Last week I had breakfast with David Cale. We run into each other from time to time here in the East Village. We always say "Let's get together" and then we always get busy and let it slide. But finally we did it. We met at Cafe Mogador on St. Mark's Place. I ordered eggs over easy. David had the Foul Madamas.
I've known David for (gasp) twenty years. I was but a youth when I met him. He was already a star in the performance art world. I saw him in his one-person show The Redthroats at Second Stage and I've been smitten ever since. David is a true artist. The kind of performer who blends humor and poetry with the ease and grace of a figure skater. He's performed at major theaters across the country and been featured on Bette Midler's Mondo Beyondo on HBO. He's also won one OBIE and two Bessie Awards.
Currently David is making a recording of his hit musical show Floyd and Clea Under The Western Sky. He was so excited to have the opportunity to make this recording with some of the best musicians in the country. I can't wait to hear it. The show opened at the Long Wharf Theatre and played to acclaim in New York at Playwrights Horizons. But the story of how the show came into being is what really fascinated me. It all came about because David fell in love with a character he was playing in a film.
The film is The Slaughter Rule starring David Morse and Ryan Gosling.
New York Times flim critic Stephen Holden said: "To the smaller role of Gideon's old friend Studebaker, a local country singer who lurches around in an alcoholic daze wearing a stocking cap and a miner's lamp, the New York performance artist David Cale brings a heart-tugging vulnerability. Tough, plaintive country music, beautifully chosen and performed and mostly of the vintage honky-tonk and swing variety, plays a large role in the movie. Of all the human activities, it is the only reliable balm, alcohol being a portal to violence."
David couldn't let him go. Thus was born Floyd and Clea.
I sat enthralled listening to David tell me the story of creating this character. It's so brave to take a character that is so far from oneself - Cale is British and couldn't be further from a drunken mid-westerner - and continue to explore it as a musical no less. He truly goes out on a limb. This is what makes him a great artist.
We sat for nearly two hours over breakfast. We ordered another cappuccino. Our conversation wandered over personal terrain, a mutual friend we shared concern for. He told me about working with Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper in the recent Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera. David was not at all certain he would get along with Mr. Cumming, also British and enormously talented. But the two became fast friends. David spoke with great admiration of Cumming, saying he "loves his way of being in the world". Well, that's the way I feel about David Cale. I love his way of being in the world. His sparkling intelligence, his gentle demeanor, the way he can tell a story and make you feel you're the only one in the world worth talking to...this is why I live in New York. Because some days I get to spend with heroes. Some days there breakfast with David Cale.
