Ouch!

Wow. Or should I say, 'ow'.

We don't usually get the Sunday Globe, but this weekend we did. It sat on the freezer over the weekend, and this morning I retrieved it and took it down into my basement office. I had noticed the front-page story about Plymouth Rock Studios when Mary brought the paper in with the groceries, Sunday, but as I was already aware of the collapse of the financing agreement, I wasn't too concerned.

Ouch!

The front page was bad enough - as it cast the project and its nominal head, David Fitzpatrick, in unflattering terms. But from there it gets worse, far worse.

I won't rehash it here - if you haven't read it, here's a link. I have to say that the Globe story underscores what I had been saying from the beginning, that certain proponents of this project have been far too glib, and town officials far too gullible. Despite my natural cynicism I too had come to believe in this project. I was especially impressed with the talented people who were attracted by the opportunity, and were willing to do what they could, to make it happen.

But now it may be too late.

It's a Mickey Rooney moment, boys and girls.. that point in the film when we decide to do this on our own.. And the first thing we have to do.. Well actually, in the Rooney-Garland films they just did it all, on their own: raised the tents, wrote the musical, sold the tickets and put on the show. I don't think that's going to work here. If a thousand 'fans' of Hollywood East each gave a thousand dollars, we'd be short about 499 million. But perhaps what needs to be done - what can be done, is that the focus is narrowed: that PRS find some way to achieve some tangible success (buy the property, produce a more elaborate and financially rewarding feature?).

You can't tell a Hollywood executive to put their money where their mouth is, because that's what they do all the time: they believe in, well, 'make-believe' (and you can't blame them). But instead, now, they really need to put their money into the ground: they need to plant something, build something, produce something real, convince the hard-asses that lend the big money, that this remains viable.

The best thing about dreams is that we wake up from them  - inspired.

But if you spend the whole day talking about your dream, the next thing you know its time to go to sleep again.

Wake up PRS: time to get to work.

Withdrawal, Snobbery, and 'The Road'

In late August and September I experienced a flurry of acting activity - beginning with extra work on films in Lowell and the North Shore, punctuated by Zombie work for Rock Media's Longwalls Zombie video, and brought to a fever pitch by six weeks of Kevin Lasit's advanced acting lab. The inevitable crash probably would have come earlier, but anticipation of the premiere of the video kept me from realizing that for the first time in over ninety days there was nothing on the horizon.. Not that I don't have other things to do, but the demands and disciplines of acting are stimulating, and prolonged exposure can be addicting.


So that's what I am feeling now, withdrawal. I check the various casting agencies daily. Boston Casting has put out several appeals for a variety of roles - but none have been a good fit (of course I have applied anyway, but was never asked to come in). In the back of my mind is a vague desire to create - with the aid of some of the talented people I have come to know, a black box experience: theatrical dramas stripped down to their essentials.. I am, to be blunt, somewhat snobbish about local theatre in general. I think that almost invariably these productions try for too much, and so sacrifice all.


I am also anxious - if that's the right word, to see what Austrailian film director John Hillcoat has done to Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'. This is fiction (that reads like a prose poem) that is completely unsuited to film. It is a dark, grieving meditation on futility. It is not post-apocalypic - as some early reviews have stated, because McCarthy takes you into the very heart of an apocalypse in progress - a human apocalypse. This is a book to read aloud over the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. But there are no scenes, to speak of in its pages: instead there is a smouldering fire that you feel is always just about to re-ignite. There are no gratuitous scenes of familiar landmarks laid to waste. There is wasteland, and through it a dieing father and his son scurry like cockroaches. Every page you expect the boot to come down. I am anxious because I feel protective of this book: it is a crushed and crumbling flower within the pages of the Book of the Dead and I worry that putting it on film will be like adding rouge to the cheeks of a corpse.

'The Road' I think, would make a wonderfully brutal play. "O-u-t-c-a-s-t.. outcast!' is the memorable refrain from Dicken's Nicholas Nickelby. We are all outcasts, McCarthy says. Life sucks, and then you die.

also starring, in barfabetical order..

Yes I know, I'm not a 'featured extra' in the Zombies rock video that premiered at the Independence Mall this week (where else but a Mall!) .. but I'm a 'creatured extra'. How many extras get to do drooling close-ups? How many extras get to bite the bass player? How many extras get invited to the grand premiere?

So okay, you have to be quick - watch closely, or you probably won't notice me at all. But if you don't blink, there I am: drooling against the glass, then again - more drool, then rising up out of the bushes to take The Longwall's bass player down (tongue out, fast-food look in my riveting blue eyes).

I may not be able to add this to my acting resume - but when your 24-year old son is green with envy, you know you must be doing something right.

So spread the news (pass the link around), and let everyone get a look at this, the first full-length rock video from the Wunderkinds (Lou Janetty, Josh Bethoney, Steven Madden, et al) at Rock Media (Plymouth Rock Studios)

Thanks to everyone involved for a good time, especially The Longwalls themselves) - and please think of me if you need to cast a thoughtful, sympathetic, seems as if he could almost talk, middle-aged zombie in your next film.