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[0:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello and welcome to The Drama Book Show.

[0:21] David Rigano: My name is David Rigano.

[0:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And today we are here to talk about Just Another Day by Dan Lauria.

[0:27] David Rigano: Yep.

[0:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Everybody's TV dad himself.

[0:30] David Rigano: Truly.

[0:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: From The Wonder Years.

[0:32] David Rigano: I took a photo with him when he first came in with another event and sent it to my mom and my dad and like everyone.

[0:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm like, oh my gosh.

[0:40] David Rigano: Uh, he's been so wonderful because he would just reach out and be like, hey, I'd love to do an event here.

[0:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it was just like, yeah, of course.

[0:48] David Rigano: No, no problem, Dad.

[0:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And he also was just like, if you ever need a moderator, like, yeah.

[0:52] David Rigano: And I was like, we have one.

[0:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: David will be really mad.

[0:55] David Rigano: But also, he was so much fun to talk to.

[0:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That he'd like, yeah.

[1:00] David Rigano: If I'm ever, yeah, you know, Vermont or in Allentown.

[1:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You're in Allentown and I'm in the Bahamas, I'll be London.

[1:07] David Rigano: Dan can run the whole thing.

[1:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, exactly.

[1:09] David Rigano: It's interesting because watching him talk like before the event, like he was like, let me show you this song.

[1:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Let me like tell you about this story.

[1:17] David Rigano: And it just reminded me of talking to my dad, because my dad and I are the same in that way where it's like we'll be talking, he'll be like, let me show you the song, and we'll like stop and listen to it.

[1:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I remember he wanted to show you the song from the play.

[1:26] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it was a real weird, surreal moment because I was getting stuff ready, like the chairs were all set up and everything's ready to go, and you two just happened to be sitting and talking in the front after doing like a little sound check.

[1:39] David Rigano: And he had his music playing and you guys continued talking, but I no longer could hear you talking because I could only hear the music playing.

[1:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So it felt like a fade out of a TV show.

[1:49] David Rigano: Where it was just like, yeah, the two of you just chatting and like very sentimental guitar-based music was playing like over the two of you, and I'm like, if this was zooming out, this would be the end of it.

[2:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, exactly.

[2:03] David Rigano: That's exactly what it looked like.

[2:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I'm like, what is happening?

[2:07] David Rigano: So much of the play is about music and how memories are attached to music.

[2:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I think that's why he really wanted us to get to hear it, because the characters even he'll talk more about this, but the characters even speak in old song lyrics sometimes because the play is about dementia and Alzheimer's, sometimes utilizing those things that stick to the back of our brain as a way to pull someone back.

[2:41] David Rigano: Yeah, I've seen those videos, I'm sure you have of, oh yeah, putting like a headset with music on someone who is just not there and watching them start to come back, and music will do that.

[2:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Music is just so powerful for that reason.

[2:54] David Rigano: Have you seen the one of the, I think it was like an old Follies girl?

[2:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[2:58] David Rigano: Like a Ziegfeld Follies.

[3:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And there had been like video taken of her and the other girls doing some dance that she never saw.

[3:09] David Rigano: Right.

[3:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Because how like you weren't gonna take the video and then show it to them on your phone.

[3:15] David Rigano: So we're talking 70 years later or whatever, and she remembers someone coming in with a big machine and filming it, but and she's also not all there anymore in her life, and she sees it, and she in her chair starts doing the dance.

[3:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh my god.

[3:37] David Rigano: Because again, part of that.

[3:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's still, it's the muscle memory.

[3:40] David Rigano: The music is in your muscles, it's there, it's when people know a dance.

[3:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like after a while, you stop counting because you know the dance, the dance to the sound.

[3:47] David Rigano: Yeah, that's so incredible.

[3:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like it's, uh, there's times where I've, I, the fact that you can memorize song lyrics so easily, but it's so hard to memorize a monologue sometimes.

[3:57] David Rigano: Yeah, because of that.

[3:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's all of us who memorize the countries because of Animaniacs or who were able to, I could still sing like the state song from elementary school.

[4:07] David Rigano: I was earlier with you.

[4:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You said something, and I started reciting You Are Old Father William from Alice in Wonderland.

[4:15] David Rigano: Yeah, and part of the reason that I can recite that poem, again, rhyme is another thing.

[4:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like rhyme is another way that really helps.

[4:22] David Rigano: That's why perfect rhyme is important, musical theater writers.

[4:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Agreed.

[4:26] David Rigano: But aside from that, the first experience that I ever had with that poem from Alice in Wonderland was in the 1985 TV movie musical version of Alice in Wonderland, where it was performed by Sammy Davis Jr.

[4:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[4:44] David Rigano: Uh-huh.

[4:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Exactly.

[4:45] David Rigano: So it's some of you.

[4:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[4:48] David Rigano: That's, it's my dad, my was a teacher, and my dad, after retiring from being a sheet metal worker, became a teacher's aide and was working with her, and he would always tell me, he goes, we have such trouble sometimes teaching, getting the kids to remember like the top 100 words that are used in the English language, like that you have to like know and memorize and remembering how they're used and getting that vocabulary down, but they can recite the entire We Don't Talk About Bruno.

[5:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He goes, I've never, and then my dad doesn't watch cartoons at this point.

[5:23] David Rigano: He's like, I have never seen that movie, but I know that song because we have 30 first graders and that is what they know.

[5:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's just that those things stick.

[5:34] David Rigano: And that's what like Schoolhouse Rock is all about.

[5:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[5:38] David Rigano: Or as someone who used to drive in California, like the amount of musicals I've memorized because I used to drive in the car and sing them.

[5:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's, oh wait, I know this song.

[5:47] David Rigano: I know this song because I sang it.

[5:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: There was a show, I'm not gonna mention the name of it because I didn't like it very much, but I really liked the music.

[5:58] David Rigano: Uh-huh.

[5:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I at the time found a way to continue listening to the music.

[6:06] David Rigano: Okay.

[6:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, it's close.

[6:08] David Rigano: And then years later, a friend of mine was telling me about a show that they wanted to write, and I said, it doesn't sound like you're doing this, and even if you do a lot of what this does, you're definitely gonna do it better.

[6:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But I mentioned I brought this show up and I said, just take a look at it just to make sure that you're, you don't accidentally do any of these things.

[6:31] David Rigano: But I said, I don't think you're going to, and no one's gonna come after you for this show that no one really remembers.

[6:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But because I had brought it up, I found the cast album that was eventually made.

[6:45] David Rigano: Oh, okay.

[6:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And put it in my ears on the way home, and I was singing a lot.

[6:51] David Rigano: I hadn't listened to my bootleg in maybe a decade at least.

[6:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Those things stick with you.

[6:59] David Rigano: And as soon as I put it in my ears, I was fully singing along with the music.

[7:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: The same way that I still remember every part of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

[7:16] David Rigano: As we delve into how music can affect your memories, let's let Dan Lauria and you, who moderated, discuss the same thing.

[7:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Thank you for coming.

[7:25] Dan Lauria: So I wanted to start because obviously you are best known as an actor.

[7:38] Dan Lauria: I've written a number of screenplays and ghost wrote a lot of screenplays.

[7:44] Dan Lauria: And this is my fourth published play.

[7:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay, nice.

[7:47] Dan Lauria: I'm not a writer who acts, I'm an actor who writes.

[7:50] Dan Lauria: And it's a big difference.

[7:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[7:52] Dan Lauria: Yeah.

[7:52] Dan Lauria: I actually like to rewrite.

[7:54] Dan Lauria: That's one big difference.

[7:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, read no, I far pre as a writer, I far prefer writing is hard.

[8:02] Dan Lauria: Rewriting is easy.

[8:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, a lot of people say the opposite.

[8:06] Dan Lauria: I know, no, I think that looking at the blank page and trying to figure out what to put on it, that's scary.

[8:11] Dan Lauria: Looking at a page that has something and figuring out what you did wrong, that's well.

[8:15] Dan Lauria: I write late at night, so when I finish writing, I read it and I go, wow, Eugene O'Neill, move over.

[8:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, yes, exactly.

[8:23] Dan Lauria: And then in the morning I wake up and I read it as an actor and I go, I don't want to say this crap, and I throw it away.

[8:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So it's very hard.

[8:32] Dan Lauria: What has your relationship with writers been over the years as you, as we just read your credits as you've been doing TV and movies and theater?

[8:41] Dan Lauria: My mentor was the great actor Charles Durning.

[8:45] Dan Lauria: And I literally, from the first day I came to New York, he said if I ever went a day without doing a year without doing a play, he'd never speak to me again.

[8:53] Dan Lauria: So I never did.

[8:54] Dan Lauria: Even doing COVID.

[8:56] Dan Lauria: Thanks to Ann, we did the guys all over the place.

[8:59] Dan Lauria: But once I got to The Wonder Years, I produced a couple of plays.

[9:03] Dan Lauria: One was A Bronx Tale.

[9:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[9:05] Dan Lauria: And then when I didn't want to keep doing that, and when De Niro bought the play, Charlie said, what are we gonna do now?

[9:12] Dan Lauria: And we started a reading series.

[9:14] Dan Lauria: We were gonna read one play a month to help writers get literary agents.

[9:19] Dan Lauria: And for six months we read one play, and then the next six months we read two plays a month.

[9:26] Dan Lauria: And then for the next nine years, we read a new play every Monday night for nine years.

[9:34] Dan Lauria: Helping writers get literary agents.

[9:37] Dan Lauria: We were not successful as getting many plays produced.

[9:41] Dan Lauria: But we were very successful in LA getting writers literary agents, but they all ended up writing for television.

[9:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[9:52] Dan Lauria: Understandably, because it was very hard for them to get new plays produced.

[9:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Of course.

[9:57] Dan Lauria: So when somebody says, look, nobody's gonna do your play, but you can make a lot of money writing for television, they wrote for television.

[10:03] Dan Lauria: See all those credits I have on television?

[10:05] Dan Lauria: Ninety percent of those is because I helped the writer get a literary so paid its way.

[10:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, listen, it's a smaller industry than it seems like.

[10:14] Dan Lauria: Yeah.

[10:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: When you were taking on, so you had said that you had written a bunch of screenplays.

[10:20] Dan Lauria: When you were stepping into the writing as an actor who writes, did you start with screenplays?

[10:20] Dan Lauria: Did you start with plays?

[10:29] Dan Lauria: Oh no, I in undergraduate school I got interested in acting.

[10:33] Dan Lauria: Then I was in the Marine Corps for three years, and then I went to the University of Connecticut for my MFA in playwriting.

[10:40] Dan Lauria: So my degree is in playwriting.

[10:42] Dan Lauria: So I always started with, I always just like dialogue, you know.

[10:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[10:47] Dan Lauria: Then I got put as I got to know more and more people in television and movies pushed into rewriting for people.

[10:53] Dan Lauria: Uh-huh.

[10:54] Dan Lauria: Hollywood's a funny place.

[10:55] Dan Lauria: If you have a big agent, you get a lot of credit and a lot of money.

[10:58] Dan Lauria: If you don't have a big agent, some writer will say, can you rewrite this scene?

[11:03] Dan Lauria: And they take you to dinner, but that's about it.

[11:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Can your dialogue be heard in anything that we might know that you can say?

[11:10] Dan Lauria: Oh, yeah, a number of them, but I don't know if I could say I don't I wouldn't really want to.

[11:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay, I'm sure that's, that's why I ask.

[11:19] Dan Lauria: So to this play in particular.

[11:22] Dan Lauria: What made you want to tell this story?

[11:26] Dan Lauria: I've been so involved with raising money for regional theaters.

[11:31] Dan Lauria: I wanted to write something that, uh, because we're in such trouble financially.

[11:36] Dan Lauria: Yeah, I wanted to write something that was very simple to do.

[11:40] Dan Lauria: Right away, I'm thinking of a two-hander, and I thought about my friend Wendie Malick, who I've done a lot of plays with.

[11:47] Dan Lauria: And so started with two old comedy writers on a bench.

[11:52] Dan Lauria: That's where it started.

[11:53] Dan Lauria: And then I went to see a friend of mine who was in his nineties, still alive, Lou Auger, went up with his daughter, and he's at an assistant living place.

[12:05] Dan Lauria: He has dementia.

[12:06] Dan Lauria: Not Alzheimer's, it's a big difference.

[12:08] Dan Lauria: He doesn't recognize me when I go up there, but if we start talking about the New York Yankees, he goes back to when he was five years old and he talks about seeing Babe Ruth play.

[12:18] Dan Lauria: Then he works his way up through World War Two and talks about Joe DiMaggio, then Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra.

[12:24] Dan Lauria: And then sometimes he'll even get to where he recognizes me.

[12:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[12:29] Dan Lauria: So I took that and made my two comedy writers have dementia. And there was a third character, but I took that out because every play I've seen about dementia or Alzheimer's, whether I liked them or not, good one, bad one, they always seem to be about the family and how they deal with this.

[12:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[12:51] Dan Lauria: But I never saw a play that the only characters are the ones who have dementia. And I didn't write, I did not want to write a downer. So you have two comedy writers with dementia. Every no matter how down it gets, if somebody says a line from a movie, one of the lines is, Ain't that the truth, the awful truth? And the other one goes, The awful truth, Cary Grant, I read it down. And they're back up.

[13:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[13:20] Dan Lauria: And the motif of the play is that the creative spirit never dies.

[13:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[13:27] Dan Lauria: We'll get a tear out of you. But literally, one of the saddest lines in the play, every night you just hear sniffles, two lines later is the biggest laugh.

[13:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[13:40] Dan Lauria: But they're comedy writers. They can't, when they hear a straight line, it's the natural instinct to come out with a punch. So it makes what seems absurd at the beginning, it's like an Ionesco play or Beckett play, becomes very linear in a lot of ways.

[13:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Did you, when you set out to write it, did you know from the start that you would also act in it?

[14:03] Dan Lauria: Yeah, I initially wrote it for Wendy Malick and I, and then Jody Long helped with some development and Amanda Plummer, but then Patty McCormick came on, and Patty is just we rehearse once a week, and we're ready to go up.

[14:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[14:21] Dan Lauria: So when a regional theater calls us, we say them all rehearsals. We literally have a tech day, then we have a QTQ the next morning. That night we do a dress rehearsal and then we open. And it's partly because we're too lazy to rehearse at our age. We don't want our ears. We just want to do it. But also to save money for the regional theater.

[14:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And the play, if you can take a park bench and put two music stands, it can be read like love letters.

[14:51] Dan Lauria: And they even had a reading with Carol Burnett and Dick Van Dyke to raise money.

[15:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[15:02] Dan Lauria: At the Samuel Beckett Theater. I was a kind of a but we've we've always Charlie Durning got like Ann's play, the guys who was done here after 9-11 to get people to go back downtown and to bring attention to all the firemen who died, which was great.

[15:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But Wendy and I we just could not see this play just go away.

[15:25] Dan Lauria: So every time there was a major fire or something, Wendy and I would go, hey Ann, can we mind if we do the play here to raise money for the fire department? So I think the theater, I don't know, we're diminishing our oral history. And I just hate seeing that.

[15:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I mean I hate to say it, but these poor people in Gaza or in the Ukraine, you know, fifty years from now, a hundred years from now, there'll be one sentence in a history book unless somebody writes a great play.

[16:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[16:00] Dan Lauria: 911's always going to be relevant. Because of the play to guys. Fire departments will still actors will say, let's do this to raise money for the local fire. And I hope with my play that we do it to raise money for regional theaters and for Alzheimer's. So there's a purpose behind all these things, you know.

[16:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: How frequently when you're writing, do you know that you are going to act or do you have a preference when it comes to?

[16:24] Dan Lauria: I always start with actors in mind.

[16:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[16:37] Dan Lauria: Yeah. I have a play that I finished and now I'm on the board of the playwrights unit at the actor's studio, and we're gonna read it. But I put it, I wrote it for Charles Durning and we did an initial reading over twenty years ago with him, Deborah Messing and Gene Smart.

[16:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Heard of him.

[16:58] Dan Lauria: Yeah. And it went well, and Charlie wanted to do it, but then he got sick and then he had the problem with lines and everything. So I put it away. But now I might read the part myself.

[17:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[17:13] Dan Lauria: Just to hear it. But I didn't really everybody said, Hey, it's a good play, let's do it. Joe Montana is always saying, 'cause he wants to direct it, come on, we can find a good old Irish actor. Nah, Joe. It was for Charlie. So I write for actors.

[17:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Sometimes when I start, I really have older actors and like you and I were talking about older movies. So I'll have an older actor in mind. Usually a character actor that nobody remembers anymore. But still to have a distinct voice.

[17:42] Dan Lauria: Yeah. I'm doing that right now with one of my plays. I wrote the first draft, I created the characters from scratch, and now I'm going, all right, if this was produced off Broadway, who would I want to see? And now I'm trying to hear their voices in my head as I rewrite the book.

[17:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I would say to you, don't limit yourself. Go back to old films.

[18:00] Dan Lauria: Yeah.

[18:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Would Fred Astaire be right for that part? Would Gene Kelly be right for that part? Is that Sid Charisse? Is you know Ginger Rogers? Who's and Gene Kelly can be in any of my musicals that he wants to.

[18:15] Dan Lauria: Even though he's gone. Listen, we'll make it work. I always tell if I can get young writers to watch old movies. First of all, they can't believe how story-driven old movies, and they're not cut like last year Oppenheimer won best set at it. The longest take with two actors in the same frame, where you see their faces, I'm not talking about over the shoulder, is ten seconds. That's not editing. You're not going to learn anything about acting.

[18:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But you watch, like we were talking about double indemnity.

[18:44] Dan Lauria: Yeah. And the tracking shots where they're just following them and letting them.

[18:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[18:54] Dan Lauria: Don't be afraid of writing that just because we don't do that anymore, right? And I feel like in so many ways, something like His Girl Friday is such a predecessor to like the walk in talks in an Aaron Sorkin.

[19:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, yeah.

[19:08] Dan Lauria: Like he this fast-paced dialogue, and you gotta get it all right because we are not stopping. There's no cuts where you can get this part of it right there. It was called acting. We don't get as much anymore.

[19:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You know, in timing.

[19:20] Dan Lauria: As you're also saying, there is a place that we do still have to do that. And that curtain goes up.

[19:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, everybody says, why did you not do more movies or more cut?

[19:30] Dan Lauria: I turned a lot of things down because I did a play every year. You know.

[19:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Do you have back to my cards?

[19:44] Dan Lauria: Do you have any tips for writers who are acting in their own play? And or for actors who want to write for themselves?

[19:56] Dan Lauria: Again, have the character in mind. If you start writing for yourself, a lot of times you fall into what you're safe with.

[20:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[20:06] Dan Lauria: And if you really want to work on your acting, you should challenge yourself. You know, I mean, the other play I have here, Dinner with the Boys was a spoof on violence. It's a D's and does play. And then this one, the playing a character was a very good comedy writer. There couldn't be different, but their sense of humor in each. But I would say, challenge, don't be afraid of challenging self if you're gonna write for yourself.

[20:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[20:34] Dan Lauria: But you still need a good director, somebody like Tommy Kail, and they guide you through some of these things. I like a lot, I always loved working with Tommy because he didn't want actors to lock themselves in. He had a great way of getting really what he wanted, but he would always tell you, Oh, that was great. I love that choice you made today. Now don't get locked in though, try something else tomorrow.

[20:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And sooner or later you did it the way he wanted.

[21:01] Dan Lauria: I like that one the best. So he cons you into it. He's usually right, and he lets you experiment. Every once in a while he said, I never saw the scene that way. That's good. Let's keep going there.

[21:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's a very confident director.

[21:13] Dan Lauria: Yeah. Were there any unique challenges to being in rehearsal with a director when you are also the writer?

[21:21] Dan Lauria: On this last play, there was when we did it. First, we did it in Ellenville upstate in the Shadowland stages, and we lost the actress right before we went up. And Patty McCormick came in and did it on script. James Glossman directed it. We did really well. We got great reviews, even though the script disappears.

[21:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah because she was so into it.

[21:44] Dan Lauria: Then we did it in the Berkshires, and I don't know why the director wanted to change it. I didn't like that production, but we got a rave review from the Boston Globe. So then we came into New York, James couldn't do it, and Eric Krebs, who co-produced it with me. And we modified the blocking a little bit, but the intent was there. Patty and I got it.

[22:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[22:08] Dan Lauria: Eric gave us one really good note. He gave us three notes. One we went, eh? One we said, no way.

[22:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[22:16] Dan Lauria: Go find another play. And then one we went, yeah, that's really good. And we incorporated it. But I had Patty on my side, because I kept saying to Patty, look, it's my play. You anything you want to do is okay. I'll go with you. And I told Eric that. So I didn't say no. It was like working with Judith Light in Lombardi. I would never say no to Tommy. I would go, Yeah, okay, Tom, so that's what you want to do.

[22:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And do the go.

[22:44] Dan Lauria: No, that stinks. No, dang it. Judith, she's a pisser to work with. She's so funny. And so there was different things came in and out. And but I like to rewrite.

[22:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[22:56] Dan Lauria: And Patty, she's just three weeks ago, we were running the lines in LA, just when we found out we were going to get the Cele production. She came up with a winner of a line. Boy, that's in the play now. It's not in the published video. But and I'm not giving her any credit. She's not going to get a dime, but I stole that line.

[23:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So the credit is on the podcast.

[23:18] Dan Lauria: Yeah, she gets to say it every night.

[23:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Early in the process, is there ever a moment when you are in when you're in rehearsals and maybe you're trying to say a line and you're like, oh, this isn't working, and then you're like, shit, that's my fault. I'm the writer. I have to fix it. Like, what is that process like?

[23:43] Dan Lauria: Again, I'm an actor who writes, not a writer who acts. So if I'm working with a really good actor or actress, and they're having that I don't know, that thing where your tongue just will not get around the word. I'll always say, look, say it the way you want to say it. I might not write that in the published script.

[24:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[24:06] Dan Lauria: But I'll let them go a little bit with it. As long as it doesn't change the intent. You gotta remember in those old movies we were talking about, when they have a four-minute scene without a cut, they are not word perfect.

[24:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[24:19] Dan Lauria: You know, they're pretty close, close enough people know because they went to work six days a week when they weren't shooting. So they were rehearsing the day before. I had breakfast with Cary Grant and that scene in His Girl Friday, where they're going around the desk. I said, geez, that you must have rehearsed for he said, No, Dan, that was this literally we only did two takes. He said, The day before Roz Russell and I didn't, we weren't shooting, so we were on an empty sound stage with a card table, and we rehearsed all day.

[24:49] Dan Lauria: The next day when we went over, Howard Hawke said, "Show me what you got." Did it like it's a play. And he sat there and watched them go around the thing, and he said, "Okay." And then he adjusted it blocking a little bit. Then he said, "Okay, you guys go sit over there, have a coffee." And then he worked with the focuser, and you know, back then they had the document. And Cary Grant said, "We only did it a second time because the focuser back then, you had a third guy on the camera." He felt he might have got a little out of focus on one turn around the bench. Uh huh. He said, "But I looked at it and I know that's the first take we did." So they literally, that's the first they did it once.

You wouldn't ever see that today. They would take two days to shoot. Yeah. Cut cut. And then they talk about, oh, what a great actor. I go, how would you know? How would you know it's cut on every line? It's like you never see cuts into Fred Astaire dancing or Eleanor Powell or Gene Kelly or Sid Sharice. They do him. Why? Because they want you to know that wait, this is for you. We're giving you a performance. We're not editing back and forth, you know.

[25:59] Dan Lauria: Was there any time that either because you mentioned like you write it and you're Eugene O'Neill, and then you read it the next day. Was there any moment where you as the writer thought something was gonna work and then you as the actor hated the line when you were trying to rehearse it? Oh, that happens a lot. Yeah. But again, I'm an actor, and you work with somebody like Wendy or Patty McCormick, and you just say a line. I remember doing a play with Lorraine Toussaint. And we had this line. I know the author loved it, and the director was like, "Oh, you guys are great." I looked at Lorraine and went, just rolled my eyes. And she said, "That's one of the worst lines I've ever heard." The greatest, I think the greatest line an actor ever said to a writer was when Spencer Tracy was doing Inherit the Wind.

Now it was a Broadway play, and Stanley Kramer bought the film rights, and he wrote the film script and he flowered up some of the speeches that Tracy gave to the jury. Uh-huh. And there's a it's almost four minutes without a cut in the movie. And Tracy's just brilliant. And when it was over, Kramer cut everybody in the cast and the people in the back, the crew, they all applauded. And Kramer said to Tracy, he goes, "Spence, that was great. I'm printing it, but I'd like to do it one more time." And Tracy said, "Why?" And he said, "It took me six months to write this line. You're just saying it." And Tracy said, "It took me 30 years to learn how to say a line like that, so it didn't sound like it took you six months to write it."

And Kramer said, "All right, print it." And they never shot again. If you see the tribute to such a Tracy, they talk and then they show it. It's brilliant. Writers have a tendency, you write a great line, you want to lean on it. Actors, usually, if they're good actors, if it's a great line, let the line do it. Yeah. And then it takes time for writers to learn that by not laying on it. I'm actually complimenting your words. You know. And some lines, you know, I just wrote a line last night. And I love the line. I don't know how you can say it. It's there are two again, two people on a bench and they're talking about wisdom, and one of them says, "Is wisdom the mother of simplicity or the father of complexity?"

And the man replies, he said, "If I was wise enough, I probably would know the answer." I love that. I don't know if I'd want to say it. Uh-huh. It sounds like slam that in there. Uh huh. Now, unless I can write a good entrance into it and a good flow out of it. Yeah. And that's you fall in love with the lines, but sometimes the line it actually fits the characters. I'm not worried about that. But I don't know if it fits into the flow. Are we hearing the writer too much? Yeah. And that's what Spencer Tracy was saying.

[29:12] Dan Lauria: Now, in Just Another Day, because they're comedy writers with dementia, you oh, you got a license to kill. You can say almost anything. You could say the harshest thing in the world, because people with dementia sometimes flare up, and then you can have the sweetest line. But these are two different characters. So I gotta I'm more worried about the entrance in and the entrance out. Yeah. So but the first thing you do is you write the whole thing. Then you go back and you make notes and you fix on it. I had a reading of a play, and I had a line that was supposed to be a big reveal. And not that I was so in love with the line, but I thought that it worked on paper when I wrote it. And then my best friend was reading that part.

And this was a cold read. This was hey, come to my apartment and I'll buy the pizza and you read the play. And boy, did she try her hardest to make that line work? And I was listening to her try to act. And I'm oh, didn't there's no world in which that line? And then everyone very nicely tried to bring that line up in the feedback afterwards. So this I went, "No, I know. It doesn't I'll fix it. I'll fix it later." Robert Mitchum had a great line about that. He said, when I he said that when I get lines like that, I just say them as fast as I can. Let the audience figure it out.

[30:35] Dan Lauria: I do want to open it up to all assembled as well. If anyone has any questions for Dan about this play or his writing process or acting in his plays, though those of you who know and have worked with him, or those of you who are meeting him for the first time. Usually there's 15 Wonder Years people here, and they all ask all the men ask for Winnie Cooper's phone number. Yeah. I'm gonna repeat just for the podcast because sometimes the mic doesn't pick up. So we the question is why the subject of dementia, which is such a big topic. Again. The characteristic is forgive me. That they repeat things until you can't stand it anymore. And that is not a dramatic device. Again, do you want to repeat that?

Yeah, so why this big topic, especially when a lot of dementia patients have a habit of repeating things over and over, which is not always the best dramatic device. Right, but again, anything can be used as a dramatic device if you play it right. So the reason why it's called Just Another Day is in the first act, I am trying to get her to write. And in the second act, she's trying with there's no awareness of the day before. She's trying to get me to write to hang on to it. And they don't realize they're actually using words and sentences from the first act to stimulate something in the second act. And I we got rave reviews, and believe me, you know, this stuff, I don't care what the reviewers say, that's a lot of crap.

You if you're an actor and you work really hard and somebody gives you a bad review, it hurts. And if you're a writer and you put all that time in it and you get bad reviews, it hurts. So we got rave reviews, and I'm really appreciative of it. But the best response we ever got was one of the first readings we did at New Jersey Rep. This woman in her 40s said, "I'm going through this with my mother right now. Thank you for not making them stupid." And she said something which Ann referred to. She said, "My mother will still come up with a one-liner that gets you laughing. She doesn't realize she said that one-liner the day before. But it's still pretty witty." Uh-huh. A minute before. Well, by the end of the play, the woman has gone that far, but the guy is still a little bit together.

You know. So there's different degrees. But you people love that, and the second act was so different, but it was really the same. You see where the spark comes from. And of course, I got the device of the old movies. Whenever they get lost, you know, they cling to a line that brings them back to, and they remember, you know, she has a line, it's funny yesterday is a soap opera of confused storylines interrupted by commercials for soap and toothpaste and women in white with loud bells, meaning the nurse who's off stage, you never see. And yet, and then she says, "And yet I can remember the lines in old movies like they were yesterday." And they go back and forth. That's their safety device. It's not an accident when you go to these homes that they're asking these people with dementia, more so than the Alzheimer's, to paint or to play on a piano songs, they remember words from songs.

And even something like basket weaving, you'll say to them, "You were you made half of this yesterday." "Oh, I did," and then they go right back to it because the creative spirit is still there, and that's what the play is about. So it's not as repetitive as you think, but there's elements like the old movies that happen in both acts. And you realize each day, oh, they're gonna get together, they're gonna write comedy, and they're gonna fall in love. See, now you don't have to see the play. I just typed it off. Yeah, I know, but I for the general audience.

[35:01] Dan Lauria: So anybody else have any questions about the play, about the process? Yes, so uh I've seen this play many times, and also the previous play that's also been with voice. You and speaking of what you said earlier about seeing old films, seeing character actors, and trying to imagine now what the what a modern-day equivalent of a traditional character actor would be in both your previous play and this play. There are different archetypes that uh characters are playing into. How do you create that in a way that's bringing an audience that doesn't have that background information of these famous uh titans of a character actor and make it accessible for them while also giving people who are familiar with these um characters the ability to connect to the package?

[36:00] Dan Lauria: So the question is when you have this connection with these old character actors who you sometimes write with them in mind, how do you write them into it in such a way that audiences who are not familiar with them, it's still accessible for them, but that for audiences who are, they will see those either archetypes or tropes or whatever inspiration you're putting into those characters.

[36:29] Dan Lauria: Jerry, just to on the dinner with the boys, I had three old characters, Charlie Derning was written for uh Charles Nerning, Dom Delawise, Peter Falk, and Jack Klugman. We actually read it with those four. Matter of fact, half the funny yeah, not bad, huh? First reading met a lot of those really hysterical lines, they were ad libs that Dom Delawitz threw in at the very first reading. Matter of fact, we they're full audience, 300 people there, and they're reading, and I'm in the wing watching, and Charlie said a lot, and Dom came back with a one-liner that brought down a house.

[37:10] Dan Lauria: And Charlie held the script up to the audience and says, "It doesn't say that in here." And I yelled out from the wing, "It does now." And it's in there. So they, but in this play, Just Another Day, I really cheated. This play starts with a theme song written by a Lord Graham Russell of Air Supply. And it's written for this play. And while that song plays to at the very beginning, before the lights come up, on the back scrim are photos, still shots of old movies. And the audience liked it so much that in the second act, when we started the second act, we only had like a few pictures and just part of the song. Now we play the entire song all over again with 22 different pictures. Because we hear the audience.

[38:14] Dan Lauria: You commie Pinko bedwetter, and they just know. And Patty and I are back saying, "We're just loving that." Now I even have a picture of the bad seed because Patty was in it. Oh, of course. Yeah. And you always hear, "That's the woman in the play." Those are fun to see, to hear, like when the audience catches that, or if it goes by and they don't notice, then that's so they don't notice. But yeah. And Patty and I, we have a thing where every night we dedicate the performance to an old character actor. You know, she'll say, "People you probably didn't like of tonight for Una Merkel," Patty will go. "Okay." He has only made nine million movies. So we, that's our little prayer before we go out. And that's the great thing with character actors is how many of them you can say their name and you get, "Huh?" And you say, "He was the cab driver." Oh, and everyone goes, "Okay." That, and I think you still get that with character actors.

[39:26] Dan Lauria: Yeah, and sometimes more with the character actors than the big names as time's going by, but I'm just amazed at young actors who don't watch these old films. Charles Durning said a long time ago, he said, "Every day that I'm not working on a play or a movie, I work out." As heavy as he was, he never smoked or drank, so he actually lived to be 89. And he would walk and he would speak aloud, he would read aloud. He said he usually goes half the time on the toilet, but I would read aloud for an hour every day and watch an old movie. And he would watch some movies 80, 90 times he's seen them, and he'd be looking for little things to steal. Uh-huh. And I remember once doing a play, I said, because he saw everything I ever did.

And I said, "Charlie, I got a bit in the second act. I'm bringing down a house. You're gonna love it." So we came. The night he came, it worked great. Everybody laughed when it was over. I said, "What did you think, Charlie?" And he went, "Edgar Buchanan, 1937 in Coconuts with the Marx Brothers." And then the next time I went over, he put it on, and it was the same. He goes, "There's nothing new, Dan. It's nothing new. They've been acting for thousands of years. It's how you use it, how you interpret it." And that's why these old movies where they're not cutting, it's not a talking head. Yeah. Actors and writers can learn a lot more. And it's a cheap way of doing it.

[41:01] Dan Lauria: And I never want to hear from a writer when I teach, "I have writer's block." That doesn't exist. Just take your favorite old novel, your favorite old book, and set it in another time. And we were talking earlier. I always example. Yeah, I said, "Let's make a Western out of the Hunchback of Notre Dame." And they go, "What are you talking about? How can you?" All right? You have somebody who was disfigured in the Civil War. Now he lives up in the mountains. The trees are now the bells. Maybe we make him smart. You know, he goes into town and because of the way he looks, people make fun of him and they beat him up, and a saloon girl gives him water. He goes back up in the mountains, finds out the saloon girl is accused of a murder.

He breaks her out of jail, brings her up to the mountain, defends the mountain against the people that are coming up to get her again while they find out who really killed the girl. And then the girl leaves, the poor guy is left alone with the trees. That's the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

[42:06] Dan Lauria: Everybody knows one of the few old movies everybody knows is Double Indemnity. Watch Double Indemnity and watch Body Heat. There's the same movie. Watch Postman Always Rings Twice. Same movie. And because you cannot copyright, thank God, you cannot copyright an idea. So a woman getting somebody to kill her husband, there's got to be nine different just set it in another time. Yeah, most of the women will love to go see that. Especially if she gets away with it.

[42:38] Dan Lauria: And I, you made me think of something. There's this video that goes around the internet of, and I'm sure there are so few of these because they actually had to pay for the film, and film wasn't cheap. But bloopers from old movies going around. And I told you that over the pandemic, I discovered, I say discovered for myself, Barbara Stanwyck, who I had never seen in anything before. I saw Double Indemnity over the pandemic, and I went on a deep dive. But there's a great blooper of her, and I think this goes also back to what you were saying. She's saying the line, and she says, "And I told him that if you and I knew goddamn well that I was gonna screw that up, and I did." And I love that she does this fully in character. She is, and I'm watching, I'm like, "That's why I love Barbara Stanwyck." Because she is so intensely in that character, and even as she's screwing up, she's screwing up in character.

[43:35] Dan Lauria: Yeah. Like I said, I didn't get to work with my idols, but I did get to know, like I'm on the board of the National Veterans Foundation, and I'll tell you, I have photos with me and Jimmy Stewart and me and Robert Mitchum and Cesar Romero, who was the best storyteller of all of them. And to hear them talk about what it was like to, like Robert Mitchum, you couldn't get him to talk about acting. He was a funny guy, but he wouldn't. He was a tough guy. But they liked talking about movies. And both Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, when I mentioned a character actor like a Frank Fallon, and they weren't together, they're separate times. Both of them had the same almost a word perfect response. They went, "Oh, if it wasn't for guys like Frank Fallon, I wouldn't be Jimmy Stewart." See, that's how much they respected those people because back then those character actors went to work every day, whether they were shooting or not.

[44:34] Dan Lauria: So sometimes they'd show up on a lot and they'd say, "Okay, you got a scene with Cary Grant today on stage 14." So they're trying to memorize the lines that day. They're running over. They don't go to the director, they don't go to the AD. They knocked on Cary Grant's door and said, "Cary, what's going on?" "Come on in, Frank." And they work up a routine, and then when they got on the set, the directors always show me what you got. They were expected to do bits and little takes, you know. And Cary Grant told me a great story about His Girl Friday. He couldn't look at Billy Gilbert. He would just crack up. So he and Rosalind Russell are rehearsing by themselves the scene where they're going around the bench, and a runner comes over and says, "Howard Hawks says, you guys got to come over and watch this."

So it's the famous scene where Billy Gilbert shows up with the reprieve for the guy who was gonna hang, and Clarence Kolb is the mayor, and Gene Lockhart's the warden. It's just amazing. For the podcast audience, if you haven't seen His Girl Friday, that's Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, and every great character actor in Hollywood. Every one of them is terrific. But it's in that scene, it's a master class in timing.

[45:53] Dan Lauria: And the first, and it's actually there were two cameras set up so that with the three of them together, that was one take. And then by the door was a separate camera. But when they were doing that scene, the first take, Cary Grant told me, he says, "It was ruined by me and Ross Russell. We were behind the camera. We couldn't stop laughing. We ruined the take." And when it was over, Howard Hawks gave us that stern look. But I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, guys. We couldn't help it." And Billy Gilbert said, "That's okay, Cary. Now we can do it again." They just love doing it. Now at the end of the film, Billy Gilbert comes in. First of all, he said nobody told him to come in with an umbrella. He just he did that on camera.

But he cracked up Cary Grant. So Howard Hawks ruined the take. And Howard Hawks was a tough guy. He said, "Come on, Cary, let's get it." So another take is ruined. And Howard Hawks said, "I'm printing the next take, whether you screw it up or not." And it was fun to hear Cary Grant curse. He said, "But I looked at Billy Gilbert and I said, 'Don't fuck around.'" And Billy Gilbert said, "Okay, Cary. Now the lines are supposed to go, the mayor is saying about Billy Gilbert. He's speaking like a child." And Cary Grant says, "Out of the mouth of babes," and Rosalind Russell has the next line. So now they said, "Okay, let's go. Action." Clarence Colt says, "He's speaking like a child." Cary Grant says, "Out of the mouth of babes."

And Billy Gilbert goes, "Hi, babe." And Cary Grant, if you watch the movie, he loses it. But if you watch real close, you have to see it on a big screen. If you look at his right side, his jacket goes like this. And that's because Rosalind Russell kicked him out of the camera. He said, "I could have killed him." Oh, I'm gonna go home and watch that movie tonight. So it was that whole camaraderie that's lost because we're not relying on the written word as much as we did with the old movies.

[48:00] Dan Lauria: Uh-huh. So the written word causes a creativity. Getting back to, do we have, before I close it up for the evening, do we have any other questions from all assembled? That's fine. Yeah. Go ahead. We've got the time. No, we've got the time.

[48:18] Audience Member: Um, when we spoke somewhat earlier, you were expressing a lot of concern about the relationship between AI and actors' voices and images and where technology was put in the profession. Can you update us on your thoughts?

[48:34] Dan Lauria: I thought Charles Durning was one of the most prescient of actors I knew. I remember him getting kicked out of a SAG meeting because he didn't want to merge with all of AFTRA. He wanted to give AFTRA our stunt people and our extras, and we take just their actors and make just an actors' union. And he wanted equity in there, and everybody said, "Equity's so poor, no, we'll lose all our money." And Charlie stood up and said, "You guys don't realize in 20 years live is gonna be the only thing worth anything." And he actually told me, "You keep writing, because they won't be able to replace the writer," but they have. AI has replaced the writer. So I don't know where we're going to go. I never thought they would replace writing, but they are. So actors, they don't need actors anymore.

[49:27] Dan Lauria: They're self-tapes, cutting on every line. I haven't seen anybody listen in years. You know, so that whole art is being lost. But Tony Shalhoub had a great line. We were talking, he said, I don't know what's going to happen. It might end up with me and Alfred Molina doing a two-hander on a corner of 36th and 7th Avenue, directed by Dan while Wendie Malick and Joe Montaigne pass the hat around, but we'll be there. I'll be there to put something in that hat. Yeah, because that's going to be the attraction is that wow, they're right in front of us. I mean, watching these little five-minute videos, and then you watch a kid who's never been. I used to say little kid. Now I'm saying you watch college kids who have never seen a play, and you bring them in, and they're taken back if it's a good play.

Problem is right now we're not necessarily doing the best plays. We're doing plays because of a theme or a cause. I'll tell you one thing that pisses me off. Every grant I've read has one word in common: young. Young women, young black male writers, young female writers, young LGBTQ writers, young writers. Excuse me, that doesn't make the play better. Go by the words, because a bad play, I don't care what your cause is, a bad play is gonna hurt that cause. Do the best plays. And it's one way to find out. Have a reading of it before you produce it. And within the app did it within all those demographics, there are older writers who haven't had their voices heard who have a completely different perspective on what that demographic is going through.

And they and I just don't care who wrote anything. I don't care what your cause is. I'm as liberal as they come. I'm way left of left. And I don't want to hear about your cause if it's not a good play. Uh-huh. I see a cause I'm really interested in. I run to go see a play, and I go, oh my God, this is gonna hurt. People are gonna come here. They're not gonna want to contribute to this. Why did you do this play? So your motif is to produce a bad play. Okay. But yeah. I had to sell my house to produce my play. No, I couldn't get I worked at theaters all around the country. I had theaters gave me awards for helping them raise money. They wouldn't read my play because they said we can't get a grant for a 75-year-old writer.

I said, that doesn't change the words on the page. Yes. I might have written the play, but I didn't write those reviews. Why don't I doesn't fit our motif? Okay. You know, and I think that's hurting theater a lot right now.

[52:17] Dan Lauria: To close it off, and I think this is segueing nicely out of that. What do you hope that the future of this play is? You've mentioned it a little bit, but specifically, what do you hope the future of this play is, and what do you hope that people will take away from it when they see it, whether that's you performing it or Dick Van Dyke or someone at the actor's home of New Jersey? No, I'm just hoping a lot of regional theaters will do it. If they want Patty and I, we're there. But if they want to do it with two locals who have a nice following, it's I want it done to help regional theaters. I wrote the simplest play I could. Yeah. There's really no special effects. Graham Russell's been great about letting his theme song.

Anybody who produces this play can use that song. The stills from the old movies. If you don't want the ones I have, fine, use your own. But I just want it to help regional theater. I don't really need anything. I'm fine. Uh-huh. If I died yesterday, all I'd say to God is thanks, it was fun. And but we're the theater's really in trouble now. Kids that make going to college making 10-minute movies, they have no idea what it is to sustain a character or tell a story. And we got to get back to that. And there's things we can do. There's uh I'll give you one example. I've always wanted to do it. I could never get to David Schultz, the head of Starbucks. But I always wanted maybe he listens to the podcast.

Whoa, I hope so. He could have run for president if he did this. I always wanted to design a set, like a park bench, a kitchen, bus stop. And you put it in Starbucks where you put your cream in your coffee for January and February. And have a one-act national playwrighting contest for that set. Now they make their money back because oh, and then what I would like to do, you pick six, and I had six great playwrights. I just talked John Patrick Shanley, he thought it was a great. They would mentor a two-week rehearsal with the writer, and then we get the best actors, and we just put it on Broadway for four weeks or something. Now they sell it as the park bench plays or the drama bookshop kitchen plays, blah blah.

That's one way they make the money. The other way they make money back is one of the reasons why colleges and high schools do not do new plays is you got 20 people, 20 students paying to go to college, and you're gonna that's why they do all these old plays they've done nine million times. I I don't know how many times we can watch Our Town. Yeah, I don't care who does it, I don't care if God was playing the lead, I can't watch it anymore. I if we have one set and each play is no less than three characters, no more than five, and we have an A night and a B night because the set doesn't change, that means we can have 25 students there. And who owns the royalties? Whoever sponsored this? Yeah.

And then if you give an award to a regional theater, say Ann Nelson won, we did plays about the park bench and Ann Nelson's one act won. Now we give a regional theater 250,000 to produce Ann's next full-length play, and another regional theater, 250,000 to produce a play written by the famous playwright that mentored her while we were doing this. And then maybe another theater, 250,000 for a musical. Who owns the rights to that would be whoever sponsored it. And if so, say it takes 20 million dollars to do it the first two years. But if one of those plays ends up being Driving Miss Daisy, uh-huh, you've not only made your money back, you've made extra. And if all and I know I can get the names to do it, provided all the money, after you take back what you put in, goes back into helping regional theaters develop new writing.

Yeah. But we need a conscience, whether that idea works or not, there's got to be a way to get young people to say, I want to write that. Yeah. I want to write the one act about two old people on the bench. I want to write about when I lost a little league game as a pitcher in my set there. It was the first time I ever really talked to my father. I never knew he played ball, too. And besides, I always mention Starbucks, writing and coffee go together. Yeah. You know how many extra cups of coffee they're gonna sell just for people going in to get the application and sitting there and talk about writing? And I can't, and if you're teaching writing at any university, if you don't tell your student to go over there and get an application, this is gold. It's a win-win for everybody. Because we're not gonna get any money from the arts.

[57:17] Dan Lauria: I want to end with this one thing. I do a lecture at colleges right before the election, a young girl asked me what I thought was gonna happen to the arts if the current administration gets in, which they did. And I said, Personally, I think there'll be more money for the arts than ever before, but it'll be censored. If you do a pro-choice play, next year, you're not getting a grant. Uh-huh. And some kid stood up and said, That's fair. You never did any plays I wanted to see. He actually said that. And I'm stuck in the middle. And he said, I'm so tired of all these gay plays and all these Jewish plays. And I thought there was going to be a riot. Uh-huh. So I said, Settle down. So I said to the kid, Do you believe in capitalism?

He goes, Yeah, what's that got to do with it? I said, The reason why there's so many Jewish plays and there's so many gay plays is they support theater. Now, when I came to New York as an Italian, I hated that all Italian plays were gangsters. So we had a group called The Forum of Italian American Playwrights. I was a veteran. We formed VETCO. We did plays, some became very famous, like Tracers and that, about the Vietnam experience. So you want your write a good play, and if people go, then you'll get on what you want. But don't start knocking the people who are doing everything they can to get some kind of culture. We're the oral history of our country. Without a hundred years from now, I always give the example, unless you're a history major, you can't tell me one battle that was fought during a hundred years' war. But every one of you can quote a line from Shakespeare. Yep. That's how important theater is. Some of which are about battles fought during the War of the Roses.

[59:14] David Rigano: There you go. Thank you, Dan Lauria, so much for being here for talking about your play and plays and movies. It has been an absolute delight.

[59:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we are back from a heartfelt two-person show. He's a delight.

[59:31] David Rigano: He is.

[59:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And he always has been. He like just it's just so genuine. There's no surprise that why he was America's dad.

[59:40] David Rigano: Yeah.

[59:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And even to that point where he, in the previous event, he had to say some horrible things in this script. Like they were like just very like dirty, vulgar. And I remember being like, no, you can't say this. And so it's just what a wonderful, delightful person.

[59:59] David Rigano: And I'm so happy to know him.

[1:00:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: To now we've worked with him. Just so great. And to like to know that he created this not just to tell a story, but to it like this is theater and activism.

[1:00:17] David Rigano: Yeah, it is.

[1:00:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It is.

[1:00:18] David Rigano: And that's the best theater.

[1:00:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[1:00:21] David Rigano: Yeah, it really is. And he's just a wonderful friend of the bookshop at this point.

[1:00:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we're gonna go from one friend of the bookshop to a couple friends of the bookshops. One who works here, but who is our moderator. But Justin Borak, who was in with he was here with Community Garden, comes in to talk about all of his work with a special moderator of Aaron Burstein.

[1:00:41] David Rigano: Yep, who is one of our employees and a friend.

[1:00:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yep, and so he's been on the podcast.

[1:00:49] David Rigano: He has Aaron was in, he hosted with us when we talked about Joe Iconis, of course, which makes sense because of that.

[1:00:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He got to he met Joe and went on to work with Joe.

[1:01:00] David Rigano: So the podcast is just getting us all jobs.

[1:01:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So we'll talk more about that in the next episode.

[1:01:05] David Rigano: So remember to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast.

[1:01:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Please subscribe to the drama book shop on Eventbrite so that you can be alerted every time we add new events to our calendar.

[1:01:14] David Rigano: Give us some ratings and some notes and some reach out and some comments and some likes and all of that fun stuff because we love to know that you're there.

[1:01:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And remember, all of the books we talk about can be found here at the Drama Bookshop.

[1:01:25] David Rigano: And so can we, and we will see you at the bookshop.