Talent is an amazing thing.
Not everyone has it, and some who do fail to cultivate it enough to turn it into something really special.
I’m sad to say I probably fall into the second category. There were certainly things I enjoyed doing and were somewhat good at, but there’s only one thing at which I was truly exceptional.
Writing on deadline.
For the first 15 years of my newspaper career, I covered sports. Especially when it came to baseball and college basketball, that meant covering evening events. In some instances, for example when I covered the Los Angeles Dodgers, that meant games that ended around 10:30 p.m. and my deadline for filing was 11 p.m.
It’s even worse than it sounds. When the game ended, I had to go down four levels to the Dodger clubhouse, do some quick interviews to get quotes and then hurry back up to write my 500-word story and file it.
Most of the other people who had such short deadlines wrote part of their stories before the game was finished. They wrote play by play, also known as “running,” and then topped it off after the game ended. It was all that was expected of them, but their stories didn’t sing.
I was proud of what I could do. I used to say that I couldn’t sing or dance, but I could write a good 500-word story from scratch in 15 minutes.
“But what I really want to do is direct …”
Say what?
Sorry. I went Hollywood on you for a few seconds.
I have heard it said that everyone has a skill, one thing at which they are truly exceptional. I could say that’s nice, but of course it depends on what the skill is. Some people, like my brilliant wife, understand scientific concepts only two or three people in the world can get.
Others can belch the national anthem.
Most of us are somewhere in between.
There are several people close to me who really should have been successful, yet weren’t. My friend Mick moved across the country 45 years ago in hopes of writing screenplays. He had tremendous talent and worked exceptionally hard, but had only sporadic success.
In fact, I used to say that of all the people who went to Hollywood wanting to write, my friend was in the top 5 percent when it came to success. Unfortunately, only the top 2 percent do well enough to live on.
Note: The numbers are pulled out of thin air, but they make the point I intended to make.
My sister Hilary may be an even better example. She wanted to be an actress from a very young age, and she was truly exceptional in her talent. She did community theater through high school, and really blossomed when she majored in drama at the University of Virginia.
In the second semester of her first year in college, she got a part in the Virginia production of “Romeo and Juliet.”
Juliet.
Yes, she got one of the greatest female roles ever written in her first year of college.
Four years later, she took part in her alma mater’s summer program and got a part in the production of “The Miracle Worker.”
Yes, Helen Keller.
My sister should have been a star, and she spent the better part of two decades living in New York and trying out for productions on and off Broadway.
She did workshop plays and other small productions, but never got her big break. She later told me that her approach to her career had been wrong. She had wanted to be judged solely by her work and had very little interest in networking. As it turned out, though, productions had become so expensive that jobs went to people who were known to be dependable.
I did some acting as well, nearly all of it in my early 20s. My stuff was just community and college theater, but I had two wonderful opportunities that stand out in my memory. I did Tennessee Williams’ wonderful play “The Glass Menagerie” in 1972, playing the Gentleman Caller, and getting one or two good reviews for my performance.
A year later, I had the lead in a community college production of “Black Comedy,” a play in which darkness and light were reversed. When the lights were on, the characters were staggering around in the dark. It was a lot of fun.
That was pretty much it for me, washed up at age 23.
I remember how wonderful it felt to be on stage, and I remember right around that time, asking my mother (veteran of stage and screen) if she thought I could make it as an actor.
She was honest with me. “I think if you worked hard and had some good luck, you might have some success,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s your real talent as it is Hilary’s.”
We may still have a star in the family, though. My nephew Nathan — Hilary’s son — is already working professionally in the Boston area and getting rave reviews from big-time publications like the Boston Globe. He’s nearly 50 years younger than I am, so I have to hope I’ll still be around when he wins his first Tony … or Emmy … or Oscar.
Talent and hard work are a wonderful combination, but best of all is being able to do them in pursuit of something you love.
You go, Nathan.
Make us all proud.