An actor’s life for me

Honest John, the fox, and Gideon, the half-witted cat, sing “An Actor’s Life For Me’” in the Disney cartoon, “Pinocchio,” while tricking the little wooden head into servitude to the evil showman, Stromboli. Many of us believe that we could do that — act, that is, not trick people into servitude. (Not that tricking people into servitude is not a valuable skill. Ships’ captains and Big Business need this ability). The late, lovable, movie comic John Candy once did a skit in which he played an actor being interviewed. One of the questions put to him was, “What is your secret to acting?” to which he replied, “I try to pretend really hard.”I can do that. What I can’t do is remember lines. This is a distinct handicap in a profession in which you don’t get to make up your own dialogue. Everything is pre-planned and the delivery as written is often critical to the success of the show, unless you are Woody Allen, when you can sort of play it by ear. You can tell when Woody is winging it. The delivery becomes uneven and he tends to repeat or over-emphasize the stuff he likes and kind of mumble through the other stuff, with long pauses in between, like in real life. The trouble is we don’t want to see the awkwardness of real life. We want perfection in our productions. The perfection thing could also be a problem. I tend to work around 90 percent at my best, and maybe around 50 percent the rest of the time. If I am not feeling so good, it can go lower. (Do I feel warm to you)?u u uMusic ability is good. It is an integral part of most shows and movies. A minor stumbling block here is that my brain cannot process those little squiggles on the sheet music. They make sense to a musician. To me, not so much. I know that if they are going up that little ladder that the sound should go higher, but I lack a starting point and the ability to quantify the steps.It is hard for me to know if an instrument is in tune. My hearing is not that sophisticated. Here they are trying to sell me surround-sound systems when I cannot really hear that much difference between monaural and stereo, at least not enough to pay for it.I may have found my acting niche. Every so often they run an ad for movie extras: all ages, all body types, all intelligence levels. You just walk around in the picture. Sometimes you get shot or run from a monster.I can do that. Bill Abrams resides, and runs lines, in Pine Plains.