The Pizzicato Effect

Psycho-Intellectual Equipment for the Post-Everything Age

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Achieving Authenticity

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My appearance on Hollywood Camera Work's Prep Show

My appearance on Hollywood Camera Work's Prep Show to discuss directing actors.

This week, I’m a guest on Hollywood Camera Work‘s Prep Show with the estimable Per Holmes and my new pal Brandon Galatz. We looked at a scene from a short film and spent some time picking it apart, figuring how to make the acting better. It was a fantastic exercise and a dream come true to geek out about quite literally my favorite topic in the world.

Per’s company Hollywood Camera Workcreate…

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Pictures from my production of Stupid Fucking Bird at Occidental

Pictures from my production of Stupid Fucking Bird at Occidental

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Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum

Certain stories have an eerie power over an audience. And the reason is not just what the stories are about, but how they are told. The imagination of an audience can be abducted and toyed with when a director recognizes the relationship between the function of their storytelling, and the form of the story they are telling.

The highest form of dramatic art, if you ask me, is when there is a…

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Pictures from The Bald Soprano at W.H.A.T.

Pictures from The Bald Soprano at W.H.A.T.

The show I’m directing on the Harbor Stage of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater opened on Wednesday and here are some pictures:

Jonathan Fielding navigates the most awkward silence in Western theatre. I have cast him six times, and made him grow a mustache  six times.

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The Grapevine and the Wedding Ring

The Grapevine and the Wedding Ring

Two friends of mine were driving on the Grapevine, which is a braided ribbon of highway climbing over the hills one hour north of Los Angeles. They were high school sweethearts, they had just gotten engaged, and they were in the middle of a knock-down-drag-out fight over something neither of them can now remember.

At one point, the bride-to-be had had it, she rolled down the window, and she…

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Mehna Lisa

One night in 1911, a maintenance worker at the Louvre decided to go home with the Mona Lisa hidden under his smock. When it was discovered, all of Paris was positively scandalized by the theft of a painting which, until that night, no one really gave a merde about.

Up to that point, the relatively small Mona Lisa was just one of a handful of Leonardos hanging in the museum. But when the news…

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A Keyboard of Cypress, the invention of the piano. Around the year 1700, Bartolomeo Cristofori was the Keeper of the Instruments for the Grand Prince of Tuscany.

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ROAR The most dangerous film shoot in history is widely considered to be the 1981 comedy adventure…

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Vakhtangov in the Provinces

Vakhtangov in the Provinces

Yevgeny Vakhtangov was a stage actor in Russia around the time of the Revolution. He joined the Moscow Art Theater in 1911, and by 1920 was in charge of his own studio. For many teeth-gnashing theatre scholars—who struggle to choose between early Stanislaski’s stage-freight-based emotion-recalling inside-out acting, and late Stanislavski’s fake-it-til-you-make-it, just-pretend-why-don’t-you,…

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O for a Muse of Syntax

O for a Muse of Syntax. Here's a grammatically perfect sentence: James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

Here’s a grammatically perfect sentence:

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

Well, almost perfect. You just need to sprinkle some curvy marks…

James, while John had had “had had,” had had “had;” “had had” had had a better effect on the teacher.

Without the commas and quotes and semicolons, it’s just a skipping needle. A blip…

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Japanese Calligraphy

When you sit down to learn Japanese Calligraphy, you start like anyone would, by copying a characters. And, like everyone, you flounder and your first character looks terrible.

Your teacher waits for you to feel frustrated, as attempt after attempt winds up crumpled on the floor, until they finally lets you in on a little secret… Make the white space look the same and the ink takes…

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Smuggling is an Art Form The trick to smuggling is to hire a mediocre art director. The well-loved beauty of this prohibition-era truck's faux-haphazard lumber placement is a dead giveaway. Any driver behind this truck would instantly fall into a reverie over the gorgeous patterning. Too much sacred, not enough profane.

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Anates in Cognito

Ducks are wearing wolf masks.

You can never unsee it.

We love you, duck. Just be your beautiful self. There’s no need for this.

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The Smell of Insecurity The Advertisers of Axe Body Spray pursued “insecure men” as a demo. They were ironically too successful, as Axe is now the smell of insecurity.

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Dear Son...

Dear Son... (#1) http://wp.me/pU5g2-n9

Dear future son,

During your first week of college, you’ll have chosen your courses and will have to go to the college bookstore, if such a place still exists.

Mostly it will be sweatshirts and stuffed mascots, but perhaps some craggy old fart will force you to buy an actual biology textbook made out of tree. You will find it on the shelf, and you will gawk at the price. $600. Or Units. Or…

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Behind the scenes of Chronicles Simpkins Will Cut Your Ass .

Behind the scenes of Chronicles Simpkins Will Cut Your Ass .

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