Television: Bakers Dozen (1982)

Before embarking on my journey east I did a good amount of analysis of what it was I was getting myself in to, like any dutiful Urban Planner would. Staying at HUD and doing the good work I knew I was capable of doing was not sustainable given my speech limitations. Speech therapy was questionable because it would draw attention to me and also almost all of the people in a support group I attended still stuttered after years and dollars of therapy. However, trekking to New York was no guarantee either. I didn’t know anyone there and the only knowledge I had about the City was what I gleaned from shows like The Naked City, Car 54 Where Are You? and Woody Allen flicks. San Francisco was similar in density and compactness but it only had 700,000 people while New York City had 8 million. But more importantly I didn’t know that much about the theater or being an actor and it wasn’t a world I was particularly passionate about. What I was immensely curious about were the voice and speech exercise I had learned at ACT because they made me less anxious and there were signs of improvement. Perhaps if I moved to New York City I could work in anonymity and one day have a free and clear voice and return to HUD. I did have an emotional sense of what I was getting myself into, a sixth sense. I knew that this experience would have to be painful, a mixture of fear, humiliation and dread, in order for me to be successful. Emotions I was already familiar with but this experience would more than likely be at a much higher level. If I was going to do it I needed to own it, be a man about it. Maybe Mother Nature had given me this disfluency because I wasn’t a manly specimen. I hadn’t ever met a Type A individual with a speech disfluency. So the search for a natural voice was really about a search for manhood. On a cool crisp dawn in late November of 1978 I exited JFK airport with two suitcases ready to start my journey.

I had been in the City for 2 1/2 – 3 years and I was driving myself with a daily routine of voice and speech exercises. I had also gotten a survival job with the Harris Poll, the public opinion research firm, and I was able to practice cold calling and trying to maintain my composure while practicing my voice and speech exercise. After months of this there were signs on incremental improvement. I had booked two theater jobs during that time with the Pan Asian Repertory Theater Company. The first role was as Brighella, an Inn Keeper in The Servant of Two Masters and it was a small role with few lines so my first New York City stage experience went off well. Plus, I had made a bunch of new friends and I was feeling more and more comfortable around them. But I had problems in the second play, And The Soul Shall Dance, because the character, Murata, was a substantial supporting role with numerous scenes. I struggled and exposed my speech issues on a number of occasions but these actors were now my friends and didn’t let on that it was an issue with them. I think I got through the run well enough. Then out of the blue I booked this episode on Bakers Dozen, a CBS Primetime cop comedy. The character was Donald Murphy, an FBI undercover operator with two scenes. None of the dialogue gave me any difficulty so my work was natural, focused and the words flowed like butter. And I was too naive to know what an opportunity it was to play opposite the show’s star, Ron Silver. My Mom called all the relatives and everyone she knew to give them a heads up on the air date. But to see myself on Primetime television just blew me away as well my family and friends in California. It was a huge asterisk so early in my career. When I think back I’ve always felt that this role was given to me by fate because I was still new to the business and I didn’t have a television or film credit to my name. And it proved to be such an emotional and psychological boost for me because now, what I was doing in search of a natural voice, didn’t seem as towering an obstacle. That job came at the right place and right time. I had given myself credibility. That show only lasted one season but for me it played out over a lifetime.