082 The Importance of American Theater

It's a solo episode this week fellow daydreamers. Charlie talks about the importance of embracing artistic heroes, championing those artists whose artistry and courage lay a roadmap for living a significant creative life. Charlie shares his thoughts on a few of his: William Friedkin, Ron Cephas Jones, Paul Reubens and Sinéad O'Connor. Charlie also answers a listener's acting question, and highlights some important commentary on the SAG/AFTRA strike, and the state of American theater.  You can follow CBP on Instagram @creatingbehavior, and Charlie's NYC acting conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio @maggieflaniganstudio. Theme music by  https://www.thelawrencetrailer.com. For written transcripts, to leave a voicemail on SpeakPipe, or contact Charlie for private coaching, check out https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com

Transcript

Charlie Sandlan (00:02):

Inspiration. It's incredibly important if you want to live a creative life, and it comes to you in many ways, right? Sometimes you can seek it out, I think, and then sometimes it just comes to you as you allow your mind to daydream. Whether that's reading a poem, finding some solitude to yourself, taking a walk on the beach, watching the sun rise, playing with your dog or your cat, watching some kids play in the backyard, all of these things that can fill you with the beauty of what it means to be alive and to be human.

(00:37):

You also need artistic heroes. You need to find those artists, those creatives whose life and work mean something to you because of their courage, their artistry, their attention to detail, their work ethic, the path that they took through their own personal struggles to leave some sort of mark on the world. Their contribution, their artistic contribution, I think is very important.

(01:06):

I've lost a few of those over the last few weeks. I'm going to talk about them and a few other things. It's a solo episode today, my friends, so put the phone back in your pocket. Creating Behavior starts now.

(01:44):

Well hello, my fellow daydreamers. How the hell are you? I'm talking to you from Bellport, Long Island of all places. Trish and I rented a little place out here, and it was about two hours from the city. It's like halfway between New York and the Hamptons. It's a cute little town. Beautiful. And we've been out here since August 1st. Her parents came up for the month, and we've just been hanging out.

(02:15):

I'll tell you, it's a bucket list kind of thing. Since I started teaching back in, what, 2005, I've always had August and the first week or two of September off, right? The studio kind of shuts down. There's no classes. And I get a time to kind of reboot,

(02:33):

And usually when I was single living that life, I would travel. I would take a trip somewhere. And I always thought, "God, I'd love to just be able to stay someplace for a month." Maggie used to do it all the time, her and Richard, her husband. Every August, they would rent someplace up in Cape Cod in a little house somewhere and just have a month. And I would go up and visit them every August for a couple of days and think to myself, "God, this is fucking great. I want to do this." And now I've done it. And I have to tell you, it is worth every penny, every single penny having the best time. Just a cute little house. It's got a swimming pool.

(03:13):

I mean, now I'll tell you what pissed Trish off, because we were going to be here for a month. And I am very emotionally attached to my Peloton bike. I don't know if I've ever talked about this or not, but I am a huge Peloton user. And in the pandemic, I bought a Peloton.

(03:34):

And the first time I ever used one when we were living pre-pandemic, the building that we were in the gym there, they had some Peloton bikes. And so I started using them, and I just fell in love with it, loved it. And I'm addicted to it.

(03:51):

So my workout routine is primarily on the Peloton bike a couple of days a week, and I also do Rumble. So here in New York City, there's a fitness studio called Rumble, and it's kind of half boxing, half weights and full body stuff. Great workout. So that's kind of my routine, right?

(04:13):

Well, I knew I was going to be here for a month and I was like, "Trish, I want to take the Peloton bike." She's like, "You've got to be fucking kidding me. We're not lugging that bike." I said, "Well, I need it. You're going to have to help me with this." And this house that we have has got a little shed in the backyard. I'm like, "It can go here." So I had to figure out how to break down the Peloton bike, how to get it into the car, and get it out to Long Island.

(04:39):

So the first thing that pissed her off was that I had to tell her that, "Listen, we have to make multiple trips out there," because the bike takes up 70% of the car, and then I had to have her help me get it down out of the apartment, down the hallway, downstairs. Thank God we have an elevator building, but she was not happy about this. And I have to tell you, we got it out here, and thank fucking God. I have been on this bike more times this month than I think I've ever been. It's been fantastic.

(05:11):

So yeah, life is good here. You know what's interesting? When I get to the end of July and the school years come to a close, I actually really honestly think to myself, "There's no way I can do this anymore. I'm absolutely fried. I don't want to deal with any more students. I'm not interested in any fucking person that wants to act or wants to be an actor." Just the energy really that it takes to get through a school year, to not just be in the classroom, but to run the business side of things, to put out all of the fires and the shit that just comes up right over the course of a school year. By end of July, I can't see myself doing it anymore. And I think to myself, "My God, there's no way I can do this in September."

(06:00):

And then if I play my cards right and I use August in a good way, I'm usually jacked up and ready to go. And it's absolutely happened again this time. This is the end of August. I've got about a week or so before I'm back in the office every day. Classes start September 7th, and now I'm excited. I feel rejuvenated. It took about seven to 10 days to kind of decompress. And now, listen, I'm ready to go.

(06:30):

But it has been really, really special to just be here and not have anything to do, but eat, sleep. We've had friends that come up and have stayed with us for a couple of days here and there, so we've hosted a lot, and got a lot of other creative work done. Not just this podcast, but writing, and other things that I've wanted to be able to put my attention on. So it's been a good month. And now Trish is going to have to help me lug this Peloton bike back into the city, so I know she's going to be thrilled about that. But I think part of what will make this more palatable for her is that I actually did use the bike many, many, many, many, many times, so I proved myself right on that. Anyway, it's been a good month.

(07:20):

I did see Oppenheimer. I have not seen Barbie yet, but I saw Oppenheimer, and I really enjoyed it. I'll tell you, Cillian Murphy, that guy has an intensity about him, a quiet intensity that the camera just eats up. I mean, I'm a huge Peaky Blinders fan. Thought he was incredible in that. That is an amazing show. The pain, and just the quiet loneliness, and the PTSD, everything that he captures in that show was phenomenal.

(07:57):

But I thought that Oppenheimer was really, really, really good. What I really liked about him, some particular moments really. When you see him working on calculations, when you see him having ideas, when you see him approaching the chalkboard to work out a calculation, the intensity in his eyes, you can just see him actively engaged in something inspiring. And the camera caught that. I thought it was wonderful. It was a great kind of a historical biopic.

(08:31):

I'm actually reading American Prometheus right now. It inspired me to read the book and I can't put it down, so that's kind of been my summer reading is American Prometheus, the book that the movie is based on.

(08:47):

 The Bear. I binged season two of The Bear. And I don't know, for my money, I think it's the best show on television streaming right now. The writing, the acting, just the whole arc of the series, the way they segment each show just down to the titles of every episode is artistic. I thought it was incredible. And they did it in season one. They did it in season two. There was one episode in particular that is just one of the best shows you'll ever see on television. They did it in season one. I think it was episode seven. They did that one 22 minute episode, which was one long continuous take, which was extraordinary. And they did it again in season two, episode six, Fishes. It is the flashback episode back to Christmas, maybe four or five years before the show actually takes place, before Carmen's brother kills himself. Talk about an episode.

(09:58):

I think really, one of the best Christmas dinner table holiday episodes that I have ever seen. Extraordinary writing. The insight and sensitivity to mental illness, to mental health, the inner conflict, the loaded in histories of what families and family dynamics kind of grapple with when you get to holidays, and the star power. Are you kidding me? Jamie Lee Curtis, talk about having a second career.

(10:36):

I remember Jamie Lee Curtis back in the '80s. She was to me... Oh my God. Not only did I think she was just the most beautiful human being on the planet, she was in some of my favorite movies from Trading Places, to A Fish Called Wanda, physical with John Travolta. My God, she was so sultry in that.

(10:58):

And now in her sixties, to be doing the work that she's doing. It's a far cry from Halloween, Everything Everywhere All at Once, phenomenal, and her work on The Bear.

(11:15):

And what I like about Jamie Lee Curtis is that she doesn't give a fuck. She is willing to be sloppy, messy, unattractive. She's just raw, really raw. And I thought her work on that episode was phenomenal, including Jon Bernthal, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson. It was really a great episode. If you have not watched The Bear or you're not tapped into that, come on, get your fucking shit together. Watch The Bear, watch season one, watch season two. It's very important because I think it's the kind of acting, the kind of writing that I think any really serious actor wants to be a part of, and you should champion good work.

(12:04):

There are a couple of articles that I'd like to point your attention to that are interesting and also relative to what's going on in the world. The first is this New Yorker piece. Now, everything I'm giving to you, just Google find it, bring it up, and read this, okay? It's a New Yorker article by Michael Schulman. It was July 12th of this year. And the title of the article is "Orange is the New Black" Signaled the Rot Inside the Streaming Economy: The innovative and daring show was a worldwide hit for Netflix, but some of the actors say that they were never fairly compensated.

(12:49):

This entire article is about, I think really in essence, one of the primary things that SAG-AFTRA and the writer's union are striking over, and this has got to do with streaming revenue, residuals from streaming shows. It's a fascinating article about... Listen, when Orange Is the New Black came out, it really saved Netflix, who was trying to segue, so to speak, from the discs in the mail to an actual production company and platform. And it was a multiracial cast. It was all women primarily. It was based on a true story, a woman's experience of being imprisoned. And I don't know how many seasons they had, six, seven. Was one of the biggest hits in all of television.

(13:50):

And when you read about what they were paid, we're talking paltry sums. And these residual checks that you get in the mail, if it's a streaming show, we're talking pennies on the dollar, cash and checks for 25 cents even today. Now, this is years after the show's been canceled. A lot of these actors, you book a job like this, you become a series regular, or you have a recurring guest spot on a show and you think to yourself, "This is a hit. My life's going to change. I'm going to be financially comfortable, at least for a while. My life's going to change." No, not at all. This is why we're striking.

(14:32):

So let me just read a snippet from this and give you a sense of what the article's about. "A decade on however, some of the cast feel disillusioned about how they were compensated, both during the original run and in the years since. Television actors have traditionally had a base of income from residuals, which come from reruns and other forms of reuse of the shows in which they have appeared. At the highest end, residuals can yield a fortune. Reportedly, the cast of Friends each made tens of millions of dollars from syndication. But streaming has scrambled that model, endangering the ability of working actors to make a living."

(15:09):

And the article really talks about some of the shady shit that Netflix was engaged in. Hiding viewership numbers, not really revealing how popular the show was, how it was really up there with the viewership and even surpassing the viewership of Game of Thrones on HBO. And these actors really didn't make anything. I think it's a very important article, especially if you want to keep up to date on what and why SAG-AFTRA is on the picket line. There's another good article about this as well.

(15:39):

I think the LA Times is a great resource material because it's in LA, a lot of articles about the strike, about why we're doing it, about what is the ramifications really of the strike on your average actor who has to struggle to pay bills and to try to make enough money to trigger health insurance.

(16:03):

So this is an article in the LA Times by Josh Rottenberg from August 9th. The byline of the story is, "We can't pay our rent. Actors on the picket line reveal harsh reality of trying to make it in Hollywood." Kind of profiles four actors that are on the picket line, that are striking, and what they're going through. This is the average actor, not your A-lister.

(16:28):

I think it's great. You see Adam Sandler, you see Ben Stiller, you see Matt Damon, all these A-listers on the picket line. Sure, okay, great. You've got millions of dollars, you've got nothing to do with your time. It's great to put yourself out there. But the average actor is getting hammered right now.

(16:48):

It's an important article to read, because I think it just gives you an insight into what actors are going through, what this time is like. And you might find some kindred spirits there for you.

(17:01):

There was one stat in the article that I found very disturbing. 12.7% of the 160,000 some odd SAG-AFTRA members, right? 12.7% of them make $26,470 or more. The $26,470 is what triggers health insurance for a year through SAG-AFTRA. After $26,000, 12.7%. Talk about needing a survival job. That stat blew my mind.

(17:42):

And I think that's what gives a lot of people pause when you start to really say to yourself, "I want to be an actor. I want an actor's life," but fuck, there's some real shit, real life stuff that you've got to contend with. So it's a good article to read. I highly recommend it.

(18:03):

And there's another really important article. It's a guest essay in the New York Times by Isaac Butler. This is from July 19th, so it's recent. And if you don't know who Isaac Butler is, he is one of the premier writers on acting and the theater that we have today. He's had a couple of really great books. He wrote a book on the oral history of the making of Angels in America with Tony Kushner. I think I've talked about it on an episode at some point. It's not just a great oral history of the making of that play Angels in America, but it gives you some great insight into the early '80s, the AIDS epidemic, especially out in San Francisco where that play originally was workshopped. And his most recent book called The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. I think it is a must read for any actor. It is required reading for my students.

(19:01):

He wrote a guest essay in the New York Times, and it's called American Theater Is Imploding Before Our Eyes. It's really disturbing, and there were a lot of things that he wrote about that I wasn't really aware of in any detailed way. I'm just going to read you the opening of this article so you have a sense of what it's about and the implications.

(19:24):

It starts off, "The American theater is on the verge of collapse. Here's just a sampling of recent dire developments. The Public Theater announced this year that Under the Radar Festival, the most exciting of New York's experimental performance incubators, would be postponed indefinitely, and later announced it was laying off 19% of its staff. The Humana Festival of New American Plays, a vital launching pad for such great playwrights as Lynn Nottage and Will Eno over the past four decades was canceled this year. This season, the Williamstown Theater Festival, one of our most important summer festivals will consist of only one fully produced work, alongside an anemic offering of staged readings. The Signature Theater whose resident playwrights have included Edward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Annie Baker, is delaying the start of its season. And even then, will produce only three new plays rather than the customary six. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, one of the country's oldest and most storied regional theaters recently announced a second round of emergency fundraising to remain operational. The Lookingglass, a major anchor of Chicago's theater scene is halting production for the year. The Brooklyn Academy of Music laid off 13% of its staff. BAM's Next Wave Festival, which helped catapult generations of forward-thinking artists to prominence, presented 31 shows in 2017. This year, it will present seven."

(21:02):

That is the opening of the piece. And this whole point is that we need to rethink and reconsider how we look, not just at theater in this country, but how we fund it and how we keep it alive, because it's important. It's a vital part of, I think, the spiritual wellbeing of the country.

(21:32):

And the thing about nonprofit theaters and regional theaters in this country is it is the place where most important work is workshoped and worked through before it becomes something that gets to New York, that gets to Broadway. It's a great developer, an incubator, as he says. Musicals like Hamilton, A Strange Loop, all have been workshopped outside of New York.

(22:00):

His point is that this subscription based model, which is what most regional theaters have dealt with and relied upon for 30, 40 years, 50 years, doesn't work anymore, and the pandemic really kind of just pulled the rug out of that. You'd get a lot of subscriptive donors, they'd spend thousands of dollars on their tickets with grants and other forms of fundraising, theaters were able to stay open. Not the case anymore.

(22:31):

His idea and what he's championing is to return back to what was done in the New Deal, the Roosevelt back in the '30s, the Federal Theatre Project, which ran and was funded from 1935 to 1939, it was part of the New Deal. A lot of money went into the regional theater scene.

(22:53):

Playwrights like Arthur Miller, directors like Elia Kazan, Orson Welles, the Negro Theatre Project, which at the time was very, very important to people of color and to minorities, and giving voice to those beyond just the white men that dominated theater and filmmaking. That we need to return to something like that if we want to keep these regional theaters alive.

(23:21):

So listen, you guys are listening to this podcast from many, many, many different cities, not just the United States, but all over the world. Whatever city you are in, there are important theaters that are doing work that need support, they need help. And you should seek them out if you haven't already, and find out if there's any way that you can be a part of what they do, even if it's just on a volunteer basis. I think it was a disturbing thing to read. Once you read it, you will also say to yourself, "Fuck, this isn't good." Theater is important.

(24:06):

I got a really good question the other day on SpeakPipe from Tim Ashby in Chicago. I had a question about acting. And I'm going to play it and I'm going to answer it here. But I just want to say, listen, I say it at the end of every episode, and I don't know how many of you actually get to the end of the episode. But I use SpeakPipe. It's a great little widget. It's on my podcast website.

(24:32):

So if you go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com go to the contact page. There's a little red button. If you hit that, you can leave a voicemail, and it will get sent right to me. You can ask me a question, you can make a comment about something you've seen. I will absolutely get back to you, and I will also put it on the show when I can, and share it with everybody. So this is a question that Tim asked me that I thought, "Okay, you know what? This is a good question and something that we can talk about here." So here's Tim's question.

Tim Ashby (25:05):

Hey Charlie, if this is your favorite Chicago actor, Tim Ashby. So just got a quick question for you. I know you didn't coach Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I'm curious how you would approach... There's a moment where he stuttered a little bit when he said, "Mama," and they decided to craft that and make that a repeatable choice. So I'm curious how you think that would be done. What do you think? Thanks. Bye.

Charlie Sandlan (25:40):

Okay, good question. This has to do with crafting. So what he's talking about here is the ability to make a choice in a moment that can be repeatable, right? Take, after take, after take, or you're doing a shows a week, something that's kind of locked in, that is baked into what you're doing, right? It's behavior.

(26:05):

So there's this moment. And let me just say, Sam Rockwell crushed that film. And what I thought was interesting, just to go back a little bit about Sam Rockwell and how he approached this film, I've talked before about how you need ideas. Not just for how you're going to play the part, but for beats and moments. Ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas. His idea for the part itself, the overarching kind of acting idea that everything else funneled down from was the essence of John Wayne. That's where he started. He read the script. That idea came to him. There's something John Wayne about this cop. And from there, everything else started to fall into place, and you've got an Oscar winning performance.

(27:01):

But what Tim is talking about here is what Meisner, and certainly I teach this in second year, what Meisner talks about, which are as ifs and particularizations. You can read in a script and see a moment, and know that that moment is important, that it requires a sharp response, a very particular piece of behavior, just the actor, you understand that.

(27:26):

Well, you can give yourself what I'll call and what Meisner called a particularization, an as if. It could be a physical particularization or an emotional particularization. For example, I know in this moment, I've got to respond in a very vivid, visceral way. And maybe the moment itself when you read it, doesn't really mean that much to you personally. But you know as the character, it sets you off.

(27:57):

Well, you particularize. You say to yourself, "In this moment, I'm going to respond as if I was just spit in the face. I'm going to respond as if I was just slapped." Well, you act that out. You can act out a particularization or an as if away from the script. It's immediate behavior. Once you have the behavior, you don't need that particularization anymore. You just wed it to the moment, and you've got it. "I'm going to respond in this moment like a deer hearing a twig snap in the woods." Well, if you're just sitting at home right now and you act that out, it gives you an immediate piece of behavior. I'll give you another one just off the top of my head here.

(28:41):

Someone saying something to you, and you know that the character's response has got to be one of real irritation, real grating like I just know that what's being said to me is really fucking irritating me. I'm going to respond in this moment as if the other person is running their fingernails down a chalkboard.

(29:02):

Now, if you just sit right now wherever you're at, and act that out, it's going to do something to you. You're arching your back, you're going to tense up a little bit. You can just feel the searingness of those fingernails. Wed that behavior to your response. Boom, you've got it. It's repeatable.

(29:21):

You can have emotional particularizations. Maybe the previous circumstance of the scene is one where I am breaking up with my girlfriend. That's what's happening. I'm leaving. Well, I could do an emotional particularization. That might be the circumstance, but it is as if she's breaking up with me. And that might give me the emotional life, which is interesting, and maybe more interesting than being detached. And I'm done with a relationship, and I'm out of here. So you can have emotional particularizations. You have physical particularizations with impediment work.

(30:01):

There's this really great play called Two for the Seesaw. It was written way back in the '50s. This woman Gittel, she has a bleeding ulcer at the top of a very emotional scene, and she's got moments where she needs to be in a lot of pain.

(30:20):

Well, you can have physical particularizations. I'm going to respond in this moment as if someone's putting a lit cigarette out on the lining of my stomach. If you act that out, it's going to give you a piece of behavior. You wed that to the moment, and then you've got it. You don't need to think about it anymore. And it allows it to be repetitive, because if you continue to work on it and you rehearse it, it just becomes baked in to the behavior you create. And when you know you've got it, and you like it, and it works, and you want to keep it, boom, done.

(30:50):

And so this is something that in second year of Meisner training, certainly in the second year of the work that we do at the Maggie Flanigan Studio, we work a lot with as ifs and particularizations. It quickens behavior, sharpens a moment, and you use them when you need to. So I hope that answers your question about making something repetitive, and I look forward to another question of yours. Somebody hit that SpeakPipe button and ask me something, and I'll put it on the show.

(31:22):

So I talked about in the open, heroes, having heroes, people that leave a mark on you. And there have been quite a few of mine that have passed away in the last few weeks, and I thought I would just talk about them. If you don't know who they are, or maybe you do, but you don't know that much about them, they might inspire you in some way.

(31:48):

We lost Ron Cephas Jones a week or so ago. Ron Cephas Jones has been around the theater and around television and film for 30 plus years. Fascinating life, interesting man, incredible work. I saw him on stage a number of times. I saw him, my God, maybe 20 years ago in Stephen Adly Guirgis' Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train. I saw him on Broadway in the Lynn Nottage play Clyde's.

(32:18):

He had a very difficult life growing up, became a heroine addict back in the early '80s, relapsed many, many times, ended up homeless, sleeping on a bench, had a double lung transplant about five or six years ago. Two pack a day smoker. But he ended up carving out a really prolific theater career, television career, film career, some really wonderful films. Sweet and Lowdown, Half Nelson, Across the Universe. I thought he was great in Luke Cage.

(32:52):

And when you have other creatives, other professionals who speak about you and of you in very kind and endearing ways, it says something about the life that you lived. He was a member of the LAByrinth Theater Company, one of the important theater companies in New York in the last 30 years. They actually did a profile of him in the New York Times a few years ago by Reggie Ugwu. And this is what he had to say about his work on This Is Us. It was kind of the show that really broke him into the mainstream. He won a SAG Award, a couple of Emmy Awards.

(33:34):

He played William Shakespeare Hill. He was the absentee father of Sterling K. Brown's character. And by the time he comes back into his son's life, he's dying of cancer. But he has a number of really great episodes. And this is what Reggie had to say about his work on that show. "On a series with no shortage of weary storylines. William is a figure of singular pathos. But Jones' soulful performance, the weather beaten brow, the voice like brushed wool, confers a lived in texture and depth." Wow. It would really be wonderful to have somebody write something like that about you, would it not?

(34:24):

And Ron had this to say just about his own life after his double lung transplant. He ended up on Broadway in Clyde's after the double lung transplant. So talk about thinking that you will never not just act again, but be able to walk and talk after something like that. This is what he had to say that spoke directly to me, and my views on what it means to be obsessed with your life's work.

(34:49):

He said, "My whole life has been the stage. The idea of not performing again seemed worse to me than death." I just always followed his work, thought he was a really interesting man and human being. And he will be missed. He was a hero of mine.

(35:11):

William Friedkin passed away in the last month. If you do not know who William Friedkin is, please look him the fuck up. I can only imagine that there are a lot of people that if you are under the age of 40, may have no idea who he is. The idea of turning to my class right now saying, "Who knows who William Friedkin is?" I doubt very many people would raise their hand. Very important director in the history of cinema, particularly New Hollywood, coming out of the 1970s.

(35:45):

A lot of his career was, eh, okay. But he made two films, which left a profound impact on the course of movie making. The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in the mid-70's as well. The French Connection, if you have never watched it, put it on your list. It won five Oscars, including best actor, best director. And it's based on a real story about these New York cops and breaking up a drug ring run by some French drug kingpins. Stars Gene Hackman. If you don't know who Gene Hackman is, Gene Hackman, incredible actor.

(36:32):

Now in 1971, he was coming off of Bonnie and Clyde. He had a really great part playing Warren Beatty's brother in Bonnie and Clyde. But this was the film that really put him on the map playing the detective Popeye Doyle.

(36:46):

And The Exorcist. It was the first horror film that broke into what we would consider the mainstream awards nomination process. It was nominated for Best Picture. It influenced a hell of a lot of films after that.

(37:08):

But The French Connection, man, there would be no Dirty Harry, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, The Wire, if there was not The French Connection. And the car chase, there's this car chase in The French Connection where Popeye Doyle is chasing this hijacked elevated train in Brooklyn. And if you read the history about this, William Friedkin had to pay off the NYPD and politicians so that they could film this. To film this, it was about 40 grand, I think he paid to be able to do it. I think it's one of the best car chases in the history of film.

(37:48):

And it's a really great book if you are interested, and you should be reading about the history of certainly New Hollywood. It's by Peter Biskind. It's called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and he talks a great deal about the importance of this film.

(38:06):

But William Friedkin, he left his mark. And The French Connection in particular, really when I watched it as a kid, just blew me away and made me want to be involved in filmmaking and acting. I found it very inspirational. Rest in peace William Friedkin.

(38:25):

And now I would like to talk about somebody who was a very important part of my adolescence, my teen years, early teen years. And that was Paul Reubens, who passed away at the age of 70, Pee-wee Herman.

(38:40):

I have always found Pee-wee Herman to be one of the greatest, most interesting, most courageous characters that we've ever seen on stage on film. Paul Reubens was a courageous, courageous performer. Peewee was the epitome of what it means to embody the open and curious child. The exuberant energy, the big voice. He was like a man child, this stunted adolescent, skinny rail thin guy in a gray suit and a red bow tie, with this odd voice and loud volume changes. It was incredibly original. He was so quick, so sharp. He did it in standup, where he really honed Pee-wee Herman for the first time back in the late seventies coming out of The Groundlings. He did it in television. The movies that he made, my God.

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I remember in 1981 when the Pee-wee Herman show first premiered on HBO, blew my mind. The talking chair, the talking clock, the double entendre. Do you know, I think what made Pee-wee Herman so fun and so interesting is that he not only appealed to the child, but he appealed to the adult as well. The humor kind of slid both ways, and it was just so sophisticated. He was so physical, he was so vivid. Pee-wee's Playhouse from '86 to '91 on CBS, my God, it was only 45 episodes. But every Saturday, it was just this collection of pop art, vintage toys, talking furniture. I mean, it was just so much fun.

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His interviews, whether he was on Letterman, there's this really great... Go down a YouTube wormhole. There's this really great clip of Pee-wee Herman on Letterman, one of his many appearances on David Letterman.

(40:47):

They're sitting there talking. And all of a sudden, like a kid would do out of nowhere where, he goes, "Okay, staring contest," and he's just staring at Letterman. And Letterman doesn't miss a beat, he stares right back at him. And for about 45 seconds, they are just locked eyes. Neither one of them smiling or moving at all. The crowd is just bent over in laughter. It was such a fun moment. He guest hosted Joan Rivers.

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Now, this is probably also before many of you were born. But back in the '80s, Joan Rivers actually had a talk show late at night. Go down the YouTube wormhole, watch the opening of him hosting The Joan Rivers Show. It's just a piece of masterful art. And I was lucky enough to see his 2010 Broadway show, PeeWee's Adventure. It was so much fun. And the way that that set was revealed, the gasping, you could just see everybody in that audience. Filled with baby boomers and Gen Xers like myself, who kind of grew up in their adolescence in teen years, or they were parents raising their kids. The gasps, tears were running down everyone's faces. It was just like childlike wonder. It was so much fun.

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He was one of a kind, and also had his fair share of ups and downs. I remember in 1991, when he was arrested for exposing himself in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida. And here's this guy who has cultivated for 25 plus years, this character rooted in innocence, and openness, and playfulness. And the actual artist, the guy himself, he is revealed as a human being for fuck's sake. Talk about being canceled. It was canceling before anybody even knew what that was. The outrage, oh my God. The moral hypocrisy of it all, how awful and terrible it was. He went through many years of being ostracized and shunned. So it was really rewarding to see him in 2010 come back fully and end up on Broadway. He was an incredible performer, an amazing artist, and he left a big impact on me about what it means to be curious and open, playful. So rest in peace, Paul Reubens.

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And finally, I'd like to talk a little bit about Sinead O'Connor, who died a few weeks ago. I remember in 1987, 1988, hearing the song Troy on her first album The Lion and the Cobra, and the song Mandinka, and just thinking to myself, "My God, this woman's voice is phenomenal." And then you see what she looked like. This shaved head, these piercing, open, vulnerable eyes. She was an amazing artist.

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And what I love about Sinead is that she was not afraid to speak truth to power, and she risked everything to stand up and expose the child abuse of children by Catholic priests. Talk about the patriarchy, the misogyny, the sexism of our culture.

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And on October 3rd, 1992, a seminal moment for me and for a lot of people in the country, on either side of how you felt about it, her appearance on Saturday Night Live where she sang a cover of Bob Marley's War, acapella. She's standing there in this kind of white gown surrounded by candles. She sings this song acapella, and at the end, she pulls out a picture, and it pulls out. She lifts it up. She was holding it the whole time, a picture of Pope John Paul II, and rips it three times, and tosses it on the floor, as she says, "Fight the real enemy." And what she was doing was talking about the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. And she saw it firsthand. She experienced the cruelty in Ireland, which was pretty much a theocracy for decade upon decades.

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She was crucified. Her career was absolutely destroyed, ostracized. And maybe two weeks later, she was slated to sing at a benefit. Not a benefit, it was a celebration, I think of Bob Dylan in Madison Square Garden. And she comes out, and you can't tell, the boos and the cheers are so loud, it makes this just cacophony of sound. She was coming out to sing... I forget what song she was going to sing. She couldn't do it. So she pulls the earplugs out of her ear, she tells the band to just not play anything, and she sings that Bob Marley song again with full throated rage, and anger, and pain, and walks off the stage.

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I just imagine what that must have been like, what she must have felt. But this is what she did. She was the voice of social progress. She was a prophet, so to speak. She was proven right, and she became an instant pariah of the conservative political right. All these religious people, they took thousands and thousands of her CDs and tapes. They put it on the concrete near Rockefeller Center, and they drove a 30 ton steamroll over it. She was so brave. I'm not surprised that she's no longer with us.

(47:00):

Once she lost her son at 17 to suicide a couple of years ago, she talked openly about not wanting to go on, about how difficult it was. Her own struggle with mental health, with bipolar, with a mother who beat her, and would keep her outside for weeks at a time to just live in the garden.

(47:22):

That picture of the Pope that she tore in the three was one of two things that hung in her mother's bedroom. And when her mother died, she took it off the wall and she said to herself, "I'm going to use this at some point. How, I don't know." And it wasn't until years later that the Saturday Night Live opportunity came.

(47:42):

There is an amazing documentary called Nothing Compares, which came out a couple of years ago. I think you can watch on Amazon Prime or Netflix. It's a great documentary about her life, her work, certainly the fallout of what happened in 1992.

(48:01):

Just the idea of her shaving her head in the late '80s, people could not wrap their mind around it. It upset them. They could not believe that a woman could think and act for herself, that she could do whatever the fuck she wanted to do with her own body. They couldn't wrap their mind around it.

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And you watch these clips in the documentary of these reporters, interviewers, talk show hosts, the way they talk to her, the way they ask questions to her is so demeaning, so sexist, so filled with misogyny. She handles it all with such grace, and sensitivity, and kindness. She was just a kind human being, a loving human being. And she endured a tremendous amount of hostility, of anger, of vitriol, for speaking her mind. Here's something she said about that picture that hung on her mother's wall. She said, "The types of people who kept these things were devils, like my mother. I never knew when or how or where I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the moment came," and she did.

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She's known most famously, of course, for the Prince cover, Nothing Compares 2 U, the video of that, the sadness in her eyes, the tears coming down her face as she looked in that camera with that closeup, unbelievable openness and vulnerability. I probably sat in my room in college at Purdue and listened to that song hundreds of times over, and over, and over again. I loved it so much. She was a pioneer. She was a diarist, really, in her music.

(49:49):

She basically diarized her life in mainstream pop music, and she was deeply sensitized to racism, to the plight of Black men and women in this country, who have been subjected to continual racism for the last 400 years.

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And she talked a lot about what Roots did for her, watching Roots as a kid. If you don't know Roots, it was a very important mini-series in the 1970s, the late '70s, about slavery. And it put it on her radar, and she dealt with it many, many, many times in her music.

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One song that dealt with it directly, it's called Black Boys on Mopeds, and it's based off an actual incident, of course, of police officers targeting an African American boy doing something that they thought was suspicious, that ended up in that child's death. Really great song, disturbing song. I mean, when she came out to sing, she sang at the Grammys, I think really early on in her career. Maybe her first time she was ever nominated for a Grammy, she comes out to sing her song, and she's got Public Enemy's logo painted on the side of her head, because she was so upset that rap was not being acknowledged in the mainstream, that these really prolific and interesting African American rappers and bands were being ostracized and shunned from mainstream recognition. She found a way to be non-conforming and to say something in her own way. I mean, that's courage. I found that very inspiring.

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And I'll just wrap up today with a couple of quotes from Sinead talking about the cruelty and the hatred that was leveled at her for decades after Saturday Night Live. She said this, she said, "They tried to bury me, but they did not realize I was a seed." And she was someone who early on, stood up for issues and causes that were not popular. Abortion rights, the rights of the LGBTQ community, those that had contracted AIDS that were dying and suffering in the eighties, she stood up and spoke for them, for the transgendered community. She was talking about their rights before it was remotely popular. So I will just end it here on another quote by Sinead. Rest in Peace.

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"An artist's job sometimes is to create the difficult conversations that need to be had, and it's none of my business what anyone thinks of me when I do that."

(53:04):

Well, my fellow daydreamers, thank you for sticking around on this solo episode. Keeping that phone in your pocket. Please subscribe and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you have a few seconds and you can go to iTunes and leave a review, that would be fantastic. Share this with your friends. Tell them there's this great podcast about the artistic life. They got to listen to it. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com. Go to the contact page, hit that red button. I use SpeakPipe. Leave me a question. Share with me some of your thoughts.

(53:30):

You can go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com if you are interested in training with me and my New York City Conservatory. My next first year class begins September 8th. You can follow me on Instagram @maggieflaniganstudio @creatingbehavior. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for this song, my man. My friends, stay open, find those artistic heroes. Stay resilient, play full out with yourself, and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace.