Glad I spent 45 minutes writing and formatting that post about New Orleans — because now it seems to be gone, a victim to some “improved” or new tool of WordPress. What you’re now seeing on the page is only the very top of that post; wish I’d written it in a text document first, instead of straight into the blog. Well, maybe I’ll try it again tomorrow.
I just got back from four days in New Orleans. As promised, the music was great and so was the food. I made sure to eat crawfish, grits, beignets, blackened catfish, cajun chicken, gator, oysters, po’ boys with remoulade, and every other sort of local delight I could find. To give you an idea of how seriously they take food in New Orleans, please note the photo below. That’s right — that’s an Arby’s.
Of all the news coverage that The Car Plays has received in its various productions around southern California since 2006, I think this local PBS reporting from San Diego gives the clearest picture of the experience.
That said, the focus in this piece is on actors. I understand that: The actors are right there in the play. If they think it’s a challenge acting in a car (and it is; they’re right), that’s matched by the challenge of writing a 10-minute play that takes place in a car — and is still captivating, requires being staged in a car, has a beginning middle and end, has a motivation for the actors to get into the car, and includes a way to get them out of the car (what dramatists call a “button”). These are fun, tricky little plays to run, and the success of the series is a testament to the process Paul Stein established for figuring out what works in cars, to the producers and the reading team, and to all the playwrights involved.
Just a reminder: It’s been extended through next weekend.
For the second year in a row, badges for this year’s Comic-Con International sold out within an hour. Three of us were online and group-texting our waiting status starting when badges went on sale at 8 a.m. At 8:40, one of us was able to get badges for the three of us, and 13 minutes later it was sold out. Given the frenzy that Comic-Con now induces, this wasn’t surprising, but it still warrants attention.
Could I have gotten in some other way? Probably. I have a connection who got me a Pro pass last year; I’ve been told for years that I qualify for a Pro or Press pass (for some years, I wrote extensively about comic books; those pieces are still in print, and have been reprinted in various books over the years); and I have two Pro friends who could take me as a guest. Some of my friends can’t understand why I haven’t gone this route all along (my first Comic-Con was in 1988), so here’s the explanation again: So much of what I do is already “work-related” (tied to paying writing work or to my company — which, again, is paying writing work) that I’ve been happy to hold onto this one thing that’s purely for enjoyment. I’ve never “worked” Comic-Con and I don’t want to. I’ve been happy to pay for the badge and support what is, after all, a (large) non-profit. How large? When I finally was able to get into the online queue to buy a ticket, I was #29387 in line. I had read that the Con was selling 60,000 badges. Total estimated revenue from those badges alone: $10.5 million.
To give you a sense of how Comic-Con has grown, especially recently, revenue was $5.6 million in 2005; in 2009 it was $10 million. I understand there was a little global economic collapse in the middle of that, but in the depths of it, Comic-Con still had double-digit annual growth. I think attendees would sooner let their loans default and their pets die than miss Comic-Con. (By the way, if you ever want to check the IRS 990 filings by a non-profit, here’s the link.)
The year 1988, when I was newly moved to California and drove down on a lark to San Diego to attend “San Diego Comic-Con” with my roommate, is long gone. Now you practically need Eisenhower to plan your landing.
I couldn’t help noticing that Inc. magazine, which every month pays tribute to a recently deceased entrepreneur who’s made a lasting impact, this month decided to profile Richard Alf, one of the founders of Comic-Con. Here’s their obit.
In other news, I’m getting up tomorrow morning at 7:20 because, you guessed it, badges for this year’s Con go on sale at 8 (and will no doubt be sold out by 8:01). Yes, I could get in free, but I’ve been faithfully supporting the Con since 1988.
Which makes it all the better news that the show has been extended for one more weekend, which means it runs this weekend, and next, closing March 11. Here’s where you can get tickets (if you can).
In the publicity shot at top provided by the La Jolla Playhouse, you see Sara Wagner as Esme Coughlin in my play Dead Battery, plaintively making calls from within her teenage son’s car to learn more about his life, his death, and her own culpability. You also see a couple of audience members. (Look: Another sold-out performance.) I have to say, it’s an amazing voyeuristic experience living out these little playlets from inside the cars they take place in, and it’s a testament to the phenomenal work of some very very talented actors. My wife (admittedly perhaps biased) cried just reading the script; imagine how it feels being in that car while this grief-demolished woman struggles to maintain her self-control; now imagine what it takes for an actor to do that performance 15 times a night. I am enormously grateful to Sara and to my director, Paul Stein, who is also the progenitor of the entire Car Plays concept. I’m grateful to them both, as I hope you can see in this shot below, taken over celebratory beers at the local bar on opening night last Thursday.
Nice to see that this review on LATimes.com “as been corrected.” Phew!
That’s how long my friend Doug drove today just so we could have dinner together.
He was in southern California from Texas, just overnight. He had a meeting in Carlsbad (that’s just above San Diego), while I had a series of meetings up here in Burbank. The only time slot we had in common was dinner — so Doug drove two hours up and two hours back just so we could meet for dinner. After we ate, as he was walking back to his rental car and I was getting ready to head off to City Hall, he said, “Well worth it!”
This is not the sort of commitment made by passing acquaintances. To drive for four hours to spend 90 minutes together, you’ve really got to be a friend.
Early this evening, after finishing a construction job (see below), I went to a run-through of my new play, Dead Battery. It’s part of The Car Plays, a festival of plays staged within cars and produced by Moving Arts, appearing at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego starting this Thursday night. Here’s information on the production and how to get tickets.
I was very pleased by what I saw. One of the best directors I know, Paul Stein, is directing the piece, and my friend the extremely talented Sara Wagner is starring. The play is loosely based on some thoughts I had about my college-aged son’s car, parked in our back yard, as well as a writing prompt from Paul: write a car play that is at least 50% silent.
This is the fifth time I’ve had a play in The Car Plays, but it’s the first time I was given a writing assignment. Paul had asked me and the other writers in one of our infrequent writers’ meetings how we felt about writing prompts; I heard myself saying I would be thrilled to get one. I don’t think that that’s what I would have said 15 or 20 years ago, but maybe I’ve come to better grips with the fact that, one way or another, I’ve been writing to prompts most of my life. Most of the things I’ve been paid to write — ad copy, book reviews, radio commercials, videos, op-eds, speeches, web sites, and more — have been to spec, and you know what? The guidelines make it easier. If it’s got to be a certain length, and needs to contain certain things, and needs to be done in a certain way. it’s more like completing a puzzle and less like a big blank screen that you’re supposed to fill with words of some quality.
Car plays in particular are like writing haikus. Each play needs to be nine minutes. It needs to take place inside a car. Ideally, the main action also needs to take place inside that car. And each play needs what sitcom writers call a “button”; an even that buttons up the play and signals the end. In most cases, that means the cast leaving the car.
My first car play, All Undressed with Nowhere to Go, written in July 2006, was a comedy about an adulterous couple who had no place to go to have sex. I wrote a sequel to that, All Dressed Up but Going Nowhere, which featured the same man but now with his wife, and to me it was heart-wrenching because you saw that these two people belonged together but just couldn’t connect. (My wife didn’t like it because in one of the woman’s speeches about the chore list I struck a little too close to home. A recounting of lists seems to be a recurring feature in my plays.) I also wrote a play called Chasm about a couple stuck up in the mountains during an earthquake — in a twist, it’s the young woman who is armed and ready to take charge — and I’m not sure how many more car plays that haven’t been produced, and probably won’t be. (Most notably Snake in a Car — still wish I could make that work.)
I wrote two very different drafts of the current one, the first was a comedy about a woman suffering from empty nest syndrome who keeps calling her son at college, trying to vicariously join in the fun. Then my wife happened to call while I was tinkering with it and I did two things I’d never done in all the years we’ve been together: 1) stopped writing to talk to her; and 2) told her what I was writing, and how it worked. She said, “What if the son is dead?” And I instantly knew that that was better and said, “I gotta go” and hung up. That meant a total rewrite because, well, now that it’s a high-school kid who is dead, it’s not such a comedy any more. Rewrites are like that: One small change begets many more.
And then actors and directors change it more: not the script, but the playing of it. Not because they’re arrogant — that’s an uninformed perspective — but because they bring their own talents to it and, especially in the case of a car play, the production must bend to accommodate the needs of the production. In this case, my script was running a full 50% over the time limit. When I wrote this draft, I wondered if it was actually short — we discovered only in the first reading that it would probably be long, and Paul and Sara didn’t learn just how long until they started rehearsing with props. I’d never before written a play that was at least half silent, and it was difficult to time in my head how long it would take to, for example, look at a CD case with judgment, scowl over an empty whiskey bottle found in the back, pull a face over a pair of discarded panties, and more. In the draft, I have Esme leaving the car to retrieve a trash bag; that was taking too long, so Paul suggested that she use empty shopping bags and junk-food bags left behind in the car. He also found a way to jumpstart the action in Dead Battery by presetting the actor in the car. But finally, he called to ask if he and Sara could suggest line cuts and I said of course. When you’ve got really good people who have earned your trust, it’s only right that you trust them back. I saw the line cuts today in print and heard them tonight and they were minimal and well-chosen.
A couple of months ago I had lunch with another actor, someone I’ve been doing theatre with 15 years. Somehow or other I’d gotten into a joking framework with him on Facebook and then realized I’d stumbled into a concept and posted “I should write this as my next play.” He immediately IM’d me to say yes, do that, and then we met. This opportunity too has a set of specs, so once again I’ll be writing to order. I’ve got notes for that play, and I’m looking forward to writing it this week while I’m down in San Diego with my latest production.
For rent:
Beautiful open-plan loft space situated in bucolic surroundings. This freshly built one-room hideaway, nestled in the bosom of fruit trees providing natural shade, works with its natural environment and is open to both wind and solar. Its compact design ensures efficiency, while allowing affordability and comfort exceeding tenement spaces in lower Manhattan. A simple rope system dumbwaiter ushers goods from ground level. Photos below only hint at the possibilities.
Note: Please do not disturb current occupants. These members of the construction crew are now squatting, but will be removed.
