GOLDA: Other people love me for the things you hate, I have a mind of my own, and what I came here for is an absolute necessity for me! I won’t live without it.
And she didn’t.
Category Archives: quotes
Greetings from Chenult, OR (pop. 75)
Zack and I are crashing in Chenult, having just had a long and beautiful day at Crater Lake. Enjoyed the Pinnacles very much. I had a couple of thoughts, trying to respond to the Robert Negron / Michael Dixon school of the outdoors affecting the arts.
1) that a truly site specific piece would involve responding to the “set,” or the outdoors. And how do you respond to a mountain? A tree? How does it affect the chorus?
2) that it would be great to try to stretch as much distance between two people on stage as there is between Wizard Island and the Phantom Ship – because they do have a relationship, those two islands – just as two people can have a relationship across miles of water. I mean this both literally and in the sense of emotional space.
3) There has to be some way to replicate the thousands of trees. The DENSITY of the forest. And Martha Graham is much closer to it than I am.
Anyway, Chenult. Great cheeseburgers. Lots of enormous trucks. A brand of beer called “Moose Drool.” Good talk with the proprietor, Phil, of the Chalet bar & restaurant next door – apparently a truck stop has moved into town and that’s affected his business. His grandson tends bar and he runs the place. We shot a game of pool while talking with him.
Overheard in said bar: “A little fucking communication goes a long way.”
Give Room and Foote It, Girls
The NY Times has a great long article on the prolific writer Horton Foote, still getting plays and screenplays produced at the age of 91.
(Via ArtsJournal.)
I still think the best naturalistic directing I’ve ever done was of that scene from his play Courtship, with student actors, for the Summer Workshop at Harvard-Westlake. With the lovely Lauren Schaffel, who was in the Mr. Show episode “Sad Songs are Nature’s Onions!”
Foote on the writing life(style) and the lack of proper habillements:
“I’m so glad that Hallie and Devon don’t mind when I write all night. When I’m working, I’m not lonely. I was always this way. When we first went to New Hampshire, I’d start writing right out of bed, in my pajamas, and then I’d get so excited I’d never get dressed. Daisy would bring friends home after school, and I’d be in my pajamas, and she’d say to her mother: ‘Daddy’s got to get dressed. They think he’s an alcoholic.’ ”
And on the untimeliness of death:
Foote spent two years developing a script of his 1979 play “The Widow Claire” with Robert Altman. Just as the money was raised, the director died. “I was so impressed with Altman,” he said. “I feel a little cheated.”
(More Mailer) Willie Brown and his wife’s secret sexual catalogue:
Lovemaking on the stairs.
Beverly’s profanity in heat.
Experimenting with costumes.
_____________(He will not give it a name because he has heard it in places he would not mention to her. She will not because she’s not supposed to know it.)
A Moon For Daniel Sullivan
It’s not that Slate has no theater coverage, just sporadic coverage, mostly centered around New York. They’re doing better than many news sources. There’s an article every few months. They cover the Tonys. They mention Spring Awakening. Obviously I think there’s more writing to be done on the topic, and more coverage of the regional world, but at least they’ve started.
I particularly enjoyed segments of Daniel Sullivan‘s diary during MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, in 2000. The whole thing‘s worth reading, but here are a couple of good excerpts from the life of a stressed freelancer:
Daniel: 5:00 p.m.: A meeting with set designer John Lee Beatty on another play, Spinning Into Butter, by Rebecca Gilman. To be produced by Lincoln Center Theater in the summer. We sat in the theater and talked about where things should go. The play takes place in an office in a New England college. John Lee said, “What do I do so it won’t look boring?” He always gets right to the point. I was at a bit of a loss. “Windows?” I said. “Oh!” he said, surprised. But he always acts surprised by even the dullest idea. He’s very nice. “Maybe it should be a very tall room,” he said. “How tall?” “16 feet.” “That’s tall. Do they have rooms that tall in New England?” “Victorian rooms are tall.” “But Victorian doesn’t give you the typical New England school.” And so it went for an hour or so. I don’t know what initial design meetings are like for other directors, but this is par for the course for me. And at the end we agree to meet again soon since neither of us knows what the hell we’re doing.
And again:
Daniel: “The press department calls to ask where they should seat the chief theater critic of the New York Times. I suggest a local restaurant. “No, really, where?” I suggest Row J. “Why J?” “Because if he’s any closer he’ll see the side light we haven’t been able to hide.” ”
Outrageous Fortune
Having just watched all of Season One, I’m going to take a drastic step – I’m going to put SLINGS AND ARROWS director Darren Nichols (Don McKellar)on my resume as one of my references.
Darren: I’m used to being hated. That’s my thing. But I can’t function as a director unless that hatred is kept in check by a thin, calculated veneer of invulnerability.
They really understand him in Germany, of course.
I loved him playing with the little plastic horse while he was reading the script, too – and the roll-up Bosch poster that he carried with him. There’s a very fine line between him and me. You could almost call it a thin, calculated veneer.
PS. Don McKellar also co-wrote the book for The Drowsy Chaperone, with Bob Martin (one of the Slings & Arrows writers, too)
Mailer? I Hardly Even…
It’s been a Maileresque couple of days. I bought the PARIS REVIEW with Andrew O’Hagan’s interview of him in it. I was so happy that there was a discussion of style in it:
MAILER
[…]
One of my basic notions for a long, long time is that there is this mysterious mountain out there called reality. We novelists are always trying to climb it. We are mountaineers, and the question is, Which face do you attack? Different faces call for different approaches, and some demand a knotty and convoluted interior style. Others demand great simplicity. The point is that style is an attack on the nature of reality. [my italics]
That’s a great summation of my theory about styles of directing, too. We are mountaineers. Which face do you attack? All styles are legitimate – the only danger is to eschew or denounce style, or to fail to understand that style is a choice with value, or to only be capable of writing (performing, directing) in one style…
I guess that’s a lot of dangers.
Style is a minefield full of cherry trees.
Mailer wasn’t always so aesthetic in the interview – he managed to get in some weird race references and bash Vaclav Havel, not to mention refer to his wives as cities he had gotten tired of living in (femininity as geography, anyone?) but I liked so much of his notions about writing, and I liked his bluntness.
The interview also had my favorite interviewer line in it ever:
INTERVIEWER
That won’t do, Norman. No way.
I was having breakfast with Kate McConnell at Brother’s the next morning, and as we left our table, a family playing the Trivial Pursuit cards which are on all the tables read this question aloud:
Dad: Which Pulitzer-Prize-winning author’s first novel was THE NAKED AND THE DEAD?
A silence followed it, but I gasped, “Norman Mailer!” and went straight to Bloomsbury to order a copy of that novel.
(The Paris Review archives all their extensive interviews here, by the way.
Here’s another great quote:
MAILER
Our understanding of good and evil begins with our parents. Down the road one is altered by one’s relationships with one’s children.
INTERVIEWER
If one is so minded – or so inclined – is it a good idea for a novelist to have children?
MAILER
I don’t prescribe for novelists. I mean, if Henry James followed my prescription, where would he have been?
Dara Weinberg 