by Mark Connelly
Everybody hates Sonny Lane now. The pile-on was predictable from the Joe Rogan interviews to the SNL skits. He wasn’t in R Kelly or Weinstein territory but as cancelled as can be. Not facing jail but enduring the St. Helena of Betty Ford and Dr. Drew mea culpas. He’d always been a bad boy. The cute bad boy for six seasons on Lost in the Village, the witty bad boy standup on two HBO specials, the brash bad boy host of the Golden Globes, and smash star of the whole Bad Boy Buster film franchise – Buster does Vegas, Buster Busts Broadway, Buster in Brazil. He was raw. He was wild. Letterman and Leno sat back and let him go rogue when he burst on the scene, and until last year he held his own with Howard Stern and Jimmy Kimmel. He was edgy, but in the early days he knew how to skate the line without going over. He was famous for starting a smutty joke on late-night TV then muttering under his breath, making a winsome grin, or sighing “you fill in the rest.” He dated models. He dated porn stars – cis and trans. He dated Jessica Tate and her daughter at the same time. He was raw. He was wild. Then came the allegations and the Diddy videos. And suddenly, so suddenly, he went from loveable bad boy to Cosby predator. And so the lights went out, and Sonny went down like the Titanic with no band playing. TV dropped him. Vegas dropped him. Hollywood dropped him. The nastier clips of his shows and movies were compiled and spilled on YouTube. Tearful ex’s multiplied on TikTok with bruises and horror stories. It seemed everyone had a tale to tell. After his coke bust, Sonny went into rehab.
Now he’s clawing his way back, trying to start his second act. Doing the ultimate makeover vehicle, Death of a Salesman, Off-Broadway. No red carpet here, no limos slipping up on opening night, and no real marquee. His name is not in lights but in six-inch-high letters painted on a board hanging over a common doorway. The Rostrum Theatre boasts 180 seats, all of them uncomfortable. His version of Miller’s classic – produced by, directed by, and starring Sonny Lane – has a three-week run. And I’m in it!
Sonny cast me as Howard, his boss. I played the part at the Intiman in Seattle last year, so maybe he saw the video clip on Facebook. And like the rest of the cast, I’m a safe choice, an Off-Broadway veteran. Competent, reliable, and unknown. I owe Sonny this part. It might boost my career. The play is getting a lot of attention. Critics, former friends, and influencers are showing up out of curiosity, most hoping to see a meltdown. But Sonny is holding his own. In his baggy double-breasted suit and shaggy gray wig, he looks like a forlorn scarecrow, dragging himself across the stage. Your heart breaks watching him wince when he picks up his sample cases. He chews up the scenery in a few scenes and gets mawkish, but mostly he’s doing what he has to. Show everyone he’s got the discipline to manage two hours onstage, remember lines, and do a yeomanlike job. It’s his MFA masters thesis. From standup to Stanislavsky. From brash badboy to battered bum. So maybe a few critics and agents will see the play and take note of me. Maybe Sonny will get his act together and remember his castmates, and, if he ever gets a movie again, take me along.
Still, I loathe Sonny Lane. I’ve got that standard working actor attitude about stars. Since college I’ve done thirty productions. Off Broadway, Milwaukee Rep, Papermill Playhouse in Jersey, dinner theater in Austin and Atlanta, summer stock in Oregon and Ohio. I have had big parts in big plays in small theaters. Torvald in A Doll House in Pittsburgh, Ralph in Awake and Sing in Ann Arbor. And I have done TV. Two gigs on Law and Order. Wordless witness pointing to the body in one episode, and jury foreman with four words “We have, your honor” in another. I did a Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing a waiter serving water to Larry David and Jeff Garlin. There was an impromptu back-and-forth with Larry about whether the water was bottled or tap. My adlibs brought a smile from Larry who rolled his fingers under the table to keep going. But my lines were cut. When it aired I was mute, just pouring glasses. The scene cut to Jeff talking about Susie. I was in Margin Call and had a scene with Stanley Tucci. Shot in an elevator my twenty seconds included a lot of closeups and reaction shots. Great scene but it never made the final cut. Still, it looks good on my reel. I also have an outtake with George Clooney. Eighteen seconds of Up in the Air no one ever saw but the editor. So that’s my cv, my resume, my legacy after twenty years of auditions, casting calls, call backs, rehearsals, and road shows. To make ends meet, I teach theater part-time at Westport Community College, online, of course. I also do local radio commercials for Jersey City Toyota and Garden State Savings and Loan – “where dreams become plans.”
I’m that kind of actor. Not famous but working. Not rich but not waiting tables. The guy with the reel and cv. A wanna-be, a bit actor, a loser to some; a role model to others. Doing dinner theater in Denver or Waiting for Godot in Des Moines, I remember Carl Sandburg’s poem “Muckers.” Twenty men are watching ditch diggers toiling in the mud. Ten mutter “it’s a hell of a job,” and ten pray “Jesus, I wish I had the job.” I’ve never done Broadway, had only four words on network TV, and been in three movies if you look close. But I can say I did a scene with Clooney, was an extra in Flight, and had a pair of walkons in Boardwalk Empire. And, like most, I have my “almost’s.” I almost got an audition for The Sopranos. I was almost cast in a pilot. I almost got the roadshow of Wicked, ensemble, of course. I’m that kind of actor.
And like that kind of actor I detest talentless “stars” like Sonny Lane. The smug, self-satisfied millionaire bozos on talk shows spewing about their concern for the planet while they private jet to Maui and do celebrity tours to adoring fans. Those flashy, shallow talentless types. The Sonny Lane types. I’ve got that working stage actor attitude about movie stars who need a dozen takes to get out two lines and rely on a soundtrack to supply their emotion. Those types.
But right now I’m working Off-Broadway, again. You know the scene. You saw it on TV or read it in high school. I’m Howard the boss, onstage for ten minutes.
You know how it goes. Willy walks in while I’m playing with my wire recorder. I’m downstage, with my back to Sonny Lane. He shuffles around trying to get my attention. I ignore him. When he asks to have a word, I play a recording of my kid reciting state capitals. The whole time Sonny is shifting uneasily back and forth, trying to get a word in. When Sonny tells me he’d rather not travel and work in town, I dismiss him. When he asks for sixty-five dollars a week, I shrug my shoulders. There’s just no spot for him. He offers to take fifty a week. I shrug and shake my head. There’s just no job for Sonny. When he starts his long story about Dave Singleman I sigh and glance at my watch. I act bored. He begs me for forty a week. I shrug him off. No way. Then the big scene Sonny choreographed like Balanchine. I slightly pivot to the left with my back to the audience. Facing me from upstage, Sonny looks over my shoulder to the house crying, “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!” (I heard gasps opening night. Sonny can really milk a line). I turn, so the audience sees my callous reaction. I shake my head and smirk. When he claims he once made one-seventy a week, I lose my patience, tell him to drop off his samples, and exit. He’s canned.
I’m behind in my rent and maxed out on Visa and Discover, but I’m living the dream. For the next three weeks every night – except Mondays – I get to fire Sonny Lane.
Mark Connelly’s fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Cream City Review, The Ledge, The Great American Literary Magazine, Home Planet News, Smoky Blue Arts and Literary Magazine, Change Seven, Light and Dark, 34th Parallel, The Chamber Magazine, and Digital Papercut. He received an Editor’s Choice Award in Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver Short Story Contest in 2014; in 2015 he received Third Place in Red Savina Review’s Albert Camus Prize for Short Fiction. In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes, which received the Clay Reynolds Prize.
January House Literary Journal 
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