It used to be that an apology counted for something.

“Just say you’re sorry,” we were told as children. And then it would be over.

Now, though, even the most seemingly heartfelt of apologies is meaningless. For the hecklers who were the poor victims of his inflammatory attack, nothing short of hiring a news-camera-chasing lawyer like Gloria Allred and demanding millions in settlement will suffice.

So Michael Richards is either angry, or racist, or both. Who was really hurt by his outburst? Himself. And in subsequent interviews, he’s been the picture of genuine contrition. He’s been banned from the Laugh Factory. He’s been vilified by fellow comics. If his career isn’t over, this is at least a very costly setback.

None of that is punishment enough. No, he must pay the hecklers and their attorney, and it won’t be cheap.

If or when he settles up, will that be enough? Or will it take more? Maybe we could find a pretext for sending him to prison. Surely someone’s civil rights have been violated. I know I’m outraged by having seen that video — maybe he should have to send each of us ten bucks. And then have to clean up after Thanksgiving dinner.

I hope this goes far, far into trial, that both sides wrack up enormous legal bills, and that the final judgment is on behalf of the plaintiffs to the tune of: one dollar. Then both sides will learn not to be greedy, hateful, and stupid.

Recently I talked about opening lines here, going on to express my ongoing fascination with the opening of “True West” here. Playwright EM Lewis responded by asking what was my favorite opening line from one of my own plays… and that, ladies and gentlemen, leads us to an example of how a writer spends 90 minutes doing something more “fun” than working on his current project.

Those ninety minutes later, I have to say I don’t have a favorite opening line. In fact, I’m not even sure I can find evidence of one good opening line. (And having the “True West” line as an example doesn’t help.) The ones that immediately stood out in my mind did so because of the spin the actor put on it, and the overall context of what was happening and what was going to follow. Once you’ve seen it produced, it’s hard to extract the experience from the written line. Here’s an example, in the form of the opening of “The Size of Pike”:

(The apartment of a fortyish working man bachelor – the basics, and displayed none too well. A TV, empty beer cans of a notably cheap brew, a pizza box, a recliner. Not a pig sty, but arbitrarily unkempt. There are two doorways, one to the kitchen and one to the bathroom, and a closed door leading outside.

At rise: JOHN and ROD surrounded by camping and fishing gear: a tent, a sleeping bag, Coleman lantern, fishing rod and tackle box, an ice chest and the like. They each hold a bag stuffed with more stuff. John carefully sets down his bag. Rod lets the one he’s carrying drop with a thud. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his
arm, then looks at John sorrowfully, shaking his head with disapproval.)

ROD
Izzat it?

(John looks around.)

JOHN
That’s it.

Great opening line? Mmm… probably not. But it sums up a lot of the theme of the play: that Rod views himself as a manly man and John as someone who is too pampered and bringing too much stuff on this fishing trip. Does the opening line signal that the play is also going to be at times comedic? No — but the director and the actors were smart enough to get that, and to get a laugh out of the first line.

What I noticed in dipping into a couple dozen of my plays was that most of them start immediately (whether they’re short plays or not). This habit probably comes from my formative years of reading bad pulp novels, where someone with a gun comes in in the first three pages. An example from my play “Speedy”:

(A woman, MINDY, addresses us.)

MINDY
(To us.)
It started with a vicious argument with my husband Rob. I don’t know how it turned that way – it happened fast – but it was about the Millers coming over.

(Lights come up on a table and Rob seated at it. Mindy seats herself in the other chair.)

MINDY
(To us.)
I didn’t want them to.

(She calmly places her hands around Rob’s throat, then this remembered scene starts and she shifts into violent emotion.)

MINDY
You prick! You fucking asshole! This was supposed to be our night out! Now you’ve got these goddamn assholes coming over and screwing everything up! I hate those fucking Millers! If I hear one more story about Jim Miller!
Who are these people who eat our snacks and drink our wine?

ROB
(Gasping.)
Sandy’s… your best… friend….

MINDY
(To us, hands still around his throat while he freezes.)
It’s true. Since college. Sandy studied biochemical engineering. I studied anthropology. We’re both managers at Barnes & Noble. I like her a lot. But this time I felt differently and said:

(To Rob.)
Best friend? Best friend? It seems to me that Caesar’s best friend was Brutus. Look how that turned out! I would gouge out the eyes of her aged grandmother with a paring knife.

ROB
(Struggling to pry her hands off.)
I think you’re –
(As he frees himself:)
Over-reacting!
(He gasps for air and rubs his neck.)

Great writing? No. Fun on stage? Yes, if done right. It also shows an attempt to stave off my foremost fear: boring the audience.

Although I haven’t come close to having a great opening line, I think this, from “Three People, According to Sociologists,” is probably closest:

Scene One

(A basement band set-up. A huge acoustic drum kit with a massive bass drum, kettles, toms, hi-hats, percussion blocks, everything imaginable but twice over. A stool behind it. To the side, a guitar in a stand, a beat-up old amplifier, another, but in better shape, distanced from it. A battered refrigerator rescued from a junkyard or garage sale. Beside it, a couch with its stuffing showing. Also, a stereo with stacks of records and tapes, all dusty, and a profusion of cables, leads, and wires leading everywhere: to the two microphones in their stands, to the stereo, to a separate small tape deck, to phase shifters and the like for the guitar. In short: a cluttered, mossy, dusty basement music set-up. Down left, a phone atop a small desk with chair. Everywhere: empty beer cans with stamped-out cigarette butts atop them, and stray trash: junk-food bags, greasy pizza boxes, empty cans and bottles.

Hard, punkish rock and roll music rises, then fades, as the lights come up on:

ROOG, thick with muscle, wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped off, jeans, and sneakers, sits at the desk by the phone, thinking earnestly. A clutter of paper scraps — names and phone numbers written on bar napkins, matchbooks and the like — is scattered atop the desk. SPIKE, anorexic-thin, with black t-shirt, black leather jacket, black sneakers, and ripped jeans, noodles around with another guitar, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He plucks stray notes, tries chord changes, etc., while he talks, his amp off the entire time.)

ROOG
(Exasperated.)
I dunno. I’m runnin’ outta guys.
(Pause. No response from Spike. He picks through the scraps, finds another phone number.)
How ’bout Jess Hames?

SPIKE
Thinks a C’s an E. Bad thing in a bass player.

As with “True West,” the audience sees the set, sees the actors, hears the first line — and immediately understands what this play is going to be about. That’s not the only mission of an opening line. But it is, after all, your opening — and so it should open the play.

Why could Richard Pryor say “nigger” and Michael Richards isn’t allowed to? Because it was in the context of Richard Pryor’s angry blackness, and Michael Richards is Jewish.

Why can Chris Rock say “nigger” and Michael Richards isn’t allowed to? Because, again, it’s part of Rock’s act — and evidently not part of Richards’.

Why can George Carlin say “nigger” and Michael Richards isn’t allowed to? After all, Carlin’s “act” is how genuine he is — when he says “nigger,” he means it. Michael Richards isn’t allowed to because of what he means by it — a hateful slander — and here, the fact of its genuineness is what will shadow his career.

Attacking people by type doesn’t get you far any more.

Why? Because it’s got ME in it.

Click here to view the episode.

Above are three self-portraits of Robert Crumb, as a four-year-old, an adolescent, and today.

Accompanying these illustrations in today’s Los Angeles Times Opinion section is an odd little piece written by his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb. Click here to see it; if you want to see the full versions of these cropped images, registration is required. Here is the entirety of the text:

As a child, my husband, Robert, already felt like an alienated old man (top left). He longed for the past, never having actually known what he was nostalgic for. It was as if he were born in the wrong time. He never felt part of the contemporary culture. You can see the roots of his alienation already beginning.

You can see from this drawing (middle) how out of sync Robert was — awkward, sensitive, nerdy. He was destined to suffer the cruelties of the outsider — especially in Southern California in the 1950s, where surfers and beach bunnies were the mode.

This image (right) is reflective of Robert as a mature artist — someone who has an eye for capturing himself with total honesty and has finally honed his scathing critique of modern society. We see the artist here in his pajamas at home. He has nothing to hide; it is all there.

Like most things about the LA Times, this baffles me.

(First, a few other things that baffle me about the Times:

1. Why doesn’t the newspaper that is situated in the entertainment capitol of the world have far better entertainment coverage than we get in Calendar — and for God’s sake, why is the writing in that section so deadly dull?
2. Why doesn’t the paper of record for the nation’s second-largest city have a metro section (rather than a “California” section)?
3. Why can’t the paper settle on a font? It doesn’t seem to be a problem for other newspapers — or even for me.
4. Why is it so riddled with errors? I have on file my favorite example: the day that the bottom half of Calendar Page 2 was advertising, and the top half was corrections. Other days have only come close to that achievement. Let us never forget the day they announced on page one the death of Allen Ginsberg, probably the most important American poet of the past 50 years — and misspelled his name.

I could go on in this vein, but I’ve already surpassed “a few.”)

What baffles me about this piece is that a) I don’t know what it’s doing in the Opinion section because it doesn’t offer an opinion about anything, and b) I just can’t figure out what prompted it. Is Crumb in the news and I missed it?

I haven’t been a fan of the Bond franchise since… well, I remember hating “Moonraker.” That was in 1979.

“Moonraker” typifies what disinterested me in Bond: the detached gimmickry of an outerspace conflict. It was an extraterrestrial epic in which nothing was grounded.

Much has happened in the series since then, not much of it good. Until now.

It is not just that the new Bond himself is a rehumanized model, although that goes a long way. The gadgets are gone. (This Bond’s most essential spyware? A defibrilator.) Minus the fantastic, something closer to reality reappears. That’s a good thing. While I don’t want my secret agents settling down in the suburbs, I do like to know that they can get cut and bleed and feel betrayed and heartbroken and be driven by ego and rage.
Best Bond yet? It sure felt that way today.

This is not as bad as some stage directions I’ve seen.

Thanks to Mark Chaet for sending this.

While I’m on the subject of “Godot,” Trey reminded me of this poem, which I wrote in the 90’s. It’s been published a few times — I don’t remember where. It seems especially pertinent at the moment.

Waiting for Godot to Leave

Well, he finally showed up
And of course he brought guests,
Uninvited ones,
And he ate all the h’ors d’ouevres
And he’s finishing off the punch
And he knows everybody who’s anybody
And goes on about them at great length
And he stuck his head up your dress
And he threatened to ruin me
And now he’s in the pool with our daughter
And he’s so fascinating and intimidating
And funny and awful and rude and overpowering
But just such a boor in the end.
No surprise, really.
Nobody ever lives up to their P.R.

At this point, having seen probably 10 productions of “Waiting for Godot,” having read the play several times, thought about it, weighed the various merits of differing performances, and having gone so far as to give my son the middle name Beckett, I think I’m qualified to discourse on the play.

The acclaimed Gate Theatre production currently at UCLA Live! is no good.

I say this with no glee, mirrored only by my absence in glee seeing it.

Although the play is many things, one thing it is not or should not be is ponderous. But that’s what we have here. In fact, here’s how ponderous: It started around 8:10, and wrapped up just shy of 11 p.m., with a 20-minute intermission. Given that Act Two was 55 minutes (I clocked it), that puts Act One at about an hour and a half. Tooooo… slowwww….

My companion, the fiercely smart playwright and performer Trey Nichols, said that it was lacking in existential dread. Absolutely true. It was also lacking in comic rhythm. Beckett modeled the characters of Gogo and Didi after Laurel and Hardy; while I don’t expect Laurel and Hardy, I expect the comic spirit necessary to the parts. I also expect something to be at stake. Several years ago at The Matrix theatre in Hollywood, the late David Dukes, in addition to being a wonderful clown alongside co-star Robin Gammell, closed Act Two with a wrenching depiction of a man desperate to understand his place in the universe. The current Didi, played by Barry McGovern, seemed more like a man learning he might have to wait for the next bus.

Whom do I fault? Oddly enough, the memory of Samuel Beckett. Evidently his determination of how this play must be performed has been cast in stone at the Gate Theatre and with this director and at least two of the actors, all of whom he had personally worked with. This situation sounded hauntingly familiar, so when I got home I dug out my edition of Kenneth Tynan’s Letters , and there it was. (At the time, Tynan was the literary manager of the National Theatre.)

31 March 1964

To George Devine, copies to Laurence Olivier and William Gaskill, The Naitonal Theatre

Dear George:

Forgive me for writing, but I feel I must try to explain more clearly to you and Larry what is worrying me about “Play.” I wouldn’t do so if I didn’t feel that many of my qualms were shared by others.

To recap: before Sam B[eckett] arrived at rehearsals, “Play” was recognizably the work we all liked and were eager to do. The delivery of the lines was (rightly) puppet-like and mechanical, but not wholly dehumanized and stripped of all emphasis and inflections. On the strength of last weekend, it seems that Beckett’s advice on the production has changed all that — the lines are chanted in a breakneck monotone with no inflections, and I’m not alone in fearing that many of them will be simply inaudible. I suspect that Beckett is trying to treat English as if it were French — where that kind of rapid-fire monotony is customary.

The point is that we are not putting on “Play” to satisfy Beckett alone. It may not matter to him that lines are lost in laughs; or that essential bits of exposition are blurred; but it surely matters to us. As we know, Beckett has never sat through any of his plays in the presence of an audience: but we have to live with that audience night after night!”

Please understand me: I trust the play completely, and I trust your production of it, — up to the advent of the author. What I don’t especially trust is Beckett as co-director. If you could see your way to re-humanizing the text a little, I’ll bet that the actors and the audience will thank you — even if Beckett doesn’t!

Why have I seen “Godot” so many times? Because done well, it is an astonishing experience. The first time I saw it was as an undergrad, in a college production featuring my friend Joe Stafford as an imperious Pozzo. That was 20 years ago, but the performance has stuck with me — Joe embodied the comic boorishness of the role. And at the end, when the moon has risen and Godot has yet again not come, the lights drew down and pinlights of white emerged in the flies, signifying stars, and for a moment I lost my place in the universe. That’s an effect I’ve been swiping ever since, as with “Two Men Losing Their Minds” at Moving Arts in 2000.

Done right, with verve and with stakes, featuring characters who yearn for answers, “Waiting for Godot” is a transformational experience. Performed as a museum piece pregnant with significance, it’s a crashing bore.

…Or the most aggravating chick on the internet? You decide.