Conversations with geeks: Charles Ross

MAJ: I guess no matter what his age is, the fact that he’s writing for The Times and someone who appreciates a geeky perspective is not says something about what The Times thinks their audience is.

CR: I guess so. I think that he thinks that maybe [One Man Star Wars] is cheapening the quality of what’s out there. But I don’t know that it’s cheapening it, as much as it is diversifying it.

MAJ: Yeah! If things like that Abba show aren’t cheapening Broadway... So, let me ask you, what does being a geek mean to you? Does it have special connotations for you and for how you live your life and do your art?

CR: It’s something that sort of inside of me, and you don’t necessarily have to make any conscious decision to feel a certain way or to do certain things -- it just comes naturally. You can be sci-fi writer, or you can be a person that makes fantasy films, or you can be a comic book artist... I’m an actor, that’s what I always wanted to be. I think that any good art has to come from a place of love. Being a geek is kind of unabashedly just loving something, and who cares what people think? Because it’s easy for people to laugh at how much you love something, and make fun of you for it. You can either choose to love it secretly... or you can love it outwardly. And so you get closet geeks and outward geeks. Someone who will wear a T-shirt with whatever the heck they want on it. Whereas with other people, they try not to let their other friends know that they’re checking out all the geek sites on the Internet or they’ve seen The Last Starfighter 50,000 times or something crazy like that. For me it used to be about following the things I loved, like what I watched on television or whatever. Now, doing this show here, it’s very much wearing my heart on my sleeve. So you open yourself up to potential ridicule. But people have been pretty damn positive about the whole thing.

MAJ: That’s one of the points that I’m trying to get across in my blog, that geekiness has to a large degree gone mainstream. The things that, in some ways, define geekiness -- you know, love of science fiction and computers and that kind of stuff, which, of course, doesn’t apply to everybody who considers himself a geek... But those things have become mainstream to the point where it’s not unusual to run a Web site, or be a big Star Wars fan, or have a huge DVD collection... it’s just par for the course. I think part of it is because technology has just improved to the point where it’s easy for people to get a hold of these things. But part of it is the fact that we who grew up with this stuff are now adults and we’re in position to be starting to shape the culture.

CR: I think that’s a pretty fair estimate. It’s funny, though: the money people try to capitalize upon that. They can’t necessarily create it for themselves, but they can find people that are willing to create it. So they’ll put their money behind it. I feel a little cynical about it... but it is nice to know that there are people who are putting their money behind this type of show that I’m doing here.

MAJ: I think geeks and Generation Xers know when somebody’s trying to sell us something, that there’s no real love behind it. So we can tell the difference between some mercenary attempt to get our money and something with some real love and understanding behind it, like your show.

CR: Right. It’s funny though -- you go to a sci-fi convention--

MAJ: Oh, I’ve been to many--

CR: The funny thing is the difference between the midlevel management, the people who put it on, and the people who are the guests, that have been invited, or the people that are coming to attend the convention. There’s just a different range of... I want to say sincerity...

MAJ: Dedication, maybe?

CR: The legitimate geek, the highly motivated, make these sort of events happen. But then there’s the people that at some point realize that if they put on this giant convention, the geeks will come, though they’re not necessarily geeks themselves. But they can’t help but become associated with them, can they?

MAJ: I guess not. So, I would think Star Wars is a real touch point for our generation. I’m 36, and I think you’re just a couple of years younger than me...

CR: I’m 31.

MAJ: We all grew up with Star Wars. A whole bunch of us have seen the movie a hundred times and memorized it. Do you think there’s something particularly about Star Wars that appeals to us, or did it just come along at the right time when we were all at that impressionable age to just be blown away by this? Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

CR: Well, I think when you get somebody like Luke Skywalker coming along, here’s a guy who seems isolated, he has watched people pass him by. It’s always “just another season more,” “just another season more”... He wants to get out of there in the worst way, but he loses everything and becomes completely isolated and somehow finds that he’s actually the most important person of the day. He finds some kind of destiny waiting for him and he realizes just how important he is. When they call it A New Hope, I think it’s a new hope for everybody, for anyone who comes from a small town or feels isolated within a city, someone who doesn’t really know what their personal power might be. Having a sense of adventure can take a person far away from the place that they’re feeling that they’re stuck in. It doesn’t give out any real answers as to what we have to do in our own lives, but it’s a chance for anyone to just believe in themselves and not necessarily have all the answers or see the road clearly ahead of them, but just to take action and have their action result in positive change.

And for myself, that idea has replayed and replayed in my head time and time again. Doing the show and having the audacity to not only try it but to continue to take it to different places... It’s always been a challenge to sell the show to the audience, and to sell it to myself, that what I was doing is a good thing. Maybe what I’m doing is not going to change anybody’s life, per se, but it might challenge people’s perceptions of what one person can do.

It’s such an important story for so many people. Can you take away all the special effects, music, costumes, and sets and conjure the essence of it? Will people be able to follow you? What will they think?

MAJ: And now you’re Off-Broadway.

CR: Yeah. I’m so very happy to be just where I am. I could never have planned for it. I never did plan for it. It just sort of... happened. You know, you take the leap and either the net will appear, or maybe you’ll fall flat on your face, but you have to be willing to take the leap, and another leap, and another leap... because if not, then you’re just sort of standing on the ground, or you’re just waiting on the precipice but you never really take that step. That necessary step.

MAJ: I like that attitude. I feel like a big part of being a geek and a big part of the culture of Generation X is we’re much more involved. We’re not passive consumers of pop culture. We make fanzines, we do fan Web sites, we go to conventions, we even just get online and talk about shows. We’re not just sitting here absorbing our pop culture, we become active participants in it. Do you feel like there’s some sort of criticism or commentary beyond what you’ve already talked about in your show, or was that not part of the motivation behind it?

CR: Criticism of the movies themselves?

MAJ: Not necessarily criticism in a negative sense, but just your own way of figuring out what they’re about. Did that come out through your development of the show, or did you kind of go into it already knowing what you wanted to say?

CR: The major meanings that I discovered came out when it was first rehearsed. Now, a few things have gone further, but if there was any kind of statement I was trying to make, that came out fairly early, I believe. It’s funny how that the more I do the show, the more tiny little meanings clarify themselves for me, things that the audience just wouldn’t get.

MAJ: You’re seeing new things in the show each time you do it?

CR: Oh, absolutely. But more than anything, I’m seeing new things in the audience. Because the audience is never the same. And every time I think I might have a peg, I find myself wrong.

MAJ: Interesting.

CR: And it’s lovely... it’s lovely. Because it really is always like having a brand new cast member. And there’s that nice thing about live theater, that as much as you might rehearse the thing or how many times you’ve performed it, it’s always open to the chance that you might screw something up! A person’s phone might go off, people may not get anything, or maybe they’re getting it, but not making any noise -- which isn’t very helpful when you’re on stage, because part of the reason that you do something live is to hear something coming back. You know?

MAJ: Yeah. I’ve worked in theater too -- not onstage, but I’ve done tech work behind the scenes, and I was always stunned to see that some nights the audience is just really there and some nights they aren’t and you never know why!

CR: Yeah, it is so strange. There’s always a different vibe, a different mood that seems to be there in the audience. Sometimes you can feel it beforehand, when you stand backstage but you never really know until you start. I liken it going on a run -- say, you run around Central Park. You learn the geography of your route, and you learn the geography of the show. You know when to hold back, you know when to push... you know how much further you have to go... It’s just about making a start at the right pace that will get that audience going. There can be a couple of things that are thrown off, or there can be a couple of jokes that just don’t seem to work, and it’s bizarre that it can change the whole flavor, the whole experience of that journey.

MAJ: What kinds of unusual reactions are you getting from the crowds? Do you talk to people after the show?

CR: Sometimes, if they stick around. Usually people are pretty much gone before I get a chance to talk to many of them. And the reactions... there’s always the extremely positive reactions. People do surprise me still at how much they know of the movies, how much they’ve thought about them. Sometimes I think people are almost a bit tentative to really state how much they like the films, or how much the films really do mean to them. You’ll get people who want to stick around, they want to talk, but it’s not like being at a Star Wars convention, where geek talk goes on forever. It’s like being in a limbo between the Land of the Geek and New York Broadway.

MAJ: I wonder if maybe the show is drawing out some people who are big fans of the movies but haven’t had that geek experience of going to a convention and just doing nothing but talking about the stuff for three days.

CR: It’s possible. Also, I think it draws some people that have only been to conventions that really haven’t been to theater much. It’s been very funny to hear the reactions of people that are either working in theater or film or television, and they ask me, So, is this all that I do? Or have I ever done any other acting, or am I just a comedian, or what?

MAJ: Well, the show is sort of outside the realm of the traditional stage production...

CR: Oh, absolutely. The thing is, if I wanted to do a piece of conventional theater, then that’s what it would be. But my whole background has been purely conventional theater. It means very little when I’m on stage now, but I take all that experience that I’ve had, and I realize that although this show doesn’t really fit into conventional theater, it’s still just a strange little performance that references a story that everybody knows. No different than the story of Hamlet, because there were other versions of Hamlet that existed before Shakespeare’s Hamlet and other versions afterwards, so it was a story that people already knew.

MAJ: Even Shakespeare’s Hamlet, though, continues to get productions and reinterpretations -- it’s not a story that’s every going to die. I’m sure that’s true of Star Wars too... I’m sure 50 or 100 years from now, someone is going to remake Star Wars.

CR: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. People will say, “How can you possibly remake it?” But you know...

MAJ: Someone will do it. Can we talk a little bit about the Lord of the Rings show?

CR: Sure.

MAJ: I have a friend who I grew up with, who is also a huge geek, and we were complaining to each other recently that we don’t have time to memorize movies anymore like we did when we were kids. You know, we would rent movies and watch them 100 times and you’d memorize them... And I recently realized that, I’m on my way to memorizing Lord of the Rings, because even though I’m busy and have all sorts of adult responsibilities I never had to worry about before, I found time to watch these movies a dozen times each. There’s something in those movies that has captured the imagination of a lot of people in the way that Star Wars did. Obviously, you’ve found that yourself, too.

CR: Oh, yes. I can’t really think of a series of films that have captured me the way The Lord of the Rings has. But I think it still goes back to being a kid -- I read the books when I was a kid -- and I think there’s still the same appeal of the individual, the hero, the person who longs for something else, and once they find themselves out of their comfort zone, they’re not really sure they want to be there anymore because it means, in a sense, they can never really go back. And that’s very true in life...

MAJ: That’s the hero’s journey, and it’s Luke Skywalker’s story too...

CR: Absolutely. It’s a familiar form, and the film’s a comforting story, in a sense, because it sets up the world very much as it is, with beautiful places where people somehow remain ignorant of what’s going on while there are places where the worst might be happening. I think it’s actually kind of timely that those films came out when they did, considering a lot of the fear that seems to pervade the world right now. Well, I guess it always has, but with something like September 11th...

MAJ: We got a big reminder of how scary the world could be.

CR: And how completely powerless we are to stop it when those things do happen. You know, not just us as individuals but even the people that we mostly put our trust in... But I guess the movies once again show the power of an individual. I didn’t have any problems with going to see the films in the theater or buying them and then watching them as many times as I have. And definitely it comes from a place of love that I adapted the films the same way as I did Star Wars. I found it even easier to adapt LOTR, though, I guess because I’ve had the experience of doing it with Star Wars and realized that I can do. Putting it up on its feet, it’s always a matter of trial and error. You see what works and what doesn’t work. I think the hardest things to put on stage are things like great battles, because how much can you really do? There’s not a lot of conversations -- there’s a lot of violence. So even though the orcs attacking Helm’s Deep takes up such a huge part of the second film, very little of it can really make it into my show, because, you know, how much battle can you really watch? And make it funny?

MAJ: I’ll be curious to see how you handle that, because your X-wing fighters and the Death Star exploding, it’s very funny...

CR: Well, I know that there are places where people who are not really, really keen, keen fans do find that part to be a little confusing because it’s hard to keep up, unless you’ve seen Star Wars numerous times.

MAJ: Are you finding people coming to One Man Star Wars who haven’t seen the films, or have only seen them once or twice?

CR: Oh, absolutely.

MAJ: Really?

CR: It’s always been that way.

MAJ: That’s great.

CR: Strange though.

MAJ: I’m really looking forward to seeing One Man Lord of the Rings. When is that opening?

CR: I’m not sure exactly when we’re going to be able to do it. Funny thing about intellectual property... You know, they’re working on a Lord of the Rings musical, right?

MAJ: I had heard that.

CR: Well, let’s just say I’m rather low on the priority list -- I’m in the waiting game to see what I’ll be allowed to do here in New York.

MAJ: Ah, well, I hope it comes through.

CR: Me too. Me too.