The Old Days
Born in Chicago: The Second City
Crested Butte: Just three Long
Haired Hippy Freaks
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last updated 05/08/2011
Chicago
I was born Rolf-Eric Tecumseh Forsberg on 16 December, Beethoven's birthday, at 11:30 AM at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. Not only was Chicago the hog butcher to the world, creator of the sky scraper and inventor of the department store, but it was also America's improvisational hotbed. And on December 16th, the very same night as my birth, a new theater was opening it's doors: The Second City. This cozy cabaret was offering its fledgling comedy revues in the basement of a building on Clark Street which had been rented from the more established theater company, Playwrights. My mother, Josephine Raciti Forsberg, had been a member of Playwrights for many years and was good friends with both Paul Sills who founded it and Paul's mother Viola, who worked with children using theater games at Jane Adam's famous Hull House. Paul liked Jo and so invited her to become a part of his new brainchild, The Second City, which he was opening in the basement. Of course my mother accepted and soon she was helping Viola teach her theater games to adults so they could learn how to improvise. My mother was also given the job of hostess and female understudy. But unfortunately she was unable to attend the opening night of The Second City because her guts were healing from a caesarian section that I had caused. Meanwhile I was sleeping in an incubator by her bed.
My father, Rolf Forsberg, was also a member of Playwrights but he wasn't around for my birth, his second child and first born son. In fact he wasn't around for the first child either, my sister, Linnea, born fourteen years earlier in Green Bay Wisconsin. He was in New York trying to get a show going for her, and he was in New York trying to get a show going for me. Rolf was a writer and a director and on the day that I was born he had a show off Broadway, the Tempest staring Ed Asner and directed by my dad. The same production had been a huge hit in San Francisco but it was not as well received in New York City. The New York Times however was kind enough to announce my coming into the world in the theater section of the the next days paper. So even as a glistening new born, I was stitched to the fabric of other people's fame.
My New York Times birth announcement
I was a bit of an after thought to both of my parents. They had already been married for fifteen years and were on the verge of divorce for the most recent of those. My father, Rolf Forsberg, a pure bred Swede from Chicago's North West side German neighborhood had met my mother, Pepina (Josephine) Raciti, a Sicilian Catholic from the suburb of Oak Park at a theater event when they were in their earlier twenties. They both loved Shakespeare and they both had parents who didn't understand. They got married and spent the next decade and a half traveling around the country as union actors in a road show (Moods from Shakespeare and Goodnight Ladies were two of the big ones). They lived like communists, first with Jo's family in one room of a large apartment full of other Italians, and then in the artists commune that was Playwrights and the Arts Circle where many other artists dwelt (including Jean Arnold, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Paul Sills and others). Linnea was home schooled as Rolf and Jo tried to pound their way up the entertainment ladder. One person who was really taken by their rebellious and artistic nature was Josephine's young nephew, Martin deMaat. So he became their unofficially adopted son. The year before I was born Rolf moved to New York and Jo hooked up with Paul Sills and his mother Viola Spolin and began working at the new art form of improvisation. Soon after they laid the plans for The Second City cabaret theater to open and Josephine was to be Viola's teaching assistant as well as the understudy for all of the female comedians. But she missed the champagne because I needed milk. Within a few years The Second City had launched the careers of Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Alain Arkin and Fred Willard.
For the first few years of life I enjoyed watching my father write in his private bedroom, a Japanese style room with tatami mats and fish tanks where he meditated and typed. Only I was allowed in and my mother certainly was not. Rolf was an avid Buddhist and I was so in awe of him that I wanted to be a Buddhist also. He showed me how to meditate and gasho and sit Za Zen and clean the tanks. Rolf was known in some circles as "Chicago's north side Yoga guru". He had practiced a number of religions, born Lutheran, converted to Catholic, then converted to Hindu, and then landing permanently on Zen Buddhist with his teacher and Master, Reverend Kabosi. All of the Japanese exposure may have effected my sister Linnea, because she began dating Ronnie Morimoto, the son of Japanese immigrants, born in an internment camp in California. He was 6'2", drove a Mustang made great chicken teriyaki. So as a child I was surrounded by Japanese people on one side and lots of Jews on the other. The Jews were through The Second City (everyone there was Jewish but my mother) and my mothers best friends, Leah Rochelle, Fern Greenberg, Joyce Sloane, Paul Sills and Jackie Kroneberg (and I played Dradel with all of their kids).
Rolf and Jo got divorced early on leaving me, my sister Linnea and my adopted cousin Martin to be raised by Josephine alone. Martin and Linnea were already young adults but I was still a little kid so I was passed from one baby sitter to another (including some stars) and when I didn't have a sitter I played tanks with the matchbooks on the floor of the second city bar while my mother taught improv classes. As a little boy I watched my mother work at Second City, training and directing people like David Mamet, Harold Ramis, Betty Thomas and Bill Murray. Bill even painted the family kitchen in return for classes.
TRIVIA
First big role in a film was at age 4.
Directed my first super 8mm film at age 9.
In the late 1960s Bill Murray painted his family kitchen in return for improv classes with his mother.
Mother, Josephine Forsberg, was an improv teacher whose students included Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Shelley Long, Brian Doyle-Murray, Betty Thomas, David Mamet, Catherine O'Hara, Brandon Tartikoff, Tim Kazurinsky, Peter Boyle, George Wendt and Robert Townsend.
This went on until I was almost nine when Jo finally decided to call it quits in Chicago and move to Colorado with a boyfriend half her age. His name was Eric also (big Eric) and he was rich. But he sold his Porsche and bought a VW bus and he drove the us to Aspen over a two month trip of sleeping in the car or a tent and fishing for food while being chased out of towns for being long haired hippy freaks. It was Billy Jack only for real. Aspen ended up being too urban so Big Eric moved the bus and it's human cargo to a tiny town called Crested Butte (which is now a ski resort but at the time was a dead a door nail silver mining town). To pacify and entertain me, I was given my first super 8mm camera. My earliest films were often inspired by my favorite childhood authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and the favorite films of my youth, historic epics, horror movies and action adventures.
Crested Butte
After six months in Colorado Josephine had had enough and moved back to Chicago with me in tow. She began teaching at the Second City again and broke up with Big Eric.
I was a little tainted by the Colorado experience and was eager to move in with my father and give that more stable life a shot. So in the summer before fifth grade I hopped in another car (this time with Rolf and his pregnant wife Moira) and drove west to California to settle in the small town of Sierra Madre just outside of Los Angeles.
typical house in Sierra Madre in the mid 1970s
Rolf rented a huge Spanish adobe house on a tree lined street across from the Catholic school, St. Rita's. Although there were three large bedrooms, I was given an army cot put in a tiny enclosed porch that was used for film can storage. But it was my own room, however small and I loved it. Rolf and Moira decided not to put me in the public school because of the terrible "bussing" problem at the time. So I was enrolled in St. Rita's right across the street. I had been raised by Rolf to be a Buddhist and by my mother to be a Unitarian and I had little or no knowledge of the Catholic church. But Rolf was a hot religious film maker and Rolf refused to allow his reputation to be compromised by my obvious lack of Christian upbringing. So, even though Rolf and I both attended the Pasadena Buddhist temple, and sat Za Zen every morning before Yoga, I was told to "pretend" to be a Catholic at all costs. This lead to some awkward situations like me thinking I would be struck down by God when I accidentally took holy communion not knowing what it was. The charade was to go on for four years. Soon after the first Christmas, my little brother Thor was born. It was the best moment of my life so far.
Rolf and Moira had a small film company that made shorts for the religious and the education market. I worked on my father's films as an actor, a PA, an assistant editor and a special make-up effects artist. I even starred in one film, "King of the Hill".
The early 1970's was a wonderful time in Sierra Madre. There was a canyon filled will hippies and artists and a quaint town that had become an enclave of fringe writers, film makers, actors, painters and sculptors. And Rolf & Moira were in the midst of it all. One of the Forsberg family's best friends was a man named Howard Whalen. Rolf used Howard is all of his movies (Howard starred in "The Ark", a film about the environment that the Universal Feature "Silent Running" was based on). Howard loved Jazz and often worked in his big, overgrown garden. He dated Marie Pekenpah, Sam Pekenpah's ex wife. He was good also pals with a young up and coming actor, Ed Harris (who wanted to date my sister but she wouldn't hear of it). And most of all Howard was the central figure in Sierra Madre's visual art's community. He was a sculptor in clay and his work was indicative of his time and place, Sierra Madre, tucked in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, surrounded by hard drinking writers and artists from the late sixties and early seventies who have all but dropped out of the rat race of the Hollywood scene. They were sexual, primitive and inspiring. Howard was a true, undiscovered talent.
Some of Howard Whalen's many sculptures, tucked away in his bamboo garden in the little town of Sierra Madre, an artist's haven.
I Lived in Sierra Madre attending Saint Rita's school and graduating in the mid 1970s. Then I was ready to give Chicago another try.
Graduation Day at St. Rita's: me, Bob McGuire, Scott Brown and Anthony Labeck
I moved in with Jo in a studio apartment and attended the exclusive Francis W Parker High School on a scholarship.
The Front door of Francis W. Parker School
During my teens I took improv classes with my mom and Martin at The Second City, performing in comedy revues. At age 14, I co-starred with George Wendt in the musical, The Dubbing of Sir Saul by King Benjamin. Of course, I fell in love with the stage. Where as most of my friends had paper routes and other part time kid's-jobs, I made my High School pocket money doing lights for comedy troupes and house managing the children's' theater.
I made great friends at Parker including Charles Schneider, Ralph Saunders, Harrison Fried, Chris Henry and Neil Giuntoli. Also attending FWP High School at the same time were Daryl Hannah, Billy Zane, Lisa Zane, and Jennifer Beals. But Charles was my really soul mate for many years (a soul mate who went crazy on me many times). We made films together with my super 8mm camera and tapes with Charles' cassette deck. It was a great friendship. Some of my early films with collaborator Charles Schneider were sent to John Waters who used quite a few of our images in his future films.
Me and Charles (Chucky) in front of my Tolkien drawings
As soon as I was old enough I took classes at 'The Second City', performing in a variety of shows and later writing them.
During the summer I would go to California to visit my dad and Moira and Thor and all my old Sierra Madre friends. On projects with my father, I worked as a PA, an assistant editor and eventually landed a job in the make-up department on The Late Great Planet Earth (1979) starring Orson Welles.
