Saturday, May 28, 2005

 

Leaving Hyperspace

On the way to Revenge of the Sith last night, I cracked wise uncontrollably about how bad the movie would be, to the point where my wife asked me if I wanted it to be bad. At first I thought, "No, of course not." I wanted it to be fantastic, in my heart of hearts. I wanted to be six again, seeing Star Wars for the first time with my Uncle Bruce. I wanted that sense of total open wonder, of transportation to a waking dream. I knew I wouldn't get that. It could never be that way again. The best I could hope for was a mild two hours of entertainment that didn't completely sully that portion of my youth, like The Phantom Menace did. Boy, I was a big defender of that movie. I was a glassy-eyed zombie who insisted that it was a worthwhile successor, that Jar-Jar Binks was not the most irritating failed marketing ploy in the history of cinema. I don't remember the intervention, probably because of the sophistication of the Lucas brainwashing technique; but whoever did it, thanks guys, and I don't fault you for the cigarette burns.

What I bring as an audience member is the material of my own life; a film, TV show or play takes that, tries to reshape it and show it to me. Maybe it shows me something new about it, maybe it confirms my delusions. Revenge of the Sith depends on this to the nth degree. In order to engage the movie, Lucas is banking on not only my familiarity with the plot points and characters of the last five movies, but upon my familiarity with the experience of those movies. When I see a wide shot of a spaceship lifting off, I remember my six year-old thrill when I saw the Millennium Falcon launch in Star Wars, and I can't help but apply that previous sensation to the current one. It gives weight to the moment on screen that -- if I were to experience it by itself, or examine it from a story analysis perspective -- is bereft of emotional content, merely an opportunity to show off the CGI.

It's frightening to think that a movie can have so much influence over me. I guess I do treat the Star Wars experience with a bit more seriousness than I should. After all, it's just an excuse to eat popcorn. Yet I have personal reasons for taking the interest, and I also think it's silly to ignore a film or genre that had such a huge impact on a generation of American men. It would be silly to ignore the influence of westerns on prior generations, or the melodrama on mid-late 19th century American society. It's silly for me to ignore its influence on me, at any rate, since lines and scenes from the original trilogy pop in my head so often.

If I were a serious fan -- and many claim that these films are contradictorily for small children and "serious fans" -- I would be bringing the fan experiences too. Again, not just plot and characters fleshed out by a breadth of stories, but the experience of amassing that knowledge and discussing it with like-minded fanatics. I feel a bit on the outside of the Star Wars phenomenon now. My younger self would be shocked that I am so distanced. But I feel as distant, in some ways, as I do when I watch shamans engage in a ritual on a Pacific island, or hell a revival down the street: a mixture of fascination, envy and revulsion. Why can't I feel a part of this event the way these other people do? It's not because I consider myself intellectually or culturally superior. To know me is to know a dweebextraordinaire. But some part of me -- perhaps my ego -- recoils at the idea of giving myself over to an ecstasy or a zeitgeist so completely that I lose perspective on the manipulative art of the purveyor.

Movies are built on such a capitulation, though. Films that draw attention to the medium tend to be art-house fare or sarcastic comedies. Did the engine of capitulation ever power theatre? It seems unlikely, given both the architecture of theater spaces and that most theatre philosophies account for the audience awareness of the façade. But the concept of the fourth-wall, even merely as a notion to be rejected, suggests that for a time, this idea was the norm: the members of the audience must lose themselves in the play, as they would in a dream.

Wow, how did I get here from Revenge of the Sith? I was going to write my response. And here come the spoilers:

My wife felt bad for Natalie Portman. She thought she flailed about in a vague earnestness, unclear of what she was supposed to be doing, hoping audiences wouldn't pray for her departure so they could get another lightsaber battle. She always takes the actor's perspective, I take the writer's, and I blame the crazappy dialogue. Though I did enjoy this one more than the last two, man. If I write a love scene like that -- if I write a scene that screams GENERIC LOVE SCENE from the first syllable -- beat me with bad writer stick.

Also, I am compiling a list of Movie Moments that directors are not allowed to use ever again. These cliché moments were used and parodied so many times that the parody has become cliché. At the top of this list, place any character that raises their fists and shouts "NOOOOO!" Cross it off your list boys and girls. You have lost your "NOOOOO!" privileges.

posted by Dan 10:46 PM
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Friday, May 27, 2005

 

HyperSpace Hypocrite

I just did the thing I swore I would not do after subjecting myself to Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Yes, I bought tickets to Revenge of the Sith for tonight, because I am at the in-laws, and this is what I do out here.

I only pray that the movie does not hurt me with the Jedi Suck Trick.

posted by Dan 7:55 PM
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Welcome Volkswagen

While I warm up my instrument with some sun salutes, check out Jason Grote's blog, specifically where he weighs in on the review discussion.

posted by Dan 1:57 PM
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Joke's On Them

I just received several scripts in the mail today. As part of my agreed fee-waiver for the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, I will be playing several small parts in other people's readings. I apologize in advance for blowing all of the other actors off the stage with my sheer charismodynamic luminositbrillianceness. I'm not overcompensating. Stop looking at me.

posted by Dan 1:56 PM
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Thursday, May 26, 2005

 

But Think Of The Unemployed Readers of Stage Directions

Noted this article in the L.A. Times about one of L.A.'s biggest regional theatres (via ArtsJournal):

Center Theatre Cuts New Play Programs
by Don Shirley, Times Staff Writer

The ax has fallen on Center Theatre Group programs designed to develop new plays and playwrights -- including a cluster of labs that has been one of the most distinctive features of CTG's Mark Taper Forum for more than a decade.

Artistic Director Michael Ritchie, who took the helm of Los Angeles' flagship theater company in January, is eliminating the Other Voices program for disabled artists -- a Taper fixture since 1982 -- plus the Latino, Asian American and African American labs established from 1993 to 1995.

...

Ritchie, who hasn't attended a play reading in seven years, is also dropping a system of readings and workshops conducted under the direction of playwright Luis Alfaro -- whose job has been eliminated, along with those of the lab directors.

"I've never liked having a play read to me," Ritchie said. He prefers to read it himself because "it gives me the ability to go back over it."

I suppose I should find the demise of any new-plays program upsetting, but I have to say I sympathize with Ritchie on a few points.

Readings can be useful to the playwright, but they are not a foolproof way to improve a text. A bad performance, an unsubstantiated but forcefully given critique, or just indigestion on reading night can send the writer off in the wrong direction. Further, readings are often a crutch used by theatre companies to demonstrate an ostensible interest in new plays while failing to produce them. In the article, Ritchie promises to increase the number of new play productions, instead of merely leaving them in development. I applaud that. I hope that he will use the money saved by the elimination of the development program to increase his full-time staff in the literary department. Reading and going over new plays on paper is a skill that requires more experience than an intern from the local university generally has.

I'm sure Luis Alvaro worked hard and was devoted to the writers in his program. No one gets into play development for the money and glory. And I'm sure there were many fine plays and productions that came out of the CTG/Mark Taper programs. Most major development programs can claim that. But I wonder if the number of good plays developed in such programs outweigh the number of good plays hopelessly spaghettied by the process? I've seen -- many times -- a hopeful beginning quickly scuttled because a well-meaning director or dramaturg. They convince the playwright to alter his or her vision with spoken or unspoken promises of production, if only they will make the suggested changes. I've been through this myself. The results are often disastrous.

And what about all the plays that struggled through the process, only to be told at the end, "thanks but no thanks?" When I developed a T.V. show, I got that answer at the end, and I cried all the way to the bank. It happens in film and T.V., but there's compensation. The compensation for a long road to refusal in theatre is...a manuscript that you can send to someone else for more development.

Of course, I don't hold these reservations so sacred that I myself would make an example. Given an opportunity to put a play in development at a major company, I'd certainly jump at the chance. What unknown playwright wouldn't? That's the carrot these programs offer. "If you just make these changes, there's a definite possibility you're in the running for the spring slot..."

A friend of mine recently got burned by this. She had a play which won some important awards. A major theatre company announced its intention to produce new writers from its area. She was selected as their flagship dramatist. Two years, several readings, pages of notes and many a lbarrel of midnight oil later, the theatre told her that they were happy with all that she'd done to improve the play; alas, they were going to produce A Charlie Brown Christmas instead.

Really, this kind of bait-and-switch has got to stop. Theatre companies are slowly strangling the one comfort we playwrights do have: control of our work. We're not paid well, there's no fame except for a select few; we only do this for love of the art and some mastery of our destiny. But, being human and therefore desperate, we would really really really like the small comfort of production once and a while, and we do often consider trading power over our material just for the chance of that.

There are important questions that we need to ask about how we shepherd new plays in this country. Michael Ritchie might be doing the right thing, whether or not he's merely considering the bottom line.

posted by Dan 2:05 PM
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Short and Sweet, if Sweet = Late

I was going to write about my recent viewing of Fahrenheit 9/11, but who needs another essay on that? I'll just say that I was disappointed that it didn't feature Moore claiming that American soldiers ate Iraqi children, as many a right-wing pundit promised me.

posted by Dan 1:24 PM
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Tuesday, May 24, 2005

 

One Line

My daughter invented a new game. I stand outside the garden door. She stands inside. She says, "I'm going to go outside." I say, "I'm going to go inside." One of us opens the door, and we pass each other. The door bangs shut. Now she stands outside, and I stand inside.

She says, "I'm going to go inside." I say, "I'm going to go outside." One of us opens the door. We pass. Door shuts.

Repeat ad infinitum. She could play this game until we both dropped, like some Stephen King-inspired death sport. Sometimes I throw in a variation. For instance, I might insist on remaining outside, regardless of her location; at which point she will remind me that the rules of the game specifically state that I am to vacate my outside or inside location based upon her position on the playing field. In her own way, she says that.

The game is so simple, and so inexhaustible. Like two men standing on a stretch of road, who pass the time as they wait for news from their prospective employer.

Like this Rothko painting. I didn't get Rothko and his cohorts for a long time. I still don't, in a way. It is the kind of painting that inevitably evokes the statement, "Hell, my three year-old could do that." Well, that's true, Imaginary Plebian, but your three year-old has the advantage of an appreciation for the power of simplicity, something most adults lose. A three-year old gets that sometimes a little thing is very, very big.

My daughter did her own version of Rothko this weekend (and no, I don't mean my daughter's painting is on the same level as a Rothko). There's a similarity of simple structures: large swatches of color laid side-by-side. Hers came out of the fact that she stuck her left hand in one color paint and her right hand in the other. Basic sensory experience. Rothko was reacting to -- among other things -- the Holocaust. His simplicity was a response to the stark nightmare that unfolded in Europe. Really, how else can you respond to death on that scale except with splashes of color? But even in acknowledging that his paintings were an attempt to express his moral horror in this way, there's something more that they do. It's as if I want to fall into them. It's as if I can just stare at the combinations of color swatches for days. It's as if I can go in and out of the garden forever. The more I dwell on the expansiveness of something as simple as one color stacked on top of another, the more I appreciate Rothko.

Simplicity of structure doesn't preclude a lack of complex thoughts, I don't think. Three year-olds can do what Rothko did, in a way, but he recognized something deeper within a dichromatic structure, and made the simple idea his own. It's what separates us from this sort of thing. Much as I love elephants, they're experiencing the act of painting the same way my daughter does: as sensory experience. Somewhere along the way toward maturity, something in the human frontal lobe kicks in, and we recognize that these designs we make say something about our experience in this world. This is the real boot out of Eden, I suspect.

Somebody give me a sandbag so I can get back to Earth. My roundabout point is that, as a playwright, sometimes I think I'm beyond the need for simplicity. My thoughts are so interesting, my characters so wild and vigorous and free, that I can let things wander wherever they may. Those who are smarter than me might (MIGHT) be able to get away with this, but I cannot.

Two men wait on a road. The prodigal sister seeks safe harbor. A king loses everything when he tries to own his daughters' love. So little, so much.

UPDATE: Welcome, Parabasis readers. This is the only place for all your yammering needs.

posted by Dan 12:29 PM
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Monday, May 23, 2005

 

Call Me Orson

Second movie from my digital film class. Again, take in the spirit of your fool friend with a video camera. Forgive the credits too. They're a bit fuzzy, as I hadn't figured out Final Cut just yet.

This one features the talents of fellow playwright Ed Valentine, my own dearest Julie Rapoport, and a surprise guest star making her film debut...

Here is The Rookie.

posted by Dan 10:16 PM
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