Actors...What Lies Will You Tell?

I met a playwright. He served me a drink at a bar. Which is funny, because you'd think he'd be writing a play.

This dude was about... 30. He was bar-tending at 'Harry's Burritos' on the upper west side (I'm incredibly rude so, I call this place 'The Hairy Burrito' Yes, that's right, I'm 14)

Anyway, I was there with my sister and she and I were talking about acting.

This bar tender (who my sister described as being 'kind of an idiot...but not fully committal') asked if we were involved in theatre, and I said "yes" - he said 'I'm a professional playwright'

I was curious... So I asked him, "What kind of plays do you write?" He said "Oh you know, Drama, Comedy, Thriller. Action/Adventure"

A red flag started waving in my mind's eye. A huge red flag.

I said "Wow, I don't remember the last 'Action/Adventure' play I saw?"

Yeah, well I just have a few things going on right now, I'm just tending bar until they hit.

"Oh, I said. What are you working on now?"

"Well, I've never actually written anything...I mean, I've just had some ideas."

Again, it was not my intention to cut this guy off at the knees, or try to test him, I was just asking the same questions anyone would ask if someone told you they were a playwright.

Turns out this guy doesn't write anything, nor did he even attempt to lie about what he wrote, in fact he admitted quite openly 'I've never written anything before'

If I were to draw a flowchart of our conversation, here's how it would look.

I'm a Professional playwright

+

I write Action/Adventure plays

+

I've never written anything before

A similar series might be:

I'm an astronaut

+

I've been to the moon

+

I've never been to the moon

Now, again, I'm not tring to humilliate this guy, but it occured to me how irritating we all are in the entertainment business to people who aren't.

I was a little irritated by this guy who said he was a professional playwright who then admitted he wasn't. And I work in entertainment. Imagine if I were an investment banker....

If people ask me what I do, I tell them I'm an actor. I have experience in it...It's what I've done more than anything else professioanlly.. So I tell them.

Then people ask 'What have you been in that I might have seen' - and I say 'well, nothing major... You probably won't have seen me in anything'

They probably think I'm just some guy who lives alone in a small apartment, who eats cereal for dinner and creates a fantasy world to live in. All of that is true...but, they think that I do all those things in a creepy way.

So I have a solution... I will lie.

I will tell people I'm a scuba diver, and then list all the oceans I've dived in ...since they can't prove or disprove that. I will tell people I'm a mountaineer, or a goverment worker, or that I own my own cheese souring company in Virginia, Cheese for which the recipe is so secret, the location and name of my company could never be revealed. So there's no way of tracing my lie!

I suggest you try it to avoid the long lingering silence you hear on planes or in public places right after you tell people you're an actor...An actor who's never appeared in anything they've seen. I suggest you avoid this awkwardness by telling lies.

....what lies will you tell??

PS: There is a small Chinese grocery store in my neighborhood that I occasioanlly go to if I run out of something essential. This is the warning that appears on the plastic bag they gave me today: