These unprecedented times we are, as a planet, living through have presented us all with terrible loss and pain, and unfortunately, suffering. Having lost friends and colleagues to this virus, I,  as well as millions of people around the globe, have had to reorder priorities. What is now important and vital is very different than what was important just a scant few weeks ago. Clearly, we have as a world been stopped in our tracks by an invisible microscopic virus that continues to defy and mystify even as we scramble to decipher it, while wreaking a deadly path of illness and death regardless of race, creed, size, shape, income, politics, or age. As talk grows of beginning the very small tentative steps to regain some semblance of normalcy, it is evident the new ‘normal’ will scarcely resemble the old ‘normal’ as we knew it. This invisible enemy, microscopic in size and weight, has now toppled us physically, as well as economically, socially, and geopolitically. The mightiest of governments, industries and agencies of great influence have been humbled, as we all have been. The best scientists and medical experts around the globe still struggle to understand how this invader operates, replicates, survives, and fells one reasonably healthy individual while another is spared. It is a time for reflection. It is a time for humility. It is a time to recognize opportunities and seize upon solutions.

Occasionally making news, sandwiched between the continuous coverage of the pandemic, is the astonishing reporting coming from several university studies, scientific communities and media sources, of the unprecedented drop in air pollution worldwide since the pandemic began. Easily found on the internet are more and more satellite images, maps, and actual before and after photographs of the remarkable drop in CO2 levels and air pollution across the globe. There is a stunning split image of the Taj Mahal two weeks before the shutdown and two weeks afterwards, showing the crystal clear Taj un-obscured by pollution haze. For the first time in decades, Mt Kenya is visible from the capitol of Nairobi. NASA footage of China shows a virtually spotless country versus the same image taken weeks before. Similar NASA coverage shows clear air above US industrial centers and capitols, and all across the globe. The science is clear, and the facts are clear: we are seeing in real time, thanks to a shutdown courtesy of an invisible speck, the effect of human impact on the planet.

We have learned, thanks to the pandemic, to trust science, to trust the facts, not the spin wizards or woolgatherers. And from trusting the science, the medical experts and the facts, we are on the road, as a united world, to understanding how to combat the virus and to prepare for how it will undoubtedly revisit us in the future. There remain those who would refuse the science, the experts, and there will always be deniers, as we know from history. The virus was labelled a hoax, a witch-hunt, an attack on credibility. And yes, this has happened in history. Yet, it is the science, and the facts, the truth that holds the day. It is the science, the facts, the truth that are putting us on the path to recovery.

And so, the science, the facts, the truth presented by NASA, Columbia University among many others, and scientific organizations around the world are showing us what happens when we stop contributing to climate change. Yes, there are deniers, those labelling it a hoax, a fabrication, an attack on credibility. Yet it is the science, the facts, and the truth that hold the day. The proof is there, now, in front of our eyes, scientific provable data, from before and after the shutdown, of what can be accomplished by a simple two week shutdown of ‘business as usual’.

And so I would like you to entertain a novel proposition. We have an unprecedented scourge challenging us, yet it has also given us an unprecedented opportunity. As we reorganize and re-evaluate how we go about our daily lives, perhaps we are already on the path to something quite remarkable. Suppose, globally, twice a year everything were to shut down for two weeks, similar to what has been happening. We have already made huge strides around the world in adapting to the current schedule, re-tooling and re-imagining what is the new ‘business-as-usual’. With a fixed end date, companies and industries could plan ahead for deliveries, stockpile supplies, and have a yearly production schedule that would seamlessly incorporate the two shutdown periods. Similarly, social, economic, political planning could incorporate those timetables, planning ahead.

Lest you think this impossible, consider the following. We already do this in our yearly calendars on several levels. Schools follow Christmas, Spring and summer vacation breaks. Workers take holiday breaks, vacations. There are national holidays, religious holidays. Companies often are preparing next year’s products before the current year has even begun. Fashion companies design winter wear in the Spring while forcing models to suffer freezing winter temperature photoshoots wearing the new summer bikinis. Car companies are already designing new models years in advance, targeting rollouts.Entertainment conglomerates film content for theatre and streaming long before actual airdates, and still manage to incorporate hiatus shutdowns. Knowing a two-week shutdown period is scheduled, airlines could preplan for the slowdown, and use that time to refurbish their planes and do maintenance. Stock markets around the world, knowing in advance, would be able to incorporate the shutdowns in their projections, particularly since there would be a specific end date, and all the listed corporations would also have been prepared.

Clearly this would take quite a lot of thought and planning, and I am not smart enough or insightful enough to even suggest the ins and outs of such a plan. Perhaps using this as a launching pad of other solutions would be considered. The United Nations would prove an invaluable tool in coordinating such an initiative. Global business, social, media, religious and political leaders as well would be instrumental in investigating and structuring a workable system, in collaboration with the already existing and active international climate change organizations. Yet, the fact is, we are already doing it during the current shutdown, on a global level, and with no end date as yet. Yes, we never would have anticipated the devastation the pandemic has caused, either in human suffering, or the economic debacle that has befallen the entire world. What is clear though, is that had warnings been heeded, as they were in several nations around the world, the fallout would have been mitigated and dramatically lessened. This enforced moment of introspection and self-evaluation has made clear what is ‘need’ versus what is ‘want’. That important distinction has been in stark relief weighed against the loss of friends and colleagues.

So let us consider this when faced with the opportunity to tackle climate change.  We are forewarned and have been for some time. The science, the facts, the truths are there, and they are provable. The predictions and warnings have been coming fast and furious from the scientific community, the calamity that will ensue without stemming global warming would be catastrophic beyond what we have imagined. We have been given an unprecedented opportunity to see the future, to participate in the future, to protect our future. We are responsible to each other and to our children and grandchildren to protect and guarantee their future. The satellite footage showing clear skies during the shutdown places the blame clearly at our feet. It is us. Not cows, not volcanoes, nor hoaxes. It is up to us to take advantage of this unprecedented contagion to give us the opportunity to take advantage of an unprecedented opportunity to change the course of our history much as this microscopic virus has changed our history.

Right now, we are becoming accustomed to walking six feet apart, wearing facial coverings, eyeing every passersby with suspicion. In many cases, the daily news updates of the infected and dead  roll over us like background noise as we become inured to the devastation the virus has caused, and every night we go to bed thanking whatever God we worship it wasn’t me or my loved ones on the news today. We grow irritated at confinement, decry lack of progress as voices are raised in protest against perceived abrogations of civil rights, forgetting that this limited time indoors pales in comparison to the years during both World Wars when people endured starvation, lethal bombings, exterminations, death and destruction. For years, not weeks. We rankle at standing in lines to enter a grocery store, our nerves are shot, our emotions bursting to the surface over insignificant provocations. That is the new normal.

Consider the new normal, however, if we do not very proactively slow down global warming. Without a fixed end date, assume you cannot go outside because solar radiation could sear your skin without a specialized suit or an ozone layer to protect you. Or the air quality is so poor windows can never be opened, while air-purifying systems groan to eke clean air through rapidly clogging filters. Assume radically unpredictable devastating weather patterns disrupt food and water sources and distribution, coinciding with economic and social collapse. And that those who do venture outdoors pass others who wearing not only special suits, but masks with oxygen cylinders, eyeing each other suspiciously. The new normal.

In these unprecedented times we are faced with an unprecedented opportunity. By trusting the science, the truths, the facts about the corona virus Covid-19, we have mitigated its devastating effect and are on our way to solving this terrible riddle. Let us then trust the science, the truths, the facts about our environment in peril, and heed the warnings we have been given, to alter the future of our human existence. Regardless of international boundaries, race, creed, education, politics, it is up to us. We, the people. If it was ever so true, it is time to Seize the Day.

Punctuality is the courtesy of Kings




In the old days, before texting, and even before then, punctuality was a mark of respect. When it came to Kings and Queens, who wielded enormous power, being late was a significant slap and could precipitate armed conflict as it was interpreted as not valuing the monarch’s rank and power. It still holds true today between heads of State. Diplomatic sleights and messages can be conveyed by just being a few minutes late, or making a head of state wait for a meeting. It’s all about value.


Food for thought for the perennially tardy actor. Or….fill in the blank!

Many years ago, an ambitious young student who didn’t look like much applied to USC, the film program and was rejected on the grounds that “the candidate fails to demonstrate the appropriate level of rigorous creativity required for a program of this caliber”. So the kid went to another school. 


He did okay, and he’s a good sport…every year he sends a check to USC, a donation. On the memo line of every check he sends, he makes a note…”it could have been more”. USC takes it stride, and cashes the checks. In the lobby of the USC Cinema Arts Building, they have a copy of the kid’s rejection letter and one of the checks, displayed under glass. 
Oh. Who signed the check?….Steven Spielberg.

…that is the question! Why act? Well, who knows. It’s mysterious to me the more I do it, the more I learn, the less it makes sense, the less I seem to know, and I’ve been at it professionally for more than 35 years, and as an amateur back to childhood. I have of late been comparing acting to learning how to hold smoke: you have to cup your hands gently around this visible but intangible mist in order to be able to make it work—if you grasp at it or lunge, it slips through your fingers effortlessly and maddeningly uncontrollable, ever out of reach. I suppose that is the case with every art form, it does not respond to force, intimidation, booze or drugs, fast cars or agreeable women (Picasso excepted…but even then…). Technique is wonderful, it builds the muscles and tones the instrument, whatever it may be, but there’s something tauntingly out of reach that elevates craft to art: Yo Yo Ma and a cello concerto; Matisse and his cutouts; that fellow Shakespeare’s Sonnets (the word is his plays aren’t bad either); Pavarotti’s “Nessun Dorma”; Artemisia Gentilleschi’s ‘Judith Slaying Holofernes’; Megan Fairchild soloing with the New York City Ballet.


So what is it, that makes us as actors, or artists of any kind, endure hail, fire, wind, flood, poverty, restaurant jobs, precarious incomes, parental dismay, and fallen arches to doggedly pursue our craft, often far out of the limelight or recognition. Odd that Van Gogh, like so many painters, died broke and unrecognized; Vivaldi, discredited, banished from the royal courts whose patronage he enjoyed, impoverished; brilliant playwrights Georges Feydeau, Richard Brindsley Sheridan dying in obscurity, diseased, not a cent to their names. My friend Walter Bobbie, who had a terrific Broadway career and has become a wonderful Broadway director, once compared acting to an addiction: you get a taste of it and you’ll do whatever it takes to get another hit!


I’ll leave it to the shrinks and pundits who write biographies to explain ‘why Mozart, why?’. For me nothing has ever fit like being in this profession. I wish I could explain ‘why, Bob, why?’ in wonderful prosaic introspective psychological pedagogical hoo-hah. I’ve had a lot of jobs over the years, not bad at some of them, sucked at a lot of them, didn’t care about most of them. Was in pre-med until I realized it just wasn’t for me. The best I can say is the feeling I get when I walk onto a film set…like I’m home, and this is where I belong. It fits like a pair of shoes that were meant for me to wear that were always there, just waiting for me to put my feet in. Maybe even more so, it’s this. I love getting into a theatre before anyone is there and just sitting, listening. The quiet. There is something pure about that silence, not unlike when you sit in an empty cathedral…there is a connection there to something else. Something nameless. Something so much bigger, so much more. In that stillness is a connection to something ineffable. Something that words cannot explain. But you know it when you feel it. It’s gentle in its touch but has a power and grandeur that astonishes in its simplicity. 


I was at the Frick museum in New York City awhile ago, there to see “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”. In the main salon, off to the side of the massive Turner and Velazquez  extravaganzas, was a small Rembrandt gouache, “Old Man Sitting with Pipe”. He looked at me with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, like he knew something I was yet to learn, and I could see in his flushed cheeks, the crinkle of his mouth, the laugh lines just forming around his eyes that he was just about to tell me…and I realized a tear had run down my cheek. In this small 8 inch by 8 inch portrait…Rembrandt had held smoke.


I have, a handful of times, felt that on stage, or in a film shot that may or may not have made it into the finished product. It is the feeling of sitting alone in a darkened theatre, listening to the silence. It’s like holding smoke.


That’s why.

One of the many sources of inspiration I have always found as an actor, director, writer or producer is to drink in all the other art forms that artists more inspired than I am use to reflect and illuminate the human condition. Classical music, architecture, dance, sculpture, all are incredible and never-ending sources of inspiration. One such source is the work of Kathy Ferguson, a brilliant painter who toils in her studio on Long Island City before showing her works in galleries around New York City and state, and around the country. Her use of light, color, and composition are uniquely her own, yet harken back to the palettes of Henri Matisse and Gustav Klimt. She has a keen artists eye and insight, so please check our her website, as well as two exhibits happening this May. It's a short subway hop to her Long Island City studio in New York's new artists' center.
​http://www.kathyfergusonart.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=31652&Akey=JKB3JNVB_


Also happening this month, check out the Degas exhibit at MoMA--it's rarely scene examples of his print work and etchings, part of his ongoing exploration of painting and the creative expression. _http://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1613