Drop Frame

Dr. House, Can You Spare Me a Dime?:

How Hugh Laurie's appearance on "Inside the Actor's Studio" made me regret being a young intellectual

27 September 2006

A girl, 19 or 20, blonde shoulder-length hair and wearing a cheerleader’s kind of smile, stood in the last row of the lecture hall. With microphone clasped between her hands, with a face of expectant, exuberant finality, she asked the question that had been nagging her all evening. Maybe all her young adult life. “Mr. Laurie,” she said. “Can you tell me, will House have a romantic relationship with Dr. Cameron, Cuddy, or Dr. Wilson?”

Now, people tell me that I take things too seriously and, reluctantly, I have come to believe it’s true. Just two weeks ago, I escalated an argument with a superior at work over his use of the word “amongst” in a press release. Last year, at graduate school, I fought with a colleague about the film “Memoirs of a Geisha.” He liked it; I did not. “Because,” I said, “it’s neither a memoir, nor about a geisha.” He blocked me with his hand, saying I was reading way too much into the title. Last presidential election, I was so giddy with seriousness I stayed awake, pacing, in anticipation of that moment when I, fellow citizens, would perform in the democratic process. Since I do not drink coffee, seriousness must be mine. It keeps me active and wired, bouncing and twitching in line at the polling station. I may have been heart-broken at the end of that Election Day, but in the morning, I was alive within its solemnity.

Being too serious is, I often find, an advantage to a writer – especially a writer on the arts. With the film and television industries in this country so seductive, with so many young people clamoring toward a Hollywood lifestyle, it’s a good idea to have a few serious people around to temper them. Tweed-wearers, dictionary-readers, these types. To think critically, to analyze their creations, to keep them advancing the boundaries of what they are doing, and to tell them, “Please God, do not keep making the same old crap!”

Welles wouldn’t have made “Citizen Kane” if he wasn’t just a little too serious. Fellini wouldn’t have been frustrated into “8 ½.” And imagine that Van Gogh painting, “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear.” Vince would have had two picture-perfect ears. No, give me seriousness, and give me “Starry Night.”

Which is why my abrasive reaction to that first question, asked on Bravo television’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio” Monday night, August 28, is not so disconcerting. At least, I’ve been telling myself its normal. I think in the shower, and after the show aired, I found myself toweling off a little too vigorously, agitated and annoyed. “Why is that question bothering me?” I thought. “What is my problem?” If I had kept it up much longer, my second question would have been answered by a grand headline: “Brooklyn Resident Dead in Bathroom after Being Too Serious.” Seriously.

“Inside the Actor’s Studio” is enjoyable to me on its face because it reminds me of all the worst parts of college. The smarmy, self-indulgent professor – though, thankfully, a tweed-wearing one. Over-crowded classrooms. Do-gooder students laughing at any tedious joke to gain the approval of teacher and guest. I like it because it takes me back, and makes me appreciate the level of critical thinking I did gain by paying attention in those packed classrooms, not all that long ago. Air the show at 9:30 am instead of the usual eight in the evening, add the constant sound of jackhammers and pump in the smell of molding cheese, and the nightmare would be complete.

But apart from enjoying the vicarious pain of the show, I occasionally find myself inspired by it. Several years ago, in an Emmy-winning episode, comedian Mike Myers said something I have not yet forgotten. “Poop is funny.” Meaning that funny is funny and distinctions of high or low art are irrelevant so long as the object achieves its purpose. You want a laugh? “Poop.” I used Myers’ line on a desperate grad school application and got in; I’m forever glad to know that academics have a sense of humor.

The August 28 episode of “Inside the Actor’s Studio” featured as guest the venerable British actor Hugh Laurie. Title star of Fox’s hit medical drama “House M.D.,” Laurie, describing himself as an asshole, reviewed a career that featured notable stints on many BBC programs and an occasional turn onstage and in print. The audience learned about his impeccable range, his many talents, and his unique point of view when it comes to performance. “If it’s fun,” he said, “I think it can’t be any good.” In short, we spent the episode learning there was more to the Hugh Laurie than Dr. Gregory House. He was turned on by eye contact. Off by financial advice. His favorite curse word you can guess – though, unlike others, he said it boldly and proudly. He would be a rock star, in another life. At the pearly gates, if they exist, God would say, “No hard feelings.” At the very least, he proved himself a comic visionary. At most, the most underappreciated and talented British actor of a generation that includes Rowan Atkinson, Emma Thompson, and Laurie’s friend and collaborator, Stephen Fry.

And then, that question. On “House,” Dr. Allison Cameron is Dr. House’s protégé, Dr. Lisa Cuddy his boss, and Dr. James Wilson, played by the impeccable Robert Sean Leonard, his only friend. “Will House have a romantic relationship with Dr. Cameron, Cuddy, or Dr. Wilson?”

She, the student-actor, asked the invited master-actor, in her one opportunity to pull from his years of knowledge one insightful remark, if his CHARACTER, one of the hundreds he’s played and one over whom he has no writerly control, would ever fall in love. Whether he was gay, no less, and in the hissing sort of laughter coming from the crowd, I had a terrible flashback. To every nagging, middle school bully who got a laugh out of his sycophants by calling a glasses-wearing boy gay. To every awkward dance where the girls would huddle for conversations like, “Does Charlie like soda pop, 'cause if he does, we, like, have so much in common.” To every childhood broken crush, and every mistaken love. You see what I mean about being too serious?

Some time after my thought-provoking shower – thankfully before I led myself to a bathroom aneurysm – I realized that the true problem with the girl’s question was not the question itself, which was innocent enough. It was its insipidness. It seemed made to shock, and the girl seemed unaware as she continued over the sounds of the students around her that her question was not for Laurie at all, but for his show’s writer. “’Cause,” she said, “There are pages and pages on the internet about the whole House/Wilson relationship thing.” She was not prodding for intelligent remarks, not asking for advice on how better to undertake the assailable career of an actor. She wanted a scoop. And in a master class, you know what that is called? She’s a bum. She’s asking for scraps, peddling for instant satisfaction from a man with so much more to give. If only we ask the right questions.

What the student asking a question of Hugh Laurie should care about is his tenacity, for spending twenty years in bit parts, his only starring film role in “Stuart Little,” before garnering any sort of American recognition with “House.” An actor should care about Laurie’s nationality: Laurie’s shockingly strong native English accent compared to his character’s pitch-perfect American one, and Laurie’s true feeling that European actors will always have the advantage in the acting-with-foreign-accent market (which, to me, accounts for all the embarrassing accent work in recent American movies set overseas; see the forthcoming “Marie Antoinette” for an example). A student should care about his longevity: Eton and Cambridge-educated, Laurie never graduated from acting school and yet, still, inspiringly, he is here.

Instead, today’s young actor is consumed by a culture of celebrity, overcome by the life of a fictional character, and unable to understand the difference. This I do take seriously, because far too many times in my young life have I come across young practitioners of the arts who dream of becoming big shots and who have no clue how to think about their chosen fields. In fact, it seems like we’re all getting worse.

To me, film and television matter. Acting matters. Inspiration matters. When given the opportunity, we need to challenge the experts to be inspiring. We all need to be better students and better learners. And if that means more 9:30 am classrooms and rotten smells, then let us welcome that too. “That guy you played that one time in the place. Will he ever love again?” That doesn’t cut it. Hearing it asked to Laurie, when he must have been confronted with so many other questions more demanding, made me wish I truly didn’t belong. That I was much more than just a little too serious.

Laurie, for his part, answered well, as honestly as he could. “That’s not my place to say,” he said, a smile creeping across his face. “I suspect if the show runs long enough, we’ll see all three play out. As for the Wilson line, if Bob is up for it, I’m game.”

Laughter, some applause. Laurie turned to the next student, a young man, who delivered the episode’s second and final question. “How confident would you be diagnosing yourself, after having done ‘House?’”

“Ugh,” I think. “Here we go again.”

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Photo Caption. Steely Hugh. Actor Hugh Laurie, star of Fox television's, "House M.D."

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