The Challenges of Extremely Steady Work By Robert Walden (Lou Grant & Brothers)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.backstage.com/bso/advice-columns/actors-craft/the-craft/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003788149

The Craft
The Challenges of Extremely Steady Work
April 10, 2008
By Robert Walden

An Oscar-winning producer once said, "The only thing more miserable than an out-of-work actor is a working actor." Well, I have been a professional actor for 40 years, a director and writer for 20 years, and an acting teacher on and off for more than 30 years. In that time, no one has ever brought up the idea of playing the same character five years in a row -- no conversation, no discussion, no guidance. Yet I had the good fortune and blessing (or curse and burden, if you like) to have such a thing happen to me twice in my career, to be a working actor with extremely steady work. The first time, I was on the TV series Lou Grant -- 114 episodes as Joe Rossi. The second time, I was on Brothers, the cable sitcom, playing Joe Waters for 116 episodes.



Please don't get me wrong: I've been extremely fortunate to have had steady, well-paying work in highly regarded, well-awarded TV series, with a parking place on a studio lot all mine for 10 years -- 11 if you include a year on The Bold Ones back in the early 1970s. But playing the same character for years at a time can be a real challenge. Indeed, friends, colleagues, and students have asked me over the years, How do you stay interested, alert, hungry, ambitious, inventive, motivated, and sane?

Well, you have to find ways to fulfill your contract, satisfy your employers, try to be professional, use every technique from every class you've ever taken, risk turning scenes upside down and inside out, and then see if you can manage to hold it all together -- and keep your head high -- when the script hits the wall. I'm talking about repetitive demands and story lines, similar scenes staged the same way on the same set. I'm talking about 12-hour days or longer, the lack of growth and behavior in your character, the 10-month schedule. Again, these are not complaints. They're realities faced by those lucky enough to have to solve these problems -- and who thrive in doing so.

On Lou Grant, the phrase "Rossi at his desk" must have appeared in the script 1,000 times or more. Now, unless it's pivotal to the story, it's not the writer's job to say exactly what Joe is doing at his desk. As I knew my character better than anyone else, it was my job and obligation to come up with what I did, how I did it, and how it would best serve the story while feeling alive in the scene. That Rossi was a reporter helped -- it enabled me to start a scene from where I really was that day. For example, he might have been working on more than one story at a time, up all night, frustrated with where a story was going, buoyant over a story's progress, or simply mulling the mot juste for whatever sentence he was writing. So I could use my own thoughts and feelings as a jumping-off point. It was real and could be honest and true for the character.

There was also research, my favorite part of acting. I actually received offers from people I knew to write for newspapers -- a stunt, perhaps, but an opportunity for me. I found out how it feels to be under the pressure of a deadline, to be stared at, mocked, criticized as I took chances and actually wrote some stories at high-profile publications. I learned a lot and was never stuck for behavior for "Rossi at his desk."

FULL story at link.

Marta and I loved both of Robert's shows. We did meet Ed Asner in person 2 years ago.