Give People Props

I’m a son of the summer, born in the dog days.

A Leo, through and through.

I thrive when it’s 87 in a dry heat.

Me and the lizards.

That’s our time.

Lizard babies are everywhere right now, tiny shapes moving in my peripheral vision and dodging our heavy footfalls. We liberated two from the house so far. Ten-year-old me would be thrilled to know we live with so many.

September showed up on our doorstep today, wiping the soles of its boots made wet with a surprise rainfall, trailing a pashmina of low lying fog in its wake.

I resent the intrusion.

I put on my headphones and listen to a high school football game. I teleport across space and time, leave palm trees and faded jacarandas behind for Friday Night Lights shining two thousand miles away.

I see you, kid.

On the thirty yard line.

In the bandstand.

It’s all football and falling leaves for you now.

It’s slipping notes into lockers.

It’s learning and longing.

Homework and heartbreak.

You’re a son of the summer.

A couple of months ago you thought it would last forever.

Now you’re falling asleep in world history and failing chemistry.

And the warmth on your face, the smell of honeysuckle, the sweat of her skin on yours, it’s all fading fast in the rearview.

Go now. Drive past the city limit sign. Go to the tunnel on 93. Go to High Rock.

Take it all in. Savor every last second. Linger.

Just linger a little while longer, would you?

Because you’re a son of the summer and before you know it you will be in the autumn of your days here on this earth. Every year a few more precious leaves will turn and detach from the branches. They will come cascading down in flashes of color and light as they return to the soil. Your memories of them will get folded and stirred into a swirl of apple butter bubbling in a kettle on an open flame.

The game ends.

It’’s evening.

I am teleported back to palm trees and faded jacarandas.

The baby lizards have retreated into the cracks and crevices of the brick wall.

There are coyotes in the canyon.

I know why autumn makes me melancholy. I know putting on long sleeves reminds me that all good things come to an end. And it is this fact that makes me cherish them all the more.

Tomorrow I’ll take my Pendleton shirts to the cleaners, prepare my fall uniform. I’ll switch out the palomas for an old fashioned made with mezcal, the taste of a bonfire under a cool night sky.

I will set aside my resentment and welcome the guest of September.

Summer, Eaton Canyon Falls (09.01.23)

GIVE PEOPLE PROPS

Last weekend I did a Q&A workshop for The Appalachian Film Festival in Huntington, WV. I was invited by my friend Dave Lavender who is working on behalf of the WV Department of Economic Development to bring more film and TV production to the state, as well as the fine folks at The Foundry Theatre who revived the festival after it went dormant for a number of years.

As the tropical storm closed in I started to worry about getting back in a timely manner so I canceled my plane ticket and we pivoted to Zoom. I had a lot of fun talking to the filmmakers and answering questions, despite the digital divide, but I was bummed that I didn’t get to be there. One of the reasons I was disappointed is that I was looking forward to saying hello to one of the other guests, Michael Cerveris.

When I was in college studying musical theater somebody sent me an article from the Huntington newspaper, the Herald Dispatch. It was a front page feature on Michael, who grew up in Huntington, twenty miles away from my hometown of Ironton, Ohio. At that time, he was starring in the Broadway revival of THE WHO’S TOMMY. It was a huge inspiration, seeing a kid from down the river make it big.

In 1997, I moved to New York and started working as an office PA for Dodger Productions. I may have mentioned this before but the first thing I saw when I walked in for my interview was the cow, Milky White, from the original production of INTO THE WOODS, the very first Broadway show I ever saw. The other featured prop in the waiting area was a couch shaped like a pair of red lips from TOMMY.

My first day at Dodgers was the first day of previews for TITANIC and tensions were high because the boat didn’t sink the night before. I repeat. The night before the first preview of the musical TITANIC the technical marvel of a sequence that was supposed to bring the entire three hour piece to a thrilling climax didn’t work. Eventually they ironed out all the bugs and the show won a bunch of Tony Awards and everybody was fine.

It was my first big Broadway opening night, my first Tony Awards party, a lot of firsts.

But one of the coolest things of the whole experience for me happened outside the theater, on the street, when I got to meet Michael Cerveris in person for the first time.

He played Thomas Andrews in the show and he was GREAT.

Talk about casting a spell.

One of my daily duties was to deliver house seat tickets to the box offices of all the Dodger shows at the end of the business day. It was hands down my favorite part of the job. I got to know all the doormen, all the box office personnel, and all the house managers. Every day I would weave my way through midtown feeling like the mayor of Times Square, fist bumping people and dodging cabs. It was a beautiful time.

One day I saw Michael standing under the marquee of the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. I was super nervous but I worked up the courage and told him my name, that I was from Ironton, just down the road from Huntington, and that he was a big inspiration.

This guy, who was playing one of the leads in the biggest show on Broadway at the time, couldn’t have been cooler. He was so kind and genuine and encouraging. It was one of a number of encounters like that over the years where someone modeled for me the exact right way to behave if I was ever lucky enough to be in the same position.

In the fall of 2017 we took the cast of REVERIE to New York Comic-Con for a preview of the pilot and to do a bunch of press. When we got to the Javits Center we were escorted to a green room that we shared with a bunch of other shows, one of which was Ben Edlund’s fantastic live action reboot of THE TICK on Amazon.

I looked over and saw Michael nearby. He was playing a recurring character on Ben’s show. I had to bring it full circle and reintroduce myself. Again, he could not have been cooler. Meetup #2.

Which brings me to last weekend…

I was really looking forward to making this connection for a third time and maybe having a conversation that lasted longer than ninety seconds. I knew he’d been a featured guest the night before and I knew I wanted to tell the story about meeting him to the Zoom attendees.

Just before I started to tell it I asked if he happened to be there in the room and he was! I hesitated for a second because I didn’t want to embarrass him or put him on the spot, but then some small part of my brain overruled my hesitation. I felt like it was important to show my appreciation for that kindness, and to do it out loud.

Any one of us are capable of having a bad day or an off day. We’re all fighting invisible battles that could cause us to seem standoffish, if not outright mean or rude. Sharing the good stories is a reminder of who and what we can be at our best. You just never know what it’s going to mean to the person on the receiving end.

In that same spirit I also gave thanks to my friend Dave, who was there acting as moderator. For many years Dave wrote about the Tri-State arts and entertainment scene for The Herald Dispatch. He may have written that initial story on Michael Cerveris, I did a search on the archives and couldn’t find it.

We met when I was making my first movie, THE KING OF IRON TOWN, set and shot in Ironton. Dave was a big champion of my work from then on. If I was directing a new show or putting on a local film night I would get in touch with him and he’d say, “Let’s spill some ink on it.” He tells the stories of the people who tell stories. As I was talking about the great things Dave has done for people like me I started to tear up out of sheer gratitude.

There was one more cool full circle moment during the Zoom.

I told the crowd about my first job at Jenny Wiley Theatre and how I got the part of the Cowardly Lion in THE WIZARD OF OZ after the guy who was originally cast couldn’t make it. During the Q&A a gentleman stepped to the mic and said, “I don’t have a question myself but my son wanted me to ask when are you going to go down to Disneyland and see ROGERS: THE MUSICAL?”

That man’s name is Mickey McCoy. I met him and his family during that very first summer at JWT. His daughter Annalyse was a munchkin and her younger brother, Josey, was a kid hanging around the theater. That family made a big impact on me at age 19. Years later I directed Josey in a handful of projects and became a huge fan of the family all over again. Regarding Mickey’s question, Josey is currently playing pre-serum Steve Rogers in the new musical at The Hyperion at Disneyland.

Yesterday I went on a hike to Eaton Canyon Falls on the outskirts of Pasadena. Along the way I nodded and said hello to other hikers as we were coming and going. Shortly before I got to the falls someone told me, “Keep going, you’re almost there!” I did the same thing for someone else coming back.

It reminded me of the first time I went for a hike in Griffith Park and crossed paths with a giant of a man coming down as I was going up. He didn’t say a word, he just held out his hand for me to give him a high five. It was the meatiest, most satisfying high five of my life and it kept me going for an hour.

We’re all crossing paths on our respective journeys, weaving in and out of each others’ lives. The older I get the more opportunities there are for people, places, and experiences to circle around again. I want people to remember that I was helpful and encouraging when we met at those intersections. That I was kind. Present.

And I want to get better at letting other people know when they did that for me.

You never know when they might need to hear it.

EXPERIMENT

I came across an article last week that just screamed “PROMPT!”

I wanted to pass it along because it could be a great exercise for anybody who is looking for a spark of inspiration, or to practice any number of techniques.

The basic idea is that last month, a Russian military plane crashed at an airshow in Michigan. The pilot and backseater both ejected just in time to survive the crash. An investigation revealed that as the plane was plummeting to the ground there was a disagreement between the two as to the correct course of action. The pilot wanted to try to regain control and land the plane safely. The person in the backseat wanted to eject. Ultimately, the person in the back seat pulled the ejection lever.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what a confrontation between those two people looks like after they survive. There are so many possibilities for a fictional dramatic take. On the one hand, they both lived. On the other hand, a bond of trust may have been broken. A relationship may be irrevocably harmed. Why didn’t the backseater trust the pilot to land the plane? Or themselves?

This is such a compelling setup. You get to decide who these people are. What gender? Are they friends? Family? Lovers? Is there a generation gap? Religious differences? You get to decide where they have this conversation. Is it at one of their homes? A diner? Outside a review board office? How do you get into the heart of the scene? Is there small talk? Is it heated from the get-go?

In real life, nobody was seriously hurt. The people on the plane suffered minor injuries and nobody on the ground was injured. But what if… what if someone had been killed by debris? How does that change where each person is coming from?

I’m going to do some thinking about all of these questions and share what I came up with at some point in the future. If you’re interested in taking a crack at it let me know, maybe we’ll share them all together and talk about why we made the choices that we made. It could be a lot of fun to see how our brains turn this into drama.

Check out the article here!

That’s it for this week, I hope you had a great holiday weekend!