John Cazale and Inmate 19250

Trigger warning: This post will mention sexual assault and prison. If either of those are troublesome for you, stop reading when you see the warning box, pictured below, further down.

WARNING: HERE THERE BE DRAGONS

The actor’s vulnerability

I have degrees in Theatre and English. I’m a trained actor. I was by no means a great actor, but I had a few moments. My point here is that, while I made no terrific accomplishments as an actor, I understand the craft. I understand the work that goes into making something look effortless; the work that goes into convincing people, both audiences and fellow actors, that someone in a play, etc., is not a character, but a person.

One of the most important things an actor can bring to any scene is vulnerability. This can also be one of the hardest things to accomplish. As humans, our most basic instincts are to seek safety instead. Part of actor training is learning and practicing letting go of this instinct, of baring one’s soft underbelly to scene partners in an effort of creating something more than the sum of its parts.

The great John Cazale

Part of an actor’s job is to poke, prod, and support their scene partner(s) to create an experience that transcends what any of the actors in the scene could do alone. Even when a character is quite aloof, the actor must traverse and build upon vulnerability to find that aloofness and make it natural and believable.

John’s film career was a brief one. He acted in only five feature films before succumbing to lung cancer at age 42, in 1978:

• The Godfather (1972)
  • As Fredo Corleone
  • Winner – Academy Award for Best Picture
• The Conversation (1974)
  • As Stan
  • Nominee – Academy Award for Best Picture
• The Godfather Part II (1974)
  • As Fredo Corleone
  • Winner – Academy Award for Best Picture
• Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
  • As Sal
  • Nominee – Academy Award for Best Picture
• The Deer Hunter (1978)
  • As Stan
  • Winner – Academy Award for Best Picture
  • John was fighting/losing his battle with cancer during filming, passing soon after filming completed.

For such a short film career, he was in iconic films. And nothing but. There is a spectacular documentary of John and his work: I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale. The documentary covers his stage acting career, his all too brief film career, as well as interviews and discussions with actors, directors, and others who had the privilege of working with him or were inspired by his work.

Asking questions without having to answer them

There’s a great moment in the interview with Al Pacino discussing working with John on The Godfather Part II: “He became whoever it was he was playing; and he did that by asking questions. Because he taught me about asking questions, and not having to answer them — that’s the beauty. What’s wonderful about it is you open the door to things.”

In life, like in the stories we tell, we don’t get answers to all of our questions. We don’t get solutions to all of our problems. What matters most, I feel, is pursuing those answers and solutions regardless of our chance of success. To me, the measure of a person is not the answers they can provide, but the questions they are willing to ask (of themselves, of others, of society, of the world).

Asking hard questions can come with vulnerability. Sometimes lots of it. I have been using some of my acting training, namely making myself vulnerable, in my sharing my experiences living with Trauma, Depression and Anxiety. It’s been difficult. It has required courage. I have done it anyway, particularly since not everyone can. I have done it anyway in the hopes of helping to nudge society in the direction of openness so that sharing mental health challenges doesn’t require courage. Mental health stigma is a giant bag of dicks that our society tries to make us all carry around. It doesn’t have to be this way.

My vulnerability

I’m going to start sharing more about my childhood trauma, with more details related to my dad. It’s going to be hard. But I have a unique perspective, a perspective that most people don’t think about, a perspective that doesn’t get much coverage, even in the era of the 24-hour news cycle. I will be getting vulnerable AF, risking ire and outrage from people who may not understand I am trying to shine a little light where there is currently just darkness; not taking light from anywhere else, but adding new light.

WARNING: HERE THERE BE DRAGONS

Inmate 19250

I sat at a 4-seat rectangular table that was bolted to the floor. All four chairs, likewise, were bolted in place, capable of swiveling but not being lifted. The chairs, as I remember, were in varying colors of muted blues, greens, and oranges. The room had 12-15 such table/chair installations. Along one wall stood vending machines with various snacks in their soft, plastic packaging; nothing that could be even improvised into anything dangerous (other than trans-fats and sodium).

My mother and I had entered the room through a stout metal door with a small, reinforced, shatter-resistant glass window. At the opposite end of the room as another such door. We weren’t allowed to go near that one. Nor was anyone that came out of that door allowed to go near the one my mother and I had used.

It was only a few moments of waiting before we saw a familiar face through the small window in that far door. It opened and a brown-haired man in his fifties with perpetually stooped shoulders approached us. He was wearing a faded, but deep green, button-down shirt with a label on the left breast, “19250” in dull, whitish letters. We hugged and he sat down at the table with us. On the table rested coins for the vending machines; the man was allowed to touch neither.

The room was the visiting area at NH State Prison in Concord, NH. The man was inmate 19250 and my dad. The scene was repeated often, weekly when we were able, over the course of more than 5 years. He was convicted of felonious sexual assault of a minor (11), one of my soccer teammates, and served most of a 7-year sentence.

Forgotten victims

While my father never sexually assaulted/abused me, I am nevertheless a victim of his behavior. There is a fuck-ton (not sure how many shit-tons are in a fuck-ton, but a fuck-ton is undeniably bigger) of trauma for me in and around his arrest, his trial, his conviction, his sentencing, his term in prison, his release, and other events that happened in relation to and/or in conjunction with all of this.

I cannot even fathom what my dad’s victim had to go through and is quite possibly still going through. I sincerely hope that he got/is getting any help and support that is needed. I hold no ill will toward him, or his family, either. Just empathy and compassion. My opening up about my own victimhood is IN NO WAY INTENDED to lessen his. This will likely be the last time I mention him at all since my goal is to share MY lived experience and on one else’s.

There will undoubtedly be people who will have the knee-jerk reaction that I am trying to defend my dad or clear his name. I have no intention of doing either. There is no doubt in my mind that my dad was guilty. I didn’t witness any instances first-hand, but there were things I did witness that, upon reflection, take me beyond a reasonable doubt. I have no plan to go into any of those details.

And

Our society stresses OR. Someone is either a decent/great person OR they are a monster, with very little, if any, middle ground. Nuance is something people just don’t have patience for. There are lots of famous names I could mention here. There are many crimes/deeds for which we vilify people. People that harm children are pretty damned high up on that list. And I can’t argue with that, nor will I attempt to.

While it is effortless to mark strangers as monsters, it is a lot harder to do when that person worked hard to make sure you had food, shelter, a good education. It’s harder when that person loved you, read to you when you were little, played games with you, made you and so many others laugh. It’s harder when that person volunteered so much of his time, and when possible, his treasure to help people and taught you to do the same. It’s hard when you witnessed that person doing so much good to throw that all away and label them: MONSTER.

My quest(ion)

I understand taking the position that no amount of good makes up for horrible actions. If you hold that position, I respect that. I will not try to argue with you or change it. Rather, I will be focusing on the question I feel is worth pursuing:

How do I hold all the good things that my dad did in one hand AND the horrible things he did in the other? I just can’t apply the OR here that society would dictate.

I make no promise (to myself or anyone else) that I will find some grand answer or make any startling realization. My hope is that I will, to borrow from Al Pacino, “open the door to things.” I also hope that I can shine a light on the difficulty of being the family of a sex offender; the difficulty in being caught in the blast radius of the actions of someone you love.

I don’t know how many posts there will be as part of this effort. And they will not all be in an unbroken sequence or series. I will need to take breaks to blog about other topics for my own well-being. I am creating a new category and tag “AND” that I will use to denote posts related to this important quest(ion). So, if this is content you would rather avoid, but you still want to read my brilliant posts on other topics, just skip the posts in the AND category.

I hope you will follow along as I try to sprinkle some AND in among the OR.