Damage Control

So I figured, since I wrote about the genesis of Dead Authors last week, I should continue on an irregular basis, to write about where some of these plays came from and have been. So Damage Control next.

Damage Control has had more readings and has come closer to production than any of my plays except Where the Rain Never Falls (which was broadcast on WBAI to boot!). Ironically, as things have turned out with my emphasis recently on solo pieces, DC started as a solo piece. I wrote it originally in pretty much one blast of energy in a spiral notebook and saw it as a new age kind of guy who was forced to kidnap someone to pay a debt, the twist at the end (which I will not give away) was in there and I thought it had potential.

But then, I don't know where the impulse came from, but I decided on its current form: the kidnapper: no longer a new age guy but a gambler in over his head . . . way over . .. and has to kidnap this girl to pay off a debt; and his 'mentor' for want of better term, the enforcer who is there to make sure he does what he is supposed to do. There is a third character as well, their drugged victim who is tied to a chair and eventually wakes up.

We never know their real names, the novice is Bro, the killer is Blade. Blade is now the new age guy, into meditation and the like, he does what he does and disappears. He is also a Vietnam vet and learned some valuable lessons there.

As I remember it, the writing went pretty quickly on this one and rewriting was minimal at first. I sent it to my friend Jerry Davis, who had just started Burning Coal Theatre in Raleigh (we had done The Trip to Bountiful together some years before) and he offered to do a reading of the play. So. He flew me down there, and it was a pretty amazing experience. The critic from the Raleigh paper was writing a story about readings and I was interviewed for the first time . . . that was pretty cool . . . and the audience response was very good. I'll never forget one fellow saying he had been 'praying for a happy ending'.

Another reading followed some time after that, in Nyack, at the Elmwood Theater; they had a competition for short plays and the three finalist were all read one evening. DC finished second, though I thought it was the better play; it's too much of a love or hate thing . . .people can get turned off to violence especially if the other choice is a typical light comedy.

At some point after that a friend of mine who was in real estate and wanted to produce got involved. I wanted to have a reading somewhere in the city and he offered this room in a building he owned on Rivington St. on the Lower East Side. It had at one point been a butcher shop. To make a long story short: the Yankees were playing that night and not many people showed. My buddy Kurt Lauer played Bro and he was wonderful, we found some young actress to play the victim and Eric Goche playe Blade.

At any rate, Michael stuck with it, we were gonna be partners in crime and he even ended up producing when DC was accepted for the TRU reading series. We had an excellent director in Jules Ochoa who asked the right questions and guided me through some light rewrites. The guy who played Bro was excellent as well, Jimmy something; who was very edgy and right on. Amazing how the girls who have played the victim have always done so happily, with no lines (I think I added a scene where she did have some lines for the TRU reading). And the reading was in a 99 seat theater with a full house! It was amazing and people really responded.

Then things started going kablooy. We did a reading at the Rattlestick Theater, hoping to produce it there, and Michael had met a film director who came to that reading and became something of a Svengali for Michael, leading on the path to a film rather than a play. Since no money changed hands I was the third part of the triumvirate, equal partners: Micheal producing, me writing and the director directing. I wanted to work to make it happen and kept asking for notes from the 'director'. I had written a screenplay which mirrored the play but with an intro scene leading up to the actual kidnapping . . . pretty good I thought. Finally we convened in Michaels office for a reading of the script . . .and the director said: I've made a few changes. He then proceeded to tell me that Blade was now crippled with a fused spine or some shit and a bow and arrow came in to play as well(he also didn't think people would buy a fast acting tranquilizer, which I thought they wouldn't question if they bought the premise of the movie) Oh, and there were two actors who had been flown up from wherever the director was from to read the parts (the guy playing Blade had a, guess what, fused spine and was an archer) . . . I . . . blew . . . up. I felt bad for the two actors who must have thought this would be their big break. I used language I shouldn't have used and barely kept it in control . . . to get to the point: that was the end of the line for Damage Control, the movie.

It was also the end of the line with my friend Michael. Though we can still be civil it has never been the same. The crowning blow was when he had an assistant write a form rejection letter to me . . . that was worst of all . . . he couldn't bring himself to tell me to my face what I already knew.

Well . . . sometimes you have to stand up for your work, otherwise why bother. I would do the same thing in the same circumstance right now. As my friend and another writer, Angelo Parra said: Better that it sits on a shelf gathering dust than to be made into a film that is an embarrassment.

Right on.