A Quote by Clarke Peters
My first professional acting job was in 'Hair' during the Vietnam War. So I think I've always been drawn to projects with a social conscience.
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My first professional acting job was on 'Boss'. My first acting job was basically my first acting class. I had to show up on set prepared and knowing my lines. Also, I got a chance to work with a living legend, Kelsey Grammar - that gave me hands on experience.
Social justice has always been a part of my inspiration. For example, when the Vietnam War was going on, I wrote a song about that.
I think that the war on drugs is domestic Vietnam. And didn't we learn from Vietnam that, at a certain point in the war, we should stop and rethink our strategy, ask ``Why are we here, what are we doing, what's succeeded, what's failed?'' And we ought to do that with the domestic Vietnam, which is the war on drugs.
Most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early '60's - the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now.
On the Vietnam War: I've lived under situations where every decent man declared war first and I've lived under situations where you don't declare war. We've been flexible enough to kill people without declaring war.
There are so many fantastic roles, but the ones that have always drawn me to them are the loners who, for whatever reason, never quite fit in and knew it and had to find their own way. I've always been drawn to that, for some reason. I've always been drawn to that sad, isolated place, but what it produces in behavior is something else, entirely. For whatever reason, I'm drawn to these people. Essentially, I think what draws me is that they are survivors against rather considerable odds.
I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer.
Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how - while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" - the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam.
Hair and make-up always helps. I did always try to be well-groomed, professional at all times. Take your job seriously - but not yourself.
First of all, as a professional, you can run around saying "artists, schmartists" as much as you want. But I'm a professional, so if somebody hires me for something, I'm going to bring my best to it. They've hired me, I'm professional, I show up on time, I do my job. That's what we're doing. So in that sense, it's always both things.
I didn't even have a career before 'Stranger Things' - it was my first acting job, my first time on a professional set, and my character wasn't even supposed to be a big deal - it all just exploded.
I was 23, and that was my first professional job. Anybody who has curly hair knows you don't want it to be brushed out because it becomes a never-ending tangle.
One big, glaring difference I can think of between Iraq and Vietnam is the news coverage. During the Vietnam War era, you had TV coverage of the war saturating the airwaves every night, and that coverage wasn't put through a military filter at all.
Those of us who finally saw through the Vietnam war saw through this war, and all the actions that were necessary to end the Vietnam war will be necessary here. I think the American people will get us out of this war.
'No Sweetness Here' is the kind of old-fashioned social realism I have always been drawn to in fiction, and it does what I think all good literature should: It entertains you.
If you run an Internet search on Vietnam and the war, most of the information you get begins at about 1962. I think this is telling. It is missing the whole period that led up to the reasons the war happened in the first place.
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