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John Cameron Mitchell - Alan Mandell Tribute
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Cross posting from socials for those of you who wish to avoid those platforms.
A giant has passed. Alan Mandell, friend and colleague of Samuel Beckett, costar of Shortbus as the mayor of New York (and the car wash victim in Hedwig!), wonderful father (to Peter and Olivia) and husband (to the kind Lizzy) and my great friend and mentor.
When he was young, he brought Beckett‘s plays to San Quentin State prison, then befriended Sam and acted in his plays that Sam directed. Alan was general manager of Lincoln Center Theater in the late 60s, and when I first moved to LA in the late 80s he was at LA Theater Center and took me under his wing during a play called Sarcophagus which was about Chernobyl (we’d do our own radiation makeup together while agreeing it was the worst play we’d ever done).
He provided seed money for Hedwig and Shortbus to get them started and he was just generally the kind of man I wish to be when I grew up. We both acted in a Sunset Blvd-inspired film by the late David Schweitzer that will be released soon.
I have so many memories of Alan. How he stood up for me to be cast in a Joe Orton play, how he encouraged me in every questionable artistic step I took, how he used to watch YouTube with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner (Mel: Look at this video! Carl: That’s MADELINE KAHN in your own film, Mel! Mel: Just look at it, she was a genius! Alan just laughed and laughed.). How he took me to coffee with Beckett in 1988 in Paris, a meeting that changed my life forever, and how he helped design his own funeral urn which featured a line from Endgame: “Something is taking its course.” (The scene continues with, “We’re not beginning to… to… mean something?” “Mean something! … Ah that’s a good one!”)
Farewell Alan, you meant something to me. You were my second father.
Jcm
Cross posting from socials for those of you who wish to avoid those platforms.
A giant has passed. Alan Mandell, friend and colleague of Samuel Beckett, costar of Shortbus as the mayor of New York (and the car wash victim in Hedwig!), wonderful father (to Peter and Olivia) and husband (to the kind Lizzy) and my great friend and mentor.
When he was young, he brought Beckett‘s plays to San Quentin State prison, then befriended Sam and acted in his plays that Sam directed. Alan was general manager of Lincoln Center Theater in the late 60s, and when I first moved to LA in the late 80s he was at LA Theater Center and took me under his wing during a play called Sarcophagus which was about Chernobyl (we’d do our own radiation makeup together while agreeing it was the worst play we’d ever done).
He provided seed money for Hedwig and Shortbus to get them started and he was just generally the kind of man I wish to be when I grew up. We both acted in a Sunset Blvd-inspired film by the late David Schweitzer that will be released soon.
I have so many memories of Alan. How he stood up for me to be cast in a Joe Orton play, how he encouraged me in every questionable artistic step I took, how he used to watch YouTube with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner (Mel: Look at this video! Carl: That’s MADELINE KAHN in your own film, Mel! Mel: Just look at it, she was a genius! Alan just laughed and laughed.). How he took me to coffee with Beckett in 1988 in Paris, a meeting that changed my life forever, and how he helped design his own funeral urn which featured a line from Endgame: “Something is taking its course.” (The scene continues with, “We’re not beginning to… to… mean something?” “Mean something! … Ah that’s a good one!”)
Farewell Alan, you meant something to me. You were my second father.
Jcm
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