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The Thrill of the Chase

David Blum — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

By David Blum

IN THE SEASON opener of Entourage,Vin nie Chase finds himself in jail—a free-float ing party jail with joints by the fist-load, gorgeous girls at the ready and, as always, the loyal buddies who follow him everywhere— this time behind the figurative bars of Holly wood prison.This is the lockup where movie stars land when they can’t get arrested.

It’s a fun notion to see the former movie star at the center of Entourage searching for a job, any job—and it might have been even more entertaining if the producers had taken the idea to its craziest extreme, with Vinnie serving customers at the In-N-Out Burger.

Still, it’s almost enough to see his demotion to has-been actor driving around Los Angeles for meetings with disinterested executives who don’t even bother blowing smoke up his ass. He’s a burned-out box-office bum with a scraggly beard and no juice. Even his cell phone doesn’t get good reception anymore.

This season’s provocative, underlying theme is redemption, and whether its characters can find any in the hedonist hellhole they live in. Vinnie needs a way out of the career logjam created by Medellin, the art-house flop that used up his considerable Aquaman capital.The side stories that dominated last season—the emer gence of Turtle’s romantic life, the revival of Drama’s dormant career—recede to the back ground as this year’s episodes begin on Sunday.

Instead, the focus goes to Vinnie and his self made mess; the sole subplot comes from Eric’s desperation to galvanize the career of his only moneymaking client. It isn’t until the end of episode four that “E” even manages to make a dent in the high walls of the Hollywood chain link fence that keeps Vinnie out of sight.

As usual, the bimbos come and go at warp speed; but this time around,Vinnie has to ex pend a little pro-active energy to get the girl. Now, when the boys strut down Sunset Boulevard, the background extras aren’t in structed to do double takes at the passing movie star, because there isn’t one. Even Ari, the high-flying über-agent who handles Vin nie, finds himself defending his major-domo status by engaging rivals in daredevil car races—and losing. It’s a new low point for the boys of Entourage, which means a high point for the audience at last; we get to see them closer than ever to the glass we’ve been watching them through for the last four sea sons. Close up, their desperation drags them down so far that for once, we can feel our jeal ousies replaced by our sense of superiority.

Hey, even we knew Medellin was a bad idea! The focus on the foursome yields great re wards this time—especially as the producers probe the essence of male bonding and broth erhood.The relationship between Vinnie and Drama deepens as the two change places this season; by the end of episode four, it’s hard to know who’s more famous. I won’t be sur prised if the season’s plot arc includes the idea that Drama replaces Vinnie as the family’s most prominent star—shifting, in a funda mental and potentially riveting way, the dy namic that dictated the premise of the series.

I hope I’m right, but even if not, the sight of the brothers singing a drunken duet of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” had almost as much emotional resonance for me as in The Deer Hunter, when Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro belted out that same sad song. Coincidence? Don’t think so. Who knew, after four seasons of slogging through the ups and not-so-ups of this fabulist four, we’d finally have true down-and-out characters to root for? It’s about time Entourage kicked in with a storyline of failure and pain for us to care about. Four episodes in, I’m already hooked on the jagged edges of this poignant plot; it’s a big hole these produc ers have dug for Vinnie Chase and his pals, and nothing beats watching these guys climb ing their way out of this prison’s subterranean tunnels, a flashlight in Vinnie’s gleaming teeth as he leads the way with the common sense of a kid from Queens. After four years as a mixed bag of insight and ineptitude, Entourage finally has the potential to emerge as a true television classic—and just in time to spring HBO from another season in the slammer.

The Thrill of the Chase

David Blum — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In the season opener of Entourage, Vinnie Chase finds himself in jail—a free-floating party jail with joints by the fist-load, gorgeous girls at the ready and, as always, the loyal buddies who follow him everywhere—this time behind the figurative bars of Hollywood prison. This is the lockup where movie stars land when they can’t get arrested.

It’s a fun notion to see the former movie star at the center of Entourage searching for a job, any job—and it might have been even more entertaining if the producers had taken the idea to its craziest extreme, with Vinnie serving customers at the In-N-Out Burger. Still, it’s almost enough to see his demotion to has-been actor driving around Los Angeles for meetings with disinterested executives who don’t even bother blowing smoke up his ass. He’s a burned-out box-office bum with a scraggly beard and no juice. Even his cell phone doesn’t get good reception anymore.

This season’s provocative, underlying theme is redemption, and whether its characters can find any in the hedonist hellhole they live in. Vinnie needs a way out of the career logjam created by Medellin, the art-house flop that used up his considerable Aquaman capital. The side stories that dominated last season—the emergence of Turtle’s romantic life, the revival of Drama’s dormant career—recede to the background as this year’s episodes begin on Sunday. Instead, the focus goes to Vinnie and his self-made mess; the sole subplot comes from Eric’s desperation to galvanize the career of his only moneymaking client. It isn’t until the end of episode four that “E” even manages to make a dent in the high walls of the Hollywood chain-link fence that keeps Vinnie out of sight.

As usual, the bimbos come and go at warp speed; but this time around, Vinnie has to expend a little pro-active energy to get the girl. Now, when the boys strut down Sunset Boulevard, the background extras aren’t instructed to do double takes at the passing movie star, because there isn’t one. Even Ari, the high-flying über-agent who handles Vinnie, finds himself defending his major-domo status by engaging rivals in daredevil car races—and losing. It’s a new low point for the boys of Entourage, which means a high point for the audience at last; we get to see them closer than ever to the glass we’ve been watching them through for the last four seasons. Close up, their desperation drags them down so far that for once, we can feel our jealousies replaced by our sense of superiority. Hey, even we knew Medellin was a bad idea!

The focus on the foursome yields great rewards this time—especially as the producers probe the essence of male bonding and brotherhood. The relationship between Vinnie and Drama deepens as the two change places this season; by the end of episode four, it’s hard to know who’s more famous. I won’t be surprised if the season’s plot arc includes the idea that Drama replaces Vinnie as the family’s most prominent star—shifting, in a fundamental and potentially riveting way, the dynamic that dictated the premise of the series. I hope I’m right, but even if not, the sight of the brothers singing a drunken duet of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” had almost as much emotional resonance for me as in The Deer Hunter, when Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro belted out that same sad song. Coincidence? Don’t think so.

Who knew, after four seasons of slogging through the ups and not-so-ups of this fabulist four, we’d finally have true down-and-out characters to root for? It’s about time Entourage kicked in with a storyline of failure and pain for us to care about. Four episodes in, I’m already hooked on the jagged edges of this poignant plot; it’s a big hole these producers have dug for Vinnie Chase and his pals, and nothing beats watching these guys climbing their way out of this prison’s subterranean tunnels, a flashlight in Vinnie’s gleaming teeth as he leads the way with the common sense of a kid from Queens. After four years as a mixed bag of insight and ineptitude, Entourage finally has the potential to emerge as a true television classic—and just in time to spring HBO from another season in the slammer.

Theater: Hippie Hop

David Blum — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The producers of the Public Theater’s loving revival of Hair in Central Park have put aside the reality that most of us recall not the original (and far less linear) 1968 Broadway production, but instead the lean, fun 1979 Milos Forman film adaptation. I left the Delacorte Theater last Saturday night with renewed respect for the Czech movie director who took the Broadway version and re-fashioned it into a tight, endearing movie musical mostly by cutting songs that stretched out the simple story into an epic rock-opera of emotional uplift. But by the end of a long night at the Delacorte—one that included actors roaming the aisles for loose change, waving their hair in people’s faces and, at the end, inviting the audience on stage to boogie—I had given in, like everyone else, to the intoxicating power of a natural high.

There’s really not much point denying the power of the dozen or so songs that make Hair a classic: This production offers near-perfect renditions of “Aquarius,” “Where Do I Go?” and “Hair” along with one song wrongly cut from the movie—the spectacular and haunting “Frank Mills.” It’s fun to watch well-trained actors bring to life lyrics imbedded in your brain and to hear melodies that soar; it’s a musical score as good as any ever performed on a Broadway stage, with endlessly brilliant, hilarious lyrics. And the cast assembled to stage for this production has the looks and talent to keep even the most hardened cynic mesmerized. The first act takes off so fast and forges such a strong emotional connection (with an audience who has long ago memorized the melodies) that it’s nearly impossible to resist its pull.

And yet, to my surprise, boredom sets in quickly after intermission, when an epic hallucination sequence—wisely trimmed in the movie—strings together several songs that put an end to the show’s heart-stopping pleasures. It’s no creative crisis: This production will move to Broadway and undoubtedly collect tons of awards. But would it have hurt the cause to cut judiciously from a show with more than two dozen songs and multiple reprises? With so many back-to-back pleasures in Hair, it seemed indulgent to restore every melody removed by Forman in his equally moving interpretation.

This is a minor quibble with Hair, a long-overdue and mostly inspired answer to the prayers of those who stand for hours every summer in the hopes of a wonderful bargain in a spectacular setting—and frequently end up disappointed. I loved the performance of Jonathan Groff as Claude Hooper Bukowski; even though I preferred the character’s hick-to-hippie transformation added to Hair by the movie’s screenwriter, Michael Weller, Groff managed to make sense of the original muddled conception of Claude as a hippie to begin with.

The point of a nostalgia trip like this is to restore sensations lost or forgotten over time, and even this flawed production succeeds on that level—especially if you’re the type to enjoy making googly eyes with actors when they come visit you at your seat. I’m not, but this show succeeds at making a human connection in other ways, most of them musical. And the epic, thrilling rendition of “Let The Sunshine In” at the curtain call gives the audience time to revel privately in whatever pleasures they associate with those bygone days—and to enjoy the chance to sing along with the gifted, gorgeous cast under the spell of an August moon. It’s enough to justify the indulgence of brilliant artists who should have known better than to reject some shrewd, delicate editing of their timeless masterpiece.

Hair, through Sept. 7, Delacorte Theater, 81 Central Park West (at 68th St.), 212-535-4284; 8, free.

A Hair Short: The Public Theaterâ€™s hippie hop is a long walk down memory lane

David Blum — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:25:28 +0000

The producers of the Public Theater’s loving revival of Hair in Central Park have put aside the reality that most of us recall not the original (and far less linear) 1968 Broadway production, but instead the lean, fun 1979 Milos Forman film adaptation. I left the Delacorte Theater last Saturday night with renewed respect for the Czech movie director who took the Broadway version and re-fashioned it into a tight, endearing movie musical, mostly by cutting songs that stretched out the simple story into an epic rock-opera of emotional uplift. But by the end of a long night at the Delacorte–one that included actors roaming the aisles for loose change, waving their hair in people’s faces and, at the end, inviting the audience onstage to boogie–I had given in, like everyone else, to the intoxicating power of a natural high.

There’s really not much point denying the power of the dozen or so songs that make Hair a classic: this production offers near-perfect renditions of “Aquarius,” “Let The Sun Shine In,” “Where Do I Go?” and “Hair” –along with one song wrongly cut from the movie, the spectacular and haunting “Frank Mills.” It’s fun to watch well-trained actors bring to life lyrics imbedded in your brain, and hear melodies that soar; it’s a musical score as good as any ever performed on a Broadway stage, with endlessly brilliant, hilarious lyrics. And the cast assembled to stage for this production has the looks and talent to keep even the most hardened cynic mesmerized. The first act takes off so fast, and forges such a strong emotional connection with an audience who has long ago memorized the melodies, that it’s nearly impossible to let go of its pull.

And yet, to my surprise, boredom sets in quickly after intermission, when an epic hallucination sequence–wisely trimmed in the movie–strings together several songs that stop the show’s heart-stopping pleasures dead in its tracks. It’s no creative crisis–this production will move to Broadway and collect tons of awards, have no doubt–but would it have hurt the cause to cut judiciously from a show with more than two dozen songs and multiple reprises? With so many back-to-back pleasures in Hair, it seemed indulgent to restore every melody removed by Forman in his equally moving interpretation.

This is a minor quibble with Hair, a long-overdue and mostly-inspired answer to the prayers of those who stand for hours every summer in the hopes of a wonderful bargain in a spectacular setting–and frequently end up disappointed. I loved the performance of Jonathan Groff as Claude Hooper Bukowski; even though I preferred the character’s hick-to-hippie transformation added to Hair by the movie’s screenwriter, Michael Weller, Groff managed to make sense of the original, muddled conception of Claude as a hippie to begin with.

The point of a nostalgia trip like this is to restore sensations lost or forgotten over time, and even this flawed production succeeds on that level, especially if you’re the type to enjoy making googly eyes with actors when they come visit you at your seat. I’m not, but this show succeeds at making a human connection in other ways, most of them musical. And the epic, thrilling rendition of “Let The Sun Shine In” at the curtain call gives the audience time to revel privately in whatever pleasures they associate with those bygone days–and to enjoy the chance to sing along with the gifted, gorgeous cast under the spell of an August moon. It’s enough to justify the indulgence of brilliant artists who should have known better than to reject some shrewd, delicate editing of their timeless masterpiece.

David Carr: From Crackhead to Potato Head

David Blum — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This morning on the subway I started reading The Night of the Gun, the gripping new drug memoir by New York Times reporter David Carr. It’s filled with great, memorable lines. Almost right away, this sentence on page 22 stopped me cold:

“Far from clinically handsome, I have a face that looks like it could have been carved out of mashed potatoes, and my idea of exercise was running the length of my body.”

Nice imagery! Carr can totally turn a phrase. But it sounded familiar… a face like potatoes. Where had I heard that line before? I felt certain I’d read it somewhere else recently, and so I went online to investigate.

Within seconds, I’d found it: In a July 7, 2008 article in the New York Times—by David Carr!

In a column about how Fox News had been presenting distorted images of New York Times reporters, Carr contemplated how his own face might fall victim to the Fox Photoshopping menace:

“….with a face made out of potatoes, the Photoshopped picture will have to go a long way to make me any uglier than I actually am.”

But wait, there’s more!

On June 16, 2008—just two weeks before the Fox News piece—the phrase turned up in another David Carr column, when he described the late NBC News correspondent Tim Russert this way:

“He had a face that seemed to be carved out of potatoes, but he worked on television by working harder than your average talking head…”

And three months before that—in the Times’ “Talk to the Newsroom” web feature that showcases interviews with New York Times reporters and editors—Carr answered a question about his television background with this now-familiar-sounding assessment of his looks:

“With a face that looks as if it were crafted out of mashed potatoes and a voice that sounds like a trash compactor that needs oil, I’m not a natural for television…”

Carr’s compulsion to characterize human faces as spud-like isn’t limited to himself and Russert—whose name, after all, might at least suggest such a comparison. Consider this description of debonair movie star Daniel Craig from Carr’s “Carpetbagger” blog on the New York Times website, from November 16, 2006:

“To the Bagger’s eye, [Craig] has a face made out of potatoes—although the rest of him seems to be made out of titanium…”

To be fair, sometimes Carr takes the metaphor in unexpected directions. For example, in the March 23, 2006 edition of the Times, Carr had this to say about actor Steve Buscemi’s resemblance to his favorite starch:

“Directors tend to focus on Mr. Buscemi’s visage, shooting his face so it looks something like what might happen to a bowl of mashed potatoes if it were sculptured [sic] by an ax.”

But in the end, Carr comes back to his stock phrase and its studied simplicity, much the way the rest of us return, with regularity, to a favored meal of meat and—let’s say—potatoes. Consider this comforting reference to NYPD Blue actor Dennis Franz from a David Carr profile of the former Detective Sipowicz on March 1, 2005:

“And Detective Sipowicz, with a face that looks as if it were carved out of potatoes and the body style of a greeter at Home Depot, was an unlikely hero.”

Lest one think that Carr limits this literary device to men with lumpy faces or craggy complexions, it’s worth noting this citation from a Carr profile of the square-jawed, white-haired author Joe McGinniss, published on July 28, 2004:

“[McGinniss] had an old cap set against the Sunday morning sun, a handsome Irish face that could have been carved out of potatoes, and a glint of tragedy in his eyes.”

Or was it just a glint of butter and a side of sour cream?

Hot news! The Nation Magazine Launches a Sex Column

David Blum — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:33:01 +0000

The Nation magazine has just sent out a press release touting a "new sex column" to appear in the magazine beginning next month. The magazine is calling the column "Carnal Knowledge," an extremely witty spin on the title of the 1971 movie, "Carnal Knowledge." The column will be written by JoAnn Wypijewski (pictured left), whose sex column credentials include years of freelancing for Mother Jones, Legal Affairs and New Labor Forum.

"The path [Wypijewski] sets here will hardly be straight or narrow, but rather full of zigs and zags and surprises," says The Nation‘s editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, "like politics, like sex, like life." And, of course, like The Nation, a magazine long noted for its erotic coverage of issues like immigration, labor relations and bloated defense contracts.

In her first column, Wypijewski explores the sexual appeal of Barack and Michelle Obama. "In politics as in pop, legions of little girls jumping out of their panties can’t be wrong," she writes, according to The Nation‘s news release. However, the news release fails to make clear what the hell Wypijewski is talking about.

The Next Big Thing

David Blum — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

When you find yourself under Joe Iconis’s spell

It’s wild what notions your mind will compel

In the annals of bad ideas, this will rank very high

But fuck it — gonna write this, and my good sense defy.

Joe’s a 26-year-old boy from Long Island, and me —

A frustrated lyricist who wants you to see

The theory that Joe may have Broadway’s answers

Or at least, a reason to hire stagehands and dancers.

Where I’m woefully weak at this, Joe is sublime;

As good as Herr Sondheim or dead Hammerstein —

Those idols inspired that quite-fertile brain

Into sweet lyrics and songs, chorus and refrain.

“The Black Suits isn’t my story, but close,”

Joe says over coffee, that day’s second dose.

It’s the first day of rehearsal; I’m searching for clues

As to why his four-year-old musical might be news.

But then, moments later, I remember the reason;

His music’s so gorgeous, to ignore would be treason

What began at NYU as a graduate school thesis

Has become cause to praise God and thank Jesus.

Joe’s got black hair, thick and thatched in good measure

And a smile that reveals his extreme sense of pleasure

That at long last, next week, Joe’s show-stopping songs

Will be onstage at the Public Theater, where they belong.

The Black Suits tells the story of a high school garage band

Don’t think it’s predictable; your doubts will be damned.

It explores the way kids think their lives are so rad

That their choices, their music, their dreams can go bad.

It’s not like Chorus Line, Passing Strange or Rent

At the curtain you won’t see your flaws, and repent

Don’t expect Joe to fix anything, solve anything, please!

He’s just a dude with an ear for a tune, and 88 keys.

Did he like Spring Awakening? It blew Joe away.

How about In The Heights? “I don’t want to say.”

At age five, he found Little Shop of Horrors so wild

That he wanted to leave audiences just as beguiled.

But it wasn’t till later that true inspiration appeared

In Robert Altman’s Nashville, a film Joe revered

Its overlapping dialogue, its intricate themes

Gave Joe the guts to follow his own crazy dreams.

When he reached NYU, he soared fast, no surprise —

And it didn’t take long for his profs to realize

That sweet little Joe deserved agents and fame

From the first day of classes, they knew he got game.

Awards came his way, to reward his strong promise

But behind every smile lay fresh backstage dramas

They can love you, yet hold back the chance of success

It’s Development Hell, with no chance of egress.

So it was with a group called the MCC Theater

The Black Suits caught their eye (you still with me, dear reader?)

They scheduled rehearsals, some workshops, that shit

‘Cause they figured they had hold of a big fat Broadway hit

Months and months were devoted — no wait, make that years

As Joe and his actors put aside their careers

For readings and stagings and meetings devoted

To a process that to you and me might seem a bit bloated

And then it turned out — those jerks missed the point;

They canceled the play, tossed him out of their joint.

So poor Joe was left in the lurch, as it were

With nothing, no show — just his own cris de couer.

Armed only with outrage and a ballad or three

Joe took to the Internet, folks who download for free

In no time the you’s of YouTube took a liking

And Iconis discovered his page views were spiking.

Now this is where it gets kind of insane

Because who ever heard of a musical born on the wane?

But that’s exactly what happened; in fact

The Black Suits came back as written, and intact

“It’s just how I wrote it now,” Joe says with pride

And not an ill word will he utter to deride

Those who would have blocked his singular vision.

No, sir, not even a gently mocking admonition.

Nope, all that is past, and the last laugh is Joe’s –

And the show will go on with the actors he chose.

In the front row on opening night, Lucille and Artie

(Yes his parents) will join in, and swing by the cast party.

And what will be next? That’s the question we wonder

Will The Black Suits move to Broadway or be torn asunder?

“Let’s just take it slow,” is Val Day’s sage advice

She’s his agent at William Morris, yet surprisingly nice.

Take it slow? Those aren’t words Joe would choose;

He closes his eyes at night, and sees Broadway reviews.

While others have visions of sugar plums dancing inside

Joe’s head has a picture of Ben Brantley, smiling wide.

So anyway, people, you’re probably wondering…

Why all the rhymes? Why is Blum blundering?

Stop all this Seussiness — show me, you demand!

Let me hear Joe Iconis and his wonderful band!

Well, I’m sorry to tell you, the show’s all sold out

(I know, yes I know, it’s a bummer, don’t pout)

But if Broadway producers end up filling the seats

Then there’s always a chance for performance repeats.

Meanwhile, there’s YouTube, and a boatload of links

Or his nightclub act (where you can also buy drinks)

Otherwise, let’s hope that a producer takes a gander

And that his name is Weinstein, or at least Nederlander.

JOE ICONIS: THE DETAILS

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Iconis grew up in Garden City, Long Island, and graduated from New York University, and also he completed its Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. He is the 2006 winner of the Jonathan Larson Award—named for the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Rent—and in 2007 won the Ed Kleban Award for lyricists, which comes with a $100,000 prize. His other shows include Things To Ruin and Plastic: The Musical.

THE BLACK SUITS

The Joe Iconis musical The Black Suits—with music and lyrics by Iconis, and a book co-written with Robert Maddock—runs for eight performances, beginning July 1, at the Public Theater under the auspices of the Summer Play Festival. It stars Nick Blaemire, Lance Rubin, Jason Tam, Jason Williams and Annie Golden, with John Simpkins directing. The entire run from July 1 through July 6 is sold out.

THE PLANT THAT ATE DIRTY SOCKS

On July 16, another Iconis musical—The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks—begins performances at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street, produced by Theatreworks USA. The cast includes Jason Williams and Lance Rubin and is also directed by John Simpkins. Performances continue through

August 22; for complete details visit www.theatreworksusa.org.

WORDS & MUSIC BY JOE ICONIS

Joe Iconis frequently appears in a nightclub format as “Joe Iconis and Friends” and has appearances scheduled at the Laurie Beechman Theater (also known as the basement performance space of the West Bank Café on West 42nd Street) in July 20, August 4, September 28 and October 28. He’ll also be onstage at Joe’s Pub on August 4, performing his own songs.

For free downloads of four Iconis songs, visit his MySpace page under the name “Joe Iconis Music.” For reviews, a blog, photos, reviews and assorted commentary, go to www.mrjoeiconis.com.

Theater: Bloody But Not Equal

David Blum — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The surprises for the audience in Hamlet—the fun of revisiting a high school homework assignment—come from the choices made by directors who dare to meddle with Shakespeare’s intentions. Let’s face it, we’ve seen the tragedy so often that we’re almost conditioned to anticipate and hope for the unexpected; a Hamlet that doesn’t deviate from the standard interpretation almost doesn’t deserve to exist at this point. At least from that perspective, the Public Theater’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, gets points for the shock value of his Hamlet’s unorthodox ending, which completely rewrites the basic Shakespeare text when Fortinbras guns down Horatio in cold blood. And that act of spontaneous brutality almost—but not quite—makes up for the utterly predictable three hours that precede it.

On a near-empty stage lit so brightly—and for what reason?—that it blocked out a beautiful full moon behind it, Eustis has presented a prosaic Hamlet with little poetry in its rhythms, and not nearly enough subtlety in its laughs. There’s an oddly distancing aspect of the Delacorte stage that makes it especially hard for actors to deliver nuance; it’s probably no coincidence that Kevin Kline, whose own Hamlets (he did it twice at the Public) offered brilliant understatement, never agreed to perform the role in Central Park. The casting of the melodramatic Michael Stuhlbarg (check) might have seemed perfect on paper for an outdoors production—his broad, rubbery face contorts into an almost comic-book version of a man in tears—but after a while his outsized madness grows maddeningly dull.

I’ve felt for years that the Public Theater has boxed itself into a foolhardy formula with its summer Central Park productions—the relentless casting of recognizable actors to draw attention to plays that need no such gimmickry. While in years past the NYSF has gone so far as to recruit movie icons like Denzel Washington and Michelle Pfeiffer to the Delacorte to “sell” tickets, this year Eustis downsized the effort by bringing in TV stars. The results are the same: scenery-chewing star turns by Andre (Homicide) Braugher and Sam (Law & Order) Waterston diminished the more appropriately calibrated performances by their theater-bred brethren, like David Harbour as Laertes and Jay O. Sanders in multiple roles, including the Ghost. The exception that proves the rule: the shimmering Lauren (Six Feet Under) Ambrose, who followed up her triumph as Juliet last summer with another triumph as Ophelia. But hasn’t she, by this time, earned the right to be considered a stage actor at heart?

Every moment Ambrose inhabits the stage is a gift, even to the most jaded and bored of summer audiences , but her appearances in this production don’t do enough to counterbalance the casting misfires. After 32 years away from the Central Park stage, you’d think a more cohesive cast could have been found to reward the wait. It was the Joseph Papp formula that led to this star-driven state, and no one in his wake has dared to stray from that well-worn path. This time the blame falls squarely on Eustis, who focused too much on the glib wit that Shakespeare sprinkled lightly over his text, and too little on the underlying questions that keep us mulling Hamlet’s meaning, and returning—again and again—to a classic in search of surprises. I wasn’t expecting a thousand natural shocks, but I might have preferred more than one.

Through June 29, Delacorte Theater, East Side entrance is 5th Ave. at 79th St.; West Side, Central Park West at 81st St., publictheater.org; Tues.-Sun. 8, free.

All the News that’s Fit to Squint

David Blum — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Gay Talese won’t go online, bless his ornery old-fashioned soul. He answers his phone like people used to (he’s listed in the phone book and it’s a land line, remember those? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing! Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!) and says “Hello?” and if you have a request he’ll ask you to please fax it to him, because, yes, Gay has progressed into the modern era far enough to own a fax machine, he doesn’t mind that particular whirring contraption, probably because it involves paper and the ringing of a phone…it’s like a Dixie cup and a string, only longer, looser, lighter than air, the connection invisible yet somehow tangible. He rises every morning and paws through the newspaper with the diligence of an obedient journalism student and checks his mailbox for letters with stamps on them (and there will be letters; people write to Gay Talese; I did when I was a young starry-eyed reporter; wouldn’t you if you were?) and puts on an elegant Italian suit and, often, a wide-brimmed hat to match. He walks the streets of his Upper East Side neighborhood with the gait of a go-getting reporter, because he still is one, and he presses his opinions on people with the passion of a high-school debate team captain, only with more grace, more wit, more aplomb. Yes, the man has aplomb.

You wouldn’t like being Gay Talese. It’s hard work and the rewards don’t seem very obvious to someone with a website and a password and high-speed Internet access, the ultimate vrooooom vroooooom vroooooom… Remember vrooooom? No you don’t, but that’s okay because Tom Wolfe isn’t New Journalism anymore, his old hats are old hat. Gonzo is the way of the world. Everyone writes in lower case. The world has abandoned traditional words and grammar in favor of shit that fits on a phone screen. Will u b there 4 a few mins? Meet u at ur apt 4 dinner? No time for apostrophes, my friend. Can’t be bothered with articles. Won’t. Fuck that. No point. By the clicking of our thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

Meanwhile, Gay sits in his home office and contemplates the future and fumes that the rest of us, the young people among us especially, won’t read the goddamned newspaper, that we won’t get off our asses and talk to people and discuss ideas and consider the world. And of course he’s right, Gay is often exactly right about things, that’s the problem with him, he’s right and we know it and we feel bad at 10:15 p.m. when we already know what’s going to be on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper from checking the website, so what’s the point of paying some guy named Oscar to drive in from Flushing to drop the printed version on our doormat? Is it just so we can hold in our hands the source of 63 percent of all our ink stains? The ink-to-news ratio in American journalism has dropped precipitously, and that’s not good news for those of us who don’t always wear dark colors.

See, this is how it goes when you’re a person of the twentieth century, which, let’s face it, you all are, but some more so than others. You like old buildings, you fancy old restaurants, you wear old shirts you can’t bear to throw away…you launder and plunder and plead and prod and poke and pilfer until you’ve re-shaped the world around the way it was, the way we were, the way it’s supposed to be. Everything is supposed to be something in the old world; nothing can just be. The new Richard Price novel is supposed to be good…well, sure, isn’t everything supposed to be good? Isn’t that the point of everything? No one sets out with the purpose of making bad things. But Gay, God bless him, wants us to distinguish between good and bad, old and new, right and wrong. He’s a rabid subjectivist; every move he makes, every breath he takes reflects a conscious choice, a decision. He turns the page of a newspaper because he wants to, he believes in the power of his index finger and licks it with anticipation at the next page. Yum!

Phenomena don’t just happen; they’re named, like children, and often with about as much logical sense as parents use when they call their little boy Branwyn and consign him to years of ridicule on the playground of life. But right now we’re in the middle of a phenomenon, and it needs a name, and Bill or Betsy won’t do. In the last, oh, six months or so, it has been stirring in the souls of men and women who consign themselves to cooking up theories; just look and you’ll see them, long-winded essays about speed and money and sex and Obama and what it means to have no means. It’s The Recession, Stupid; It’s The War, Stupid; It’s The Headline, Stupid.

But we need headlines, don’t we? If anything, there seem to be more of them these days, bombarding us with instantaneous conclusions and digestible facts in rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat doses, twenty-four tablets a day taken at the top of every hour and chewable, too. You can mix them with alcohol or drugs or coffee (especially coffee) and they’re good for you; it’s like taking your mind out for a little stretch to loosen it up, yoga for the noggin and it’s free, absolutely free, no need for a trainer or a gym, just a laptop and access to the Internet fast lane, so you can pass those slow suckers out for an afternoon drive and rubbernecking at the porn. Why pay for news when it’s everywhere, knocking down our door, begging to inform you of every development as it occurs? Gay knows what’s coming, and that’s why he’s alternately annoyed and afraid; it’s a world where no one pays and everyone plays, a universe of information and advertising coming at us through particles of air. Someday we’ll take a deep breath and our lungs will fill with the New York Times, that’s how easy it will be to keep up. But even now the naysayers must acknowledge that it’s happening, that this is the dawning of something; it is now readily apparent that no one with a shred of intelligence will soon fork over funds for a newspaper they can read at no charge.

Like most respectable phenomena, this one landed impertinently in our lives when we didn’t see it coming, in the form of a national obsession over a few disputed votes in Florida that might, just might, have changed the face of the present, had some lame-brained Supremes not bent the Constitution to their will. Who has dispelled the feeling of those days in November 2000, when we collectively forgot to work for weeks and instead turned, for the first time, to our computers for constant updates? No one could wait for the morning paper to find out what kooky Katherine Harris had done to keep political justice at bay; she was the Western world’s most dastardly deed-doer since Snidely Whiplash. We began the aughts as we ought: in front of a screen awaiting news of our future, as reporters roamed in just the way Gay wanted, up and down, up and down, up and down. Did you vote for Bush? Did you vote for Gore? What did you do? What did Jew do? It was Florida and we just couldn’t understand how a redneck Texan could kick Tennessee ass in a state of retired New Yorkers and angry alligators.

Less than a year later, jets rammed into skyscrapers in our home town and stopped the world dead in its tracks. And that’s when it really began, our insatiable curiosity for news every second, more news than we could ever afford to buy. A strange sound outside our windows and suddenly we wondered, what was it this time? What was that—another attack or a sonic boom or just another friggin’ car alarm? The computer calmed us down as we scrolled through websites in search of something familiar. We went on Safari, and combed the brush for the path to the open road. It took years to find our way back home.

And that’s where this story begins: at home. Not Gay’s unwired world, but our own homes, where we keep our laptops and our WiFi connections, girding for the recession and wondering how long we have left.

Gay gets the New York Times at home, of course, dropped off by 6:30 a.m. and left on his stoop so that whenever he gets up—and which of us doesn’t imagine that Gay gets up before we do?—it’s there, waiting in a blue bag to protect it from the elements, and God knows there’s a lot of elements out there, a periodic table full of them and then some. One imagines that he does the unthinkable, flipping through the pages one at a time, taking in the pictures from Myanmar and the Ben Brantley reviews and the Bob Herbert columns and all those little gems, too. That’s what you do, that’s what happens when you stir the Times into your coffee every morning.

But it’s changing, damn it to hell; that’s what got Gay going recently when his buddy Arthur Gelb, the former managing editor of the Times, came to him with a plan to turn the paper’s shifting fortunes into a documentary. “It’s about why the Times is having difficulty attracting readers when in my opinion it’s still a very good paper, and about the difficulty of convincing young people to read it,” Gay dejectedly told a New York magazine reporter in announcing the project, and it sounded highly plausible. Only a week earlier, we learned that circulation of the New York Times on Sunday had dropped a ridiculous, absurd, unbelievable nine percent from a year ago, meaning more than one out of every ten bagel-munching, coffee-guzzling, Arts & Leisure-loving looneys had ceased their practice of starting off the weekend with the Sunday Times sprawled on the furniture in a messy heap of prose. Travel, Real Estate, and let us not forget the Automobiles section. New Yorkers yearn for new cars just like everyone else, maybe even a little bit more because we don’t have a place to put one; we love the smell of Mazda in the morning.

Think about it. A nine percent drop in anything can make us ornery. Imagine a nine percent drop in muscle mass, or space on the subway, or caffeine consumption and you’ll get the picture.

But now imagine said nine percent of subscribers (a number close to 150,000) settling in on Sunday morning in front of their computers for the experience of reading the paper online, alternating the Week in Review with a Hulu video of last night’s SNL opening sketch, a game of Scrabulous on Facebook and an email or two or five. Starting to make sense? Of course it is; computers make sense. It’s no coincidence that we have one at home, one at the office and one in our front pocket. We need Fandango and HopStop and MapQuest. Krugman and Kristof can wait; they won’t tell us how to get to BAM from the Upper West Side, or the running time of Iron Man, or how the service delays on the IRT will impact our impending trip to Yankee Stadium. Everything is impending; no rest for the leery. No time. We’re late.

But what’s the problem, what’s the point? You’re getting bored. Restless. Articles in newspapers don’t last this long anymore. It’s free, you’re thinking, I’ll toss it and move on, I can always pick up another one later, read it online, catch the snarky summary on Gawker. Theories need to be one sentence or less, preferably one word or less. When Tom Wolfe named the Me Decade in 1978, it took him a billion words and it still didn’t make much sense except that it told us we only cared about ourselves, that was the takeaway. Everything needs a bite-sized chunk to carry around and share, a forkful of philosophy from a pu-pu platter of ideas on the lazy Susan of life.

So what’s changed between then and now? What’s the word? Tell me tell me tell me, you’re saying. You don’t want to wait for the movie.

The answer (and you won’t like it) is nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is no Me Decade, no Free Decade, no E! Decade. Newspapers aren’t dying. Television didn’t destroy the movie business, movies didn’t destroy books, books didn’t destroy cave paintings. The sky isn’t falling and Gay Talese will get everything he needs via fax and the future isn’t going to be so bad, really, because it turns out the future is now, and nothing has really changed. You still use keys to open doors. Newspapers exist and will continue to exist, and reporters will continue to report, and articles will be read. Pay $1.25 and the New York Times can be yours, and it’s still the best deal in town; emotions unavailable in the online edition will still pour forth from its pages, thanks to the wondrous confluence of words and photographs and headlines and ideas. Or pay nothing and it will still enthrall and engage and inform; the New York Times will entertain even those of us who now prefer to read the paper standing up on the subway on a Kindle.

Still, thank God for Gay Talese; he’s the firm but benevolent father to us all, reminding us to turn off our computers and go outside and play, it’s a beautiful day outside, the sun is shining and all’s right with the world.

The New York Times buried the lede…

David Blum — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:55:08 +0000

…in its obituary this morning of Claus Luthe, the German car designer responsible for the sleek BMW models of the 1980s that influenced American car design.

In the 13th (and next to last) paragraph of the obituary, Dennis Hevesi reports: "In 1990, after 14 years at BMW, Mr. Luthe’s career came to an
unfortunate end. He was convicted of murder after stabbing his
often-troubled 33-year-old son, Ulrich, to death during a violent
argument. He was sentenced to 33 months in prison, but did not serve
his full term."

My gosh, yes, what an unfortunate end to Ulrich’s career!

This obituary must be comforting news to successful people everywhere who, unfortunately for their career, may have also murdered their children. They no longer have to fear that their criminal acts will detract from a generally laudatory obituary in The New York Times.