parent trap

Its funny. I remember with such clarity of vision the moment my son was born and all the things it meant to me as a person. The heaps of responsibility, the fear, the outright disbelief that I could have had anything to do with creating something that spectacular (and as it turns out these 5 years later...Smart). But for some reason I never really gave much thought to my career. Possibly because I was more than content to stay home and be a SAHD for a little while after my wife went back to work. After all I had cared for both of my parents when they were near death so this seemed like a much more positive situation. His every accomplishment those first nine months stunned me and filled me with awe. Then on Sept 11, after he had been in child care for less than a week, I felt we had reached the end of our short life together as a family. I raced to the facility to collect my son because I thought, if I die today and my son dies today God Damn it we will die in each others arms. My wife was at work and sort of stranded. As that afternoon rolled by and it seemed that an all out attack on the US was not in the offing I questioned what I was doing with my life. And like so many artists I know, I felt a certain sense of shame at having the audactiy to be an actor. What sort of fucking contribution could I make to a world so recently shattered and thrashed and torn apart in front of everyone. As an artist I wondered. As an American I felt some shame. As a father absolute terror and that's when it hit me. It sounds cliche now, but at the time I thought if I give in now..the motherfuckers win. NO WAY. And it turns out that the theater season of 2001-2002 was the best in my professional life down here. The combination of the aforementioned will not to let the bastards win combined with the awesome realization of the physical power of creation I was capable of made me more fertile creatively than I had been in years. I starred in show after show after show, appearing in plays, nonstop, from Sept straight through June and having the NY Times say some of the best things anyone (critic) has ever said about shows I was in, nevermind starring in.

Flash forward 5 years and I am faced with the opportunity of playing one of my three favorite roles in the Shakespearean canon but it would mean being away from my family from April to November. And not a car ride away. Several hundred miles, at least a ten hour drive. And for the first time in my parental life I wonder, the money wouldn't cover the cost of help for my wife with my son. What theater money ever would. Could I focus enough to do a good job, missing my family. Would I get to enjoy the relative freedoms of sleeping late and not having to pick someone up at sometime?

It is worth pondering and pondering but as the Grinch did, I puzzled and puzzled until my puzzler was sore.

Faith in the shape of a Donut. (Doughnut)

Sunday mornings always make me misty. I am a sentimentalist in search of a faith. Faith in something. When I was younger my family would pile into our Ford station wagon (the one with the fold down seat so you could sit in the back and look at the cars coming at you and pretend to pick your nose or whatever. The same metal death trap that is at the end of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving) and then we would trundle off to St. Andrews Church for Sunday Services. If I am not mistaken St. Andrew was a fisherman. Or a fisher of men. Me? I am just a fisherman, thats were our relationship stopped.

Anyway, if we went without a struggle and sat quietly and still through the service we would be rewarded for our behavior by stopping at a bakery called Hazel's. This place sat at the corner of Eaton Court and Washington Street in Wellesley Mass. Right across from the clock tower and sold doughnuts that rival any known to man on this earth. The only thing that came close in the 35 odd years since then is a warm Krispy Kreme. But those you can get sick of. Hazel's Doughnuts you never got sick of. Warm, glazed, a mess to eat and impossible to understand. They were more impenetrable to me then than the Christian faith was and is. I couldn't conceive how anything so good could be all things to all 8 year olds at all times. First off, they were sanctioned by the parents, second there were no monogamy rules concerning flavors, third you got all sticky and sweet, and fourth it was a Pavlovian association that was unconsciously building in my mind that associates deep religious faith with doughnuts. Much as I associated Brighams Chocolate Chip ice cream with visits from my Aunt Eileen.

So I don't know, perhaps the lesson is that my faith is tied up in doughnuts. The whole Christ thing flew like a barn swallow through my head because Sunday wasn't about church...It was about doughnuts.

Theologically this has caused me some trouble over the years. I was on a film shoot back in 1998 and we were shooting in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma. We had three 35 mm film cameras set up to shoot a major confrontation scene in a film called Restoration that was produced by the Mormon Church as a really expensive history lesson. Some day I will write on that experience. Anyway... Mormons have more faith, and I mean pure unadulterated FAITH, than any group I have ever seen. And when some dark clouds started coming in like an army (sorry Emily) threatening to shut down this VERY EXPENSIVE shot, the crew and many of the actors( I think there were only about 6 of us on that shoot that were not Mormon) gathered together with some of the Church Elders to pray for the weather to break so we could get the shot off. It was kind of amazing because we were on a ranch that was literally bigger than Manhattan with scorpions and snakes and ticks and all sorts of other junk and this group of Mormons held hands, bowed their heads and prayed like the dickens for the sun to come back out and let us get the shot off. But what will always stick in my mind is that they were holding hands in a tight circle and if God was looking down on them they would have looked very much like a doughnut.

Background (NOT EXTRA'S)

GOOD MORNING AND WELCOME TO LETS MAKE A DEAL

On todays show we will be giving away an all expense trip to Burlington Vermont to see my short film THE READER at its 17th (or so ) festival. This package includes transportation (a ride up with me in a beat up old Saturn that my son has trashed) Accomodations (at a smarmy little inn just outside Burlington(hey its "leaf peeping" season so rooms are hard to get) and a Festival Pass that will get you into everything at the festival!!

All seriousness I am an actor, writer, director, producer, father, husband, guitarist and stuggling to make it all work.

So check this out. When I shot my first film we were way up north in Vermont and because we were there in September we had to rouse early for good morning light. So we would set up the shot (tough stuff cause we shot a 12 minute film on super 16 with a total of 5 people (including 2 castmembers and I was one of those) and then someone took this shot of my DP taking some morning stock footage.

So we finish the hard work of making the film and get it processed and stuff and get back here to the NYC/NJ area and suddenly I realize that I am a company. I had founded an LLC so my house wouldn't be taken away from me if Chris, my DP, had fallen off that dock been shocked to death or drowned. So, now that I was a company what do I do????? Get a logo, business cards and art.