Forget the Sinister Six. For Spider-Man, the real challenge is outliving the damage this musical is doing to his reputation. Courtesy of Ward Sutton and the Village Voice, here’s his cartoon perspective on how the show went wrong.
Last Saturday, my friend Larry and I went to Silent Movie for an evening of the month-long John Cassavetes film fest. (The Silent Movie Theatre is still called Silent Movie, but it’s programmed by a group called The Cinefamily. They run Silents on Wednesdays and occasional other nights, and special programming the rest of the time.) I’m not a great fan of John Cassavetes’ work, but I was willing to see “Husbands,” starring Cassavetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara, if it afforded me the opportunity to see Gazzara live in person for a Q&A beforehand. I’ve always enjoyed Gazzara’s work, especially in “Buffalo ’66” and “Tales of Ordinary Madness.”
I was glad to have bought tickets in advance, because the event was sold out. Waiting in line in front of me was Danger Mouse, this generation’s answer to Brian Eno. My feeling is this: You know you’re at a cool event when Danger Mouse is there too. And sitting next to me in the house was an actor from”Fringe” (who lit up when I told him, after I heard him bring up the Jersey Devil, that the creature was my distant cousin). One of the delights of living in Los Angeles is such memorable unexpected encounters.
Ben Gazzara was terrific. I would say his advancing years have freed him to say anything, but I suspect he never censored himself much anyway. At age 80, his gruff macho persona is intact. When asked about shooting “Tales of Ordinary Madness,” which was derived from Charles Bukowski’s writing, he said Bukowski was “a pussy. The whole movie, I’m drinking Thunderbird, and he shows up with French wine.” He also impatiently waved off any number of the poor interviewer’s questions, making sour faces over the titles of various projects he clearly did just for the money and didn’t want to discuss. At other times, he just roared “No, no, you got it wrong.” The crowd loved him, but Gazzara also knows how to work a crowd, and how to get a laugh. After more than an hour, he said, “Awright, that’s enough,” and got up to go. Another example of good timing.
Unfortunately, what followed this was the movie. I’ve tried to like these Cassavetes films that have so many film-school acolytes, but I’m always left thinking they must think they have to like them, and therefore decide to like them, because there isn’t much in them to recommend them. My old playwriting teacher David Scott Milton (who, coincidentally, wrote a one-man show on Broadway that earned Ben Gazzara a Tony Award) knew the Cassavetes crowd and said he felt the problem with the films was editing — they needed some. I agree with that. I also think they would benefit from stories. “Husbands” is two hours and 11 minutes of Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara gassing around — first in New York, then in London. Sometimes they stumble onto something amusing, but nothing builds, and for much of the movie we wait while they search for inspiration. One extended near-rape scene in a London hotel is indicative of the problem: Cassavetes’ character has picked up a blonde and they’re tussling around on the bed; it’s unclear whether she’s enjoying it or not — it seems mostly not — and the actress, unsure what she’s playing, winds up playing nothing, swinging between tears and laughter, playfulness and panic. Like the rest of the movie, there’s nothing we can make of it. Finally, and not one minute too soon, the movie ends with Cassavetes and Falk returning home, Gazzara’s character having decided to abandon his family to stay in London. I think it would’ve been good to see the scene where he struggles over that decision, or at least informs his friends of it. Instead, we find out when the two men get out of a taxi, without him, and discuss it. It’s always nice to miss the conflict.
I’ve seen most of the movies John Cassavetes wrote and directed, and really, only one is worth seeing: “Gloria.” Yes, Gena Rowlands plays the hell out of that role. But, importantly, there’s a story: Rowlands plays the former mistress of a mobster, who now must shield an orphaned little boy from the mob that wants to kill him because of what he knows. It’s got one great scene after another, made great by the high stakes. Nobody has any time to gas around. “Husbands” is all gas. Further proof that Danger Mouse is a genius: He left before the movie started. Wish I had thought of that.
When I noticed an actual half-empty shelf in our refrigerator at home, I briefly considered running to the supermarket. But then I thought: This is a perfect opportunity to empty the larder, so to speak, because my wife and children are out of town for a week. So rather than rotely replace what’s missing, I figured I could find out what’s buried at the bottom of the refrigerator, its freezer, the freezer in the garage, the pantry shelves, and the kitchen cabinets. In other words, I’m going to eat my way through our stores without replenishment.
Progress so far:
Day One.
Breakfast consists of coffee, half of a leftover steak, one of five remaining slices of sourdough bread, and one egg (leaving me with five). Thank God there’s plenty of coffee for the week.
Later, I come home from leading my Saturday playwriting workshop and have a bit of leftover rib meat, and a bowl of cantaloupe already cut up by someone (my wife?) and left semi-forgotten in the refrigerator. Already, I can see more shelf space.
My friend Larry comes over at 6:30 and we go to see Ben Gazzara speak at a John Cassavettes retrospective. (More about that later.) Many many hours later, post-midnight, when the show is finally over, Larry suggests we go out for a drink. I leap on the idea: “Hey, let’s go drink at my house. It’s free!” “Free” because it’s already been paid for. We get back to my place and I start mixing gimlets. I also dig out some snacks: cracked-pepper Triscuits that I didn’t know we had, some sliced peppery salami that I didn’t know we had, and an assortment of cheeses from the Hotel Amarano, where I hosted a reception five days earlier. Larry dutifully eats his share of all that stuff. A couple of shakers later, I’ve emptied the big Rose’s lime juice bottle and the big vodka bottle and now I’m making drinks using the little lime juice bottle and the little vodka bottles that drunks carry around in their pockets for emergencies. (I have them for an utterly different reason, I assure you.) I now start making a list of the groceries we will eventually have to buy — say, on Sunday, after my family returns; the list contains one item: “Vodka.” I also start smoking a very big cigar in our living room, but because my wife doesn’t read this blog, I’m secure in knowing that she’ll never know. The dog looks at me askance. Larry leaves at five minutes of four in the morning, the booze now exhausted, and the topic of a “Star Trek” convention gone wrong exhausted for the moment. I go upstairs and read a bit and discover that I’ve got only two half-beefsticks left. Uh oh.
Day Two.
I get up and start coffee brewing. I crack an egg into a frying pan and reach for another — but I drop that egg onto the floor. Now I have only three eggs left for the week. I’m starting to feel like the father in “The Road,” who scavenges around the loft of a barn searching in vain for something, anything, to eat, briefly considering trying to mash down some hay. He would probably pick up that egg and fry it. But I throw it away. I also have the last bit of rib meat from last week, plus the last of the blueberries and the last of the blackberries, and another piece of the sourdough bread. I add berries and eggs onto that shopping list alongside vodka. I never really noticed these racks in the refrigerator before, but now they stand out like the spine of a fish stripped of its flesh.
For lunch — which might more appropriately be called dinner, given when I’m having it — I decide to try my luck in the kitchen cabinet. I find a can of lentil soup, crack that open, and eat half of it. I also pull two fillets of white fish out of the garage freezer to defrost for later.
Over dinner, while watching the thoroughly ludicrous and uninvolving NBC show “The Event,” I eat what else I’ve scavenged from around the house: four tiny red potatoes I found in a bag by the fruit bowl (?) and then boiled, and the two fillets, cooked in a lemon butter caper sauce that I make and am quite fond of, the lemon plucked from my tree and the capers plucked from a little bottle I found on the wrong shelf. I top the entree off with a bowl of pineapple drawn from a thick rectangular storage container I found tucked in a deep corner of the refrigerator. We’ve still got a bottle of cheap-ass white wine in the refrigerator (Golden Gate Chardonnay, a full 74 cents a bottle cheaper than Two-Buck Chuck, so take that, Trader Joe’s), so I knock off a glass or two of that. For far too long, the intelligence of the American public has been berated, and I know this now for a fact, because I am watching “The Event” in the knowledge that statistically no one else is watching this show, and I take some comfort in that; that is, until discovering that they’re watching “The Celebrity Apprentice.” I catch one minute of that, in which Meat Loaf evidently has given bad driving directions to Jose Conseco and Gary Busey and now they’re lost somewhere in New York. Gary Busey makes buggy faces at the camera — he’s now too old and historically too besotted to do much physical damage.
More in the days to come, about what I’ve found to eat in my house, and if and when I’ve eaten in.
And I polished off the can of Smokehouse Blue Diamond Almonds while writing this.
Last night, while I was out seeing something else (which I’ll be writing about later today), “Julie Taymor” was trying to salvage her reputation. This clip shows the predicament she’s in — for now.
Charlie Sheen LIVE: My Violent Torpedo of Truth.
“Will there be surprises? Will there be guests? Will there be mayhem? Will you ask questions? Will you laugh? Will you scream? Will you know the truth? WILL THERE BE MORE?!?!”
Probably. But there won’t be me.
While some companies have started to hire more people, here’s one job posting that I don’t believe is indicative of a turnaround: Charlie Sheen is looking for a social media intern. Whether it’s a job or a ploy — it has all the makings of a stunt, given the wording and given the promotional aspect — the unlucky “winner” (pun intended) would certainly find that it’s a lot of work.
To make another point, while I’m on the topic of Sheen, I would remind you that his antics cost between 200 and 300 people in Burbank, the city where I live and work, their jobs when production of his show was shut down for the season. The rich irony of his putting out this job notice shouldn’t be lost on anyone.
Another interesting class I didn’t get to take in college: one where a man toys a naked woman with a dildo.
I’m having a hard time understanding the outrage of some people (unless, of course, these are the people who are professionally outraged). Northwestern University is a private university, so public funds weren’t involved. The course is a course in human sexuality, so everyone knew what they were getting, and the demonstration was relevant. The demonstration was after class, and therefore attendance was voluntary — even registered students didn’t have to view the demonstration. As the professor notes, “Observers were Northwestern students legally capable of voting, enlisting in the military, and consuming pornography, as well as making many other serious decisions that legal adults are allowed to make.” But somehow, I guess, adults must be protected from their own decision-making, because the president of the university is launching an investigation into the demonstration.
I am hopeful that those stalwarts of liberty and freedom, the Tea Party, will join me in protesting — not the class or the demonstration, but the university’s desire to police our choices.
Someone I know — an actress who was in a play I produced in 1993, now magically reintroduced to me via the wonder of Facebook — informed me a few days ago that right now we’re in the midst of “The National Day of Unplugging,” during which one is encouraged to “Put that smartphone down! Back away from that iPad! Switch off your laptop, and stop Tweeting!” at least during “the Sabbath.” The theory behind this, I take it, is that minus what Thomas Friedman called “the Evernet,” we will all draw closer together.
I posted immediately that I wouldn’t be participating. (And, if you’re reading this today, neither are you.)
My second reason for not participating is that I’m not Jewish, and not observing “the Sabbath.”
But my main reason is this: As someone who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, I grew up unplugged. It was really really dull. I didn’t know then what I was wishing for (although I know that it was a plea for some sort of change), but now I know: I was wishing for the internet and for digital computing power.
Digital computing power allows me to write, film, or record scripts, thoughts, music, movies, art, really anything I want — and then disseminate it all over the world. Just like I so desperately wanted to do when I was a kid, when the options were limited to Xerox copying (at 25 cents a page), the U.S. mail, cassette tape recorders, Super 8 video cameras, and the like. Most of the offerings I couldn’t afford, and what I could afford was slow and ineffective.
Things like “The National Day of Unplugging” strike me as elitist. Evidently, we lucky people, we 1/6 of the world’s population who can easily access the internet, have so much access that we now view it as a menace, an indulgence, something we should deprive ourselves of. The internet thus joins the long list of vices such as drinking, dancing, smoking, acting, and eating chocolate and red meat, that well-intentioned meddlers have inveighed against over the years when really it should be none of their business. It also reminds me of the back-to-nature crowd who view the outdoors as vast pastoral idylls, whereas those of us who grew up in it know that life in nature alternates between great danger (rattlesnakes, sinkholes, disease-carrying pests, cliff faces, falling trees, hurricanes) and extreme tedium. There is, often, nothing to do in the great outdoors, except strive to survive. That is the story of much of our history, and I’m glad we’ve turned the page on that.
Here’s what I plan to do during every “National Day of Unplugging” and similarly blinkered notions: use up all the available broadband surrendered by the people willfully sitting in the quiet.
According to a new study, fewer people aged 15 to 24 are having sex. What’s wrong with these kids today? Don’t they know there’s plenty of time for abstinence after they’re married?