Another door opens 19

  I returned from the O'Neil with renewed confidence. I had more than held my own on stage with some of the best actors from New York and Los Angeles. Even though I still had no agent, I was called in for a interview for a major film.

I was given no script but I had an interview with the casting director that went very well and the proof of that was a callback to meet with the lead actor that I had a lot of respect. Again the interview went well as I was able to talk about acting with the star and again I was callbacked to meet with the director.

With three interviews and no script , I had no idea what they were looking for except the character was from a tough neighborhood in the Bronx. That can mean anything and when I went into the interview with the big director, in a condo on 57 st and Park Avenue. I reacted like anyone from that kind of neighborhood and commented how beautiful the condo was and the spectacular view out the window. The director was sort of condescending and remarked that he had a even better place in Malibu.

I didn't get the role and when I went to see the film a couple of years later I got angry. The characters were fighters and wise guys which I could play if I got up 4 in the morning with a hangover. I know that the persona, of a ordinary working man, I showed to the director was not what they wanted and if I knew what they wanted I could have done it with ease. Everybody says just be yourself on a interview but I am many different people, I am a chameleon and can change to whatever is needed.

I didn't get the big film,it would have been a great shot but that kind of luck is not my destiny. So, I had to slug it out off-off Broadway some more and I started to get calls from some of the better off-off Broadway theaters.

 I accepted a role at the IRT theater for a new play "Windfall Apples" a period 1940's original play. I bring this play up because it was the first time I worked with an actor that would intentionally try to upstage me. During our scenes together he would break the blocking, that we had worked on, and walk upstage as far as he could. When I caught on to what he was doing, I would turn my back to him and just talk to him over my shoulder. If I got a laugh on a certain line, the next night he would slam a door or fake cough on my line.

Why an actor would do this is beyond me. It certainly doesn't make the scene better . The thought would  intrude in my mind while I'm onstage with him,"look what this asshole is doing".Thankfully, these kind of actors don't last long and are weeded out because no project can be successful with such a selfish pos.99% of the time, I have had great experiences with actors and the trust we developed with each other on stage would last for years offstage. 

An acting teacher I had at HB Studios recommended me for a play at the Jewish Rep Theater. It was an old play "The Gentle People" by Irwin Shaw originally done on Broadway in the 1930's. The character I was to play was Goff, the main antagonist in the play.

Goff was a gangster that worked alone and also a romantic. This guy was extorting this poor fisherman and the same time seducing the fisherman's daughter. You gotta love this guy. He was totally evil but I didn't approach him that way. There was a piece of dialogue between him and the fisherman that was the key to the character. The fisherman asks Goff "What do you got inside you" Goff answers " I got what I learned on the brake rods,poolrooms, food lines and dive bars all across this country, I got rock inside me old man" .

That was the only way he knew to survive in 1930's depression America. Goff worked alone and in the play it is indicated that Goff uses a gun but I decided to use a flip open knife that with practice, I was able to flip it open instantly with a flick of my wrist.

I received one of my greatest compliments from the audience. At the end of the play, the fishermen, that Goff is terrorizing, decide to kill him as this is the only way they can get him out of their lives. They take Goff out on their boat and mange to throw him overboard and he drowns. Every night when I was thrown over the side of the boat, The audience cheered and applauded.

I received a call from a director that I met up at the O'Neil. He said he was doing a reading for a new play for Joe Papp, the producer of The New York Shakespeare Festival or Public Theater, the foremost equity theater in New York. Many successful Broadway plays have come out of there such as: Chorus Line and many others.

He didn't ask me to do the reading but would I mind reading one of the parts for rehearsal as the actor doing the part couldn't make it that day. Of coarse I said I would do it.

The day of the rehearsal came and there were 10 people in the cast, all on the fast track of acting signed with some of the best agents in town.

The play was a comedy "Sorrows of Stephen"and the part I was reading was very funny and when I read with the lead actor J, a yuppie to his bones, I got a lot of laughs from the other actors watching.

When rehearsal was over, the writer P asked me how I liked the play. I told him, and it was the truth, that I really liked it. The director S, asked me if I was available to do the reading for Papp. Well, I didn't have to look in my appointment book when I said yes. The other actor that was supposed to do the reading was never mentioned again and I was set to do it.

So, this was some kind of sneaky audition in that if they didn't want me, there would be no hard feelings.

The day of the reading came and we were brought into Joe Papp's huge office.My character was a homeless guy who asks some guy for  a quarter and sees that he went to school with this obvious successful person. The reading went very well and the cast and I waited outside the theater as the director was talking with Joe. S came out finally and said it looks very good.

Four days later I received a call from the director saying that Joe Papp wanted to try the play out as a workshop and it was alright for me to do the part and that I would soon receive a call from the casting director. Now, I have been trying to get an audition for years with this casting director to no avail. She called me, in a very cold voice, and asked who my agent was.  I said I didn't have one at the moment and she said I am being offered the part and do I accept. Of coarse I said yes and I do believe from her cold and unfriendly voice that she hoped I would say no. I am sure that wasn't the way she would talk to a big agent or one of the elite, pampered upper class actors that she was accustomed.

I would encounter many people like her and L from the O'Neil and no matter how good I was, to them I was just some street person that wondered off the street into their world.

I didn't care,I would show them, they are no better than me, they just had better parents.

Class Distinction in Theater 18

At the Eugene O'Neil Memorial Conference, 16 new plays are done over a 4 week period.Each play receives a very extensive rehearsal period for 3 days, this includes rewrites that you get each day, then 3 performances with book in hand. This was a great idea on their part as it took away the obligation of memorizing the lines and also created the illusion of a work, if given a full production, would be much better. The word around the O'Neil was, for a lot of these plays, the best rendition they received was at the O'Neil. You were required to carry the the book even if you have a photographic memory so the audience, full of producers and agents, could use their imagination.

To get there as an actor in just 3 days you have to make quick choices based on your first instinct. Pick a objective and run with it. I was working with some really good actors. Like J, a great character actor, who made it a pleasure to work with, as we played off each other really well. So instead of being intimidated by these famous and almost famous actors, I reveled in it and took it as a challenge that I can hold my own on stage with anyone. I had gone through the mill the last few years and what I have to offer will be appreciated here as it was off-off Broadway and New Jersey.

Besides the name actors, there what was considered the up and coming actors on the New York scene. They went to fancy acting schools like Yale Drama and Julliard, where their parents paid about $30,000 a semester and this was 1978 dollars. I didn't recognize any of the chosen bunch from my travels as an actor so far. Never saw any of them at auditions or even Jimmy Ray's but they all had good agents and worked at the major Off-Broadway theaters in NY and major regional theaters. The funny thing was , most of them considered themselves Hippies. 

One time, hanging out with a bunch after rehearsal, the wealthy hippies were talking about the old days hanging out in San Francisco and one of the interns turned to me and asked if I was a hippie back in the day. I said I missed the whole movement as I was in the Navy. The all stopped what they were doing and one little wise ass asked if I killed anyone. Now I had been asked that question before by people that bought into the whole propaganda premise that the military and everyone associated with it is evil.

As I said this was 1978 and the cloud of the Viet Nam war still hung over head. Then ,nobody said" Thank you for your duty" but "did you kill anybody." I would try to debate them but they never seemed to want to listen to another point of view. So this time I thought I would make a joke and said "Yeah, we used to pile the babies bodies up and burn them" . They looked at me like I was serious and I had to say it was a joke. They didn't think it was a funny. Of coarse in some of these plays we were doing there was some ugly stuff going on but that's art.

The first play I did was with J playing the lead role but I had a good part. I was anxious before my first performance, anxious to get on stage and show these privileged upper class what  I can do. As usual, the audience laughed and reacted just right for me and the play. After the show people congratulated me and I know I did well. Although, in the dressing room after the show, the artistic director L came in and one by one he congratulated the other actors in the play, except for me. He passed me by like I wasn't there.

I don't think it was my work, maybe it went around that I burned babies bodies or he just considered me some kind of white trash and in looking back I may have given him reason.

I had really good parts over the 4 weeks I was at the O'Neil but socially I was like a kid in a candy store with no one around. What I mean is, in stead of networking and kissing ass like everyone else, I succumbed to every temptation that came my way. There were many female interns there that had not yet graduated from Yale or Julliard and would flirt and offer themselves.

Here my basic instincts overcame my better sense.It was stupid on my part. I worked in basement theaters, lofts and out of the back of a truck, now finally working with big league actors ,I act like a sailor who has been out to sea too long. While the other actors played politics and looked to advance their careers, I thought I had made it, that now would be a good time to relax and enjoy myself.

But acting is a very social business and producers, directors and the people in power would rather work with friends. It's not like pro sports which is pure to the back stabbing in show business. If you can play ball, nobody cares about your background, only if you can play ball. Even L snubbing me didn't make me see that I haven't made it yet. 

Outside of that, I did well up there and word got back to New York that Johnny Dee was an actor to watch.