Waiting for Godot to Leave

By popular demand, here is an article I wrote for my Upstage Productions Murder Mystery Newsletter in May of 2000. I am not making it up. As I’ve boasted in previous newsletters, we were invited to perform for what I was told were a group of “top HBO producers” at the Belhurst Castle in Geneva, New York in April. The HBO folks wanted me to do a parody of “The Sopranos”, their fascinating, violent, vulgar, and addictive hit drama series, which features what we kindly call the “F word” as a mainstay adjective. And so I set to work writing a parody of the show and faxed it off to HBO. They called me in March. “We really are happy to be working with you on this project,” they told me, “but we feel your script is a little … vulgar.” This is because in the first act, Tony introduces Uncle Junior, his 87 year old uncle, and Uncle Junior uses the “F word” literally 17 times in his first speech. To which Tony replies, “Uncle Junior, ever since you got cable, you been a real pain in the ass...

We've been talking much lately about "intentional disciples" and of the need for parishes to foster "true discipleship", to encourage the formation of capital D Disciples and not just neo-pagan lukewarm modernists disguised as Christians. The problem is Wormwood pulls up a pew and says to us, in his cloying and flattering tone, "According to most pastors, only five percent of all their parishioners are serious about following Christ. You're one of those. You're a capital-D Disciple. You're an intentional Disciple. You're a true Disciple. These fat church ladies with their pot luck dinners and their parish picnics, they're not even Christians in any meaningful sense of the word. Look at that chubby grocer in the pew beside you. He nods off during the homilies. He's not a True Disciple. Look at that pierced kid at the Teen Mass, with glowing hair and a condom in his pocket. He's not a True Disciple. But you are! You ma...

A friend of mine was living in Chicago and he was miserable. Not because of the Cubs. And not because of toll booths. And not because of the winters! He was miserable because he wasn't famous. He was slaving away auditioning everywhere and doing some sort of comedy improv thing on local access cable TV and he was angry and sore that nobody noticed him. His whole life was focused on getting noticed! getting seen! getting famous! And this is what happens to actors when they forget that it's not all about them. It's about the work. But before I say that again, let's examine the question of The Meaning of Life Earlier this week we had a backyard meeting of the ChesterBelloc Drinking and Debating Club, my men's only group that sits around discussing philosophy, life, religion, while arguing and drinking. Two of our members have tremendous faith - not faith in God, but faith in Evolution as the Answer to all Questions. I finally got one of them (my favorite atheist, Stev...

(Takes deep breath) On Friday, July 22, my actress Maria Romine and I drove the 9 1/2 hours from St. Louis to Athens, Georgia, where on Saturday I gave a presentation on the show business of writing, and where I walked in a nearby cemetery in 110 degree heat index learning my lines for some of the ten different scripts we're producing in the next month and where a security guard stopped and drove me to campus when the cemetery closed, the old guy pointing out where all his family was buried in a Southern accent so thick I could hardly understand what he was saying, and where in the evening Maria and I performed Murder on the Disoriented Express , a show we hadn't done in two years, and then we got up early for Mass on Sunday and went to a nearby church where the Mass was all about some blonde, who stood at the lectern and told us what the homily was going to be about, and then after communion told us what the homily had been about except she dumbed it down to a point where I fe...

If you want to return to the Garden of Eden , head to Kansas. It's right there in the town of Lucas on the High Plains. It's a quirky place, built by S. P. Dinsmoor, a Civil War veteran, who can only be described as a crank. The yard of his hand-built house, front and back, is filled with his own bizarre sculpture, expressing his own peculiar philosophy. The climax of the tour is viewing the Body of the Artist as a Dead Man. You may peer into his crypt, in which S. P. Dinsmoor is laid out exposed to gawkers. For this privilege you must pay one U.S. dollar, per the terms of Dinsmoor's will. The fun part about seeing the Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas is that it's such an off-the-beaten path adventure. The sad part is the locals pretend this kind of thing is "folk art". Well, it may be "folk", but it ain't art. Chesterton's famous quip, "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly" only applies to amateurs - and you might say,...

This is part three to this and this . And I swear I am not making this up ... Here's part of what I deal with in my business. I placed an ad last week for an actor to play a part in an upcoming television series. I got an email from one guy and offered him a slot last Friday, audition by appointment, any time during the day or evening he could make it. " I've got to work ," he tersely replied, and suggested no alternate dates. Then I placed another ad this week. He applied again. I offered him 9:30 am this Friday (Sept. 23). He made the appointment, then emailed me late tonight (Thursday, Sept. 22) saying, " I've got to cancel. I've got to work." When I told him I would not reschedule him, that two attempts were all I was going to make to audition him, he wrote back (and I swear I am not making this up, it's a copy and paste, punctuation and all) ... "you should respect the artists personal life before your own selfish need. Dont...

[Photo: Yours Truly as King Arthur and Jessica Franz as Guinevere in Kill-a-Lot] After years of therapy and extensive soul searching, it appears as if the reason I got into show business was so that my mother would love me. Now this makes little sense, because my mother, God rest her soul, certainly loved me. But for whatever strange reason it seems I was unconvinced of this unless I could make her laugh. "Your mother laughed at everything you ever said," my wife Karen has observed on numerous occasions. She always adds: " That was her mistake ." And so Karen refuses to laugh at anything I say, and she usually manages to hold this line rather well. So I'm married to a woman who never laughs at anything I say, while my mother laughed at everything I said, but not uncontrollably . And there's the rub! I knew on a deep subconscious level that I would never be happy as an actor or comedian - or for that matter as a man - unless and until I found a woman who wou...

Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed  (ἐπίστευσαν) in his name. But Jesus did not trust (ἐπίστευεν)   himself unto them because he knew all men  ( John 2:23-24 ) The same root word in Greek is used to signify both the faith professed by the people in Jerusalem who are impressed by the signs performed by Jesus, and the thing Jesus will not offer in return. They offer some sort of faith in His name, but He has no faith in this faith, as it were. John explains why in the next verse ... and [Jesus] didn't need anyone to tell him about human nature. He knew what people were really like. ( John 2:25 ) Knowing their hearts  - even without being told - Jesus knows that their faith is not such that He could entrust Himself to them.  Indeed, neither could Jesus count on the faith of His closest disciples, who all abandoned Him in His hour of need. So He keeps a wise reserve. Jes...

Let's call him "Chad Withers", the Sensitive Actor I once hired an actor.  Let's call him Chad Withers.  That's not his real name. He did a fairly decent job for Upstage Productions , but one Christmas season, he got very angry at us for not giving him the number of shows to perform that he thought he was entitled to.  So he quit.  He quit after he had already agreed to perform some gigs - leaving me to clean up his mess, re-cast the shows he had agreed to do, and cover for him. About a year later, he called and apologized. This was a first for me.  I mean, who calls and apologizes for something they once did?  When is the last time that's happened to you?  People just aren't sorry for the bad things they've done, and if they are, they're embarrassed about them, so they keep their mouths shut. Of course, Chad wanted something from me.  The apology had a point to it.  He wanted me to hire him back. *** Now here's where it gets...

[NOTE - these are actual emails concerning a show the actress in question had agreed to perform on New Year's Eve, five days from today, for actual money.  It's really rather humorous.  This is what I deal with in my business.] ----------------------- Original Message ----------------------- From:  NAME OF ACTRESS  <[name withheld]@gmail.com> To: info@thewordinc.org Cc: Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 09:55:19 -0800 Subject: Hi Its [NAME OF ACTRESS]. Just got a message from your wife. Im emailing on my gmail account because you dont seem to be getting emails from my yahoo account. I emailed you back in nov saying i couldnt do the show. Then i got an email from you sending the script and asking if I was still doing the show I wrote you back and said that I had sent you an email back in November saying I couldn't. Now I have got a call from your wife asking if I was doing the show. My concern is you aren't getting my email so I'm writ...

Yes, he was the most important person in my life, but I had had enough of him. You couldn't fake your way through a rehearsal with Jiman.  He was the most exacting and challenging director I had ever had.  He was the first person who showed me that acting required the engagement of the whole self - physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional.  He was my mentor, but I was getting a bit tired of him.  After all, he was not the most balanced of men, and his psychological insight and charisma gave him the makings of a cult leader, a role he would have latched on to with gusto, particularly when it came to the attention the women in the cast gave him.  In fact, if we had been rehearsing in rural Guyana and not suburban Missouri, I have no doubt he would have been sleeping with all of us - at least with the ladies - and sooner or later we'd be drinking the Kool-Aid and worshipping little carved wooden mini-Jimans in our spare time. And so, while he had brought...