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Interview with Mark
Troy Mr. Troy is happily celebrating his 33rd production at The Renegade Theatre. His plays have been seen in Los Angeles at The Attic, The Tiffany, and The Rose, in New York at the Nat Horne, The 13th Street Rep and The Westbeth, and The Congress Theatre in Ottawa, Canada. His new play, "Peking Duck," presently runs Off-Broadway at Theatre-Studio. Last year, he directed a successful New York run of his one-act comedy "A Jewish Booty Call." Mark has sold screenplays to Columbia Pictures, MGM and Castle Rock Entertainment. He is also a writing teacher at Learning Tree University and Harbor College. What sparked your interest in stage and screenwriting? When I was growing up in New York, my mother was an actress and singer. During the war (and I don’t think she would mind me saying, The Civil War), she sung for the troops. I am vague in exactly which troops, or where, or if she ever went on the road, but by the time she started having a family – of which I am the youngest and most loved – she had given up much of her singing. Acting however, never left her. She was always putting on shows at local theaters or Jewish Centers. My father built the sets.I can remember often sitting, as a child, under big round dinner-theater-style tables and watching rehearsals. Truthfully, it was the rehearsals and the rehearsal process that interested me most. The actual show was simply icing on the cake. A round of applause. I wanted it to be my show… to watch it come together… to see it grow out of nothing into something people could enjoy. But I never really wanted to get up from under the table. It was safe. A writer needs to feel safe. Screenwriting came much later. By college, I was already a produced playwright. I was even teaching the playwriting course when my professor, eager to finish his latest opus, started not showing up. I took over the class and had a ball. A friend of mine said I should write a screenplay. We were both big Woody Allen fans. This was post "Annie Hall." I told him the theater breathed life into me. That live stage, which my mother had been taking me to since I could remember, was far more interesting and dramatic than a movie. You can't get the true intended feeling of seeing "1776" or "La Cage Aux Folles" or "Guys and Dolls" from a flat screen. Don’t get me wrong, I was always a movie fan, but theater was for me. And besides, who needs more than fifty-seven dollars a year to live on? But the gauntlet was set. He dared me. Knowing nothing of the craft or the style or the structure, I read a script (whose title I cannot remember) and I wrote a screenplay in six weeks. It was sold to Columbia Pictures and bought me a house in Beverly Hills. My friend never wrote again. Describe what it felt like the first time you saw one of your scripts being performed. I was never a member, but I somehow hooked up with a grouped called Fourth Friday’s Playwrights, which was a Menza Group of New York intellectuals who met once a month, if I recall, on Fridays, and read new literary material. They did a few of my plays, then spoke about them in language to this day I do not understand. They dissected the work as well as me. And on those long subway rides back from Manhattan to Queens where I lived, I can recall thinking what a genius I was that I could entertain nine people with towering IQ’s who lived on the upper West Side and adored me because they thought I knew exactly what I was doing. Clearly I didn’t, and to this day claim that good writing is so subconscious that the second you realize you know what you’re doing, you’re going to fail at it. But my first actual professional play was "Going Home" at the Off-Broadway Village Performers Theater on Second Avenue. My guess is today, it’s a check cashing and Western Union establishment. The show was a comedy about nursing homes (if you can fathom that) and was met with good response. It was exhilarating, scary, nerve-wracking, silly, demanding, fun, brutal, and it exactly the same way today. The only difference is, I was nineteen then. And today -- I’m not.Do you prefer writing on spec or on assignment? I assume that when you ask about writing on spec you are speaking of screenplay writing. In the theater, just about everything is on spec. Very few plays are commissioned. And in spite of the fact that I am "America’s most produced unknown playwright", I have only been commissioned once, for the piece "Barry Moses Bar Mitzvah," an interactive theater experience; when those weird things were popular. But to answer the question more precisely, writing on spec is far more freeing. Far more creative. More intriguing. More something I would lust after. It’s also always the quickest way to go broke in Hollywood. If you can’t get a paying gig… you’re in trouble here.You've written scripts for Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzeneger. How did that come about? I had a play produced out in LA and we were blessed with good notices. Some important people came and the director asked me if I wanted to write a movie at Castle Rock. I said I wasn’t doing anything other than suffering, so why not? The movie turned out to be a fish out of water piece to star Tom Hanks. It was a tough, but good, experience. I worked under the tutelage of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, the foremost comedy writers of the time. We did a nice job. And two days later Hanks won an Academy Award and all bets were off! You see in Hollywood, as you are rising, someone else is rising higher… if you don’t plateau at the same time… you are left in the dust. They never made that movie but I bought a nice car.Arnold Schwarzeneger was looking to do a comedy. He had strutted his stuff enough to last the rest of us the rest of our lives. But he is also extremely protective of his image. Well, so am I for that matter. I never wear black shoes with blue pants. But for Arnold, it was a mantra. And he was always second guessing what his "public" with a capital P wanted him to do. He bought my script and in some ways it became Hollywood folklore what happened. Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters have even chronicled it in the book "Hit and Run." The movie has tried to have life elsewhere with other actors, but Lesson #2434 in Hollywood is… nobody shares. Arnold’s career slowed, and my script slowed with him. You've also sold films to about every major studio. Can you give us a run-down of what happened (or is happening) with these scripts now? Neil Simon says writing movies is F-U Money. And he’s right. It’s also OK money. You take it, you live on it, you have some fun. And move on to the next project. If you’re not the top three writers in town (and those change everyday) your stake in moviemaking is strictly pecuniary. After a few months, you stop thinking of the project you sold. After a year, you stop looking for it in the trades. Two years: you’re just hoping against hope you get that production bonus check. After five years you’re watching "Saturday Night Life" to see who the next up and comer is; knowing he’ll be taking over the development of the script you haven’t seen any rewrites on since you left your last agent.At last count, I have five-- maybe six-- feature films in development at various studios. I know nothing of any director being attached. And I have no concept of what stars are into it. I hear gossip and ignore it. And I wait… wait and hope for my production bonus check. I am a writer -- that is my job. That’s a full time worry… I can’t get bogged down with the "business of show." We've all heard of "development hell." Why does it happen, and can you still make a living as a screenwriter if most of your scripts never see the "big screen?" When I teach screenwriting (and I teach playwriting as well), I tell my students the most important thing they need to know to keep their heads clear during the writing process. We, as writers, are not making movies. We are not anything more than "story delivery systems." Our job is to blueprint wonderful, exciting, brilliant ideas to paper so that others (assuming we are not making smaller films to direct ourselves) may take our words and fly. Keeping that in mind, our objective is to simply write, get paid, rewrite and get repaid. Making movies is another vocation.What's one thing you wish you'd learned earlier about the businesses of theatre and film? The only thing I wished I knew about the business before getting into the business is that you can live anywhere on the planet and be a writer. But if you live in L.A., you need a car.How did you choose your manager, and how instrumental is he in moving your career forward? Choosing a manager is easy. If he returns your initial phone call, he is as good a person as your own grandmother is. If he returns it after he signs you, he is, for all intensive purposes, a lover. If he gets you a job, marry him. But all in all, agents and writers’ managers do very little, or as little as they possibly can. It is your job as a writer to network, listen, hear about new projects and do a lot of the work yourself. But if you are in the spec world, you need the agent or manager to get the material to the right person.You've had over 30 plays produced professionally. What are some important differences between writing for the stage versus writing novels, screenplays, etc.? The different between writing a movie and writing a play can be summed up in three words. Original thought. Okay – two words. A play can be daring, original, and passionate. A film is 115 pages; and make sure the margins are correct. (Exceptions to the previous rule are, of course, many. Hook up with a daring, original and passionate producer with money – and you can make marvelous cinema.)While screenplays are generally subject to the "contributions" of directors, producers, actors, etc., it seems that the words of the playwright are usually more respected-- that is, there is less rewriting done by others and less deviation from the writers' original intentions. Do you agree, and if so, why do you suppose this is the case? Og was a caveman. He carved into a rock the words "I am Og." Another caveman came over and crossed out what Og had written. And wrote, "You was Og." And punched him in the nose. This was: The first rewrite! Og said, "You can’t do that. Those are my thoughts and ideas. I own those words! Those are my words!" But the other caveman just shook his head and said, "This is my rock."I wish I knew more of the history of theater to answer your question more faultlessly. The truth is New York playwrights were brought out to Hollywood for the sole purpose of writing movies, and because they knew the pastrami was good. But something went wrong along the way. The Dramatist Guild (which I am a member) clearly states in every contract – Not a single word may be changed without the writer’s permission. Often in writing. The Writer’s Guild (which I am also a member of) holds arbitration committees all the time to see whose words were whose and doesn’t give a damn about original intent. It is the nature of things, which is way I am often drawn back to the stage. Your new play opens in LA this July. Tell us about it! My play "The Secret Nymph of New Hyde Park" opens at the Renegade Theatre in North Hollywood, CA on July 21 2000. Our website is http://performanceart.net/secretnymph. My other play "Peking Duck" is presently running Off-Broadway as I write this.Anything further you'd like to add? If anyone has any specific questions for me, my website (under construction) is http://jps.net/mmtbupkus and my e-mail is mmtbupkus@jps.net . I would be more than happy to chat with anyone, as I am learning all the ways of the new world. Like: "I c" for "I see." And "ty" for "Thank You". What an amazing cradle of humanity we have created for ourselves and what wonderful things to write about.
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