As New York City embraces the cycling lifestyle by altering the landscape with hundreds of miles of bike lanes across the boroughs, this new consumer-based bicycle show will feature the many nuances of bike culture—from bikes for commuting, racing and pleasure rides—as well as those people who are conscious of the environment. We want our readers to be educated and have a good time while they learn the ropes. This will be the place to do it.

We decided to partner with Transportation Alternatives because we applaud their efforts to make the city safer for everyone. T.A. is involved in every aspect of traveling around New York City. From bike routes and bus lanes to pedestrian crossings and car parking, they’re fighting for safer, smarter transportation and a healthier city. When Transportation Alternatives was founded in 1973, New York City’s cycling population was a fifth of what it is now and the number of pedestrians killed each year by cars was more than twice as high. Since then, T.A. has been laying the paving stones of a safer city—pedestrian plazas, parking-protected bike lanes, the very philosophy of the livable street—and pushing city agencies and elected officials to introduce this innovation into the urban landscape. We’re proud to be assisting with those efforts.

Jerry Portwood Editor-in-Chief, New York Press

The first half of the film is an attempt to manufacture a context,
with images of Stalin and a bleak Soviet regime. Amid black-and-white
footage of military dominance, we’re introduced to quirky Igor Savitsky,
our hero (and aspiring artist), who will begin by appreciating and
collecting folk crafts of a remote area of the Uzbek region of
Karakalpakstan. The film then goes on to explain how Savitsky went on to
amass over 40,000 pieces of “forbidden” Soviet art that he stowed away
in an impoverished museum in the desert of Central Asia.

The film is chronologically chaotic and rife with warring political and personal agendas. Stephen Kinzer,
former New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul, is one of the dominant
Western talking heads—he was essential in starting the ball rolling by
“discovering” the remote museum and publishing pieces in the Times in
the late ’90s. His view dominates, rather than including some outside
sources that could potentially shed more light on the regional history,
politics and artistic veracity of the whole affair.

Although the filmmakers attempt to explain what was at stake for
these lesser-known artists and the social function of these paintings
and drawings, we’re never sure if we can truly trust anyone. In reality,
these well-meaning, yet clumsy, documentarians are in the service of
late capitalism and the global art market, authenticating and supporting
a weighty provenance to heighten interest in this treasure trove of
art. In that way it reminds us of the tale of the Barnes Collection
detailed in the much-better documentary, The Art of the Steal.
Again, we see well-meaning people promoting a “hallowed” collection,
only to have it potentially stolen by the more influential and powerful.

Why certain questions are not posed or answered is mind-boggling. For
example, it would be fascinating to hear how a collective of renegade
artists operating in the hinterlands had access to expensive indigo
paints and other materials. Was there some sort of black market
operating that supplied these artists with support and resources?
Ultimately, it’s undeniable that some stunning paintings (and their
equally jaw-dropping biographies) are uncovered. No doubt this film will
act as a primer for many and, once academics and curators get a chance
to devour the collection, we’ll begin to have a more complete
understanding of what went on. Not that we must rely on Western
“experts” for guidance, but this campaign to rehabilitate an artwork’s
status requires many more perspectives before we can get anywhere near a
legitimate understanding.

But
with this year’s lineup including names like Suzan-Lori Parks (Pulitzer
Prize) and Barry McGovern (Beckett interpreter extraordinaire), one
begins to question what it means to be “under the radar.” Mark Russell,
the producer of the show since its inception, admits that the name has
begun to bite them in the ass. “Originally, it was more to that point,”
he explains.

Russell
was also the executive artistic director of P.S. 122 from 1983-2004, so
he has been getting his hands dirty in the land of misfits for decades.
“This is probably the most mainstream thing I’ve ever done,” he says.
“But to others, it’s still way out there.”

Of
course it’s all relative. While Taylor Mac may now seem like a breakout
star on the Downtown circuit, even touring internationally (he’s
presenting in the festival for the second time), his name means nothing
to a wide range of people. “Eric Bogosian may be a big star to you and
me,” Russell explains, “but say his name to someone on the street, and
they still don’t know who he is.”

Under
the Radar is, in fact, a small organization inside a much larger
one—with all the bureaucracies that entails—and, according to Russell,
“I try to dismantle it each year and ask, ‘What do we really need to be
doing?’”

This
year the festival has a decidedly international flavor with work from
Chile (Guillermo Calderón’s Diciembre), Africa (Correspondances) and
Europe. Much of this work would not have an opportunity to be seen in
the city otherwise and, rather than wait for a special engagement once
the work has been anointed by some other organization—such as Lincoln
Center and BAM do with their branded festivals of intellectual
international fare—this offers exposure to groups so that they may be
able to build a tour or land other high-profile gigs.

Under
the Radar takes place in that space in early January when the
members of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters converge on the city, and
other festivals such as COIL (at P.S. 122) and CULTUREMART (at HERE) and American Realness (at the Abrons Arts Center) are
also scheduling edgy, little-seen and brand new work. In Russell’s estimation, there
are potentially more combined performances taking place during these few
cold weeks than all those during the annual Edinburgh International
Festival, known as a incubator for ground-breaking talent. Also, this year, it may not be as comfortable as just plopping down in a theater at the Public and seeing a piece. Due to extensive renovations taking place at the Lafayette Street location, many of the performances are taking place "off-campus" at La Mama, Dixon Place, HERE and the Abrons Arts Center. So, it may be more of a psychic and physical adventure than years past.

Of
course, programming a 12-day festival with a limited number of slots
for performances, Russell and his team must make difficult choices. It’s
a “messy process,” Russell explains in regards to the way pieces are
selected. Ultimately it’s what he responds to at a gut level and what he
thinks New York and American audiences need to be confronted with.

“I
hope we will infiltrate the American theater,” Russell says. “We
want to question, ‘What is theater? Why do we do theater now?’ It’s an
opportunity to isolate why we are in the room together.”

Jones seems to be following the same trajectory as Alex Timbers—Les Freres Corbusier artistic director whose Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson received the imprimatur of The Public and went on to Broadway—and Kyle Jarrow, whose Hostage Song
should hopefully receive some big-time producer tutelage some day. The
comparisons can either be taken as praise or as a dig at that sort of
highly praised material that is meant to "develop new audiences" for the theater
by including indie actors and comedians with racy language and
references to popular culture.

Director Sam Gold (who also comes with his own bona fides as the director of Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizon) and the
cast of mostly young, somewhat recognizable faces are doing their best
with weak and wearisome material. Jeremy Strong plays the young coward Lucidus who gets suckered into dueling as a macho display to impress his father (Richard Poe), and his high-pitched warble and fey ways are funny. He impressively manages to maintain the persona without becoming grating despite the perpetual physical and vocal one-liners. A scene with his foppish friends (Stephen Ellis and Steven Boyer) eating pies in the park is full of comic moments. When comedian Kristen Schaall is let loose to prance and preen on stage as Lucidus’ love interest Isabelle Dupree, she easily steals the show with her eye-rolls and quirky delivery. Christopher Evan Welch as Henry Blaine is the only actor who never really quite fits in. His hulking size (most recent’y seen in AMC’s short-lived Rubicon) may have been right for the role of a mercenary, but he just comes across flat and…bored.

By the time we get to the final duel scene (a six-way) and blood and guts are spilled, I was left with a So what? feeling. It’s the worst thing possible when we’re meant to be seeing new voices, new stories, new energy. Why stage a play with jokes and jibes but no real heft or clear point. The need to dig into period costumes and narratives is clearly in the air. Uptown from the Broadway theater, Lincoln Center Theater is presenting a much more daring piece with John Guare’s wordy and wonderful A Free Man of Color. Having both period pieces running simultaneously only shows how slight Jones’ attempt is. Here’s hoping he gets another chance, and this time we get something wild and witty and worthy of his formidable talents.

The Coward, Through Dec. 4, LCT3 at The Duke at 42nd Street,

229 W. 42nd St.

646-223-3010; $20.

You probably know artist Eric Drooker’s work even though you may not recognize his name. He’s produced artwork for over a dozen covers of The New Yorker, several depicting books stacked to resemble skyscrapers. Now his art has been adapted as animated sequences in Howl, the film about the landmark 1957 obscenity trial on the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem Howl, starring James Franco. As Drooker explained, documentary filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, known for their film The Celluloid Closet, were going to make a doc, but they ended up going in a completely different direction. “They are in San Francisco, and I’m in Berkeley these days. They visited and looked at some of my other work. That’s when lightbulbs went off over their heads, when they saw these illustrations I did with Allen’s poems.” Now the 90-minute film contains approximately 20 minutes of animation woven throughout. An illustrated book of the poem is also out now, containing Drooker’s artwork.

The 51-year-old artist was born on the Lower East Side, attended Cooper Union and lived for most of his life in the East Village, where he first met Ginsberg, who started collecting his agitprop posters around Tompkins Square Park. As he explains, the massive construction projects that he experienced during his youth that influenced him greatly show up in many scenes in Howl.

New York Press: I know that you had a working relationship with Ginsberg, but how did your involvement in the film get started?

Eric Drooker:When they began the project, the first thing they did was interview the oldest members of that scene: Ferlinghetti, Peter Orlovsky, Tuli Kupferberg, the founder of The Fugs. When they were interviewing [Tuli], they came across a copy of Illuminated Poems. Not sure if Tuli showed them the book or they saw it when they were there. Now that Tuli’s gone, we will never know. So they decided to contact me to use some imagery in their documentary.

How was that process for you? Did you create the art and then farm it out to other artists and animators?

That was very unusual to see the work translated by other artists. Usually, I write the thing, draw it and ink it all myself. So I was operating in the auteur approach of doing it all, doing the whole thing, so it would be the work of one artist’s hand. It’s so tedious and labor intensive; it would have taken 10 or 15 years to make a film like that. You need to have a team working with you. So, I designed the whole cast of characters: the skinny 29-year-old-withglasses Ginsberg character; a Kerouac character; Moloch, a Minotaur. I would draw the Minotaur, from the front, the side, from all different angles. I did the anonymous nude, copulating figures.

I was wondering about all the sexual imagery, the phallic images that keep recurring, the large penises on the male characters.

There was more sexual imagery. It got cut. They were showing it to different audiences and taking surveys. And people asked: “But Ginsberg was gay. How come there’s all this heterosexual imagery?” But

I think the poem is celebrating all kinds of sexual expressions, as long as it was taboo. It was a big part of Allen’s attraction; all his boyfriends were almost always straight men. He liked guys who like to fuck women. It was part of his recurring motif. And some of it made it in there There’s a lot of homosexual imagery.

The size of people’s genitals was toned down a bit. But it ended up I was exaggerating everything because I had a feeling that would happen. So I overcompensated.

Was there any pushback to your visual interpretation of the poem?

It conjures up images in the mind of the reader, of the listener. You don’t want someone interpreting it for you. That’s what is great about poetry: You hear words and come up with your own dream image.

On the other hand, there is a tradition of coming up with illustrated poems, books, rock videos. We attempted it, and I would have had even more outrageous, not just sexual but political. They were staying more personal to a young man coming out of the closet and coming to terms with his sexuality. I think it could have had a larger dose of political reality of the ’50s, the cold war, McCarthyism, the Howl obscenity trial, the Hollywood witch hunt, the execution of Rosenbergs. Younger viewers may not grasp some of those connections.

Were you basing your image of Ginsberg on James Franco?

When I was doing drawings of young Allen, I make him very tall and skinny.

He’s very elongated, almost like an El Greco. I wasn’t going for realistic proportions; he’s very stretched out and very graceful, so when they animated them they would look more abstract and graceful. This was before I knew about James Franco. I had been working on it for over a year before he landed the part of Allen, so I wasn’t thinking of Franco at all; I was looking at pictures of Allen when he was in his twenties. That’s most of the poem, when he was in his late teens and twenties. Allen was only 16, 17 when he met Kerouac at Columbia University.

You grew up in Manhattan and your images seem to continually show the city and skyscrapers as overpowering and intimidating. Why do you think you keep returning to that?

I thought the whole world was like that. I hadn’t been to too many other cities. I’d been to Boston, which seemed like a smaller version of New York. I was such a city boy; I hadn’t been to the country or the woods. When I got into my twenties, I felt a little bit of the oppressive nature of the architecture.

There was this architectural boom, especially in Lower Manhattan, with these buildings that weren’t even there when I was a kid. I had the Empire State Building, the Chrysler, these very beautiful skyscrapers, out my bedroom window. Then I watched the Twin Towers go up; these big shoeboxes, not pointy or with design or pattern. I remember going down there when it was open to the public; they would let you go on the roof. The scale was so preposterous, a monument to male ego. It had a Dr. Seuss quality. It looked like a disposable cigarette lighter. All the buildings built in my lifetime look like they have a disposable quality.

I would go to the rooftops where my parents lived and it’s what hit me at a certain point: These are the mountains, and people are consigned to live in the valleys. It’s not a human scale, not really built for people. This is for commerce, about making money, the circulation of money and traffic.

Moloch is still alive and well. I just heard last week that Obama’s military budget is larger than under Bush. My first time reading the poem, the part about Moloch is what got to me: “A thousand blind windows.” The whole first part was a surrealistic kaleidoscopic roller coaster ride.

With so much art and animation to get done, how long were you working on the project?

Almost four years. The last two years of the project were high-drive. At first, when they talked about animating, I thought it would be little vignettes. I thought a minute there or two minutes there, to break up the monotony.

When I realized what they were proposing, I thought they were crazy—way over-ambitious. Why don’t we animate Dante’s Inferno while we’re at it? Of course, it didn’t even hit me, The Inferno would have been ambitious, but not as dangerous or as ambitious as Howl.

JUNKO
HAS SCARS marring both arms.

Curious
why such a beautiful woman in her line of work would choose to openly show off
such an apparent defect, I ask her what they are from.

“Oh,”
she says, lifting her delicate eyebrows and nodding her head. “I had tattoos
removed.” She smiles as she almost looks me in the eye.

I
stroke the raised area, the first time I’ve touched her since she sat down
close on my left, her bare thigh rubbing against my jeans, and nod. These scars
are jagged and mean. They aren’t from any sort of tattoo removal I’ve ever
seen, and I should probably just drop the subject, but I continue.

“Then
why do you still have the one here?” I ask, touching the small red heart on her
wrist. “You still like tattoos?” She smiles, a bit more uncomfortably now, but
she remains bright and positive—and changes the subject. “You want more drink?”
She pours from the half-finished bottle of Remy on the table. A small giggle
and more smiles all around.

I’d
ended up at the “geisha bar” on a Thursday night because my friend Sam was in
town visiting an old fraternity brother. Sam is 50 and openly gay, but he still
values the link he has with these college guys and their yearly bonding rituals
of golf, drinking and fancy dining. So after he and I had a drink, his pal
Ronnie showed up. “I’m taking you to my geisha bar!” he informed us, as he
hailed a cab while standing in the middle of Park Avenue.

“Where
is it?” I ask. He laughs at my question, a puzzled look on his face, as if I
were being intentionally obtuse: It didn’t matter where it was. It just was.

I
hopped into the backseat with my middle-aged friends and took off uptown to
what looked like a dumpy karaoke bar in the East 40s. A glance at the menu,
however, revealed a caliber of clientele able to pay $750 for a bottle of
cognac or plunk down a black AmEx for champagne that runs more than my weekly
salary.

“I
was kind of a little too drunk here the other night,” Ronnie admits. “Let’s see
if they give me a hard time.”

When
we enter a small cheer goes up.

“Oh,
Ronnie-san!” one stunning young woman in a sexy short-sleeved suit greets Sam’s
pal.

“Hi,
Sally,” Ronnie says with a grin.

“You’re
not mad? I wasn’t too bad the other night?” “Oh, you so baaaad!” Sally in the
suit says. She continues to beam and walks us to an upholstered corner. It’s
flanked with screens to block the view to the bar.

Otherwise,
the place is nearly empty except for the young women clustered around the bar,
three of whom decide to partner with us. Junko sits beside me. Sam gets a shy
girl named Kimi. Ronnie has Jenny. These women aren’t dressed in some
outlandish geisha attire, they’re just pretty, high-end call girls.

“You
like my suit?” Sally, the hostess, asks, positioning herself at the head of the
table.

“Yes,
very much,” Ronnie answers. “It’s Bebe,” she says, sliding her hands down her
sides, over the tight-fitting jacket that only barely conceals her sharp
hipbones. “I like this suit very much.”

“It’s
very nice,” Ronnie answers. “But why are all you girls here? It’s Thursday
night! You should be out with customers before they leave for the Hamptons
tomorrow with their wives. I’ll never make any money!” He’s chiding them but
it’s also obvious that he’s half serious. One of the girls brings over a nearly
empty bottle of Remy Martin XO with a tag hanging around its neck labeled: Mr.
Ronnie. No. 125.

Sam
and I are curious about the way the place operates so Ronnie fills us in. He’s
part owner in the operation, “And I personally interview each of them,” he
explains, with a cheerful leer. He points at Sally: “I fuck her.” Then at
Jenny: “I fuck her.” He’s a proud prince showing off his harem.

“But
what if someone walks in and they don’t understand what this place is?” I ask.

“If
they come in off the street, someone will politely show them the menu. Once
they see the prices, they usually start to get the drift.”

Most
of the clientele are Japanese or Korean businessmen, and they seem used to the
idea that there may be a bar with expensive bottle service and beautiful,
submissive women to cater to their whims. Turns out the Korean guys come for
the karaoke, so there are two rooms in the back. As a few bustle in, laughing
and yanking on each other’s sleeves good-naturedly, they head to the rooms and
two of the other girls who have gathered nearby politely excuse themselves. An
older Japanese gentleman enters the room and takes a seat near the piano, where
a plain-looking woman, her hair in a ponytail and wearing little makeup, sits
and picks out easy-listening tunes. His bottle tag reads No. 5. He’s obviously
been coming here for some time.

“There’s
no sex on the premises,” Ronnie says. “If someone is found having sex here,
she’s fired. Immediately.”

Well,
at least we know there are some sort of standards. Having worked for years at
newspapers that carry advertising that cater to the seedier sides of men’s
fantasies, I have tried to maintain a level of magnanimity and when it comes to
the brothels and the happy ending massages offered, believing people should be
able to negotiate freely for what they desire—as long as no one gets harmed.

“What
do you all know about me?” Ronnie asks the gathered girls.

“That
you are very rich, Ronnie-san.” Now it’s starting to feel a little creepy.
“You, what’s your name?” Ronnie begins to interrogate Kimi, who has thrown in
her lot with Sam. But Sam has been unresponsive and she’s not sure what she’s
done wrong. “What is it?” he asks again.

“Kimi,”
she says, and she lowers her eyes. “Oh, Kimi is a very good singer,” Junko
pipes up.

“You
are?” Ronnie isn’t backing down.

“Why
don’t you sing for us if you’re so good.”

“No,
I don’t know any songs.” She is being demure, and I wonder if she is seething
just below the surface.

“She
is professional singer,” Junko says.

Is
she trying to deflect the attention away from herself? Because she’s just
thrown her gal pal under the bus.

“Oh?
You’re a professional?” Ronnie probes. “How often do you practice?”

“I
don’t know. Not very often,” she responds.

“Then
you must not be much of a professional. If you want to be good, you have to
practice every day. Tiger Woods, he practices seven hours a day or more. You
have to have commitment.” Ronnie obviously worships that strain of American
exceptionalism that has profited him in life. If you work hard, you’ll excel.
He’s made millions doing whatever it is that he does. He’s on his second wife I
learn (both Asian) and has kids that have been tucked into their cozy beds in a
penthouse somewhere.

He
begins to bully her more, telling her how she’ll never amount to anything if
she doesn’t try harder. Sam tries to defend her, but I can tell he’s feeling a
bit too exposed. My liquid courage has kicked in from an earlier bottle of wine
and the bottomless cognac, so I finally try to break it up.

“I’ll
go sing. If I sing, will you sing, Kimi?” She looks at me as if it’s some sort
of trick. And I wonder if I’ve trapped her in a geisha girl fib. Maybe she’s
only supposed to pretend to be a singer? She walks with me to the piano, and we
begin to rifle through the scores. Most are popular tunes with Japanese characters
written above the English lyrics. I’m searching for something that I won’t
massacre too terribly and finally find “Let It Be.” The microphone is handed to
me, and I begin to sing. Kimi supports me by clasping my right elbow and making
sure I keep the microphone held up close to my mouth. Ronnie isn’t interested
in a drunk guy belting out a Beatles hit, so he’s moved on to the new woman
seated next to him.

When
we return to the table, it’s only a moment before Ronnie swivels to Kimi and
says, “So now it’s your turn to sing.”

She
lowers her eyes and tries to beg off. But a deal’s a deal and eventually she
slinks back to the piano, tracks down a song, chats with the pianist and begins
to sing. I recognize that it’s a Carpenters tune, but then the lyrics kind of
shift. Sometimes they sound English, sometimes Japanese. I’m not sure what
exactly she’s singing about, but Kimi hasn’t lied: She does have a lovely
voice. When she’s finished, Sam and I applaud and she returns, triumphant, to
the group.

“That
was very good, Kimi,” Ronnie says. She basks in his approval.

By
now, a new gaggle of women has appeared and they make their way to our sides,
but they are just as confused that Sam and I are not pawing at them. In fact,
we both have our hands tucked politely between our legs, careful not to touch
the ladies.

“You
guys are wild. My friends, usually, they’d be all over them by now,” Ronnie
says and chuckles. It’s like he’s seen a rare pachyderm and it’s the first
irrefutable evidence to support the fact that some men really aren’t interested
in women as playthings. Or women at all. Sam’s been here before, and is
familiar with Ronnie’s antics. He explains how he turned off their other
friend. “We were in geisha hell and Chris just thought you were being cocky,”
Sam says. “He thought you just wanted to be the biggest cock on the block.”
Ronnie doesn’t care. “He was just being a pussy.”

Having
made the rounds, Sally is back to check on us. And it’s time for Ronnie to have
some more fun.

“You
know, Sally, my friends here are gay,” he says, nodding his head in our
direction. “They’re into other guys.” The drink has finally gotten to Sam, and
he’s now slumped forward, his eyes closed. At the moment, he’s not much into
anything.

“No!”
Sally says, shocked. “They not gay!”

“Yes,
they are.” Now I really feel like some sort of rare species of freak, but I nod
my head in agreement.

“Really?”
Her eyes are wide; her glossy lips in a beautiful bow that must make many men
squirm in anticipation.

Jenny
leans in to me and explains softly.

“Sally
is not very sophisticated. I don’t think she even knows what gay means.” Jenny
has been snuggled up close to Ronnie for some time now, and I see that she has
a pride of place amongst the women. She’s a sad beauty: long black hair parted
down the middle, draping her face in an oldfashioned way, her lips turned down
in a teasing scowl. She speaks English fluently and without much of an accent,
while some of the women struggle with each syllable. But Sally must have
understood because she has dragged the only male staff member, a bartender,
over and pushed him down across from me.

“You
like?” she asks me.

“What?
Umm. What?” I babble.

“Sally,
what are you doing?” Ronnie has stopped whispering in a woman’s ear. “No,
Sally. He’s not here for that. He doesn’t understand.”

“Yes,
I ask him,” Sally says.

“Sally,
take him back to the bar. Sally, do it. Now.” This must be how Ronnie talks to
his kids. Stern. No nonsense. You do what Daddy says or else.

Sally
frowns, but she obeys. She takes the young Japanese man with his shaved head
(he is indeed attractive) back to the bar. Jenny finds the entire episode
hilarious. “She’s the hostess,” she explains. “She just wants to make sure
everyone is happy, that they have a good time.”

Ronnie
continues to scold her for the assumption that everything is for sale—for a
price. “But I asked him, and he said it was OK. He liked,” she says.

“Oh.
Well. In that case, bring him back.” Ronnie seems surprised, like it’s only now
that he realizes that it’s not just the dude who can pay for the chick that
makes the world go round.

He
and I get into a heated argument about the whole affair, one that somehow
shifts to how he raises his kids. “You have a problem with money,” he tells me.
As if it’s some righteous indignation that keeps me from understanding that
money isn’t dirty, it’s what enables everything. If you have it, you get what
you want. “My kids are going to be great. I’m sending them to the best schools.
I’m giving them the best that money can buy. And I love them!” His logic
astounds me, as if he hasn’t paid attention to countless TV, book and movie
plots that suggest that you can never control what your children will be, how
they will turn out, when they will reject you and your way of life. His
flummoxed reaction makes me realize that few people disagree with him. Money
has insulated him from insult. All these women are so obedient, but I imagine
they wish they could stab Ronnie in the heart if they could. I know I do.

We
move off the subject, however, when a shy, petite Russian joins us. She’s the
only woman working the room who is not Japanese or Korean and, although her
English is halting, we’re told that her Japanese is impeccable. A recent
college graduate hailing from Siberia, Janna is visiting on a tourist visa. She’s
been in New York for a month and somehow found her way here.

“Do
you like it?” Ronnie asks. “Are you enjoying yourself?” He obviously didn’t
“interview” her.

He
expects a positive response, but Janna has the spleen of a Russian and can’t
suppress her melancholy. “No. People are very bad.”

I’m
elated and urge her on, coaxing her to be honest and brutal in her summation.
“You need to cheer up,” Ronnie tells her.

“No,
more, more. I love it, she’s so Russian.” I’ve now had to put my palm
over the rim of my glass to keep any of the women from filling my glass. We’ve
finished the original bottle hours ago and have already made it halfway through
the second. Sam, long snuffled into his chest, only wakes now to join the fray.

“You
don’t get it. She needs me. She needs this place,” Ronnie says. “What sort of
opportunities does she have back in, where was it? Siberia?” He snorts. “Have
you ever heard of a female executive in Russia? What would she amount to back
in Siberia?”

I
know he actually has a point, but I hate that he could be proven right. I
realize that Ronnie feels some white man’s burden to help women. By fucking
them. His imperialist twinge means he’ll conquer as many soft female bodies as
possible, and in the process raise them up from the proverbial muck. Why work
at changing the way the world works? It’s his form of charity—just remember to
wear a condom.

“Men
are evil,” Janna hisses. And my heart leaps. I love her in that moment, wish I
could jump across the table and hug her. She has courage that these other
docile women don’t exhibit, and they seem nervous that Ronnie may snap.

“You
know why my friends won’t marry a Russian girl?” Ronnie asks. I hear the malice
in his voice. “You may be the most beautiful women in the world. You are very
beautiful, Janna. But a Russian woman will marry you. She will love you. Until
the day after she is safe, has her papers. And then next day, she will divorce
you. And take half of everything you have.”

Ronnie
is proud of his pronouncement, having summed up the problem with all the greedy
gals in the world. Janna sneers, and I can almost see her twisting the dagger
deeper. But Ronnie doesn’t like to be cruel, he’s the nice guy, and soon he’s
turned the charm back on. People are smiling again and Janna is no longer the focus.

Soon
after, I overhear a conversation and hear tenderness from him as he whispers to
Jenny, the sad beauty, still at his side. “You seem sad. You don’t like this
place anymore do you?” Jenny looks at him, not like an obedient servant, but as
if she wants to discern if she can trust him. She nods in agreement. “I can
tell: You don’t want to be here. Don’t worry. I have a good lawyer. I’ll get
you papers. I’ll get you out of here. All you need is a good lawyer and you can
do anything.”

It’s a
cynical pronouncement, but as we gather our things, pay the bill and say our
good-byes—hugs on the sidewalk as if we’re old friends who will see one another
someday soon—I wonder if Ronnie may, unfortunately, be right.

La Soga

Directed by Josh Crook

Runtime: 102 min.

The colonial architecture and streets of the Dominican Republic have stood in for many a film set in
Cuba, but rarely has a film been set in the Caribbean island that tells a story
about the culture and people of DR itself. La Soga, written by and starring Manny
Perez, a Dominican-American who has a lot he wants to say about the country
where he was born.

The story centers on the actions of Luisito (Perez), aka La
Soga (the rope), a sensitive hit man who also happens to be a vegetarian
butcher and lives in a shack in a small town on the outskirts of Santiago. The conflicts
don’t end there. The action-packed thriller (plenty of chase scenes and bullets
flying, worthy of a film with a much bigger budget) is pulled between genres:
part love story, part action film, part political intrigue, part indie foreign-language drama (the graphic, beautifully shot, pig slaughter scene may be the one moment that could potentially tie all of these tropes together). It’s as if Perez and others involved in the film wanted so badly for it to be marketable and accessible to as wide an audience as possible, they made sure they ticked every beloved box on a producer’s check list. The focus could have been refined and made for a simpler tale. As is, it’s a thrilling ride—as long as you don’t try to dig too deep into the narrative structure.

Director Josh Crook has the advantage of an outsider’s
perspective who seems fascinated by the beauty of the tropics—as well as the
power of his main character. Perez has a stunning onscreen presence. His boxer’s
build, deep tan and light eyes radiate the power and grace of an actor who deserves more mainstream attention. We can believe that next-door-neighbor beauty Jenny (played by 2001 Miss Universe Denise Quiñones) would fall into his big, strong arms. But that romance seems a bit tacked on when the strongest story being told here is the way in which the DR government is in cahoots with the federal government and it’s a two-way street of corruption between Santiago and New York City.

Luisito and his cousin Tavo (Hemky Madera, most recognizable from his role on
Weeds) dole out "justice" fairly easily to all the bad guys. But Perez and Crook hang the "inspired by true events" label on the film, which ultimately screws up the formulaic point of a "truthful" entertainment. (Aren’t just about all stories and films inspired in some way by true events?) But here’s hoping that Perez continues to develop his storytelling skills and returns with a more honest, less fabricated film that will appeal due to its honest strengths rather than eagerness to please.

That’s what members of Pilobolus, the nearly 40-year-old modern dance company named for a sort of fungus, called it when they’d barnstorm into a room and try to convince someone to work with them. About a year-and-a-half ago, a contingent from Pilobolus showed up at Spiegelman’s Soho studio to win over the world-famous comic book artist, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus graphic novels, to collaborate with them on a new dance.

“It seemed like a reasonable way to try to wake up,” explains the 62-year-old Spiegelman, concerning the visitors. “I don’t really get my day going early, and they seemed so friendly. I met with them and after a while they came back. And I got used to them. They became a presence rather than a proposition. Then after I saw Dog•id, I said yes.”

The group that arrived on Spiegelman’s doorstop included Michael Tracy, a founding artistic director and choreographer, and Pilobolus executive director Itamar Kubovy. They had been discussing for years whom to work with as part of their international Collaborators Project. “Art was incredibly fascinating,” explains Kubovy. “He’s someone who thinks about how he works, and in fact works, in a completely different way.”

They’d already worked with children’s book illustrator Maurice Sendak years earlier and later with Israeli choreographic team Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak. the collaboration with puppeteer Basil twist in 2008 jump-started the idea of incorporating shadows into the work. Although the group was already receiving attention (and criticism) for its car commercials and 2007 Academy Awards “interpretive” dance, the most untraditional may have been the collaboration with Steve Banks, a head writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, which resulted in Dog•id (now re-titled The Transformation). For many, it was a new direction for a dance company that had become predictable with its particular brand of physical humor and optical illusions. With the death last month of Jonathan Wolken, another founder and artistic director, it also seems to be a pivotal moment for the company’s future.

Spiegelman describes the shadows he saw onstage during Dog•id as a “protocinematic entertainment experience” that he was interested in exploring. He recalled seeing an opera with the supertitles projected above the singers’ heads, which made him think of a comic strip’s thought bubbles: “I loved the idea of speech balloons above shadow heads.”

During their early encounters, Spiegelman showed the group sketchbooks that McSweeney’s had published, which included a lot of noir comics and movie imagery. “He took us through several meetings to make sure we didn’t want a dancing mouse,” says Tracy.

“When someone approaches me about a collaboration, my radar is up: ‘they want to ruin my book,’” says Spiegelman. the artist says he doesn’t feel Maus should be adapted to another medium since the story is so inextricably tied to the making of comics. He did attempt a musical theater/ opera piece based on another idea about 16 years ago, but the experience left a bad taste in his mouth.

Spiegelman’s dark, sarcastic humor and style may not seem like a logical match for a group whose most popular current work involves a sort-of makeshift waterslide on stage. this week, however, Pilobolus premieres Hapless Hooligan in ‘Still Moving’ in New York during its annual four-week residency at the Joyce theater. it’s a pastiche of early 20th-century comic strips inspired by Happy Hooligan and Lulu, utilizing multimedia projections, shadows and, of course, live dancers. it’s not a simple narrative, although it does focus on male and female characters, Hapless Hooligan and lulu, who find each other, are torn apart and then have a torturous experience until their dying end. Oh, and there will be dancing skeletons.

The world premiere of the work took place last month at Dartmouth College. it caused New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay to remark: “Neither at Pilobolus nor anywhere else have i seen this kind of dizzying overlap of cartoon, film, silhouette theater and live dance.”

It wasn’t easy going, however. When Spiegelman initially showed up at Pilobolus’ Connecticut studio in december 2009, he says he was interested in large projections that the dancers would be behind and in front of. “I had such naive ideas,” he says. “It wasn’t panning out. I was making literal compositions, and i was kind of surprised: they kept moving into the black areas of my drawings and they would get lost.” Often he would try to make the dancers stand still, to make them two-dimensional, so he could move them like a cartoon. But Spiegelman is a heavy smoker, so the dancers would wait until he was out of the room so they could do their own thing. “He spent the winter standing outside our studio having a smoke,” says Tracy. “And peering in the windows to see how radically we’d changed it while he smoked a cigarette.”

The breakthrough moment occurred after a long, grueling day of trial and error. Spiegelman had been using a Wacom tablet, a device that is like an elaborate computer mouse that allows you to draw, and he still had it in his hand when the dancers started to improvise and move around. “It was at the end of the day, when the dancers were frustrated because i was making them stand still,” explains Spiegelman. “They needed to move, so they put on some music. it was really sexy. I started making splashes of color, graffiting with the Wacom pad. I felt like I was a dancer and not trying to make a cartoon. it had a conversational aspect to it.” It was during this improvisational moment—drawings done live—that Spiegelman realized that it wasn’t about the dancers standing still; rather, his cartoons were going to have to “build something,” and the drawings were animated by Dan Abdo and Jason Patterson.

Choreographer Michael tracy describes it as an almost metaphysical happenstance. “It gave us several layers of meaning and reality that we were able to play with,” he says. “It was as if some scientist had given us the algorithm to open up two more dimensions. It’s as if we were one-dimensional and now, we were suddenly three dimensions. The other dimensions were explained… We were living in a cartoon.”

Spiegelman says he kept apologizing to the dancers because he was asking for a type of precision, to interact with the animations that he felt was practically inhuman. “It’s like dancing with an idiot dancer. They can’t be off one inch. When it doesn’t work it’s disappointing, but how amazing when it does work.”

Pilobolus performs three programs in repertory through Aug. 7. The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; Mon.-Wed., 7:30; Thurs.- Fri., 8; Sat., 2 & 8, $10 .

Directed by Oliver Stone

At Angelika Film Center

Runtime: 78 min.

Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border sells itself
as a “road trip” across five countries in South America, but the contentious
director spends most of it stuck on Hugo Chávez and the current state of Venezuela. In
fact, the film should have been subtitled: “My Love Affair with Hugo.” The final result of this ode to Chávez
proves that, just because you can make a blockbuster, zeitgeist-shifting film, doesn’t mean you grasp
the fundamentals of crafting an intelligent documentary. Tariq Ali‘s name is attached to the project to give it a whiff of academic credibility and Leftist appeal, but it’s unclear how involved Ali was in the making of the film.

Stone begins by including a clip from FOX News showing on-air
personalities flippantly speaking about coca production, pronouncing it cocoa (like the beverage),
and laughing at their mistakes on-air. It speaks to the ignorance and xenophobia of most North Americans and seems like a Michael Moore-esque
setup meant to reveal the misrepresentation by America’s hegemonic media
powers (there’s even a clip of Moore himself railing on a news show to reinforce the point). But the clips and original footage presented fail to
get at essential biases in North American media since the documentary ultimately only promotes Stone’s own bias. He’s going to
show you how Chávez, the problematic president and former military man, is a
radical leader, a la Simon Bolivar, who will incite a revolution and bring
together the countries of South America. It’s such a Lefty ideological
message, skimming over the complexities and history of the region, that it’s
astounding that the film has opened in Spain (where there is much more institutional knowledge and support of South America) and is receiving support
from many of the featured presidents in the film.

For those not as familiar with the geopolitics of our
neighbors to the south—who simply think of cocaine, samba, maids, earthquakes and
military coups—I suppose the film could be something of an introductory lesson
in how the media manipulates and influences American impressions of people who speak Spanish and live south of the United States. Chávez has affected many changes in Venezuela and Latin America, of course, but should the white man from the
north with a Hollywood pedigree consecrate him? Oftentimes Stone seems to want
to fill in as the patriarchal figure, showing up to right the wrongs
of his countrymen. He comes off, however, as bored, smug, condescending and with a vague
grasp of what he’s actually attempting to do.

After he finally leaves off the Chávez hagiography to fly
down to Bolivia to interview president Evo Morales, Stone suffers from altitude sickness (and
looks like crap). He decides it will be cute to ask Morales to chew coca leaves with him to help relieve his altitude discomfort. In a funny bit, Morales says that Stone’s bag of leaves is no good and has an assistant bring a better one. The scheme is obvious: Let’s do “drugs” with a sitting president on camera. But it comes off as a juvenile gimmick, especially since the unprocessed coca leaf acts only as a mild narcotic—like caffeine. When he then asks Morales to play some soccer, the president rolls his eyes and does so. It’s a patronizing move on Stone’s part. Would he have the cajones to ask President Obama to play a game of pickup basketball? Doubtful. He later embarrasses himself again when he asks President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina how many shoes she owns. She mocks his question and declines to answer, refusing to humor him. He isn’t able to have much screen time with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, the most important and fascinating of the new guard of South American leaders. It’s a serious gap, showing his lack of journalistic interest. He should have tried harder to make sure Lula was included—or scrapped the project.

A glut of stellar docs reach a mass audience these days, both with
obvious biases as well as thoughtful meditations on a variety of controversial ideas, which only makes Stone’s documentary appear that much more amateurish. It feels like an extended 60 Minutes segment without the probing questions or comparable production quality. Yes, Stone was given unprecedented access and has the resources to execute a difficult project—one that does need to be done. But to cram so much complicated history and politics—not to mention unwavering admiration for a controversial figure such as Chávez—into a slight documentary is egregious. Stone may think he’s an expert because he’s spent so much time talking to Fidel Castro of Cuba over the years, but everyone in South America would be better served if someone had stopped him from making this film.