Actress Karen Allen lives two towns away from me, and in a rural area where everyone knows everyone, that makes her practically a next door neighbor. I used to teach her son piano.
Last night, Karen was on the schedule to speak at one of our community venues: The Monterey General Store, located in teeny Monterey, Massachusetts, which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The Monterey General Store (http://www.montereystore.com /) is in fact, a general store: You can buy sandwiches there, and soda, and ice cream bars, and an unbelievable number of different brands of potato chips. But the store is also a big supporter of community culture and crafts. They sell llama wool from a farm down the road, and pottery with images of leaves of the Berkshires imprinted in the clay, and books by local authors, as well as a whole collection of CDs from local musicians who have played at the store’s weekly concert series (David and I have played there; our recently released CD (http://tinyurl.com/5l2sjj) was recorded at one of our shows). Basically, there’s a raised area in the back, with tables and chairs, and everyone squeezes in. If there’s a big crowd (like, say, more than 30), the latecomers over-flow into the aisles by the frozen foods and the lunch meats.
For Karen’s talk, the store had gotten a lot of calls, so owner Kenn Basler moved the event across the street to the Congregational Church, which he laughingly calls the store’s “annex. ” (The Store presents concerts there a couple of times a year.) The church easily held the 100 or so people who showed up; I’m not sure how we would have all fit in the store!
Karen brought a DVD containing three mini-features on the Indiana Jones films: These shorts featured actors, producers, and writers talking about how the films were made, the locations they were shot at, and some of the special effects (creepy crawlies, snakes, rats, lizards, alligators, and bugs). In between the shorts, Karen fielded questions from the audience about everything from working with John Belushi on Animal House to the dangers of filming stunts (She actually got burned filming the bar-burning scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the fire and beam-crashing-down sequence didn’t go quite as planned.)
It’s always special to get to hear a world-class artist talk about his or her craft and experiences. It doesn’t matter if they are in the same field as you are. Speaking just for myself, I’ve never worked in film in any way, and the only TV experience I have is being interviewed for the news and consulting on an outdoor TV show. So this world is a wonderous mystery to me. I came away awed at what it takes to put a film together — and inspired to continue in my own creative work.
Karen talked about her career — how it got started, the types of roles she’s sought and the types she’s turned down. She talked about the challenges for an actor of balancing a career with raising a child (A film set is not the most interesting place for a young kid, she pointed out: While a parent is on the set, a child is often left alone in trailers with tutors and babysitters; the novelty wears off after a few days). Karen talked about the ups and downs of an actor’s life: What union scale wages are, and about how most actors try to take on as many different things as possible — stage, TV, film, commercials — just to keep going, stay fresh, stay out there — just to WORK. (The arc of an actor’s career, she said, usually looks like a stock market graph: up and down and up and down.) She also talked about upcoming projects: She’s reading scripts for possible new films right now, and within the last few years, she has started a fiber arts design business (http://www.karenallen-fiberarts.com/) making and selling her own beautiful knitwear designs. She’s also teaching acting and directing plays at a local college. In other words, she’s doing exactly what so many creative people do: working in her primary artistic area (or, in her case, areas), teaching some, getting lucky with a big project, feeding the soul with “projects of the heart.”
Karen’s love for the creative life and her sense of humor was evident in her responses to audience questions. What I’m often struck by when talking to successful artists, or when hearing them speak, is that they truly are in it for the passion they have for their creative work. I think it’s too easy for people looking in from the outside to think about “success” as equating “money.” We read about books that sell a million copies, or records that go platinum, or block-buster movies, and we might be tempted to think that those authors and musicians and actors have hit some sort of a lottery. But listening to Karen speak, and knowing her personally, I was reminded that success is really a side effect of the work itself. A very pleasant side effect, I’m sure, but not the reason for doing it.
It’s about the work — and about loving what you do.
Amen to your comment about success. It’s not only people outside the field who equate success with money. The publishing industry does too. I had a contract from a big publisher with a big advance for my book “Slaying the Mermaid,” but it wasn’t the huge bestseller the publisher hoped for, so it wasn’t a “success.” And I felt unsuccessful. But over time quite a few people told me how much they liked it, that it had helped them. One person actually said it changed her life. So I had to revise my notion of success. It’s also having an impact on people. What could be a better result of writing a book?