Joe's View

Obviously any piece of comic material that has been performed continuously for 20 years has to have a lot going for it.

But it was still a very pleasant surprise to have such a good time watching Paul Perroni perform the Rob Becker piece “Defending the Caveman” at the Downtown Cabaret Theatre in Bridgeport last weekend.

While the show ran and ran on Broadway in the mid-1990s — with Becker starring in it — I resisted, thinking that “Caveman” must be just a younger guy’s version of a Jackie Mason-style nightclub-act-disguised-as-a-Broadway-show.

The durability of the material was proven, however, after Becker stopped appearing in “Caveman” and audiences continued to enjoy it with other performers.

Becker succeeded where other solo artists, like Lily Tomlin and Eric Bogosian, have not, in sending his vehicle off into the theater world without his participation (I know that there have been occasional presentations of Tomlin’s “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” by other performers, but not on the scale of “Defending the Caveman”).

The reason for the enduring appeal of “Caveman” was evident within a few moments of Perroni’s arrival on stage — the young actor was able to take possession of the material the same way he might with any other play.

For the 90 minutes or so he was on stage, we believed “Paul” was giving us his theories on the differences between men and women that have not changed since prehistoric times.

As played by Perroni, “Caveman” had a present-tense quality that belied the fact that Becker first started working on a rough version of the show in 1987 which he polished for more than three years before it took the form of its current incarnation.

Perroni makes us believe he is talking about his life — and his wife — as he kvetches about the way men and women shop, watch television, and hang out with their best friends. It’s the same sort of “nothing” that “Seinfeld” made hay out of for a decade on television — i.e. shocks of hilarious recognition about the tiniest quirks in human behavior.

Perroni physicalizes “Caveman” by working the whole stage of the Bridgeport venue and acting out scenes about his wife and his friends in a manner that takes the evening way beyond the realm of stand-up comedy.

The show becomes an acting piece in the same way that the David Sedaris monologue “The Santaland Diaries” became a play in the hands of fine actors like Timothy Olyphant and Thomas Sadoski.

(For information on this weekend’s performances, go to www.dtcab.com)

So far, we haven’t had much of a winter in the Northeast, but it’s still nice to dream of summers at the beach via the USA series “Royal Pains,” which restarts tonight at 10.

The Hamptons-based show has been a small but significant hit for the basic cable channel since 2009, reflected in Penguin’s decision to publish a spin-off novel series.

The third book in the series, “Royal Pains: Sick Rich,” has just been released through Penguin’s Obsidian paperback mystery division.

The novels are the work of the fine writer D.P. Lyle, who has won and been nominated for a number of mystery fiction awards for such medical and forensics thrillers as “Stress Fracture” and “Devil’s Playground.”

“Royal Pains” is a tasty mix of soap opera and medical drama, but without the heavy-handed theatrics of such network doctors-and-nurses melodramas as “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The USA show is no more than froth, but the Hamptons locations give it a real boost (unlike another ABC show “Revenge” which fakes its upscale Long Island settings in North Carolina). It’s fun to spend an hour fantasizing about being rich and famous beyond your wildest dreams.

Mark Feuerstein stars as Hank Lawson who operates an upscale medical concierge business with his brother Evan (Paulo Costanzo). The show earns points for not making a big deal out of the way the Lawsons enjoy the plush lifestyle that comes from tending to the ailments of the super-rich.

Feuerstein has that relaxed style and low-key charisma that marks a real TV star (traits he shares with Nathan Fillion of “Castle”). Once a memorable supporting player in films like “The Muse” (where he was very funny as Albert Brooks’ agent), the actor has found a TV role that fits him like a glove.

“Royal Pains” has a serial structure with plotlines running through several episodes, but the stories are light and breezy and easy to pick up or drop depending on whether or not you are home on Wednesday evenings.

Mary Jane Clark delivers another superior traditional mystery with “The Look of Love” (William Morrow), the second in the writer’s new series about Piper Donovan, an aspiring New York actress who moonlights as a cake decorator for upscale clients.

The first book “To Have and to Kill” took readers into the world of daytime drama when Piper was hired to do a cake for one of the performers on a just-canceled soap opera.

The debut novel was a very tasty blend of excellent mystery plotting and a behind-the-scenes view of TV production and the life of New York City actors (Clark worked for CBS News for many years before she turned to mystery writing and her daughter, Elizabeth, is an actress).

“The Look of Love” takes Piper to a deluxe spa in Los Angeles where the director, Jillian Abernathy, is about to get married on the grounds.

Just before Piper lands the gig, violence erupts in Jillian’s life when someone tosses acid in the face of her maid (the assailant mistook the domestic for his real target, Jillian).

Clark makes the spa setting and its clientele of beautiful people getting expensive treatments (and recovering from plastic surgery) a major part of the appeal of “The Look of Love.” Without ever getting preachy, the author shows us the downside of beauty-at-any-cost in subplots involving a young woman who had one nosejob too many (and is now afraid to show her ruined face to the world) and Jillian’s mom who died after a plastic surgery operation performed by her husband.

The novel has a large group of suspects with a good reason for wanting to get rid of Jillian. And, Piper is drawn into the mystery in a very believable manner (so far, Clark has done a great job of turning her heroine into a crime solver without making her look reckless).

Clark gives us an entertaining detour in the form of Piper’s audition for a TV commercial while she is waiting for the wedding at the spa (the book drops several hints that L.A. rather than New York might soon become the primary setting for the series). 

Although “The Look of Love” can be filled under the huge food-related mystery category — there are recipes in the back of the book — you don’t need to be interested in baking or decorating cakes to get caught up in this well-written and very satisfying concoction.

After an odd five-month break, season three of the USA series “White Collar” will resume Tuesday night at 9 with six new episodes running through Feb. 21.

It’s the sort of bizarre scheduling that can kill a good show, and this sleek, shot-in-New York series is a good one, judging by the three January episodes I was sent recently.

Can you arrive as a total newbie in the middle of the season of a show that has been on since 2009? I did, and had fun watching, once I got over some confusing cliffhanger elements (left over from the summer run on USA).

Fortunately, the rest of the episodes appear to be designed as stand-alones so the Jan. 24 and Jan. 31 stories were much more satisfying. I had a great time with these comic capers — the first one a “Rear Window” variation set in Cobble Hill Brooklyn and the second an amusing tale of financial services corruption that takes place in a snooty private school.

With its low violence and sex quotients, “White Collar” has an old-fashioned mystery feel similar to that of the ABC hit “Castle,” which is also rather far-fetched but very entertaining.

The set-up for “White Collar” is simple. A smart and sexy young con artist played by Matt Bomer has been roped into helping the FBI as part of a deal that might get him a full pardon for his crimes.

Matt’s handler, Peter Burke (Tim DeKay), has mixed feelings about working with a convicted felon, but Neal’s criminal brain comes in very handy in tackling particularly complex heists. One of Neal’s old grifter cronies — played by Willie Garson (Carrie’s gay pal on “Sex & the City,” above, right) — helps out, too.

“White Collar” is smarter and funnier than most of its competition, but it only seems to be a matter of time before the very charismatic Matt Bomer crosses over to movies (he was in “In Time” last summer and will appear in the forthcoming Steven Soderbergh picture “Magic Mike”).

Now I want to catch up with seasons one and two on DVD.

Like most baby boom film buffs, I’ve been enjoying the performances of Max Von Sydow for most of my life.

The 82-year-old Swedish actor conquered art house audiences here when he was still in his 20s in a series of Ingmar Bergman classics including “The Seventh Seal,” “Wild Strawberries” and “The Virgin Spring.”

George Stevens introduced the actor to Hollywood with the starring role of Jesus in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” in 1965 and then the Swede nabbed another leading role in the big-budget 1966 film version of the James Michener best seller “Hawaii” (below, right).

Since then, Von Sydow has made films in many countries and several languages, but most moviegoers probably remember him best for playing the title role in “The Exorcist.”

The actor has only been nominated for an Oscar once, in 1987 for the Danish film “Pelle the Conqueror,” but he is generating a lot of buzz for his mute performance in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” (left), which opened in New York and Los Angeles in late December for Academy Award consideration and will be released nationally on Jan. 20.

Von Sydow is long overdue for an Oscar, but if he should be nominated in the best supporting actor category later this month, he faces very stiff competition from another veteran who has never won the prize, Christopher Plummer, for that actor’s marvelous performance in “Beginners.”

Two of my favorite Von Sydow performances are often overlooked in discussions of his career — the worldly Alsatian assassin Joubert in Sydney Pollack’s great 1975 espionage thriller “Three Days of the Condor” (below) and his deliciously campy star turn as Ming the Merciless in the 1980 science-fiction comedy “Flash Gordon” (above).

Neither performance brought Von Sydow much critical recognition but they have given me great pleasure over the years as I have rewatched the films in question many times.

The killer in “Condor” is, technically, a “villain” — he is part of the hit squad that murders Robert Redford’s girlfriend (and co-workers) in the opening scene — but as the story proceeds, Joubert becomes more sympathetic as we see that he is just a gun-for-hire by the CIA or any other organization that will pay his fee.

We get hints of the humanity under Joubert’s surface in the opening scene when his kind eyes and warm manner make it appear that he might not enjoy the dirty work he does. Later in the film, when his contract has been fulfilled, he becomes something of a mentor to the Redford character by warning him of the dangers he faces within the CIA and then giving him a lift to the airport.

The performance has fascinated me for more than 35 years because there is so much depth and ambiguity in the way Von Sydow plays a relatively small role.

As Ming, the actor had one of his rare comic roles and Von Sydow is spectacularly funny, delivering the juicy Lorenzo Semple dialogue. “Flash Gordon” was a flop in 1980 — audiences then preferred their science-fiction straight up — but the movie has gathered a sizeable cult over the years for its good humor, lively performances and stunning production and costume design (the work of Fellini craftsman Danilo Donati).

But the sly, tongue in cheek tone is powered mostly by Von Sydow savoring such evil Ming pronouncements as “Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror.”

Neither of these performances earned Von Sydow Oscar nominations but over the years they have entertained me much than such Academy Award-winning work as Helen Hunt’s in “As Good As it Gets” or Jack Palance’s Oscar-winning performance in “City Slickers.”

The new non-fiction book “Betrayal” (Forge) is about the FBI man who was sent to Boston to clean up its shockingly corrupt office — it’s a gripping story of gangsters having their way with those who are supposed to enforce laws.

Everyone knows that undercover cops and FBI men who work with informers run the risk of “going native” — becoming as crooked as the low-lifes they associate with — but the scale of the corruption in the Boston FBI, as reported in this book, was staggering.

“Betrayal” reads like a superior thriller and there’s a good reason for that — the federal agent Robert Fitzpatrick collaborated on the memoir with Jon Land (below, left), the Providence novelist whose most recent book was the terrific “Strong at the Break” (which I reviewed in this space last spring).

Land has shaped the material for maximum drama and he makes us care about Fitzpatrick as a person as well as a law enforcement officer. “Betrayal” shows us the FBI man’s tough childhood in and out of a series of shelters and orphanages and then the toll Fitzpatrick’s job took on his marriage and family life.

Fitzpatrick rose through the FBI ranks, making quite a name for himself in the 1970s with the ABSCAM investigation in Miami that nailed numerous bigshots including New Jersey senator Harrison Williams.

Based on his reputation for getting results, Fitzpatrick was sent to Boston to try to clean up the mess there regarding agents and their criminal informants — the state police and other Massachusetts law enforcement officials believed that the FBI was in bed with the notorious Irish gangster James J. “Whitey” Bulger.

In their quest to bring down the Italian mob, the FBI was tacitly building up the power base of Bulger by providing him with as much information as he was giving the feds. People were dying in Boston as a result of the free-flowing exchanges between presumed federal enforcers of the law and one of the most vicious hoodlums in the country.

“Betrayal” turns into a tale of paranoia when Fitzpatrick begins to wonder if he was sent to Boston under false pretenses — that his mission was meant to fail in order to build up the FBI men who were in tight with Bulger.

The circumstances surrounding this case were used in the Martin Scorsese film “The Departed,” where Jack Nicholson played a depraved crime lord modeled on Bulger, but the real facts of the affair are much worse than anything in the 2006 best picture Oscar winner.

Fitzpatrick lays out the unholy alliance between the FBI and Bulger early in the book:

“Having proven himself to his (FBI) handlers, Bulger wasted no time in taking over the Winter Hill Gang in the wake of gang leader Howie Winter’s incarceration. The fact that the Italian mob remained the Bureau’s number one priority gave Bulger carte blanche to run the Irish mob however he saw fit…Boston watched as the Winter Hill Gang under Bulger…consolidated its vicious hold on the city’s rackets, thanks in large part to the federal arrests and subsequent incarceration of the competition (Bulger) served up neatly on a plate.”

Bulger wasn’t brought down for his many crimes until last June.

“Betrayal” is packed with the same suspense, humor and strong characterization we have come to expect from the Jon Land novels and the result is a moving and horrifying memoir about law enforcement officer criminality that merits comparison with “Serpico.”

Did you see the recent news stories in 2010 about the first “legal” male prostitute in America?

He worked for one of the state-regulated bordellos outside Las Vegas and was available to any woman who wanted to hire him (the prostitute made it clear in news reports that his services were not available to men).

The New York Post sent a female reporter to interview the guy, but a few weeks ago it was announced that he was quitting due to a lack of business — raising that age-old question of whether or not women are hard-wired to split sex and romance the way men who use prostitutes are.

Judging by the rise of “Girls Gone Wild” and other spring break-related porno-documentaries, college-age women who go to Cancun and other places are as eager for “hook-ups” as their male counterparts, but is that all they are looking for?

Traditionally, when a woman is portrayed as being sexually aggressive in a movie or TV show — ala Samantha in “Sex and the City” or the Jackie Bisset character in the George Cukor movie “Rich and Famous” — we are told this is a fantasy perpetrated by the gay dramatists and directors behind the cameras.

An interesting 1998 French film, “The School of Flesh,” explores this rarely discussed issue of the way modern women are balancing love and sex.

Based on a novella by the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, the story follows a Paris fashion executive (played by the great Isabelle Huppert) who is drawn to a considerably younger man (Vincent Martinez) she knows is a bisexual prostitute catering to male clients.

Director Benoit Jacquot never tells us what attracts the woman to the young man — other than his physical attributes.

Through the terrific performance by Huppert we get to delve into the turbulent personality of a woman who thinks casual sex is enough for her, but begins to want some sort of long-term romantic relationship with a guy who is clearly unsuitable for her.

How many “real” women would get into a situation like this one?

Is the character simply a stand-in for the bisexual Mishima?

Those are just two of the questions that are fun to bat around after watching “The School of Flesh.”

Old-fashioned showmanship is still alive and well in Hollywood.

We might be in the middle of the “prestige season” in which critically acclaimed Oscar contenders are being rolled out for awards consideration, but at the box office last weekend, the little, Z-grade exploitation film “The Devil Inside” soared over all of the competition with a $34.5 million gross in the first three days of release.

The opening was the third strongest January debut ever, after “Cloverfield” ($40.1 million) and a re-release of “Star Wars” ($35.9 million).

A high gross doesn’t mean much if you spend a lot of money to make a movie, but “Devil” is what they call a “pick-up” — a film shot independently which is acquired for release by a major studio — and it cost Paramount less than $1 million to purchase the film.

So, even if the studio spent $10-$15 million on marketing, the movie is already in profit after less than seven days in national release — something that is unheard of for an average studio production with a budget of $75 million and an ad buy of $20 million.

Of course, with a picture like this (scoring a rare F rating in industry exit polling last weekend) you have to get in and out quickly, burning the audience in a few days before the atrocious word of mouth gets out. And in these social networking days, word of mouth is faster than ever (I had a good time over the weekend reading the outraged Tweets of moviegoers who were sucked in by Paramount’s effectively creepy marketing campaign).

Paramount has a fairly long tradition of making a good, quick buck with effectively marketed pick-ups.

Way back in 1976, the studio bought a grisly Mexican quickie based on the true story of the rugby team that survived a plane crash in the Andes and reverted to cannibalism to live. Paramount dubbed the picture into English, slapped on the title “Survive!” and made a bundle before word of mouth got out.

The quickie release killed another studio’s plans to make a big-budget movie based on the Piers Paul Read bestseller about the case, “Alive” (17 years later, the Disney studio finally made a movie out of the book and it quickly bombed at the box office because of its high cost-to-gross ratio).

Paramount launched two hugely lucrative franchises with canny pick-ups — the “Friday the 13th” series in the 1980s and the “Paranormal Activity” films in this decade — but those pictures had good buzz (at first) so it seems highly unlikely that we’ll be getting a “Devil Inside 2.”