Here's the Sentence That Changed My Life

When I was twenty-three years old I overheard a sentence that changed my life.

I was working as an assistant for a Broadway production company that had an office on the 19th floor of 1501 Broadway in Times Square. One afternoon, while I was sticking everybody’s mail into their respective boxes, the guy working the phones told me the bank had accidentally deposited a thousand dollars into his checking account. He asked me if he should tell the bank or just wait and see what happens.

I was an aspiring actor and a writer, working a string of survival jobs. AKA, broke as a joke. A thousand dollar windfall? Out of nowhere? Obviously, I was on the side of “wait and see.”

As we’re talking, one of the main producers passed by. He always wore a sport coat, sneakers, and a baseball cap, and he had a magnificent wizard beard. The receptionist asked him the same question. Tell the bank? Or wait and see what happens?

Broadway Gandalf said, “Have you ever heard the phrase, action is character, character is destiny?’’

I had heard the “action is character” part, in reference to characters in a drama. The idea is that a character is defined by their actions. Until that moment, it never occurred to me to apply that same idea to my life. My actions tell the world who I am more than words ever could.

It’s as true for us as it is for Oedipus, for Hamlet, for Blanche DuBois, Tony Soprano, Fleabag, and Dora the Explorer. Actions set the course for the person we will become.

I saw it so clearly. I could compare who I was to who I wanted to be, and start taking actions to bring the two into alignment. Every choice I made, every action I took, would be a step in that direction. Or… a step further away. No choice, no action, would be stasis. From that moment on, that sentence wasn’t just a tool in my dramatist’s toolkit. It became a compass for the next thirty years of my life.

To be clear, there have been many, many times when I lost my way. But I’ve been able to find the path again, thanks to that simple phrase.

“Action is character, character is destiny.”

I was a pretty unreliable guy in my early to mid-twenties. I was reckless and irresponsible with relationships. They were a distraction from doing what I really wanted to do, which was watch movies and write all day. Emerson wrote in Self-Reliance, “I would write on the lentils of the door, “whim.” I took that idea way too far.

I flaked out on people. If I didn’t ghost them I showed up late. But, because I didn’t want them to think I was a bad person, I made up excuses. Which meant I wasn’t just a flake, I was also a liar.

I was not above taking office supplies from my day jobs, or skipping out on a few hours so I could hand out flyers for whatever show I was doing, while still billing the company for the total hours worked. I rationalized that my corporate employers were, “subsidizing my art.” In legal parlance, that is what is commonly known as “stealing.”

By the time I hit my late twenties, people started to trust me with more responsibility. I directed shows in summer stock. I made low budget movies that family and friends donated hard-earned money to help produce. I didn’t abuse that trust because I wanted to do more of those things. Over time, I became more responsible.

I also realized the effect it was having on my relationships.

My girlfriend Julie and I met the summer I turned 25. One evening, we’d made plans for a date. Just before I left the house, I saw that TOUCH OF EVIL was playing on Turner Classic Movies. Not just any old TOUCH OF EVIL. The Orson Welles director’s cut. Remember, this is pre-DVD, pre-streaming. I had never seen Orson Welles’s director’s cut of TOUCH OF EVIL. It was my great white movie whale. Who knew when I was going to get this chance again, if ever?

I distinctly remember sitting on the couch, thinking, “I can make up an excuse. Hopefully, I’ll get another chance.” Then I thought, “Which guy are you?” Are you the guy who stands a girl up and lies about it afterward, so you can watch a movie? Or, are you the guy who gets off the couch, and goes on the date?

We’ve been together for twenty-eight years.

Also, I can literally pull out my phone right now and within sixty seconds be watching the director’s cut of TOUCH OF EVIL, so I think I made the right call.

That same summer, I was working out in a gym, when I spotted a hundred dollar bill on the floor. My financial situation wasn’t any better by then. A hundred dollars was a Godsend. I wrestled with whether or not I should I turn it in to the teenager running the front desk for a good twenty minutes, because I knew, I just knew, that if I gave them the money they’d probably just keep it, anyway.

I dug up my journal entry from that day not too long ago. In it, I wrote about Broadway Gandalf, and “action is character.” I asked myself, “Which guy are you?” I turned the money in and I was disappointed in myself that it was even a debate.

But, here’s the gift of doing the right thing. If you do it often enough, it becomes second nature. Which is not to say that there aren’t still times when I’m tempted to stray from the path. When it happens, I think, “Action is character, character is destiny.” I ask myself, “Am I this guy? Or this guy?”

It’s not just moral choices. It’s any action that can alter the direction of your life.

I wrote all the time, because I knew that was the only way to close the distance between who I was, which was someone who wasn’t getting paid to tell stories, to being somebody who did get paid to tell stories. I wrote and wrote, and I sent off query letters, and I made my own movies, and I entered contests. I took action all the time to get closer to where I wanted to be.

On Christmas Eve in 2012, Julie and I were driving her parents’ car from their home in Chicago to visit my family in Ohio, when the car died on the interstate in the middle of a blizzard in Indiana. When the tow truck guy arrived, he looked exactly like Santa Claus. He gave us a ride to a local motel where we spent the night and waited for my dad to pick us up on Christmas Day.

We ordered a pizza. When the pizza delivery guy showed up, he also looked exactly like Santa Claus. (Big beards are a running thread in this article.) While we were eating dinner, I got a call from the motorcycle company I was working for at the time. They were ending the marketing campaign I worked for. I got fired. On Christmas Eve.

That night, I told Julie that I had two choices. I could get a regular job, or I could sell the motorcycle they gave me and put that money toward my writing career. Because I made the right choice in getting off that couch in Indiana fourteen years earlier, Julie said, “I’m with you, whatever you want to do.”

I sold the motorcycle and used some of the money to enter a bunch of screenplay contests. In April of 2013, one of those contests led to me getting a manager and an agent. Two weeks later, my agent sent the script to Amblin Television. In August of that year, I sold my first television show with my Executive Producer, Steven Spielberg.

I’ve spent the past thirty years building up the tools in my dramatist’s toolkit. Along the way, I realized I could put them to use in developing my own character. When I started to do that, I created a better story for myself. Not that it’s all been easy since then. I’m in a particularly challenging time right now. Because of this tool, I wake every day and take action to get where I want to be.

If my life has a three-act structure, I’m in late Act Two. (If I’m lucky.) When I think about who I want to be going into Act Three, I think about Broadway Gandalf, and how that one simple sentence changed the course of my life. That’s why I’m passing it on to you now. That’s why I changed the direction of this newsletter.

I’m not here to tell you how to write a story. I’m here to tell you that you are already in one. No matter who you are, or what you do for a living, you can use this tool and others from the dramatist’s toolkit to live a better story.

Welcome to Character Is Destiny: A Dramatist’s Guide to Living a Better Story!

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