Words Hristo K. Bojilov
PEOPLE / FILM · SPRING 2018
Statistically speaking, the opportunity to meet your childhood hero is in the same ballpark as winning the lottery! Phil Donlon, actor, director, writer, and founding member of The Gilead Theater Company in Chicago, was able to meet not just one but three baseball heroes he’s idolized from a toddler age. However, this encounter arrived under entirely different circumstances than he’d once anticipated.
At the beginning of production for the new feature film High and Outside, Donlon as star, was expected to talk the talk and walk the walk. To foster that end, the production team arranged for the Chicago actor to hone his baseball skills with the likes of none other than Roger Clemens, Pedro Guerrero, Jose Canseco, and other high-profile athletes. Not only did Donlon see them on the field, but on the set as well.
Born and bred in the South Side Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, Donlon was raised by both his father and mother, a salesman and a nurse. He points out that he did not grow up in any kind of creative-arts family by any stretch of the imagination. However he and his father did watch TV crime shows and in what may have been a harbinger of his future, at the simple age of ten, he and his father wrote a script together. He recalls it as a fatherly-son moment in life that he will always cherish.
“It was like a ten-page science-fiction script, and I was convinced that George Lucas needed to read it.”
A neighbor of his who was the same age as Donlon, laughed at the idea of Lucas actually taking the time to even open the package. But Donlon sent it anyway. He never found out if Lucas read the script or even received the package.
As a normal Chicago south-sider Donlon truly grew up on the sport of baseball, lived and breathed, it because he lived just a stone’s throw away from Comiskey Park, (presently known as Guaranteed Rate Field), where the Chicago White Sox play. Like many kids, he dreamed of becoming a baseball player and playing for his boyhood team in front of the very crowds he could hear roaring from his own backyard. If he wasn’t actually at the park itself, he would hear the fireworks going off and cheer after a home run as if he were really there, right alongside the thousands who were. Those boyish dreams held fast until Donlon’s senior year in high school when an unexpected curveball got thrown into those boyish dreams.
A friend of his at Glenbard North dared him to audition for one of the school plays. He tried out for the role of Eddie Fuseli in Clifford Odets’ drama Golden Boy.
“I treated the audition as a complete joke. The head of the drama department, who became a very good friend of mine in later years, was like: Okay, you’re trying to treat this as a joke, I’m going to cast you.”
Though he’d never before performed on stage, Donlon was awarded the role. Surprised at feeling at home upon that stage, he realized he had never really felt this kind of connection with his athlete sports heroes. Baseball got left behind.
“It excited me. Even though I began by treating it as a joke, it was the greatest rush I had ever felt. My dad wasn’t a fan of me performing on stage, so this is something that just came out of nowhere.”
The former baseball fanatic quickly evolved into a performing arts enthusiast. But even though he had this new-found desire, he did not know exactly how to go about it making it real. Memories of his childhood curiosity about how someone became an actor on those crime television shows that he watched with his father, quickly rushed back into his thoughts. He knew college was the next obvious step in his academic career.
Regardless of the lack of financial aid for a performing arts school, he was determined this was his calling. No matter how absurd it seemed to spectators he was determined to follow through on his new-found ambition.
An acceptance letter to Roosevelt University, in downtown Chicago’s campus, came with a full-ride scholarship. He did not at first realize the amount of work awaited him. He quickly learned that to get on the television screen he would have to dig through the theatrical trenches by learning monologues, reading Greek Tragedies and reciting Shakespeare alongside students who had already mastered this craft. He felt deeply like an outsider among his peers.
Once again, the unexpected came to Donlon. A guest professor named David Mamet took notice of him.
Unbeknownst to Donlon, Mamet was, a the time a God of the movie industry who came down to Earth to share his knowledge. Understanding Donlon’s frustration with reading all this foreign material, Mamet gave him a copy of his own play called Glengarry Glen Ross. Mamet was not surprised that his young student truly understood it.
“I started to kind of understand what theater can do for me, and that was really like a big moment. I am grateful to him for that.”
With Mamet’s help Donlon was able to raise his nearly failing grades as well as his confidence. Following his new thirst for the stage, Donlon attended numerous plays in Chicago’s local theaters.
“I realized there were all these great actors who I loved and were doing really well in Hollywood who all came out of the Chicago theater scene. I began to really start respecting that. As a badge of honor, if I come out of the Chicago theater scene, that would be great.”
Donlon started his own theater company, The Gilead Theater Company, with two other students from school. The company went on to do great things for the next six years, getting praise from Chicago’s Tribune and Sun Times. Donjon explained:
“Everyone loved us. We were nominated for a ton of awards, and got great reviews. Our shows were selling out.”
Following this newfound success, Donlon acquired an agent and scored work opportunities. Before he knew it, he received a phone call from the ‘holy land’ of Los Angeles. The phone call was for a pilot, which never aired, but this turned out to be a call that changed his life from being on the brink of a small opportunity to something permanent.
Moving to L.A. was an immense decision, but one that had to happen if he was to nurture his acting career. He contacted his old friend Nick Offerman, then the star of the show Parks and Recreation, who accepted him into his home, and provided a living room couch until he got on his feet.
Looking to change his luck, Donlon auditioned, researched, and read for almost everything he could get his hands on in order to gain experience and recognition. The actor was quickly creating his own spotlight.
“I wrote/directed and put myself in the lead of the first short film called “Wrestled” which I financed with my own money.”
He sent the film to the Sundance Film Festival, and it got in!
“At the time I didn’t actually know how hard it was to pull that off. To be the person who makes your first movie, sends it to your first film festival, which is Sundance and you actually get in, is like playing the lottery and winning. It’s really near impossible, and while I realize that now, I didn’t then.”
Doors began to open up for the actor. After searching for people, ideas, and material that spoke to him, he stumbled upon something at a friend’s casting party.
The host of the party was Geoff Lewis, an actor known for working with Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood. While sitting around one night, drinking with friends, Geoff’s wife said:
”You two should play father and son in a film because you have the same eyes.”
At the time it did not mean much to anyone, but six months later that comment wakened something in Evald Johnson because he called Donlon with an idea for a film.
High and Outside runs deeper than baseball. Writer Dan O’Dair and Director Evald Johnson wanted to portray the gloomier side of baseball, the struggle, and the raw emotion before the fame and glory. That meant casting someone for the star role who has actually played baseball. Donlon eagerly stepped up to this plate.
Spending some quality time hitting baseballs and conversing with the former pros not only shaped Donlon’s game on the baseball pitch but shaped his character for the film.
“I don’t like to rehearse a lot. Part of what I feel is great about film is that you’ve got the camera there so it captures the magic moment when the magic moment happens, and if it doesn’t you do another take. What I think is the hardest thing for an actor is when you’re on take five. How do you do five different takes and than have to take another one. You can really get into a pattern. It’s hard to switch it up and do something fresh.”
This film conveys a particular novelty. Every scene and each word of dialogue seems so fluid, so uncontrolled, and so raw. Donlon mentioned that one of the best compliments he’s received for his role in this film was that it’s so intense they did not know what was going to happen next.
“I give the credit to all the actors I worked with because you know they put up with a lot of shit. I would talk with Lindsey Haun, who plays my wife in the film before takes about how far I can go with stuff. She said to go for it, and Jeff was the same way.”
Donlon most certainly went for it, sometimes for 25 whole minutes. Due to Johnson’s improv style, some of the takes would take that long. Over-all, Donjon felt that it was working in concert with Johnson, writer Dan O’Dair, and fellow cast member and close friend offstage Geoff Lewis, that made the whole shoot, all of it worth every single second.
Part of what makes this noir film successful is not just this improv style, but the relationship and chemistry between Geoff Lewis and Donlon, perhaps because they are close off-stage. Over time, Lewis has grown into a father-figure for Donlon.
The audience can feel that connection between the two actors in every scene together. One minute it’s them screaming at one another, while the next it’s a moment of reconciliation. Lewis had a token saying during the production of this film, “Let it rip!”
To Donlon and the cast those words meant you were to give everything you had of yourself in this next take. This film’s visionaries, its talent of all ages, and its dialogue keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. High and Outside rips away the usual sports movie happy ending where the protagonist wins it all, and instead delivers the dark struggles of an athlete in his search for fame and glory. Donlon’s portrayal of that athlete slams it out of the park.
Creative Credits
- Written by
- Hristo K. Bojilov
- Photography
- Nick Holmes
