Taking Characters from Greek Mythology

"How can you copyright an enterprise, a profession? I must be free to film a story of a newspaper publisher. If I am restrained, it will force us all to go back and take our characters, say, from Greek mythology. And even then I suppose somebody would contend he was Zeus."

--Orson Welles, quoted in Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu by Simon Callow

 Working hard on my 1940s play that depicts Zeus as a movie-studio boss (ooh, how meta!).

See also the New York Times' recent review of a film book, Gods Like Us, about movie stardom, abounding with Greek-mythology references.

We & Orson Welles (Theater Pub column)

I'm finally managing to read Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu, one of the books I meant to read this summer, and I'm finding it totally engrossing. Going into it, I had the question, "How did Welles become so accomplished at such a young age?" and it turns out that, in large part, the answer to that is "because he was a self-promoting, workaholic, egotistical jerk." So, fortunately, rather than filling me with envy and resentment of Welles' success, this book is making me feel better about the choices I have made and am continuing to make.

More of my thoughts about this book and about the young Welles are in my latest column over at SF Theater Pub.

See also: my review of Me and Orson Welles, the 2009 film about Welles' 1937 Julius Caesar production with the Mercury Theatre.

The Books I Meant to Read This Summer

Labor Day always holds a kind of melancholy for me -- growing up, it was the night before the school started, and the crickets would chirp as I lit a sparkler saved from the Fourth of July and said goodbye to summer -- so tonight I find myself thinking of what I never got around to doing this summer. Like uploading my photos from my Europe trip, or writing that blog post going into my Pint-Sized show in more detail. And for some reason, I feel compelled to compile a list of all the books I meant to read this summer and never did.

• Something by Charles Dickens: I was going to read a Dickens novel (maybe Bleak House?) when I was in London, as it is the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth and the place where I stayed was around the corner from the Dickens museum. As it was, I packed Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus instead, barely got through a few chapters (when I'm traveling, I always think I'm going to read more than I actually do) and haven't touched a Dickens novel in years.

• Other People We Married, by Emma Straub: Straub's debut novel, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, is coming out tomorrow, and as you may recall I'm super excited to read it. But I wanted to read her first book, a short story collection, beforehand.

• Wallflower at the Orgy and Crazy Salad, by Nora Ephron: Last summer, when I was writing Pleiades and seeking resources about the early '70s, the fabulous Megan Cohen told me to read  Ephron's first two collections of essays. I never got around to it, but when Ephron passed away in June, and several tributes mentioned just how terrific her journalism was, I publicly pledged (on Twitter) that I would read these essay collections this summer. Especially because I would also be revising Pleiades. But I couldn't find these books in any bookstore, and now I'm about to give the revised version of Pleiades to my publisher, and am irrationally freaking out like, "If only I'd read Ephron, my play would be better!"

• Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu and Orson Welles: Hello Americans, by Simon Callow: These biographies have gotten terrific reviews; Welles is a fascinating figure for anyone who cares about theater and cinema; and I'm writing a play about a 1940s Hollywood starlet and, lest we forget, Welles married Rita Hayworth. Plus, I turned 25 this summer, Orson Welles was 25 when he made Citizen Kane, and I want to figure out how the hell he did it. All compelling reasons to read these books... but it hasn't happened yet.

• Cultural Amnesia, by Clive James: I've had this erudite tome of essays on my bedside table for over a year now and keep telling myself that I will read one essay per night before bed. Then, when I was in London, the story broke that Mr. James has leukemia and does not expect that he can fight it much longer. As it is always nicer to read and appreciate someone's work while he is still alive (instead of saying, as I did with Ephron, "Oh, I always meant to read her book, and now she's dead!"), I recommitted myself to reading this. But it's a rare night when I actually do read one of these essays before bed.

My parents would probably tell me to focus on what I accomplished this summer and stop beating up on myself, but Labor Day is a time for melancholy, and I have no sparklers or crickets at my disposal, so let me think, with a sigh, of these unread books.

Highly-Anticipated Movie Reviews: "Me and Orson Welles"

Title of movie: Me and Orson Welles

Reasons for anticipation: Zac Efron is sooo dreamy!

Kidding! No... my reasons for anticipating this have nothing to do with teen heartthrobs, and everything to do with the fact that I am totally obsessed with backstage dramas, and the 1930s, and the American theater of that time, and the portrayal of theater on film... So this movie, being the story of Orson Welles' 1937 production of Julius Caesar, would surely be amazing--wouldn't it?

My verdict: Unfortunately, Me and Orson Welles is not as awesome as I'd hoped. It plays like a fairly generic backstage drama/coming-of-age story, rather than pinpointing what is specifically interesting about Welles and his Caesar.

It's a charming movie, but very lightweight, and at two hours, a bit too long. (It's supposed to deal with the frantic final week before the opening of Caesar, but is not paced very urgently.) What it has to say about the theater--actors can be needy and insecure and vain and petty, making art involves a lot of bluster and bullshit, there is always a crisis but the show always manages to go on--has all been said many times before. The idea of the "genius artist who is also a pain in the ass to work with" is also a cliché, even if Orson Welles was a pretty stellar real-life example of the type.

But then, the movie never explains why Welles was a genius or what made his Caesar so revolutionary. You see, in 1937, it was mindblowing to update Julius Caesar to the present day and stage it as an anti-Fascist polemic, as Welles did. But because the movie focuses on the shenanigans of the last week of rehearsal, and is told through the perspective of naive teenager Richard (Zac Efron), it never reveals the social/political/philosophical implications of Welles' production.

The other mindblowing thing is that Welles was only 22 when he produced, directed, and starred in Caesar; in other words, he was the same age as Zac Efron is now. But good luck finding an actor who resembles the baby-faced 22-year-old Welles (at left), and can imitate his famous voice, and convey the immensity of his character--his genius, his hubris, his desires. Faced with such a challenge, Me and Orson Welles decided that the best it can score is two out of three, and cast unknown British actor Christian McKay in the role. In terms of his acting and his voice, McKay is excellent--charismatic, powerful, and a showman through and through. But he is also 36 years old, and looks it; he comes across as a paterfamilias, not an arrogant youth just striking out on his own. Welles is supposed to be just 5 years older than Richard--think how much more complicated and interesting the movie would be if McKay and Efron seemed to be only 5 years apart in age!

Zac Efron annoyed me less than I thought he would, though his performance is nothing more than serviceable and I have no desire to see him in any role that is darker or more complicated than that of Richard Samuels. But Richard is a 1930s male ingenue, so the role suits Efron.

Claire Danes plays Sonja, the theater's secretary/production assistant. (I was tickled that Sonja is a Vassar alumna--no doubt one of Hallie Flanagan's protegees!) She's smart, efficient, and ambitious; and because being smart and efficient was not enough for a woman to get ahead in the 1930s, she's willing to sleep her way to the top. However, her character is confusingly written. It's unclear what the "top" is for her (is her goal to be an actress? a writer? a producer?) and it's also unclear why, if most of her sexual encounters are mercenary, she chooses to sleep with Richard. Sure, Richard's got chutzpah and a nice profile, but why would a pretty twenty-something woman go after this high-school kid? It feels like the screenwriters thought, "This is a coming-of-age story, so Richard needs to lose his virginity and have his heart broken," without considering why Sonja would acquiesce to this.

It seems that one of the assumptions behind Me and Orson Welles is that the 1930s were "a more innocent time" and that the people who go see this movie just want to be transported back to an era when the theater was "the thea-tuh," and bright-eyed teenage boys could luck into show business, and people sat around and talked about how sad it is that George Gershwin died. (This reference, and others, will go completely over the heads of any teenage Efron fangirls who go to see the movie--which is kind of a shame.) That's why the movie's main character is the bland and inoffensive Richard instead of the complex titan Orson Welles. That's why it neglects to explore things like the fallout of the Great Depression, or the implications of Welles' anti-fascist take on Caesar, or anything else that would be too gritty and depressing. But, see, why I love the 1930s is that it wasn't a more innocent time. It was passionate and scary and keyed-up, just as much as the 1960s were, just as much as our current era. And that's what's missing from Me and Orson Welles.

Voodoo Macbeth!

A quick addendum to my post on Macbeth just because I think it is so very cool: a clip of the infamous "Voodoo" Macbeth, directed by a 20-year-old Orson Welles for the Federal Theater Project. OK, the acting isn't terrific, but it is amazing to be able to see a bit of this legendary production. (Thanks to About Last Night for the link.)



John Houseman, in his book Entertainers and the Entertained, recalls "the selfless fervor that kept us going, night after night, through rehearsals of the Negro Macbeth, in the freezing, barren Harlem winter of 1935-36. There is no theatrical aphrodisiac more potent or satisfying than extreme collective penury." During the rehearsal process, many Harlemites "suspected [the play] of being a deliberate and cruel hoax calculated to ridicule the Negro in the eyes of the white world" but, according to Houseman, opening night was a "triumphal consecration."

People still talk about this production (the novel I'm currently reading, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, even alludes to it) so I am thrilled that a piece of it was preserved for us YouTube viewers of the future!

"Orson's Shadow" at ART

Saw this play a week ago at Artists Repertory Theatre. It's closed now, but I still thought I'd write it up.

Photo of Alexander Korda, Orson Welles and Vivien Leigh from if charlie parker was a gunslinger....

Austin Pendleton's hit play Orson's Shadow is a backstage comedy-drama about what comes after fame, success, and celebrity. It takes place in 1960--about 2 decades after Orson Welles made Citizen Kane, Vivien Leigh made Gone with the Wind, and "Larry" Olivier made Rebecca. The trendy theatre critic Ken Tynan brings Orson, Larry, and Larry's new flame Joan Plowright together to stage Ionesco's Rhinoceros, whereupon all hell breaks loose. Larry is a preening diva, Orson has been a failure for over a decade, Ken is nervous and sickly, and Vivien is manic-depressive. Only Joan is really presented in a positive light, as a smart and hardworking young actress who has great sympathy for her rival, Vivien. I wonder if Pendleton had to do this because Joan Plowright is the only one of these figures still alive.

Kudos to Pendleton for discovering such a rich dramatic situtation and cast of characters. For instance, Orson, Ken, and Larry all hate Rhinoceros, but the play convincingly explains why they each decide to produce it. Orson hates Larry for "ruining me in Hollywood in 1948" but loves Ken and Vivien. Ken, the famously waspish critic who slammed Vivien's Cleopatra (she still hasn't forgiven him), idolizes both Larry and Orson like an awestruck fan. Here is a man who loves "not wisely but too well." Actually, that goes for all of the characters. And they hate too well, also. Their relationships are complex and well-explored, full of interesting parallels and contrasts.

Pendleton has a harder time beginning and ending his play. The story requires a lot of exposition in order to make sense and Pendleton, not wanting to use the time-honored device of staging a conversation between two characters that reveals all the relevant information, instead makes a joke out of it. It looks like such a conversation will begin between Ken and a young stagehand, until Ken turns to the audience and says "I wouldn't want to make that nice young man a vehicle for exposition," and does a monologue explaining the situation. This postmodern cutesiness annoyed me. The end of the play is similar: just when the passions and and tensions boil over, the action stops and Joan delivers a monologue explaining what happened to all of the characters in the future. It's too quiet an ending for a play so full of wit and conflict.

Todd Van Voris did a great job as Orson Welles, capturing the physique, the rich baritone voice, and the emotions of a man who once had it all, lost it, blames other people for his problems, knows deep down it's really his fault, but is determined to stick with his art. Followspot said it better than I could: "a brooding, wounded giant with a voice that can wake the dead." Susan Maginn was a very vulnerable and sympathetic Vivien Leigh--the way she alternated between self-aware acceptance of her mental illness, and complete irrationality, was skillful and sad. Michael Mendelson captured all of Ken Tynan's tics and neuroses, including a great emphysema attack in Act II.