MAKE YOUR SHOW: theCreators
Guiding the Narrative of Life and Work
with Actor/Writer/Director Joanna Gleason
Tony Award winning actor Joanna Gleason has been entertaining viewers with her stage, film and television work for decades. When she decided to create more balance with her work and her life, she took on what she came to think of as her "miracle" - "The Grotto", a feature film that she wrote and directed. The journey her film took from inspiration to production is as inspiring as Joanna herself. Outside of her work, she heeds the mantra of her father, delights in spending time with family and reminds us that forks in the road can lead us to an unexpected journey.
HELPFUL LINKS FROM THIS PODCAST:
"The Grotto" at Annapolis Film Festival
"The Grotto" at the Garden State Film Festival
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John Cramer:
Normally we would talk to people who have made their own work again, mostly actors, and ask them, you know, about their career and how they started out acting and we do not have time to hear about all the amazing roles that you've done.
Joanna Gleason:
It's a nice way of saying you have been in this so long!
Jason Cicci:
Well, that's what's so incredible, though, that with such a storied career, you wanted to make something.
JG:
I've been very lucky. I've been in the theater and television for decades and decades. And I always knew that there would come a moment when there was a fork in the road. And also destiny and also fate. I was not going to have, nor did I really want to go from show to show to show to show or to push with managers and publicists, push for constant exposure and movie to movie, which may have led to nice things, big things, shiny things. It may have, maybe not. I didn't feel like I was built for it. It's not a self-deprecating way of saying I didn't think I was good enough. It's just sometimes you get the lay of the land and I thought, “my lane is the theater and everything else is gravy” - the shows I've done, the TV shows I've done, for, which I'm immensely grateful. It was because a lot of those shows I started directing. Diane English, who created “Murphy Brown”, had me on a series called “Love and War”, and she let me direct a “Love and War”, but also three other shows that she had. And I thought, “okay”. And movies? I'm not a big face on the silver screen. I'm not going to have that. And I've done some work in movies that I'm proud of, particularly “Boogie Nights”. But as I got older and after I realized what the wear and tear is of doing eight shows a week – you can talk to Cady Huffman about this and many other Broadway, you know, many of us veterans. I thought, “I want to do some I want to guide the narrative of my own life and my work. And I want to also be in my life more with Chris and kids and grandchildren”. And I thought, “all right, what can I do?” And so, I wrote a show for 54 Below. My first solo show in 2013. It was a one person show, but it had a string quartet and my music director on the piano and me and a little bit of backup singing. And I brought some friends up that I'd been in shows with. And I thought, okay, the expectation is you'll do from the shows you've been in. And I felt obliged to sing from the shows I've been in, and the show was very successful. But years later I thought, “I have another show to write and it's about my parents”. My parents had just died and they were 96 and 90. Still kind of processing the loss of my parents, I wrote a short movie, 14 minutes long shot in Connecticut for two and a half days in the dead of winter, used mostly actor friends. It debuted at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival and also Cambridge in England. And I thought, “okay, I now have my production team”. These were friends who said, “We love “The Grotto.” “The Grotto” is the name of the feature film. “Let's do this short. Let's use this DP - Gabe Mayhan. Let's see what we're like working together.” And it worked beautifully. And it's a beautiful little movie. And it was my calling card to say to myself, “Well, maybe you can direct a feature”. And I had written this feature and put it in a drawer and some people had loved it. And the biggest obstacle to getting it made was the voice in my head and the voice in my head said, “Who do you think you are your age directing a feature film? Who do you think you are? You didn't go to film school and you're not young. Who do you think you are? You're not a big enough star so that the world will open up and give you all the resources you need to make your first feature film”. You know, it's just like there was always some spoiler in my ear. Everyone has the destroyer and it's very hard. You can say, “All right, just don't listen”. But you ask what keeps people from doing these things, from taking that plunge? Two things are true. I mean, two things can be true always, if not more. One, is you have absolutely nothing to lose, because as long as you say it does not going to devalue me as a human being to fail here or to not get the response I want here, it's not going to be anything about me. This project is either for them or not for them, it's binary.
And the other thing that's true is stupider people than me are doing this every day. And if you just remind yourself that stupider people than you with dumber stories to tell, not even as artfully as you are getting their stuff made every day…
Jason:
And less experienced people.
JG:
Yes, you have nothing to lose.
John:
It's really amazing. We've talked a lot about the internal critic that we all have. And I think two things really stand out for me. One, that I think a lot of actors would be very surprised to hear that someone like you, again, with the career that you've had, the success that you've had, are having those same thoughts, those same doubts.
And number two, I'm not sure if we've actually given that advice for dealing with it, which is I mean, I think it's called a fact check, right? When we have these dark, negative thoughts, we can look out in the world and collect some facts and test our thoughts against those facts. Your fact check was great. There are plenty of idiots that are doing this. Surely, I can do this.
JG:
But, you know. But they're not. Maybe they're just not hobbled by that inner critic as much. You know.
Jason:
And I think that's really true.
JG:
To their credit, they’re just going to march boldly forward. And maybe with that sheer momentum and some good sales pitch and their heart in the project, you know, more power to them.
Jason:
And with some luck.
JG:
Yeah, always.
John:
It kind of reminds me of these people that you see that are climbing, you know, El Capitan in Yosemite without ropes. And you're thinking, yeah, they are missing a part of the brain that I have for the fear.
JG:
Or this is their life. And if you want to look later, did they make it? Amazing? Did they not make it? That was their life. And that was their choice.
John:
You know, this is why we do this. It's so fun to hear these stories. And again, inspiring. When you were creating it, what helped you in that process? Did you have teammates? Did you have partners? Preparation for the project? What kept you going?
JG:
Well, what kept me going was I showed it to Chris, my husband, Chris, and his reaction was wonderful and his notes were wonderful. And I showed it to my son, who's an eagle eye kind of producer, dramaturg. He's a singer songwriter. Aaron David Gleason But also another one of my trusted eyes. And I showed it to my sister, Sharon Hall, who's been a producer in television for decades and high up in the studio system. And her notes and her husband, Todd Kessler, another brilliant writer who's written brilliantly for TV for decades, and the biggest kind of the biggest shows. And I have this kind of trusted circle and another friend, Susan Rice, is a screenwriter. One of my great friends. Smart, taught screenwriting. So, I knew I had something here.
It had a false start, as many projects do, years ago. A producer was very interested in it. A big star was very interested in producing also. Their lawyers kind of said to them, “This isn't the project for you, it's too small. She's not a star. Why does she want to direct? She's never directed before.” There was enough, you know, clouding it that these two lovely people who were willing to take a leap at this thing were dissuaded.
And I knew there came a moment when I got on the phone and said, thank you for taking it this far down the field. I love you forever. Let's part company. And that was when I regained my footing because I was being, and not intentionally, but I was being minimized and kind of put in a corner and like, “that's nice. We'll option it for zero money and you go away.” And I thought, “No, I didn't work all these years on it to walk away from it.” And I'm forever grateful for their interest. It didn't work out. Then my son Aaron said, “Show it to Todd Shotz.” Todd's the family friend. He's a producer. He also has a side business, a tutoring business called Hebrew Helpers, and he gets people ready for their bar mitzvahs and he goes all over the world officiating. But he and a filmmaker, Tim Kirkman, who is also one of the best teachers of film at USC, and Sean Akers and Kelly Woyan, the four of them are T42. They read it. They said, “We want to do this. We want to produce this movie for you.” And I started to feel supported and energy behind it and we showed it around-a couple of pieces. Again, there was “has she ever directed before, and I don't know and da da da da da…” And then of course, because Jason, you live down the road from me, up the road from me, I met a new friend, Nancy Lefkowitz, who read it and said, “I love this. Come over for coffee because a new neighbor from down the road Laure Sudreau, who is Ouroboros Entertainment, just moved in down the road. She's coming for coffee.” We got together for coffee. I never mentioned the movie, but I realized there's a wonderful woman here. And boom, the pandemic hits. Nobody sees anybody for a year. Nobody talks to anybody for a year. We're all cowering in our houses and the sun comes up. There's some vaccines. I wrote Laura and I said, “Are you accepting submissions? You know, I wrote a movie.” She said, “Send it.” I sent it on a Monday and Wednesday she said, “I'm on vacation. I read it. I'm crying. I love it. I saw your short film. I'm crying. I love it. Let's meet Friday.” This never happens.
Jason:
Right.
JG:
Now, first of all, that the head of the production company would read it anyway instead of farming it out to somebody, I thought, “All right, there's a little magic here. And there's magic in the movie as well.” She came over, we spent 2 hours talking, and at the end of the 2 hours, she said, “I'm in.” And I was lucky enough that this woman and her company fully financed this movie, the sole investor.
And we were off and running and I told T42, we're in, Laura's in. They dropped everything else they were doing because they have a lot of other projects. And we got it up and running very quickly. Very quickly. We shot in L.A. just at the end of Delta, right before Omicron, and so we had COVID protocols, vaccines, rapid testing, you know, PCR testing, and nobody got sick - for the 22 days we shot and so the four weeks of pre-production, nobody got sick. And I thought we were blessed. So that's how it got made.
Jason:
Wow, that's amazing.
"What inspired ("The Grotto") was that - my life, though very shiny from the outside, when I was 40, fell apart."
John:
Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about, because again, the level at which you're operating in creating your project is different from a lot of the people that we’re used to talking to.
JG:
You say that and I know what you mean. It would appear that Joanna Gleason's been around for a long time. She has a certain, you know, there’s a little asterisk by her name and she can go sideways into a level of what she wants to do next. And to a certain extent, that's not untrue.
John:
Yeah.
JG:
However, here comes the voice. I had never directed a film, but yes, then I made the short that I directed, and I know how to work with actors, and I know how to tell a story. And yes, the name was enough to have people's eyebrows go up and go, “Oh, Joanna Gleason…” When it came to finding the casting directors they were in because they knew my work, and when it came to finding most of the cast, it was because we knew each other, we had worked together. That's when it was useful. But when you start from scratch, you start from scratch. A good piece of material doesn't always get made, a good piece of material that has a little bit of a, you know, a thing attached to it. Like “you know her from…” has a little crack in the door open. You know, that's true.
Jason:
You mentioned that you made a short. So, you wrote a short script and then you shot it. More important was it to have actually made the short film in getting people interested? I know from firsthand experience they can't really envision sometimes what's on your page when you just send them a script. Was the having that short an important part of this journey?
JG:
Very. First of all, it showed me what I'm like on a set. It showed me what I'm like in pre-production and how to delegate responsibility and how to enlist everybody in bringing me their best vision of what should happen. And they did. And we had a shoestring to work on, and yet things materialized. You know, things we needed, including a backup generator, because we were running in an old house and things were going to fall over. You know, my husband ran to a Home Depot, you know… I mean, it was really kind of a fly by the seat of your pants. And I needed to do it because I also knew this short film might be a bit of a calling card to somebody that I wanted to sell “The Grotto” to somebody that I wanted to get interested in “The Grotto”. I've made a little movie. So.
John:
And another question about the short: were there are people involved in making the short that helped make the feature more possible? And how did you that?
JG:
Absolutely. It was the same production team. It was T42 to the same four people and the same cinematographer Gabe Mayhan. Gabe and I had been talking about “The Grotto” for years before, actually before he and I ever physically met. And also because he came up, he flew up to do the short, which is when I actually met him, but we felt like we knew each other, that when we said we're a go for “The Grotto”, Gabe was available, T42 was available. I didn't feel like a stranger having to meet everybody new, having to interview and hire and wonder who's going to have my back and “are we on the same wavelength?” A lot of that was “I'm working with friends here.”
Jason:
That's got to feel good. That's got to be an important part.
JG:
Of yeah, I hope that with the next one that I have the same feeling. It'll be different producers because everybody now is on to their own projects, shooting and filming and producing. But I'm hoping that I can put together and attract a group of what I would love is, women, women in their forties, fifties and sixties who've been in this business for a long time. And of course, some fabulous men because you need fabulous men. But I'm hoping that we can put together a group that is so used to communicating well and so secure in who they are that, you know, I like the ego free environment-they’re hard to find, but I like them.
Jason:
Hard to find. But that's…
JG:
True. We had that on “The Grotto”. There were no games played, the cast had to endure shooting outside in the desert and freezing freezing, freezing and also boiling, boiling, boiling in Los Angeles. There was a lot of love on that set. If I could replicate that, if I could bottle that, I would do that every time. I could have just been “freshmen really lucky” with that. But I think if people like the material enough, you can create that environment.
Jason:
So, speaking of “The Grotto”, could you tell us what it is about and what inspired it?
JG:
What inspired it was that-my life, though very shiny from the outside, when I was 40, fell apart. Personally. It had fallen apart twice. I was in a musical. I was about to go into a musical. Nick and Nora has its own story, which turned out to be one of the biggest flops Broadway has ever seen. But that's where I met Chris Sarandon. I was at this place in my life where I thought, “I’m exhausted, I'm 40. I don't really live anywhere. I'm not really making a nest anywhere. I don't have a partner.” My son by now is, you know, he's close to leaving the nest. I need more time with him. And everything felt scattered. Also, I mistrusted. I didn't fight for myself in ways that I am able to do now. I didn't speak up during the rehearsal process of things that were going wrong and things that needed to change. I'm just such a like, Yes, let's make it nice, don't make waves. Sure, I'm a pro, you know, I don't have to it. But you learn, you learn from your missteps. You don't learn if the path is easy, you know, you learn from the detours and I said this in an interview, really that you may think you know what your path is, but it's the detours that have all the great scenery. It's the detours where you look and go. I didn't know I could do that or yeah, I don't want to do I never want to do that again or, you know, bring snacks next time."So I was in a crisis and my parents lived in Los Angeles and they had a tiny house in Palm Springs that they bought for, at first my grandparents to come down from Canada in the winter, you know, to come down to thaw, and then Dad had all these aunts and uncles and then cousins and nephews and everybody would come to this house in shifts and they'd play golf and they'd relax little bit. I would go to the desert. I would weep and weep and weep. And I don't know why it was. It had a magical, very moving vibe for me. And I found myself thinking, “What if there were place to heal, like the grotto at Lourdes in France?” Do you know the story of Bernadette of Lourdes, the great movie, “The Song of Bernadette”? Jennifer Jones…I think she won an Oscar. Gorgeous movie, amazing movie, black and white, very beautiful. And I thought, “What if there were a nightclub in the desert, a gay nightclub where men had come to heal in the eighties during the AIDS crisis, in the eighties and nineties? And let's have a grotto rock, Styrofoam rocks, and it had a fountain, and it had a statue of the lady. She's never called the Virgin Mary in the movie, she's the lady. And what if they came there just to be with each other and to, you know, to laugh and to heal? Because I'd lost a lot of friends. So, I created the grotto and I and then I thought, “All right, how would a woman in her forties, how would that come into her life?”
And from there, I sprung this story of how she would, in a way, inherit this place through unfortunate circumstances which opened up her eyes to the life she had been living. She was living somebody else's life. She had been in everybody else's story but her own, which sounds like that line from Into the Woods – “I'm in the wrong story.” My own line. And then I created some crazy acts for the club that would be a little passé, a little out of date, because now we're not in the eighties, now we're in 2022. What would have happened to that club? Who would she meet there? Why was this club left to her by her fiancée who died? You know, and there's magic in the lights. There's the sign of The Grotto. The lights keep blinking and certain messages come through. And who's trying to communicate with her in the desert? And that's how it evolved. And this movie is a kind of a hybrid. Yes, it has drama and emotion. It's also very funny and also tons of live music because it's a club. So, it's got all those things, which makes it slightly hard to pin down as a genre. It’s a stand-alone kind of, you know, “this is what it is.” And when they say, you know, the grotto drama, comedy, music, you know.
Jason:
LGBTQ…
JG:
Is LGBTQ friendly. Yes. There are actually three gay characters. Seven Latino characters, it’s a woman lead other great women's roles written, directed by a woman. I mean, it checks a lot of boxes for us. Yeah. And so, we got it made. It took a long time to edit through all the pieces together - as it does, but we got into the Heartland International Film Festival in Indianapolis, and I thought we got to do a festival and I went to a festival. Another thing…I'm sorry.
Jason:
Another Into the Woods line, John!
JG:
Into the Woods. I can't say the word “festival” without 12 people going “A festival!”
Jason:
Naturally.
JG:
And we went on and won Best Narrative Feature Premiere. So, where we premiered, we won. And that was astonishing for me that it played in Indiana. It played in what you would either think of as a Mike Pence red state or a David Letterman blue city. Do you know what I mean?
Jason:
Yeah.
JG:
That audience was filled with both. And some of the feedback I got was from the people that you would not have expected to be moved by it, who were incredibly moved by it. And then so no. And now we go off to Annapolis to their festival in March and the Garden State Festival in March. So that's all very exciting.
John:
That is very exciting. And again, you're good at kind of answering our questions before you ask them, but that might go along with the question of what for you was the biggest surprise in the process of creating this this project. It sounds like the reception that it's getting right now and with the audience crossover, I think sounds like one of the surprises.
JG:
I was surprised how I never ran out of energy for 5 minutes, not any day. And these are long days. But I was just I was so ecstatic and so happy to be with everybody. And I was clear. But here's the big takeaway that I learned. Young filmmakers out there, old filmmakers out there, write everything down when you get inspired that, “you know, we could also have we could have them singing in the background” - write it down, because in the heat of shooting, you're going to forget to tell the script supervisor, tell the first A.D., tell the DP, write it down.
So that's that was my biggest lesson. That's what I learned. Write everything down so you don't miss anything. And also, what I learned is take your time. You don't have to rush to make your days. And I rushed the first few days thinking I was obliged to get everything done and I missed stuff. Take your time and try to beg for a couple of days or more of rehearsal before you start shooting.
I would say to filmmakers, “Do you know how to tell a story? Do you know good stories when you see them? Do you go to the theater ever and watch good stories being told? Watch movies, watch great movies, and turn the sound off and watch what's in the frame? Can you figure out the story without the sound on? You know, I mean, a lot of stuff I see is very derivative of something that a young person has grown up with, with no respect and no desire to learn about what came before. You know, I'm very much a student of the films of the thirties and forties, and that to me was great storytelling.
Jason:
I totally agree. As I grow older, I'm more fascinated by movies, older films, and their origins and how those people made those things when they didn't have half the trickery that we have now. There's something so organic about it. And so, even though the acting style might be not what we've come to accept or see in movies these days, I still find myself loving it so much and missing it.
JG:
I think some of the acting is actually truer and more human than a lot of what we see these days. But let's also say that “Everything Everywhere, All at Once”, with all of its trickery, is a spectacular film. And likewise, a couple of years ago, “Moonlight” in its simplicity in telling that story is a masterful, gorgeous film. It doesn't have to hearken back to anything that was before. It didn't need any tricks. It needed these people in that story and those actors. And there's a lot of great, great work being done. There really is. There are many film schools, and a couple of which was which I'm acquainted, put a premium on style over substance and don't really tell a story because the camera is truly focused on the director/writer, like “I'm the auteur, this is my signature”, whereas I think you should practically disappear, you know? I mean, yeah, some of the greatest directors out there, you know it's one of their films because there is a style and there is a voice, but still the movies that work the best for me are the ones where I'm in it. I'm not wondering, “how did you write that? How did he shoot that…or she?” I'm in it.
John:
You know, there definitely have been some movies lately-and I loved “Everything Everywhere All at Once” - and I don't know that I would put this film in that category, but there have been some really impressive films lately that I can't help but wonder how do they do that, whether that's a cinematography trick or some other element. And I agree with you. The best films are the ones that draw you in and you forget. You're just in it. Experiencing it.
JG:
Yeah, Yeah.
"I would say to filmmakers, 'Do you know how to tell a story? Do you know good stories when you see them? Do you go to the theater ever and watch good stories being told? Watch movies, watch great movies, and turn the sound off and watch what's in the frame. Can you figure out the story without the sound on?'"
John:
What do you think, in the process of making your film - because you just had some really incredible lessons - and I would say one of my favorites is the one with seeing the images without sound - I think that's a really big one - what would you say were some of the biggest challenges that you faced in making your project? You talked about the long days - it didn't matter. You were energized because the passion was powering you. But what were some of the things that you maybe wished you had known before you got involved that that were challenges?
JG:
Well, you're going to lose locations if you don't have a lot of money. The place that you envisioned in your head that you thought you had to shoot the scene is going to disappear and suddenly you have two walls, and the rest is glass and a warehouse. You know what I mean? And then you just think, okay, and you make it work. You have to be able to be flexible, really flexible, and think on your feet. At one point, Gabe, the DP, and I said, “Let's not start the scene down there. Let's flip it. And everybody on stage goes, ‘what??’”. I said, “We're going to start down there in the booth and then we're going to walk it. And because he and I are so in sync and he so trusts me and I so trust him - he shoots, my God, gorgeous, the film is gorgeous… that we could flip everything and, you know, be nimble on our feet. But I wish I had had more prep time with him alone and I wish I'd had more rehearsal time with the actors so we could have tried some things. Days get - you know - it's always the thing about “we're losing the light”, or I need the light to come in at this angle, or the guy didn't show up with the…da da da da. Or it's freezing outside and she's only wearing a summer top and she's frozen, you know? So, we had a snake wrangler. I said, “Who's that person?” “That's the snake wrangler.”
Jason:
So, he's controlling snakes that in the script or controlling…?
JG:
No, no snakes in the script and hopefully no snakes where my actors were walking.
Jason:
Yeah, that's… Wow.
John:
Yeah, that's a good, good note to make sure you get your snake wrangler.
Jason:
Yeah. I'm curious about your years of acting experience. And now being on the other side of it working with actors. Do you have a particular way or is it just an organic thing that happens because of your experience?
JG:
The good ones will bring you so much. And if you have an idea, there's something you're going to go for. It's probably already in their repertoire. And you just say, “you know, what if she were actually struggling to stay awake?” And then the whole scene feels differently. Or what if she's more hurt than angry and you just kind of ask those kind of questions and I'll tell you, it's a lot to learn. You know, particularly Betsy Brandt plays the lead and she's just heaven. And, you know, she's got pages and pages every day. She's in just about every scene. And at some point, there is a law of diminishing returns when if you haven't had enough rehearsal, you know, you can't go back the fifth time and go, let's do it again. Let's do that, because I as an actor, if somebody comes to me the third or fourth time, I'm thinking, “What do you want? Tell me what you want. Just tell it to me. Say it to me.” You know what I mean? So there has to be a way because actors are that they are bringing you the best available thing at that time. And if something's missing, then I haven't been clear, or we haven't had a minute to ourselves to just have that little bit of private rehearsal talk time. Time is your enemy, really. Time and money, you know. But we got it done. Look, the miracle is at 71, I made a feature film that I wrote and directed. That's the big miracle of “The Grotto”. My miracle. So now I can't play the age thing anymore because I've already done one. So now I'd like to be, you know, 73 and making her second feature film. And that's just what my story is going to be.
Jason:
Do you have, speaking of which, do you have something in the works?
JG:
Yes, I do. I do. It's a drama. There's no music, there's no magic, there's no comedy. There's not that. It's a drama. And once again, it ends up in the desert. It starts actually sort of in the Midwest. And it ends up in the desert, which is a very magical place for me.
Jason:
And will you follow a similar process, will you make a short?
JG:
No, no, I won't make another short unless I have the time and a story, or a short story, I want to tell. No, but will I luck into one investor who underwrites the whole thing? Unlikely. Will I get it made in a year instead of the 12 years with the grotto of putting it away? Not trusting myself, being tentative about it, thinking “Who do I think I am?” I finished with those bad things in my head. I have something to show for it, so I'm hoping that the process will be, you know, much more condensed and that in the next couple of years I can get the next one made.
John:
So, it sounds like your intention for creating this project kind of grew out of this experience that you had with this specific place, and it was a story that you were driven to tell?
JG:
Yeah.
Joanna on the set of "The Grotto"
John:
Do you feel like you fulfilled your intention with this project?
JG:
I did. I most certainly fulfilled the intention when I look at the movie or the things I wish I'd done differently. Every director I've ever known says you'll feel that way. You'll say, “I should have done…: Yeah, but am I proud of it? And does it stand up? Well, yes, I do think it does. I do want to do it again because it falls under the heading of What Do You Want to Do Now with Your Life. I mean, yeah, I just did an pilot of an HBO show. Yes, I go read stories of selected Sharks Symphony Space. Yes. I'll host this evening at Carnegie Hall. Yes. There are those places that I can still show up. Would I want to do another show in New York? I think if there were probably an Off-Broadway show. Broadway has so changed, and I don't even know that that's what I would want to do. But I'm sure if there's another Off-Broadway play with a limited run, and a great role and I would consider doing, I really would consider doing it. But you know what? It’s you leaving your house in Connecticut and getting on the Merritt and spending 2 hours in the car one way and at the end of the night, coming home for two and doing it every day for eight shows a week, six days a week. It's a thing. It's a thing. And I love my time at home, and I love being with my husband and the kids and the grandchildren. And I love writing the movies and trying to get them done and all that kind of stuff. But if there were another great play, with a role that I was a big enough draw to get. And I say that cynically because it's just a fact. It's a fact about the New York theater. So them's the facts. And I didn’t toil in the fields of television long enough to be television famous. You know, I've appeared in great things and had a great time, but I elected not to try to go that route, but I just saw something in me driving me to say, No, you're a writer. Tell your own stories. Tell these stories. If you can support yourself by doing everything else for a while and then see if you can guide the narrative.
John:
And would you say then that your experience making “The Grotto” has motivated you to make more? Or is there something else that's motivating you to make more?
JG:
Time, I think. I said to my husband, I said, “Oh, I've just had this big birthday and oh, I'm in act three,” you know, “soon the curtain will come down!” And he said, “Sweetie, your life is Shakespearean. That's five acts. Your life is in five.”
Jason:
Oh wow.
JG:
“If you think you're in act three. You got a couple more acts to go.” And I thought, “Yeah, okay, what are you going to do with them? What are you going to do with them? You made ‘The Grotto’.” I don’t want to be like, “there, I made my little movie, okay, I won't bother you again.” You know, that would be the old voice. You know, “you don't have to put up with me again.” No, the hell with that. I have another one. I'm going to make another one. Then I will make another one after that if I want to. Or I will do something else like spin “The Grotto” into a TV series. And it would make a great one, by the way, with all the acts coming to the club. So anyway, right now it's out and about and with people looking at it, hopefully distributors and streamers and somebody will buy it and it will be available for all to see.
Jason:
Where can we see it now?
JG:
If you know the writer director, she can send you a link. It's for festivals right now. However, I think I might be allowed. I don't know how this works in the world. It's in the marketplace to have a charity screening somewhere in town, you know, maybe at that theater of the Sacred Heart Theater where we raise money for something. So, it's not making profit, you know what I mean? It's not. And so, I'm going to look into that because it would be fun to have, you know, the locals, my friends, all my gang come and see it. Yeah. So, we'll see.
Jason:
Exciting.
John:
Well, that's a great story. And I want to hear more about what's next. But just for the people that are watching this – actors - because I feel a little bit resentful as an actor being told all the time that as an actor, you also need to be making your own work. And I do understand that even though I have done it and I do enjoy it, I can understand that feeling. I think that a lot of actors probably have - you know, “I also have to be a writer and a director and a filmmaker.” You know, some people feel that way, but what's your take on that now that you've done it yourself? Would you tell other actors that they should be making their own work?
JG:
No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't tell them that they should be. I would ask them if they consider everything that isn't working downtime. That's the mistake. Your life without the work and a place to go to do your acting work is not downtime. It's your life. And this is the thing you have to get square with the universe. You have to have a life. And in that life, you have to be healthy and productive no matter how you have to do for others. Do for others. My father, until his dying day said do for others. It was practically a motto. I would have put it on his headstone if I thought about it. Volunteer. Volunteer, volunteer. That can give you a sense that “I've had a great day. I did something for somebody else.” “I'm not going to get every acting job I want. I'm going to be disgruntled that I didn't get the part I want. I'm going to have expectations that by the time I'm 27, I should have already.” Your expectations will kill you. You'll become addicted to them. Just keep making plans and forget about your expectations. Expect if you eat right and you let your family know you're fine and happy and you're good to your friends and you do something for others, you can expect that you'll feel good about life. There's a huge life out there. It cannot be all about “I'm only existing if I'm on the stage.”
John:
Well, that does seem like a great, great way to end it right there.
Jason:
I can’t think of a better way.
John:
Did we find out enough? I want to make sure that we talk about every place that people can see the film and festivals that are there. Coming up.
JG:
What Heartland in Indianapolis did is that they put it online for viewing during the festival. I don't know if there's virtual festival for Annapolis. The Annapolis Festival is the 24th and 5th and 6th, I think, of March. And we just closed Cinema at the Bayou February 1st. We're also Cinequest on the West Coast -that's a virtual festival, I think, coming up. But Asbury Park is Garden State Festival and “The Grotto” will be playing the night of March 25th (2023).
John:
That's great. We want to also make sure that if people want to be able to find you, find more out more about you and your projects, where do you like to go?
JG:
This is very exciting. For the first time ever - I'm slow to this - this weekend I’m meeting with two fabulously brilliant young people who are going to make a website for me, a real website, not with all the crazy kind of fan-based misinformation, you know, Helter Skelter, “oh, Google her…”, because there's so much wrong on that. I'm going to make a Joanna Gleason a website. Everything - the teaching, the shows, the movie, the short. I don't know if I can actually put the movie up on that. You know, I have to wait to see if it's been bought or anything like that. But everything you need to know, that I want you to know will be available to me.
Jason:
Really exciting. Will the short be there. Are you allowed to share the short?
JG:
I have a feeling since there's not a big market for shorts that stand alone, I'll check with my producing team, and it would be a nice thing to have on there. It's called “Morning Into Night”.
Jason:
Joanna, I can't thank you enough. This was so inspiring, not just to our listeners, to me personally, thank you. To hear you talk about process and how to incorporate being an artist into life is something I don't think we hear enough about.
JG:
Have a life. You must!
Jason:
For creative people, it's so hard just to get those jobs, you can become obsessive about it, you forget to be living a life.
JG:
First and foremost. Because as we know all too well, and maybe for the first time in a long time in this country, it can go, you know. The thing that got brought to our shores and all over the world was a big reminder that attention must be paid.
John:
That's right.
Jason:
Yes. Thank you for reminding us and for those stories and for teaching us.
JG:
Thank you.
Jason:
My gosh. I feel I can have a good day now. And incidentally, I'm going to teach later and I'm going to use some of what I learned.
JG:
Well, brilliant. Well, you're teaching. You're doing God's work.
Jason:
Hopefully. Yeah.
John:
Well, thank you so much, Joanna. It really has been a lot of fun talking to you.
JG:
Thank you, John.
Jason
Thank you.
JG:
Great to see you both. And thank you for having me.
Jason:
And thanks for joining us.
Joanna Gleason made her Broadway debut in Cy Coleman's musical. I Love My Wife, in 1977, for which she won a Theatre World Award. She returned to Broadway and off Broadway with Joe Egg in 1984, for which earned a Tony nomination.
Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods won her a Tony Award as Best Actress, plus Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. In 1991, she starred as Nora in Nick and Nora, the ill-fated musical. What she won, however , was a her husband-to-be, Chris Sarandon. They have been together ever since. They have four children between them, with song-writer-producer Aaron David Gleason being Joanna's son from her first marriage.
In 2004, she starred in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on Broadway (Tony nomination) the same year she was in The Normal Heart at The Public Theatre in New York City. Other Off-Broadway appearances include Sons Of The Prophet and Happiness.
Film appearances include "Boogie Nights", Heartburn", The Wedding Planner" and "The Skeleton Twins", among others. TV roles include "West Wing", "The Newsroom", "Friends", "Bette" and "Love and War".
Joanna has directed off-Broadway, and for CBS Television and Lifetime. She made a deeply personal short, "Morning Into Night" before undertaking "The Grotto", which marks her first feature as writer/director.