My name is Casey Rubens.

When people ask me why I got out of directing movies in Hollywood and into directing live

movement pieces in Philadelphia, I tell them it's not complicated.

Adolfo Pedragal drove me insane.

I like to say to my theatre students, use the story of Adolfo and I as an example of

the dark side of creativity.

The moral is, stay away from everyone at the far ends of the entertainment industry spectrum,

both the heartless marketing vultures and the obsessive creatives willing to do anything

for their art.

Only work with people who have at least one foot firmly planted somewhere near the

sane middle.

Over the years I had heard all the stories about Adolfo, the warnings of his craziness.

The screenwriter friend said to me, yeah, remember when Daniel Bay Lewis quit acting for a while

to become a cobbler?

Adolfo was like that, but weirder.

When he goes, he'll just be homeless.

And it will be permanent.

But when Adolfo called me in the middle of the night from Thailand, raving about the

script I'd sent him, of course I got excited about the possibilities.

Suddenly I had Adolfo Pedragal on board, one of the great modern screen iconoclasts,

completely unpredictable with this performances, all of which were fascinating in some way.

So he signed on to play the notorious serial murderer, Alexander Pekushkin, the chessboard

...