Today’s LA Daily News has a nice piece by Evan Henerson (who for years has kept theatre coverage an important part of the paper) profiling David Henry Hwang and his new play, which I keep raving about. You can read the profile here.
And Gregory Rodriguez’ op ed in today’s LA Times remarks upon how the context of the play has changed in the 17 years since the events that shaped it. Well worth reading.
In today’s LA Times, Larry Flynt writes a fond remembrance of his buddy… Jerry Falwell.
Surprised?
I’m not. While at first glance the friendship between the pornographer and the preacher may seem hypocritical, on further examination everything becomes clear: It was all just business. Their seeming enmity was gratifying for one and lucrative for the other.
It used to be that months, sometimes years, were required to generate a backlash to a backlash. But accelerating communications technology has changed all that. Now, with an instantaneous and ongoing news cycle, coupled with satellite transmission, the internet, cell phones, texting, blogs, websites, RSS, and probably secret messages in your alphabet soup, the backlash backlash is upon us before the first backlash has even ended.
Take the Imus situation. Only moments ago he was a racist villain. Then Bill Maher and others painted him as more of a free speaker chased out of town in a witch hunt. Now Imus’ $120 million lawsuit against CBS is proceeding apace from the position that, well, they wanted a shock jock and that’s what they got. (Which is in line with what I said before.)
I think Imus is going to win (either at trial or in a settlement). For CBS, it was never about the outrage and always about the money. (Of course.) They hired Imus to generate ratings and money, which he did. When he went “too far” (a location hard to define, given the nature of the job description) and sponsors and advertisers backed away, they canned him. Now he’s suing them — for money. It’s going to cost them all around, in every way.
And when he wins, Imus will seem redeemed, completing the backlash backlash. And if it isn’t okay to mock on the supposedly public airwaves attractive intelligent young college women as “nappy-headed hos” because they happen to be black, then he’ll take this brand of what passes for humor to satellite radio and make a lot of money for someone else.
Elie Wiesel regrets his early bad writing.
Don’t we all?
At left is someone I’ve known off and on for almost 15 years, playwright and critic Hoyt Hilsman. And, possibly, future Congressman. He’s one of two announced Democrats (I know of) seeking to displace David Dreier, a Republican I see all too often on Faux News (including just the other morning while I was at the gym).
I’ve always known Hoyt to be a smart critic, one whose opinion I respect (in a town where I often make decisions purposely opposite to certain critics’ opinions). That, plus the fact that he’s got an image of outer space on his website (and funding for space exploration research and technology is to me a key issue — and one that no one ever addresses because they don’t believe there are any votes to be had from it), plus the fact that he’s a playwright, makes this a candidate that I’m interested in finding out more about.
If you feel the same way, here’s his website.
This is a photo of the aforementioned Handlery Hotel, where I stayed for the state Democratic convention a few weeks back. Want further proof that there’s no truth in advertising? Here it is: The Handlery “Hotel” is a motel.
After missing Senator Gravel (a feat that I and I’m sure the rest of the country will be repeating), I spent my first night at the convention attending the environmental caucus meeting and then various hospitality suites. The meeting room was packed with people. All along the walls rows and rows of elected officials and candidates stood hoping to get just a few minutes to talk. The chairman, Luke Breit, noted the standing-room only crowd and the obvious message: that the environment is a key concern for California Democrats. (And that comports with my own observations; last summer when I got to meet with Howard Dean, while he wanted to talk about campaign finance reform and clean elections, almost every Democrat in the room wanted to talk about the environment.)
When we got to voting on actual resolutions — to, eventually, go into the state Democratic party platform (or not) — here’s how seemingly every vote went:
As an example, he voted against the resolution decrying the attempt to put a toll road straight through the middle of a state park (you just can’t make these things up) because it didn’t provide public transportation for low-income people who needed to get through the park.
He voted against the resolution seeking to ban certain “Gopher-Getter Killing Methods for Gophers and other Rodents” because it didn’t cover some other small animals.
He voted against supporting the insidiously named “California Clean Car Discount Bill” (which would actually raise prices on non “clean” cars, meaning that the “discount” is actually an avoidance of the increase) because it didn’t cover motorcycles.
I think he would have voted against seating because it didn’t cover standing.
You like to think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the one person in the room willing to disagree, but we hope that person is Henry Fonda in “Twelve Angry Men” and not, well, the village idiot.
By the time the caucus meeting ended, I was more than ready to hit the hospitality suites. Although I dropped in on all of them, my first stop was Dennis Kucinich’s “hootenanny” — their word, not mine. Essentially this was a small room of shoeless hippies dance to bad jug music. With tortilla chips as the “food.” Kucinich wasn’t there, and after a moment, neither was I.
Yesterday in my email newsletter I wrote a piece with advice on how to become a produced playwright, which some people have emailed to thank me for. If you missed it, click here. In a nutshell, here’s the advice: be diligent and persistent.
Just today, the graduate writing program I teach in at USC uploaded a podcast that advocates the same mindset, but adds the perspective of fiction writers and screenwriters. I find it fascinating watching friends and colleagues share war stories that sound so very, very familiar. (Click here if you’d like to see it.) One of the speakers is novelist and dramatist Chris Meeks. (A good guy and a good writer.) If you’d like to check out his own email newsletter, here’s the archive.
Almost everyone who has met with any success as a writer has pretty much the same story. They tried harder.
The other night I saw what I thought was the most remarkable play I’ve seen in perhaps 10 years. (Since I saw the premiere production of “How I Learned to Drive,” a play I now teach.) It was “Yellow Face,” by David Henry Hwang, now playing at the Mark Taper Forum here in Los Angeles. Even though I had to get up at the inconceivable time of 5 a.m. the next morning for USC commencement, there I was at 11 p.m. on the plaza of the Music Center declaiming the wonders of the play for Dorinne Kondo, the friend/colleague who invited me, and Tim Dang, artistic director of co-producing company East West Players. I’m going to write more about this play when I have more time, but let’s put it this way: I wondered aloud how long it would be before “Yellow Face” is published, because I’d like to read it and I might put it into the syllabus of one of my classes.
Today I had lunch with another colleague, a playwright whose work I respect. She’s smart and talented. She wanted to know if I’d seen “Fat Pig” at the Geffen. (Answer: Not yet.) I brought up “Yellow Face,” preparing to launch into full shared excitement. Her reaction: She left at intermission. “I don’t like plays about writers writing about writing,” she said. That line was especially ironic to me because in 1992 I wrote a play that specifically satirized a form of novels I loathe: writers writing about writers who write about writers. (The specific novel that first got me on this rant was “The Dean’s December” by Saul Bellow.) To me, “Yellow Face” was about many different wonderful things, interwoven and unified. To her, it was a play about the playwright writing this play (which, granted, it is on the surface). We saw the same play (well, she saw only half) and arrived at completely different conclusions.
I’ve grown used to having disagreements about art. (And even higher forms, like comic books.) But “Yellow Face” is precisely the sort of play I go to the theatre hoping to come across — surprising, funny, moving, troubling; something that makes me challenge my own notions of what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior. To me it seems so ambitious, and so successful on its own terms, and so important, that it is unequivocally great. But after listening to my friend this afternoon, I suspect that my dread that night — that the critics are going to reject it as either self-serving or badly constructed — is exactly what’s going to happen.
I hope not.
And I’m going to advise everyone I know to see this show.
Two years before becoming “the hero of 9/11,” Rudy Giuliani channels Dr. Phil for a ferret lover on a radio call-in show. Now the exchange has been lovingly animated.
You must click here.
Moving Arts’ 13th annual one-act play festival just got a great writeup in Flavorpill. I’m looking forward to seeing the show next Tuesday night.
Speaking of one-act plays, the festival I just produced for the MPW program at USC also got strong coverage. Here’s a feature on the festival, with a profile of the eventual contest winner, Kristina Sisco, and a photo of the agelessly beautiful Irene Chapman and her co-star, Del Monroe. Irene is a former Broadway actress, while Del is one of those great classic character actors (I grew up watching him on “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.”) It was a real treat getting to watch their work each night.