“Just wait till they hear all that originality pouring out of your head,” - Myrna Minkoff to Ignatius J. Reilly
The writer John Kennedy Toole killed himself in late-March of 1969. He ran a garden hose from the exhaust pipe in through the window of his car. Toole had recently been on a cross-country road trip; at one point he had driven to California, from his home in New Orleans, visiting the Hearst family mansion. Another pit-stop was to Andalusia, Georgia, where he paid his respects to the deceased writer Flannery O’Conner. On his way home, Toole stopped outside of Biloxi, Mississippi, and it was there where the young writer took his life. Laid on the passenger seat was an envelope marked “to my parents”. Toole was only 31.
Unlike his most famous creation, the corpulent medievalist Ignatius J. Reilly, Toole was a buttoned-up and confident young man. The over-achieving only child. By the time he was old enough to drive, Toole had entered college, locally at Tulane University, as an engineering major. After a stint as a professor at Hunter College, Toole was drafted into the US Army and stationed at Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico, where he taught English. More importantly, it was his time in Puerto Rico where he began writing his novel A Confederacy Of Dunces.
Puerto Rico proved to be a difficult place for Toole. He began to drink excessively. Fellow cadets found him to be an odd duck. His cherished class ring from Tulane was stolen, never recovered. When a friend came to visit, she noticed a certain darkness had washed over him. He had became withdrawn, only concerned with his novel, then just a work-in-progress. His fellow soldiers would listen to the sound of Toole pounding the keys of his green Swedish-made Halda typewriter, a gift from his lone army buddy David Kubach.
With his parents struggling financially, after his father fell deaf, Toole was discharged from the army and returned to New Orleans. He accepted a teaching position at Dominican College, an all-female Catholic institution. Toole was a hit on campus. The nuns, in particular, noted his charming disposition, as well as his dandy attire. Teaching only a few hours a week, Toole would spend his off-hours working on his novel and joining friends for nights of music and dancing. Except for a four month bout of depression, following the assignation of John F. Kennedy, things were steadily improving for Toole. He had finished his novel and sent the manuscript off to Simon & Schuster, one of the country’s premiere publishers.
After some back-and-forth flirtation with S&S’s senior editor Robert Gottlieb, who claimed to love most of the novel (his major criticism being that he felt it was never really about anything), Toole grew frustrated and put the book aside, focusing, instead, on his teaching duties. Occasionally Toole would attempt to find the manuscript a home, only to be rejected again and again. Toole’s mother Thelma convinced him to drive to Greenville, Mississippi to present his work to reporter and publisher Hodding Carter Jr. With a grin across his face, Carter informed Toole that it would be a pass for him. Toole never again sent out his novel.
Then he was dead.
Always her son’s champion, Thelma Toole made it her life’s duty to see that her son’s novels (at 16, Toole had written another novel entitled Neon Bible) be published. She eventually got the manuscript into the hands of the Catholic Existentialist writer Walker Percy, who had began teaching at nearby Loyola University. Percy loved the novel and spent the next three years seeing to its publication. In 1980, over a decade after Toole’s suicide, Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
“Are they the only ones who laugh? At the jokes when they are so bad. And the jokes they're always bad. But they're not as bad as this” - “Here” by Pavement
I have been a showbiz failure for almost 15 years. After my own stint of living in New Orleans, I went west on the 10 freeway, settling in Los Angeles with the hopes of telling jokes and writing action movies. It’s not that I’ve been completely inactive. There’s been bombs, believe me, just none that appeared on the silver screen. I’ve done considerably better than most: sold a TV show that shot a pilot, never aired and wasn’t picked up; had various scripts almost get made. Almost, of course, doesn’t pay the bills. And then there’s my comedy career. Which hasn’t fared much better.
My first appearance at The Comedy Store, the Sunset Strip institution that helped launch the careers of David Letterman, Robin Williams, and Richard Pryor, was a disaster. See, I was young and brash and, frankly, an egomaniac (who in their 20s isn’t?). I was under the impression that I was the next Great One. I was lucky enough to be put on a bill with about ten other comics, all of whom had more or less the same material, in my un-humble opinion. Pot joke after pot joke with the occasional Are Batman and Robin gay? material. Seriously, two comics presented that same premise. Worse, the crowd was eating it up. So, I sat in the green room, a little buzzed, listening to - again, my shitty opinion - this hack material, when I finally said to myself, “Fuck this audience”.
I tossed aside my little notebook of jokes and zingers and what have you and upon hearing my name called I hit the stage with a white-hot resentment for everybody in that crowd. I bombed, on purpose. With my back to the audience for the first few minutes or so, it became clear to these unfortunate paying customers that I wasn’t interested in entertaining them. Before long the audience began talking amongst themselves, confused as to what, exactly, was happening in front of them, which is kinda what i wanted. I wanted them to have a bad time. They did. At one point, I left the stage and walked out among the crowd, chit-chatting with various audience members, all of whom had a bewildered look on their faces.
Finally (thankfully), my time ended and I left the stage, retreating to the back of the club. It was there I heard a voice I now recognize as Mitzi Shore, the owner of The Comedy Store. One of the biggest gatekeepers in comedy. “You must respect the stage,” she said. Being in a bit of a post-performance fog, I barely registered what she said. Sadly it took me far too long to understand her words.
A friend had attended the show, an aspiring camera operator who shot the set. Afterwards, outside the club on Sunset, he handed me the tape in a huff. “That was a waste of time,” he said. He then proceeded to calculate out loud how much this night had cost him: tickets, parking, two or three drinks, etc. Not to mention a night he could’ve been on a set, earning money. I felt terrible. I still do. And I still have that clip, uploaded to my Youtube, as a reminder to not only “respect the stage” but people’s time and devotion as well. It’s not a clip I can watch, or stomach, but it lives online, nevertheless.
Why am I writing all of this, and not about food? Great question! And I have no idea. Maybe it has to do with the episode we shot in New Orleans, where I did my own truncated adaptation of Confederacy of Dunces. I love that novel. And I relate to Toole’s frustrations with things just not happening the way you would like it to go. And since the film rights to the book are in a legal clusterfuck, this felt like my only shot to do my version of a dream project.
Shot on the fly, with a local actor/improviser named Nick Alonzo Napolitano playing our version of Ignatius (pictured above). Nick did a fantastic job. This was also a project that reunited me with a few film school buddies. So, it means a little bit more to me than past projects, I guess. Also, it’s pretty good.
And maybe…just maybe one of these projects of mine with take off. And then they won’t have Mike Postalakis to kick around anymore. Which is to say, I’m not going anywhere. I’m gonna see this nonsense all the way through. Entering the world of showbiz is like joining a marathon without a finish line. You have to pace yourself. Forever. Just like I wish John Toole would’ve stuck around long enough to see his creation entertain the world.
OK, Christ, this wraps up my New Orleans saga. We sure did cover a lot, right? Parkway has the best Po’ Boys, Luke is an amazing restaurant, I’m not giving up. In fact, I have a stand up gig tonight. I’m gonna knock them dead. Or not. Doesn’t matter.
Lots of stuff coming your way, dear reader, including a piece on my most recent trip to Las Vegas. I’m also heading out in three weeks with my crew to Cleveland to shoot a new episode…so that will be… something.
If you are enjoying this blog or the videos, please like each post and send to a friend who you think might also dig this shit. I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Respecting the stage,
Mike Postalakis