Page 16 - Flathead Beacon // 3.4.15

16 | MARCH 4, 2015
COVER
FLATHEADBEACON.COM
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
J.K. SIMMONS
JAN. 9, 1955
Jonathan Kimble Simmons is born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Don and Pat Simmons.
1972
Don Simmons accepts a teaching position at the University of Montana in Missoula. The elder Simmons served as the chair of the UM music department as well as a choral conductor and music educator. He retired in 1995 but both he and Pat remained community icons and advocates of arts and music in Missoula. Don passed away in 2012. Pat passed away in 2014.
1974
After a year studying at Ohio State University, J.K. Simmons moves to Missoula to join his family. He enrolls at UM and studies music, following in his father’s footsteps.
1977
After meeting Don Thomson while serving as a guest opera performer in Great Falls, Simmons joins Thomson’s repertory troupe at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, which Thomson and his wife Jude have owned and operated since the early 1960s. Simmons’ first main role was Tommy Albright, the star of the well-known Broadway musical, “Brigadoon.” The company performed four main plays that summer: “Brigadoon,” “The Bat,” “Where’s Charley?” and “Bye Bye Birdie.”
1978
J.K. Simmons graduates from UM with a bachelor’s degree in music after majoring
in voice and minoring in composing and conducting. He returns to Bigfork to work for the Playhouse during the summers, serving as a cast member, director and musical director until 1982. Simmons later told the University of Montana’s alumni publication, The Montanan, that the experience in Bigfork was “magical.” “You got to be part of a company, not to be a star. Bigfork was a formative time in my life.”
1983
At 28, after working in musical theater in Seattle and other stops across the Northwest, Simmons moves to New York City with $400 and everything he owned inside his Fiat convertible. While trying to break into Broadway, Simmons serves as a waiter and performs in a variety of regional theater productions. Within a few years, he was performing in renowned Broadway productions, including “Guys and Dolls” and “Peter Pan,” where he met his wife, Michelle Schumacher.
1994-96
Simmons transitions to television and film acting and lands his first big roles, appearing in “Law & Order” and an episode of “Homicide: Life on the Street.” Simmons earned a reoccurring part in the “Law & Order” franchise, appearing as psychiatrist
Dr. Emil Skoda on television from 1994 through 2010.
1997
Simmons is cast as neo-Nazi Vern Schillinger on HBO’s series “Oz,” which featured 56 episodes through 2003.
1999
Simmons is cast as Frank Perry in the film “For Love of the Game,” starring Kevin Costner. That same year he also appears in the Oscar- nominated “The Cider House Rules,” starring Tobey Maguire and Charlize Theron.
2001
Simmons appears alongside Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts in the adventure comedy “The Mexican.”
2002
Widely considered Simmons’ breakout performance, he plays J. Jonah Jameson, the fanatical editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle in “Spider-Man,” starring Tobey Maguire. The film grossed over $800 million and vaulted Simmons’ reputation as a talented character actor. He would reprise the role of Jameson twice more, in “Spider- Man 2” (2004) and “Spider-Man 3” (2007).
2005
Simmons is cast as a leading character in the TNT series “The Closer,” playing Assistant Chief Will Pope from 2005-2012. Simmons and the rest of the cast are nominated five times for Screen Actor Guild Awards for best ensemble cast.
2005-PRESENT
Simmons becomes steadily employed as a well- respected character actor, appearing in prominent supporting roles in films such as “Hidalgo,” “The Ladykillers,” “Juno,” “Up in the Air,” “Thank You For Smoking,” “Burn After Reading,” and “Labor Day.” He also lands several commercial roles, including starring as the Yellow Peanut M&M. He is currently filming “The Accountant,” a thriller starring Ben Affleck. He will appear in the 2016 “Terminator: Genisys,” alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Emilia Clarke.
FEB. 22, 2015
Simmons wins an Oscar for best supporting actor at the 87th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles. The former Bigfork Summer Playhouse cast member garnered the top honor for his role as a sadistic, abusive jazz band instructor in “Whiplash.” In interviews before and after the Oscars, Simmons frequently references his time in Montana as significant. His acceptance speech at the Oscars also makes headlines as a touching moment, encouraging viewers to call their parents if they can and tell them they love them. He ends his heart-felt speech by acknowledging his late mother and father, saying, “Thank you, Mom and Dad.”
While working on the set in Great Falls, Don met a young man with a no- ticeable voice who was a guest baritone in the opera.
Jonathan Kimble Simmons, known to many as Kim, was a music student at the University of Montana. Born in Detroit, the middle child of Don and Pat Simmons grew up in Michigan and Ohio. After a year of college at Ohio State University, Kim moved to Mon- tana to rejoin his family, which had up- rooted to Missoula after Don accepted a teaching position at UM in 1972. Don took over as the chair of the UM music department and also served as a choral conductor and music educator. His pas- sion for music transferred to his kids, and Kim began following in his father’s footsteps, starting with guitar perfor- mances in coffee houses before tran- sitioning to classical music. At UM, he studied voice acting, composing and conducting, which, as fate would have it, was how he crossed paths with Thom- son.
The two hit it off immediately and Thomson encouraged Simmons to fol- low him to Bigfork and join the theater company by Flathead Lake.
Although Simmons had no real training as an actor, he agreed to try it out.
The Playhouse cast — smaller than the 20-member group it is today — per- formed four main plays in the sum- mer of 1977: “Brigadoon,” “The Bat,” “Where’s Charley?” and “Bye Bye Bird- ie.”
As is customary today, the Play- house required a lot from cast members. Singing. Dancing. Acting. Helping cre- ate sets. Sound production. It’s a whirl- wind summer for the cast and crew, which produces unique performances every night, from early May through September.
“It’s a different show every night,” said Jude Thomson. “It requires a lot of talent to be a cast member.”
For Simmons, it didn’t come easy.
“I was horrible,” he said.
“Up until then he was a great musi-
cian singer. He had no idea the range he had,” Jude Thomson said. “But the Play- house gave him different off-the-wall characters to play and he totally rose to the occasion.”
Simmons landed his first major role in “Brigadoon,” playing Tommy Albright, the star of the well-known Broadway musical.
His fierce work ethic buoyed him along and he began improving from one performance to the next as a budding actor, whether it was playing Sir Eve- lyn in “Anything Goes” or Petruchio in “Kiss Me Kate.”
Dwayne Ague, a Great Falls native, was a first-year cast member along- side Simmons in 1977. He became close friends with Simmons right away as the two young men worked together that first summer, acting at night and paint- ing sets or swimming in Flathead Lake during the day.
“He could sing so well. He knows ev- erything about music. That was his first passion. But even then he was just start-
ing,” Ague said. “He was just like the rest of us. We were all just trying to fig- ure out what we were good at and what direction we wanted to go in.”
Another aspect that made Simmons stand out was his willingness to do it all. “He wants to work. He did every- thing, even if it was just a cameo or a bit walk-on part,” Ague said. “That’s one of the things that sets him above a lot of
people. He just wants to get involved.” The possibility of acting beyond Big- fork presented itself and after Simmons graduated from UM in 1978 he moved to Seattle in search of larger stage roles. While trying to establish a career in theater, he stayed connected to Bigfork and returned for six seasons at the Play-
house, which he describes as formative. “It was a lot of things but I think the main thing is the environment that Don and Jude Thomson created there, just getting a bunch of kids that had some talent and were willing to work really hard and had some real commitment and passion for what they were doing and also having a great time enjoying northwestern Montana at the same
time,” Simmons told the Beacon. Simmons said the Playhouse forced him to grow as a well-rounded perform- er in front of live audiences, a training
ground that was pivotal for him.
“That helped me learn and become a versatile actor. But I think more impor- tantly, for myself and for everybody who worked there, it gave us an appreciation for all the different crafts of theater,” he said. “When we weren’t on stage re- hearsing, we were pounding nails or painting flats or people were sewing in
the seam shop. It was a real team effort. “Theater and movie making and TV, most things that people do in life — un- less you’re just a novelist sitting in your cabin in the woods somewhere — it’s usually a collaborative kind of thing. And that’s one of the real big things we all learned at Bigfork. There was no room for any divas there. Everybody was working. Everybody worked long, hard days for the first six to seven weeks of the summer to put the shows on their feet and then the second half of the summer we got to go play in the lake all
day and just do our shows at night.” When they weren’t acting or setting up a production, the cast was enjoy- ing the community surroundings, or as Simmons recalls, “Mostly drinking beer
and acting like an idiot.”
“We didn’t do a lot of hunting or fish-
ing or any of that kind of Montana ac- tivities but we’d go for some hikes. We spent a lot of time swimming around Flathead Lake,” Simmons said. “Now when I go back there I have a lot of friends who have boats, so we do that. We did some water skiing on Flathead and over on Swan Lake once we got to get to know some of the locals.”
Simmons and other cast members launched an annual softball tourna- ment in 1979 — the Townies versus the Playhouse — and the lively event has taken place every summer since. Sim- mons makes a point of returning every year to see friends and participate in the event, which is entering its 36th year.
UM FILE PHOTO