Playwright, Actor, Critic, Harvey Perr: RIP – UPDATE: Uh, Not.
Colin Mitchell | Apr 02, 2010 | Comments 19 |
Crazy. I was just about to write what I thought was going to be a funny piece about Harvey Perr, how I stumbled upon his writings purely by accident, he writes some of the best reviews of the past year – in my opinion – and then he goes AWOL for the last couple months.
Well, his complete lack of output lately struck me as very odd, so I did a little more research. It appears Harvey passed away recently, I’m not exactly sure when – he was 69. Sad. Especially for us. Was looking forward to hearing more of his biting wit raining down on some of today’s plays. Alas, it’s not to be. To his family and friends and associates, condolences from the Lemon. Here’s a little snippet I found written by Harvey and posted at the The Last Bohemians site.
Here’s Harvey reminiscing about his days in “the Biz”:
I lived most of my childhood in Flatbush and East Flatbush, Brooklyn. My father was in prison from the time I was a year old, so I had a lot to write about. In 1955, I went to London and saw a production of “Waiting for Godot,” which really changed my life. I went to the New School for Social Research. I wrote a play about being a working-class Jew, and it was about my own life. It was called “Upstairs, Sleeping.”
Edward Albee was conducting a workshop at the Circle in the Square. I was about 23. When Albee started the Playwrights’ Unit, he asked me to join and that started my career.
In 1965, I was asked to go to Universal Studios for a screenwriting seminar. I went out there for two weeks. I came back to New York. They called and asked me if I wanted to come out there on a one-year contract. I had no choice. At the time, I had a wife and small daughter. We were poor. I was working in the credit office of a trucking company that had just gone bankrupt. I said, “Of course.” It was the last thing I wanted to do. I felt it was a mistake, but I went anyway. The only thing of mine that wound up on the screen was “Tobruk,” this terrible war movie with Rock Hudson. It was incoherent. I was called to rewrite some of that stuff.
When my career as a screenwriter went out the window after a year, I didn’t have enough money to take my family back to New York. I really became a playwright in Los Angeles. I was stuck there. I started doing my plays at the Mark Taper Forum. To make a living, I worked in the music business.
Ed Field thinks of me as a bohemian because he loves my writing and I’ve never made a penny. I have never compromised and I have never given it up. I never thought of myself as a bohemian. I thought of myself as a survivor. Maybe they are one and the same thing. I never knew where I fit in. I have been produced commercially, but I have never had a commercial success. It is no longer important to me if I become successful or accepted. I think it’s been a good life. I’ve written things that I wanted to write.
I didn’t really become politicized until the 1980s. The director Joe Chaikin really politicized me. He made me look at the world in a different way. I’m sort of sorry that I’ve become so political because it makes living in the world so difficult. I’ve been on this earth 67 years and there is a lot in America that I am unhappy with, but I could always live here. I now find it impossible to live here.
I barely knew ya, Harvey, but I already miss ya. Go check out some of his reviews, Lemon Heads. Good stuff.
UPDATE: News of Harvey Perr’s death – REPORTED BY ME – have been greatly exaggerated. Please feel free to mock and ridicule the author of this post at your leisure.
Filed Under: ponderings • x-in memoriam
Uh, are you certain of your source here? I went to Harvey Perr’s Facebook Wall, and he appaears to have written something on it yesterday
No, I’m not. I remain uncertain of my own breathing sometimes. Maybe I’m still stuck in April Fool’s Land. I’ll do some more checking. Ah, but it’s so BORING fact checking…
Just wrote a message on his facebook page. I’ll get to the bottom of this, don’t your worry. Heh.
I see that here are two reviews by Harvey Perr at stageandcinema.com that are dated March 21.
Really? I think I’m having a stroke! I haven’t seen any new ones in at least a month’s time. Hmm. More fact checking. Grrrrrr.
You realize I’m gonna leave this post up anyway, don’t you, Don? Just for entertainment’s sake. It’s just how I roll. The mocker must withstand the mock, even if he’s mocking himself. Or something…Clear!
Yup. There they are. NEWS ALERT: The news of Harvey Perr’s death has been greatly exagerrated. BY ME! Something must have gone haywire with my link to the site and it never updated. Damnit. Now I have more work to do!
I’m no lawyer, but I doubt that it’s a great idea to leave up a post with inaccurate information that someone has died. If you want to mock yourself, you should probably write a new post that makes it clear that Perr is alive before you go on to do the self-mocking.
Fun post for a Friday, anyway. Don’t feel so bad, we all mess up sometimes. (Just not always so publicly) ;)
You’re probably right, Don. Coming up!
Oh, thanks, Daria!
[...] this post for clarity, apparently written by my evil [...]
Colin,
you can add to the title something about it being a mistake. I was fooled a couple years ago when I wrote a post and that was how I rectified the story: http://illuminatela.com/24-hour-service-at-metro-on-weekends
I always wanted to live long enough to read my own obituary. Good stuff. Actually enjoyed reading it. And the comments. And tell Don Shirley thanks. Which of his friends recognized me at The Wake? Thought I was unrecognizable these days. Thanks too for making me younger than I am. I will be 72 on Sunday. If I live that long!
PS I was wondering why you weren’t posting quotes from my reviews for such a long time. Got it now.
Harvey! There you are! You’re very welcome. Happy Birthday. And please keep up the good work.
[...] April 2nd, 2010, at 1:47pm, I killed critic and wit Harvey Perr. Exactly one hour and twenty five minutes later, at 3:12pm, I raised [...]
[...] questions have been beaten to death, but were recently resurrected when blogger Colin Mitchell posted an obituary for the very undead theatre critic, playwright and actor Harvey Perr. Mitchell believed [...]
Your frivolous attempt to abdicate yourself from any responsibility, has given creedence to the belief that most bloggers are lazy, self-indulgent and spew half-baked knowledge off the top of their heads to an equally uniformed following which eats up said underdone offerings and regurgitates them all over the net. No wonder nobody believes in anything anymore.
On the other hand, you’ve probaly given Harvey Perr the best thing he could have asked for…wider attention to his brilliant writing and analytic criticism. Now there’s someone worth reading. Long may he live!
Good lord, Jay, if you’re interpretation of my response is a “frivolous attempt to abdicate myself from any responsibility” there really is no hope for intelligent communication anymore. At least in your specific case.
But agreed on Harvey. Love the guy’s writing.
[...] theater, or ANYBODY. So I got together with my son Lex, and Wes Walker, Guy Zimmerman, others like Harvey Perr, and we had a discussion about the idea of putting on work with “no critics”, and also [...]
[...] or ANYBODY. So I got together with my son Lex, and Wes Walker, Guy Zimmerman, others like Harvey Perr, and we had a discussion about the idea of putting on work with “no critics”, and also to make [...]