Listening

Posted 10:15 AM by sean
It always cracks me up when actors say things like, "I'm not an actor, I'm a re-actor" or "I try to listen to my fellow actors more than *acting*". What cracks me up about it is, y'know, how good a listener can you be if you can't hear yourself sounding like an asshole?

But man, if you get the chance to be around artists, open up your ears, and fast. It doesn't matter if they are good or bad, if they are lazy or disciplined, if they are bold or scared, listen to it all. You can't disregard what people say unless you are actually listening. I mean, you can, but it would be a *huge* mistake.

Theater is a colaborative process, probably film is the only one that is more so. With dance pieces, the music isn't generally edited to fit the choreography and, even though I hate it, scripts are often altered to match a director's or actor's vision. I did a film once with a fabulously talented writer/director who was cowed into changing a lot of his lines because the sitcom actor playing the lead wanted to "add some motherfucking funny". This kind of stuff happens in theater with almost as much regularity, but film is even more collaborative because there is the foley stuff and the editor and color shifts in the film and all kinds of crap that happens for a year after the thing's been shot.

With a play, a writer writes it by herself or himself, largely, and then meets with a director or a dramaturg who will give advice about re-writes. Then a reading will be done and a talkback session, and another re-write. Then, in a perfect world, the play will be mounted and during that process the director will want to change some things, actors will want to change certain things, and a technical staff will want to change certain things, and it's really a battle between the playwright and the producer as to what they agree to change and what they don't.

With a musical, that process starts much earlier, when the people writing the show get together. It used to be that songwriters would write a bunch of tunes and then a book would be written to lace them all together, but those days are long gone. Even though our show does have a lot of tunes in it, it's written that way on purpose, in an effort to give a wink at those old shows.

But, this does mean that we all have to start listening to people long before we want to. *WAY* before. The editing process has begun from the moment pen hits paper, or rather fingers touch keyboard. There is a verse in one of our songs where a character claims to pick up girls by capturing and killing panthers and making "panther steaks". We have joked since we wrote it that someone will think it is stupid and want to remove the lyric, but what actually lies in wait for us is something far worse. Something we all three think is really important is probably getting in the way of the show and will have to be removed, and we have no idea what that thing is yet.

We met with a director some time ago, and he suggested that one duet be changed from one set of characters (one of the two couples) to another set of characters (one member of each couple). I wasn't sure about it, but I decided to just write it and not worry. I wrote about thirty versions, always holding on to this one melodic chunk...



And, as you see here, I finally switched it to 3/4 and made it a sort of Texas Two-Step waltz. Once I did that, I realized I had it, that it was just so lovely. The song almost writes itself around this little phrase.

So, I did it, I wrote this little country waltz, and the thing that's so great about country music is that it is much closer to jazz than it is to rock and roll. By being the opposite of jazz, controlled, bright, rhythmically unbending, it has to follow the same sets of rules but backwards. Where you might get minor nine 4 chords in jazz, you'll get major minor-seven 2 chords in country (sorry about that, it's my blog I get to say what I want, but any non-musicians will read that and think "Sean knows a lot" and any musicians will read it and say, "Sean's full of shit...")

Anyway, I wrote this little bizarre waltz and pushed and pulled a strange little melody out of it. Last night, very late in a marathon Gideon writing session (four hours of shit-talking and Chinese food) I played it for Mac and Jordana and they both thought it was wonderful, just wonderful. Mac left and Jordana got in the shower.

When she got out of the shower she had some lyrical ideas, but she had more or less forgotten most of the tune. Because, you see, except for the part quoted above, the tune is largely *SHIT*. Cool chord changes, bullshit unsingable tune, but I didn't care. I wanted those weird chords, I wanted to bend the song to my will, so I fucking *jammed in* this retarded tune.

Jordana started singing and I had about three seconds of wanting to save the song I had worked two months on. During the fourth second, I jumped out of bed and got my guitar, and the next half hour I scribbled furiously to catch what Jordana was singing. I listened to her song and, although most of it was my song already, it was better. It was simpler, it was smarter, and you will remember the tune.

We got to a point and I realized that if I threw away everything from the song before, the song would be like Andrew Lloyd Weber, which isn't bad, it's just that he writes as if he is strolling downhill, the songs continually going where you think they ought to if you've, y'know, ever listened to any music ever. So I made some tiny changes, changes that Jordana heard and liked better than what she had done.

Look, I'm lucky. When people are making changes to my stuff, it's smart people doing it. But I've had some terrible directors, *TERRIBLE*, and yet every single one of them said more smart stuff than dumb stuff. And when Jordana's lyric "everything was going according to plan" came out, and I said, "Can we say that another way?" she knew exactly what I meant. Although the words say what we want the character to say, those words have been said that way a million times before, and it's worth spending an hour or two trying to find a way to say it in the character's voice.

That guy, that sitcom guy from that movie, was wrong when he thought he was bringing the funny. I wish to God the old script were still there, and I wish to God the creators of that movie had had the level of intelligence and talent in his cast that I am surrounded by. I'm not saying it's important to change everything you can change. But the writer/director of that movie was smart enough to listen to both people who aren't as smart as he is, and people who are smarter and that really is a huge compliment.

Who We Are

Posted 11:50 AM by sean
I just wanted to let you know who we are, in case you are simply a reader of this blog, and you aren't the kind of person who knows my people in person.

We've been accused of not having enough drive, enough spirit, it's true. We hold doors and pull out chairs, and when that happens, sometimes other people get through the door and other people sit down and we don't. For some reason, this southern gentility has been named "After You, Dear Alphonse" by none other than Jordana, and it can make for a difficult debate session sometimes.

We don't close deals the way people think we should. We don't sprint that last half mile sometimes, unless we've paced the race and that last sprint is for a personal best. We aren't aggressive, we aren't competitive the way we should be. We don't submit our work to enough people, we don't make enough phone calls to contacts, we just don't close deals the way people think we should.

There is something about the way we were raised, something about how we live our lives as men and women, where we just don't know how to exploit a contact, how to take advantage of an undeserved situation, and we too often see our situation as undeserved.

Last night, our team played an arch rival, and we played just terribly. We had a sinking feeling right from the beginning of the game, that same feeling we had on election night, that feeling that what had been said about us was too much, what had been said about the opponent was too little. There are things that weekend warrior basketball players do, bouncing a dribble off your knees, trying to do too much when you are triple teamed, forcing the game, that our team did from the first second last night.

We didn't deserve to win last night, at all. The other team is nowhere near as good, and they were working at triple their talent level to achieve something.

These guys I know, the guys with websites and loads of publicity pictures, the guys who have eight songs prepared for every audition, who toil to create perfection even in shows they have no interest in being a part of, the writers who finish the plays that will most likely be produced, they deserve the success they get in their little slices of life.

But we, my friends and family, are like slow moving majestic ships, picking up barnacles and stories, slowing down to pick up pirates and princesses, losing the cartage that means the least and building thick sturdy hulls of coral and character. We get lost and defeated sometimes when we look at our complicated stores, especially when we need to streamline, because our storage is nothing but riches.

We will slowly get there. My team, last night, didn't deserve to win, hadn't played well, played like people who were asking themselves questions instead of men who didn't bother to ask. Our coach is a kind man, more concerned about the emotional maturity of our best offensive player than about his game. He knows the game is there, he wants the player to be a man. We played terribly, and yet, with 18 seconds left, we were down by one and we had the ball.

I know what I would have done.

I just don't have it in me to try to win a game I've already lost. Every once in a while I will show up to an audition or a party, and try to make a better life for myself, but every time I do that, I just choke, I don't even get a shot off. Because, in our living room, where my friends and I make our own tiny art and make our own tiny jokes, I know that if someone happens to walk by and look in the window, I'll have won the game that I've been winning the entire time.

Maybe it won't happen at all. Maybe I will just be another in a long line of people who wrote their quiet songs and made their own homegrown art. I know there are a million people with garages full of wood lathes who make the most beautiful jewelry boxes you can imagine, and give them away to friends as gifts. There are people taking ballroom dance lessons that never compete, they just live for their two times a week that they dance. And there are people who keep blogs, writing every day these perfect little entries, shaping words into pure poetry without editing and without any thought to publishing.

I have a team with as much talent as I've ever seen. And we haven't won yet. We've won a lot of games, and we've lost some. But I know the character of this team, I know who we are, and by the time we get to March, we won't have to steal a victory that we didn't deserve. We will have won walking in. I know my people, and I know that's what will happen.

I would not say Benefit

Posted 10:57 AM by sean
Last night, Jordana Mac and I, in other words, the entire staff of Gideon Productions, went to a benefit for The Play Company. We are big supporters of the play company, if "not giving a single dollar to the organization but still go and see every play" counts as big supporters. Mostly, we support their mission and their execution. Whenever we talk about The Play Company, there is some debate about which of the plays they've produced is the best, but every single play they have done has been incredible.

There was a moment last night when the director of the play "Trust" said, "no company has done so much with so little," and, despite the fact that their budgets are $98,000 more than any show I've produced, I think I agree with them. We've always aimed our bow and arrow across the yard and more or less hit the target, these guys might have a handgun, but they're hitting targets on the moon.

I have a horrible sense of being out of place when I get shoved in a room for a show or a benefit that I don't actually feel a great deal of passion about, and I've often thought that maybe I was just a little shy. But last night I realized that I should just stick to gatherings where I can honestly be passionate about the organization, or I should learn to be more passionate about more things before I go to too many of these things.

One should always bring Mac along on things like this. "I'm starting a trend," Mac said as he eschewed eating utensils of any kind, favoring the shovel-then-lick-fingers-clean method. Jordana looked across the room, saw a woman wearing a jeweled top complete with a large fake parrot on her shoulder and said, "I should be friends with that lady," and within twenty minutes, they were perched on two chairs talking like old immigrants from the same country.

I made the rounds, marvelled at some of the celebrities, became incensed with the fact that a sprinkle of charm in a handsome black man is often mistaken for talent, and ate tons of *amazing* food. When Lindsay introduced me to one of the producers at Spike TV, the dude said he was looking for a brand new channel, something not yet done, and I said, "We need a channel that's mostly good looking girls doing really stupid shit in bikinis, marathons of 1970s James Bond movies and then basketball done with inset trampoulines... Can we do that?" Fortunately, he laughed, since that is a distillation of what SpikeTV is.

I didn't really care about any of the theater or movie celebrities, but when I saw Tyler Florence, I nearly tackled him. He must have only stayed a minute, probably because he saw the look in my eye, that "you're the best thing on TV" look. Seriously, I've watched the food channel, and this guys is a gold mine. Great looking, really smart, seat of his pants cooking chef, the guy is brilliant. "Food 911" if you haven't watched it, is Tyler going into average people's kitchens to teach them how to cook the stuff they really want to, using their kitchens and their dishes. It's so awesome.

The highlight of the evening is when Dana showed up with Capt. Jack Bowen, who is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. I said "Hi Jack!" and he reached out and grabbed my finger and wouldn't let go. It was amazing.

For Now

Posted 10:08 AM by sean
I don't have children, and it's possible that I will be the worst father ever. People think I will be a good father, but that's largely because I'm a good actor, and I have faked everyone into thinking I, y'know, "listen" and shit, so I am prepared for the fact that I will be a bad father. I might end up raising that one kid that makes your kid insane.

When I was growing up, half the time we thought to ourselves, "Man, what the hell is the problem with our parents?" I had a best friend named Gretchen in fourth grade. We played together *all the time*, our favorite game was Star Wars, played on her trampouline with pool cues. We would lightsaber fight for hours, swinging the pool cues at each other's heads while jumping up and down uncontrollably.

Then suddenly, we weren't really friends anymore. I remember the two of us talking to our assembled parents, I remember us being confused as hell, I just don't remember any of the specifics. I remember Gretchen and I talking about how they didn't realize we were too young to care about being a boy and a girl. We actually talked about it. "Maybe we'll care later, but why can't we be friends now?" We spent hours swinging pool cues, off balance, at eachother's heads, but our folks didn't want us spending too much time together as a boy and a girl.

But, y'know, I'm not really tied up in knots when it comes to sexual stuff at all. I figure at any given time, people are trying to have sex, or, better yet, they are having it, and I'm pretty much okay with that. I've had partners "cheat" on me, and I can say with all sincerity, the two things about it that bothered me were the lying and the fact that everyone else thought it was unforgivable. I've just sat there while everyone else said, "I can't believe she did this", when it seems perfectly understandable that *anyone* would do it, I just wish we didn't have to *lie* about it.

I have a lot of confidence when it comes to my own fidelity, because my understanding of intimacy is completely screwed. By some incredible stroke of good fortune, intimacy and sexuality are not all that wrapped up in one another for me. I don't have to have sex with someone to feel a sense of intimacy, and I don't need to do the deed to feel a sense of conquest. If I look at a girl and I can tell she digs me, that's enough. Because it has never been something I put a whole lot of stock in.

I lost my virginity really early, and I never really stopped having sex. But I also remained friends with everyone I slept with, I still write emails to girls that were hook-ups in high school. I have been right on the edge, so to speak, of having sex with someone and could see in their eyes that they were scared, and I stopped with absolutely no regrets. I've never regretted sleeping with, or not sleeping with, someone.

A big part of it is that I never really got that much out of it. It isn't that I am free of talent in that department, but I have to guess I'm pretty workaday. I certainly have never felt the same thrill of understanding and communication during the sex act that I have felt while I was, say, playing in a string quartet or acting in a play. And if the pornography I've, y'know, stumbled across is any measure, I'm certainly not the most gifted man in the world. But what I lack in firm abs and strokes-per-second, I think I make up for in sharing jokes.

Now, why are so many of my friends so bent out of shape about the whole thing? Why are there boys and girls bobbing up and down in each other's wakes, wishing they could be closer but terrified of how close they are? My guy friends have a level of intimacy with my wife that makes my chest swell, she cracks jokes and they laugh, they call and talk to her on the phone, she is essentially a really good looking guy that they can be themselves around. How can they be that way with the women they sleep with?

I'm not talking about you, don't worry. I'm talking about that guy.

Is it possible that, if America wasn't so terrified of polishing all the sexuality out of our children's lives, that maybe our kids would grow up with a sense that sex is simply one way of communicating with one person, that masturbation is as essential as napping or snacking, that you can love someone you don't fuck and fuck someone you don't love and we can all still be friends later. Janet Jackson flashed a nipple on TV and mothers were saying "I don't want my children to see that!", y'know, the same children who were *nursing* a few years ago, and we are outraged, but so very little discussion goes on about Darfur or Abu Ghraib? If you care more about sex than you do about America torturing Iraqis, then you are the problem.

My kids will have to be the frontline of liberation. My sister knows she can talk to me about whoever she's sleeping with, and I won't come within a stone's throw of judging her. She's an adult woman that can fuck the Pope for all I care, I just want her to have good friends, a nice place to live and lots of money. I've covered for family members who were lying their way through affairs and nonsense, and I've forgiven my exes for their divertisements. My in-laws never judge their kids' sexual lives, and with our sisters we generally know details pretty soon after consumation.

I have to think that my kids will ask questions and that I'll answer them with as much openness as possible. It could all change, I could be a rotten father. But let me give you a snapshot of Jordana and I on the train yesterday:

Jordana: You like to do that head spin, don't you?

Sean: Yeah. I think the head spin adds a lot of funny.

Jordana: With the double take?

Sean: Yeah. This is the regular double take ( Sean looks at Jordana, tries to look away, then snaps his head back at her) and this is the double take with the head spin (Sean looks at Jordana, tries to look away, then rolls his face around in a circle and snaps back at her). I find the spin effective.

Jordana: I like the spit-double take.

Sean: This is the slow burn double take. (Sean looks at Jordana, tries to look away, then slowly turns his head toward her. It isn't funny.)

Jordana: Not as good as Charles Durning.

Sean: Yeah, that one doesn't really work.

Jordana: (Eyes lighting up) I like the slow burn spit take.

Sean: (already laughing) The Slow-Burn Spit Take? How the hell does that work?

Jordana: It's like this (Jordana pretends to drink, then, slowly, her whole face goes slack like a zombie, corners of her mouth turned down. Prretend water rolls out of her mouth all over her clothes.)

Sean: (laughing so hard the train is starting to stare)

Jordana: The spit take is when you're surprised, the slow-burn spit take is when your life is ruined. (She does it again.)

Sean: (laughing so hard his voice is making those little whistle noises)

And that to me is what it means to have intimacy. The hours of unexplained dialogue that fit into this conversation are a thousand times better than fucking some 19 year old. It's nice to come off stage and have some 19 year old want to have sex with you (let's face it, the only time I'm remotely attractive is when I'm on stage) but it's so much better to just know you can without all the need to prove something. If we understood the *chasm* between intimacy and sexuality, would we maybe not fucking care so much about porn and gay marriage? Would we be able to keep our eye on the ball? Could Clinton have achieved a lot more in his presidency if everyone admitted that we didn't care who he was getting a blow job from?

I think so. But, again, I might be the worst father ever.