Okay folks, get ready:

Eric will be reading extremely RARE material, so rare you have never heard it before, as a benefit forLAByrinth Theater company! Two nights only!

LAByrinth Theater Company
presents
A Benefit Reading by
ERIC BOGOSIAN
BITTER HONEY
Underperformed & Neverperformed Bogosiana


Eric Bogosian will read monologues that you've never heard.



His underperformed material is from This is Now!, a collaboration with Elliot Sharp, which has only been heard twice.



His neverperformed material was cut from early versions of the solo shows Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll, Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead, and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee -- but these monologues can't remain unheard any longer.



He's neverperformed them before. He may neverperform them again. Buytickets now.




All proceeds go to LAByrinth Theater Company: "What theater could be, should be and will be. A company that is deeply devoted to their craft and to one another. It doesn't get any better than LAB," Eric Bogosian, LAByrinth Company Member since 2005.



TO BUY TICKETS:
PHONE: 212 513 1012
ONLINE: http://www. LABtheater. org (on sale monday may 5th)

Two Nights Only
May 21 & 22, 2008 at 8pm

General Admission -- $25
Unreserved seating.



Sweet Seats -- $125
Get the best seats and support LAByrinth.


Guarantee yourself reserved seating and tote home a swag bag, filled with an autographed playbill, a Bitter Honey poster, an archival DVD of Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll, and more ($100 is tax-deductible).



A limited number of $25 Rush Tickets will be available for purchase 1 hour prior to each performance. Cash only. Limit 2 per person.



Please note: tickets are only available directly from LAByrinth Theater Company, NOT from our hosts at The Public Theater Box Office.



Performing in The Anspacher Hall at
The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street (by Astor Place )
May 21 and 22, at 8pm

See you there! And hold on to your hats for more happenings later this summer.



Bogosiana Forever,
Nikole
The sweet & sour assistant

Dear Myspace Friends,

Thank you so much for your emails, especially those
that pertain to CI, since I don't read the official
blogs and I like the fact that someone out there
notices "Danny Ross." I like Danny, I like playing
Danny and the CI set is much fun with a great bunch
of actors and crew.

Currently I am in final edits on a new novel (simon &
schuster) that will appear in your bookstores,
hopefully, next January. I am very very happy with
this book.

Also, recently got the good news that a new play of
mine, "1+1" will be part of the New York Stage & Film
summer series at Vassar.

We return to shooting Law & Order at the end of the
month. Again, thanks for the input. I appreciate it.
Continue to do good work out there and have fun.

Yours - E

31 Ejaculations: No. 8
If kissing was like sailing on a silken sea, this was like burning rubber in the Indy 500.

By Eric Bogosian

June 12, 2000 | It could've been something more romantic -- windowpane, mushrooms, even "Strawberry Fields" -- but it wasn't. It was some run-of-the-mill, ugly purple stuff that looked like a miniature lump of Play-Doh. "Purple barrels." But it was acid, all right. And it worked. Just taking the shit was like going up the big hill on the roller coaster. Clickety-clack, up we go! Once we go over the top, who knows? Over the top and down the rabbit hole, past the point of no return. Anything was possible. You could fly. You could lose your mind. You could enter another dimension. The adrenaline hit the system and the mouth went dry and the knees buckled and down you fell.

B. and I spent so much time hanging around, waiting for the LSD to lock onto our neural receptors, we forgot to fuck. But not completely. We kind of sailed off the edge of the universe, dropped down into Wonderland and then started to kiss. That felt good. It felt like a dream kiss, like instead of something prefatory, we were in the thing itself -- the kissing. That was all we had to do, forever. This mouth, I had never tasted anything so good. So amazing. If the Grand Canyon were made of wet rock candy, it wouldn't be this good. So we kissed, for what seemed like years. My arms and legs were foreign countries. Colors. Trails. Anything more specific than "I am in a room, on a bed, kissing" was an impossible thought.

But then she must have touched me. Or we got the amazing idea: "Let's take our clothes off!" What an exciting, revolutionary concept! So we did that. Now skin was touching skin. If kissing was like sailing on a silken sea, this was like burning rubber in the Indy 500. Sparkles and sparks ran over every trippy square inch of dermic geography. And even though I had no idea where my prick was, where she was, where my mind was, I was/am consumed in this nuclear bomb of color and orgasm. Yes, orgasm, every stroke is an orgasm. And now I'm coming. Overhead the fireworks are blossoming and beside me rides the entire regiment. We're on horses charging down into the valley. GERONIMO!!!
------------------------------------------------------------

No. 9
I felt like my body was filled with neon and she was lighting me up.


June 13, 2000 | I guess I grew up with only one way of thinking about sex: "Make the first move." Kind of like laying siege to a castle or something. The girl is supposed to act like she doesn't really want to and then you've got to convince her that she does. Or the girl has to act a little shy or something. And you have to prove yourself to her. And then she gets into it.

But this was different. I was standing there in the middle of the room, we had spent all day together and had ended up back at her place near Venice Beach and I was in a nothing, mellow frame of mind. We knew we liked each other a lot -- it was just a matter of "when." So I wasn't thinking about anything, was actually thinking about taking a piss, when she pushed me up against a wall and kissed me. Not aggressively, more like absorbing me into her aura, surrounding me with herself. The sun was setting and everything was getting dim, and in the gloom all I could see were her eyes glittering. And then she just smiled and moved in on me and I let go. I let her. I felt like my body was filled with neon and she was lighting me up.

We fell into this thing together, except we didn't tear each other's clothes off. No. We didn't fall into bed. We didn't do anything more than kiss. We just stayed in that space for a long time. And then her boyfriend showed up, so we never did have sex. I didn't come. But it was the most intense sexual experience I've ever had.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

No. 10
A part of my body is inside her body.

June 14, 2000 | When I lost my virginity I didn't have an orgasm. I got nervous because I kept thinking my mom was coming home. We were in my folks' house; we had nowhere else to go. I kept thinking I could hear a car in the driveway. So Naomi and I, we're kind of struggling around on my parents' bed, on this kind of slippery shiny material, and I'm thinking, so this is what a girl feels like. But I'm kind of numb because I know my mom is coming home from the mall any minute. I'm wondering, will she be able to tell we did it on her bedspread? I glance up and our Savior is looking down on me, all white and tortured on a wooden cross over the headboard. I look to my right and my grandma's sepia-tinted picture is on the nightstand next to the ashtray I made for Mom in seventh-grade pottery class. (Mom didn't even smoke!) And in the midst of all this, my girlfriend, who is a kind of alien in this environment, is nude and having sex with me. A part of my body is inside her body. Which felt completely abnormal and definitely was not something I should have been doing at this place in time. So I didn't come. I faked it.

31 Ejaculations: No. 6
Coming is dying. Dogs come. Flies come. It is an end. Instead, let's stay here awhile.

By Eric Bogosian
June 8, 2000

All men think about sex all the time. But very few men really want to have sex. It's too much trouble. Men like to come, and they like to fantasize about screwing, and they like to brag about conquests, but they don't actually like engaging in the act. It has nothing to do with romance. Romance is some construct men made up because it makes them feel secure. Women like romance, but they also like the chaos of real sex. They want to walk on the wild side. They want their bottoms licked and their toes tickled, their nipples bit and their muffs ruffled. In other words, they want pure sex, which is too much trouble for most men. Maybe it's because men don't have that part of the brain that's the really intelligent part. The part that says loving is better than fighting. Given a choice, men will kill each other every time. Which obviously isn't logical. Women, on the other hand, are conceptual beings. They are wise. They see into the future. They see into the "now." In fact, a concept can turn them on as much as or more than anything else. That is why they like all the fooling around. Coming? Coming is dying. Dogs come. Flies come. It is an end. Instead, let's stay here awhile. Let's linger in life.

So there was this widow, she was very lusty because her husband had died a couple of years back and she had pretty much got over mourning. I had tea with her. And she was telling me how guilty she felt that she was so horny. And I said, fine, you don't have to feel guilty, I promise you we will just kiss. And that is what we did. Not hard, not intensely, but in a schoolyard, behind-the-fence kind of way. We "made out." On and on, for a long time. All over her body. And she started to shake after about 45 minutes of this. She wanted to break the vow. She wanted me to go further. Because by this point we were completely naked like little babies and everything had been kissed and touched and smoothed and stroked so we were feeling very comfortable with one another. Pretty high actually. But the last thing had not happened. And she was burning like a hot water bottle. Because I had made a promise. And I kept it. She became really excited, got out of control and raped me.

I know it doesn't seem possible that a woman can rape a man but it happened. As I came into her, she blushed, first from her face and then all over her body. And then she relaxed. It was like a big bell of joy clanging.

31 Ejaculations: No. 7
All of a sudden this guy with long hair, long as a girl's, is walking toward me, and I knew what was going to happen.

By Eric Bogosian
June 9, 2000

I would hide these muscle magazines under my bed. My mother wanted to know why I had the muscle magazines and I'd say, "I want to be muscular." Which kind of made sense because I was very skinny.
And one day I was walking around in Greenwich Village, in the late '60s. Actually, I was hanging around because I wanted to find a hippie. I thought hippies were cool and Greenwich Village was where they hung out.

So I'm just walking around these little streets. I had no idea where I was. I had gone to Washington Square Park, no hippies there, so I find myself walking down this street, turns out to be Christopher Street. All of a sudden, this guy with long hair, long as a girl's, is walking toward me.

And he's looking me right in the eyes. My nipples felt like someone was pinching them. He said hello to me, I said hello to him. Then I think he said something like, "Nice day for something." Which I didn't quite understand at the time. But I said "Yeah, it is." So then he asked me if I was thirsty. And I thought, that's a weird question, why is this guy who I don't even know asking me if I'm thirsty? But in a way, I didn't care because he was so cute! He looked just like the guy on "Mod Squad" except he had straight hair. Long straight hair and a headband. A genuine 100 percent hippie. Yeah, he was into free love all right.

My heart was racing because I knew what was going to happen. I knew and I didn't know, at the same time. I was into denial basically. So we go into this bar ... I'm 17, but I could pass for 18. So I order a beer. And before the beer even comes, he's like, "Come here." And I follow him, we go into this back room and there's a men's room back there. I remember thinking how clean everything was. So I'm like, "What?" and he's "Shhh" and then he kisses me. And like, I'd been on two dates in high school and no girl ever kissed me like that.

Tongue in my mouth, wow! Then he starts unbuttoning my shirt ... down to my pants, undoes my belt buckle, opens my fly and as they say, SCHWING! I'm ready. I'd been ready for years.

He got on his knees and put my thing in his mouth and it was like on "Star Trek," when they go, "Beam me up, Scotty!" I was BEAMED! And, uh, I guess that was when I realized the truth.

The weird thing is I think my whole family already knew. Like my dad, ever since I was 6 years old every time he saw me he would ask me: "You have a girlfriend yet?" Back when I was 6 I would just say, "Oh, Dad!" and leave it at that. But ever since I started shaving he had been getting kind of insistent and angry about it. And then he stopped asking.

So anyway, this hippie, whose name I didn't even know, sucked me off, I blew my load and like they say, it was the "dawning of the Age of Aquarius."

31 Ejaculations: No. 4
Her skin and her hair were like something you could eat.

By Eric Bogosian
June 6, 2000

We were hiking I guess. Along this stream that cuts through this part of the New Hampshire hills. Water's probably flowed here for thousands of years, maybe millions. All I know is that the stream is banked with sand and lots of little round stones about the size of cherries. I said, "Why don't we stop and just take it all in?" So we did. I pulled out a joint and lit it. She took a little toke, but she never really liked pot. I did. I liked it a lot. The sunshine turned into this warm invisible syrup flowing over me. And then I smelled her. She was always so clean. Her skin and her hair were like something you could eat. I was suddenly so stoned and I looked over at her and she was giving me one of those hippie smiles that said, come on, finish the joint and let's snuggle and kiss. I pushed the joint into the sand, pulled her to me and licked her lips. Hmmmn. It was like I was coming already. Everything was so nice, better than nice. And we just did it on the bank of the stream, the smell of the water and the woods and the sand and her body all mingling together, both of us naked in the sunshine. Of course, afterward we had sand all over us and I guess the pebbles weren't the most comfortable thing in the world. I dunno. Laughing, we splashed the freezing water onto goose-pimpled skin. Then we drank some and it felt so good.

No. 5
I don't know what you call what I am
June 7, 2000

I don't know what you call what I am; I think some people have names for it. All I know is I am who I am. Like last weekend. I walk into the party, smile at someone I kind of know and then scan the women there. I can walk into a party anywhere and find people like me in minutes. We know who we are. People who don't know anything about us think that the women with the low-cut halters and the red lipstick are part of our clan, but far from it. No. People like me stay hidden. But we know each other. I just let my eyes meet the eyes out there and in minutes I know. I "see" her and she "sees" me.

This one last weekend is in a way typical. Petite. Brunet. Really cute with big eyes. Nice breasts, very round. Hiding in a corner reading magazines. I know women who are one of us have to be very careful. They don't want to mix with amateurs; they only want me and my ilk. They don't want stories being told about them around the water cooler on Monday. Nah-uh. They just want to do the deed. And so we find each other. I found her. She was flipping through a copy of the Economist, nibbling on a crab cake.

I said, "Those crab cakes are amazing, aren't they?" And she knew. She looked up, said nothing, just smiled. The next step is usually "Where?" And we're out the door, usually separately. But we find each other. We do. In a stairwell, on a rooftop, in a car. And that's all we want.

The crab cake girl and I actually went back to her place. Her teeth chattered when she came. I guess I'm supposed to be ashamed about the way I live. But like this girl last weekend said, "Dance or get off the floor. Life is too short."

31 Ejaculations was written By Eric Bogosian for Salon.com in 2000

(I will be posting them in sections, but before i post the first few, here is the intro and a complete list of all you have to look forward to...)

First of all, if you are a kid or you're offended by graphic descriptions of sex, please don't read these pieces.


I'm not going to try to explain what I'm getting at here, because if you don't get it, there's no point. But I'm not trying to shock or disgust anybody and if it isn't your cup of tea, just stop reading.

I believe that God made sex as a kind of unsolvable Rubik's cube so that we could have something to do while we're killing time here on Earth. So on these pages I present you with a few twists of the cube from my perspective.

I put the first version of these together for a performance at Saint Mark's Poetry Project about four years ago. They are fiction. I have substantially revised them for this Salon project.

The dictionary defines an ejaculation as: "e-jac-u-la-tion n. 1.an abrupt, exclamatory utterance. 2. the act or process of ejaculating, esp. the discharge of semen." (from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language). In case you wanted to know.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Complete list

Nos. 1-3: Three snapshots of sexual encounters.

No. 4: Her skin and her hair were like something you could eat.

No. 5: I don't know what you call what I am.

No. 6: Coming is dying. Dogs come. Flies come. It is an end. Instead, let's stay here awhile.

No. 7: All of a sudden this guy with long hair, long as a girl's, is walking toward me, and I knew what was going to happen.

No. 8: If kissing was like sailing on a silken sea, this was like burning rubber in the Indy 500.

No. 9: I felt like my body was filled with neon and she was lighting me up.

No. 10: A part of my body is inside her body.

No. 11: Just the two of you wandering in your own secret garden where no one else is allowed in.

No. 12: Red lipstick, olive skin, smoking a Parliament.

No. 13: I get up in the morning and my balls are so blue I almost can't walk.

No. 14: Me and Betty and Veronica from the Archie Comics were hanging out.

No. 15: I came and she went.

No. 16: I knew she was wearing a thong. And she knew I knew it.

No. 17: Of course my stoned little dirty mind is fibrillating with the naughtiness of the whole thing.

No. 18: I just get hard the minute they screw the metal clamps around my penis.

No. 19: I know the woman across the way sits in the darkness of her place and watches me.

No. 20: It's not that long, only about 6 or so inches, but it's got the dimensions of a Pepsi can.

No. 21: The film of sweat makes the electricity between us tingle.

No. 22: It's so much like coming, you don't have to come anymore.

No. 23: It's just because my cool is beyond sex.

No. 24: In the big world I'm small, but here I'm big.

No. 25: I walk in. Everybody's naked. I can do this.

No. 26: If I take my eyes off the TV, I might die.

No. 27: The first thing I did was lick her.

No. 28: Redheads are always a little crazy.

No. 29: She was the ur-woman in my life, and when she came to me now, I would finally be happy.

No. 30: It's like Paul Newman said ...

No. 31: This is good -- let's pause for a while.

No.1
Hair spreading all over the place like seaweed underwater. Skin hot. Breath. And, what? Is that perfume? Pillow. Sheet. Sheet around my foot. In. In. In. Yeah. OK. She just said something? "What?" "Huh?" "What did you just say?" "Do that." What did I do? "What?" "Hold my butt like that." Hold her ass. Smooth. No muscles, well, kind of muscles. Just right. Soft. I like soft, must be why I'm heterosexual, men don't have asses like this. Ohhh, shit, not yet, don't ... Sheet's around my foot. Shake it off. Shake off. Fucking sheet. In. In. In. Keep it going there, champ! Fucking, sheet. There! It's off. Cramp. Owwww! Shit! Is she coming? What was that? Oh, she's talking to me. "What's a matter?" "Nothing, just a cramp." "A cramp? Where?" "Shhhh, it's OK." "You want...?" "Shhhh." In. In. In. In. Oh yeah. She must think I'm a jerk. How can I be thinking about this? In. In. Well, she likes me cause I'm kind of jerky. That turns her on. I'm unthreatening. Not a pig asshole like her ex-husband. If only she knew what I was really thinking. What am I thinking? Why am I thinking? Ohhh, here it comes. This is good. This is a good one. It's gonna be a good one. Oh yeah!!!! She smells good. I smell her pits. Good. Hold her hands over her head. Does she think this is kinky? Oh, wow, I can smell her ass on my fingers. Not bad. In. In. In. Bite her nipples. Like little erasers. And how cliched is that? Forget it, just enjoy the damn things you fuckwit! In. In. In. I wonder if she likes this? She just said "Oh." She likes it. Oh, she's moving faster. All right. Let's go. Rocky Mountain sleigh ride. Where did that come from? Maybe endorphins make you think different things than usual? Maybe I should slow down, let her do the work. Wow, where did that ripple of pleasure come from? Man! Fuck oh, oh, hair, sweat, breath, hair sweat, my eyes are closed. God she feels good. She feels the best. My eyes are open, her little soft ear, the pillow, what time is it? What difference what time is it! Why do you always think about things when you're fucking? No one else thinks about things like "What time is it?" Oh, shit, what was that? Is that her finger? Her finger is in my asshole. Am I up for this? Oh, no, here it comes. She's coming. Yes. She did. She is. My eyes are closed. Oh God, this is intense. I'm yours baby, I'm all yours. Let's fall, let's fall. I'm swimming. I'm swimming. I'm falling. My skin is on fire. Oh no, here I go, she's biting me. I'm going, here I go, I'm going, now, uh-huh, oh shit. I just said "oh shit." Wait. In. In. In. Not yet. Here we go. Here we go little girl. Here we go little lady. You're getting fucked and I'm fucking you. Over the edge, uh-huh. All of you. You belong to me, all of you. All ... you ... naked ... fucking ... inside ... oh shit. OH SHIT... la-la-la-la-la ... OH JESUS GOD IN HEAVEN FUCK FUCK FUCK ... I'm coming ... good-bye.

No.2
Me and Randy used to talk to each other about once a week. She was the receptionist at my accountant's office. Somewhere in Long Island. But I think she came from New Jersey. "Hey, how's it going?" "Great, how's it goin' with you?" I didn't have a clue what she looked like, but what a voice! Low, with a big smile. "Great, great. You know." "Yeah." "What'd you do this weekend?" "Nothing, you know, stayed in." "What about your boyfriend? I bet he came over." "Get outta here, I'll get Ron for you." This goes on for months. I'm always asking her about her boyfriend, after awhile she starts calling me her boyfriend, joking you know? I mean I'm married. It's not like we're gonna get together. I'm wondering what she looks like, ask my accountant. And he's like, "Oh, very cute. Very sweet. I thought you were married?" So that ends that conversation. So now I'm her boyfriend, and I keep flirting with her. "What are you wearing?" "This mohair sweater." "Yeah? And what's under that?" Like where do I get off asking her this shit? "And under that?" She's laughing like I'm the funniest guy she's ever met. It's all a joke. Next thing I know she's asking me what I'm wearing. Somehow she starts asking about my dick. And it's like, I can play this game, sure. We're just joking. So I start telling her how big my dick is and how hard it is and stuff. And we're laughing harder and harder. It's like the Howard Stern show on the phone. Obviously she's bored out of her brains in that office. And then it happened. Somehow I started asking her about her pussy and whether it was wet and then what I was gonna do to it and stuff and somehow we started fucking, right there on the phone. It was like the end of the day and each of us was all alone. Maybe we had been planning this all along. Who knows? But we did it. I came, that's for sure. And she sure sounded like she did. It was pretty amazing actually. Real "safe sex."

No.3
She entered my office smelling of aromatic soap and powder wearing layers and layers of clothes. Thick wools sandwiched silk with leather and fur. The effect was an expensive package, waiting to be opened. I knew what was underneath; she was my patient. I had examined her many times.

But today was different because today she had her 14-year-old daughter with her. I'm a medical professional by trade, not a teacher, but I've been around long enough that I instantly recognize certain "situations." Mother, daughter. Doctor's office. Of course, she wanted her pubescent child taught the facts of life in the most explicit manner possible.

But I explained to this perfectly shorn, perfectly dressed, powdered and perfumed pillar of up-market society that much as I'd like to be of service, as much as I'd like to bang her tight little daughter right there on top of my examining table (because I knew that was what she wanted me to do), such behavior was strictly against my mandated professional ethics -- not to mention the law. No, I cannot "do" your sweet little daughter. I have a practice to protect.

This "Vanity Fair" subscriber, Starbucks imbiber, dauber of Estee Lauder, owner of Volvos and Cuisinarts, didn't protest. She simply touched her daughter's shoulder and turned crestfallen for the door. My God, I thought to myself, have some pity!!! Her life isn't easy. That private school is so expensive, and so is that Donna Karan suit and that trip to St. Barts. Cut her some slack. Give her a break. Do something.

"Wait" I said. "Don't go. Maybe I can help."

She turned, the coolness of her eyes shading into warm hope.

Her daughter watched me warily from the corner of the examining room as I took her mother's hand and led her to the paper-covered table. "Lie down and loosen your clothes," I said with gentle firmness.

Some women taste like fruit, some women taste like a freshly opened oyster. Mother had obviously been in heat for some time, because when I tugged her lace panties down over her knees, I was instantly wrapped in the aura of love. The cloth over the crotch of my Gap 501's (I'm a very casual doctor) stretched to drum tautness.

I took off my glasses, gently separated her knees and lowered my face into her muff. My tongue danced over and into her wet sluice, her belly bounced as I moved my hands up to cup her breasts. In moments she was moaning "Yes! Yes!"

I looked over toward the corner where the daughter stood, her eyes wide with excitement, her mouth slightly open, forming inaudible words. Suddenly I realized how beautiful this girl was. Like some pre-Raphaelite nymph. And I thought, "We're on this earth for such a short time. So I lose my license? Fuck it." I beckoned to her: "Yes, yes, come here. I'll have you both. That's it, slide out of those nasty clothes like a good girl and come to Doctor. That's it, now..."

OH! OH! OH! SHIT! DAMN! MAN!!!!! Phew. Where's the fuckin' Kleenex

I worked with Bob Altman on the TV movie version of "The Caine Mutiny Court Marshall" in the fall of 1987. I played Lieutenant Greenberg alongside Jeff Daniels, Peter Gallagher, Michael Murphy and the late Brad Davis. I had just come off a four month run as "Barry Champlain" in "Talk Radio" at the Public Theater and soon would be making the film, although I didn't know that at the time.

Bob was a tremendous presence with whom to work. My previous experience had been with Larry Cohen on a low budget film called "Special Effects". Larry was known for his previous films "It's Alive!" and "Q" and others which he had written and directed. This was a few years before the "independent film" movement arrived in full force. Larry would script the films (he's a successful screenwriter in Hollywood), throw in about four hundred thousand of his own money and direct and distribute on his own. This was a totally non-union film with very long hours and a dangerous set and a very unorthodox director. Larry would expect us to work as long as 23 hours straight, expect me to do my own stunts. Larry was fun in his insane way but when we finished shooting I signed up with SAG ASAP. No more stuntwork for me.

With that experience under my belt, I was invited to star as Lt. Barney Greenberg in "Caine Mutiny". Working with Robert Altman meant I would be working with one of my film heroes. I was pretty green when I got to set in Port Townsend, Washington (on the Puget Sound). Fortunately Jeff Daniels and Peter Gallagher took me under their wing. They also kicked my ass. I was very full of myself at the time, thought I needed to give everyone "notes" on what they were doing. They set me straight.

Bob was only interested in one thing from his actors: truth. He wanted us to do what felt right. In that way he was a behavioristic director, always encouraging the actors to inhabit the role. He didn't want anything to get in the way. He didn't want marks on the floor, he didn't want pre-set blocking. He told his camera team it was their job to capture what we were doing.





Bob said one thing to me at the time and I live by his words: "Life is too short to make anything I don't want to make." At the time, Bob was reaping the rewards of doing what he loved but in a bad way. He was shooting television movies because he had been essentially blackballed out of the film business. He had been blackballed for screwing with the studios, particularly on "Buffalo Bill and the Indians". Following that film with an extremely self-indulgent "Three Women" and the non-starter "Popeye" assured his exile to movie Siberia.

Now that he's dead, everyone pays lip service to how much he was respected and revered, but by the mid-nineteen-eighties, Bob was not having an easy time finding work. Perhaps he never did. The story goes that they tried to fire him off the M.A.S.H. set. But a few years after we did "Caine Mutiny" he directed "The Player" and "Short Cuts" and he was back in the game. He was a gambler from way back.

When Bob died, the pundits wrote their requisite articles summing up his life. They discussed his "successes" and "failures" but of course for Bob Altman, all his films were successes, because he was not looking at his work from a
critic's perspective, he was not looking at his work from the "outside in." Once he was in the swing of making films, he made films from the inside out. His signature style was a function of the process of his method, his playfulness, he wove his curiosity into the very fabric of his films.

Altman may have been ornery, but he took risks. Taking risks takes guts and it takes faith. Work made from a vantage of fear results in conservative work. Fascists are fearful, they depend on "shock and awe" to make an impression. They cannot make courageous work because they have no faith in what they're doing. Bob was a revolutionary. Unlike controlling (anal) artists, a revolutionary steps into fear. Bob was thrilled by the unknown. He didn't worry about the results, (although he had faith that he would always end up with something worth watching), because he was facinated by the process.





Critics have a fascist curve in their spine because they view and comment on art from an outside perspective. They tend to disregard process as a valid part of artmaking because they have to focus on box office and numbers. (If they don't, they will soon be standing in the unemployment line.) (Did you just utter the name "Pauline Kael"? That was a long time ago.) "Numbers" are intrinsically fascist because they reduce art to quantity.

At best, critics recognize a successful art gesture because it reminds them of something that was successful in the past. That's why most of the things critics laud have a very short shelf life. The work is not actually original, it just looks like something else that was original. Once.

The critics need to annoint artists like Altman "geniuses" because they can't understand them or their process. By labeling something a work of "genius", the critic, as a spokesperson for the status quo, can undercut the communal nature of the art enterprise. The idea of "genius" is decadent because it is romantic. Capitalist society reveres the notion of genius because it is the greatest manifestation of the "individual." Art for centuries and centuries was a communal enterprise. Now we are meant to be on the look-out for "genius." But true genius cannot be seen (from outside) it can only be experienced. To label Altman a genius is to try to circumvent his active collecting of actors and writers and camera people.

The only people Bob didn't like were the producers. He had no time for them. He told me that he employed the moving camera/contiuous shots so that once he had the take he liked it would be uneditable by the powers-that-be. (Standard master/close-up edits can always be re-edited by the producer. Long takes pretty much can't be.)

A group enterprise, this was the Altman game. On location. he showed dailies to his cast and crew every day. He and his wife Kat threw a party at least once a week to bring the cast and crew together, so we could eat and enjoy one another's company. I visited him when he was editing "Short Cuts". This was still in the old Steenbeck days, when





cutting film meant physically cutting film. He had three Steenbeck's running simultaneously and played the edits with his editors like Bach at a cathedral organ.

Of course had Robert Altman's films never made money, the critics who are attempting a post-mortem dissection would have no use for him now. But they did. And they extended beyond that. They provided a window into the working method of a true revolutionary.

As it turns out, though Bob said "life is too short", his life was long. His last words to me, two years ago, was "Being old sucks." He made that statement at a premiere for his latest work. He never stopped working, because he wasn't trying to prove anything. He was simply living the best way he knew how.