Joe's View

With Joe Meyers, entertainment writer

Archive for April, 2010

A double dose of newspaper nostalgia at Film Forum

Wednesday, April 14, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

Manhattan’s indispensable non-profit movie house, Film Forum, launched another of its great revival festivals last weekend — “The Newspaper Picture” — which is set to run through May 6.

With the very concept of “the newspaper” in peril, the four-week series is doubly nostalgic.

The history of the movies runs parallel to that of the American newspaper industry — which both nourished and attacked Hollywood — so it’s no surprise that some of the best pictures ever made are about reporters and editors.

The film that many people cite as Hollywood’s best — “Citizen Kane” (1941) — is a quintessential newspaper picture and so is one of the best romantic comedies of the screwball era, “His Girl Friday” (1940).

A lot of the credit for the durable genre must be laid at the feet of the great Chicago newspaperman-turned-dramatist Ben Hecht, who with his partner Charles MacArthur, created the almost foolproof 1920s stage classic, “The Front Page,” which became a movie in 1931, and inspired almost countless remakes and imitations.

The Film Forum season spans five decades and demonstrates the flexibility of the genre and the potent cynical comedy that is almost always a hallmark of movies about the business.

On April 25 and 26, you can see a dynamite double feature consisting of the dark comedies, “Nothing Sacred” (1937) and “Roxie Hart” (1942), both of which are about the unholy marriage of the media and the hustlers who exploit it.

The first picture — written by Ben Hecht — is about a young woman (Carole Lombard) who uses a “human interest” reporter (Fredric March) to pitch the phony story that she is dying of radium poisoning in order to get a free trip to Manhattan. The second movie is about a vaudevillian accused of murder who gets a big PR boost from her criminal charges (the material was turned into the long-running Broadway hit, “Chicago”).

Hollywood personalities were able to work off their resentment of newspaper people they believed were too powerful with classic results — Orson Welles’ thinly disguised William Randolph Hearst in “Citizen Kane” and screenwriters Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets’ brilliant hatchet job on columnist Walter Winchell in “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957).

“Sweet Smell of Success” (below) was out of step with the prevailing mood of the 1950s — post-war optimism — and died a dismal death at the box office. In the subsequent half-century, however, the movie has become a certified classic with some of the most-quoted oddball lines in Hollywood history (i.e. “The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river”).

The Film Forum series will end May 6 with screenings of the last great newspaper movie, “All the President’s Men” (1976), which remains one of the best nuts-and-bolts views of daily reporting. With its busy newsroom filled with powerful journalists and noisy typewriters, the Alan Pakula film (above) has much more in common with the first version of “The Front Page” than it would have with any newspaper picture set in 2010.

(Check out the Film Forum bookmark on this page for a complete schedule of “The Newspaper Picture.”)

‘Leg Work’: the best TV show you never heard of

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

Several years before it became popular to film TV series such as “Law & Order” and “Sex and the City” in New York City, CBS gave a greenlight to “Leg Work,” a wonderful show that featured Margaret Colin and Frances McDormand as a private detective and her pal who works in the district attorney’s office.

I was only able to see three or four episodes in the fall of 1987 before CBS yanked the show off the air — four of the original ten shows were never aired by the network — but I was left with fond memories of an extremely well-written and well-acted series.

Because it was produced in Manhattan, the show was able to draw on the city’s theater acting pool. Up-and-comers Lisa Banes, Marisa Tomei, John Pankow and Angela Bassett were just a few of the actors I had already seen in plays and was pleased — and surprised — to see on TV.

After CBS axed the show, “Leg Work” popped up a few times as filler programming on the Lifetime cable network — by that time, Colin and McDormand had become better known due to their film work — but I figured I would never have a chance to see the episodes I missed. Nothing is dead-er than a flop TV series without enough episodes to syndicate.

This is where the miracle of the Internet comes in. Idly web surfing a few weeks ago, I Googled “Leg Work” and was stunned to see that an eBay merchant called goldmonkey.com (!) was offering all ten episodes on DVD for a little more than $10.

A few days later, a tiny package arrived in the mail with all ten episodes on two DVDs. While the visual quality is far from perfect — it looks like a copy of a copy — the show turned out to be every bit as good as I remembered.

Colin is terrific as Claire McCarron and McDormand perfect as her world-weary pal Willie Pipal.

The writing is as sophisticated as anything on HBO or Showtime right now and one of the episodes CBS didn’t air — “Life Itself” — deals with the AIDS crisis in a way that Hollywood wouldn’t even contemplate until “Philadelphia” came out six years later.

The Manhattan backdrops give the show the same sort of realistic texture that “Law & Order” would display a few years later, and “Sex and the City” would have a full decade later (some of Colin and McDormand’s brunch and bar stool conversations about their arid sex lives are on the same page as the similar chit chat of the four Manhattan friends in “SATC”).

What a shame that this fine show was never given a real chance to connect with the TV public. It was just five or ten years ahead of its time.

How nice that the miracle of the World Wide Web makes it possible for us to see this lost show again.

Hot fun in the summertime

Monday, April 12, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

Like lemmings, some of us feel a primal urge to head to the ocean every summer.

Not necessarily to go in the ocean, but to spread a towel or blanket near the shore, oil up with sun screen, and watch the passing parade.

The lure of the beach bridges classes, sexes, races, ages — the whole enchilada.

I don’t quite understand why I feel the need to spend a week or more at an ocean beach every year, but I do, and to this day I get a real kick out of watching the passing scene. Kids under the watchful eyes of their parents, young lovers going about as far as the law allows in public, old folks who might tell you the Atlantic Ocean isn’t what it was back in their glory days.

Joseph Szabo’s fantastic new photo book, “Jones Beach” (Abrams), consists of pictures he’s been taking at the vast public beach of that name — adjacent to New York City — for the past four decades.

Proving that old saw about very specific art almost always having universal applications, “Jones Beach” will hook anyone who loves a teeming summer beach — whether it’s in Wildwood, N.J., Santa Monica, California, or on Long Island.

Although there are a few fashion and hair clues as to which year a given photo might have been shot in, the pictures basically all run together as a seemless visual essay about beach fun. For the last 40 years, at least, people on the beach have been wearing as little as possible.

The book comes with a rave quote from Bruce Weber, but Szabo doesn’t deal in the sort of youthful perfection that has become Weber’s trademark in his work for Abercrombie + Fitch or in personal projects such as “Bear Pond.” Szabo likes to capture people of all shapes, sizes and ages — a truer reflection of life on a public beach than those wonderful fantasy images that have made Weber’s name.

Vince Aletti contributes a good introductory interview/essay in which Szabo talks about the limitless opportunities for a photographer on a crowded beach: “Hundreds and thousands of them, all for the picking. Male and female in all states of dress and undress, attitudes and relationships. You just had to show up and bring a camera.”

Of course, in Szabo’s case, he also showed up with a great eye, and an obvious ability to make all sorts of people feel comfortable in front of his lens.

Aletti puts it well when he concludes, “In pictures that are consistently engaged and engaging, Szabo captures an endless summer. Before his camera everyone — whether cavorting, snuggling, cruising, showing off, or dozing off — is vividly present and alive in the moment. And so, happily, are we.”

‘Around the World’ without much clothing

Sunday, April 11, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

Choreographer/producer Jerry Mitchell and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS are presenting another preview of their gigantic annual “Broadway Bares” fundraiser tonight at 8 and 10 p.m at Splash, 50 West 17th St.

“Around the World” is the title of the show that will give audiences a taste of what they will see June 20 when “Broadway Bares” — “Strip-opoly” — is presented at Roseland Ballroom.

This is the 20th anniversary of the fundraiser and Mitchell is determined to set a new record by raising $1 million for the charity; he decided to add a series of preview shows at Splash in the months before “Broadway Bares.”

Splash is the Chelsea club where Mitchell – then a dancer in “The Will Rogers Follies” — and a few of his chums presented the first “Broadway Bares” on their night off two decades ago. The show has gotten bigger each year after its move to Roseland; more than 200 dancers are expected to perform in “Strip-opoly.”

Tonight’s show is being directed by the stunning Broadway dancer Rachelle Rak (right) whose credits include “Fosse” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.”

Rak has taken part in several of the “Broadway Bares” shows herself so she should have a good feel for the mix of naughtiness and artistry audiences expect in this modern-day burlesque show.

Tonight’s show will feature Marty Thomas as guest vocalist and numbers performed by some of the best dancers on and off Broadway, including Dave August, Kristine Bendul (currently in the Twyla Tharp hit, “Come Fly Away”), Ward Billeisen, Bree Branker, James Brown III, Buddy Casimano, Emily Loftiss, Kristin Piroette, Angie Schworer, Joe Simeone and Mark Stuart.

“Around the World” is a follow-up to a January “Solo Strips” show at Splash which put several thousand dollars in the BC/EFA “Broadway Bares” pot.

Tickets are $10 and are available now at www.broadwaybares.com.

A town rallies around ‘T.S. Spivet’ and Reif Larsen

Thursday, April 8, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

The Trumbull Library is doing its first “One Book-One Town” celebration over the next two weeks and they came up with the perfect novel, Reif Larsen’s fabulous “The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.”

In this age of Kindles and Nooks — and other electronic devices — here is a book that defiantly insists on a presentation involving paper and ink.

Last year, after I attended a huge book convention where most people were talking about technology rather than literature, it was bracing to read “T.S. Spivet” and then to interview Larsen about a novel that flies in the face of current book world technology developments.

The slightly oversized novel combines text with drawings, charts and maps that have made it impossible to “translate” to the Kindle — something that Larsen is quite proud of.

And this wonderfully oddball story of a 12-year-old Montana boy who maps everything around him — and sets off alone on a trip to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. — caused a pre-publication sensation in which most of the major publishing houses fought for the right to produce Larsen’s first novel.

“T.S. Spivet” mixes old and new elements in a delightful manner — the story is set in contemporary America (one of Spivet’s graphs charts the secret of the success of the McDonald’s fast food chain) but the book looks and feels like something that might have been produced 100 years ago.

It will take you back to the gorgeously illustrated versions of Mark Twain and Jules Verne that you might have read as a child (and yet it took modern graphic design to put together pages on which some of the drawings are wedged into the margins of the text like visual footnotes).

Larsen has produced something that is a pleasure to look at as well as to read and for that book lovers will revere his unique creation.

Larsen will be appearing at the Trumbull Library Saturday at 3 p.m. and then the town will be off on an amazing two-week adventure into the ideas raised by this terrific novel, everything from a panel on mapping and cartography to a discussion of cowboy cuisine.

A ghost and a prince meet/And everyone ends in mincemeat

Wednesday, April 7, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

There was lots of drama on and off stage at the Metropolitan Opera Monday night.

A smoking light — high up in the auditorium — caused some folks to flee before the management explained at intermission that there was no fire and that this sort of thing happens occasionally with theatrical lighting.

Those who were downstairs during the first half only heard a sudden and very loud hubbub that could have been mistaken for a reaction to the evening’s opera — “Hamlet” — which appeared to divide the audience.

The 1868 French adaptation of Shakespeare by Michel Carre and Jules Barbier hasn’t been performed at the Met since 1896.

It’s not surprising that the piece hasn’t been seen in New York for more than a century, because the French opera takes lots of disconcerting liberties with the Bard’s story.

“In English-speaking countries it is generally as dangerous to tamper with Shakespeare as it is to fiddle with Goethe in Germany,” the Playbill program notes point out.

Indeed!

For those of us who have been seeing stage and film versions of “Hamlet” for most of our lives, the French opera version of the story is very weird, to say the least.

Rather than the doddering old man of the Bard play, Ophelia’s father Polonius is an accomplice in the killing of the king, so that his brother Claudius can take power and marry the king’s widow, Gertrude.

In the opera, Gertrude is in on murder, too — ala Lady Macbeth — rather than the semi-innocent bystander of the play.

The ghost who is taken as a sign of young Hamlet’s madness by his family and friends in the play, makes a bizarre last act appearance in the opera scaring the daylights out of the whole Danish court.

There’s no poison or dueling in the final scene and victims in the play live to scheme another day in the French version, negating the lyrics in that great old show tune, “That’s Entertainment” — “Where a ghost and a prince meet/And everyone ends in mincemeat.”

If you can put the plot changes aside — along with a very drab set — there is a lot to enjoy in this “Hamlet,” starting with Simon Keenlyside’s intense performance in the title role (above).

He looks like a prince and he sings his way past many of the holes in the plot. Some of the staging appears designed to thwart his characterization, however, including an elaborate graveyard scene, complete with a dug-up skull, that leaves us expecting an “Alas, poor Yorick” moment that never arrives.

The opera beefs up the role of Ophelia, devoting all of Act IV to a mad scene before she kills herself.

The Met staging originated at the Grand Theatre de Geneve where French superstar Natalie Dessay played the role (right). She was supposed to perform in New York as well, but a medical problem caused Dessay to cancel, leaving the part to the beautiful and vocally powerful Jane Archibald (making her Met debut).

Dessay has the charisma of a real stage legend — as well as a great voice — so Act IV felt a bit like a star vehicle without a star. It was easy to wonder Monday night if the Met would have booked this interesting but eccentric adaptation without Dessay on board.

A return to the beautiful (and dangerous) Broward’s Rock

Tuesday, April 6, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

The latest novel by Carolyn Hart — “Laughed ’Til He Died” (William Morrow) — is in bookstores today.

The mystery is the 20th in a series Hart has been writing about Annie Darling and her bookstore, Death on Demand, on the South Carolina resort island of Broward’s Rock.

Hart is one of the top contemporary practitioners of the traditional mystery — which some people slap with the misleading label “cozy” — in the spirit of such masters of the form as Agatha Christie and Rex Stout.

The Annie Darling books are masterpieces of construction and characterization, with a perfect balance between a puzzle mystery that keeps a reader happily turning pages, and well-drawn characters that are as full of surprises as the people in our own lives.

Two years ago, Hart started a wonderful new series about the adventures of the late great Bailey Ruth — an angel/ghost who returns to her Oklahoma home town to help folks who are caught up in violent crime. The first two titles in the series, “Ghost at Work” and “Merry, Merry Ghost,” display many of the same virtues as the “Death on Demand” books, but with a healthy dose of “Topper”-style supernatural humor.

The Annie Darling books have gotten richer — a tad darker, too — since her beloved husband Max was falsely accused of murder in the 2007 novel “Dead Days of Summer.” The experience showed the Darlings how awful it is to have police zero in on a single suspect at the expense of other investigation work and how quickly living in a small town can go from feeling comfortable to being claustrophobic.

Max has become a unlicensed investigator determined to help those in the same situation in which he found himself. And, as a result of the false charges, he and Annie both have a more prickly relationship with the local police.

“Laughed ’Til He Died” features a newcomer to Broward’s Rock, Jean Hughes, who arrives on the island under the sponsorship of the enormously wealthy Booth Wagner, one of the most contemptible characters Hart has ever written about.

Wagner installs Jean as head of the local youth center just to anger the board members with the idea that his “bimbo” is running the place with few obvious qualifications. Jean turns out to be a terrific administrator, however, and she loves the fact that her dying sister has a beautiful place to spend her final days.

When Booth decides to fire Jean, purely out of spite, the woman turns to Max for help, and the stage is set for the poor woman to become the top suspect when Wagner is killed during a youth center program.

Hart makes every character three-dimensional — even Wagner, who we quickly see has as many enemies as that doomed businessman in “Murder on the Orient Express.” The contrast of terrible behavior — and violence — in such an idyllic setting heightens the suspense and the horror (Booth is not the only one to die in the novel).

I am a big fan of Hart’s Bailey Ruth books, but I would hate to see the writer stop producing “Death on Demand” novels — few mystery series have ever given me this much sheer reading pleasure.

You call that a Broadway musical?

Sunday, April 4, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

The chat rooms devoted to Broadway have been buzzing lately with debate over the new musical, “American Idiot” (above), based on an album by Green Day, that has just started previews at the St. James Theatre.

The “All That Chat” blog — bookmarked on this page — is one of my favorite daily reads because you can look at dozens of informed reports on shows in previews.

So far, there has been a great divide among preview theatergoers.

The youngish people who loved “Rent” and “Spring Awakening” and believe the only way Broadway can survive is through big infusions of pop music and contemporary themes are very enthusiastic about “American Idiot.”

On the other side are the baby boom — and older — old-school show queens who would rather see the same Stephen Sondheim show 12 times in revival than to see something with the dreaded rock music they believe helped to destroy the Broadway they loved 40 years ago.

I think it’s great to see musicals such as “Next to Normal” — which just announced that it has moved into the profit column — in the same neighborhood as “A Little Night Music” and “The Lion King.”

One of the things that has hurt Broadway since the beginning of the rock revolution — in my opinion — has been the unwillingness of the major figures in that form to write for the theater. Instead, we’ve had after-the-fact revues like “Beatlemania” and “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” that haven’t brought anything new to Broadway — they were designed simply to leave baby boomers awash in nostaglia.

The music and lyrics of “American Idiot” were not conceived for the stage — Green Day put them together for the concept album of the same title — but director Michael Mayer has used this contemporary material to fashion a book show, not simply a concert presentation.

Other modern music shows are stacking up over Broadway like planes over JFK.

Sherie Rene Scott’s one-woman pop-rock musical “Everyday Rapture” (below) is going to replace the aborted “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” on the Roundabout Theatre’s spring slate (after the much publicized exit of Megan Mullaly caused the cancellation of that Terrence McNally play).

Producers also are working on bringing John Cameron Mitchell’s off-Broadway hit, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” to Broadway next season with Cameron returning to the title role after a long foray into film directing.

Another new sort of Broadway musical planned for next season is “Yank!,” the just-closed off-Broadway production at the York Theatre (above right).

“Yank!” is a more traditional sounding musical — set during World War II — that deals with non-traditional material. The show uses the musical style and structure of a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic to portray gay love in the military long before the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era.

The fact that so many different artists and funding sources think Broadway is still worth caring about is an exciting development no matter what age you might be.

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