Safety Last (part 1): Finding the Sense of Danger

 "Nobody ever went into battle shouting: 'Give me safety or 
give me death!' And neither shall we go on stage preoccupied 
with our physical well-being. The show is bigger than any of 
us, so if you're more concerned about your own survival 
than about performing a great show, then you're on the wrong 
pyrate crew! Safety is not worth dying for, and it's 
not worth the show dying for..."

In the early 1990s i wrote my first script for Brethren of the Coast. Our director complained the script was "unperformable" and demanded changes. So i changed the director. The new director didn't work out either so i directed everything myself from then on. The next year we did a new show, 'Sanguinarium,' which i proclaimed to be my masterpiece but which Wolf described as: "an anguished cry for help." Before our first performance i said a few words to the cast to get them into the proper spirit:

"The sound of an audience laughing and cheering is worth 
more to me than my own life. So it's certainly worth more 

than any of your lives. Therefore: i don't care who gets 

the laughs, just as long as the show is funny. And i don't 
care how many of you get hurt or killed, 

only that the fights look good..."

Bullsh*tting the crew. i've got skills at this.

     In truth, there were only a couple of the crew whose deaths i would have been indifferent to but it was Brethren policy to cultivate our reputation as reckless, heck-raising pirates so i did my part.

    Wolf and i had spent some weeks and broken some swords choreographing a double-cutlass duel. i wrote a quick five-person skit that incorporated the duel so we could perform it for the rest of the Brethren on Catalina Island. During that voyage Lazarus drank 12 bottles of Guinness, puked on himself, then passed out below deck. We revived him when we docked at the island and he hiked to the isthmus with us to perform. Badly, very badly. The skit got a great reaction though so i rewrote and expanded it into a 12-person show that became 'Sanguinarium.'

Lazarus: Hours away from a great performance.

    The gist of the plot was: each of several pirates attempting to steal a box of treasure from the others thru fighting, palaverance, backstabbing, treachery and dirty tricks. Beginning with a dozen pirates it got down to four, then two who seem to have co-conspired against the others but, naturally, they betray each other until just one wench, Severine, is left on a stage covered in dead pirates, she thinks she'll finally claim that treasure until…

In those early days our pirate "look" was not even passable.

    i felt it was better if every performer got a few laughs and memorable moments so there were no "leads" or stars in this show, no heroes, just vile reprehensible characters whose sole redeeming attribute was that they were interesting to watch. i wrote the script to fit the cast -rather than casting it to fit the script- so everybody was portraying themself; Wolf, Lazarus, Severine, Winifred, Francisco, Baxter, Drake, myself, and Captain Bellows. (the few other roles were played by different people each time according to who was available).

    We did 'Sanguinarium' at different venues throughout the summer and something always went injuriously wrong. Winifred stabbed my hand in one performance. It swelled up before the second show, two hours later, so much that i could barely wrap my fingers around a sword hilt and when the blades met during the double-cutlass the wound popped open, squirting like a fat angry zit. The hilt became wet, slippery then sticky, i struggled not to drop it. The fight was awkward but the show prevailed.

    A week after that i cracked Wolf's nose with a belaying pin (not intentionally). He had to wipe with his sash and snort blood before each line to finish the show. A couple days later i stabbed Lazarus during rehearsal, into the back of his hand and out the palm. It was bloody. He had a gig that night with his band and went onstage with a wad of cotton taped to his palm and a maxi pad over his knuckles. They were punk rock so nobody noticed.
    For the first dozen shows someone got hurt in every single performance yet we always got more applause than the other acts so we began to suspect that, like a NASCAR race, certain people watched us just hoping to see a wreck.

    But after we'd done it enough times it started going smoothly. We'd adapted to the complications of blood-wet slippery stages and stepping over the dead during combat. (the dead always had their eyes open in terror that a weapon would land on them) We also got comfortable with the sword choreography and this was not a good thing. It didn't seem as piratey when everything worked. The fights were tighter, even graceful, but the audiences weren't gasping or cheering as much. The verbal jokes still got laughs but something intangible was missing. We had evolved into a polished theatrical troupe and polish did not work when you were a pirate.

Winifred, Lazarus, Severine.

    Lazarus did tattoos at Voodoo Ink on Hollywood Blvd. We were there one afternoon drinking tequila shots, watching a stripper get her nipples pierced when he proclaimed: "Something's wrong with the show! It's not fun anymore."

    "i know it, man. i know."
    "We're just a bunch of actors now. I don't feel like a pirate anymore."
    "Maybe we need a new show."
    "We can't do a new show. I finally have my lines almost memorized." (by "memorized" he meant able to remember that he had a line when it came up, not so much able to deliver the line correctly)
    "The jokes still work. It's something else..."
    "It's the fights. That double-cutlass thing used to be the sh*t, but it doesn't pack a punch anymore. It looks like choreography."
    "That's because we don't screw it up like we used to."
    "That's what's wrong with it! When you look too rehearsed people realize they're just watching a show. There's no sense of danger unless you f*ck up once in a while so it looks like a real fight."
    "Sh*t! We should drink before the shows, so we're sure to f*ck things up."
    "Good idea!"
    Naturally Lazarus thought it was a good idea, he'd never done a sober show yet. Still, i resolved to test this theory (strictly for science) so at our next show i stealthily downed a few jiggers of rotgut rum just minutes before stagetime. i was discreet about it because i'd always discouraged the cast from over imbibing.

    The show began with a three on one fight against our captain, Jaimie Bellows, with him prevailing and vanquishing us. The liquor crept up on me thru those first moments. i couldn't tell what effect it had on my swordfighting but it sure well worked on my mind. i felt GREAT! Like a true pirate, completely in character. This was awesome! The only thing that went wrong in the whole show was a squib not breaking, nobody even got hurt. What a triumph.
    "Helluva show!" said Lazarus.
    "What a show," said Bellows. "Now we can get a drink, finally!"
    "Umm, yeah," i said. "Let's get a drink." i was already four sheets to the hurricaine but i presumed they couldn't tell. (they could tell but i was too drunk to tell that they could tell)
    Severine wasn't fooled. She began shouting at me: "What the hell were you doing, going onstage drunk?!"
    Had i been sober at that moment i would have realized the futility of trying to explain it to her but, alack, in my diminished state, i tried: "i thought the show might look more natural if i wasn't so sober."
    "Well it didn't. You forgot half your lines!"
    "You're exaggerating. You're a pathological exaggerator.."
    "And you totally grabbed Winifred's ass in your scene with her."
    "i don't remember that." If i had done that i regret not remembering it.
    "Oh yeah, and you scared the hell out of Cabinboy." It had been Cabinboy's first show with us. (We called all the new recruits Cabinboy until we came up with proper pirate names for them).
    "Why? What's his problem?"
    "When his squib didn't break he was afraid you were going to stab him for real just to get some blood in the scene."
    "He's right. Blood is very important for this show. Next time i will stab him to get that blood. He moved out of the way this time." i meant that as a joke, of course, (no, honest, it was a joke).
    "You should go talk to him and tell him he's safe. He thinks you're mad that he didn't let you stab him. Now he's afraid to do the next performance."
    "No, he isn't."
    "No, he really is! You need to talk to him."
    "Balls to that! i'm drinking."
    i staggered off toward the bar. Severine followed. "I need a drink too…"
    Cabinboy didn't show up for the next day's performance.

Severine.

    i had resolved not to drink for the next show but it was too late, the precedent had been set: "If the director can drink," the crew reasoned, "then we can drink too." It was immediately clear that something was wrong. Wolf was slurring his words. He was thoroughly, obviously drunk. This is going to go badly, i thought. And it did. The fights did not look like choreography though, and the crowd applauded during the double-cutlass.

    Bellows got us gigs like the CutThroat Island screening and the Redondo Beach pier opening but we also did a few non-piratey things like histrorical festivals and faires. i really hated the faires. They always contained at least a few meddling, busy-body, "safer-than-thou" types. (Lazarus called them "safety-nazis"). Sword performers who held to a narrow opinion of how things should be done and were hostile to anyone who deviated from their orthodoxy. These were broadsword/rapier/etc. fighters. As pirates, we used different weapons hence we did things diferently. We didn't criticize them for being different but they sure came after us.

    At those events we could measure our success by the amount of hostility we got from the other performers. We quickly realized that whenever someone told us how bad our show was it was usually because our show went over better than theirs had, it was just jealousy, so if we came off stage to the rebukings and admonishments of other artistes we knew we'd done well.
    Some criticisms were reasonable, like: "Maybe you guys need to rehearse more." i would respond by pointing to the Brethren of the Coast placard next to the stage and asking, "Does that say 'Refined demonstration of thespianic skill?' No, it says: 'PIRATES!'"

    Sometimes the older sword performers would try to lecture us, affecting superiority and then boring us with "safer-than-thou" platitudes and suggestions -like "Never drink before a performance"- that would have only weakened our act until it sucked as bad as theirs had.
    We pirates felt that, as long as the audience didn't get hurt, the performers were adults who could decide for themselves what risks we were willing to take by getting onstage with one another, we could only blame ourselves for our injuries so it wasn't anyone else's concern. But these "lecturer" types presumed that we were trying to do what they did: polished proficient swordfights. They were wrong; we were pirates and there is no polish or gracefulness in piracy. It was they who wanted what we had: the fun of performing.

    One memorable "Safety First" crusader insisted on condemning us for recklessness after we'd done a particularly successful show. This guy got so angry that Lazarus and i couldn't resist antagonizing him, we eventually made a sport of these perpetually outraged busybodies. This fellow berated us for several minutes, seriously shouting things like: "Your whole crew is dangerous and you shouldn't be allowed to perform anywhere, at all, ever!" i again pointed to the placard. "Does that say 'Polished demonstration of the proper and gentlemanly techniques of swordplay?' Well, does it? No. It says: 'PIRATES!'"
    "Well I'm reporting you for drinking!"
    "Dude, we're pirates. PIRATES!" He just didn't comprehend it.
    "You're the most unprofessional group I've ever seen!" He was furiously mad even though we'd given him no provocation other than winning over an audience he had failed to, and our cheerful demeanor (which we knew would get his goat). He finally stomped away, probably to yell at somebody else he disapproved of. There's always somebody who'll try to make you feel bad about feeling good. F**k those people.
    Bellows asked: "Who's he going to report us to? The Temperance League?"      Lazarus said: "Let's get a drink!"
    We never discovered what that guy's problem was but i will speculate that he suffered from a bad case of Pirate Envy.

The lessons to be learned from this: 1: There is no polish or gracefulness in piracy. 2: If Patrick Henry had demanded "Give me safety or give me death!" nobody would remember him today.  

Godspeed!

Thanks to Jessica Black Photography for several of the pictures here.

The Pressgang Cometh...

Imagine Pirates are looking for a new female performer who can make it to rehearsals twice a week. Preferred attributes (other than punctuality) are: work ethic, big personality, physically healthy and energetic, passion for performing… If interested, please email: Info@ImaginePirates.com

And Godspeed ye.

Sea of Darkness 3: Inveiglement, Sophistry, Epiphenomenalism

Concerning Revenge From The Sea's third Voyage and Complications 

overcome to achieve said Venture, viz; the slothful Saboteurs and irrational 

Accords endured by our valiant Crewe in their Pursuit of theatrical 

Grace. With certain Names altered to protect the easily butthurt...

In most cases no single actor can save a show yet any one actor can ruin it. When someone screws up during performance somebody else has to cover for them and a painful truth of theatre is that the one doing the covering is usually perceived by the audience to be the one screwing up. For this reason most troupers are wary of going onstage with anyone they suspect is unprepared, or incompetent. Yet it's a pirate's lot that such situations will occur.. 

Lazarus drew the invite cover for the third cruise.

     In Los Angeles there are plenty of people who want to be movie stars but far fewer who are competent actors, and fewer still who own a proper costume/cutlass/pistol/etc., hence during my early years of pirating, casting a show required lowering the usual theatrical standards and settling for people who were already pirates. 
     i'd never believed that talent or experience mattered as much as reasonable intelligence and a work ethic. To show up at the requisite time and make a good-faith effort to do the work was all i asked. If anyone drank liquor during rehearsals i wouldn't give them some soberer-than-thou rebuke, most pirates drank, as long as they knew their lines and blocking it didn't matter. Lazarus came to rehearsals sober but he would be drunk during performances. i still considered him one of the better performers though because he never complained about things and there were certain lines he could deliver better than anyone else, like the definitions. Whenever any character used an obscure or uber-nautical term that the landlubbers in the audience wouldn't understand, (i.e., Moses Law, Keel-hauling, Rosary of Pain, Marooned, etc.)  Lazarus would follow by defining that term for everybody. But whether he remembered the definitions depended on how much he'd drank, and there was no way to predict that.

Bastard and Wolf.

    In Sea of Darkness 3 my character, Mr. Crow, insists the reason they've all been lost at sea for three years is because the crew's refusal to stop frigging has lost them favor with the Lord. Lazarus stepped forward to define the word "Frigging."

Scripturally, the scene went thus:

CROW: "Faith indeed, if we are to rediscover His graces and hence find the isle we seek, you must all refrain from this incessant, unholy, and nigh constant frigging!"

LAZARUS: "Frigging: That kindly, though solitary, easement of nature commonly practiced by seafaring men particularly on lengthy and arduous voyages when feminine compire is most lacking. Their worn and calloused hands, indeed providing but the barest relief from that incessant and reoccurring swelling which doth afflict and torment them."

But Lazarus had some difficulty with the line:

Here's Lazarus blowing his line at the final rehearsal, 

yet still not nearly the worst actor in the show.

    After Lazarus blew the line four times at our final shipboard rehearsal i tore that page out of the script and pasted just the one line on the side of his tankard. During the show he held it blatantly in view of everyone yet still read the line incorrectly. He didn't break character at all though and the crappy delivery came across so natural it didn't detract from the efficacy of the scene. No one really expected Lazarus to know his lines because he wasn't an actor; just a pirate pretending to be an actor.

Lazarus eventually paid for his lack of preparation.

    Lazarus was worth the trouble he brought because he was a good enough pirate that his acting skills were irrelevant. Not everybody justified the rest of us hauling their weight though. i knew who was good and who wasn't, and scripted the shows so the good pirates got the bigger parts. This caused some grumbling by the incompetents, several of whom quit (as i'd hoped they would), so by the time we did Sea of Darkness 3 there were enough good pirates to carry the show and we were stuck with only a few useless people. A vestigal Idiot Faction.
    Nobody is discouraged by a bad actor who is trying to do better, but the ones who don't even try are a poison to the morale of everybody else.
    Two of this Idiot Faction were blatantly detrimental to the show. Their very presence was dispiriting to the people who were actually working. These wankers had nothing to offer yet felt entitled to be involved simply because they'd been around so long (that is, they were too dense to realize nobody liked them or wanted them around). You probably know their type: lazy, complainers, excuse-makers, takers of frequent cigarette breaks, habitual fomenters of gratuitous interpersonal drama, constantly affronted by irrelevancies, gigantic egos with irrationally high estimations of what they contributed to the shows. Eventually i outright fired these morons but in those days i had to make Faustian deals just so the shows could go on at all.  
    One of the Idiots, Monkeyass, (i'll just use the name the others used when speaking of him) had the line immediately following Lazarus definition of frigging:

MONKEYASS: "Do you mean waxing the bowsprit?"

LOUIE: "I think he means climbing the mast one-handed."

DOXY POX (losing patience with their idiocy): "He means jerking-off!" (she moves her hand bell in an illustrative motion)

CROW (to Doxy): "Measure thy words! Abbreviation is kin to sloth and is the Devil's playground."

WOLF: "Well so is my left hand!"

    i had triaged that line to Monkeyass because i knew that if he blew it (as i expected him to) Louie would be there to immediately deliver his own line and give Doxy her set up. The line could be omitted completely without effecting the scene at all. i didn't think the scene itself was funny though. When the crowd cheered and clapped for Doxy's line i attributed that to their drunkenness and her bawdy delivery. The "dumbing down" of the dialogue from Lazarus lengthy definition to Doxy's quick punchline seemed very obvious and downright uncreative. The joke was almost dependent on the audience being drunk.

Doxy Pox practices her delivery.

   i decided to reverse the concept: Rather than 'dumbing down' the joke we would 'wise it up.' Instead of reiterating an idea in ever simpler terms until the crew finally grasped it, we'd go the opposite direction and restate it in degrees of escalating complexity, finally culminating in a sesquipedalian gallimaufry of six-syllable words forming an overlong sentence our audience would be tortured to comprehend. It wouldn't be gibberish, it would convey a specific and clear idea, the logic would just be difficult to follow. Having established with the "frigging" joke that the crew were simpletons, this reversal of the approach would be unexpected and, hopefully, funny.
    i worked hours on just the one line, an act of pure science: first listing a few dozen five and six-syllable words then struggling to cram as many of them as possible into a single sentence which conveyed a definable thought. Wolf was the only one i trusted could handle the line. i presented him the page of script as a challenge to his thespianic skills. i didn't actually think this would challenge him -he'd been an actor since he was five years old and starred on Broadway at age six- but hoped if i expressed some doubt in his abilities he'd be inspired to excel all the further.  (Yes, i really did read Dale Carnegie and remember some of it)

Al Pacino and B.J. Barie (the future Wolf Dekardson) in 'Author, Author'
That kid could act!
    The Idiot Faction of the cast were impressed by the long words and thought it must require a supremely skilled actor to remember and deliver such dialogue. But i thought the big words by themselves almost substituted for delivery: they just sounded like great acting no matter how you said them (unless you said them incorrectly). i began to apply simpleton-psychology to Bugger and Monkeyass whenever one would screw up during rehearsals: "Dude," i would ask, "If Wolf can memorize that long and inhumanly complicated line why can't you even remember to say 'Aye!' on cue?" Wolf went along with this too, playing up the difficulty of the line to the point where the rest of us were treating him as though the entire show depended on his getting that one thing right. The Idiot Faction would shut up their complaining for a moment but neither would work any harder, they just came up w/ new excuses for their failures. 

Scripturally, the scene went:

WOLF: "Quiet! Now be cautious! We all know Mr. Crow has a dodgy way of speaking so don't let him confuse ye with his quick words."

LOUIE: "Quick words? What do ye mean by that?"

LAZARUS: "Aye! What does that mean?"

     (several others express their lack of understanding..)

WOLF: "I mean don't let him bamboozle ye with his double-talk!"

LOUIE: "I still don't understand."

LAZARUS: "Nor do I."

    (others reiterate that they don't understand either..)

WOLF: "I mean don't let him attempt inveiglement of your perceptions via sophistries appealing to yer subjective predispositions to the point of obfuscation of our collective intentions by exploiting susceptibilities often epiphenomenal to your inebriate dispositions!"

BUGGER: "Oh, I get it!"

LAZARUS: "Why didn't ye just say so?"

RUBY: "Long winded son of a Dutchman..."

       (the rest of the crew express their sudden comprehension as well) 

Here's Wolf getting it ALMOST perfect in the final, shipboard rehearsal.

    i construed Wolf's long line as a balloon being blown up to complete fullness as he delivered the words, the words filling it to nigh bursting, followed by a half-second pause and then: "Oh, I get it!" spoken fast, like a pinprick, bursting that fat balloon in a loud, sudden POP! 
    But Bugger didn't POP the balloon as intended. No, he just let the air out of it steadily, gradually. He didn't quickly proclaim: "Oh, I get it!" Instead he said: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh, I-I-I-I get it..." Rather than the punctuating 'POP!' it was just a slow deflation to nothing followed by the others who had waited for him to finish before they piped in with their own lines. Instead of a gloriously shocking loud noise followed by laughter, Bugger's delivery left us with just an empty balloon, limp and wasted. He may as well have been a deliberate saboteur. 
    Why had i cast this undisciplined moron? Oh yeah, because he had whined and begged to be in the show and -idiot that i was- i pitied him. My bad. My very, very Bad. i learned from this experience that an effective director must be Without Pity for anyone or anything except the show itself. 
    My mission now was to thwart the Idiots so that the competent people could shine. To save the joke somebody else would have to deliver the line. But Bugger wouldn't just forfeit his dialogue to another, better, actor. He was difficult. A Four Star General of the Butt-Hurt Brigade, he would pout and be a bitch about things and slow down the rehearsal process with his bullshit when we were too close to the performance date to waste time dealing with nonsense. i had to be crafty.
    On the very last day of rehearsals, after weeks of insisting the performers not step on one another's lines, i took Doxy Pox aside during a break and told her: "i need you to betray one of your fellow actors."
    "What do you mean?"
    "i want you to step on his line, to actually say it before he does. Quicker, and louder too, than he does. Steal the punch from him before he ruins it."
    "Whose line?" 
    "Bugger's."
    "Hell yes, I'll do it. He sucks and he's an a**hole!"
    i didn't even have to explain which line i was referring to, she knew.
    "Don't do it in this rehearsal though. Wait until the actual performance so he doesn't know it's going to happen."
    "Easy."
    "Thank you," i whispered. "You're saving the show."
    "I know."

    One of the setup lines got blown and other things went wrong but Wolf delivered his line perfectly (people even applauded) and Doxy Pox came in just in time, loud enough to follow it to maximum effect. So the joke worked, mostly, and the show was saved.

    Mary Widow had printed up two documents on parchment paper, one of them affirming that Wolf had, indeed, delivered his line correctly and awesomely "..as witnessed by all of the crew." the other declaring that Wolf had "royaly screwed up and failed" to deliver the line. We intended presenting one or the other to Wolf after the performance to commemorate his success or failure.
    We got about half the crew to sign them, thinking the rest could sign on the ship. But the 'success' paper got misplaced and left ashore. 
    "Damn!" i said, "Wolf won't get his commemorative document."
    "Unless he blows the line," said Mary. "I still have the 'fail' one." So Mary went about the crowded ship, dodging drunken pirate-folk, surreptitiously getting the rest of the crew to sign it. 
    Wolf, of course, delivered the line perfectly, ergo it was with some apologies that we had to present him with a parchment proclaiming his complete and utter failure. 
    Oh well. Sorry, Wolf.

    A few years later that original parchment, the 'success' one which had been left ashore, turned up in a pile of documents betwixt D.B. Cooper's birth certificate and William Kidd's privateering commission. Behold:

Saint Douglas Fairbanks

    Back in the olden times -1980s- it was a complicated challenge to join the Screen Actors Guild because you weren't eligible to join until you'd performed a speaking role on film or television, but you weren't allowed to audition for those roles unless you were already a member. Of course if you had family in the business it negated these rules (because nepotism is the supreme rule in Hollywood) but for the rest of us this was a formidable obstruction to our ambitions (this, and the $830.50 initiation fee). Other actors respected you for getting into SAG but not because it meant you were talented, rather because it meant you were clever enough to have dodged the Catch-22 regulation. SAG membership was the last great barrier between being a wannabe and being a real actor (or so us credulous youngsters believed in those simpler times). Anyway, it was a big steaming deal.

    Eventually, thru trickery and audacity and winning a role i wasn't "legally permitted" to even audition for, i got into the Guild. There was an "orientation" meeting for new members which was something like a brimstone and hellfire sermon from a James Joyce novel except that the deadliest sin in this case was to work non-union. The meeting wasn't mandatory but i endured it because my friend Donna told me they'd give me my card at the end (rather than mail it to me which would have taken a few weeks), and they did. On the bottom of a SAG card is a line one has to sign to make it valid. Donna said she took her first card to the Chinese Theatre and signed it whilst standing in the footprints of her favorite actress, Ginger Rogers. She described it as though she were adopting Ginger as the patron (matron?) saint of her acting career.

    In those days SAG headquarters was located on Hollywood Blvd. just a couple blocks from the Chinese Theatre. i'd always liked Donna's story so i went immediately to find my own patron saint. Naturally, it was Douglas Fairbanks, the first great swashbuckler. (i might have been torn between Fairbanks and Errol Flynn but Errol never got to put his footprints there).

    What i knew about Doug was that he'd had his own studio back in the 1920s, and total control over the movies he made; casting, scripting, stunts, directors, set design, etc. he had the final say on all of it. He built colossal sets for The Thief of Bagdad, and an entire castle for Robin Hood. Many of the scenes in his Black Pirate movie were directly modeled after Howard Pyle's paintings. He embraced the fun of life and it showed in those films. He seemed to scale every wall in his path and never came across a sword he didn't pick up to wield against injustice. For several years he'd been the biggest movie star in the world, and now he would be my patron saint. i knew i wasn't worthy, and Doug might have been affronted at the idea, but i was arrogant. Hell, i'd just gotten into SAG, hadn't i?

    Doug was among the first to leave his footprints in cement at the Chinese Theatre. i knew the spot, between the box office and the front doors. i pushed my way into the courtyard and found him. Ignoring the tourists who still crowded on all sides -even at 11:00pm, i set my feet in Doug's prints, traced my pen through his signature, then set down my card on his hand print and signed it.  

    "What are you doing?" asked one woman in a foreign accent. 

    "It's my SAG card!" i shouted, excited as hell. "It's my SAG card!!"

    She backed a few steps away, as though i were crazy. Behind me, a voice asked, "What the hell is a SAG card?"

    

    i never got to perform in a swashbuckling movie. Nobody was even making such things anymore. As my career fell miserably short of those first Fairbanksian aspirations, i was stuck playing parts like 'Heavy Metal Kid #1' or 'Maladjusted Student' or 'Junkie #2' on bad television shows when i should have been swashbuckling instead. Doing this when i just knew that God intended me to do this. Grateful for what i had but not at all content.

"i'm not complaining, but i'd rather be boarding galleons and hacking shit up with a cutlass."

    Doug was in the Hollywood Cemetery and i would visit him frequently, even doing a picture shoot there which rendered my most successful headshot, but he never spoke to me to tell me where i was going wrong. i returned many times, hoping for a word or a sign from Saint Doug. But nothing. 

"Honest, i'll go away if you just say something!"

    In 1993 my friend Severine brought me into a pirate group she belonged to called Brethren of the Coast. She was trying to form an acting troupe out of them but most of them didn't have the discipline or interest for it. There were a few good people though   and the group got some good gigs, including opening for the CutThroat Island movie at an early screening and inaugurating the Redondo Beach Pier. So i wrote some scripts and we did a few shows, but it was futile. Even after i brought in Wolf (an actor i'd met filming The Mask), who was talented and enthusiastic, we were still outnumbered by those who -even though they'd begged to be in the show- came to rehearsals only to lounge about drinking rum. BOTC did do some cool things, like sailing a tall-ship to Catalina, but Sev and i wanted to be on stage.

    Then, after years of waiting, Saint Doug finally spoke. Probably just so i'd stop bothering him.

    In June of 1996, the Los Angeles Conservancy presented a screening of The Black Pirate at the uber-historic Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A. The film, made in 1926, had just been released on video with a newly recorded soundtrack by the 20 piece Robert Israel Orchestra. The orchestra would be performing the score live during the screening. A stage show would precede the film with two singers followed by a comedy skit. At some point during rehearsals the director realized that his sword battle wasn't going to work at all. Instead of swords the actors were using flimsy foils and just didn't know what to do with them. Hell, i wouldn't have known what to do with foils either. 

    An acquaintance of ours, Louis, was in the cast and he phoned the Brethren of the Coast about coming in with some pirates and doing a big sword fight to close the show. This seemed to me a great opportunity and, with the Douglas Fairbanks angle, like a destined gift of fate. We could finally get pirates into the real world of show business. The BOTC agreed to do it, and then -a couple days before the event- decided not to. i was heck-bent to do it though, with or without them. Sev and i phoned Louis and told him we were still in. Wolf and Christina joined us.

The four of us rehearsing in the Brethren days.

    Wolf and i had some half-arsed duel choreography which needed a lot more work, whilst Sev and Christina had nothing, so we weren't prepared at all. But when opportunity rings you answer the door whether or not you're dressed. Anyway, we four were the disciplined pirates and this time we'd be able to work without any drunken, lazy fools hindering us.  

    We showed up at the Orpheum next morning and rehearsed thruout the day whilst the musicians tuned their instruments in the orchestra pit. It was a gigantic stage and the director, Stanley Sheff (alias Maxwell DeMille), seemed grateful to have us there and worked our fights into the plot of his show.

    Sev and Christina did just some very basic sword moves, switching off attack and defense so they each did both sides and stretched out the fight. Then they added a few slashes and a disarming. There were only four cutlasses between the four of us so the hardest problem was finding a graceful way for Wolf and i to get hold of the girl's swords in time for our double-cutlass segment. We all went thru our fights over and again for about eight hours and became confident with the choreography but the sword acquisition part still seemed like it could go terribly wrong. And it did, even in the final dress rehearsal.

Here's one of the first run-thrus. The choreography was 

silly and we hadn't yet worked out the second sword procurement.

A couple hours later: we still don't have our

sh*t together.

And a full minute w/ Wolf, me, Severine, Christina, and

 even our indefatigable director, Maxwell DeMille.

    We hoped to go thru it another few times, focusing on just that element, when the woman from the Conservancy ran up to the stage and asked, "Can we open the doors a little bit early? Those people are lined up across Spring street!" Spring st. was around the corner and a block east.

    "Cool!" shouted our videographer.

    The show was SOLD OUT. 2300 people. And i knew that Doug was smiling down on us.

"Ahoy, down there! You realize, don't you, that they came to see my movie,
 not your silly sword fight?"

    Sheff said a few words at the opening, and introduced the singers. They each sang a song and then the spotlights followed a couple pirates as they chased some screaming women thru the isles of the theatre. The curtain was raised to reveal a stage full of pirates with a giant skull and bones backdrop. The audience cheered at this point. It seemed to be going well but the dialogue was hard to follow after that, and some of the actors seemed lost trying to wield their flimsy foil blades. Wolf and i stayed at the front of stage left, waiting for our moment.

    "Prepare to save the show," he said. Wolf -like me- was an arrogant bastard.

    "Sure. If we don't fuck up completely..." i was worried because we'd never gotten thru a single rehearsal perfectly. This might go really badly for us.

    Sev and Christina did their fight and didn't screw up, thus raising the bar of audience expectation. By the time Wolf and i began we had their full attention. One strike went wrong in the second sequence but we didn't even pause. As the tempo of the fight picked up so did the orchestra and i felt more powerful. Wolf pushed me across the stage and i landed, pulling off my baldric as he did a long leap and brought his cutlass straight down at me. i rolled and picked up Christina's sword, raised the two blades over my head to deflect his attack, then taunted him. 

    "i have two swords!" i turned and spun them in front of me. "i have two and you have only... Two??"

    "Aye!" he shouted.  

    Having taken Sev's sword, he beat the two blades together -they rang like church bells- then charged. A few seconds into the double-cutless duel the audience gasped and began cheering and clapping. It was the first glorious moment i'd ever had as a pirate performer. The fight got faster and the music along with it. The choreography was simple but flashy, with a few silly moves. We kept it a trifle slower than rehearsal speed to avoid disasters. One sword did slide into the orchestra pit at the end and a musician had to dodge it to avoid being impaled, but it all worked.

     The duel ended with "baseball sword," a gag Wolf and i had come up with that got a big laugh. The other actors finished their skit quickly and the curtain closed to great applause. The stage went dark and as the cast lined up for the curtain call i searched frantically for one of the other swords and found it just in time. The curtain opened and Wolf and i crossed our swords overhead as we took our bows.
And, thanks to the sorcery of 21st century technology, you can watch the whole thing HERE .

    Afterward we finished up backstage, got our pay in cash, then rushed to one of the balconies where some seats had been saved for us to watch the movie. The Black Pirate was filmed in two-strip Technicolor but most video releases of it had been in black and white. The color had been restored for the new video version and for this screening. Also restored was the original musical score composed for the film. Silent films were never really silent but were intended to be seen with musical accompaniment, whether a single organist in the small venues or an entire orchestra in the great movie palaces, like this one. So the sound and sight combined again, as they had in 1926, and Douglas Fairbanks' masterpiece got it's due that night.

    On my way out i pirated the lobby poster -which hangs over my desk as i type this, a fitting prize for a night of piracy. Thanks, Doug.