I had the pleasure and privilege of being in a scripted piece for the New York Times. Directed by Poppy de Villeneuve, there are five shorts in total, all set in Central Park. They are set to begin “airing” on Febuary 1st one per week. Mine is the 5th of 5, so I’m guessing it will be available on March 1st.
I thought I’d done a fair amount of things in my modest career as an actor. Then I was asked to work with a mechanical ape for a short film. Understand, I’ve worked on stage, on tv, in film, in voice-over, with children, the elderly, stars, people who thought they were stars, the beautiful, the ugly, the talented and the talentless, in period pieces and sci-fi, in studio films and ultra low budget productions, on trains, on boats, in cars, in helicopters, in front of a green screen, on practical sets, the list goes on… but a mechanical animal, that’s new to me. Read more…
About a year ago somebody asked me who I wanted to be. I had no idea what she meant. She pressed the point, and made me describe, in detail, what I aspired to be, emotionally, physically, financially, professionally, personally. When I was done describing this stable, fit, wealthy, successful, loving guy, she paused and said, “So be that person.” Read more…
There is no higher art than learning itself. Returning to study this month has reminded me why I started in on this profession of acting in the first place. We need it to understand ourselves, and, at its best, those of us who put our faces, bodies and voices on display are offering a way to make sense of our collective experiences in this lifetime. We aggrandize the normal in order to highlight its significance. But I’m not so naive to believe these things are always offered with such noble intentions – there’s that little matter of narcissism, ego, and an unhealthy need for attention that seems to linger in most actors. Still, there are two sides to this coin. Read more…
Many thanks to the person who sent me this collage (and stills) of screengrabs from my “2:16 with Edoardo Ballerini” interview. (Perhaps this should be titled “Oh, To Be a Work of Art, Part Two.”) Regardless, this is the closest I’ll ever come to the “Hard Day’s Night” cover…
The collage:
Many thanks to Iain Alexander for his interview on FilmIndustryNetwork.biz. Besides being a fan of his beautifully maintained and informative site, I was particularly pleased he gave me a chance to talk about playing Italian-Americans, something that has always felt strange to me, despite my name.
Click here to read the full piece.
A quick perusal of the self-help/psychology sections of bookstores reveals a distinct trend: the word “mindful” is finding its way into a lot of titles. The significance is inescapable. Mindfulness is now fashionable, and is being used to sell products, which can only lead to a corruption of its meaning, the way westernized yoga today bares scant resemblance to the original practice. Accessorizing your wardrobe with $100 shorts from Lululemon is not yoga, it’s Sex and the City. Read more…
My freshman year at Wesleyan a friend told me that I was not the type of person to ask, “What’s for lunch?” but rather, “What is lunch?” I took it as a compliment. Though I’ve never been referred to as a genius, I’ve always aspired to use my brain whenever appropriate, and the meaning of lunch is as worthy a topic as any other.
Today I went back to class for the first time in a quite a while. In a stinging twist of irony it was held in the same room where I first studied acting. The musty scent of old furniture and well-worn set pieces filled the air, and tears came to my eyes. I was transported back in time, filled with remembrances of a clueless young man who nevertheless knew that he wanted to inhabit this strange world of props and cues and was willing to scrape nickels together in order to do so. Read more…
As a nice end-of-decade surprise, Richard Roeper of “Ebert & Roeper” fame has put “Dinner Rush” into his top 100 films of the decade, coming at #92, between “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Frozen River.”
I have always been enormously proud of this film, and my work in it. It never got the attention it deserved, thanks to a miserable release strategy, but it has developed a kind of cult status over the years, and it never ceases to amaze me how often people will ask me about, or how well it played around the world, particularly in Japan, Australia and England.
Thanks, Richard!
Click here for a link to the Roeper article…
And here for the DVD on Amazon.com…
Enjoy!
The last growth spurt of my life happened when I was 26 years old. I ate and slept like a teenager, and for a few short weeks a typical evening was spent consuming a pound of pasta and a box of donuts, and then crashing for about half a day. I didn’t even gain any weight. It all got magically burned off into… growth. Maybe I got a little taller, I don’t know. One thing I did notice, however, was that my brain “fizzed,” as if somebody had poured champagne on it.
Read more…