Also in a book, I have no constraints on time and place.
And in fact, most people who shares my values and concerns, who have my sense of humor don't go to the theater at all.
As a performer there is a thing of trying to seduce people that are in my presence in whatever way I know best.
As soon as the dirt is hitting the casket, it'll all be forgotten.
Because I'm always interested in the right move. Is there a right move? Maybe there isn't a right move. I think that's where I ended up at the end of that play, anyway.
Ensemble is hard to do. It's like 3-D chess.
Every show is a new opportunity to complete the work.
For a long time, my shows were about people walking out or about getting my gigs canceled or having the presenter not wanting to pay me.
For me it goes back to when I was in the fourth grade and tried to write the scariest story I could, and the audience in the class just laughed at it.
From my perspective of a guy in his late forties, it's becoming more and more clear to me that the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do all depend on what part of life you are looking at it from.
I always seem to go off in one direction and get a different response than what I expected.
I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can't quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that's what the deal is with me.
I don't know anybody who does what I do.
I don't know anybody who does what I do. I'm very underground.
I don't think describing or giving myself a label or even telling people what characters I'm going to play will give you a sense of it.
I don't think of myself as groundbreaking. I'm just a guy who's here now, doing stuff now.
I don't understand how that works from a critic's perspective. It would seem obvious that not everything is to everybody's taste. I don't like everything, but I don't say that person doesn't try or that person doesn't do good work.
I don't view anybody with disdain. If there's somebody I disdain, then I don't write about them.
I feel like I'm in the curl of a wave and now's the time to do the performing I've always wanted to do. I've got every capacity that I ever wanted to have.
I guess that's what I'm doing with my stuff, I'm playing hard and loud and fast. So the style is just as important to me as anything in particular that I'm doing.
I know that I'm inadequate, but I never thought that at seventeen.
I know that I'm inadequate, but I never thought that at seventeen. I thought I was doing the best I could. I thought I was being idealistic.
I love playing other people's work. I love acting.
I provide the bricks and mortar with the words and situations - the director and the actors and the designers build the house.
I say I don't want to go in front of an audience and be me, the real me.
I started acting when I was in high school, started writing when I got to New York in 1975.
I started to do solo pieces, which were about the people who were inside of me.
I think everyone has the right to say what they like or don't like, just don't tell me what to write. Don't tell me how to write the book.
I think everyone has the right to say what they like or don't like, just don't tell me what to write.
I think of myself in relation to performance the way Tom Waits is to music. I have my own particular crowd that likes my stuff. It's raw and it's funny.
I think one of my big vulnerabilities, and I'm proud of it, is that I say the thing as it lies.
I think that's the romance in believing in over-the-top performers, but I'm not going to pretend I'm like that any more.
I think the funny thing about me writing about the suburbs is that I grew up in the suburbs, and they are very deeply a part of me. I still spend a lot of time in them.
I thought I was doing the best I could. I thought I was being idealistic.
I was a big fan of Dazed and Confused.
I was a big fan of Dazed and Confused. I thought Rick would be a very good choice to get that type of energy. The stage show has a lot of energy, although he chose to shoot it in a way that was more laid back than the stage show.
I was definitely surprised when Talk Radio took off as a play. As a film it has become somewhere between a popular thing and a cult thing.
I write for an audience that likes what I like, reads what I read, thinks about the things I think about. In many ways, this puts me in opposition to the people who go to the theater generally.
I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.
I write, but I also act.
I'm a talker, but that comes in all different forms.
I'm always surprised by things that happen to my work.
I'm not a light-hearted person, so I can't think light-hearted at work.
I'm not hip, I'm not cool, I'm not glib.
I'm pretty much a saint with my kids, and it's very sweet when I'm holding my two year old in my arms and I'm nuzzling his fat little cheek.
I'm still who I am. I guess there's a part of me who is lively.
I'm very underground.
I've wanted to write about that type of confused character who is trying to do the best thing, but isn't sure what that may be.
If all I ever wrote about was inner city freaks, I think it would be dishonest.
If I kept it up like I was fifteen years ago, I wouldn't be alive today. I had to do something.
If we all knew we were going to live to be 150 years old, we'd all approach our lives very differently.
If we all lived to be twenty-five and we all knew we were going to die on that day, who could say what would be the right thing to do up to that point?
If you say city to people, people have no problem thinking of the city as rife with problematic, screwed-up people, but if you say suburbs - and I'm not the first person to say this, it's been said over and over again in literature - there's a sense of normalcy.
In the book there was a larger point of view, which was my feeling about the suburbs. Also in a book, I have no constraints on time and place.
In those days, I was pretty hot tempered; I was pretty difficult. I created a character that was that way without any remorse for being that way.
It's a mental fake-out to myself. I make believe I'm making a new show so I forget the material I was working on and make up some fresh material.
My attitude is black with a lot of humor.
Obviously you're not going to describe me as shy, but I'm aware of one thing. As we sit here, I'm not the person I am when I'm at home at all.
On the other hand, I can't come out and do straight humor. I just can't do it. There are too many things on my mind.
People get a little lost here because they're getting too literal about what's going on that stage. We've got to understand what we're watching. We're watching my world of imagination, not the real world. You want to watch the real world, the real world is there. Go look at it.
The world intrudes in my brain daily. Since my brain is dripping with all kinds of stuff that's out there in the world, that I can't seem to be able to shut out, it has to end up being in my work as well.
Then one day it all switched, and all of a sudden it was really cool to see my stuff or cool to come to my shows. And I was kind of surprised, but I liked it.
There are playwrights who do that, who make cuts, and it's a lot of lights going up and down. I can't stand that stuff.
There needs to be something that ties the audience together with me in the moment that we're in. So we understand what we're doing is we're sitting in the theatre and watching some skinny guy jump around on stage.
Well, the real Eric Bogosian is pretty self-conscious of himself.
Well, there are some things I could do in a book that I couldn't do in dialogue. I can hear people's thoughts. I can take a point of view past all the characters.
When I'm putting a solo show together I make subsidiary shows that are feeders into the new show.
Whereas, Talk Radio the movie was more like speed metal stuff. It doesn't quite have as much humor. It's very serious about what it had to say.
Who am I? I'm a guy who has two kids and drives an SUV and pays rent and looks at a computer screen all day long. Like a lot of other people. And those are the things I want to talk about.
Eric won the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear Award for his work as author and star of Talk Radio.
Eric's film catalogue includes the films Heights, Wonderland, Igby Goes Down, Atom Agoyan’s Ararat, Gossip, Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, The Substance of Fire, Under Siege II and Dolores Claiborne.
Eric won an Obie as a monologist.
Eric is married with two children and lives in New York with his wife, director Jo Bonney.
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