Topic: Character Interviews
An interview with Louis Seiffer
The Inside the Actor’s Head Studio (with Thames Lipton) Host Thames Lipton gets up close and personal with the new smash sensation Hollywood movie star, Louis Seiffer.Lipton: Welcome to Inside the Actor’s Studio, Louis. I know our audience is thrilled that you would honor us with your appearance today. Thank you for being here.
Seiffer: Thanks. You’re welcome. And please, call me Lou.
Lipton: Very well, Lou. (pause) Lou, if you don’t mind me stating the obvious, you are an enormous man! Even bigger than you seem in your fantastically successful movie, Fiddler’s Follies. We even had to search the studio for a chair large enough to accommodate you. Just how tall are you? What is your weight?
Seiffer: (broad proud smile, a shift of weight from side to side, producing sounds of seating boards in pain) Seven foot six, three fifty, give or take, it depends.
Lipton: Depends? Depends on what?
Seiffer: It all depends on how much attention I am getting. I swell in stature the more people believe in me.
Lipton: (Looking surprised, eyes widened) Really? Such a curious quality! I’d like to get back to that in a moment, but I know everyone is just dying to know how you came from obscurity to movie superstar stature in such a short while. How did you get your big break?
Seiffer: Well, I’ve been flying under the radar for, hell, seems like thousands of years, you know, doing bit parts in any kind of nightmarish foul scripts I can get into. I’ve actually been written up in the Bible, but nobody reads that anymore. Just as well, the reviews weren’t that great. Anyway, my break into the big time came when Marvin Wilson sold the movie rights to his best-selling book, Owen Fiddler. Owen Fiddler bought the rights, you know, and produced the movie. He and I go back, he owed me one, so I got the part.
Lipton: I see, and of course we were all astonished to learn that Owen Fiddler was a real person.
Seiffer: Oh, he’s real, all right, the (bleep)ing (bleep)hole. (Lou bares his funky yellow fang-like teeth)
Lipton: What? So you don’t much care for the man who helped launch your Hollywood career?
Seiffer: Like I said, he owed me. Now he figures he has no need of me anymore. That hurts my ego. I’m barely three foot tall around him these days. (bleep)ing little (bleep)head.
Lipton: And again with the size and stature changes thing! How odd! Can you demonstrate that for us?
Seiffer: I have little control over it. It just happens. Takes a strong personality to make me change. I brought a clip from Fiddler’s Follies with me, though. It’s the scene where Owen Fiddler, myself and Frenda Fiddler meet in the never-world. Frenda is, as we all know, an outstanding phenomenon, a powerful force onstage or off. This scene was done in one take, and it demonstrates that quality in me that you and everyone else seem so (bleep)ing interested in.
Lipton: Very well, let’s let our audience view the clip. (motions to the stage hand)
(The screen lights up with the scene a dull gray ethereal room. Louis Seiffer is lying in a bed, appearing weak. Owen Fiddler stands next to the bed. A glow in the partially opened doorway begins to intensify. It simmers, then boils and pops. It bursts like a bomb going off into the room, slamming the door off its hinges. A display of blinding white lights revolve and spin around a sparkling core that dances about. Lou Seiffer looks impressed. Owen stares in awe. The light show begins shrinking and coalescing, settling into a human-like form. Frenda Fiddler now stands in the middle of the room in an alabaster translucence of divine spirit. She takes a firm stance, assumes a countenance of authority and begins to speak.)
“I need the both of you to remain quiet and listen intently to what I have to say. I do not have time to repeat myself. My words will be chosen carefully in order to convey accuracy and truth.”
(Lou Seiffer gets incensed and bursts out of the bed. He takes form as a horned indigo pig-devil wielding a five-pronged spear and levitates into a hover above her head. His breath is a visible puke yellow wind that stinks like the decomposing dead. He roars at her)
“YOU INSIGNIFICANT LITTLE SHE-SWINE, DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”(Frenda looks firm into his eyes) “Sure, I know who you are. You are the representation of fear that resides in the hearts of humanity. You are really nothing at all, although you think yourself to be the greatest of the gods.”
(Lou starts to lose color, size and elevation as she continues)
“You’ve made an eternal career choice as the one who tempts mankind into mortal deception and fleshly pleasure. You lull the materially fortunate into a spiritual slumber as they recline in their luxurious castles built upon sand. You tantalize the “have-nots” with temporal elixirs of profane pleasures and deadly desire-fulfillments. You feel all puffed up with a false sense of power that is just an illusion. Humankind grants you that power through its ignorance and fear. You must just love it when someone commits a foolish deed and then says, ‘Oh, that wasn’t me, the Devil made me do it.’”
(Camera cuts to a close-up of Lou - he’s back in the bed now, appearing shaken. Frenda stands over him)
“Humanity has built you up in their minds as the most powerful of evil spirits, some terrible demonized deity with the power to kill and damn the soul. For thousands of years the churches have falsely glorified your status as the mighty punisher of sins, holding spiritual freedom and enlightenment at bay out of fear. As if your power to rule over people’s will and destiny were in fact a reality. You and I both know that’s not the truth, don’t we now?”
(Lou is the size of a toddler now and lies still as Frenda concludes)
“We each hold the power of choice. We each decide with our thoughts, deeds and actions whether to create Hell for ourselves or to move toward Heaven. I choose to not listen anymore to your insipid prattle and lame threats. Frankly, I’m getting tired of all of this and quite bored with your presence. Oh, and by the way, did I tell you your breath stinks?”
(Frenda swells her aura into a bright red sphere and shouts)
“BE GONE!”(Louis Seiffer vanishes)
(The screen goes blank and lights come up to the sound of thunderous applause)
Lipton: Outstanding! Lou, thank you so much for … Lou? (looks around, incredulous) Where did Lou disappear to? (motions to the director to cut to a commercial)
***
