Part 3 of some excerpts from an interview conducted by Max The Drunken Severed Head with my adopted actor, David Patrick Kelly.

The interview was conducted in Pittsburgh on May 19th, 2007.

This portion deals with DPK’s early work as an actor and musician in New York City in the 1970’s.

Max’s wife Jane also puts in an appearance.

DPK:
Max’s [Kansas City] had 150 seats with little tables that were lined up in rows. I saw everybody — from Bruce Springsteen with his first record out, “Greetings from Asbury Park”; the Wailers, the original Wailers, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh; Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar…

Jane:
Wow, I’m jealous of that.

[Max laughs]

DPK:
It was great — [the Wailers] had just had Burnin’ out on record. Patti Smith made her first appearance there, when when it was just her and Lenny Kaye on guitar… Charles Mingus quartet…

So once in a while it’d be really packed with people. We’d have to help down the stairs. Then I did a play there, and that moved into what they called a punk — we didn’t call it punk rock — but it was the punk rock era.

And we’d read about the band Television playing at CBGB’s, and so I went there too with my band. Very good band, still got some live tapes, gonna bring them out. I had to dissolve my band, and then…

Max:
You played guitar?

DPK:
I played guitar, and played all the cabarets in rock. It was a wonderful scene, actors and songwriters in the 70’s in New York, and that new music, or punk, if you wanna call it that, that THING was going on.

It was very creative. It was a wonderful time in the theater too. There were a lot more theaters then. And I did a play at Max’s, and then my first New York job, big job, was Sergeant Pepper on stage.

I played Sergeant Pepper himself and sang “Get Back” and “Saved the Day” at the end of the show. It was by the people who did “Hair” and “Jesus Christ Superstar”. John Lennon and Paul McCartney came to the opening. It was really fantastic.

Jane:
VERY nice…

DPK:
It was like a dream. Did you ever see that book “Rock Dreams”? By a guy named Guy Peellaert? David Bowie has an album called “Diamond Dogs”.

Jane:
Uh-huh.

DPK:
The cover of that, where he’s half dog and half human — it was done by an artist called Guy Peellaert. He had a book called “Rock Dreams” where it was just fantasies, like Dylan sitting at a diner with Elvis, and stuff like that.

And so, being with John Lennon at the party was a little bit like one of those rock dreams. There he was, talking to me!! Taking me around, introducing me to people.

Because, it’s a long story, I know I had gone on in place of somebody, and I know all the words, and he said [imitating Lennon] “Here’s Dave, he knows all the words, I don’t know all the words to my songs”. [laughter]

He was being hounded by Nixon during that time, because he was in protest at the big convention that was coming up. He’d done an interview with himself, “Dr. Winston O’Boogle Interviews John Lennon”. And so I told him, “John, you did a good interview with yourself”. He says, “Yeah, I asked myself some very pertinent questions”. [laughter]

He was a wonderful guy. It was just another horrible tragedy, you know…

Jane:
Yeah.

Max:
I was so…

DPK:
Inconsolable?

Max:
Saddened about that.

DPK:
I’d seen the Beatles. I’d seen them in Detroit, at the Olympic Stadium. Yeah, it was me, Larry Francis, and 12,000 screaming 12 year old girls. That was it.

Part 2 of some excerpts from an interview conducted by Max The Drunken Severed Head with my adopted actor, David Patrick Kelly.

The interview was conducted in Pittsburgh on May 19th, 2007.

Max, The Drunken Severed Head:
Do you get impatient with actors who don’t place emphasis on the story but more on their role?

DPK:
We’re all crazy in our own way, and I judge actors that I want to work with again about how they are “in the moment”, as we say.

Onstage, or in a film scene, when you’re with people and you’re looking in their eye, you can really tell what they’re about. You can tell everything about them. And you can tell how generous they are or how selfish, A lot of that gets confused because of the roles they’re playing. You cut a wide allowance for how people are offstage, because everybody has their own discipline, and their own ways, and their own philosophies.

But when you’re doin’ the THING, you can tell how people really are. You can tell if they’re selfish, or if they’re generous. You can tell what kind of an ARTIST they are, and that’s how you judge. In the world everybody’s crazy in their own way. So you just have to find a way to tolerate and allow people to be what they are.

Then there’s certain times where you get to see what people really are. And, that’s how you deal with who you keep connecting up with, and who you want to work with again. But impatience, you gotta let that go.

Martial arts taught me a lot about patience. I only started martial arts when I was 35, and it was very meaningful, because it shakes off, it goes back to looking in people’s eyes. To me, martial arts, with men and women, in my karate school [smiles] you really get to see how people are.

We’re animals with big brains. So we have the perfect ability, that’s possible, but we’re really animals. And the real nature of people when they’re fighting each other comes out. And once again you see how they really are. So that it was a different way to get more TRUTH. It was kind of a goal for me.

I wanted to play Shakespearean generals, so I wanted to have martial arts. And I’ve been there twenty years now. So it’s once again, a spiritual discipline. I call myself a Zen Taoist. Christian is what I am. Meditation is a part of it, Tai Chi, and martial arts, these things give me structure, and some way to stay fit as I get into my creaking years.

And, larger than that, it’s a spiritual discipline as well. It teaches you a lot about patience, about your patience with other people. Because it’s like an army experience almost. People talk about the army being “the best time of their life”. They didn’t want to go in, but, “Oh, my buddies,” all that stuff. Because you’re with people you wouldn’t normally be with.

Being in a locker room, and people saying [mocking tone] “Hey! Ain’t cha gonna do no more movies man?” or, “Whattsa matter witcher’ career?”, or something like that… They don’t know anything [about me], but still you get to learn something about them. You ask about them and they say “Well, I got five kids, and three wives, and I’m strugglin’, but my martial arts keeps me together.” And it’s true. You get to — for an actor it’s a goldmine. You’re doin’ this research, you’ve got different people that you don’t get to meet, instead of hanging out with actors all the time. So that’s waaay more than you wanted to know about martial arts…

Part 1 of some excerpts from an interview conducted by Max The Drunken Severed Head with my adopted actor, David Patrick Kelly.

The interview was conducted in Pittsburgh on May 19th, 2007. It has not been published to this date.

Yes, this is brand new, never-before-seen interview material with my adopted actor! Thanks again, Max!

Max, The Drunken Severed Head:
My first question would be, basically, how did you become interested in acting? What were the circumstances?

DPK:
I think it was the Catholic Church. I had a happy upbringing. I was an altar boy in the 50’s, and saw all that ritual, and the costumes, all the vestments and everything else. There was something about it that was mysterious and great.

My father was a painter, so we always had painting going on in our basement. There were big scenes. He painted the furnace to look like a tree, and the walls were always covered with paintings, so I think it was just an environment. My mother taught me music. And it was a combination of these twin things in my family, art and music.

So I think that combination made it obvious, just combined to make that all interesting for me. And then, literature too. My family was always bookish. So the combination of all those things made it happen. And the first thing that I was interested in was Samuel Beckett and things like that. And Dostoevsky in high school. These were great characters.

I’ll always remember a kid saying to me once, “You’re an actor,” just out of the blue. I was just playing in bands in high school, and things like that. And he said “You’re an actor” and it sort of stuck. It was sort of prophetic.

So, the combination.

The biggest influences on me growing up in Detroit was MUSIC, really. ‘Cause I’d seen these great acts. My high school friends and I, we had the MC5 — I don’t know if you know them — and Iggy (Pop) were around, in Detroit, and the MC5 played at our junior high school dance. You know, this theatrical, amazing group of people with this powerful thing. But then we would journey around. I saw Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles. I saw The Doors at Cobo in Detroit.

And this was a very theatrical time. All my friends and I, we wanted to go to the circus school. For some reason, circus was a big influence. Going down to Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey. But then, just reading the literature, and getting involved with Shakespeare in college, at the University of Detroit, where I graduated. My first show in Detroit was a combination of music and theater, HAIR.