Summer Hiatus, Marlon Brando

Update: scratch the next indented paragraph. I will be posting more. I’m actually starting to feel better. I think.

Won’t be posting much this summer – at least I don’t think I will. Need to give this a break, maybe. Yeah. Whatever.

It has become an issue of contemplation recently. Giving up on this blog. Maybe it’s time to hang it up. Oh the monotony. The duplicity. Repetitive humdrum. Have been sporadically posting anywho the past few months. This whole blog thing was a neat experiment, I guess. But I have to face facts. The work on my new book has come basically to a full-stop. I’m not quite sure how to explain the connection but when the work on my book was going well I could also post here. It’s as though typing 2k to 3k words a day on my book wasn’t enough – so I filled the gap with putting stuff up here. Nomatter, for sure. The book is going nowhere and I feel that I have probably lost a connection to it. A tragic endeavor, indeed.

It’s not that I’m blocked or anything like that. It’s just that the confidence – you know, that whole identity, image and ego chestnut that makes up one of the many pillars that sets aside achievers from non achievers – is no longer with me. Being a middle aged failed man doesn’t help either. I really despise the bitter disposition that has overtaken me. Add to the fact that I can no longer fight the belief/idear, deep down in my heart of hearts, that it probably just wasn’t meant to be. This whole dream of WRITING. In fact, I’ve probably known that all along. But hey! What the heck. That’s the easiest thing about life, isn’t it?

Lying to yourself.

And so… All the years of arm-chair critics, pseudo-know-it-all publishers and the shear unwillingness to take any advice regarding how to write… is coming full circle. No one in publishing will read me and I can’t fight the fight anymore. Pass another drink, my friends. Gulp, gulp. Soothe the bitterness.

This inevitable failure kinda reminds me of something. Like the time when I gave up acting. Oh, what a time. I was young and stupid and looked fairly decent and went to the movies one too many times. Yes. I tried acting at the behest of a high-school counselor that declared it might be a way to fend off my aggressions. (Her other “career” advice was to either be a truck driver or a air traffic controller.) So it was a kind of therapy, I guess. I had no idea what acting was about when I started and after being able to watch all those good lookin’, skin caring actresses, nothing else mattered. When I got to college I read scripts and plays and listened to acting teachers. I had a hard time remembering text but I eventually got over that. The directors demanded more though – as they should have. I gave it my all, really. Pretending became part of my mind. I wanted to go beyond “method“, you know. I was the character. And then that one spring day while rehearsing a scene for a university production the director/professor turned to me and said:

“OK. Stop. That was great, Tom, very good.”

Short pause.

“Tom. Are you OK? You can stop now…”

I heard the directors words. I even knew that the other actors had turned off. They were all going to their ego corners and waiting for the praise, the ego boosts that come after each rehearsal. But I stayed there on stage, I remained on my markers, my skin began to tan from the beam of light and the trance I was in. I remember not wanting to move because if I moved then I might not find that character, that way, again. I couldn’t turn it off.

“You wanted me to become this killer character, didn’t you!” I yelled.

“Tom, that’s enough!” One of the other actors screamed.

“Fuck you. I became your killer, I am your killer, and I won’t turn it off!”

One of the actresses came over and tried to remind me of the show & tell, the pretend that we all played. She even mentioned how much she looked forward to our evening in her dorm room. But I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go of any of those roles. They tore me apart because in order to play them I had to become them. Isn’t that acting? Isn’t that what makes all the high earning actors so prominent? Why, yes. That’s exactly what makes them great actors. They could not only play the characters but they could also turn them off. But I couldn’t. I wonder if it had anything to do with the characters I chose (or the characters that were chosen for me).

I (tried to) play(ed)…

Iago – who, like Satan, believes in God for the sole purpose of also being able to defy Him.

Cornwall – I offered up ways to depict the torture that he wanted to put Lear through, but in the end I was denied because the professor/teacher thought my portrayal “overkill”. (Ha. Ha. Ha.)

Richard III – Yes, of course I (really) believed in killing those children. (I didn’t make it beyond stage test.)

Aaron the Moore – Oh, to be someone that can be so systematic about rape.

For whatever very good reason – I gave up on acting. Obviously that was the right thing to do. The idea of playing something else just didn’t work for me. Strange how giving up on writing actually hurts – at least it hurts when I’m sober.

Since we’re on the subject… Oh, how I admire great actors. I mean “actors” that really know what they are doing. I’m not aware of any such actors today – they are all in the past. Maybe that has something to do with acting on/for the stage. Most actors today are just products of some dim-witted acting school and few stage appearances. If there are any good actors today then you can be assured that they appear regularly on a stage somewhere. Which brings me to the clip featured below. I have seen every movie Marlon Brando ever made at least three times. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to recently find this unseen footage of him.

As you’ll note, this is Marlon Brando screen testing for “Rebel Without a Cause”. As you should also know, the movie was eventually made with James Dean. But the shear energy from a young Brando in this clip shows that the movie would have been just as good with him. Also, in my opinion – this is likewise just a guess – I bet James Dean stole some of this. Notice the lisp Brando uses, and some of the facial expressions. I mean, come on, could a director have actually told Brando AND Dean to do that? Dean was energetic and his energy amazed, he was bedazzling, but Brando is my Grand United Mistakes’ greatest actor. (Just my 2cents.) Ah, who knows. Maybe a director could have told them both to do that.

Rant on.

-tgs-