Don't watch New Amsterdam
Unless something magical happens between now and when it is aired in January, this show is a complete bomb. I read the pilot last night and it had some of the worst dialogue... God forbid they miss a chance for him to say something "weird" which reminds you that he can't die, like "You remind me of my other six hundred and nine girlfriends." Yeah. That's basically what the script is like. Add in a sexy female detective (Yes, the script specifies she's a babe) for sexual tension and that's the show. The sexual tension part is going to fail because neither of these characters are developed enough for them to see anything in each other except lust.
One of my favorite lines is him talking with his partner (the babe). These two people are arguing across the street. "He's saying that he knows." "How do you know?" "I can read lips." "What, were you also deaf?" "For a while. Normandy. A shell hit a little too close for comfort."
How is that nobody says, "Sorry John Amsterdam but you're a fucking lunatic. Either stop talking about your past life/I can't die thing or leave, because we don't need any more psychotic cops."? Please. Go sell crazy some place else; we're all stocked up here.
Anya says 101 and 102 have been shot as well -- we'll see if it gets better. She said she could bring home some of the scripts for me. Well some good comes out of it, then.
I've been AD-ing this god awful show. It's lesser Tennessee Williams (A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur) and the girls just don't understand it. I mean they can "work off of each other" but their work is so self-indulgent that it's tiresome. They don't understand the words they're saying half the time. It definitely makes me wonder how useful Meisner is. A huge part of it is preventing yourself from coming to a line with preconceived notions of how it is to be said. Jonas's example was always the last line of When Harry Met Sally when she says something like, "You say things like that and I hate you, I really hate you." Now, if you are not a Meisner actor, you would, theoretically say that line with the feeling of "I hate you" behind it rather than "I love you." However, I contended that only a drooling idiot would mistake that line after having read the script. I mean, there's no way that that line could mean anything but, "I love you", no?
Clearly, though, believing your fellow actors to be anything short of intellectually destitute is a mistake. There's this beautiful monologue at the beginning of the second act that the girl can't do anything with because she doesn't get it. It's this flowing prose about one of her earlier boyfriends written in that Blanche du Bois style that makes Williams so wonderful to read and hear. But she can't find the beauty and it all falls flat. And when I listen to the actresses (it's an all female play) talk about the script, all they can say is that it's so boring. Needless to say, it's more than boring to the audience.
And yet, I don't know why I'm surprised. They are precisely what you'd expect the product of a NY acting school to be: more pretty than talented, more likely foreign than American, substance-less when discussing anything of value, self-indulgent, and perpetually annoying to me. This is the precise reason why, when Jonathan (the director of Company) mentioned to me that they needed two more plays to use 2 men and 4 women, I decided not to write something. I would either have to pander to see my work survive (Like at the Alley) or watch it collapse in flames around me.
My apartment, though nice, has become irksome. The air conditioning unit shoots out hot air when turned to cold, and turns off when turned to heat.
Well, it's almost noon. I have to head off to work now, after all -- I have Creve Coeur to rehearse from 1-6:30. I know that looks like a long time; believe me, it feels longer.
Sox won and the Yankees lost last night. And I got my computer, etc. back, so good news all around. Fortune spreads her legs for me.
One of my favorite lines is him talking with his partner (the babe). These two people are arguing across the street. "He's saying that he knows." "How do you know?" "I can read lips." "What, were you also deaf?" "For a while. Normandy. A shell hit a little too close for comfort."
How is that nobody says, "Sorry John Amsterdam but you're a fucking lunatic. Either stop talking about your past life/I can't die thing or leave, because we don't need any more psychotic cops."? Please. Go sell crazy some place else; we're all stocked up here.
Anya says 101 and 102 have been shot as well -- we'll see if it gets better. She said she could bring home some of the scripts for me. Well some good comes out of it, then.
I've been AD-ing this god awful show. It's lesser Tennessee Williams (A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur) and the girls just don't understand it. I mean they can "work off of each other" but their work is so self-indulgent that it's tiresome. They don't understand the words they're saying half the time. It definitely makes me wonder how useful Meisner is. A huge part of it is preventing yourself from coming to a line with preconceived notions of how it is to be said. Jonas's example was always the last line of When Harry Met Sally when she says something like, "You say things like that and I hate you, I really hate you." Now, if you are not a Meisner actor, you would, theoretically say that line with the feeling of "I hate you" behind it rather than "I love you." However, I contended that only a drooling idiot would mistake that line after having read the script. I mean, there's no way that that line could mean anything but, "I love you", no?
Clearly, though, believing your fellow actors to be anything short of intellectually destitute is a mistake. There's this beautiful monologue at the beginning of the second act that the girl can't do anything with because she doesn't get it. It's this flowing prose about one of her earlier boyfriends written in that Blanche du Bois style that makes Williams so wonderful to read and hear. But she can't find the beauty and it all falls flat. And when I listen to the actresses (it's an all female play) talk about the script, all they can say is that it's so boring. Needless to say, it's more than boring to the audience.
And yet, I don't know why I'm surprised. They are precisely what you'd expect the product of a NY acting school to be: more pretty than talented, more likely foreign than American, substance-less when discussing anything of value, self-indulgent, and perpetually annoying to me. This is the precise reason why, when Jonathan (the director of Company) mentioned to me that they needed two more plays to use 2 men and 4 women, I decided not to write something. I would either have to pander to see my work survive (Like at the Alley) or watch it collapse in flames around me.
My apartment, though nice, has become irksome. The air conditioning unit shoots out hot air when turned to cold, and turns off when turned to heat.
Well, it's almost noon. I have to head off to work now, after all -- I have Creve Coeur to rehearse from 1-6:30. I know that looks like a long time; believe me, it feels longer.
Sox won and the Yankees lost last night. And I got my computer, etc. back, so good news all around. Fortune spreads her legs for me.