by Rainn Wilson
“Walk faster,” I said in a fierce whisper out of the side of my mouth as we set off down 103rd Street. They looked at me quizzically. To them, we had simply walked through an average group of young East Harlemite teens hangin’ on the corner, like we often did.
We started moving at a rapid clip when I heard footsteps running up behind me. “Oh shit,” I said to myself, and then THWACK. I was hit across the back of the head by a kid with a stick. Hard. I realized later that if that had been a pipe or a bat, I’d probably be dead right now (which would make writing this book more difficult than it already is).
I turned to look back; John had been grabbed and swung around, and was being punched by a trio of what looked like fifteen-year-olds.
“RUN!” I shouted, and Diana and I started taking off for the corner, John close behind. A few bottles shattered around us as we bolted down the dark street.
And there, thank the Almighty God in heaven, was a cop car. New York’s finest. I pounded on the windows and we all jumped in. The cruiser screeched out, caromed down 103rd Street, and, of course, just like that, the gang was nowhere to be found. They had scattered like mice.
The cops drove us home and we were all traumatized and sweaty. Right then and there, obviously, we decided to move out of the hood. But the thing that bugged me most of all?
The dozen or so people sitting out on their stoops on 103rd Street at eleven p.m. with their little kids running around who had seen all this go down? Our neighbors for the previous six months? The witnesses to this mob of feral hoodlums? Did they call the police? Did they shout out, “Hey, cut it out”? Did they come to our defense? Not one bit. They laughed. They pointed and laughed and applauded as we were being attacked and even shouted out, “Go back to Greenwich Village” at us. That still makes me very sad and a little bit angry.
A few months later I was “gay bashed” in our new neighborhood of Chelsea. I couldn’t sleep and was walking down Seventh Avenue near Sixteenth Street when a couple of drunk gentlemen, hanging out on the sidewalk in front of an Irish bar, suddenly wheeled around and turned on me. One beefy fellow called out, “Hey, faggot,” as he swung at me and caught me on the side of my head with his heavy drunk fist.
Another swung me around and tried to punch me in the face, but I ducked like Jackie Chan. (It’s amazing how the old “yellow belt in Shorin-Ryu Karate” reflexes kick in under duress.) The third one came up behind me to grab me by the arms, and I took off like a cheetah. (Actually, probably more like an emu.) The angry gay-bashers called out, “Get that faggot,” as they jumped in their car to give chase.
I’ve never run so fast in my life, and after taking a quick left down Thirteenth Street (which was a one-way street, going the wrong way for gay-bashers in cars), I hid under a stairway for about half an hour, terrified, sucking in wind like Usain Bolt.
Wanting to hurt, degrade, insult, or discriminate against a person or a group of people because of their sexual orientation is an abomination. I got a firsthand lesson in how deep and grotesque the hate and injustice toward my LGBT comrades run in our culture. A lesson that I’ll never forget. (Or perhaps this whole incident was a vast misunderstanding—they hated bassoonists, were calling me fagotto, and were simply drunkenly slurring their words a bit. I don’t know.)
Strange things happen when you put six million people on an island the size of Dodger Stadium.
Flash forward a bit: In 1991, when I lived with my future wife, Holiday Reinhorn, on Third and C in Alphabet City, there was a tremendous turf war happening between the squatters and the drug dealers. We lived across the street from a drug front, a store called Today’s Candy. (Hint: It didn’t sell any candy.)
The dealers would often take those giant phone receivers that the phone company uses to check the lines, pry open the telephone box on the back of our building (RIGHT outside of our bedroom window), and hot-wire it, talking in loud voices to I have no idea who.
The squatters were do-gooding hippie/punk anarchists who didn’t like to obey anyone else’s rules, the cops’, the mayor’s, or the dealers’.
One night we woke up to huge jets of flames emerging from the abandoned building right behind ours. The dealers had set fire to the squatters’ building. We watched smoky, filthy anarchists emerging one by one down a fireman’s ladder. Some carrying babies. The drug dealers had won. And they did. They won everything. They won the whole city, the whole decade.
I was never attacked in New York again, but those events traumatized me, and still to this day I jump back and scream at the top of my lungs whenever I see a drug dealer, homophobe, candy store, or teenager.
Chapter 9
AN ACTOR REPAIRS
—
I stood under the lights on the stage on my first day at NYU’s Graduate Acting Program and took a deep breath. In the audience was every single student in the program and every single faculty member, arms crossed, faces saying, “Impress me.” This was called “showings,” a rite of passage for all students at the school. Terrifying. I had literally been losing sleep for weeks waiting for this dreaded moment, and although I didn’t end up babbling or naked like I had in many of my worst acting nightmares, the only response I got from the crowd was yawns. The monologues that I had performed with such success in my audition in front of Zelda Fichandler fell flatter than pancakes on that day. I survived the experience, however, and, along with my seventeen other classmates, was ready to enter the maelstrom of becoming an actor. I had a lot of work in front of me.
The training program at NYU was like an actor’s boot camp, only instead of three weeks, it was three long years. We had to be at the Greenwich Village location every morning at nine thirty and classes didn’t end until six or seven. If we were rehearsing a play (which was most of the time) we would rehearse from seven to eleven p.m.
There was no time off. Any break we got was filled with other work. We had monologues to memorize, songs to work on, vocal warm-ups to attend to, scenes to rehearse, comedy bits to hone, and COUNTLESS plays to read.
If you were making a movie and needed a faculty for a Greenwich Village acting program and wanted to fill it with the most fascinating, frustrating, and eclectic human beings known to man, look no further. This group of people gave me all the tools I needed, and I’ll be forever grateful to their collective genius. The faculty was truly indescribable. That being said, I’ll attempt to describe them.
ZELDA FICHANDLER
The legend of Zelda, grande dame of the American theater. Zelda always had perfectly coiffed bangs that slanted across her forehead at a forty-five-degree angle and covered one eye in a dramatic fashion. She wore silk a great deal and had ENORMOUS pieces of jewelry that clattered when she would move or gesture. While doing imitations of her we would put random objects on our fingers to comedically signify her rings—Coke cans, tape dispensers, folding chairs, etc. . . .
She had founded the American regional theater movement and had some of the deepest, most memorable quotes known to man. Such as: “We’re each given one life, the life of a fly when measured against eternity.”
And: “There is a hunger to see the human presence acted out. As long as that need remains, people will find a way to do theater.”
And, most famously, as she would repeatedly say (sphinxlike, perplexingly) to our class, “Go out and come in again.” And we would nod sagaciously, as if we understood exactly what she meant. Sometimes we would literally go out of the classroom and come in again, hoping that was what she was asking for.
To her, you see, theater was a divine mission, a sacred excursion deep into the human condition. Artists were warriors, shamans, con men, and saints. Thank you, Zelda.
NORA DUNFEE
Life is like a box of chocolates. That old woman on the bench in Forrest Gump in the pink coat? That was our text teacher, the late, brilliant Nora Dunfee. She was like a mini grande dame of the American theater and had been speech a
nd vocal coach to dozens of acting legends and even toured with the Lunts as a young girl.
Nora would dramatically drill us on Shakespearean sonnets, obscure poetry, and heightened verse, seeking to ever expand our range, tonality, and expressivity. If you said “axed” instead of “asked” or “egg-zit” instead of “eck-sit” (for the word exit), she would really let you have it.
She was most loved, however, for the adorable way she would fall asleep in plays, wrapped in her winter coat, big fuzzy hat perched on top of her head like a bird’s nest. Once, in the middle of our endless, terrible “theater-in-the-round” production of As You Like It, she not only fell asleep, but she let slip her program, which floated slowly and delicately like an oak leaf straight off of her lap onto the center of the stage. The whole play froze and stared transfixed, unsure of what to do. Frank Deal, who played Touchstone the jester, picked up the program and ran offstage with it, hooting like he had found a priceless artifact, and the audience roared.
HOVEY BURGESS
Hovey Burgess ran away from home at age fourteen to join the circus. By the age of twenty he had traveled most of the United States as a clown and performer with Ringling Bros. By twenty-two he was the world-record holder for juggling five balls cascading on the floor in reverse.
He taught us circus skills. Why professional actors needed a circus class is beyond me, but boy, was it fun. We would pass juggling clubs, walk a tightrope, and even swing on a trapeze.
Hovey was famous for his punk-rock style. He hung out at the clubs and bars of the Lower East Side with his long white beard and black leather motorcycle jacket with Siouxsie and the Banshees airbrushed on the back. Only in New York.
LIVIU CIULEI
The late Liviu Ciulei was infamous in the theater. He was the first of a whole gaggle of great Romanian directors who came over to the United States in the 1970s. These dudes were mad geniuses. For some reason theater and Romania go together kind of like England and rock and roll or Greece and dire economic circumstances. These obsessive Romanian lunatics reinvented from top to bottom every classic play they got their hands on.
He was a sweet, gruff, grizzled, leathery Slav who looked like a cross between a dwarf, an orc, and Paul Giamatti. You could barely understand him because he sounded like Borat’s great-grandfather. Every moment of his direction was expertly choreographed, and bad acting caused him to wince as if he were in physical pain.
But the most memorable thing about Liviu was his constant losing battle with nicotine. In an attempt to quit smoking, he would chew nicotine gum in gigantic wads. But as soon as we would get into the technical rehearsals of a play, he would get really stressed out and start smoking as well. Both at the same time. Golf-ball-size blobs of nicotine gum and a cloud of smoke around him wherever he went as he sucked down nicotine like a demon from hell.
JIM CALDER
Jim Calder was our clowning, commedia dell’arte, and movement teacher. Jim had traveled the world doing weird clown performances and was obsessed with the rhythms of comedy. With him everything had to do with rhythm, juxtaposition, intensity, and absurdity. His classroom was an intense laboratory in total physical imagination.
In his class, we would fall madly in love with a trash can, become the personification of trees or fire, bark like dogs, explode like volcanoes, sing nonsense songs, and wear “neutral masks,” discovering the world as if we were newly born and experiencing it for the first time.
Jim was renowned for his unwittingly harsh criticism, which would be given in his sweet, Stan Laurel–esque fashion. You would finish an exercise that you had sweated and strained over, and Jim would turn to the rest of the class and say (goofily while scratching his scalp): “Not interesting, no? Kind of boring, right? Didn’t really work. Fell flat, no? Oh well. Next!”
I don’t think there would have been a Dwight Schrute, however, without his wicked mentorship.
PAUL WALKER
Our late theater games teacher was one of the most miraculous and inspiring human beings I will ever have the honor to meet. He looked like a vaudeville version of the Monopoly guy, with a large mustache and absurdly mismatched clothes. He was mercurial, joyous, and mysterious, with eyes that shone with insanity and wisdom.
Kids play games. So do actors. Play creates total unself-conscious freedom and an open door toward the full expression of impulse and instinct. This was the incredible playground of wonder and imagination that we explored with Paul.
The class would start with simple children’s games like Duck, Duck, Goose; Tag; or Red Light, Green Light and build to ever more psychedelic, ridiculous types of play.
Some of my favorite, most memorable games:
Poet Laureate: Improvised poetry slams and readings.
Instant Greek Tragedy: Just like it sounds.
Harry Belafonte Day: Just like it sounds. Which is to say, awesome.
Sexy Nostril: You draw a random character trait and a random body part out of a hat, create that character, and improvise accordingly.
Steve and Eydie’s Telethon: A completely improvised hour-long 1950s-style charity telethon with singing, cocktails, cigarettes, and stand-up comedy.
Paul’s main acting dictum has always stuck with me and been a guiding principle through my long, strange acting career: “Assume your own brilliance.”
Whenever you’re onstage, assume that whatever you are doing is absolutely vital, amazing, and the most perfect thing you could ever be doing in that particular moment. As simple as it sounds, assuming you’re brilliant helps one break through the doubt, self-consciousness, and tentativeness that plague one when acting.
Paul died of AIDS in 1993 at the age of forty-one. Anyone who had ever worked with this brilliant, fierce angel had their life touched.
RON VAN LIEU
Ron was the Obi-Wan Kenobi of NYU. Our acting and scene study teacher, he was like a pencil-thin half-owl with a shock of white hair. He was very intense. Very wise. His blue eyes could and would pierce your insecure soul. I always found myself a fearful, stuttering mess in his presence. It was from him that I really learned how to act.
—
The first year of training was a blur.
The whole year’s focus was about stripping away all the bad habits we had developed as actors to that point. The idea was then to fill our empty actor cups with the delicious stuff of great actor training. It was a lot of work. And boy, was it bizarre.
We spent hours literally learning how to breathe. We learned about our tongues. How they moved. We stretched them like tongue yogis. We learned how our voices worked, what resonated when we made sound and how to maximize those vibrations. We learned phonetics and how to talk purdy. We spoke obscure verse and poetry with abandon. We forced our bodies to be ever more expressive and flexible. We did period dancing and movement, learning how to bow and curtsy like the cast of Downton Abbey.
Deb Lapidus, our singing teacher, taught us how to “act” songs and gain confidence even when we were horrible singers and croaked like toads.
I was in heaven. This is what I had wanted my entire life. I couldn’t wait to go to school each morning and I delved into the process with total abandon. I was living my dream. It was like the movie Fame. You know the one. Where they would sing and dance to Irene Cara in the subways and on the lunch tables with a gritty New York abandon.
I would walk to NYU from the subway with Tom Waits blaring from the cheap spongy headphones of my Walkman (kids, a Walkman was like an iPod with a cassette tape in it that kept jamming and shutting off a lot for no apparent reason) and feed off the energy of the city, going to class literally pinching myself.
(I would feel this same way on The Office many years later, inspired and singing as I drove to my dream job, where I knew I’d get to improvise, play, and goof off with some of the most talented, funny, and cool people on the planet.)
Then I started hitting an actin
g bottom in my second year. I was simply not good. My acting was forced, stiff, and “in my head” instead of allowing me to inhabit the characters I was playing. I didn’t know what to do about this situation and got more and more anxious. The more anxious I got, the worse I got as an actor. I started seriously doubting my abilities and believing that in truth I sucked.
Finally, the wheels fell off during scene study class one day and I finally learned how to act.
I was doing a scene from Strindberg’s Miss Julie with Maria Vail and I was just awful in all of the usual ways: self-conscious, robotic, forced, tense. It was another sweaty, inhuman performance. We finished the scene. The observers in the class were bored and fidgety. There was a long pause. I felt sick to my stomach.
Ron Van Lieu looked at me and said, “Rainn, I believe that you’re very talented. Why do you keep getting in your own way?” He was plaintive, caring, and genuinely concerned for me. I could feel his frustration and love coming toward me as he asked me the question.
I dropped my head and, as much as I resisted, started to cry. To sob, really. In front of the whole class, dressed as a turn-of-the-century manservant, sitting on a wooden cube that was substituting for an ottoman, I released all of my pain, fear, tension, and anxiety in loud, pain-filled blubbers. I wept for literally fifteen minutes and Ron didn’t stop me. He just let it happen and let the class be witness to it.
We began to discuss what was really going on with me and I realized that underneath all my tension and bad acting was FEAR. Fear of rejection, of abandonment, of not being liked. I truly thought that if the audience was able to see the real me, they’d get bored and hate what they saw. In my acting I then amped everything up to try to “be more interesting.” This of course only made me look like a broken acting robot, filled with gestures and tension that had nothing to do with the character I was playing or the scene I was in.
We decided to let all that go. I made a commitment to “dare to be boring.” To just listen while acting. To simply breathe. To BE the character and see the world through the character’s eyes, without amplifying my performance in any way, shape, or form.