Acting Coach to the Stars
MC
July 15, 2007
The Actualizer
By MARK OPPENHEIMER
Giovanni Ribisi called me. Burt Reynolds asked me to call him at home.
The director Joel Schumacher called me from Romania between takes for
his next movie. Anne Archer and I played phone tag for two weeks.
A-list, B-list, stars of stage, stars of screen, they were all eager to
talk. The Tony winners John Glover and Tyne Daly. Edie McClurg, the
dippy secretary in łFerris Bueller's Day Off.˛ David Carradine.
Put the word on the street that you're writing about Milton Katselas,
and every student he has ever had will want to tell you about the best
acting teacher in the world, the man who took them from fresh-faced,
straight-off-the-plane-at-LAX ingénues looking for work - commercials;
God willing, someday a sitcom - to being real artists. They'll tell you
about how he saved them from the failings of the artist's personality,
like narcissism and drug addiction, and set them aright. They were born
with the talent, but he gave them careers.
But there are dissenters too. Students have left Katselas's school, the
Beverly Hills Playhouse, because of the unspoken pressure they felt to
join the Church of Scientology, the controversial religion founded by L.
Ron Hubbard in the 1950s. Nobody ever told them to join, but they could
not ignore how many of their classmates and teachers were
Scientologists. Or the fact that Milton Katselas, the master himself,
credits Hubbard for much of his success in life. And the assorted
weirdness: one of Katselas's students works a day job at the Scientology
Celebrity Centre, where Tom Cruise and John Travolta study, and one
zealous television star left the playhouse because she said she believed
that Katselas wasn't committed enough to Scientology.
Before trying to metabolize this strange cocktail of Hollywood, dreams
both deferred and achieved, and Scientology, consider the very sincere
professions of faith in a bearded, baritone septuagenarian with a
Mediterranean temper who began as a student of Lee Strasberg and became
the teacher of Ribisi, Daly and Carradine; of Michelle Pfeiffer, Tom
Selleck, Tony Danza, Priscilla Presley, Patrick Swayze, Cheryl Ladd and
hundreds more.
Richard Lawson, a Katselas student and occasional Scientologist, who now
teaches at the playhouse, says that Katselas's teaching helped him cheat
death in 1992 when his plane from LaGuardia crashed in Flushing Bay and
he was submerged underwater. łI just got this inspiration to overcome
it, to fight with everything I had to get out,˛ Lawson told a reporter
in 1998. łOne of the things I attribute that to is the teachings of
Milton.˛ Anne Archer, who discovered Scientology at the playhouse nearly
30 years ago, says, łI have seen performances sometimes in that class
that are so brilliant that they're better than anything I have seen on
the stage or film.˛ Her husband, the producer Terry Jastrow - also a
Scientologist - says that Katselas changed the texture of his daily
existence: łI go out in the world and look at human behavior now. I see
a woman or man interacting with a saleslady, and I see the artistry in
it. Life is an endless unspooling of art, of acting, of painting, of
architecture. And where did I learn that? From Milton.˛
Most people in the Los Angeles acting community believe that the Beverly
Hills Playhouse is a serious conservatory where actors train with a
master teacher, while others think it's a recruitment center for
Scientology. I wondered if it might be both. What if the playhouse was a
serious conservatory, and Katselas a master teacher, not in spite of
Scientology but because of it?
I first attended Katselas's weekly master class on a Saturday morning in
April. I took my seat in his small theater on South Robertson Boulevard
in Beverly Hills well before the 9:30 start time. I was stargazing -
Justina Machado from łSix Feet Under˛ was there; Beth Grant from łLittle
Miss Sunshine˛ was there - when promptly at 9:30 the class rose to its
feet in a standing ovation. Katselas had entered by the door near stage
left, and he was proceeding slowly, with the shuffle of a man vigorous
but in his 70s, to his chair on a landing a few rows up from stage
right, offering small, regal waves as he went. Nobody sat until he did.
łWhat is this, Easter?˛ he asked.
łPassover,˛ several students answered at once.
łWhat is this class, 82 percent Jewish - the rest goyim?˛ People
laughed, and at that the lights dimmed, then came up, and a scene began.
And one thing very quickly became clear: Milton Katselas is an
uncommonly good teacher.
In the first scene, Jack Betts, whom I later placed as the judge in
łOffice Space,˛ played the actor John Barrymore, from the one-man show
łBarrymore,˛ made famous on Broadway by Christopher Plummer. I thought
that Betts captured both the dissolution and the grandeur of a great man
in his pickled decline, but after the scene, when Betts sat at the edge
of the stage to receive his critique, Katselas made clear how much
better the performance could have been.
A Katselas critique is a respectful dialogue; he is never mean, but he
is challenging. Katselas wanted Betts to find the quieter notes in
Barrymore. One place to start, he thought, might be in the song with
which the scene begins: Barrymore singing łI've Got a Girl in
Kalamazoo.˛ As Betts had sung it, the song was brassy, vaudevillelike:
łA! B! C! D! E! F! G! H! I got a gal in KAL-amazoo!˛ Katselas had him
sing it over again, several times, suggesting that he turn the final
syllable, the zoo, into a drunken, slurred, tossed-off note of disdain.
After several more takes of the song, Katselas wasn't satisfied, but it
seemed that Betts was getting there. The Barrymore that emerged at the
end of 45 minutes was stranger, sadder, perhaps a bit louche, less of a
stereotype and altogether more believable than what Betts had delivered
at the beginning of class.
In many ways Katselas embodies what we expect from the acting pedagogue.
He has a sexual, dangerous edge - I wasn't shocked when he confessed
that he had dated several of his students. He looks unkempt, but
deliberately so, very bohemian. He swears a lot, as if perpetually
burdened by his inability to wring better performances from his
students. But although he believes in sex and danger and anger, Katselas
never sounds like a Freudian in search of those emotions, and in this
regard he breaks the stereotype.
The great American acting teachers, like Strasberg and Stella Adler,
have typically insisted that there is a role for an actor's emotional
history in his or her performance. In various versions of Strasberg's
łMethod,˛ the actor uses łsense memory˛ or łaffective memory˛ to relive
actual experiences - the death of a parent, an episode of sexual
violence, the birth of a child - to summon tears, horror, elation or
some other emotion for the character. Acting classes can thus resemble
talk therapy, as actors, lost in the moment, weep, scream or cackle. But
Katselas is adamant that he doesn't care what his students have been
through. Digging into the past might work for some students, and as an
avowed pragmatist Katselas tells actors to use whatever works. But he
mostly gives actors bits of physical direction rather than asking
probing questions about their motivation. In one scene, he had two
lovers touch their foreheads together, injecting a note of true intimacy
into what had been pure farce; in another, he told an angry junkie to
clench his hair in his fists and yank, and all of a sudden the actor
found the rage that had been missing from his performance.
łThe purpose of the acting art is not to bring about therapy,˛ Katselas
told me later. łOne taps their own experience of love or violence and
tries to pull from it whatever is possible in terms of an association or
understanding, but there is also the imagination and the character and
the writing. The personal thing is always very strong and can be
created, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you go into the traumas of
your life in order to get it.˛
Is this teaching Scientology? Not at all. But it happens to be quite
consonant with Scientology, which is famous for its opposition to
psychiatry and psychotherapy. (A group founded by the Church of
Scientology operates a museum in Hollywood called Psychiatry: An
Industry of Death.) The only time I heard Katselas quote L. Ron Hubbard,
the Scientology founder, in class, he was oblique about it. Four
students had just performed a scene in which two college students, about
to have a one-night stand, are suddenly, in an absurdist, łOleanna˛-like
twist, interrupted by lawyers who want them to agree in advance how far
their petting may go. In his critique of the scene, Katselas railed
against the legal profession: he wanted the actors to understand that
this was more than a funny scene; it was also an indictment of how
litigiousness, as well as the fear of it, separates us from our desires.
Lawyers are just one group to whom Americans give over their autonomy,
and these undergrads, having let the lawyers in, needed to push them
back out and take responsibility for their own actions. It is not
therapy that reunites us with our authentic selves but willpower,
properly directed. łA cat that I study says you are responsible for the
condition you are in,˛ Katselas told the room. łPeriod.˛
That łcat˛ is Hubbard. But Katselas never says so, and it's not clear
that he ought to. In the context of the scene critique, Hubbard's seems
a germane aphorism, one that might help the actors get a better feel for
the shifting alliances onstage. In other arts, it's easy to gauge
proficiency, if not genius. We know what technically correct music
sounds like, and writers have rules of grammar and syntax to follow or
to tactfully violate. But what makes a good acting performance? How do
you disappear into a character? In addition to being the most ineffable
of arts, acting depends on extraneous accidents of fate, like the right
look. And it's the only art that you can't master alone; there's not
much market for soliloquies. With all those uncertainties, a fine
performance, let alone a paycheck for it, can seem terrifyingly elusive.
It must be the rare actor who can dismiss supernatural aids, whether
Scientology or superstitious incantations like łBreak a leg,˛ without a
slight loss of nerve.
hen David Carradine met Milton Katselas at an audition in the mid-1960s,
there were 50 people sitting in the back rows of the theater, just
watching Katselas watch actors. łHe already had a cult fame, these
followers who were like disciples,˛ Carradine says. łHe was the hot
young director. I read the play, and I really hated it, but I went to
the audition anyway.˛ Katselas was barely 30 years old.
Born to Greek immigrants in Pittsburgh in 1933, Katselas moved to New
York straight after graduating from the Carnegie Institute (now Carnegie
Mellon). There was no period of ignominy, no nights of waiting tables.
He had seeded the town for his arrival. łI told the guy at Carnegie that
within a week, I'd be working with Kazan and I'd be studying with
Strasberg,˛ Katselas told me last spring when we met at his house in
West Hollywood. łPrior to that, when I was still in university, I was
walking in the streets of New York, just visiting over holiday, and I
saw Kazan, and I said to a guy, 'Is that Kazan?' and he said, 'Yeah.' ˛
Elia Kazan was fast becoming a legend. He directed łA Streetcar Named
Desire˛ in 1951; łOn the Waterfront˛ would come in 1954 and łEast of
Eden˛ the year after. łI ran after him; I lost him; I found him; he went
up in a building,˛ Katselas said. łI had my back to the building,
looking away from the building. Then this guy taps me on the back, says,
'What do you want?' It's Kazan. He went up, knew that I was chasing him.
We spoke a little bit in Greek. I told him I was in university. He says:
'When you come from university, look me up. I'll give you a job.' ˛ When
Katselas arrived in New York, Kazan kept his promise and hired him as
his gofer during the Broadway run of łTea and Sympathy.˛
The charmed life got more charmed. Strasberg let Katselas into his class
at the Actors Studio. Kazan sent his young Turk - or, rather, Greek - to
the stage director Joseph Anthony, who hired him. Katselas talked
himself into a job with Joshua Logan, the great director of movies like
łPicnic˛ and łBus Stop.˛ Katselas began teaching and directing, and in
1960, at Edward Albee's request, he directed the American premiere of
łThe Zoo Story˛ for the Provincetown Playhouse. His greatest success,
though, was łButterflies Are Free,˛ a timely play about a blind
Manhattanite who falls for a free-spirited hippie, which opened in 1969
and ran for more than 1,000 performances. Blythe Danner won a Tony for
her performance, and Katselas was nominated for his direction. In the
early 1970s, Katselas moved to California to direct ł40 Carats˛ with Liv
Ullmann and the film version of łButterflies Are Free,˛ in which Goldie
Hawn took Danner's role.
Katselas never made it back to New York to live. In his telling, his
migration sounds like an inevitable progression: Hollywood beckoned; he
began teaching in California; it agreed with him. The truth is somewhat
more complicated: New York was where Katselas succumbed to, then
defeated, an addiction to methamphetamines; it's where his first
marriage, to an alcoholic, began to fail. California must have
represented an escape and a fresh start. In 1983, he returned East to
direct łPrivate Lives˛ with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton but was
fired during the tryouts before the show reached New York. łI got along
great with Burton, and he told me I was one of the few directors he ever
accepted notes from,˛ Katselas says. łBut I didn't get along with
Elizabeth, and I'd rather not go into why.˛ He never worked on the East
Coast again.
+In California, Katselas met L. Ron Hubbard, the science-fiction writer
and amateur scientist whose teachings form the basis of Scientology.
Scientology promises its adherents the ability to become łclear,˛
ridding themselves of negative memories, or łengrams,˛ that retard their
abilities. After becoming clear, they can proceed up łthe bridge to
total freedom,˛ realizing their full potential as łthetans,˛ spirits
trapped in bodies. One mechanism of advancement is łauditing,˛ in which
the Scientologist, in conversation with a church łauditor˛ and hooked up
to a machine called an łE-meter,˛ deletes engrams; there are also church
classes like łPersonal Efficiency˛ and łLife Repair.˛ As a Scientologist
proceeds łup the bridge,˛ he can gain access to esoteric knowledge, like
how we thetans got here. Scientology, it has been widely reported,
teaches that 75 million years ago the evil alien Xenu solved galactic
overpopulation by dumping 13.5 trillion beings in volcanoes on Earth,
where they were vaporized, scattering their souls. (John Carmichael, the
president of the Church of Scientology of New York, told me, łThat's not
what we believe.˛ He refused to discuss the church's esoteric teachings,
though he did claim that Scientology's beliefs about the origins of the
universe and mankind łfollow the much older tradition of Eastern
religion dating back to the Vedic hymns.˛)
What most Americans know of Scientology is the alien myth, parodied on a
famous łSouth Park˛ episode; or the German government's view that
Scientology is less a religion than a cult with totalitarian overtones;
or the church's winning fight for tax-exempt status despite the fees it
charges, which for many courses are thousands of dollars; or reports in
The Times and elsewhere that while battling with the I.R.S., church
lawyers hired private investigators to find dirt on federal employees.
Millions are also aware of the religion's celebrity practitioners, like
John Travolta, Isaac Hayes and Beck. But for most people who dabble in
Scientology, including dozens of Beverly Hills Playhouse students, the
religion boils down to two rather prosaic practices. There is the
auditing, which, despite Scientologists' angry denials, is a lot like
the psychotherapy they abhor, and there are the classroom teachings. In
class, Scientologists learn Hubbard wisdom like łWhat's true is what's
true for you˛ and łUnderstanding is composed of affinity, reality and
communication,˛ as well as practical advice about the importance of
working hard, not blaming others and communicating clearly. Scientology
is a quintessentially American mix of prosperity gospel, grandiose hopes
for technology, bizarre New Age mythology and useful self-help nostrums.
Katselas was introduced to Scientology in 1965 and has been studying it,
off and on, ever since. He has achieved the state of clear, and gone
well beyond it; he is, he told me, an Operating Thetan, Level 5, or O.T.
V. According to łWhat Is Scientology?˛ published by the church, being an
Operating Thetan means that you łcan handle things and exist without
physical support and assistance. . . . It doesn't mean one becomes God.
It means one becomes wholly oneself.˛ But despite his advanced level of
Scientology training, only łon five or six occasions,˛ Katselas says,
has he urged a student to explore Scientology.
Others confirmed that Katselas does not proselytize. łI didn't know he
was a Scientologist until four days ago,˛ says Burt Reynolds, who has
been a guest teacher at the playhouse. łThe Scientologists I know, the
actors I know, practically want to drag me there. He's never brought it
up.˛ Katselas's devotion to Hubbard notwithstanding - he keeps a picture
of L.R.H., as Scientologists call him, on a table in his office - he
makes rather modest claims for Scientology. łIt certainly helped me,˛ he
says. łIt helped me as a painter. I started doing a lot of painting, did
the Scientology, and it opened up my visual sense. And it helped me in
communication, endlessly, and that's a vital thing in teaching or
directing.˛
It was in precisely those two areas, painting and communication, in
which I thought I could divine Scientology's influence. Katselas thinks
highly of himself as a visual artist. He maintains his own studio,
employs a full-time assistant who helps with his sculpture and
mixed-media works and has had a handful of shows (three in a gallery
that he owns). And although he has no architectural training, he has
collaborated with a local architect, offering ideas for the design of
two houses in the trendy Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles; one of
the houses, it so happens, was purchased by Apl.de.Ap, one of the
singers for the Black Eyed Peas. Katselas does not do the blueprints for
the houses he łdesigns,˛ just as he does not do all the technical work
for his art. Katselas has no reputation among critics of painting or
architecture. But he seems to have a strong belief in the multifarious
nature of his genius - he eagerly showed me the houses he has helped
build and gave me a long tour of his art studio - and that is typical of
Scientologists, who are taught to think of their potential as limitless.
As for communication, Katselas is, like Hubbard, fairly obsessed with
the idea that if only people communicated better, the world's problems
would disappear. Katselas told me that if he sat down the warring
parties in Israel, he could broker a truce - a comment that nicely
marries Scientology's human-potential hubris and its faith in
communication as the greatest virtue. Katselas also shares
Scientologists' admirable habit of looking words up in dictionaries.
Every teacher at the playhouse has a dictionary handy and has actors
learn words they don't know, and Katselas uses numerous dictionary
definitions in łDreams Into Action,˛ the self-help book he published in
1996 and hawked on łOprah.˛ The book acknowledges Hubbard łfor his
wisdom, writings and inspiration˛ and carries blurbs from,
incongruously, Mario Cuomo and Molly Yard, the former president of the
National Organization for Women.
It might seem odd, then, that Katselas and the Scientologists have been
somewhat at odds. I asked Katselas if it was true that the actress Jenna
Elfman left the playhouse because she found him insufficiently committed
to the church. He confirmed the rumor, hesitantly. łIn a certain way,
yes,˛ he said. łI don't know what really occurred there. She was going
to be fully involved with Scientology at a certain point in her life. I
don't know if that crept back in.˛ (Gary Grossman, who has worked at the
playhouse for more than 20 years, also said he thought that Elfman
wanted to move Katselas łup the bridge˛ in Scientology, though he added
that łthe only ones that would know would be Milton and Jenna.˛ Elfman
never returned calls that I made to her publicist.) łBut I've got to do
what I'm going to do,˛ Katselas continued, łand I'm not going to do it
because somebody tells me I should do it, and it doesn't matter what
somebody else thinks is right.˛
Katselas's stubbornness, and his sheer ego, are the keys to
understanding his relationship to Scientology. He takes what he can from
the teachings, but he can be rather contemptuous of the church. łI know
[Hubbard] made a statement once that Scientology is not the people in
it,˛ Katselas said. łScientology is a technology that he's developed
that is really powerful, and these artists respond to it because it
cleans up certain things that they've looking to or that they're dealing
with, and that helps them in their quest or in their way, and there's no
doubt of that.˛ But, he added: łI don't go to parties, I don't go to
Scientology events. I just don't do it. And they're not enthralled with
me because of that.˛ Katselas agreed that some Scientologists were
łzealots,˛ by which he might have meant that for them Scientology was
primary, whereas for Katselas Scientology is instrumental. This is a
man, after all, who had the chutzpah to chase down Elia Kazan on the
street and ask for a job. Scientology didn't convince Milton that he had
unlimited potential; it just confirmed what he already suspected.
+Katselas was born with the ego and the talent, but Adam Donshik wasn't.
Donshik, who first told me about Katselas three summers ago, is an old
high-school classmate of mine. We were part of the small theater crowd,
and we acted together in łGuys and Dolls˛ and łGypsy.˛ He had a lovely
voice and was always cast in the musicals, but he was an indifferent
actor. We hadn't spoken for more than 10 years when in 2003 I flipped to
the ABC drama łThreat Matrix˛ and saw him playing a terrorist. Eight
months later, I was in Beverly Hills on an assignment, and we met for a
drink. His hair was a little thinner, but he looked great, all tan and
muscled. The West Coast suited him. The career was going great, he said.
Life was going great. łYou want to know why?˛ he asked. łScientology.
I've become a Scientologist!˛ He smiled as if to acknowledge the
improbability of this Jewish kid from New England finding Scientology.
He had gotten involved through friends at the Beverly Hills Playhouse,
where he studied.
Donshik now works for the playhouse as an admission interviewer, acting
in TV series on the side. Of a total playhouse payroll of about a dozen
teachers, interviewers and assistants, nearly all, I discovered, had at
least dabbled in Scientology. Some, like Allen Barton, who is executive
director of the school, are committed Scientologists; others, like Rick
Podell and Gary Grossman (who starred with Tom Hanks in łBachelor
Party˛), have taken just one class and do not consider themselves
Scientologists. Jocelyn Jones and Gary Imhoff, former faculty members,
are Scientologists, as is Jeffrey Tambor, an actor best known as the
imprisoned patriarch George Bluth Sr. on łArrested Development˛ and who
was Katselas's heir apparent until he abruptly quit the faculty several
years ago. (Katselas blamed Tambor's wife: łI think she felt there was a
tension between her and me and the school, and I think Jeffrey was
caught in the middle of it.˛)
Of the students, I easily located a dozen who are Scientologists, and
based on interviews, I concluded there are probably several dozen more
in the current student body of 500. Like their teachers, some students
are devout while others indulge a mild curiosity and then drop off. łI
went down and took a couple of classes,˛ David Carradine said. łI'm no
kind of Scientologist, but I've been around it enough to know it's a
very intelligent thing.˛ This being Hollywood, some students, like
Giovanni Ribisi, were Scientologists before they came to the playhouse.
Of course, other students worry less about how Scientology will help
their acting than how it will help their careers; there's a widespread
perception in Hollywood that Scientology is a networking tool. People
notice that, say, two stars of łMy Name Is Earl,˛ Jason Lee and Ethan
Suplee, are Scientologists; that the Scientologist Kirstie Alley did a
guest appearance on Elfman's łDharma and Greg˛; that Ribisi has popped
up on łMy Name Is Earl.˛ łI knew someone at the playhouse who joined
Scientology because she thought it would help her career,˛ one agent
told me. łShe thought Jenna Elfman would be her best friend.˛ And actors
who study at the Celebrity Centre on Franklin Avenue do bump into the
stars, chat with them, even have lunch with them at the restaurant. How
bad could that be for a career?
All religious communities can be networks for business contacts, but
Scientology makes a special pitch to celebrities, and church literature
is filled with testimonials from Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other
stars. According to a pamphlet I was given at the Celebrity Centre in
Hollywood (there are eight Celebrity Centres, in cities from Paris to
Munich to Nashville), the center was founded in 1969 łto take care of
those who entertain, fashion and take care of the world . . . the
artists, the leaders of industry, politicians, sports figures and the
like.˛ As a very successful hack sci-fi writer, Hubbard was something of
a junior-varsity celebrity himself, and he had great esteem for his
betters. łHollywood makes a picture which strikes the public fancy, and
tomorrow we have girls made up like a star walking along the streets of
the small towns of America,˛ Hubbard once wrote. łA culture is only as
great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.˛
Of course, the majority of those who study at Celebrity Centres are not
actual celebrities, and for many of them the chance to be valued for
their art alongside more successful peers, the Cruises and the
Travoltas, must be salubrious for the ego. At the centers, the agent can
join the same exclusive club as his client, the editor as his writer.
And all of them can bask in a theology that holds, again to quote
Hubbard, that łone of the greatest single moves which could be made to
advance and vitalize a culture such as America would be to free,
completely, the artist from all taxes and similar oppressions.˛
But if a few students have appreciated the playhouse for its connections
to Scientology, others have left alienated. łI have clients who left
there because of all the Scientology,˛ one longtime Hollywood agent told
me. Terrell Clayton, who had a recurring role on łSix Feet Under˛ and
studied at the playhouse for five years, says that the pressure to study
Scientology is subtle. łIt's not like while you're being critiqued they
say you need to join Scientology,˛ he says. łIt's small conversations
you might have with colleagues or fellow students.˛ He now studies with
Ivana Chubbuck, a highly regarded teacher who wrote łThe Power of the
Actor.˛ Chubbuck has kind words for Katselas. łIt seems when people come
from his studio to work with me, they seem to be pretty good actors, so
he must be doing something right,˛ she says. łIn terms of how he
operates as a Scientologist or a human being, I would be remiss in
saying something based on rumor or hearsay.˛
And then Chubbuck told me something unexpected and clarifying: łIf he's
putting something else he does in his teaching, if it works, it works.˛
In other words, even if he were dispensing Scientology-flavored
pedagogy, even if his example did lead some young actors to the
Celebrity Centre to spend their dollars - earned at union scale, working
bit parts in Lifetime movies - on classes meant to bring about a state
of clear, that might not be a bad thing, not if it helped their art.
Katselas is adamant that he does not want a cult around himself. łIt
worries me,˛ he said when I mentioned that his students seem to worship
him. But he collects disciples. His personal chef, art assistant and
longtime girlfriend are all students or former students (the latter two
have studied Scientology). He knows what's best for others too: he
threatened to fire his art assistant, Richard Shirley, unless Shirley
lost weight. (łHe's in my life; it's very much my business,˛ Katselas
said. łEverything is everybody's business. Our fellows are our
responsibility.˛) And he cultivates the image of a man with almost
magical powers. łDreams Into Action,˛ his motivational book, is full of
promises for future greatness, if only people would heed his words. He
has style: he drove me around in a restored vintage Mercedes. He's an
entrepreneur, a real estate investor, even a partner in Skylight Books,
one of L.A.'s best independent bookstores. He once got drunk with the
sculptor David Smith. He has the wit of Thurber, the charm of Zorba.
According to one Scientology text, man łis not only able to solve his
own problems, accomplish his goals and gain lasting happiness, but also
to achieve new states of awareness he may never have dreamed possible.˛
Katselas seems to have achieved such a state - what student could be
blamed for wanting to drink his elixir?
On my last day in Los Angeles, I saw Adam Donshik play Hamlet in class.
It was the scene in which he kills Polonius and fights with his mother.
Katselas wasn't impressed - his critique was barbed - but Adam was
worlds better than in high school. Even accounting for age and maturity,
something else had intervened. An unusual teacher had given Adam both a
religion and a talent for acting. If the two were somehow inseparable,
it might not pay to try to pull them apart. I could mock Adam for
following the man or for following the faith. But perhaps it would be
wiser to simply watch him act.
--
"Anybody can direct. There are only 11 good writers."
‹ Mel Brooks