Jack Grapes, Writer/Teacher: And you're more nervous than I am. Film Courage: Oh yeah I
get very nervous but I'm hoping to...I like it. Fail better each time and and not just
aim for good. Jack: Well see that's another thing my acting teacher used to always say,
when you're nervous before performance don't try to get rid of nervousness, bring it with
you into the scene because it's an authentic emotion and as he put it never deny an authentic
emotion on stage or in front of a camera. Never deny it, never try to cover it up so
if in the middle of a scene you start laughing, laugh. If in the middle of the scene you're
nervous let that nervousness be there. When I do a poetry reading I am always (ask my
wife) she'll tell you my palms get sweaty and I'm a wreck and and I want to be I know
that's good i go okay good it means i'm alive because if i was dead i wouldn't be nervous
but if you're alive you're afraid of failure and if when you're afraid of making a fool
of yourself in front of 20 or 100 people you get nervous well that's good i should be nervous
and what i try to do is not to dissipate it the nervousness is really my friend because
it means i am connected to this moment when i get up and i open you know my book of poetry
and i go okay my first poem is going to be you know blah blah blah if if i'm confident
i i i'm going to be boring you know confidence is really pretty boring you know there's nothing
worse than seeing somebody think they know everything it's it's boring when you're performing
when you're acting when you're reading um so if you are nervous hold on to it it's your
friend let it be and when you start to read whatever that poem is a story if the poem
makes you you're nervous it's because there's something at stake you might be writing about
the time your father came home drunk and you you've tried to stop him from leaving and
you pushed him down and he fell and here you are 12 years old and you feel like you just
knocked your dad out or maybe you're writing a poem about when you were in in italy and
you were 19 and you got a phone call from the father of the boy you were traveling with
and he tells your son you have to come home you're the man in the family now and you don't
even want to admit that you know what that means so you say what i i don't understand
of course you understand he's telling your father died but you know what i don't understand
he said son you're the man in the family now
well you know that's that's a moment that i really relive and remember it was like my
whole world caved in i was in lake como in italy and uh it just changed my life it just
i i never thought that would happen i my father was like the most important man in my life
and if you're writing something about that then you should be nervous it should bring
you into the heart of your feelings whatever there might be for me it was absolute terror
just terror that i would not know what to do i felt my father was the wisest man i ever
knew and that even though i was 19 i felt that he would tell me the secret of life and
he hadn't told it to me yet but he was going to and when he died i thought i'll never know
what the secret of life is i'll never know how to survive because i want to be an artist
and i don't know how you make a living as an artist so maybe he would tell me but he
wasn't there anymore and i was like lost for years because of that and even now when i'm
talking about it i'm i'm getting all um i'm feeling that feeling i had when i was just
scared shitless about life that i wouldn't know what to do and you know the funny thing
about it is it's been i don't know 60 years since my dad died and i'm still not sure i
know what the secret of life is and i'm still not sure i know how to survive i can't believe
i've survived this long but i have but i don't believe it i don't i don't get it i don't
understand it i don't know how people survive you know i always think they know something
i don't know so nervousness is good how are how are fathers days for you how what father's
day june 20th how was that father's day you mean when when i'm the father of my son and
any any time father's day comes up i i you know once my son was born it was more a question
of me being the father to him and so that's what father's day was for me that you know
he would uh get me something or write me a card and every card he wrote i've saved them
i've got him on the on my bookshelves you know so i can see him and you know he always
would make me a father's day card um
you know i never thought about that um i i think about my father so much or did think
about him so much that i don't think i reserved one day that today is going to be the day
i think about them i thought about my father so much especially when i was unsure or in
trouble or worried or whatever i would think what would my father do what would he say
what would wha you know what would he tell me so i i don't need father's day you know
i i but he died when he was 50 i think so when i made 54 i remember thinking okay because
i always thought will you live to be as old as he was at the time 54 seemed like uh a
very old but when i was 54 i i felt like i just got started my son was about five years
old so i became a father when i was 49. so um you know i uh at 54 i thought okay all
the okay now it's it's it's me you know it's not him now it's now you know it's my turn
i've got to do it so that was a big year for me when when i had turned 54.
was it easy for you to write about this i've written about my relationship with my father
many times in different ways um
and my mother too who was a kind of a crazy according to my therapist a paranoid schizophrenic
so i wrote about my mother too but i've written about my father i've written about being a
father when josh was born and i would have to go to safeway and get diapers and enfamil
the the milk you know that you drink so i've written about father issues quite a bit um
you know buckowski has that great poem about his own father when he goes to his house after
his father dies and he puts on uh his father's suit which hangs on him a little loose um
the poem is called the twins because he looks at himself in the mirror and he thinks okay
now i'm my father so we could be twins so um i guess you wrestle with your father one
way or the other those who've had good fathers those who had bad fathers my dad was a wise
man a great man loved by everyone he also had a problem uh he was an alcoholic and a
lot of anxiety in my family growing up i'm a quote adult child of alcoholics you know
that that was the thing um but i didn't i don't know if i wrote about him a lot after
i got to be 54. i think at that point i kind of thought well okay i got this far without
knowing anything maybe i can i can go the rest of the way without knowing anything and
i still don't know anything you know every day when i wake up in the morning i said you
know i i try to guess what time it is by the light you know the light outside that beginning
of dawn and i try to guess what time it is and i'll i'll look over and i'll see what
time it is and i'll think to myself okay another day another day to write your poems and teach
and be you know love your friends and love the world so that's a long answer to to a
very simple question you asked where's the green tape no i don't want you to talk it's
great i like it i know there's a lot of emotion i remember there was a clerk at a grocery
store and i'd seen the person many times and i was sort of friendly with them and and i'm
not it was father's day and the clerk so i forgot what happened and he said you're not
wishing me a happy father's day and i could see how hurt he was and he goes you think
that just because i'm older i don't you know and i could just see it was like a real wound
to this person yeah and i i said to him you know the reason i didn't wish you that is
because father's day wasn't a thing for me i never knew mine so that was why so we were
both coming to it with these two different things but yeah i could see even he was he
was still you know this was very hard for him and here he was behind this cashier trying
to save face and you know i just remember that being a very um interesting moment i
never forgot it yeah we don't have a lot of moments like that with people we don't know
i kind of knew him just just i would joke with him and and i actually never saw him
after that i don't know what happened to him but hopefully he's okay but um anyway i'm
going off on a tangent but i guess what i'm trying to say is that we don't know some you
know fatherhood motherhood all those things are very these are very sort of deep you talk
about the deep voice yeah these are things that we all carry our own wound or whatever
with us you know yeah and um you don't know whether you're supposed to play a role or
what is it to be a father you know i i remember when my wife was pregnant i when she called
me on the phone to tell me she was pregnant the first thought i thought was okay now now
it begins meaning i have to take life seriously and then the night her water broke we were
watching um sleeping with the enemy a movie on tv and it was about 11 o'clock at night
you know you you always want your water to break in the morning so you can go to the
hospital and you've had a good night's sleep but no it was 11 o'clock at night we were
exhausted and our water breaks and we're driving to the to kaiser and i i stop at a ralph's
or something and i get ice because they said something about you know she can have eyes
or something like that i don't know what it was but i went into the ralphs with the neon
lights and everything was real bright and it was 11 11 30 at night and again i just
had that got a little ice chest put the ice in i remember thinking okay this is it you
know we knew it was a boy your son's going to be born very soon and your life is going
to totally change so there was that feeling that everything was going to be different
well nothing really changes you just go on day by day being and dealing with what you
have to deal with but in my imagination i thought you know it was like okay show time
you know it's like you're doing a play and they go you're on and then you have to walk
out there and i'm the father where's my lines and they go um uh there are no lines i go
what do you mean i go well we don't have any lines well there's got to be lines i mean
i'm a father what's what's the what's the you know what's the role what do i got to
do and they go oh i don't know and they go are you a father yeah but i don't know what
the hell to do well anybody here know what to do no i'm in front of 500 people here what
am i going to do well you got to be a father yeah but what is that about i don't know so
you just go and do it you know that whatever role you think it is it's not what you think
it's going to be
i remember when josh was in third grade i was driving him to school and my son is very
stubborn i don't know where he gets it i think he gets it for me of course uh he's really
stubborn i mean you know you don't tell josh what to do and we're in the car and i don't
know we got into something he and i and my wife would always say don't make it a fight
you know i couldn't help it you know i'm going to hold my position he's going to hold his
and before you know it i'm kind of yelling and screaming and we're just driving it's
a mess we get to school and it was my day to go to the kids and teach them how to write
poetry so i tell them you know write about something true and anyway i walk around the
room and watch what the kids are writing just to see if they're doing okay sometimes a kid
maybe doesn't quite know how to get started and i help him and there's my son writing
about me yelling and screaming in the car now i usually have the kids get up and read
and there was no way i could not have him do it if he wanted to because i that would
be a bad lesson to teach him so when it was time to read i said okay who wants to read
first josh raises his hand i go oh [ __ ] so he walks up opens it up and he's writing about
being in the car with his dad who's yelling and screaming and the kids are like i mean
they're they're loving it and at the same time they're a little shocked and i know they're
all looking at me they want to see how am i going to react to it and i just listened
to it like i was listening to a piece of writing and then when he was finished i went good
good i said you know the part there where you mentioned that you could write a little
more about that you know make it now as i responded to it like it was a piece of writing
worthy of being commented on uh but you know how do you plan for something like that you
know they're the kids i'm the teacher and he's writing about me you know being a kind
of uh not very empathetic father so you know i don't know whatever's in the handbook it
wasn't in the handbook i got you just sort of stumble your way through and hope you do
your best i think that's why in saving private ryan um at the very end of the movie when
he he goes to the grave of the major who saved his life and you know he's an old man now
and and he hopes that that his life was worthy of being saved i broke down in the movie theater
because the way i related to it was at that point when i saw the movie i hope my life
will be worthy as a father as a husband as a friend and i mean i was just it's probably
the most i've cried in a movie ever in my life when he said i hope my life will be worthy
so you make a lot of mistakes you fail right you fail and when you fail you you got to
go well this is what's supposed to happen and that day that josh wrote this piece about
the car ride over that was the deeper voice yeah it was a deep voice and he was writing
about something that was like pretty brave gutsy of him to write about that you know
i mean i'm his father i'm the teacher i'm coming into the classroom as the teacher teaching
everyone how to write and i'm telling them a matter of fact i read a poem by my own father
come to think of it that's part of the lesson so he went and did it you know bravo for him
so like i said you i i had to validate that i i couldn't uh one tell him no no don't read
that josh it'll make me look bad well if it made me look bad too bad because what he wrote
was good and as a teacher and as a father i have to reinforce for him that this is how
you make art you tell the truth you you take risks you write about what's hard to write
about.
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