Opening Night
I have a lot of rituals I’ve developed over the years for opening nights. They don’t absolutely have to happen — I’m not superstitious — but it’s nice if they do. Call it tradition. It calms my nerves.
Opening nights are weird things for me because the script is locked, the performances are locked, and I am essentially superfluous. But I still feel like I should be doing something — and since there is nothing for me to do, I tend to my rituals.
I go and have a really huge meal by myself. This meal should include pork, and any or all of it should be deep fried. I had lobster the night before at Fatty Crab, so I kept this opening night’s meal fairly light: A bacon cheeseburger. I deserved it.
Then I hung out at New Dramatists during the afternoon and wrote my thank-you cards in the library. While I was there my agents emailed to let me know that they had something for me and were messengering it over. An hour later a package arrived — an opening night gift: Four Superman graphic novels, including The Death of Superman. If you know the play, you can see how thoughtful this was of them. It was touching — definitely a bit of a Jerry Maguire moment.
Then, because of the need to fit as much as possible into my remaining time in NYC, I had a TV-related meeting in midtown. I marched up there in the broiling heat — it was 90 degrees, but the air was so muggy and thick it felt like I was swimming through it. I needed to arrive extra early in order to cool down before going into the room — first impressions, you know. Afterward I took the good ole 2/3 uptown to the theater, settling into the crisp, air conditioned atmosphere within and counting down the time.
I never sit during the show — I always stand. This frees up a seat that the theater can sell/comp to someone who needs it, and besides: I like standing. I like the idea of facing the thing we’ve created together and watching it all run. It’s kind of a neat thing to see something go from neurons firing in your brain to becoming a complete physical manifestation in front of you, alive in the world.
The after party was at the Blue Donkey Bar. But you know me: I’m more interested in the working process of getting the thing up on its feet and making it work. The joy/celebration for me is in the process, so I’m not much of a party person. But I go and cruise around and have fun because, like a birthday party/bar mitzvah/bachelor party, you’re there for the enjoyment and support of other people.
Now I’m back home in LA. Being gone for a month makes you realize how comparatively clean and sunlit this city is. But I already miss NYC. And the show is going on without me because I have to get back to work on other things.
But you know me: Always onto the next thing and the next… Busy with my business.
Previews
This play about Cambodian Americans is a lot sexier than I originally thought it would be (see attached photograph). I didn’t know Cambodians could be so sexy. Are we destroying old stereotypes or creating new ones? Personally I think it’s good to be stereotyped as sexy. Yours truly is, and it hasn’t created any problems for me.
So we’re now halfway through previews. This Saturday we have a matinee and an evening show, and then another matinee on Sunday. After a sprint through a short rehearsal period and a lot of rewriting, the script is finally locked. It was a challenging but really fun process — I’m going to repeat the most boring phrase ever used here: “Good Writing is Rewriting” — but rewriting under a time crunch is really where it’s at. The scarcity of time really motivates you to identify writing problems and solve them.
I’ve been in town for four weeks now and I’ve barely seen any friends. In fact, the only time when I do see people is when they come to previews. This is really nice of them, although it would be great to see people outside of this process. I’m happier when I see people over food, because then — hey, there’s food there.
So anyway, the script is locked. My job is technically over, so I’m decompressing with one of my favorite morning activities: Listening to music while drinking a Diet Coke and browsing the Internet for funny cat videos. Maybe I’ll go running later, maybe not. Maybe I’ll go to the Museum of Natural History, maybe I’ll get a slice. Who knows? It’s great to have a day off.
One thing is that I really miss LA. I can’t wait to get back. I got a lot of work to do. Plus I miss the culture and the slower passage of time. And I’ve been eating like I’m on vacation, and I need to get back to my regular diet of shoots and leaves.
Theater Review: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity at Second Stage Theatre
Dear friends: You should know that as of today, I have quit writing.
From now on, I only wrestle. From now on, I eat creatine with every fuckin meal and only wear Ed Hardy shirts that I only take off by tearing them off my body while growling. From now on, I will only respond to my wrestling name: “THA HUGE”. It should always only be spelled in capital letters and pronounced the way the late, great Chris Farley used to pronounce “DA BEARS”.
I have made this life decision because of a play: THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY, written by Kristoffer Diaz and now playing at Second Stage Theatre.
In every way imaginable, wrestling IS theater. It’s live, huge, full of spectacle and good and evil. It holds a mirror up to our culture — our fears and our perceptions of ourselves. So what we have here is a balls-out, high-powered, FUN theatrical superkick to the motherfuckin face. It is about a “jobber” — a no-name wrestler whose job is to make the superstar of THE Wrestling look good. It’s about this guy’s love for the game, the spectacle, and everything that he does to preserve that love — even when the game doesn’t love him back. It’s about America and celebrity and terrorism, and it’s a play you should see.
I don’t want to say too much else about the play beyond that. It’s loud, fun, and energetic, and you should come see it. It will pick you up, powerbomb you, and pin you, and you’re going to have a great time.
THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY is now playing at Second Stage Theatre from April 27th to June 20th, 2010.
All New Yorkers Talk About Is Food
It’s true. There are no other topics of conversation in this city. Any attempt at talking about anything else will result in the participants steering the conversation back to food. It is automatic and inevitable. Everyone has places that they love in every category of food, and all of these places must be mentioned as soon as that category of food is mentioned: “Oh my god, there’s this excellent Tibetan place on 2nd Avenue…”, “Oh, that’s a great place, but there’s an even better place on 9th…” BLAH BLAH BLAH
Why is this? 1) The food in this burg is excellent, 2) It is one of the purest creature comforts available, and 3) FOOD. But still, it’s starting to get a little old. We don’t talk about food this much in LA. Probably because we don’t want to be reminded of it b/c we’re all anorexic, but that’s how we roll.
Speaking of food: Halal food carts. I love them.
There are four basic types of food carts in NYC: The ubiquitous dirty water hot dog carts, the “breakfast pastry type” carts (donuts, croissants, etc..), the NUTS 4 NUTS carts, and the Halal food carts. These last carts serve foods like gyros and what we call shwarma foods in LA.
For years I avoided these carts even though they smelled so good: Fatty meats frying on an open grill. The danger of food-borne contaminants/poisoning seemed too high. But then our directors’ assistant Matt said that I had to try them (“They will change your life”), so I made the plunge. Chicken over rice. Five bucks — which, compared to the average cost of food in NYC, is almost free.
So good. So good so good. My stomach is fairly steel-like (I’ve only gotten food poisoning once in my billions of years on earth), so I think my fears were unfounded. But the taste and the price make the risk worth taking. Do not fear the Halal food cart. It is your friend, and it only wants what’s best for you.
Rejection
We all go through it. I’ve gotten way more rejections than I’ve gotten acceptances for things — that’s the nature of the game. Although I can say with absolute certainty that every time I was rejected for something or accepted for something, the correct decision was made and it did me well as a person. I am a sum product of all those strikes and gutterballs.
So now here is a book of other peoples’ rejection letters simply titled “Other Peoples’ Rejection Letters”, full of real and often unkind rejection letters that were sent to actual human beings.
Here is my favorite sample from the book. I love this letter so much — read it and create your own backstory:
Rehearsal Room
My desk in the rehearsal room.
(Note how photo is centered on Diet Coke can)
Hey gang. So rehearsals have been going well for our show over here; the thing is up on its feet and everything is moving along nicely — knock on wood. Everyone is really nice and great and I feel like we’re doing good work together. But now it’s time to move on.
I’m going to miss this rehearsal room. It has some nice large windows to peer out of wistfully. Down below you can see 43rd street and 8th avenue, a big BMW video billboard and lots of weird little people walking way down below. They know what I like to drink at the deli down below. The WiFi is fast and the power sockets are easily accessible. There is nearby Bon Chon.
But now it’s time to go forward and get going. We go into tech tomorrow, so everything got packed into a truck and driven uptown to the theater. My morning commute gets extended up there from now on. Fortunately it’s by one of my favoritest places in New York City. (Speaking of which, DJ sets in the planetarium? I love!)
We got tech all weekend. This is my favorite time to nestle into the darkness and do writing work. For some reason I’m really productive on working on other things while tech is happening on a show. Maybe because I’ve been so focused on one thing that my mind is hungry to work on other things. I don’t know.
But it’s time to take this show to the next level. I’ll see you next week… At previews.
The iPad: One Month In
A couple of days ago I went uptown to visit the holiest of the Apple sites, The Cube — from which Steve Jobs’ power emanates and flows across the galaxy. If you’ve been there, you know what it’s like: You descend into a 24 hour zoo full of people milling around, buying computers and hardware and watching tech demos. It’s loud, it’s noisy, and it never stops. It is iHell.
The big difference this time: The presence of several tables of iPads on display, all of them surrounded by tons of people poking and swiping and leaving a thin film of oil on their screens. I’m sure that someone needs to come by and Windex those suckers every couple of hours — probably not the most pleasant job down there.
So I’ve had the iPad for over a month now. It’s traveled with me, it’s served as a script reader and a video viewer. I browse the web on it, send emails every now and then. How has it held up?
I’m impressed. It’s a great device for media consumption — that is, reading and viewing stuff. I’ve read a couple of scripts and Huckleberry Finn on it. I don’t miss the Kindle’s E-Ink screen and I love the speed of the iPad’s PDF support.
Viewing videos: I used the iPad to watch the entire first season of Nurse Jackie as well as a bunch of Doctor Who episodes. It’s a great personal video player, although the aluminum back makes it a little slippery in your hands. It definitely requires a case. Walking around NYC I’ve seen various people on the train and on the street watching videos on their iPads. I wonder how ubiquitous this will become in the coming years. I have a feeling that soon they will make messenger bags with a flap-open compartment that allows you to slide in your iPad and use it while it’s in the bag. This would be great for viewing/reading stuff while you commute.
Email: I’ve jotted out a few short emails on it but I prefer using a physical keyboard. But it’s great for checking email while you browse the web — whenever I hear that audible email “ding” I hit the home button and switch apps to Mail — I read the message, then go back to whatever it was I was doing.
Travel: This is a perfect entertainment/media consumption device for traveling. It’s light, it gets all its media wirelessly (no lugging around DVDs, etc..), and the battery life is great. The lady that I’m renting my sublet from asked me if I wanted the cable hooked up — I declined. Why bother? The place has WiFi and I have Netflix Instant Play on the iPad.
I haven’t taken the thing out in public yet — I’m not as bold as those folks I’ve seen toting theirs around. Also, the one time I did take the thing out at a coffee place (to show our good friend Dave), it attracted a swarm of nerds faster than a booth babe handing out Star Craft II beta invites. I don’t need that — don’t try to sell nerds here: We’re all stocked up.
Verdict: iPad = good.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
