Inside the Actors Studio is the most important programme series on television for anyone who wants to be involved in performance, acting, directing and performance writing as it provides the opportunity to experience something of the lives of those who have become successful. Over what must be the past thirteen years 200 major personalities have been interviewed by, the Dean Emeritus of the Drama school, founded by Lee Strasbourg, James Lipton.
The alumni of the school include Edward Albee, Carroll Baker, James Baldwin Anne Bancroft Ellen Barkin Marlon Brando, Lee J Cobb, Montgomery Clift, Jack Nicholson SI, Robert de Nero SI, James Dean, James Fonda , Dustin Hoffman SI Harvey Keitel, Martin Landau SI, Diane Ladd, Karl Madden, Norman Mailer, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman SI, Al Pacino SI, Geraldine Page, Sidney Poitier, Mickey Rourke, Rod Steiger, Christopher Walken, SI Gene Wilder SI, Tennessee Williams, Shelley Winters SI , Joanne Woodward SI. (SI = Seen interview). An impressive list of names but they represent only a small percentage of thousands of students whop despite talent, ability, determination and years of effort never become the household name which will one see themselves being interviewed.
I have benefited from experiencing something of the lives and work of Ben Affleck, Alan Alda, Lauren Bacall, Antonio Banderas, Kim Bassinger, Roseanne Barr, Drew Barrymore, Kathy Bates Juliet Binoche, Kate Blanchette, Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan, Ellen Burstyn, James Caan, Nicholas Cage, Michael Caine, Stockyard Channing, Glenn Close Jennifer Connolly, Francis Ford Copola, Kevin Costner Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Billy Crystal, Matt Damon, Geena Davis. Cameron Diaz, Johnny Depp, Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfus, David Duchovny, Faye Dunaway, Clint Eastward, Peter Falk, Sally Field, Ralph Fiennes, Laurence Fishbourne, Harrison Ford, Jodi Foster, Michael J Fox, Jamie Foxx, Morgan Freeman, James Gandolfini, Andy Garcia, Richard Gere, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, John Goodman. Melanie Griffiths, Gene Hackman, Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, (2) Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anthony Hopkins, Dennis Hopper, Angelica Houston, Ron Howard, Helen Hunt, Holly Hunter, John Hurt, Jeremy Irons, Samuel Jackson, Billy Joel, Elton John, Angelina Jolie, Tommy Lee Jones, Val Kilmer, Ben Kingsley, Jessica Lange, Queen Laifah, Hugh Laurie, Jude Law, Jack Lemmon, Jerry Lewis, Jennifer Lopez, Sidney Lumet, Jeanne Moreau, Shirley MacLaine, Ian McKellen, Bette Midler, Arthur Miller, Liza Minnelli, Mary Tyler Moore, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers (2) Mike Nicholls, Gwyneth Paltrow Arthur Penn, Sean Penn Michelle Pfeiffer, Dennis Quaid, Anthony Quinn, Robert Redford, Christopher Reeve, Venessa Redgrave, Burt Reynolds, Tim Robbins, Julia Roberts, Chris Rock, Diana Ross, Meg Ryan, Susan Sarandon, Martin Scoresee, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Neil Simon, Will Smith, Kevin Spacey, Sissy Spacek, Steven Speilberg, Stephen Sondheim, Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, Barbara Striesand, Sylvester Stallone, Ben Stiller, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlize Theron, John Travolta, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Williams, Kate Winslet Forrest Whittaker, Debra Winger, James Woods, Renee Zellweger. This is about 160 of the 200 on the programme series to-date.
A subjective reflection is that the subjects fall into three broad categories; those with showbiz family connections, those that had one or both parents giving 100% encouragement and those who made it the hard way, some times the very hard way and confirming problems which has kept the media industry producing endless copy.
The interviews all have the same structure. Lipton sits to one side of the stage with the invited personality at its centre, before the college, and invited guests. He has meticulously researched each life, often unnerving the subject by knowledge which could only have come from a close relative or friend. He has a little box of prepared note cards. The television edition is an edited version of the full interview after which there is a session in which the performer answer questions from the students, with sometimes one or two of these being shown. During each programme there will be occasional sots of the audience and it is evident that each time the camera is seen to focus however intense the involvement the student is ready to project their essence into that moment.
Each interview concludes with what is a bizarre and idiosyncratic interest of James Lipton in which he uses a questionnaire, originally devised by Bernard Privot, originally devised by Proust, This rarely adds to the rest of the programme, but serves as a way of ending by treating every subject in similar manner. The order of questions is not as in the programme. The questions: Favourite word (yes) Least Favourite word (no) Favourite sound (all clear) least favourite sound (bomb/rocket warning siren), which job would you like to have done (poet, writer, talk show host) which would you would not like to do (government assassin) favourite cuss word (shit) What turns you on (creatively emotionally, spiritually? (A cloudless sky on a warm day). What do you want God to say when you reach the gates of heaven, (you made it I did not expect that would). It is doubtful if the series would have attained its present level of success, rarely off a Satellite channel, without the personality of James Lipton, a poet and writer who enjoys performing before the camera and being tattooed. When he interviewed Juliet Binoche in Paris, a rare and I believe the only instance of an interview outside of the USA, his friend the Minister of Culture had arranged for him to receive a national cultural award.
This morning after waking, washing up, preparing lunch and the rest of my day I watched again the interview with Nicholas Cage. These are programme which merit and are given undivided attention. I have some video tapes which I have watched several times, but these days one of the series is usually reappearing on a Satellite or Cable channel having first appeared on the Bravo network. Presently they are on the Performance channel, with tomorrow previously seen Drew Barrymore while the adjacent new channel Mainstreet, at one I cannot remember seeing before, is showing, the Simpsons and Charlie Sheen over the next 24 hours. Now from the sublime to the ridiculous.
The day at the hospital commenced with a minor disappointment after having secured the 3rd to 5th place on the Hangman game, My mother's initials had been replaced by a newcomer with scores I knew I would be unable to match or exceed. I investigated the other games and to great delight found that the Coronation Street game was a variation of Hangman. In this instance the game is limited by only having 9 attempts to correctly identify the letters of the phrase or required word. However you cannot get wrong the answer to individual choice of three answer questions, because if you do the game ends. You can avoid the situation by asking Ken Barlow for help and he will oblige with either the correct answer or reducing the options from three to two. In addition the same few seconds is allowed for each decision It is therefore not surprising that no one exceeded 3000 points during the previous 7 days and in fact one was above 2500 and two were under 1000. I fancied our chances and was quickly rewarded with the fifth place then second, 4th and 5th, although I was pushed down from second to third at one point. However as the evening ended I had successfully achieved the top two spots and the 4th and 5th, thus the screen glowed with four of five initials, although alas the camera was not to hand to make a confirmatory record and who knows what the position will be tomorrow, or in fact today as the piece is reviewed and revised.
Earlier I had watched the Ladies put up a good first half performance against the USA in the quarter finals of the World Cup but then lost three goals and were on their way home. I was impressed by the extent to which they have started to play at the same level of organisation as their senior male counterparts and it was not surprising to learn that the USA has performed before a crowd of 90000, or play male teams, sometimes successful, when they lack effective female opposition. Apparently female success has taken off in more than a big way in the USA than the male teams where American football continues to reign supreme. Beckham or no Beckham.
And then listened to an exciting old fashion derby in which Sunderland scored within two minutes and got a draw with two minutes to go. Neither manager appeared happy with performances which were all about blood and gut and just what the supporters want. Arsenal showed the Toon what they should have done to Derby winning 5,0 but Birmingham held Liverpool to a draw at Anfield.
Yesterday I enjoyed Mario Lanza for the second time in a week, the life of Enrico Caruso. The film is a very fictionalised account of his life. This reminds that I used to have an original wind up gramophone recording as I had of he Peace in our Time speech. Where are they now. If still in the unpacked boxes from the move hey are likely to have become warped. I deem to remember putting them somewhere safe. In the Mario Lanza film, Enrico appears to die from failure to give attention to a cough and the excessive sue of ether whereas it was from peritonitis, due to the bursting of an abscess. Mario was well cast having the same large chest bulk and like Enrico he also died a comparative young man. He at the age of 38 Caruso at 49. There may have been some truth that Caruso only married shortly before his death because his first love married another when he was unknown and poor. It is also accurate that he his bride was half his age but to suggest that he married someone who he liked as a young girl as soon as she was able to do so cannot be true as his bridge was 25 when they married and a widow at 28. It was my Aunty Harriet more than my mother who adored Mario Lanza although I did go with them to see some of his films. The Great Caruso when I was moving from preparatory school and Because you are mine a year later. I was at work and went on my own to see the Student Prince in 1956 and bought the Long Play Record , one of my first, and which I have and still play to this day 50 years later. Fifty years later that is an extraordinary concept as writing it down it seems like yesterday. Mario made the recording before making the film which was just as well because he had put on so much weight that the studio cast Edmund Purdom to play his role and dubbed Mario's voice. Less than a decade later I visited Heidelberg in Austria as part of my tour of Europe in three weeks, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France and during which time I also drank beer at a festival in the Black Forest, had an accident involving a cyclist in Italy, which broke th windscreen but fortunately did not injure anyone otherwise I would have been locked up, did I shoot glide on the Italian motorway on the way back from Naples, where I had a horse drawn carriage ride with a wren stationed at Malta, whose friends parents I had encountered while driving up Vesuvius while they drove down, attending the Naples Film Festival after my companion posed as President of the Oxford Film Festival, accompanied by two beautiful English roses whose car boot my companion had fixed at a campsite in Rome and who and then joined us in the South, and mentioning Rome I had arrived as the Pope was about to give public audience outside of St Peters, and managed to buy a Cross and a statue from a shop in one corner so that they could be give his Papal blessing and which I am about to collect from the residential home where they were with my mother until her admission to hospital six weeks ago.
The alumni of the school include Edward Albee, Carroll Baker, James Baldwin Anne Bancroft Ellen Barkin Marlon Brando, Lee J Cobb, Montgomery Clift, Jack Nicholson SI, Robert de Nero SI, James Dean, James Fonda , Dustin Hoffman SI Harvey Keitel, Martin Landau SI, Diane Ladd, Karl Madden, Norman Mailer, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman SI, Al Pacino SI, Geraldine Page, Sidney Poitier, Mickey Rourke, Rod Steiger, Christopher Walken, SI Gene Wilder SI, Tennessee Williams, Shelley Winters SI , Joanne Woodward SI. (SI = Seen interview). An impressive list of names but they represent only a small percentage of thousands of students whop despite talent, ability, determination and years of effort never become the household name which will one see themselves being interviewed.
I have benefited from experiencing something of the lives and work of Ben Affleck, Alan Alda, Lauren Bacall, Antonio Banderas, Kim Bassinger, Roseanne Barr, Drew Barrymore, Kathy Bates Juliet Binoche, Kate Blanchette, Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan, Ellen Burstyn, James Caan, Nicholas Cage, Michael Caine, Stockyard Channing, Glenn Close Jennifer Connolly, Francis Ford Copola, Kevin Costner Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Billy Crystal, Matt Damon, Geena Davis. Cameron Diaz, Johnny Depp, Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfus, David Duchovny, Faye Dunaway, Clint Eastward, Peter Falk, Sally Field, Ralph Fiennes, Laurence Fishbourne, Harrison Ford, Jodi Foster, Michael J Fox, Jamie Foxx, Morgan Freeman, James Gandolfini, Andy Garcia, Richard Gere, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, John Goodman. Melanie Griffiths, Gene Hackman, Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, (2) Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anthony Hopkins, Dennis Hopper, Angelica Houston, Ron Howard, Helen Hunt, Holly Hunter, John Hurt, Jeremy Irons, Samuel Jackson, Billy Joel, Elton John, Angelina Jolie, Tommy Lee Jones, Val Kilmer, Ben Kingsley, Jessica Lange, Queen Laifah, Hugh Laurie, Jude Law, Jack Lemmon, Jerry Lewis, Jennifer Lopez, Sidney Lumet, Jeanne Moreau, Shirley MacLaine, Ian McKellen, Bette Midler, Arthur Miller, Liza Minnelli, Mary Tyler Moore, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers (2) Mike Nicholls, Gwyneth Paltrow Arthur Penn, Sean Penn Michelle Pfeiffer, Dennis Quaid, Anthony Quinn, Robert Redford, Christopher Reeve, Venessa Redgrave, Burt Reynolds, Tim Robbins, Julia Roberts, Chris Rock, Diana Ross, Meg Ryan, Susan Sarandon, Martin Scoresee, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Neil Simon, Will Smith, Kevin Spacey, Sissy Spacek, Steven Speilberg, Stephen Sondheim, Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, Barbara Striesand, Sylvester Stallone, Ben Stiller, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlize Theron, John Travolta, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Williams, Kate Winslet Forrest Whittaker, Debra Winger, James Woods, Renee Zellweger. This is about 160 of the 200 on the programme series to-date.
A subjective reflection is that the subjects fall into three broad categories; those with showbiz family connections, those that had one or both parents giving 100% encouragement and those who made it the hard way, some times the very hard way and confirming problems which has kept the media industry producing endless copy.
The interviews all have the same structure. Lipton sits to one side of the stage with the invited personality at its centre, before the college, and invited guests. He has meticulously researched each life, often unnerving the subject by knowledge which could only have come from a close relative or friend. He has a little box of prepared note cards. The television edition is an edited version of the full interview after which there is a session in which the performer answer questions from the students, with sometimes one or two of these being shown. During each programme there will be occasional sots of the audience and it is evident that each time the camera is seen to focus however intense the involvement the student is ready to project their essence into that moment.
Each interview concludes with what is a bizarre and idiosyncratic interest of James Lipton in which he uses a questionnaire, originally devised by Bernard Privot, originally devised by Proust, This rarely adds to the rest of the programme, but serves as a way of ending by treating every subject in similar manner. The order of questions is not as in the programme. The questions: Favourite word (yes) Least Favourite word (no) Favourite sound (all clear) least favourite sound (bomb/rocket warning siren), which job would you like to have done (poet, writer, talk show host) which would you would not like to do (government assassin) favourite cuss word (shit) What turns you on (creatively emotionally, spiritually? (A cloudless sky on a warm day). What do you want God to say when you reach the gates of heaven, (you made it I did not expect that would). It is doubtful if the series would have attained its present level of success, rarely off a Satellite channel, without the personality of James Lipton, a poet and writer who enjoys performing before the camera and being tattooed. When he interviewed Juliet Binoche in Paris, a rare and I believe the only instance of an interview outside of the USA, his friend the Minister of Culture had arranged for him to receive a national cultural award.
This morning after waking, washing up, preparing lunch and the rest of my day I watched again the interview with Nicholas Cage. These are programme which merit and are given undivided attention. I have some video tapes which I have watched several times, but these days one of the series is usually reappearing on a Satellite or Cable channel having first appeared on the Bravo network. Presently they are on the Performance channel, with tomorrow previously seen Drew Barrymore while the adjacent new channel Mainstreet, at one I cannot remember seeing before, is showing, the Simpsons and Charlie Sheen over the next 24 hours. Now from the sublime to the ridiculous.
The day at the hospital commenced with a minor disappointment after having secured the 3rd to 5th place on the Hangman game, My mother's initials had been replaced by a newcomer with scores I knew I would be unable to match or exceed. I investigated the other games and to great delight found that the Coronation Street game was a variation of Hangman. In this instance the game is limited by only having 9 attempts to correctly identify the letters of the phrase or required word. However you cannot get wrong the answer to individual choice of three answer questions, because if you do the game ends. You can avoid the situation by asking Ken Barlow for help and he will oblige with either the correct answer or reducing the options from three to two. In addition the same few seconds is allowed for each decision It is therefore not surprising that no one exceeded 3000 points during the previous 7 days and in fact one was above 2500 and two were under 1000. I fancied our chances and was quickly rewarded with the fifth place then second, 4th and 5th, although I was pushed down from second to third at one point. However as the evening ended I had successfully achieved the top two spots and the 4th and 5th, thus the screen glowed with four of five initials, although alas the camera was not to hand to make a confirmatory record and who knows what the position will be tomorrow, or in fact today as the piece is reviewed and revised.
Earlier I had watched the Ladies put up a good first half performance against the USA in the quarter finals of the World Cup but then lost three goals and were on their way home. I was impressed by the extent to which they have started to play at the same level of organisation as their senior male counterparts and it was not surprising to learn that the USA has performed before a crowd of 90000, or play male teams, sometimes successful, when they lack effective female opposition. Apparently female success has taken off in more than a big way in the USA than the male teams where American football continues to reign supreme. Beckham or no Beckham.
And then listened to an exciting old fashion derby in which Sunderland scored within two minutes and got a draw with two minutes to go. Neither manager appeared happy with performances which were all about blood and gut and just what the supporters want. Arsenal showed the Toon what they should have done to Derby winning 5,0 but Birmingham held Liverpool to a draw at Anfield.
Yesterday I enjoyed Mario Lanza for the second time in a week, the life of Enrico Caruso. The film is a very fictionalised account of his life. This reminds that I used to have an original wind up gramophone recording as I had of he Peace in our Time speech. Where are they now. If still in the unpacked boxes from the move hey are likely to have become warped. I deem to remember putting them somewhere safe. In the Mario Lanza film, Enrico appears to die from failure to give attention to a cough and the excessive sue of ether whereas it was from peritonitis, due to the bursting of an abscess. Mario was well cast having the same large chest bulk and like Enrico he also died a comparative young man. He at the age of 38 Caruso at 49. There may have been some truth that Caruso only married shortly before his death because his first love married another when he was unknown and poor. It is also accurate that he his bride was half his age but to suggest that he married someone who he liked as a young girl as soon as she was able to do so cannot be true as his bridge was 25 when they married and a widow at 28. It was my Aunty Harriet more than my mother who adored Mario Lanza although I did go with them to see some of his films. The Great Caruso when I was moving from preparatory school and Because you are mine a year later. I was at work and went on my own to see the Student Prince in 1956 and bought the Long Play Record , one of my first, and which I have and still play to this day 50 years later. Fifty years later that is an extraordinary concept as writing it down it seems like yesterday. Mario made the recording before making the film which was just as well because he had put on so much weight that the studio cast Edmund Purdom to play his role and dubbed Mario's voice. Less than a decade later I visited Heidelberg in Austria as part of my tour of Europe in three weeks, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France and during which time I also drank beer at a festival in the Black Forest, had an accident involving a cyclist in Italy, which broke th windscreen but fortunately did not injure anyone otherwise I would have been locked up, did I shoot glide on the Italian motorway on the way back from Naples, where I had a horse drawn carriage ride with a wren stationed at Malta, whose friends parents I had encountered while driving up Vesuvius while they drove down, attending the Naples Film Festival after my companion posed as President of the Oxford Film Festival, accompanied by two beautiful English roses whose car boot my companion had fixed at a campsite in Rome and who and then joined us in the South, and mentioning Rome I had arrived as the Pope was about to give public audience outside of St Peters, and managed to buy a Cross and a statue from a shop in one corner so that they could be give his Papal blessing and which I am about to collect from the residential home where they were with my mother until her admission to hospital six weeks ago.
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