Five Easy Pieces

I’ve hate Father’s Day and love Five Easy Pieces.

Jack Nicholson as Bobby in Five Easy Pieces

I never knew my father.  Not at all. When my mom was very young, she met my dad and I was conceived. My dad took off between conception and birth; he had to get back to his real family and two kids. Never met him. Know virtually nothing about him.

As I got older, I’d wonder: Would I have been a dramatically different person if I’d grown up with a father around? Then, in 1970, the film Five Easy Pieces made a profound effect on my life.

Five Easy Pieces was unusual for its time; an intelligent, grown-up film about real life.
I first saw the film in my local multiplex the week it came out. Through the years, I’ve seen the film more than 20 times. It resonates with me today at least as much as it did when I saw it the first time at age 24. The film is almost entirely a study of personality. A young man, Robert Eroica DuPea, has spurned his cultured, well-to-do family and a burgeoning career as a concert pianist and has drifted from one blue-collar job to another. As I often have, Bobby finds himself no happier in one scenario than he did in the other.

How often through the years I have thought, “If only I could have some other kind of life, in some other place, I would be happy.”

That is one of life’s great delusions. Changing our circumstances will not change ourselves or the world. In the end, we all inhabit an imperfect world and have to live with ourselves.

Sin City Savior

Hello from Las Vegas!
We managed to get one scene of Sin City Savior shot last night before having dinner and playing some slots. The Princess is thrilled that we have one of the nicest and most convenient rooms in the Paradise Tower at the Tropicana. Fourteenth floor, ten feet from the elevator. Nice view of the Luxor and south Las Vegas Boulevard.
Since I left my extensively remodeled laptop at home, typing this on a pay-by-the-minute Dell in the lobby of the Trop. So, I’ll write more extensively later.

Sons of Anarchy (FX)

I had a great time working on Sons of Anarchy for FX.

Grammy® Award-winning musician and actor Henry Rollins was a guest star in the episode of the FX drama series Sons of Anarchy on which I worked background one Tuesday in June 2009. (Season 2, Episode 4 “Eureka.”)

Rollins told me he’ll be in six episodes playing a new antagonist in the show’s fictional town of Charming, California who poses a deadly threat to the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club. (I told him he used to scare me on his videos. He said, “Used to scare myself.” He turned out to be a really nice, easygoing guy.)

Sons of Anarchy stars Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal and Ron Perlman and is a co-production of FX Productions and FOX 21, Twentieth Century Fox Television’s alternative production arm.

Sons of Anarchy is an adrenalized drama with darkly comedic undertones that explores a notorious outlaw motorcycle club and its desire to protect its livelihood while ensuring that the simple, sheltered town of Charming, California remains exactly that: charming. The Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club must confront threats from drug dealers, corporate developers, overzealous law officers and white supremacists. The Sons of Anarchy are Harley riding antiheroes, a motorcycle club of macho bad boys with dangerous lifestyles who operate out of a clubhouse. Around the club of men, are the devoted women, old ladies and motorcycle mamas.

The Visitor (Chapman Univ)

After a late-night shoot, a really cool phone call came one afternoon in March 2009.

I had been on set in Las Vegas until just after midnight, had slept in until 9am and was working my my lines for the Sin City Savior pages we’d shoot that night when my cell phone sang out: “Hit that jive, Jack!”

It was Breanna Wing, director of the Chapman University student short, The Visitor. I had auditioned for the role of Maurice in that film a few weeks earlier at the ubiquitous CAZT Studios on Formosa near Santa Monica Blvd.
When the director learned that I already had Maurice’s costume of bib overalls, she asked me to wear them to the audition. To the amusement of the other actors auditioning for other shows, I did. Frankly, I feared I had not done well in the audition.

(capture from the audition video at the right:)

Remarkably, the director Breanna Wing later wrote: “Lary, you took the role very seriously which was good. We loved that it was sad but likable. Liked your shivers.” Compared to the other actors who auditioned for this part, on a scale of 1-5 (5 being the best), we thought you rated:

• Preparation: 4
• Looks the part: 5
• Professionalism: 5
• Acting ability: 5
• Taking directions: 4

“I am thrilled that you are going to play the role of MAURICE, and am very excited to work with you.”

I spent a warm Saturday afternoon in March 2009 in Santa Ana acting in the Breanna Wing film, THE VISITOR, co-starring Tyler Haines. Great shoot. Excellent crew.

The smart, prepared young director had the good sense to rehearse both Tyler and me the day before our shoot. We blocked the scenes a bit, looked at photos of the monster and the room where we’ll be shooting and ran our lines about a half-dozen times.
Breanna Wing is a dream director; prepared, smart, flexible, good with actors and with real vision. She also wrote the script.
Bre is extraordinarily good at giving actors a bit of space to interpret and bring stuff to the scene, which I love. I pledged her my undying devotion.
Here’s the finished film: done

Cheating Actors

Actors are often asked to cheat; but it’s okay, really.

Shooting lead roles in three student films over the last year gave me plenty of time to think about acting for the camera and how it differs from theater and other forms of the craft.
In film and television acting, there’s no live audience so there’s little if any feedback of any kind. My audience is just a camera, the camera operator, the director and any crew standing around at the time. This means I use my imagination and play to the camera, ignoring the crew. Years on movie sets have taught me to be aware of where the camera is and what the camera is supposed to be capturing at the time. Obviously, when I am in a scene with another actor, I need to look at him and react to what he says. But – guess what – often, because of what the camera is trying to capture, I need to “cheat.”

As Richard Brestoff explains in his excellent book, The Camera Smart Actor: “Because distances and locations look different to the camera than they do in real life, an actor might be asked to look at a different place than where the other actor actually is. On camera, it looks fine but to the actor it is a cheat. For example, an actor might be asked to cheat a look or a body position more toward the camera than the actor would think necessary or even comfortable. But, to the camera, such a cheat would look perfectly natural.”

A good example is the scene between my character Don Romano and my henchman in the student film comedy, A Taste For Danger.
I was seated behind my desk and he was standing in front of the desk on my left. While we shot his medium shots and chokers, it didn’t matter where I looked because I was either out of frame or only a small bit of my head appeared. However, when we shot MY medium shot, the director asked me to deliver my lines to a spot on the doorway just to my right and not at the actor.

Take a look:

done