Peter Hermann: Our "Night Talk" Addiction
It's almost a cliché to talk about an actor's varied career path, but in Peter Hermann's case, "varied" is an understatement. He went straight from Yale into the Teach for America program, then worked as a fact checker for Vanity Fair. As an actor, Hermann jumped from regional theater and TV guest spots to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where a recurring role as defense attorney Trevor Langan led to romance and marriage to series star Mariska Hargitay and appeared in last year's award-winning film United 93. On stage, he's played everything from Shakespeare's Orsino and Tennessee Williams' Brick to his current role as producer Dan Woodruff opposite Liev Schreiber in the Broadway production of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio. Just after opening night, Hermann filmed Cashmere Mafia with Lucy Liu, a new TV pilot from Sex and the City creator Darren Star. As his thoughtful essay for Broadway.com demonstrates, Hermann has given serious thought to the underlying themes of Bogosian's drama, which illuminates the corrosive effects of media "stardom."
"John Belushi."
Eric Bogosian is answering a question about why he wrote Talk Radio, which he debuted at the Public Theater in 1987 and is now playing on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre. He's on stage with us for an audience talk-back after a recent performance.
"I watched this guy publicly self-destruct, and I realized the themes in his life weren't entirely foreign to me. I wrote it as a parable of warning to myself."
Did Eric heed his own warning? Obviously. But the story of Barry Champlain, Talk Radio's acerbic, self-loathing, substance-abusing, manipulative, egomaniacal, toxic anti-hero played by Liev Schreiber in our production, also has some things to say to the country as a whole. And it might not be a bad idea to listen.
"Your lives have become your entertainment," Barry roars at his Night Talk radio audience. "Marvelous technology is at our fingertips, and instead of reaching up for new heights, we try to see how far down we can go… how deep into the muck we can immerse ourselves."
Dead on, Barry. We all know the muck. Eerie, when you consider Eric wrote those words 20 years ago.
But the line that chills me every night comes at the end of Barry's final monologue. On the night when a media company is evaluating whether to syndicate his show nationally, Barry has made his way through the parade of callers—from cat lovers to racists, agoraphobes to anti-nuke protesters. He has fought his staff, his boss played by me, his ego and his ambition and finally finds himself cornered into probing for the meaning of his life.
It doesn't.
Barry discovers, to his horror, that he's nothing more than entertainment. He's a punchline. And so he lashes out, rages at his callers over the air, bares his soul and speaks the truth—a rant that is equal parts panic, self-hatred, yearning for contact and blistering insight.
It ends with this chilling line: "I guess we're stuck with each other."
Why chilling? Because it is absolutely true, and more so today, two decades later. We are indeed stuck with each other—a country of people who can't stop tuning in, listening in, logging on, doing whatever we can to witness people who can't stop making spectacles of themselves. The callers in Talk Radio have listened to Barry Champlain long enough to know he will ridicule them. And yet they keep on calling. We have the same mentality. Yes, I may look like a fool. But hey, I'm on the radio! Or on television! And everyone is there to witness it!
Before I go on, I have to steer myself away from the soapbox. Eric Bogosian is a smart enough writer to know that the one way to make people tune out is to try to send a message. Talk Radio shocks, entertains, intrigues, draws you in, makes you listen, knocks you flat with the freight train that is Liev Schreiber as Barry Champlain. But it never preaches.
For the record, I have called in to a radio talk show. It was a long time ago, something on NPR, I think. The woman who answered the phone at the station and decided to put me in the queue of callers could not have sounded more bored. "But wait," I remember thinking, "I'm not like those other people calling in. My comment is going to make this guy think. And it's going to make the audience think." By the time my turn came, I barely remembered my point. I was on the air! I stammered some version of what I wanted to say, heard a pause, felt like an idiot and then listened to the host move on to another topic.
David Mamet, in his essay "Our National Dream Life," suggests that theater, at its best, represents the chatter of a country's unconscious mind—our night talk, if you will. On stage, in our choice of material, we work out the problems we can't solve rationally. According to Mamet's model, this country first dreamed Talk Radio in 1987. And now, once again, we start up from our pillows in the middle of the night and realize the same dream is back.
Are we listening?