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Old Dreams
Jul. 28th, 2007 11:23 pmA long time ago, I wanted to be an actor.
My first role was in a little grade school musical adaptation of Disney's Cinderella. I played a cat. Most of my lines were "Meow".
I was in every play my high school put on, and also did some of the curtain pulling etc. I learned the techie things too, because you could ear extra money by running the soundboard and lights for people who rented out the auditorium. At the time the high school auditorium was the largest hall in the county.
Some of the more memorable roles were playing Roger in Grease where I had a duet with my high school girlfriend (the song, "Mooning", isn't in the movie), and a rather odd turn as a fat, 15 year old Winthrop in The Music Man - that's the show where in the middle of the run, my voice changed. Not so great for a role that should be played by an 8 year old.
I also played an undertaker in community theater. I t was never the staring roles, always the supporting ones, and often ones that required an oddity. in Grease, Roger is supposed to be fat, and there are jokes about it. Winthrop Paroo has an overly pronounced lisp. the undertaker is shy and a bit Morbid in I Remember Mama. I thought, this is good, I can play character roles.
Still, what I really wanted to do was go into television. It was a dream of mine to be on a sitcom, and not just as the wacky neighbor, but as the lead. Sort of the job that's filled by mediocre comedians today. Why couldn't I have my life, young as it was, mined for the material that would make a decent sitcom. It would be a sitcom about a guy in drama club and marching band. What's not to love.
Now I think, even I wouldn't watch that show.
I went to college as a theater major. I was never cast in a show there, and I couldn't find a way to impress the faculty - well, actually the lighting director liked me, but I always had a hard time with the acting faculty. One of the acting teachers was the father of Cindy Pickett - you probably won't recognize the name, but she played the mother in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He kept telling us of her big success, which is that she was in one movie you may have heard of. He also mentioned some of his students, Randy Quaid, Brent Spiner, Robert Wuhl - but failed to mention that they all left after a year of college.
I always received poor grades in the acting classes, and was never given too much help on how to improve my craft. They really didn't care about me, and after a while I didn't care about them much either. My GPA plummeted as I slowly found out I wasn't getting anywhere. I realized that i wasn't a good actor, this is true, but there really wasn't anything else to be learned from these people. They didn't teach anything.
So I changed my major. I decided to go into journalism, and take Radio-Television courses as a minor. I still had the dream of performing, but what I wanted was to be in television. The focus of the University of Houston was not to build stars, but to build stage performers, and that's not what I wanted.
Yeah, I wanted to be famous. I would have loved to have been a talk-show host in the mold of David Letterman. Back then his show was hot and different and hip. not things you'd say about it now, but that was the breakaway from the more staid Johnny Carson tonight Show. Again, Letterman was a performer who got to be famous for being a version of himself on television. That was my idea of fame, being myself. I could write plot lines of my "show" that would be punched up versions of my real life. If I could sell that, it would be great.
I always wanted to use that little performance bug, and I appeared in several of the projects classmates would have in my television production classes. I played a version of the Church Lady once. this even moved on to my last job where I popped up in several of the quarterly meeting videos as a dance, news anchor and CSI detective. I'm a complete ham, and at least i know that.
I even produced a video magazine of the college marching band - which at the time was very topical, but nothing ground breaking, except that we had done it. We worked down hours of videotape and popped in fake ads and music videos that implies that our drum major was a diva. Well, he was. It was a labor of love, but really makes me wonder what I missed out on by not finishing the RTV degree.
I've given up finding my way in acting. I guess I could try to find some community theater outlet, but so far i haven't wanted to give up the time to do it, or to go through the horrible rejection process of auditioning. Right now I've had enough performances that haven't convinced anyone with a series of work interviews that have gone no where.
I really wonder what would have happened if I really put in more effort in my post college years to really go after writing or working in television, or even an acting gig. when I graduated I was low on cash, and needed to work for money, not to take an internship. None of them that I qualified for paid, and as someone who paid his own way through college - several years of it, taking the easy way in working a retail job that paid seemed like a good choice at the time.
So the dreams died. The acting, the writing, the production. I guess that's why I'm often fascinated with people who have found their ways into those careers. I guess that's part of what the post about "famous" bears was about, seeing the photographers and comedians and other creative folks around in the community and just wishing I could be in that league.
I've tried with minor success to tie my jobs to my journalism education, but except for a few writing projects for work now and again, and when I used to produce the quarterly meetings, right now those skills, such as they are, are very dormant.
So as one of those other goals for my next 40 years, I probably should look into further my creative life - beyond some rants and occasional bursts of commentary here. I keep trying to decide if I want to join the chorale, or talk to one of my coworkers about his community theater. Chris has bought a video camera, so maybe I can come up with some you-tube worthy moments.
I guess that I look aback and wish I made a could of left turns instead of going the easy route, but what's done is done. Now I work 50+ hours in customer service trying to make enough to go on a trip now and again. I don't get to be rich or famous or mobbed with fans. What's past is past, so I guess it's time to look forward.
My first role was in a little grade school musical adaptation of Disney's Cinderella. I played a cat. Most of my lines were "Meow".
I was in every play my high school put on, and also did some of the curtain pulling etc. I learned the techie things too, because you could ear extra money by running the soundboard and lights for people who rented out the auditorium. At the time the high school auditorium was the largest hall in the county.
Some of the more memorable roles were playing Roger in Grease where I had a duet with my high school girlfriend (the song, "Mooning", isn't in the movie), and a rather odd turn as a fat, 15 year old Winthrop in The Music Man - that's the show where in the middle of the run, my voice changed. Not so great for a role that should be played by an 8 year old.
I also played an undertaker in community theater. I t was never the staring roles, always the supporting ones, and often ones that required an oddity. in Grease, Roger is supposed to be fat, and there are jokes about it. Winthrop Paroo has an overly pronounced lisp. the undertaker is shy and a bit Morbid in I Remember Mama. I thought, this is good, I can play character roles.
Still, what I really wanted to do was go into television. It was a dream of mine to be on a sitcom, and not just as the wacky neighbor, but as the lead. Sort of the job that's filled by mediocre comedians today. Why couldn't I have my life, young as it was, mined for the material that would make a decent sitcom. It would be a sitcom about a guy in drama club and marching band. What's not to love.
Now I think, even I wouldn't watch that show.
I went to college as a theater major. I was never cast in a show there, and I couldn't find a way to impress the faculty - well, actually the lighting director liked me, but I always had a hard time with the acting faculty. One of the acting teachers was the father of Cindy Pickett - you probably won't recognize the name, but she played the mother in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He kept telling us of her big success, which is that she was in one movie you may have heard of. He also mentioned some of his students, Randy Quaid, Brent Spiner, Robert Wuhl - but failed to mention that they all left after a year of college.
I always received poor grades in the acting classes, and was never given too much help on how to improve my craft. They really didn't care about me, and after a while I didn't care about them much either. My GPA plummeted as I slowly found out I wasn't getting anywhere. I realized that i wasn't a good actor, this is true, but there really wasn't anything else to be learned from these people. They didn't teach anything.
So I changed my major. I decided to go into journalism, and take Radio-Television courses as a minor. I still had the dream of performing, but what I wanted was to be in television. The focus of the University of Houston was not to build stars, but to build stage performers, and that's not what I wanted.
Yeah, I wanted to be famous. I would have loved to have been a talk-show host in the mold of David Letterman. Back then his show was hot and different and hip. not things you'd say about it now, but that was the breakaway from the more staid Johnny Carson tonight Show. Again, Letterman was a performer who got to be famous for being a version of himself on television. That was my idea of fame, being myself. I could write plot lines of my "show" that would be punched up versions of my real life. If I could sell that, it would be great.
I always wanted to use that little performance bug, and I appeared in several of the projects classmates would have in my television production classes. I played a version of the Church Lady once. this even moved on to my last job where I popped up in several of the quarterly meeting videos as a dance, news anchor and CSI detective. I'm a complete ham, and at least i know that.
I even produced a video magazine of the college marching band - which at the time was very topical, but nothing ground breaking, except that we had done it. We worked down hours of videotape and popped in fake ads and music videos that implies that our drum major was a diva. Well, he was. It was a labor of love, but really makes me wonder what I missed out on by not finishing the RTV degree.
I've given up finding my way in acting. I guess I could try to find some community theater outlet, but so far i haven't wanted to give up the time to do it, or to go through the horrible rejection process of auditioning. Right now I've had enough performances that haven't convinced anyone with a series of work interviews that have gone no where.
I really wonder what would have happened if I really put in more effort in my post college years to really go after writing or working in television, or even an acting gig. when I graduated I was low on cash, and needed to work for money, not to take an internship. None of them that I qualified for paid, and as someone who paid his own way through college - several years of it, taking the easy way in working a retail job that paid seemed like a good choice at the time.
So the dreams died. The acting, the writing, the production. I guess that's why I'm often fascinated with people who have found their ways into those careers. I guess that's part of what the post about "famous" bears was about, seeing the photographers and comedians and other creative folks around in the community and just wishing I could be in that league.
I've tried with minor success to tie my jobs to my journalism education, but except for a few writing projects for work now and again, and when I used to produce the quarterly meetings, right now those skills, such as they are, are very dormant.
So as one of those other goals for my next 40 years, I probably should look into further my creative life - beyond some rants and occasional bursts of commentary here. I keep trying to decide if I want to join the chorale, or talk to one of my coworkers about his community theater. Chris has bought a video camera, so maybe I can come up with some you-tube worthy moments.
I guess that I look aback and wish I made a could of left turns instead of going the easy route, but what's done is done. Now I work 50+ hours in customer service trying to make enough to go on a trip now and again. I don't get to be rich or famous or mobbed with fans. What's past is past, so I guess it's time to look forward.
