Q & A with Charles Evered

Anthony Grippa: What made you want to tell this story, about two guys starting out real life?

Charles Evered: I wrote Running Funny when I found myself in a sort of "twilight" time in my life. That is, I found myself---for the first time in my life, truly left to my own devices. And I found that both thrilling and terrifying. Just like most of the important times in your life. I wrote the play in the attic of a room I rented from an elderly couple in North Arlington, New Jersey. My mom had just died a pretty horrific death from cancer, ---and my dad had died of the same disease about seven years before. I guess I was 21 or 22 years old, and I was renting this modest room dreaming of being a writer----but at the same time, thinking that was the same thing as getting to go to Pluto. It was an important play for me; ---because the play was a safe place I could go in an awfully tumultuous and painful time. Also, I knew that everyone in some form goes through this same passage of life. Sometimes it happens in our teens, sometimes in our twenties and some people experience this passage at the latter stages of our life---so I knew that I was writing something that lots of people might be able to identify with.

AG: That is definitely what attracted me to the play. I was drawn to the characters because I identified with them so much and by the end of the play I felt like I had gone through an experience with these three guys. I was particularly invested in the poignant relationship between Michael and Stan. Michael becomes sort of a surrogate son to Stan by the end. Was his character created as a father figure for Michael, and in a way, for you?

CE: Stan was definitely created to compensate for the fact that I hadn't had a father for seven years by the time I wrote the play. Also, I was heavily influenced by the Greek dramatists,---having read a lot of them in college and having seen some excellent adaptations of the myths by Kenneth Cavander in the late 80's in Williamstown. I was particularly influenced by the story of Teiresias, ---a character who was given the gift of prophecy by Athena to compensate for his blindness. The character of Stan---and in fact, the literal man I based the character on, ---Stan Kamin, was like that. Stan Kamin was a blind,rugged, smart, sensitive and fascinating man who owned the house that I rented a room in---in 1987. I only lived with him and his wife Rita for about a month as I remember, but they had a profound effect on me---at a very difficult time in my life. Stan also migrated as a major character into my first full length play; The Size of the World. The reason Stan was fascinating was because he was so completely grounded and not full of shit. He was an infantryman in World War II, and a roofer most of his life. He fell off a building once and broke his back. He supported a wife and child. Stan Kamin fought in a world war, had some scrapes with people, and if he didn't agree with what you were talking about, would literally say things like: "Ah, that's crap." He didn't give a hoot about social convention, and he wasn't scared to offend people. He's the opposite of the way many of us are now. And so Stan Kamin used to sit there at his kitchen table and talk for hours to me about the women he was with, his war stories---this amazing life, and I see him asa literal hero. The kind of guy typical of that generation that
did things more than just talked about them. He wasn't frozen with terror at the idea of action, as so many of us are now. To me, it was natural to seek to dramatize him, because he was fascinating and all I really had to do was write his character, ---put him down on paper and get out of the way. Some amazing actors have played the character since, and though Stan Kamin is gone now---whenever I see one of those two plays produced again, it's as though it's a chance for me to see Stan resurrected somewhat. Maybe that's one of the reasons I write, ---to bring people back from the dead in some way. To preserve them, at least emotionally, before they cross to some other world.

AG: Stan sounds like an amazing guy. It's interesting how as writers, we channel things from the real world into the fiction we create. Clearly the character of Michael, who lost both of his parents, stems from your experience. Where did Eddie come from? He and Michael seem to be similar in that they both want to be somewhere else, yet it's this desire to run away, to keep moving forward that eventually creates a rift in their friendship.

CE: Eddie is just another side of all of us---all of us are ambitious on some level and constantly seeking validation from others. Even Michael has moments where he's tempted by the huge glass buildings of the city, ---and of course no one wants to be broke. But like everything else, the important thing is balancing these two aspects of ourselves. There's nothing wrong with ambition at all as long as it's tempered by perspective and self knowledge. Eddie wants to succeed for all the wrong reasons which means that even if he did "make it"---in the context of Running Funny, get a job in the "city" and make lot of money---without the proper perspective, it's all for naught. In that way, without hopefully being too blatantly representational, Eddie and Michael represent both of those sides of all of us.

AG: To me Michael and Eddie are a great representation of a generation just stepping out into the real world, whether it is in 1987 or in 2006. Running Funny is a story that will remain relevant for years to come because so many of us deal with the loss of loved ones and experience a time in which we have to say goodbye to our childhoods. It's what makes this story both funny and sad at the same time. Eddie tries so hard to run away from his family, but no matter how fast he runs he knows that like Michael, there will always be a part of him wishing to go back to a time when he didn't feel the pressure of having to run away or to keep moving forward. I wish I could've seen the first production. How did the play end up getting produced at the Williamstown Theater Festival? It must have been a great experience for you at such a young age.

CE: I started off as an intern at The Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1986, having been invited by Bonnie Monte (Now the Artistic Director of The Shakespeare Theatre of NJ) who read a collection of my short plays and thought they were pretty good. So, for that summer I basically got to sit in rehearsals and get coffee for people for a summer. But the important thing was, I was in the room watching and studying some pretty great professional people. Then the next summer, 1987, I was invited back as a Play writing Intern, or some such title they gave me, ---and Bonnie said she'd find a space and time to do some of my plays. And that's what happened with Running Funny. It was a great cast: Paul Giamatti, Peter Gregory and Nick Brooks and it was produced in a little loft type theatre. Bonnie directed it and the company at Williamstown came to the production. It was a great experience, and each of the actors were superb.

AG: With a background as a playwright, was it difficult to adjust to the world of writing for film and television, which I know you have been doing for quite some time now?

CE: For me it was a natural extension of my writing for the theatre---and as a practical matter, I had to move into the world of film and TV in order to make a living. It's one thing to write plays in Grad school, but when you get out---especially if you had to take loans out as I did, you have to make more money as a writer, and so I was fortunate to win the Chesterfield Fellowship, which provided a great bridge to working in Hollywood, especially for a playwright that hadn't had any experience there before. In the end though, I frankly don't see such a huge distinction between the different forms, though----because in the end, all that matters is the story and so you have to judge for yourself what the best medium would be to tell this particular story in. I think in the ideal world, you should be able to sort of float between mediums.

AG: Has anyone else ever approached you about turning Running Funny into a movie?

CE: Years ago an independent producer was interested in it, but he wanted to sex it up, and I didn't see the point. I think it would be nice to have an independent film that actually didn't deal with overt sexuality, crime, drugs, heists, incest, etc. I always thought it would be kind of radical to tell a simple story about loss and life and growing up. But then, I'm crazy.

AG: That makes two of us. I just want to make a movie that I would want to go see. A simple story about characters going through the same crap that I've gone through. It's rare to see a movie these days that tells a human story and doesn't have a director trying to show off. I think Alexander Payne's Sideways is a great example of this. It's sort of an anomaly, a movie that should've been made during the 70's. And Paul Giamatti was amazing.

CE: Indeed.

AG: There have been many filmmakers who have made low budget movies by themselves, funded by family, friends, and credit cards. Christopher Nolan made Following, Kevin Smith's Clerks, Darren Aronofsky's Pi was a big hit at Sundance a few years ago, and John Sayles' Return of the Secaucus Seven come to mind among others. What do you think makes these low budget movies stand out among the thousands of independent movies that get made every year?

CE: I think the ones that stand out are the ones that have good stories, simple as that. And also, characters that people can identify with. Just because people can make movies doesn't mean they should, and I think (Remember, I'm still more a playwright than a movie or TV person) but I truly think that if someone has a great story, that film or TV show or play will succeed, because there is ALWAYS a need for great stories told well.