AE: Since the show has aired, what's the reaction been from the entertainment industry?
CB: I'm working on different projects, I'm hoping that it's going to translate into work, that was one of the reasons that I did it.
AE: What kind of work?
CB: I really like being on camera so I think that I would like to continue doing that kind of stuff. It's a hard town, you gotta really push to make things happens, so that's basically what I've been doing.
AE: As far as being on camera, do you mean as yourself, as a character, in a newsy kind of media role, as an interviewer, on another reality show? Where do you see yourself?
CB: I don't really want to do reality, ultimately I want to do acting stuff, but I wouldn't turn down the right type of talk show or commentary thing came up. That would be great.
AE: You went to the Fame (Performing Arts High) school in New York and the Lee Strasberg (Theatre Institute) acting school in L.A. When you took classes, what kinds of roles did you gravitate towards? What were you good at and what did you enjoy doing?
CB: I actually liked doing Shakespeare a lot.
AE: Men's roles or female roles?
CB: Both actually.
AE: So you were good at acting with that kind of language?
CB: I liked it, it was fun and it was kind of something different and you could kind of experiment and do different things so I liked that.
AE: You did plays?
CB: It was very different from the TV show (Fame) where they're performing all the time. You don't actually get to perform ‘til you're a senior and you do one play that you actually have an audience that's not your peers and your teachers.
AE: What play did you do?
CB: I did Midsummer Night's Dream.
AE: Who did you play?
CB: I played Peter Quint.
AE: Do you ever wish that you'd gone to a conventional college and gotten more of an education, a liberal arts type of thing.
CB: Definitely….I kind of made a mistake because I got into NYU for film and for drama, and I ended up going to film school and really didn't like it, and I think if I had gone into the drama program I probably wouldn't have left school.
AE: What didn't you like about film school?
CB: I'm not a very visual person, I realized, and so the idea of directing - it just wasn't the right fit for me. I should have stayed with drama because I was really passionate about that. At the time it was '87 and it was such a different climate, I really didn't think that I would be able to work. It was one thing to be able to do experimental stuff in school and be good at that and play a guy or whatever but in the real world I thought I'll never work so I should do something behind the scenes.
AE: Because you were too butch and you couldn't pass?
CB: Yeah, because I was too butch, basically.
AE: You think it's any different now?
CB: I do think it's different now. I think that there's a lot of independent stuff, there's a lot of gay stuff that's happening, and there's more nondescript characters. And I didn't really think about it at the time, I think that when you're in high school you're not thinking about being a working actor or something, you're thinking about having this huge career. I think now that I'm older, I would be happy with a lot less (laughs).
Lydia Marcus has written extensively about queer and indie film for the past decade. Her entertainment features, film reviews, and photographs have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, AOL, Frontiers, LN, Girlfriends, The Advocate, GO NYC Magazine, IN LA, Planetout.com, Gay.com, and indieWIRE. com. She writes a monthly film column, “At The Movies,” for the LN (Lesbian News).
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 - Home
