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Life of a Political Actor "A 'Tuna' Atmosphere" Good afternoon. My name is Sarah Massey with the Institute of Texan Cultures. It is Sunday, June 18, 1995, and I'm at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, to interview Jaston Williams, who is one of the performers in Greater Tuna . I'd like to start with- where you started in Texas, what your youth was about, and where you began. I was born in El Paso on June 28, 1951. My father was a farmer and rancher. He came from very Western stock. My mother's family was much more Southern. So the children were kind of a mixed hybrid. We had kind of a "magnolia mother" and a "cowboy father." We lived on a farm outside of Van Horn, Texas-about twenty miles south of Van Horn. [We] lived there until I was about six years old, and then we moved up to the Panhandle. My father farmed there, and we lived in Overton, Texas, for nine years, which had been where my father was born in the early century. We were kind of an "old" family in the area. In the beginning of my sophomore year in high school, we moved to Crosbyton, Texas, which is right above the Caprock; it's thirty miles east of Lubbock, and it's right on the border between farm country and ranch country. So, again, there were some really fascinating personalities to grow up with. I have more of an affection for far-West Texas where I lived before, when I was six years old. My mother lives in far-West Texas now. She lives in a little town called Dell City that's about 490 people, and it's at the base of the Guadalupe Mountains, about eighty-five miles from Van Horn in one direction, eighty-five from El Paso in another, and eight-five from Carlsbad in another. It really has kind of a "Tuna" atmosphere. But it's that far-West Texas country; it's very, very independent; people are very, very independent. They may fight and squabble with each other greatly, but if anybody's broken down on the highway, they stop. I mean, they take care of each other. I think a lot of that has to do with a desert mentality. When you live in that kind of environment, if anybody needs help of any kind, there's no question about it, you just provide it. So I find something very wonderful about that part of the world. I hope within the next ten years to maybe have a place out in that part of Texas. I really love the area around Alpine and Fort Davis. I would like to have a little hidden-away home up there where I could go and write and experience it. But I have a very strong affection for far-West Texas, and I have a lot of knowledge about the Panhandle. I have a lot of old friends up there; I grew up and went to school there. I went to school at Tech, briefly. But it does not inspire the same kind of affection in me, somehow, that far-West Texas does. I'm not really sure what the difference is. I think there's a difference; well, there's a difference in the climate, there's a larger population in the Panhandle, and there's more of a rigidity. I grew up in a part of the country where there were, basically, three Protestant religions, or three Protestant denominations, that seemed to run the whole show. You just didn't know anybody who wasn't either a Baptist or Methodist or Church of Christ. I mean, they ran the show. We were Methodist; I loved it because you had to show up and you had to pay and you couldn't get real emotional! [laughter] So we were in church every time the lights were on. And, I look back on it now, my older brother resisted the religious background thing with every fiber of his being. He fought it every Sunday, and he never got to first base with my mother. He fought it every Sunday of his adolescent life, and he went to church every Sunday of his adolescent life. It never occurred to me to resist it. It was just something that you did. It was just a part of your life that was there. I'm very grateful that my mother and my father had the religious background that they did, if, for no other reason, that it taught me social graces. It taught me that there are situations that you will be in as an adult where you're going to have to sit still, where you're going to have to be quiet, where you may have to listen to someone who's just boring the life out of you [laughter], but that you have to do this! And it taught you a sense of decorum. The social lives of these communities were built entirely around churches and schools. I think that that kind of naturally came out in our plays when we write about the fictional town of Tuna, Texas. Everything is pretty much set around a church, a school, and a radio station. So I was very fortunate; I didn't realize what was out in the rest of the world. I, about halfway, thought that trees were something the Brothers Grimm had made up [laughter] because we hadn't seen very many of them. Forests were just out of the question and kind of frightening! Stuff could hide in there! [laughter] It's one thing in the Panhandle-if there's something violent, you can see it coming from a long way! [laughter] I go back every five years to my high school reunion and have just a delightful time. There are times when I look at the life that some of my classmates have, and I'm envious. I'm extremely grateful that I have a career in theater, that I write it, and that I act it. I'm fortunate to be able to travel and learn about a lot of different parts of the country and the world firsthand. But then hotel rooms lose their sentimentality when you're in one all the time; it becomes a real job, and everybody's got to have a job, and I'm glad that I've got this one, but there are things that you give up. There are times when I would love to be in a small town in West Texas going to the football games on Friday night. Having barbecue? Enjoying barbecue... Homemade potato salad. ...and a covered dish and congealed salad, my God! You know, I miss it so bad. You can't find anyone in my generation that can make it. [laughter] So I miss it in a way. My father died about a year and a half ago, and we buried him in Lubbock. And, bless his heart; we had the most wonderful funeral. Funerals are great in our family because we fall apart and just lose our mind. And then you eat congealed salad, the tuna rolls, and the this and the that, and just have a wonderful time. It's a great time of fellowship and reconnecting and all of that. Dad's funeral was on a beautiful fall day in Lubbock, not a cloud in the sky, and just a hawk circling repeatedly over the graveyard, and it was a great way for an old cowboy to go out. It was a great way to say, "So long." And so, again, I do have a lot of affection, and I may go back to Lubbock. When I die, I mean. [laughter] It's probably the best thing I can think [of] about Lubbock, is being buried there! [laughter] Well, how did you leave? I mean, how did you leave that part of the country? I graduated from high school on a Friday night in 1969, and I was gone Sunday morning. I came back briefly to go to Tech for a while, and I enjoyed it very much. Actually, I loved going to Tech. But I couldn't handle the sand, the weather. It's not as bad out there anymore, but there was a period there in the late 1960s, early 1970s, where it took on dust bowl proportions in the spring. The weather was more than I could deal with. It was very depressing. I came down to San Marcos right after high school and did a couple of semesters there, so I knew that there were trees and clean water and places where the toilets didn't freeze the first of December! [laughter] So, going back, I really loved Tech, and that's where I wanted to go to college, but the weather was just inhospitable. At a certain point I just thought-I can't... ...Do this. ...I can't do this. Spring should be the most beautiful time of the year, and it was the worst time out there. So, another victim of the dust bowl. I went to Houston. I was married at the time. Married very young, and my son was born on Mother's Day of 1971. He was about a month old when we moved to Houston. I was planning to go to the University of Houston, and I thought I would go by a junior college and pick up some electives. It was one of those moments where fate guided. You know, fate guides you somewhere and you think later, "How did I get here? What did I do to get here? And how wonderful this is." I decided to take some electives, and I thought, "Well, I'll wait. I'll go to U of H a semester, and I'll just go by a junior college not far from here." I'd heard of a place called San Jacinto College in Pasadena-it's right across the street from Gilley's. I thought, "Well, this will be a great place to take biology, math, or whatever." And when I went in, they told me, "You have to declare a major." And I said, "Well, I, you know..." And they said, "Well, you have to." So I thought, "Well, I'll just be honest, and I'll major in theater." They said, "Well, you have to go talk to the Head of the Theater Department." I said, "But I don't want to take any theater." They said, "Well, you have to." They were big on the rules! [laughter] I thought, "I don't know if I'm going to like this this much." I went to talk to the head of the Theater Department-his name is Jerry Rawlins Powell. He's been retired for a few years now, and he was a godsend for me. I talked to him for about an hour. Was absolutely fascinated by him. He was a real "no-bull" guy and was very direct. He said, "I don't know what we will do this year in terms of plays because I don't know who we've got. But we'll do four plays this season, and then we'll do some in the summer. I won't know until I see who shows up for the first audition what play we're going to do, but we'll do something." He had such a clear idea of what he liked, and he was very up-front with me about what he liked, and I took a liking to him immediately. During the first week of school, I dropped several courses and took pretty much a full load of his theater courses. He was literally a one-man theater department. So you had him for poetry [interpretation], for acting, for technical theater, and for lighting; he did it all. It was the best thing that could possibly have happened to me for a couple of reasons. One was that at a certain point he told me, "You know, you're very good. We're going to use you; we're going to use you all year. And you really don't need to be in school," he said, "because you don't want to be in school. You don't want to do the things that students have to do in terms of all this other stuff you want to take. You want to be in theater. And I think you can do it." He signed me up to audition for a theater company in San Antonio that I'd had the good fortune to see-I'd seen a performance of theirs when I was a student at San Marcos. It was the First Repertory Company of San Antonio. It's been defunct for a while, but [it was] an excellent, exciting, on-the-edge theater. I held them in high esteem, and it didn't occur to me to audition for them. I didn't know that they would open it up or anything. I didn't know how to get in the door with them. He told me, "You know, they're auditioning next week, and I want you to go. You need to prepare a classic piece, and you need to prepare two contemporary pieces. Go to Rice University, and they'll see you there." And I did, and I got hired. They were hiring pretty much a new theater company; they were hiring about seven or eight actors. And I was the youngest person, I think, that they'd ever hired. How old were you at that time? I was not quite twenty-one. I was twenty when they hired me. They had to wait until my birthday for me to sign the contract, because you had to be twenty-one. It changed my life. Again it was one of those things of "How did you get here?" It's something I love about life-that bizarre happenstance. The dust storm drove you away; you knew to get away from the storm. If nothing else, you're not going to get dust in your face! You end up across the street from Gilley's, studying theater with a one-man drama department who happens to be a genius. He pushes you toward San Antonio, and you're working what would have been, I guess, my senior year in college; I was working with the First Repertory Company, and it was like, "How in the hell did I get here?" I don't know how I got here, but I am so grateful and thankful. In fact, it's interesting-with the Institute of Texan Cultures being in HemisFair-because this theater was in HemisFair. It was right over in the corner-it's gone now-but it was right off the corner of Soledad and Alamo. And we did, my God, we did Hamlet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Cabaret, The Canterbury Tales , [Jean] Genet's The Balcony , O'Neil's Desire under the Elms, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Plays that just don't get done anymore. There was a seriousness about theater at that time. It was a serious time in the country-the Vietnam thing was happening. So many liberation movements were sprouting up. And we were a very, very liberal, on-the-edge group of young people, under the leadership of Jay Robert Swain, who was just an incredible man and who would fight every battle that he could for you. I was extremely fortunate to get to work there. Through some connections, I ended up going to San Francisco and spending a lot of time there. Although I never did theater in San Francisco, I gained some life experience there that I never would have gained anywhere else. And it was THE time to be there; it was in 1973 through 1977. I was kind of back-and-forth on the road all the time. Tales of the City is like reading my mail. It was exactly that way. [laughter] That's exactly what was going on. It was one of those fascinating places to be. I guess it must have been somewhat like Paris was in the 1920s. All of a sudden something just happened, something just blooms in a place, and you don't know why, and, by the time that the world finds out about it, it's over. The interesting thing to me about San Francisco is so many people thought the party was over, because "the summer of love" stuff and all of that had passed and had gone into a very dark heroin underground, and the Haight-Ashbury, when I first came to San Francisco, was a ghetto that you just could not go near! It was a dangerous place to be. It was all boarded up and about drugs. The gay movement was happening, and there were violent and frightening things happening. The Zebra Killings happened when I was there. It was a frightening thing to be a slight, small, white male, because those were the ones who were being killed. And simultaneously all over the city, somebody would walk up to you and kill you, and it was racism. It was a terrifying thing, yet you hung on. The Patty Hearst kidnapping happened during that time. If you had written it as a scenario for a film, no one would ever have bought it. I also connected with a real dear friend of mine that I went to college with briefly at Tech, and she ended up at Mills College in Oakland. Her name is C.K. McFarland, Cynthia McFarland; she later formed a theater that I worked at in Austin and where we originally did Greater Tuna . We bonded and reconnected in a big way. We both remembered that period where we were in Lubbock with dirt blowing in our faces. She was kind of a heavy-set, tall woman; I was a slight frail man. We identified with each other because we did not fit... Fit in the mold. ...fit the Tri-Delt image of what we should be. And we ended up in San Antonio. I went back to San Antonio, and we just did spur-of-the-moment theater all over town. First Rep had kind of gone its way by this point, but we did a lot of theater in just any venue that we could find. We did The Killing of Sister George ; we did Find A Way Home ; we did a wonderful play called Steambath by Bruce Drey Freeman that's about the psycho ward in heaven. [laughter] It's where you go to chill-out and have a Mars bar, and then they let you in the Big Room, and you're here forever [laughter]; really wonderful, wonderful play. We trained, we learned so much, and we did it all-we built the set, we found the costumes, we got someone to shoplift two hundred sheets from Fort Sam Houston's hospital [laughter] so that we could project. [laughter] You just did what you had to do. It was quite a Bohemian lifestyle. And we bounced around between San Antonio and Austin and San Francisco and Taos, New Mexico. What were you doing in Taos? Well, we went in the summer of 1975, I think, to do theater. And we formed a company called the Magic Mirror Players, and we got...well, there were some rich hippies that owned a place called the San Geronimo Inn. They set us up at the San Geronimo, and we did a play called Robin Hood's Sherwood's Scandals . That was one of the crazier experiences. [laughter] We had kind of a female Phil Silvers playing Robin. And we just gender-switched everything that we wanted to; it was a marvelous experience. It was one of those summers that changes your life, that changes your take on things. There were people involved in the production that had been very active in a lot of the radical/political movements of the 1960s, and those days were kind of over, and everyone was in a transition. Taos was still a place where people really lived that down, sleep-on-the-dirt, hippie attitude. And it was fine to observe it, and I could take it for a while. There were times when it got a little tiring for me. Did you encounter prejudice there? Yes. Taos is a lot different now than it was. It was a strange situation, in that the hippies had come in during the late 1960s, in droves, some of whom were just incredible people and some of whom were very undesirable people. There was a very middle-class community there, and there was a Native American community, of course, at the Pueblo. Then there was a serious Hispanic community that spanned pretty much all economic spheres. All these hippies came in, and there was a feeling from a lot of people of, "Why are you taking our town?" Taos had always had its free spirits, but there'd never been that many of them there, never been that dominant. There was an attitude, and I understood it. These long-haired blond kids come in from Texas and California and are just dancing in the streets and having the best time they can imagine, and they feel that they're in paradise. You had a lot of local people, primarily Hispanics, who were on the bottom end of the economic ladder, who felt trapped by this town. They saw the beauty, but they also saw a darker side. They saw a side that if you got out of high school, there was no job waiting for you; there was nothing for you there, and you couldn't leave and you couldn't stay. And there was a great deal of animosity. I didn't experience any of it directly, but I know there were times there-before and afterwards-it got into violence, it got into guns. There were kind of turf wars. And I remember-I was so innocent to it, and I think that's one reason I didn't get hurt. But there were serious turf wars, and there was just a real animosity going on. People felt like their town had been taken. And other people felt like they had found paradise, and they didn't want this attitude to get in the way of it at all. So this was one of your first experiences with prejudice? It was a serious experience with prejudice. As a long-haired blond... ...Long-haired blond white hippie in a fairly Hispanic, low-rider, community. Something that I learned then, and I've learned since, is that you can defuse a situation, if it can be defused, if you take a peaceful, non-violent attitude toward it. People are very hesitant to attack someone who's just standing there with their arms wide open saying, "Go ahead, break my ribs," which a lot of us, I guess, [laughter] were stupid enough to do! [laughter] I had, and have, a real affection for Taos, and I know Taos now is not what it was in the 1970s. There's a lot more commercialism; there are more hotels; there are twenty-four-hour groceries; there are a lot of things there that took away from the charm of what we had. I think there's a two-year school there now, a two-year college. There are a lot of job opportunities that weren't there. I found it very heartening that you would see teenagers that you would have been afraid of in the 1970s, who would have been sitting in the town square, who had jobs. And who were raising kids, who were going to school; that it had ceased to be the end of the world for a lot of people. The economic thing had happened. Now Taos lost some beautiful stuff; they bulldozed the town square in the center and put in all this concrete, and I'm sure some day they'll bulldoze that and put it back as it was. If you've ever read The Milagro Beanfield War , that reminds me so much of my period in Taos, like when they start screaming "Viva Snuffy!" in the back of the church. [laughter] And go, "Uh-oh, there's going to be trouble!" [laughter] But Taos is still an inspiration to me. I lived there for several years, or I had a place there that I shared with a friend of mine. But, in the past three or four years, I fell in love with the French Quarter in New Orleans, and I decided you can only have one out-of-town place that you actually pay the rent on. [laughter] You may play twenty characters, but you cannot have twenty homes! [laughter] So, I found a wonderful apartment in the French Quarter, and I've been hiding out there a lot. I still live in Austin, but I have a place there. My friend in Taos bought a house, and she's got a bedroom that's always waiting for me there; it's got my stuff in it, and late in the summer I'll be visiting Taos. Oh, that's wonderful. But Taos inspires you. And the art, the light, the artists, and a certain innocence to it. Are you friends with another Texan, Michael Martin Murphey? I know of him. Actually, Joe, my partner in Greater Tuna , knows Michael Martin Murphey very well. He was always kind of around on the fringes. R.C. Gorman, the same thing. R.C.'s so funny; he said, "You know, you can't imagine what it's like. Talk about prejudice; I'm a Navaho in a Pueblo community!" [laughter] That's a good line! I'm just finding it fascinating, because the other one I interviewed, Amado Peña, two weeks ago, he's at Nambi, and his gallery is in Taos. So many Texans seem to be gravitating that way. Well, they do. I think there are some invisible borders in there-that eastern New Mexico and parts of western Texas and all-that it's not Texas or New Mexico; it is just some kind of magic place. Such places pull you in and inspire artists and are great places to relax and to write. If I were a painter, which I'm not...and in this life that will not happen! [laughter] I mean, my attitude about art is, if I can do it, it isn't art! [laughter] In terms of painting anyway! Okay. But Taos has been an enormous inspiration for me. I'd now like to ask you to reflect and think about my next question-are you famous? Umm... What does that mean to you? I think some people would say I am infamous! [laughter] Infamous! Okay, how so? How are you infamous? I was just a real free spirit in a certain part of my life. I hear stories, I hear people telling stories; some are true, but a lot of them are just made up. I was such a wild child for a period of my life that I think people just imagined a lot of stuff. You know, I burned a lot of brain cells, but I can remember! [laughter] I don't serve breakfast to twenty people in my underwear! And I've heard that story, but no, it did not happen. Now that I would remember! I don't think about it that much, and yet [I] will get stopped in an elevator. What amazes me is when I'm in some part of the country where I don't think anyone would know about Greater Tuna or the characters, and [I] will run into someone who knows [me], or who knows [my] work, or who's been affected by it one way or the other. I don't know what fame is; I'm not really sure. I think fame affects some people in that it takes their privacy, or it puts a certain amount of pressure on them, because in this business it's not "what have you done?" It's "what have you done lately?" I remember an interview one time with Meryl Streep, who I would argue is the best film actress in this country. Maybe that we've ever had. She has talents and abilities that are stunning. And she said, "You know, I am afraid every time I do a film that if we really mess this one up, is this it? Will I not work again?" And that is a fear that everyone goes through. The machine, in the film industry especially, is geared to "who's new?" and "how much can we get out of him?" You're hot for a certain period. You grind everything out of them that you can over that period, and then you've got to ditch them because you've got to bring up somebody new. It's all about being new, peaking, on the downhill, and then you can make a comeback. I find that stuff just awful! I feel very sorry for certain people, because we've got a lot of very, very talented people who are not getting the opportunity to work. For as much money as it takes to make an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, we're losing five, six, seven great potential art films. Or serialization or films based on good novels or on the Forester stuff or something. Thank God for Merchant-Ivory. There are some people out there who seem to know how to do it, and it's a shame there aren't more of them! But fame is, I guess, when you don't get the attention, it scares you, and when you do get the attention, it's a little embarrassing. And yet, this is what we do! You want to entertain people; you want to make them happy, you want to make your political point; you want to speak to their heart and their souls; you want to move them to tears. There's got to be a certain line, beyond that, that [actors] can cross. I think for someone to say, "I want to do all this for you, but I don't ever want to talk to you; I don't ever want to give an autograph; I don't ever want to have to deal with your lives," that is kind of shallow and selfish. You have to know where to draw the line. But, on a certain level, I think you do have an obligation to cross over and shake a few hands and meet a few people. The other thing is that, to me, that's the only thing that keeps us grounded in the real world. If we get hung-up on what Broadway producers or Hollywood producers or Manhattan or Los Angeles considers to be the real world, then you're going to get pretty dull pretty quick. Because you lose touch with the real people. Well, the on-goingness of Greater Tuna and A Tuna Christmas is unbelievable. t is very hard for us to contemplate at times. We have thought of sending a thank-you letter to Newt Gingrich,and there's great irony in that. He has revived some of what I consider to be idiotic ideas. After we thought, we fought this battle, this is over. This is our greatest fear of the early 1980s. Just when you think there's no one more ignorant than some of what we've had, then honk! honk! For my next number, here comes this north Georgia vaudeville act, running on two flat tires, and everybody's clapping! And you go, my God, I wouldn't buy Crayolas from this guy! And he thinks he's the president of the United States, and we can get some humor out of that. I guess I should be grateful to Congress, if there weren't so many idiots. But there's some truly dangerous people up there, and we feel that it is our obligation to point that out! My hero, one of my heroes, and the person that A Tuna Christmas is dedicated to, is John Henry Faulk. He had the nerve, at a time in the 1950s when people were running from Joseph McCarthyand avoiding any contact and trying not to say anything that would possibly get them into trouble, he formed an organization and sued [McCarthy]! He eventually won and lost his career as a result of that. During the prime of his career, he could not be seen by people in the United States of America because of this fascist from Wisconsin. He was one of the blacklisted. He was blacklisted. Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were blacklisted. Zero Mostel was blacklisted. It's unbelievable. Kim Hunter was blacklisted. Lillian Hellman was blacklisted, of course, and Dashiel Hammet. We lost so much! John Schlesinger couldn't make films during his prime. It is a great American tragedy that we must never forget! And, thank God, there were a few like John Henry, who was just stubborn, South Texas, independent enough to say, "I am not going let this jackbooted, goose-stepping Yankee come in here and destroy my life! He may destroy my career, but I am going to win something on this! And we're going to point out who he is!" And they did! Roy Cohen was the lawyer, and the thought of John Henry taking on Roy Cohen is a beautiful thought! They will both have their deserved place in history. But our material is by its nature political, because we are political, and we feel that it is our obligation. Where did that come from? Where did you get into such a social justice issue? I became politicized...this is interesting...I don't know if you were around in Texas when this happened. In 1972, there [was] a massive scandal and the Governor, Preston Smith; Lt. Governor, Ben Barnes; the Speaker of House, Gus Mutcher; and several others had, among other things, extorted money from a convent. They had been involved in a serious banking scandal, down to money laundering. I mean it was unbelievable what had gone on. And these were the big boys that were running the state! Running every aspect of it, in tandem; they were all working together. There was a woman named Frances Farenthold who was a member of what was called "The Dirty Thirty." They were kind of rebel legislators who fought this whole group for environmental laws, against racism, for women's rights, and for rights for everybody. Well, she ran for governor. She was one of eight candidates and came in second in the primary; ended up in a highly contested run-off with Dolph Briscoe, which she lost. But she established, laid the ground, really, for Ann Richards to come in later and any number of people. It was at the same time that George McGovern was running for president. We were draft-age; the Vietnam War was at its height; and all of a sudden you realize there are some people there that you do respect, that you do want to emulate, that you do think could make a difference. It always amazes me when right-wing Republicans say, "Well, you accuse someone of being a McGovern Democrat as if that were some kind of crime or some kind of badge of dishonor. If you didn't vote for McGovern and you voted in that election, you voted for Nixon." You can blame me for a lot of stuff, but you can't blame me for Richard Milhous Nixon! In fact, on my tombstone, wherever it goes up-and it may be in Lubbock-it will say, "He voted for McGovern." You can hang a lot of stuff around my neck, but you cannot hang Nixon! [laughter] And I'm very proud to wear that badge. That politicized me. Living in Taos and living in San Francisco politicized me. Being out on my own, seeing the poverty in this country, seeing the dispossessed, and seeing the aged; it's a national disgrace. We are not a great nation; no nation is great until it takes care of its people. We're not saying that all the liberal ideas were right; we're not saying that at all. But we are saying that to throw people on the street is disgusting. It's disgusting, it's inhuman, and, by doing so, you are leading this country to what could be a civil war someday. It's very frightening. Somehow we don't think that can happen. But maps change, and it would be a tragedy that we can never overcome. We have a fine country here, but we've got to take care of our people. I worked for a while at the Carver Center in San Antonio. I worked with a government program, and we went out into the ghetto and into the barrios and anywhere where people needed help. It created drama workshops and all of that, and I saw some stuff that was terrifying to me and frightening. You'd get your heart broken from what you would see. I had some of the most creative and outstanding students who barely had shoes on their feet but had a creativity that was amazing. That was before the funds got cut for the program. So if it was that bad when they had them... I saw one neighborhood where the only time I saw the people of that neighborhood truly united was when a rat would appear on the street and everybody would drop everything and try to kill that rat. It was a real lesson for me. My father and my stepmother were very conservative. My dad was very conservative and ended up late in life becoming a Republican. I gave him a tour of some of the parts of San Antonio one night that opened up his eyes. A lot! He said, "Well, I don't like being over here." And I said, "Well, they don't either." Think about it. Think if you had no other place to go. And it's worse now; this was before crack, before any of that stuff. Yes, that's right. But when we came, when Joe and I ended up coming to Austin, I had been living in Atlanta for about a year and a half. Joe had moved to Austin, and our friend C.K. had started the TransAct Theater Company. The purpose of TransAct Theater was political. We were a whole other side of the bargain, as it were. The theater itself did not last very long. There were financial troubles, but we ended up renting the theater, getting our own money together and renting the theater and producing Greater Tuna and starting it there. So Greater Tuna was, in some senses, born out of this attitude. It was during the early years of the Reagan administration. We felt-and the Moral Majority-these people were really being used. I still feel that-that the Republican Party kind of made a pact with the devil. They spoke [about] the issues that a lot of people, a lot of extremists, wanted to hear, but they really didn't give 'em anything. They gave them some people on the Supreme Court, but abortion stayed legal; prayer in public schools stayed legal; the Constitution stayed intact, no matter how many people would like to gut it. I think this had a lot to do with the fall of George Bush [Sr.]; I really do. I think that Reagan could make the speeches that Bush just couldn't make. The other irony is that when we were in Washington during the Bush years, we were invited to the White House twice. We know the Bushes well. [Former] President and Mrs. Bush are delightful people whom I like very much. I know she's more public about it than he is, but I think both of them are a lot more liberal than they would like anybody to know, to believe. But there's a lot more heart there than we saw, and I have a great deal of respect for both of them. I felt they came in with some dignity; and they left with true dignity. That could not be said about some of the recent administrations before them. The way you go out is as important as the way you come in. That's interesting. Tell me what's in the hopper now, what you're writing or thinking of writing. I'm working on a play; I'm doing what I hope is the final draft on a play called Romeo and Thorazine , which is a satire of show business and of the mental health racket. It is about a mental hospital that is producing a play, an in-house production. [laughter] It says a lot of what I've got to say about theater and about the mental health racket. I had the misfortune of having someone very dear to me hospitalized a couple of times, and [she] had to be put in the state hospital because she would not go into a private one; she had to be committed for her own good. They are frightening places. I would go and visit her, and the first thing that I became aware of was that I could not tell the patients from the staff. I found the patients, for the most part, much more enjoyable and less frightening than the staff. There were people out there working that you thought, "Oh, my God!"- very kind of violent personalities. "What's wrong with her?" And they say, "Ah, she hasn't had her break!" [laughter] I think it's very thin line. One person's high entertainment is another person's insanity. I kept getting an image of these people as "angels with broken wings." For many of them, the way they looked at the world or the way they had no choice but to look at the world, meant that they were just too fragile to accept it. I think we, in our everyday "normal" lives, get so used to the insanity of living in any country and in a contemporary country. I mean, when you think about it, we get into big chunks of metal that will go up to 140 miles per hour, we put ourselves on hard surfaces, and we hurtle! And we count on everybody having their act together to stop when they see a red light! Yes. It is absurd! And yet we're stuck with it. [laughter] Someday they're going to look back, a couple of centuries from now, "You want to talk about a crazy period-the second half of the twentieth century was nuts! [laughter] They'd hop in these things, and they'd go to their psychiatrist and say, 'Why am I so nervous?'" [laughter] Technology has not gotten to the point where we can be a little calmer about things. I think there had to be times when it was easier. I'm just appalled by fax machines, because I think part of our existence is based on the fact that "it's in the mail!" [laughter] You tell them, I just mailed it! That's all that has held this society together, and you can't tell that lie anymore. I had a dear friend, bless his heart, I just adored him; he was from Texas, and his name was Billie Ray McCauley. I am so sorry he's gone, because he wasn't famous to anybody except all those who knew him, and then, once you knew him, he was just the most amazing creature. He looked like Santa Claus; he was originally from Hillsboro, Texas, which he called "Hill Snooky, Texas," and he lived all over the world. I met him in New York. He was the only man I've ever known that you could walk down the street with in New York City, and people would [call], from distances, "Billie Ray!"-outside of cabs, down from the buildings, in the subway-anywhere you went-people recognized Billie Ray. He was one of the most delightful human beings, and he told a story that's one of my favorites. One thing he said-we were talking about computers and all of that and fax machines. He said, "Let me tell you something; one carefully placed ham and cheese sandwich in the right computer, and the world will grind to a halt. It can be done." And he said, "There are days when I want to say, I've got a sandwich, and, by God, I'll use it!" [laughter] "I'm a desperate man here!" He told one of my favorite stories that is so Texas and so entertaining, and he was one of the most entertaining people I've ever known. I've never known anybody that didn't love him. He said he had a cousin from North Texas. She was a beautiful girl, from Hillsboro originally-went to TCU, entered beauty pageants, did the whole Texas debutante thing, and was a very talented singer. She decided she wanted to go to New York and do musical comedies, and she did a few. She actually went up and got in some. When she first moved to New York, she was just a stunningly beautiful woman, and he said, "I wanted to take her somewhere and introduce her, you know, have a big dinner at some nice restaurant and take her out and introduce her to some people from New York." And so he did, and there are about a dozen people at the table, and it's just a feast, which it always was with Billie Ray. There was a man across from her, who was just truly taken by her beauty, and he leaned over the table, and he said, "Do you miss Texas?" And she said, "I'm sorry, I can't hear you." He said, "Do you miss Texas?" And she said, "I'm sorry, I just can't hear you; it's too loud in here." And he said, "Do you miss Texas?" And she said, "Oh, no, I'm Miss Fort Worth. But my roommate was Miss Texas!" [laughter] True story. [laughter] Isn't that too much! And on that, let's end it! [laughter] Okay. May we all have a roommate who's Miss Texas. [laughter] |
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