In the fall of 1958, there were thousands of leaves that fell
every day on to our front yard. It was my job to make them
disappear. I would start off by arranging them in large
mounds. Sometimes the mounds would be in a straight line
and sometimes I would play tic-tac-toe. I knew that
eventually, they needed to all be put in the street, arranged
along the curb in a tidy row. So I didnt want to get too
crazy with the designs and create a lot of extra work.
This bi-weekly exercise did not go unnoticed by the younger
kids in the neighborhood. They knew my routine. I would
make these huge piles appear in some Christophe-like
exhibit and they waited patiently on the sidewalk.
Depending on my mood, which was usually upbeat, I would
let them pick one pile to attack. It was actually kind of fun
to watch. I was 11 and way too old to partake in that little
kid activity and besides, I had other plans. After the kids
had flattened the mountain and had re-raked the leaves in to
a semblance of a pile, it was time to get down to business.
It didnt take me long to convert the 4 or 5 mounds of tree
droppings on the grass in to a long, multi-hued tube that
would run the length of the gutter in front of my house. The
kids would know it was close to show time and you could
see them start to get antsy. After some last minute tidying
up, making sure the stretch of grass between the sidewalk
and the street were leaf free, I would yell to my Dad that I
was ready.
He would appear in the front door, pulling on his coat and
adjusting his ever present fedora. Excitement started to
build
we were about to experience one of the very best
part of Fall. My Dad would make his way down the driveway
and he would pull out the matches he used to smoke his
pipe. Cupping his hands to block out any sudden blast of air,
he quickly lit the match and just like that, with a flick of the
hand, that long neat row of leaves would quickly turn in to
this orange, crackling tube of fire. The kids were happy to
watch the flames eat their way down the long row of leaves,
chasing and tamping out any escapees caught up in
unexpected gusts of wind. And of course, there was the
fantastic smell! But that was not what I was waiting for.
My real fun would come later, when the flames had died
down, and we were left were the smoldering remains. The
street filled with wafting smoke, intermittently obscuring my
vision. And when the haze was just right, it was time for
me to begin the show. In seconds, I would become a
newly hired marshal, walking down some deserted street in
Laredo, squinting from the high noon sun and the dust being
stirred up by tethered pinto ponies. The street was deserted
because the town folk were afraid. They saw me searching
for the no good desperado who killed everyone in my family.
And that meant trouble! That varmit was hiding out in one of
these buildings and I was eye balling each one, squinting
like James Arness as Matt Dillon, or Richard Boone as
Paladin, or Gene Barry as Bat Masterson. It was my job to
make the town safe again and that meant finding that
coward before he could slip away. Because I wasnt
allowed to have toy guns ( another chapter! ), I had to rely
on other props. Hats, kerchiefs, vests, canteens, bed
rolls
easy to get stuff. But the smoke was the key to fully
getting in to character. When you got smoke, you got real
production value. And that made the squinting more real.
Which made the danger more real. Which made the
satisfaction of saving Laredo and disposing of that low down
dirty rotten scoundrel even sweeter.
What was the point of this story? Not to illustrate the many
ways I helped contribute to Global Warming but rather give
you some small insight in to my lifelong passion for playing
different characters. Some people call this acting. I call
it having a blast being someone else and putting that
person in really cool situations where that guy always wins
or if he is shot, he dies a really cool death and falls down but
then bounces back up again in 4 seconds to start all over.
My earliest memories of acting involved my mother playing
the various girl parts and my baby brother Tim playing some
sidekick who didnt speak. Around the holidays, he was
often caste as The Baby Jesus and my mother would be the
Virgin Mary. I would play the pivotal role of Joseph, my
head covered with a dishtowel, and I would come home from
a hard day of woodworking and general carpentry and greet
my family as I had heard my father greet his.
Hello Mary, Hello Jesus, did you have a good day?
Yes, Joseph. How was your day?
Im bushed. Can I get a martini?
Or, I was Davey Crockett, fresh off of blazing some trail in
Old Kintuck and coming in to some rugged Frontier Fort,
asking for some grub . My brother was my faithful
sidekick George. Again, in my version of the popular TV
show, George, who was played by Buddy Epson, was a mute.
Hello Mam. Me and George could sure use some vittles.
Comin right up stranger. You from these parts?
No mam. Me and George are from Kintuck.
I see. Well, here you go
fresh rabbitt.
Even though my mother had just put down two peanut butter
& jelly sandwiches, I thought it was the best damn rabbit I
had et in a long time.
When I got older, and was allowed to watch different kinds
of TV shows, the scenes got more involved, the stories
more complex and if necessary, they would often last a good
part of the afternoon. The neighborhood kids would be
rounded up and be given their parts ( I was the oldest and I
ran a benign dictatorship). After going to the Saturday
matinee at the local theater, we would recreate the movie
we just saw. We formed musical groups, we held talent
contests, we dressed like young reporters and stopped
people on the street to interview them. But we had no film
in the camera.
As a young kid and later as a teenager, I really spent a lot of
time being some one other than myself. This love affair with
character playing continued in some form or another right
through high school. When I was floundering in my first year
of College, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do
with my life ( other than try and stay out of Vietnam), my
mother suggested I take one of the acting classes offered
to Freshman. After all, she said, you have always enjoyed
being on stage. Taking her advice, I enrolled in Acting 101
at the leafy institute that was crazy enough to accept me,
and was zapped! It was then I realized that people did this
for a living and that you could actually train to become
better at playing characters. You could be paid for being
someone else. I knew then what I wanted to do with my life.
I was going to be a professional actor!
After a couple of feeble attempts at two different colleges, I
moved to New York to begin my life as a thespian. I was
armed with a slight familiarity of Manhattan, a bartending
job, and a whole lot of entitlement. I had done some plays in
college and was ready to take my innate ability to the next
level. I didnt think I would be bartending very long! I met
Sully in one of the colleges where I wasted everyones time
and he had already moved to the city. He was going to be
my roommate and he was going to show me the ropes. I
quickly fell in with his friends and became part of a group
that met on Wednesday mornings at a diner on Ninth
Avenue.
We were all relatively new to the city and even newer to
show business so the round table discussions and general
bs sessions were a great way to gage where everybody
stood in the pecking order of success. But even though
there was very little professional experience amongst this
crew of wannabes, we somehow assumed that we knew
everything there was to know about breaking in. After all,
our little Gang of Five had been big deals in College. A few
had done some summer stock, and one guy had a big time
broadway voice. The College plays seemed like a huge deal
at the time but we often failed to grasp that were we all cast
in roles that we would never be hired for in a professional
setting. I am sure that in Boston, they are still talking
about my watershed performance as the dashing, 50 year
old Colonel Vershin in Checkovs Three Sisters. The fact
that I was 22 at the time and completely ill equipped for
such a demanding role was not lost on anyone unfortunate
enough to have sat through the three-plus hour production.
But that was college we were all in the same boat. The
summer stock productions were community theater
efforts. We assumed that those types of credits looked great
on our bulked up and inflated resumes. None of us had
actually ever been paid to act, but, now that we were all in
New York and completely dialed in to the system, that was
all going to change very soon.
We were all going to break the mold and prove that this
business wasnt as tough as everyone said it was. Sure,
thousands came and quickly washed out, packing their bags
and head shots, driving back to fly over cities like Tulsa and
Canton and Springfield, IL. But those casualties were the
untalented losers who didnt have the goods and were
nothing like us. We had a lot going for ourselves and, we
had the goods. Especially me! I was tall, nice looking,
great hair and very funny. That meant I was a lock for either
soap operas, movies, or sitcoms. I really wasnt interested in
live theater even though I craved the applause. I wanted the
notoriaty and the life style that a successful Hollywood
actor got to have. I wanted to be able to walk in to ANY
McDonalds in this country and be recognized. That was the
dream. Because if that happened, then I knew I had more
than enough money to live on and that I had worked in
enough movies or TV shows to be famous.
The other guys all had unique abilities and qualities as well.
It was a given that we would quickly separate ourselves
from the herd. Put in a little time, take some classes to stay
sharp and this social club was going to rule! Brando and
Casavettes had their little group of kick ass actors who
owned New York. Well, now it was time for me, Flacker,
Sully, Sler, and Frisch. We were next! This was the
undeniable truth that came out of every Wednesday morning
meeting at Glorias Diner. It was October, 1974 and I was 23
and ready to be a star. After all, it was destiny.
Well, now that its May, 2010, it might be a good time to take
a look back and compare what was destined with what
became reality. I continued to study under a great teacher
in New York for another three years. I would occasionally
get work as an movie extra and always felt that it was way
beneath me. I deserved a lot more that being the piano
player in a Lindsay Wagner Movie of the Week. It was in the
fall of 1977 that I formed a comedy team with Nathan Lane
and we started to get noticed. We didnt really want to do
stand up comedy but we felt it was a good way to get our
names out there. We signed with William Morris and in 1980,
we took out first trip to the Coast. After a few years of
opening for big name acts, and the occasional talk show, we
went our separate ways. Not sure what ever happened to
Nathan Lane or if he stayed in show business but I
continued to eek out a marginal living with small television
and film roles, commercials and of course, bartending.
After a decade of wild ups and downs and more than enough
jobs lost for some crazy reason or another, I decided that I
had had enough. It was my 38th birthday and I was
bartending at a very hip and trendy restaurant called
Tribeca. It was in Beverly Hills and was THE place to be.
As the night wore on and the bar slowed down a bit, the
staff brought out a cake covered with way too many burning
candles and sang Happy Birthday. A lot of the patrons also
joined in the fun. I, on the other hand, was having an out of
body experience. I could see the cake and the candles, and
I could see the happy faces of the staff and the customers
as they sang their hearts out but I couldnt hear a sound. It
was like I was underwater in the deep end of some pool and
there was zero noise. Thats because when they set the
cake down on the bar, I happened to look down for a second
and saw that I was wearing an apron. And it hit me like I
was bitch slapped by Mike Tyson. I was 38 and still a
bartender. And that is not what was destined for me. I had
not signed on for this life. And it became very clear to me,
at that moment, that I needed to do something else. I was
no longer going to be able to be an actor. I wanted to get
married and have children and I didnt want us to be living in
a Volvo station wagon. So I was going to have to find
another way to make a living. And with no college degree,
no job experience and not even knowing how to use a fax
machine, I had my work cut out for me.
One of my bar regulars was a successful sales man and I
asked if I could take him to lunch and pick his brain. I had
no idea what I should look for or how to begin finding a new
career. He told me I should try and get in to sales because
I was a natural. This, of course, was the last thing I wanted
to do because thats what my father did and he hated his
job. He was good at it but hated it. One of the reasons I
went in to acting was because I knew that I would never
hate it. But, here I was, miserable and frustrated, kind of
hating show business and determined to find a new life.
So after mulling over the regulars advice, I applied for some
ad sales jobs that had come to my attention. I ended up
getting one of those jobs but that is not the reason for this
lengthy preface to the wonderful self help book you were
kind enough to purchase. The reason for the story, and the
reason for this book, is that it became very clear to me in my
job interview process and within the first several months of
my new job at Advertising Age Magazine, that absolutely
everyone
and I mean everyone
is in Sales. I had been in
sales all my life but it never occurred to me.
I was an actor, a comedian, a left side of the brain kind of
guy. Not a salesman. My Dad and his cronies were
salesmen. Losers like ONeils Hickey and Millers Willie
Lohman were salesmen. Used car dealers and snake oil
vendors were salesmen. Not me. I was an artist. But in this
crazy new world of magazines, and ad agencies and media
sales that I now found myself buried in, it didnt take me
long to realize that trying to land an acting job was no
different than trying to sell a media manager advertising.
Peel away the particulars underneath, and it was all selling.
So I vowed to one day write a book for actors and writers
and anyone else in the arts and help them connect the dots
and understand that we are all salespeople. And in order to
be successful in the arts, or education, or medicine or
whatever our chosen fields might be, we need to approach
our business as any good salesman would approach his
business and the selling of his product. And after 15 years
as an actor, and after 10 years of selling print media and
being one of the first to sell advertising and promotions on
the Internet, and after 8 years as a successful independent
film producer, that day has come.
So please take these stories and these exercises and these
examples of disaster and success for what they are worth.
Nothing more than a little insight in to one persons
experiences and ultimately, another way to approach your
work.
By the way, this morning, I went in to a McDonalds to get
some coffee and nobody asked for my autograph. But,
hey
you never know.
On May 12, 2010, at 3:30 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:
I can do that. Do you have a text copy you can send to me? Perhaps it would work best if you just paste the text into the body of an e-mail. If you're going to want to collaborate further/have me provide editing, the best way would probably be use of Google Docs. You might also want to get a Gmail/Google account to facilitate this.
On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 6:18 PM, patrick stack
<pjs@outofpocketfilms.com> wrote:
is the tweaking something you want to do or shall I
On May 12, 2010, at 9:58 AM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Hi-
I didn't receive a word doc from you recently, though I recall that early on one of your messages ended up in my spam filter for some reason so perhaps that's what happened.
This is pretty good, though of course you'd want to have at least one chapter finished as well in order to convince one of the agents to sign you. A couple suggestions - the beginning portion should be clipped here and there just to make it move faster. The later parts dealing with your earlier career could meanwhile be expanded a bit, as they're particularly grabbing. Of course, you'll definitely want to stick in a great number of such anecdotes throughout the book. Also, the bits of humor work very well; a few more such lines or clauses would make it stronger ("bitch slapped by Mike Tyson," etc). Finally, this is in pretty good shape but needs a few small tweaks here and there for grammar and style - nothing major at all.
Haven't heard back from the other agents I e-mailed but will send out another round of queries perhaps later today. Feel free to call or e-mail if you'd like to discuss anything.
On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 12:48 PM, patrick stack
<pjs@outofpocketfilms.com> wrote:
BB,
I think the word doc I sent has a virus. so, here is the first draft of the Preface I wrote for the book. Your thoughts are most welcomed.
Patrick Stack
Out of Pocket Films
Sony Studios
10202 W. Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
310-943-6383
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
Patrick Stack
Out of Pocket Films
Sony Studios
10202 W. Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
310-943-6383
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
Patrick Stack
Out of Pocket Films
Sony Studios
10202 W. Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
310-943-6383