And One Far-Too-Long Post Shall Become as FOUR Posts . . .

1. EGO


I finished my production draft of Hamlet (for the production I'll be designing/directing in June) on Sunday. It's 92 pages long in the standard script format that I like working in, which isn't bad (I am hoping, HOPING, for a 2-hour 15-minute show, but I'll live if it's up to 2:45 with intermission). I have to send an email out to all the actors I want to keep working with, saying "Who wants to do this, and what part(s) are you interested in?" and see what response I get.

I have Bryan Enk cast as Polonius/Fortinbras, Daniel Kleinfeld as Rosencrantz (and possibly others), me as Hamlet, and that's all that's set right now. There are specific people I have in mind for Osric, Voltimand, and Guildenstern, but the rest is wide open, and I want to read as many people as I can for everything else. As usual, I would rather work with the Gemini CollisionWorks regulars, but I may have to venture outside the group for some of the parts. I don't care all that much about casting "age-appropriate," necessarily -- probably as a result of always being cast myself as "the older person" in every damned show I've done since I was eleven (result of a deep voice and serious demeanor) -- but I'm not sure if any of the group will necessarily want to play my mother and stepfather (hell, Glenn Close was only nine years older than Mel Gibson when they did the parts). I'm trying to play about 15 years younger than I am, so maybe it'll work out with people from the GCW pool.


I'm in the middle of breaking down the script into french scenes now -- taking an internet break from this -- and I'm going to need at least 18 actors for this show. There appear to be two ways to break this down -- either I have 18 actors, all of who have at least one speaking role (many of them not very large) with most having a lot more non-speaking stage time, or 10-11 actors with all the speaking roles, lots of doubling, everyone getting lots of "speaking" stage time, and another 7-8 non-speaking "extras" who I can rotate out performance to performance, if necessary. I'd rather the first plan, of course, but I still have some paranoid worries that I won't be able to get the actors I want for some fo these parts if they "only" have their one or two short scenes (of course, this was how World Gone Wrong worked, though I didn't realize it at all at the time). Well, I'll get the people. I have to finish the breakdown(s) first so I know exactly what doubles I'm trying to cast . . .

I also need to check in with the others at The Brick to be sure everyone's aware that this is happening and that I'm really set with this for the Pretentious Festival in June. It's come up in conversation with Jeff, Hope, and Robert, I think, so I just have to check with Michael, I guess, to be sure we're all a go on this.

The show is also now officially titled Ian W. Hill's Hamlet.

I had considered this some time ago, and discarded the idea, but then Berit had the idea on her own and brought it up, and convinced me to go ahead with it (she's gonna read this and complain, "Oh, sure, blame me!" - no blame, she's right, I just needed a push). This production is, after all, for the Pretentious Festival, and the production is not in fact going to be very pretentious at all (quite the opposite in some ways, though certain kinds of pretension are critiqued in it). The pretension is in me as actor/manager taking on this role and directing it as well, of course. A role nobody else would probably ever cast me in. I'm only able to get up the nerve to do it because of the cover of "The Pretentious Festival" and by thinking of the fine writing Steven Berkoff did in his book I Am Hamlet about directing and playing the role himself -- his point being that ANY actor can play Hamlet, the role is so vast, containing multitudes, that as long as the actor correctly finds and plays THEIR Hamlet, they can't go wrong. This comforts me sometimes.

That said, I'm still planning on losing as much weight as I can for the part (I'm at about 250 lbs. right now, I want to get rid of around 70 lbs. of that or so - probably not going to happen, but I can try), getting rid of the beard and much of my bushy eyebrows, and going blond. I have no idea if this will really matter to the audience one way or another, but it'll matter to me.

Berit has also reminded me that any time I'm asked about what I'm doing next by anyone in the Indie/Off-Off community and I say, "Hamlet," they immediately get that I'll be directing and playing the role and seem honestly excited to see what I'm going to do with it. So within a small community, it's a selling point. Ian W. Hill's Hamlet (by William Shakespeare)

I had also decided anyway that 2007 was to be "The Year of Ego and Self-Promotion" for myself anyway, figuring that if I was to really try to accomplish anything in my art (as in possibly move towards making an actual living with it), I was going to have to unleash my monstrous ego, sell myself, and huckster the work as much as possible and not be ashamed of it. I'm not very good at this -- I have the ego, oh dear, DO I have the ego, but I've worked very hard for years (not always so successfully) to keep it under wraps, as the display of ego in others (even people I respect and admire who deserve to have large egos) nauseates me. Well, this year, I'm going to make myself sick.

(. . . oh god I'm gonna get KILLED for this . . .)

Third Part, Different from the First

3. Surprise


In looking over the Oscar nominations when they came out, and realizing that I had not seen even one movie nominated in ANY of the categories, it occurred to me that the only movies I had seen in a movie theatre in the past year were Drawing Restraint 9 and INLAND EMPIRE. That's it. Period. Whoa.

Between ticket prices, Netflix, lack of interest in what comes out these days, and theatrical work to take care of, I guess that seeing movies in the theatre (and I've ALWAYS been one for the promotion of actually seeing films on a BIG screen rather than video) has become a hell of a lot less important in my life than it once was. This would sadden me if I didn't have better things to think about.

Which reminds me, more Lynch writing soon -- I have the essay file open in the background constantly while working on other things, so I can drop ideas here and there if they come up. But Hamlet, sorry, Ian W. Hill's Hamlet (gotta get used to that) has needed to take over here for the time being.

It's like Cremaster or Something, what with the Out of Order and All

4. Disgust


In case you haven't by some chance come across either these original stories, or commentary about them somewhere else, here's a couple of lovely items from The Washington Post on the way our wounded servicemen are being treated by our "SUPPORT THE TROOPS" government when they come home, in PARTS ONE and TWO. Please read them if you don't already know what they're about. I'd say more, but I start to see red and boil over. The articles are disgusting enough and speak for themselves.

My brother David comes home to Maine from the Army this week (day after tomorrow, I believe). He's very lucky that his injury (broken leg) is not something chronic or permanently disabling, given what they're writing about here. Of course he, and all the other soldiers who have been injured in Iraq in "non-combat" ways (he fell through a flight of stairs while on patrol) have not been included in any budget projections in what the VA will need to take care of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, so the Administration can keep the apparent cost of the War down.

Berit and I will be spending next week up in Maine ourselves, so we'll be able to see him then. Good.



And with some additional commentary, here's Mr. Randy Newman with A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.

The Post with All the Links Takes Longest

2. Wonder


I love comic strips. I don't get daily papers anymore though, so the only ones I see now are the ones I subscribe to in my blogreader: Doonesbury, Mutts, Get Fuzzy, Dinosaur Comics, For Better or For Worse, Get Your War On, Dykes to Watch Out For, Two Lumps, and Zits. I have a fondness for the many other classic strips I grew up with which, frankly, aren't really that good at all. So The Comics Curmudgeon has been a godsend (I should also mention Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke, for a more focused, one-strip approach).

Josh, the Curmudgeon, pulls out those comics that just need to be commented on, and gives it to them. So I only get the small, appropriate dose of such strips as Curtis, B.C., Gil Thorpe, Mary Worth, and Funky Winkerbean, to name just a few (and what the hell HAPPENED to Funky Winkerbean anyway? When I was growing up it was a semi-funny strip about high school kids, now it's a depressing soap opera about a bleak, hopeless world where nothing good can ever happen to anybody!).


One of the most-hated and discussed comics in the comments at The Comics Curmudgeon is Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse. I have been reading this comic since its inception, and as a result have become completely caught up in the saga of the Patterson family, who have been aging in real time over the last 30 years or so. I have been so close to this strip, following it so long, that it has only recently become apparent to me how horrible most of the people in it are, and how terrible Johnston's storytelling has become. But I'm trapped. I've been with them since the beginning. I have to follow the lives of the Pattersons, even as they've become a mawkish, sentimental, saintly group in a world of evil outsiders.

I was thinking I might be freed this year, when Johnston announced that she was ending the strip. But she has since changed her mind, and will allow other hands to continue the story, and worse, FAR WORSE, the characters are going to freeze in age where they are now! No, oh god, no no no. I can't stop reading it, and reading it gets more and more painful.

The only way to make it bearable is to decide (as many readers at Curmudgeon have done) that it's become some kind of Mulholland Drive situation, and that at some point Mike Patterson has slipped into a coma, and the events of the strip now are his deranged coma dreams, in which he and his family make all the wrong choices about everything, and yet somehow every keeps turning out better and better for them! Yeah, that works.


The Curmudgeon has also made me a fanatic for the hijinx of those wacky girls in Apartment 3-G, a strip I'd always heard of but never read. This soap-opera strip about three career girls in NYC, with glacial pacing and insane plot twists, has recently gone over the edge.

First, red-headed non-entity Tommie (who has had nothing interesting happen to her in 45 years or so of the strip's existence) sees a friend in an Off- or Off-Off-Broadway show (it's not clear; looks like something in-between), attends the cast party, tries to give an intelligent critique to the show's director, and instead suddenly finds his tongue in her mouth (see my new avatar above) -- yes, this happens all the time in NYC theatre, of course, that's why we do it (Berit notes that usually everyone's drunker first - a few well-placed bubbles around Tommie's head would have made the whole sequence more realistic). She's spent the past week going over this with Apartment 3-G's distaff-Sammy Glick, Margo, demon-goddess with hair the color of her blackened, shriveled soul. Worship the Margo, fools, for she is She Who Must Be Obeyed!

Now, bubble-headed blonde Luann, an aspiring painter who has her first NYC gallery show coming up, has rented a studio so she can work on her art in peace to get it all ready for the show (there are so many things wrong with that sentence I don't even WANT to try and mention them). The room she has rented as her studio once belonged to . . . okay, get this . . . Albert Pinkham Ryder. Yes, really. Don't know who he is? Check the link. Great painter. Eccentric guy. Character in Caleb Carr's sequel to The Alienist, The Angel of Darkness. Always kept a stew pot simmering, 24/7/365, that was all he ate from, into which he just kept throwing stuff. Crumpled up his smokes and other bizarre materials into his paintings. A favorite.

Shortly after she moved in, weird poltergeist activity started happening, and Luann began speaking to "Albert," who would reply by beeping Luann's microwave (ALBERT PINKHAM RYDER is in a comic strip, beeping someone's microwave?! The HELL?!). Maybe he's hoping she'll make him some stew.

Here's today's strip. Mr. Ryder has now manifested to Luann in ectoplasmic form. Either that, or it's President James A. Garfield in the guise of Ryder (I didn't imagine Ryder looking so spiffy, but maybe it's what being on The Other Side does for you). I can't WAIT to see where this goes. I am slightly worried that this will all turn out to be a series of hallucinations brought on by Luann's prolonged exposure to paint and turps fumes, but if we're lucky, Margo will wind up in a face-off with the ghost of A.P. Ryder for possession of the soul of Luann. We won't be lucky.


One of the best comments ever on Apartment 3-G was actually from TV's The Golden Girls, and reported by someone in the comments at Curmudgeon. I've never seen that show, so I have no idea who the characters are, and I'm repeating this from memory, but it was something like:

WOMAN #1: Let me have the paper, I have to keep up with my girls in Apartment 3-G.

WOMAN #2: I haven't read that comic strip since 1962.

WOMAN #1: Oh, you haven't? I'll fill you in. It's later that same afternoon . . .