Sometime during my life travel as a person who works in the theatre, I came to realize that Charles Nelson Reilly, who died yesterday, was a genius. (And I use the word reservedly, but not in this case.)

As a kid I used to see him on “Match Game” and “Hollywood Squares,” in a regular featured role on “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” and in odd guest appearances on “McMillan and Wife” and, seemingly, every other show on television whether intended for adults or children. Reilly always played someone fussy and wacky, and became the subject of ridicule among my circle of friends in high school and college. I think we all loved him but thought it wasn’t cool to love him, so although we all knew who he was and all could discuss with some knowledge his various acting gigs, none of us embraced him as a performer. I remember thinking that the guy had found one thing he could do and had somehow parlayed it into this career.

When did I, well, grow up about this? I’m not sure. But I do know that by the time about five years ago I saw him in his one-man show “Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly,” I knew for sure that the man was brilliant. His show was somewhat scripted but largely improvised around set pieces, and consisted solely of Charles Nelson Reilly on-stage talking, and occasionally picking up a prop or going to a stage location and doing some more talking. That’s about it. It ran a staggering four hours (I am not exaggerating) and judging from the audience response could have run another four. That night I would have told you that Charles Nelson Reilly was not only the funniest man in the universe, he was the best actor as well. The show was 100% riveting and 1000% entertaining. After this four-hour personal extravaganza, which touched on his heartbreaking youth, his near-brush with death in the infamous Hartford circus tent fire (an event that clearly marked him; he never again sat in an audience, and in his show said that he still had nightmares about being trapped in that crowd burning to death), and his rise to success and celebrity, Reilly was then mobbed in the lobby for what seemed another four hours. People could not get enough. It was an astonishing performance — both the show itself and the show in the lobby — and now I’m sorry that that show has closed for good.

Looking back I can see how my friends and I were confused while young. Charles Nelson Reilly seemed like one of those “famous, but for nothing” game-show stars. No, Reilly was a hugely talented and highly trained Tony-winning actor who found himself on game shows, where an entire generation (mine) discovered him, and where he damaged his career.

In addition to his solo show, I got to meet Reilly several times. He was a Tony winner for “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” and agreed to be part of a cast reunion fundraiser at USC about five years ago when the theatre school staged the show. (Somewhere around here I have three copies of signed cast-album CD’s.) We talked a bit afterward and he was kind and generous. I believe we had him as a presenter at the Ovation Awards but I can’t fully recall; what I do recall are endless discussions and great fear that he would talk all night in what was a tightly timed show. We also profiled him for LA Stage magazine, in a piece I didn’t write but did edit, and the photographer told me Reilly was generous with his time and very inventive in the photo shoot — which clearly showed in the pictures. And I saw him at numerous events and personal appearances and whatnot. He had a reputation for being difficult and cranky, but when I saw him he was always kind and generous and bitchy and very very funny.

He was also, as I said, a formally trained master. After 20 years of working with people who have studied television and film acting and who are now auditioning for the theatre and don’t seem to understand that there isn’t a microphone hanging 10 inches above their heads, I’ve grown to appreciate that more and more. In the theatre, craft is supremely important. It is not enough just to show up, and it is certainly not enough to just “be brave,” as David Mamet advises in one of his very bad essays on acting. One moment from Reilly’s solo show that I’ll never forget was his dissection of the contemporary “Hollywood Squares.” There may have been some sour grapes — again, game show appearances hurt his career, and now he was linked with a game show that, in a new version, was terrible — but to him the difference was in the background of the “stars.” Where once they were highly trained and recognizable character actors and comics, people with real accomplishments and real talents, now they were people who had been voted off various “reality” shows. “They say, ‘Hello, stars,'” Reilly complained, “but it should be, ‘Hello, shit.’ These people aren’t stars. They’re shit.'” In print it just looks nasty; on-stage it was funny and sounded true. To Reilly being a celebrity was not being a star, and calling these people stars was a deep insult.

Charles Nelson Reilly was a star, an actual star, someone who had earned every bit of his career. I’ve never seen anyone so completely hold an audience in the palm of his hand by simply talking to them, and for four hours. Dame Edna can do it (and John Leguizamo can’t), but not for four hours.

This posting just came across the Yahoo message board for our program at USC. It’s from a student.

I am too lazy to call individual people up, so here’s the thing. I’m
moving into a new place in Westwood this coming Friday June 1st. I know
it’s a work day, but I could use at least one person to help me move
out and maybe later join me at a pub to numb away my aching joints. Any
help would be appreciated. Cheers

-Reza

Uh… yeah. I’m sure most of us will run over to help someone move who admits to being “too lazy” even to personally ask people to help. Somehow I don’t see this person being very helpful in his or her own move. I take the “I could use at least one person” phrase at face value.

I also enjoy that even the pub invitation is not communicated as a thank-you (just as the other wasn’t truly a request for help, but an invitation to be used). No, the pub invitation is a further opportunity to cater to the needs of the requester.

If you’re reading this and want to get used, let me know and I’ll forward the email address.

In the 1990’s I was a frequent patron at The Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax in Hollywood. Then two things happened that told me I should take a break:  1) I had seen all the Buster Keaton movies (many of them with enjoyable friend Joe Stafford in tow) and 2) A contract killer shot and killed the owner-operator during a screening.

In the years since, things have changed a bit at The Silent Movie. (And for an informative and delightful history of the theatre, click here (about recent changes), and here which also covers the murder and fallout.) For one thing, it’s not so silent. Because now that’s where Sinead O’Connor is going to be performing in July. What Ms. O’Connor has to do with either movies or silence eludes me (although hats off to someone for this very odd idea). Does the world get stranger and stranger, or is it just me?

While on Thesaurus.com to find a better word (okay, I guess my secret is out), I came across this graphic for what I took to be Madonna’s cover version of the Pink Floyd classic from The Wall. A quick free download later, courtesy of this link, and I was listening to something in no way related to Pink Floyd and which I can only hope the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay never have to endure. Hellish treacly shrieking over cascades of synthesizer chirps in the back. It was so sickeningly sweet and done at such an insistent high pitch it was like a dental drill to my cerebellum.

If saving the Earth from global warming involves music like this, some of us might have to say, “Burn baby burn.”

The man to the left is actor William Fichtner, or, as I refer to him at home, “Bill.”

Bill is a celebrity actor. He’s on Prison Break (which I haven’t seen, and which, I’m given to understand, also features a sinister character called “Tea Bag,” for reasons best left unmentioned). Previously he was on a creepy small-town alien invasion show called, I believe, Invasion, which I also haven’t seen. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Bill on anything except, if memory serves, a two-part X-Files in the 1990’s, but he is much-discussed at my house because of the shows my son watches and because, as you’ll see, of our special relationship.

Where I have seen Bill, and a lot, is at the gym. I see him there a lot because I’m there a lot, and also because I’ve grown convinced that he’s stalking me. When I’m there in the morning (as just this morning), it’s only a matter of minutes before he arrives and starts lifting or using the cross-trainer right next to me. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. I don’t know if he comes looking for me on Sunday, because I don’t go to the gym on Sunday. I do know that when I sometimes go on Saturday afternoon after my playwriting workshop, he’s there. In fact, when I go on other afternoons rather than mornings, he seems to arrive shortly after me and then pretend to casually scan the various dumbbells (hand weights, not people) near me before “selecting” one or two.

In fact, the only place at the gym that I haven’t seen Bill is in the steam room while I’m in there. I guess he’s too modest.

One time Bill broached a conversation with me. He asked if he could turn the ceiling fan near us up or down or off, I can’t remember, and I obliged. His tentativeness in conversation with me was touching and sad. It’s hard for me to condemn Bill for his interest. In some way it’s flattering.

By the way, there is also a man named Jeff whom I take to be gay (I’m not always good at discerning these things) who strikes up a conversation with me every morning. But I don’t think Jeff is interested in me; rather, he seems more interested in discussing his daily work commute from Burbank to West Los Angeles, a troubling subject I sympathize with.

My wife tells me that she saw Bill at a children’s party one weekend a few months ago. His cover story was that evidently one of our children plays with Bill’s child, but I can imagine Bill’s disappointment in two things: 1) not seeing me there (I take our kids when these events are on Sunday, and I can only hope that Bill isn’t reading this), and 2) my wife’s comment, after looking at Bill for several minutes and blinking and wondering aloud where she knew him from before finally venturing, “Do I know you from Burbank PTA?” (No, because I don’t attend PTA meetings., and therefore neither does Bill. You see the pattern.)

I’m not sure what to do about this relationship. I don’t want to encourage Bill, but I don’t want to have to find another gym. I’ve been a member of this one for more than 15 years. I was there first. The management of the gym has been completely ineffectual at even replacing a shower door handle despite my repeated requests, so I’m sure they’re similarly powerless to do anything about larger issues.

Beyond just hoping that Bill starts to book movie roles that require his presence overseas, I’m unsure what to do. I am, however, open to suggestions. Thank you.

So it appears that gypsy moths are once again going to devastate the clan homestead in southern New Jersey. And somehow the state and the township couldn’t work out in time who might pay to eliminate this infestation, until it was too late.

It further appears that this is the big news from my home town paper, the one I served as a classified ad salesperson (in high school) and editor (after college).

Twenty years after I moved across the country, some things still haven’t changed.

Another reminder to the would-have-been self-centered that there are other people in the world:

Today I was one of what turned out to be quite a large group of playwrights who received an email from the very nice man in England who maintains one of the world’s foremost databases of playwrights, www.doollee.com. Here’s what it said:

I am celebrating – the 20,000th Playwright has just been recorded on www.doollee.com, together with 67,189 of their plays.

Are your plays, bio, picture, agent etc etc, all as you want them?

A template is attached – your individual page should contain the information YOU want for now and posterity!!

Listing your work is a pleasure, thank you.

All good things
Julian

ps Have you entered the new competition? – http://www.doollee.com/Publishers/x-competitions.html

Julian Oddy
48 Dorchester Road
Weymouth
Dorset  DT4 7JZ
UK

[both www.doollee.com and google appreciate reciprocal website links]

www.doollee.com receives over 12,000 individual hits per day (4.5 million/year) – your information is important to many people from all over the world.

I read this email aloud to my wife, never feeling less special in my life now that I know that I’m one of 20,000 produced playwrights listed on this site (and who knows how many more aren’t listed?). Even one of 19,000 would have been better. At least I’ve got about 30 plays that have been staged, far more than the average  (although only three are currently listed on Doollee – I guess in my copious spare time I should ask Julian to update the listing).

This brought to mind something Stephen Dunn said over dinner once when I studied writing with him in the 1980’s. He said, “There are only 40 real poets in the country and we all know each other.” I’ve always kept this in mind because even though I’ve had poetry published I’m quite aware I’m not one of those 40 real poets. In grad school I used to wonder how many real playwrights there are — at the time I estimated 200. Now I know:  20,000. Plus.

Today’s LA Daily News has a nice piece by Evan Henerson (who for years has kept theatre coverage an important part of the paper) profiling David Henry Hwang and his new play, which I keep raving about. You can read the profile here.

And Gregory Rodriguez’ op ed in today’s LA Times remarks upon how the context of the play has changed in the 17 years since the events that shaped it. Well worth reading.

In today’s LA Times, Larry Flynt writes a fond remembrance of his buddy… Jerry Falwell.

Surprised?

I’m not. While at first glance the friendship between the pornographer and the preacher may seem hypocritical, on further examination everything becomes clear:  It was all just business. Their seeming enmity was gratifying for one and lucrative for the other.

It used to be that months, sometimes years, were required to generate a backlash to a backlash. But accelerating communications technology has changed all that. Now, with an instantaneous and ongoing news cycle, coupled with satellite transmission, the internet, cell phones, texting, blogs, websites, RSS, and probably secret messages in your alphabet soup, the backlash backlash is upon us before the first backlash has even ended.

Take the Imus situation. Only moments ago he was a racist villain. Then Bill Maher and others painted him as more of a free speaker chased out of town in a witch hunt. Now Imus’ $120 million lawsuit against CBS is proceeding apace from the position that, well, they wanted a shock jock and that’s what they got. (Which is in line with what I said before.)

I think Imus is going to win (either at trial or in a settlement). For CBS, it was never about the outrage and always about the money. (Of course.) They hired Imus to generate ratings and money, which he did. When he went “too far” (a location hard to define, given the nature of the job description) and sponsors and advertisers backed away, they canned him. Now he’s suing them — for money. It’s going to cost them all around, in every way.

And when he wins, Imus will seem redeemed, completing the backlash backlash. And if it isn’t okay to mock on the supposedly public airwaves attractive intelligent young college women as “nappy-headed hos” because they happen to be black, then he’ll take this brand of what passes for humor to satellite radio and make a lot of money for someone else.