The Agony of Discretion

There’s No Secrets This Year - Silversun Pickups (mp3)

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly. -- Samuel Johnson

I wrote something funny, and it cannot be shared.

I had this incredible, awesome, cathartic experience of scathing creative comedy, borne of a mere two hours of feverish and obsessive work, and the product must be locked away like a kidnapped child, never to be revealed to the world.

It all started when a friend of mine created an amusing video as he lamented his own pending 40th birthday. He has been so paralyzed by this birthday that he disappeared into his computer and started creating a movie to manage his anxiety.

He used this site called xtranormal.com, where you can create short movies using one or two characters from more than a dozen different genres. Each genre has a handful of scene choices and a dozen or so characters. You pick one or two characters and a scene, and you start. You create the script. You add hand gestures and sound effects and body movements. You can even micromanage the camera angles.

If you’re curious, here is his brainchild:



Fate had it that my friend sent this video to me immediately after a frustrating series of interactions with coworkers and fellow administrators at my school. Making a “humorous” video out of his own anxieties seemed to have helped him, so I figured I should dive in and find my own humor catharsis as well.

And I did.

I signed up. I picked perfectly unidentifiable characters, sat them in a school office setting, gave them perfectly unidentifiable names, and used them as amalgamations for the personality glitches and shortcomings of five or six different coworkers, including myself. I made up names of schools that were only barely similar to our own schools. Every single thing I did guaranteed that no single person at my school could possibly accuse me of targeting them.

But then I did an awful thing. I showed my wife.

I’d been holed up in my computer room, giggling maniacally, and I let her watch as I proofed an early draft.

“Kinda funny?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not Daily Show material, but it’s kinda funny, right?” (You see, my wife doesn’t laugh aloud at stuff that comes through on a TV screen. She laughs at people, at conversations, but she doesn’t ever laugh aloud at a TV or computer.)

“Oh, it’s funny. It’s very funny.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“You’re going to lose your job.”

“Oh come off it. That’s silly. There’s absolutely no way anyone can connect this to me or the school,” I said.

She looked at me, shaking her head.

“What?”

“I’ve said my part. You’ll lose your job. Good night. Love you.”

“What??”

“The minute you send this to anyone, it’s got your name attached to it."

And she was right, of course. The essential part of my beautiful creation is that the only way I can share it with anyone is to tell them, and the only way to tell of such creations in a digital realm is to email them, Facebook them, tweet them. And in all those realms, it’s all too easy to trace these things right back to my doorstep, to my paycheck, to my pathetic and desperate attempts to claim I didn’t have specific people in mind when I skewered them in my cute little movie.

That I’m one of those getting skewered wouldn’t be much of a good defense as I packed up my office and polished up my funny resume.

So instead of getting to share my fun creation, it sits hidden in a virtual drawer, and I know what it is to have that secret drug addiction, that secret lover, that secret murder weapon. I created my own personal Jack Bauer emergency in the form of a stupid silly expose on the idiocy of school administrators. I armed the device, and all I can do now is keep it locked away and try my best to guard the door.

Even though what I want so badly is to let people in.

Dammit.

As always, there’s a silver lining. Before this week, I never understood how to write a screenplay, or true dialogue without novelistic exposition. There was some disconnect in my feeble skull. But with XtraNormal, it makes sense. I can write dialogue and test it out. Yes, it’s poorly-enunciated, kitschy computer voicing, but just moving that one step into verisimilitude gives me loads of confidence and has me hungry to keep writing more.

I’m about to finish the second in what is certain to be a series. This one was inspired by summer reading programs.

I probably can’t show that one, either.

"I Am Pagliacci"

Walking Through Syrup - Ned's Atomic Dustbin (mp3)
Fitz and Dizzyspells - Andrew Bird (mp3)

Most of us flock to careers to either escape or defeat our personal demons. For Batman, Spider-Man and a bevy of other superheroes, their careers are an attempt to avenge the deaths of loved ones. Fittingly, this little vignette comes from the most-acclaimed comic book series of all time:

A man goes to the doctor. Says he's depressed. He says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. The doctor says "The treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him, that should pick you up." The man bursts into tears. He says "But doctor... I am Pagliacci."  --  WATCHMEN

I first read this passage in 1986. I was 14. This little vignette branded my brain. It stuck in there as easily and permanently as Meg Ryan's fake orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. I wrote the word "Pagliacci" in my class notebooks when I was bored. Often I would doodle around the word with squiggles or sketches, but mostly I just drew little tear droplets. Sometimes just a single tear off the end of the crook of the "g".

How is it possible to be so haunted by a 69-word story? Why does Pagliacci seem so real?

SIDETRACK WACKY CAREER THEORY #1:

I have a wacky career theory.

One of the reasons such a high proportion of gay men have found a home in the performing and fine arts is because, for the greater part of the 20th Century, the odds of accepting and being comfortable with their own identity in their formative years was difficult bordering on impossible. The closet doors stayed closed for many understandable reasons, especially until early adulthood if not later. Hell, homosexuality was still identified as a mental illness in 1977, so being openly gay was in many places no cooler than being openly psychopathic.

In such an environment, gay people -- I'd argue gay men in particular -- learned how to act from the first days they began to understand themselves, their desires. At that young age, they began to act. Act straight. Act like they thought society expected them to act. Whatever persona they projected, for most of them, it wasn't their true selves. It was some collection of little parts of themselves combined with behaviors and ticks from the world around them.

To use the vernacular of Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 Hours," those who lived in the closet had a massive jump on the rest of us. We acted in plays or skits; they acted all day, every day, sometimes from the minute they awoke to the moment their eyes shut for sleep.

I've always imagined Rock Hudson, sitting in his movie premiers, secretly laughing at everyone around him. If I have to live this fucking heterosexual lie, I'm gonna bleed you small-minded people for every penny I can. I don't mean to suggest Hudson was a mean or vengeful guy. But if he or any other closeted actor took twisted joy in their successes, how can anyone blame them? What's one more acting job -- the role of the boring straight Hollywood star -- in the bunch? Why not cash in on it?

While I've never exactly seen this theory written or expressed, I struggle to believe it's either original or all that controversial. Maybe it is, but since it doesn't seem particularly insulting to suggest that they're more naturally gifted at an art our culture values, I'd like to think it's not. (Great documentary on the subject: The Celluloid Closet.)

This theory doesn't have to limit itself to closeted gays. Anyone who grew up developing a carefully-crafted veneer, or multiple personas, or other ways of adapting to a troubled or challenging adolescence, would also be more easily suited to the world of acting. Which is why so many great actors and actresses, when they're not gay, need at least 10 different therapists.

WACKY CAREER THEORY #2:

In a similar vein, depressives flock to the role of comedian. Not all clowns are Pagliacci, but many are.

Artie Lange's story, while very sad, is so unoriginal as to be, well, kind of depressing (link is to a phone interview with a New York Post reporter). The short version: Artie Lange is a comedian and right-hand man of Howard Stern. They spend their time on the radio mocking strippers for growing up sexually abused and being burdened with a bunch of psycho-baggage while asking them to strip and do naughty things. All the while, these radio jokesters struggle with their own demons.

Some have died. Belushi, Farley, Ray Combs, Richard Jeni, Lenny Bruce. Some have fled from themselves, or struggled from here to get there. Many have found themselves embroiled in scandal with drugs or other embarrasments. Murphy, Chase, Kinison, Pryor. This isn't by any means a comprehensive list. Roseanne Barr is/was a walking checklist of disorders.

But if Hollywood is best made for people who grew up pretending not to be themselves, then the comedy circuit is best made for people whose humor is borne as a desperate and essential coping mechanism.

I leave you with Flunky the Clown, the funniest, least laughed-at skit ever to grace Dave's old show.