Yes, I’m producing two readings, two nights in a row. (And I hope you can join me)

Despite her successful career, Katie is a bit lost. Half Caucasian and half Japanese, and cut off from both parents at an early age, she isn’t sure who she is. But a forced reconciliation with her crazy mother — and then a roadtrip to visit Grandmother — bring her face-to-face with the women she was eager to leave behind.

“Lies My Mother Told Me,” a dark comedy by Connie Yoshimura, receives a staged reading this Monday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Studio/Stage in Hollywood.

Please join me for this free event, with catered reception afterward. I’m the dramaturge on this project and am eager to hear your input.

“Lies My Mother Told Me” by Connie Yoshimura

directed by Joe Ochman

with

Alice Ensor, Helen Slayton-Hughes, and Linde Gibb

Studio/Stage is located at:
520 North Western Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90004

Click here for directions.

What: rehearsed reading of “Lies My Mother Told Me” by Connie Yoshimura, with reception

When: Monday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Studio/Stage, 520 North Western Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90004

Please join us.

Above we see the bucolic bungalow once inhabited by Charles Bukowski. (And it looks more appropos than ever.)

This is just one of dozens of wonderful atmospheric photos of Los Angeles landmarks one may find on this site, where you’ll find everything from Walt Disney’s first studio (a garage), to the home of Zappa Records (which I’ve passed about a hundred thousand times), to our local stand-in for The Daily Planet.

Thanks to Mark Chaet for letting me know about this.

This weekend I’m producing readings of two new plays by Connie Yoshimura, a playwright I work with as dramaturge.

Please come join us.

Here’s Sunday night’s offering: “Open House.” (Monday night’s reading is “Lies My Mother Told Me”; more about that shortly. And yes, for my purposes, “Monday” is part of the weekend. Hmph.)

What happens when everyone in the neighborhood suspects the worst about you?

That’s one of the questions explored in “Open House,” a new play by Connie Yoshimura receiving a staged reading this Sunday, March 9 at 7 p.m. at the Hollywood Court Theatre.

Please join me for this free event, with catered reception afterward. I’m the dramaturge on this project and am eager to hear your input.

“Open House” by Connie Yoshimura

directed by Mark Kinsey Stephenson

with

Carolyn Hennesy, Ronnie Steadman, Maria Lay, Kip Adams, Liza de Weerd, Laura Buckles, Richard Ruyle, Angie Hauk, Toby Meuli, and Rick Sparks

Hollywood Court Theatre at Hollywood United Methodist Church

(the church with the large AIDS ribbon on the tower)

6817 Franklin Avenue, Hollywood CA 90028

Click here for directions.

There is a large free parking lot. Park in the lot, then enter through the gates in front into the courtyard. Walk up the ramp to your left. Go to your right along the breezeway and you’ll see a set of doors to your left. Go up the stairs to the second floor, turn right, and you’ll be at the theatre. We will post signs directing you.

What: rehearsed reading of “Open House” by Connie Yoshimura, with reception

When: Sunday, March 9 at 7 p.m.

Where: Hollywood Court Theatre, 6817 Franklin Avenue, Hollywood

Please join me.

Twelve years ago, before we had even moved into the house we were buying, a man stopped by and tried to sell my wife a security system, one of those deals where they put the stern sign on your lawn (“This home protected by Westec Security!”) and have a car drive by every once in a while just to take a look. There would be an upfront fee, and a monthly fee for ongoing service. I came to the front door just as he was closing his appeal and convincing Valorie of the necessity and the incredible affordability of the security system we hadn’t known we needed. His pitch included words to this effect:

“This is a neighborhood in transition. You’re pretty close to North Hollywood.” (Which I took for code as “minorities” and/or “gangs.”) “There have been four break-ins in this neighborhood recently.”

We had already signed the mortgage on the house. Valorie looked stricken. She wanted to sign up for this security. I took the security salesman’s pamphlet, sent him packing, and said to Valorie, “Come with me.” We walked next door and I rang the bell for my soon-to-be neighbors. An older couple came to the door, we introduced ourselves, and they came out.

“How often has there been a break-in around here?” I asked.

The couple looked at each other. Then the man, Brad, said, “Never.”

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Nineteen years,” he said.

We thanked them, walked back to our new home, threw away the security-system information and started moving in. And in the 12 years hence, there have still been no break-ins.

Most people buy the security system, though, whether they need it or not. In study after study, fear outsells hope. And that’s what happened in three out of four state primaries yesterday when a lot of late deciders chose Hillary Clinton. Here, metaphorically, is what Hillary Clinton’s security-system pamphlet on the dangers of living in the Barack Obama neighborhood looked like:

1. Like a photo of a black man with a Muslim/African name dressed in Arab garb. Her campaign put that out. Never mind that it’s protocol and political good manners to wear traditional garb when meeting with foreign dignitaries — and that, therefore, Hillary has done the same.

2. Like a TV commercial that shows kids sleeping, and an anxious white woman in her home, while the scary telephone rings. Never mind that every time Hillary has answered the phone she’s made the wrong call. And that — of course — her opponent would also pick up the phone.

3. Like this response, by the candidate herself, when asked if Obama is a Muslim: “Not that I know of.” Note the innuendo.

There was more of this, and none of it was unexpected: This is politics, not charm school. But it does serve as a good reminder that P.T. Barnum was right, that there is a sucker born every minute. It also serves as a reminder that in a free (or relatively free) society, you get the politics you deserve. When we reward base tactics with votes, we ensure more of the same.

Tonight my son Lex and I went to screening and talkback on campus at USC. The guest was David Simon, executive producer and creator of “The Wire,” which we are sad is ending its five-season run next Sunday.

As LA Times television critic Howard Rosenberg noted in his introduction, “The Wire” is far too complicated to synopsize easily, but if you haven’t watched the show, let’s just say it’s about the long-ranging and wide-reaching implications of the war on drugs and all the institutions it touches. It is not a show that an optimist could embrace.

Admidst talk of the show’s themes, Simon recounted the latest statistics on our country’s prison industrial complex: 1 in 100 people in this country are in prison, 1 in 9 black men in this country are in prison, 1 in 4 black men are in some way under the aegis of the enforcement or corrections. We are the most imprisoned people in history.

It’s the war on drugs that has gotten us here.

“No politician in our lifetime will touch this,” he said, “Not Obama, not Clinton, not McCain. The only thing that will end it is massive civil disobedience.”

His plan is this: That if he ever winds up on a jury in a drug case where no one was harmed, he plans to vote not guilty. If asked, he’ll admit during voir dire that victimless drug crims shouldn’t be prosecuted. If everyone did this, he said, and the system couldn’t empanel a jury for possession cases, then the system would have to adapt.

That’s his proposal to end the war on drugs: not to play the game.

He says his fellow writer-producers on “The Wire” have already signed on, and tonight he was spreading the word to the 300 or so of us.

Now I’ve posted it here.

Thoughts?

While I’m not generally keen to shovel dirt on someone’s encomium to a dead friend, Brendan Greeley’s remembrance of William F. Buckley Jr. in today’s LA Times Opinion area doesn’t sit well with me.

(First things first: Because Opinion no longer has its own section — it’s the flipside of Book Review — it is now more properly called an area. Most weeks, the area is squirreled away inside a wraparound from Jennifer’s Leather.)

To Greeley, these are the charming traits evinced by the old nob:

1. He had money and wasn’t defensive about it. “To admit that wealth exists requires a kind of innocence, a sincere wonder that anyone might be offended by it.”

2. He “played poker with 19th century Spanish doubloons.”

3. “He had most likely never in his life picked up his own towel.”

There’s more along those lines, but the operant disquisition is into the source of Buckley Jr.’s wealth. His father was a lawyer and oil baron who made his money south of the border in Venezuela, where he struck it rich with Standard Oil, and in Mexico, where before he was kicked out of the country he worked to get the Mexican constitution changed so that he more widely speculate in oil and land. It doesn’t sound as though there was a lot of personal towel-retrieving there, either, but Buckley pere earned his fortune.

In some corners, there is still a notion that the better off should do something to assist the worse off, those without pricey Bordeaux and 36-foot sloops, those who can’t use 19th century coins as poker chips. There’s a sense that the world has helped make them better off, and perhaps they should do something to make the world better off. You see this expressed in the recent actions of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, who are placing billions of dollars behind curing diseases and providing people access to clean drinking water. What Buckley Jr. gave us is dozens of books dedicated to the idea that democracy is too freely given and that the rights of the patrician few outweigh the needs of even the most destitute and hopeless. He also gave us Ronald Reagan and, unbelievably, Senator Joe Lieberman. (Buckley actively campaigned against liberal Republican Lowell Weicker, endorsing and campaigning for Lieberman, who won in a close election decided in conservative areas of the state.) Don’t like the federal government you’ve got right now? It started with William F. Buckley Jr.

But his friend seems blind to all this, in the way of surviving friends. He lauds Buckley’s “luck in the world,” luck which comes of a massive inheritance and a scrabbling greed that never cares about others, and he praises Buckley’s profound interest in every single person he ever met. Didn’t he ever meet anyone who couldn’t afford a cup of coffee, and if he did and was profoundly interested, did he do anything about it?

I’ve written plenty of plays, but at least so far I’ve never written a novel. Tonight may have helped me understand why. Novelists work in solitude. Playwrights work with actors and directors. To me, that feels better.

I know a number of novelists, and I have enormous respect for what they do. But it doesn’t relate all that closely to what I do.

What I do is write a play, or agree to direct a play, and then get together with some actors, and proceed from there.

That process is collaborative. Obviously. It’s also generative. Other people bring other things — like ideas, and excitement. And, sometimes, bad ideas, and baggage. But when you’ve got a group of people you trust, talented people you have developed a relationship with and who have developed relationships with each other, that provides a foundation. Novelists tell me they start all over again every time. Theatre people start with the foundation of other people.

So tonight we had readings of two plays in progress from my private workshop. The plays, by Ross Tedford Kendall and Stephanie Walker, were strong and funny and felt lived (as opposed to written). Admittedly I may be biased, but I think these plays should be produced. Ross has put his play through several complete redrafts — and I commended him for both his patience and his tenacity — and has now arrived at what I’ll call a point of departure. It should depart from the development process and into the production process. Stephanie’s play features beautiful writing and subtle character work. Both readings benefited from the interplay you find in a place where people with similar ethics are committed to achieving the same goal. Not all of these actors may have worked together before, but there were so many interwoven relationships in this theatre tonight that it really felt like a family celebration.

All of us grew up with a family, whether that family was large, or just one person. I’m not so naive as to think that family is always a good thing; there are bad families. But when we think of what we want from a family, I certainly felt that tonight at the theatre I work in and from the people I work with, and that is something I doubt a novelist ever gets.

Watch this trailer and tell me it doesn’t have everything one might want all wrapped up in one movie.

I never anticipated saying this, but here goes: I actually feel sorry for Hillary Clinton.

No, I didn’t vote for her. (And now probably will never get the chance.) And no, I’m not going to send her any money. And yes, she’s been wrong about almost everything, including health care back in the 1990’s, and Iraq and Iran and Pakistan since then. But watching last night’s debate has me thinking that she’s right about one thing: the media have been unfair to her. Or, at least, harsher to her than they have been to Obama.

I understand why this has happened. Hillary has been so entwined in our national consciousness for so long that it’s hard to look at her afresh. And why would we? She has run as the candidate of experience, so yes, let’s look at that experience: being consistently wrong, and now being saddled with replaying the battles of last decade, before September 11, 2001 and before the predations of the Bush Administration. It’s all so old, but so detailed, that a lazy but avaricious press can’t help itself.

Then there’s Obama. Fresh. Exciting. Multi-culti. Thoughtful. Cool under pressure. Hillary is practically leaking anxiety all over Tim Russert, but Obama calmly assesses each ball and decides whether or not to swing and where to hit it. He has so much poise that he’s even willing to concede a point — the one about Farrakhan — to his opponent. When was the last time I saw a presidential candidate concede a point in a debate? Um… never. So now we have a contrast not only with Hillary Clinton, who will forever argue the validity of her vote for the Iraq War (as though her having been duped is an argument in her favor), but also with George W. Bush, who believes that God tells him what to do and that he’s therefore never made a mistake. This leaves us to consider as president someone who efficiently recognizes error and moves on. That is a radical transformation, and just the latest instance of the Obama rebranding of the position.

The way Hillary looked at Obama in off moments brought to mind the adage, “If looks could kill….” All along she has thought that this job was hers, but first she had to get these pesky primaries out of the way. I take great personal delight in voters having upended her conclusion. As I’ve noted here before, hubris is a failing that fails the perpetrator first and foremost.

I don’t feel good about Clinton’s treatment in the press recently. But at the same time, I don’t care. The press writes only part of your narrative; the rest is up to you.

I’m halfway through the process of hiring six stage directors for three different plays (which means: I still need three directors). So yesterday I’m speaking to one on the phone who I think would be good for this particular play. But after listening to her schedule, I say, “Hm. It really doesn’t sound like this is going to work.” Bear in mind, she’s just told me that she’s directing another play, one that requires her to be on-site every night, and she’s got a family commitment for all of tech weekend. She shoots back, “But I don’t even know about your project.” So then I explain about the project — being friendly, but utterly wasting time for both of us because it’s transparent that she can’t do my project — and as soon as I’m done, she says words to the effect of, “Oh, I’m sorry, I have these other commitments that I just can’t change, so I’m afraid I’ll have to say no.”

In other words, she couldn’t bear to be rejected, so she turned it around so she was rejecting me.

Pretty pathetic.

I didn’t reject her because of her personality, I rejected her because of her schedule. In fact, I wasn’t truly rejecting her, I was just noting that it wouldn’t work with her schedule. But given this window into working with her, we needn’t worry about that happening again.