God,
The Playwright
By Michael Moriarty
web
posted May 27, 2002
After my 46 years in theater and film, the only perspective through which
I can understand life is God as the playwright and the human race as His
cast. We act, totally unaware of the play's outcome. We are handed the
lines the moment we are expected to deliver them and are left with only
one hope, that we're among the "good guys" and not led blindly
into a dressing room of villains.
"Play the role well. Therein all the honor lies."
With that as the divine order from God, we endeavor to perform what the
Deity expects of us. Only He can judge our true integrity because He created
us, formed us and assigned us to a role in the play that only He comprehends
because it's His play, not ours.
A few mortal playwrights and screenwriters have tried to play God. One,
in particular, approached me with a job offer and said quite assuredly
that he would be the only one to know the entire script and he was going
to write it as he went along. I declined the offer.
Only God can do that, I thought, and so I dismissed an opportunity to
work with someone recognized as a major American filmmaker. A few years
later, this "auteur" found himself trapped in God's play and
discovered that, for many people, he was turning out to be a bit of a
villain.
We can never know for certain where life's ultimate audience sympathies
will lie. It's not our job.
"Unto thine own self be true" and then thou canst not be false
to God. The irony in this quote from Shakespeare's play Hamlet is that
it is the character of Polonius who says it, and he, throughout the drama,
reveals himself as the most Machiavellian member in the cast -- plotting
and conniving and spying, sins for which he ultimately dies.
I performed one highly celebrated villainous role, that of Major Erik
Dorf in the television mini-series Holocaust. From that point on, I was
determined not to play any more bad guys. It cost me millions of dollars
to turn down numerous villain roles. That strategy finally led me to the
role for which I'm best known - assistant district attorney Ben Stone
in the TV series Law and Order.
In 1994, I was dragged into a backroom, Washington, D.C. meeting with
then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. The behavior of the most powerful
law enforcement officer in the world was so unconstitutional and abusive
that I had to warn everyone who'd listen to me. The listening audience
dwindled swiftly and I soon found myself on the way out of my series.
I resigned in protest, placed ads in Variety and The Hollywood
Reporter to announce that fact. Because of what had happened to the
United States under the Clinton administration, I was leaving my country.
In a further protest, I took up two of the most politically incorrect
substances, alcohol and nicotine, and, being a man of my word as best
I can, I left New York City for Canada.
The following eight years have typecast me in the real-life role of loser,
in the minds of many. Some have admired my integrity, while others laughed
at the naiveté of a man who should have known better. Adding up
the public intoxication arrests, the domestic dispute that ended up in
court, and the only one of my five assaults to be recorded in the press,
the North American audience and the entertainment industry have, in great
measure, written me off.
I
know for certain that I played the role of Michael Moriarty well. I was
true to mine own self. That certainly doesn't mean the other characters
in the play, the over 300 million citizens of North America, are obliged
to show any understanding or compassion. They are in the same play and
many have been obliged by the Divine Playwright to oppose me in "mortal
combat" (literally, in some cases).
Only the Church of the Good Thief ensures me some haven and sanctuary
from the world's idea for the plot of this play.
With a criminal and a prostitute as the main entrance to a new kind of
temple, only the losers of the world would seriously consider opening
these doors and venturing inside. So be it.
As a young man, I entered acting with the vocational dedication of a
priest. What that commitment brought me is now recorded in entertainment
history.
I left Law and Order because I never wanted to make the same mistake
Erik Dorf made in Nazi Germany. Dorf was a careerist. All he and his wife
cared about were his promotions up the ladder. Regardless of the luxuries
Law and Order brought me, I knew I couldn't put them before my ability
to tell the truth, as I understood it. If my comprehension has been limited,
that is clearly the intent of our Playwright. My blind spots were pre-ordained
and the plot will unfold within the framework of that short-sightedness.
"On! Don't go back!"
That was the most frequently and most perfectly enunciated phrase uttered
by Sir Tyrone Guthrie - in my estimation, the greatest director in the
history of the English-speaking theater. Dr. Guthrie, as his actors usually
addressed him, now directs the tempo and style of my life in many ways.
The plays he directed, works by Sophocles and Shakespeare, were massive
and, with so little time for rehearsal, demanded that the cast repeat
the entire dramas and comedies as many times as possible before opening
night. Sir Tyrone wanted the cast to see the complete panoply before they
became too concentrated on the secondary conflicts of their characters.
The Book of Revelations appears to be the outline of life's drama in
the next decade. My actions are largely guided by this prophecy of St.
John the Divine. Now, as a result of my own personal revelation of the
dark carnival now in progress across North America, my instincts are telling
me how the play will end.
How I fit in, and where my life decisions will lead me, arise from a
vision of the immediate future, one fraught with such dangers that only
a spiritual commitment encompassing life and death is sufficient to meet
the dreadful challenge.
Marxism, which now rules the world through the socialist federations
of the United Nations, is not a political idea but a religion. That Marxists
have contemptuously dismissed religious fervor as the flaw within the
Judeo-Christian civilization is deeply ironic when one realizes that Marxism
is the most ubiquitous spiritual zealotry alive today. That Islam and
Communism share a common enemy, the Free World, explains their increasingly
intimate merger. Japan and Germany's hatred encompassed only Europe and
North America. The Axis powers' shared loathing precipitated Hitler's
invasion of Poland and Japan's assault on Pearl Harbor. Islamic fundamentalism
loathes all things western and Judeo-Christian.
The September 11 attack on Manhattan's Twin Towers and the Pentagon in
Washington, D.C., has been likened to Pearl Harbor. Decades of unrelenting
campaigns of destruction in the Middle East should have been compared
to Hitler's capture of the Sudetenland and all his invasions prior to
Japan's entrance into the Second World War.
Millions of Christians have been murdered in the past two millennia.
As Christ predicted His own fate, so He knew full well the fate of His
followers. Therefore, until Christians are prepared to die for their faith,
they are not prepared to live a life filled with the abundance that their
Lord promised them.
Until one wholeheartedly enters the drama of Christ, he or she does not
comprehend the mortal danger within the play they're in. Once understood,
each second of our lives is precious, profound and containing an "eye
of the storm", which holds a peace that "passeth understanding."
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe winning actor, best known for his
role as Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone on Law and Order.

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