Back at school.

I attended the National Institue of Dramatic Art. Unlike say the National Institute of Sport, NIDA'S infamous entrance examinations (not unlike the processing of the Polish Jews, wooden desk, rows of nervous people in loose clothing) do not necessarily hinge on talent. Emphasis is put on 'potential', an oft hard ore to mine, and 'getting the right mix' for each year's intake: imagine the forty year old potential athlete with a murky past and a beer gut - but see those hurdles in his eyes. The torture stories that pour from the reputation of the place itself are largely untrue, it's just that deciding to be an actor is a torturous decision - that lifetime of narrowing eyes and that question that everyone seems to be allowed to ask with as much naked scorn as they feel's appropriate, from cabbies to blood: 'Yes, but what do you really do?' Oh sorry, what do I REALLY do? I must have misunderstood the question. I'm really an international jewel thief who slimes your wife when you're at work.

The last official word from NIDA on graduation day was: 'Get out of here you little areshole.'
I'm far from little and felt unrecognised, hadn't I cut hell for three years, hadn't I been romantically angry, a hard nut to crack? A thesp true and true? Predictable most likely. I've basically always been a troublesome shit of a student. Little shit. The type to sit up front to keep an eye on the teacher.

Having said, my time On The Zac (Anzac Parade) remains the most exciting, instructive, nurturing - in a Name of the Rose way, and the second most raunchy stretch of my life.

Imagine my glee when asked to return to write and workshop and script for their 2005 graduating year. They're letting me back in. And they're letting me touch the kids. And they're paying me.

In order to get a sense of who these twenty one remaining potentials I was writing for were, they were asked to anonymously fill in a Prosut questionaire sometimes used by actors, probably only at NIDA, to unlock the rhythms of their characters, those strange jewel thieves who don't exist. One of the questions was: 'If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?'

It's a tops question I reckon. I like the soft intoverted touch of 'do you think', it's not a test, you're so the boss of Proust. Here are eleven of their answers. The other ten couldn't see potential enough in the concept to bother filling them in.

Eagle (Wedgie)

A bird maybe

A MUCH LOVED SCARF.

A Goldfish

A Slater Bug.

A bird - so I could shit on these people who screwed me over in the last life.

A Monet Painting.

Some gun slinging cowboy, maybe a pirate. (My red hot fave. I like how gun and slinger are two words, like John Wayne would milk it.)

An Eagle or a dolphin.

The Universe.

a man


Do these kids want out of the human race or what? Maybe after three years locked in a monastary everyone grows imaginary wings.

I can't wait for another twenty actors to thunder out of there and take my jobs. I may have to sabotage them now.

I Live for Cast Parties.

The cast party that was held, as they often are, in a sloping journey from The Old Fitzroy tavern to the Budgie Jar late last December for the play I had written, was a typical refelection of the scores of cast parties I have attended since deep childhood. The stage has few rewards for those on or behind it. So the piss up at the end of a season is always worth tying on, at least for that one last sweep of the eraser on the blackboard of life, before coming to in the daylight of unemployement.

My first cast party I woke up. The proximity of females during the amateur production of Wind In the Willows had been unsettling enough for private school Ferret Number Nine, I had befriended few ceptin the guy on the piano and a Fieldmouse. But at the party everything changed, Moley and Ratty got it on. Washerwomen got their tits out. The pianist handed me my first hard liquor. I was never the same again. All the egocentric tensions of theatre, all the stupid rules get overtaken by emotion, grass and the notion that we're all only a basketful of oranges away from a whore's proffession. People disappear stage left into dark corners: Since we may never see each other again, fancy a, you know, shag?

Shit spills out over the punch and things fall into a predicatbly delicious and hedonistic pattern:

If two actors were going steady when the play started, this is the night it will end in a blistering screaming match.

If two actors have started making the beast during the production, this is the night they will show everyone just what kind of beast they've been shaping.

People who got free tickets to the last show in order to come to the party will tell you how important you are.

People who had to pay to see a closing performance full of tomfoolery and in-jokes will rightly claim bewilderment.

The cast square will stay later than they ever have before and will ask the female lead loudly to return home with him to his bedsit.

You will agree to write evryone a part in the next thrilling chapter of your literary career, tomorrow.

The musical director will remind you you owe him several years worth of hard liquor.

You will lose the rest of the night with a girl who hated you from something else, but seems to have wrestled her devils at least for another beer.

You will hug people too many times.

The tequila will mix with the tears as you scream your lineage to Shakespeare into the Taylor Square morning.

Cooked.

I normally take a month off around this time of year to drink. So I have no apologies for my absence. I like to think of the internet as my most popular yet faithful mistress, always there waiting when I return, yet with two million new friends.

During my sabbatical, I trekked to Taylor Square for a labour intesive retreat holding up a bar, I encountered a phenomenon new to my field of experience. Namely drunk strangers coming up and saying variants of the same thing: 'Are you that dude from the Chefs? That fucken sucked.' or ''Hey are you on that cooking show? I work in a kitchen, it's nothing like that.' or 'You motherfucker I watched episode one of that thing and it really fucken sucked.'

One's first impulse is to question why these people watch television, what's that thing about TV letting people into your living room you wouldn't let past the front door, and why they care so much about it (enough to wanna fuck with my night), but one forgets, firstly that these people have no choice, they're often imbecilic and have been raised watching television. And secondly, it was only a year ago I too cared somewhat.

I'd been attatched to the Cooks for about two years by the time they decided to make the series. The pilot had been deemed too adult and Ten were keen to pick up the Secret Life reins. But they stalled it's starting point for two years while they tested various waters, would Friels do it? How did one make it, ahem, 'spunkier' etc? More sex obviously, and a Sony contracted teenage soundtrack. During this time I gave up theatre gigs due to my contractual obligations, no complaint, I was getting paid, but was doin nothing.

Nick my fellow cast member was asked to drop his Indian accent, a pretty authentic one I might add, the day before we filmed. Poor bugger. The reasons were never clear, came from on high, but one can imagine the Ten boardroom mouthing the word ethnicity. Trying it on for size. For the truth of it is the old Ten share prices have NEVER looked good whenever there's been a new drama airing. Even Secret Life. I felt at that point, at the old accent drop, that we may have been on a shaky vessel. So I did what I always do in a shaky vessel, some acting.

Six months later we'd filmed the thing, but despite the lack of money towards the end (we couldn't shoot in the kitchens for lack of food) which signalled a slight mistrust by Ten, the cast itself, I still maintain as one of the highest quality bunch I've worked with, and I felt confident that AT THE VERY LEAST we had made some better than average telly. I mean it wasn't about cops and nurses and teenagers, know what I mean? Perhaps not.

Ten stalled and stalled releasing the series over 2004. Easter looked promising. Then it wasn't right to put it against the Olympics. Then they were scared to put it up against Sex in the City. Reasons? Or excuses? Ten may have not liked the product they got but they wouldn't say. I wouldn't let my kids watch it personally. I hate TV. But that's a different matter. Official word from publicity was that 'they loved it'.

Alarm bells clanged when the same publicity told us it was going on half in ratings half out, and it was up against the last eps of Sex in The City... I had my doubts. That is of course the moment they require you to juggle peices of fruit for the cover of the TV guide.

Nobody watched the first episode and Ten pulled it, stuffed it late ten thirty Thursday. Okay. Firstly, unlike many new series, which film their episodes three and four first so one has the gleam of a team that's hitting the ground running for the premiere episode, Cooks couldn't do this for big bad budget reasons. Secondly which first episdode has EVER been anything but a bit of a clunkfest, establishing UST and all that crap. And on the same theme when has a new drama series ever been judged on it's first episode? The network programmer had told a cast member at the official launch only a few weeks before when asked if he would pull the series after one episode 'No, not one'. Probably didn't forsee those ratings figures. Maybe. But one ep? Against Carrie and a baby? Or a wedding dress? Or whatever the fuck it was? Most likely he never liked the series. Probably also owns a four wheeled drive.

The Cooks had been banging around Ten for FIVE YEARS. People lost bits of their life over that thing. Only to be shelved on the starting line. I mean really. Was some of it cheesy? Totally. Cheesier than John Woods ballroom dancing? Who cares. TV audiences watch Idol in unprecedented numbers while CSI costs us twenny grand an episode to import. The Cooks cost round a hundred and fifty grand an ep to make. Do the math. If I was head programmer answering to a board I'd be staying the fuck away from new Australian drama (except that niggling little Australian content quota, what to do there? keep it cheap, foldable, storable) and importing as much cop, nurse and reality as I could.

The bitch is that it was so fun to shoot. Kissing pretty actresses. Getting paid. Cool stuff like that.

So a chapter lies bathed in broken dreams and vitriol? Hardly. I predict nobody will ever point me out from that show again.

Anyone who wasn't out drinking over summer at ten thirty on a Thursday night is only a Taylor Square tourist anyway.