What inspired you to write Claus?

 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been writing about Santa Claus, and the elves, too. When I was in 5^th grade, I started writing this thing called Santa Jaws, which is about this shark who’s Santa Claus who comes up the toilet and leaves presents in the sink or in the bathtub. This was 1975, so that sort of thing was very much in the zeitgeist. Then in 6^th grade, I started a novel called Famous Potatoes, which was about two of Santa’s elves and what their lives were really like. For me, there were never more than two elves, maybe three. The first draft of Claus actually had three elves. But more than that…I just don’t see it. I’ve given the matter a lot of thought, obviously. Maybe because I’m a Jew I’m able to be fascinated by the whole phenomenon in a way the true believer kids never can. Or won’t allow themselves to.

 

 

Angels With Dirty Faces is one of my all time favorites and also The Maltese Falcon, of course. Gutman and Wilmer! And Peter Lorre, who’s one of my favorite actors, who started out as a member of Brecht’s first theater company back in Germany. In the movie M, in that climactic scene where everyone is accusing Peter Lorre of committing the crimes, there’s a quick shot of Brecht as part of the crowd, the angry mob. I don’t think he’s credited, but I’m sure it’s him.

 

 

 

Not that young. I was 26 or 27.

 

 

I’m really glad you felt that way because that’s the way I always felt about it, too. Of course, I wanted it to be funny, but for me it was crucial that the Santa Claus character be portrayed as someone with a very real heart and soul; a very sad, lonely, bitter old man disappointed by life and desperately in search of something to make it all mean something, which in that last scene I think it does, though not in the way he expected,. I really wanted everyone in the play to be happy at the end, and I wanted it to snow in Santa’s hospital room. Only I never wanted him to be called “Santa” – at least not by the people who were close to him.  He wants to be called “Alan”, even though it’s not his real name. It’s very important to him. And the weird complexity of that, as well as of all these other things going on in his psychological make-up, gives him depth, makes him real. Or at least I hoped it would. Because that’s what he had to be: this real flesh-and-blood guy, very emotional, sure, but an actual human being and not some hokey cartoon character. It always upset me when people – and there were a few of them – wanted to turn him into this clichéd, over-the-top, total camp diva or whatever.  Drove me nuts.

 

 

Sure. But overall the actors really got the characters and played them pretty much exactly as I always saw them. Of course, that doesn’t mean they didn’t come up with some really brilliant stuff of their own. One time during rehearsal, or maybe even during a performance, Bradley White, who played Constable Noël, suddenly sang out one of his lines instead of speaking it, literally sang it out like the star tenor of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical. And it was so bizarre, so completely unexpected that it was perfect. Absolutely genius. I totally stole it, going back and putting it in the script after the fact. But it was his. The actors were all amazing. I was really lucky, and I’m very grateful.

 

 

Hesh is about my father, who had a lot of demons, who was always my total hero. Claus was written a couple years earlier, and my father’s in that one, too, at least in the later part where Alan’s in the hospital. Very much so. What’s interesting though is that Ned Eisenberg, the actor who played Curtis and then later played Hesh, was a big influence on me while I was writing it. He did some things in the way he played Curtis in Claus that reminded me more of my father than my father did, and a lot of that ended up in Hesh.

 

 

About how difficult it is to reach out to people emotionally when you really need to. About how complicated and convoluted it can get, but when it works out, it’s always so simple, like this huge relief.

 

 

I had a some genuinely fantastic mentors in high school and in college, and after that in the New York Playwrights Lab, which was led by Israel Horovitz. I learned a lot there.

 

 

There were several writers in the New York Playwrights who were also members of Naked Angels, which is how I first got involved with that company. I’d wanted to be a writer for a while already, but they really solidified it, put a jumpstart on it for me, because they were all so smart, and funny, and sharp and seemed to be living these lives that were just really great, and I wanted that, too.  Not that their lives were all glamorous and fabulous or anything, but just the way they thought and talked, how they engaged the world in their day-to-day lives. And they wrote.

 

I was introduced to the Tuesdays@9 open reading series at  Naked Angeles, and I would go every week and bring in a scene and have it read by great actors and it was so much, and people really seemed to like it, which made me think maybe I could actually do this.

 

 

Kenneth Lonergan, who’s one of the best playwrights and screenwriters out there. He was in the Playwrights Lab, and a member of Naked Angeles, so I got to know his writing pretty well, pretty quick. Aside from Kenny I’d also say Waldo Salt (Midnight Cowboy) and Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon). Martin Amis, though he’s primarily a novelist and not a script writer, is another profound inspiration. And I love Harold Pinter.

 

 

I’m developing this new cop show for TV with a friend who’s a producer; writing a screenplay adaptation of a Holocaust book for young adults, also a horror movie I’ve been meaning to write for years. Plus a couple other jobs I’d really love to do; we’ll see how it goes.