oh, ed!

couldn't help posting this one. Time Out New York caught ed durante in the street -- in monkey fur! (oh, ed.) he's the illustrious director of jake gets paid, the indie i was in last spring. enjoy!


I, New York

Time Out New York / Issue 652 : Mar 27–Apr 2, 2008

Public eye Ed DuRanté, 41/7th St and First Ave

Photograph: Jay Muhlin

Can we take your picture for the magazine?
[Laughs] This is too funny. My brother has been going around with this homburg hat and pipe, and I’ve been telling him he’s gonna get into Time Out because of it.

I don’t think I’d notice any hat within ten feet of your jacket.
It’s Mongolian monkey.

Sure it is.
I am dead serious! My ex-girlfriend got it years ago as a gift from her mother. She wouldn’t wear it, so I took it.

What do you do?
I’m a filmmaker. I just finished my first feature, Jake Gets Paid. It’s a black black comedy. It’s about a woman who, after discovering that her boyfriend is having an affair, decides to give him a surprise party. She invites the mistress, Jake’s parents, the friends. Everyone knows this party shouldn’t happen, yet they all come because they all love Jake. I just sent it to Cannes.

Anything autobiographical about the plot?
Well, you know. These things happen.

Monogamy is not a natural human inclination.
[Laughs] You said it, not me.
[Editor’s note: Wikipedia lists 16 different forms of non monogamy.]

Does the girl with the monkey jacket play into this?
Um, no comment? All my scripts are inspired by things in my life that hurt or were great. It took me three years to get this one right—mostly because it took so long to be truthful with myself.

Black black comedy is a catchy term. Do you think other people will start using it to describe their work? That’d be great. As long as they give me credit.

More thoughts from Ed

“I want to see Passing Strange. The show is political and deals with race and sex and so many other things that I deal with in my own work.”

“I worked for Ed Koch at City Hall for awhile. Eventually, I was like, Why am I doing this? I’m an artist. So I quit and started Talking Drum Theater Company. Then I started a hip-hop rock band. Then I applied to NYU’s film program and they gave me a full scholarship. How did I fit all that in? I did a lot of cocaine.”

“The ring and bracelet were my dad’s. When he died I put all his jewelry in a box because I didn’t feel like I was man enough to wear it. Then at a certain point in my life, I was like, You know what? I’m ready now. Our dad had a lot of style—he was a painter, very much a dandy. That’s why the brothers DuRanté roll with whatever we feel like wearing. [Laughs]”

—Kate Lowenstein

"Jake" didn't get in!

unbelievable but true -- the film i was in called Jake Gets Paid didn't get accepted to Sundance Film Festival. well, thankfully they're not the only game in town. there are festivals everywhere, not just colorado. if you know of one, tell the director ed durante all about it at jakegetspaid@gmail.com.

Jake Gets Paid -- The final edit

i went to the tisch school of the arts screening room to see the final edit of jake gets paid, the movie i shot with ed durante in april. it was a nine day shoot -- every saturday and sunday that month -- and it was tight. there were moments when it felt like a massive impossibility but we all got through it. the finished product needs work here and there (they haven't fixed the sound, for example) but all in all, it was astonishingly good. especially the new ending, which kind of blew me away.

it's not that i ever doubted ed. it's obvious that he knows what he's doing. it's just that with film, you don't know what you have until you've edited it and it's up on the screen. while you're actually doing it, everything is all over the place. there's just no predicting it. it's pretty clear that ed is ambitious and aggressive with all this. he's going to follow through with the festival circuit and push as hard as he has to, to make something happen. it's his first feature. (and mine.)

with theater, you can read the script and know what you've got. and when all else fails, great acting can save bad direction. not so with film. it's all about the direction -- ed's vision, his ideas, they're all up there.

the fun part is, my nieces leslie and monique came out to see it, and leslie brought her husband ernest. leslie and ernest sat behind my friend and i, and i got to talk to them before the movie started to fill them in on my life and make faces at them and stuff after everything was underway. fun. and ralph was there. and stephen. and john and judtsna. it's like i got this moment to catch every one up on at least some part of what i've been up to this year. quite gratifying.

Queen Esther Gets Paid

a few days ago, i got a call from ed durante, the director of the indie black black comedy jake gets paid. this was my first substantial film role to date -- although i have some blactress buddies that think my moment in that grand farce marcy x (a medium/semi-close up shot of me, in a kente cloth headwrap no less, yelling "get that bitch off the stage!" in reference to a pink chanel-suit wearing lisa kudrow) was a pretty good one. ed sounded a little giddy, as usual. he decided to have one last rough cut showing of the film before he submitted it to sundance, to get some feedback. that's got to be a crazy trajectory, drumming up support to get your film seen there. because it's not about independent film anymore. and it doesn't necessarily matter how good your film is. he had put it up for "public" consumption somewhere on nyu's campus (his alma mater) on the same night as sekou sundiata's memorial, so i figured i was destined to not see it before the rest of the world did. but here was ed's phone call. i couldn't say no.

ed pulled that shoot off in april by scheduling everything on the weekends. in retrospect, i can't believe he did it. wait a minute -- what am i saying? film is a collaborative effort. we did it -- the cast, the crew, all of us. we really did.

he said 7pm, so i'm thinking he'll click the light switch off at 6:55pm and of course when i show up at about 6:20pm or something i'm the very first person there, which is embarassing and wierd. i got to thinking, maybe i should give up on this whole "punctual" thing i've got going. it's totally working for me but not really. ed was at his rosy effervescent best -- wisecracking and wine-sipping his way through it as he rearranged furniture with his brother paris and answered the door and greeted the guests and poured the vino. there were a dozen of us or so. it was very much a listening room.

i have to say, i really liked the movie. it looks so warm and lush. and there are moments that feel immediate and familiar because of the camera angles, the rhythm in conversation and some fairly straightforward funny moments. there were moments when i wouldn't look at my face but i didn't look as fat as i thought i would, so all i could really feel was sweet relief. i didn't know that ed would bookend the movie with my songs. that was a beautiful surprise.

the first was "stand by your man" which rang out stark and weary as the main character Liza, a brunette white girl, runs out of the bedroom towards the camera completely naked in slow motion a la peckinpah (at least that's who i thought of when i saw it) with her black boyfriend jake's freshly removed condom. the next shot has her in the tub, emptying the contents of said condom into her vagina and tilting her hips upward, in an obvious effort to impregnate herself, all the while chatting casually with the boyfriend through the closed/locked door, who thinks she's simply washing up. obviously a psycho, right? there's more but i really don't want to give it away...
later when it was time to ask questions and toss up opinions, i remembered out loud an article i read somewhere about desperate modern women who say they don't want to get married or have kids but who poke tiny pinholes in their condoms and diaphrams or stop taking the pill, or whatever, to entrap whoever they're with. conception by deception. it's supposedly on the upswing in urban areas, especially new york city -- but no one had ever heard of such a thing. how cool was ed, to tap into something so topical.

he ends with the song "get it right this time" which totally worked. it was almost as though the lyrics were saying what jake was really thinking.

i remember walking to the subway and thinking, okay, i'm over the hump. i've done three national commercials, i've done a supporting role in a film. i've finally got on-camera stuff that shows that i can act. now what i need is a role on the "law and order" franchise and my transition to film/tv/commercials will be complete -- relatively speaking, naturally.

i almost forgot!

here's the good news of the moment: i got cast in a truly indie feature length film called Jake Gets Paid. i'm calling it "truly indie" because the director Ed Durante wants to shoot 12 pages a day for 7 days, every weekend in april -- starting saturday march 31st -- from 8am to 3pm. coffee, bagels. no pay.

it's an interesting role. i'll definitely have a significant amount of camera time -- and that is what i wanted when i started to seriously pursue film/tv. here's the deal: as a vocalist and a theater performer, i don't have much of a reel -- so when someone offers me a film role, it would kind of behoove me to take it. the thing is, you can't necessarily read a script and tell if a movie is going to be worthwhile. you have to trust the director and his vision and his process -- and hope that it comes out well in the end. on the one hand, if the director has a reputation, you have something to hang your hope on. but even that's no guarantee. on the other hand, if it's just this well-intentioned enthusiastic and probably even talented guy standing there with a bunch of short films to his credit going, trust me -- well, that's a whole other ball of wax. just ask alan arkin.

mr. durante says it's going to be tight and he promised me that i'll hate him when it's over but in the end he says it'll be worth it. thankfully, i get to keep my hair very natural: no wigs, no extensions, no nothing. that fills me with sweet relief. one thing, though -- i'm getting my body back and since he'll probably be shooting this movie out of sequence, there'll probably be some scenes that'll have me looking chubbier than others. that'll be funny. chubby me in one scene, lean me in the next one. ha.

let the adventure begin.