Lou and Me

So funny but true story. I had a friend who worked at LaMamma that legendary NYC avant garde theater in downtown manhattan. Through this friend I was able to see a lot of out there theatre which was pretty cool. I look back on it as my fun acting education where I saw what I liked and didn't like. Well she asked if I wanted to see the new Cheryl Churchill play "A Number". I wasn't that interested until she mentioned that Sam Shepard would be staring in it. I had first discovered Sam Shepard the same way many a boy of my generation had, as an actor playing that ultra badass Chuck Yeager in the Right Stuff. Then when I discovered he was an Awsome playwright I was like this guys a badass. Plus he's doing Jessica Lange ? Hell yes! The fact that he too had crooked teeth like myself made me love him even more cause I was like " if he can do it, so can I". So I was pumped. 

The play was being performed at New York Theater Workshop, which always had out there shows. We got there and grabbed our seats. I am sitting there and I look over to my left and sitting six seats over was Lou Reed with Laurie Anderson. Now my first introduction to Lou Reed was the song "Perfect Day" in the film Trainspoting at age 13, which I loved. But I didn't really listen to him until my final summer I lived at home. During that time my friends started showing me different music which opened me up, bands like early Modust Mouse, Fugazi, Wu-Tang, Iggy Pop, the Stooges, Mum, David Bowie and Lou Reed. Now I wasn't living under a rock, far from it. It's just I had been raised on old school rock n roll by my parents. I had grown up listening to the Beatles,Hendrix, old school Elvis and the like. Though my jam was Sinatra,Soul music and R and B like Sly and the Family Stone, Jackson 5,  Curtis Mayfield and the like. But it was part of my education if that doesn't sound too pretentious. I had already gotten into Johnny Cash who was the voice of that summer where I worked long hours in the local paper mill and drank cheap beer with my friends and contemplated my new life in NYC that was about to begin. 

So when I saw Lou Reed in the haggard flesh I was like fuck yeah! I thought of everyone back in Washington state and how much I had changed in the year and a half since I had left. How wow man, Iam here in NYC, fucking crazy. I turned and told my friend. I said" look it's Lou Reed!"

She responded" Who's that?"

Oye I thought. 

Then the show began. 

To put it mildly the show sucked. That was I think the first time I realized the difference between film acting and theater acting. Sam Shepard who is brilliant on film was kind of lackluster on stage while Dallas Roberts who everyone was touting as this hot upcoming actor was so bad I wanted to gag. Too much symbolism, it just sucked. I was more interested in the fact that the seating in the theater looked like the Senate in Star Wars. 

Of course the whole audience seemed enraptured by the show. I was wondering am I missing something? Am I dumb? Do I have bad taste? I mean I do love Stallone films, but this was bad. I turned and looked over towards Lou Reed . Would he be liking this? Lou Reed was asleep.