KEIZER ON COLBERT

Within the span of a month, two UVM alumni and contributing writers to Vermont Quarterly have sat down across the desk from John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Scroll down a bit and you’ll find a posting about Jim Tabor’s appearance on The Daily Show as he promoted his new book, Blind Descent. And now, on July 6, Garret Keizer will bravely take questions from Stephen Colbert on his latest book, The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise.” (It’s easy to imagine Colbert: “Sir, why do you have a problem with the things that I want?”)

We were honored to share an excerpt from Garret’s book in the print edition of the summer issue Vermont Quarterly, which just went in the mail. It’s an interesting piece, focusing on John Coltrane as his jazz exploration took him into territory that some would map as noise. Any readers out there who don’t receive the print edition are welcome to contact me and I’ll send one along.

And be sure to check out The Colbert Report on July 6 to see if Garret manages to wedge in a sentence on Stephen.

More on Garret: http://garretkeizer.com/

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“MY FACE IS GONNA BE THIRTY FEET WIDE”

Eben Young ’86 apologized for a delay in our e-mail correspondence. He was busy working on his Russian accent for an audition at the National Theatre in London.

Damn. I’ll confess to wishing I could offer such a cool reason for occasional lags in e-mail response time.

Eben is a longtime actor, going back to his days on the Royall Tyler Theatre stage. Stage, films, television—he’s done a variety of work.  Among his  most recent roles, Eben played an FBI agent across from Ewan McGregor in a short scene in The Ghost Writer, a film by Roman Polanski. Look for him clad in a white shirt, all FBI seriousness, near the end of the movie. Eben is among the alumni we touched base with for brief e-mail interviews in the on-line version of the summer issue of Vermont Quarterly. The interviews are one of a number of ways we’re bringing more content to the web version of the print publication.

It was a pleasure trading e-mails with Eben, even if that mode of communication didn’t give me an opportunity to hear how the Russian accent was coming along. Here’s a sample of what he had to share about working with Polanski and McGregor. See the link at the end of the post to read the complete interview.

VQ: Anything interesting to share about acting opposite Ewan McGregor?

EY: He was friendly, available, and always present. There was no starry attitude. We were all rather subdued due to the nature of the scene, but we did start to joke around a bit as the shoot wore on.

As a variety of different angles had been completed, it became time for my close-up. Now, I’d taken some time off in my career so this added a certain frisson to this experience. There is an acting tip that helps to keep one’s concentration from straying wildly to thoughts like, “My face is gonna be thirty feet wide… what should I do with my eyelids?” and that is to concentrate on one’s acting partner; in this case, it was Ewan.

It then became apparent that due to the particular camera angle that Polanski wanted for the shot, I was going to have to give my performance to the wall, about two feet to the left of Ewan. Polanski put a couple of pieces of tape on the wall for me to use as my eyeline and said something like “acting is a crazy business.” Kindly, Ewan said “Well it was nice acting with you” in reference to the fact that we were then going to have to play the scene without looking at each other at all. I first thought, “well, there goes that strategy” and then thought  “doing scenes to a bit of tape on the wall is just what we used to do for the Oral Interpretation class I’d taken with Jennifer Cover at UVM,” which was of some solace. And we got it in one take. So, thanks Jennifer!

http://alumni.uvm.edu/vq/summer2010/young.asp

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