Jack Hitt
Appearances
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And I think Tinkerbell must have had an appearance in the first act, but it was somewhere in here that people just started laughing at this. Then another thing that happened was later on in this scene, if you remember, Wendy gets trapped on an island. And and she she spots a kite that's floating by and flying by and she's supposed to grab it and attach it to her back and fly off. Right. Right.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Well, of course, the kite is attached to the flying apparatus line. And it gets closer and closer to her. She's standing on this little paper mache hill. But the flying apparatus people can't quite get it close enough to her to reach. So she has to step out into the waters that she's just told us is filled with crocodiles to grab it. She finally gets the kite.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And when she yanks on it, it pops off the flying apparatus. And the hook goes zinging up into the lights and catches. Yeah. So now there is this big loop of wire hanging in front of the stage. And there's Wendy holding the kite. And she ad-libbed as best she could, as I remember. She sort of said, on second thought, maybe I can swim.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And with that, she walked off the stage sort of motioning her arms like you would do the swim, the dance in 1965. Oh. So she does that. At this point, I mean, the audience, the actors are just falling apart. They are so frightened of the audience. There are just belly laughs rolling up to the stage from the audience. People are howling with laughter at every mistake.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And now any small mistake just takes on these... You know, it's just any instigation for laughter is just enough for this audience. And now the old people have given it up. Everyone has quit being nice. Now there is just this kind of frightening roar that comes from the audience every time there's a mistake.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Yeah, this is a fiasco. And what's really interesting about a fiasco is that once it starts to tumble down, the audience wants to push it further along.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Oh, it would have been a grave disappointment had there not been just one more mistake after another, one more embarrassment after another. Now the reason they're there is to chronicle these embarrassments. This is why I have remembered this play for 25 years. ¶¶ Towards Act 3, the director had decided that she wanted to break down the fourth wall.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
You know, this was cutting-edge theater as far as she was concerned.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
That's right. And interact with the audience and break down that wall. So the idea being that you would get more in touch with the dramatic sense and the reality of what was happening. Right. Anyway, so in this particular scene, what was going to happen was that the Indians were going to throw rope ladders down from the balcony and climb down these rope ladders into the audience.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
and move among the audience and frighten us. Anyway, I knew about this scene because my friend David, who I went to high school with, was in it. And so when David was climbing over the top of this balcony to climb down the rope, he lost his footing. and fell to the floor from the balcony, a distance of about 15 to 20 feet. A good fall. That's horrible. Yeah.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And he landed on both of his feet and sprained both of his ankles and, of course, curled into a fetal position and began to cry. Right. He was really, really hurt. Now, to appreciate the horrible moment that I'm now describing, also understand that it's a Friday night. We are in a college town, and there is a volunteer fire and ambulance department.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And in order to summon the rescuers from wherever they are, an alarm is sounded that can be heard for five miles. That alarm is located right over this theater. So the alarm goes off. Okay? This is an air raid siren. It is so loud, you can put your fingers in your ear and it's still hurting your ears. We're right under it. It can be heard for five miles.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And what you have to understand is that everybody in this sort of community understood that there were And there was certainly a sort of air of everyone sort of reaching beyond their own grasp. Every actor was sort of in a role that was just a little too big for them. Every aspect of the set and the crew. And, you know, rumors had sort of cooked around. You know, there was this huge crew.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And then, of course, three minutes later, busting through the door of the theater are these 15 firemen. who are in boots, hats. They got hoses. They don't know what it is. All they know is that they've been sent out on a call. Right. And to sort of add to the chaos, the director, of course, has sort of flogged the actors that the show must go on. No matter what. No matter what.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
So while all of this is happening and several people are attending to David and other people have just now decided that since the firemen are here, he's going to be fine, they can start laughing. And now the audience has just completely lost control. People are standing up in their seats and shouting for more. They want blood.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
I mean, at this point, people are actually injured in the production and they want more. Somehow that's how this entire play ended.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
I've never seen a production like this. And I've never seen an audience collapse like this.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Well, see, I would disagree with this. See, I think, you know, the old theater critics, you know, the ancients would say that the reason you go to the theater and to see a great production is to be, I think the word they used to use is transported.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
The idea being that you would be lifted away from your animal nature and into these higher, more spiritual realms or get in touch with these greater tragic emotions, right? But of course what happened here was the exact opposite. We got transported directly in touch with our animal being. Our baser selves. Right. But, you know, that's almost as rare if not more so than a great production.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
That's right. That's right. And maybe greatness could have occurred.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Opening night comes and, you know, well, almost everybody in the area and the, you know, 10 mile radius of this theater knows somebody in this production. So the place is pretty much packed. And I don't know if you remember the opening moment of Peter Pan, but it's the three little kids sleeping in their bed. And Peter Pan comes flying in the window.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And in this particular production, there's a big bed with all the three kids in it. And off to the left, I remember, is a big, huge wardrobe. And there's a large window there and a little bureau. And Peter Pan comes in and has a little speech where he says... You know, anybody can fly. Why? With just a little magic dust, one can fly. And Peter Pan sort of sprinkles this magic dust in the air.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And sure enough, the kids sort of suddenly just lurch into the air. And it becomes clear right away that the people that they've hired to run these flying apparatuses really aren't quite clear on how they actually work.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
So instead of the kids sort of sailing, you know, gracefully to and fro, they sort of hang in the air like puppets, just sort of dangling there and sort of getting jerked up an inch or two or back and forth.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Yeah, just hanging there like a spider. And then several of them start to sort of circumscribe these circles in the air where it's clear that the people running the machines have just sort of set them off on these kind of oval courses that spiral farther and farther out. And if you're sitting in the audience, there was clearly a sense of fear on the faces of these people. Of the actors?
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
The actors. The actors actually, you could sense their lack of confidence, shall we say, in the people running the machines in the back.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
No one is laughing. Everyone, now this is one of the great things about audiences, especially in a live theater production, is that they're very forgiving. They want the show to work. And so everyone is sort of gripping their chair a little tightly. We feel for them. They're up there. They're embarrassing themselves for us.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And so the audience, I think, was very forgiving and very understanding of this moment. But there was one moment in this first opening scene that kind of put the audience on notice. And that's when, as the kids are sort of jerking up and down and swinging back and forth and sort of going around in these ovals, at one point, the littlest one...
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
I don't think she had ever directed. and she claimed to have acted, and it was never really quite clear just what her credentials were. But she had managed to convince the local theater department of this college that she should direct a production of Peter Pan.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Right. Okay, so and? And so he's flying around in this circle, and the audience sort of sees this coming, and there's a real sense of pain and gripping of the chair and white knuckleness as the kid suddenly does just a,
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
an enormous splat into the wardrobe I mean and it's clear that he's hurt you know and he comes off of it sort of you know a little dazed and then of course he's jerked up in the air a little bit and often a little too high so that he's suddenly sort of in the workings he's sort of He sort of left the stage itself. He's now up there with the lights, you know.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And then all of a sudden he just sort of... Suddenly he would just plummet back down to the stage and be caught up just before he hit the floor. And... It was hard to watch because, as you can tell, it's an incredibly funny moment. But like I say, the audience was still in this very forgiving mode. And no one said a word. We just all sat there sort of holding our breath.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And there's that weird tension of being in the audience thinking, oh, oh my goodness, they have gotten off to a very bad start. Oh, this is not good. Right. And we feel for them.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
No, no. Because, you know, like I say, audiences are forgiving. And, you know, one or two mistakes, even big ones like this, they're going to let that ride. Yes, they are. We did. We did. We were very good.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
What happens immediately after this? They disappear to Never Never Land. And if you remember, the stage goes dark. And then when the lights come up, there's Captain Hook. And he's giving his first opening soliloquy about how evil he is and what a menace he is and how he harms people and hates children. It's all that good stuff. And so Captain Hook is out there, and he looks great.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
He's got one of those big old fat hats and this great hook and these wild-looking boots and everything.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Something's happening. It's a good sign. It's a good sign. And he's in charge. This guy, he's got a bad mustache, and he is certainly evil.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And the audience is totally in his pocket. He's speaking away and gesturing wildly and going on and on about how bad he is. And then at a certain point... As he gestures, his hook and the entire black casing up to his elbow flings off of his hand and flies into the audience and punches an old lady in the gut. And now – He is bad. Yeah. He had like the worst ad lib I've ever heard.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
I mean, what do you say at that point? Because, of course, his hand is now nakedly exposed to the audience.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Captain Hook said, you know, they just don't make those hooks like they used to. That was actually the ad lib. I will never forget it. Then the lights come up, and we are in Never Never Land. In Act 2. Yeah, this is like Act 2. And Captain Hook might have stood in front of this set, but you didn't really see it because he spoke from shadow.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And now the lights come up, and this is supposed to be a very dramatic moment. The rumors of all this crew and the painting and everything that was going on and all this construction... all work towards this one moment. Because when the lights came up, here was Never Never Land, this sort of psychedelic set. There were papier-mâché mushrooms everywhere of different sizes.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Slowly but surely, you know, you began to hear, you know, sort of rumors about this production. For example, I know that they had spent a lot of money... renting these flying apparatuses out of New York. And apparently there's like one company and a handful of these apparatuses. And so to get them was a major coup.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
It was absolutely wonderful and surreal. Wow. And there's nobody there. And then from the upper rafters of stage right, suddenly the kids and Peter Pan appear. Flying. Flying. They're flying. And their landing occurs rather rapidly at an angle of about 45 degrees to the stage. They come down basically like, I don't know, lead sinkers on a line and crash to the floor.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And then are sort of just dragged across the floor like mops and wipe out all of the mushrooms.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
Yeah. Yeah, it's clear now that the audience is giving way. Something has been lost. Some sense of decorum, that little bit of forgiveness that the audience has for the actors. And empathy. And empathy. It's beginning to dissipate. Well, there was a split in the audience. The younger people who were the least forgiving, they started to go first.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
So the high school students, a couple of college students maybe, they started to laugh out loud. I'll be honest, Ira, I might have been one of those first people to laugh. I was in the 10th grade. It was hard to not laugh at this.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
But then whatever restraint that the audience had, it just evaporated at this point because there were a number of things that happened in quick succession that just made it impossible to hold any sense of decorum. Which are? For example, Tinkerbell appears for the first time around this moment. And Tinkerbell is essentially a light bulb on an extension cord. What? Yeah.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
And this was the director's idea of being raw, being very modern. Tinkerbell was just going to be... you know, this literal light bulb dangling from an extension cord.
This American Life
699: Fiasco!
That's right. Or something like that, or nothing at all. And people just address the invisible, you know, sprite, right? Well, that did not happen in this case. This bulb comes just dangling down and sort of hangs around. This naked white bulb just hangs around and people are talking to it.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
Anyway, we had declared it to be our land. We were squatters. And so we started painting things on the wall. And one of us painted a naked woman. And one of us wrote his name and then loves. And then the girl he had a thing for at that time. And that's how we got caught because he wrote his name on the wall. And then I wrote all these bad words. I just wrote every bad word I could think of.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And so I came home one day and the police came to my house and told my parents or called my father at work or something. And anyway, he came home early from work. And he sat me down in his big study and said, you know, I understand you painted some words on a wall. And I was like, Oh my God, it's burst into tears. You know, I was just beyond, uh, control.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
My father never cursed, at least not in front of us. And he was very strict about language. And so he asked me what words I, we painted, I painted on the wall. And, you know, I think I choked out H-E double hockey sticks or something. And, you know, he kind of looked down. Very grave indeed. Anything else? I was like, yeah. That was just the warm up.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And so then I said, you know, I painted the other words. I can't say them. I can't say them. And then he said, tell me what it started with.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
he's gonna get it out of me so i coughed up the letter s and he was just his eyes blazed and he bowed his head oh my god anything else and i was i could not be contained i was wailing around on the sofa he said there's only one word left and yeah i painted it and he was just i mean i think he was actually thunderstruck And then he sat there in silence for a few minutes.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And then he looked up at me and he said, he said, now you have to understand, my father comes from the rural area, marries the Southern Belle in Charleston, South Carolina. It's a marriage of two kinds of families in the South. And he said, son, I've worked all my life to make sure that when you or your sisters or your brother walk down the street, people say, there goes a hit.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
They're good people. I don't think anybody, anything that anybody in this family has done has damaged that reputation as much as you have today. And he said, that is your punishment. You may go now. You know, I was 11. Wow. I was just, I was floored, you know. I asked him, I think, to spank me. Because, of course, part of me wanted an explosion that would end it.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
But he said, when he dismissed me from the room, he said, you know, this has been your punishment. And then, of course, a couple of months later, he dies. And that's one of my last memories is him telling me that. Do you think he was being sincere? Well, I'll tell you. Years later... We had a little family reunion. I might have been 20. I was in college. And all my siblings got together.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
They were all married at this point. We dismissed all the in-laws to go see the movies. And the five of us stayed up really late talking. And I don't think we'd ever really talked about our father.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
in any deep way since he had died and i started telling that story and i had never told that story because i was ashamed of it damn it was the black mark on the family that i had done this right and i i couldn't bring to i'd never told anybody that story and i started telling the story and All my sisters start wailing with laughter.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And then they all start telling the story that what they had done that had prompted essentially the exact same speech. Like one of them had been caught shoplifting in Atlanta and he had to fly there and get her. And it was just a terrible story. I'd never heard that one before either. And I thought, well, painting a few bad words on a wall, that's nothing compared to shoplifting in Atlanta.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
I think I was the only one who didn't know. I mean, they're much older than I am. I'm a mistake, right? So my oldest sister is 16 years older than I am. So I think what was kind of moving about that whole encounter was that all of them had long ago forgotten their particular crime that had prompted Daddy to give them the big reputation speech.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
But, you know, when I brought it up, it suddenly, for all of them, that all flooded back. I mean, it just created this great little moment where we all suddenly realized we were, you know, the whole family was just so defined by my father's rather Baptist sense of morality.