Two thoughts
Posted November 10th, 2003 by Sean WilliamsI really do want to get back on the wagon here in a number of ways. I keep setting myself deadlines for getting a personal trainer and getting back to the gym, and yet I haven’t done it. Even after seeing the videotape of Lucretia where I look, in a word, tremendous.
Two things. One, my freinds Anthony and Scott have created a show called “Gutenberg: The Musical” that is as original and entertaining as anything I have seen in years. A double bill of that show and Lucretia would be a hell of an entertaining night.
Second, I was watching the cast of The Simpsons on Inside The Actor’s Studio. The host was doing his usual last set of questions, and asking the actors to answer in character which is just insufferable (these people are the *actors* not the *writers*. They just read what they are given, for fuck’s sake…) but for the last question, “If Heaven exists, what would you like God to say to you at the gates?”, he had each person answer as themselves. Each said something lovely, it’s the kind of question that inspires lovely answers, and finally they got to Harry Shearer. His answer; “Show starts in half an hour.”
You just never hear someone describe the experience of half-hour call as heavenly, especially someone who is famous as a film and voice over artist, but that’s how you know the real deal. That would be great, to always have that feeling of the Stage Manager leaning in while you put on make-up and calling “Half-hour to places!” and hollering back, “Thank you, half-hour”.
Ah, so much is made of the theater-family, the whole joining the circus, smell of the greasepaint bullshit. People are so full of crap they get “I can’t, I have rehearsal” bumper stickers and have star2b@hotmail email addresses. So the less the said, the better, maybe. But to hear a multi-millionaire, who is part of The Simpsons and Spinal Tap, say that heaven is the moment before the show starts… it just really touched me.