Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living (17 page)

I did a production of
The Crucible
at Steppenwolf for a high school series they produced on their main stage. I was cast as John Proctor, the lead, which was I believe the last time I was cast as an actual “leading man.” It’s such a great piece of literature to work on, and if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you do so now. This riveting memoir chapter will be here when you return. . . .

Okay, back? Pretty gripping, right? Arthur Miller was not too shabby with the typewriter and the dialogue and the drama and such. How about that Giles Corey, huh? Good shit. The gifted young lady who played Abigail in our production was named Cecilia, and she originally hailed from Mexico. You generally don’t want new inter-cast relationships springing up in your play. They should be generally discouraged as they can tend to rock the boat. However, if there exists the remotest possibility of romance between the actors playing John Proctor and Abigail in your production of
The Crucible
, then you might as well throw in the towel, because you’re doomed. The whole play is rife with an intense, forbidden sexuality between the two characters. So, naturally, Cecilia and I started dating.

* * *

T
he Defiant Theatre was this fun, weirdo, little 1920s-Vienna-wannabe theater art club that was quite an exciting bacchanal, by and large. Ultimately the pinnacle of my Chicago experience was living on North Avenue in my warehouse and building the set for
Ubu Raw
. We had always wanted to try this Greek scenery trick called
periaktoi
, which is a set of three-sided pillars, two feet wide by twelve feet tall, maybe twelve or sixteen of them, side by side, so all the front, or downstage, faces together make one enormous picture, as the upstage wall. The whole set of pillars was rigged to spin together so we could rotate between different scenes. It’s also a modern billboard technique, but to execute it writ large like that was so fun and really cheap for the considerable amount of “bang” it carried. So we had these huge expansive cycloramas that we were all painting together in the warehouse and then rigging into the three-sided pillars. One of them had a trick door in it for a surprise entrance because we loved our scenery tricks. Magical theater scenery, like secret doors, revolving turntable stages, or trapdoors in the floor, are something I love to see properly used, as they still can make me feel the magic I felt as a child. It’s like a ride at Disneyland with a more comfortable seat and better writing.

Ubu Raw
was, in a way, the superhero movie I’ve always wanted to make but never had the opportunity to do so. I was at an age then and in the sort of physical condition that playing Aquaman, or, let’s be honest, Ben Grimm from
The Fantastic Four
, might require. As Pa Ubu, I was in a fat suit with this huge, round belly, all in white with a big red target on the belly, and my mask was an old bike helmet with a huge latex mask built over it. The main
Ubu
masks were made by our incredible artist friend Stephanie Nelson, based on a drawing of the character by Alfred Jarry, who wrote the original
Ubu Roi
. Her mask for Pa Ubu was this huge head that came to a white point at the top, which folded over to the side like an old-timey nightcap, with these weird walrus eyes and a big moustache, so all you could see of my actual face was my lower lip and chin.

Joe’s staging upon an absurd circus of a set designed by Emil Boulos was a joyful romp into the ridiculous. I made my first entrance on steps that were made by slaves who were holding planks—they would walk in formation and turn the planks into steps, which I would pound up and down. As advertised, much of the movement and line delivery was very Kabuki-inspired. In addition, there were vast broadsword and quarterstaff fights, which were incredibly demanding physically. At intermission it was all I could do to lurch into the alley and smoke two cigarettes and pound two beers. I’d just peel out of my fat suit, squat against the wall, and catch my breath, just in time for round two.

I’m so very grateful that I had that moment to revel in what turned out to be the greatest strength of my youth, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. Even by age twenty-eight or thirty we all began to realize what a key ingredient youth had been in the rigorous performances at our Defiant Theatre company. As young ne’er-do-wells, we were able to give ourselves over to the lifestyle so wholly that we sacrificed so many necessary and practical (i.e., grown-up) parts of our lives. Like, I exclusively drove vehicles with no insurance or registration (because those things cost money), which really could have ended badly when I totaled my motorcycle on the freeway on the way to a performance of
A Clockwork Orange
, and because it wasn’t registered to me and had no plates, I just left it on the side of the highway. So, with youth, apparently, came a certain amount of assholery, at least on my part.

I had been engaged, the day after the motorcycle crash, to drive my friend Todd’s moving truck to Los Angeles, but I had three ribs out of place and all the blood vessels in my eyes had been broken. Todd, his wife, and I finally determined that I could see plenty well enough to truck their entire life’s possessions a mere couple of thousand miles. In deference to my injured state, we did take a slight detour through the mystical town of Sedona, Arizona, where they had a friend named Mindy who practiced white witchcraft. She laid a poultice on my ribs and cleaned up my energies and whatnot, and it smelled real good in her room, so I was pretty down with a witching, all things considered. We rolled into Los Angeles the next day, and I just looked like a serial killer. At the time I was cultivating this “style” consisting of a porkpie hat, the completely bloodred eyes, a thick dog chain around my neck, old leather combat boots, and these weird sort of Swiss paratrooper red camouflage pants with matching cloth suspenders. I met any intimidation that Hollywood created within me in a full-on
Mad Max
mode, which is really the way to attack any frightening new terrain. I discovered that there was really not too much to be scared of in LA, beyond a lot of assholes and maybe some venereal diseases.

* * *

M
y final chapter in Chicago was centered around the venerated, unassuming Irish whisky bar across the street from Steppenwolf by the name of O’Rourke’s (now sadly gone). For some reason the magnanimous proprietor, Jay, took a shine to me and hired me part-time as a bartender. Not only was I a twenty-six-year-old drunk, but he added, “You can give your friends the first pint free.” I thought, “You’re insane. You effectively just told me to hand out a couple hundred bucks a week to my pals.”

We had the greatest time at O’Rourke’s, the most idyllic of what you might imagine as a smoky, dark pub filled with show folk laughing and dancing, or sometimes railing with all seriousness about the state of affairs surrounding the price of tea in China and so forth. Jay was a very benevolent avuncular figure who really supported the theater community, which, in turn, supported his business. He had Tom Waits and Jacques Brel and Nina Simone on the jukebox, one of the best lineups I’ve ever seen. The pub, after all, is where so much of theater life takes place. Romances are consummated and then torn asunder, theater seasons are planned, plays are cast, and chuckles are plentifully expended. While studying there, I served Albert Finney and Laurie Metcalf, Malkovich, and Jessica Lange, and I drank with Keanu. It was the place where I first began to rub elbows with hotshots from the world of film who came to perform in or just see plays at Steppenwolf, which has easily the most knockout ensemble of acting talent assembled this side of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I worked on
Buried Child
with Gary Sinise and Ethan Hawke, and Sam Shepard came to do some rewrites. Sam slipped me $40 and sent me out for a bottle of Maker’s Mark one night, and it took a long time after that for anything in my life to eclipse that instance as the most exciting thing that had ever happened. I guess I still had a lot to learn, about bourbon whisky and about being starstruck, which I’m glad I got out of the way in the shadows of O’Rourke’s, before I ever even heard of the blinding lights of a red carpet.

* * *

I
know I have deep gratitude for this time in my life, because whenever I would later think things like “I missed the prime years of my acting life building fucking scenery! Jesus-goddamn, John Cusack had done two dozen films by this point!” I know I wouldn’t trade anything for the time I had with the Defiant Theatre and Chicago theater in general, easily the most fecund and exciting theater community in the country.

What with savory stage roles in
The Ugly Man
,
The Kentucky Cycle
,
Golden Boy
,
The Questioning of Nick
, and
Ubu Raw
, I had such a string of good fortune in 1996 that I felt like I might never top this banner year. This, combined with my film work, led me to consider a move to New York or LA for the first time. Coming into my late twenties also made me realize that I would eventually want to make a little more of a living wage than my Defiant salary ($0/year) was providing. New York had a lot to recommend it, but ultimately all signs were pointing west.

In my Chicago circle at that time, moving to LA was called “pulling the Schwimmer,” because David Schwimmer had left his great theater company (which is still one of the greatest—the Lookingglass from Northwestern). Shortly thereafter he won his life-changing role on
Friends
(this was completely unfair, of course, as David has always remained a loyal and valuable contributing member of Lookingglass, but you know how people are. Shitty).

So that was the flavor of the moment—that we thespians must disdain sitcoms. But I eventually came to realize that Chicago actors make a habit of bad-mouthing both New York and LA for many reasons, as a defensive mechanism to assuage their own fears about having to move to one of the coasts and give it a shot. One night at O’Rourke’s, when we were both two sheets to the wind, my old pal Pickering pinned me against the wall with his finger and derisively said, “Hey, Nicky, I hear you’re thinkin’ you’re gonna go pull the Schwimmer.”

If my mind hadn’t been made up by that point, that would have certainly done the trick. I owe Steve a debt of gratitude for spinning me a 238-pound cautionary tale, standing it unsteadily upon two feet, and poking its finger into my chest.

Carry a Handkerchief

My wife and paragon of comeliness, a lady of immense talent with pretty sublime taste who goes by the name of Megan Mullally, likes to tell the story of the first night we ever went to dinner together. We had been rehearsing our play,
The Berlin Circle
, at the Evidence Room theater in Los Angeles. We had known each other for only a few weeks but had become fast friends, with some seed of romance brewing in the fecund incubator that is the backstage area of a live theater. I had been living in the raw basement of some fellow troll-like company members and working piecemeal as a handyman, carpenter, and actor, and so one might accurately have described my circumstance as somewhat “down on my luck.”

I had also been helping to build our new Evidence Room theater space in a warehouse, as well as the stage set for our show, so I’d been working all day in overalls, rehearsing in them, and then, in this instance, wearing them to a nice dinner. I would point out to the ladies and gentlemen of the fashion jury that at this juncture I did possess the wherewithal to change into a clean T-shirt. These were a fine pair of Carhartt canvas overalls, but, regardless of their durable quality, Megan seemed to think that they were not appropriate fine-dining attire. Especially abhorrent to her, for some reason, were the phone numbers which I had inked in Sharpie all over the thighs of said britches (when you’re twenty feet up an A-frame ladder hanging lights, you often need to jot down information on the nearest handily available surface).

I suppose I didn’t help matters any when I pulled up to the table and tucked my napkin into the bib of the overalls. Her aversion to my genteel show of elegance completely baffled me, because I was positive I had seen Jed Clampett execute the exact same nicety on
The Beverly Hillbillies
, but apparently I was somehow well over the line into the realm of faux pas. With such an auspicious beginning, I am fully astonished and grateful to this day that Megan ever took a chance on me.

She has since straightened out my closet considerably, as she has a talent and a taste for choosing things like garments, poodles, houses, art, and novels. Really, anything but overalls. I hastily learned to dummy up and wear the shirts she put on me, and I’ll tell you what: If I don’t get a compliment on every shirt she’s ever upholstered me in, well, I’ll eat my hat. Naturally, I retain my Carhartts and other work wear for the woodshop and such, but when I go anyplace that I might be expected to look “decent,” “civil,” or “not homeless,” I reach for one of her choices, and welcome the world’s inevitable refrain: “Wow, nice shirt!”

That said, I do have some strong feelings about the world of fashion. In order to chase the brass ring of “prosperity,” I feel that a jackass (like your author) must eschew fashion as much as possible. Definitely allow your significant other to choose your shirt, but leave it there. Jobs that require a suit upset me. They displease me much, as our world is rife with such superficial conformity. As a member of a race of animals who are blithely burning through the natural resources of their beautiful planet, laughing their faces off like beer commercial models as they careen across the water on their Jet Skis, I am pretty well put off by the amount of attention we monkeys can bestow upon things like bang length and pleated fronts and skirt size and shawl collars. I can comprehend why I need brown shoes and belt for some suits and black for others. I comprehend it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

In a grander sense, I’m quite peeved by the customs that we have allowed, even encouraged, to flourish around our collective appearance and hygiene. First of all, at some point we allowed ourselves to become stinky to one another. Animals, mammals in particular, seem to love the musk of their brothers and sisters, a scent so potent that they can actually communicate with one another through the odors they are giving off. We “people” gave that up centuries ago, and now our natural odor is counterintuitively offensive. This is a failure, people. It’s the fallacious part of our human egos that informs us we’re “better” than nature, which keeps us from enjoying the sniffing of one another’s crotchal areas. I’m not preaching here, I’m one of us just as much as you are, but I’m always at the ready to try getting more stinky.