Tag: Paul Mullin

Always Do the Awkward Thing

March 15, 2011

It’s my honor to accept this award for Best Original Screenplay for Crimes and Misdemeanors: a boring, flaccid, overwrought drama about, for, and by Upper West Siders. I mean, if I wanted that, I could go to the theatre.

What’s lamer than telling theatre jokes? Well, telling theatre jokes to an audience of film makers, for one.
When I was invited to participate as an “acceptor” for the First Annual 20/20 Awards, I could’ve sworn it was a huge joke. The idea of reevaluating the the Academy Awards twenty years after the fact struck me as an even more absurd than the Academy Awards themselves.
With nearly a years worth of retrospection, I suppose I am glad I was the first presenter of the evening. Had I known how seriously the others would take their role, I would have frozen, possibly peed, knowing the lame litany of campy jokes I had folded in my breast pocket. Instead, blissfully clueless as to what would follow, I naively soldiered on with my lame attempt at channeling Jimmy Kimmel.

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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
Winter Implicit

March 3, 2011

Consuming days like communion wafers
Awaiting the theatrics of the stars
Burning dead illusion somewhere beyond
These swamping atmospheres
Suffering through the wrung-out salt-craving
of the season’s seventy seventh hangover.
That tree is also an outcropping
of the dumb earth, but it can crown
itself again from its own skeleton.
Don’t look at me. I’m meat bound. Graying.
My sons are my blossoms
and their daughters, lost summer.
And what does Ikkyū say? “Chop open
the cherry tree. You’ll find no flowers.
But the spring breeze brings forth. . .”
Baseball cherry pop grilled steak and mojitos.
Winter implicit.
Winter be damned.
Winter come again.

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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
The New New News on the Radio . . . Again!

February 28, 2011

The Puget Sound’s NPR affiliate 88.5 KPLU ran a segment on our show this morning, A look at “The New, New, News: A Living Newspaper.” You can read the accompanying text article and listen to the audio here.
But I won’t leave you without a little teaser:

The play also explores how long time print journalists are making their way in the world of blogs and virtual newsrooms that don’t have any firewalls separating them from the demands of advertisers.

They pull back the curtain of online journalism and raise a lot of interesting questions.

Mullin and Nichols say they don’t want people to take sides, new versus old, paper versus digital. But they do want us to be aware of the changes happening in journalism, and to question these changes so we can make the profession better. They say that if the public does not take these changes seriously, our democracy could eventually suffer.

We have finished up our West Seattle and Capitol Hill runs, and now only have two weeks left at our home base in North Seattle. So get your advance reservations now by clicking here!
(You can click here to listen to KUOW’s earlier piece on The New New News.)

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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
On Institutional Arrogance

February 13, 2011
Seattle has already lost the print edition of the Seattle PI and the … The Empty Space. We need to fight against the Darwinian trend of saying that only the strongest survive, and take action against the slow erosion of the cultural tapestry of Seattle. We are a city that prides itself on its intellectual acuity.

Kate Whoriskey
Artistic Director of the Intiman Theatre
I am often accused of arrogance. The aspersion does not bother me much. I try to remind everyone who will listen that the last thing they should be looking for in a playwright is reticence. Dramatists can be wrong—often are— but after all boldly framed public dialogue is what we wright when we write. Institutional arrogance, however, is an all together different, more heinous sin. My recent work blurring the line between journalism and theatre with NewsWrights United has opened my eyes to the prevalence of this poisonous phenomenon in both fields.
Back in June 2010, at a panel on monetizing on-line news David Boardman, the Managing Editor of The Seattle Times, made a stunning statement about the recent death of his former competition, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “The reality is: it’s not like something was lost.” This is not the first time someone at The Times has gone out of their way to kick the corpse of The P-I. If you choose to watch the video (Boardman makes his remarks at timestamp 52:50 in the video provided below) you will notice that the journalism insider panelists barely blink at Boardman’s chilling dismissal of Seattle’s longest running daily newspaper. In fairness, they might have been reluctant to register the churlishness of one in the rare position to offer them a paying job in their chosen field. (As a playwright I have long since been liberated from this kind of fear, since no artistic director is willing to pay me, or any local playwright, at a rate comparable to even what an Equity actor makes, let alone a living wage.)
The Seattle Times survives through the idiotic exigencies of fate. It could have easily been the other way around, and in their hearts they know it. The jury remains out on newspapers. So “Fairview Fanny”, as The Times is traditionally nicknamed, would do well to watch her step in the cemetery lest she dance into her own grave.
The chasm gapes even wider and closer for The Intiman Theatre, one of Seattle’s three Big Houses. In a recent email to everyone in their database the Intiman made it clear that unless a half a million dollars is raised by the end of March, and then another half million by September, the theatre will cease operations. In the business, we call this a “shoot-the-puppy” campaign: a deeply desperate move, fraught with risk, but also deeply arrogant. At its core the implicit message is:

Our survival matters so much that you should overlook our ineffectuality, our malfeasance, our self-dealing, our cowardice and even the very arrogance of this plea. We matter more than the artists we underpay. We matter more than the audiences we fail to reach. We matter more than the smaller organizations you will not be supporting so that you can help us survive, because we must survive and you must pay now for nothing more than the chance to watch us live another day.

Allow me to honor the clarity of Intiman’s ultimatum with some clarity of my own: I hope they die. I hope they do it soon and with a minimum of suffering. And most of all I hope they do it without siphoning precious funds from the rest of us who make theatre in the Pacific Northwest.
In her note on the Intiman’s blog which I quoted at the top of this post, Artistic Director Kate Whoriskey invokes the ghosts of The Empty Space and The P-I as if she actually suffered their loss instead of showing up on the scene quite recently and long after those beloved institutions succumbed. She merrily previews the upcoming season: “I will be directing my husband in The Playboy of the Western World,” assuming we would be delighted by this nepotism. She must imagine we were similarly delighted when we learned that she had been hand-picked for her position by her predecessor Bart Sher without any input from the community, the patrons, and very little, it seems, even from board “Without the Intiman, will we be as strong?” she implores in closing. And all I can think of is the Lone Ranger joke. He and Tonto are surrounded by a band of Apaches. He says, “Looks like we might die here, old friend.” And Tonto replies, “What’s this “we” shit, Kemosabe?”
Seattle theatre is alive and thriving. Buy me a beer and I will name you at least 100 theatre organizations in Western Washington more deserving of your donation than the Intiman. For now I will give you three for free and attempt to tier them to your tastes:
- If you like raw gusty innovative new stories which actually take place here now in Seattle, then support the project for which I currently serve as Executive Producer, NewsWrights United. We are world premiering our second edition The New New News: A Living Newspaper this Friday. Our ticket prices are considerably more affordable than the Intiman’s. If you can’t make the show, you can still support us here. (I don’t hate our odds of surviving past September.)
- If your tastes are more conservative, but you still want to support a smaller endeavor; if you love the classics and want to see them done with verve, talent and bold new insights, support Seattle Shakespeare Company. They have a production of Three Penny Opera coming up that I am itching to see, since it’s by my favorite German playwright and it stars one of my favorite undersung Seattle actors, John Bogar. You can donate to Seattle Shakes here.
- If your tastes are still more conservative, and/or you are rich enough to consider such smaller theatres beneath the consideration of your largesse, give some money to A Contemporary Theatre. The day before Intiman sent out its desperate plea, its fellow Big House downtown announced that for the second year running it had booked a budget surplus. You can donate to an already healthy ACT here.
All three of these organizations prove that at every level of operations we can do better than what the Intiman has been doing. We know this in our hearts. What we do not know is if the Intiman can do better than what the Intiman has been doing. I tend to doubt it, and that is why I believe it is time to let it die.
Please do not misunderstand me. The shuttering of the Intiman represents a loss nearly as terrible and irrevocable within Seattle’s cultural ecosphere as the loss of the P-I is within Seattle’s journalism world (Mr. Boardman’s fear-born callousness notwithstanding). I will not dance on the Intiman’s grave. But I will also not be a party to keeping the institution on life support past the time of its viability, especially when doing so means diverting funds from theatre arts organizations that have been more successful in reaching and expanding their audiences, like, frankly, NewsWrights United, Seattle Shakespeare Festival and ACT.
The Intiman has been arrogant for a very long time. If Kate’s note is any indication, they have no intentions of improving their tone-deaf messaging. They want you to believe this current crisis was the fault of one lone mismanaging scapegoat. But as Michael Strangeways pointed out on the SLOG comments board: “Brian Colburn… didn’t steal the money, or spend it. Years of overspending and waste and the laziness of the Board has led to the woes of Intiman. It wasn’t one man/woman, but many, including fair haired child Bart Sher.”
Losing the Intiman will be a tragedy, but we will survive. We can even hope to be a better community for it in the long run, if we guard against institutional arrogance. We need to remember that artists matter more than institutions, that audiences matter more than funders, that plays matter more as works of art than career stepping stones. As Mark Handley, author of Idioglossia, remarked on Face Book:

I’m too much of an evolutionist to take this seriously. Every one of the theaters that produced me as a young man are gone, squeezed out by creeping provincialism. People seem to think that this is ALL (read: $60 ticket, NY director, LA actors) or NOTHING (as in: nothing, gone, kaput, out of business) is the way to go… *sigh*

So yes, harsh as it sounds: please let the Intiman die with dignity. Its time is done. In its place, let’s build something new, local and accountable. We actually already have the pieces in place for that. The Intiman will not live to see the promised land, but if Kate Whoriskey is serious about making Seattle her home– claiming its unique triumphs and defeats as hers too– then perhaps she will still be living here when we finally grow into a “world class” theatre town.
* * *

Seattle Channel Video can be played in Flash Player 9 and up
(Above is full video of the panel discussion “Town Square: Revenue Models in the Changing Media Landscape” from which I referenced David Boardman’s glib remarks about the death of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If you dare, surf a little past the Boardman quote and you can see me holding Publicola’s Josh Feit’s feet to the fire on his equally glib Pollyannaish assessment of arts coverage in the current environment. If you decide to watch the entire event, you will witness the nearly monolithic patronizing attitude of the panel (David Brewster excepted) to questions from an audience who is clearly not buying their uniformly optimistic outlook. Oh, journalists love the concepts of honesty and transparency, as applied to others.)
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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
#WAshooting on the Airwaves

February 11, 2011

Seattle’s NPR affiliate 94.9 KUOW will be running an interview with me and Jeremy Richards about a story NewsWrights United stages in The New New News: A Living Newspaper about the Twitter coverage of the 2009 Maurice Clemmons manhunt, now infamously known as the “WAshooting Feed”. The segment will air on the radio on Saturday, February 12 at 12:06 pm PST, but the sneaky tech-savvy listener can access it now and forever at “Tweeting the Manhunt”. I welcome your thoughts. (But I already know that I talk to fast.)
The show itself premieres on Friday, February 18, in West Seattle at Olympic Hall at South Seattle Community College. Advance reservations can be made here.
We will also be delivering the “paper” to North Seattle (click here) and Capitol Hill (click here) locations. Don’t miss it!

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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
Shakespeare Would Hate Us

February 1, 2011

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was thinking of auditioning for The Wooden O this year, since for the first time in a years I won’t be on vacation during their run. My buddy, who happens to be a Seattle firefighter, but whose wife acts with the O on occasion, trotted out a taunt he likes to tweak me with: “But Paul, you hate Shakespeare.”
He bases this facetious conclusion on a challenge I proposed some years back calling on all Seattle theatres to self-impose a Shakespeare hiatus for one year. Brendan Kiley, Arts Editor for The Stranger, picked the idea up and wrote about it here. I still genuinely believe this would be a grand and beneficial experiment, but not because I hate Shakespeare—quite the opposite. As a playwright I flatter myself that I understand the man’s genius better than most of the directors and actors who worship so sycophantically at his altar for all the wrong reasons.

“It’s the language that makes his plays so exquisite.”

“No, it’s his sumptious, multifaceted characters.”

“No, no, it’s the tradition, the chance to etch one’s mark on the living canon of performance.”

It’s all bullshit. Shakespeare was a great—yes, even the greatest—playwright for one and only one simple reason: he wrought great plays. All the rest is just so much makings. You might praise a chef for her choice of ingredients, but you wouldn’t claim them as the reason for her genius. A year without Shakespeare would help us gain some much needed clarity and distance from the material. We would come back to it ready to attack with refreshed hearts. And it would also get us off his cash-cow tit for long enough to taste a little bona fide self-sufficiency. Hell, we might actually miss Shakespeare. That currently unfathomable notion alone would make a break worth it, wouldn’t it?
Never mind. I already know the answer. It was shouted at me and Kiley at the Seattle Theatre ShitStorm back in 2008. And it has been shouted just as fiercely upon every subsequent mention. “Never! We will NEVER stop staging Shakespeare. Not for a year. Not for a month. How dare you!? You and the rest of your modern playwright ilk are not fit to wipe the soles of his pointy shoes.” The level of vituperation one encounters upon even suggesting a breather from the bard naturally calls a paraphrase of one of his more famous lines to mind, “Methinks the status quo doth protest too much.”
Yes, American Theatre literally worships Shakespeare. And I have to laugh, because I am pretty sure he would have hated us.
Shakespeare was a playwright, poet, player and proprietor, in equal measure, despite our hindsighted emphasis on the first of those four. He made plays to make money and he made a lot of both. He would hate our precious process of endless workshopping plays to an early death on dusty shelves. At the Globe you worked the problems of a play in performance.
He would hate that people more often read his plays than see them.
He would hate, or not have been even able to comprehend, a system in which playwrights make plays for performance in cities far from where they live, for less than it costs them to create, for the narrowest sliver of society.
He would hate that so many modern American playwrights have never acted and never produced, have never done anything in a theatre except watch silently from dark seats.
Since he shared them, he would sympathize with the milquetoast middle class aspirations of most American playwrights—“I just want to have a house and a family and make the same kind of money as my friends I went to college with”— but he would grow to hate them eventually. Shakespeare may have envied his social superiors, but he also knew at his core he was better than them.
He would not hate that we kiss the asses of our benefactors and patrons, but he would hate how poorly and surreptitiously and self-loathingly we do it; almost never managing, as he did, to flatter and skewer with the same loaded lines: floating sublimely above, then suddenly crawling at them from beneath, being everyone and no one at the same time with such stunning success that even today reasonably sane and educated people entertain themselves with the pseudo-intellectual dalliance that he did not even write the plays which he so clearly did.
He would have hated the MFA system for generating new viral spores of actors, playwrights and directors when there isn’t enough work for the ones already in the system.
He would have hated the advent of the auteur director, smothering the natural brilliance of his plays with their dense cloying concepts.
He would hate that artistic administrators make the decisions about which plays get done, instead of a consensus of proprietor/players, all sharing the ownership of the theatre, and thus the risks and rewards.
And most of all, he would hate our necrophilic prejudice for his plays, even the poor ones, over anything new, even the good ones. As the consummate playwright, he would want us to love the living writers as much or more than the dead.
So, yeah, I’m pretty sure if Shakespeare were alive today he would hate us.
And he’d be writing for television.

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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
The Blogs are Alright

January 26, 2011
Does it automatically mean you are stuck in a self-referential rut as a playwright when the same talented young actress who, back in 2008, played a character based on your wife, less than three years later gets cast in a completely different play portraying, not a character based on you, but actually you, the playwright?
Rehearsals have begun for The New New News: A Living Newspaper, and true to our promise, NewsWrights United is publishing blogs from members of the cast and crew. You can get ‘em while they’re hot over at NewsWrights United: The Blog.
I really couldn’t be more delighted with the material that the New New Newsies are generating, while simultaneously managing to rehearse the show, take care of their families, go to school, and/or hold down full-time jobs.
- You can read It’s Not in the P-I-veteran Brian Thomas Gould ranting about “The Table Read” and how he uses it to read his director based on the roles he’s been cast in.
- Or check out “Memories of Homemade Bombs” in which NewsWright Actor Tammy Batey recounts her days as an actual ink-and-paper journalist covering Stratton R. Maxey for the Federal Way Mirror. On April 14, 1999, Maxey accidentally blew off his left hand while handling a homemade bomb.
- And then, of course, there’s Courtney A. Kessler’s “Playing the Playwright”, in which she relates her experience as an actor playing both my wife, scarcely disguised as the character Jenny Wolfe in The Don Juan Cult Concerto, as well as more recently myself, in a brief scene in The New New News about how NewsWrights United decides to cover our stories.
By the way, you can order tickets for the upcoming New New News here. We know you wanna.
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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
The New Posters are Here! The New Posters are Here!

January 20, 2011

Could I be more excited?!
The new posters are in for The New New News: A Living Newspaper, and NewsWrights United’s magnificent Managing Producer, Jim Jewell, will be handing them off to Keep Posted for delivery around the Puget Sound. Soon you’ll be seeing one on the wall of your favorite tragically hip coffee shop!
Could I be more pleased!?
No, I don’t think I could.
(Haven’t been so happy about a poster since this.)
For more information on the show, and how to order reservations in advance, click here.

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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
Extra! Extra! The New New News to Drop at a Seattle Doorstep Near You!

January 18, 2011

It’s official. We have the dates and we are rolling out the press release to local and national media as I post this. The second edition of NewsWrights United’s Living Newspaper: The New New News will be delivered at three—count ‘em, THREE!—theatrical doorsteps throughout Seattle: North, South and Central. I am enclosing the release, authored by our magnificent Managing Producer, Jim Jewell, so that you can have all the coveted details:
*****
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 13, 2011
Media Contact: Jim Jewell, Managing Producer
jim@newswrightsunited.org
206.359.1738
NewsWrights United presents…
The New New News:
A Living Newspaper about
Journalism in the Age of New Media
SEATTLE, WA – NewsWrights United will be delivering the next edition of their Living Newspaper to neighborhoods throughout Seattle this spring with The New New News: A Living Newspaper, opening February 18, 2011 at Olympic Theatre at South Seattle Community College (SSCC). The New New News will remain at Olympic Theatre through February 20, 2011 before moving to Erickson Theatre on Capitol Hill February 24-27, 2011 and finally to Stage One Theatre at North Seattle Community College (NSCC) March 2-13, 2011.
      The New New News: A Living Newspaper was written by NewsWrights Executive Producer Paul Mullin and Creative Producer Dawson Nichols, in collaboration with Editing Producer Tom Paulson, and will be directed by Nichols.
      The New New News: A Living Newspaper examines journalism in the age of new media, paying special attention to the implications to information and democracy created by the collapse of newspapers, the 24-hour news cycle and the demands of monetizing media. The play follows the staff of The New New News, an online news provider dedicated to coverage of online news, after their primary financier has given them just 12 hours to double website traffic or be shut down. Coverage of the Maurice Clemmons manhunt and The Seattle Times’ subsequent Pulitzer win, NW sports-writing legend Art Thiel’s efforts to launch and monetize his own sports site, hyper-local political bloggers, live-and-mobile streaming and the ascendance of Twitter underscore The New New News crews’ efforts to create immediate and compelling news. The New New News examines the choices journalists make when their livelihood is on the line and success is measured by the eyeball and the minute.
      This is the second Living Newspaper produced by NewsWrights United, serving a similar function as the first while breaking new ground. “It’s Not In The P-I was about the death of a newspaper,” says Nichols. “The New New News is about journalism in the new media environment – who produces it, who consumes it, how it is different from the journalism we have known. Like the first play, this one is local and timely, addressing these issues through stories and people that are rooted in Seattle.”
      These are familiar themes for NewsWrights, as they view part of their mission as the revitalization of both theatre and journalism, and localism as a key to success. Jokes Mullin, “Immediacy comes in two basic flavors: one of time and one of space. When you bring journalism into a theatre, you bring the two different flavors together for an explosively tasty combination! It’s better than peanut butter and jelly.”
      This newest Living Newspaper will once again be produced in cooperation with NSCC’s theatre program (which is led by NewsWrights’ producer Nichols), and will bring together professional actors with NSCC students. The professional cast includes Michelle Chiachiere, Mark Fullerton, Joe Ivy, Catherine Kettrick, Joe McCarthy and Jordan Williamson. Dan Schuy from NSCC serves as Technical Director, Lighting Designer and Set Designer.
    The full performance schedule for The New New News: A Living Newspaper is as follows:
Olympic Theatre at South Seattle Community College (SSCC)
6000 16th Ave. SW, Seattle, 98106
Friday February 18 and Saturday February 19 @ 7:30pm
Sunday February 20 @ 2pm
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/148545
The Erickson Theatre on Capitol Hill (part of Seattle Central Community College)
1524 Harvard Ave, Seattle, 98122
Thursday February 24, Friday February 25 and Saturday February 26 @ 7:30pm
Sunday February 27 @ 2pm
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/148614
Stage One Theatre at North Seattle Community College (NSCC)
9600 College Way North, Seattle, 98103
Wednesday March 2 at Noon
Friday March 4, Saturday March 5, Friday March 11 & Saturday March 12 @ 7:30pm
Sunday March 6 and Sunday March 13 @ 2pm
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/148619
All performances Pay What You Will. Advance reservations available at Brown Paper Tickets for each performance venue as listed above.

NewsWrights United would like to thank 4Culture, Vulcan, Shunpike and their many individual donors for supporting The New New News and other programs of NewsWrights United.
###
About NewsWrights United
NewsWrights United was founded in 2009 by playwrights Paul Mullin and Dawson Nichols and former P-I reporter Tom Paulson to produce It’s Not in the P-I: A Living Newspaper About a Dying Newspaper. Managing Producer Jim Jewell and Dramaturg Wes Andrews joined the team in summer 2010. NewsWrights United’s mission is to produce and advance the form of the Living Newspaper – local, topical stories pursued with journalistic rigor and presented through the medium of live theatre.
About Shunpike
Shunpike is a 501(c)(3) non-profit art service organization whose mission is to strengthen the Seattle arts community by partnering with small and mid-size arts groups to develop the business tools they need to succeed. Working in close partnership with these groups, Shunpike helps solve problems quickly and impart vital skills in finance, organizational management and arts administration.

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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video
The Macallan Talks – Side Two

January 14, 2011

A few days ago I shared a transcript I recently found from the first half of a cassette tape recording that William Salyers and I made one evening in 1997 while consuming a bottle of Macallan scotch, each. As promised, I share the second half of the full transcript at the end of this post.
We are clearly getting drunker on side two. Alas, this does not increase the insightfulness of our comments. Just the opposite, I’m afraid. I sure don’t like myself very much as the discussion wears on. It feels to me, thirteen years later, like I am trying to badger Bill into believing he will be a better artist once he admits he’s an artist and opens himself up to– what?—the “wider universe”; the “heroism of art”, or whatever woo-woo crap 30-year old-Paul was spouting. At one point, I literally say to him: “I think you need to start reading folktales.” Can you even get more excruciatingly Left-Coast Joseph Campbellish condescending than that?
In the intervening time since I gave him this advice Bill Salyers has gone on to world premiere the title role in Louis Slotin Sonata in Los Angeles and then off-Broadway, winning himself several awards and enormous critical acclaim for his efforts. He also world-premiered my play An American Book Of The Dead – The Game Show, directed the world premiere of The Good Ship Manhattan, world premiered The Sequence playing future Nobel Laureate, Francis Collins, and these are just the examples from my scripts. The quality of his work as an actor in an even broader panoply of plays —classic, modern or brand new (mine and others) — is legend. And I think it is safe to say that Bill never really changed his point of view from the one he espouses in these recordings. In other words, for all my high holy exhortation to become a better artist by first admitting he is one, Bill remained a great artist, and became an even greater one, simply by being Bill. Lesson learned: not all heroes and artists want to be heroes and artists— some don’t even believe in such things— and yet, somehow, art and heroism still happen.
So, with that, here’s some highlights, then the whole thing at the end if you’re interested:
Blowing smoke up Salyers’ shorts while simultaneously patronizing him
PAUL: I consider you to be as great an artist as I’ve ever met. I consider you… to…I consider that I need to learn things about my craft that you’ve already learned about yours. I’ve also– yeah! And I’m starting to, because you’ve worked at your craft. You’ve been pragmatic hands-on with your craft in a lot of different ways that I’m just starting to: I’m starting to write for television, you know. I’m starting to… write for hire.
BILL: Right.
PAUL: You know?
BILL: Right.
PAUL: Which you’ve been doing for a while. In fact, in some ways, you… that’s what you do is act for hire…. Except on projects like TUESDAY where you chose to do it because of– of whatever feelings you have for the work. Um… but I– but I think the one thing that I’ve always kind of instinctively known, whether it was because of my religions upbringing, or because of my attraction to art.
BILL: Mm-hm
PAUL: Because my attraction to art was one of a knight in shining armor. And we can talk about that too. Uh…I have revised my vision– but not completely on that. Um… I do think that artists are true heroes.
BILL: Hmm? (Maybe this is sort of a verbal shrug?)
PAUL: True heroes. That true artists are those people who um…. and I include that person who can make the exquisite phad tai, or… or the exquisite scotch, or, or can uh… well, we can talk about that maybe later, but– I feel like one of the things that– that you refuse to admit is that that which you do is beyond your control–
BILL: Mmm-hmm.
PAUL: To a certain extent. And you’re uncomfortable with that.
Devolving into faux-Jesse Jacksonism
PAUL: For many people– for the born-again Christians of the world– I would nothing but heartily convince them that there is nothing outside themselves.
(Bill laughs.)
PAUL: That that world which they have created is their own fucking fucked-up… vision of the world.
BILL: Yeah.
PAUL: And that that which they hate is themselves. And that which they love is a… sweetened aspect of themselves and that they have not left themselves.
BILL: Right.
PAUL: You… you I would encourage you to see the other aspect of the universe, and that is that you are constantly connected in a thousand million different ways to that which you feel unconnected to. And that that the– that the satellite– you’re either a satellite revolving around the sun or you are the revolution. You know?
BILL: Mmm.
PAUL: You know?
BILL: Mmm-hmm.
PAUL: And uh… not to sound like Jesse Jackson. Although that would be– Fuck, man. I should write for Jesse Jackson ‘cuz that’s great!
(Bill laughs.)
PAUL: That’s better than anything Jesse’s said in a long mother-fucking time.
(Bill laughs.)
PAUL: You’re either that which revolves around the sun, or (Jesse Voice) you are the revolution!
BILL: You’re right. That does sound like Jesse.
PAUL: Umm. Except it doesn’t rhyme. But it’s– it’s a little too sublime for Jesse. We’ll have to find some other demagogue for it. But– although I love– my heart goes out to Jesse. I can’t hate, Jesse. He’s fab– Did you hear his speech the last convention? It rocked.
Mullin lays an Irish curse on Salyers
PAUL: There’s– There’s this great Zen koan that I love. Says– the young monk comes to the master, and says, you know, “I’m meditating but I’m too cold.” And the Zen master says, “Well, you know when cold go to that place where you are so cold that it kills you and when you are hot go to that place where you are so hot that it kills you.” And I lay this Irish curse on you: “Live in that universe where there is no art. Be that universe where there is no art.”
BILL: Well, I think I’ve tried to. I mean, I–
PAUL: No, I mean it.
(Paul laughs.)
PAUL: NO, I MEAN IT!
(Paul laughs hysterically.)
BILL (drunken voice mockery of Paul): You don’t understand!
On whether an actor should ever argue a director down
BILL: This stuff about– this stuff about uh– nobody stops to think about the fact that there was a director involved in that show. It wasn’t just about what Steven wrote. It wasn’t just about what I did, you know? What I– when I’m– when I’m rending my hair, my fake hair, at an incredible point and I go, “RENFIELD!” That’s not necessarily my choice.
PAUL: Right.
BILL: That’s me doing what I was told the best way I could. And I’m–
PAUL: Right.
BILL: And I’m presented with the challenge of trying to find truth in that. Now a lot of actors would have argued Eddie down…. That’s not my job. It’s not my– it’s not my job to uh– promote myself–
PAUL: Is there ever a time when it’s right to argue a director down?
BILL: Yeah, when you’re the other director.
(Paul begins to groan very lowly. )
BILL: If you’re an actor your job is to do what you’re told as best as you possibly can.
PAUL: Wow! Okay! We come to the truth of it.
BILL: I’ve– I’ve long said that. If you want to direct a play go fucking direct a play.
PAUL: Well, wait a second. Wa-wa-wa-waaaiiit a second
BILL: Okay.
PAUL: Because I think it’s not as facile as that.
BILL: I think it should be. I think if you’re a craftsman it is.
PAUL: Ah well.
BILL: –And that’s why I’m not an artist.
PAUL: Hmmm.
BILL: I– I don’t have any patience for that crap. I mean, it’s another– it’s another– it’s another way that the film world has invaded what we do.
PAUL (overlapping): Well, here we go. Well, here we go is what I’m saying is like, yes, as the novice, rookie, bullshit actor who’s got a little taste of Stanislavsky, a bad taste via Mr. Uh– Strasberg.
BILL: Strasberg, yeah.
PAUL: Uh…. That’s the last thing they need to be doing is telling the director what their choices are. But let me tell you something about Mr. (slurry) Mr. Eddie Levi Lee, is that you know more about theatre in your fucking, you know, nose–
BILL: Then I, then I–
PAUL: Hair clippings than Eddie Levi Lee knows.
BILL: Okay, then if I– if I believe that going into it, I’m a hypocrite when I sign the contract. And I’m not a hypocrite… so I sign the contract.
PAUL: I– augh!
On whether an actor should ever refuse a line change from a director
PAUL: Billy, you’re saying– you’re saying to me that in no circumstances would it be right for you as one of the best actors that I know uh… to– to call bullshit on a director. That
BILL: I’m saying it’s not my job.
PAUL (overlapping): That fucking frightens me. No, it is your fucking job!
BILL: No, it’s not.
PAUL: Yes, it is your fucking jo–
BILL: I don’t agree with you.
PAUL (overlapping): I went to– John Sylvain came to me and said– I had a line that said, “I threw that pass–” now obviously this is an actor/playwright, a whole ‘nother issue.
BILL: I know the line you’re talking about, too.
PAUL: Yeah, said, “That fucking nigger dropped it.”
BILL (simultaneously): “That fucking nigger dropped it.”
PAUL: And Johnny said, “You need to cut that.” And I said, “You need to go fuck yourself, because one, it’s the night before opening, and two, it’s the fucking script, and THREE, it’s the way we rehearsed it.
BILL: Well, let me– let me tell you something. I’m not saying– don’t misunderstand me. In that same situation I would have asked John to keep the line. I wouldn’t have told John to go fuck himself, because John’s the director.
PAUL: No! No! No!. But see that’s where I digress with you, because John’s fucking with my shit there and he has no business doing it.
BILL: Brother, it’s not–
PAUL: And he deserves–
BILL: It isn’t your shit!
PAUL: Yes!
BILL: It’s our shit.
To follow is the full transcript of the second side of the cassette.
(more…)

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Tags: 20/20 Awards, Academy Awards, award acceptance, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Do the Right Thing, Paul Mullin, video