Skip to main content

Sign of insanity?

Talking to oneself. Often. For long periods of time. In different voices. With distinctly different personalities...


I'd say the above is pretty indicative of insanity, wouldn't you? And it's what I do for a living. So that makes me...


No, I know that my puppets aren't real, and that I'm throwing my voice...


...or do I?


Well, talking to myself is what I'm doing right now. If no-one reads this blog, then I'm retroactively insane. So somebody please read this and save me from insanity.


Ventriloquism is a lonely profession. Moments of intense joy and inspiration as I feel my puppet partners coming to life through my considerable skill; moments of gratification when I bring joy and laughter to an audience, giving me the fleeting feeling that my existence has a purpose. Then the show is over, the audience gone, I pack up my dummies and equipment and head back on the road. Me and the dummies, alone together.


Not that my life is so lonely. My profession yes, but I'm a single dad to two wonderful daughters. They take up loads of my time, and it's anything but lonely around them.  The divorce is not finalized yet, but the marriage has been over for a long time. All for the better, I feel. But this profession of mine...weird, you think? To you, maybe, but to me it was the perfect profession, as soon as I discovered my talent for it as a young man. There's a cliche, an image of a shy ventriloquist who uses his dummy to say things that he would never have the courage to say himself. That cliche is quite apt in my case. And doing it all these years has made me less shy. There are other adjectives that are often associated with ventriloquists aside from "shy", like withdrawn, reclusive, antisocial, weird, mad..."withdrawn" fits me, perhaps, but I don't accept the others, especially the "mad" one.


Then again, mad people don't know that they are mad, right?


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Trillo & Suede History

I created the concept of a ventriloquist/dummy detective duo in a film noir-ish alternate universe back in the 1990’s. In 1999 I wrote my first Trillo & Suede feature film screenplay – The Hong Kong Canary. It was a parody of both The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Next I entered a Twilight Zone of Catch-22’s… Production companies would not look at my script unless I was represented by an agent. And agents were not interested in representing me unless a production company had already taken on one or more of my scripts. Agents were also not interested in looking at my script because I was not an established, well-known screenwriter. And, of course, there was no way I could become an established, well-known screenwriter unless I could get one of my scripts produced. I tried submitting The Hong Kong Canary as a pilot for a tv series. I also wrote treatments for an entire season of episodes. However, most tv channels would not accept tv series scripts unless submitted by an agent. And

The Honky Tonky Monkey Rag

In 1997 I wrote and recorded this song for my kids' video "Winners". It was one of many novelty songs, skits and bits that I wrote and recorded with my puppets for kids' and family videos. They also were parts of the pitches that I made through the years to tv producers for various concepts of kids' and family tv shows that I created featuring my puppets and me. Several times tv producers responded enthusiastically to my pitches, raising my hopes that this dream would come true...only to inevitably dash my hopes by changing their minds or simply disappearing.   Shortly after I recorded this video in 1997 I began shifting my focus from pitching a kids' tv show to pitching my newer concept aimed at an adult audience: Trillo & Suede - a film noir parody featuring a ventriloquist detective and his wooden partner. An eerily similar chain of events ensued with Trillo & Suede over the next two decades, in which I was led to believe many times that various tv

The Trillo & Suede Concept

The Trillo & Suede Concept Exciting news: I’m planning to shoot Season 2 of my multi-award-winning Trillo & Suede web series this August – less than two months from now. My long-thwarted dream is finally coming true. Enjoy it all here… https://www.youtube.com/c/TrilloSuede Many people have asked me various questions about my concept of Trillo & Suede. So far the concept has been mainly in my head, but now I want to write it down for others to see. It also feels helpful for myself to have it in writing to refer to. My concept might evolve over time in some ways, but I don't imagine I'll ever want to change the main aspects. Here it is... Trillo & Suede live in an alternate universe in which they really are a detective duo in their “real” lives. They decided to produce a web series based on their real life experiences as detectives and we are seeing that project as it unfolds. This was Trillo’s idea because he has a life long issue of feeling unappreciated