This stroll down memory lane may be droll, but it is not
fantasy. All that I write here is, in fact, mostly true, the whole-ish truth,
and very little but the truth.
IMDb. The Internet Movie Database. Search it, and you will
not find me. At least, not yet. But not for want of trying on my part. In time,
IMDb may catch up with me.
My other career, you see – tho I speak of it little – is as
an actor, a thespian, a player, if you will, in the classic sense. Or, it was. I
have trod the boards. I have brought down the house. And when the time came,
Mr. DeMille, I was ready for my close-up.
Like many thespians, my beginnings were in the theatuh, mine
being the rare case, however, in which I was not hampered by formal instruction
in the discipline. Thrice have I broken a leg, nay, four or five times, yet
while cameras were not unknown in that era, I now have no photos to document
these older productions. Perhaps as a result of this essay, some will come
forward. I’d like that. And while, as I recount my earliest work, you may say,
“school plays,” there are those who think of them as the work of a prodigy. And
when I say, “those,” yes, I mean me.
In third grade, at Lincoln Street Elementary School, I debuted
in the role of a Chinese magistrate, in what I must admit was a forgettable
play, since in fact I have all but forgotten it. My soliloquy lives on, perhaps,
in the memories of my fellow students, were any of them eidetics. I had the
lead, an auspicious start to a decade-long career, but all I really recall is that
Mom made my costume, adding to her already illustrious résumé both costume
designer and costume maker. It was a long, flowing green thing, reaching to my
ankles and graced with red and black trim at my sleeves and collar. On front
and back she traced some kind of elaborate geometric design in wide, black,
permanent marker. The gown flowed generously around me, like a warm summer’s
evening, which was good, since I wore it well into high school as a
Halloween costume, by which time it dipped only to my knees and fit somewhat
more snugly around the middle. Fortunately, my Fu Manchu mustache was applied
with some kind of mascara, instead of a Sharpie.
My debut in a musical came in fifth grade. Some might have
called it a choir concert, but it was television-themed, I wore a costume, and
I had a solo. In truth, the solo was more of a trio, but more is always better
in show biz. Still, I did get to sing on my own for a verse, if humbly from
a trash can. The show was a Sesame Street pastiche, and I was one of three boys
bedecked in old green carpet singing that eternal hit, “I Love Trash.” And yes, we were all in trash cans. The director was a purist. As it happens, the other two
Oscars were tall and lithe, and when the curtain descended they easily popped
up and emerged from their props. I on the other hand must have had the smallest
of the three receptacles, since I had to wobble back and forth until I fell
over and could crawl my way out. I refuse to think that the reluctance of the
other singers, and even the parents, to assist me at this time of need might
have been due to a certain amusement they derived from my predicament.
In sixth grade, at Bidwell Middle School, the footlights
called again. This time I played the hero, one Hercules, by name. There might
have been taller boys in class, but none apparently who were willing to memorize
lines, and in any case, I had experience. I donned a yellow tank top and rigged
my wristwatch's wide, tooled, leather wrist band – which really was quite the thing in
those days and hardly as hideous as it might sound now – into a MacGyverish arm
band, long before that character was ascendant, I might add. Sadly, my herculean work
failed to impress the girls, but I observe that we were very young, and they
were probably just shy.
One of my teachers in eighth grade had some of his students
make their own movie. I was particularly attracted to this and was more
involved than the others. I helped write the script, acted in the role of a news anchor, and even directed some scenes. The old 8mm camera could not capture sound, so I
ended up recording a voice-over in post-production. You can imagine my
anticipation before viewing the movie at year’s end, but you might also imagine
my horror when I attended a second showing of the movie a year later, after my
voice had changed.
I pursued other interests mostly in high school. Took a hiatus, if
you will, from acting. But, when I was a senior at Red Bluff Union High School,
a production was scheduled of Neil Simon’s comedic masterwork, “Barefoot in the
Park.” Now, Neil envisioned the character of Mr. Munshin as not requiring an actual
actor. In the script, he is only spoken of, and spoken to, by the leads as an
imaginary being out of sight of the audience. In one scene, the female lead
directs some lovey-dovey words to a man in the apartment hallway, who she thinks is her
husband, only to find that the man is instead Mr. Munshin, an upstairs
neighbor. Ah, the stuff of comedy. Some of my actor friends thought it would be
funnier if at this point Mr. Munshin, in person, were to peer – perhaps even
leer – hopefully through the open apartment door before the mistake is found
out. My talents were sought, and with some assistance from costuming in the
form of a raincoat, my silent, walk-on response to the line, “Hey, lover, start
puckering your lips,” brought down the house. Both nights, if I’m honest.
Little more than a year later, I graduated from creating a
role to playing a real person. Danny Day-Lewis had his Lincoln, George Scott
had his Patton, and I had my Elvis. I know it’s an unusual choice, and my portrayal was limited to a single evening, but I counted it a great
responsibility. My time was not lengthy on the temporary Occidental
College dorm lounge stage, but playing a real person requires finesse
and sensitivity, and in my case, it also required a wig, black mascara, an
entirely white costume, and a large, sequined, cardboard and tin foil belt
buckle. In true collegiate fashion, our spectacle – for that it surely was, as
anyone who attended the 1981 Chilcott-Orr Fall Talent Show will attest – compared
and contrasted “Young Elvis” – my
colleague dancing wildly to “Nothin’ but a Hound Dog” – with what they affectionately termed,
“Old Elvis.” While I lip-synched to “Love Me Tender,” having just had my face
sprinkled with droplets of water before entering the spotlight, three co-eds
rushed the stage, screaming in delight and drying my face with their
handkerchiefs. This was encouraging, but alas, they were but ringers, engaged
in advance to heighten the drama.
Though I focused on other arts at Occidental, my acting nevertheless
expanded into television and movie roles. In the spring of 1980, shooting began
on the pilot episode of Steve Cannell’s crime-fighting comedy, “Ten Speed and
Brown Shoe.” The big ending was shot on a hot, sunny day in Long Beach’s
Veterans Memorial Stadium, and a marching band was required. Some Hollywood
casting genius approached Occidental College, which hadn’t had a marching band
in any living person’s memory, to supply one. We obliged, and the word was
spread, but when the motor coach was ready to transport us on a very early Saturday
morning to the location shoot, the number of true bandsmen was insufficient for
even a small marching band. Emissaries were sent to the freshman dorm to roust
several bleary-eyed wannabe sideliners, before they could fully comprehend what
was being asked of them, and when the need for a Drum Major was identified, and
a mace put in my hands, who was I to decline? I shared the field with the show’s
stars, Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum, and our efforts succeeded. The show was
picked up, as they say in the business, for an entire season. I suppose you could say ours was a singular success. I have just learned the show is now available on DVD,
with the exception of the pilot. Something about rights and lawyers and money. It's more common in Hollywood than you might think. Fortunately, I viewed the episode when it originally aired, but editors deemed
the marching band’s dramatic contributions to be less interesting than the car
chase, and so our screen time is so brief that if you blinked, you would miss the
entire band, which only appears in a shot so long that even the Drum Major, my
only TV role to date, can hardly be detected. In a related aside, I have all my
life been able to wiggle my ears, which is entertaining, but hardly original.
However, I can also wiggle either ear independently, and for many years I was
aware of no one else who could do this. But then, Jeff Goldblum did it one night on the
Letterman Show, and now we are two. If I encounter Jeff some day again on set, I shall bend
his ear on the subject.
And finally, motion pictures. Talkies. The Big Screen. It
was 1981, fast on the heels of my TV debut, when Hollywood came a’calling. The
picture was “Choices,” based on the true story of a handsome, high school
senior with outstanding talents in both football and violin, but who also has
significant hearing loss. Some of his friends are good people, some are not,
and family dynamics pressure him to weigh his love of sports with his abilities
in music. He has to make some important, uh, choices. I’ll admit, it’s not an
A-movie, and it might not even be a B-movie, but surely there is some letter of
the alphabet with which it may be graded. In an ironic acting stretch, I play
an orchestral trumpeter. I have no lines, it’s true, and the music you hear was
recorded later by a studio orchestra, but there’s no such thing as a small
role, only small actors. Note the way I look up, when called. Observe how I look down when castigated. Acting, you see, is all in the eyes. By some miracle, the picture has been released on DVD,
and you, too, can own a copy for a small investment. Very small. In my scene
(31 minutes in, for anyone who wants to know), the kid plays assistant
concert-master in a youth orchestra that his grandfather conducts. They are
rehearsing Handel’s Royal Fireworks, and the trumpets tick off Grandpappy by
making mistakes. This, of course, is not completely unknown in the real world, but
in the movie, the kid gets so annoyed at the conductor’s behavior that he jumps
up and leaves the orchestra in furious disgust. Now, I know just a little about orchestras,
and never, ever – not since the first Tyrannosaurus Rex led the very first dinosorchestra
– has a string player EVER left a rehearsal in anger over a conductor’s
treatment of brass players. You can wish, you can dream, but that ain’t never
happened, and it ain’t never gonna happen in real life, such are the social
bonds between the sections of an orchestra. Anyway, another genius Hollywood
casting director secured the services of the Peter Meremblum Youth Orchestra,
of which I was a member at the time, and we scooted off early one Saturday en
masse on bus to Simi Valley High School, which interestingly portrayed itself in this picture.
However, the orchestra’s use of the word “Youth” was somewhat malleable, and a
problem quickly arose. The script called for the horns to be the clammy culprits, which is not really a dramatic stretch, but one of our horn players that day was
decidedly bald and not at all convincing in the role of a high schooler. So,
they switched out the cue ball for us trumpets, and consequently, I’m in a few wide shots
of the orchestra, and yes, I have a 2- or 3-second close-up. On a side note,
the female lead was also in my scene, and it was apparently her birthday, since
there was a cake for her after we wrapped for the day. Her name? Demi Moore. It
was her film debut, too.
I haven’t acted in quite some time, but IMDb will probably read this and add me to their site soon. And I haven’t given up, either.
I’m thinking of writing a little. And directing, of course. Isn’t that what
every true actor wants?
