Tosh's Journal: August 16, 2023 (I look like Jean Cocteau, Peter Sellers, and a bit of me)

 

Tosh's Journal: August 16, 2023

Tosh's Journal: July 7, 2023

 

Tosh's Journal: July 7, 2023

My Favorite Albums of All Time (Part 2)

 

My Favorite Albums of All Time (Part 2)

The Appearance of Me by Tosh Berman

 

"The Appearance of Me" by Tosh Berman. Read it here: 

The Appearance of Me by Tosh Berman

Tosh's Journal - September 8 (Homage to Peter Sellers & Alfred Jarry)

TOSH'S JOURNAL

September 8

"There is no me. I do not exist… There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed." It isn't I can't stand myself, but I'm on the surface extremely dull. There is no spice in my DNA to make me special. What I can do is re-invent myself to a better version of me. Or start from scratch and create a new "me." I tried to do my best to blend in with the crowd that I came to be accustomed to, but clearly, they never took me seriously. All of them feel that I'm a performer, but for the heck out of them, they can't remember one film or theater piece I have done. They know that I exist, but in what degree is totally beyond them.

As a card-carrying pataphysician, I have consistently been mistaken for Peter Sellers. The interesting fact is that we don't look like each other at all. But still, I'm always reminded of him, due to what people think he or I look like. A day doesn't go by, where someone doesn't comment on the resemblance of the dead late comic actor. If he was alive, I wonder if people would still make the comparisons between him and me. "The dead… are more real than the living because they are complete." I suspect if I were dead, then I would get my own identity back. Again, even with that, my lack of uniqueness would be challenging for someone to pin me down. Also, my face is not mine, but a remembrance of someone else's face or appearance.

To live in one's shadow, is a traveler wandering in a neighborhood where he's not invited, but accepted with closed arms. I have often appeared in front of an audience, but they were expecting something else, or even someone else. It takes approximately ten minutes into my performance where the audience realizes that they are at the wrong show. After a while, I believe "that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts." Every day I try to re-think myself in a new position where I find that I need to think what 'my character' would do in a particular or specific incident or plan. It is rarely that I consider "what I would do" but mostly 'what would he or she does." And that is pretty much how I see the world. A fellow pataphysician has commented that "the theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know or as a completely new character."

I was reading Siegried Sassoon's poetry, and I came upon a statement by him that touched me: "The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so." The only occupation that I'm suitable for is acting. Sadly I can't remember a written line if my very life been dependent on it. What I do is improvised anytime I find myself in a conversation with someone. I never know where or when the conversation ends, but I pretend that I do know, and I think the other person will gently follow my lead - in a sense, it is like dancing the waltz, where one leads the other.

I wrote a play that had one performance, so I guess one can call it a total failure. Nevertheless, the lead character stayed with me, and I adopted his language as my own. For instance, I never say the wind, or it's windy. Instead, I would say "that which blows." Slowly but surely, I built up a character that became comfortable to wear. But I was always aware that the things I said or do were based on another character - sometimes a fictional character. In the future (if there is a future) the play "will not be performed in full until the author (the royal we) have acquired enough experience to savor all its beauties." I tend to see the world as a theater piece, and sadly, I'm the only one in the audience.

-Tosh Berman

"My Life in the Theatre de la Huchette" by Tosh Berman (Paris)

Not too many people know this, but besides being a publisher (TamTam Books) and writer ("Sparks-Tastic, "The Plum in Mr. Blum's Pudding," and the upcoming memoir "Tosh"), I'm also a movie actor.  I did a cameo in Anna Biller's "Viva," in which I had a line, or to be more exact just one word "precious," and the role of 'Boy' in Andy Warhol's "Tarzan and Jane Regained Sort Of..."   Also, I had starring roles in various films by Relah Eckstein.   Now, due to financial issues, I have decided to become an actor for the stage, and not just any stage, but The Théâtre de la Huchette in the Latin Quarter in Paris. 

The theater is located at 23 rue de la Huchette, and since 1957 they have been presenting a double-bill of "The Lesson" and "The Bad Soprano" by Eugène Ionesco.   The playwright has the knack to convey the absurdity of life in such a manner that articulates my view of the world.  Therefore I went to the Huchette theater and told them I'm willing to work for nothing if they give me a role in the production.  They asked if I can speak French, and I said "NO."  I told them it would be faithful to the playwright's concern if I were an actor that couldn't express myself in another language.  But the rub is that Ionesco such an exact type of writer, that language, of course, is essential. But the fact that I couldn't deliver his lines in such a manner means that the director has to up his game by presenting me in such a production.  Every night I have to learn m lines in French and to remind you, dear readers, it's two plays I'm doing every night.   I do all my lines in French of course, but it has a California accent attached to it, that caused my director to winch whenever he hears me recite the lines. 

It's interesting to note that Ionesco is Romanian, and French is his second language, which is the language he wrote his plays in.  So in that sense, I feel we have something in common. I told that to the director, and he agreed that I was on to something.  "The Bald Soprano" in my mind is about language and communication.  Therefore since Ionesco wrote it in a second language, and I don't speak proper French makes this production the essential version of the play. 

I often have dreams where I'm either in a public space or at a party with friends, and I'm naked.   Everyone else is dressed, but for some reason, I either lost my clothes or forgot to put them on before leaving home.  The thing is no one says anything about my nakedness. Acting in these two one-act plays, I have that feeling, but I'm awake and aware of what is in front of me.   Which are embarrassment and shame.   My role model for acting is Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films directed by Blake Edwards.   If I speak fast enough with a strong fake French accent, I may get away with the performance.  Hopefully, the audience, and especially the theater critics will see it as an absurd performance in a highly ridiculous pair of plays. 

Tonight is opening night, and as I walk from the 3rd arrondissement to the 5th I try not to think of the pain in my stomach, but also I realize that I forgot my lines.  My immediate reaction is to run away from the theater.  Still, as a professional, and as a representation of an American, with the 'go-for-it-spirit' I enter the backstage of the theater to face my fate. 

- Tosh Berman, Paris, September 17, 2018

Russ Tamblyn Actor on Tea With Tosh

Russ Tamblyn my special guest on Tea With Tosh.   From 1987!  A superb gentleman.  A close friend of my father Wallace Berman.   Russ is an amazing actor/artist and tells some hysterical stories here. Love the man.

September 8, 2014

September 8, 2014

“There is no me.  I do not exist… There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.” It isn’t I can’t stand myself, but I’m on the surface extremely dull.  There is no spice in my DNA to make me special.  What I can do is re-invent myself to a better version of me.  Or just start from scratch and make a totally new “me.” I tried to do my best to blend in with the crowd that I came to be accustomed to, but clearly they never took me seriously.   All of them feel that I’m a performer, but for the heck out of them, they can’t remember one film or theater piece I have done.  They know that I exist, but in what degree is totally beyond them.

As a card-carrying pataphysician, I have consistently been mistaken for Peter Sellers.  The interesting fact is that we don’t look like each other at all.  But still, I’m consistently reminded of him, due to what people think he or I looks like.  A day doesn’t go by, where someone doesn’t comment on the resemblance of the dead late comic actor.  If he was alive, I wonder if people would still make the comparisons between me and him.  “The dead… are more real than the living because they are complete.” I suspect if I was dead, then I would get my own identity back.  Again, even with that, my lack of uniqueness would be very difficult for someone to pin me down.  Even my face is not mine, but a remembrance of someone else’s face or appearance.

To live in one’s shadow, is a traveler wandering in a neighborhood where he’s not invited, but accepted with closed arms.  I have often appeared in front of an audience, but they expecting something else, or even someone else.  It takes approximately ten minutes into my performance where the audience realizes that they are at the wrong show.  After awhile, I believe “that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.” Everyday I try to re-think myself in a new position where I find that I need to think what ‘my character’ would do in a certain or specific incident or plan.  It is rarely that I consider “what I would do” but mostly ‘what would he or she does. ” And that is pretty much how I see the world.   A fellow pataphysician has commented that “the theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character."

I was reading Siegried Sassoon’s poetry and I came upon a statement by him that touched me: “The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight.  I, as I am now, didn’t exist at all.  Will the same thing happen in the next five years?  I hope so.” The only occupation that I’m suitable for is acting.  Sadly I can’t remember a written line if my very life been dependent on it.  What I do is improvised anytime I find myself in a conversation with someone.  I never know where or when the conversation ends, but I pretend that I do know, and I think the other person will just gently follow my lead - in a sense it is like dancing the waltz, where one leads the other.

I wrote a play, that had one performance, so I guess one can call it a total failure.  Nevertheless, the lead character stayed with me, and I adopted his language as my own.  For instance I never say the wind or it's windy, instead I would say “that which blows.” Slowly but surely I built up a character that became comfortable to wear.  But I was always aware that the things I said or do was based on another character - sometimes a fictional character.  In the future (if there is a future) the play “will not be performed in full until the author (the royal we) has acquired enough experience to savor all it beauties.” I tend to see the world as a theater piece, and sadly, I’m the only one in the audience.

August 18, 2014

August 18, 2014

There are numerous ways of looking at one’s life, and it can be measured by the objects one owns, or their sexuality.  For instance, I’m a pussy hound.  Why? That is the million dollar question that I simply don’t have an answer for.  I think the main reason is either a life where one sleeps through the day, and just function whatever is in front of them.  For instance, you wake-up and make a cup of coffee without thinking of it.  I say 90% of my life is on that zone.  The sexual aspect of one’s life are mere moments when you see a woman, and it jabs one into another existence.  An inner-life comes out of you and all of a sudden you’re in a world full of color, and it has absolutely no meaning.  It’s a zone you’re in that has no rules and it is all about the sensuality of the moment.  Each woman is different.  There is no such being where one is exactly like the other.  So if you’re having sex with one, it is totally different from the other.  The truth is that no individual is like the other.  And that becomes obvious when you’re fucking a series of women.

The great thing about a book like “Lolita” is that the intellect is there, but here the British professor of French literature, who has a guideline in life is totally disrupted by the presence of Charlotte’s flirtatious daughter.  All logic is launched out the window, and there lies the problem for our hero of the novel.  Or is the true hero Clare Quilty, the drunk and sometimes incoherent shadow figure that floats into the narrative like Satan looking for a lost soul.  Nevertheless one has to disguise their desires nowadays.  When I was a teenager, all my girlfriends were mostly going out with much older men, and to me, it was more common to know a beautiful girl in school, is clearly dating the questionable male that is waiting outside the campus with his car running.

Sex is passion, but it is also about details.  As they say, the devil resides in the details.   I recently read Alain Robbe-Grillet’s last book, “A Sentimental Novel, ” which is about a professor having a S&M affair with his daughter.  It struck me as being ‘sick, ’ but also I found it attractive because it is ‘sick. ' Usually the older man, who is obviously a pervert - is also a very educated and well-read person.  To dwell into such depraved sexual practices, does one need to be an educated and smart person?  Being a filmmaker and writer, one can easily go into the darkness of one’s sexuality and address those issues.  The problem is the case that the reader or audience member may have trouble either in dealing with those issues, or at the very least, being very judgmental in such an obvious fashion.   I have always been attached to a specific photograph of Robbe-Grillet’s wife Catherine.   It looks like she is a little girl. Yet her expression is totally adult-like, and I feel I’m being pulled into a very precarious position.  Roman Polanski is such a man who has dealt with a bad hand, where he suffered greatly through the loss of his wife and childhood (due to war). Yet his work comes alive with the sensual aspect of living.  In fact to live is the ability to accept and further one’s adventure into the world of sex.

If I had one role-model in my life, it would be Jack Pickford.  He was the younger brother of Mary, and it seemed his life was spent on drink, drugs and a passionate addiction to sex with women.  His first wife was a wild number named Olive Thomas, who had a thirst for the carnal life just like her husband.  Both were talented actors, but according to a source close to both of them “they were more interested in playing the roulette of life than in concentrating on their careers.” She died under mysterious circumstances, and he had two further marriages, that of course, ended up as a failure. I was taken by him, because I wanted to expose myself to all the harm he has done to himself.  The loser is always more romantic than the winner, and it is usually those who lose, that we remember their presence more.  The taboo is what keeps us in line, and to go against the grain is the thrill some look for.  I have fallen for the passion of my times, but I now walk in various shopping centers and imagine what the girl tastes like, and in that small world, in my imagination, I find a certain amount of peace.

August 17, 2014

August 17, 2014

I have consistently been emotionally drawn to men like Monty Woolley, who was a close associate of Cole Porter’s, but was also a well-known actor - but for me, the very vision of the man is strictly through a series of photographs.   If I was going to grow a beard, it would be like Monty’s facial hair.   The thing is one has to pass through a lot of time and trouble to keep the beard trimmed and neat.  The one thing that I don’t like about my body is the hair.  Too much hair on my legs, arms, torso and worst of all, the back.   Also I have a thick beard.  Technically I probably need to shave twice a day, but that’s too much work for me. I tend to shave every two or three days, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t like how I look with a three-day beard.  In fact, I don’t like how I look period.

I’m approaching 60, which is old.  People say 60 is the new 40, but that is a lie.   The first thing I noticed is my neck.  My neck looks old, but my face continues being youthful.  Lately I have been using a lot of cream on my neck area, including my hairy shoulders, hoping to stop the aging that is taking place in that part of the body.  As time marches on, I find myself losing my self in step, and it is hard for me to go back in line to march for a better world for me.   On the other hand, Monty Woolley looks old, but I suspect that he was born looking old.  I tried to find images of Woolley without a beard, and it was impossible.  I assume that he was born with a full beard.  Nevertheless, I do have at least three men that I look up to in a physical fashion sense, and besides Monty, there is the pop singer Kevin Rowland and the Jazz singer, writer, and Surrealist art collector, George Melly.  I’m struck by them because they are not technically handsome (such as yours truly) but have a strong sense of style, that overcomes ugliness or any human defectively traits.   So though I do have an aging neck as well as a hairy body (with the additional middle-aged fat as well) I figure I need to bring more personality to my appearance.  The thing is all throughout my life, people always compared me to celebrities.  In fact, I was often mistaken for certain public figures.

When I was 21, I went to see “Taxi Driver” at 20 times in a movie theater.  I even adopted his look, not shaving my head mind you, but the checkered button-up shirt, Levis, and the beat-up jacket he wore through the film.  It was my uniform that year, and I pretty much wore that on a regular basis.  The thing is people began to mention that I look like Robert De Niro, which was complimentary at the time, but then people began to approach me like I was the actor.  Not only that, but famous actors who actually worked or knew him.  They would come towards me and say “HI Bobby.” They always had a weird look on their face when I told them that they are mistaken.  Also I remember going to the Whiskey to see The Screamers, and someone behind me said “that’s Robert De Niro!” I looked around to see where De Niro was, and then realized that this guy was just talking about me.  I had to leave the area because he was sort of creepy and his friends were about to approach me.

As I got older, I was compared on a regular daily basis to Martin Scorsese (I think due to the eyebrows) and the now late Robin Williams.  Which I didn’t like to be compared to, due that he had a hairy body like mine.   A lot of homeless and street people approached me on the public walkways, saying that I looked like those two guys.  It was strange, because I couldn’t see the resemblance at all when I looked at myself in the mirror. Especially for Scorsese. However, on the other hand, so many people have commented on what they think is the resemblance between me and the great film director.  It is like they are willing themselves into thinking I look like this figure.  

Lately it is now Peter Sellers.  Here I can actually see the resemblance, I think due to the glasses I wear, as well as the facial shape of our mouths and eyes.  Time-to-time, I have been called upon to send a photo of me for maybe an article or a need for a bio of some sort.  Since I don’t like any of my own photos or portraits I usually now send a photograph of Peter Sellers.  The funny thing, is that very rarely do I get anyone turning down the photo - even those who know me quite well.   I never felt I was losing my identity, probably because I have spent my whole life thinking about being someone else.  For instance, Kevin Rowland, Melly, or Wooley.  No one ever mentions that I look like those gentlemen.  Which, at the end of the day, brings me a sense of sadness.

Will The Real Mr Sellers Please Stand Up (1969)

Recent Portrait of Tosh Berman

Peter Sellers On My Mind

Peter Sellers and The Fab Four


Peter Sellers and Dino


Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove mood but doing various British accents


Rare footage of The Beatles having a chat with Peter Sellers


Peter Sellers with Spike Milligan - Clip from "Mukkinese Battle Horn"


The Goons (with Peter Sellers) "This is Your Life"