After Mighty Ducks 3, I returned to Thornwood High School with even more clues as to what I wanted to spend my adult life pursuing. Talks between takes with all the adult actors on set, plus the crew members who had first hand experience making classics left me with a never-ending list of movies to rent from Blockbuster and books about theater and plays to read. Most of the recommendations were from the last great revolution in dramatic and cinematic art from the 1950s to the later 1970s. And since I had just spent time with people who were involved in making some of these things, it didn’t feel so distant or impossible.
Actors like to tell stories to keep off the insane boredom of the wait while on location. And so do stunt coordinators. Taken in concert, it can give an impressionable young mind, hellbent on finding an express pass out of life in a Midwest suburb, all the fuel he needs to launch himself west one day.
Beginnings are hard to trace, but if I had to put my finger on that moment when it all started for me, it was when I watched Dr Strangelove.
Specifically — AFTER I watched it and sat with mine and my brother’s friend Steve at a Denny’s, eating a butter pile of ham and egg and drinking midnight coffee and he asked — “have you seen FAIL SAFE?”
For one one the first times, I didn’t lie and say I had seen Fail Safe in order to look cool and sound in the know. I was rewarded with facts that dramatically shifted the trajectory of my life. Namely, I learned the Sidney Lumet classic had come out the same year as Dr. Strangelove; both were nominated for Oscars, and had eerily similar plot lines. One was a hyper-real tragedy and one was an absurd satire. I left that Denny’s determined to compare the two films to learn what made them work.
So I walked into the Principle’s Office and asked if I could take an independent study course comparing tragedy and comedy because I thought it was going to be my life’s work. I think I probably just wanted to get out of taking a math class. The principle said if I could find an advisor to sponsor it, draw up a proposal, they would consider.
Enter John Knight. Who had just started teaching. Mr. Knight hadn’t yet been beat down by the grind of getting teenagers in a flawed institution to want to learn. Our drama / English teachers were warriors, and he was the newest to join their ranks. 1
I told Mr. Knight my crazy plan and he didn’t blink an eye. I am not sure if it was his idea or mine, but somehow, we determined I had to not only make a study which means write a paper, and I mean — a paper-paper; but I was also to direct a short play. To, in effect, pick a side on which is more effective in conveying a social message (tragedy or satire) and test it out. Not exactly scientific, but to this day, I still do it.
And that was how I met Gore Vidal. Learned they used to have plays on TV. And that that was where so many of the artists I was reading about got their start. Somehow, CBS playhouse paid this lefty intellectual dude money to write a play called VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET. And then put it on live TV!!
The play was a satire on the incungrities of the American dream told from the perspective of a wayward alien who has visited this small plant to decide the fate of the human race and learn if they are good or bad, etc.
I cast Brent, who had never really acted before, in the lead. And many of my friends. It was really a latch key kid doing latch key theater. Half the time, Mr. Knight would open the theater up and let us have it a few hours here and there. Again, that kind of rebellious, make-do-with-what-you-have attitude and need still lives at the center of my independent creative spirit.
I’m not realy a maverick, but I do try and find ways to get things done outside the traditional pathways. Who knows if that would be the case, had I not had these encouragements.
Having a project that mattered to me made school fun. I spent half the day in the library; reading Aristophanes, the Orestia, and what the role of Greek theater was in its original context. I learned the value mythos and story had in the republic. And I was forever changed when I learned that in Athens, they put the theater — the places where stories were shared — between the temple and city hall. It’s role was that sacred.
The more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew. I studied the tools of storytelling and the subject matter. I zeroed in on the common source of the films and looked for concrete evidence of it, outside of narrative — which meant I spent Spring of my senior year in high school reading up on the total annihilation of the human race via a toxic cocktail of computer error, collective insanity, and the H bomb.
I found exhaustive studies from the 1950s from the Atomic Energy Commission (recently seen in the movie Oppenheimer) and from the Rand Institute, got my hands on the screenplays of Failed State and Dr. Straneglove, and started to make my case.
The more I researched, the more the role of the arts and community became so clear. But I didn’t know that what drove me was also the fact that I was an 8os kid. I grew up in the twilight shadow of the atomic age. The arms race. The existential flight from nuclear annihilation. As made clear by my earliest memory of watching The Day After on TV and seeing the world blow up during prime-time between dish soap commercials.
It was a deeply damaging moment my entire generation understands. Like when the Challenger fell from the sky while we sat in class. Having seen Jason Robards go blind from radioactive sickness, I would experience night terrors and began to start worrying and grew to fear the bomb. (That’s a joke for those who know Dr. Strangelove, if you don’t get it, skip it).
The point is, I spent most of my early childhood looking up at the sky to trace airplanes crossing America in the stratosphere, wondering if they were missiles from Russia.
Maybe when I was in Denny’s and learning about these two movies, I was exposed to the fact that my fears could also lead to art. To make sense of fear and synthesize it is a noble pursuit. Ours was an age of terror. Long before the towers fell. And conscious or unconscious, even at a young age, it left its impression.
While we were rehearsing the play, we made the choice to stage it as a live TV broadcast in order to pay homage to the 1950s. We made pretend cameras out of cardboard, and held up laugh and applause cards for the audience. I told al the actors to have characters off stage while they waited between scenes. And finally, and most importantly — I even, for the first time, wrote my first sketch. I had written privately since I was tiny, as I mentioned here before. But this was the first time, outside of doing speech comedy, that I would let my writing be heard publicly.
It was a Shake N Bake commercial. For the fake TV show our play was being broadcast on. Hey, our theater program needed a sponsor, too! Why not Shake N Bake!
And that was when I first encountered the joy of sitting in an audience and listening to a room full of people laugh at a joke you wrote. There is nothing better. Maybe sex. And some brands of coffee. But hearing strangers laugh? Priceless.
A word or two more. I know I’ve gone on long enough. But hey. It’s my story.
I wanted to share why I was sitting in the audience where I learned this all important thing. I had been exiled there because Mr Knight gave me my first and most important piece of advice when doing anything creative.
I was a nervous wreck in the tech booth, standing over the shoulder of Mr Tuftie (our amazing Technical director at Thornwood high who I think is still teaching because he isn’t human and maybe a pagan god). Mr Knight turned to me and said, “Matthew, the last place a director needs to be on opening night in in the tech booth. Now get out.” Even though I don’t think I had a choice, I reluctantly agreed. Although I still sat in the last row next to the open door. Eventually, Mr Knight closed the door. And I had to learn the thing we all learn - to sit back and let it go.
It was after the one and only performance we had of VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET that my father turned to me and said, “you are an actor, sure, but this, doing this, wow.”
He was blown away. And for the first time in many years, my father and I agreed on all things. That this, writing pieces, making a play, somehow pulling it all together, was sorta my thing. To this day, I had never seen my father so sure of anything. Even while at the horse track. It was like the blessing that made it possible for me to risk it all and do what I’m still doing.
And when I graduated a few months later, he and mom memorialized what we had achieved with a pocket watch . On it were engraved the words - Shake n Bake under the Dr Seus prophecy, “oh the places you’ll go.” I look at it whenever I need to be reminded what time it really is.
And here I am all these years later still trying to answer which of the two ways of telling stories is more effective in promoting social change; satire or tragedy? Usually I end up synthesizing the two. But it is a question to keep you busy for a lifetime, so thank you Steve H at Denny’s.
All because some public educators and administrators and librarians allowed me to and trusted me to follow my own north star.
And it is still up there every day. To guide me.
(to keep me on time always, even if it stopped long ago)
At the start of the pandemic, John Knight retired after 31 years of teaching drama around the Chicagoland area.
Great story Matt!! We all have to start somewhere and it is always good to diversify in different areas of our career and life in general! And to be able to give you some freedom doing your own play at young age had to be awesome with the aderliane running! As a side note if I may say, I'm glad you and some of the other ducks have shared that sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board when things don't work out the way we wanted to! Much love and respect to you! 🤟🤟🤟🤟