Keeping his acts together

The Daily Yomiuri

Saturday, May 13, 2000

By Isabel Reynolds

How many careers is it humanly possible to fit in one lifetime? According to Milton Katselas, who is all at once a successful, writer, artist, director and acting coach, it all depends on your self-esteem and time management skills. At the moment, he has simultaneous exhibitions of his prints in Los Angeles and Tokyo, and his working on a script for his next film, based on two one-act plays he wrote and directed himself, called “Visions and Lovers.” ”I really believe anyone can do it.” He said of his multimedia career in a recent interview at the Galerie Yoshii in Ginza.

For those who want to know how to start, it might help to read his book “Dreams into Action.” Based on a text he wrote earlier for would-be-actors. The underlying purpose of this chatty, informal volume is to persuade readers to stop wasting time dreaming about the future, decide what it is they really want to do, and do it. Of course that sounds blindingly obvious, but the book was a best seller in the United States-clearly many people are hoping to transform their lives.

Katselas’ own career started with a degree at Carnegie –Melon Institute. Under the influence of his Greek immigrant parents, he then decided to look for an apprenticeship, and managed to persuade four well known directors, including Elia Kazan, to employ him as a gofer. That led to an introduction to Edward Albee, and before long Katselas was directing the then fledgling playwright’s first U.S. theater production, “The Zoo Story.”

“It wasn’t just a success, it was the start of a movement, a kind of avant garde movement in New York.” Katselas said of his reception. Still only a few years out of college, he continued his theatrical career until he was given the opportunity to turn one of his theatrical productions into a film. That was “Butterflies Are Free” (1972) with Goldie Hawn.

As for his other careers, Katselas explained airily, “I’d been teaching the whole time and then in the mid- ‘60’s I decided to paint and I painted.” Six months after he made that snap decision, turning one of painter girlfriend’s canvases around to experiment on the other side, he won the Emily Lowe Painting Competition from a field of 4,000 artists.

Many theater and film directors are also talented artist, so this combination is perhaps the least surprising part of what Katselas calls his “plate-spinning act.” He commented, Obviously, I’m writing. (“Dreams Into Action”) was originally written for actors and then it was changed into being for a regular audience. But yes, the painting is related to the sculpture and the sculpture to the theater. This piece here (he indicates one of the prints in his exhibition) came to me out of the play I wrote, because there is this solitary, sort of alone figure. In the play I wrote, the man and the woman do not end up together. It’s a very sort of tragic separation.”

The painting of the lonely figure is in fact a typical of his artwork, which is mainly abstract. In fact, if one of his works starts to remind him to strongly of a real object, he usually changes it. Katselas says he is inspired by the energy and modernity of places like New York, and influenced “like all modern painters, by Picasso.” The current exhibition is of monotype prints, created by applying a kind of printer’s ink to piece of plastic or metal, carefully placing a piece of damp paper over the top and putting it through a press. Unlike most other kinds of prints, monotypes are one-offs.

Katselas came into contact with the Yoshii family, which owns galleries around the world, when he met Kazu Yoshii in New York. After a successful contribution to an exhibition of paintings including works by Picasso and Mirro there, the gallery owner invited him to hold his own shows here and in California.

Despite the latest artistic success, Katselas admits that directing is his first love - “by a nose over painting.” It was directing that led to his recognition as a first-rate acting teacher, and gained him a roster of students, many of whom became big stars.

“I’ve never advertised the classes. Never in 35 years, “he said. “No ad in the paper, no radio, no nothing. People just hear about me, or they hear about students like Michele Pfeiffer, Patrick Swayze, and Alec Baldwin.”

“Some of these people were good students. George Clooney was a student of mine and George was very rebellious, but them we had lunch about a month ago and he was telling me everything about the class, everything he remembered. I was amazed, because I thought he was a bit of a rebel….. Sometimes people look like they’re not, but they’re really doing it. Other times, they look like they’re really doing it, but they didn’t get anything,” he laughed.

In the end, you get the impression that what differentiates him from other artist is his amazing ability to get on with people. The director delights in relating stories of to meetings with straight-laced middle-aged Japanese men that have ended in emotional bear hugs. In one case, he overcame the initial frosty reception by apologizing for the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

According to Katselas, self esteem is the most important prerequisite for success, and he thinks the key to bolstering other people’s self-esteem is generosity of spirit. “We are afraid,” he said. “we think that is we compliment somebody, we become less. I don’t feel that. I feel we become more.” His gentle philosophy is a reassuring counterpoint to the theory that only the nasty succeed – and it is obviously worked for at least one person.