ACTOR: a NOVEL in THREE ACTS ^ a Novel Submitted to the Faculty Of
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ACTOR: A NOVEL IN THREE ACTS ^ A Novel Submitted to the Faculty of San Francisco State University "ZvlH In Fulfillment of Z^C,CU) the Requirements for the Degree Masters In Creative Writing By Mitchell Duran San Francisco, California Spring 2019 Copyright by Mitchell Duran 2019 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read Actor: A Novel in Three Acts by Mitchell Duran, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master in Creative Writing and Fiction at San Francisco State University. ACTOR: A NOVEL IN THREE ACTS Mitchell Duran San Francisco, California 2019 Sanford Meisner, one of the world's most famous acting teachers of the last 20“ century, inspired by Lee Strasberg, Konstantin Stanislavski, and Uta Hagen, a teacher of The Method, once said, “For one to act and act well, one must live truthfully under the given circumstances.” For Ave Gardener, the lead protagonist in my debut novel Actor: A Novel in Three Acts currently at 110,000 words, this creed is more than just craft to Ave Gardener. It is a way of life. At age five, Ave’s once famous mother, Edie, put him on the stage. Always overbearing yet instructive, Ave, by the influence of his mother, is admitted and eventually graduates from Juilliard, one of the top acting conservatory’s in the country. To escape his mother’s influence, Ave moves from New York to Chicago, the land of improvisation and gritty theatre to become his own actor. After restaurant jobs and toothpaste commercials, Ave catches a break at Steppenwolf Theatre where he lands an integral part in Sam Shepard’s True West. Edie, the same night Ave hears the news, has an accident, forcing him to go to her new home in San Francisco to care for her. Ave, through the contact of his father, a famous talent agent in LA, meets the infamous director Jules Sables. A mixture of Scorsese, Julian Schnabel, and Tarantino, Ave lands the roll in his new movie. Ave has to take it. Edie is crushed. One night, as Ave celebrates without her, Edie, drunk on her roof, realizes that she can’t live for her son to succeed and ends her life. Ave, mourning the loss of Edie, goes on location for the film anyways. Immediately, Ave is dropped into the dark, solipsistic, egotistical world of Hollywood, far different than anything he ever experienced at home, in school, Chicago or San Francisco. Ave does whatever it takes to be noticed and respected, from out-acting to over-schmoozing to sabotage. When he finds out one of the leads is contemplating leaving the project due to money complications, Jules asks Ave, What would you do for your art? With Oscar rumors already buzzing around the film, as well as the pressure from his superiors and peers, Ave finds himself forced to make a decision between his old artistic moralities and a new level of recognition I certify that the above synopsis of Actor: A Novel in Three Acts is a correct representation of the content of this novel. PREFACE AND/OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I first want to thank my parents. Mom, your eternal support is always with my work and Dad, your generosity and awe imbibe this story and all the others I try to tell and show with wonder. Also, I’d like to thank my stepfather Rob who always had a few right words of encouragement. I want to thank my peers in workshop, all of my professors along the way, and my thesis advisor Carolina De Robertis, a fervent light whose guidance and conversation took this story to a level I never thought possible. VII TABLE OF CONTENTS Act I Act II Act III VIII 1 Actor: A Novel in Three Acts By Mitchell Duran That night in Chicago, before the Steppenwolf audition, before everything changed for the better, worse, and back again, was like any other night talking to Edie. Being my mother, she always had some kind of drink near her. Double Sapphire Gin with Fentiman’s and a slice of lime was her poison. I could smell the juniper through the phone, feel the tickle of the sodas bubbles as they popped over the ice and into the caverns of my forever frozen nose. I think Edie still had the old highball glasses from New York, the ones Dad and her used for the actor parties they were always throwing. I remembered their weight and the thickness of their ridged glass in my small, five-year- old hands. She claimed to have kept them after her and Dad moved to LA. She may have lost them though after Edie moved to San Francisco after the divorce. I was afraid to ask. 2 “I can’t go back to New York after everything Dean’s done to me,” Edie had told me. “See everyone, tell them the same old sob story. No, no. I am exiled.” That, was Edie. I had yet to visit her in San Francisco, so she had probably gotten rid of them. I tried my best not to bring up the past. Whenever I did, be it a memory of a place or a person or a line from one her roles, her breath would shudder, almost crack as it exited her body in a gasp. After our fights about leaving New York and me moving to Chicago, it didn’t feel right trying to see her. We sure as shit we could talk though. If it were past her third cocktail or her fourth, Edie would skip the tonic all together and pour the Sapphire over ice. The sound was soothing and violent, like a sudden summers downpour. Listening to her talk, mostly at me, there was a drawl she’d take on, a syrupy croon that could just as soon - if I called it on her - turn into the sharpest dagger. I drank whiskey on the rocks with lemon during our talks. Didn’t matter what it was: Evan Williams, Jim Beam, or Old Crow. Edie had that luxury of choice because she had money. Divorce without a pre-nup will do that. I didn’t want to see any of that, even when the money was offered to me from either side. To me, unearned money, unearned credibility, especially after New York and Juilliard, was a crutch. The idea of the top ladder being at my fingertips just because I popped out of that mom rather than that mom never seemed fair to me, so I denied any hand out after all that had been given to me. What I needed, I would provide. Staring out the window, I gazed at the white translucent ice slick on the street. 3 I was about to mention it to Edie, when she began to stammer, “You know, you know, you know that in this...” I remember pushing my pointer finger into the growing frost; felt the cold, and made two quick faces at myself in the windows reflection: a big smile and then instantly, a deep frown. “I know what?” I asked, Edie still stammering on the other end of the line. “I’m saying it darling!” I knew what was coming, but I humored her because maybe she would say it in a different way, a new way. She was an actress after all. “In the acting business, success breaks down into two factors: who you know and luck.” She let her words linger for a moment then filled it with a sharp crack of a lighter. The sound echoed in what she called her reading and drinking room. I listened to her drag on her Pall Mall cigarettes and then cough once, twice, three times away from the receiver. I took the phone from my ear and took a drink, slurping loudly so I didn’t have to listen to all that pain inside of her. The bitter lemon and ice struck the front of my teeth, failing to distract me. I didn’t say anything to her about the coughing at first afraid that would bite, tell me to mind my own business, but she kept hacking. They sounded deep and dark, like the wings of an old theatre too cheap to afford stage lights. I heard another hiss of her dragging her Pall Mall, then the light tap tap of it as she sprinkled the ash somewhere. I listened to the base of her glass thunk on the table. Edie cleared her throat and I envisioned black lung cancer, choking asthma, that little hole they put in your throat from those scare commercials on TV. She knew all those repercussions. Edie was a grown actress. She knew how to take care of her body, or at least she did when she was working, which hadn’t been for a very long time. I got the courage after one hard cough and told to her get up from her drink and get a glass of water before I called an ambulance. “So dramatic,” she sighed sitting back down with a glass. “Oops. Look what you made me do...I spilled on my jammies a little.” “What’s up with that Mom?” I asked. “What’s up with what?” she retorted. “You know I don’t know your lingo.” “I can feel your spit coming through the receiver,” I said with a half-laugh. “So vulgar. Such a young man.” “I learned it from you.” “Aging is unfair,” sighed Edie.