AMC Alums Michael Brainard And Greta Lind Team Up For New Podcast
Michael Brainard (ex-Joey, ALL MY CHILDREN) wrote, directed and stars in THE ERNIE PYLE EXPERIMENT, a 13-episode podcast chronicling the pre-World War II work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ernie Pyle and his wife, Jerry’s, struggles with alcohol. It was recorded in Pyle’s native Indiana and produced by the local NPR station. In the podcast, Brainard plays Ernie, and the role of his wife is played by Greta Lind (ex-Katie, AMC), who played Brainard’s Pine Valley wife.
Begins Brainard, “Each episode is about 30 minutes long. It’s set in 1936, when Ernie is a travel columnist. He and his wife travel the United States by car writing six columns a week, a thousand words each column. He drives through the backwater of America searching for stories about America and its people.” This is not Brainard’s first creative foray into the life of Pyle; he previously wrote a play about him, called War Is Coming, Ernie Pyle. “Whenever anybody thinks of Ernie Pyle they think of him as a war correspondent of World War II. That’s how he reached the apex of his fame and it’s where he won the Pulitzer for his writing for the war. But I’ve seen Ernie from another angle, from his pre-war stuff,” Brainard explains. “The first book I found of his was a compilation called Home Country and it’s about his travels in the ‘30s, which is the basis of my podcast.”
While workshopping the project in Los Angeles, Brainard called upon Cady McClain (ex-Dixie, AMC) to play the role of Jerry, but when she was unable to travel to Indiana for the three weeks of podcast recording, Lind got involved. She explains, “Michael and I had not stayed in touch, but a few years ago, I got a Facebook message out of the blue saying, ‘Greta, is that you?’ And I was like, ‘Michael Brainard… Why does that name sound so familiar?’ And then I was like, ‘That was Joey!’ So I said, ‘Yes!’ and he said, ‘Facebook strikes again!’ Then he said, ‘Do you live in Bloomington, IN?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said that he and his wife were coming to Bloomington to meet with Owen Johnson, an expert on Ernie Pyle, and would I want to meet them for a drink? So I met them the next week and it was one of those connections that you can’t quite explain, where you pick up in a way that is beyond logic — not only with him, but with his wife, who I had never met. I just felt a real closeness. So that was sweet, and then they came back a few more times, and my then-husband at the time — we’re divorced but we are very close and good friends — was the station manager at WFIU, which is our local NPR station, and the two of them started to talk about potentially creating something together and I was really on the periphery. I’m a massage therapist and I really hadn’t done much acting in quite a while and was actually, to be honest, in the process of integrating that time of my life, emotionally. When Cady was unable to come out to record, Michael asked if I would be willing to audition and I said, ‘Well, you know what? I’m at a place in my life where I am no longer interested in feeling afraid. I feel brave. So why not?’ So I auditioned and he asked me to come to the callback and then he asked me that night if I would play Jerry. It was like a marriage proposal! He was like, ‘Greta, will you play Jerry?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’ “
The full cast consists of 24 actors. “It’s really a huge treasure trove of Indiana actors,” Brainard praises. “And when Greta read with me [at the audition], I was like, ‘I have to have you!’ She was amazing. I wanted it to be more realistic than stylized, and she could do that. And we were back working together again!” Playing Jerry proved to be a thrilling experience for Lind. “I”m glad I didn’t know how huge the role was when I took it on,” she chuckles. “There was so much text that I didn’t have the luxury of getting nervous or worried. Michael and I did some phone rehearsal, which was great because he was able to give me some guidance and direction. Jerry is so complex; she is once in a while sober, but usually, she is drinking, drunk, on uppers or on downers, and not only dealing with alcohol and pills but also bipolar, undiagnosed bipolar. So she is really kind of going in and out of being pretty frenetic and pretty shut down, and everything in between. What this ended up being, for me, was the role of a lifetime with the team of a lifetime. As women, the roles are often fairly two-dimensional and I really hadn’t bitten that deep into anything in a long time. I’m 51 years old now, and I have to tell you, it is a complete relief to not be an ingenue anymore! That is an unrealistic image to begin with, and I am someone who finds getting older very freeing. I had never done a recording like this before, and this was all new to me. I would go to work, see my clients as a massage therapist, get coffee and something to eat and shift gears and then we we would start recording and we would record all evening. It was a really alive process. I’m a paper person, but the microphones are so [sensitive] that you can’t have paper in the booth because the turning of the pages would be too loud, so I read off an iPad, and I just found the relationship between Ernie and Jerry, and the connection between Michael and me in that regard, and the entire cast and crew to be wonderful. It was one of the most safe, caring playing fields, and not for a moment did I feel fear and not for a moment did I get in my own way, that is incredibly freeing.”
The first two episodes are now available on iTunes. “It’s exciting and it’s scary,” sums up Brainard. “Every three weeks, there will be two more episodes dropped all the way through National Ernie Pyle Day, August 3; the final episodes will go up that week. I just feel so lucky. Our sound director, Russell McGee, is truly an amazing artist and he’s elevated this thing to a place I would never have [thought]. If I studied the rest of my life trying to learn what he knows how to do, I couldn’t do it! I’m really proud of how it turned out.”
To listen to the first two episodes, click here.
Lind dug up this photo of herself with Brainard circa 1990.
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