Write On!

I’ve been writing! Sketches mostly. I know I’ve been irregular with the blogging, mea culpa.


The little sketch comedy show I was in finished up last week to an appreciative audience of two plus a homeless man who wandered in about halfway through to take a nap in between random muttering. Perhaps we were disturbing him. Or perhaps he had just shown up early for the AA meeting which took place after the show. Suzanne, dear friend that she is, came along to the final performance, laughed loudly and dragged me off to a bar afterwards where a friend of hers was having a party. There we got chatted up by a couple of middle-aged lawyers: Roy and Randy (“He’s the rest and I’m the relaxation”), I kid you not. They were nice enough fellows, but no thanks. Sometimes I wish I had it in me to be rude enough to say at a certain point “I have to talk to someone else now, bye!” They both gave me their card. I guess I know who to call if I ever need legal advice… especially with regards to real estate dealings… ace.

Everyone is talking about Inception. I’m over it. What a heap of hyperbolic hoo-ha. Hey, I enjoyed it, it’s very entertaining, but it is NOT the greatest film ever made. Basically, it’s little more than a heist film with arresting visuals, but it seems to have a lot of people hoodwinked into thinking it’s deep and philosophical and complicated. It’s not really. As far as films that play with ideas of memory and dreams (and the manipulation of both), then Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind goes a lot further, has richer characters and ultimately a point to make about the importance of memories in shaping who we are and how we learn from our experiences. Come to think of it, so does Hitchcock’s Spellbound (which comes complete with Salvador Dali dream sequence). That being said, I applaud the making of a film that is not based on a TV show or video game and that does not rely on the star power of its actors for success. I’m glad it is doing so well and hope that the Hollywood power-brokers recognize the value of investing in original scripts.

Comedy Ha Ha

So, I've been doing this little sketch comedy show on Friday nights.  It's called 'Lo-Carb Comedy' and the material is all based around health and fitness and alternative lifestyles; a rich vein from which to draw comedy blood.  This has been an interesting and in some ways challenging experience.  Anyone who is familiar with Baggage Productions knows the quality of script, sharpness of performance and attention to detail of our shows.  Our budgets have always been tiny, but that matters less when you are working with great scripts and wonderful, talented, dedicated people.  We put a lot of work in, typically devoting several months to writing, development and rehearsal. 

Lo-Carb Comedy is a different beast because this is a bunch of people I haven't worked with before and we threw it together in two weeks.  Nothing is slick in two weeks, but I suppose there is a sort of knockabout energy to the show which is appealing.  Given the very short lead time, I dug up some old Baggage sketches that fitted thematically, and Will (who is a comedian and the driving force behind the show) contributed some stand-up.  Two other young women - JJ and Julian - plus JJ's hubby, John (that's a lot of J's) round out the cast.  JJ and Will wrote some other sketch material and John does an on-target Christopher Walken impersonation.  The best thing about the show is that it has got me writing again.  After hearing about the range of insane extreme diets that Julian has personally sampled (and continues to seek out), I wrote a sketch about the topic.  Since the show has been up on its feet, I've been working on another sketch; the juices are flowing. 

We've performed the last three Friday nights at the Next Stage Theatre, a pokey little place in a strip mall in the heart of seedy Hollywood.  It's a busy venue, with multiple shows each running one night a week.  Lo-Carb Comedy is on right after The Vampire Chronicles; we're sharing a dressing room with an assortment of nubile young things in bustiers (some are vampires, some are victims).  The low hum of muted chit-chat in the dressing room is punctuated by blood-curdling screams on-stage and dramatic music. 

Outside in the parking lot one encounters hipsters heading to The Woods - a bar which, typical of LA, looks utterly nondescript (even daggy, being in a strip mall) on the outside but is actually pretty cool and jam-packed on the inside (you could be anywhere from New York to Berlin) - or families stopping in at Mashti Malone's for some ice-cream, or a homeless man selling a rabbit (as a pet or a meal, your choice).