Stage and Screen

Many moons ago, I had the theater bug bad.  I remember this teacher I had in junior high school that put on an improvistional play featuring our school.  She was very excited by it all.  Just recently, she was honored as teacher of excellence.  Her fond memory was of this play. At an all school reunion, I had to ask her if she was a hippie before she ended up teaching at this school years back in the early seventies. She admitted to me that she was.  Her vitality and energy was something that I find very common with other hippie women that I know. I didn't do the play, because I was to self-concious of myself.  After I got out of school for the summer, I did try out for a workshop.  I did lights and was in several short skits.  The one that I shined in the part was of Don the burnout  in "High School Anthology."  It is about a guy going through his yearbook, and the characters would come to life.  I played Don so well that it was I knew him my whole life (I do mean whole. The role was actually me several years in the future from where I was at the time.) I was so into character that I utter the most stupid thing ever,"My brother Buzz the Barmaid."  I did other productions while in High School.  My favorite role was of Ed McKeever in "The Solid Gold Cadillac." The movie version will shown in a festival which I will talk about later.

I wanted to be a theater major when I first started college in the fall of 1980.  I took a class called Oral Intrepreation.  One of the assignments was to read dialogue, so I picked a passage from Michael Herr's book "Dispatches." This is the same book mentioned in yesterday's entry.  I found out that my professor was in Viet nam in a Air Cavalary unit.  In order to stay sane, he memorized everything that Shakespeare wrote. 

My dream of theatre died when I sobered up, and I read the book "Audition." There was an line in the book early on that read,"Asking to go into acting is like asking for admission into an insane asylum."  I happened to meet a producer from Broadway while in treatment. He told me of a guy who played Hitler and had to spend alot of time in therapy to get over the role.  This weighed heavy on me.  He said that He could get me a role in a show.  All I would have to do is get my equity card. The only way to to get a equity card is to do an equity show.  They are very hard to get.  I never did it.  I kind of reget it.  A few years later I fould myself in New York State, so I looked him up with the number he had given me.  It was disconnected. Maybe I made the right call on not going into theater after all.

Get your DVRS or Tivos  ready. Turner Classic Movies has their "31 Days of Oscar" movie marathon starting Monday February 1, 2010.  All these movies have either won or have been nominated for Oscars.  There are some great movies to be had.  I will feature what I feel are the best of the day.  Lawrence of Arabia is my pick of the day (On 2/1/2010 @10:00 CT/11:00ET on TCM)

Music for today:

Grateful Dead
December 10, 1972
Winterland Arena
San Francisco, CA
listen here

Grateful Dead
December 11, 1972
Winterland Arena
San Francisco, CA
listen here