5:13 p.m. - 2007-04-03
An Open Letter to Kenneth Branagh
Dear Kenneth Branagh,
This is NOT a fan mail, because, in many ways, I am not a fan. Once upon a time I was, oh how I was. I had just seen Much Ado About Nothing and, like every other English nerd in America, I was absolutely enthralled. You took one of Shakespeare's comedies, which, no matter what anyone says, have none of the staying power of the tragedies or histories, and you made it accessible and hilarious. You gave us Denzel Washington and Robert Sean Leonard reciting iambic pentameter, looking all hot, and Keanu Reeves reciting iambic pentameter, which is funny on its own. You gave us Michael Keaton devouring the scenery in a way he hadn't since Beetlejuice. But most of all, you gave us yourself and your wife, Emma Thompson, inhabiting the roles of Benedick and Beatrice, too wise to woo peaceably, those so-sharp-they'll-cut-themselves lonely hearts whose mutual hatred was the most pathetic disguise imaginable for what was obviously unbridled passion. I still remember the verbal fencing matches: "I would rather hear a dog bark at a crow than a man declare he loves me." "God keep your ladyship still in that mind, else some gentleman or other end up with a predestinate scratched face!" "Scratching could not make it worse, and were such a face as yours were." Genius. Yes, it was obviously the Bard's megagenius, but the two of you made it vibrant and raucous and sexy. The only line of Shakespeare I quote in day to day conversation comes from Much Ado courtesy your film: "Good lord, for alliance! Thus goes everyone out into the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I shall sit in a corner and cry 'Heigh ho for a husband!'"
Then you just had to go and FUCK IT UP didn't you?!
It's not that I don't think Helena Bonham Carter is an extraordinary woman. She is one of the most beautiful women on the planet and an exceptional actress as well, able to pull off adaptations of James and Forster with the same aplomb as edgy fare like Margaret's Museum and Fight Club, not to mention the cred she earned by doing a voice in the Wallace and Gromit movie. I feel like HBC is pretty cool. But for all that, she is not Emma Thompson. She does not come close to Emma Thompson. While it is true that Emma Thompson is not the ravishing beauty that HBC is, it is also true that she is her equal on the stage, able to adapt Jane Austen to the screen as well as, if not much better than, you adapt Shakespeare. She also strikes one as being a great deal cooler than Helena. They would go to the same party, and you'd feel cool and all being there with them, but then HBC would start seeming really pretentious and right about the time you were getting bored, Emma Thompson would nudge you in the ribs and say, "I don't know about you, but I could murder a plate of chips and eggs. Shall we away?" And then you'd go laugh about all the dumb shit you saw at the party over lots of greasy diner food. In Much Ado, when Denzel Washington, as Don Pedro of Aragon, proposes to Beatrice, she says, "No, my Lord. Not unless I could have another husband for working days. Your grace is too expensive to wear every day." Dude, Emma Thompson is high tea with the Royal Family, a night out in Paris, and burnt waffles the next morning in bed. She is just about perfect, and you, you wretched asshole, cheated on her.
Just so you know, the entire world, or at least everyone that knows your and your former wife's work, is pretty certain that you just couldn't handle that your wife was so much more awesome than you were, so effortlessly talented where you sometimes looked like you were trying WAY too hard, so modest where you seemed like an egomaniac. Dude, for real, when Kate Winslet earns mad credit for NOT sleeping with you, you know you're kind of a lame skeez.
And, along with all that, you have ruined my life. Because of you, I will have no financial security. I might never have health insurance. I will spend holidays away from my family. I will likely die penniless and cold and it will all be your fault, and the fault of a film that I had forgotten you directed, a film called A Midwinter's Tale.
Do you remember this movie, Mr. Branagh. You filmed it in black and white, which couldn't be more pretentious. You stocked it full of mostly unknowns; the only people I recognized were Julia Sawalha, who played Saffron on AbFab, Richard Briers, who you cast in EVERYTHING, and cameos by Joan Collins and Jennifer Saunders, obviously a shameless ploy to try to get gay guys to come see your film. You made it about a struggling actor/director who decides to help out his sister by staging a production of Hamlet at a local church that's about to be closed, an actor who manages to cull, from the bottom of the acting barrel, a group of half-mad misfits, many of whom can barely act, in order to take on what many consider to be the greatest piece of writing in the English language in less than two weeks. HAH! I say. HAH! It cannot be done. But, of course, the ragtag bunch gets their shit together, has the prerequisite epiphanies, and the show does, indeed go on.
Now that would be all well and good, but then you had to throw in this whole thing where the actor/director's agent is trying to negotiate a three picture deal for a sci-fi trilogy. Sure enough, she does, but here's the catch, wait for it, HE HAS TO LEAVE ON OPENING NIGHT! Oh, shit! Whatcha gonna do? So, of course, he has to go, and all the other actors tell him that of course, he has to go, except for Julia Sawalha, The Girl he is totally going to get, who urges him to stay, to turn down the deal, to realize that money and fame are not why they have chosen to do theatre, but instead to nourish their souls, to nourish their hearts, and that he deserves the chance to be able to do that. And he walks away and his sister is ready to go on in his place but then, at the last minute, on opening night, he comes in and takes the stage and the show, if not a massive financial success, instills a love of Shakespeare into the hearts of the children who have come to see it, just as it instilled it into the hearts of the actors all those years ago, blah di blah di blah and all that rubbish.
Such things NEVER happen in real life. I thought that, when I watched your movie, probably more than a decade ago, now. But oh, how I wanted them to. How I loved the thought of doing that. How I wanted to be the guy playing Hamlet. How I wanted to look fame and fortune in the eye and turn away from it, striding forward into art and frienship and love with those immortal entrance words "A little more than kin and less than kind!" and be able to take my bows with a clean conscience and a fully nourished soul, and get the girl in the bargain. Such things, though, never happen in real life.
Except there came a day, a little more than three years ago, now. I was directing a show, a show called Getting Off: Stories of Sexuality and Consent. It wasn't going well for a while. I was worried. I was scared. I was very, very close to pulling the plug. But then came our first rehearsal of tech week, when we put it all together, and that's when the magic came in. It caught fire. It was good. It was going to be great. I was thrilled. Then I found something out. I was up for a scholarship, the Mellon Fellowship. It would have paid for a year of graduate school plus a $15,000 cost of living stipend. One problem: the interview would take place on the day after closing night of the show in Minnesota. I called and asked to reschedule. I couldn't. I tried to find a flight that would leave the next morning and get me there in time. There was none. So I did what I knew I had to do. I booked the flight and started making arrangements for the show. I had a monologue, you see, and so I figured I could film it and show it on closing night. All of my actors understood. Not a one said that I should stay. No Julia Sawalha secretly in love with me or anything.
But I felt torn. I didn't want to leave my cast. I knew that they needed me there, to warm them up, to get them onstage, to give them the smile or the shake of the shoulders that they needed. I didn't want to cheat the audience by giving them a video of my piece. I knew that the last show, the one that should be the best show, was going to be fractured and awkward. So I called The Notorious MOM, who I was sure would tell me to get my ass to Minnesota. She didn't. She said that she understood how I felt. She said that she hadn't been sure that she was ready to take this job she was thinking of taking, because she hadn't been sure that what she had created at her job at the time could survive without her. It was only when she knew it could that she was ready to leave. She told me that if I didn't feel like the show would go on and be the best it could be without me, then she would understand if I turned down the money.
So the next evening I strode into the rehearsal room. One of my friends said, "Get out! Get to the airport! What are you doing here?" but in minutes she and everyone else was hugging me. It felt wonderful. And the show that night was the best it had ever been, strong and solid and tight and moving. It was incredible. And yeah, I didn't get a Julia Sawalha or male equivalent of my very own that night, but I felt proud, and whole, like I knew who I was and loved who I was. Heart and soul fully nourished.
But I did go on to grad school, and I did stop doing theatre. Heart and soul no longer being nourished. Then I came back here, and did a show. But that wasn't enough for me, now was it? No, I decided I needed to write a show. I decided I needed to creat a show. I decided, along with my actresses, that the play we had been commissioned to do wasn't what we wanted to do. It wasn't radical enough. It wasn't feminist enough. So we got together and decided to write our own thing.
It has been like pulling teeth. One of my actresses has started a new job, so she can meet, like, never. Two are going through relationship difficulties. All of them work jobs that do not have fixed hours, so there has been no way of getting them together. I have been starting to get panicked, because even if we do get this all together, will we be able to get a theatre space? Will we be able to get an audience? Will it be any good?
And then what happens after? What's my next project? Can I get actors for it? Should I go for an MFA? Will that just be wasting more of my time? What happens as I get older? Will I run out of ideas? What if I never get to a point where I know where my next rent check is coming from, or mortgage payment? I'm not exactly Orlando Bloom here, so the odds of landing a sugar daddy are slim. Will I be able to get a job teaching theatre? Should I finish my degree in English, or will that just mean more wasted time? I don't want to go back, but I worry about what happens when I'm 35, or 40. It seems like all the fuck I have are questions now, bashing around my head, ready to cause a nuclear fucking reaction.
Except that yesterday I had my first interview with one of my actresses to begin generating material. We talked about her history of activism. She told me about finding out that the city she was living in was dumping hazardous material near a park, and how her mother would tell her stories about living in Alaska and riding on dog sleds, and as I heard these stories I realized that we had stories that were going to be worth telling, and that we would go crazy, and we would risk a lot, and probably get little reward for it, and we would not doubt be eager to kill one another at more than one point, but we had stories that were worth telling.
So regardless of what happens next, I have something to say to you, oh man dumb enough to let go off Emma Thompson. Under the influence of your film, I have come to a point in my life when I am willing to turn away from financial security, to live a life that is nothing like what my parents dreamed for me, to always worry about where my next paycheck is coming from, or to always be in crappy dayjobs that I hate, all because I have become convinced that there is nothing quite like getting a group of artists together and making something new, that goes live and that eventually ends with the drop of a curtain. It is going to be a difficult, stressful, depressing, exhausting, life and, thus far, no sign of male-equivalent Julia Sawalha. Everyone is going to worry about me, and I am going to worry about myself, and all I'll have to make up for it is the feeling of watching a show go up and knowing that it is happening because I was there. And so I have this to say to you and your so-called Midwinter's Tale:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A thousand, a million times thank you. Thank you.
