THE WICKED STAGE and the gag reel

by Rob Kendt

The editor of my college newspaper once called me into his office and asked bluntly, "What's wrong with you?" My offense: I'd written a rather juvenile editorial titled "I wish I were an Oscar-baiting whiner," in which I'd mocked the whole awards-show circus; my editor objected especially to repeated references to "dickless statuettes." I stood with Woody Allen, I replied: Art is not competition, how can you compare Hannah and Her Sisters and Platoon, I'd rather be playing my clarinet at Michael's, too, etc. I've mellowed over the years--not least because Back Stage West now has its own awards show, the Garlands, and actors have their own show, too, the SAG Actor Awards. I still don't think art is a competitive sport, but I've come to see that awards mean what they mean, which isn't everything, and they certainly don't proffer absolute objective judgment; they reflect the views of the organization giving them, which means they're inherently political and subjective, but such honors have their relative value.

Still, while I admire show producer Gil Cates, who also runs the Geffen Theatre, I must say I haven't enjoyed an Oscar broadcast in many, many years. Steve Martin is a promising host--both classy and unpredictable, both dry and warm, in his ironic way--and maybe this year the dreaded dance numbers will make sense, as a musical is nominated (and favored to sweep). Just spare us the Gangs of New York and Lord of the Rings production numbers, please. Speaking of music, I love that both Eminem and Kander and Ebb are nominated in the song category (which gets me thinking--what if the bad-boy rapper-turned-actor went into the still-running Cabaret as the Emcee?).

Among the segments planned for Sunday's show is a film-clip montage of actors relating what it was like to win the Oscar, produced by a master of the form, documentarian Chuck Workman, who won a short-film Oscar for his memorable eight-minute Precious Moments and has since been asked to produce segments for the show. On his own, Workman--who's also made the documentaries The Source, about the Beats, and The Story of X, about the recent history of adult entertainment--has been working on a film tentatively titled The Actor's Life. The idea came from visits to Milton Katselas' master class at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, where Workman observed "wonderful emotional moments" as actors did their scenes and the master critiqued them. But what began as a look at actors in class became an investigation of the actor's craft as it's lived and practiced in all media, from Broadway to Equity 99-Seat to film and TV. "Actors are artists as creative as many painters and composers and writers," said Workman. To illuminate the point, he started shooting not just Katselas' classes but classes led at NYU by Shirley Knight; he went backstage at an Off-Broadway show and "led the players in a dressing-room discussion of their technique," as he said he's striving for something more than a talking-head-interview film—something "more theatrical." He recently had Christopher Neiman, the star of Theatre of NOTE's Yellow Flesh/Alabaster Rose, free-form a monologue about the actor's craft while pacing back and forth across NOTE's narrow Hollywood stage, and he sat in on a NOTE rehearsal/company meeting. He went to the "old actor's home"--the Motion Picture Country House in Woodland Hills--and filmed the seniors watching an old movie.

Workman--who recently completed the non-documentary drama The House on the Hill with Knight, Philip Baker Hall, and Laura San Giacomo--admitted that "even though I'd been a director, I didn't really understand what actors do. The joke was, I don't know when they memorize their lines. I still don't." He's not after what he calls the "Chorus Line cliche: I hope I get the job, I hope I get the job"--this won't be The It Factor, in other words--but rather the "gritty work" of the actor's craft, a craft "as old as carpentry." In the course of his Oscar-segment shooting, he's been able to catch footage of such actors as Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall talking about their craft, which he plans to use as "chapter headings" for his film, and he's found that all actors, at all levels, are seeking the same thing: As Hoffman put it, "It's just trying to get the truth out." Some actors aren't articulate about their craft, he conceded, "but they all study, they talk among themselves; they do know what they're doing. They may not know what makes it successful; I don't think anyone knows the formula. But they know what they're trying to do, their objectives—to put things into a transitive verb, to move to Moscow, to kill the king, to act, to perform, to be out there. There's something very important about how they feel about their work."

Workman said that while he's seen plenty of documentaries about classical musicians and jazz sidemen--the unsung pros who support the star player--he's never seen a film about the craft of actors like John Glover, whom he calls "the greatest 'studio musician' actor there is." He also loves veteran actors like David Proval and Robert Forster, thesps with interesting lives and long careers. "There's a lot of fools in this town who don't take actors seriously," Workman lamented. True, and the self-congratulatory spectacle of the Oscars, which tend to be more about actors' wardrobes and political statements than their craft, isn't going to change anyone's mind about that. Here's hoping The Actor's Life, likely destined for cable and/or the film festival circuit, will.

• Got a message from Brad Friedman, senior producer of Sacred Fools' late-night Crime Scene, taking issue with my Mar. 6 column about the Scene going dark for awhile. Apparently I was wrong: It will return this coming Saturday, Mar. 22, at 11 p.m. after the Fools' new mainstager, The Mechnical Rabbit. Friedman pointed out that this "L.A. theatrical fixture. . . has now been running for nearly half a decade, and has featured well over 500 L.A. actors." And, shame on us, we've never even reviewed it! It's a crime.

• Calista Flockhart as a back-stabbing bitch? Reports of her turn as Natasha in the Roundabout's pointlessly star-studded Three Sisters back in 1997--when she was still a non-star--would indicate she's up to the challenge. She'll be pulling out all the stops in the title role of a celebrity reading of All About Eve at the Ahmanson on Mar. 30 to benefit the Actors' Fund. Gordon Davidson will direct the cast, a not-too-shabby bunch: Stockard Channing (as, natch, Margo Channing), Tim Curry (as Addison de Witt), Blythe Danner and Victor Garber (as Karen and Lloyd Richards), Angela Lansbury (Birdie), Carl Reiner (Max Fabian), John Ritter (Bill Sampson), and future-Taper-second-stage-namesake Kirk Douglas (as a presenter). Joseph Mankiewicz's classic backstager has been adapted for the stage by David Rambo (God's Man in Texas), and original cast member Celeste Holm will chair the event. Judging by the last one of these--a 1997 staged reading of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to raise money for HB Studio with Uta Hagen, Jonathan Pryce, Mia Farrow, and Peter Gallagher--this should be a night to remember, if you can fork over the minimum $50 per ticket (top VIP seats are $1,000).

• With Suzan-Lori Parks' bluntly titled new play Fucking A opening at New York's Public Theater (Queen Latifah was in talks at one point to star, but another rapper-turned-actor, Mos Def, will star, presumably not in the same role), it's about time the Pulitzer Prize-winner (for Topdog/Underdog), who lives in Venice and will soon complete her first year teaching playwriting at Valencia's Cal Arts, had a play produced in L.A. (Her only local production so far was Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, at the Odyssey Theatre in 1993.) It will go down in the underrated city of Long Beach, where loud*R*mouth Theatre Company will mount Parks' In The Blood, about a homeless abortionist named Hester (who wears an "A," but not for adultery), at the Edison Theatre as an Equity 99-Seat production. "I don't know why they gave me the rights--I'm so surprised," said director Laura Marchant, who runs loud*R*mouth with Emily Duval (and whose day job is as a publicist with Davidson Choy). They're in the midst of casting (looking for "mostly African-Americans"), even though the play doesn't open until July, because "this is a hard play, let me tell you," said Marchant. Loud*R*mouth began in 1999 when Duval and Marchant, Cal State Long Beach theatre grads, mounted The Vagina Monologues with the show's college campaign, which has since raised $35,000 for women's charities; the new theatre company's mission was "theatre for women, by women, about women." (The charity beneficiary for In The Blood, appropriately enough, is Friends and Helpers, which helps homeless women with children.) After a few false starts--two one-acts at the dearly missed Glaxa Studios--the troupe hit its stride with Parallel Lives, a.k.a. The Kathy and Mo Show, a version of Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney's two-woman show, at the the Edison, and then last year's A Night of Steve Martin, one-acts by this year's Oscar host. How does loud*R*mouth get the rights to such high-profile stuff? "All I do is write a letter and follow up," Marchant said.