Delicious Writing

A couple of weeks ago I dusted off my play, "Brando, Tennessee & Me" which I hadn't looked at in 3 years. I had notes on its structure and characters from the generosity of Perry Martin, the leading theatrical director in New Orleans. I heeded his advice and ripped the thing apart, and replaced two characters. One of the characters I added in was in there in the early stages of the play: James Dean. In fact, I think there were 8 or 9 characters in the beginning, when I did a staged reading of the play at the now defunct (due to Hurricane Katrina) True Brew playhouse in New Orleans. I also had Norman Mailer, Shelly Winters, Gore Vidal and others.

After the 3 day run of the reading -- which was a huge thrill to hear the actors bring my words to life -- Perry (and other theatre-types) said it needed to have a smaller cast, which would sharpen the focus on the characters. What Perry said was, "If it's 'Brando, Tennessee & Me' -- give me more Brando, more Tennessee!"

He initially suggested I cut out James Dean, because, "You want a young Brando, AND a young James Dean? You'll never find the actors for it!"

But after Perry read my re-write (at the time) he said I needed to put James Dean back in -- since this play was good enough for Broadway and "you can find those actors in New York."

Well, I put off and put off dealing with it -- and later discovered I'd lost the earlier versions of the play with James Dean in it -- so I had to go back and re-do my research to build that character's dialogue from the ground up.

I immersed myself in the world of James Dean -- re-reading his biography and researching his life online. It was interesting and delightful, not like work at all.

When I first wrote the play, about 6-7 years ago, there wasn't any YouTube. But now I could watch James Dean in interviews, screen-tests, and on TV and movies, to try to get a sense of how he spoke, and his language habits. It was delicious to be able to create that dialogue, and also to re-arrange things to give Tennessee and Brando more lines. And I polished up Capote's lines, while inserting a new character, the Bartender. I even changed the setting for most of the scenes which I'll keep secret because once others see what I've done, they'll want to steal the technique. It was something I'd thought about way back, and when I told Henry Hood of it (he was the old man I used to help out a bit and he was the inspiration for the play -- and it's central character, the "me" in the title) he sat up and said, "That's GREAT theatrics!" I was going to save that theatrical device and setting for another play I had in mind, but I decided to use it here -- who knows if I'll get to write another play?

It was fun writing - and I was kicking myself for not getting to it earlier!

But it wasn't all fun -- at one point when I had ripped the play apart, and had a bunch of notes and quotes I needed to work in, I felt as if my brain was splayed and I couldn't do anything else until I put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Then last week I had to get back to work on some tech reports, which is sometimes interesting, but certainly not fun or very satisfying.

In the meantime, Roman, the Crazy Croatian, who is a literary genius, read the play in its new form (last year he read the old version). He immediately saw the improvement and we went through it scene by scene and he pointed out some weak lines and places where I could re-structure the scene. So I've started to address those issues, as well as to work in a few more things I want to put in the play before it's ready.

Then yesterday, over wine, cheese and oysters, Roman said that the play was "really very funny, very good" and "will certainly be produced on Broadway." He said he always has had a knack for these things, for picking out what will be a hit and what will not.

So I am choosing to believe him and suddenly it seems as if the clouds of my recent weeks-long depression have cleared. In my mind, I literally see the name of the play in lights, hopefully at the Barrymore Theatre on Broadway.