S2E9: Frank Sheppard

Episode Transcript:

Frank: Okay, how was that? Is that all right? That's okay?


[music]


Evy: Hello, and welcome to "Word Up Podcast." I'm Evy.

Webster: And I'm Webster.

Evy: And today we're here with Frank Sheppard.

Frank: Good evening.

Webster: What an intro.

Evy: Yeah, you always mesmerize me with your voice.

Frank: It gets me in trouble.

Evy: So Frank, you're a poet, you're an artist, you're a performer, you're an actor. I missed something already, I think.

Frank: No, I am what they call me at the moment. Sometimes they call me a beatnik actor, you know, a jazz actor in that terms. But this poet thing has come up lately in the last year or so. It's because I began doing the spoken word quite regularly thanks to you, and Ennio BLESZ over there getting me involved in this whole circle of things. And then I've been hearing from people that I'm a poet. I write. That's true. I have been blessed with knowing poets. And that goes back some years in San Francisco, where I produced some plays of some poets.

I got to meet a great poet called Baraka, Amiri Baraka back in 1967, '68 when I was in high school. And because there was this racial disturbance at my high school in my last year, and I got introduced to him. And he took me under his wing and we drove around in the dead of the night because everything was under secret. And there was like this racial trip going on. It was my first introduction to dealing with all kinds of things because I was involved in other ways in athletics and a student at this school and I had to be a part of integrating this high school. And after being there for four years that spring of my graduation year, something broke out between a Black student, a girl, and a White guy.

And he took it upon himself to get this other person named Anthony Imperiale, who was trying to make a movement towards dealing with what was happening with the Italians and the Blacks in 1967, '68 when the whole Black movement was going on. So Imperiale was talking about, “What about White power?” So when this guy went to Imperiale, they began to picket the school, because the White guy had gotten suspended and the girl didn't. And what had happened was one day after school, a bunch of people drove up. And the Blacks had to take this bus. We would bus to school. We took the public bus almost seven miles every day to school in this White neighborhood to integrate it.

And these people showed up and they start beating people on their heads with baseball bats and things of that nature. And I wasn't at that bus stop. I was on another bus stop because I didn't wanna stand there with all these people. And at that time, I was just like take the bus at the stop before.

And so when it went down, they said to me, "Frank, it's not you, it's them." You see, they had accepted me as being a part of them because I had gotten through that school and within the four years of being there, I became captain of the football team. And I was like this...well, person who stood out in that respect. So they looked at me differently because over those four years, they were playing sports with me and dealing with me, not only in the classroom but outside the classroom. So for them, it wasn't me they were having a problem with, it was those people and those people were my people.

And I was in a state of confusion because I wasn't into politics. I was into sports. And I didn't deal with it at all. It wasn't on my mind. I didn't look at this program called "Soul!" that was a Black program that was on the PBS. And I had some things going on with me. But when that went down, I was like, "Wow, what's going on here?" So I was chosen as the spokesperson and they brought me up to this whole auditorium of White students to me to say what was going on, what's happening.

So some people introduced me to some people, some people from the Communist Party, and Eugene McCarthy was running for president at that time. So there was a lot of other things going on that was about to happen. You had that thing in Chicago and all these other things. So I just got thrown into this whole box and Baraka somehow or another, was somebody who they told me to go see and he had run this organization in Newark. And I drove around with him and things, but then he brought me into this whole bit which got the whole city involved. Because I was at the school where the Burgermeister's daughter went and the fire chief's son went, and so I was in this environment that was completely elite in that way.

And so when he got them into this situation or this situation came up, it brought a whole lot of other things. Because it ended up with me going on...these people from the Communist Party giving me information and showing me how to get on television. So I was on like the evening news. And then we called a city-wide boycott of the high schools to come out at a certain time to go down to the armory. My only thing was I was just looking for the students to be protected there at the school. But when I got involved, and these other people got involved, then they began to ask for things that they really wanted, and they had an opportunity to get to change the curriculum of the school. And so you had people who said, "Well, we should have Black studies and we should have Swahili and we should have all these other languages introduced as a part of the school system."

And so my whole point was like, well, I just want these... How many of us were in this school? Fifty out of 300 students or something like that at this school. And I just wanted to make sure that they'd get their safety. So that was like my eye-opener to politics and social issues. And I got to meet Baraka 30-something almost 40 years later, because after I left them, and I got to meet him when I went back home. And he remembered me as a 17-year-old kid who was dealing with this other thing, and he had gotten involved. So the last thing he told me that I should be a writer and I should go on and this and that, but that was like my first experience with an artist and a poet at that time.

Webster: Wow. What an introduction. Most people start with yeah, you know, I had a pen and a paper and I wanted to get my ideas out. But that's quite a way to be thrust into that world.

Frank: Well, basically, I was always been able to be tapped on the shoulder. I mean I got into acting because some people said, "You're gonna act," then I produced plays before I got on the stage. There was a price to pay before becoming a performer and that was producing and doing other things in San Francisco and eventually, finding my way into the business or the craft. I was fortunate to be in a community center in San Francisco, and people used to come through and do volunteer work, give workshops and things like that.

So I never had to pay for a workshop. I always got it for like, "Hey, come on. We're gonna give you this." And to my good fortune, I got to work with some of the artists from another generation, artists from the '50s, Beah Richards, who performed many years in movies and got nominated for Academy Award. She was my teacher in San Francisco. Then the woman who directed, "Your Arms Too Short To Box With God," "Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope," she was my director in the San Francisco Opera in San Francisco. And I got an opportunity to meet people who are from that other generation who took it upon themselves just to give it to me. I was fortunate.

Webster: And for our audience who don't know you, how did you get to Amsterdam? How's your life in the U.S. taken you here?

Frank: My journey?

Webster: Yes, your journey.

Frank: I started off in Newark, New Jersey, and then when I finished school, I went to work on Madison Avenue for capitalists, White capitalists. Then I went to work for Johnson products, a Black capitalist. And that was after my hippie days in college. So I went through that and made my way to San Francisco. And in San Francisco, things changed. I got involved with different kinds of people and they brought me into the art scene. And I just fell into it. Not fell into it. I wanted it after a while and I got to get to Los Angeles and work in Hollywood, "Hill Street Blues," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," theater, film.

Then one day in San Francisco, this guy showed up and he said he had auditioned for a play and they were coming to Europe. And he told me about this thing and so I went and got myself a saxophone or I had a saxophone or something. So I went on the audition and they were coming to perform in Edinburgh and then come for a few days in San Francisco and they had booked the [inaudible 00:11:23] and saw Excalibur. So they took me. I spent a month in Scotland at the Edinburgh Festival. Then we came over to do those five performances or something and somebody had given me a name of somebody at the Melkweg so I went by to see him when I got here.

And he said "Oh, you know Idris and Rhodessa, you can play here," and he said, "But you gotta wait... This is September so you gotta wait until like November or January, something like that." So I said, "Oh, yeah, okay," so I thought I was gonna hang out in Holland for a few months. In the meantime, I got a job with a group from Chile who had got deported from Chile, back over to Chile and they put them on a ship and they docked in Rotterdam. So they happened to be in Rotterdam and these people got in contact with them for this festival showcase something festival that was... And so they needed an actor and I answered an ad in the newspaper. So I went and performed with the people from Chile until I was able to get my thing going at the Melkweg and that was it.

So I worked with that group, and then I did something at the Melkweg and then this guy asked me to do a student production he was doing called "The Meeting." It was about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and he asked me to do Malcolm X. And luckily for me, I had connections at the Melkweg and I had an open date. So when we finished it at the school, the theater school, I was able to say well let's take it over to the Melkweg because he gave me another date because it was now business in February or whenever.

He said, "When you have something you can bring it." So we brought it back and it was a hit. Econ television did it as a teleplay, this producer from Econ walked up to me at the school, gave me her car because she thought her father wanted to direct this. He was a freedom fighter. He was a filmmaker. So he made a teleplay out of the piece called "The Meeting," and that was it in that terms. And we toured the country and...

Evy: And how many years now have you been here?

Frank: Come on, that's many years ago. That's many years ago. I came in the '80s, so I got here in '86. So when I arrived in '86, everybody was looking at what was coming from America, political or social, and it hit a nerve, so much of a nerve that I got to go and be a guest and speak at these high schools and things like that, where they would have an American day. Somebody saw me do the performance at the Melkweg and invited me to have a whole meeting with like three classrooms of students, high school students talking about freedom in America and all these other things. So it just clicked on that nature. And that was at the time when people were up on the whole thing that was going on in South Africa.

So if you look at the whole thing that was going on here in the late '80s, and the political and social things that were going out, it was all about South Africa, it was all about the other things, and then you had this whole issue. If you're doing something about Malcolm X, it was like, "Wow, Malcolm X." So that was like, people wanted to know and people wanted to deal with it on that time. That was it, right time, right place. Again, this guy saw me walking out of a place and before I got home, he got my number and called me to ask me to do this student thing for him. And I said, "Well, yeah I'll do it," in which I got to meet one of the people from the Last Poets. And he did Martin Luther King and I did Malcolm X. And I was a real follower of the Last Poets. I listened to them when I was at university and then I got the opportunity to work with the original.

Evy: Wow. That must be an impressive experience.

Frank: Gylan Kain. And that was a great experience. He and I do it for television. It played on the Econ for three years. They kept bringing the piece back and we toured the country with it.

Evy: And how would you say that Amsterdam changed throughout all these years, or the scene, not just Amsterdam, the scene and the people?

Frank: Well, the people I know have all gone, and then I got real fortunate to work with people where it would be like if I had an idea, and if I got up in the morning with an idea, I can walk into someplace unannounced and say, "Hey, Frank. I got this." And then it was like, they would make sure that it was done. I mean, the money was here, everything was there. So that in itself has changed a lot, but things do change.

Evy: Of course.

Frank: And so that's the difference. But it's cool because I'm meeting a whole new other generation of people. I'm working with people now, who I am working with and I worked with their parents. So that's been happening a lot lately, you know. I'm working with somebody, "Oh, you worked with my father." Oh, you worked with my mother," that sort of thing. So there it is.

Webster: What are you working on nowadays?

Frank: On Valentine's Day, I'm doing this piece called, "Two Tales One Song," based on a piece of product I made called... It was a CD. And it was where we were doing tales and songs, and I wrote all the tales and Florence does the music and we do a live performance. So that's what we're doing now as far as something to say solid that I'm continually doing. Then there's things that are always happening at the LAByrinth. I find myself at the LAByrinth a lot in that respect. It's a good place to be and it's in a smooth and everything.

I work with these guys there at the LAByrinth. Other than that I just did a movie. It was on last week. It was a documentary on Donny Hathaway. And it was called "Mister Soul." So it was aired just last Saturday on the VPR0. So you could still catch it if you missed it. And that was interesting because it was from a phone call via...somebody told this guy, "You wanna do this, you wanna get this guy, Frank Sheppard."

So he called me and I went to the studio and I did some lines for him that he had written for a certain part that he wanted to change in the movie. He wanted this character who was in Donny Hathaway's head to have a voice because Donny always talked about this character who followed him all his life called Mr. Soul. So he had a little part written for Mr. Soul based on interviews and everything. And then he decided, "I think I wanna change some things in the movie. I want to have your voice more." So he put my voice on many different things in the movie, which then made me larger in the film and I became Mr. Soul.

And it worked out really well. I didn't know what I was doing because it's out of context because you just have text and you read it and you're doing it in the moment, and you don't know how it's gonna fit in this whole scheme of things. So how he edited it into the whole thing, I became the voice of the movie, so much so that these people in Rotterdam invited me to be there at the premiere of the film, and do three songs, or two songs for an audience. That was nice. It was in a club situation and I got a chance to do a couple of songs.

I'm not Donny Hathaway, but I do like to interpret things like he used to interpret things. If he did a song that someone else did, he definitely did it his way, and whatever hit he wanted to put on it. So I work like that anyway if I take a song for somebody to go, "I thought I heard that song before," and oh, no, but it's an interpretation. I don't like to do covers. If I'm gonna do something somebody else did, I'm gonna bring something else different. I'm not gonna copy that artist.

Evy: And I'm also wondering, do you have preference for the performing to live audience or acting, or it's both equally close to you?

Frank: I would imagine that what comes, comes. It's the moment, you know because when you sing, acting, and live and this, there are so many different aspects to this thing that we do as far as creating something for someone else. If I'm doing an animation or taking film, or if I'm doing an animation or doing something for a corporate, if I'm working for Philips or this or that, it all involves being able to make something believable and true. I enjoy doing that if it's on stage or if it's a voice or if it's in film or whatever. That is a part of me that I enjoy. So there's no real preference over this or that.

I believe sometimes I miss something if I do something so much on this side. I say, "You know, I haven't done something in the studio in a long time, or I haven't done something on stage or something." But other than that, it's just like if it comes, it's the moment, then you make the most out of what you have to do at that given time, that opportunity.

Webster: It sounds like you've done a lot so far in your career. And it's great hearing about all the projects that you've done and the projects that you're doing. And I'm just wondering how do you stay inspired, and how do you keep the energy to be able to keep coming up with new ideas?

Frank: Well, you know, when you say that my career... I have a thing called "From Film to Life." I experienced that, from film to life. A few times there's something I've done in film or on stage has become life, okay. I'll give you an example. I had a casting director manager who always believed in me, and he believed that I cross the color line. So if you send something out to say, "Oh, we want some actors and da da da," and if you don't put, "We want Black actors," it's assumed that you want white actors. And when they sent out the daily, they say, "We want a Black actor," or this, so you see it when you're going. So he said, "Frank, go over there, go over there anyway." So I go in and it changed the whole concept of what they want. So I had a film called, "Condom Sense."

Webster: Great title.

Frank: Okay, now, it was a film that was made for health services and things to get people to use condoms. So the premise was this guy was a counselor. He was talking to a guy about using condoms, and he didn't wanna use them, and the guy had to convince him why he should use a condom because his woman wanted him to use a condom. Now, I did that film. So I'm walking through the neighborhood with my son, and I see all these teenage women out there pushing baby carriages. So I say to the guy who's running the center there. I said, "I got this film, maybe I could show it to these guys." And he said, "Oh, people are gonna be back here next week. You should come by and meet these people.”

So I go there and this guy is there and he says, "Hey, I got that film, ‘Condom Sense,’ and you in it and we got a project from Ford Foundation about teen fathers, and we need a community outreach worker to be a part of this program to bring these boys into this program to be teen fathers since it's teen pregnancy. So Ford is doing the thing." So my mentor said, "Frank, you could do something for the neighborhood." Okay, so I take the job. And the next thing I know I'm on, "Good Morning America," I'm put in something else, and this project has become so big that it was on Donahue, it was over the whole bit. So because I did the character as a counselor, I get asked to be a real counselor.

Then I get invited to Rotterdam to some Kodak theatre or something to be a keynote speaker and show the film in Rochester, New York. They fly me cross-country and I had only been at the job for three days. That is how it works a lot of times if you do something and people see you do something, then they bring you into something else, which then is all about changing the thing. My [inaudible 00:25:22] is one thing but for me, I've been blessed and able to get involved with making about a change in many other aspects and for fair housing, for human rights as an investigator. I then segued to be a private investigator for the Black Liberation Army and other things and involved in this whole different aspect of things simply because I was asked to get involved, and then it turns out like that.

Webster: Do you not ever feel like an imposter when that happens?

Frank: No, I mean no. If you're gonna deal with people who discriminate in housing, who discriminate in other things, they have to be accountable, brought to account for that. And if it's a way of getting them to make something right and do righteous by others, because it's so horrible to discriminate against somebody because of the color of their skin, or their race, or whatever. And if a person feel that they want something, and they go there to get it, and then they feel they don't get it simply because of who they are, it's wrong. And the people who wanna get away with it, if they get away with it, there's a price to pay.

And that's one of the whole things that the United States had in many respects, where they got involved in that respect to say, "Okay, if they're gonna be discriminating, then we're gonna have people go in and try to catch them in that lie, catch them in that point." And we have a service where people can call and say, "I feel I've been discriminated." And it happened to me personally. I knew of this place. I wanted the apartment. And when I went there, the guy said, "Oh, no, it's not available," and I had seen this thing was placed. So I sent my girlfriend who was Japanese to this Korean store that was in our neighborhood and they told her, "Yeah, it's apartment there."

I left America after that situation but a couple of years later, I got this thing from my manager that they gave me $15,000 because I had applied that I felt that I was discriminated against. And they caught them in this discrimination and two years later, I got $15,000 for their thing.

Webster: Sounds like it's worth it. I pick discrimination any day.

Frank: It is worth it. Discrimination is horrible. I mean, they used to discriminate against Black men in San Francisco and I was asked to do this undercover thing for the Human Rights Commission to see what hotels were discriminating against Back men who wanted to get a hotel room, in the worst part of San Francisco, in the Tenderloin. And these things happen and they have to be taken care of. And if you get involved, you find many ways of making a change for people voting, making... And so those are the things that I'm most proud of, in those situations where you really change something as an individual.

Evy: Of course. It seems like you say yes to a lot of projects. Have you ever said no?

Frank: No. I say yes, but it's how you get into something. I became a private investigator working on murder cases simply because I was looking for some money to supplement my acting. And this guy who was there at my mentor's place, he said, "Hey, why don't you work with me on this case that I'm working on?" And he happened to be a real famous lawyer who won the case for Attica. He won the case against...he was Fred Hampton's lawyer. So when you're put in these situations, there's no way you're gonna say no. You're gonna get involved. And if you're lucky to be in the right place at the right time, then this is what's happening. It's like, it's there to be. You're supposed to be there, and this is supposed to happen, and that's just the way it is.

Evy: Since you say yes a lot, would you perform for us now?

Webster: In the segue.

Frank: You have to place the tale in the place where it fits, be it mind, or heart. This is something that's been with me for a long time, many years. I could say that it was the thing that got me on my way. Written by somebody named Holly Kern, I don't know where she is right now. But she wrote this and she was a member of a theatre company that I was in, and I was amazed by it and it took me around the world.

“Andy was a new white kid from New York but he had never been South before. Me and Mickey, we kept teasing Andy about the training, you see. We was up at this school in Ohio and part of the training was learning how to protect yourself. Now, when I say protect yourself, I don't mean hitting anybody back. You're supposed to love the person who's beating you on your head and burning down your house. That's what old man Bayer be saying.

Old man Bayer be up there writing on the blackboard, ‘The non-violent activists must refuse to hate.’ Well, we were up at that school when we got the word about the church burning down, the church where we were gonna hold freedom school. Well, me and Mickey decided we had best head back down there right away and Andy, he wanted to come along with us. But we thought that Andy should stay back up there and get a bit more practice. But Andy, he couldn't wait to get down there, he couldn't wait to help register these people to vote.

So we started on down there driving. And then we were driving in the car and the car radio was on and that's where we had gotten the word that the United States Senate had passed the civil rights bill 7227. Mickey said, ‘That prove you were right.’ Well, I hope he is. We got on down to Longdale and we went over there to the church where we were gonna hold the freedom school. So when we got down there, there was nothing but broken up glass and brick, and we said, ‘It don't matter. Now, we're gonna teach these people to register to vote.’

So we went over there to the other church where the people were that Sunday and when we got there, they told us where that happened. It seemed that last week, a bunch of white men had drove up and just start beating on everybody and just burned down that church. And they wanted to talk with us but they were like a little put off, like, a little scared. They didn't want to talk to us for too long. So we thought that we had best head back on over to Meridian 'til things cooled down a bit. And we decided to take the long road back, you know, because everybody be out there Sunday driving and things and so on.

I was doing the driving. I was doing about 35 miles an hour, you know, just laughing, and around the time we got out a distance from that church, we saw a patrol car following us. And he was following us for a couple of miles and then he pulled us off to the side of the road. None other than Deputy Sherriff Price himself. Said he was stopping us because one of our rear tires had gone flat. We don't see how because we never left Meridian... From Meridian, everything on that car was working perfect while he sat there, on his big ass, and he watched us change that tire.

And then after we changed the tire, he said we're all under arrest. I said, ‘For what, changing a tire?’ He said no. He said I was arrested for speeding. I was only doing 35 miles an hour. It didn't make no difference. The officer said Mickey was under arrest for resisting arrest. Well, he took us back to the county jail and booked us all as Negros which was a surprise to me because I never known Neshoba cops to be colorblind. It didn't make no difference, though. And as they were marching us off to the cell, Mickey said, ‘How about our phone call?’ The deputy said ‘Later.’ In Neshoba, it probably meant never. Well, he took us back and put us all in the cell.

It was hot, hottest day of the year, longest day and I just kept thinking and hoping that somebody come down here and get us out of this mess. Thinking about those other kids coming out to register the people to vote, I wonder if they'll find some love in their heart for Deputy Sheriff Price. Around about the time it got dark, the deputy walked in, escorted us all out the cells to a station wagon. I had this bad feeling we probably gonna end up visiting some of the deputy friends and probably end up tarred and feathered or worse.

He drove us out from the county jail down a rock-cut road a few miles, then he pulled off to the side of the road. The moon was high. There it was. A bunch of the deputy friends looking like a lynching mob. I recognized one of them. I knew Harley. I knew him from Meridian but he wouldn't look at me. And they start searching the car and shouting things. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if you stay where you belong, you wouldn't be here with us.’ He pulled it out the car and one of them said to Mickey, ‘Hey, Jew boy. Jew boy, you still think some nigger ass is as good as I am?’ He went and took out a shotgun, shot Andy straight through the heart. Harley was over in the ditch throwing up and they shot Andy. Andy had only been in Mississippi 24 hours and they shot him without a word and they're just laughing.

And then one said, ‘See what happened to your nigger-loving friends, coon?’ I was gonna die. I couldn't let them do to me what they had did to Mickey. And Andy, I'm sorry, Andy, but I couldn't do that. And I just start swinging my hands, all kinds of ways and shaking. And then one said, ‘That nigger wanna put up a fight.’ And he took out an iron and he started beating me on my back and I just couldn't feel any more. And then one of them said, ‘Let's finish the nigger off.’ And they done that and he shot me three times, twice in the heart and once in the head. And then buried our bodies so deep down in that dam that no one was gonna find us for a long, long time. And I had just been thinking lately about Mickey and Andy laying there on that dirt, and old man Bayer writing on the blackboard, ‘The non-violent activists must refuse to hate.’”

Webster: That was a journey, man.

Frank: She wrote that before the movie, "Mississippi Burning," came out, and she did the investigation of how these three young men were killed. And then she wrote that monologue. And she wrote another monologue that won me an acting award in Los Angeles based on somebody going to register to vote. And she was a special person, quiet girl, sort of hippie-like, and she was writing with the theatre company I was involved with in San Francisco. The One Night Theatre Company, a Jewish Theatre company, brought me into that thing. And I've seen some of her work and when they wanted to do a monologue festival, I saw a monologue that she had written. I was 30 at the time or something, and the character was 64 years old.

So in the audition, I dressed up what I thought the character would look like, and went on the audition. And the person who was gonna direct this monologue, she thought that I was so old that I would not remember the lines. And then someone from the theater goes, "No, no, Frank is only 30." Because I had gotten to this costume and my head was like this is what this character would look like. So I got the part and then I got invited to Los Angeles to be on the acting competition and win some money and get an agent in Los Angeles. And I went down and won the competition doing this part. Then I used that monologue for voting registration, campaign for the NAACP. And I rented the video that I had made of this character, and they used it for their voting drive and it was like that. It was Willis James Washington was the character's name.

Webster: Look what you did to the room.

Frank: No, when you said do something, I could not... I can only attribute that beautiful piece, one of the pieces that Holly Kern wrote. And that piece and another piece became a part of my one-man show that got me, when I did it in Los Angeles, and I did it here when I came in. It was called "Living on This Planet." So from those pieces, I then put together the basis of a one-person show. Adding other stuff, and it was a part and something that I could never forget. Even though I did it those many years later, it still can come back to me in my head or whatever.

Webster: It kind of left me a little bit shaken, actually.

Evy: Definitely.

Webster: I didn't know you were going there with it. Okay, cool story, some boys, yeah, nice.

Frank: No, you realize, yeah, it has that slick when you're listening to a dead man.

Webster: Yeah, exactly.

Frank: He died. James did die, you know. And when she wrote it from that, you can imagine she wrote it from that perspective and she just said, "You can do this anytime you want, anywhere you want." So it stays with me 40 years later, or whenever, it can come to me and use it, do whatever thing.

Webster: What's your process like getting into the character of a dead man?

Frank: Well, the whole thing is within me. You really have to know the situations of people on this planet who's gone through that, who deal with that. If you deal in that way, or if you feel that way if that's your thing, it's just there. And the fact that they just come up and I don't have to think about them, maybe I might miss a line while I'm doing this. Well, I didn't go, "Oh, I'm sorry, Mickey. I didn't wanna give into that," but that's something... But that doesn't have to be because I can really play around with it because it's mine now that I can say, "Oh, I missed that line." As I'm saying something, I say, "I missed that line. Oh, yeah, 45 years. How could you remember that line?" But you know you've missed it after you go past it and you're like, "Oh, I didn't do that. Well, I came here." Then I'm trying to think of the time too, how much time we have in this.

Webster: Nine minutes and 25 seconds.

Frank: That's how long it is?

Webster: Yeah. It's a perfect length. Excel is running out of data.

Evy: And I'm wondering also, since we already talked about how much yes you say, and how your process works, what would be your advice to people who are starting or who are just thinking of starting and exploring the scene or the art scene?

Frank: Yeah, that's difficult because before I became an actor and I was working in New York City, I got as far as the Actors Studio door, and I didn't go through. I didn't go through because I felt like I'm a businessman, and I'm this and this is expected of me and da da da, and then when are we gonna go into this art thing? If you feel it, you just have to take that step and do it. Again, I was fortunate to meet people who are in the business who decided that they were gonna bring me into it to use it to their advantage. And an advantage for me getting into it is because I used to be in sales and everything. They brought me in to be their producer. So I had to produce a couple of things for them and then find my way eventually to get to performer.

So you must be aware that there's always opportunities and you've gotta be willing to take the chance when something is knocking or something is near. And I met somebody last night. He said, "I write but I haven't performed yet." I said, "Well look, you gotta make that step if you're gonna do that. If you wanna do that, you have to. That's the only way that it can happen."

Evy: So against all odds just try.

Frank: Yeah. There's no harm in trying. That's what it's all about. You don't get anything unless you take a chance at doing it. I mean, every time I go out for an audition or something, if I'm not prepared or if I'm not ready, but if you're gonna get the opportunity, you have to make the most out of it. In the business, when you're auditioning constantly, you have to be really able to deal with rejection.

Webster: As the saying goes, you win or you learn, right?

Frank: Yeah. You know there are so many variables that it's just not your work that is gonna... It's like what they want and what is perfect for them that they think they're gonna be able to work with and that's the whole key. It's not just up to you. I mean, you can be terrible, terrible, or you can be good, good, good and still don't get the part because you're not right in their eyes for the part. And you never know what is right for the part, you know. It's ridiculous.

Evy: But then what would you advise not to do?

Frank: I never know that because people never tell me that that's not right to do. You know it's like I had an opportunity to do a TV program and they had given me the script for me to learn the lines. And I took the script home and on my way home, I stopped at a restaurant that I go to, a café, a restaurant, to get a burrito. And I went to the bathroom, the urinal. So I put the script on the wall and it went down behind this thing. So I couldn't have the script so I couldn't learn the lines.

Webster: Oh, no.

Frank: So when I came in the next day for my callback, I said, "Look, you won't believe what happened. It just happened yesterday when I was going home. You won't believe that I put that script on..." and they said, "Hey, that's Walter, that's the character." And so that's the business that is... It's crazy whatever you do, or whatever you don't do, you don't know until in the spot. And if you're fortunate enough, you get it.

Evy: So also, I feel like you would consider yourself a very lucky man.

Frank: Yeah. There's definitely an element of serendipity across your life.

Frank: Sometimes it feels like that. Sometimes you can... For me, if I saw something on television, and I said, "Wow, I'd like to be in a story like that." If you see an old movie and you say, "I'd like to play that character." The movie I saw was about South Africa, and it was made in the '50s. Sidney Poitier was young. He was in it. And I thought the characters were like, oh... And lo and behold, within a couple of weeks, they're doing a state production for the San Francisco Spring Opera called "Lost in the Stars." It was a Broadway show. And they brought this director from New York, and I went. This friend said, "They're doing it."

And I went down there and I got the part of one of like the character that I thought in the movie because I dressed in khaki pants. I went there. But it just happened. And sometimes things happen like that. And you don't have any... It's in the universe. It has nothing to do with you. It's just completely totally in the universe. And there, if you call it luck, or you call it whatever it is, but that's the way of the world. That's the way it turns.

Webster: Well, thank you very much, Frank.

Frank: Thank you.

Webster: It's been a pleasure talking to you today.

Evy: Thank you for sharing your stories. And where our listeners could find more information about you, your...

Frank: Last night I was thinking about something, and you know what they call subscribers, but I have a different idea. I wanna become something that people can subscribe to. And we're gonna take subscriber to another level. It's not donation. It's like you can subscribe to Frank Sheppard live. And so not give me money live in my pocket, but go see things as like, you know, "I'm a subscriber to that guy." And that means that I go see him because subscribing is different from donation.

And when you give donations, it's more like we're poor, you know, we're dying. But if you say, "I'm a subscriber, where is he playing and what is he doing?" So just look out for Frank Sheppard and consider yourself subscribing. And there might be a chance that I do stories that you wanna hear, and you can depend upon that. So there it is. Other than that, just check out Frank Sheppard on Google or Frank Sheppard on Facebook or whatever and just become involved and just connect. And I'm open for connection. Thank you.

Evy: Thank you.

Webster: Thank you. And for our audience listening, you know where to find us on www.wordupodcast.com where you'll find past episodes as well as information about our special guests. Thank you.

Evy: Thank you and goodbye.

[00:51:43]
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[00:51:56]

Webster: Thank you very much.

Frank: Oh, thank you, guys. No, it was a beautiful experience because this is much different than anything else in terms of... I've never worked on a podcast but I just did see Angelica Houston, on the podcast a few weeks ago and I liked the format of this...



Transcript by Audrey van Houten