Dixon Carter Lee
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- Joined
- Nov 22, 1999
- Posts
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When Your Heroes Aren’t Gods.
I went to see some friends in a show last night, a series of short plays written by Ray Bradbury. I’ve always loved Ray Badbury. I’ve got several well-thumbed books of his laying about the house, a few I’ve had since high school. Hell, half the reason I like “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is because of him. I’ve read “The Martian Chronicles” ten times. The man’s lyrical prose and stylized story-telling have been an influence on me. He’s a hero. But I’ve always known he wasn’t a great dramatist. Short story prose doesn’t often lend itself well to the theatre. Still, I knew he’d be there, and I missed really meeting him several times already, so off I went, hoping for a nice evening.
It’s a small theatre, and there were only about 20 of us in the house. Ray came in with a walker, and a few people to help him navigate over to his front row seat (a weird place for the playwright to sit, smack dab in the actor’s viewpoint -- the stage is on the floor, and his walker very nearly became a part of the set). He looked old, and talked loudly (due to some partial deafness, I think) and as he conversed with his friends I heard that he has a book of 400 poems coming out, and another novel (and I also found out that one of his friends there that night was Irv Kirshner, who directed “The Empire Strikes Back”, but he didn’t do anything to disappoint me, so never mind about him).
So the producer intros Ray before the show, and Ray stands up to give a speech. I hate pre-show speeches, because a play should always speak for itself. Still, Ray gets up and sort of half turns around, moving is somewhat difficult for him, and there I am, sitting 18 inches from the man who wrote stories I’ve already started reading to my son. He says, “I’m sure many of you are wondering what I’m doing here...” and proceeds to tell us how great the theatre is, and how terrible and godawful the movies are. He does about a seven minute speech, recounting his life as a writer, his year in Ireland working on the screenplay to “Moby Dick” for John Huston, etc., and the day he realized he was a good playwright, and, again, how terrible all the movies are now, and that’s why he’s back in the theatre.
And I realize, he’s clueless. The day before I’d seen “Black Hawk Down” and rented “Shakespeare in Love”, one film an astonishingly well directed and produced film about the seminal moment in American military hisotry when this country lost the will to fight protracted wars for ambiguos goals, and the other boasting a screenplay more lyrical and prose heavy than anything he’d ever written, and dramatically successful to boot. The movies are not "terrible". The culture is not sick and dying. Of course there are crappy movies now, just as there were crappy movies then, but there’s also great, great work out there.
Ray's been going on about this now for a couple of years, speechifying about how terrible movies are, and how great they used to be.
It reminded me of Steve Allen, whom I met a year before he died, and who was doing the same “I’m doing theatre now because all other culture is Godawful” kind of speech before his own (dreadful) theatre piece. Again, clueless. His big thing was how awful, dumb and terrible TV is, and, you know what? Between “Sopranos”, “West Wing”, “24”, “NYPD Blue”, “Law and Order”, “Sex in the City”, “Monk”, “Mystery!”, and a whole host of other shows, I think we’re in the middle of a Golden Age of Television. Sure we have “Big Brother”, but, hell, the 1950s and 60s had crap too, Steve. Do I have to bring up “My Mother the Car”?
I suppose what I’m getting at is this: it’s sad, very sad, when the culture has passed by one of your cultural heroes while you're sitting 18 inches away. Ray and Steve are/were too old, too uninformed to be honestly critical, and they expend/expended way too much energy bemoaning the dearth of a culture that no longer calls them on the phone.
Ray’s plays last night were terrible. They were based on his short stories, which are great, but as theatre they, er, blew. It didn’t help that the direction was worse (done by a colleague of mine, unfortunately --I’ve never liked his work). And the casting was way off. (Len Lesser, remember him as Uncle Leo on “Seinfeld”, cast as an a Scottish Doctor in 1790s London, wearing britches and a three corner hat (!), pinching snuff and struggling through the worst attempt at an accent since Mickey Rooney played a Japanese photographer in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”).
Anyway, it was a small house, and I knew nearly everyone involved in the show, and I initally had my heart set on sticking around afterwards and meeting Ray properly and maybe taking him out for a drink and, gee, I don’t know, maybe we’d become best buds and go shoot hoops or something. But, I didn’t. I left early with some pals to go have a drink, and maybe that was silly. I just felt sad about the whole thing.
I’m sure I’ll read “Martian Chronicles” again, and love it, but not any time soon -- and that sucks.
I went to see some friends in a show last night, a series of short plays written by Ray Bradbury. I’ve always loved Ray Badbury. I’ve got several well-thumbed books of his laying about the house, a few I’ve had since high school. Hell, half the reason I like “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is because of him. I’ve read “The Martian Chronicles” ten times. The man’s lyrical prose and stylized story-telling have been an influence on me. He’s a hero. But I’ve always known he wasn’t a great dramatist. Short story prose doesn’t often lend itself well to the theatre. Still, I knew he’d be there, and I missed really meeting him several times already, so off I went, hoping for a nice evening.
It’s a small theatre, and there were only about 20 of us in the house. Ray came in with a walker, and a few people to help him navigate over to his front row seat (a weird place for the playwright to sit, smack dab in the actor’s viewpoint -- the stage is on the floor, and his walker very nearly became a part of the set). He looked old, and talked loudly (due to some partial deafness, I think) and as he conversed with his friends I heard that he has a book of 400 poems coming out, and another novel (and I also found out that one of his friends there that night was Irv Kirshner, who directed “The Empire Strikes Back”, but he didn’t do anything to disappoint me, so never mind about him).
So the producer intros Ray before the show, and Ray stands up to give a speech. I hate pre-show speeches, because a play should always speak for itself. Still, Ray gets up and sort of half turns around, moving is somewhat difficult for him, and there I am, sitting 18 inches from the man who wrote stories I’ve already started reading to my son. He says, “I’m sure many of you are wondering what I’m doing here...” and proceeds to tell us how great the theatre is, and how terrible and godawful the movies are. He does about a seven minute speech, recounting his life as a writer, his year in Ireland working on the screenplay to “Moby Dick” for John Huston, etc., and the day he realized he was a good playwright, and, again, how terrible all the movies are now, and that’s why he’s back in the theatre.
And I realize, he’s clueless. The day before I’d seen “Black Hawk Down” and rented “Shakespeare in Love”, one film an astonishingly well directed and produced film about the seminal moment in American military hisotry when this country lost the will to fight protracted wars for ambiguos goals, and the other boasting a screenplay more lyrical and prose heavy than anything he’d ever written, and dramatically successful to boot. The movies are not "terrible". The culture is not sick and dying. Of course there are crappy movies now, just as there were crappy movies then, but there’s also great, great work out there.
Ray's been going on about this now for a couple of years, speechifying about how terrible movies are, and how great they used to be.
It reminded me of Steve Allen, whom I met a year before he died, and who was doing the same “I’m doing theatre now because all other culture is Godawful” kind of speech before his own (dreadful) theatre piece. Again, clueless. His big thing was how awful, dumb and terrible TV is, and, you know what? Between “Sopranos”, “West Wing”, “24”, “NYPD Blue”, “Law and Order”, “Sex in the City”, “Monk”, “Mystery!”, and a whole host of other shows, I think we’re in the middle of a Golden Age of Television. Sure we have “Big Brother”, but, hell, the 1950s and 60s had crap too, Steve. Do I have to bring up “My Mother the Car”?
I suppose what I’m getting at is this: it’s sad, very sad, when the culture has passed by one of your cultural heroes while you're sitting 18 inches away. Ray and Steve are/were too old, too uninformed to be honestly critical, and they expend/expended way too much energy bemoaning the dearth of a culture that no longer calls them on the phone.
Ray’s plays last night were terrible. They were based on his short stories, which are great, but as theatre they, er, blew. It didn’t help that the direction was worse (done by a colleague of mine, unfortunately --I’ve never liked his work). And the casting was way off. (Len Lesser, remember him as Uncle Leo on “Seinfeld”, cast as an a Scottish Doctor in 1790s London, wearing britches and a three corner hat (!), pinching snuff and struggling through the worst attempt at an accent since Mickey Rooney played a Japanese photographer in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”).
Anyway, it was a small house, and I knew nearly everyone involved in the show, and I initally had my heart set on sticking around afterwards and meeting Ray properly and maybe taking him out for a drink and, gee, I don’t know, maybe we’d become best buds and go shoot hoops or something. But, I didn’t. I left early with some pals to go have a drink, and maybe that was silly. I just felt sad about the whole thing.
I’m sure I’ll read “Martian Chronicles” again, and love it, but not any time soon -- and that sucks.
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