Danchik Writing Beware

Roger Danchik has had one of those lives that is much more interesting to talk about than to actually have lived. The stories of a life like this can be great. For instance, how he almost decided to climb Mount Everest when he was in Nepal – where pot was legal in the 60’s – because it didn’t look that high.

Back in the US, he went to undergraduate school, where he hoped that his World Travel would help him get laid (it didn’t). He studied theater and spent much of his time moving heavy sets around and ignoring his classes. He wrote a children’s play called the Princess and the Ogre, because one of his heroes and friend, Larry Shue, had written one the year before, in which he acted. Roger’s play has been performed all over the US, always by word of mouth or by somebody who saw it or was in it and almost nobody ever sent him royalties. In some strange way he considers that a success even though he spent a lot of his life broke.

Since he had no idea what to do next, he went to Brandeis Graduate School as a playwriting major, though he didn’t manage to write a play while he was there. Since he wasn’t going to class anyway, he started touring with rock’n’roll bands because at one point he lied about being able to run a carbon arc followspot (ask someone 50 years or older). In those days, running a carbon arc followspot was a bump in pay. So when asked everybody answered, “sure I can run a follow spot,” and then when you got to your spot, you immediately asked somebody near you how to turn it on and what to do. Surprisingly, that often worked. Of course you probably burnt yourself a number of times, but that was standard.

He luckily was David Bowie’s followspot man for two tours and got to watch a genius perform as well as play a lot of ping pong, which is generally all he did in undergraduate school.  The list of bands he toured with would be impressive if he could remember them. He definitely toured with Chicago, The Rolling Stones for a few shows with an elephant, Emerson lake and Palmer, Queen and others. He positively tried to seduce Diana Ross on her tour, but they wouldn’t let him in her dressing room, even though he’d taken a shower.

After about 10 years the rock and roll the industry started to change and became more professional and the new roadies were fatter. There weren’t as many problems to solve and everybody knew how to do everything. That was too boring so he got out of rock’n’roll just at the time he would have started making real money.

  He tried to earn a living by working in various theaters, which is another way to say you’re going to be broke forever.  Then he accidentally started a new career, which was working in the movies. Though, there weren’t a lot of movies around Boston when he first started, he earned enough, with unemployment of course, to only have to take out one home equity loan to survive.

During this time he also became the movie script reader at what was then Scout Productions, the producers of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.  There has been some debate that he was the model for the messy straight guy, as when he went to the office they straightened his collar, asked him to pull up his fly, told him when he needed a haircut and after he left for the day, they had someone straighten his desk.

Even though he managed to piss off many of the hiring people in the movie industry, and was fired a couple of times, he managed to work until health problems forced him to retire. It was probably time since for the last few years all he had done was walk around and make jokes, which seemed to satisfy his bosses and other workers.

He even designed a few low budget movies, including the Legend of Lucy Keyes, where he should have gotten the award for most use of dead pig heads with makeup. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a category for the Oscars.

He has written a couple plays, one which would be in a podcast if he ever finished it, called It’s Hard To Be Creative When You’re Dead.  He wrote a musical based on The Scarecrow, but of course never finished it because even with Ritalin his ADHD keeps taking over.  He wrote about 25 songs, but the usual musical has about 20 and he still hasn’t finished.

For those classicists who like Greek Comedy, he decided that Aristotle should have written one and so took it upon himself to write the dirtiest play ever written by Aristotle. He thinks it’s funny, but he also was in the rock and roll tour buses for 10 years.

So, finally after about 20 years of thinking about it, he finally finished his book about Viila and wrote about 100 drafts until he had filled it with enough funny lines. The object being to make people laugh, have a good time and just maybe give them something to think about. He has been told it’s not literature, which would be a grave insult if somebody could actually define literature. One reader said it was similar to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, except with more foreskins.

After that review, nothing else needs to be said.