Sean Kanan On His Book ‘The Modern Gentlemen: Cooking & Entertaining’ His Advice For All The Men Out There
It is really not hard to describe Sean Kanan and his life at the moment. It actually would only take one word to do so: Busy! As he mentioned to me that he is, “constantly doing nine million things all at the same time,” he is maintaining a balance of it all. I was lucky to get a chance to speak with him about his accomplishments and what is to come.
Sean’s career is extremely colorful as he says, “I have always been multi-hyphenated. The business has changed so much and has become so competitive. I have to have several irons in the fire at any given time. Sometimes the acting is clicking along and sometimes the same goes for the producing. I try to keep it all going. And as I have gotten older and have worked for a while, I have become better at synergizing them all together.
So that one tasks compliments and feeds into the other.” As a producer Sean has produced and starred in ‘March’ on HBO, ‘Hack’ a horror film and an independent film, ‘Jack Rio’. The combination of both his producing and writing that Sean has done so far was for the Lion’s Gate film, ‘Chasing Holden’, which was based on his experiences from an east coast boarding school.
I asked Sean about his roots and where he comes from, he said, “I was born in Ohio; moved when I was 5 and grew up in Pennsylvania. I went to school for 2 years at Boston University and then finished my Political Science degree in UCLA. It was all history after that. Moving to L.A. was in the calculation to start my acting career. “And from there it all began as was chosen at an open call by Oscar winning director, John Avildsen, from a pool of 2,000 other candidates for the role of super villain, Mark Barnes in, ‘The Karate Kid III’. From there on, he was featured for his martial art skills in, ‘Chaos Factor’ and co-starred in the films ‘Extreme Limits’ and ‘Carpool Guy’. Along with that, his popularity, knowledge, and ability to speak Italian made it possible to land the lead role on, ‘Sons Of Italy’ and Italian version of ‘Dancing With The Stars’
Currently, Sean stars on daytime television’s ‘The Young & The Restless’ as Deacon Sharpe, the role that he made famous on ‘The Bold & The Beautiful’. He said, “I have been really busy working on ‘The Young & The Restless’, it has been great. I have been off for several months while I wrote the book and it will start airing again November 30th. I have been doing quite a bit of press for the book and I have a lot of appearances scheduled around the country doing cooking demonstrations and things like that.”
As he mentioned his new book, which was released in September of this year, ‘The Modern Gentlemen: Cooking & Entertaining With Sean Kanan’, published by Dunham Books, I asked how he chose the topic out of all his experiences in life with acting and so on, why about ‘The Modern Gentlemen’, cooking, entertaining? He responded, “The book is really a hybrid. It is only partly a cookbook. A lot of the book has to do with pop-psychology, politics, dating, etc. It is about how to be a gentleman while still remaining to be a guy’s guy. In todays often confusing landscape of deterring messages and things like that, I think a lot of guys are walking confused thinking, ‘am I suppose to be the alpha male? The problem-solver? Or am I supposed to be the guy that is very vulnerable and shows his feelings and is a great listener?’ The reality is that it should to be a little bit of everything. A lot of the book deals with what is the gentleman of today’s society. There are chapters dedicated to how ‘the modern gentlemen is a nice guy but not a nice guy.’ A lot of guys say, ‘every time I meet a girl she tells me that I am a nice guy and just wants to be my friend and how come girls say every girl says she is in to bad-boys?’ I talk a lot about how you can absolutely be the bad boy but can still be a gentlemen.”
I was interested in the cooking aspect and I asked if he was a Chef, his response was, “the cooking aspect of the book, as I mentioned, is only one part of it. I give instructions and tips on how to cook. However, I am not a trained Chef. I mention that I am not a trained chef at the beginning, yet it doesn’t really matter. Rachel Ray is not a trained chef either; the idea is that if I can do it, you can do it. I am self-taught. I have learned a lot from my Mother. I have learned a lot from living in Italy for a year, while doing, ‘Dancing With The Stars’. I learned as much as I could about how to cook while I was there. I wing it, I show how easy it can be and that’s how I teach it.”
Sean wants to motivate the typical guy’s guy to be more open about the so-called ‘domestic’ duties and take charge. He strongly believes that men deserve a better reputation and he says, “it is a book about re-branding a man. Men have gotten a bad-rap. Madison Avenue and Hollywood and how they portray men in the media and how they can’t do anything unless their wives tell them how to do it. And to contribute to that, there are commercials displaying how guys are obsessed with Quiznos, beer and women in bikinis. While there is some reality to that, that is not the only thing that defines men. For a long time woman think that men don’t have the certain skill-set that they wish they had. The problem is that a lot of men have not been taught how to do a lot of the things that woman wish they could do. For example, prepping the house for when company comes over and to have an eye for aesthetics and design and that sort of stuff.” Sean elaborated on the subject, “men have associated design, aesthetics and housekeeping with being very feminine because that what society has told them. Take flower arranging for example. Before you relegate it to some sort of feminine pursuit or something for sissies, think about a bunch of guys that roam the Japanese countryside, that are known as some of the most resilient operators in the world: the Samurai. The Samurai use to do something called, Ikebana meaning flower arranging. They theorized that if they could juxtapose several flowers just so and concentrate completely on how to make the perfect arrangement, they could transfer that knowledge to their study of Kaishin, which is the study of the sword. You wouldn’t want to run into a Samurai, who wants to separate your head from your neck with a razor sharp sword, who has mastered intense concentration and precise knowledge of how to do so gracefully. Suddenly, flower arranging doesn’t sound so silly.”
I mentioned that the book is relatable enough for a woman to read and be interested in, as all women are constantly wondering what exactly is going on inside a man’s head. Sean fully agreed with me and said, “Exactly! At the beginning of the book, I say that, ‘The book is a front row seat for women in the theatre of the male psyche’ and I truly believe that.”
However, besides Sean’s mission to revamp and guide men to a world where women will see them in a new light, he touches on a subject that is very important to him and that he wants to create awareness about. He said, “awareness about bullying is another subject within the book. I wanted to find the link between the work I do with The Anti-Defamation League about bullying and how the need for awareness could be demonstrated in the book.” He mentioned how his fiancée, “told me that young men who are taught how to be gentlemen at an early age, don’t grow up to be bullies. They grow up being calmer, understanding and will treat somebody’s daughter or sister with respect. I wanted to make the connective lines between The A.D.L. and the book. I feel really good about putting the book into people’s hands because there are a lot of different levels and this is really a lot more than another book full or recipes by some guy in a Soap Opera.” Sean and his fiancée are currently working on putting together a series of Public Service Announcements concerning bullying.
Sean’s standup comedic routine is what makes him a quadrupled threat. He has preformed at leading comedy clubs like The Laugh Factory, The Comedy Store, Dangerfield’s, The Brokerage, Uncle Vinnie’s, along with others. And in Sam Shepard’s ‘True West’ at the Zephyr Theatre and ‘It’s Just Sex’ at the Two Roads Theatre. I asked about his love for standup and he said, “I have done standup off and on since I was 15 years old. It supported who I am. A lot of people see me as this guy who does all of these dramatic parts but the truth is that I love to make people laugh. The last standup routine I did was about two months ago at a casino in Oklahoma in front of about one thousand people. It was really a lot of fun. But it is difficult with everything else that I am doing to do comedy as much as I would like. It is also very competitive; everyone is trying to get stage time. However, I do standup in Los Angeles time to time. But when it comes to leaving the city, I am very close with my family and it takes a lot for me to leave the city now.”
Sean’s most recent work on the big and small screens includes, a reoccurring guest appearance on FOX’s ‘Red Eye’ and HLN’s ‘Showbiz Tonight’. His latest role was in the feature film, ‘My Trip Back To The Darkside’ directed by Shane Stanley. And premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, Sean recently starred in ‘Abracadabra’, directed by Julie Pacino.
Sean’s guest appearances on television series include: ‘True Jackson VIP’, ‘Freddy’, ‘Who’s The Boss?’, ‘VIP’, ‘The Nanny’, ‘Walker: Texas Ranger’ and ‘Lois & Clark’. Other regular roles on television series include: ‘General Hospital’ as A.J., ‘Quatermaine’ and as Jude Cavanaugh on, ‘Sunset Beach’. A regular role on ‘Camera Café’, directed by Antonio Banderas. He has appeared on the prime-time series, ‘The Outsiders’, executively produced by Francais Ford Coppola. As well as an appearance in the mini-series, ‘Wild Palms’, executively produced by Oliver Stone.
Near the end of our chat, Sean was on his way walking to an appointment as he exclaimed that he “just walked by the most beautiful Cockatoo! It is a gorgeous white Cockatoo, not something you see everyday!”
When I asked Sean about how he keeps it all together, being so busy and having so many projects on the go, he said, “when it comes down to it I keep my feet moving. I am always moving and always trying to do something. That is what has allowed me to continue to work and do new and exciting things all the time. I am always willing to spread my wings.”
To learn more about Sean, visit: www.seankananthemoderngentleman.com
Written By: Michelle Coveny
