LAST OF MY HOLLYWOOD DAYS

Just before I left L.A. for Jersey, back in 1999, I played a second character on NYPD BLUE. I had  played an artist, Walter Hoyt, in previous years on the show, the most memorable character in my acting career (I still have people stop me and comment on that role), a career that I never really owned as I always saw myself as a poet who happened to act for his day job, despite the fact I was in my first school play at 13, my first professional play at 22, my first short film at 22 and my first feature at 26, and I made my living at it for over thirty years from my late thirties to my mid-sixties, enough so that I now live on a SAG pension, and yet, up until writing this post actually, I never thought of myself as an "actor" the way I think of friends who also have made their living at acting, sometimes sporadically, and are better known for it.

At any rate, the artist I played on NYPD BLUE was a unique creation and collaboration between me and the writers, and I am grateful for having the opportunity to have done that. But the character above came later on NYPD BLUE and was created as Dennis Franz's character's AA sponsor, just before I made the decision to move back East. The shots above were posted by Louis Perez, a good L.A. buddy originally from NYC and in the hat in the first photo above (his latest role was as the fight announcer on the most recent episode of RAY DONOVAN). They are of a scene in NYPD BLUE of an AA meeting. (I don't know the identity of the actress in the second shot.)

In the episode that followed, Franz's character Sipowitz (if I'm remembering the names correctly) calls his sponsor and says something like "Whattaya mean you moved to New Jersey?" and that was the end of that plot line. It was a nice note to leave L.A. on, and as frustrating and disappointing as it was to leave that role as well as my L.A. friends, it seemed like the right move for me and my family at the time. And anyway, it's all history now, as it all always is as soon as it happens.