KEVIN KLINE - New York Post interview from early 90s

Note: I'd received a xeroxed copy of this article, but didn't know the source, and contact with the sender was lost. I thought it was from the 80s. On June 5, I received this email from Frank Ball:

I'm the director of that production of Viet Rock that Kevin mentions in this article. It is from his New York Magazine interview, I think in the early 90s, sometime around when the film "Dave" was opening.

Thanks, Frank!!

Kevin Kline is the kind of actor who thinks out loud with his body. And what his body says is usually funny, whether he's chewing every stick of scenery in sight as the rip-roaring Pirate King in Broadway's The Pirates of Penzance or making a silent entrance in the dark in John Malkovich's production of Arms and the Man, whether he's addressing the world from the Brooklyn Bridge as the near-psychotic Nathan in Sophie's Choice or merely cocking an eyebrow in Larry Kasdan's deadpan western, Silverado. The most celebrated veteran of the Acting Company, Juilliard School's touring ensemble directed by legendary actor and teacher John Houseman, Kline in many ways epitomizes the generation of young actors who rejected the Actors' Studio Method that dominated American acting in the 1950s and sought an all-inclusive training that would make them adaptable to the full spectrum of experience as an actor -- musicals and dramas, theater and film, Shakespeare and Lanford Wilson.
   In person, Kline projects little of the dynamic and flamboyant persona that is his trademark as an actor. He's unassuming, down-to-earth, almost bland, particularly when he's clean-shaven after a series of dashing beards and mustaches. When we met, he was two months away from starting rehearsals for Hamlet at the Public Theater, and champing at the bit. To occupy his time, he'd agreed to return to Juilliard to teach an acting class, from which he'd just come.

   The criticism so often leveled against Juilliard actors is that they're all technique and no heart. The problem with acting school is that it breaks things down so you think that acting has to do with speech and voice and movement and how to wear a period costume. The fact is those are only tools that can aid and abet what is more important -- all-important -- which is the acting. The instinct. That's why I'm there, to make sure that where those things have become impediments, the students learn to make them only tools or to throw them out altogether.

When you were at Juilliard, did working actors come in and teach you?
   Some. In the first year, we were guinea pigs. They would try a class, and if it didn't work, it would just stop. We had classes in learning how to bow in every period, how to use a fan, use a cane, take snuff, how to put on your wig, how the women put on that Restoration makeup -- the white stuff with the black dots to cover their syphilis sores or whatever. All that stuff is a luxury. You think, "What use, pray...?" But in fact, years later, when you're doing Shakespeare or Restoration comedy, it helps to know what the cut of the coat meant and what it meant to stand with your foot out this way and how to show your calf.
   Of course, when you're in school, you'll be a Restoration production, and the teacher will be saying, "No, you should be doing that with your foot," and the speech teacher's saying, "Mmm, darling, you're still splashing your T's, and you're biting off your G's." All these things are impediments to the acting, when, in fact, like any technique, they should be learned to be forgotten.

What made you interested in acting?
   I had been in the school play in high school, which was an all-boys' Catholic prep school in St. Louis run by Benedictine monks from Appleforth Abbey in England. And I really had fun. Friends of mine were throwing up, and I as enjoying it. I felt very calm and rather at home on the stage. Whatever repressed exhibitionistic impulses I had were given vent.
   When I went to Indiana University, I studied music the first two years, but I thought: I want to try acting,too. So I took an acting class my first semester and got a D in it. It was at eight-thirty in the morning, and I missed the first half of the midterm exam. But I loved it. I started doing one play after another, and I spent the next summer on the Ohio River. Indiana University had a showboat, and I lived on the showboat. Terribly romantic, wonderful summer.
   When we got back to school, a few of us had the idea of starting a company, breaking away from the theater department (which was very staid), and doing exciting, artistic drama to "serve the community." We sat up nights writing a manifesto. We started doing satirical revues. I was the pianist. I would play all the parody songs. Eventually, they let me act more. A playwright joined us, and we thought of ourselves as the Group Theater. I spent three years with this group off-campus doing our own theater. We did an evening of Williams one-acts and Viet Rock, which was to date the most amazing theatrical experience of my life. At the end of the play, people wouldn't just applaud or write a good review. They would burn their draft cards. We changed people's lives dramatically. That's what theater was all about in 1969. All of us were potentially draftable as soon as we graduated.

Were you always a good actor?
   I was terrible at first. They all encouraged me to continue with music. Eventually, I got better and better. I was certainly one of the stars of the theater department. They'd say, "Kline's auditioning for Threepenny Opera -- there goes Macheath." I had a certain ... I don't know, I used words and it just sounded good. I was hot. For my graduation present, my parents had promised me a trip to New York to audition for Juilliard. They were taking only three or four people to enter the third year of this four-year program. I thought I didn't have a prayer but at least I'd get a trip to New York. I almost didn't bother with the audition., but I'd paid the $40 audition fee or whatever it was, so I went over and in a sense didn't care. It helped. I got in. Then the draft lottery was imposed, and they decided to cut off at 195 that first year. I was 196, which was how I got to go to Juilliard.
   In one sense, I had an edge over people who went right to Juilliard from high school, because I was constantly acting for four years in college. Whatever the quality, I did twenty-five, thirty plays, Wednesday-night improvisations, original plays, as well as acting on a stage that I helped build. I had more of a sense of who I was as an actor than some other people. Although that was a vintage year -- an extremely talented class of very distinct individuals. Remember Houseman had worked with Orson Welles. Houseman liked wild people. I realized as soon as I got there that I was tame. On our first overnight out in Patchlogue, Long Island, I got a knock on the door at three in the morning. There was an inch of snow on the ground, and three completely naked, drunken actors were dancing around, saying, "Come on out, dance in the snow." I literally pinched myself to see if I was awake. We were at a motel right on the main road of this little town, and here are three of our actors naked. They came in and jumped on the bed, saying, "Come and play, come and play. We're the naked runners for God." It became a tradition in the company. Periodically, at a dull point in the tour, someone would say, "There's a run tonight, a naked run for God." We even got Houseman to take his clothes off. He'd heard about us over the years. I never did it.

You were much too mature for this sort of thing.
   Mature? [He starts to say "repressed."] No. I just wasn't into it. Maybe because I couldn't let go of my first job as a monk.

Do you have it in mind to do movies?
   I think every American actor wants to be a movie star.

How did that fit into all of this?
   "Oh, gee, someday, maybe, wouldn't it be neat if...?" But I never wanted to do stupid movies. I wanted to do fffilms. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the company and was starving. I was working Off-Off Broadway for $25. Actually, while I was doing the soap, I stood by for Raul Julia in Threepenny Opera. I had $600 a week coming in guaranteed from the soap, and my day finished at three o'clock, so I could go do Off-Off Broadway or stand by for twelve weeks. After that, I did Dance on a Country Grave, a musical of Return of the Native at the Hudson Guild, which got decent reviews but didn't move to Broadway.
   Then I auditioned for this small part in On the Twentieth Century. My agent, Jeff Hunter, said, "It's not a very good part" -- of course, I'd been playing leading parts-- "but think of it as paying dues. It'll be good for you to work with Hal Prince." Well, that's what I did. I was still very ambivalent about doing a commercial Broadway musical. But I hadn't worked in four months, 'cause I left the soap.

Were you making more money doing the soap than from the Acting Company?
   Three times! I was making $300 every time I worked, with a guarantee of two times a week, but I usually only did one. If I worked five days, I'd make $1500. Broadway was about the same. I worked for $650 a week. In the Acting Company I was making $250 a week, maybe more with the per diem. But $600 a week was unheard of at that time.

Did you find it hard to go into movies? Did it feel like a different kind of acting?
   Mm! Yeah. Very, very scary. I feared that everything I'd learned onstage was different. Some people say film acting is right here [he points to half of his eyeball], that that's your canvas. Yet some of my favorite roles involve playing someone who really uses his whole body. People say, "You can get away with bigger, phonier acting onstage." I don't think so. You can see it from the last row, you can see it from the first row if someone is bullshitting you, if someone is phoning it in, if someone's missed the point. People talk about overacting on film and automatically categorize it as stage acting. But as a matter of fact, it's just bad acting.

What's your favorite thing about being an actor?
   Getting to live for a few hours a day on a very exciting, more intense plane. To get to put myself in those situations that transcend the banality of everyday existence. To get to become the King of England by killing your brother, his son, and your wife. To be so crazed with power and sick with self-loathing that it becomes a positive kind of force, an irresistible force. It's too late to know now if I could find that kind of excitement if we all lived our lives as fully as we should, or whether I need that because I'm not living as fully as I should.

You've just been through this long string of doing one thing after another -- Henry V in Central Park, Silverado, Violets Are Blue, Arms and the Man onstage. Is it hard for you to sustain that pace?
   In fact, no. I'm not doing anything now, which is why I'm going stir crazy and why I'm teaching. I'm very particular about what I do. Especially with a film. I still can't get over the fact that when you're finished, it's still there. You have to live with that for the rest of your life. Your kids and their children might have to see it. If it's going to be preserved, it's got to be about something. It can't just be stupid.

How much imput do you get or require from a director?
   The approach I've adopted in the last few years is--you do it yourself and the director edits. I don't think you go in there and say, "Mold me."

A lot of actors think of themselves as a vessel and wait to see what delightful liquid the director pours into them.
   I don't understand that. Because I work instinctually. I resent the notion that I am merely a vessel, "a pipe for fortune's finger to play what stop she please." It's hard enough to reconcile myself to the fact that I'm an interpretive, as opposed to creative, artist. At least let me find my way, find out what I have to say about this character and what this character means to me. I rarely argue or fight with a director. Most directors I work with say, "Show me something and let me fix it." They don't like to spoon-feed you.

Have you ever thought of quitting?
   Oh yeah. Sometimes I think maybe I've seen enough of me, and I'm afraid everyone else has. I hate repeating myself. It's inevitable if you're an actor to repeat certain aspects of yourself. But sometimes I get bored with my acting, and I think that I don't have enough in my brain to be interesting every time out. I've always respected people who quit. Not that I'm thinking of retiring this year. A lot of that is neurotic, that fear. It can be good to harness that neurosis. It makes you not get lazy and not be repetitive.
   Also, it's an agonizing way of life. You have to wait sometimes six months, a year, two years between jobs. What do you do unless you're an avid fisherman or astronomer? I have a piano, it kind of helps, but I'm not big on hobbies. Unfortunately, I define myself by the work I do as much as the next guy. And when I'm not working, a part of me is dead.

Excerpts from this interview were translated by kkstl into Spanish for her Kevin Kline page

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