Twitter Approval Matrix

From New York Magazine's 'Entertainment" section>>>

NYMAG.COM


The Twitter Approval Matrix:

"Our deliberately oversimplified guide to whose tweets are worth following."

http://nymag.com/arts/all/approvalmatrix/56103/




If you are into the whole Twitter movement... the "comments" section of this article offers even more positive and negative Twitter leads....

Kickin it with the curry at Costco

I'm watching I'M NOT THERE on DVD right now... while I'm writing this...

It's a pretty cool movie... very surreal and abstract.... but I'm having trouble following... there's a lot going on there....

I'm gonna have to watch it again... give it my undivided attention...

I'm just doing a little Wednesday morning multi-tasking...

blast a blog post
Peanut butter toast
self submit for some
web series host

I have a print casting to go to today over on Sunset and Gower.... first time I've heard from my commercial agent in MONTHS.

My IMDB credit for my role on BONES went through....it's official.... hooray

Thank you Amanda Chism.

The episode "The Critic in the Cabernet," is scheduled to air on FOX on May 7th.

I'm "The Critic" in the cabernet.

I posted a new worksheet on the wall of my apartment so I could organize all my story lines and plot points for CATCH, my web series...

I have so many ideas bouncing around in my head for this series that I was in desperate need of devising a more specific game plan for the project.

I threw a giant piece of paper up on the wall and created 15 categories that constitute the fundamental beats to a proper screenplay.

I am using one my favorite little books "SAVE THE CAT: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need," by Blake Snyder.

I'm also using the "Blake Snyder Beat Sheet," as a reference, which is where I came up with the 15 categories... those are the 15 beats that Snyder lists as the essential structure for any good screenplay.

So I started doodling all my ideas up on the wall... fitting story lines and moments into beats...

and BAM!!

I'm got a feature film...

Approaching this web series from this perspective changes a few fundamental principals of the project.... but I've got something good here...

I'm excited.

Now I have a lot of issue to face, questions to ask...and decisions to make regarding CATCH...

But this is EXACTLY what I needed...

I guess I can mull things over while I'm wearing my hair net and rubber gloves at Costco today... handing out samples of TASTY BITE Indian Food...

UGH.... Yes... That's what I'll be doing for the next two weeks.

It's a job... I'm not thrilled about it... but times are tough and I desperately need the money.

I've been seeking and submitting like crazy. A sampling gig at Costco is the only thing on the table right now...

So I'm gonna make the best of it.

Come on through and visit y'all!

I'll be kicking it with the curry at the Costco in Los Feliz today, tomorrow and Friday from 3P-9P.

Before They Were Kings: Part Seven

BEFORE THEY WERE KINGS, Vanity Fair, 2004: Hackman, Hoffman and Duvall reason with rage>>>

Part Seven of an Estimated Eight...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE


Truth was their grail. As Duvall puts it, “To live truthfully in an imaginary set of circumstances, that’s what it’s all about. And do that, you now, in a somewhat effortless way.” Hackman learned to do it under George Morrison, still active today as president of the New Actors Workshop. At that time he headed the Premise, an improve troupe that performed in a tiny theater on Bleecker Street. The shy and introverted Hackman did comedy improvisations there. Morrison says, “He fell out of his shell, and learned to be funny, learned timing, delivery, voice.” Hackman says, “When I’m working on a character, I never get to the point where I don’t believe it’s still me. I think there’s everything in me. I think it’s possible that I could be anybody. When you think that way, all things are possible for you.” The disappointments, the rejections, the mental jobs, says Hackman, “create a resolve in you that no matter what kind of part you’re given, you can do anything. Give me the challenge. I can do it. The scarier the better.”

Ever since those beginning years, the three have always been risk takers in their choices of roles and characterizations. Hoffman’s first wife, now Anne Byrne Kronenfeld, is today a talent manager and believes that they “are among the last of a generation. You don’t see actors today go to the edge of a cliff and say ‘OK, I’m going to jump, and maybe I’ll fly and maybe I won’t.’ They’ve done that.” Hoffman describes the experience of flying: “If I tried to define what it means to be most alive, it’s when that cloud of mortality disappears. It’s when you’re in a place of timelessness. You’re free, really free. When that happens in life, there’s not a moment when you’re not completely in the moment. There’s nothing else we want, is there? Our work gives us a chance to have that.”

They are all able to project two opposing feelings simultaneously. One is vulnerability. Duvall and Hackman can draw on their shy kindness. Hoffman, believes Anne Byrne Kronenfeld, “touches the audience with his ability to find the appealing contradictions, even the humor, in the most unsavory characters. That reaches out to the audience.” Sometimes the class clown in him resurfaces. Performing with Ula Grosbard’s wife, Rose Gregorio, who played a whore with a blond wig covering her dark hair, Hoffman suddenly snatched the wig off. She remembers, “We broke up onstage, and the audience just went bananas. We made it part of the scene.”

The second undercurrent in the trio is a simmering, suppressed anger; an unpredictability. Duvall, the specialist in macho men sensitive at the center, explains “You should find some aspect of vulnerability in yourself. And the anger sits there. A sense of danger. What’s next?” Sometimes it is an explosion of rage. In 1965, Duvall again played Eddie Carbone in A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, this time at the Sheridan Square Playhouse, a 199-seat, three-quarter-round theater with tables, close to, and level with the stage. One night Duvall noticed a man asleep several tables away during a scene that required him to threaten Jon Voight with a wine bottle. Duvall smashed the bottle on the nearest table, splattering glass, and woke the man up. Sometimes Duvall would simply spot somebody he thought didn’t like him and use the anger to feed his acting. According to Hoffman, even after Duvall’s curtain calls, as he walked offstage, he would lean over to the person and yell, “Fuck You!”

Hackman confesses that he could have modified some of his mean-guy roles, but “what interests me is to get that edge, get to that anger… A good thing about acting is that you’re allowed to be who you are. It’s OK if you’ve got some aspects of you that are dangerous.” After a movie or a dinner with Hoffman, Hackman would sometimes stand on a street corner and say, “I gotta go.” Hoffman explains what that meant: “He had to get in a fight. He’d go to some bar.” Hackman adds, “There’s a kind of catharsis about it. I don’t want to get hit, but I don’t like to take any shit.”

In Hoffman the rage is more hidden, but it can erupt if he feels that his fiercely held acting processes and judgments are being violated, especially by directors who seem to now nothing about acting. They are the ones who grow impatient if the actors gradually explore their characters, who want to impose their own ideas, who do not want to join the actors in jumping off that precipice – “What? Your wife just died and you want to start laughing?” The anger, Hoffman explains, “comes from your toes. It’s a wonderful feeling.” He adds, “Hackman doesn’t talk. He just picks the person up and throws them out the window.” Duvall says, “It’s hard to be diplomatic when you’re using yourself, your own temperament, to give what the character calls for.” When one film director told him to pause and smile, Duvall walked off the set.

(to be continued)

Hollywood Feels The Pinch...

From the Guardian.co.uk >>>>>>

Hollywood feels the pinch: Film production at standstill.

Economy and migration of studio work elsewhere put many LA staff out of a job.

Bruce McCleery hardly had a day out of work in 25 years. As one of Hollywood's most sought-after lighting technicians, he worked on big budget movies like Independence Day and Mission Impossible III. He traveled the world as part of an elite group of technicians considered core members of a film production team. For the past few years, he developed a second career as a cinematographer, working mostly on small, independent productions or doing second-unit work on blockbusters such as Transformers II.

That, though, was before the bottom fell out of the film industry....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/apr/27/hollywood-film-industry

... Some of California's competitor states, including New Mexico and New York, have had second thoughts about their own tax packages because of budgetary woes - a fact that could yet work out in California's favor. The industry, after all, is still based here, and the Hollywood name still has a worldwide resonance. "If we can recover our recent losses," Audley said, "California can remain a major player."

For now, though, that remains a big if.

Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

The Guardian, Monday 27 April 2009

LIP DUB

I was over at my friend Josh’s place last night. We were working on CATCH episode 4… which needed a few quick touch ups. He showed me this viral video on Youtube because he wanted to show me this girl that he thought was exactly his ‘type.”


"Take a look at the girl in this video. This is like, my ideal girl. I wanna marry this chick."


So I’m watching this video, the girl is cute, definitely, but I was like:

“What IS THIS VIDEO? It’s AWESOME.”

“It’s just some lip synch thing. A bunch of people got together and taped themselves lip synching a song.”

“I’m LOVIN this. It looks like so much fun.”

“Yeah, it actually started this whole internet craze and then people all over did the same thing… lip synched a song and put it on Youtube. It’s now officially called LIP DUB.”

“Yo, I wanna do a lip dub. Look at that! That’s awesome.”

I went home and researched LIP DUB. I ended up watching like 200 LIP DUB videos. Now I’m obsessed. I’m a little miffed that this has been going on for like two years and I was completely clueless.

From Wikipedia…

A lip dub is a type of video that combines lip synching and audio dubbing to make a music video. It is made by filming individuals or a group of people lip synching while listening to a song or any recorded audio then dubbing over it in post editing with the original audio of the song. Often, they look like simple music videos, although many involve a lot of preparation and are well produced. The most popular lip dubs are done in a single unedited shot that often travels through different rooms and situations in, say, an office building. Tom Johnson, a technical writer who blogs about Web 2.0's effect on communication, describes a good lip dub as having the characteristics, or at least the appearance of:

• spontaneity: "It appears as if someone thought up the idea on the spot, pulled out their personal video camera, and said hey everyone, let’s all lip sync this song."
• authenticity: The people, production and situation appear real.
• participation: "The video doesn’t consist of one person’s spectacular lip sync, but that of a group, all participating together in this one spontaneous effort, which seems to communicate the attitude and mood of the song."
• fun: the people in the video are having a lot of fun.

Wikipedia lists a handful of the current cream of the crop as far as lip dubs go….

· Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger

· Bienvenue chez les geek

· UniversityLipdub: 257 Weeks by Nine Days

· Digg Dubb: Groove Is In The Heart

· Fergalicious Lipdub

· Frontier Psychiatrist: allen girl lip dub

· CNET Australia office lip dub

· Lip Dub - Mr. Roboto by Styx

· Lip Dub: Journey's Don't Stop Believing

· Dane Cook Lip Dub - Dream House

· Purpose - Lip Dub

· Lip Dub : Lollipop

· Fatals Picards - L'Amour à la française (AOL France)

· Christophe Willem - Double je (Expedia France)

· Lip Dub created by New Zealand Radio Station ZM

· Don't feel like dancing (Mines de Saint Etienne)

Fun songs…great viral stuff… I love watching all these groups of friends and co workers get together and rock it like that…

To the drawing board!

Before They Were Kings: Part Six

VANITY FAIR 2004: Hoffman, Hackman and Duvall deal with rejection>>>

Read the full article

Hoffman liked to provoke. He made a behavioral laboratory out of his job in Macy’s toy department, where Hackman would sometimes visit. Hoffman remembers, “We had a thing where we would outdare each other to see who was going to be more outlandish.” One day Hackman brought in his 18-month-old son, Christopher, and the two friends decided to test the Christmas crowd shopping in a glazed-eyed trance. Hackman put Christopher on the counter, and Hackman hawked him as a walking, talking doll, with real hair, $16.95. A woman said, “I’ll take it,” then touched real flesh and shrieked.

Hoffman, demonstrating hockey games, has his eye on Elaine, a sexy salesgirl selling tape recorders. He hatched a plan to impress her. While customers watched in shock, a badly dressed Hackman came on to her as a brain-damaged creep. The pint-sized Hoffman interceded, pushing Hackman out of the way and hustling Elaine down the escalator. Wearing a dopey grin, elbowing through the Christmas crowds like a big bear, Hackman followed them into the cafeteria, grunting, “UH, UH, UH.” Everyone stopped eating and watched as Hoffman shoved Hackman and yelled, “get your ass outta here big fella, and stop bothering this girl.” Saying, “Ok, Ok, take it easy,” and followed by Hoffman, Hackman backed into the men’s room, where they pounded on the walls and yelled and splashed water on themselves, then emerged disheveled, with Hackman holding his eye and Hoffman shouting, “Now just get out of here.” Next, says Hoffman, “Gene did the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.” Groaning, he staggered up the down escalator, getting nowhere. Elaine began to cry, screaming at Hoffman, “How could you do that? That man is sick!” Taking pity, Hackman came back and tried to explain, but Elaine ran off sobbing. Hoffman says, “You have to understand we were frustrated actors out of work, and there we had an audience. This was a solid one-acter. It held.”

Stocking their hoard of behaviors was one thing, but the chance to use them on stage was quite another. “No one starts at the top in the theater, and the bottom is a very ugly place,” says Hackman. Describing the ritual of auditioning for roles, he says, “You’d be on a bare stage reading with the stage manager, and there’d be two or three fuckers sitting in the 15th row of a dark theater, and you couldn’t see them. And then there would be this voice – ‘thank you very much’ – and you’d just leave. Or they’d say, ‘Uh, could you read the part of Jim in the third act,’ and I’d say, ‘OK,’ and you’d have to cold read for them. Or they’d say, ‘Uh, could you hang out for half an hour. We’d like to put you with someone else.’ And you’d go through this process – and already you’re thinking, since they didn’t send me away right off, maybe, just maybe… And in the end they would say, ‘Uh, very nice, really very nice… well…um… we’ll let you know.’ And you’d never here anything.”

Sometimes there were open calls, where no appointment was needed and hopefuls showed up by the hundreds. “It was madness, says Hackman. “A cattle call, they called it. A lot of people would get physical about where they were in line, and who had to go to work, so let me in front of you so I can get the hell out.” Gene Kelly once held an open call for a musical he directed. After Hackman stood in line and sang for a part, Kelly came to the edge of the stage and told him, “Nice try. Musicals are hard.”

Hoffman says, “The actor who go the part was always a piece of shit.” Those were the ones who immediately gave a full-out performance, which never became deeper and richer. Duvall called them salesmen. “The producers and directors,” says Hoffman, “are scared, see?” They want to see what you’re going to be opening night.” In radical contrast, the trio’s acting philosophy dictated giving very little at first – suppressing the acting of the character, waiting for the portrayal to arrive internally, instinctively. In addition, their lack of leading man looks made them hard to categorize. “I was trouble,” says Hoffman. His size and physiognomy made him seem un-castable. Duvall once called him Barbara Streisand in drag. Friends from that era, meeting the movie-star Hoffman, have said, “You were the last one I expected to make it.”

The three reacted differently to rejections. For Hackman “it was more psychological warfare, because I wasn’t going to let those fuckers get me down. I insisted with myself that I would continue to do whatever it took to get a job. It was like me against them, and in some way, unfortunately, I still feel that way. But I think that if you’re really interested in acting there is a part of you that relishes the struggle. It’s a narcotic in the way that you are trained to do this work and nobody will let you do it, so you’re a little bit nuts. You lie to people, you cheat, you do whatever it takes to get an audition, get a job.” He and Duvall occasionally made rounds together, and when agents refused to see them they slipped their photographs and meager resumes under the office doors. “We both knew we would never get a job,” says Hackman. “I gave a casting person a resume that was bullshit. I had no resume. He looked at it and said, ‘I see you played in such and such two years ago. That’s interesting. I was in that play and I don’t remember you.’”

To Hoffman, rejections meant that he had no talent. When he was told “You’re not right for the part,” he would sometimes yell, “You’re right!” and flee. When a mumbling stage manager was flat in his line readings, Hoffman was known to fling the script pages into the air and walk out. What particularly enraged him were casting directors who chose to read the lines looking down at the script instead of watching him. When Hoffman returned home after two, three, four failed auditions, he sometimes stalked around the apartment chanting, “I’m a great fucking actor. I’m a great fucking actor and nobody knows it!”

Despite the praise he received from teachers and the status he held in his circle, Duvall suffered from self doubts. After one of his first off-off Broadway performances, in George Bernard Shaw’s MRS WARRENS PROFESSION, he received a lethal review in the NEW YORK POST. The paper reported that the revolting romantic lead was “made even less palatable by Robert Duvall, whose spine tends toward a figure S, whose diction is flannel coated, and whose simpering expressions are moronic.” Reading it on a bus, he felt so sick that he had to get off. Duvall fled home to his parents in Virginia for three months, returning to the wars only because Ulu Grosbard kept reassuring him. Duvall says, “Thank goodness I had a good friend like Ulu, who still had, you know, faith, in what maybe I could do.”

Looking back, Duvall can say, “Each day is different. There’s a general frustration, but you’ve got to weather that and go on. You gather with guys like Dusty. We used to go to Cromwell’s drugstore on Rockefeller Plaza, make lots of jokes – gets you through the day. Downey’s steak house at night. That fills the day with a certain camaraderie, which is good.” One night Hoffman told Duvall, “We’ve got to talk about something besides women and acting.”

Television roles were rarely discussed. Tennessee Williams and Chekhov and Ibsen were infinitesimally dissected. Brando stories were swapped. Those sidewalk colloquies among the three sometimes devolved into battles over whose acting teacher and technique was right. The trio hewed to different versions of Stanislavski’s holy writ, which required reliving emotions and re-experiencing the five senses onstage. Hoffman describes Duvall exploding, “Bullshit! What do you man, you sit there for an hour trying to feel hot or feel cold!” Hoffman explains, “We were almost like religious fanatics. Our craft was the most important part of us.”

CATCH 3 and Coachella

Sunday morning.....

CATCH Episode 3 (on Youtube) has been attracting an unusually high amount of hits/views over the past few days. I can't quite figure out why. CATCH 3 was viewed 75 times on Friday, April 17 and 300 + times yesterday, Saturday, April 18th.

300+ views is a huge spike compared to the 10 or so daily average to this point. 300+ views that came on a SATURDAY no less... hits are usually less frequent on the weekend.

Youtube's traffic reports leave much to be desired... but I WAS able to determine that about 85% of the hits were coming from an external link. I traced that external link back to a message board site caled Runboard.com.

Thats about as far as I got. I havent been able to locate the specific post or link... but I'd love to know where all the traffic is coming from.

Nobody is rating the episode or leaving comments, and the spike in views isnt translating into more trafiic to any of my other sites... still... 300+ on a Saturday... interesting....

Going to Coachella today with a couple of my new bestest buddies out here in LA. Its gonna be a scorcher. It's been really comfortable in LA for the past few weeks... few months actually.... but today and for the next couple of days, Its sunny, clear and in the high 80's, whihc means its gonna be HOT in the desert...

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is a three-day annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley. The event features many genres of music as well as large sculptural art. The event has several stages/tents set-up throughout the grounds, each playing live music continuously.

The line up for today is The Cure, My Bloody Valentine, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Throbbing Gristle, Lupe Fiasco, Paul Weller, Peter Bjorn and John, X, Antony & the Johnsons, Roni Size, Public Enemy, Jenny Lewis, Groove Armada, Paolo Nutini, Christopher Lawrence, Lykke Li, The Kills, Okkervil River, M.A.N.D.Y., Clipse, Sebastien Tellier, Fucked Up, Perry Farrell, The Horrors, Late of the Pier, K’naan, Junior Boys, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Supermayer, No Age, Vivian Girls, Shepard Fairey, Themselves, Gaslight Anthem, The Knux, Mexican Institute of Sound, The Night Marchers, Marshall Barnes.... Not necessarily in that order...

MY itinerary for today will include PUBLIC ENEMY...or course... Lupe Fiasco, The Kills, Clipse, K'naan, Gaslight Anthem, Mexican Institute of Sound and Friendly Fires...

Generously applying sunscreen as we speak.....

Entertainment Industry and the economy

"Hollywood odd jobs drying up" Daily Variety

"Really? Tell me something I DON'T know M%$# F%$@!" James Huffman


Posted Tuesday April 14th on VARIETY.COM>>>>

By MARC GRASER, JUSTIN KROLL

Hiring freeze spreads:

Hollywood is feeling the chills of a hiring freeze.

Jobs that the creative community once relied on to stay afloat during rough times are themselves starting to dry up in this recession.

That includes everything from directing assignments at commercial production houses to positions at restaurants, bars, hotels and retailers. Even temp agencies have little to offer job seekers....

Read the full article at:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118002420.html?c=3284



... The current situation may be dire, but recent numbers offer a bright spot for the future job market.

The number of entertainment jobs remained relatively unchanged in February vs. last year at around 122,200, according to the LAEDC. Org is forecasting a modest improvement in Hollywood with 1,000 more showbiz jobs to be created this year and 2,000 more next year, mainly because of increased pic and cable TV production.

"The increases in box office and cable are enough to offset the uncertainty this year," Kyser told Daily Variety, "(and) 2009 has gotten off to a very strong start."

Indie Films and the Internet

Shirley Petchprapa, ISSARA FILMS, director of CATCH 6 and CATCH 8, passed this article on to me this morning.

Really good article.... lots of useful information....

DIY Distribution: Indie Films and the Internet

You’re not a big-shot Hollywood producer. You don’t have a PR agent. And your latest film or video isn’t going to set the world on fire. Should you give up? Definitely not. No matter how conventional or unconventional your production might be, there are ways to spread the word and find an audience. The upfront costs are usually modest, though you may have to rethink your approach in promoting your pet project.Victor Zimet and Stephanie Silber direct and produce documentaries through their company, Home Team Productions. One of their films, Random Lunacy, won the Best Documentary prize at the Westchester International Film Festival in March 2007. Hoping to build on that success, they took what they assumed was the next logical step....


FULL ARTICLE: http://www.studiodaily.com/main/work/10321.html


.... Whether these techniques will work for you may depend on whether you see the glass as half full or half empty. "Everything we do brings a little bit of success," says Home Team Productions’ Zimet. "If we try this, and it’s not as great a success as we thought it was going to be, I still think there’s something in it that did succeed. I’ll take it for that in my most positive moments, and just say, OK, let’s move on."

David English, January 1, 2009, Source: Studio Monthly

AMC contest update

I received an email this morning regarding the AMC BREAKING BAD video contest>>>>


Dear contestant,

With over a hundred videos in the contest so far -- and more coming in every day -- it's important to remember that only the videos with the most votes will become finalists and qualify for a shot at a walk-on role on Breaking Bad (and a win $1000). If you want to secure a place among the top 20, now is the time to start drumming up votes.

Here are the top ten videos so far:

1. Ronnie Nase Breaks Bad (Boyertown, PA) Total Votes: 205
2. Daniel Janis Breaks Bad (Columbia, MD) Total Votes: 173
3. Nicole Whitney Breaks Bad (Indianapolis, IN) Total Votes: 133
4. Derrick Collins Breaks Bad (Colombus, OH) Total Votes: 92
5. Chad Nikolaus Breaks Bad 2 (Oshkosh, WI) Total Votes: 89
6. Brenda Whitehead Breaks Bad (Los Vegas, NV) Total Votes: 82
7. Angie Griffin Breaks Bad (Osh Kosh, WI) Total Votes: 79
8. Chris Rzepka Breaks Bad (Chicago, IL) Total Votes: 75
9. Jeff Mills Breaks Bad (Portland, OR) Total Votes: 72
10. Keisha Brown Breaks Bad (Greenville, NC) Total Votes: 71

Want to get in the race or move up the ranks? Link to your video on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Post on list serves of any organizations/clubs/alumni groups to which you belong. Spam your friends.

Best of luck. Hope to see you in the next round! (Finalists will be announced on Monday, May 4.)

HEY>>>>> Please take a look at my short film submission ("James Huffman Breaks Bad") for the AMCTV contest...and don't forget to vote... THANK YOU.

http://blogs.amctv.com/breaking-bad-contest/2009/04/james-huffman.php

Before They Were Kings: Part Five

The fifth installment of the Vanity Fair 2004 article that highlights the early days in the careers of Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and "Bobby" Duvall>>>>


New York in the late 1950’s and 1960’s was a simpler, cheaper world. Hoffman’s share of the apartment he lived in was $10 a month. Hackman paid $22 a month for his East 20’s cold water flat. Nevertheless, he says, “in those days it was a question of which of us was most broke right then, and the other two would help him out.” The three supported themselves with survival-level jobs. Hoffman was a typist for the Yellow Pages, along with some 80 girls. He strung Hawaiian leis, checked coats at the Longacre Theater, helped move the Time Inc morgue to the company’s new building. “I’d do any job anywhere,” he says. “I had no shame.” Hackman, who was a relief man at Whelan Drugstores, says the customers “treated you like crapola.” Once, while he was employed as a doorman at a building in Times Square, on of his former Marine officers walked by and muttered “Hackman, you’re a sorry son of a bitch.” He sold women’s shoes at Saks 34th Street to annoyingly fussy women, but, he says “I managed to steal enough so I could retire from that.” For a few dollars, he would slip shoes to actress friends. Earning a princely $10 an hour, Hackman moved furniture for the Padded Wagon in Greenwich Village, hauling refrigerators into walk-up apartments, and he has no memory of being tired. He included Hoffman on one job and handed him a carton of books to carry up six floors. “I lasted about an hour,” says Hoffman. Once, Hackman and another actor were moving a valuable art collection, including a Picasso lithograph. The other actor went up to check the apartment and returned with a broom, which he tossed into the truck. “It went right through the Picasso,” says Hackman, “Like a spear. The owner was standing there, and he just about shit his pants.”

Duvall, who occasionally went job-hunting with Hackman, moved boxes at the Gertz department store and delivered messages for a dollar an hour. He pushed clothing racks in the garment district for a day and never went back. After three days he quit washing dishes at the Mary Elizabeth restaurant and, embarrassed, sent Hackman to pick up his paycheck. He got a night job at the post office in the Broadway district and quit after six months. He says he decided, I don’t want to be here 20 years from now. Returning from the post office early one morning, Duvall woke up Hoffman, who relates the scene: “‘Dustbone,’ he says, ‘you’re gonna here this. AGES OF MAN. I saw John Geilgud. He was drunk. They were dragging him out of the theater. I swear to God. It was freezing. The steam coming out of the manholes. Nobody on the street. He must have been in there all night, and they’re hailing a cab. Fuckin Geilgud! Just before he gets in, he puts his arms out to the empty street and he yells out, “Does anyone want to fuck an actress?”’ Duvall was like he had witnessed the Second Coming.”

The trio relished regaling one another with what they had seen and heard, sometimes by accident, on the street. They would demonstrate the walks they had witnessed that day. Duvall reported hearing a woman passerby say, “No Harry, it’s not the egg foo young; it’s the whole last six months.” Hoffman assembled an entire cast of characters from his job as an attendant at the New York Psychiatric Institute. Duvall would say, “Do the cop, Dustbone,” referring to a violent ex-cop who had had a frontal lobotomy and would stand with his legs apart, “Hey, Mr. Hoffman, my wife is coming today. She’s a real Dutch cleanser.” Hackman would spend parts of days alone on seedy, anything may happen 42nd Street, going to the cheap movie theaters that doubled as flophouses. He came away with oral dramas he had heard in the darkness, such as the man who yelled in a heavy New York accent, “You’re SORRY! You piss all over my wife and you say you’re SORRY?”

Unlike Hoffman, who could be serious and moody, then extroverted and explosively funny, Hackman and Duvall harbored an interior privacy. Something of a loner, Hackman would go for weeks without seeing his friends. Describing himself, Duvall says, “I liked meeting people, but you always had your own visions of the future, so you cut yourself off from being wholeheartedly social.”

All three young men were hyper perceptive and compulsively preoccupied with studying human activity. “As an actor,” says Hackman, “you become so alive in terms of being aware of other people and their behavior. In the early days it became – what’s the French word?- a RAISON D’ETRE. I’d get up in the morning, wanting to go, you know, out in the streets and just watch. It’s obsessive. That’s why actors are nuts. They’re different because their interests are different.” Duvall says, “You just see the way a guy walks; you’re looking for it, but you’re not looking for it. Something will grab you.” Hoffman adds, “Someday… if it’s in a community theater in Oshkosh and I’m 50 fucking years old, I will use it there.

Mitigating boredom, they turned their subsistence jobs into seminars on humanity. Working as a counterman at Howard Johnson’s, Hackman wondered, “What kind of improvisation could I do with this person?” He says “There was always somebody who was a pain in the ass. There was a crippled guy who cam in every day, and it was interesting because he knew he was difficult and he enjoyed being difficult. He’d leave a quarter or 15 cents tip and always say, ‘Gene, to the bank. To the BANK!’” Hoffman used a waiter job in a French restaurant to practice his French accent. If somebody spoke French to him, he would say that he needed to practice his English. During a newspaper strike, dressed as Paul Revere and wearing a sandwich board advertising the retail store Modell’s, he shouted out the news in Times Square. “That was acting!” he says.

MOBY does it.

The New York Yankees Do NOT open in Baltimore today. You gotta love an opening day rain out.

Regardless... I can’t wait to go see the new stadium. I miss New York.

The North Carolina Tarheels are HOT. They play Michigan State in the National Championship tonight and they just look unstoppable. I seriously don’t think I’ve ever seen a Carolina team play this well.

When people ask me why I’m a Carolina fan, I say “I was BORN in North Carolina. Almost everyone is my entire FAMILY went to Carolina… except for me… er… and my Mom… she went to Wake Forest… and… ok my cousin went to Western Carolina… you know what I just like the Tarheels ok.”

I watched Jamie Kennedy’s documentary HECKLER yesterday. WOW… what an experience. It affected me for sure. It’s funny, honest… sometimes shocking. In all honesty, I, myself have posted writings on this site that were critical of another artists work. I’ve been rather harsh fro time to time. Granted, I’m always willing and more inclined to write positive stuff about films or TV shows or music that I really LIKE… but I have taken the time to sit here and trash a couple of stage productions as well as a film or two… and I don’t think I will ever do that again. In fact, I wrote a scathing review of Clint Eastwood’s GRAN TORINO a couple of months ago and have since removed it.

I’m an artist… not a critic. I'm one of the good guys. I know how much of yourself you give to offer up a project to the Gods. I know how painful it is to hear or read ANY type of criticism… after you’ve slaved and sacrificed to help make a project come to fruition. And what exactly am I contributing by unleashing my critique? What possible positive effect would my negative opinion have…on anyone?

From now I will praise work that I find intriguing, exciting… or simply great. I want to share positive and uplifting things with those I care about… and that’s it. Harsh criticism does nothing more than hurt… and that’s not why I do this.

I’ve been reverting to this LIST style of blogging lately. Is it a cop-out? It doesn’t feel like TRUE writing… it’s easier… I’ll say that… it allows me to share a series of experiences, thoughts and opinions without spending too much time on structure… If I find structure…great… if I don’t…whatever…it’s just a “list.”

The LIST format comes from that damn Facebook “25 things about me” thing that was bouncing around for a while. I enjoyed writing that… and I got great feedback… I thought to myself “I should do this more often… and hey… MOBY does it.”

Before They Were Kings: Part Four

Hoffman... Hackman... Duvall.... PART 4>>>

.... Hoffman was joining a world of actors starting out, steeled against rejection, energized by hope and freedom. Hackman says, “There was a kind of feeling of Jack Kerouac at that time – ON THE ROAD – kids just wanted to have a good time and kind of experience things. It didn’t have anything to do with being successful – just wanting to try this thing and see if it worked.” Duvall remembers parties at Hackman’s apartment, with Faye, who was Italian, cooking pots of spaghetti for crowds of actors. One night after dinner, they all lay down on the floor, went to sleep, and woke up for dessert. “Yeah,” says Duvall, “those were good years, not knowing what the future was about. All these friends. Very important. Dreaming. That was fun.”

Duvall’s apartment was, to a degree, a youth hostel for a flow of actors and opera singers who stay a few nights or weeks, sleeping on the sofas. The rooms teemed with music – young singers, records of Broadway musicals such as WEST SIDE STORIES, and Hoffman, playing the piano. Duvall, a fine country-and-western singer, impersonated Hank Williams. At parties with candles in Chianti bottles and pizza, actors entertained with skits. Hoffman and Duvall improvised a routine called “Roger’s Rangers: The Toughest Unit in All the Services.” Duvall was the commander, Hoffman played the three rangers who at 70 degrees below zero have just run 10 miles on the ice, barefoot, with no clothes on, and now stand naked at attention after cold water has been poured over them. The commander walks down the line of soldiers and hits one across the jaw. Hoffman recalls, “Bobby would say ‘Did you feel that, soldier?’ I’d say ‘No Sir.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I’m a member of Roger’s Rangers, sir.’ ‘Very good.’ The commander moves down the line, boom in the belly, boom on the jaw. Same routine. The third ranger is standing at attention with a huge erection. The commander pulls out his sword and, boom, cuts off his penis. Bobby says, ‘Did you feel that, soldier?’ I say, ‘No sir.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because it belongs to the man in back of me, sir’ Bobby loved that stuff.”

Hoffman, Hackman, and Duvall have always been propelled by an uninhibited willingness to dare. An actor in their circle, Elliot Gould, considered Duvall “very tough, very independent, great integrity,” and vividly remembers their first meeting. Hoffman brought Duvall around to Gould’s apartment and rang the buzzer. Peering out the peephole, Gould remembers, “I saw what looked like the back end of two very bald horses with out tails. They were the butts of Dustin and Duvall. I thought, OK, that’s fine. They’re saying hello, in their way. Interesting. I’m sure we all look fundamentally the same from that angle. They were both a coupe of ASSHOLES.” Years later, on the set of THE GODFATHER, Duvall, off-camera, mooned Brando during a take. “Hey,” says Duvall, remembering the incident, “You have fun. It’s harmless.”

“Bobby maybe was the most outrageous, uncensored,” says Hoffman. “Do anything on impulse.” Once, as they ate together in a diner, Duvall spotted two Puerto Rican girls walking by. Dragging Hoffman with him, he caught up to them. “Hey, talk English. My name is Bobby Duvall; here’s my friend Dusty Hoffman. We’re actors.” They ignored him. Desperate, he came out with a unique pickup line:” We live right around the corner. You want to come up to our apartment? We have new linoleum in the kitchen.”

For the unmarried Duvall and Hoffman, girls were central to their free-rein theater world. Hoffman admits, “We were obsessed with sex.” Duvall concurs: “It was like what a friend from England said about being an actor- ‘Bob, it’s the greatest leg opener in the world, isn’t it?” Acting classes were a gold mine. “There were always a few models,” says Hoffman. “One comes up to you and says ‘Hi,’ like you’ve never looked at her, while for six months, you’ve been imagining her in bed with you. And she says, ‘I’d like to do a scene with you,’ and WHOA, she picks a love scene, and you’re rehearsing and it’s ‘YES!’ That happened to me and to Bobby. Much as were adherents to our craft, we looked for classes with women.

In the early 60’s, after Hoffman had lived with a succession of girls and friends – even slept in a dance studio where he taught acting – he and Duvall shared an apartment on West 22nd Street. “I’d get lucky,” and have a girl sleep over, and we’d be in the shower the next morning, and Bobby’d take his clothes off and just jump in the fucking shower – ‘Hey, I’m Bobby Duvall. I’m his roommate. I’m an actor. What do YOU do?” Duvall counters: “Let me tell you what went on before. I came down and he had the girl up on the table, standing there naked, and he’s standing there like he’s a painter.” (Duvall measures in the air with an imaginary pencil.)

In 1963, Hoffman was rooming with an opera tenor named Maurice Stern, who had discovered a Laundromat where beautiful ballerinas worked. Any girl who would load his laundry, and touch his dirty underwear, he figured, liked him. If after a week he had not scored, he would move on to the next candidate. Stern particularly liked Anne Byrne, a 19 year old dancer with the Pennsylvania Ballet Company who was studying in New York at the Ballet Theater. Stern wanted Hoffman to check her out. “Now, don’t do that sensitive shit,” he warned him. “You know what I’m talking about – you play that one song you’ve ever written and you get that Jimmy Dean look.” Stern took Byrne to a club called The Improvisation, where Hoffman played the piano for fun. “My heart pounded,” says Hoffman. “She was my fantasy girl. The unattainable.” His date, Phyllis, went to the bathroom, and Stern went to make a phone call. After a long pause, Hoffman said, “So, you’re a dancer,” She nodded and said “So you’re an actor.” No other words were spoken, but soon, he did do Jimmy Dean. Stern finished out the prescribed week without success, and Hoffman took over. On his motorcycle, they went to the beach and to art museums, and they read poetry together (Hoffman once organized a Sunday-evening poetry group).

When Anne Byrne returned to Philadelphia, he told Duvall, “I will marry her,” and the two men bet $100. After she returned from Philadelphia in 1969, he did. Hoffman adds, “Bobby’s never paid me.”

(to be continued)