Ever the available whore, I agreed to judge Crunch Fitness’s Who Wants to Kick a Millionaire’s Butt? kickboxing event, figuring it to be a passable minor kitsch diversion that might serve as a distraction from ennui for a few ignoble minutes. Well, honey, my jaw dropped to my knees when I entered and found throngs upon throngs positively panting to see TV’s famed alleged rich guy Rick Rockwell get whupped and humiliated. (It was a case of giving the people what they want, I guess.) This thing was bigger than the Olympics—or even Miss Teen USA—and my hookery little self was now a proud and integral part of it!

The match pitted Rockwell against Crunch's contest winner, Marni Rosenthal, in a vicious battle between male money and female rage. As a pop-cultural happening, it had the mythical potential of a great sci-fi flick—but all the greenbacks in the world couldn't quell my sudden fury on finding that this little contretemps was as fixed as Jocelyne Wildenstein's face! Minutes before the fight, the judges—actors Liev Schreiber and Craig Chester and I—were told point-blank that we were to vote for Marni and only Marni. "So it's a complete sham?" I shrieked in horror. "Yeah, I'll show you the script," came the ready reply. I guess they wanted this to be like real wrestling, and that seemed rather appalling and a little bit against my principles, sort of. But hey, once the thing started, it was obviously a fake—a stunt whose unapologetic fraudulence was easily made up for by the fact that the gym donated $20,000 to Rockwell's favorite charity (altar dumping?). The event had a downtowny performance feel to it, and as long as Rockwell was game enough to lose, everyone was going to work to make things extra shameful for him.

As the press-hungry opponents pretended to assault each other in fragile places, MC Misstress Formika warned Rockwell that if he tried to bribe the judges, he'd be instantly dismembered. "You can't dismember me," shot back the world's shortest-lived bride-groom since Drew Barrymore's, "because I'm not a member here. I can't afford it." Millionaire indeed! Moments later, he fell to the floor and we all went along with the gag—if not the gag order. Was I so wrong?

And now you want a real fight? Tell me you didn't like Dancer in the Dark—my favorite capital punishment entertainment since the Bush campaign commercials and the ultimate battle between female money and male rage—and I'll sock you one but good. The musical tragedy has divided people so strongly that I've practically risked my privates admitting I liked it. In fact, most people find it so alternately shattering and annoying that you'd think everyone would have run home in tears after the New York Film Festival opening-night screening, but instead they made it to the Tavern on the Green after-party and bravely continued to promote their own agendas and chomp away at the free food. Whit Stillman was carrying around his plaque from something called Shecky's; Darren Aronofsky asked me if his own movie, Requiem for a Dream, scared me (yes, by the time Ellen Burstyn was strapped down for electroshock treatments, I was not only beside myself, I was beside the person two seats away from me); and an intrepid gossip reporter moaned, "I just told Björk that her name rhymes with New York, and she didn't understand what I was saying!"

Rather than try to teach the little diva both phonetics and geography, I spoke to her Dancer costar Siobhan Fallon, the former Saturday Night Live regular who winningly plays the prison matron with a surprise liking for Björk. When I brought up the movie Caged, Fallon said, "I've never seen it. I don't hang with the swing crowd, baby." But it's a 1950 women's prison flick! A perhaps more coherent question: Is her character flat-out in love with Björk? "In the '60s, to have a steady job in the prison was a privilege," answered Fallon. "To risk losing that job, I must sort of love her . . . as a mother." As a hot mama is more like it.

The mother of us all, Aretha Franklin, sang forthe swing crowd at the Louis Vuitton Classic—a designer-car show in Rockefeller Center—but she never did the song that would have made the most sense, "Freeway of Love." The soul goddess trotted out other signature numbers, some esoteric choices like "Danny Boy," and an audience sing-along of that opera tune she premiered on the Grammys a couple of years ago. (I soared on that one.) Her set was heavy on instrumental breaks and lower-register riffs, but Aretha's still the absolute queen—a multimillionaire who kicks real butt—and why should we force her to sing "Freeway" when her ass was driven all the way to New York anyway?

I took the freeway of gloves to Cowboys!, a goofy, eager-to-please gay musical spoof at Wings Theatre, where leather chaps tend to signify the old West and the old West Village. The production—a sort of Homoklahoma!—doesn't really have anything to say about the genre; it merely grins and yodels and makes puns on cowpoking as it gives the old let's-put-on-a-show-to-save-the-ranch plot a spirited twist. But hey, the horse gives the finest performance I've seen on the gay circuit in years.

The week's ultimate novelty act was Weng Weng, a Filipino dwarf who starred in a vintage spy spoof called For Your Height Only, revived at an esoteric screening hosted by Paper critic Dennis Dermody. The movie's pretty cute in itself—it's beyond Caged—but for extra yuks it was smirkily dubbed by folks who must have seen Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? In one typical moment, when a photographer shoots a corpse at a crime scene, a character says, "I wonder if she does weddings and bar mitzvahs." Meanwhile, little Weng Weng creates his own photo ops by kicking so much ass you could set him loose at Crunch without a script.

In the audience was Julianne Moore, who'd just wrapped Hannibal, but was actually more terrified by her recent Upper West Side experience. "I felt like I was living in Scarsdale," Julianne told me, quaking. She's moved downtown, where the suburbia has more of an edge to it. Finally, my weng weng perked up even more at the Va Va Voom Room, a burlesque show at Fez hosted by Miss Astrid, a snarling diva in an eye patch, a pink boa, and a German accent—very Ute Lemper meets Marni Rosenthal. The marvelously decadent revue trotted out magic, a depressed clown, a balloon dance, and Scotty the Blue Bunny, a guy in a sequined bunny suit who—after rollicking through "On a Wonderful Day Like Today"—said he was dressed that way "because I wanted to be the queerest looking thing on earth." I approved—and besides, who am I to, you know, judge?

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Hamptons International Film Festival: Ask the Expert

Maggie, grade 10, Long Island
Have there been times when the part you played in a film didn't follow your moral values? If so, were these parts more difficult to portray?

Schreiber: I actually hard a time with some of the violence in the Scream movies. I think I was able to overcome that because of the sense of humor those films were all so infused with. I think that whenever you have a problem morally with what you're playing, it does make the character more difficult to portray only in that you sort of have to come to terms with the fact that you are an actor. As an actor, if you decide to take on a part...to some extent, you have to be responsible for that.

Sara, grade 11, Long Island
How much control do you have over the characters you play, and how much of the character's personality is pre-determined by the director and the script you're working with?

Schreiber: In the best of all worlds, everything is determined by the script: character, concept, all of that in one way or another, whether it is subconscious or unconscious. All of the information that you use to come up with the character, and hopefully to come up with the piece itself, is derived from the text. It may not be a literal response to the text, and I think the unconscious response to the text is just as valuable.

Gillian, grade 9, Long Island
I am very interested in pursuing an acting career. Since I am definitely attending college and looking at Yale (in four years), I was wondering how you thought the Yale department was? How many years did you attend and did you enjoy it? What are some things you learned?

Schreiber: I really enjoyed Yale. Since I went fairly young, it was my first experience of working with very professional actors, directors, writers, and stage managers. Part of what's great about Yale is that so many people want to be there, so many students apply...because so many students apply, the talent pool is obviously much wider; therefore, you tend to get very talented people. The guest artists are really terrific. One of my favorite memories at Yale was when Bill Irwin came up and did clown work with us. I really enjoyed that.

Robin, grade 10, Long Island
What was it like working in a horror move like Scream?

Schreiber: Scream was really fun. It became more and more fun as we went. Usually when you work on a film, you get to know the other actors for a couple of weeks, and then you don't see them again. But, because we kept coming back and doing more, there was a great sense of camaraderie. Friendships developed, ways of working together developed, which made it really enjoyable.

Joe, grade 12, Long Island
Did you enjoy working with Tom [Gilroy, the director of Spring Forward] on the film? We spoke with him for a brief period at the Hampton Film Festival and he seemed like he was a pleasure to work for. Good luck.

Schreiber: Yes, I did enjoy working with Tom. I'd known him as an actor in New York, so we've been friends before starting this film together, which was great, because it allowed us to have very easy, intimate conversations.

Kori, grade 12, Long Island
As an actor, what image or lesson do you want to promote to young people who watch your films?

Schreiber: I think as an actor, your primary responsibility is to just be present, to be as diverse, as interesting, and as complicated as the characters you represent. Hopefully what that does is that it has the effect of being inclusive for everyone, and opens up the range of people who are touched by a film or a play.

Olivia, grade 10, Long Island
When did you first become interested in acting? How were you able to pursue a career in this filed?

Schreiber: I first became interested in acting in English class, when we were reading Shakespeare. It was just the matter of sticking with it, continuing to read plays, taking acting classes, watching theatre...it was just one of those things... one thing led to the next. I got very lucky.

Jobeth, grade 10, Long Island
Do you place a lot of pressure on yourself when you star in movies?

Schreiber: Yes, I think there is definitely a lot more pressure when you are starring in a movie. There is the pressure that you are carrying the movie, the pressure of people thinking whether or not you deserve carrying the movie, or that you are able to carry a movie. That's a very dangerous thing, that pressure, so you have to put it out of your mind and trust that it's not so much about you as an actor as it is about the character you're playing. As long as you stay focused on that, I think you're safe.

by Christine Ehren

Playbill On-Line: Betrayal is famous for running backwards through the character's relationships. How do you approach that as an actor?

Liev Schreiber: The hardest thing about the chronology issue is that you have to be very careful to make sure the characters don't have any more information than they do. It can have the effect of making the piece incredibly reflective, which has a numbing effect on the play, a deadening of the action. And it's a very active play. In order for everything to seem active and in the moment, you can't keep dwelling on the information that preceded the event that you're now playing.

In some sense, though, it's the same as working forwards. You've got the same history; you're just playing it backwards. You have to remember the characters don't know anything until they've played it and the problem is you, as the actor - going backwards - have all that information. [Playing backwards] mostly affects the latter scenes. After you've already played the breakup or, in theory, the more difficult moments between the characters, when you get to the scenes that are really about loving, they sometimes become informed with the melancholy of scenes 1, 2 or 3. When, in fact, what's going on in scene 6 is no, you haven't broken up yet - you don't know you're destined to separate. Keeping that information away from yourself as a character is kind of tricky.

PBOL: This is your second professional Pinter role. Is there anything you particularly like about his plays?

LS: I think my attraction to Pinter is the same as my attraction to Shakespeare - the form of language. You need a remarkably talented writer to achieve liberation through form, and that's what Pinter does. The text is not at all confining or stiff in its form. It's liberating. The map is liberating, emotionally liberating.
I like [Pinter] mostly because he does most of the work for you. When it’s structured that well, it does most of your work as an actor. That's very exciting to play because you can experience things a lesser writer would not be able to let you experience. You can achieve things that you may have to push with other texts. Because [Betrayal] is so accurate, it takes you there, and you don't have to waste your energy with a lot of acting. It's laziness, basically. The irony is that everyone thinks Shakespeare and Pinter are incredibly technically difficult playwrights but the reality for me is that I like to do Pinter and Shakespeare because I can be lazy. It's like paint-by-number, but you need a really great artist to make it that simple.

PBOL: I was going to ask you about your affinity for Shakespeare, but you've made that clear. You're lazy.

LS: And verse structure. Playing Pinter is very much like playing verse. There is an intuitiveness to the structure of the language that transcends a normal idea of what acting is. If you follow that map, it makes you a better actor than you ever thought you were. It's also the love of language I've always had. I like words. I like the sound and feel of words - and when it comes to words, Shakespeare and Pinter are up there.

PBOL: Your recent Hamlet was maligned in the press - not your performance, but the production itself. How did you feel about the production?

LS: I felt proud of it, you know. Hamlet is such a proprietary play. Everyone is Hamlet, and that's why they love it so much - and that's why they hate it so much. You're telling their story and they want their story to be told their way, which is okay. I understand that. But one of the things Andrei and I felt going into Hamlet, is that this is one of the most well-known plays, if not the most well-known play ever written, so in order for the experience to be outside of the realm of banality we wanted to try to reinvent the theme. That's a dangerous business. But it should be a dangerous business. It would have been easy for us - and probably not as interesting - to do a very traditional, narrative-driven production of Hamlet. But I think both of us felt like we wanted to explore having people hear it in a new way. Part of the problem for me with Hamlet is everyone knows the words, and therefore it's very difficult for them to hear them. It's kind of like the singing words to a song over and over again and not knowing what the words are saying. They're sort of following along "To be or not to be, that is the question," but what is really being said? Sometimes an abstraction can get at some unconscious sense of what a speech is in a more interesting way than a purely narrative-driven approach.

I know Andrei feels that theatre is a deeply spiritual venture and to add to that, there's a little bit of the terrorist in him. He thinks that a bomb should go off in the theatre - this notion that theatre has the potential to be volatile, to change the way people think. Which is healthy attitude to take towards to one's chosen career. Now, I think why people liked the performance more than the production was that I had the luxury of that text. That text is beautiful and if you allow it to be present, it will engage people no matter what. I think there were things in Andrei's production that worked beautifully and there were things that didn't work beautifully, but through it all the undercurrent was that text. That experience of stretching and exploring and expanding and testing the boundaries of that play was wonderful. You see so many Hamlets, you do want to say is there a way to do this play so it's not about the actor? I mean, it's always going to be about the actor, because it's Hamlet, for Christ's sake - the greatest part ever written for an actor - but it's also the greatest play ever written. But if we spend too much time worrying about the actor, we're not going to get the chance to experience that play, which is a profoundly beautiful, spiritual play that's essential to each of us. We must hear that play! It's so rich and it has so much to say. But if you get too involved in "oh, boy, did that look good?" then you're watching a showcase for a talented actor strutting his stuff, instead of getting inside the viscera of the play. That's what we were trying to do. To what extent we failed or succeeded is up to the individual.

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