Category Archives: Acting Coaches

Acting Class

by Alan Swyer

Acting Classes, Acting Coaches, Actors, Fiction, Film, Musicians, Short Story, Theatre, TV 1

A wannabe actor finds out he’s learning from a beast of a man. 3,130 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

 

"I cannot make you an actor," the man often spoken of as King Kahn (but never to his face) told the dozen hopefuls gathered on a Monday morning for his new theater workshop. "I’m a teacher, not God. I can, however, help you learn to think, prepare, and behave like the professional I assume you aspire to be. But that’s if and only if you’re willing to listen, accept criticism, and most importantly do the goddamn work. Understood?"

Feeling like he had somehow crashed the wrong party, Ed Saks watched as his classmates, who ranged in age from their early twenties to a woman in multiple scarves approaching fifty, nodded a bit too vigorously.

"But let me make clear," Kenneth Kahn continued, "that I am not, nor shall I ever be, your psychiatrist, your daddy, or your friend. If we were in New York, I would say if that’s what you’re searching for, go back to Poughkeepsie, Pawtucket, or Passaic. But we’re on the other coast. Where shall I say, Freddie?"

"Oxnard?" offered Kahn’s eager young assistant. "Or maybe Cucamonga?"

"Freddie’s a veritable font of knowledge. Oxnard and Cucamonga indeed."

Upon his arrival before class, Saks felt that he was entering an alternate universe. The other students spoke of Kahn as the successor to Stella, Bobby, Sandy, plus someone called Gadge, all the while referencing their own experiences at Tisch, RADA, and summer stock. It was as though another language was being spoken. That was also true when they cited stars reportedly mentored by King Kahn, plus celebrities male and female with whom he had been linked sexually.

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Firing Forsyth
Part One

by Nat Segaloff

Acting Classes, Acting Coaches, Actors, Directors, Fiction, Film, Film Schools, Producers, Screenwriters, Short Story Leave a comment

A comedy-action star stretches to take on a daringly different dramatic role. 1,705 words. Part Two. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

Brendan Forsyth was a green-light machine. Ever since he shot to stardom opposite Ryan Howson in Gangsters Two, the pair playing two lovable rogues, he had become one of those rare Hollywood commodities popular with both public and critics. He was also smart. He had a social conscience and supported many causes and charities, but he kept a low donor profile. His marriage was stable and the press treated him and his wife, Barbara, with respect. He was selective with interviews.

His ability to choose projects was equally remarkable. He famously passed on the starring role as the ship builder who rescues all the passengers in the disaster picture Sea Doom because it was the builder’s flawed design that put everybody in jeopardy in the first place. Rather, he wanted to play the captain of the rescue liner because that was the only guiltless character in the script. Interestingly, Howson had no qualms playing the ship builder, and the re-teaming scored a box office record.

Forsyth would even take a supporting role if he thought it could help a picture get made. That garnered him a lot of good press, but it also made his fellow actors wary of him. And yet the guy was just so likable that they had to forgive him. What other big star would have played the fireman for barely ten minutes in the children’s movie, Cathy’s Kitten? Because his daughter loved the books, that’s why. Or the voice of a paranoid caller on the TV series Shrink Rap? Because the sitcom was his guilty pleasure, and it set off a trend of celebrity cameos.

So when Forsyth agreed to play the hotly contended role of Dr. Bob Doherty, an alcoholic surgeon who climbs on the wagon to save the U.S. President’s life in the medical thriller Operation Death, it was seen as another daring decision by the iconoclastic star. Producers Adam Hoffman and Charlie Greene were thrilled; Larry Cooper, the retired surgeon who’d written the bestselling novel, was honored; and screenwriter-director Allan Spanner was eager to work with his friend of twenty years dating back to when they were both struggling actors.

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Roommates

by Robert W. Welkos

Acting Classes, Acting Coaches, Actors, Auditions, Fiction, Film, Screenwriters, Short Story, Theatre, TV 1

Three world famous actors started out long ago as NYC roommates struggling to make it. 3,222 words. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

New York City — 1950s

Sheldon Dumar, Bo Daggett and Bill Travers live together in the same New York City apartment 8547D799-C475-4659-B563-17A9A283F8B3building as close to roommates as three straight guys can get, all in their twenties and all focused on finding acting jobs.

Tonight, Sheldon is awakened by a pluk, pluk, pluk noise. What is that, the faucet? Geez, can’t a guy get any sleep around here?

“Shut up.” He covers his ears. “I said, shut up, dammit!” Groggily, he rubs the sleep from his eyes and stares unfocused into the grayish darkness. He has to laugh. How does that TV show go? There are eight million stories in the naked city… and now this is one of them: Bo’s shitty leaky kitchen faucet. Then Sheldon remembers all those lessons drummed into him using the Meisner Technique. Learn to improvise, Sheldon, like Meisner says. A phrase. Respond with intensity. Let your emotions flow. Sheldon glares at the faucet. “Are you pluking with me, faucet? Stop pluking with me!”

Sheldon dips his head and laughs. Always on. Always the actor. But he’s thankful Bo doesn’t kick him out of the apartment. Bo wouldn’t, would he? They’ve been pals since meeting at the Pasadena Playhouse, as unlikely a pair as Wally Cox and Marlon Brando.

Sheldon asked to crash at Bo’s pad while looking for a job in New York. Found one, too. Waiting tables. Don’t we all in this profession until the auditions pay off? Now Sheldon is looking for something off-Broadway or maybe a TV commercial. That would suffice until he gets on his feet financially and can afford his own pad. Until then, Bo says Sheldon can sleep on the kitchen floor. What a pal. Pluk, pluk pluk.

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The Dog That Talked Like Brando

by Jay Abramowitz

Acting Coaches, Actors, Animal Performers, Fiction, Film, Producers, Short Story 2

A struggling actor has a career epiphany made possible by a pooch with an unexpected plan. 2,377 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

I was in the bathtub about to slide the straightedge into my wrist when I heard 8547D799-C475-4659-B563-17A9A283F8B3Marlon Brando call out, “Don’t do it, Paul.”

“Ronnie?” I called back in a voice that alarmed me when I heard it. Ronnie, the closest thing I have to a friend, is an impressionist. I thought maybe Providence had made him afraid for me and sent him, like the angel Clarence in It’s A Wonderful Life.

“It’s not Ronnie. Come here, I want to talk to you.”

I laid down the blade on the side of the bathtub, pulled my body out and sloshed into the main room of my studio apartment. I didn’t bother drying or covering myself. If it’s Ronnie, who cares. If it’s the ghost of Marlon Brando, let me present myself as God made me.

I didn’t see Marlon Brando or his ghost in my apartment. Only Bella, gazing up at me from the kitchen area faithfully and – I knew her so well – hungrily. I stared at my dog. A mutt, delicate, pure white, forty pounds give or take, her fur hanging down her sides long and fine but, on her head and face, short. I’d almost left her alone in the world, my personal Old Yeller to whimper endlessly over my grave. I scratched her behind an ear and sobbed as I pulled her head against mine. I’d bathed her recently and she smelled like vanilla cookies.

“I love you too, Paul,” she said in Brando’s voice. Her mouth moved, like the talking dog in Babe. She glanced behind herself and added, again in Brando’s voice, “Jeez, I wish I had balls to lick.”

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Shooting Star

by Michael Brandman

Acting Coaches, Actors, Agents, Directors, Executives, Fiction, Film, Film Crew, Managers, Moguls, Oscars, Short Story, Studios 3

Who in Hollywood can control this hugely talented film actor hell bent on causing trouble? 3,754 words. Illustrations by Mark Fearing.

It was only after he achieved superstar status that Rick Myer’s life issues began to surface. He was twenty 8547D799-C475-4659-B563-17A9A283F8B3–seven and totally unprepared for the adulation he was receiving.

He had grown up in South Orange, New Jersey, the son of an alcoholic father and an adoring mother who devoted her life to serving his every need.

At age seventeen, having previously shown no interest in pretty much anything, he announced his intention to become an actor. His mother took it in stride and arranged for him to take private lessons with a Manhattan based acting coach.

Each Saturday Rick would take a Lackawanna local to Hoboken, catch the subway to Grand Central Station, then hike uptown to Fifty Seventh Street where he studied acting in the living room of Dora Weissman’s one bedroom apartment. Weissman, a veteran performer and long time acting teacher, did all she could to guide and inform him, but soon found him to be a difficult and headstrong student. Plus, he frightened her.

One night, at a dinner party held in honor of the Yiddish Theatre luminary, Shmuel Alter, she bumped into the estimable acting guru, Frederic Augsburger, and recommended Rick to him as a possible candidate for his Actor’s Salon.

Augsburger expressed interest and the following week, having watched Rick perform a pair of scenes that he and Weissman had prepared, he invited him to join the Salon.

After barely a month of intensive scene study, and against Augsburger’s wishes, Rick hustled an audition for the upcoming Broadway play, Caged.

"You’re not ready," Augsburger told him.

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Jimmy And Marilyn:
The Golden Years

by Peter Lefcourt

Acting Coaches, Actors, Agents, Assistants, Auditions, Fiction, Film, Playwrights, Short Story, Theatre, TV 1

They never dated or acted together. What if these two icons were alive and living together? 929 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

“Todd call?”

“I don’t know – check the machine…”

“He said he was going to get me in to read.”

“You pick up my prescription at Rite Aid?”

“It’s two days’ work. I could play that role – a guy from Montana runs a gas station. I told them to send over Giant so they can see me do the western thing.”

“Jimmy, I told you — you need to take everything off your résumé with a ‘5’ in front of it. They don’t want anybody who worked before 1960. I took Some Like It Hot off mine last year.”

“You ever go in on NCIS: Temecula?”

“I go in on them all. Strasberg always said that you should use an audition as the first rehearsal for the part.”

“The thing about those NCIS series is you get residuals forever.”

“Your pension check come?”

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Acting Coach Unrequited

by Juliana Ashe

Acting Classes, Acting Coaches, Actors, Fiction, Film, Short Story, Starlets Leave a comment

A Hollywood acting coach makes a dream offer to an inexperienced young woman. 2,958 words. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

I had no idea who Erwin Eckelson was when I first met him. After I did understand, I was shocked and happy he invited me to participate in a free weekend of acting classes he was offering, Erwin was well-known in Hollywood as an acting coach who’d taught many movie stars over the years. He combined the methodology of both Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler to train over 100,000 students. And in case you were wondering, yes, he’s still alive.

I met Erwin in a way-out-there spiritual class led by a woman who went into deep trances and brought through entities from other realms of life to give pearls of wisdom about life on this planet. My spiritual journey with her changed many of my naive attitudes. Erwin was also into this woo-woo stuff. Who knew?

Not many, because the classes took place in Tucson. There were no actors there. We all sat on chairs and some on cushions around the room. Erwin sat very straight and quietly on a pillow on the floor. Most people got up and told a little about themselves. The very odd thing was they took off their clothes to do it. I did not get the memo. The majority of the attendees were over fifty and I never saw so much flesh pointing south. Erwin did not get naked but he did wear a lovely silk robe that looked just like Hugh Hefner’s.

When I stood up and told my personal story, Erwin noticed me. I was a 5-foot-8 blue-eyed blond 115-pound stick figure at the time. He came over to where I was sitting and said, “You’re so beautiful and such an anomaly. I can’t figure you out. When you speak you have a bit of country twang. You’re like a cross between Grace Kelly and Minnie Pearl.”

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