http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/12/28/john-c-mcginley-on-glengarry-glen-ross-critics-and-al-pacino/
When John C. McGinley got a call asking him to play Dave Moss in “Glengarry Glen Ross” with Al Pacino on Broadway he immediately began memorizing. Five days a week, four hours a day, for four weeks straight, he learned every ellipsis and comma in the brutal Pulitzer-prize winning script by David Mamet. He turned his rehearsal space in Los Angeles into “Mamet Theater Boot Camp” he says, and hired a young actor to be the “text police.”
“I told him what I want you to do is police the commas, the pauses, and the italics,” says Mr. McGinley. “I don’t ever want you to tell me how you think this is going, because you have no idea. All I want you to do is just be the word police,” Mr. McGinley says. “I just became this Mamet zealot.”
The technique worked. The most anticipated show of the fall – with Pacino as Shelley Levene and Bobby Cannavale as Ricky Roma – has gotten mixed reviews overall but McGinley, whose character plots to rob a third-rate real estate office, is often singled out for his performance.
Although he’s friends with Ed Harris, who played Moss in cult-status movie version of the play, he wouldn’t ask him for any advice or even watch the film. “I wanted to explore this one by myself.”
He admits his co-stars were surprised when he showed up for the first rehearsal looking a little like the do-gooder student who actually completes all of his summer reading over the vacation.
“I came to New York so wired it wasn’t even funny,” he laughs. “They thought I was a jackass.”
He spoke to Speakeasy about working with Pacino, memorizing Mamet, extending previews, and his not-so-delicate thoughts on critics. Following is an edited transcript.
How does it feel to be getting so many good reviews?
I’ve never gotten notices like this. I wouldn’t even put that kind of stuff on my bucket list, because it would never have occurred to me before. I wouldn’t put on my bucket list being on Broadway with Al Pacino and being directed by Daniel Sullivan — because it’s just never gonna happen. So when it does, it’s kind of astonishing.
I’ve done 70 films, 200 episodes of TV… as Dr. Cox on “Scrubs” I got some good write ups there, but not like this. You don’t dream about this stuff. And so I’ll see these different write-ups and it seems like I must have composed them in a dark closet somewhere and dispatched them myself.
You haven’t been on Broadway in 27 years – not since “Requiem for a Heavyweight” in 1985. What took you so long?
The last time I was here we opened on a Thursday and closed on Sunday. It was shattering. It was profoundly upsetting. Enough to where I didn’t want to do it anymore. I turned down a bunch of Broadway shows because it was too emotionally expensive.
You worked with Pacino on Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday.” Is he the one who wanted you in this production?
I haven’t had the spine to ask why I got offered this play. I’m sure someone must have championed me and I haven’t asked yet. I don’t know why. It’s a little cowardly.
You often get cast as a jerk. Why is that? Are you one?
Sometimes I get cast as kind of a tough guy with a heart of gold. That’s what I try to do. Because, if the character’s just a jackass all the time there’s nothing redeeming. You can’t follow that character for nine years on TV. We tried to make Dr. Cox a tortured, damaged guy.
Dave Moss is the exploration of hopelessness, and what desperation spawns. All actors are familiar with hopelessness, we’ve all had a taste of hopelessness and it feels profoundly desperate. So if I plugged that into this character, all of a sudden I connected to that sense of hopelessness. When men are hopeless, it’s game on.
You’ve said you followed Mamet’s script exactly, breath for breath.
[In the script] there are pauses and words italicized and capitalized and in bold font for where David wants you to do this, that, and the other thing. I took that to be like Shakespeare – unless you’re going to do Iambic pentameter you might as well do a different play. And in my brain I just figured unless you are going to respect what David put on the page — I mean the play only won a Pulitzer — I just think you might as well do a different play. You might as well dance the steps that he put down for you to dance. And I did, and I still do.
That’s what people seemed to be a little miffed about with Pacino — that he wasn’t doing that specific Mamet-speak.
I don’t buy that stuff. Al’s a god. You’re lucky to be in a room with him for two hours. Give me a break. There are nights when I watch that guy from the side of the stage and I weep. He’s one of the greatest actors in the history of cinema and he’s astonishing on stage. I think they’re taking cheap shots. Al’s one of the great storytellers ever. You get to be in a room with him for two hours. Be quiet.
Well, people seemed to feel a little confused by the whole extended preview process and the price of the tickets.
Not people. Not people. A couple of writers at the New York Times. Not people. I don’t agree with you. Not people. Here’s the problem. It’s real simple. If you’re a reviewer and your review is rendered irrelevant because the run is sold out, you’re going to be a petulant child and want to take your basketball and go home so the other kids in the playground can’t play with it. Because your opinion is not going to move the meter. So of course you’re going to have an axe to grind.
Who cares that there were more previews? What a jackass thing to reference. 1200 people are standing at the end of the show every night. What’s that? That’s because the previews were postponed? Yeah, it got tuned up, sure. So what?
(He laughs.) Now the New York Times is going to kill me the rest of my career.
Well the economics are a little bizarre for these plays. They would be hard to mount successfully without Al Pacino, but on the other hand, tickets were not cheap.
The business model worked out beautifully. There are only two or three people who can do this. Hugh Jackman, Al, and a couple other people where whatever the critics write is completely irrelevant. And that pisses them off. So what! These are the same people who hated “Les Mis” when it opened and tied to kill it. That didn’t work either.
