Looking Back

The other day, for whatever the reason, I found myself wondering about years past, as I looked in the mirror during my early morning "get ready" for work routine. It was a good thing. The way it used to be, way back in the fifth or sixth grade.

I’m sure most of you over the age of thirty, from time to time wonder where an old childhood friend might be today. How did he or she turn out? What variety of life’s pitfalls did they overcome? He might have been the best athlete in the school; someone you admired, or competed with. She was the little girl with the big smile who sat directly in front of you; the one who was the smartest kid in the class. I saw faces; remembered attitudes; who was tall; who was sloppy, and who was neat. There were aggressive kids and those so shy the teachers had trouble getting them to participate on anything requiring a verbal presentation up in front of the class. The voices are gone. For whatever the reason, I can recall many of the faces, but what my schoolmates sounded like escapes me.

It was a time in my life when all of us had everything in common. We were boys and girls who lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same school, and shared the label of middle class Americans, not poor, not rich, decidedly middle.

The word love rarely came into a meaningful play; nor was the term hate used in a serious vein. “I love chocolate. I hate chocolate.” That was about the extent of our love/hate expression.

Most of us have delved into self-reflection. It’s ours to experience, usually at our own propelled bidding. Naturally there are the conditioned response memories, times when without warning an event resurfaces, allowing pleasures as a rekindling; Some to our liking, bringing smiles, with endearments, capturing the moments in time which are ours alone to savor. Surely there were the not so pleasant events, none of us wish to relive. But those are the ones we learn and experience growth from by thinking back.

At eleven years of age, it was my first really deep thought experience. Up until that moment, what had existed for this sixth grader were happiness, laughter, and the occasional disappointment over the realization the Dodgers were not going to win the pennant for yet another year.

Robert wasn’t a really close friend of mine. He was one of those quiet introverted types. He wasn’t a klutz, but by the same token he wasn’t a kid who was one of the first to be picked when we were choosing up sides for a sandlot ballgame. Robert did however have the unpleasant distinction of being the first kid in our class to lose a parent. I suppose it was a day or two following his father's funeral that Robert returned to school. He looked different to me. There was something in Robert’s eyes that told the story. Of course his life would never be the same; none of us knew that. What we didn’t know was Robert’s loss was also ours. For the first time in my life I was to say, “I’m sorry about your Dad, Robert.” Robert could barely speak. I don’t recall a sound being made. Robert mustered a token thank you nod. The next day I picked him first to play on my team. To this day I wish I might have picked him before his Dad was gone.

Loss or gain is always an action, which causes change. For an eleven-year-old boy in the sixth grade, a new thought was to be perceived without warning. While I had not yet used the word empathy, I would never the less have it with me for the rest of my life.

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From time to time I will be writing about some of my friends from the past who have become well known to the world. There names will be changed to protect their privacy.

There Will Be Times To Reflect, "As Time Goes By"

In two large corrugated cartons stored in the corner of my office, there are many stories, which will forever remain, not found, and most likely never again to be read by anyone but me. Scripts that began with a dream, and ended in two nondescript boxes in the corner of an office. It took all of five years to fill the two boxes, probably around forty pounds of paper, eighteen hundred and twenty five days of an immeasurable journey. The worth of the trip is only a selfish value. I’ve talked to other writers who cop the plea allowing how they were only writing for themselves anyway. If they happened to get paid for their labors, it would represent icing on the cake. To them I would offer, “What good is icing when you don’t have a cake to put it on?”

The younger writer brings enthusiasm. The older writer finds his or her enthusiasm turning to cynicism, without willful attempt. The younger writer tells a story with his or her passion for the truth being enthusiasm for the life and times being depicted. The older writer may bring forth a truth cloaked in cynicism regardless of the time period they’ve chosen to write about; happening without a willfulness to be downtrodden.

Many of us have given in to following a heart whose choice for joy is far less indiscriminate than should be allowed; our choices are not without limits. Personally, I admit, not necessarily to poor judgment, but too often to no judgment at all. I doubt if many young people enter into a pursuit of a dream, by first really taking heed of their dreams' limitations. If you’re dreaming about your dream not coming true, the result will be just that. The question becomes, why in the name of good common sense did I fill the two boxes in the corner of my office? My writing was a day and night never-ending pursuit. The words hit the paper with reckless abandon. Days, weeks, months, and finally five years of damage had to be accounted for.

While I was never guilty of deliberately conjuring defeatist’s thoughts, my dreams of success at the heights of the literary world had come to a sour end. Sound the trumpets; reality had set in. What does remain in my minds' eye, and perhaps will stay with me forever, is the stack of rejection letters I received during the course of my travails as a struggling scribe. At first I found the letters shocking, mainly because much of what the reviewers had to say about my work didn’t jive. It often came across as if they had sent the rejection notice to the wrong writer. I actually found myself wondering what in the world they were talking about. But the turn-downs that remained with me were the ones that were just outright cruel. One review was particularly nasty. It came in at the end of my professional writing career.

Note: I had already made my mind up about the futility of my continuing pursuit of a career as a writer.

The reviewer attacked me with a vengeance. Line by line, she pointed out my obvious ineptitude. That became it for me. The time had arrived. The cartons were sealed. However, not all was lost. Her review provided me with two pluses. It improved my vocabulary. Nothing in the review was the least bit conversational. It wasn’t a tutorial. It would be a much better descriptive if I referred to her assessment of my work as a verifiable documentation of my inability to communicate at even an average level of intellectuality. And secondly, after rereading her assertions of my literary clumsiness, I laughed uncontrollably for the balance of the afternoon, most likely a form of temporary insanity.

The amazing part about all of this is how many years ago it all took place. Everyday we hear someone remark about how fast time is flying by. “I can’t believe it’s Christmas, or New Years again. What happened to the summer? Your daughter is how old?” Probably one of the most agreed upon terms in all of humanity: Race, creed, color, religious preference, men, women, friends and enemies. The universal cry for all is agreed on: Time flies by, “As Time Goes By”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vThuwa5RZU


So, if we all agree about how short life really is, why do so many of us waste it? Why do we usually do just the opposite of what should be done in order to slow things down?

The other day I gave an actor the note, “Romance it a little.” His look wasn’t one of complete understanding, because the script wasn’t calling for any degree of intimacy. I added,
” Read in the present as if you’re relishing the moment, and recognizing the satisfaction you personally are experiencing.” And the key to all this is not merely asking the actor to slow his reading pace, but rather slow because of a pertinent reason to do so. What better reason could there be than creating the romance of what once was commonplace? It may have been a fleeting moment you’re reflecting on, but in the instant it takes to recreate it, your thought process will bring into play the missing romance aspect required.

The boxes in the corner of my office are not painful keepsakes. They have within them some tears, some laughter, and a great many dreams of what could have been. What they don’t have are buttons, switches, portable screens, and games to be played. Nothing in those cartons was ever “Googled”. The five years cannot be recaptured. The content of those boxes however are mine to recall and savor at my will. The five years may have been nothing more than short flashes of light, but the pages will never again be misunderstood. Those are mine forever to recall, “As Time Goes By.”

• Is the vast number of words in our world ever read?
• If every discarded script in our fair city was solicited for a paper drive, would there be enough space in our city o hold them?
• Is there anyone in Los Angeles (Hollywood) who doesn’t have a script in his or her possession that will be the next blockbuster sensation?

Truth Be Told

The magic of the truth. When the truth is there for you, certainly no explanation is necessary. The lack of explanation regarding the recognition of the truth has always been the same.

Truth has always been the actor’s goal. While the word truth or its study thereof by a theatrical production company may differ dramatically, the end result will always be the same.

Most likely every nook and cranny in this great country of ours has its own version or method of guiding actors in their quest for the truth. The most famous of these nooks would be the “Actors Studio.”

In the thirties we had the “Group Theater,” its forerunner and inspiration being Constantine Stanislavski and the “Moscow Art Theater.” Stanislavski, the most searching, dedicated, and powerful teacher of acting in the history of the art, set in motion an ideal that has codified the truth.

On December 3, 1947, Marlon Brando, in an American play called “A Streetcar Named Desire,” put on display a most notable exemplification of the Stanislavski method. Two months earlier, in October, the play’s directors, Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Robert Lewis formed a workshop for actors called the Actors Studio. It was there that Lee Strasberg devoted the next thirty years zealously to the development of the Stanislavski method. Fifty-seven years plus, and the method is still gathering momentum.

Method Acting: What was once an awkward admission is now a fact shared by almost every acting student in the country. Method acting has long since arrived. The Actors Studio continues.

Earlier in this piece I mentioned "Street Car" and Marlon Brando. It was in this play that Marlon became one of the first American actors to deliver a speech with his back to the audience. That revolution began long before Kazan staged it in "Streetcar."

There, in the middle of the first act of The Sea Gull, at the Moscow Art Theater on December 17, 1898, a group of actors was seated with their backs to the audience. That same audience, in unison let out a gasp at this sight. The director that night was Constantine Stanislavski.

It is important to know and understand that the year was 1898. Stanislavski had a slim background in directing actors. What he did have was an innate feeling for the truth, and a desire to change the pomp and circumstance that was part and parcel of the then Russian theater. Initially, Stanislavski actors were not the least bit creative. He staged the play as a dictator might. Not only did he tell the actors where to stand, sit, and move, but he also provided exacting line readings. His fierce desire to improve himself was a driving force in his lifelong study that was about to begin.

What I so personally admire about Stanislavski the innovator and teacher is what I got from him as a student. He was a man not unlike myself. I, of course, am not making a comparison of skills, but rather the acknowledgment, and lack of understanding he had at the beginning of his wondrous learning adventure.

I share with him in the belief that being a student is forever. Being an actor is a lifelong study. Answers reveal themselves when the student has lived and studied long enough in order to recognize the answers. And becomes wise enough to allow for each answer to not necessarily be that of the gospel. We develop along with our recognition that life oftentimes does not present us with the answers we happen to be in search of. Concurrently, our questions will forever remain an endless road representing a lifetime of query.

His system and ours is internal. We harvest our truth through and during a lifetime or in a mere momentary reflection.

Sights and sounds cannot be shared tomorrow in exactly the same way as they appeared today. The old childhood neighborhood revisited will be familiar, but somehow not the same.

And as Stanislavski proclaimed the wealth of our ever-changing environment, I found myself becoming a total believer. Your audience will be the informer, as well as your judge, jury, and provider for what can be the greatest passion in one’s lifetime.