Ep. 75: Bonus Episode: More Milton Justice
Make sure to read Milton’s guest blogpost!
How to reach Milton:
Milton’s Book
Milton’s Podcast
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How to reach Milton: idon’tneedanactingclass@gmail.com
Movies mentioned by Milton:
Wanted: The Perfect Guy - After School Special that earned Milton an Emmy Award for producer
Transcript:
Melissa Milner 0:09
Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. I'm your host Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever changing. And I hope with each season, you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the fourth season of The Teacher As... and it's exciting to see the growth in how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy The Teacher As... please rate it on Apple podcasts and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. Thanks for listening.
Melissa Milner 0:41
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. Before I start, I do apologize for the quality of my voice. I'm on week three of a virus that turned into bronchitis. So lots of fun. This episode is a bonus for the end of the year. Normally, I would not publish an episode during my winter vacation, but this extra content from Milton Justice was just too fun not to share. This episode is mostly unedited, and full of Milton stories that were not necessarily related to teaching, but were fun for anyone who might enjoy hearing stories about actors and the business of Hollywood in general. So make sure to listen to The Teachers As Actor Part Two with Milton Justice, as well. So this is like what was leftover. Let's get started with this first clip, where Milton shares about his experience at the Emmy Awards when he was nominated for an after school special he produced. The most exciting part for me was his date.
Milton Justice 1:43
The Emmy Awards... were Daytime Emmy Awards.... really fun because it was a lunch. And so we were all someplace and and so way in the back, they had the after school special people because and the other people were there and there and then so and my date was Madeline Kahn. Oh, and so now they're all looking slowest. I had just done a movie of the week, which Lee Grant directed starring Marlo Thomas, which eventually, which actually won an Emmy Award for Marlo. And so Phil Donahue was also nominated at another table. And so I'm sitting there and so I'm sitting there in this little table in the back with that thing. And I have my date Madeline Kahn, and then Marlo and Phil come over to say hello. I mean it was just hilarious. And I get people kept looking. Last week I didn't know we were up against this was called... God what was it even called... Wanted: A Date for Mom or something anyway, but I mean, we were up against things like Please Mom, don't hit me. And what if I'm gay? And I said and we're like, wanted to date per month. And so and then the presenters happened to be a close friend of mine Grant Show who just was on Dynasty but at the time, he was on a on a soap call Ryan's Hope, and and Yasmine Bleeth.
Melissa Milner 3:21
Oh the eighties...the eighties.
Milton Justice 3:25
I know and Grant said to me, I'm going to say you won, whether you did or not. And so, of course, I'm there. There used to be a televised thing that I lost. But anyway, your first thing I do is I look at it because I didn't trust him.
Melissa Milner 3:41
In this next section, Milton shares how we got started producing and realized eventually that it wasn't as fulfilling as he had hoped.
Milton Justice 3:51
I left college and I went to work in New York right away because my college had done a world premiere of a play that had music and I was the only theater major that knew how to teach actors. I was saying, Oh, wow. And the composer came down and liked what I'd done with his music. And so he he said, Do you want to be my assistant in New York for the summer? And I said, Sure. It turned out he was the composer at the New York Shakespeare Festival. So I mean, I graduated on Sunday went to work in New York on a Friday. And then the other things happened. It was you know, I met some people on tour with the Oxford Cambridge Shakespeare Company. They asked me to come to England. I'm a person who never said no to anything. That was a new opportunity. And then I went to work. So I went to school at SMU Bob Hope had donated a million dollars to build the Bob Hope theatre. And so they were doing a TV special there. And so they had asked me to come back to do the music for a show they were doing but I had a week before I went into rehearsals. And so they said they needed somebody to work for the production arm of the Bob Hope show. And then they said to me, Chrysler has given us nine automobiles. And we have all these actors that need to be picked up from the hotel Do you think you could, you could organize getting your friends to pick these people up. And so I said, I had no idea that I could do something like this. And so they looked one day, and apparently, instinctively, I knew to have a chart, I had assigned one of my friends who were in the theater department, each actor. And, and so and I knew what time the actors call was. And so they were looked at what I this chart of mine. And they basically said, when you get through here, why don't you come up to Hollywood? And we'll put you to work.
Melissa Milner 5:56
So like, like, sort of naturally, you were more of a organizer, producer.
Milton Justice 6:01
I had no idea. I had years later people said how did you become a producer? And I said I was the only one of my friends who could make a list? Yeah. And that was? Yeah. And it was just a thing. So I went out to Hollywood, much to their surprise, I arrived on their doorstep. And they said, we the only job we have is the gopher. So this is back before fax. So forget emails. So Bob Hope had 12 writers. So basically, they would have we'd take out sheets and things of information for sketches. You know, Neil Armstrong was going and so they would send out some information, they would write a stand up for this for the 1969 Vietnam show, do sell show. And so and I would drive the material out, and they call me when it was picked up. And one day, the producer said, he said, This is insane. I need to get somebody in here who knows how to type. And so I said, I know how to type. And he said, Are you fast? And I said yes, I'm actually really fast. Because I taught myself to type when summer in the eighth grade when I had the measles and I was home and had nothing to do. And so I started typing a script, I got through about two sentences. And he looked at it and he said, Okay, you've been promoted to production and Secretary gets your shots. You're going to Vietnam with us. And so, so I had this whole sort of life going on. And, and having worked in film, and, and, and somehow or another, there was something missing. I mean, I actually remember one point, thinking to myself, is this how I'm going to spend the rest of my life rewriting the lyrics to thanks for the memory. And so my college girlfriend said, she said, Oh, you know what you should do? She said, Stella Adler's in town, and she's teaching a class, you should audition for it. And she said, I took the class last summer, and it was fantastic. So I took so I've just went and got in, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I mean, Stella said to the class one day, she she said, if if it's an art form, you want it. You must come east and fits the business, you're after you're in the right place. And I realized I'd been in the business for so long that I didn't. I wasn't happy. I mean, I was making lots of money. And so but I just I wasn't happy. And so I took her class, and it was, I couldn't believe it. It was like I get it. And then in one of those weird moments, my friend Tom Hulce long before he played Amadeus.
Melissa Milner 9:12
Yeah, I was gonna say I know that name.
Milton Justice 9:14
Yes. Well, Tommy was doing the national tour of Equus. And he wants to stay in Hollywood and I wanted to move to New York. So we switched apartments. I mean, it was just bizarre how things worked out.
Melissa Milner 9:30
Next, Milton talks about teaching acting, and specifically about Stanislavski.
Milton Justice 9:37
The great thing about teaching acting is I think you'll never get it. I'm absolutely convinced that Stanislavski his last words were the secret of acting is and then he died. Because it's just like, it's always something. Yeah, yeah. I'm very close friends. with a woman named Sharon Kenickie, who's written kind of brilliant book called Stanislavski. And focus, it's because she translated all the Stanislavski from Russia.
Melissa Milner 10:12
You talked about this either in your book or on your podcast. Yeah. Fascinating.
Milton Justice 10:17
And it's so amazing. And Sharon, I mean, we're, we are we're friends, because I'm constantly, we're constantly discussing certain things we've discovered. And, and it's because you'll never get it.
Melissa Milner 10:33
Yeah. And that there was, I don't remember what it was, but there was a piece of language. And it's like a misunderstanding of whether it was it's about preparation.
Milton Justice 10:43
Yes.
Melissa Milner 10:43
Yeah, it was something like that.
Milton Justice 10:46
Well, what ended what happened was, there's a vocabulary of acting that has sort of become accepted as and this is the vocabulary.
Melissa Milner 11:00
Yeah. Oh, it was motivation, or...
Milton Justice 11:03
it's actually was objective. But what happened?
Melissa Milner 11:06
Thank you.
Milton Justice 11:07
And so. So it's started when I was teaching in Korea. And the only reason I seriously I think the only reason I want to be the teacher in Korea, is because I was older and male. And I think they liked that image for the school.
Melissa Milner 11:28
This was for Stella?
Milton Justice 11:31
No, like, I was, I was teaching at Yale. And so about this time, somebody said, you know, would you be interested in, in being the dean of a school of the arts in Korea? And of course, again, I thought, well, I've never done that. Why not? But while I was teaching through a, an interpreter, I'm way too old to learn a new language. And I And so Paul, who I became codependent on. At one point, he looked at me, and I said something and he said, they don't have that word in Korean. Yeah. And all of a sudden, I found myself. I think it was the most important breakthrough in my teaching, I suddenly could no longer use a vocabulary that everybody had come to accept as this is how you talk about acting. I had to teach acting in vocabulary, that was just common, ordinary usage. And when I read read Sharon's article, I first discovered her an article called The difficulty of translating sheiks Stanislavski. And she said in this article that Stanislavski never wanted to vocabulary. In fact, there's a great quote of his that says, it's not a system. It's a culture. And he was really saying, and like a culture, it changes.
Melissa Milner 13:15
That's a lot like teaching. That's so interesting. Yeah.
Melissa Milner 13:18
You can't you you know, and I have enormous frustrations about it, I have to say, with so but what I really discovered with Sharon Carnegie's article was that everybody had, I never liked the word objective, but people say, you know, you're acting, you know, what's your objective and objective sounded like one of those things you might or might not accomplish. And I it was just too wishy washy for me. And then apparently, then I discovered the original word was the Russian word. This is a dacha. And the real translation of it was problem. And so what Stanislavski was saying was, every character has a problem. Well, that's so much easier to figure out, than what's my character's objective, but my character's problem sounds like something that you would want to know. People asked me, you know, what I how I think stellar would have adjusted to the time we're living in with the video and video, and, you know, in all of the availability, and so I think they all thought I would say that, Oh, she would have hated it. And I think she and Stanislavski would have loved it. Yeah. They said, What do you think Stella would put herself on tape and done it? I said in a second.
Melissa Milner 14:50
I loved this part of my chat with Milton. He shares about his time teaching and directing the incredible actor Mark Ruffalo.
Milton Justice 15:00
Mark Ruffalo was a student of mine and he took to heart something I said once when I said if you're not failing in my class, you are not trying hard enough. And so he arrived at class one day and he said, "So you are going to be very pleased and today's failure."
Melissa Milner 15:20
Well, he's one of the best, Milton. So you did a good job.
Milton Justice 15:25
Oh my god.
Melissa Milner 15:26
He's an amazing actor.
Milton Justice 15:29
Yes, he was in the first Godot I directed. And he, and none of us were ready to do that play. I had a student who had been rock climbing in the Hollywood Hills, he fell and was left in a wheelchair. And so I got together with Ruffalo, and another actor, Tim McNeil. And we were all friends with Chris. And I said, so here's the thing. The only thing that's going to save him is if he does a play. So I said, we need to do a play, so it doesn't look like an actor in a wheelchair. And then I said, all I can think of is Godot, we could sit through the whole play. So we all agree. We're going to do Waiting for Godot. Well, we were just... Oh, you have no idea. But it was very successful. But it was a point where Ruffalo is stuck in the middle of rehearsal. And he stopped and he looked at me, I was sitting in the very small theater. And he looked at me said, "I have no idea what I'm doing." And I looked, I looked, I looked at him. And I said, "Neither do I. I'm just so glad that I'm not up on stage with you." And the and Chris, the actor in... that was in the wheelchair, it totally like moved him to a place because there was a point where he screamed at Ruffalo, "You better hope I never walk again because the first thing I'm going to do is kick your ass." So they become actors. You know.
Melissa Milner 17:04
Oh, that's funny.
Milton Justice 17:05
So yeah, so that was that? Yeah, that was really that was an education. The other thing I directed Ruffalo in was Long Day's Journey into Night. And through an accident, which was the people building the theater hadn't gotten the proper permits. And so the we had a stage and we had part of the set. And but they had to stop construction. And so we ended up rehearsing for five months. And I really, I haven't talked to Mark about this recently. But I think having that long to work on a play, is how we really both learned our technique. I mean, I was directing. And I was directing him and he was impossible. And so...
Melissa Milner 17:58
What do you mean, like becausehe was hard on himself?
Milton Justice 18:01
Oh, so hard on himself? Yeah. Yeah, some way or another. I have. They were doing a TV special on him and CBS News. And he just walked into my class with a news with a news crew. And I told this story about him. And which, which was said I was supposed to drive him home one night after rehearsal. And I said, I couldn't find him in the theater was dark, and everybody was going, I was walking around, and I walked back into the dressing room. And I, I said, the light was off. But I heard something. And I looked in and I turned to the light Mark was sitting in the, in the corner of the dressing room on the floor. And I said to him, Mark, what's the matter? And I can't find my action. And I mean, it was just like, it's like, he knew when it wasn't working. There's some people that you kind of like, join the process of learning. Some people you just stay out of their way. He was so demanding. He was forcing me to understand certain things. And so I think I grew a lot. It was very, very, very early in my teaching, and I think I grew a lot working with him, because he was so demanding. And so I had to come up with answers. Now I find all my students demanding I don't know why.
Melissa Milner 19:32
And lastly, when we were recording, we had some time for some more stories of famous people. I was relieved to hear that Bob Hope was as sweet as he seemed to be.
Milton Justice 19:42
Bob, Bob, I am I'm not sure why he took to me maybe because I'll tell you that he was around people who had been around forever. And, and I was a kid. And so I clearly was a fan. And so I just loved him. And so he would he would do things when we were editing the Christmas show. And it was I did. I worked for Bob Hope for five years for the show for five years. And I but when we were doing the Christmas show, man he was. It's like we have four editors. Four assistants. We had exactly two weeks out of all filming and 14 bases to pull it down to a two hour TV special. And the people were working constantly. Bob was late one morning and Mort, who was the producer, head writer and director of the Christmas show said Where the hell have you been? He said, I was tired. He said, I spent last night with Milton trying to teach him how to tap dance. And the I mean, he just did that stuff. I mean, he would do stuff like you'd call the office, what are you doing? Milto. I said, Yes. What are you doing? And they'd say, what I always do, I'm trying to save your career. And he said, be out front. I'm picking you up in five minutes. And I said, all right. And so he picked me up. I said, Where are we going? And he's Marie Calendar's.
Melissa Milner 21:17
Oh, Marie Calendar's. I lived in California. I know Marie Calendar's.
Milton Justice 21:20
Yeah. So we'd go to the marine calendar and Toluca Lake, and he said they have the best banana cream pie. And so it was just adorable. But I because of well, two things, first of all, because of Bob Hope. During that period, I met lots of people. And because it was Bob Hope they were all fantastic.
Milton Justice 21:48
So there was guy at the guard house. And so I'd go up and you know, and it said, would you take this up to Mr. Hope? And so I just drop it off sometimes. And so I went by one time and and he he said, Well, just you can take up on that. He said, Bob's awake, and you know, just take it on up. And so anyway, so I went up to the stairs to his bedroom with this revised script. And I knocked on the door and I came in, he said, Did you come to the kitchen? And I said yes. And he said, Was anybody there? And I said, No. And he said, Come on. And so we went downstairs to the kitchen, and he said to cook makes the best German chocolate. And so the two of us sat in his kitchen. They always fed you. Yeah. Oh, it's like a dad thing, right? Yeah, no, it was. I know that's adorable. And then I did two TV series in London with more my boss and Jack one and I'll never forget, you know going to they sent me over to Jack Benny's hotel because he had a sketch he wanted to do and he was going to dictate it to me. And so, you know, I was sitting there thinking I was sitting with John Beilein. But this was all time. And then I I was assistant director on a play opening the Westwood Playhouse Little Foxes starring Lee Grant, Carol O'Connor Burgess, Meredith Harris, Yulin, Bruce Davidson, bearing. And so and the director left after opening night and left the play with me. And so it's like, suddenly I was going every night and I was giving notes to these actors.
Melissa Milner 23:48
I would be like imposter syndrome. I'm sorry, with actors like that. Oh my god.
Milton Justice 23:52
I know. It was amazing. But it was like you found yourself and Lee Grant was so demanding on herself. I went in every night to rehearse the play with her not give her lines. She would rehearse the play in her dressing room every night. And so then Lee said, you know, my husband and I have a have a film company wanted to come work for us. So I went to work for her. And then she said, Oh, well, now we're all going. We're all going to Barcelona for a month in London for two months. Look, we want you to go I got you a job as a PA. And so suddenly, I was doing a film in Barcelona, and everyone in the world was in this film.
Melissa Milner 24:36
What film was that?
Milton Justice 24:37
I mean, it was it was not a successful film. It was called Voyage of the Damned. It was a film about a shipload of Jews that were sent from Germany to Cuba. And Hitler had pre arranged with the Cuban government to refuse entry because he wanted everyone to believe the world to believe that nobody wanted the Jews But my God, everybody was in this movie. First of all, Faye Dunaway was the star Lee was in the movie, Max Von Sydow, Malcolm McDowell, Orson Welles, Wendy Hiller Luther Adler, Maria and I mean, I mean, it was like all these people, and we were all living at the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona. And we just had this huge, enormous ball, like, lobby, and we all would go after shooting everyday and sit there and drink before we go to dinner. And then, and then, by the way, when I moved to New York, and I went to work for a company that ended up doing the Tennessee Williams flop Vieux Carre. But there was a day they said to me, Milton, would you go down to the least stay hotel and pick up Tennessee Williams and bring him up? And so there was a moment where I was sitting in the back of a taxi. And I thought to myself, you're a kid from Texas. You're sitting in the back of a taxi with Tennessee Williams driving up Park Avenus.
Melissa Milner 26:12
Was he nice?
Milton Justice 26:13
Oh, my God, he was the Tennessee Williams story is I was we were having auditions. And I would read opposite the actors auditioning, because of course, I'd studied acting. And even though I was a producer, I wanted to give them the best thing. So there's a scene from a few cabaret with the tubercular painter who was in the lived in the hotel room. And the flophouse next door to where the character that was the autobiographical character of Tennessee Williams lived. And there was a moment where I said, okay, so Tennessee Williams is watching this edition and I'm reading his autobiographical parts. Just leave that right behind or you're not going to be able to talk. And the actor that was auditioning for the part of the tubercular painter was an actor named Tom Aldridge. And it was one of those moments. Tom Aldrich was so brilliant that he pulled me up to his level. I mean, it was, I've never had that experience before, because I haven't done that much acting. But I haven't been with an actor who was just so immersed in the play that he pulled you into it. Tennessee, came up to me afterwards backstage and he said, Milton, you're a very good actor. And so I knew that this guy Richard was playing the part. So well, you know, Richard, because Richard is very good. He said, Oh, I know. Richard's good, but you're a very good actor. And you know, after that, you don't have to ask.
Melissa Milner 27:57
No, that's like, who needs an Oscar for acting? Tennessee Williams said you're good actor? Wow.
Milton Justice 28:03
No, I know, that was fun.
Melissa Milner 28:07
For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner. And I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.