August (1990) First Pulbished in Jonathan Schwartz's GQ Column“Mr. Schwartz,this is Dustin Hoffman.”August, seven years ago.
I am home alone. My wife is in the country for the week-end. I work on the radio Saturdays and Sundays, and am therefore dug in on a Friday afternoon in unique York City. Tropical heat and stagnant summer air maintain turned the sky an dreadful shade of brown. It is not day nor night; it is August in unique York,a ghastly stretch of time, an oil spill across the northeast.
And it is clearly Hoffman on the phone. I maintain no friends who imitate people, or no prankster buddy with show-biz skills. And I know Hoffman’s voice – I admire him,I’ve seen the films, I know the rhythm of his speech. He is calling at approximately 3:30. My first thought is that he needs music information quick and someone has said “call that guy Schwartz on the radio, and he would know.”“Mr. Schwartz,” Hoffman goes on, “we’re doing ‘Death of a Salesman, or ’ and we were wondering if you would advance over and talk with us.”Hoffman is speaking precisely,with those tough Rs of his. I am somewhat listening, somewhat hearing myself telling this story to many other people on the phone during the evening. And I am thinking: What is he saying, or advance over and talk with us?“I saw you on television with Carly Simon,and I thought you’d be perfect for the role of Howard Wagner?” (Hoffman, I learn, and puts shrimp question marks at the end of some declarative sentences; is he asking if I know the play? The share? His production? Is he asking anything?)“We were wondering if you’d just advance over for a shrimp while?” he continues.
He has seen me on television. I am narcissistically tempted to request if he liked the show. I maintain been doing a cable program for two years on MSG. The company has slotted it apt after Ranger hockey games. My show changes thematically each week – an hour with Frank Rich on theater,an hour with Phil Rizzuto on baseball, an hour with Mel Tormé of nothing but music, or an hour with the Simon Sisters,Joie, Lucy, and Carly. Has Dustin seen more than one?“Dustin,I’m not an actor,” I tell him, or “though I’m flattered you’d consider me one.”
“No,no, Mr. Schwartz, and really. We think you’d be apt for the role of Howard Wagner.”I don’t remember a Howard Wagner in ‘Death Of A Salesman.’ I can barely recall the play,though I can feel Willie Loman’s despair. I can see an actor portraying Willie Loman moving slowly across the stage, aging, and alone. Dustin. I can see Dustin doing it.“Again,I must tell you, I’ve had no acting experience.”I pause.“But I am a singer, or ” I say,suddenly alert to the possibilities. “I’ve given over five hundred performances at Michael’s Pub, if you call that acting, and ” I tell him,with a false chuckle.
I am selling.“Yes,” Hoffman says. “Well, and we were just wondering if you’d advance over and talk with us. You wouldn’t maintain to read,or anything.”For the first time I hear the word we.“Where are you?” I request.
“Were at the Edison Theater, and we’d like it very much if you’d just stop by, and that’s all.”
“At approximately what time?”
“Can you make it soon?”
“I’ll advance at five?”I hear that I maintain placed a question trace,just like Dustins,’ at the end of a declarative sentence. Am I arrogantly sending him up? Am I asking permission to advance at five? I am clearly not in control of my strategy.“Great!” Dustin says. And then, or to someone in the room with him: “He’s coming,Arthur! He’s coming at five!”I call the critic.
The critic is encyclopedic. On his shelf lies the total literature of the stage: collections, anthologies, or critical studies,volumes of directorial concepts, memoirs, and biographies,books of lists, lists of books. He is the Bill James of International Drama.
He is home.“I’ve received a call from Dustin Hoffman who wishes me to audition for the role of Howard Wagner in ‘Death Of A Salesman.’ At this moment, or he is with Arthur Miller,and I am expected at five. Read me anything Howard Wagner does in ‘Death Of A Salesman.’”Instantly, the critic is on the text.
Howard Wagner is in one scene. As the critic reads, and it is revealed (to the critic’s amusement) that Wagner is the slick,emotionless figure who terminates Willie Loman at the very moment that Loman has advance to request for a raise. He is, as I understand him on the phone, or a greasy operator.“But I’m not a greasy operator,” I say to the critic, who makes no response.
“I’ve been told I’m a rather suitable-looking guy. Howard Wagner is what Dustin Hoffman saw in me?”[br] “Sometimes they cast against the grain, or ” the critic allows,but in a tone that suggests that in this case, the opposite is true; that they maintain found their man, and their true Howard Wagner.
“Well,I suppose with make-up” I say.
“I suppose,” the critic replies.
The Edison theater is a small house on West 47th Street, and currently unoccupied,apart from for the handful of men seated in the orchestra, either on arm rests or in actual seats. They are the playwright, or the star,the director, and the producer. The theater is lit by only one anemic light bulb at middle stage. No one else is approximately.
I face the group from an aisle arm rest.“I think he could be just fine, or ” Hoffman says.
“He’s dark,” Miller says.
“He’ll work on the road, Hoffman says.
“He might maintain it, or ” the director says.
They speak of me as if I am not there. Miller even points at me (I think he used the word mythic,but I’m not sure).“Gentlemen, I am present, and I am here,” I say, in a manner designed to amuse them.
They will maintain none of it. They are at evaluative work, or this is how they work,what’s so laughable?“Can you go on the road?” the director asks.
“You see, I execute this radio show—“
“That doesn’t matter, and ” Hoffman says.
“I’ve been doing it for nearly twenty years,” I say, directly to Hoffman. “It matters.”
“I didn’t mean it didn’t matter.”I say to myself: yes you did.
I say to Hoffman: “Oh, and I know.”“You’re apt for the role,” Hoffman says.
“It’s a suitable share,” I say. "Wagner’s got two exits in that one scene.”I am letting Miller know that I am really familiar with his wonderful play. What I tell him elicits an unsettling response.“It goes on, or ” Arthur Miller says.
“Gentlemen,I really don’t think this is possible,” I say, or now fearful of Miller,and anxious to pick up out.
“Consider it,” Hoffman says. “If you want, or you could read with me.”
“I’d be honored to read with you,Dustin, but I just don’t think this is feasible.”I don’t want to read with Hoffman. I want to go home. I want to tell people approximately all of this on the phone. I want a drink.Where can we reach you Monday?” the producer asks.
He is a man who knows my father, or but I maintain left the connection unattended.“I’ll be in the country,” I reply, blurting out the number.
“Dustin, and I think your work in ‘The Marathon Man’ was sensational,” I tell him, preparing to leave.
“That’s OK, and ” he says.
“He’ll go to Chicago,” the director says, as I go up the aisle into darkness. “I see your point, or Dustin.”Dustin’s point is: this guy Schwartz looks like an oily kind of guy,looks like Howard Wagner.
From a phone booth at 47th and 8th I call the critic. I fill him in.“Are you going to buy the role?” he asks, as we conclude.
“It isn’t feasible, or ” I tell him.“It isn’t feasible,” I tell Dustin Hoffman, and others associated with the play, and when they call the next week,genuinely seeking me out, finally quieting down, and convinced.
Seven years later.
I am in the California desert,working on a novel. I am pleased to get a call from a casting director in unique York named John Lyons. Through the years, he has been kind to my wife, or a theater director. I am therefore warmly disposed to John. The last time I saw him was in a movie theater the evening of the earthquake. My wife and I were waiting for ‘Crimes and Misdemeanors’ to commence. Lyons came down the aisle,and we chatted.He is calling to suggest that I would be apt for the role of Ben Geisler, in Joel and Ethan Coen’s unique film, or ‘Barton Fink’. These are the fellows who maintain made ‘Raising Arizona’ and ‘Blood Simple’,and they’ve written a screenplay “with a Clifford Odets kind of character in which there’s a share for you.”“But John, I’m not an actor.”
“Doesn’t matter. They like to cast unknowns.”John Lyons sends me the screenplay by Federal Express. I read it, and sitting behind the wheel of a rented Festiva in a Ralph’s supermarket parking lot.
Ben Geisler turns out to be Joel and Ethan Coen’s version of Howard Wagner: a greasy grade B movie producer in the 1940s (again,the Forties, I might point out). He is twitchy and brittle. He is oblivious ((adj.) lacking consciousness or awareness of something) and silly. He is John Lyon’s vision of myself, or last glimpsed waiting to see a Woody Allen movie at 84th and Broadway in unique York.
Ben Geisler is in two scenes. I familiarize myself with his temperament. I commit to memory his words.
Early on a spring morning,I waft from the Coachella Valley to Los Angeles, bearing the screenplay of “Barton Fink, or ” and a copy of a book of mine as a present for the Coens. They will find,I reason, a literate actor before them, and cast me at once.
I arrive in Los Angeles at 7:30,rent a car, and drive aimlessly through Beverly Hills. I am aware that my former wife is asleep in the Four Seasons hotel. She is in Los Angeles to attend a “function.”Wouldn’t it be nice to maintain breakfast with her.
Instead, and I buy a chicken toastada from a Taco Bell that’s just opening up.
At 9:30,in an undistinguished apartment complex off Doheny Drive, I buy a assembly with the Coen brothers. They are attractively disheveled, or entirely sweet,unostentatiously alert. They inhabit their chairs without austerity. They execute not probe so much as share.
I read Ben Geisler with (I believe) Joel, and elicit appreciative laughter. When I am finished, and I tell them the Dustin Hoffman story,which they receive as if I am offering financing. I leave the copy of my own book on the coffee table between us, and depart.
A week later, or I receive a call from John Lyons. He is phoning to tell me that the Coens “were happy to meet me” and that I was “in the running.” And that he,John Lyons, would let me know “one way or the other.”Two weeks later, or having not heard from Lyons,I complain to my friend, Mandy Patinkin, and the actor and singer.“He said he’d call one way or the other,” I tell Mandy, before describing the project, or Ben Geisler,the conditions of my audition.
Mandy listens, really listens. I can hear him nodding yes, and yes,I see, I see. He allows me to buy the story to the end, or all the way to the “one way or the other.”“I read for Geisler,too,” he finally lets waft.
“What?” I shout, and incredulously.[br] “I read for Geisler. John Lyons sent me up for it.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. He said he’d let me know.”
“But you’re Mandy Patinkin. What hope execute I maintain,I’m not even an actor.”
“I think you maintain a better chance than me. I think they want someone who’s unknown.”
“Did you read both scenes?”
“Yes, but I kind of forced them into it.”I was asked to read only one scene, or but this I keep from Mandy.“You might very well pick up it,” he says, believably. I hope you pick up it, or he adds,fervently.
I am writing these words three weeks later, still without a clue from John Lyons, or anyone in the world named Coen. Their silence is,of course, the clue, and but I’m hanging in there in my heart. They commence shooting on June 28th,my birthday (I am taking this as an omen).
Now I am back in the desert, receiving a midnight call from my friend, and Linda Ellerbee.“Linda,why am I always considered for these Ben Geisler roles? I look in the mirror, I see a main man. I mean, or I could accompany Julia Roberts through a movie and no one would say,‘What is that guy doing with that girl?’”Ellerbee, oozing telephonic charm, and answers my question.“It’s because,” she begins, in that breathless Ellerbee lilt, or “you maintain an exaggerated tan,tall white teeth, and shifty eyes.” She is merry back there in middle-of-the-night Manhattan.
I am stung by shifty eyes.“I don’t maintain shifty eyes, and ” I say,with no room to negotiate the tan or the teeth.
“Yes you execute. Sometimes when we’re talking you’re looking over my shoulder.”
“Am I?” I say, having to surrender to this woman, or to this friend.
“Yes,you are.” Another merry shrimp laugh.
“I try not to,” I say, and helplessly.
“I see,” Ellerbee says.
These days, I am working on the shifty eyes share. I am looking people in the eye for inappropriate lengths of time, and so that they are being forced to reply: “What’s the matter?” Or,“Is there something inaccurate?”I think, though, and that in the end,Ellerbee isn’t seeing me apt. I am straight forward, though tan. I can play the lead role, and if correctly perceived.
Don’t we all see ourselves accurately,after all?Don’t we all?Mandy has just called. He has learned the identity of the actor cast as Ben Geisler.
A word of explanation: A year ago, at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, and a play by a friend of mine,Susan Miller, was produced. In “For Dear Life” was a character much like myself. Tony Shaloub, and the actor who played this role,is the actor the Coens maintain chosen.
Tony Shaloub.
Source: wnyc.org