Jimmy applied to transfer to the film studies program at the University of California at Los Angeles. He was accepted later that fall, and even accepted advanced placement in the term beginning in January 1964. That autumn, Jimmy landed the role of Gus in a student production of The Dumbwaiter, Harold Pinter’s two-character play about a pair of hitmen waiting to murder someone. It was his first public performance since his ukulele jams at the Contemporary two years earlier. Jim quickly turned the rehearsals into anarchic, absurdist experiments in obscene improv, prompted in part by his reading of theatre-of-cruelty mage Antonin Artaud. Waiting for the curtain to rise, the other student actor, Keith Carlson, never knew what Jimmy was going to do. He played scenes and read lines differently every night, sometimes improvising bits of stage business, refusing to repeat himself. The director […] was kept in a state of suspense. They were all afraid some of the lewd rehearsal material might slip out in live performance. […] Carlson recalled, {…] “with Jim we just never knew.” A performance photograph of Jimmy, wearing his hair long with muttonchop sideburns, and being berated by Carlson’s character, was published in the school paper. Uncharacteristically, he clipped the picture and sent it to his mother. Here is that photo.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 21:59:01 +0000
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