So I saw this play on Saturday, The Break of Noon, by Neil LaBute. You know him—he directed the movies In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things, Nurse Betty, Possession, The Wicker Man, Death at a Funeral, among others. What a weird mix, right? Anyway, this play, I don't know how I feel about this play. It had some interesting ideas, I guess. It was about a regular guy, John Smith (David Duchovny) who is the lone survivor of an office shooting, surviving because, he says, he heard God speak to him, saving him. He then becomes a celebrity evangelist, and the play is basically a satire. I just enjoyed the novelty of going to a real play. I had only been to two others in New York. The theater was a small downtown theater, the Lucille Lortel, not a big Broadway one. So we were only about 50 or 60 feet away from the actors, I would guess.

It's weird, the difference between watching actors on TV and watching those same actors on stage. (Amanda Peet was also in this.) When you watch actors on screen, you take the acting for granted. You don't think about it. You imagine you're watching people talking and doing stuff, not people pretending to be people talking and doing stuff. You think, acting looks easy. Anybody could do that. I could do that. But then when you see those same actors on stage, you're suddenly aware, somehow, of how much hard work it must be. On screen, it looks easy. On stage, it looks hard! Duchovny was great, by the way. Not bad for a former English Ph.D. student and Ashbery scholar!