The Not-So-Perfect Pitch

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

In a mild twist of fate, I auditioned for a role on an HBO series yesterday.  This is no early Meryl Streep character that is going to require me hours of dialogue training to nail an East Prussian accent.  I doubt I’ll have to insist that all crew members call me by my character’s name so that my precarious Method balance is maintained.  If I get the role, and it is a real long shot that I will, I would basically be playing me.

James Killough's new headshot, which will launch a sneak attack on HBO. Photo: Sebastian Artz.

I’m sure there are hundreds of actors out there who can play a middle-aged Ghey from the West Village, which is what this is.  And I’m sure we all sound alike in the end; these are lines I would actually say.  I really felt this dialogue was written with me in mind, which is why I keep my hopes up, even though as someone who habitually sits on the deciding side of the casting couch I know better.

What concerns me is the script describes my character as wearing a kimono.  Maybe the writer is savvy enough to know that I would indeed wear a man’s antique shibori resist-dyed kimono in a heartbeat, but I think she might have something more flamboyant in mind.  And therein lies the challenge.

I mentioned to my associate Tyler that I was concerned they probably wanted an old-school extravaganza Ghey, the kind who, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, is coming back in vogue thanks to that little Nellie in Glee. Tyler encouragingly replied, “Nah, you’ll be like the transvestite Liev Schreiber played in Taking Woodstock.  He looked totally out of place in a dress, but it was really funny.”  I twisted my ankle the other day stepping out of Tyler’s Ford Explorer, so the thought of slipping into a dress and heels isn’t very appealing right now.  But trying to convince the costume department to outfit me in an antique men’s shibori resist-dyed kimono rather than Haute Golden Girls Nightwear is an exciting challenge.

The Joy of Stalking

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

Alan Cumming has a new site up dedicated to obsessions, itsasickness.com.  I would say it celebrates passions more than obsessions in the truest sense of the word, and I am hanging on the truest sense because the site does have “sickness” in its title.  And sick obsession reminds of the time I went truly mentally ill and stalked a former lover.

Knowing Alan as I do, he probably means sickness as in the recent colloquialism “That is so sick,” like it’s a really good thing.  In the video up on the site right now, Zoe Kravitz is obsessed with a green dragon plushie costume, with how it makes her feel empowered.  This isn’t my particular experience of people obsessed with plushie.  The plushophiles I’ve met are rather lovable, extreme introverts who like to dress up as cartoon characters and have kinky sex.

Zoe Kravitz vogues plushophile lite in Williamsburg for itsasickness.com.

I had a brush with plushophilia and diaper fetishists back in the early Noughties through a friend, Gene, who also had extreme social anxiety disorder (SAD).  Gene was one of a trio of people who would trigger the mnemonic that gave rise to my play Hatter, the film version of which Alan Cumming has been attached to, just so you follow my meandering train of thought.  Gene had some hilarious stories about “furries”

Let My People Go

A very sweet thing happened last night.  One of the younger denizens of the dormitory-slash-tenement I wound up living in by some cruel twist of luckless fate came by to offer his support in my defense against the (in my opinion) nefarious Susan Blais.  He not only offered to testify at my upcoming court appearance, but suggested I spearhead a “class action” suit on behalf of most of the beleaguered residents of this shithole.  I’ve been feeling like Moses all day, with the theme song from “Prince of Egypt” playing on maximum rotation in my head.

Charleton Heston as Moses, history's most famous schizophrenic after Jesus Christ (burning bushes talking to you? time to reach for the anti-psychotics, buddy). This was before he dropped the staff and picked up a gun on behalf of the NRA. We preferred the old weapons; more flair.

My young friend guilelessly believes that just because I have the “moral upper hand” that I will win.  I explained that legal right and moral right are two very different things.  Ms. Blais has the legal right based on a technicality and she is exercising it, as is her right as the owner of this property.  She is doomed to win.  It will be probably be a Phyrric victory, as most assaults of this kind against my august person usually are, but that is neither here nor there: I want out of here, a.s.a.p, and suggested to my young friend that he and whoever else wants to join in the so-called class action suit to do the same rather than fighting a wacko over control of her own property.  Possession is nine-tenths of the law, which includes possession by Satan, apparently.

He said, “I never like to say this about a woman, but she is a real cunt.”  Jinx!  That’s exactly the word I muttered when I got my summons.

Indeed, justice can work as often against you as it can for you.  As I said in a previous post, in this case I am a victim of justice.  And it’s nice to know that everyone around me agrees.  It will give me courage when I raise my staff in court and bring a plague of locusts down to ravage Ms. Blais’s entire property portfolio and slaughter her first born sons.

Mistaking moral right with legal right is completely understandable for people outside the law industry.  Just because you are right, doesn’t mean they can’t make you wrong, or in this case, just because what Susan Blais is going to me is wrong, doesn’t mean she isn’t within her rights to do it.

Web page for my contentious film HATTER.

I learned the distinction between moral and legal right a couple of years ago, when my film project HATTER was under siege from various directions.  It was flattering that it caused such a brouhaha, but it wasn’t pleasant to discover that, even though wrong was being done to me, I “didn’t have a leg to stand on,” as Alan Cumming put it so aptly when he called  me from the set of Julie Taymor’s “The Tempest” in Hawaii.  He capped the conversation with, “Come on, James, this is Hollywood.  You know how it goes,” meaning I should capitulate to the meanies, and furthermore ought to be coerced into doing it by that cliché.  Yes, but Alan, darling, I’m not a bottom, I don’t take it up the ass from anyone. So I thought about it for a while, and understood that, while the moral upper hand felt good, doing the right thing by the project felt even better, so I turned the screenplay into a stage play and called a holdback on the film while everyone simmered down.  It’s now being cast in London, with the wonderful Sean Mathias directing.

To stick with the biblical theme, what happened to HATTER was sort of like the Judgement of Solomon: in order to keep my baby alive, rather than have it butchered by the opposition, I gave it over to someone else. Provided  it lives, let it be raised by another parent.  As the play goes up this year (hopefully; it’s an extremely edgy piece, not for the squeamish), I will blog more about it and fill you in with the details of what happened during that period.

It’s quite the story, with quite a few morals.