Treading the Board
The idea was Story Scrabble. I invented the game a day before meeting Geoffrey Rush.
Thanks to a Sunday Life commission, and all the talent agents in between, I had 30 minutes with the stage and screen star – chatting in the Melbourne offices of Buena Vista. An hour if I was lucky. Scarcely time to map a candid profile of the man, but I was willing to chance my arm.
And then the Scrabble idea struck me. Instead of the usual Q&A, which Rush must suffer every other week, why not muck around with words?
The brainwave felt right – Geoffrey is a lingophile, a writer, translator and lover of cryptic crosswords. He’s also a good sport. Surely Captain Barbossa won’t be scared of a vowel glut, or worse, an orphaned Q?
Not that we’d be playing the orthodox game. Rather the score, the idea of Story Scrabble (where any one tile can be flipped to form a blank) is a memory-prompt, the trigger for a yarn, a pet quote, a chance for the inner voice to ark up.
If Dadaism ever embraced the art of profiling, I’m sure Max Ernst and pals would settle for the Scrabble method.
Perhaps I should rewind the clock before going further. Originally I had intended to funnel my precious 30 minutes into a driving lesson since Mr Rush is a chronic non-motorist. For most of his 56 years the star of Shine and Peter Sellers has relied on cabs, mates, lovers and LA limos to get about….
Working under the theme of Performance Anxiety, I’d phoned a local driving college, booked a tutor, secluded a car-park, only to discover Geoffrey hasn’t been idle between projects. Somewhere amid Munich and Candy the actor performed a triumphant test to secure his P-plates. The lesson gag was punctured.
So back to the Scrabble board – the interview you have when you don’t have an interview. What better way to elicit fresh material from an over-interviewed fellow? With the help of A, S, E, I, R and all the other one-pointers, anything might arise.
Just what exactly, I’ll post here shortly.
(Striptease aside, you know any other Scrabble variations? One game I know treats the board as a sphere, or a 3-D doughnut, where words can run over one edge, top or bottom, resuming on the opposite side. I’m sure there must be plenty more. Seriously, I’ve just conjured the Rush Variation out of panic…)