Starr Hardgrove

Chris Polk for Variety Will Smith got upset at Chris Rock for telling a joke about his wife and slapped him in the face. If this was a normal altercation, it might be a few days long. This happened at the Oscars. My initial reaction was, "Did I just see what I thought I just saw?" And then, I looked on the net. Literally a few seconds later, writers had already written a story that was a basic explanation of what happened. Later that night, Will Smith accepted his Oscar crying about his performance at the Oscars. So the next day, there were a billion videos about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock for a joke.  What can we learn from this... We are all familiar with violence and we're pretty much used to it. We see people smash into other people in football. We see people get shot in public schools. Our news is full of crimes of violence and mayhem that happen in our city. We are a violent society.   The writer Anthony Burgess said it plainly.  Violence among young people...

A while back, I wrote a television pilot that I never released. Partially because I had plans on filming it myself and putting it out there. Well, fast forward a few years and I have a few irons in the fire, so here's Lucky's Gamble. I wrote this after watching a ton of Breaking Bad and always being a fan of heist films. Oceans 11 being the most famous and many others. This teleplay follows the actions of four friends who are gamblers in Oklahoma city but are struggling through the daily slings and arrows of life. They decided that the only way that they are going to get ahead is planning a heist on the Indian Gambling casinos that are in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma.  This is a labor of love for me and it's also something that I've written that I'm very proud of. It's available for filming, purchase, stageplays. Anything that you would like to do with it. I would appreciate if you do a performance or something of it, throw me a bone. But then again, let me know ...

I worked for the Tulsa Stagehands Union when Foo Fighters toured with Guns and Roses. It was like a circus to see Dave Grohl and Axel Rose walking around. As a stagehand, there are certain unwritten rules to not do, talk to the talent being a HUGE one. We are waiting in the wings and the Foo Fighters just killed it. As they are walking off, the idiot next to me yelled "Great show, Taylor! YOU ROCK" to which he graciously raised his hand and waved as he walked to his dressing room. We all quickly turn around and told him to be quiet and did our laboring as stage hands getting the Foo Fighters to the next city.  It's also hard to hear and find out all of the things that I never knew about Taylor Hawkins. It seriously reminds me of the death of a good friend called Tommy Layon. He did all of this cool stuff, but I found it out after he died. I was surprised to learn about Taylor Hawkins that he had three kids, that he played for Alanis Morrisette on the Jagged Li...

About ten years ago, I left Tulsa. I left after giving the city ten years of my life. I was living with my then girlfriend who would later marry me and give me two beautiful children and five years together before our divorce. I’m not an easy person to live with. I wish life would have turned out a whole lot differently, but it did not. But here is the story of what happened when I left Tulsa.My then girlfriend and I were on the couch at our two story home where we were at the end of a failing production of one of my favorite plays, Humble Boy. Our lead actors walked out of the production at the end of the show a week before our opening performance at the Dennis R Neill Equality Center. We were on the couch, talking to each other about being happy in Tulsa. I asked her, “Are you happy here?” and she said “No, are you?” and I said no. I think it was part trying to live a creative life in Tulsa and a life that was completely out of the way of the constant criticism that is received from ...

Recently saw the Amazon Prime series Modern Love and an episode called “When Cupid is a Prying Journalist” about a young man and woman who are perfect for each other, but one transgression throws off the whole shebang. They speak about trust being the number one currency in a relationship. And one of the most jaw dropping scenes is when one character basically tells another one “We’re Done”. We all have our We’re Done moments in life. In work, in life, in relationships, but most of us stay in these toxic relationships because we’re getting something out of it. The toxicity for work is money. We have to have money. For life, for food, for rent, for basically everything in life. And our jobs do their best to let us believe that they are the only way for us to get the funds that are necessary to live. It’s a marriage of convenience and not of love. And everyone out there is saying that you should love what you do. Why live a life of misery? Why struggle at something that your heart is not...

The picture above is not Georgia. But the recent version of The Watchmen is filming in Atlanta, Georgia. As a person who lives in Tulsa, my local paper decided to run an article telling me that the show takes place in Tulsa but the filming location states that it’s filming in Atlanta, Georgia. As a person who has spent nearly ten years of my life trying to make art happen in Tulsa, I understand why they didn’t film here. Tulsa likes to brand itself as an arts city, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of funding and supporting artists, the community is more on the “get a real job” side of the coin. A person who I respected even told me that the arts are not something that you can actually get paid for. But if this had filmed in Tulsa, that would not be correct. There would be some actual filming going on in our city. You can point to incentives or other such things, but rarely do you get a chance to have something like this happen and just mis is colossally. There are people wh...

Two years ago, I was living in a four bedroom house with a great job. I had a family and had finally achieved what everyone thought would have been the American Dream. I had a wife and two kids. I was a teacher and performing arts center director. On paper, it was great. In real live, it takes two people to make a marriage. When my marriage ended, I thought life was over. I thought that I would never see my kids again. But I picked myself up and began to walk forward. Literally, I walked around the block every day. It was the only thing that saved me. Walking. How funny. I came to Tulsa with no home and no job to closer to my kids. I eventually got a position at a call center and worked to get my own place. My mother fell ill after a routine surgery and was sick for a year. She died three times. She’s still with us, and working to recover every day. We made it through that. We weathered the storm. It was rough, but we made it. My kids had been displaced and were in a position where the...

Fishing has become one of the most intriguing features of the new action/adventure game Farcry 5. While the story revolves around the community of Hope County, Montana and the dictatorial rule of a charismatic preacher Joseph Seed and The Project at Eden’s Gate; you can still kick back from the carnage and do some fishing.The level of detail that has been placed into this game is really mind boggling. By purchasing a rod and reel from the local store, you can take your dog out fishing. You also have the choice from different flies that are available and the different fish that you can look for. As you play, you also unlock secret fishing spots throughout the game. You earn cash and perk points for how many fish you catch. The interesting thing though about this game, is that it is creating a community around the side mission that seems to be mirroring the current fishing community. This seems to be a great way to reach young people and bring them to the sport. Right now, you can search...

I have a lot of theatre friends, and they tell a lot of theatre stories. It seems to be the national pastime for theatre artists to tell why this production was great, or something interesting that made this production a living nightmare. I think we all have them and having been in nearly 300 plays in my lifetime, I can honestly say that most of these problems come from poor planning. Everyone thinks that the magic of the show requires an alchemy of the right factors that create an atmosphere where everyone is working toward a goal and everyone gets along. While this is nice, it’s not always necessary for a production to come together. Here are the things that I feel need to happen in order for you to have the best possible production that you can have. Production Meetings If we harken back to our times when we were drama students, if we went to an amazing school, they were meeting way before the production began. There needs to be at least four meetings before the first rehearsal. The...

For all my life, I’ve been a creative. A person who basically creates gifts for people to enjoy. In the past couple of months, I have been reinventing myself. Partly because a life that I had planned fell through, but mostly because I am completely reevaluating my direction in life. I want all of my passions in life to converge in one place. The center. Some would call it the Ikigai. In fact, it is my Ikigai. My reason for being on this Earth. It’s not going to be something that comes down and lights on me like a bird but something that will ultimately be able to fulfill me in my newly time constrained role as a father to two lovely daughters. As someone who is searching right now, I came across this episode of Shark Tank. Yep, on Hulu. And an app called Bravo. People say that there are a thousand apps like it in a thousand ways, but this is basically a tipping app. But an app where someone has the ability to transfer funds in proximity to you. And I got to thinking about this app and ...