THEATER REVIEW : ACTOR LOOKS TO STARS FOR KEY TO ROLES

The character Mickey in Bill Hauptmann’s “Gillette” is the “archetypical good ol’ boy,” according to the actor who plays him. He is also a Virgo with Aries rising.

Jim Haynie may sprinkle his conversation with the casual profanity of a ‘60s survivor (the 46-year-old actor spent 10 years working for San Francisco rock promoter Bill Graham), but you can bet that sooner or later he’ll come around to matters spiritual.

Astrology has provided insight into his quest for self-understanding for nearly 17 years, Haynie said. Why not use what he has learned to probe into the characters he plays?

Early in rehearsals for “Gillette,” which continues at the La Jolla Playhouse through Sunday, Haynie let the playwright in on his astrological interpretation.

“I told him I think of Mickey as kind of like Hank Williams (a Virgo),” Haynie said. “He’s not totally organized; he’s a little wild and crazy and he runs off and gets involved in various things, but these ideas--he develops and then presents them after having thought about them in his spare time like a Virgo might, such as when we go out to the prairie and I’m all set for these gals. I’ve got stories to tell ‘em, I’ve got an answer for everything.”

Although Haynie says he lives more spontaneously, he admits to being a lot like Mickey. “I’m a free-spirited son-of-a-gun and always have been.”

In 1963, the Oklahoma-born, aspiring Aquarian actor (with Aries rising) made his first hopeful trip to L.A. It was dismal.

“The agents did such wonderful things for me as let me watch the bulldozers developing their property,” he said. “I ended up making a lot of Shakey’s pizzas, being a manager of a pizza parlor, from whence I became a drunk. I used to be brought home in the mornings and tossed on my doorstep. It certainly didn’t live up to my dreams.”

Haynie dried himself out, went to San Francisco and spent six months in the park performing with the San Francisco Mime Troupe before he joined up with Bill Graham. After years of hanging lights, sampling psychedelic drugs, wiring sound and traveling with rock groups, he went back to acting.

His career got a big boost from a starring role, opposite Peter Coyote, in the premiere of Sam Shepard’s “True West” at the Magic Theater in San Francisco. When the play moved to New York, Haynie found himself in the middle of an explosive feud between playwright and producer. Shepard wanted Haynie to continue his role; producer Joseph Papp disagreed. Eventually the whole production suffered, with Shepard and director Robert Woodruff walking out.

When he called Shepard a few years ago to get permission to do “True West” in Los Angeles, the rights had already been promised to “the Quaid boys” (Randy and Dennis), “but maybe you could be in Jessica’s project,” the playwright reportedly said.

“Jessica’s project” turned out to be Jessica Lange’s film, “Country,” and the role Haynie landed was a juicy one. He played Arlen Brewer, a neighboring farmer who kills himself when times get hard.

It reminded Haynie of his own father, who committed suicide. It was his father’s death that sent the actor on a “reorganization,” a “realignment kind of inner exploration.” He has been studying astrology and counseling others about their charts ever since.

“I don’t separate my spiritual life from my acting life, my work, because I can’t,” Haynie said. “I’m not interested in keeping it separate. I think that is a certain kind of mythology that’s been imposed by those who use workers. They want you to separate your work from yourself, because they’re only interested in the work.”

Good guy or bad guy, he tries to stick to roles that have something illuminating to say, Haynie said. Of his role as Mickey at the La Jolla Playhouse, he said:

“There are qualities in this character that are spiritual in origin--and there always are. That is going to relate to a large number of people. I hope to spark people’s realization of themselves, not just the self that other people think they are, or even that they might think they are.”

“You ask a person, ‘Who are you?’ and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m a cashier at so-and-so.’ That’s not true,” he said. “That’s not who you are. That’s a job you do at the present, but that’s a very, very minuscule part of yourself. Your self is so much wider and deeper and richer. That’s what I’m looking (for), to contact people on that level, on that spiritual level where they wake up, where they are charmed to some degree, but not charmed to the degree that they can’t see themselves.”

Haynie, who is so distressed about Reagan-era “repression” it is best not to get him started on the topic, says he is working toward the time when people all think of themselves as artists, “an artless society, not one that doesn’t have truth and beauty and love in it and beautiful forms that we call art, but maybe someday we won’t have to call it that. It will just be part of our life.”

Meanwhile, he’s grateful for an opportunity like “Gillette,” which gave him nine luxurious weeks to develop a well-written character.

“It’s just so nourishing compared to what I’ve got to do in TV-land,” he said.

In addition to roles in “Country,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Silverado,” “The Right Stuff” and a dozen other films, Haynie keeps busy in series television. This fall he will appear in six “Dallas” episodes as a private eye (a Libra, he says). He’ll return to San Diego in early October to start filming “From Hollywood to Deadwood,” an independent project starring Haynie in another detective role (this time a Leo.)

It pays the bills, but Haynie regards much of television as “awful, meaningless, trite, garbage things which have no connection to the human spirit at all. They are the worst side of humanity, the ‘All right, that’s an enemy, shoot him. Oh, they’re shooting at us, let’s shoot back. Oh, let’s crash some cars. Oh, let’s bleed on the sidewalk, let’s tear this woman’s clothes.’ I mean, it has no connection to life in the mind.

“I say the spiritual life is really the only thing that I care about,” he said. “There is no other raison d’etre, that’s the only one.

“I used to be a carpenter and I built buildings, but I generally built them for the paycheck, at that time. But if I were to build a building now, the spirit that goes into it would be the important thing, not the nails in the boards.”