smooth. “Hi. I’m here for ITVF.”
“Who?” the lady at reception said.
“ITVF.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“The Independent Television Festival,” I said. “The PilotMaker Luncheon?”
“Oh, that,” she said. “It was cancelled. Like an hour ago.”
“Oh,” I said.
She paused. “Welcome to LA.”

My friend Shane (who very generously let us crash on his floor for the week) put it this way: it’s a sunny town for lots of shady people.

Which is not to say we didn’t meet a lot of stand up folks. It’s just that EVERYONE is in the film/tv biz. If you go to a party, eight out of ten of us are writer/directors. The ninth is a producer who just got into writing/directing, and the tenth is stoned.

TOP 5 TRIP HIGHLIGHTS:

#5 At the UNC-Hollywood cocktail party we saw Eva Marie Saint and met the director of The Break Up and the Chairman of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
#4 At Friday’s red carpet we saw Nicholas Cage’s son and wife (ex-wife)? Rumor has it the red carpet was for Nick, but he didn’t show. (We asked the photographers to get some pictures of the Hot for Teacher cast. They kindly obliged.)
#3 Saturday we got a pitch meeting with one of the execs at Current TV (Al Gore’s TV channel). We pitched them a show about the NYC off-off Broadway scene which they liked (and may buy.)
#2 We learned how to be TV executives: Take lots of meetings. If Steven Spielberg comes in and pitches you a show about mud, you say yes. Because if you don’t, and it’s a hit, your boss says, ‘Steven Spielberg brings you mud, and you say “no”?’
And if you say ‘yes’, and it’s not a hit, you can always say, ‘what, I’m gonna say no to Steven Spielberg?’

And our number one trip highlight:

HOT FOR TEACHER star Michael Schreiber arrives at the Saturday night screening whacked out on Pseudophed. Michael borrows my festival pass (retail value $150) to grab a drink at the bar. On his way back ‘a cute girl who looked like Penelope Cruz’ asks if she can borrow his pass for a second. He says yes. He hands it to her. She puts it around her neck. We never see her again.

Welcome to LA.

We had a great trip, did lots of networking, and we’re glad to be home. HOT FOR TEACHER will be screening in New York City on Thursday, August 30, at 8 p.m. And in Richmond, VA either on September 15 or 22 at The Byrd Theatre, late afternoon. Hope to see you soon.

GOOD NEWS - ITVF

2007-08-02T22:17:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends of The Match,

Hello, hello! It's been awhile! A number of you have been asking for news about the Match, the Match premiere, life in general. We must confess we've been waiting for a bit of good news. After some dark winter months (more on that later) we do have some exciting news to share. The pilot we shot in Richmond last summer has been chosen as an official selection of the 2nd annual Independent Television Festival presented by Comcast (www.itvfest.org). The festival will take place in Los Angeles at Raleigh Studios July 27-29th. The Match Team is going to LA!

We had over 100 people contribute time, energy and hard-earned cash to the production and we'd like to thank you all again for your support.

We are hard at work nailing down the time and place for the Richmond and New York screenings (really!). It's looking like September will be a good month - people will be back from out of town trips and the smell of school supplies, back to school sales and number 2 pencils will be in the air.

We'll have a new and improved website in July - check out www.matchproductions.com after July 15.

Thanks for your patience! Go Match!

Warm Regards,

The Match Team
Brooke, Katie, David, Gladys and Karen

www.matchproductions.com

INTERNS shoot

2007-06-04T20:06:00.003-05:00

With blistering speed, 5 Guys + 5 Gals Productions polished off a dandy of a
pilot shoot in two short days. Highlights included a room full of Bubble
Fun chewing hotties, Bob telling me that 'I was a pretty good DA, but it
would take some time before I got up to his level' and Sri flashing Kyle,
twice.

And the Oscar Goes To:

ANNAH, for securing our location and helping out with the building guys.

DAVID: (to building guy) Do I need to sign anything?
BUILDING GUY: Yes. Here.

(BUILDING GUY hands David a binder full of permission and insurance forms)

ANNAH: Do you need me to sign anything?
BUILDING GUY: This isn't my real job, you know.

And the Oscar Goes To:

MICHAEL, for getting up at 4 a.m. or something to make it to Saturday's
shoot.

MICHAEL: Boy, I'm tired. Are we done yet?
DAVID: No, we still have to shoot all the shots you're in, and everyone's
staying late to accommodate your schedule.
MIKE: Oh. (pause) Thanks, Luis.

And the Oscar Goes To:

KYLE, for bringing Netta.

KYLE: Can I see your boobs? I haven't been laid in a really long time.
SRI: Sure. (flashes him)
KYLE: I love you.
SRI: You should.

And the Oscar Goes To:

KATIE, for being with us despite a bout of Rheumatic Fever.

SHANNON: Katie, can you be in this scene?
KATIE: No - I can't act.
SHANNON: You can't act frustrated? You're a stage manager.
KATIE: Oh right.

And the Oscar Goes To:

BEN, for finding a place to buy a camo hat, on a Saturday, in six seconds
flat

DAVID: So, you'll be in a room full of hot chicks, taking pictures of them,
and they all want you.
BEN: Hmm. OK. I can do that.

And the Oscar Goes To:

LUIS, for putting up with the rest of us.

LUIS: Can I help out with THE INTERN shoot?
DAVID: I don't know. Do you have any sound equipment?
LUIS: (drives up in a Jeep filled with his stuff)
DAVID: Oh. (pause) Sweet.
BOB: You're much more laid back than Glen. And much more Mexican.

And the Oscar Goes To:

BROOKE, for doing a thousand little things I didn't see, and for throwing a
hell of a wrap party

BROOKE: I know it's last minute, but everyone's coming over tonight.
MICK: Cool.
BROOKE: We'll probably watch the dailies for six hours.
MICK: Cool.
BROOKE: And you have to cook hamburgers in the rain.
MICK: (long, long pause) Cool.

(Props to Mick for being such a great host.)

And the Oscar Goes To:

SHANNON, for co-writing, co-producing, and for talking me out of my
super-stupid 'white on white' production/costume design

DAVID: Sweetie? I'll be gone for two hours in the middle of everything on
Sunday.
SHANNON: Good.

Later,

DAVID: How'd it go?
SHANNON: Much smoother after you left.
LUIS: Much, much smoother.
BOB: You left?

And the Oscar Goes To:

BOB, for knocking the tampons out of Kyle's hands, PRECISELY onto the desk.

BOB: I'm a little worried.
DAVID: Why?
BOB: Now that I'm running the camera, this scene is going to look better
than everything you shot.
DAVID: I'll risk it.
BOB: (to all) OK PEOPLE - LET'S GO - TIME IS MONEY - WE'RE PUNCHING OUT.
SHANNON: In.
BOB: WE'RE PUNCHING IN. (to Shannon) What's that mean?

Good times, my friends. Next up will be 48HR, June 15 (Friday) to June 17
(Sunday). Look for an email soon about our pre-meeting. Until then.

D

Scene 47

2006-10-29T10:58:00.000-05:00

The pilot epsiode (including 'next week on the Match') is 52 scenes. Some of those are a single shot, others are 3 pages long. Of the 52 scenes, 51 were shot in Richmond this summer. The remaing scene is a critical one, scene 47, wherein we learn why Mr. Thompson left his law practice.

The challenge - shoot outside an NYC courthouse, arguably one of the most famous halls of justice in the world, and shoot the scene in post 9-11 NYC when city security is at its height, without getting a permit.

No big deal, right? People do it all the time.

Still, the idea of the cops showing up and confiscating our camera halfway through the shoot,gives me nightmares. It keeps me up most of the night before we attempt our little guerilla filmmaking black-op mission.

Our plan was simple: rehearse ahead of time, hide the camera, and pretend the cast and crew don't know each other. So we'll act out the scene without revealing the camera to get a master shot, and then (and this moment is critical,) we'll break cover, reveal the boom pole to the world and run the scene five times in a row without stopping to get all the coverage we need. Hopefully we'll be gone before the cops can mobilize.

After all, if you 're just pointing a video camera at some people on some courthouse steps, you can get away with calling yourself a tourist (and our cameraman had a CA driver's license). But once you pull the boom pole out, you acknowledge that you sort of know what you're doing, and you darn well know you're supposed to have a permit.
These are the things I lose sleep over.

We're supposed to shoot Saturday morning - the forecast is heavy rain - I call the actors and Gladys and Brian on Friday night and tell them we're on stand by for Sunday, our back up day. Shannon and I go to a Halloween party Friday night and don't feel guilty about staying out late.

Saturday afternoon, the forecast looks good, I call everyone and tell them we're a go. We're to meet at the Starbucks on the corner of Court and Joralemon at 8 a.m.
It's daylight savings time - hopefully no one will show up at 7 a.m. by accident.

At 7:15, I wake up, shower, put on my costume. Shannon helps me lug the equipment a few blocks to Starbucks. The phone rings. It's Heather: she slept through her alarm, she's coming as fast as she can. At Starbucks Shannon orders a Grande Vanilla Latte and a pumpkin scone - I don't fel like eating - I have OJ. I'm getting nervous.

The phone rings. It's Tara and Jeremy. They're running a few minutes behind, they're coming as fast as they can.

Outside the neighborhood is waking up. More people = more potential bystanders = trouble.

The phone rings. It's Gladys and Brian. Thye're waiting for a train, they'll be there as soon as they can.

Now everyone is late (we would have been late, too, if we didn't live right around the corner) and the only one we haven't heard from yet is Tony. I assume we'll have to do the scene without him.

Heather shows up first, then Gladys and Brian, then Tony, who apologizes, the 4/5 train wasn't running.

Tara and Jeremy arrive - they look great - all the actors do - they've chosen perfect costumes.
The team is ready.

Gladys and Brian and I scope out the set. It's still a pretty quiet morning, but a police van is parked fifty feet from where we want to shoot.

We try to recon nonchalantly and mostly succeed. I point out where we'll be, just between the 4th and 5th column on the courthouse steps. Brian nods. We run back to Starbucks to tell the others we're ready. The group heads over, the actors take their places on the steps. Brian pretends he's a tourist and Gladys signals us to go. Shannon watches the cops like a hawk. It's still not totally obvious what we're doing, so we act out the scene and get the master shot.

I walk over to confer with Gladys and Brian. Master shot's in the can, I look at Gladys. "Well?"
"Let's do it," Gladys says, with the air of someone who knows she must jump off a cliff, and doesn't see any sense in waiting.

We pull out the boom and we all run up the stairs, camera and mics blazing. It occurs to me in this moment that I have a number of responsibilities:
1) I wrote the scene - if it sucks, it's on me.
2) I am in the scene - if the acting sucks, it's on me.
3) I directed the scene. Gladys and I work closely on the scenes where I appear, since she can see what's happening (and she knows what she's going to need when she sits down in the editing room) but I blocked it, I instructed the actors, so if the story isn't coming across, it's on me.
4) I am producing, so if the cops give us a hard time, or take our tape, or take our camera, or get any of the actors in trouble, or they shut us down, then I've wasted the morning of all these generous people who have decided to get up early on a cold, blustery Sunday morning and help me tell my story.

I try to forget all this is happneing and just be present, just be there, just be in the scene.

Match Teaser

2006-10-25T09:33:00.000-05:00

Here's our teaser. Hope to have the pilot done by Christmas!

EDITING

2006-10-21T12:09:00.000-05:00

So now we’re editing. Gladys has the lion’s share – I’m doing scenes 1-12, she’s doing 13-52. We’re discovering where our holes are, what we should have done better. We're discovering that we're not as great as we thought we were. We're discovering that the back slapping and joyous yelps of glee that we uttered at the wrap party when we finished shooting were just shouts of triumph that we had made it through the week. Turns out, we're not so goddam brilliant.

In one scene there’s dust on the lens. We knew it when we shot it, but the day was going so well, we were supposed to be way behind and we were actually getting ahead and it would have derailed the whole production to stop and do the shot over and it felt great to say, 'naw, we got it, we’re moving on, we’re rolling baby!”

We should have stopped and done it again. Coulda shoulda woulda.

The name of the game is coverage. Coverage. I read a review a while back and some famous film director was lamenting the fact that directors don’t make films like Hitchcock anymore. Hitchcock , so the story goes, had every shot planned out in his head: he knew precisely how it would all fit together, in fact he shot it in such a way so that it COULD ONLY be put together the way he wanted it, thwarting the suits at the studio, defying them to make sense of it any other way.

OK, yeah, sounds great, if you’re a genius. If you’re not a genius, and most of us aren't, it turns out you shouldn't pretend to be Hitchcock, or use his methods, because you never know. You never know what might inspire you in the editing room. There are so many decisions to make, thousands upon thousands – why not give yourself as many options as you can?

That’s why we shoot: to give the editor as many options as possible. The film’s written three times, right? - blah blah blah - you've heard this all before.

THE SHOOT - Part 5 - Wrapped

2006-08-21T13:11:00.000-05:00

The last night we had a wrap party hosted by Amy and Dan Ludwin (their daughter Caroline was one of our extras). We watched dailies, cackled like kids at every single little brilliant thing we had shot (warning: the dailies always look great). We stayed up until 6:00 a.m., someone barfed in the sink and Greg wrote the Ludwins a hilarious thank you note that I never saw. I’m sure we kept them up way past their bedtimes. For most of the world is was a school night. For us the work was DONE.

Highlights:
Chris Ceraso’s wonderful turn as the Headmaster.
Elaine Bromka as the hilariously uptight music teacher.
Kyle Masteller and the toke 'em up posse
Michael "I'd be happy to direct you" Schreiber
Bob's performance art
Greg and Brooke's love/hate relationship
All of Julie's Eve Ensler moments
Emily fainting
Annah's banana
Kurt's gas can
Dawn's 'Kick Me' sign

The actors take a funny script (it better be funny, or tightly drawn, or SHORT, otherwise why are you wasting all these people’s time?) – the actors take it and make it better – they, what else – give it life. That's a rule: trust your people. Work with people who are great at what they do and create an environment where they can give you everything they've got. The production, to be efficient, requires intolerably long hours. Do everything you can to fill those hours with trust. You want your people taking risks. Keep them laughing between takes. Care for them. They are surrounded by people who do not nourish them. Care for your people and they will give you their best.

THE SHOOT - Part 4

2006-08-20T13:10:00.000-05:00

I didn't keep a diary during the shoot because there wasn't any time for it. But we were sufficiently organized that when one of our stars had to fly back to New York for 24 hours in the middle of the 6 day shoot (and we had already moved her scenes around 6 or 7 times to try to make all of our lives easier) nobody panicked. Shannon figured out the flights and when she would have to leave and when was the earliest she could be back and we made it happen.

When Tony got sick and couldn't make the trip to Richmond, we called off our search for a Richmond courthouse and decided, we'll shoot the courthouse scene in New York in September. The courthouses up there look bigger and more imposing anyway.

The biggest rule of all - follow this one and people will like working with you - don’t keep anyone waiting around unnecessarily. Arrange it so that people arrive when they must and can leave as early as possible.

THE SHOOT - Part 3

2006-08-19T13:09:00.000-05:00

Organize, organize, organize. Rehearse every scene before you shoot it. Direct the entire movie on paper. Know what every shot is going to look like a month before you shoot. If you are infinitely prepared you will be ready to take advantage of the wonderful improvisations your artists will come up with. We had two or three fabulous contributions come up each day – I can’t tell you what they are without spoiling the movie – but I can tell you they emerged because we were ahead of schedule and had time to shoot a few extra lines here and there when they raised their glorious heads. Good ideas can come from anywhere. Our sound guy provided the funniest improv’ed line of the film. Two of our extras came up with a shot idea that was as good as any we had storyboarded.

I subscribe to Robert Rodriguez’s populist approach to filmmaking. The days of the film auteur in the black turtleneck and beret are behind us. The Panasonic DVX100A is everyone’s friend. Final Cut Pro is easy to learn. For less than a few thousand dollars, anyone can do it now.

Can you do it well? is the question.

THE SHOOT - Part 2

2006-08-18T13:08:00.000-05:00

A rule: if you’re going to produce a movie, get an AD or two who are absolutely first rate. Gladys and Katie did a lot of worrying so that I wouldn’t have to. Elizabeth (Mom) also did her fair share, getting people from the airport, taking people to the airport, arranging for all of the housing of our 15 New York actors including a number of highly accomplished 30-year veterans. Our goal was to provide them with an experience and a working environment that did not waste their time, that was top notch given our budget restraints. The meals that were provided were very good, the beds were soft and the pillows had chocolates on them their first night. I figure, you put Godiva on someone’s pillow, they know you’re trying to take care of them.

So Mom sorted that stuff out months ahead of time. I talked to Collegiate probably five months before we set foot on the campus. We talked to SAG probably two months out – they require all their paperwork to be done 30 days in advance of shooting.

Katie and Gladys made sure the location was ready to go. Alfred and Jim would light it. When the lights were in place we’d bring in the actors and block and rehearse (we’d rehearsed everything in New York a few weeks prior, so everyone knew what they were doing in the scene, why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish). Alfred would watch the rehearsal and figure out where the camera should be. Jim would tweak lights, Glen would find the best, least obtrusive way to record sound. That's another rule: if you're going to make a movie, find a great crew.

THE SHOOT - Part 1

2006-08-17T11:52:00.000-05:00

August 10, 2006 (The Match shoot was August 11-16)

7:30 wake up and finish packing.
8:15 car arrives, takes Mike, Bob, Kyle and Dave to Manhattan. Driver takes the LONGEST ROUTE POSSIBLE, we arrive late.
9:00 long line at CC Van Rental. We’re at the back of it. Clock ticking. If we don’t get on the road soon we hit infamous Washington DC rush hour traffic, which pushes back our production meeting and location scout, and gets us to bed later than midnight. We have six very long, very tightly packed days ahead, and every hour counts.
The rest of the people in line at CC are doing the same thing we’re doing, renting vans for a day or week of production. It makes me feel very small. Everyone’s doing this. How can we possibly produce a show that stands out?
10:00 a.m. – we arrive at Shannon’s UWS apartment – cast is assembled. Most of us, Kyle, Michael, Bob, Brooke, David, Shannon, Katie, Gladys, have worked with each other before.
Julie, Greg, Paco, Emily are new but seem easy to get along with.
10:45 a.m. out of the Lincoln Tunnel
11:45 actors have to pee
12:00 we stop for snacks, gas, rest stop
2:00 actors have to pee again, and they're hungry – we have two vans – the production van goes ahead, forgoing lunch in order to beat traffic. The 'Party Van' stops for lunch. Somebody, upon hearing that lunch is on the company, orders a beer.
5:00 p.m. The production van beats traffic - we make it to Richmond - the producers take a tour of Collegiate School – everyone’s excited by the location – it’s a great looking facility. By 7 the Party Van has arrived and we all have dinner - Holly's there to measure actors for their costumes. Alfred and Jim check out and balance the Glidecam. Mom and Per have consented to us turning their house into a Hotel for the week - they make us a fabulous meal - in fact the food all week will be four star - actors get their housing assignments. Producers have one last meeting. Lights out.

August 11-16

Every morning would start the same. I would wake up before my alarm clock, flip out, eat an apple, and immediately have to use the bathroom. Nerves. I figure it will get better once I've shot all my scenes, then I can just concentrate on directing. Having chosen to take a part in the pilot now seems like a terrible idea - I should have cast someone else so that I could wear fewer hats on the project and concentrate on the work at hand.

But as we shoot my scenes I remember that I love this too, acting, and while in my dark hours I fear my decision to act AND direct has sunk the project (come on, I ain't Mel Gibson), looking back I think, generally, I held my own, and you know what, fuck it, I loved doing it.

Week 130 - SpikeTV Eats It

2006-05-13T14:33:00.000-05:00

(This episode rated PG for language)

Turns out one of the teams we beat at 48HFP was a team of pros from Spike TV. Their film starred Rob Schneider's daughter (the Richmeister, Makin Copies, etc). But they couldn't handle Bucky's power, baby! They won 'Best Film with Rob Schneider's Daughter In It'

But I digress. Announcement, people, announcement:
After three great years of corporate paradise, I have decided to leave my desk job to pursue writing and directing projects full time. My new email address is david@matchproductions.com.

I'd say 'take this job and shove it,' but my boss has been really nice to me over the past three years. Thanks, Peter!

Week 129 - VICTORY!!!

2006-05-11T14:28:00.000-05:00

(This episode rated PG for language)

Team Bucky Wilson brought home the bacon last night, winning triple honors at the 48 Hour Film Project, Best of New York. Our short film GREED won in the following categories:
Best Editing – Gladys Murphy
Best Directing – David Stott
Best Film – GREED

We beat out 41 other teams for the honor, so it’s a pretty huge deal for us. Our film will be entered in the international contest and will be included in the Best of 48HFP DVD. We were particularly pleased for Gladys, who put in the longest hours of anybody and truly did a remarkable job.

Thanks for your support!

David

Week 128 - We Made It: the Best of New York - 48 Hr Film Project 2006

2006-05-07T14:23:00.000-05:00

(This episode rated PG for language)

Team Bucky Wilson's crowd-pleasing Drama "GREED" has been selected for the Best of New York screening on Wednesday, May 10.
Join in the fun!
See us rip off Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross in less than six minutes! Our potty-mouthed ensemble makes corporate malfeasance look downright sexy. And Michael's hair! It looks fabulous!

Details:
BUCKY WILSON PRESENTS:
"GREED"
at the BEST OF NEW YORK, 48HFP 2006
TIME: Wednesday, May 10th, 7:30pm
PLACE: Slainte, 304 Bowery
(between Bleecker & Houston)
COST: Free
ALSO: Awards Ceremony... find out the Judges' picks (Best Film, Best Actor, etc.) Hope to see you!

Week 127 - 48HFP 2006 Aftermath

2006-04-24T14:20:00.000-05:00

(This episode rated PG for language)

Well, we clobbered ‘em. We were one Mandarin Pimp shy of a blowout, but keep your calendar clean on May 10, just in case there be justice in the world. They put ours last in the running order, which is a good sign, but how do you compete with high school kids wearing Mexican hats? I think our chances are good for Audience Award, but who really cares? We often get accolades when we least expect (or need) them.

While holding our collective breath for the Judges' Decision, it's time to revisit NO RETREAT FROM DESTINY (some of you were good enough to attend the Richmond premiere back in September). Kevin Hershberger's Civil War motion picture has just been released on DVD and I hope you can log-on to the movie web site, see what's been done on the film, and if you're inclined, order a copy for your library.
The film was just awarded "Best Director" , "Best Drama" and "Best in Show" at the 2006 Vision Film Festival. The movie also won awards for "Best Cinematography" and "Best Musical Score".

"No Retreat From Destiny" and tells the story of the last great Confederate invasion of the north, in the summer of 1864, the July 9, 1864 battle of Monocacy, and the attack and defense of Washington, D.C. at Fort Stevens. The movie is 106 minutes long, and the battle scenes are some of the most intense ever filmed of Civil War-era combat. The movie was produced by men and women from the Civil War re-enacting community - not by Hollywood, and they worked very hard at "getting it right."
Check out the details and place a DVD order at: http://www.monocacymovie.com there are more video, music clips and photos at: http://www.lionheart-filmworks.com

Week 125 - 48 Hr Film Project 2006

2006-04-21T14:12:00.000-05:00

(This episode rated PG for language)

All times, dates, quotations approximate - it's all a blur

FRIDAY, April 21, 2006

6:00 p.m. Dave and Bob report to One & One to pick up assignments.
Group consensus is, whatever the topic, make it funny.

6:45 Bob draws the genre: Drama.

6:46 "Crap."

7:00 Cast/Crew assembles at Gladys's, brainstorming begins in earnest

8:00 "Naked Man in Office Peeing on Desk" idea embraced

9:00 some one suggests we just go ahead and make a funny movie, and then, at the end, have someone get cancer. "Cancer=drama"

10:00 rough draft of random office story sketched out

10:15 Shannon: "OK, I get all that, but what's the story?" Everyone
else: "Don't sweat it. The story will come." Shannon: "I don't think we should shoot the movie without knowing what the story is." Everyone
else: "Shut up, princess!"

10:30 in a blizzard of inspiration, Shannon sketches out the opening shot and the first scene

11:00 second draft finished

12:00 third draft finished, still no story, script still sucks.

SATURDAY, April 22, 2006

Backstory: The building we intend to shoot in is notorious for refusing any photography inside. How do we get a camera, tripod, crane, light kits and sound recording equipment, plus a 7-member crew, up to the 19th floor, on a Saturday? Dave spends Friday night scheming on how to achieve this. Gladys and Michael suggest we take the bulkiest equipment up Friday at midnight and hope we get a disinterested security guard. Dave lies in bed sleeplessly, anticipating a bad news phone call.

Morning comes. The first sortie has achieved its mission without a hitch. Half of the film equipment is now safely upstairs. Based on the success of the first mission, the decision is made to gamble, to try and smuggle the jib (a small camera crane) up the elevator. Shannon camoflagues the jib in an oversized snowboard bag and Dave marches into the lobby, crapping his pants.

The security guard nods as Dave signs in and takes the illicit equipment upstairs. Dave giggles, then pees himself.

Last remaining roadblock - get the cast/crew up the elevators. We have two security passes for seven people. We go in two groups - each with a heavy back pack. But we go in costume: corporate dress.

The security guard stays silent.

10 a.m. Saturday.
Another read through, rewrites. Bob's character is given more lines. Some profanity (but not much) is excised from the script. B-movie crapola dialogue "I'll scramble the system, you get the codes, she'll upload the funds" is replaced with vague references to global corporate finance in an attempt to conceal the fact that we have no effing idea what we're talking about.

11:00 We get the first shot off, a two minute one-take, and we're off to the races.

11:00-5:00 Gladys grows an extra pair of arms so she can hold the boom, capture video, edit and chew gum at the same time.

5:00-8:00 p.m. Nothing at all gets accomplished, and nobody has any idea why this is.

8:00-1:30 a.m. Kyle speaks in a Mexican accent, Michael's allergies threaten to kill him, Bob cracks up the cast with his long, dramatic pauses. "It's like.............taking candy............from a baby."

1:30 a.m. departure for home

3:00 a.m. Gladys erases all the files by accident.

3:01 a.m. Gladys contemplates suicide.

3:15 a.m. Gladys finds the files.

3:30 a.m. Gladys falls into a fitful sleep.

SUNDAY, April 23, 2006

7:30 a.m. Gladys awake, back at the edit bay.

9:00 David's alarm goes off.

9:05 David still asleep.

9:15 David still asleep.

9:23 Shannon: "Gladys is up already, and she went to bed after we did."

9:24 David: "Gladys is young."

9:30 David offers to give Gladys a break, Gladys says it's under control, David begins work on special effects, Shannon goes out to get the crew breakfast.

9:45 Shannon returns with breakfast.

9:47 Shannon goes back to bed.

11:00 Brooke, Kyle, Bob, Michael meet at Michael's to work on music.

11:30 David and Gladys watch a rough cut, discover that there's no story.

11:45 Shannon: "I told you."

11:46 Shannon goes back to bed.

1:00 p.m. Shannon awakens, fully rested.

1:05 Shannon and David story consult, decide that the lack of information and story details can be fixed with a voice over or opening titles. Since all the film equipment is back at the office (in anticipation of emergency reshoots) Shannon can either go back to CPR to get the microphones, or research insider trading law on the internet.

1:06 Shannon researches insider trading law on the internet.

1:45 special effects shots and sound effects added.

2:00 The music crew arrives, Gladys begins music and sound editing.

2:01 rest of crew works on paperwork, brainstorming for titles begins.

2:05 Suggested Title: "The Mainframe"

2:10 Suggested Title: "10b5-1"

2:13 Suggested Title: "Rich Crackers"

2:12 Suggested Title: "I Think That When You Have More Money, You Also Seem to Have More Problems That You Then Have to Deal With"

4:00 fine cut screened, tweaks suggested.

4:30 Gladys takes a shower.

5:00 final(?) cut screened, sound tweaks suggested.

5:30 David takes a shower, car service called.

6:00 DVD burning begins.

6:20 power calibration error, David tells no one.

6:26 power calibration error, Nam flashbacks.

6:36 power calibration error, Gladys saves the day.

6:40 where's the car?

6:41 where's the car?

6:42 where's the car?

6:50 DVD delivered to drop site

7:15 back up DVD delivered

7:16 Miller Time

8:16 still Miller Time

10:16 shablahblah... beer

10:30 taxi and subway rides home

Now come see it!

BUCKY WILSON PRESENTS:
"GREED"
screening at 9:15p.m.
THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2006
Landmark's Sunshine Cinema
143 E. Houston St., between 1st and 2nd Avenues
SUBWAY: F or V Train to the 2nd Avenue Stop

$10 tix, the show will sell out - order ahead of time - probably no tickets available the day of
call movie fone - 212-777-3456
enter 484 for movie title (48H, for 48Hour Film Project)
theatre zip code 10036
Come help us win the Audience Award
Team Bucky Says thanks

Week 112 - Bucky WIlson, Back At The Plaza

2005-02-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

Dave 6 Press has a new name! Henceforth we shall be known as 'The Bucky Wilson Weekly.' However, despite the promising name, we do not encourage you to expect that The Bucky Wilson Weekly will actually come out every week.

Week 112 - Bucky Wilson, Back at The Plaza

Feb 2, 2005

So The Plaza party came and went. We had a blast (if you were there you know it was mad cool) though I must say, The Plaza isn’t what it once was. It’s still a landmark, but let me explain. When first we checked in, I started running the water in the marble bathroom (we had a view of snowy Central Park by the way, it was tres cool) I pulled the stopper to turn on the shower, and it came off in my hand. Not only that, but a spout of water shot up out of the pin hole, and hit me in the face. Right out of the movies.

Later, Tuesday night it was, I sent my shirts to be dry cleaned. I called Weds. morning for them, no shirts. No problem, I had an extra in case of emergency. I wore it. I worked. I called Thursday morning, no shirts. No problem, I JUST BORROWED ONE FROM MY BOSS. No, that wasn't awkward. I wore it. I worked. I called Friday, and after searching high and low, they brought it out to me. TWELVE BUCKS. TO DRY CLEAN A SHIRT. And it took them three days.

Next example: Thursday night I had a few friends up to the room. Friday morning, there we were, I blush to say, surrounded by a large collection of beer and wine bottles in disarray. Friday afternoon, there are still beer bottles and wine bottles in disarray. Saturday morning, there are still wine and beer bottles in disarray. Saturday afternoon, there are still wine and beer bottles in disarray. Sunday morning, we still are living with the mess, so I call and inform them that I’ll be stepping out for a few hours and might they be willing to service the room? The concierge finds it ‘shocking’ that the room hasn’t been cleaned in 48 hours. I must confess that I agreed with him.

So, Boo Hoo. I stayed at The Plaza, and my shirts were late. I was surrounded by beer bottles. Rough life. But let us consider the finer things in life:

Acting. Drama. CityLab.

This year, I have had two very 'instructional' readings of my work by CityLab (CityLab is my three hour Lab on Wednesdays.) 'Instructional' is what I call it when the work sucks. If you take the time to understand why the work is falling over, you transform the loathsome experience from a suckfest to a learning experience. For the first time, watching my play, I wanted to yell ‘cut’ and stop the show before the Lab Director did. I was appalled by my own suckfest. The things I’d learned in the lab I simply had not applied to the work – I was using techniques and skills I’d used in my fiction and was trying to make them play onstage. It simply was not happening. Here’s why: the only thing that’s truly interesting to watch onstage is action. That’s why it’s called acting.

I recall the words of a screenwriting teacher I had years ago: “The two worst characters you can ever write into a script are Harry the Historian and Marvin the Explainer. These guys fill us in on what’s happening because the screenwriter lacks the skill or wherewithal to write action.'

Spewing plot onstage is what novices do, what I did yesterday. Why not write a thrilling scene where two people want things from each other, and have to go through each other to get what they want, instead of a line like, “You know, the only reason I haven't killed you yet is because your mom is my sister, and one time, in 1986, we went backpacking in Antarctica. Plus, I like cheese.” Who cares, right? Nobody cares about things that are offstage.

We did an improv exercise yesterday – I was Kobe Bryant’s coach and I played opposite Kobe Bryant. In the scene I called Kobe into my office to get him to start passing the ball to his teammates. I had to convince him. It was the only way we were going to win a championship.

Well, Kobe came into the office to tell me he wanted his own dressing room for all our upcoming games.

The conversation did not go well. What he wanted was clear, and what I wanted was clear, and we both had to go through the other guy to get what we wanted. We both pursued it relentlessly, so it was a good scene. There was no time to think about plot – we just went after what we wanted and the audience enjoyed what we did. I finished the scene feeling really disappointed that I wasn’t able to get my point across to Kobe – how well I acted during the scene was irrelevant – all that mattered was making Kobe understand that the team can’t win if he hogs the ball.

So, if you will, contrast that moment of action with the godawful script I brought in, in which one character tells another: “Now wait a minute, Tudor. You know the D-4 Twilight Project was deactivated in 1977.”

While that line *might* seem remotely interesting as you read it, onstage it stinks. Nothing is less interesting than listening to a scientist explain the history of the D-4 Project, whatever the fuck that is, and nothing is more interesting than watching two people on stage, NOT getting along. It’s all about action, action, action. This word is not just a command that a director yells on a film set, it is a constant reminder that action is the only thing that matters.

WEEK 111 – THE CHRISTMAS LIST

2004-12-13T22:24:00.000-05:00

(This episdoe rated PG-13 for language)

-----Original Message-----
From: David Stott [mailto:djstott@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 1:33 PM
To: Stott, Elizabeth; Stott, Jamie; Andrew Stott; Stott, Mike
Subject: xmas for dave

Dear family,
I list, IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE my Christmas list for 2004. NO ITEM SHOULD BE OVERLOOKED!!!

Number 1 MOST IMPORTANT!!!
$250,000.00 for a down payment on apartment in downtown Manhattan

Number 2
$5000.00 for a Panasonic 100A DVX 3Chip CCD camera with 24p playback

Number 3
socks

DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME, PEOPLE! I AM SOOOOO IMPORTANT TO YOUR LIVES! DO NOT DISAPPOINT!

-----Second Message-----
From: David Stott [mailto:djstott@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 1:36 PM
To: David Stott
Subject: ORRRRR...

OK, I realize some of these items are out of your price ranges. This is not my fault. You all should have studied harder in college. But, SINCE YOU'RE ALL PROBABLY GOING TO BE CHEAP about Christmas, I also want...

Godfather Trilogy (yes, even the third one – I hear the director’s comments are pretty good)
The Who Box Set (The mack daddy huge one with all the studio recordings ever)
Godiva
Oceans 11 DVD
(insert assorted and sundry book titles here)
Money for crack
Money for hos
New suits from Jamie’s tailor
A Macintosh G5
Motion Software from Apple (this would be really cool, actually, but it’s pretty $$$)
A Beamer

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Stott [mailto:astott@lutron.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 1:41 PM
To: David Stott
Subject: RE: xmas for Dave

what size socks?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Stott [mailto:djstott@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 1:42 PM
To: Andrew Stott
Subject: RE: RE: xmas for Dave

Don't be cheap, Andrew! Show the love! It's Christmas, for crying out loud. Also, while I have your attention, someone STOLE a few of my CDs over the years. I am looking in particular for

METALLICA, Ride the Lightning
METALLICA Kill Em All
EXTREME 2 – Pornograffitti
ROLLING STONES – Hot Rocks

Just to BORROW so I can put the songs on my iPod, since they originally belonged to me and I still have all the original receipts, so thanks for stealing from me - I'm your brother.

CHEAPSKATES!

-----Original Message-----
From: David Stott [mailto:djstott@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 1:42 PM
To: Andrew Stott
Subject: RE: RE: xmas for Dave

Oh, I also want,
Metal Gear 3 – Snake Eater for PS2
Dave Chappelle – Season 1
Dave Chappelle – Killin Them Softly
BOOK – Daily Show with Jon Stewart, America, The Book – A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction

OK, that’s all for now

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Stott [mailto:astott@lutron.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 1:47 PM
To: David Stott
Subject: RE: and

are you sure?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Stott [mailto:dstott@cpradr.org]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 1:48 PM
To: Andrew Stott

FOR NOW I said! God!

------END TRANSMISSION------

Tune in after Christmas to find out if Dave's family gave him anything at all. (We're not counting on it. All he deserves is coal.)

Week 110 - The Little Spy

2004-11-29T22:20:00.000-05:00

At long last, prinicipal photography on The Little Spy has commenced. Mad ups to the stalwart cast and crew for enduring rain and high wind on our picturesque SoHo Rooftop location. Please allow me to introduce:

THE CAST
Annah Boyer is The Little Spy, a high-kicking, gun-toting bad ass. She’s pretty, all right, pretty deadly!

Tara Merdjanoff is Annah’s nemesis, the smug, self-assured and gorgeous evildoer Mira Black. She’s lethal with a sword, a staff and a .45 magnum. Ease back, gentlemen, she’s taken... Taken you to School!

Shot on location in New York city without permits, The Little Spy is an experimental kung fu cartoon that utilizes New York’s uniquely gorgeous cityscape and cutting edge low budget animation techniques to tell the story of a Little Spy with a big heart. It’s the Matrix meets On Golden Pond, except there’s no pond, and no, um, gold?

Production Notes:

Saturday, November 21. Got up at 9:00 a.m., reached Tara’s promptly at ten with no cash left to pay for the taxi. Borrowed $30 from Tara before she was really awake.

11:00 – neighbor comes up to the roof, asks ‘what the hell we’re doing up there.’

‘Shooting a movie,’ I say gleefully. ‘Are we too loud?’

‘My boyfriend is trying to sleep.’

Oh, I say, well I guess we shouldn’t make art today, because your boyfriend is a light sleeper.

No, I didn’t really say that. But I should have.

12:00 - people staying in the nearby hotel are looking out their window. We have fans!

It starts raining. We make Annah do many many cartwheels through puddles.

Tara hits herself repeatedly in the head with the staff. BUT ONLY BECAUSE THE RAIN MADE IT SLIPPERY.

6:00 p.m. Saturday night – we go to the overpass near Battery Park to film the dream sequence. Despite the fact that Annah is wielding a sword and a Desert Eagle on the pedestrian bridge, nobody bats an eye. New York is a one of a kind place. Pull out a video camera in Richmond and everybody wants to be your pal. Pull one out in New York and you’re an NYU Film Douche.

Sunday morning, director moves call time from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. to delight of a tired cast and director. We arrive at the public library at 42nd and 5th ave. The whole place is blocked off. My first reaction: Oh crap, they’ve blocked off the steps. My second reaction. ‘Oh, crap, they’ve blocked off the steps! If we get inside the barricade and act authoritative, people will think they blocked off the steps FOR US!'

The strategy, which usually backfires, in this case works. There is no rain, but the same gorgeous overcast light.

Two ladies fight with swords on the steps of the New York Public Library and nobody cares. I repeat, what a city.

10:00 a.m. - The Bryant Park shoot behind the library is 86ed – who knew today they’d be dressing the park for the holidays? Hundreds of workers mill around, ruining every shot. Boo hoo.

A homeless man approaches, singing. We guiltily buy him off with 57 cents, which, after paying back Tara for yesterday’s cab ride, is all the money the director has left in the world.

12:00 noon - We go back to Tara’s. Shannon has gamely offered to go to Queens to pick up our weapons – we need the guns and staffs to finish what we started on Saturday.

In what promises to become a recurrent theme, she arrives at Tara’s with no money to pay for the cab. David, on the roof, has been to the ATM, says he’ll drop his wallet down 7 stories. Annah suggests that this is a stupid idea. She suggests that he needs to be smart and WRAP HIS WALLET IN HIS JACKET before he drops it. She is serious.

We drop the jacket over the side, the winds picks it up, carries it over to the next building, and dumps it on the fire escape next door. Nobody’s home at this apartment, so we ask a local vendor for a ladder, and using one of the staffs Shannon has brought, we disengage the jacket from the fire escape. Production is only stalled ten minutes because of this stupidity.

MEET THE CREW:
Meet Fight Coordinator Thomas Cook, this actor, martial arts expert trains the ladies for three hours a day, turns them into ninjas in no time flat! With superior teaching methods, a gentle hand and a wise philosophy, Tom wins the part as a ninja master in episode 2 and also the title role in the upcoming mockumentary, Kung Fu Billy, the story of a blind kung fu master who thrills and kills at the Special Olympics.

Producer Shannon Chirone ably smooths the production process as advisor, assistant. Sparks fly on the set when Shannon tells the director she thinks ‘that one should grab that one by the ponytail and throw her off the building.’ What an eye for action!

MORE ON THE LITTLE SPY next week...

Week 109 - OCTOBERFEST

2004-10-13T22:17:00.000-05:00

Crazy sked this week, kids. Leaving for Amsterdam on Sunday, trying to edit my friend Annah's demo video before I leave the country. Tech and Dress rehearsal tonight for tomorrow's show. Sometimes it's all too much.

But I figured out a way to explain this vicious cycle to all my friends who ask my the question: Why do you do it?
So, as best I can figure, I give you, a day in the life of the actor:

Wake up - after tossing and turning all night from actor's nightmare (you know this one - you're onstage with no idea what you're supposed to say next - a variation on the 'naked at school' dream)
Breakfast - worry about your show that night.
Lunch - still worrying
Dinner - still worrying
Pre-Show - still worrying
Show - ??!!
(it's all a blur)
After The Show - worried that you didn't do your best
After First Post-Show Drink - friends convince you you weren't so bad
After Second Post-Show Drink - friends convince you that, at times, you were actually pretty good
After Third Post-Show Drink - you convince yourself you are the best actor ever, and to quote a friend's play, you 'gave the craft of acting a new dimension tonight.' Can't wait to do it tomorrow! De Niro is a hack!
Bedtime - go to bed, deliriously happy
Sleep - have actor's nightmare, rinse and repeat.

That's how simple it is.

For you last minute planners: hope you can make it to our show on Wednesday or Thursday (10/13 & 10/14)

New Works by the Actor Director Lab
Ensemble Studio Theatre
549 West 52nd Street (10th/11th)
2nd Floor
8:30pm
Call for reservations at 212.247.4982
$7 suggested donation

See you in my dreams.
...
...
(Not sure what that means. It's late.)

Week 108 - Under the Gun

2004-10-05T22:16:00.000-05:00

Wherein we discover that the time you are supposed to do the most work promoting your show is precisely the same time that you feel most uneasy about it. Will the cast come together? Will the rewrites be done in time? Will Shane pull off his quick costume change between the second and third scenes, or will he simply perform the third scene bare-assed to avoid unsightly delays? We won't know until you do. Come check out our two nights of murder, mayhem and political chicanery at EST.

Week 107

2004-09-27T22:11:00.000-05:00

It’s Tuesday, and I’m contemplating the state of my career. What will I tell Mom when she calls? I don’t always know what to tell her about the life. I don’t want to lie to her, but I don’t want her to worry, either.

I’m mulling this over when I get a phone call from some indy folks about a movie shoot Friday. Can I come to Maryland to play a Confederate Officer on horseback? The pay is deferred, but they will put me up in a hotel Thursday night.
I say yes, I’d be happy to, and then my thoughts turn to Mom. How do I spin this to her? I can leave one of two messages on her voice mail:

TO MAKE MOM PROUD: ‘Hey Mom, can’t visit this weekend – I’m out of town on a movie shoot – they’re putting me up this time, and giving me riding lessons for the battle scenes – can’t pass this up – will miss you, sorry.’

TO MAKE MOM SEND MONEY AND COOKIES: ‘Hi Mom. Guess what? I’m so desperate for movie parts that I’m going to drive five hours each way to Hagerstown to play some hillbilly soldier in a Civil War flick. I’ll drive five hours, say my six lines, and then drive back to New York. Don’t ask about the hotel, ma. $49 a night, four to a room. I will probably be sharing a twin bed with one of the extras who will want to stay up all night talking about the mad cash he made on Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (true story). Glad I moved to New York so I could drive to Maryland and share a bed with a sweaty Civil War re-enactor who’s in it for the free beer and chicken wings.

Neither description is particularly true, or relevant. (For the record, all the extras I met were total pros, and the hotel had a bad ass pool). Neither is a lie, but neither speaks to the artistic truth of the situation. The truth is, in the scene, I play a Confedrate Officer who comes across infantry soldiers rounding up prisoners. He instructs them to take the Yankee muskets but leave the Yankees behind – the men will only encumber them for the march ahead.

This is my job. When the director says action, I am to embody that character as best I am able. Everything else, the hotel, the five hour drive, the costume they put on my back and the horse they put under my butt – is scenery. I should acknowledge it to the extent that it serves the work. I should control the horse as my character would, but the Confederate Officer cares not a whit for the five hour drive, the quality of the hotel in which I stay, nor the state of the career of the actor. The Confederate Officer simply wants to get his boys on the goddam move. That is his story, and that is the story I will do my best to tell. I must get off book, I must bring a few ideas to the director, and once I have done this homework, I must arrive as ready and refreshed as I am able, and listen to the director and give him what he wants. I cannot predict nor control how the horse will behave under me. I cannot control the hot weather or the itchy wool uniform. I must prepare myself in every way I can and be ready to improvise as the situation demands. I must arrive rested, calm and prepared. The rest is out of my hands.

As it turns out, humility is the order of the day. The extras and re-enactors I met had a knowledge of and passion for the subject that is going to do more to make this film realistic and engaging than my five lines. Those guys made the film. Thanks to Mike, who taught me to ride, and thanks to Kevin, who let me do the scene six times. This city slicker can’t wait to see the tape.

(Dave 6 Press is weblog written by David Stott. David hates spam as much as you do and does not want to clog your mailbox if you do not want to receive his weekly entries. If you'd like to be removed from this mailing list, please reply to djstott@nyc.rr.com with the subject: WANK ON YOUR STORIES, MR. STOTT. [Somebody actually did this last week])

Week 106

2004-09-20T22:07:00.000-05:00

TOP STORY:

So, I hit another lady playing tennis. Bruised her. Hit her in the shin - and this time it was on purpose. I mean, she was beating me 4-1. Besides, my serve went in, and it wasn't my fault she couldn't get out of the way in time. In fact, that's kind of the point of serving fast. As I said, I was down 4-1.

I love competition.

I was at a birthday party in Montclair on Friday. Our hostess used to work for Outward Bound and knows all these ice breaker party games. One of them, and I'm sure you've done this before, is the one where you pass a grapefruit around a circle without using your hands. The way you grip the grapefruit is by applying pressure from your chin to your chest. In this manner, by invading each other's personal space, the grapefruit is passed around the circle. Mind you, while these fruit exchanges are taking place, you're racing the red team, and if the grapefruit drops you have to start back at the beginning.

Now, innocent little me was not intending to make a big competition out of this game, but my good pal Annah is standing next to me assuring me that this is no joke, THIS IS WAR, and I better not slow her down.

So the grapefruit begins to make its way around with the circle and when it gets to me, I am expecting a simple exchange.

Sorry.

The woman passing the grapefruit to me is a little shorter than I am, which makes it awkward. I get in there and take the fruit, except I can't get a good grip on it. The grapefruit inevitably begins sliding, ever so slowly, down her body.

To drop the grapefruit is death, because your team has to start over from the beginning. Annah, I know, will kill me if this happens, so I persist. The grapefruit drops between this poor woman's breasts, and my face is right in there, trying to get a grip on the damn grapefruit. The fruit drops lower, to her belly button, and lower, to wonderland, and, well, I'm not a quitter.

To the casual observer, I looked like a simple pervert. To my teammates, I was both an inspiration and an embarrassment. After lots of wiggling, the grapefruit is now on Mrs. Robinson's thigh, and finally, right before it rolls off her knee, I get a grip on the pesky little thing. Of course, by that time, there's really no one to pass it to, because they're all dying laughing and the other team has long since beaten us.

So I did the gentlemanly thing and apologized to the woman for taking so long. She replied that it wasn't so bad and makes a joke about how glad she is that her son (my age) is in the other room, not watching.

Are we ready for round 2? our host asks. Sure, we say. And I'm sure I have learned my lesson, and will not repeat my mistakes, but I do, to the delight of the crowd, and history repeats itself, and I find myself, once again, buried in the decolletage of someone who is old enough to have dated Eisenhower.

After the party's over, my roommate Jen, who watched all this with great humor, asked me why I persisted in molesting a perfectly nice fifty year old woman after it was obvious that I had no chance of gripping the fruit. Why, Jen asks me, didn't I just let it hit the floor?

I thought for a moment and then I realized I had no answer for that. The thought never entered my mind, Not once. DROP THE GRAPEFRUIT? No way - that was the cardinal rule. We'd have lost the race. The truth was, I didn't notice the poor woman's breasts or crotch on shapely thigh until after the game was over. During the game, I was concentrating on winning. You might say I was victorious.

Week 105 - The Tennis Story

2004-09-09T22:03:00.000-05:00

So I've been in New York about two years now. I've exercised twice. I hate the gym, man, and that late night walk home from the subway station doesn't really count, does it? I've been meaning to get back into tennis, which I haven't played in years, but the work-all-day, theatre-all-night schedule doesn't leave much time. Plus, last time I was on a tennis team, I was twelve, and the team mother would write a weekly newsletter to the parents, and in the newsletter she always advised the parents that children were NOT to wear in the matches whatever it was I had worn at the previous match. No Jams, no soccer shirts, no wet bathing suits, no soccer cleats - she was a tyrant. Anyway, I enjoy the sport despite its strict code of dress and so I decided that tennis would be my way to exercise. I decided I would make time.

I finally found a place to play - the only problem was, I didn't know anybody, and hitting against the backboard gets boring after a while. Well, turns out the tennis club has Twilight Tennis on Friday nights. I thought - great - it's right as the sun's going down - picturesque - it will be a super way to get to know people. So I went, and, turns out, I was 30 years younger than anyone else at Twilight Tennis, having overlooked the double meaning.

So I was partnered with a 65 year-old woman named Jo. But no problem, as it turns out: as we play, Jo is chasing down balls, serving consistently, and holding her own. We're doing OK. My game is a little rusty, so this is a good way to warm-up.

But the problem is, we're getting our butts kicked, and I tire quickly of getting my butt kicked, especially in any sports-related activity.
So eventually it's my turn to serve, and I decide to turn up the heat on our opponents. My serve can be pretty deadly when I get it in, so I decide to go for it.

I stare down Larry, the 55 year-old real-estate salesman, and my first serve is an ace. Larry didn't even get his racquet on it - it was awesome. Next up is Bill, 62, helluva heart surgeon. My second serve, ACE. The guy goes down looking. Third point, back to Larry, ACE. I am on fire. I am starting to gain notice from the other courts. People are starting to talk about the new kid. I'm one point from serving out a perfect game, and I know I got a doozy of a serve left in me. This shot is going to be hot. I toss the ball up nice and high, rear back, and the slam the ball right between Jo's shoulder blades.
Jo drops her racquet.
Jo stops breathing.
Let me repeat that. Jo stops breathing.
I know I have a tendency to spice up my weekly tales from time to time, but folks, today, I am not exaggerrating. There is no need. For, I, David Stott, have managed to knock the wind out of poor Jo FROM BEHIND. She's up at the net, her back to me, gasping and choking for air, and I run up to her, sputtering apologies, and she signals, no, no, get out of the way, don't touch me, DON'T TOUCH ME and I watch hopelessly until finally, finally, she breathes. She catches her breath. Can I get her some water? No, she doesn't want water. Can I get her a towel? No, she doesn't want a towel. She walks it off like a real trooper and I tell her I hope in the next game she will drill me at least twice in the back of the head. She says don't be silly, it happens.

But my game is gone. I play the rest of the set with a lot of caution, hitting lobs to Larry and Bill instead of topspin forehands, serving them grapefruits instead of aces.
I think back to that serve I drilled into my partner and I tell you folks, I couldn't have hit that serve any harder if I wanted to. Jo's going to have a bruise for a good long while.

After the game, Jo calls me over. "Dave, you're new here, right?"
"I am," I say.
"Are you having trouble making friends?"
"Yes," I say.
"Huh," she says.
She walks off.
I am, once again, alone with the backboard.

Week 104 - The V Word

2004-09-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

(This one rated R for language)

Dear Lexington friends,

It's been a few weeks since the scrambled eggs and the pancakes and the lemonade and the writing/acting/directing madness of upstate, but I've finally gotten my act together to check in with everyone, and I hope this email finds you fine and dandy and enjoying this week's wonderful Republican National Convention wherein the Elephant party will surely nominate a coke-snorting C-student once again to lead the free world into the future.

But I digress.

I write this weekly epistle to you in an effort to stay connected. Originally, I used my weekly letter to try to keep in touch with friends back home (some of them even wrote back) and while I may occasionally plug a show or two, the main idea is to keep in touch. If you'd like to stop getting the letters, please reply to this email with the heading 'Get Lost' or something similarly colorful and I will take the hint...

DAVE 6 PRESS presents:

Week 104 in the Big City

Ah, friends, the last week of Summer. A time for reflection.
One Last Look At Lexington: A story I have not shared heretofore. A wonderful story about love, life and the V-word...

My third week at Lexington, one of our teachers offered a lovely morning yoga class for those of us able to get up at 7:00 a.m. (I think she got there at 6:00 a.m. and did an hour of yoga herself before instructing us - she's amazing.) Anyway, I'll admit I was going to the class just to try and make a good impression on the teacher - this was foolish since I am the world's worst yoga-er. I can't touch my toes - haven't been able to since college and karate class, but that's not the point. The point is, at one point in the class, towards the end, everybody's nice and loose and feeling flexible and Shane's breakdancing in the corner or something and the instructor tells us to get our hips nice and low, low, low on the floor, and then she tells the women, quite distinctly, that their vaginas should be nice and open. And while my first instinct was to laugh, as that particular phrase was not one I'd ever heard in polite company before, I did not laugh, because in her delivery of those words, the teacher made it clear that she was in love. She loved all the vaginas in the room, and she loved them more than anything else in the world. At that moment there was peerless, unparalleled vagina love in the universe. If you're wondering where the love was that day - it was in the Barn Theatre in Lexington, NY.

Now, there's more to the story than the gratuitous use of the word vagina numerous times in the preceding paragraph. The love shown in that yoga class made it dawn on me that there are two essential forces in the world: the creative and the judgmental. The reverence for the vagina was expressed out of general reverence for the creative force, all creative forces in the world. So now, if I think back to the morning of vagina love, and I judge it as merely funny, I am missing the point. If that's all I take away from the moment, 'ha ha, she said vagina' then I am missing worlds of wisdom, and I will never be as intelligent as the teacher. In fact, were I to make a joke of it, I would make myself dumber. If I were to go for the easy laugh, I would lose the experience. Nothing against comedy, heavens no, but any time anybody stops AND POINTS and says 'that's funny,' he misses the point, because he is judging instead of participating. The best comedy includes everyone. And that returns us to two weeks ago, when Rom Linney told me to write truth instead of writing jokes. Making cracks about people, art, their speech, their appearance, is not just bad. It's getting in the way of the creative. And that's why the artist and the critic will never see eye to eye. One creates, the other judges. Now, the artist who uses the critic to get better, and the critic who appreciates the screaming demands of craft made upon the artist, these people are the enlightened ones among their respective clans. A bad review, if it's honest, can be a gift. A good review, if deceitful, is a curse. So don't come to my show and tell me you loved it if you hated it, but don't come to my show and take pleasure in the awfulness of my work either.

Things to say when you see a friend's show: I list below some examples of what the friend says, and how the actor/writer/director interprets the compliment.

FRIEND: That was great.
ACTOR: Don't pity me.

FRIEND says: I liked that piece you were in when you didn't talk.
ACTOR hears: When you speak, your acting gets worse.

FRIEND says: Great costumes.
ACTOR thinks: If you're looking at the costumes instead of watching me, the play is crap.

FRIEND says: That's the best work I've ever seen you do.
ACTOR thinks: You didn't like my work before?*

However, if the actor is having a good night, the reverse is often true.
FRIEND: That was great.
ACTOR: I know.

FRIEND: I liked the piece where you didn't speak.
ACTOR: My command of my craft is so powerful and amazing, that I can rivet the audience with my very gaze.

FRIEND: Great costumes.
ACTOR: Yeah. The costume designer used all my ideas.

FRIEND: That's the best work I've ever seen you do.
ACTOR: Get used to it. I'm on my way up, baby.

Do I have a conclusion? Creativity is the positive force. Judgment is too often the negative. The world needs more creativity than judgment. So, actors, next time your teacher speaks with reverence about something you don't understand, listen and do your best to keep up. Friends of actors, you have a tough job. You must always tell the actor they were wonderful, but you can never lie.

Week 103 - Slam 2

2004-08-19T21:51:00.000-05:00

>Big audition last Wednesday. I’d say I’d give myself a B+. I read this
>thing about Leo DiCaprio - he was going up for his big role in Marvin’s Room
>and he had to read with Robert DeNiro, and they came out into the hall to
>get him and he was doing karate kicks with his friends in the hallway.
>Karate kicks in the hall. This kid goes in to the room, reads, screams his
>lines at DeNiro, gets the part, yadda yadda yadda, Titanic. So that’s how I
>approached this audition. I knew the material, wanted to be loose, so I
>found the room where we were going to be reading, got there early, loosened
>up, did some Bruce Lee shit in the mirror, was feeling pretty good about
>things. We do the reading, I make the producers laugh - everything’s all
>good. Yadda yadda yadda, laughter
>
>I get the call the next day. ‘Dave, you’re great. We loved you. It was a
>pleasure watching you read. I can’t encourage you enough. We went
>the other way.’
>‘We went the other way’ means one of three things.
>1. I’m lying, you weren’t good at all, and so we didn’t cast you.
>2. I’m sleeping with the guy we did cast, so we didn’t cast you.
>3. The guy we cast is untalented, and a prick, but his father’s the
>director, so we cast him.
>
>Or, I suppose,
>
> 4. You were good, sport, but somebody else was A) better, B) taller
>C) shorter D) Chinese and E) fit the bill better than you did.
>
>In these situations you want to yell
>A) if you wanted to encourage me, why didn’t given me the part, jagoff?
>B) Why don’t you love me? I love me!
>C) I didn’t want to be in your stupid play anyway.
>D) Well, I’m never acting again.
>
>But then I remember. The swim teams I coached, greatness takes time.
>Collegiate didn’t win states the first year, or the second, or the third.
>They got 8th, then 4th, then 2nd, then first. So maybe the fourth or fifth
>time you’re up for a plum part at that theatre with that particular director
>- you know - maybe that’s when it clicks. After all, all of these people
>are new contacts - you’re on their radar screen now. You shared a room with
>them. They asked you to come into that room - it’s a start - it’s something
>to build on - so the faster you can brush it off, the faster you can
>regroup, turn it around, the better off you’re going to be. You’re not
>going to quit, so get on with it. Those are your choices. Quit, or get on
>with it.
>
>So enough whining. I ain’t quittin - I got shows to do. Project 7 is
>producing a show called LIVE COVERAGE at the Access Theatre. You should
>check it out. It has war, sand, camels and biting political satire. We’re
>at the Access Theatre, 380 Broadway, 4th floor on the following dates:
>
>Tomorrow, 8/18 3 pm
>Friday 8/20 9:45 p
>Weds 8/25 4:45 p
>Sunday 8/29 noon
>
>And I will be back on stage for EST’s political festival: WHOSE COUNTRY IS
>IT ANYWAY? on
>Tuesday, August 24 at 8:30p
>Wednesday, September 1 at 8:30 p
>
>Mega laughs guaranteed. You know the deal - you come to a show I’m in and
>you don’t laugh out loud, I buy your beer at the after party. So, hope you
>can make it. Email me for directions or ticket info. Word.

Week 102 - The Big Slam

2004-08-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

Returning from camp last week was something like Roald Amundsen returning from the South Pole after two years in the ice and snow to find the world had gone and changed on him. His friends and enemies had switched places, his mentor was dying, the world was on the brink of World War. Re-entry is a bitch. When I left on June 30th, Spiderman 2 was getting ready to come out, Fahrenheit 911 was the talk of the town, and Gephardt was still in the running for John Kerry’s running mate.

It was a great summer. Five weeks of stirring success after stirring success capped by a two day workshop with Romulus Linney. I think I have gushed about this man before. After two hours with him, I felt inspired – I didn’t want to go to the campfire – I wanted to stay up all night and write a play by morning.

The way the workshop works – each writer brings 10-20 pages of material (usually the beginning of a play) to the table to be read aloud. There were 12 of us. I went 10th or 11th – we had been basking in the man’s vast knowledge and experience for a day and a half.

So we read my play. In the middle of the reading, the man gets up and goes into the other room to get a Coke and some pretzels. I took this to be a bad sign. When he sat back down, he listened until the play was over, and then he said with a smile, ‘It’s a kaliedescope of icons, an American farce set in heaven with Jesus, God and the Devil as the three stooges.’ The class was silent.

‘Is that good?’ I asked.

“I like the three stooges,” he said

But?

‘But your freewheeling imagination is getting in your way. The theatre demands that we write something that touches others. Go write something that you believe in.’ He was looking at me like he felt sorry for me. I was crushed. I really liked this guy. He quoted Aristotle, for God’s sake. He got straight to the point of things.

Well, if you know me, you KNOW I’m going to finish that play now. Three Stooges or no. I will deliver it to you by Christmas, dear reader, or you can poke me in the eye.

(Publisher's Note: David continued to revise the play for eight months but never finished it.)

Week 101 - More Tales from Camp

2004-08-01T21:40:00.000-05:00

(This one rated R for language)

> Good news: got an audition at Manhattan Theatre Club, coming soon
> Good news: found out my younger brother is getting married to a
super-cool chick named Lynn
> Good news: one more week to go in Lexington, culminating in a weekend
with Rom Linney, who I understand is not only 'erudite' but 'learned'
> Good news: was voted 'Most Fuckable' at the campfire last night (sorry, mom, but I am pretty cute)
> Bad news: waited too long to do laundry - got a rash
> Bad news: had to take six trips up five flights in the 100 degree heat today to drop off files at my boss's apartment.
> Bad news: have cleaned a few too many camp toilets since my last letter
to all of you, but
> Good news: got tons of cool birthday presents - oh, wait, I didn't get
any.
> But thanks to all three of you who wished me happy birthday by email. I
was emotionally overwhelmed.
>
> Met some super-cool playwrights last week named Edward Allan Baker, Arthur
> Giron and Shirley Kaplan. They told me my work was 'not completely
> unbearable' and said while they 'read it twice and had no idea what was
> going on' my enthusiasm for the work 'was contagious, and puzzling.'
> Hmm. See you next week.

Week 100 - Dave's B-Day

2004-07-25T21:32:00.000-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's official. I am XX years old. As I ruminate on my
quarter century of underachieving on this planet, it occurs to me that I've
really only learned two things:

1) beans, beans, good for the heart, and;
2) beans, beans, good for the mind

To update you: it is with great excitement that I report to you that I have
been asked to join the staff of Ensemble Studio Theatre's Summer Conference
at Lexington. I am currently in the middle of a five week stretch wherein
it is my great pleasure to assist the likes of playwright Romulus Linney
(father of film star Laura Linney), actress Deborah Hedwall (Uta Hagen's
protégé) and writer Chris Regan (from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) as
well as EST greats Jamie Richards, Chris Ceraso and Curt Dempster. While
these names may mean nothing to you, this is not my fault. If you weren't
such a wanker, you'd be excited for me, Danny.

My daily schedule at the camp has gone something like this:

7:45 am Rise and Shine (yes, I actually get up for this)
8:00 am breakfast prep
9-10 am serve breakfast
10-12 - acting workshop
12-1 lunch prep
1-2 serve lunch
2-5 acting workshop
5-6 dinner prep
6-7 serve dinner
7-11 acting workshop
11-1 a.m. (or 2 a.m., or 4 a.m., or sometimes 6a.m.) party at the bonfire

Under these conditions it is impossible not to grow like a weed - acting 8
hours a day with some of the best teachers in the city - what's not to love?

I have also learned:
1) How to crack eggs one-handed;
2) That the word 'spatula' can ruin an otherwise good joke;
3) Washing 100 plates a day isn't boring when the other guy (or girl) in the
kitchen is mooning you.

It's difficult to describe what camp is like - I've made more friends at the
camp in three weeks then I've made in the city in the last year.

For example, last year I made four friends. OK, I take it back. I made
three friends and one acquaintance.

8 million people in New York, I've made friends with four of them. Clearly,
I am pacing myself. I am a pacer, like the Indiana Pacers, for which I do
not play, but feel a special kinship. Eight million people and I can't meet
anyone. We're all flying past each other at nine million miles an hour. No
'please' no 'thank you' just a healthy dose of 'the was MY cab, asshole' and
'you want weed?' (I get asked this regularly.)

In the bad news category, the movie I was planning to shoot with Proctor
this summer fell apart when Pookie realized the money he was going to use to
make the movie was in a trust account he can't get access to until he's 25.
I told him I was glad he checked on that.

In the good news column, the guy who's mooning me at work says he might be
able to introduce me to a literary agent. The girl who's mooning me at
work says she might be able to send my pilot script to some producer pals of hers in LA.
And I got a letter in the mail today from a woman at Tor books (the biggest sci-fi
publisher in the world) who is interested in seeing my latest manuscript.
Solid gold, baby. Solid gold. I've only been submitting to her for nine
years now. Maybe one day I will call her friend.

Week 69 - Spontaneous Combustion

2004-04-25T21:25:00.000-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am back. After a three month hiatus from the journal of the struggling
artist, I return to you only because I think I have something new to say.
The life of David since Christmastime has been fairly simple - a tolerable
day job interspersed with late nights and long hours either dedicated to
making strides into the entertainment industry (in all respects a tough nut
to crack unless your last name is Douglas or you're sleeping with someone
whose last name is Douglas) or watching the Dave Chappelle Show and
wondering if I'll ever be that funny.

Friday nights I volunteer at Manhattan Theatre Source. Manhattan Theatre
Source is located in Greenwich Village right near Washington Square Park.
Last weekend they hosted what they call 'Spontaneous Combustion' wherein ten
writers and twenty actors get together on a Friday evening, plan, write from
scratch, memorize and perform a show in 48 hours. On Friday I was partnered
with the best of the ten writers by a stroke of luck, and my acting partner
was a timid twenty year old kid named Ryan who was "visiting" New York, not
working here, not a struggling actor but a real person of all things, who
had come to visit his brother.

So Mac the writer sat us down and talked with us for a half an hour, kindly
nodding when I would make suggestions about what the script should include.
"I like ninjas," I said. "And bumbling hitmen sure are funny." Mac, to his
everlasting credit, patiently and dutifully made notes concerning my moronic
suggestions, assuring me with a straight face that he would
consider them all before setting pen to paper. To my infinite delight,
he used none of my stupid ideas and wrote a hilarious but touching story
about a boy who came to New York to visit his older brother. "Mac," I said.
"Thank God you didn't listen to me." On Saturday morning we ran the scene a
dozen times, participated in the two o'clock read through, scored some big
laughs, and then went home to set to the intimidating task of getting off
book by noon the following day.

We arrived in the morning, after a sleepless night of worry, essentially
off-book, but a little timid, and began running the scene, endlessly. In
the park, in the theatre, walking down the street, doing speed-throughs, in
Jamaican accents, even blindfolded. The dress was at five o'clock. We had
to be ready. We had to do justice to Mac's scene.

Our dress rehearsal came at five p.m. Sunday night, and when it was over, we
knew we were terribly, endlessly screwed. Despite running the scene dozens
(hundreds?) of times that morning, there were still all the errant pauses
and awkward moments that invariably occur in unpolished rehearsals. In a
dead panic we rehearsed nonstop from 5 until 8 o'clock, but the truth was,
we were doomed. Even the parts of Mac's play that we were unequivocably
comfortable to us were coming unraveled once shot through with a spotlight.
Mac had written us a wonderful five minute piece, and we were going to
destroy it on opening night in front of his very eyes.

The curtain went up, and as you might have guessed, we pulled it out. Somehow, someway, we pulled a cogent performance out of thin air. We
got big laughs, remembered everything we had practiced. It was sweet. When
we walked off stage, applause ringing in our ears, we were reminded of the
golden truth that is necessity. Sometimes, if you MUST do a thing, you will
do it, even if you believe you cannot.

Week 43 - Stott Family Christmas, 2003

2004-01-17T21:18:00.000-05:00

STOTT FAMILY DECLARED A NATIONAL TREASURE BY FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER
“Compared to them, I’m scum,” President says.

(this episode rated R for language)

Ah yes, the Stott Holiday letter. 'It’s late,’ you’re saying, 'and I’m sick
of reading about young David’s obsession with Hillary Duff.’ Well, guess
what, this letter is not late. It’s a Holiday letter, and last time I
checked, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday was a Holiday. This year’s
letter is particularly well-timed as its message epitomizes one of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.s most profound themes:

The Stotts are fucking awesome.
Seriously, dude. You know what this is – you know where this is going. We
are getting ready to list all our achievements for the year and you’re sitting
there, sweating, and you should be. We’ll list all our accomplishments for
the year, you’ll list your accomplishments for the year, and we all come to
the same conclusion, right? Our gleaming pile of accomplishments is going
to make yours look like, well, that’s not polite.

I mean, come on now. Face it. What have you really done this year? So you
sat on some Board of Directors for some corporation nobody’s heard of.
Jamie CHOPPED DOWN TREES. So you won some prestigious award at your school
or got some long sought after promotion at work: ANDREW’S SOCCER TEAM KICKED
ASS. Your daughter had a new baby and she named it after you? MOM AND PER
FLEW ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN NINETEEN TIMES. Honestly, we have done more
this year than you’ve done in the last five. Your family is full of misfits
and losers and that one embarrassing uncle named Flexit McGoon and we are
all perfect little role model citizens with fat and bad ass
cars. All the chicks dig us, and Jeeves wipes my butt after I pooh. So,
you’ve been warned.

Dave has had an astonishingly wonderful first year in New York. He changed
his name to Awesome D, and he feels that this name sums him up awesomely.
He is awesome, and his former name started with D. He is an Awesome
version of his former self. He is partying with Matt Damon and Paris
Hilton, getting laid ALL THE DAMN TIME, and is directing and producing his
way through the Broadway circuit. He won four Obies and two Commies last
year, and was listed in People magazine as The Man Most Likely To Be Sexy
Sometime in the Foreseeable Future, Just Not Now. He owns a Jag, though, so
suck it major.

Jamie this year has proved that he is the ultimate salesman. He was sent to
New York by his company to 'teach all those Gomers a lesson’ and to 'sell
the shit out of our new line of Ducatis.’ Despite a well-funded conspiracy
by the jealous co-workers in Bologna, Jamie earned a prestigious quota
buster award. Yeah, like he needs it. He was too busy being awesome with
his hot babe wife and thinking about what yacht to wear to the Tonys to care
much about some plaque that’ll just go in the basement with all the others.
Whaddaya expect? This guy’s married to a woman who single-handedly fought
off the hurricane that hit Richmond with a gardening hose and a salad fork.
She redirected it to Cairo, where rain is needed. Plus she saves puppies
and whales. In her spare time she custom builds Health Care Relief Systems
to alleviate hospital overcrowding in the Sudan. Sorry boys, she’s awesome,
but she’s taken.

Need more evidence of our awesomeness? Mom and Per visited Denmark 6 times
this year, plus Greece, San Francisco, Rome, Istanbul, Krakow, Chile, and
Sydney, Australia. Per designed the new opera houses in all of these cities
and gave all the money to the poor. Did you know he speaks six languages?
Mom speaks fourteen. You probably only know one, loser-ass English, and your
grammar sucks beach balls. Oh yeah - Per is a grandfather now, with
grandsons named Bertram and Mikkel, and his grandsons already laugh at his
jokes.

And Andrew? Well, you got his Christmas card, dincha? Andrew’s in love.
He’s in gooey, smootchie, don’t bother to call me, I’m too busy being in
love to do anything – love. Andrew IS up for a big promotion at work, is
thinking about trading in his house for a 16th century Parisian-styled
mansion, but with all the rose petals and Godiva chocolates in the air, who
can tell? As far as we know, Lynn is a good match for him, but she’s so
busy in Uruguay that we don’t see her much. Lynn cured cancer last
December.

So we’ve got it all – love, success, international travel, milk– and that
was all the boring stuff. We’d love to say more, but as you’ve probably
guessed by now, we’re too awesome to care.

Week 42 - Xmas in the Big City

2003-12-17T19:11:00.000-05:00

Week 41 will come tomorrow - computer problems. But I had an unusually
tender New York moment tonight, and I must share it with you.

Every year at Christmastime, Grand Central Station comes alive with
holiday spectacle. They set up a shopping arcade (I think that's the
right word for it), deck the halls with wreaths and ribbons and they
even project a light show onto the ceiling of the Main Concourse -
that's the cool room with the constellations hand-painted on the
soaring, vaulted ceiling.

Well I was doing some shopping after work, and the place was bustling as
usual, but there was a sense of warmth there - it was kind of strange
but pleasant - a gentleness and sense of patience that you don't always
see in New York.

I was overcome with the urge (as were most people around me) to stop
rushing from one place to the next, to stop and take a moment to enjoy
the light show on the ceiling above. Angels and candy canes were
dancing on the ceiling, and next to me, I noticed a man in a wheelchair
gazing longingly up at the ceiling, and he does this amazing
thing, and everybody sort of intuitively knows to move out of his way as
he glides across the open floor, sort of enchanted, dancing in his own
way, chasing the dancing lights across the concourse floor.

Then he crashes into a baby stroller, the mother screams and the
honeymoon's over, but for a second there, man, we were all free.

Week 38 - The World Series Inside My Head

2003-11-04T19:03:00.000-05:00

October 23-25, 2003 (this one R for language)

What a weekend – I had performances Friday and Saturday night, then Dad came to town for Game 6 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium. Joining us from Princeton was David Baumgarten, who was as happy to get the extra ticket as a college student can be without weed.

It was a great experience – we loved the hotdogs, and Dad and Dave B weren’t too disappointed that the Yankees lost (both being avid Cubs fans) but the telling moment was when Dad leaned over and said (I’m paraphrasing) “They’re not hitting for sh*t.”

In that moment, I felt I could relate with the doomed Yankees, having been the subject of an artistic K myself two days prior. Let me explain.

Having bragged shamelessly in my last electronic missive to the masses, you may assume that I approached dress rehearsal last Thursday with a certain amount of confidence, bordering on arrogance, well within spitting distance of diva-dom. I took an early early lunch from work at 9:45 a.m. – went to the space – did a scene we had done 35 times – and totally blew it . I was all over the place. It is a horrible moment, to be on stage, to know it is your turn to speak, and to have NO EARTHLY CLUE what you’re supposed to say. It is heart-stoppingly dreadful, a cold sweat, ice-water in your veins moment, and I don’t wish it on anybody.
OK, maybe Brendan Fraser and the guy who wrote Bridges of Madison County, but certainly no one I LIKE.

Anyway, they put our piece first because it was, supposedly, well-rehearsed. I had talked the director into giving me the ‘star part’. I had talked the producer into putting our piece first because it would be a strong start for the evening. In short, I gotten everything I had asked for, which was to be the point man for the whole evening. “Put me front and center,” I said. “I can handle it.”

I wish. Instead I foundered like a deer in the headlights. I finally got to do the piece for an audience and I totally choked. I was clueless, lost, utterly petrified. So I started chattering. I skipped all over the first two pages, and kept babbling until I found my spot.

Afterwards, a guy tells me, ‘That was FUNNY, dude!” and I decided he must be drunk.

I walked back to work thinking – how can this possibly be worth my time? I work all day, then use every moment of my free time memorizing these stupid lines. Nights, weekends, even on my way to and from work, I am listening to the lines on headphones. Then I have to take an early lunch break to do this dress rehearsal, run across town to f*ck the performance all up, then run back to the office and weather the withering stares from all my co-workers who think I’m getting special treatment for being allowed to take a long lunch once a month to pursue my DREAM, motherf*ckers. GO GET A HOBBY!

So I sit there back at work and stew in the situation I have created, and the baseball comparisons begin.

When the Cubs Pitcher said, after they lost to the Marlins, “What just happened was, I choked” I couldn’t believe it. How could this guy choke? He’s been pitching professionally for how long? He’s used to the crowds, the pressure, the lights, the cameras, the fans.

Now I know how this guy could choke. He was pitching for the first trip to the world series in 58 years. I’m sitting here all worked up over a one time show that is going to be seen by, at most, a hundred people, who if I’m terribly awful probably won’t even remember to tell their friends about how this one guy was particularly bad. In any case, after a week they will have forgotten my name. I’m probably a dick for thinking anybody will care.

Anyway, I choked, which was bad, but I also choked in what should have been, for a professional actor, a no-pressure situation. Having, as I do, the sensitivity of a delicate little wuss, afterwards, I called my director right up and apologized for blowing it. To his credit, the director told me not to worry, that I did just fine, that all the anguish I was feeling did not show on my face – that I did a great job of keeping it together and he hardly noticed (which, whether it’s true or not, is a great thing to say to an actor who’s wigging out on you). I chose to believe that he was telling me the truth, because A, he hadn’t lied to me yet, and B, even if he was lying, he was right. It was over, I had to go on to the next thing.

In life, as in baseball, your options are always:

A) dwell on it
B) repeat the mistake (horribly humiliating, but sometimes inevitable)
C) find a new way to do it better – hit a home run when everybody (including you) thinks you’re going to strike out.

So late that Thursday night I’m replaying the scene in my head, still cursing myself, my lack of preparation, and I run over the scene 20-30 times. I know the words inside and out.

Friday after work, I have two hours to kill – I run the lines. I run the lines in the bathroom, on the subway, in the dressing room. Five minutes before the show starts, I’m running lines. One minute before the show starts, I’m running lines.

The show starts. I run onstage. I never blink. I homer. I wish I played for the Cubs.

Week 37 - Backstage in NYC

2003-10-21T19:00:00.000-05:00

At our first rehearsal last Tuesday, we sat down to read. James and I had
worked together before and so prior to beginning, we suggested to the
playwright and the director that we switch roles - James is a drier wit, and
was more suitable for the Gary role. My brand of comedy is, um, better, and
it fit better with the lead role.

"I think I should be the star," I said, and I wasn't joking. I was telling
the truth. I'm not unlike Abe Lincoln in that regard.

Anyhoo, the rehearsal went pretty well - we got to a point where the
playwright said, "I'm really happy with this, but I don't like that last
line. If anybody has any ideas..." So I told her how she should end her
play. I added five words and she and the director squealed with delight.
Squealed. Seriously. Like little seals. Rehearsal continued to roll
right along - the author and director were chuckling at my comedic choices
hither and yon, but then, but then, on my way out the door at the end of the
night, I overheard the writer say to the director 'David is brilliant.'

Yeah. She said that. Me. Yes. The director
took me aside after it was all over and said "You are a funny, funny, man."
Yeah. He said that. Funny squared. Clearly, folks, I am the shizzle.
Clearly, you should come to this show. Friday, October 24, 8:30, Ensemble
Studio Theatre. I am brilliant in this role. I am a funny, funny man in
this role. You WILL not miss it.

The really funny thing is that two days before that I was considering
quitting acting all together - in Chicago I watched a tape of myself from
the intern show and about crapped myself, I was so bad. And I was bad ON A
NIGHT I THOUGHT I WAS GOOD. That messes with your head. So there I was,
trying to think of a way to back out of this acting project gracefully, or
at least make peace with the fact that it would be my last acting project -
that I would stick to writing and directing from here on out.

But no, apparently, I am brilliant. Apparently, I am funny squared. A few
choice words can change your whole life. Now, if we can just get Roger
Ebert, Peter Travers and Jim Carrey to say those same words. 'David is
brilliant.' I think that will be my life's goal - to get Jim Carrey to kiss
my butt. I mean, you know you've made it then.

Come to the show Friday and you just might laugh. If you don't, well, what
do you know? Seriously. Like you're like some kind of critic
now.

EAT THOSE WORDS
A part of
OCTOBERFEST

Friday, October 24, 8:30 p.m.
Ensemble Studio Theatre
549 W. 52nd St.
NYC 10019
Call 212-247-4982 for reservations

Either you will laugh or I will buy you a beer after the show. It's win-win
baby.

Week 35 - Liquid Cucumber and the Infinite Sadness

2003-09-29T22:03:00.000-05:00

September 29, 2003 10:03 PM

Great night tonight - my creative minds group (we don't have a name for
ourselves yet - I proposed Nun Hating Jew Nazis and the Women Who Love Them,
and Kids With Red Sneakers - we're still working on it) anyway, WE, met for the first time - they liked my idea for a TV show, which is based loosely upon my experiences teaching at a private school - which put me in an incredibly good mood. I mean, that's the whole
point of living here, right? -- spending time with people who think you're
the shit. What a Feeling!

Anyway, point of the story - I was in such a good mood I went home and
cleaned out the fridge. Now, if you know me, you know I DO NOT clean out the
fridge. No. Never. Unless I am getting ready to move out of the
apartment, I do NOT CLEAN THE FRIDGE (and if I am about to move out, I feel
put upon that I have to clean - I don't see the point in it, because, hey, I
don't care anymore. I don't live there)

But I did it. There was a terrible smell coming from the fridge and I
couldn't turn a blind eye/nose to it anymore.

My friends, I did not have to search for long. There it was in the
'Cripser'. This so called Crisper, which was not keeping ANYTHING crisp,
much less this liquid cucumber. OK, it was TECHNICALLY in a solid state,
Mr. Wizard, but barely. I touched it and it about exploded on contact,
running to mush like an icy stream thawed. It felt like a plastic bag
filled with water. It was gray on the inside. It has been there for a
long, long time.

It is almost two o'clock as I write this. Two o'clock is very late to be up
when you have to be at work at 9 in the morning.

But two o'clock is how long it took to clean out this so called refrigerator
and its so-called 'crispers.' It was more like a bio dome for mold. An
eighth-grade science project gone horribly, horribly wrong. Consider these
other assorted contents:

Chicken and noodles, fuzzy, been there at least two months.
Pot of rice, moldy - white mold spores - been there at least three months
Potatoes - white spots on them - age - ???
Smaller pot of rice - see above
Slice of beef - 2 weeks old - NO MOLD YET!!!!
Mayonaise that had expired in April.
Thai takeout, THREE CARTONS - at least two months old. (That was July,
folks.)
Mushy old red pepper.
Mushy old apples.
Old milk.

So I learned my lesson. NEVER CLEAN OUT THE FRIDGE - IT IS SIMPLY SAFER TO
BUY A NEW ONE.

Share your balls.

Week 33 - Soccer with the Mexicans

2003-09-11T13:56:00.000-05:00

September 11, 2003 12:07 AM

My One Year New York Anniversary is fast approaching - September 29 was my
moving date.

Only 40 some weeks in a year, apparently.

We've come a long way from yogurt parfait at 5 in the morning, haven't we?

The adventures continue. My adventure for the week? Soccer in the park
with the Mexicans. These guys can play, man. Most of them are older than
me, but they got jets. I couldn't understand a word they were saying (only
one guy spoke English) he was watching from the sidelines. He said he
thought I was Irish. The way I played I'm guessing that was an insult.

I didn't play that great, but I did score the first goal. Then about
fifteen minutes into the 7 on 7 game I was totally exhausted, but they play
every day, even in the winter, so I'm thinking they'll whip me into shape
real quick.

The biggest character on the 'field' (we play on a blacktop) was a Brazilian
guy in a number 10 Maradonna jersey. He was loud and nasty and not very
skilled, so after his team had been playing for a while and they lost, this
guy picks up his ball and goes home, leaving 20 of us standing around with
no ball. It was so elementary school I can't tell you.

I want to take Spanish now so I can figure out what the soccer guys are
saying to each other.

Labor Day was lots of fun - scored tickets to the US Open in Queens on
Friday night - saw Roddick beat Ljubicic in the second round - it was a
brutal match - not very pretty, but lots of killer serves (they aced each
other 44 times - 22 a piece) and Ljubicic got some calls that didn't go his
way and he whined. We had pretty good seats. I was with my pal Jessie from EST.
There was a lot of money in that stadium. Mullets, trucker hats and Budweiser were in short
supply.

Sunday went to grandmas 80th birthday party and then scored tickets to the
Bruce Springsteen concert in Giants stadium thanks to two ex-students of
mine, Laura Schewel and Michael Gottwald. Shout out to my nizzles.

So I know I owe the world a Big Joe DVD by September 15. Alas for all you
pervs out there, I rediscovered my epic fantasy trilogy project
when I went on vacation and have been spending 3 to 5 hours a day on it
since the cabin.

The book is rich with possibility (which is why I've been attracted to it
off and on for the last 8 years) I think the problem is each time I revise
it, in order to keep the story exciting in my own mind I go back and change
things which necessitate changes in all the surrounding paragraphs, pages,
chapters. White & Strunk preach that in good writing you should always
'Omit Needless words.' I'm getting to the point where I have to omit
needless chapters, and than can be a tough axe to swing when you've spent
months perfecting that chapter just to discover it won't go in the story.

But Dave, didn't you go to New York to do some acting?

I know, I know. But when the muse calls, you have to answer - you just have
to. Otherwise you turn out unhappy, just like Ljubicic. Or that unnamed
Brasilisan man who won't share his ball. That's the moral of the story,
I think. Share your balls.

Week 32 - NYC Blackout

2003-08-24T23:44:00.000-05:00

August 24, 2003 11:44 PM

> TALES FROM THE BLACKOUT

> I guess the last one happened in 1977, a little more than 25 years ago.
> So my timing was expert. Of all the days I decide to skip lunch and leave
> work early, I had to pick Thursday the 14th to do it. So at 4:11 p.m.
> instead of sitting behind my comfy desk at work, I'm on the sweltering
> subway en route to Queens.

> Now, to my credit, had I been one train later (or if the power had gone
> out fifteen seconds earlier) I would have been stuck underground.
> Luckily, we had just come out of the tunnel and were rounding the bend to
> the 45th Street Courthouse Road stop on the number 7 when the train
> jerked to a stop. 'No problem,' I said. 'We'll be out of here in ten
> minutes.'

> Wrong. Luckily, the train operator, Mr. Chan (I found out his name later)
> was there to guide us through the catastrophe. This guy had the makings
> of a David Spade calibre stand up comedian. He was tossing out gems like this,
> five minutes after the train has stopped. Five minutes.
>
> MR. CHAN: The train has stopped.
>
> Thanks, Mr. Chan.
>
> MR. CHAN: Make yourself comfortable. Talk to each other and enjoy, well
> don't enjoy. Try to enjoy. Don't be angry about anything. It is not
> good for your health.
>
> Ok, so the whole Niagra grid is out of power. I am alone. I counted 311
> contacts in my Palm Pilot. Who calls me? Who is concerned? Of all my
> friends and family, who will call me first? Anybody.
>
> Now, my father and brother call me BACK, six hours later, but by then I'm
> home safe and sound and don't need any moral support. Thanks a bundle,
> guys.
>
> Luckily, I had Mr. Chan, the voice of reason.
>
> MR. CHAN: Everything is under control - smooth!
>
> "The air conditioner is not work, the ventilation system is not work, only
> battery powered public address system."
>
> "Thank you for your patience. It is because of a blackout. Citywide."
>
> "It could be much worse. We could be stuck in tunnel."
>
> "Do not leave the train. It is very dangerous outside of the train.
> Tigers."
>
> "I AM NOT A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER."
>
> "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are going to evacuate train. You are very
> kind, thoughtful people. Please exit slowly. No hurry. There is no
> danger outside the train."
>
> "Don't be hurry. Don't be hurry. Everything is under control. Relax.
> You good, nice, nice people. Don't be hurry."
>
> Now, outside the train the ice cream man is making a killing and some
> neighborhood entrepreneurs are breaking their backs hustling the $3
> bottled water, but for the most part the whole city was CCC. I
> joined up with a flood of refugees pouring off the Midtown bridge - I
> walked 50 blocks home (my bud Aaron walked 90) had some pizza and Budweiser
> by candlelight and got the next day off of work. All in all, a good time
> was had by all.

Mom, I understand why you didn't call.

WEEK 30 - First Trip to Lexington

2003-07-28T18:19:00.000-05:00

7/28/03

First day of camp. Good fun. Three hour ride in the van with Lee who writes plays and used to be a big shot for Merryl Lynch, David, a gay 50s actor with good comic timing, Dana, a working New York actress, and Amy Wolf from LA who is treating herself to a vacation. She deals with a lot of a-holes in the waitressing world in LA – people not giving her props.

Dinner was really good. BBQ chicken, slaad, spicy baked potatoes, carrots, cheesecake cubes – the strawberry was particularly good. They gave us sides to read and then dinner and then we worked from 7:15 – 11:25 with one five minute break – it was great. Jamie and Chris are right on. Chris is so understated and so deadly accurate with his critiques and suggestions, it’s pretty scary. Jamie’s a little more in your face about everything but still right on.

No weak links, really, in the acting here. I can hold my own and I’m better than some. I am very excited about how I can apply all that I learn here to when I finish writing my plays and directing my feature film. The main key is simple and so often overlooked. Play the action. Every character should go after what he wants. That’s what acting is, action – we want to see action. The director of a movie calls ‘action!” she does not call ‘dialogue’ or ‘talk!’

My notes from today:

Be on time. If you are on time, you’re late. Be early.

What do I want, what’s in my way, how am I going to get what I want? This is the only driving force and the only motivation you ever need and the only thing with which you ever really need concern yourself.

Vocabulary:
OBJECTIVE: what do I want? / same as acting = intention
SCENE EVENT: what happens in a scene. E.G. This is the scene where I convince the detective to take my case.

All you can play is what you want. You can’t play ‘I have a stomache ache.’ Can’t play ‘I feel bad for all the starving children in Ethiopia today.’ All I can play is ‘I must convince this man to take my case, even though I have no money.’

Directors don’t say ‘be urgent’ Director’s say ‘if you don’t seal this deal, you lose your house, your car, your wife.’

Tight cue pick up

Passover question: Why is today different from every other day?

Don’t send up a send up. Don’t comment on a comment. Play your action for God’s sake.

If you find something that works, you may keep it. You don’t have to discover something new every time. If it works, for God’s sake, keep it.

Everything you need is in your partner’s eyes. It’s not in Ethiopia (so there’s no need to look out there.)

Week 29 - Dave's first show

2003-07-02T17:53:00.000-05:00

July 02, 2003 11:39 PM

TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE SHOW:

Rehearsal. Actors are typically overworked, underpaid, stressed out,
running from bill collectors and landlords. And what do we do for fun? Sit
around in a hole in the wall and try to memorize words we think sound cool.
The show goes up in two weeks and we haven't had a proper rehearsal yet.

Finally, we get the space to rehearse. We get everyone together. We are
ready to begin, excited to start. And then Hank the Helpful Construction
Worker fires up a JACKHAMMER twenty feet away. They're tearing down the
building next door. The hammer is jacking so loudly it rattles the fillings
right out of our heads. It makes our teeth chatter.

So we scream our lines over the jackhammer, trying to ignore the fact that
this is a tender scene, a love scene, and we probably shouldn't be SHOUTING
sweet nothings into our beloved's ear.

Next, the theatre gods decide to get cute so they add to the chiseling
jackhammer a piercing fire alarm, which is short circuiting because of the
heavy rains from the night before. The faulty wiring in the building is
being addled by the moisture, so the alarm goes on and off at irregular
intervals.

And there is rainwater dripping from the ceiling. We're careful not to
upset any of the eighteen bowls placed around the stage to collect dripping
pools. We also steer clear of the falling plaster, and try to ignore the
fact that this theatre where we work, where we bring others to laugh and
cry, really ought to be condemned before it meets the fate of its next door
neighbor. We know there are rats in the building, we're just tired of
chasing of them.

Finally, my cell phone rings. One of my actors quits. 'It's just not worth
it,' she says. I look around. Anyone else? I think to myself the girl who
quit might be right. I tell myself that acting's OK, but I'm better at
writing. I hate memorizing lines, I hate getting off book. The first few
rehearsals I feel a tremendous anxiety. I should know the lines and I
don't. Invariably those lines which I have recited endlessly on the subway
and in the shower and into the mirror as the shaving cream slides off my
face seem to escape me at the moment of truth. I hate it, I realize. I
absolutely hate this part of an actor's life. Suddenly, I know this will be
my last show. I am a writer. What was I thinking? I look around at my
fellow performers (except they're not my fellows - I am not one of them... I
am pretending to be.) I see that the roaches, rats, rainwater, jackhammers,
alarms and daily indignities of our waiting and office jobs have not fazed
them. They happily remain to squash bugs and shout out lines over
jackhammers. They are having the time of their lives. They are playing. I
am not one of them.

TWO DAYS BEFORE THE SHOW:

Tech rehearsal. Everybody has to bring in their music. To the uninitiated,
this is an interesting time, as you start to appreciate all the backstage
details. For example, there are ten pieces in the show. That means ten
sets and nine set changes every night. Ten pieces of music are used to lead
into the scenes. An intermission tape must be cut. Lighting scenarios for
every scene and internal cues (phones ringing, sound effects, doors slamming,
lighting changes within the scene) must be mastered. Luckily we have a pro
in the booth. Jackie handles all that stuff so we don't have to worry about
it.

We run through set changes. Who moves what stool where at what time?
During the course of the show I will participate in eight of the set
changes. The other two I get to sit out because I need to be changing
costumes. That gives me something to do between every act. One more thing
to remember. My biggest fear is always that I will forget a line. That the
show will stop, and everybody will take a moment out of their lives, a
moment they expected to be entertained, and they will all stop and realize
that I have failed them. I have forgotten what I am supposed to say. They
have traveled from all over, committed this time, this precious free time of
theirs. They have spent it on me and my show and I have forgotten what I am
supposed to say to them. It is a terrible fear, and it is the stuff of my
nightmares - I am still enough of a novice that I equate a great performance
with one in which I remember all of my lines.

I am told I will move six tables, five chairs and wet bar on wheels every
night. I think I can remember it all. We finish tech at 11:30. I am home
by one in the morning.

ONE DAY BEFORE THE SHOW:

Dress rehearsal. Tension runs high. One of the actors drinks five beers
during the dress because 'everybody is too damn tense.' There are seven
guys sharing a dressing room the size of a bath tub. This is the first
night we deal with the reality of accommodating twenty-three costume changes
in the space. Amazingly, it works. Everyone's too busy to hang out in the
dressing room.

Despite the nerves, dress goes amazingly well. We are excited about opening
night. We nail our cues and hit our marks and give the performances we want
to give. Someone mutters, 'if a crappy dress rehearsal means a great
opening night, what's in store for us?'

OPENING NIGHT

Somehow, everyone's on time, dressed, ready to go. Technical cues and set
changes seem under control. I have recited the monologue that's been
troubling me at least 20 times today. I hope it is enough. I hope we are
ready. I go out on stage, ready to face the audience... And proceed to act
as if I'm made of mahogany. The presence of the audience has intimidated
me. I'm not sure why. Also, the audience seems mighty solemn. There are
three funny pieces at the top of the show - no laughs until half way through
the third piece - that's over fifteen minutes in. Trouble.

The show ends.
We bow at the curtain call, disappointed. The crowd is polite, but we know
we didn't blow them away. The artistic director of the theatre (who's big
pals with Jon Voight and David Mamet) chose this night to watch us. Crap.
I leave the cast party early. Work in the morning. Home by 1.

FRIDAY NIGHT (night 2 of 4)

I'm fired up. We're all fired up. Desperate to avenge last night's loss,
we throw ourselves into our work. Jitters are gone. We enjoy the pieces
with a sense of abandon, a sense of daring, of play. The crowd loves us.
It's a small house (it's a 99-person theatre, and there are maybe 60-70
people in attendance). We make them laugh in the first three minutes, and
we make them laugh loud inside the first seven. We know we are in good
company when they laugh at the little jokes, the subtle ones, even the
marginal ones. Great show. Everyone's excited. Cast party at Druid's. We
get bombed. We go to Rudy's. Then Zanzibar's. I get home at 5.

SATURDAY NIGHT (night 3 of 4)

The house is packed. Rumor is there's a casting agent and some 'industry
people' in the house, but we can't figure out where. The crowd is loud and
rowdy. The lights go down. We're on, and we're on fire. They love us. We
can do no wrong. It feels so easy - every movement, every action, every
gesture seems right on the money. The theatre is alive. It is without
question the best night yet. I have fallen back in love with what I'm
doing. What was I thinking? I'm an actor and a half! I do good work!
People are clapping for me! I float to the cast party at Druid's, then to
fellow thespian Kate's in the village. Kate has an apartment with a back
yard. So lucky. We party. I'm home by 4.

SUNDAY NIGHT (Closing night)

Medium size house. I have brought a video camera and tripod to record this
wonderful thing we have created, and to capture my majestic talent on tape.
The audience tonight is serious, solemn, not in the mood to laugh.
I am cocky from the night before. I overdo it. I adds lines to
my own play. I play for laughs. I fall flat on my face. I feel chastened.
I eat humble pie. Fame and glory are fleeting.

Cast party at Druid's. Everybody's exhausted. Farewell hugs and email
addresses are exchanged. At midnight I cart home tripod, camera and thirty
pounds of costume bag. Home by 1. I fall asleep knowing I am an actor.

Weeks 27 & 28 - Harry Potter 5

2003-06-22T18:58:00.000-05:00

My friend works for Scholastic (The Harry Potter Company). She helped run
the unveiling of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the Toys R Us
in Times Square on June 20-21 midnight. She was on TV.

Afterwards there's this party at some swank club (Anju's in the
village I think it was) and I invited myself along (sorry about that Tina)
and I meet Tina and her friend at the door. I was instructed to say that I
was 'Alison's guest for Angel's birthday party'. There is a velvet rope
outside specifically designed to keep people like me out. I am not cool
enough to attend this party or go inside this club.

But I'm with Tina and Angel herself, and they can't really reject the
birthday girl.

Still determined to make me feel like a jerk, the bouncer informs me with as
much disdain as he can muster that the cover charge is $20. There's no
band, no performance inside, that's just the price cool people pay to be
cool together and drink themselves rad.

I immediately ascertain that this astronomical cover charge is designed to
intimidate me, and I must confess, I wasn't exactly dressed to kill. I had
just come from a rehearsal, and I was dressed like Greg Brady.
Nevertheless:

WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED:

Bouncer In Expensive Suit Wearing Ponytail: 'The cover's twenty.'
Me: 'Here's two hundred. Go buy yourself a tie that's not off the sales
rack at S&K, fatass.'

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED:

Bouncer In Expensive Suit Wearing Ponytail: 'The cover's twenty.'
Me: 'Wow! Twenty dollars! That's expensive! I'm not sure I have that
much - oh wait, I have my emergency twenty dollars. Here you go!'

Inside, I buy the birthday girl one drink and suddenly I'm done for the
night. Dead broke.

We go downstairs to another set of velvet ropes. Angel informs the
gatekeeper that she's the birthday girl. No dice. She must be cleared by
'Alison.' Another security specialist bulging out of his Armani suit
sternly informs us we can't wait in the hallway. Its a fire code violation.
So is my polyester jacket, a-hole, you don't see me making a fuss.

Anyway, after twenty minutes of 80s Michael Jackson hits Alison appears and
grants us entry into the ultra cool sublair.

Whoopee.

Broke, deaf and super-sweaty inside my jacket, this mega-stud (me, in case
you haven't been following along) does what any hot twenty-something would
do in the same situation. He goes straight home and snuggles up with Harry
Potter 5.

I am pleased to report that Harry does not discriminate against the poor.
Ron and Hermione wear hand me downs and Harry doesn't think any less of
them. Ah, fiction.

Weeks 25 & 26 - RI Wedding

2003-06-09T18:50:00.000-05:00

> Memorial Day was very memorial. Danny 'The Good
> Doctor' Raible picked me up in New York and we went to Rhode Island for the
> weekend. A wedding. You know what that means. Broads. Many, many broads.
> Schwing! Most excellent, Wayne.
>
> Danny and I are probably the only guys IN THE
> UNIVERSE who can spend the > entire holiday weekend in a sorority house and not
> get any action, but we did. We sure did. It took a lot of work, but we
> drove 'em all off. Way to go, Dan! High five, brother!
>
> Now, in our defense, most of the girls were gone home for the summer. But
> those who stayed for summer school were particularly lonely, right? They
> had to be.
>
> Nope. Nothing. A smile.
>
> And the ladies at the wedding? I have pictures to prove that Danny and I
> are not that ugly. Danny, in fact, just graduated from PA school, AND he
> has a sunny disposition! What more could you ask for, ladies? Danny is
> also very funny. For example, at the reception, Danny did the backspin
> during a rock song (his signature move at every wedding he goes to). Later
> he dressed up in an Elvis costume and dropped his mother on the dance floor.
> I am not making any of this up! Danny is a bigger goof than me! Dropped
> her HARD! They both fell over - I'm sure Mrs. Raible's teeth were rattling!
> Luckily, neither was hurt. Nice going, Dan! Very smooth!
>
> All married. All of them.
>
> Anyway, best wishes to Shawn and Deana. Next time
> you throw a wedding INVITE SOME SINGLE BABES!!!! Jeez! You know what I
> mean? You pay all this money to travel, to stay in the sorority house, to
> rent nice clothes and buy shampoo and soap, the least they could do is add
> some hotties to the guest list.
>
> Of course, that's just my opinion, I'm probably
> right.

Week 24

2003-05-16T17:50:00.000-05:00

May 16, 2003 8:19 PM

Celebrities sightings of the week: James Rebhorn (Silkwood, My Cousin Vinny, Independence Day, The Game, Meet the Parents) at EST and Willard Scott (Today Show weatherman) at Barnes and Noble.

News: Well, I‚m working on a screenplay called THE MATCH and it's all about my four glorious years as Collegiate's Newspaper Advisor. I almost cried re-reading it - what a great group of kids (tear). Boy do I miss them. Boy did we have a good time.

Anyway, saw the Matrix last night, Opening Night in Times Square - how cool is that. To get in the spirit I put on a black leather jacket and sunglasses, and promptly got shit on by a pigeon as I entered the subway. My roommates laughed.

The Matrix is f*cking awesome. Sorry, but it is. A couple of times the story got weak, but there was so much mega-bad-ass kung fu that it made up for it. And Trinity's entrance on the motorcycle is the coolest entrance in the history of cool entrances. It rivals Batman's entrance in Batman 2 (with Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, etc.) Go see it - it won't be the same on the small screen.

Oh, thanks to everyone who came to our housewarming party. Oh, wait. Nobody did. We sent out, what, 60 invitations? Seven people came. Let's see, who took the time and made the effort to come on out to Queens? Let's see. There was Jack from work. He's 78. Dorothy from work. She's 62. Jenn's friends from church, (a couple in their 70's and two gay men, one 60, one 34.)

And then there was my friend Annah, whose claim to fame is being the nurse on Guiding Light. Annah, bless her heart, single-handedly brought down the median age of the standard partygoer from 63 to 58. Thanks Annah. You're a chum. May the rest of you get shit on by pigeons.

Week 23

2003-05-07T17:43:00.000-05:00

May 07, 2003

The reading went great, thanks for asking (many of you did). The full-blown
show is at the end of June - more info as the date draws closer. Thirty six
hours after the reading, I was on a plane for San Diego. The Spring Meeting
is here in sunny California.

Presently, there is light jazz playing on the room stereo, fresh plums and
bottled water at my bedside, potpourri hanging the closet.

Today I have tennis at three o'clock and a Swedish Massage at 6.
Dinner for 7 at Vivace, the five star restaurant here at the resort.

Rough life.

Tomorrow the conference starts and I have to work my butt off, but for now?
I'm sitting in my Four Seasons bathrobe (the kind Eddie Murphy would steal
in Beverly Hills Cop) waiting for room service. On the sunlit terrace,
hummingbirds are chirping.

The bathsoap is 20% French butter. When you ask for something on room
service, they say, 'With pleasure.'

Dropped a twenty on the door man, Chris, who's my age, and asked him if he
was somebody I could 'rely on' in the days to come. He assured me he was, and
pocketed the Andrew Jackson deftly. Like it never happened.

Watched Trigun and The Family Guy on Adult Swim, read from my Japanese Manga
- Cowboy Bebop (they made a movie - haven't seen it yet) and generally
bemoaned my good fortune. I am the guy who can't really believe that he's
in such a beautiful place, in fact that he has business in such a beautiful
place.

I must remind myself that I am the company's workhorse, but god*nm, what a
stable.

--
Later
--

OK, so, at the six o'clock massage?
They ask, 'would you prefer a male or female masseuse?'

I was like, 'bring on da honeys!'
They said, 'Vanessa will be your massesuse. She will see you at six
o'clock.'

'Oh, I'll be there,' I said.

They didn't tell me that Vanessa was sixty, and Chinese, but then again, why
would they?

Earlier today I was playing with myself on the tennis court. I played for
thirty minutes, felt that the ball machine wasn't challenging me enough, so
I went to adjust the controls. I set the machine to start pitching me lobs
and it started shooting them over the fence. Over the fence! Like Barry
Bonds. And the tennis pro is looking at me
like, what the heck are you doing, and I'm like, dude, it's your stupid
machine - why would you have a setting on it that fires the balls over the
fence? So I set it to fire the balls lower, and it shot them into the net,
and I was like, that obviously isn't working, so I set it higher and they
started going over the fence again. And the pro (who has six little squirts
running around) is like 'do you need help with the machine?' and the kids
are all going 'cool!' as the tennis balls get blasted fifty yards away into
the bird sanctuary.

I was like 'dude, your machine is stupid' and then he came over and showed
me how I could click on the higher or lower setting, I didn't have to crank
the machine to go all the way high, or all the way low, that in fact there
were heights of varying degrees.

The stress was, of course, unbelievable. Thank goodness for Vanessa and her Chinese ways.

Week 21

2003-04-24T17:31:00.000-05:00

April 24, 2003

So I'm on my way to the Subway this morning and I'm walking down the street,
and I see this good looking girl approaching me and she's checking me out,
(I'm not sure why - I'd had four hours sleep - maybe it was the suit - I
wore a suit today - more on that later) so I smile back, and then she smiles
back even bigger, and I'm feeling pretty good because I'm wearing a suit and
thinking, hey, I must look pretty good for once and this lovely lass
actually noticed.

I do my best to play it cool. If all goes well, I say to myself, I may even
say something to her as I pass by.

Then her gaze shifts (she's checking out the entire package) and I can feel
her gaze go down to my shoes, my running shoes, which I'm wearing because if
I walked to work in my dress shoes my feet would turn purple. In my
defense, lots of people wear running shoes to walk to work.

But that's no excuse when you're trying to be cool. Sorry - wear the nine
inch heels and quit complaining. Coolness costs.

So by this time I'm pretty sure the shoes have killed it for me, but I see
she's still smiling, and I think I may just pull it off when I trip over a
crack in the sidewalk and come so close to falling on my face that I can
smell the concrete, my nose goes down so far - I mean, I was practically
horizontal. And I'm sure the stumble has definitely ruined my chances, but
I then I think, 'you know what? I pulled it out. I didn't actually fall -
that was a pretty remarkable recovery.'

So the shoes didn't kill it for me. And the stumble didn't really kill it
for me. But then my plastic bottle of orange juice and my cereal bars fell
out of my bag onto the sidewalk.

My God. What was I thinking?

Now, even at this juncture, I had a chance to salvage some dignity. But as
we know from the now infamous Starbucks application, I am not exactly a
paragon of self-resepect. If I had any pride at all, I would have not
looked back, and left the offending items exactly where they fell.

But I could not. My body commanded me to stop and
retrieve my items. I stopped, picked up my breakfast off the sidewalk, and
tied one of my loose shoelaces. Stupid Adidas.

When I looked up, of course, my little nymph had disappeared. I don't blame
her. In that moment, I don't think I would've talked to me either.

This is hilarious. I was just sitting here writing this and the phone rang.
I picked it up, and somebody said, by way of greeting, "My nigga."
Can you believe that? 'My nigga.' It just happened, ten seconds ago. You
think I would have learned my lesson! I could have said , 'Wassup?' or even
'Hello.' But, no, I said, 'This is David Stott speaking.'
The guy on the other end laughed and laughed. 'Obviously you don't fit my
description.'

On the cooler side of things (kids, it's an endless struggle) I had a
banner day today, despite my being white. Our first rehearsal for the
Halfway Show was this morning, and I found out I have two pieces in the
show, and I get to star in one of them. If you'll be anywhere near New
York Monday, April 28th at 7:30 p.m. I'll be making my NYC debut at Ensemble
Studio Theatre, 549 W. 52nd Street (between 10th and 11th).

I remind you of the other greats who have appeared on that stage, many moons
ago: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, John Turturro, Lev
Schreiber, Bill Murray, Terri Garr, Jerry Stiller, David Hyde Pierce,
Stanley Tucci.

With my luck and upbringing, on Monday I will trip and fall when I come
onstage, spilling bottles of juice and cereal bars all over the audience,
but at least it will be memorable.