By Lucia Bozzola, Nov 28, 2006
In my library is a book containing an essay entitled “James Bond’s Penis.” Nothing like getting right to the point, as it were. I’m not quite sure what it actually says about James Bond’s penis—besides the fact that he has one and uses it often—because the academic jargon tends to make me nod off long before the end. Yep, the writer sucks the life right out of the subject. Nevertheless, the bluntness of said title underlines the fact that the associations that usually spring to mind when one hears “Bond film,” including Bond girls, gadgets, shaken martinis, DB5s, flamboyant villains, and all-around suavity, tend not to include the super spy’s actual goldmember. Granted, we never see it (and really, how could it live up to Bond’s rep?), but it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that its presence isn’t really that far from that list of Bond keywords. It’s as vital a piece of Bond’s arsenal as his Walther PPK. He rarely has to shoot the bad girl because he can nail her instead. No wonder the laser-aimed-at-Bond’s crotch in Goldfinger stands as the most memorable torture scene of the series. Until Casino Royale, that is.
Let’s make one thing clear. I love James Bond movies. Ever since I saw The Spy Who Loved Me way back in the hinterlands of the 1970s, I’ve been on the Bond wagon. Yes, Roger Moore was my first, formative Bond, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the finer, more brute force pleasures of Sean Connery. I was a little concerned about whether the Bond franchise would remain as reliable as death and taxes when Timothy Dalton took over, but Pierce Brosnan quickly put that to rest. All of those fab cars, exotic locales, jaw-dropping action sequences, nutty bad guys, and the pun-filled visits to Q’s lab of tricks more than made up for the fact that only girls with names like Pussy Galore, Honey Ryder, and Holly Goodhead seemed to be able to infiltrate the Bond world (Question: how did Bond survive 1970s feminism? Answer: Moore made him absurd). That Moore, Connery, and Brosnan all look as debonair as George Clooney in a tux certainly helps. Happily, Daniel Craig turns out to be an excellent Bond as well, but that shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who saw him in Layer Cake—all five of us in the U.S. He has cool to spare and he looks as fine out of his tux as he does in it. Oh, James.
Of course, one of the sequences featuring Craig stripped down is that aforementioned torture scene. Connery’s Bond at least had clothing to protect his dignity when Goldfinger attempted that high-tech castration. Not so Bond 6.0. He only has careful camera angles. Now, there are a lot of zeitgeisty reasons for why the filmmakers may have chosen to remain true to this aspect of Ian Fleming’s source material in this “official” adaptation of Casino Royale, beginning with a story line centering on a French banker for terrorists (ah, the French—the best source for villains when you want to be politically correct). Bond also shoots up an embassy in Africa in search of a bomber, leading to his unwanted appearance in the press as an example of westerners stomping all over the Third World. Oh, the resonance of it all. So why not give the audience a lesson in the horrors of torture? Why not, indeed. The superb, 1960s-style black and white opening number already let us know that this Bond film will cast a questioning eye on the bloodshed that comes with the spy’s brand-spanking-new license to kill, so it’s no surprise horrific violence is inflicted on a most vulnerable Bond. Thus the double-0 sociopath is born.
But that’s not the only thing going on in this scene, or in Casino Royale. After all, getting back to the topic of scholarly essays, James Bond screws as licentiously as he kills. In film after film, he treats willing female bodies as nonchalantly as villainous male (and sometimes female) flesh. And in recreating the Bond origin myth, the makers of Casino Royale actually realize “because he can” isn’t really a satisfactory answer to the “why does he do that” question. Instead, looking back to the first non-Connery Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the source of his ladykilling becomes intertwined with the necessary loss of “soul” his lethal job entails. Heartbreak (not ballbreak) consigns him to his fate of natty suits, sleek weapons, smooth kills, and—I suppose—eventually giving a damn whether his martini is shaken or stirred. Bond’s womanizing becomes part of his killer pathology. Wow. Such an unexpected pre-Christmas gift for the girls who have forever had to roll their eyes at the Octopussys and Plenty O’Tooles that came as an unquestioned part of the Bond package.
Granted, “because he can” is still part of the equation. It’s no accident that weepy-eyed torturer Le Chiffre goes after Bond’s testicles, taunting him that he’s going to deprive Bond of his reason for living. But the joke is as much predicated on our knowing the many previous movie lives of Bond as on anything he does in Casino Royale. Bond does have the requisite encounter with the married lady who can give him information (although he doesn’t finish the project). Yet his comment to true love Vesper Lynd that Vesper isn’t his type because she’s single suggests that he’s had at least five seconds of deep thought, nay, regret, about his prior fatal conquest. And when Vesper chides him that she’s not his type because she’s smart, well, we know that makes her different from many a Bond maiden (Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist? “Dr.” Holly Goodhead? Seriously?), including the unlucky married lady. That Eva Green seems reasonably intelligent certainly helps sell Vesper’s line. She makes Bond woo her, as far as a spy involved in a high stakes poker game with a murderous criminal mastermind can woo anyone. And when he comforts her after she witnesses him kill a thug with his bare hands, it’s a rare, exceptional moment of tender emotion in a franchise that usually eschews such things.
But alas, if Bond were to have a soul, and a soul mate, then he wouldn’t be the Bond we all know and love. Vesper has to be as elusive to Bond as the little girl in red who may or may not be haunting the alleys of Venice in Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 ghost trip Don’t Look Now. Unfortunately, Bond has to take down a Venetian palazzo in the process of figuring out whose side Vesper is really on. That’s almost as upsetting as the outcome of that battle. Yet, despite his agony, Bond still isn’t convinced that Vesper really was who he thought (hoped? dreamed? no way) she was. Leave it to Judi Dench’s tough MI-6 mama M to deliver that lesson. She’s a married woman who understands women, and she figures out what was really going on with Vesper while Bond was having his balls battered. But she’s no softy. She essentially assures Bond’s heartbreak when she tells him what Vesper did for him. She teaches him something about life and puts the finishing touches on the rock-hard surface Bond needs to do his job. Ouch. Yet, no one cries for Bond even though Craig ably communicates his inner grief. Instead, we cheer for his signature introduction in Casino Royale’s final moments. That would be disconcerting if the steely-eyed, heavily armed Bond, James Bond weren’t so damn entertaining.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
"Casino Royale": Bond Has Feelings Too
"Blood Diamond" and "The Departed": Boyz To Men
By Lucia Bozzola, Dec 12, 2006
It’s been nine years since Leonardo DiCaprio stood on the bow of that boat and declared himself king of the world, i.e. teenyboppers’ hearts. Quite a burden that title was. How on earth could he be taken seriously as an Ahc-tor when he was most renowned for single-handedly inspiring millions of blushing girls to part with hundreds of millions of dollars at the multiplex? He had certainly worked hard pre-Titanic to establish the thespian cred that lay behind the very pretty face. Getting abused by Robert De Niro in This Boy’s Life.
Playing a mentally challenged teen with dubious personal hygiene in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Getting down and dirty and strung-out in The Basketball Diaries. And when he did go the heartthrob route, hey, he did it with Shakespeare in postmodern style. This was no Corey Haim, people. DiCaprio meant business. Beauty be damned. Or rather, youthful delicate beauty be damned. Then Titanic chugged into the record books and Leo became that most dreaded symbol of immature, unserious masculinity: a teen idol (oh, the horror). After that, he practically disappeared from the movies for several years. Smart boy. He needed time to finish adolescence.
Still, it hasn’t been a smooth transition to adulthood. DiCaprio made a sporting first effort with Gangs of New York (let’s all forget The Beach, shall we?). When you’re still more convincing as a teenager in Catch Me If You Can, though, it’s rather hard to claim full-blown screen manhood even if you’re in your late twenties. In this regard, his choice to do The Aviator next was inspired, and not just because he brought Martin Scorsese on board for another collaboration. Not only did he get to strut his actorly stuff as the legendarily neurotic (and priapic) Howard Hughes, but DiCaprio also got to age. On screen. He got to evolve from the boyishly enthusiastic, Jack Dawson-esque Hughes who shot Hell’s Angels in the 1920s to the tortured genius who could get it together long enough to manfully tell the Senate to go stuff it in the 1940s. The nervous breakdown interlude in between—you know, the one with all the urine bottles and the cave man hair—was like a prolonged fuck-you to the Dawson/Titanic prettiness. The adult Ahc-tor had at long last arrived.
Indeed, DiCaprio’s current turns in The Departed and especially Blood Diamond are primers on how much he is not that boy anymore. Physically, he’s no longer so wispy, and all the years of smoking and carousing have finally paid off in a few rough edges on his face. But it’s more than just looks. He’s a man, man, and don’t any of you forget it. Herewith, then, is Leonardo DiCaprio’s Guide to Achieving On-Screen Mandom in Five Easy Steps (as illustrated in The Departed and Blood Diamond):
1. Shoot Guns. As undercover cop Billy Costigan, DiCaprio packs some mean weaponry in The Departed. I mean, really, how else could he fully take over as Scorsese’s new De Niro if he doesn’t excel in one of Scorsese’s bloody mobster ballets? His facility with guns is even more impressive in Blood Diamond. Not only do we learn that smuggler Danny Archer was trained as a soldier in Angola, but we also get to see DiCaprio’s Danny in action. A lot. He manages to escape the massive rebel attack on the Sierra Leone capital, and save Djimon Hounsou’s Solomon, with the aid of only his training and a pistol. He also uses a big-ass machine gun with equal adeptness—and he never seems to waste any bullets. Yes, he can drive like hell, fight with his fists, and handle a knife, but above all, Danny possesses that one supreme movie machismo skill: he has the best aim.
2. Be a Fighter, Not a Lover. If you’re trying to overcome an image as a heartthrob, this one’s a no-brainer. Yes, DiCaprio has love interests in both films in the figures of Vera Farmiga’s Madolyn and Jennifer Connelly’s Maddy (are they mad, mad, mad to love DiCaprio?). And both play the kind of women who have no problem standing up to DiCaprio’s men before succumbing to emotion and sex. But these relationships are strictly secondary to the main conflicts (and both are neatly tucked away to the sidelines before the final showdowns). Madolyn knows that Billy suffers as a fake mobster under Jack Nicholson’s whacko boss man thumb, but he isn’t going to stop until he brings down Nicholson and/or captures Matt Damon’s fake cop Colin. Journalist Maddy gets Danny to rediscover his nearly non-existent conscience, but he isn’t going to stop until he finds that friggin’ pink J. Lo special, regardless of how many rebels armed with AK-47s and machetes he has to kill. A man’s gotta do what a, oh, you know. Nevertheless, that privileging of fighting over loving leads to…
3. Have Mental Anguish, But for God’s Sake, Don’t Dwell On It. This is interesting, because in a recent interview, DiCaprio revealed that the scenes in which he thought he did the best acting in each film were the ones in which this rule came into play. His men have emotional depth, which makes them interesting. His men don’t like to talk about it too much, which makes them men. Billy and Danny also don’t shut themselves up in dark rooms, grow their hair and nails to freakish lengths, and pee into rows of milk bottles like Howard Hughes. In The Departed, Billy visits police psychiatrist Madolyn (who knows her job is something of a paradox) because he has to, and proceeds to tell her in no uncertain terms why she should give him Valium instead of making him talk. Then he leaves and does his best to get on with his work. In Blood Diamond, Danny chokes back a few tears as he confesses to Maddy that he thinks God left humanity behind to slaughter each other long ago. Then he bucks up, gets himself together the next day, and does his best to get on with his work. Of course, since DiCaprio’s men have emotional depth, they only have one end in store.
4. Die a Noble Death (but not before nailing the bad guy). Okay, so Billy’s death in The Departed is more sudden and appalling than noble. But the motivations that got him into that sorry position were noble. Yes, he wants to catch the mole and he has to return to that dreaded rooftop because he has to continue playing his undercover part. But he’s out for blood and justice because his good paternal figure Queenan was just eliminated, and there’s no way he can let that go by. Danny’s end in Blood Diamond, though, is larded with far more golden-lit nobility. He sacrifices himself so family man Solomon and his son Dia can live. He calls Maddy to say goodbye and to tell her to publish her story. He gazes at the African soil he’ll never leave. And why can he have such closure? Because he just shot the bad daddy who made him into a venal soldier and smuggler—the kind of man who keeps the blood diamond trade going—a few moments before. Mission accomplished.
5. Use Accents. This is why this list is Leonardo DiCaprio’s Guide to Mandom, and not simply A Guide to Mandom. Whether by design or accident, Leo’s been talking funny a lot since Titanic—far more than he did before. Billy has quite the Bahston brogue, while Rhodesian-born Danny educates Maddy about “bleeng bleeng” and “bleeng baang.” Indeed, DiCaprio’s taste for accents inspired a New York Times writer to describe him as the “Meryl Streep” of his generation. Granted, being likened to a female actor may not seem like an obvious route to screen manhood. But that leaves out the full meaning of that comparison: Meryl Streep does accents and she’s really good at it. She has the ability to make you forget about the technique and focus on the character. If DiCaprio is a male Streep, then he can do that too. He’s talented and skillful enough to make Billy’s and Danny’s vocal styles a mere fact of their beings. That’s the final sign that DiCaprio has succeeded in his long transition from boy to man. He gives great performances in all senses of the word in both The Departed and Blood Diamond. He’s getting better at his craft as he gets older.
If that’s not a sign of maturity, I don’t know what is. Now let’s all hope he doesn’t age into knee-jerk hamminess like, um, Nicholson and De Niro.
"Babel": A Tower of Bombast in Any Language
By Lucia Bozzola, Feb 14, 2007
My mother told me that when she was living in Italy in the late 1950s, one of the favorite pickup lines among Italian men was stating that they read Proust and listened to Wagner. This was supposed to demonstrate their formidable intellect and, thus, their appeal as a superior male. Oh, how times have changed. Anyway, one of the many reasons my mother liked my father was because he did not tell her that he read Proust and listened to Wagner. He didn’t have to. He listened to Miles Davis.
This was one of the many thoughts that popped into my head while watching Babel recently (in between “I’m bored,” “Who’s going to be lethally idiotic in this scene?” and “I shouldn’t have eaten all those fries at dinner”). I wasn’t just amusing myself with a stroll down memory lane, either. The only reason I had gone to see Babel was because it had just been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and as someone who participates in the occasional Oscar pool, I felt the need to see the one Best Pic candidate that I’d avoided. And you know, there’s nothing more depressing than finally seeing a movie you’ve avoided because you think you know what it’s going to be, and it turns out to be precisely what you’d feared. Babel is a movie that reads Proust and listens to Wagner. And no, that’s not attractive.
It’s also not a sign of intelligence. It’s fake brilliance. It’s the blowhard at the cocktail party who tells you he went to college “in New Haven,” because everyone should just know that’s the location of Yale. It’s the Diane Keaton character in Manhattan pronouncing “Van Gogh” like she has a chicken bone stuck in her throat. While such posturing is a mere irritation or fodder for a giggle in daily life, in a movie, it’s lethal. It also seems to be heroin for Oscar voters trying to look smart despite their near complete intolerance for anything genuinely innovative or radical or risky, and their occasionally not-so-secret wish just to be entertained. The Academy screwed itself forever when they got rid of the two de facto Best Picture categories after its first year of giving awards. Had they kept “Best Artistic Quality of Production” as well as “Best Production” (eventually renamed Best Picture) after 1928, movie critics probably wouldn’t be asked, “What’s the worst movie ever to win Best Picture” quite so often. Both Goodfellas and Dances With Wolves could have won, for instance. And this year, a movie that listens to Miles Davis or Eric Clapton or Kurt Cobain or Paul McCartney could win the top prize alongside the Proust-and-Wagner Babel.
Before anyone starts yammering about how those artists do not appear on the soundtracks of Letters From Iwo Jima, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen, or Babel for that matter, I’m not trying to be literal. It’s just another way of saying that given the choice between (pop) art and Ahhrrrt for their single Best Picture prize, the Academy tends to err on the side of pomposity these days (unless the movie makes over a billion dollars and doesn’t feature Johnny Depp as an alcoholic, sexually ambiguous pirate). And Babel is nothing if not pompous. The title alone is enough to make one run screaming to the soft, straightforward embrace of such titles as, well, Letters From Iwo Jima, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen. It’s just so symbolic. So deep. Sooo…meaningful. Like Crash. If you’re an ignoramus who doesn’t know the Biblical story about the Tower of Babel, then the title is meaningless. Then again, given that two and a half of the film’s four stories are set in cultures whose primary religious text is not the Judeo-Christian Old Testament, it would appear that choosing said title is another act of precisely the kind of Western cultural deafness that the film so adamantly deplores. Oops.
Nevertheless, even if it were called Shit Happens, it would still be insufferable. That’s a shame, because as virtually all of the critics, con and pro, have observed, director Alejandro González Iñárritu has talent to spare. Babel looks and sounds fabulous, and the performances have an intensity the schematic roles don’t deserve. Is the ham-fisted edification screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga’s fault, then? He certainly deserves some blame, but his non-Iñárritu collaboration The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada showed that believable, complex life could be breathed into his characters. No, it’s the Iñárritu-Arriaga combination that’s toxic, and their current beef with each other over who is the true author of Babel sounds like a petulant battle over who has the bigger…genius. Here’s an idea: stop working together, and see who creates the better film.
Here’s another idea: tell the story in order and see if it still works. No, I never found Babel’s fractured, globe-trotting time structure confusing. I knew that as sure as somebody would misunderstand or ignore somebody to obnoxious and/or horrific effect every five minutes, I’d eventually see Brad Pitt’s end of his teary phone call home to the angelic children and saintly Mexican housekeeper in San Diego. I understand why Iñárritu and Arriaga get all fancy with their plot time. How else could they overload the climax of the film with so much pain and suffering? (In case it wasn’t already clear from the first two hours that We’re All Doomed — except for the cute American children and their pretty absentee parents. Tsk, tsk, isn’t that just always the way?). Slicing and dicing stories is also a potentially effective means for hiding the fact that a lot of what goes on is overblown and preposterous. Everyone seems to have an uncanny talent for saying or doing precisely the wrong, moronic thing in every single situation, whether it’s the Moroccan father sending his boys out with a bazooka of a rifle they can’t handle, Cate Blanchett asking for non-fat food and Diet Coke in a country that clearly doesn’t have the luxury of indulging in American dietary nonsense, or the housekeeper getting into a car with her snockered, volatile nephew. It would be very easy to think that Babel is really about the tyranny of fools.
But, oh, it’s not. How do I know? Rinko Kikuchi. Because really, three stories about disconnection through bad communication aren’t enough to make the point that we all should really, truly listen to each other. You need a deaf mute Japanese girl with underwear issues as well. You need a deaf mute Japanese girl going commando who has nothing to do in and of herself with the other three tightly connected stories. (I know, dad gave the Moroccan guy the gun — why, that’s not contrived at all.) Is there a better way to show the negative effect of not being able to hear what people say than having a character who can neither hear nor speak? Why, no. Have other filmmakers made better movies about the strange solitude of over-crowded, over-stimulating Tokyo even for people who can hear and speak? Um, yeah. Now, the sleek, neon-lit, high-tech contours of Tokyo certainly do stand in distinct metaphorical contrast to the dirt and dust of Morocco and Mexico. But so does Brad Pitt’s luxurious house in San Diego. That visual point is made before we get to Tokyo, making this a rare case where Japan isn’t worth the trip. As much as I enjoyed looking at Tokyo, I would have preferred to have that half hour of my life back instead of being told yet again that global ignorance is bad and parents need to take care of their children.
Granted, no one can say for certain (except for those Price-Waterhouse guys) who will win the Best Picture Oscar until the envelope is actually opened. The writers, actors, producers, and directors guilds have been showing the love only to Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed. Who knows? Maybe this year the Academy will reward a film that has something to say about ignorance or families or violence, but in a context where cool, snappy entertainment takes precedence over self-important, utterly humorless sanctity. I’m not too confident about that, though. I’ve been carefully listening to the Academy for a long time — and I keep hearing Wagner when I’d rather have Miles Davis.
"Zodiac": Harry Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
By Lucia Bozzola, Mar 5, 2007
Ah, serial killers. Such a cinematic subject. All that murdering, all that investigating. You have clear heroes, villains, conflicts, and, when the plot starts to lag, you can always throw in another bloody homicide tableau. As an added bonus, real life provides some mighty tasty source material if you can’t think of another creative way to link killings to the Bible or body part fetishes or family woes on your own. Real life also often provides a story complete with a Hollywood ending. Charles Manson, Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Aileen Wuornos: all caught and convicted. The End. But what if you have a camera-ready killer who never gets caught?
David Fincher has one answer: you make a character study about the men who try for two decades to nail the killer. Don Siegel and writers Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink, and Dean Riesner had another: you make a wish-fulfilling fiction about a rogue cop who won’t stop until he kills the killer in 1971. Then again, considering that Dirty Harry first came into being during the Zodiac murder spree, and Zodiac makes its debut more than three decades after the fact, it’s easier to forgive the former’s flight of ideologically questionable fantasy. If you want to sell tickets, don’t send the audience home certain that they’re next on the murderer’s list and there’s no hope he’ll ever be stopped. Now? With the prime suspect dead and the case long dormant, why not go back to just the facts, ma’am. It’s the past. It’s over. Fincher and his gang, however, still have a bone to pick with Dirty Harry’s anti-Establishment fascist hero Harry Callahan.
Some critics have noted that the dialogue-heavy, stylistically dialed-down Zodiac is a “repudiation” of Fincher’s career-making murder porn Se7en. Don’t get me wrong. I liked Se7en, and not just because Gwyneth Paltrow’s head ended up in a box. Nevertheless, the main attraction was the imaginatively grotesque murders devised by Kevin Spacey’s even more grotesque Bible-thumper in a fabulously dank and shadowy Any City. In Zodiac, all of the murders happen early and horribly, but not quite as stylishly. Yes, we get up close and personal with Zodiac’s knife work on the couple by Lake Berryessa, but that’s not the reason that scene haunts my dreams. It’s more the way Zodiac simply appears in broadest sunny daylight, and easily could be just another nature lover until he puts on his deceptively silly ninja disguise. And yes, Fincher does make one of his signature virtuoso gestures with the overhead shots following the doomed cab through the streets of San Francisco, but again, he doesn’t linger as much over the gore. After these deaths, though, the film is two hours of conversation and neurotic obsession by a quartet of handsome distressed men. No wonder I loved it.
Less noticed, however, is how those two hours of dialogue and obsession become a repudiation of Zodiac’s first cinematic incarnation via the thinly disguised killer Scorpio in Dirty Harry. It isn’t just the fictional “happy” ending that comes under fire, either. It’s also the image of violent male potency embodied by Clint Eastwood’s iconic Callahan. Now, Callahan does fall prey to the same soul-draining obsessiveness that seeps into Zodiac’s investigators. There’s a world of attitudinal difference between the jaunty delivery of his “Do you feel lucky” speech to a downed bank robber early on, and the way he angrily spits out the final “Well, do you, punk?” through clenched teeth at the denouement. But then he gets to blow away Scorpio because he had indeed fired only five shots prior with his .44 Magnum revolver. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edward’s police detectives Toschi and Armstrong, though, never get that satisfaction in Zodiac. Heck, they don’t even get to pull their guns. We learn that Toschi’s gun holster style inspired another icon of late 60s manhood Steve McQueen to wear his the same way in Bullitt, but we never see him actually use it. The only non-Zodiac man we do see fire a gun? Robert Downey Jr.’s fey, alcoholic crime reporter Paul Avery. At a firing range. Badly. Thus endeth the crime-solving efficacy of the most powerful handgun in the world.
This isn’t to say that Zodiac is about how Toschi and Armstrong are hapless cops. They are effective in that they do (as far as anyone knows) identify and track down Zodiac. They even get to sit in a room with him and manfully fix him with that “we’re on to you” stare that’s repeated every week on the Law & Orders and CSIs. Yet they never bring him down because of, yep, Callahan’s biggest pet peeve: bureaucracy. Evidence gets lost in the low-tech shuffle. Other jurisdictions want to protect their turfs. Still, Fincher and company make a point to show that even with those impediments, Toschi still won’t be wild about Harry. For when Dirty Harry opens in San Francisco shortly after Toschi and Armstrong learn they can’t arrest their man, Toschi happens to see it the same night as Avery’s fellow Zodiac-fixated colleague, Jake Gyllenhaal’s doe-eyed Robert Graysmith. When Graysmith tells Toschi how it ends, Toschi scoffs in disgust, “So much for due process.” Toschi may not be all that broken up about Zodiac’s rights, but he knows better than to become a vigilante.
Still, the movie doesn’t end there. It could have, and some bladder-challenged people with the attention spans of gnats probably think it should have. But that would miss the point that starts percolating beneath the surface with the casual revelation that it’s a married couple of professors who initially crack the Zodiac’s cipher. It comes up again when Avery can’t quite believe that shy cartoonist Graysmith’s accurate insights into the case arise from his taste for library books and puzzles. It hovers around Avery’s ability to root out salient facts that the police miss. And it comes to full fruition in the last third of the film when Graysmith takes Avery’s dismissive comments to heart and decides to research the case himself. Yes. When cops can’t do the job, then it’s best to let the bookish, non-macho types take over—especially when the target believes he’s smarter than any cop. Nerds of the world, unite! Toschi is rogue enough to do a Deep Throat and point Graysmith in the right direction (the vague resemblance of the San Francisco Chronicle’s cinematic newsroom to the Washington Post’s in All the President’s Men: discuss) because he knows that Graysmith can do things he can’t.
His investigation doesn’t turn Graysmith into a Callahan, either. Granted, no one will ever mistake Gyllenhaal for a young Eastwood (whom we never see in Zodiac), but as Graysmith, he remains resolutely stooped, reserved, and prone to fits of fear and anguish. Reading is his weapon of choice. Paperwork and neurotic dedication get him farther than any guns or knives could. And in case we didn’t notice that he’s still a dweeb, Fincher throws in a scary red herring visit to an ominous…repertory film projectionist (oh, the chills) that ends with Graysmith fleeing out of a shadowy basement rather than trying to kick some ass with a movie canister. His gut impulse is flight, not fight. It’s easy to see why. He has a powerful brain. Body? Not so much.
Some have complained that Zodiac ends with a diffused whimper instead of a bang. It seems like it could end with a bang when yet another police detective finally gets the only Zodiac survivor who saw the killer’s face to pick that face out of a line-up in 1991. But then it’s cut to end titles. Oh, boo. Yet, when said suspect drops dead of a heart attack before he can be arrested, how else is the movie supposed to end? Toschi bursts into the funeral home with guns blazing to arrest the corpse? Come on. Besides, it’s already become crystal clear that such action is not what this movie is about, nor what this movie favors. In this vein, the real end is the second-to-last scene. Having done his homework to completion, being the good Eagle Scout puzzle-solver he is, Graysmith gets to do what Toschi and Armstrong had done a decade earlier. He gets to fix the prime suspect with that “I’m on to you” stare when he tracks him to his job at a hardware store. That stare may not be a .44 Magnum. But—unlike the stares from Toschi and Armstrong—it is enough to make the intellectually arrogant killer quake on the inside. He knows that the unassuming brainiac looking him in the eye has beaten him at his game. And he no longer feels that lucky.
"Grindhouse" Lesson #1: A Chick Needs a Gun
By Lucia Bozzola, Apr 13, 2007
First, a preface. Whoever decided that the Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse should be released Easter weekend needs to have his head examined. Of course it was a “disappointment.” Easter weekend is Family Time. Didn’t the Weinstein Company realize that Blades of Glory’s gay panic jokes and incest gags are far more wholesome entertainment than zombies and Kurt Russell? I mean, duh.
Not only did such holy day requirements as stuffing one’s face with as much chocolate and ham as humanly (or inhumanly) possible make it difficult to set aside more than three hours for the flicks, but you also couldn’t bring Grandma and Junior to see Bruce Willis sporting gooey pustules and Vanessa Ferlito shaking her booty. Will Ferrell finding new uses for his jockstrap and Will Arnett and Amy Poehler making out like the couple they are instead of the siblings they play? Hey, that’s just good clean fun for all ages. And you’re out (mercifully) in 90 minutes.
Harvey Weinstein should be smacked silly for that miscalculation because Grindhouse deserves to be seen in all its grimy glory in a theater. It’s funnier than Blades (my cat sleeping is funnier than Blades), more impressive technically than 300 (Tarantino even gets in a dig at CGI), and just as prone to blood-gushing ultra-violence as those Spartan hordes. The humor isn’t exactly highbrow, either. When you see the jar of amputated testicles in Planet Terror, you know its contents will be skittering around the ground sooner rather than later. Eli Roth’s hilariously vile faux horror trailer Thanksgiving is the stuff of Johnny Knoxville’s wildest, grossest dreams. In short, it’s just the kind of cheesy exploitation entertainment that the audience apparently loves. And yet…oh, bother. As usual, the mass in the middle of America can’t seem to handle truth in advertising. An exploitation film that actually cops to being an exploitation film? Perish the thought. And then line up for the next iterations of Saw and Jackass.
Unfortunately, that exploitation label, as well as the Rodriguez-Tarantino pedigree, might be turning off a potential audience for Grindhouse: women. Chicks. Gals. That’s too bad. Grindhouse itself provides a clue to why that may be so in the fake trailers that start it off and divide it up. Machete features a one-man killing machine who gets to relax with topless girls. Werewolf Women of the SS features more topless girls. Thanksgiving perpetrates all sorts of grotesque violence on female bodies. Big yuck. Rodriguez’s top half of the bill Planet Terror initially promises to be more of the same as Rose McGowan’s go-go dancer Cherry Darling puts the grind in Grindhouse under Planet Terror’s opening credits. Tarantino’s B feature Death Proof also begins rather inauspiciously with prolonged close-ups of Sydney Tamiia Poitier’s well-manicured bare feet. But then as the movies progress, and the reels that ostensibly contain the naked ladies and dirty dancing are “missing,” the boy directors’ ids let the girls go wild. And wouldn’t you know, the girls come out on top. With a vengeance. In the process, RR and QT deliver a cinematic lesson in female bonding, self-reliance, and kicking ass that puts most “chick flicks” to shame. It all boils down to three things.
1. A chick needs a gun. Tracie Thoms’s stuntwoman Kim says as much in one of Death Proof’s “Tarantino dialogue” scenes. And Planet Terror banks on it. Yes, plenty of heavily armed, if sparingly dressed, ladies join the fight against the zombies unleashed by macho military man Bruce Willis. But we all know what the money shot is: Cherry’s machine gun leg. She doesn’t disappoint. She can shoot that thing from the back of a motorcycle, spinning on the ground, and flying through the air. It isn’t just that she’s a great shot, either. When her shady true love Wray snaps it on her zombie-amputated thigh, he declares that he is giving her what she needs to fulfill her destiny. To be all she can be. And what does she use that tool to become? Why, the savior of humanity, complete in a Cherry of Arabia get-up that covers the Gatling she occasionally needs to wipe out a few leftover ghouls. That’s some destiny. Kim is a bit more small scale in her explanation for why she carries a piece: protection. She wants to do her laundry whenever she damn pleases, and she won’t allow the fear of a laundry room perv to get in her way. Granted, one can take issue with the use of weapons at all. But the lesson of Cherry and Kim is this: when the chips are down, girls, don’t hesitate to do what’s necessary to protect yourself. A girl can use a gun if she needs to—because as Kim notes, a girl with a knife facing a man with a gun is dead. It’s like one of those Ashley Judd thrillers…but clever.
2. A chick needs a sweet ride. Okay, this is more Death Proof than Planet Terror (although Cherry’s “useless” motorcycle-riding skill proves to be quite useful when she’s confronted with a pimped up chopper). Nevertheless, Death Proof is quite clear on this point and it’s the seed for one of the best action sequences to be had since Kill Bill Vol. 1. The two halves of Death Proof cover the same basic storyline: Kurt Russell’s malevolent Stuntman Mike stalks a group of four female friends in his black Dodge Charger because he intends to kill them for reasons known only to Tarantino and his therapist. The groups even consist of the same racial/ethnic mix: one African American woman, one Latina, and two white girls, at least one of whom is blonde. Tarantino is nothing if not equal opportunity in his fantasies of ass-kicking women. But it’s pretty clear that the second quartet (which includes the heat-packing Kim) may have a different fate from the first as soon as we see their car: a Mustang. A Mustang of approximately the same muscle car vintage as Mike’s Charger. Quite a change from the first group’s crappy red Honda Civic. The odds get even better when the girls temporarily trade up to a white Vanishing Point Dodge Challenger with the big block engine. As the adrenaline rush final chase deliriously shows, Stuntwoman Kim in the white Challenger is just as able to raise iron-crushing hell as Stuntman Mike in his black Charger. She, however, has an edge that Mike lacks: the other ladies in the car. Which leads to lesson number 3…
3. A chick needs her girls. This is one of the twists in Planet Terror that is quite refreshing. For all her sexy back, tough girl posturing, Cherry isn’t a catty bitch to other women. She forms a bond under pressure with Marley Shelton’s Dakota that is life-saving. Yes, lesbian Dakota probably thinks that Cherry is hot, but nevertheless, they are there for each other. And when Wray leaves Cherry one permanent companion with whom to take on the world, it’s their baby girl. Cherry may have the big gun, but she also has Dakota and her daughter (besides, men always do something flaky like die or become psychotic zombies). Death Proof takes it one better. It isn’t just the Honda that dooms Jungle Julia and her pals: it’s their eye for guys. Their desire to attract guys, whether it’s for a lap dance or some other assignation, constantly diverts their attention. They do keep their promise to each other for an all-girl weekend away, but by that point, it’s too late. Kim’s friends, including ace stuntwoman Zoë Bell as herself and Rosario Dawson as a makeup artist with a secret wild side, aren’t so distracted. They even get their own version of the legendary opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, as the camera tracks around their diner table in long takes while they chew the fat about all sorts of topics major and minor. That’s quite an honor in Tarantino land. They earn that honor as they band together to fight off Mike, with Kim driving, Zoë wielding assorted weaponry, and Dawson’s Abernathy joining in the verbal assault. The final scene is a double-barreled coup de grace for Mike. He’s reduced to shrieking like a girl as the Girls converge on his un-death proofed car. Then the Girls take turns beating the crap out of him. There’s no Thelma & Louise fate for these hard-driving ladies. Why? Because they’re in it together, and they are pissed.
So don’t let the gelatinous gore, copious weapons, teen boy titillations, and muscle car roar fool you, gals. Grindhouse is as much for you as it is for the guys whooping and hollering behind you. Now how cool is that?
"Spider-Man 3": Feelings, Woe, Woe, Woe, Feelings
By Lucia Bozzola, May 8, 2007
Somewhere into the second hour of the third movie of the Spider-Man epic trilogy, I couldn’t help thinking of a throwaway Friends moment. Phoebe, being Phoebe, wonders why “Spider-Man” isn’t pronounced like Goldman. Chandler (naturally) fields that one, replying, “It’s not his name. He’s not Phil Spiderman. He’s a spider Man.” Indeed—except that Spider-Man in Spider-Man first comes to life as adolescent boy Peter Parker. He needs to grow up a little before he becomes Spider-Man. He needs to overcome office politics to get a full-time job. He needs to understand what marriage really means. He needs to fight crime for the right reasons. And he needs to grapple with the big questions in life. Like whether he truly wants to wear his hair in bangs and look like a member of Fall Out Boy.
I realize Spider-Man 3 should be right up my alley. Richard Corliss even used the tantalizing label “subversive” in his review in Time. To paraphrase his explanation, Spider-Man 3 is actually a melodrama dressed up as an action film, centering on feminized men who get so in touch with their feelings that the movie leaks more tears than a Bette Davis weepie. That’s what I, a chick looking for a flick that isn’t, strictly speaking, a chick flick should want, right? Unfortunately, that review is more engaging than the movie. I was warned that it was a bit of a hairball. And alas, while it sometimes verges on a tantalizingly insane hairball—I’d expect nothing less from Evil Dead auteur Sam Raimi— it’s ultimately just a big, slimy, yakked-up mess. It’s the kind of flashy mess that made me think about all of the starving children that could have been fed for $250+ million. That is not what I want to be thinking about while I watch my mega-budget summer blockbusters. I want to be entertained. I do not want to watch dramatic scenes that are of the same caliber as the woeful later seasons of Beverly Hills 90210. I also do not want to watch a story that feels like scenarists Raimi, his brother Ivan, and Alvin Sargent put several Spider-Man comic books into the Cuisinart and then typed up the results. Not even a $250 million Cuisinart could turn that mash into a gourmet treat.
This is especially disappointing because Raimi proved in A Simple Plan that he knows how to direct a good dramatic story with classical simplicity. Granted, he seemed to have lost that touch in Spider-Man 2, where every key theme was stated, re-stated, re-stated again for the slow Joe in the back row, and then re-stated several more times for good measure. In this regard, Spider-Man 3 is no different. Raimi, when not playing with Cuisinarts, seemed to be wondering just how many different ways he could spend Sony’s money. Why have one villain when you can have three, three for the price of one? One annoying love interest isn’t enough—let’s have two. Let’s also throw in four variations on the anguished father-child relationship, and two romantic rivals to go along with those two love interests. And don’t forget the shredded Hefty trash bag Id From Outer Space. No wonder the action sequence featuring a construction crane teetering out of control on a skyscraper ended so suddenly that I couldn’t help wondering what the fuck happened to the crane (seriously, it’s swinging out of control. Did it fall? Did it magically stop swaying like a hula dancer?). It’s A.D.D. Theater, brought to you by the manufacturers of PlayStation Portable. Not even an action sequence—the reason these movies are made—can be taken to its logical conclusion. There’s just too much to do!
As a result, it’s hard to care when the waterworks start flowing in earnest at the climax (of which, shockingly, there are several). Corliss assumes that Spider-Man’s primary audience, i.e. teen and twentysomething boys, won’t like the alleged bait-and-switch wherein they arrive expecting super-cool action, and what they get is Adult Drama. I say Sony needn’t worry (and not just because the first weekend broke the requisite box office records). There is no Adult Drama here—not any that has any emotional impact, anyway. Such things usually require patience, character development, subtext: qualities Spider-Man 3 sorely lacks. This isn’t to say that I’m dumb enough to walk into Spider-Man 3 expecting Antonioni or Ozu, and then get all in a huff because it’s bubblegum. Rather, I’m just not buying what Raimi’s selling when Peter et al. start mewling in superficial grief. I mean, it’s nice and all to see men get in touch with their emotions and show their sensitive sides, but when the dialogue that Explains Their Feelings is laid on with a forklift, that tends to ruin the mood. More important, Raimi never lingers on any plot thread long enough, nor elicits heart-rending performances from wooden Tobey Maguire (who seems to have one facial expression) and droopy Kirsten Dunst (darling Kiki, I’d happily see a Spider-Man you’re not in), to create the kind of sob-inducing effect Corliss figures teen boys detest. The only tragic end that might even come close is the fate of Harry “My Father Didn’t Really Love Me So I’m The New Goblin” Osborne. He’s had the luxury of appearing in all three installments, and James Franco has charisma to burn. But he’s surrounded by so many other anguished men that he simply becomes part of the keening noise.
Raimi’s meat grinder/sledgehammer storytelling method doesn’t do Peter Parker any favors, either. After all, the main “emotional” attraction is supposed to be that Attack of the Killer Goo and what it does to our boy. The viscous black yuck that conveniently crash lands by Peter’s favorite love web (where’s it from, the Krypton Tar Pits? eh, who cares) leads to a key step in maturity: Facing Your Demons. As Dylan Baker’s handy-dandy physics professor steps in long enough to tell us, the substance enhances one’s aggression (go figure), and other traits that are already present in one’s self. Apparently, in his heart of hearts, Peter really wanted to be a morph of Dean Martin, John Travolta, and Gene Kelly with an emo haircut. This was news to me, but whatever. Anyway, once we get past the funny-strange spectacle of Peter getting down with his bad self, we are supposed to be appalled at how callously he treats the devoted Mary Jane and Bryce Dallas Howard’s disposable blonde Gwen Stacey. Since they don’t really register beyond being female, it’s a little hard to feel their pain. We are also supposed to be appalled when he goes after Thomas Hayden Church’s iron-jawed Sandman with furious vigor because he wants to avenge his dead uncle. Geez, Sandman just wanted to take care of his sick daughter—he’s not bad-bad. Again, this plot thread is so cursory (and the action so CGI PG-13 pretty) that it just seems like an excuse to do another groovy crash-bang number with subway trains. Is Peter heartbroken by his own assholery? Is he horrified when he sees Topher Grace’s gleefully venal Eddie Brock turn into black Spidey doppelgänger Venom? Probably. And if the more gifted Grace had played Spider-Man, then perhaps Peter’s horror and anguish would have leapt off the screen, as it were.
Ultimately, though, Corliss’s assumption is most curious because of something he himself observes about Spider-Man 3. The movie is essentially a boys’ club, with the boys taking on the girly emotions as well as the physical activity. As such, it also deals with such boy-ish concerns as loyalty to one’s best male pals, and coming to terms with a paternal legacy. This is nothing new in the land of male weepies. More crucially, it’s also nothing new in the land of superheroes. Batman and Superman have plenty of emotional baggage to carry on their buff shoulders besides love interests. Why would the fan boys be turned off by Spider-Man 3 when it tries so very, very (very) hard to delve into the same psychological terrain? There is nothing the least bit radical or, heaven help us, “subversive” about Spider-Man 3’s lachrymose plot. It’s just more of the same dross, slapped together with incoherent abandon, and tied up with a shiny $250 million bow. I will say this, though. Spider-Man 3 makes me even more anxious to see Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne wrestle with his Batman demons in The Dark Knight.
Movies and Videos on iPods for pennies
It is really great that now you could watch a movie on your iPod for as low as 3 cents.
A few ipod movies websites that have been launched are now offering almost 600 movies for less than $20. Now that’s a deal you would not like to miss.
IPods have made our lives definitely easier by allowing music downloads movies downloads, games, and music videos from various online stores at prices really down to earth. First, iPod put music in your pocket. Now it has put videos and images. With support for up to 15,000 songs and up to 150 hours of video on a 2.5-inch QVGA color display, iPod gives you the ultimate music experience. iPods are available in two colors- white and black.
The real point is that even if one doesn’t really like all of the 600 movies and videos it’s still a steal at even 60 ipod movies and videos for less than 420. It’s still far lesser than what you might end up paying for purchasing or renting these.
Well, just in case you still don’t have clue to what an iPod is, it can be said as the walkman of 21st century. You no longer need to carry those bulky Cassettes, or CDs and batteries to listen music on the move. It has an inbuilt memory ranging from about 128mb (Approx 30 songs) to 60 GB (approx 15000 songs).And all this in an unbelievably compact size. You can even watch movies and videos in the newer versions of iPod. And above all, you don’t need to carry or buy batteries every now and then because iPods come with a rechargeable battery and charger.
All the online stuff can be viewed directly on your Ipod by transferring it using a data cable or otherwise you can connect it to your computer and watch it on the bigger screen. With iPod movies you can watch your favorite movies, watch movie previews and your favorite TV shows that you might have missed while you were, busy with your work.
How do I download ipod movies?
Well first of all, you’ll have to download your service provider’s software and then fill up a registration form. As soon as you finish this, you can start watching movies on your iPod.
With the right device on you can listen to podcasts, radio stations, and itunes and a lot more stuff. Also, don’t forget to go through the previews listed on your service provider’s website to make a faster decision for the movies and other stuff you might want to download. So why wait. Go ahead and start downloading…
Ipods are fun and easy to use for the most part. The iPods differ, yet most enable you to do multi-tasking projects. If you are searching for movies, you might want to take advantage of the low priced videos. One of the things I learnt about buying music or movies is that many have only portions of the content that is favorites while the remaining videos are something we may not like. Particular music in this situation may publish one hit on a single album and when you pay around $15 or more for one hit; it is outrageous.
This is where an iPod will come in handy, since you can select a single hit and download it, burn it to a DVD/CD and follow pursuit until you have all your favorites sounds on a single disc. Likewise, you like clips of movies you can also download your favorite episodes or else download your favorite TV shows.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Luminescence Dating
by Carey Perloff
Directed by Mark Rucker
November 29–December 23, 2006
Magic Theatre, San Francisco
http://www.magictheatre.org/jsp_index.jsp
Carey Perloff is a disciple of Tom Stoppard, having directed many of his plays in her capacity as Artistic Director of San Francisco’s “American Conservatory Theater”, and now, presenting a play, “Luminscence Dating” (a co-production between the ACT and Magic Theatre, debuting at the Magic) much in the style of this intellectually peripatetic master. As educational, idea-oriented and brisk as a Stoppard play, “Luminescence” is also a “romantic thriller” set in the world of archaeologist/academics. The term “luminescence dating” refers to the process of analyzing the last time an unearthed object was heated-up. Perloff’s story concerns three scientists whose lives are tied-up in a quest for answers, as well as a mission more romantic in nature. Never has “dirt, digging and dating” been so fervently explored.
Featuring René Augesen, Gregory Wallace and Stephen Barker Turner, as the three archeologists, Perloff’s play is charming, well-crafted and smart. This is a director’s play, one in which every loose-end gets tied, all actions have logical conclusions, and plot revelations happen in a satisfying and logical order. There is even a mystical touch, in the presence of the mythic Aphrodite embodied by a nosy female janitor. Aphrodite's speeches don’t really need to make sense—for her (unlike the three scientists) things are all about poetry and love.
In the tiny Magic space, the ACT actors, Augesen and Wallac, have a chance to get smaller and funnier. Their friendly riffs as equally sexually frustrated colleagues create the lightness the work needs---elsewhere is a lot of jargon, a pushy plot and a good measure of academic monotony. Still, a female take on Stoppard offers romance where love in the master’s theatrical realm is usually more theoretical or sexual in nature. Here, Perloff offers love and emotion as an underlying tension that really does get mountains to move. She creates a lively entertainment full of ideas and funny repartee. Perloff is a lot more down-to-earrth, so-to-speak, than Stoppard ever was.
Hedda Gabler
by Henrik Ibsen
American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco
Feb 9-March 11, 2007
directed by Richard E. T. White
Hedda Gabler has long stood beside Nora of A Doll’s House as an example of Henrik Ibsen’s women, hemmed in by the conventions of their society and longing to break free. But there is an important difference between the two; while Nora resolves her conflicts by escaping with the slam of a door, Hedda does the same with the click of a trigger. Nora is frustrated, not evil. Hedda, at least as she is portrayed by Rene Augesen at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, is quite a bit of both.
Augesen also starred as Nora at ACT, a very different performance than the one she is giving now. She is just as beautiful, equally graceful but far less sympathetic. The headstrong Hedda is thwarted by society’s strictures and fate – yes -- but even more by her own choices. She has married the wrong man, the clueless scholar Tesman (Anthony Fusco), for the wrong reasons and, just back from her honeymoon, is already bored to tears. She repels the friendship of Tesman’s elderly aunt Juli (Sharon Lockwood in a non-comic role, for once) and Thea, an acquaintance from school (Finnerty Steeves), two of the only truly good people on the stage. When a former lover, Ejlert Lovborg (Stephen Barker Turner), once a brilliant drunken rake now turned serious scholar, comes back into her life, she literally drives him back to the bottle, willfully destroys the manuscript that would have made his name and offers him a pistol to aid in his suicide. As for Thea, who loved and collaborated with Lovberg on his book, eventually leaving a loveless marriage to follow him, she too has her hopes smashed courtesy of Hedda, her supposed “friend.”
What’s to like? Beauty is as beauty does, as my dear old grandmother used to say and this beauty does everybody, including herself, in. It’s fascinating to watch, just as you might watch a spider spin its web. Although flies and other innocent insects might get caught, the spider never does. But that’s a spider. Eventually, the web of lies and intrigue that surrounds Hedda’s manipulations catches her in its silken strands. The lecherous, oily Commissioner Brack (Jack Willis) gets a hold on her that amounts to blackmail and Hedda can see only one way out. Too bad, but her plight generates about as much sympathy as one would have for a poisonous spider.
The stylized production, fashioned after the paintings of Edvard Munch (The Scream) a fellow-Norwegian, contemporary and admirer of Ibsen, is lovely to look at, with a catwalk sometimes superimposed above the genteel fin de siecle drawing room (scenery by Kent Dorsey). At crucial moments and, as a kind of overture at the beginning, various characters pace the catwalk to the accompaniment of foreboding music (by John Gromada). This is a highly operatic, but rather strange choice by director Richard E.T. White. The whole atmospheric setup is that of Victorian melodrama, a conventional form that Ibsen is credited with breaking through with his realistic dramas.
Nevertheless, the actors perform Paul Walsh’s translation from the Norwegian with ACT’s usual professionalism and Augesen is indeed a wonder to behold in designer Sandra Woodall’s long split skirts and clingy gowns. If only her character was not so Bette Davis-nasty.
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The Full Monty
Terence McNally/David Yazbek
The Full Monty, an inexpensively made ($3.5 million) "small" film from England, turned into a mega-hit, grossing big bucks ($256 million) for its producer, Fox Searchlight Pictures. Disney has led the way in extending celluloid franchises into the legitimate theater (Sleeping Beauty, The Lion King ) so it comes as no surprise that others would emulate that profitable model. After a sold-out June tryout at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego (and, it is reported, extensive reworking), Fox will open a full-blown musical Monty on Broadway this month. Based on audience reaction at a preview performance, they will have a popular hit on their hands.
The Sheffield location of the film has been shifted trans-Atlantic to Buffalo, New York, a perfect choice for a story grounded in a setting of industrial economic malaise. Terrence McNally's book for the show is its strongest point, an intelligent adaptation that succeeds in developing some well-realized characters and plausible relationships, thus engaging audience sympathy beyond the mere titillation a lesser writer might have delivered with this subject matter.
The story (for anyone who may have been isolated in Kazakhstan for the last four years) is about a group of unemployed steelworkers whose only current opportunities are dead-end minimum-wage jobs as security guards or stock clerks. Their resulting idleness and insolvency, salvaged only by working wives, has undermined both their confidence and their manhood. Divorced, Jerry Lukowski (Patrick Wilson) is faced with loss of joint custody of his son because he can't come up with child-support money. When a professional Chippendales-type male strip show passes through town and draws a big, ladies-only crowd, Lukowski hits on the idea of earning his desperately needed cash by putting on a similar show with himself and his buddies as the dancers. The story line follows the recruitment of the necessary talent, rehearsals, stage fright, the relationships of the men, and it leads up to the fore-ordained climax/finale. The extra wrinkle is provided when the women challenge Lukowski's idea: Why would anyone come to see a bunch of out-of-shape local guys strip? The answer: They'll go all the way, strip to the buff - The Full Monty.
The potential for the show to wallow in the obvious opportunities for penis and physique jokes and to rely too heavily on the anticipation of the final flash of flesh, as it were, has been transcended by McNally's book. While those ingredients are inevitably present, McNally also explores gender issues and gay issues as well as self-esteem and relationship situations, suggesting just enough to inject some substance into the premise, but not so much as to bog down what is never meant to be more than a light entertainment.
David Yazbek's score is a disappointment. An upbeat, jazzy overture raises hope for the sort of jazz-pop based music that made City of Angels such a pleasure some years back, but Yazbek's score immediately reverts to generic, rock-pop bubblegum for the ears. It does provide the needed energy for song-and-dance numbers like the opening "Scrap," where Yazbek's effectively hard-edged lyrics, contrasting workingmen's lives with their dreams, outshine the uninspired music. The almost obligatory number for the wives, "It's a Woman's World," comes over as merely shrill, but "Big Ass Rock," with unexpected gallows humor, works well. As if following a menu of possibilities, a bland Latin number is thrown into the hopper.
Andre De Shields, a well-loved stage veteran, plays "Horse," and he carries a great number, "Big Black Man," that showcases both his slide dancing and his ability to deliver a song, a song that draws laughs by saying things that are not usually said. Even more popular with the audience is Kathleen Freeman, whose extensive television and movie appearances make her face--the most slept-in face since Margaret Rutherford--as familiar as last night's sitcom. Freeman, who plays bawdy Jeanette, the pianist for the dancers, has great stage presence and skillful timing with a comic line: "For every million toads there's a fairy prince. You just gotta kiss them all!"
Some of the songs slow things down considerably - but maybe these will be fixed by opening night. Overweight Harold (Marcus Neville) singing to his belly, "You Rule My World," probably worked better on paper than it does on stage. "Life with Harold" was almost but not quite breathed into life by Emily Skinner.
The production, designed by John Arnone, is appropriate and functional without being particularly original or distinguished; unlike lavish Disney productions, this one has the look of a careful corporate budget. But then, glitzy production is not the raison d'tre for The Full Monty. It all builds up to the grand finale, by which there was an abundance of female squealing from the audience and smiles all around. This is a show that will probably prove to be immune to critics' opinions. It has a built in constituency that will be buying tickets for years.
El Conquistador!
New York Theater Wokshop
With the new shows, "Desire" and "Fashion House," the telenovela at last crosses over into the English language market this year as American networks look to cash in on audiences' penchant for escapist television. The popularity of these serialized shows in Latin America is enormous and with its production of the engaging comedy, El Conquistador!, New York Theatre Workshop celebrates this melodramatic, over-the-top medium. The play, created by Thaddeus Phillips and Tatiana Mallarino and directed by Ms. Mallarino, is even performed in Spanish, with English surtitles.
The show's premise is simple. Polonio, a star-struck coffee bean farmer moves to the big city in search of his favorite telenovela star. He arrives in Bogota and takes a job as a doorman in a big building where he is quickly entangled in the affairs of the residents.
The action of the play takes place mostly at the front desk of the building, though there are a charming prelude and prologue that occur in the Colombian countryside. From a large video screen behind Polonio's post, various location backdrops are projected. (A similar device appeared in the Broadway show Ring of Fire but did not work as well.) In addition, several of the building's residents appear on the screen and interact with Polonio on the intercom. One would be hard-pressed to find a theatrical production, on Broadway or off, that uses video as effectively or as ingeniously as El Conquistador! The front desk swings around 180 degrees in both directions and when it does, the video also follows so that the audience sees the lobby from every angle.
As played by the talented Thaddeus Phillips, Polonio is a familiar comedic stock character - a hapless, bumbling hero who finds himself in outlandish situations. Mr. Phillips is a gifted performer and his style and appeal are reminiscent of the great Mexican comedian, Mario Moreno, better known to the Spanish-speaking world as Cantinflas. Mr. Phillips, like his superstar predecessor, is a clown, an entertainer and a satirist. As he explains in the prologue, the enormous popularity of telenovelas can cause an entire country to come to a complete stop, especially on the nights of the grand finale to the story. The great irony of they play is that Polonio is a poor peasant whose little village is ravaged by war and drug trafficking but can think of nothing except his beloved telenovela.
Eminently likeable, Mr. Phillips speaks fluent Spanish and has great comedic skills. He also has an uncanny timing that allows him to interact with the video screen as though it were another character in the play. Jaws dropped as Mr. Phillips' perfectly choreographed entrances and exits made him appear to actually be walking in and out of the screen. Technical wonders aside, the action of the play follows telenovela form, with outrageous characters, crazed villains and evil twins who appear mysteriously. The use of video, particularly the taped pieces from the building residents - Colombian telenovela stars in their own right - enhances the play and adds an authentic flavor to the story.
As a native speaker, my one minor quibble with the production was with Mr. Phillips' accent, which came in and out in certain scenes. One wonders what a true Colombiano might do with the part. However, his earnest and otherwise convincing performance quickly won me over. And as the play builds to its inevitable outrageous ending and given the increased physical demands of the quick-paced finale, his performance became more impressive.
El Conquistador! is a terrific take on the zany world of Latin American soaps. Although, it could use with some trimming - some of the gags are repeated one time too many and the convention of the video footage grows a tad wearisome at the end - Mr. Phillips works hard at keeping the action brisk. His wacky running about, quick changes and changing personas are a wonder to watch. Like watching a telenovela, one must give in to the insanity of it all to enjoy it fully.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Tennessee Williams
Mendacity. That and one other word, also spoken by Jack Willis as Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hat Tin Roof, ring out with silence around them, seize importance. The second word is tolerance. Homosexuality has come a long way since 1955, but not that far. Today, no one can care very much about a protagonist who is drinking himself to death because he can’t come out of the closet. But the words of a dying father hold up to the test of time. And it doesn’t hurt that Willis’ performance as the bellowing family patriarch is amazing.
Cat is supposed to be Maggie and Brick’s story, the Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman image of marital dysfunction, Tennessee Williams-style—the play takes place in their bedroom, after all. But this is 2005 and nobody cares about a protagonist who can’t admit he’s gay. Fortunately, Big Daddy, facing fatal cancer and turning fatherly, all of a sudden, still has a few things to say. Willis rumbles around, whines, dies a little, and generally fills up the stage at the Geary Theatre with a big, Shakespearean presence—he’s King Lear with a Southern drawl.
Rene Augesen, as Maggie, on the other hand, is blonde in the not-so-positive way. Her performance should be all horny and mad, not Methodist and pre-menstrual. She’s supposed to eat up the scenery--make it the Maggie Show. Augesen just spouts the clever monologues, flits around in her slip, and tries to talk her way out of a hole. Augesen comes across like a good ex-cheerleader-type wife to Michael James Reed’s pouty, ice-cube sucking Brick, but the sharp language coming out of her mouth seems designed for a Maggie who is edgier, tougher. The closet-case and the bombshell never go off in this production. The only guts come from Dad.
This major, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, is not Tennessee Williams coming emotionally clean. It’s an exploration of stasis. Critics even questioned, in 1955, whether the narrative added up to anything. Perhaps for Williams, touching on gay themes was powerful in itself, even if his slant on it had the prerequisite self-hatred and despair.
The clan that turns Maggie and Brick’s barren bedroom into a den, then a circus, is run with dotty delusion by Big Mama, played by Katherine McGrath. McGrath, a funny actress, wears a stuffed skirt to imply girth and has a convincing wacky intensity. Still, she’s a wisp of a thing underneath all the padding, and makes sharp rather than round points with her scurrying. She’s a nervous Mother, not a Big and bustling Mama.
Anne Darragh and Rod Gnapp as Sister Woman and Brother Man seem cut out of cardboard. This Hot-Roofed house has air-conditioning on the inside—turned way up.
Blackbird
By David Harrower
American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco
May 2-May 27
Jessi Campbell and Steven Culp in Blackbird. Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Once in a welcome while something comes along to remind the critic why she took this job in the first place. David Harrower’s “Blackbird” is just such a something.
The ACT production follows on the heels of the show’s 2007 Olivier Award for Best New Play and the acclaimed current New York version starring Jeff Daniels. It doesn’t have to take a back seat to either of them. Directed by Loretta Greco (ACT’s “Lackawanna Blues”) and starring Steven Culp, the late, lamented Rex Van de Camp of “Desperate Housewives,” and the very capable young New York actress Jessi Campbell, it’s a taut 90 minute roller coaster ride of emotion you won’t soon forget.
The subject matter is sensitive. A 40-year-old man once seduced a 12-year-old girl. (Or did she seduce him?) After a stint in prison for the crime, the man changes his name, moves away and begins a new, respectable life. No pedophile he, it was a one time mistake (or was it?). More than a decade later, bitter, angry and, perhaps, still in love, she comes after him, confronting him in the untidy break room at his work. Robert Brill’s scene design may be messy, littered with cups, paper plates, soda cans and an overfull garbage can, but it is nothing compared to what is going on in these peoples brains.
“We have to process it, no matter how late,” says Peter, the man, early on, referring to a work order that has kept him at the office. The line is a blueprint for what will go on between the two, a prelude to the matter at hand.
First we get her version of what happened: an innocent meeting at a neighborhood barbecue, little notes left on his car windshield, a meeting in the park that ends in a groping session under a bush and, finally, a carefully planned consensual tryst. But it goes awry. After he goes out for cigarettes, the man doesn’t come back for hours. Panicked at being on her own in a foreign country (they have taken a ferry to Holland), she searches the town for him, ends up in a police station and her parents and the law take it from there. They never see each other again. Her court testimony is given from behind a screen. The judge said that the girl seemed to have “suspiciously adult leanings” but Peter, the man, then named Ray, was the one who went to jail. Una, the girl, remained as an outcast in their small town, ostracized by her peers, badgered by her mother and obsessed with thoughts of revenge.
“I hated the life I had. I wanted you to know that,” she gives as her excuse for hunting him down.
But Peter’s version is a little different. Struck by the enormity of what he had done, he bought his cigarettes and stopped in a pub for first one drink, then another. When he finally did come back for her she was no longer there. Desperate, he hunted for her until dawn then finally turned himself in to the police. “I never meant to leave you,” he says.
Una wants to punish him but she also wants him to help her relive the memories. Shadowy figures come and go outside the cloudy lunchroom windows as their duet goes from anger to yearning and finally explodes in violence. After that, they sit around and talk about clothes, cars and jobs like old friends. But the sexual undercurrent remains, and perhaps something more.
Harrower’s dialogue is spare, half-sentences, stammered utterances that have the ring of truth. Culp and Campbell deliver it expertly, with just the hint of British accents that sound authentic. In fact, this play draws the viewer in, rather as if we were peeking through the window, eavesdropping on a conversation that has the immediacy of real life. The song “Blackbird” sings is not a particularly pretty one but it is truly, sadly all too human.
The Birthday Party
By Harold Pinter
Irish Classical Theatre Company
Buffalo, NY
January 21, 2007
There’s more to Buffalo than chicken wings, impressive architecture, and the birthplace of alternating current. OK, so that last one was big. Buffalo, a well-kept- secret-of-a-town, is also a theater town and the Irish Classical Theatre Company (ICTC) is largely the reason why. Started by Vincent O’Neill and the late Chris O’Neill in 1985, the ICTC puts Buffalo on the national map.
Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party is a linguistic feast for the absurd leaning heart. The complacent life of seaside boarding house owners Pety and Meg and their one overgrown baby-of-a-guest Stanley is disturbed when two strangers, McCann and Goldberg, come to collect Stanley. Somewhere in the middle they decide to throw Stanley a birthday party to die for— quite literally so, in the case of femme fatale Lulu who ends up possibly deceased at the end of Act II. Just so you don’t get too sure of yourself, Pinter brings Lulu back unharmed in Act III. Shards of a narrative form enough of a story to undermine the fact that at no point do we ever know what’s really happening in Pinter’s fractured world. Don’t get to comfortable; there’s nothing to hang your truth-seeking hat on whatsoever, although much will feel like the world-in-collapse at our door step.
Pinter is in good hands at the Irish Classical. Under Greg Natale’s keen direction, Pinter’s glorious games of pun and cliché soccer goes full throttle amping up the hilarity big time. (Yes, existentialists can be funny too.) Natale gives ample space and rhythm to the poetic banter that diffuses the pervasive sense that something catastrophic may occur at any minute. Otherwise, Natale keeps the pace brisk, building a momentum that stays true to Pinter’s all-encompassing climate of fear, impending doom, and the brutal unknown.
The cast—all superb—handle Pinter’s prose with care and delicacy. ICTC veteran Josephine Hogan’s cornflakes-for-brains Meg is off the charts on the daff-o-meter. Hogan’s perky timing in the opening sections sets the tempo for everything that follows. Her loopy optimism frames the play. Gerry Maher’s crusty portrayal of Petey, the clueless inn and lounge chair keeper, works like a balm amidst the building chaos. But it’s O’Neill’s slick but slimy Goldberg that creates the matrix for the entire production. He’s one sexy thug, possibly dying of some unnamed affliction (I’m going to guess a pesky bout of pancreatitis), out for one last caper. Guy Wagner as the tightly-wound sidekick, McCann, captivates in his highly precise moves and impenetrable stare. O’Neill and Wagner pound out the interrogation scene like a couple of practiced pros. The two are a study in contrasts, with the uptight McCann soothing himself by tearing paper as if he’s performing surgery and Goldberg’s rogue cowboy-with-a-past act. The bit when Goldberg asks McCann to breathe into his mouth lends a surprising touch of eroticism and Natale gives the scene its full glory.
Todd Benzin’s ticking-bomb Stanley is spot on and Leah Russo’s Lulu plays off the surrounding lunacy with saucy style. Benzin gives Stanley the full bloom of a disaster waiting-to-happen. Scott Behrend’s homey set contains just enough oddness to keep the off-kilter feeling strong. Suspended fragments of window frames made for a potent symbol of incompleteness. With Pinter, the unseen gets equal time with the seen.
So what should we make of Pinter’s subversive Birthday Party? Well, we could take the heady approach and pick up a copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and a good bit of Ionesco, Genet, Beckett, and Ablee and place Pinter in the cannon of The Theater of Absurd. Or not. There’s no need to be a card carrying existentialist to enjoy Pinter. He’s the most accessible (or at least tied with Albee) of the lot. By crafting his plays from the familiar, Pinter welcomes us in at any door we choose to enter. He lulls us with language we know and have spoken before he pulls the rug of our complacency out from under us. It’s one wild ride and the ICTC makes it fun and more than a bit disturbing. But isn’t that why we go to the theater?
O’Neill generously led a “question and answer as best I can” session afterwards. “Huh” type questions evolved into more authoritative interpretations. Pinter’s all about having perception complete the experience. That said, what better match to a steely cold Buffalo Sunday afternoon than a strong dose of well-produced Pinter.
Bash
by Neil LaBute
"Atrocity is ‘the new black’," says filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute (Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty) in the introduction to the programme for the Dublin run of Bash. The play is a dark vision of casual atrocity; "matter of fact brutality" as LaBute puts it, in which understandable individuals with mundane characteristics inflict pain on themselves and others in the name of prosaic goals with socially insignificant results. The work takes the form of an assemblage of three monologues themed around ordinary people who commit murder. The author reinforces the awfulness of the crimes by framing them with stories which lack a sense of redemption or catharsis. Each piece is instead a testament to the creeping horror which has enveloped the murderers (or is poised to) even as life goes on as if what they had done had never happened.
The first piece is entitled "Iphigenia in Orem." In Greek myth, Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, sacrificed herself willingly so that her father and her country might prosper from the favour of Artemis. LaBute reenvisions the myth in contemporary terms. It features Jason Patric (Your Friends and Neighbors) as a Utah businessman whose eight month old daughter has died. He reveals to an unseen guest in a hotel bedroom precisely what happened and why (the actor picks an audience member in the front row to focus upon as he speaks) The play explores how a loving father could allow his child to die in the name of much less noble a cause and circumstance when his job is threatened by an aggressive female colleague.
Patric’s performance and delivery are superb. He captures the sense of restless fatalism which has infected his character and is gnawing away at his soul. Though he continually assures us that ‘life goes on’, it is clear that he has been deeply affected. The knowledge of his secret crime can never be reconciled with his everyday life. The irony is that the corporate and collegiate relationships which form a backdrop to the action show how empty that life is compared to the kind of monumental significance of the original myth, making it all the more terrible that this has happened at all.
The second piece, "Medea Redux," is set in what seems to be an interrogation chamber where Flora Montgomery (When Brendan Met Trudy) portrays a woman explaining how her relationship with a high school teacher when she was thirteen has eventually led to the murder of her fourteen year old son many years later. Medea is of course one of the best known figures in Greek mythology, and was recently revisioned for the stage with Fiona Shaw. LaBute here delves into the complexities of motivation, allowing his character to gradually unfold the layers of detail which neither explain nor justify her actions but provide a glimpse of where they came from. The character’s final revelation that she had planned her crime for a very long time asks the audience to reflect on the tone and content of what she has said, which often sounds like romantic fantasy, to seek out resolution. There is none.
Again the performance is vitally important to the overall impact of the piece. Montgomery handles the combination of moods well, alternating from the halting disposition of what is described as "an inward person" to the cheerfulness of a schoolgirl to the brooding coldness of a woman who has killed her own child. The piece on the whole feels a bit more forced than the opener though, but it is thematically consistent, well worked, and interesting as a text.
The final segment, "A Gaggle of Saints," features Jason O’Meara and Justine Mitchell as a pair of conservative college sweethearts who have traveled to New York city for a big party (bash). This piece comes after the interval, and begins in an upbeat and lighthearted manner, laden with the cliches of the American college dating scene. O’Meara is particularly funny as the irrepressibly jock-ish paramour who describes with cheerful abandon how he beat his girlfriend’s former boyfriend unconscious on the track one day. Mitchell is also fun as she talks about preparing her taffeta dress and new shoes for the big occasion and affects a similarly self-contained and oblivious persona.
Having been primed by the first two pieces, the audience of course expects all of this vacuousness to be subverted, and it is. The expectation of horror underlies the descriptions of mundane activities, making our reaction to these stories of college hijinks one of equal discomfort and disgust to that which follows when the atrocity itself occurs. The play’s title is brought into effect again as the male and several of his friends beat a gay man to death in a public toilet in Central Park. The fact that their crime is followed by a prayer serves to again reinforce a sense of hypocrisy and mixed motivation, or at least fathomable if intolerable justification. This tale features a character in the earliest stages of his reaction to what he has done (in contrast to the first, where the murder took place years before, and the second where some time has elapsed), and though its effects are therefore less pronounced, the audience understands again that it will eventually consume and destroy the killer on a fundamental level.
Bash is a serious and absorbing work of theatre. It has been running since 1999 on stages around the U.S. and was filmed for Showtime in 2000. The Dublin production is well designed, crisply lit, and superbly performed. As a play in itself it is thought-provoking, refusing to provide easy answers and mercifully not opting for postmodern amorality in dealing with these themes. It aims for discomfort and achieves it, which is something seen relatively rarely on the Irish stage (though, curiously enough, some of these same ideas were featured in the theatre’s previous presentation, Therese Raquin).
American Buffalo
by David Mamet
Dublin: Gate Theatre 13 February to 10 March, 2007
Director Mark Brokaw returns to the Dublin stage with the latest in a series of high profile productions of American dramas. He has switched registers from the stately intellectual rhythms of Arthur Miller (The Price, A View From the Bridge) to the hypermasculine, near hysterical mindscape of David Mamet. Deploying ellipsis, non-sequitors, and staccato delivery peppered with profanities and repetition, Mamet’s voice is a post-Pinter deployment of the atavistic forces behind twentieth century masculinity, one that is arguably even more skeptical than Pinter about its prospects.
The Northside of Chicago, 1975 - junk and antique dealer Don is on to something. He’s got a deal brewing, born out of malice, in which he intends to rob a collector who has bought a rare American buffalo-head coin from him at a knockdown price because Don didn’t know its true value. Don has enlisted the help of Bob, a reforming junky Don has taken under his wing, and in spite of Bob’s continuing small failures, Don is standing by him. Enter Teach, a jittery, would-be ‘operator’, who convinces Don that he ought to cut Bob out of the deal and work with a true professional, namely himself. Don’s decision throws his moral convictions into relief: not his ethics, which are clearly questionable, but the deeper commitment he has shown to his fellow man through his support to date for young Bob. The consequences of his decision will, before the night is out, result in purgative violence.
American Buffalo is an intense piece of drama, a three hander in which a sense of enclosure is vital. Part of the irony of the play is that in spite of all their planning and bluster, the characters hardly ever leave the confines of the store (or the world view it represents). The real action takes place on the moral plane, surrounding the quandary presented to the elderly Don by his decision to encourage young Bob to lead a cleaner life (relatively speaking, of course). As Mamet observed “once you take a step back from the moral responsibility you’ve undertaken, you’re lost,” a statement made about the original play and seen in the context of the moral failure of Nixon administration, which formed the backdrop the writing.
In spite of the showiness of the role of Teach, it is Don who is the soul of the play, and the anchor upon which its convincing realisation depends. Seán McGinley is a curious choice for the role. One envisions an older, heavier man, literally and figuratively weighted down and yet spry enough to be both sharp enough to run a quasi-legal business and dull enough to miss the mark from time to time. Brokaw used veteran American actor Robert Prosky in The Price and somehow I found it difficult to get him out of my head while watching McGinley at work here. Physical appearance should have nothing to do with effective acting, but there is a certain insubstantiality to McGinley as a stage presence in this role which undermines his hard work in vocal characterisation, deportment, and movement. There is nothing to fault in his performance, which strives to register the weight of the part, but on some level it fails to anchor the play as it ought.
Aidan Gillen is full of nervous bluster as Teach, and delivers the necessary scenery chewing as this eternally restless, but ultimately hollow and childish character. He lacks menace in the role though, which shows when the verbal violence gives way to the physical variety: it’s a little difficult to feel the pain. That said Domhnall Gleeson gives a nice rendering of torment in the role of Bob. Not only does he register the physical pain as the victim of Teach’s violence, he creates a very nice impression of consistent internal stress, his whole body seeming to go into and come out of a visibly painful clench with every word he speaks.
All three performers are faced with a much greater problem than casting and characterisation in the form of the beautifully and painstakingly assembled set by Alexander Dodge. Creating much too broad a space for the confined action of this play, his frankly distracting assemblage of miscellaneous objects (TVs, radios, lampshades, coins, plates, albums, mirrors, hairbrushes, bicycle wheels, street signs, etc.) serve no function other than as backdrop. In The Price a very similar stage design by Joe Vanek represented the detritus of time, which was an active subject in the play. Here, though the junk does signify something about the mentality of the world, it’s not enough to justify the massive amount of visual space given over to it, and the attendant problems in moving the actors around the place just to keep things looking busy.
There is still solid evening’s theatre entertainment here by virtue of the script itself, good and precise delivery by the cast, who do work hard, and a blistering pace. Somehow though it’s hard not to feel that Brokaw does not have the measure of Mamet yet, certainly not the way he held us in his sway with Miller.
all wear bowlers
Berkeley Rep, through December 23l
www.berkeleyrep.org
(l to r) Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle star in all wear bowlers, a hilarious, vaudeville hit at Berkeley Rep for the holidays.
Photographer: Greg Costanzo
So, who wears a bowler? Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello – right? And, in a sense, all of us. No matter how sophisticated you may be, face it, there are times when you play the fool, trip over your own feet, find yourself in a crowd of strangers and wonder how you got there. That’s about all the meaning you’re going to get out of the laugh-filled entertainment playing at Berkeley Rep through Dec. 23.
“all wear bowlers,” the inventive brainchild of actors Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle, is silly, slapstick and consummately performed; a perfect antidote to holiday stress. Just don’t look for the deeper message. There ain’t one.
Lyford, based in New York, and Sobelle, out of Philadelphia, have toured this show across four continents, garnering applause, a New York innovative theater award and a Drama Desk nomination. They acknowledge a debt to Samuel Beckett and, indeed, “bowlers” is a little like “Waiting For Godot,” absurdist, surreal but without the angst. And it’s a lot shorter.
The plot, such as it is, is simple. Two guys (Lyford and Sobelle) named Wyatt and Earnest, respectively, are lost, walking down a deserted road in a scratchy old black and white movie Suddenly Earnest steps from the screen onto the stage. Astonished at seeing a house full of people staring at him, he flees back into the movie, and out again, and back (positively brilliant filmmaking by Michael Glass). Finally, both are flung onto the stage and, when they try to escape, are prevented by barking dogs and bedeviled by police sirens before running, literally, into a brick wall.
The next hour or so of this brief offering is spent trying to make some sense of the situation and then disprove the old adage: “You can’t go home again.” Both actors have wonderfully mobile faces, Sobelle being the “brains” of the duo and Lyford, the nice guy – until he unleashes his Godzilla imitations. Inspired foolery involves a few ringers from the audience, an incredible number of eggs, at least as many pratfalls, minimal dialogue and maximum hilarity. (In case you are thinking of bringing the kids, be warned that there is liberal use of the “F-word” and some tasteless jokes, including one about cancer; then go ahead and bring them anyway).
One wonderful bit spoofs ventriloquism. Another skewers romance. And, eventually, the house actually comes down – all over the stage, revealing the backstage innards. The lighting (Randy “Igleu” Glickman) and sound (James Sugg) cues are complicated and right on target. The technical side of this show is nothing short of amazing and stage manager Michelle Blair should take a bow at the end. Of course, there is no justice in this world and she doesn’t.
But, in the tradition of happy endings, Wyatt and Earnest manage to slip back into their movie, somewhat battered and not much wiser than before. And everybody else puts on their coats and hats – bowlers or not – and heads for the exit, a little happier than when they came in. Hey, how much more can you ask for?