[continued from previous message]

"No, it isn't. That's why you do everything. How old are you now?"
"I'm thirty-two."
"OK. When you're sixty-two, you're not gonna care."
I ask what it is he wants me to write about, since I won't actually be
seeing any of the classes in person.
"Just about what I'm doing," he answers. I inquire further, but he
seems bored with the subject. We hang up. I go back into his office, expecting to see him there. He's gone, except for his crumpled
Kleenex. I think about how much he hates the press and that if I write anything short of an advertisement he'll be furious. But I remember
the speech from Hamlet and hope he has a copy at hand when this comes
out: "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature."
=========================================

&&
Mr. Hole

What isnt well known is that in November 2001 The NY Daily News posted a blurb that Brando was doing the classes and to be in the class one had to audition at an off Broadway theater on the west side. I went, stood in very cold and rainy NY weather for
an hour or more with maybe 50 others, some with portfolios, some, like me there for the fun of it. When finally we were allowed in, 2 at a time, to sign waivers and fill out bios, we were then ushered one at a time thru a door and onto a stage, well
lit, and where a guy dressed like Bin Laden was seated on a stool or chair with a video camera. American flag sticking out of his beard! In NY so soon after 9/11, that was not an expected sight. anyway, "Osama" asked me my name, and if i had any
talents or skills. I told him I played guitar, and in a split second a Yamaha acoustic was in my hands--cold freezing hands--and I was told/asked to play a song. "What song?" "Ill give you the lyrics...and they are, "Marlon Brando ate my car. Just play
something and sing those words over and over until I say stop." I responded with, "The last time I saw a photo of him, it looked like he might have eaten my car for real." Sudden laughter from the darkened audience area--had no idea that anyone was
out there. I did as I was told/asked and finished up, to decent applause from the darkness. And in a second was back out on the street,wondering what the hell I had just been part of. A week later I saw an article somewhere that Brando had handpicked
his classes from off the street in LA, and that no one was used from the auditions/. Also learned that Osama was in fact Tony Kaye, director of AMERICAN HISTORY X. Years later an article in Rolling Stone mentioned that Brando's estate--he had died in
the interim--was a mess and that tapes of the auditions and the classes themselves would likely never see the light of day. Just thought you might like to know what went on in November in NY.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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