Of all the completely ridiculous, goofy things I’ve done… this is definitely one of them.
Our story begins yesterday, when I receive a call from a woman claiming to be the sister of a fellow who was in Damn Yankees with me. It seems that a cinema down in Tacoma is doing a charity event where they show It’s A Wonderful Life, and afterward they get some actors to reenact the final scene. The fun part? It’s supposed to go on the following evening, and she’s in rather dire need of someone to play George Bailey, the main character.
Never to be one to back down from such an absurd crisis, I naturally agree to do it.
I have some vague memory of the movie… bells and angel wings and all that. I last saw it when I was… ten, maybe? I do remember it being a little cornball and campy, and ask whether it’s to be more of a tongue-in-cheek or faithful reenactment. She tells me it’s faithful, and I say “okay”, thinking heck, I can do drama, how bad can it be?
So last night I check out the ending of the movie according to YouTube, and am frankly astonished at just how corny it is. I mean, Jimmy Stewart is practically a parody of himself, and while our script is condensed down to only about two or three minutes, it’s still got lines in it like “look at this wonderful old drafty house” and “Zuzu, Zuzu, my little gingersnap”. I have no clue how I can say those things like Jimmy Stewart does without it being completely over-the-top.
So I study the script like mad and work on my Jimmy Stewart voice, thinking to myself there’s no way this can’t be ridiculous. But, in for a penny, as they say, and I’m going 100% or not at all.
So tonight I drove out to Tacoma and met my scene partner playing Mary. (The organizer had informed me that she was a fantastic actress who had trained at Julliard… I held back from saying the first thing that popped into my head, which was “well unfortunately for her I was trained at school-yard”.) We snuck into the manager’s closet of an office and did what I can only describe as a furiously concentrated or “panic” rehearsal. We only ran it a few times with the two of us, no blocking and no other actors before acknowledging the sketch is pretty much going to be whatever it winds up being.
We waited for the movie to finish, the lights came up and it began…
… Now I worked really hard to cram in those lines, and I don’t believe I screwed up a single one (at least not technically; the delivery is another matter). I did it thinking there would be people there who knew the movie backwards and forwards and who would detect the slightest thing off. In hindsight I can tell it didn’t make a lick of difference whether I said “wonderful, drafty old house” or “wonderful, old drafty house”.
There were lots of little goofs and gaffes. The kids didn’t take their opening cue. Mary came up the stairs to meet me, which meant when Zuzu was on my back I didn’t have to take her down to meet her (or perhaps I was supposed to wait until later to take her down? Who knows…), and she just hung there until I nearly toppled backwards trying to do my scene with Mary. And lots of other little things.
But I was high energy, and the audience found it pretty hysterical, even if it wasn’t the sombre retelling we’d hoped for. And I got snacks and a free miniature bell out of it.
So that’s my story of the time I was George Bailey. And remember, kids, every time you hear a bell ring an angel gets its wings. (Of course, as Jack Handey observed, every time you hear a mousetrap snap, an angel gets set on fire.)
Happy holidays,
Dan.