THE TONY AWARDS

We have come a long, long way since the Dixie Chicks.

When is the last time that you saw a group of loving, all-inclusive, mutually supportive, life-giving people stand and cheer when a major Hollywood celebrity declared from the stage that the guy in the oval office should go fuck himself?

To me, that was like watching nuns at the breaking point.  You can only push people so far until they have had enough.

Full disclosure:  I have been a life-long theater nerd.  I am Zorba the Geek.  I am a graduate of New York’s “Fame” school and I just had my first play produced this very weekend at Theater Harrisburg in Pennsylvania which turned out to be a laughing and crying sold out lovefest.

It’s been awhile since I was around theater people.   

Theater people are like any large family from any emotionally demonstrative group.   Italian. Jewish. Irish.  It’s like all our houses of worship who are all preaching the same message, in different hats (worn either on or off).

You sing.  You laugh.  You cry.  You show fellowship.  And then you go back out into the harsh white light of life and get emotionally bludgeoned to death with a Tony Soprano-sized Louisville slugger.

I just finished my most recent tour of duty in Los Angeles, shooting a new series which I wrote with my partner Paul Reiser (“There’s Johnny”now streaming on Hulu.  You have to search for it.  Consider that moment panning for gold).

The Roman Empire did not fall.  It just relocated to the west coast.  Being a staunch New Yorker (whose first two words were “Fuck” and “You”)  I never fully assimilated into the LA culture.  To me, New York is Junior’s cheesecake and Nathan’s Hotdogs and LA is KooLAid.   The trouble is, once you drink from that particular trough you find yourself working out at Gym Jones where you think you are part of a clan who is doing God’s work. 

After all, they call themselves the City of Angels.  The last time a real, actual Angel hung out in LA was around the time that the only swimming hole in town was the La Brea Tar Pits.  

L.A. is actually first becoming a liberal town now. 

All that air-kissing love that you see on display during Awards Season has never truly represented what Hollywood really is.  If it did it would look a lot more like an Extreme Mixed Martial fight in Stella McCartney pants.  The citizens of the City of Baubel, air kiss because they are following instructions on how to engage in safe intimate contact by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.  

The 13th month there is Augment.

Theater people are a much different breed.   That is because we (and I can officially say “we” as of Saturday) are like Superman in search of truth, justice, and the American way.  We may look and act like Clark Kent, but we are, at all times, ready to run around in leotards and fight the good fight.

Unlike the rest of the world, Spiderman was a big nothing in our hood.  He barely lasted a couple of seasons before he had to web-sling his way out of town.  Madeline and Annie kicked his ass.  

Theater insiders are all closet outsiders who simply do not fit comfortably in the real world.  

In order to find our true authentic selves; our legitimate voices takes years of self-directed surgical procedures on our fragile psyches and wounded souls.  It’s not like writing TV in LA where you have to turn out scripts at the rate of Lucy packaging chocolates on an out of control assembly line.

We investigate human behavior by the Scotland Yard.   

It’s all very symphonic actually.  One false note, one errant sharp or flat and everything falls apart like a House of Cards.  

We mud wrestle feelings in order to come clean.

Last night's Tony Awards, while somewhat predictable and toothless, was also as charming, adorable, entertaining and safe as its two hosts, Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles—-both of whom I adore.  Full Disclosure #2:  I cried at the end of Waitress.  I find Sara’s voice so pure and crystal clear that I welcome its direct arrow flight to the bullseye of my heart.  The still youthful part of me wants to marry her.  The older part of me wants to adopt her.   I mean if Sara saw me approaching her, I’m sure she would say, “Oh. Help that man.”

The show overall was a lot less painful than watching the Yankees being shut out by the lowly Mets.

I wanted everyone from Angels in America and Carousel to win because when you leave a theater satisfied, the illusion is that every single cast member is your real and not Facebook friend.

Andrew Garfield is giving an astonishing performance for the ages and Nathan Lane is a total revelation. He is a shockingly real monster.  (He is playing Trump mentor Roy Cohn).

Being a huge Rogers and Hammerstein guy, I found Carousel to be enchanting from start to finish.  At least Justin Peck won.  That choreography was like watching Harold Robbins at his peak.  

You will believe a man can fly.,

Bruce Springsteen brought in take-out from Palookaville and it was stirring and authentic.

Billy Joel showed up looking like the Laughing Buddha wearing clothes from the boy’s department at Sears.  I was waiting for him to unzip his fat suit and out would leap Billy the wiseguy punk from 1975.  

But then there was DeNiro who galvanized the crowd by telling Trump to fuck off.  

When the Dixie Chicks said that they were ashamed that Bush was from Texas, they got death threats.  I can only imagine how the Boys in the Brand of Trump reacted to that nationally televised bitch slap.

I hear that what DeNiro said was broadcast in Canada.  

How perfect is that?  Once again Trump is the Pillsbury Trudeau boy.

Perspective:

Here we are, on the eve of a fake nuclear disarmament summit, where an illiterate idiot, who was the only person who sat at the G7 table with NO notes and NO writing tools,  is about to pretend that he can take his fake negotiating skills, which have created nothing but profound debt and unimaginable losses, and save the world.  

That is no different than your average five-year-old declaring that he is Batman.  If he believes it, is so.  The big difference is that the five-year-old has both an imagination and a vision.

And here we were, in a room full of theater people. who cheered on DeNiro’s reduction of our Demander and Cheat.

The truth is Trump’s detritus was front and center every single time a person of color talked passionately about their fight for assimilation, a man sang happy birthday to his husband or an Angel from Great Britain suggested that we ALL eat cake because we are all at heart, Fabulous Baker Boys.

To remain civil, the civilized us live deep in the heart of subtext.  We imply.  We wink. We nod. We feel in code.

We inject chilling life themes into our works of pure fantasy.

We try not to directly attack choosing instead to paint pictures which will engage the soul and lift the spirit,.

We chose notes and language to be our universal dialogue.  We know how to summit motherfucker.

We try to spotlight the good in the most unlikely places as a way to show the world that it is everywhere you look.  If you bother to look.

Theater is the big picture that even IMAX cannot overshadow.  

The lesser of us require nothing more than the usual dose of addictive stimulation to be entertained.  The summer ahead, for the most part, will bring us an endless parade of explosions and bone cracking bloodshed.

They call the battlefield the theater of war.

We who live for our plays prefer the war of theater where every performance is a skirmish, every matinee and evening is a small victory.

Sure there are defeats and losses.  Dreams don’t always come true.

But at least we can say we tried.

At least we served.

Because we care.