February 8, 1983 Fool for Love at Magic Theatre S.F. directed by Sam Shepard.
Delayed by the schedule for shooting The Right Stuff.
Divided nature is between male/female parts of the self, not only competing male aspects.
By Kevin O'Conner. SS says that he first wrote Fool for Love with three characters then stopped for the film and came back and wrote in the father and working on the ending talking to Studs Terkel. Film life, contact with father, budding romance with Lange listed in the Magic borchure before it was finished. 16 versions going back to the first five pages. GOOD not just drafts, "I wrote 12 plays."
Lion's comments on the linear "square" quality of the first draft. Three weeks later comes the script with the old man.
Again DS forces the autobiographical content...old man and the countess as Lange. Why Olan as May, not the same type and not his sister. Both women and also Patti Smith are in these as we see both people in True West. Is Shep also Martin? Directs and moves in with Lange in Santa Fe.
Sees Fool for Love as a continuation of the True West "double nature" concept pitting man against woman...SS "to take a leap into female character. But it's hard for a man to say he can speak from the point of view of a woman. But you make the attempt."
Where does love come from and where does it go.
The theatrical equivalent of a country and western ballad.
Ed Harris who had acted in Cowboy Mouth and True West In LA and in The Right Stuff and Kathy Whitton Baker at the Magic in Seduced and Curse of the Starving Class.
The Right Stuff directed by Philip Kaufman.
The Right Stuff- in N. Calif. and at Edward's Airforce Base in LA with many Magic Theatre actors regional ensemble. And the director is Phil Kaufman who had to cast SS as Yeager. SS receives an Academy Award nomination. William Goldman during the Iranian hostage crises. SS as the cowboy in the X1 getting an aloof girl into bed...about the fraud of celebrity like True West, it is an ironic title. SS does not play the real Yeager who has plenty of endorsements but the silent film type...
SS as the movie star as real man and existentialist, wary of Bway(?), a rebel with a cause...
The James Dean energy of a man in a leather jacket on a horse meeting a jetplane in the desert, a kind of bygone quality of the forties...leather jackets...laconic...say a lot without verbally saying anything. Laid back like Gary Cooper.
SS "When I think of a rugged individualist, I right away think of Stan Laurel. Out of all the silent comics he sort of sticks out in my mind as the truest and also the funniest."
"The reason I write. I try to go into parts of myself that are unknown." Goes up in a plane his first ride since the trip to Mexico with Aaron. And hang out at a bar the Tosca, a North Beach bar in SF. As an actor/writer, he has a different relationship to the language of the script he has to say. A pioneer of inner space like the test pilots, he refuses to do prterritories withing(?). In the Lippman interview.
Description of SS looks.
About he and Lange, they are both raw beauties and renegade artists, ambitious and talented and determined to do it their own way.
About Lange, receives an Oscar for Tootsie.
120 acres in Holyoke Minnesotta Taos.
June, 1983 Fool for Love at Circle Rep. Comparison of Harris and Patton in role of Eddie, less macho and flexible not the idea of the sex roles as fixed.
Steppenwolf production still running. Ellen Barkin broke her arm. Harris and Baker win Obies and Patton as a replacement 9th Obie for writing and directing.
Comparison with True West suspenseful funny and moving. Real time stage action flights into monologue control and discipline expands the audience. Fans see them as sit com and soap opera. "Here was a writer at the peak of his powers turning out plays that however thoughtful and well written didn't project much further than his own personal life. Not the larger scale of Right Stuff or Country.
Keep plays small as in the Magic Audience Reception "I always felt I was writing for people who would understand me. I never had any aspiration to talk to people I dont know."
Quote from Flann O'Brian The Third Policeman for Magic Suicide revival...ON WRITING, "I can't seem to quit. I'd like to be free of it once and for all, I hope that I write someting that's you know, a grand finale and I won't have to go on or else I'll be able to change to something else like a novel.
Stab House in Santa Fe Pink Adobe.
Difficult to separate from Olan she still appears at LaMama in the Overtone.
Double bill of The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife and Superstitions.
Writes to Chaikin about being exhausted and still in a strange transition.
Tooth of Crime a major NY revival at La Mama, but the music Shep wrote is not very good, a kind of dated late 60's blues rock that fails to distinguish character or attitudes."
Country shooting begins in Iowa.
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