Break a Leg

Our very own Peter Cooke wrote a college paper on one of the best, most good-looking subjects you can pick -- me. He is gracious enough to share it for our newest fan blog!

Stay tuned next week for Sam Wood's blog!

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I stumbled across "Break a Leg" on one of my treks across the vast world wide web. The internet sitcom came highly recommended from several people I had met in attempt in satiate my addiction to the show "Arrested Development." Originally taped as a five minute pilot for a networkcontest, "Break a Leg" was the brainchild of a motley crew. Created by a pair of brothers, the show starred several of their friends and other local actors from San Francisco. After losing the contest the cast did not despair and posted the video on several websites. It struck up a strong cult following-of which I am proud to be a member of-and never looked back.

The premise of the show was that a young writer just had his new sitcom picked up but faces several difficulties: a lack of money, a director who can't direct and he learns that he's going to be killed. The show's creators, Yuri and Vlad Baranovsky, wanted to make a satire of the inner workings of Hollywood, but ironically had no prior knowledge on the subject. I'm still not sure what drew me into "Break a Leg," whether it was the chaotic characters or the way I saw parts of myself portrayed by the characters and the creators. Investigating into the show's production, I met Yuri, who wasn't the typical guy you meet over the internet, and spoke with him about the show and the challenge of getting a big networks attention.

I talked to Yuri dozens of times, and we grew close despite being thousands of miles away. The more I conversed with Yuri, the more I admired him, learning about how he had started with nothing in his hometown of Kiev, Russia and immigrated to America, motivated by his love of writing. Yuri was the epitome of who I wanted to become-a man following his dream-despite the hardships that might befall him. "Break a Leg" had begun releasing their third episode when I had an eye opening conversation with Yuri.

Our chat began like any other one until we stumbled into philosophy and the deterioration of the American life. I asked Yuri why he continued creating "Break a Leg" getting behind it, shoveling days of effort into it with little recognition and reward. Yuri simply replied, "Because there's nothing quite like creating your own world where the only person who has control is me, Vlad and the characters themselves." To Yuri, filming "Break a Leg" wasn't about gaining privacy and that celebrity status, it was about the creativity and passion that writing and acting allowed him to channel into a work of art, or as a character in "Break a Leg" refers to sitcoms as "comedic life paintings."

I never forgot that conversation. Yuri redefined the measure with which I rated life. Yuri and the rest of his crew and cast had nothing to lose and did what they loved. There was nothing macabre about it. I was determined to change my way of thought, looking for something I loved. Like my own, the future of Yuri and "Break a Leg" has yet to be determined, but as long we are doing something we love who knows.

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Quick note -- Peter mentions talking to me over AIM. I've posted this before, but many of us will gladly speak to any of you over instant messenger when we have the time.

You can add the follow AIM names to contact us:

BreakaLegSitcom - Yuri
Ante31337 - Vlad
Jus10m82 - Justin (Chase Cougar, Director of Photography, Editor)
Someonemanr - Dashiell (Crew Guy, Editor, Director of Photography)

Thanks! Stay tuned for Jen Day tomorrow!
-Yuri

Hey all.

We have a new weblog out for you today (with conversations coming next week) where our very own Chad Yarish (Jennifer John Bradley) will show you how a no-budget production fakes a sewer shoot. Here's a hint -- shoot in actual, disgusting, probably-diseased water.

You can check it out on the main episode page here on the website or you can watch it on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4Nvr-voBDMU

Enjoy!

-Yuri

So I wake up this morning at a good, healthy 10:30, check my phone and what do I see?  It's a missed call and a message from my landlady. My landlady who lives upstairs and who wants to know when she can come downstairs to talk to me and Monica (hi, this is Vlad by the way) about... Something. 

So I start thinking. What does she want from us at 9am on a Saturday?  Did we forget to close the garage?  Was the TV too loud?  Is she working for NBC? (hi NBC!)

I call her back, tell her to come down - which she promptly does - and the conversation goes a little something like this:

her: What did you do with my drapes?
me: What?
her: I noticed you have different drapes up. What did you do with my drapes?
me: Uhm. We took them down (inside voice: because they look like something out of a mental institution)
her: I don't like having multi-colored windows, I like my windows to be uniform.

At this point I'm imagining a 1984esque world where all the drapes are a matching grey and all the tenants are matching the drapes. 

me: Well, we like blue.  Also, did you just notice this? We put them up about 2 years ago. (note: we put up the drapes about 2 years ago)
her: I don't like that. This is a major thoroughfare.  I like all of my windows to have a uniform color.

Incidentally, has anyone ever driven on a major thoroughfare, seen a pale blue drape in a window, and exploded?  I know I have. Moving on.

me: Do you... think... anyone really cares? 
her: I care.
me: Okay... Well, we kind of just like the blue.

You see what I'm doing there? I'm starting to repeat myself. This is because I don't really have an argument. I'm not really sure why there IS an argument, given that we're talking about drapes. No one argues about drapes. Drapes just kind of are.

her: I wish you talked to me about this before you did it.
me: <stunned silence>

At this point she walks off.

So now here's the dilemma. On the one hand, there is probably going to be some glaring and occasional muttering in my future. And a pissed off landlady, is a landlady who's slow to fix the garage next time it breaks. On the other hand, she legally can't do anything. We're renting the inside of this apartment and if we want to hang stuffed monkeys from the ceiling, and call them drapes, I'm pretty sure we have the right to do that. 

We'll see how this saga plays out, but for now we're keeping our pale blue. Because as Monica says, we're just not uniform drapes kind of people.

Vlad

P.S. And I actually really like our landlady. She just has... moments.

 

So let me tell you that I really hate actors. I just do. They talk about themselves, nothing but themselves; the shows they've done, the auditions they've been on, the big names they've worked in the same room with.

Wait, did I tell you about that time I worked with Francis Ford Coppola?

Right, kind of like that! I may include myself in my hatred, I really don't know, I've never talked to myself about anything of any real value. The point is that you go to any audition or shoot and you see these actors clustered in a corner rattling off their resumes to each other. It's really sickening.

Blogging's different though (yay!). I'm supposed to talk about myself, so I'm going to go ahead and talk about the time I worked with Francis Ford Coppola.

Hold on to your hats kids, it's going to be a wild ride.

A few years ago the whole town was abuzz that Coppola was casting for some sort of workshop up at his winery. Now since the whole town was abuzz, the result was predictable, and that's why I almost didn't go to the casting call.

It was a true cattle call, or as close to that as San Francisco can get. Every freaky freaked out actor showed up to that winery; it was freaking raining too. No matter how much confidence you have as an actor (and yours truly has a third leg's worth) you can't help but doubt your castability when you're surrounded by hundreds of other actors, many of which you know, several of whom you consider to be good.

Well the casting was just an interview. It was followed a week or so later by a callback that was basically an improv class, with Francis Ford Coppola. Awesome.

So improv is not really my thing, and I didn't feel so great after that, but at least I met the guy. And that was how I got to work with Francis Ford Coppola.

Kidding, he cast me, plus a few other people I knew, and about two dozen more that I didn't. It turns out he needed actors to get a script he was working on up on its feet. We were working with Director of Photography Ron Fricke, who shot Baraka. It turns out he had brought in a couple friends of his to work on the thing too, in the form of Virginia Madsen and Edward James Olmos. I kissed Virginia Madsen's legs. Thank god.

So we worked for a few days on a little set they built, got to read the script, and even saw some B-roll footage that they shot in New York for the film... during the September 11th attacks. Yes, we saw 9/11 footage from a different vantage point than you've ever seen, or ever will see. It was very eerie. And bagels, we saw footage from a bagel factory.

And that was when I worked with Francis Coppola.

Oh, and then about a year or so later his assistant called to see if I would come back for another reading. It was just to be a table read with a couple of the actors from the filmed thing. Francis had re-written the script and wanted to hear it out loud.

When I got there the table was set up a hollow-square style, which microphones around and some CD recorders. There was a script at every table, and me and the other two actors chosen for this were milling about having some coffee and chatting. For some reason the fact that the table was set for about a dozen people didn't seem strange to me at all at the time.

Then I heard someone mention that they were sending the vans to the airport, and someone else should start setting out the name cards... and then I saw the name cards.

Have you ever been in that position where you're desperately trying to be cool, but you desperately just don't want to be? This is like that, times eleven. Demi Moore, Clive Owen, Tony Shalhoub, Thora Birch, Demi Moore, and Lawrence Fishburne.

Interesting facts about that day:

• Mr. Fishburne said "You can call me Lawrence, you can call me Fish, but you can't call me Larry".
  
• Demi Moore was Sidekickin' at every break. Probably with Ashton.
• I told Clive Owen that the first time I had ever seen him was in a video game called Privateer 2. He remembered it. Not so interesting story, then.
• I told Tony Shalhoub that once I was stoned at a director's meeting in college and someone who knew I was stoned asked me to do my Antonio impression. I managed to not do that impression for Tony Shalhoub, thank god.
• Thora Birch? Like you'd expect.

I managed to contain myself and not make too big an ass during the read, then we all retired to the guest house for dinner and cigars. I'm not joking, Tony Shalhoub's sister even cooked for us. I'm not joking, I smoked cigars with Lawrence Fishburne. I even told him I was a fan of his wife's and that it was a shame Firefly was cancelled. He said "Yeah, I know, but they're working on a movie now, so that's great".

I'm not joking, the first I heard about Serenity was from Lawrence Fishburne.

And that was the time I worked with Francis Ford Coppola.

 

I have the flu.  I hate the flu.  There are times when it's nice to be sick.  You get to take the day off work, sleep in, eat in bed, and do nothing all day without feeling guilty about it.  But the flu knocks you down.  Suddenly, you've been in bed for three days and the only thing you can remember doing is getting up to go to the bathroom.  And you can't eat anything.  And you get the sweating shivers.  What the hell is that about?  And that, my friends, is just the start of it...

 

It all started last Jenday.  I woke up in the morning shivering and coffing.  Oddly, I didn't feel bad, bar those two symptoms.  I got up, showered, got dressed, and went to work.  As the day progressed my energy started to flag.  By lunch time I was in a pretty bad way.  This was really bad timing because I was finally going to have dinner with this girl that I had been trying to have dinner with for something like a year.  I had to cancel.  I went home and got in bed and stayed there...for a day. I was so out of it I couldn't even sit at my computer and play World of Warcraft.  That's how bad it was.

   This is where it really starts to suck.  Everything would have been manageable if I had just been able to ride the flu out in bed.  But no.  I could call in sick from work.  There were plenty of people to cover my absence.  But what I could not call in sick from was The Show.  As I have mentioned before, I am currently in a production of "Moonlight and Magnolias" with Sonoma County Repetory Theater.  this is a zany, fast-paced, very physically active show, where the actors are on stage pretty much the entire time.  And it's a small company, so no understudies.  And the theater is anywhere from 45 minute to 1hr 15 minutes from my house depending on traffic, which can be pretty severe at the time of day I have to drive to the theater: Rush Hour.  (Though why they call it "rush hour" has always been a bit confusing to me because nobody is moving very fast.)

   Have you ever had to do anything that was physically demanding when you were really sick?  It's not fun.  You break out in a cold sweat and you feel like you're made out of smoke: burnt and not all together.  Thinking, focusing, remembering: any mental action is like trying to hold water in your hand.  And you're tired.  So very, very tired.  All you want to do is lay down.  It's all you've ever really wanted to do.  You can't imagine why you wouldn't ever want to do anything else when lieing down is one of your options.  But you can't.  You have to push, pull, strain, stand, jump, run, tumble, roll, move, go.  And all on the edge of a cliff.  And if you fall, you take everybody with you: your fellow actors, the audience, the people who run the theater, the bartender down the street, the Viceroy of Malasia, everybody.

   So there's nothing you can do, but do.  And you get up on stage, and suddenly, you're not that sick guy any more.  You're somebody else.  You're Victor Flemming.  You invented the camera dolly.  You smacked Judy Garland around.  You don't take any shit from anybody, especially not some punk-ass flu.  And you fly.  You feel like you're riding just in front of some huge, menacing wave and if you trip even for a second, it'll eat you whole.  And you do it, you make it to the other side, and you didn't let anybody down.  And then you crash so hard even your hair bruises.  And there's no glory, no celebration.  It doesn't matter.  Because all that matters is sleep. 

   But you can't sleep.  The flu won't let you sleep.  You wrap yourself up in your blankets so tight it's hard to breathe, but it finds a way in there with you.  You drift on the edge of consciousness, almost falling off into that merciful oblivion, but the chills and the sweat and the coughs, and the fever-enduced dreams prevent you from making that final plunge.  And every time you look at the clock another 5 minutes has passed.  And suddenly you have to go to the bathroom again.  You take another shot of NyQuil hoping that this time, this one will finally put you under.  You stumble back to bed, but the act of getting up and going down the hall has instilled the chills with a renewed vigor and you feel like you'll never be warm again. 

   And then finally, after tossing and turning and coughing and shivering for hours, sleep decends.  For a time you can escape the fetid mire.  You float in a land of soft grey nothingness.  You think to yourself "Ah yes, if it would just stay like this.  I could deal with it if it would just stay like this."

   And then the alarm goes off and it all comes rushing back in.  It's time to do another show.  It's time to get up, get dressed, and decend into hell once more.

   And that was my weekend.  I also had some friends up from So Cal this weekend, but I couldn't spend much time with them because I was either at the theater or incapcitated.  I'm over the most of it now, though my head is still stuffed up and every once in a while I cough up a new lung.