Actors Anonymous (9 page)

“I wasn’t in
gangster
land,” he said.

“
Quiet,
Sean,” said Mr. Smithson. “I don’t want to hear it. That is your problem. You always play the
story,
instead of engaging with the other person. Acting is
not
an isolated exercise! It is about connecting with the other person. If you are playing your story, or off trying to smell a lemon in your imagination, or doing anything that is going to take you away from what is going on with the person in front of you, then it’s
false
. What you’re doing is
false
. Do you understand?”

The woman next to me whispered, “Yes,
yes
.”

“Yes,” said Sean to Mr. Smithson.

“You do? What do you understand?”

“That I need to connect to the other person more,” said Sean.

“That’s right. Okay you two, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.”

“Yes Mr. Smithson,” they said and got up and sat with the other students in the audience.

Mr. Smithson called two names from a list and two people went backstage and two more people that had been backstage came out onstage and started improvising and arguing like Sean and Tiffany. Mr. Smithson was stretching and stretching his rubber band.

The class went on for three hours. At the end, Smithson told the students to rehearse and dismissed them; then he turned to the auditors in the back row and said he would meet with them. Mr. Smithson moved to the circular table onstage and all the auditors lined up. I was
last in line, behind the lady in her forties. Mr. Smithson sat with each auditor and quietly asked questions. When he got to the lady in her forties, I could hear what they were saying.

“Have you acted before?” said Mr. Smithson.

“Well, I was part of an improv group in college, we did comedy skits and things like that,” said the lady. She was holding her purse in her lap and kept readjusting the position of her hands.

“And what do you do now?” Mr. Smithson was stretching the rubber band.

“I’m a paralegal, but I hate it.”

“Mm-hm, and why do you want to be an actor?”

“Well, I just love it. I find it incredibly liberating and I want to express my feelings.” Her hands moved and then moved back. She was gripping the purse hard. “I feel so constrained by the structures in my life and I want to be able to be free, to be uninhibited.”

“Good, I see. How old are you?”

She paused, and then she said, “I’m forty-six, but I have tons of energy. I know that I am older than most of the students here, but I will work as hard as anyone. I
need
this. My husband says I am a fool for wanting to do this, but I don’t care. I can’t keep doing what I am doing; I am going to kill myself. I am cooped up in an office all day filling out paperwork for megacorporations. I would rather die than continue doing what I’m doing.”

She was getting emotional like she was in one of the improvisations from the class.

“Okay,” said Mr. Smithson. “You can start next month, okay?”

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said and shook his hand. She walked out with a huge ugly smile on her face.

Then I was up. I was the last person in there. It was just me and Mr. Smithson sitting across the table on the stage.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

“I want to be in your school,” I said.

“Why?”

“I want to act.”

“Why?”

Suddenly I didn’t know what to say. Then I said, “Because I hate myself and my life and I want to be someone else.”

Mr. Smithson’s face was blank. I looked down at the tabletop. From the corner of my eye, I could see him working the rubber band.

“You’re a little young,” he said. “We usually like people with some life experience. You need to have something to
act
. You understand? You need to be a little brokenhearted and a little beaten down. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Have you ever been in love?” he said.

I thought for a second, then said no.

“Right, well, what have you done?”

I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t done anything in my life. I was proud of nothing. I really did hate myself. I was just boring Ben.

“I don’t think I’ve done anything. That’s why I want to act.” Then I said, “My father died.”

He made a noise but said nothing else. I kept going,

“I want to live in an imaginary world because my world is so stupid. I mean my dad died when I was twelve, and it was so dumb and worthless. Like I couldn’t even feel it, or I didn’t let myself feel it because it seemed like such a cliché, and so many people lose their dads, so who cares? Nobody really felt bad for me. I mean, not
really
. Not to the point that I ever felt like talking about it with anyone. Even my mom, she was so wrapped up in herself, I couldn’t talk about it with her.” Now I was crying as I spoke. It was the first time that I had cried in a long time.

“And my dad was okay, but he wasn’t like a great guy or anything. He just owned a few fast-food places, and then he had a heart attack and died. It’s so boring, I hate to even think about it. And my grandpa died, and my cat died, and that’s about it for people dying. And I went to college for a year and studied literature and took a little acting, but it was so horrible, not like here.”

“University acting courses are worthless,” said Mr. Smithson.

“I
know,
they just made us pretend we were animals and it was so pointless that I would just pretend that I was a tree and stand there and no one cared; I would just stand there while everyone else was slithering on the floor, or growling, or jumping around. I stood in the corner with my arms down, a limbless tree, and no one said anything. After a while even that was too much, so I pretended I was a rock and sat on the floor.”

Mr. Smithson didn’t say anything; he just worked his rubber band.

I didn’t know what else to say. Then I said,

“I raped a girl once. Well, it wasn’t rape, but I guess it was.” I didn’t look at him, I looked down at the tabletop. The story came out while I looked at the pattern of the wood grain, little rivers of different shades of brown. “We were both drunk and I think that she liked me. I mean, we were getting along before it happened and we kissed and everything, but then we were watching a movie and she passed out. I knew that I should have probably waited, but I didn’t.” All this stuff poured out, and I felt small but also like it was stuff I should say, and Mr. Smithson was the guy I should say it to.

“I never saw that girl again. Her name was… well, I can’t think of her name right now. I think she might have left school after that. Maybe I ruined her life, I don’t know. I just did it, and it didn’t seem real, but then she woke up for a minute and looked at me, and then it felt so real. So I guess that is
something
. I mean, I have feelings about
that. I mean, I shouldn’t have done that. I know that now, but I can’t take it back. And I’ve never told anyone about it until now. You’re the first person I’ve ever told about that.”

I was crying, I was crying so much and it wasn’t stopping. I felt so great.

STEP 6

Were entirely ready to have the Great Director remove all these defects from our “character.”

Windsor Girl

I’
M JUST A STUPID
little girl who wants to be an actor. James wouldn’t want me writing this but I’ve taken over. I know I’m young, and everything I have to say is a cliché, but I also feel like I have a right, because he took my virginity. Maybe he took a lot of girls’ virginities, I don’t know. Well, maybe I do know, and yes he did. But I’m pretty damn sure he didn’t like any of them, at least the young virginal ones, as much as me.

I was a student at NYU (still am). I was raised in Windsor, Canada, just across the river from Detroit. I was a virgin through high school, but I hung out with punks and idiots and actors and did some stupid stuff anyway. My parents are from Croatia. Actually, I was born in Croatia and my parents had to put me in a bag and keep me quiet as they crossed the border to escape from the war. My father held his hand over my little mouth. So I was in Croatia for only a year. But I’m still Croatian. I go back to visit family: my grandmother, who I love,
but she is also a typical Croatian woman, meaning she is dumb and does whatever my grandfather says.

My mother is a nurse. She is also a typical Croatian woman and she lets my father say whatever he wants to me. He is the boss in the house, but I tell my mother
everything
. We have a close relationship. Now that I’m in New York, my mother texts me all day long. We talk every night. I told her, but not my father, when I had sex with James. Sometimes my mother is annoying and I get bratty in return, but I still love her so much. I just don’t want to become her.

I want to be an actress like Meryl Streep. Or more like James Dean or Marlon Brando (I wish I was a boy sometimes). I don’t want to be a girly girl (sometimes I do), and I don’t want to be a Croatian bride. I want to be a punk rocker riot grrrl. I want to be able to show my pussy out loud. But I’m shy of my pussy. I’m afraid it smells. It doesn’t, and it’s not an ugly pussy, but I’m still shy of it. I’m prouder of my tits. I have perfect tits. I’m very comfortable with showing them. I’ve shown them in a bunch of James’s projects. But that was all later.

My father drove a cab in Canada while getting his law degree. He worked very hard for me and my little brother. In Croatia he was a very successful lawyer, but he needed to pass the bar in Canada too. He yells a lot, but only because he’s passionate.

My parents are supportive of me going to Tisch drama school, but only if I work hard and get good grades.

Kurt Cobain is my god. He is the most beautiful man that ever lived. Except maybe James. I used to hang out with punks in Windsor. We’d go to this old abandoned house and have little concerts in the basement. Death metal type stuff. At NYU I had a band with my dormmates. We were called DaDa. I wanted to tag all the stop signs around NYU so it would say “STOP DaDa” everywhere. Like
Stop Daddy
. But also like the art movement. Chaos.

My first month of being in New York, I lost my virginity. Just like Marlon Brando. He wrote about it in his autobiography,
Songs My Mother Taught Me
. Maybe I’ll have a book someday, or people will write about me.

I kinda doubt it, I don’t know if I’m good enough at anything.

Going to New York was the most exciting thing in my life. I signed up for all my classes. I was put in the Stella Adler program—NYU has different studios that students are assigned to for their four years: Stella, Strasberg, Musical Theater, the Atlantic Theater (David Mamet’s place), and Experimental Theater. I thought Stella was a good fit. It’s where Robert De Niro and Benicio Del Toro and Marlon Brando went (but when Stella was
alive,
oh well).

One month after I got there, I was hanging in my dorm room one night (it’s in a big tower on 14th Street), and I got a text that James Franco was at the Starbucks near school. Me and this redheaded girl from acting class I was rehearsing with jumped in the elevators and ran the three blocks, giggling, to Starbucks. It was the wrong one. So we made our way over to the one near Washington Square Park, this time walking. As we walked, I told the redhead everything I loved about James and his work. After seeing
Freaks and Geeks,
I knew he was a kindred spirit (I was like the Freaks in high school), and after seeing him in
James Dean
I knew he was a genius. He was the actor I wanted to be like. I also watch a lot of cartoons and comedies. I’ve memorized everything he says in
Pineapple Express
. Saul is a character for my generation. Pure genius.

We walked down to the park and took a left to hit the corner of West 4th Street. It was October and chilly; I wore black leggings and my muscular legs looked pretty damn good.

Romance.

I want to be the voice of a generation. I want to be an artist. I want to be famous.

When we breached the frame of the window, I could already see the crowd of undergrads surrounding him, whispering and giggling to each other; I wanted to hate them, but they were just like me.

What is a person? Nothing. Destroy the person. But also I want to be a special person. This is a way to destroy the person that I am, that I hate. I don’t like my nose, a Croatian nose, my father’s nose. And I have big eyes, but they’re blue and pretty. Or so I’ve been told. Mostly my mother is the one who says I have pretty eyes. I’ve had one boyfriend. He was an asshole. A wannabe punk who liked to beat me a little bit. I mean, not really, but he pushed me a couple times and was emotionally cold when I tried to be emotionally warm.

How many times must I give myself to others, be a good friend, open myself up, and then get squashed? I want to be loved. Like James Dean, I
need
to be loved. I will act and make music in order to be loved.

Inside, a group made up mostly of giggling Asian girls went over and asked him something. He didn’t look up right away; he finished his page and then lifted one side of his large headphones and asked them to repeat. I couldn’t hear, but there was more giggling, and then they were obviously asking for a picture. He turned them down.