Lee Kirk

*program note: Unfortunately, we were unable to record the audio for this podcast in the usual way so you will notice diminished sound quality. Apologies for the annoyance.

Intro: Fenty, plastic surgery, self-acceptance, Wild Wild Country, Paris Hilton, the Donner Party, where do you stand on documentaries?, feeling trapped.
Let Me Run This By You: letting go of unnecessary shame
Interview: We talk to Lee Kirk. The power of TTS marketing department, not getting movement to music, juggling too many things mentally as an actor, being young and playing old, being stuck in your head, how Lee got into writing, writing teacher John Truby , John Cabrera and a certain Panasonic DVX, The Man Who Invented the Moon, the horrors of auditioning, writing his own showcase piece, Sean Gunn's The Dumbwaiter, learning life lessons at the Chopin Theatre, directing for film and TV, The Giant Mechanical Man, site-specific theatre, feeling the heat in Avcollie's class, Acting with a capital A, Black Box Academy, and well-intentioned G.O.D. Squad parties.

FULL TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1: (00:08)
And Jen Bosworth wrote me this and I'm Gina [inaudible]. We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet?

Speaker 2: (00:36)
You know, I look at, I'm sure there's like rubbing alcohol in there and

Speaker 3: (00:40)
That's one of their tricks is they make everything look like it comes out of a doctor.

Speaker 2: (00:45)
So people are like, Ooh, I'm going to get no bow tie. You know, I was thinking like, my agents keeps sending me. They send everybody, it's not just me like injectable auditions, which I never take because I hate, I have these lines, you know, like right there. My uncle really has them too. And anyway, I got them from my mom and I was like, maybe a little Botox, but the problem with Botox is like anything it's addictive as hell. So like, clearly if you look at people, they start with one little thing. Right. And then they're like, Oh, Oh, but over here. Oh, but here. And then they ended up looking like that.

Speaker 3: (01:21)
You know what I, what I, I also think about that. Um, you do it. I think people do it because they, they want to look younger, whether it's injectables or fillers or, um, having surgery. I think what ends up happening even to people who profess that they really like that. Look in addition to the fact that people all start to look the same, um, P people stop looking like themselves. And it's very disconcerting to be interacting with somebody who you knew to look one way and now they don't look like themselves. So in a way, it doesn't matter how smooth your skin is or because if you don't look like you, then it hasn't worked. Right.

Speaker 2: (02:08)
Right. And then it, and then it's very hard to have normal interactions. I told you how my friend didn't recognize her own mother after. Oh my God. So my friend, my friend used to, she's not really my friend anymore, but anyway, and she, she went to her sister's wedding and her mother had, had so much, and she hadn't seen her mother in a year and her mother had, had so much plastic surgery. Then when her mother was walking her sister down the aisle, she didn't recognize she didn't, she couldn't tell if it was her own mother. Oh my God. Like, it's, it looks like, kind of like my mom, but can you imagine that I would have a panic attack and pass out if that, if I didn't recognize my own mother.

Speaker 3: (02:50)
Yeah. That's like invasion of the body snatcher.

Speaker 2: (02:53)
You said it was the me, I think that's my mom. Oh my God. That's horrible. We all really

Speaker 3: (03:00)
Just need to like work on self-acceptance. That's the most beautiful thing. I mean, not to sound cheesy, but like that, if you really, and this is true for me personally, if I feel good, I look good. If I don't feel good, I don't look good. It's very straightforward. Yeah.

Speaker 2: (03:16)
Yeah. And it's yeah. And it's, it's not, um, God, I think we are so it's so simple. And yet people, we, we, we loved like, like our guests, Shana was saying, we love to be a mess. We'd love to make things more complicated than they are. We'd love to really get in there. And it ha we have to be this huge ordeal instead of just saying, Oh, let me work on self-acceptance. Um, and that brings me to I've I just was watching wild, wild country.

Speaker 3: (03:46)
Yeah. Tell us. Okay.

Speaker 2: (03:48)
Okay. So I was trying to watch the Paris Hilton one, but I couldn't watch a skinny person. I just was like, I can't watch the skinny person. So let me watch.

Speaker 3: (