Q&A; WITH ERIC BOGOSIAN : ‘I’m Getting Closer to the Frenzy’

At times, Eric Bogosian still looks and talks like the in-your-face deejay he created and played in Oliver Stone’s movie “Talk Radio.” But he’s changed. The angry young man is now a happy 40-year-old, and it shows--even as he continues to create characterizations of angry, maladjusted males, such as the one in his latest one-man show, “Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead.” His new, 90-minute show--a series of vignettes of 12 dark, destructive characters--is set to premiere at the Mark Taper Forum today with a possible New York opening later this season.

In an interview at UC San Diego, where he was trying out parts of the show Friday night, he talked about his odyssey from poverty to wealth; his wife, who directs his work; his boys, aged 6 and 2; and his current screenwriting project, the adaptation of Stephen Fried’s book “Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia” for Paramount, as well as his new play, “subUrbia,” set to open at Lincoln Center in the spring.

*

Question: What is the genesis of the title “Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead”? I understand that versions of it popped up in other parts of the country under the name “Dog Show” because one of the characters becomes a metaphoric dog.

Answer: The show was being called “Dog Show.” Then an interviewer asked me what I do with my spare time and I said, “I pound nails in the floor with my forehead.” And I don’t know, the image is really appealing.

*

Q: Is this work in a similar vein to your earlier work?

A: Definitely related. It’s a child of the show I did when I was at Mark Taper last (“Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll,” in 1990). But this show is different in that I speak more directly to the audience, I steer them around. I play my characters, but I also play a wide range of opinions.

*

Q: Your opinions or your characters’ opinions?

A: Well, who am I? I think the question is what makes up a person. I am a composite of all sorts of people and that’s what I put out there on stage. This show is really a head-on collision between “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll” and the kind of persona I played in “Talk Radio.” I’m very opinionated, irritating, a devil’s advocate kind of guy. And in mixing it, I think I’m getting closer to the frenzy going on in my head.

*

Q: You say your characters all come from parts of yourself. There was a time when you were an angry person. Now you have two sons, a good marriage, critical acclaim and money. How has your work changed?

A: In 1983, I was strung-out and poor and completely unknown. Today I’m a semi-celebrity and I’m very happy in my work. I think the biggest change is that I’ve moved from being really angry about “When am I going to get mine?” to angry about “Why are things the way they are?” The comfort in my life makes it even more imperative that I open my eyes to AIDS, to starving children in Africa. I can’t just sit by the pool and close myself off.

*

Q: How did you start working with your wife, Jo Bonney?

A: She hired me to do a voice-over animation in 1980 and we were married two months later.

*

Q: She hired you to play a deejay?

A: And I charged her. I never charged anyone before. I was doing stuff for friends for free for years, but I said this chick’s going to pay me. And she never lets me forget it.

*

Q: What is it like to work with her?

A: She tells me when a bit isn’t working. I do a lot of stuff on the road, so when I go to various audiences there’s a tendency to go where the audience wants you to go. You hear the audience laughing and you don’t hear the audience being moved. So laughter will pull you toward sillier and sillier stuff. She tends to strip away stuff that’s obvious or silly.

*

Q: Has she played a critical role in the evolution of your work?

A: I was a bum when she met me. I was doing nothing all day long. Years later she told me she had never met anyone who did as little in a day as I did. In 1980, I would get up around noon and think about doing something and then not do it.

*

Q: You came from a middle-class Armenian family in Woburn, Mass. Your mother was a hairdresser, now a teacher. Your father was an accountant. Did you have any idea growing up what you were going to do?

A: I was an odd kid. I was very bright but I had fit-in problems. When we had theater in high school I took to it like a fish in water. There is no better image than dropping a fish that is landlocked into some water and watching it swim away. That’s the way I feel when I am on stage. Alive.

*

Q: Did you get support for this?

A: For me to go into the arts was not something that could be encouraged. I backed into this as a career, culminating in the early ‘80s with Joe Papp putting me in the New York Shakespeare Festival. That was a turning point when I realized I could make a living doing this. And also I reached a point where there was no turning back. I had always thought, “Oh well, I can always do something else.” But then I was too old and I couldn’t do anything else.

*

Q: What’s next, after you finish “Pounding Nails in the Floor”?

A: My new play, “subUrbia,” will be at Lincoln Center and that’s really exciting. I’m getting ready to turn in my first draft of the film script about Gia (based on Stephen Fried’s book “Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia”) for Paramount. I had been wanting to do something for years about female beauty in America, about the downside of being a beautiful woman, that it can be a very lonely place.

*

Q: Sounds as if you’re feeling pretty good about things.

A: You know how surfers say they are in the curl of the wave? I am in the curl of the wave and I don’t have to think about anything else. I feel confident, I know what it is I want to make and I have the opportunities to make it. What else could you want? I’d say it’s perfect.