I first met Peter Dinklage more than 20 years ago, and I’m pretty sure it was through Ethan Hawke. I had been hanging out at the Naked Angels Theatre bringing my early work to be read, which is how I first met Ethan.
Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV with Ethan Hawke back in 2005 during his performance in Hurly-Burly!
I had written a play called “A Punch In The Face”, and was going to their Monday night reading series where you could get up and coming actors to read your stuff out loud. The purpose was for writers to evaluate their writing and make changes after hearing it read.
I was doing readings of ” A Punch In The Face” and a young actor who introduced himself as Ethan Hawke came over to tell me he really liked my piece. I had just read about him that very week in people Magazine about a movie he starred in called ” Alive” about people who survived a plane crash.
The Naked Angels was made up of Marisa Tomei, Matthew Broderick, Kenny Lonergan, Fisher Stevens, Sarah Jessica Parker, her brothers Toby and Pippin, and a host of others that have become household names. Somewhere along the way Ethan introduced me to Peter.
I was offered the opportunity to make some short comedy films for the Toyota Comedy Festival, and had about two weeks to get them done from start to finish, and I created what came to be known as The “Men Who” Series, based on a series of ideas I had told to Woody Allen many years before when I was still in Dental School. It was about men who did very unusual things, like ” Men Who Take A Pitchfork To The Movies”, “Men Who Enjoy Latin Dancing With Tools”, and “Men Who Dance Where They’re Not Supposed To”!
Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV with Woody Allen many years later in 2011!
In recent years when I re-connected with Woody Allen, as I was about to be re-introduced, I actually made him bust out laughing by saying, “Hi Woody, I’m a very close friend of yours!”
Anyway, back to The “Men Who” Series, … I cast them myself and when it came time to cast “Men Who Dance Where They’re Not Supposed To” I went to Peter Dinklage who kindly agreed to be in the film. He was one of three men who danced in the street wherever they wanted to, despite the fact that there were “No Dancing” signs posted everywhere.
I had my artist make up a perfect “No Dancing” sign that looked just like a “No Parking” sign and even had hours on it. I think it said, ” No Dancing Tues, and Thursdays or any other time!” We shot it on Broadway and 28th Street, where I also shot ” Men Who Dance In Traffic With The Sunday Edition of The New York Times!”
Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV with Peter Dinklage currently starring in HBO’s “Game of Thrones!”
When the shoot was over, we accidentally left the sign up, and it created quite a traffic jam for a few days, because even then parking was very difficult in the city and drivers who were looking for a place to park found it very confusing to come up against a “No Dancing” sign. It even wound up as a Page 6 item in the NY Post!
Anyway, Peter was always a very talented actor so I’m not really surprised that he went on to become such a big star. I loved him in the award-winning film “The Station Agent” in which he starred with his good friend, the amazingly talented Bobby Cannavale from Boardwalk Empire, and in about 15 minutes the new season of “Game of Thrones” is coming on and I’m running to watch.
Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV with Bobby Cannavale at The Acorn Theatre on Theatre Row in NYC!
Check out below to see Peter dance where he’s not supposed to, … in a “No Dancing” zone!
Lisa Lampanelli has been working on her one woman show for a long time now, and it shows. In collaboration with the hot theatre troupe “The New Group” she work-shopped four performances at The Acorn Theatre on Theatre Row, which is on 42nd Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues, right in the heart of Times Square! Very prestigious!
A row of posters for Theatre Row showing that Lisa is in good company!
The poster for the show says “The Untitled Lisa Lampanelli Project” underneath which it says, ” This ain’t stand-up bitches!” And she’s right. It’s not. It’s a proper one woman show, with lots of humor thrown in, but also some serious stuff as well.
The cool poster for Lisa Lampanelli’s as yet “unnamed” show!
I can’t tell you anything about it since it’s still in development, except to say that Lisa talks about her life and her transformation from being “the fat chick” to “the skinny bitch” she is now! Her words, not mine! (LOL)
In her early days she honed her insult skills to get even with any audience members who might heckle her about her appearance. After a while she began attacking first, with lines like “Hey one-tooth, with you here who’s running the tilt-a-wheel?”
She said she flew in from out of town, but she didn’t sit next to her husband Jimmy cause she flies first class! Jimmy would laugh harder than anyone else at that joke. He’s a great guy and I see him all the time! We always have a lot of laughs!
The newly “svelte” couple Lisa Lampanelli and Jimmy BB backstage at Westbury Theatre!
No one in Lisa’s audience is shocked by anything she says. She’s well known enough now that she draws an audience that demands she be who she is. She’s even made the “C” word acceptable! She says it so much you actually get used to it after a while.
She talks about many topics and about her gastric sleeve surgery that allowed her to lose 100 pounds and become the “skinny bitch” she jokes about. They take out 85% of your stomach. She truly is skinny, but it certainly hasn’t hurt her sense of humor. If anything she’s funnier than she ever was!
A rear view of the new and slender Lisa Lampanelli taken at her recent show at Westbury! She’s really a skinny bitch!
I saw her recently out at Westbury where she packed the place, and went backstage afterwards to congratulate her and say “Hi”! We had a chuckle about my new book “Make ‘Em Laugh” about the history of The Comic Strip that she is in with a very funny interview! So we took a photo with the book!
Lisa Lampanelli holding my book “Make “Em Laugh” that she was kind enough to appear in with a really cool interview! I look pretty good in this photo, dontcha think???!
But at The Acorn, there were so many people waiting to see her backstage after the show, that I just left and sent her a text message how much I enjoyed it. I think maybe I’ll Tweet this post out to the Universe and see if she RT’s it!
Chris Rock made his Broadway debut in a hard-hitting and fantastic new show with one of the strangest names ever to hit Broadway, The Motherf**ker With The Hat.
The Schoenfeld Theatre Marquee for The Motherf**ker With The Hat starring Bobby Cannavale, Chris Rock, and Annabella Sciorra
What’s particularly funny to me as a comedy writer and something I’ve thought about since The Vagina Monologues came out, is that as a writer you can call your work anything you want, and people HAVE to say it if they want to either buy it or see it.
They could just have easily called this play The C**ksucker With The Beard, and nice, regular people would have to call up and say, ” I’d like two tickets for “The C**cksucker With The Beard”, and no one could say anything about it cause that’s the name of the play.
Before The Vagina Monologues, no one used the word “vagina” in regular conversation. It felt too weird. As a matter of fact, when I saw it, the next day my mother asked me what play I saw the night before, and I felt so uncomfortable I told her I didn’t remember. She said ” How can’t you remember? You just saw it last night!”
And that’s when I realized I would rather my mother thought I had brain damage than that I knew the word “vagina.”
Anyway, this play was superb. it’s only in previews so by the time it opens officially it will supposedly be even better although I don’t see how that can happen. Now I’m not a critic, so I look at a performance as to whether I enjoyed it or not.
I don’t notice things that critics tend to notice. When I use a camera, I leave it on “Auto”. If I can see the picture I think it’s a good camera. When people rave about audio systems, it means nothing to me. If I turn on my CD player, and I can hear the song, and it sounds good to me, that’s all I need to know.
I don’t know about the bass, the treble, and all that other stuff. All I need to know is that I can hear the song clearly enough to tell it from another song,and I’m good to go!
Annabella Sciorra, Chris Rock, Elizabeth Rodriguez, and Bobby Cannavale in Chris Rock's dressing room after the show.
That being said, this cast is superb. Every one of them is a shining star. Chris Rock plays a guy named Ralph who’s the A.A. sponsor of a career criminal named Jackie, fresh out of jail, and trying to stay sober and do the right thing, played by the incredible Bobby Cannavale.
Even if you knew Bobby Cannavale personally, ( which I did), you would NEVER recognize him in this role. He actually changed physically, and looks like a completely different person. I’ve met him a few times over the years, and even looking at his photo I have to struggle to see that it’s him.
He used his talent to morph into a Puerto Rican or Dominican drug addict from The Bronx, who walks, talks, looks and sounds the part.
It’s not even acting. He BECOMES that person. He reminds me of my friend Cipha Sounds, the highly successful and talented non-drug addict radio DJ who does the morning show on Hot 97, Cipha Sounds and Rosenberg, and who IS a Puerto Rican from The Bronx.
Over the years, I had met Bobby several times through my friends Ethan Hawke and Peter Dinklage, with whom he starred in the Academy Award nominated picture “The Station Agent”, but I think he must have worked out hard physically for this part as well as having learned the script.
His body is “cut”, but even his face is cut. And he mastered the facial expressions, and even the hand motions of the kind of guy he’s playing. In the photos we took after the show, he’s throwing some kind of street hand signs, … but doing it right! Bobby’s Dad is Italian and his Mom is Cuban, so he probably gets a great tan during the summer!
Chris Rock acts like he’s been on a Broadway stage all his life. It’s his first show but he’s been on stages all over the world, so it didn’t intimidate him at all.
I went to the show with Richie Tienken, the owner and co-founder of the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip. Richie discovered Eddie Murphy and went on to manage him for 11 years and in 1986 they jointly discovered Chris Rock, so Chris is always happy to see Richie.
Watch the little interview I did with Chris backstage after the show. Richie is in it as is Chris’ friend, hilarious comic Ardie Fuqua, who happened to sit right near us in the audience.
On the way up the 6 flights of stairs to Chris’ dressing room, ( and I’m not kidding about that!) we ran into the rest of the cast and brought them with us to take the photos you’re seeing here.
Annabella Sciorra has been a favorite of mine since The Sopranos. She’s so talented and plays the long suffering wife of Ralph, Chris Rock’s character, in this, her Broadway debut as well.
She was running home to take care of her kids but was kind enough to come upstairs for a group photo for Comedy Matters, and that’s why she was wearing her hat and coat!
(L-R) Frt. -Annabella Sciorra, Jeffrey Gurian,Richie Tienken,(Back) Chris Rock, Elizabeth Rodriguez, and Bobby Cannavale in Chris' dressing room after the show.
Chris plays a guy so cold he actually tells a guy in detail how he’s been with his girlfriend and when I say in detail, I mean “IN DETAIL”! It was COLD, bro’!
I meant to ask Chris what that was like, even doing that on stage, cause most people could never do something like that in real life, but I didn’t get a chance to. I plan on seeing the show again, so maybe I’ll get to ask him that next time.
So much of acting is learning to detach from self-consciousnessm so you can be free to do what you have to onstage.
Another actor making his Broadway debut, who wasn’t with us backstage is Yul Vazquez, a very talented actor who played such an unusual character called ” Cousin Julio”. He plays kind of like a gay Jean-Claude Van Damme character who is very ready to “throw down” at any moment, to stand up for his cousin Jackie, played by Cannavale.
Yul is the co-artistic director and founding member of the LAByrinth Theater Company of which Cannavale, Elizabeth Rodriguez, who plays Victoria, Jackie’s girlfriend, and writer Stephen Adly Guirgis are all members.
Gurguis who is a brilliant writer is the other co-artistic director of the LAByrinth Theater Company.
I saved Elizabeth Rodriguez for last, because I wanted to give myself enough room to praise her. (LOL) She’s done lots of theatre and television, with recurring roles on NY Undercover, The Shield, and All My Children, besides numerous roles on other shows. She’s also been in films like “Miami Vice”, “Jack Goes Boating”, and “Acts of Worship”.
Even more amazing to me, a day or two after I met her I found out she’s the next door neighbor of my dear friend Mary Elizabeth, who just happened to call and excitedly ask me if I heard about this play, telling me her friend and neighbor Elizabeth is in it. I’m like ” Elizabeth Rodriguez?” That can’t even happen!
The way Bobby Cannavale captured the essence of his character is the way Elizabeth captured the essence of hers. I fully expected her to talk that way when I met her after the show, because it seemed to real to be a performance.
Obviously, while growing up, she met many girls like the one she portrayed, and so have we all, but it’s one thing to meet them, and another thing to be able to bring them to life on the stage. This girl is AMAZING, and sexy in a very subtle way. She makes it very easy to fall for her character, who is tough as nails on the surface, but really just wants to be loved like everyone else. I plan to do a separate interview with Elizabeth in an upcoming posting, so stay tuned!
This documentary reel about me was shot as a pre-cursor to a proposed TV project that I would host, taking the viewers “behind the scenes” in the comedy world, the film world and behind the velvet ropes of New York nightlife, all places where I have strong connections.
In this reel you will see great comics from late night TV like Ted Alexandro from Comedy Central, Letterman, Conan O’Brien, & Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Fisch from Last Comic Standing, VH1 and Comedy Central, Macio from The Chapelle Show, Uptown Comedy Club, & Comedy Central, Goumba Johnny, afternoon host from WKTU, 103.5 FM, film stars Marisa Tomei, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Jason Statham, John Leguizamo, Vincent Pastore, Chris Meloni, Kal Penn, Sidney Lumet, Guy Ritchie, nightlife and TV legends Wass, Noel Ashman, and Countess LuAnn DeLesseps from Real Housewives of New York City, and Camille Grammer from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Please watch and feel free to leave a comment, and/or share it with your friends. Thanks!!!
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