Gideon Productions

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Technicalities

Saturday, September 06, 2003
Gideon Productions was informed today that we owe $1500 in fees to the government of the United States. Mac and Jordana were sort of floored by this and, despite the fact that it was somewhat my fault, neither of them got mad at me.

Having come from a community of artists, I have been told that the IRS doesn't usually end up charging you what they send you a bill for. I have a friend who assumes that the IRS bill is really just their asking price, you can haggle. This seemed completely absurd to me.

So when I called the IRS today and sat on hold for five or six minutes, I got my phone voice ready and steadied myself for the horrible person I was sure to get on the phone.

(As an aside, several years ago I sold business insurance over the phone, what you might call telemarketing. Although I did this in LA, we called companies all over the country. Depressingly, I had a real knack for this work, and I got all the tough assignments. Some areas were more difficult than others, but nowhere was as feared as Long Island.

All the Long Island accounts fell to me, and suddenly we were doing banging business out there. My boss asked me if he could sit with me for half an hour while I made the calls so he could teach the other marketers how to do it. He found out the secret to New York.

I would call and no matter who answered, I would cut them off and say, in my best New Yawkeese, 'Yeah, lemme talk to your boss.' The boss would get on and I would say, 'I represent so-and-so, and I'm selling insurance. You interested?' The voice on the phone would invariably laugh and I would laugh too and say, 'Hey, I don' wanna waste your time.' Next thing you know, we're booking appointments. No-one here wants their time trivialized.)

So, I'm trying to get my mind in the fluid tell-them-what-they-need mode, and a Mr. Trumpler gets on the phone. I tell him I run a small theater company that just got a bill for 1500 dollars. I start to explain to him what happened in the quickest possible terms because he is being deadly silent. He tells me to hold.

He comes back and says, 'Listen, I can't erase this bill, and my supervisor can't erase this bill. But if you write to the address on your printout, and explain that you are a theater company with about ten thousand in total assets, I think they will take care of this for you.'

I think he actually laughed when he said 'theater company' but he did it respectfully. And, I have to tell you, this extends a long line of really nice respectful people I have talked to at the IRS.

On the theater front, we discovered that our playing space is about five feet smaller than we initially thought. And that's why you get a picture of me suffering through a nut kicking. Posted at 12:45 AM by sean williams

Comedy

Thursday, September 04, 2003
There is a famous story that ends with the line, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard."

Tonight was really hard. We had a whole series moments that have to be timed right down to the second, including stage falls, guns and even several kicks to the nuts.

Yeah, that's me after finally getting one right in the boys. It's bound to happen when you get stage kicked fifty or sixty times.

As Ehren noticed tonight, this is actually a very dense script, right under the surface silliness. I think people are going to laugh all the way through it, and people are probably going to be offended, but there are some really nice moments. Especially Jordana, who is managing to create this perfect balance between broad comedy and legitimate homage.

Also, in the middle of the play, we suddenly realized we were paying homage not only to great movies and radio from the 30s and 40s, but also to movies from the early 90s

Posted at 10:59 PM by sean williams

On Acting

Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Much of this blog will be about producing, but the minutiae of acting is fascinating to me.

Everyone will tell you that most of acting is re-acting, which I have to assume means listening. This isn't true. Listening and reacting are important, but it really makes up about 15% of your job. As an actor, the most important thing is line delivery.

A lot of people get by just by knowing how to deliver a line. Most comedians are not delivering great jokes, they are brilliant actors who know how to turn a phrase.

There isn't a right way or a wrong way, just like in all theater, there is only an appropriate way for your point to get across. It is silly to try to explain this in a blog, if you consider 'delivering lines' to be taking the written word and imbuing it with life, then writing about acting is the most counter-intuitive thing there is.

That being said, you can add phrasing to what you are reading that will show how lines should be said. Take the following;

"I know this goes beyond the normal protocal and that this is dangerous, very dangerous, but I need your help for old time's sake"

That's a damn good little chunk of good old movie dialogue. Consider that this is being delivered by an older man calling a South American consolate in the middle of a revolution. He's on the phone, one hand covering his mouth, his life hangs in the balance. The caller has just begun saying "This goes way beyond the normal..." and our hero interrupts with,

"I *know*..." then a new thought,

"... this goes beyond the..." he feels disgust at what used to be accepted behavior when he says, "..normal protocol," afraid that he might be too hostile, he tries to agree, "and that this is dangerous..." what? was that a noise? He pauses, looks to the side. What was he saying? Oh yeah..."... very dangerous."

How true it all is. And yet, he wouldn't be calling

"But I need your help..." and not just needing it, but maybe asking for re-payment, "for old time's sake..." maybe even implying a threat about what he knows about the past.

That's how you deliver that in a movie. Of course, what you actually do in a movie is just be handsome and clench your jaw, but that's what they would teach you to do in a movie.

Now, picture it is a guy who is twenty eight years old. He wants to get the attention of some hot girl across the bar who, he knows, is only attracted to gay guys she wants to convert. He looks at his best friend, who is a classic straight talking homophobe, and says, "Listen, I need you to kiss me, and I need you not to ask any questions."

His friend says nothing. Laughs. Sees the serious look on our heroes face and stops laughing. "Um," he says. "Uh, this is a beer hall in Queens, if we kiss we're going to get our asses kicked judiciously."
"Judiciously, huh?"
"Yeah, judiciously, ecumenically, dogmatically, whatever, dude. I'm not gonna kiss you, it goes against all normal protocal"

Our hero responds, point blank and fast as hell.

"I know this goes beyond the normal protocal and that this is dangerous, very dangerous, but I need your help" and then remembers the time he caught this guy passed out and peeing on his own bed and adds, "for old time's sake."

There isn't a correct delivery. And it isn't a matter of finding an emotional journey. There is a way of saying a line that creates tension, and a way of saying a line that diffuses tension.

As a personal aside, the best thing about working with this cast so far has been the way each line has been investigated for possibilites like these. I have seen really dramatic lines turned into laugh lines in a second, and vice versa. One other director I have worked with, Dan Kois, also loves to travel into the bizzarre world of vastly different line readins, many times just to confirm what we already think the lines mean.

Of course, even in this show, the nut-kicking is always dramatic. Posted at 2:06 PM by sean williams

Labor

Monday, September 01, 2003
Say what you want about wearing different hats or whatever, but when you are producing and acting in a play that will go up in New York, everyone knows what you're talking about.

It's not really a dirty little secret, mostly because it isn't dirty, it isn't really a secret, and to say it is little is redundant. But if you look at most people's resumes in New York, or in LA for that matter, you are gonna run across a lot of self-created opportunities. Some people look at this and disparage it, y'know, you can't get an industry job so you go outside the industry in order to work.

In my mind, that's just one less step between the artist and the art. I love colaboration, I truly think that a piece of art is better when it has two or three chefs adding ingredients, but I also think that collaboration and focus-grouping are two different things. It may sound naive, but I want nothing to do with a piece of art that has had cards filled out and chads punched about it.

So, you get with a group of artists you like, and you make a play. Some people fund it themselves, some get investments. My friend Boris put on the wonderful play "Sky Over Nineveh" (theboris.com) by working nights at law firms and just put all the money toward the production. We have the good fortune of a pretty solid business plan and some gracious investors, but still we don't want to blow too much money.

We did some prop shopping today, and then I came home and worked on lines. The interesting thing about doing double duty like that is that you end up with a shitload of stuff on your plate and no way to work your way through it. Even my copy of the script, which normally would have notes and stage directions all over it, is covered every page, front and back, with crap I need to do as an actor, producer and marketing designer.

I have to say, if someone else was doing this stuff, I would be all over them, asking them a million questions. Lots of people become producers so that they may become actors. These people are stupid, it's just too damn hard unless you actually have a ball doing all this stuff.

By the way, if you have never gone shopping on Labor Day in New York City when sales tax is suspended, you haven't really seen the crazies. We actually thought that Target on a day like this would be a good idea. We did find some good props, though.