Eric Bogosian
SubUrbia was well received at Lincoln Center in 1994, with a great cast [including Josh Hamilton, Martha Plimpton, Steve Zahn and Zak Orth] directed by Robert Falls. Were you at all reluctant to bring it back to New York only 12 years later?
No. I feel the play never really got a good look from as many people as would have liked to see it—the original run was truncated because Lincoln Center Theater had something else coming in. And the audience is potentially different now. The play has been circulating among colleges for a number of years, so I think there's an audience of people approximately the same age as the characters onstage. Also, honestly, I love working with my wife [director Jo Bonney], and this is a play she's well suited to direct because it's an ensemble, it's a young cast and it's complex. Some rewriting needed to be done, and she's very precise about making sure everything fits together.
Your wife had already directed subUrbia once, right?
She did the first production outside New York, at the Studio Center in Washington DC. Some of the work I did for her at that time showed up in the film version [directed by Richard Linklater and released in 1996]. I've worked on it quite a bit this time, as well. If you didn't know every line of the play, you wouldn't necessarily see the work, but actors who have done the play feel that certain things work better this way. The potential disaster is that you start tinkering with it and the whole thing falls apart. But I think it's much stronger now.
The whole "celebrity coming home" angle feels different now. People seem more enthralled with celebrities than ever, something that will also resonate differently in the upcoming Broadway production of Talk Radio.
I must say that this play makes the suburbs seem like hell on earth.
You actually left your hometown twice—first to go the University of Chicago, where you dropped out after a year, and later to go to Oberlin College, where you graduated. I'm curious about what made you leave the second time.
How did the Talk Radio revival come about?
Liev Schreiber seems perfect for a play that relies heavily on the power of one man's voice.
Do you scare yourself sometimes with your ability to predict the future? You wrote Talk Radio before Howard Stern, before Rush Limbaugh…
Are you surprised that the right-wing made talk radio their medium of choice?
Why do you say you're not doing regular monologues anymore?
You've written two novels in the past few years. As a theater fan, I don't love the idea of you writing novels rather than plays.
In addition to all your writing, you're also acting a lot. You're going to play a police captain on Law & Order: Criminal Intent this season, right?
One of the things I admire most about you is that you've been married to a strong and talented woman for 25 years. What is the key to that?
How old are they now?
How are you different as a parent than your stage persona?
Do you and Jo ever have to walk on eggshells with each other when you're working together?
Was turning 50 a big milestone for you?
You're not serious.
Every playwright has ups and downs.
Luckily, you've developed working relationships with a lot of great companies over the years, from the Public to LAByrinth.
See Eric Bogosian's subUrbia at the Second Stage Theatre.
Yes, although it's never really clear exactly where or when this is taking place. Obviously 9/11 happened at the midpoint between the first production and now, and it affects the store owners a little. It also affects the character of Tim, who's a veteran. Now he's been part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, although peripherally, and it becomes part of what happens to him.
SubUrbia could be called American Dream because that's what it's about: fame, fortune, fame, fortune. We're mesmerized by it. It's part and parcel of our culture, and that's why I keep writing about it. We are being poisoned by the mass media in the same way the Romans were poisoned by the lead linings in their aqueducts. I came from a town like this, a nondescript suburb outside of Boston [Woburn, MA], and we were very impressed when guys who went off to join rock bands would pass through town again. What does it mean to have been the drummer for Joe Cocker, or to have played with Loggins & Messina?
I think they are hell on earth! [laughs] I'm pretty clear about that. The interesting thing about the suburbs, unlike any other living space on the planet, is that they were planned with the idea that there was something good about lawns and trees and homes that weren't too close together. After World War II, children of immigrants moved out with the notion that these were going to be great places, but I don't think they are. Cities are organic places that came about because people created and designed them for themselves. Suburbs are synthetic places that came about because of the automobile. There's a lot of boredom in the suburbs, especially in this age group; it's dangerous because of drugs and drunk driving. When I moved to the city, there was this idea that I was moving to a very dangerous place, but I've never had that experience. I'd much rather have my kids on the New York City subways than driving around with I-don't-know-who, with a case of beer in the back seat.
Well, while I was home, my acting friends from high school and I formed a theater company called, of all things, the Woburn Drama Guild. I decided I would go back to college and graduate, which would make my parents happy, but do it as a theater person because I loved the theater so much. I had a blast. Oberlin has a tradition of theater: Bill Irwin went there; Julie Taymor went there; it was a great place to fool around and learn. If it hadn't been for Oberlin I wouldn't have been shot into New York. I came here as a student in '75 and worked as an intern at the Westside Theatre, right down the street from where we are doing subUrbia now. I even lived in that theater for a while.
I was invited to the opening night of Caine Mutiny last spring—I played the part that David [Schwimmer] played when [Robert] Altman directed it [in 1988], around the time we were doing Talk Radio—and Jeffrey Richards, the producer, asked me, "Whatever happened to Talk Radio? Did it ever get done on Broadway?" That planted the seed, and he ran with it. At the time I did Talk Radio, Joe Papp asked me if I wanted to go to Broadway, but it just didn't seem like the place for it. Today, with Kiki & Herb, Lieutenant of Inishmore—there are really no boundaries on Broadway, so I thought, why not? The idea of staging it with a great actor [Liev Schreiber] and a great director [Robert Falls] is very exciting. Sure, let's do it!
Liev is the right guy for this. I don't know how many people are familiar with the play itself, which was done originally in a relatively small theater for six months in 1987. People know the [Oliver Stone] movie, which is very dark and wrought with all kinds of tension, but the play has a lot of humor. It's going to be fun to see what Liev does with it.
I'm a student of our culture and the personalities that inhabit it, so oftentimes I end up writing about something that is kind of close to what's really happening. Even with subUrbia, the character of Buff [Kieran Culkin], says, "I'm a video artist." At the time I wrote that, we didn't have YouTube and all these other things. There's a huge upsurge of people everywhere making their own videos and posting them on the net. The notion that this kid hanging out on the corner could end up becoming a filmmaker isn't that laughable anymore.
Well, Rush Limbaugh said it best: "I'm an entertainer." And unfortunately, I don't believe the left and the right are equal. I think, in fact, that the progressive side of things is more informed and the right tends to be less informed and more susceptible to charlatans like Rush Limbaugh. Unfortunately, entertainment blended with populism and xenophobia and racism can be a potent mix. It makes sense that the right wing would find this populist medium a good fit.
I am definitely not doing solo shows anymore, but this is related; it's an evening that [composer and sound artist] Elliott Sharp and I first did last March at Merkin Hall. I do this long stream of words and characters and images, and Elliott is next to me playing along. He breaks into solos and I break into solos. It's called This Is Now because it's an attempt to encapsulate a mindset, and it's very political. I can't make a [theater] piece that has to do with the way we are today and not get more outspoken about politics and George Bush. That's a big part of the show and as a result, it divides the audience. Jo, for instance, says, "Be careful not to preach to us." That's never been what I wanted to do. I start with the assumption that the audience is intelligent and doesn't need to hear me say, "The Iraq war is bad." If you don't know that before you walk into the theater, I don't want you coming to see one of my shows.
I feel like I've exhausted that particular thing; I did six major solos off-Broadway in 20 years. You know, there's an aspect of those shows that was comedy, and to some degree I became a comedian—and I'm not a comedian. I don't want my goal when I walk out on stage to be, "How much can I make you laugh?" I admire people like [George] Carlin who can do an evening's length of stuff and keep us interested, but it's not what I want to do. On the other hand, I like to work around a theme or an idea. Even when I'm writing a solo, I'm always thinking of it in terms of a play.
Well, the world is with you, because there hasn't been any real success in that direction so far. [laughs] I get to do stuff with novels that I can't do in my other work, but the theater is where my heart is. When I'm in a theater, every night is magic. It's an incredible experience to have people walk out in front of an audience, pretend to be other people and the audience pretends to go along with it. I don't know anything else that's like that—it brings everyone together. I just saw the last performance of Sweeney Todd, and honestly, I was between tears and the hair standing up on the back of my neck. At the very end, when Michael [Cerveris] was going, "You, you, you, you, you…' I was thinking, "This guy is incredible!" I just dug it so much.
I'm always pursuing acting, but for a long time it was like rubbing two sticks together. I've also had personal factors that prevented me from taking every job. I had small children. I didn't want to be away on location. I didn't want to work certain hours. Now that my boys are old enough that it's not going to affect them, I can make myself available for a TV series. Fortunately I got this job on Law & Order and I'm having a blast. I love acting, and Law & Order is very actor-oriented.
What is the key? [laughs] Knowing—and remembering—that she's amazing. We've been together for so long, we're like entwined through each other. The early years of our marriage were extremely difficult economically and challenging as far as [establishing] my career. We went through some tough times, and I think that fused us in a way. Once you go through that stuff, you can pretty much do anything. We keep a sense of humor, because we can imagine ourselves back in the 300-square-foot apartment listening to the rat gnawing on the wall. We think, "This is easy in comparison." We've been very fortunate. And our boys are terrific.
Travis is 15 and Harry is 19.
I'm not. They consider me a terror. [laughs] Actually, I'm nothing like my stage persona. I feel like I disappoint people when they meet me because I'm not difficult or intense or any of those things. Especially around the kids, I'm a goofball and a sentimental, schmaltzy guy. When Harry went off to college, I was the one who was getting up in the middle of the night and wandering down to his room and looking at his empty bed and feeling weepy.
We've gone through a kind of gateway period where we had to reset the rules. I have to behave myself more now. When we first did my shows together, it was exciting and fun—we were just jamming, and the stakes weren't as high. Then Jo experienced a lot of success and growth [as a director] over the last decade, and I had to get used to being around somebody who was getting attention. I'm a prima donna, so I'm not always happy about that. [laughs] At this point, she doesn't want to work with someone who's temperamental, which I have been in the past. When I was starting out, I was in the middle of everything that everybody was doing: If they're directing, I'm giving all kinds of advice about directing. If they're lighting, I'm giving advice about lighting. Now, it's like: "That's their job. Believe it or not, Eric, they know how to do it better than you." Jo asks me to focus on what I need to do, which is writing, and don't worry about the directing. And I don't.
More like a kidney stone [laughs]. It was pretty painful. Anybody who turns 50 has to remember that when you're 80, you're going to look back at when you were 50 and think of yourself as a kid. As long as you can walk and talk and think and see, you should enjoy it.
Given the fact that I was getting ready to retire about nine months ago, I am pretty happy.
Yeah, well I wasn't really getting [career] traction in any way. I was going to finish the book I'm writing, and then I thought that since there was no real interest in my work, I might as well move on to gardening. [laughs] I do know from looking at my colleagues that everyone's story has twists and turns, and there are fallow periods. I have not felt fallow; I have been writing my ass off. None of the three plays that are currently published in Griller—Griller, Humpty Dumpty and Red Angel— have been produced in New York, and I've written four other plays that haven't been produced at all. I write all the time, but if the work isn't going to get produced…
I can look out my window right now and see Edward Albee's apartment a block and a half away. Not to compare myself to Albee, but when I think of what he went through in the middle of his career… the truth is that he wrote these tremendous, tremendous plays and got all kinds of attention, and then for about 15 years he was beaten up at every turn. Then he became everybody's favorite guy again when he did Three Tall Women. You can be embraced for a while, and then people look at your work and say, "We don't get it."
I'll tell you how Talk Radio was originally produced: [Public Theater founder] Joe Papp came to see Drinking in America and said, "Do you have anything you would like to do at the Public?" I said, "Yes, I have this play Talk Radio. I've written 30 pages of it." He said, "Fine, it's on the schedule for next year." And that was it. We never did a reading. We never did a workshop. We put the play on, and the play worked. I think that's the way it should be. Making art by committee does not work. You've got to let people try things and succeed or fail, and you'll probably end up with a better success ratio that way. Given the fact that Talk Radio is coming back, I feel even more strongly about this. That was the way Joe Papp did things: If you looked him in the eye and said, "I believe in this piece," that was it.