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Interview
THE DON - AT HOME. UNDRESSED. AND LATE. An interview with the Webmaster rewritten and edited by Don Cummings. Sue, the webmaster: How're your eggs? Don Cummings: Well, you know how they factory farm these chickens, the whites barely have integrity any longer. I hard boil them so I can just eat the whites, you know how fat I can get, but they turn into this weird oval mayonnaise ball. These poor chickens just want to lay us delicious eggs, and instead we get these factory produced things. I think I'll throw these out and just scramble. You want anything? SWM: No thanks. I'm allergic to eggs. DC: Who isn't? I'm allergic to everything. Even my own hair. I was thinking of shaving it all off, but I hate the shape of my skull. SWM: What have you been working on lately? DC: Well, I just finished writing a new play, you've heard of it yet? SWM: The Fat of the Land? DC: Yeah, well it's not so new. You know, it takes a couple years to write a good play and by the time you're finished, everyone's already heard about it. It's a wonder anyone even comes to opening night. It's a long process. And you have to have these readings with these fucking actors so you can hear it and then you have to rewrite it like twenty times until the play moves at a reasonable pace and nothing seems obscure and you don't mess up the time of day it's supposed to be. You know. Logistical stuff. And you don't want to EVER destroy the original intent or tone of the piece, unless you absolutely have to, like you're driven to do it, but the original intent is what it's all about and that life force is really the thing you have to protect. This play explores the loss of youth, the usefulness of art to the creator of the art, overpopulation and the destruction of our greatest asset: Nature. I know it sounds all pretentious and it is. Plays are about exploring ideas. Movies are about exploring how old men can have sex with young women if they would only come out of retirement and kill the alien. But the play's the thing. I think I might have stolen that line. And ultimately, after all the network residual checks and the lunches with Hank Azaria, I would still rather write a play and have it produced almost anywhere than be stuck with a bunch of rich, scared Hollywood royalty types who spend more money on their hair removal than my maid does on her mortgage. SWM: That sure was a mouthful. DC: I thought you wanted me to talk. SWM: Maybe not so much. DC: Okay, I'll answer in monosyllables. SWM: You know Hank Azaria? DC: Yeah, he beat me up in college over a woman. Can you imagine? SWM: No. So, you have a maid? DC: Yeah. SWM: What's her name? DC: Can't say. SWM: Why not? DC: Can you pass me the salt? SWM: Sure. DC: Look, you know you don't want to talk about Hank or the maid and neither do I. Hank, I hardly know him now and, I just, well that was years ago. And the maid, we had to have a maid or else I couldn't live here in my present relationship. I hate to clean and because of this relationship, I had to allow these two filthy cats into my life. I've been living with them for ten years and I can't wait until they die. SWM: Who have you been living with for ten years? DC: I can't tell you that. SWM: Why not? DC: Because then you'll be able to figure out if I'm gay or not. SWM: My daughter is a lesbian. DC: How nice for you. SWM: So, you don't want to talk about your relationship? DC: You know, I'm so bashful when it comes to family. SWM: Is there some big secret you're trying to hide? DC: Who are you, Barbara Walters? SWM: Because America really wants to know. DC: I was raised by wolves and my sister used to try to frisbee my head off with her Carol King Tapestry album. My brother was hit by a car when he was in the third grade and almost died. It was very sad. The whole family started drinking. Next thing you know, he got better, but we all kept drinking, Then my brother started drinking and eventually he hit someone while he was driving. And that family started drinking. And it just goes on and on. I feel like I'm part of a whole push toward drinking and driving that I can't get out of. So, I don't own a car. And I only smoke pot. SWM: Have you ever had any problems with the law? DC: Once. For breaking and entering. But I was hungry. SWM: Did you serve any time? DC: I was only thirteen, so no. Though I did have sex. SWM: At thirteen? DC: There was really nothing else to do where I grew up. SWM: Where did you grow up? DC: New York. SWM: City? DC: Suburbs. SWM: Oh. DC: Exactly. SWM: So would you say you had a happy childhood? DC: Let's just say I had a childhood, okay? But happiness is really a crutch, you know? Sort of like the Demerol lick we had in our kitchen. I mean, I was happy when it seemed like the reasonable thing to be. I was unhappy when it was the reasonable thing to be. SWM: When were you happy? DC: Oh, you know, when I got to be the center of attention. Like when I used to sing solos in the school concerts. When I was the lead in the junior high play. I peaked socially at thirteen years old. I was a cute boy soprano who hadn't yet arrived anywhere close to puberty. So I got the lead in Oliver. All the girls fell in love with me. But all the boys hated me or were jealous of me. This was nothing new, however. Shame. Other happy time--I had a great summer in a music school during the year I turned sixteen and there was a school trip to Paris in that same year and I got to go because my parents somehow scraped together the plane fare. Paris shed some serious light on suburban America for me. I got really happy then. Other things seemed possible. I saw real physical beauty and I went back to France in college for a chunk of time, too. I wish the French were funnier and I wish they had better music, but for the life of me, it is such a beautiful place, I have to go back often. SWM: I don't want to talk about France. You talk a lot about music. Are you a musician? DC: I can play the guitar and piano pretty well. And I sing. I've done lots of plays where I had to sing or play the guitar. I've even composed a whole bunch of songs. We did a revival of The Grapes of Wrath at the West Coast Ensemble here in Los Angeles and it got all these awards. I was very proud of it. I had to write all these songs and play them. Real dustbowl hymns and folk harmonies and guitar picking. I also had a small backup band and a few singers doing harmony. It was a blast. I would have never survived on the road doing gigs, I'm too gassy, as you might have noticed, but I do love writing music and staying home. SWM: Do you play the guitar a lot? DC: Not lately. The piano is easier because it's such a huge piece of furniture in my face, I just sort of end up on it. SWM: So, you like to be the center of attention. How did that happen? DC: Well, honestly, I can only tell you this. I was very shy as a boy. A combination of very loud neighbors and my own sweet disposition along with my hatred of sports and street fighting, kept me mostly indoors, reading books, playing music and feeding my fish. There was nothing else I could do.. There were no woods. Just houses and strip malls filled with refugees from the harshest blue collar sections of BBQ. SWM: Where's BBQ? DC: Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. It was an odd place for someone sort of quiet like me. I was always a good student so I liked school. But I just wasn't popular because I was puny and bookish and the teacher's pet. Not to mention, I was against playing army. Well, it wasn't very fun being unpopular but over time I became more popular because of my guitar and then, my humor. I found life exceptionally funny and I started to let people know my thoughts on things. Well, seems like they enjoyed my company. But it still was more natural for me to be shy than to be extroverted. But I found when I was extroverted I had a better time - so I just did that more and more and next thing you know, I'm not shy at all, I'm a huge ham, and we move to a better town, my life changes for the way better, I get taller and I'm still thin and I cut up all the time but the teachers still like me because I'm the smartest kid in the class. SWM: You're so lucky. DC: Not really. It's so hard to be so great. I'm this combo platter with all these options and I really feel overwhelmed. Decision making in high school and college was so stressful because if I chose to do one thing, it precluded other things. I hated to miss out on anything. And instead of choosing to be just this or that one thing, I decided to be them all. Well, this kind of behavior naturally leads to acting if you're not careful. So, I made all these great friends in high school that I did all these plays with, I got all these science awards and scholarships to college. I go to Tufts University in Boston, do a bunch of plays there and down the street at Harvard. I majored in biology and ultimately applied to and was accepted to medical school. But I didn't go to medical school. I went to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre in New York City where I was tortured every day into being a truthful actor. It was awful. Sanford Meisner was a tyrant and I don't care if he was one of the greatest acting teachers of the twentieth century. He smoked cigarettes through his trachea hole. It was grotesque. I waited tables, graduated acting school along with a bunch of people who are completely unknown today, living out their lives in quiet desperation on featureless cul-de-sacs and also a few others who became extremely successful, famous television and film stars. I've met more famous people than anyone I know who isn't way famous. I know all types. I've seen things go so many different ways for so many different people, including myself. I was always riding around somewhere in the middle - one foot in obscurity and one foot in possibility. This makes for a stressful, yet at times hilarious life. So, with my eyes wide open, doing all these gigs around New York and summer stock jobs and way off-Broadway plays, I began to write about the nutty people I met and also about people I would make up. I am also very theme focused, kind of like the French - sorry to mention them again - and I find a way to put all these characters through the paces of some theme I am exploring. It comes to me pretty easily. SWM: The writing? DC: Yeah. I mean, I got the idea to write when I studied for a semester in Paris. We went to see all these plays and we read them beforehand, and I had read all these other plays at Tufts and I was acting all over Cambridge and Medford and I thought, "I can write just as well. I'm loaded with ideas and I can't shut up." So, when I got back to Tufts for my senior year after my French Visa wore out, I wrote a play. It was called, Be Daring Now Miss Prism. No relation to Oscar Wilde's Miss Prism. It was a funny, absurd play and it was a smash hit, lucky me. I would overhear people in the cafeteria repeating lines from this play that I wrote. They thought the writing was funny. It did have a certain honest ring to it - I saw it infect these rich white kids and I guess, well, I quickly became confident in my ability to write. The play was a black farce of a family drama, complete with a concert violinist mother and a retarded son. I had a tape recorder play a Charles Ives piece right in the middle of the play - it was supposed to represent the mother's playing and all the dutiful family members sat and listened for almost three minutes. It just went on and on - it was supposed to make them and the audience uncomfortable. And it did. But the rest of the play was a laugh riot. The head of the drama department told me I had no business bringing the action of a play to a halt with a three minute Charles Ives piece and he also said that anyone can write an absurd piece of theatre, it's not so hard. I once met Eugene Ionesco, no kidding, and I don't think he felt that way. But the Charles Ives piece - SWM: Who is Charles Ives? DC: Get out of my house. The next thing you know, you'll be asking me who Joni Mitchell is. SWM: I know her music. DC: I bet you don't know the best songs. Anyway, the head of the drama department died one day. So I can only assume his oppressive opinions of me must have killed him. I knew he had bad taste and I went ahead and kept writing. But because I was accepted to acting school (I had no inclination to go to a writing school. I figured, who the hell could teach anyone to write? I can't believe I didn't use that same logic for acting.) So, I was pulled away from writing for a bunch of years as I went to The Neighborhood Playhouse and then pursued an acting career. Well, being an actor, as you know, is a slog through hell, so after a while I was quite beaten down. To take the edge off, I picked up writing again during a van and u-haul tour of a Moliere play. I pretty much went back and forth between acting and writing for a long, long time. And even after my one-man-show, American Air, got all this great press in LA, and everything else, I still couldn't catch a big break as either a writer or an actor. So, I just sort of gave up on both for six months and went back to my primary passion of childhood: smoking cigarettes. Next thing you know, I'm getting these sitcom gigs, ultimately landing on Dharma & Greg for five years as the snarky waiter. SWM: Did you enjoy working with Jenna Elfman? DC: Well, I certainly know she enjoyed working with me. SWM: Did you get along? DC: She's a Scientologist. I'm genetically Catholic, but I believe my dog is actually the only divinity I've ever come close to. Look at her. Come here, Louise. SWM: She's very cute. DC: I'm in love with her. SWM: So, what about Jenna Elfman? DC: Oh, well, she's great. Make sure you write: "No tinge of sarcasm in his voice." Because the beautiful deal is that even though I am morally opposed to Scientology, I think she's a warm-hearted, talented person. This is great. I mean, to really not agree with someone at all, but to really like them anyway. I must be some sort of Buddha. SWM: Your belly gives you away before your mouth does. DC: It runs in my family. You should see my sister. People light incense in front of her if she sits too long. SWM: You were telling me about your television work. DC: Oh yeah, so I did all these Dharma & Greg episodes and I was on shows like Mad About You and Lucky and a whole bunch of television pilots that never went anywhere and even before that I did these crazy independent movies. I was the lead actor in one called The Appointment, which I thought was a great title, but the greatness ended right there. However, I did get to act with a few people in that movie that were as related to Sylvester Stallone as you can get, and let me tell you, they seemed it. But it was nice that the movie won at a couple festivals, placed and showed at others. The idea of doing movies was very romantic, but I was in a bunch of flops and television paid a whole lot better. SWM: Wasn't it exciting to work on all those television shows? DC: It was so boring and frustrating, I could have chewed the kidney out of my back. SWM: How stretchy. DC: I was a decent dancer in my younger days. SWM: Why was it boring and frustrating? DC: Because none of the shows were about me. Let's face it, if they were about me, I think I would have been less bored and frustrated. I would go to my trailer the first day, fill out my paperwork, have a cup of something and fall asleep until they called me to the sound stage two days later to do my six lines. SWM: But wasn't it fun to be there? The excitement? The roar of the crowd? The lights? The cameras? DC: You must be mistaking me for Gloria Swanson. I'm not so into cameras. I prefer the stage. I think cameras destroyed civilization. We're living in a constant feedback loop of our behavior and so we keep mutilating our personalities into shapes that are pleasing to the camera. The camera has enslaved us. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I suspected people walked around the supermarket always showing the best side of their face. I figured it out because some people would circle the whole store to go from the end of aisle six to aisle seven. And even when they drive, the cars feel like they are so aware of how all the other cars are looking at them. It makes you shiver, it does. SWM: So you are not a fan of Los Angeles? DC: I think it has great hair dressers. SWM: And how about the industry? DC: Well, that's just it, it's an industry. And I'm really lazy and industry sounds like a whole lot of work, so I guess I have to say I'm against it. I mean, you work on a show, it's scheduled down to the minute, you eat in sterile rooms with fluorescent lights. You might as well be in the break room at Home Depot. So much originality is lost as waves of suited executives mess with things. Honestly, as I said before, I like the stage. You have a writer, a director and some actors. And hopefully there is a producer with very deep pockets and no tongue. It's a beautiful thing. I imagine some independent film sets might be pretty great. I just haven't been on those great sets. I would like to have been in Dog Day Afternoon. I would have taken Carol Kane's role. SWM: So, would you call yourself more of a writer now than an actor? DC: Absolutely. But I would always take a well paying acting gig if I didn't absolutely hate it. And the only thing that would make me hate it is if they didn't pay me my going rate. But what I plan to do, in general, is to act in some of the things I write. I do love to act, it can be so much fun - especially looking right at whomever you're acting with and giving them the full brunt of what you're doing. I love that. In life you are always encouraged to do the polite thing - at least in educated, moneyed, white society. With acting, you are encouraged not to do the polite thing. With acting, people want to see the truth of human nature, at least in my ideal world. And that's great. I love to be human with someone else being human and letting it all be out there. But, honestly, I think it is sort of sad, too - like - why can't we all just be that way all the time anyway without the need of a stage or a camera? So, with my writing, I find I can spend enormous amounts of time just being honest about being a human being. I find that incredibly satisfying and ultimately relaxing. Tends to calm my nerves. SWM: Are you a nervous person? DC: I can be. When I'm in an airplane and it's turbulent. SWM: I hate that. DC: I wrote a whole show about it, American Air. SWM: The one that almost catapulted you to stardom? DC: The very one. SWM: What else makes you nervous? DC: Large strawberries. For obvious reasons. Black Men at 1AM because this country is set up for you to fear them, no matter how many times you walk past them and absolutely nothing happens. Cars. Exponentially increasing birthrate. These last two are really the ones that do me in. Louise, get down. Look at her now. She's so well behaved and beautiful. SWM: Do you have any rituals that you have to do before you sit down and write? DC: You ever see those double yellow lines in the middle of the road? I do them. SWM: Anything coming up on the silver screen we should know about? DC: Reruns. Watch the syndicated channels. I'm all over the place. I say, let my hologram do the work while I get down to the business of writing. SWM: Do you have any advice for someone starting out in the business? DC: Absolutely. Get a dog. SWM: Will that help? DC: Probably not. I think people should just go to nursing school. SWM: I know a lot of nurses. DC: You are the luckiest woman alive. I really liked the nurses on the floor when I had my appendix out. So, I would say, yeah, go to nursing school. SWM: I have to get going. You were so late and you're really full of yourself. You took up a lot of time. DC: Yeah, I hear that. SWM: You want me to write down any final words? DC: Yeah, sure: Stop driving cars. Stop having babies. And go to nursing school. SWM: Sounds good to me. DC: Of course it does. See you later. Come on, Louise, let's go take a nap.
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As told by Don Cummings. |
Notes From the Webmaster
