Recently I came upon an article in the Hollywood Reporter listing 47 iconic movie and TV sites in NYC. Read it here. (Why it's not an even 50, I can't say.)
One location that's obviously cited is Central Park which has been used in too many movies and TV shows to count. But one of movies that's not on this list but that makes great use of nation's most famous urban park is Hair from 1979.
Based on the late 1960s anti-war, anti-establishment hippie Broadway smash, it's about a young man named Claude from Oklahoma who comes to NYC on his way to enlist in the army before shipping to Vietnam. (Why a guy from Oklahoma would need to travel all the way to NYC to go into the army is odd but, hey, it's a movie). Anyhoo, while roaming around Central Park one afternoon he comes upon a group of hippies who befriend him and rock his world. He also gets close to a young beautiful society lady who is bored by her preppy boyfriend and upper class life. Eventually it all goes haywire and Claude goes into the army -- before his friends head out to Nevada, trying to rescue him from going to Vietnam. There's a big, surprising, ultimately tragic twist at the end about the randomness of friendship and fate.
When the musical Hair hit Broadway in 1968, it was a stunning, crazy, and almost dangerous thing. America was mired in the hopeless Vietnam war and the anti-war, hippie movement was gaining steam (Woodstock would be a year later). This musical rocked the culture, a show that was both highly political and highly entertaining -- plus, at various points, the cast members took their clothes off. Richard Nixon, right after he became President, imagined that he'd go to a show and, as soon as cast got naked, he'd get up and walk out, showing his solidarity with the Silent Majority, the squares in the "real America" (fortunately he never did it although it would have been lit). Like A Chorus Line, Rent and Hamilton later on, this show defined its time.
But when the movie came in 1979, times had changed. Vietnam was over, Watergate and stagflation had and were traumatized the nation, and this movie already seemed like a museum piece. It was of and about another time. Hair the movie was moderately successfull but didn't have the same resonance as it had had on Broadway 11 years earlier.
The movie was directed by Milos Forman, who had just won Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and would, later on, do so again for Amadeus. Hair is somewhat forgotten from his filmography. The cast is amazingly -- especially a young Treat Williams (RIP) as George, the hippie leader, and Beverly D'Angelo, the bored young deb. Claude is played by John Savage who had just had a huge success in The Deer Hunter. He's a good actor but rather miscast -- he's not really believable as a young Okie. The rest of the mostly unknown cast is quite good, including the late, wonderful Nell Carter singing in the park at night.
Still, there's something about the movie that sorta doesn't work -- it reminds me of the Rent musical, a great, brilliant show put to film that somehow, someway, sucks the life out of the story and score. But I still suggest seeing it for the music, the cast, and beautiful shot Central Park.
Probably the world's greatest playright, Tom Stoppard, has died.
Plays like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, The Coast of Utopia plays, and so many others, were like nothing that had ever been seen before. Stoppard's use of language was brilliant, complex and yet captured your mind and emotions in equal measure.
He was a true genius.
I saw several of his plays on Broadway -- revivals of Jumpers, Arcadia, The Real Thing (in 2000 and 2014) as well as new plays like The Invention of Love and, most recently, Leopoldstadt. I reviewed this last play, his great swan song, in 2023, as well as the 2011 revival of Arcardia and the 2014 version of The Real Thing. Read them here.
And yes, Stoppard also wrote for the movies, winning a screenplay Oscar for the 1998 hit Shakespeare in Love. It had the great line, "That woman ... is a woman!"
Two amazing things about Stoppard's life and career are worth noting.
First, his native language wasn't English. He was borin in Czecholslovakia, escaping the Nazis with his mother in the 1940s, before landing and living the rest of his life in England. From there he would not only learn his new country's language but take it and mold it into magic for six decades. Stoppard is an open-and-shut case for why immigration, and welcoming migrants, is a smart thing to do.
Second, when my parents got together in the late 1960s, they went to the original NYC production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (I actually have one of their Playbills in the family files). Forty-odd years later my wife and I got together, in part, via our mutual love his plays. Kismet.
RIP Sir Tom. We'll probably never see his likes again.
Here is a local NYC news review of The Real Thing from 1984. "Put the right words in the right order and you can nudge the world a little bit."
Few filmmakers capture the life and spirit of NYC like Spike Lee. He's been making movies for forty years and he makes movies like no other -- movies that make you think, movies that sometimes make you angry, sometimes make you laugh loudly, but that you never forget.
Spike and his movies have been part of my life since I was kid -- Do the Right Thing blew we away as a teenager. And then he started his fruitful collaboratoin with Denzel Washington and they have made some modern classics -- Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X, Inside Man and, now, after working together for more than 30 years, Highest 2 Lowest.
Denzel plays a music executive who is the midst of trying to save his business when his kid gets kidnapped -- only for a huge twist when its not his kid but his assistants. This awful situation leads him into a huge moral dillemma and leads to wild, unpredictable outcome.
Spike's approach to storytelling is unconventional -- he does not make predictably, standardly told narratives. And he really goes all out with that approach here. But, always, his visual flair is on full display, and Denzel just eats up the screen with a wild, fun performance -- a great actor, a master thespian, at the time of his craft. Also, Jeffrey Wright plays his assistant and, as always, he's great.
Late in the movies the rapper ASAP Rocky appears and, damn, he's got some real acting chops. There's a scene between him and Denzel that is so good, so intense, so amazing and mesmerizing that you have to watch the movies just for that. It's just two guys talking -- and its riveting.
Finally, this is a great NYC movie and it really goes from "highest to lowest", from the penthouses of highrises of gentrified Brooklyn, to the streets of Manhattan, to the subways and back alleys of the Bronx.
They don't make a lot of movies like Highest 2 Lowest these days so you gotta appreciate it when you can.
You can also listen to Spike talk about the movies with Marc Maron here.
When you read a novel or watch a movie or any standalone story, the timespan it takes place across can vary: the story can take place over a few hours, a few days, a few weeks -- or a few years, decades, or centuries.
It therefore takes a special skill to tell a story within one day -- 24 hours -- that has an engaging beginning, middle, and end. Obviously the goldstandard of a 24-hour story is James Joyce's 1922 legendary novel Ulysses, a tale of two down-on-their-luck Dubliners, whose lives intersect on June 16, 1904.
Most movies that take place over 24-hours are action movies -- they're basically lengthy chases, one slambang sequence after another -- that only work narratively over a short period of time. Also, the movie usually has a hook that such and such a thing must be done before a specific time or else a bomb goes off. Non-action movies are harder to tell within 24-hours but some have tried.
A couple of other very good set-within-24 hours NYC movies that aren't on this but that I've also written about are New Year's DayandVanya on 42nd Street.
Of course NYC is the perfect place to set a story within 24-hours because there's so much to do, and it's so relatively easy to get around, that a lot can happen within a short period of time. I hope many such movies will be made in the future!
Like many who lived through the twenty-teens, I was a huge Game of Thrones fan.
Set in a fictional world of seven kingdoms living tenuously under one ruler, the entire premise of the show was that a once great family, a once powerful dynasty (the Targaryens) that had united the kingdoms and ruled for 300 years, have been overthrown -- and the new rulers are still grappling with the problems left in its wake. While the various remaining would-be kings are battling it out for power, the last Targaryen left alive is prowling around distant lands, scheming to return.
The prequel show, House of the Dragon, flashes back to a time when the Targaryens were in power, fighting amongst themselves, their fall distant yet becoming more and more inevitable.
What's brilliant about each show, what draws so many people in, is that both shows are haunted. Both series have a shadow over them, an extra dimension of drama and meaning. In one we are haunted by the now-gone years of power; in the other, we see their power, knowing that it's going away.
The Targaryens are ghosts as much as people -- and they live forever in a kind of mythical world inside a mythical world.
In GOT, even though the Targaryens are almost completely gone, they haunt the show -- people keep talking about them and obsessing over their impact on the seven kingdoms (gone but not forgotten). They may no longer have literal power but they still have power over the minds and souls of the people. And in House, we can't help but watch with a sense of dread that this family, this dynasty, at the height of its power, no matter what's going on or what they're doing, is inevitably doomeed, destined for ignominy.
In short, the Targaryens are doomed but they are forever present in peoples' minds and still meddling, in one way or another, in the kingdoms' business -- even after their doom.
Doom seems to be on a lot of people's minds these days. Our democracy and our environment are in a precarious place, a downward slide. But doom is not final -- it is simply, in many respects, a new way of being, a new normal called the "undervelt."
The "undervelt": an undergroud or underworld where (if I can be gauche enough to quote myself), "defines itself in opposition to the above ground, the outside world. It is in constant friction, a perennial resistance. Like ... trash -- we want to forget it, we want it out of our lives, but it never goes away."
Woody Allen used to be one of America, and especially NYC's, most acclaimed filmmakers. For over fifty years, he made fifty movies, some much more successful than others, many getting nominated for and winning multiple Academy Awards (Woody himself won four). But he's been dogged by controversy about his personal life. In the USA and NYC, he's been "cancelled" -- actors won't work with him, financiers won't pay for his movies, and he can't (or barely can) get them distributed in this country. He's been making his last several movies in Europe but in America and NYC he's a pariah.
And yet ...
He's not gone. And even though his latest movie, Coupe de Chance, hasn't been released in NYC or elsewhere in America (at least not yet), apparently there are secret screenings of it around town that have become quite popular.
In short, Woody's career now exists in the "undervelt."
Woody is no longer a mighty, acclaimed filmmaker. He's fallen hard. But now he's a figure of rebellion, someone people want to ignore but can't -- a perfect denizen of the undervelt. And it shows that his impact and his importance to cinema is so profound that, even though everyone in respectable society says they hate him, they obviously still care enough about his work to go see it -- albeit in secret.
Woody's work is now like the last Targaryen, rattling around in exile but forever messing with the heads of its antagonists.
I know there are many who bemoan "cancel culture" (I've done so myself in the past). Reading about how the work of a decades-long, Oscar-winning auteur is now being consumed like Western media in North Korea or pre-Internet porn is sad, whatever you think about him.
However, I view this whole "cancel culture" thing in another perspective.
First, no filmmaker is guarenteed or promised massive distribution. Most movies never get seen, many directors get their movies dumped into barely enough theaters to cover the movie's catering bill. No director, not even a formerly big-time one like Woody, is promised a big audience. A big career is not a right -- it's a privilege, a privilege few get and most eventually lose, one way or another. I really don't feel sorry for him or any of these "cancelled" people.
Second, even if you become hated, even if you're "cancelled" or ignored, if you do good work, no matter under what conditions or in what environment, it will last. People can try to "cancel" it, suppress it, censor it, belittle it, ignore it, whatever -- but it doesn't matter. It stands firm like the rock of Gibralter. It leaves the haters in the dust. It cannot be erased or ignored. It lives. It thrives. It stands the test of time and, eventually, inevitably, leaves the haters in the dust. The work rides high, even if its creator does not.
Third, I know what it's like to labor in the shadows, to have your work ignored, to live in the undervelt. But I persist. Because my work has impact and, most importantly, exists. This blog has been read nearly a million times. It's never gotten any kind of big outside attention or attention from the media, but it gets readers -- and always will.
Thus my message from the undervelt -- don't worry, don't get crazy about "cancel culture". Just do the work. Do it well. No matter what happens to you, good or bad, whether you deserve it or not, your work will last. The impact of your work and your life will outlast everyone and everything else.
So get to work -- there's no time to lose. And, hey, I can tell you first hand, the undervelt ain't that bad.
Before the 21st century Golden Age of Television, the 1970s through the 1990s was the Golden Age of the Television Mini-Series.
Whenever regular TV shows went on vacation, the networks would broadcast these multi-episodes series that were a little less than a movie but a little more than a regular TV show. Some of these mini-series, like Roots from 1977 or the 1980s civil war drama North & South, were great, classic TV. But a lot of it was stuff like the 1987 soapy mini-series I'll Take Manhattan, based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Judith Krantz (who wrote a lot of these kinds of books that then became mini-series).
The show's IMDB description tells you everything you need to know about it: "Maxi Amberville tries to save the magazine empire her father built, but her treacherous uncle stands in the way." The Amberville's are supposed to be a Murdoch-like, more like Sy Hersch-like, family running a magazine company very much like Conde Nast. The spirit of this show -- family members battle for control of a media empire -- is basically Succession thiry-years earlier, although nowhere near as funny, well-written, well-acted or well ... everything ... as the HBO show. The story is formulaic, the acting hammy, the dialogue stupid, everything's predictable and dopey.
So why does Mr NYC choose to remember it?
Because it's a relic,a time-stamp, of its age -- the Go-Go 1980s Reagan-era business drama that was very popular at the time. And because it's a very NYC story -- Money! Sex! Publishing! Betrayal! Donald Trump! Lots of shots of the World Trade Centers! Lots of music with saxapohones! Secretative calls being made in phone booths in the pouring rain in at nighttime! It's all there.
The most interesting thing about it is the cast -- it's truly a time capsule of actors and actresses whose careers were either on the way up or on the way down.
Valerie Bertinelli plays the heroic Maxi. She had just finished her long run on the hit TV show One Day At A Time and this show, one gueses, was supposed to demonstrate her great acting chops. She is a great actress but this show was clearly not the right vehicle in which to do so.
The always wonderful Barry Bostwick plays her father, the company's founder, and he's probably the best thing in it. A just-about-to-be James Bond Timothy Dalton is in it as are veteran TV actors Jack Scalia and Perry King who plays the no-good rotten scheming villanous uncle as a no-good rotten scheming villanous uncle.
There's also a few actors who went on to greatness: Jane Kaczmarek, thirteen years before Macolm in the Middle, Chris Noth a few years before Law & Order and Sex and the City, a pre-My Two Dads/Step-by-Step Staci Keanan, and, most notably, future Oscar-winner Julianne Moore ten years before Boogie Nights.
Also, future President and aspiring fascist dictator Donald Trump has a cameo because they filmed some of it at Trump Tower and gave him an obligatory cameo. You might otherwise call this show Trump's Bedtime for Bonzo.
It has to be seen to believed. But I'll give this show credit -- 1987 was the era of Bonfire of the Vanities NYC, the start of the crack epidemic, when people loved to hate this city -- and this show, at that time, dared to celebrate it.
Here are a couple of episodes (you can find the rest on YouTube) as well as some clips and promos. It was truly part of a TV era we probably will never see again.
Food and porn -- we Americans consume lots of both. These days you can easily get food delivered to your house or dialup billions of porn videos on your computer. But just because food and porn are so easily accessible doesn't mean that writing and commenting about them intelligently is easy. It's a real skill requiring lots of hard (pun intended) work.
Someone who does that hard work and writes and comments quite smartly on both food and porn is Claire Lower -- the Senior Food Editor at Lifehacker.com and co-host of the "You Like That?" podcast about the Golden Age of Porn. In both her food writing and on her podcast, Claire makes observations and provides insights that are funny, smart, sweet, and -- like food and porn -- simply irresistible.
Claire was kind enough of answers some of Mr NYC's questions about her writing and podcast. A resident of Portland, OR she also answers some of my questions about how her city -- like mine -- has changed over the years, and how both seem to be at risk of becoming less sexy and fun.
Tell us a little bit about your background and your work as a food editor.
What’s the best part about being a food editor? Do you get to eat all the time?
I’ve been writing about food for almost a decade, and a full-time staffer at Lifehacker for 6 years, where I’m currently the senior food editor. I do get to eat all the time, but it’s not always what I want to eat in that moment. It’s nice when I get to develop an egg recipe in the morning, but this morning I ended up wrapping a pickle spear in fried cheese. Still good, just a little weird at 10 a.m.
I do love my job though. I’m able to talk about food in what I hope is a very accessible and fun way, and help people eat better.
What inspired you to create the “You Like That Podcast?”
I actually made a slideshow of Golden Age films for Lifehacker, and then I realized I actually had a lot to say, and a lot of love for these movies. I just think they’re so interesting from a historical perspective, and I’ve always been a slut for the 70s.
What’s your favorite thing about doing the podcast and the most challenging?
I really love finding interesting historical tidbits and anecdotes to share with Catie [her co-host] and our listeners, and I really like watching porn with a more critical eye. It can be challenging to watch THAT much porn, however. I watched Taboo five times to prepare for our most recent episode, because I wanted to listen to all of the commentaries.
What’s your favorite era for “Golden Age” adult films – the 1970s, 1980s, or another?
Late 70s and early 80s are great, but I really like the early Golden Age, right after loops kinda started to fade out and make way for capital-F films.
What makes a “good” adult film?
Jamie Gillis. Just kidding. I think a good adult film doesn’t have to be super serious, but I like a bit of plot, well shot sex scenes, and sets and locations. Give me something to look at! I don’t care is the story is goofy, I want to believe these two people have a reason for having sex with each other. Doesn’t even have to be a good reason.
Has there really ever been an adult movie where the story or the performances were compelling beyond the sex?
Oh, absolutely. Immediately, Mascara by Henri Pachard comes to mind. The sex in it is really interesting and inclusive, but the story about the relationship between the two women is so well told and acted. Both Lisa De Leeuw and Lee Carrol give these incredibly nuanced performances that are heartbreaking in moments, but they’re also very funny. It’s also got a great score, and a consistent mood.
Who are some of your favorite adult films and performers, past or present, and why?
Oh my gosh, so many. Jamie Gillis, R. Bola, Lisa DeLeew, Kay Parker, Herschel Savage (who I’m actually pretty good friends with), Richard Pacheco, Seka, Veronica Hart, Christy Canyon, Ginger Lynn, Andrea True (who also put out some great disco and rock records), Mike Horner. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone and going to kick myself later.
A lot of my favorites were either actors who started doing porn for easy money, particularly Gillis, Bola, and Savage. I do think Gillis was the ultimate male porn star. A true pervert and artist. I always feel like Gillis is subtly mocking the audience, which I like.
But it’s also not that deep. Some people are just fun to watch fuck.
Who would be your dream guest on the podcast?
We’ve actually got a lot of my dream guests lined up to be on here. We already released our Christy Canyon episode, we got to interview Lisa Cintrice about Mascara, and we’re currently editing our Howie Gordon/Richard Pacheco interview. Herschel Savage and Veronica Hart will probably be on at some point. I guess a dream guest would be Gillis, because that is obviously impossible and could only take place in a dream.
Are you a fan of the movie Boogie Nights?
I am, haha. I love PTA, and I love the 70s, and I love that pool party scene with that Three Dog Night song, even though Herschel told me that’s all a fairytale. They didn’t really all hang out in cliques and throw pool parties.
I do like the limo scene, which is based on Gillis’ On the Prowl Series. Tom Byron has told a great story about how Jamie wasn’t thrilled with it; he thought they took this beautiful thing he made and made it sad and tawdry, whereas On the Prowl is tawdry, but still kind of light and fun. But I think you have to be a real pervert to see the difference in the two.
What would you say is the biggest difference between “Golden Age” porn and today’s Internet stuff?
Lisa Cintrice said something in her interview that really stuck with me. She said “it’s all loops again.” And she’s right. There’s barely any plot, no real production value, and I just think digital looks so much worse than film. I know there is good porn being made, and I’m glad that women seem to have more control over their money, but the porn film is very hard to find.
Moving on: how long have you lived and Portland and what do you love about the city?
I’ve been here eight or nine years. I actually really like the weather. I like my house. I like that there are record stores everywhere and a good food and beverage scene. I also hunt and fish so it’s nice to have all that stuff nearby.
Are you a fan of the show “Portlandia” and was that an accurate or out-of-date parody of the city?
It’s barely a parody. I liked it before I moved here, but it’s hard to watch if you’ve lived here a while. You can still find “death to Fred and Carrie” graffiti in dive bar bathrooms. How has the city changed in the time you’ve lived there?
Yeah, it’s just more sterile. More condos and little shops with Notorious RBG mugs.
I’m a New Yorker and it feels like NYC has become a less sexy, less wild, city than it used to be, thanks to gentrification. Portland strikes me as another sexy, wild city that has undergone a lot of change. Is it still wild and sexy or is it getting more boring?
We still have more strip clubs per capita than any other city, and several sex clubs of varying repute. They did shut down Hawthorne Theater though, and that was like the last seedy porn theater. I never got to go and I regret it.
Do you have a favorite adult film set in NYC – or Portland?
Mascara is my favorite movie set in NYC. It’s so moody and pretty. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a porn set in Portland. (I never go to Hump or anything like that.)
Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
I really think it’s important to watch these old fuck films. We forget that porn was illegal and dangerous to make, and I really do consider those early actors and directors to be free speech heroes. They really are stars to me.
Thanks Claire! You can follow her on Twitter at @Clairelizzie.
Happy New Year! Before we march any further into 2023, I want briefly want to remember someone who left us 2022 -- the wild comedian Gilbert Gottfried.
A Brooklyn-native and lifelong New Yorker, Gilbert had a massive 40+ year career as a standup comic, actor, voiceover artist, commercial pitchman, and TV host. He should never had had the big career that he did: he was physically unattractive, his voice was grating, he was beyond offensive, he was a just plain weird. In short, Gilbert Gottfried was the total opposite of what it normally takes to succeed in showbusiness and yet he did, brilliantly, because he was funny as hell, a total original. Audiences couldn't get enough of him because, in so many ways, he was them and they him.
Gilbert had some notable career highs -- he was in Beverly Hills Cops II, was a voice in the 1993 classic Aladdin, and was featured in the popular documentary The Aristocrats. He appeared on the Howard Stern radio show many time, birthing many classic bits. He was always on TV doing standup and selling out clubs. He was everywhere, all the time, and very popular.
Gilbert was also part of the notorious 1980-81 cast of Saturday Night Live, (famous for being totally awful but for giving the world Eddie Murphy).
In the 1990s, Gilbert hosted the USA cable channel show Up All Night, a truly bizarre thing where, on Friday nights, he would introduce bizarre B-movies then do shtick before and after commercial breaks. Gilbert hosted the Friday night version and then Rhonda Shear hosted the Saturday night version (I think I'm right). I would watch Up All Night and enjoyed both of them more than the movies (it's because Gilbert was funny and Rhonda was hot) and it was a real relic of my youth.
Gilbert died in April 2022 at age 67. The world, and NYC, is much less funny without him.
I really need to start an "ahead of his time" label for this blog because, once again, Mr NYC is ahead of his time -- specifically, this time, about nine months. In March, 2022 I wrote a blog post about Mayor Eric Adams and how his nascent mayoralty seemed to be all about flash over substance, about how he had no clear vision or policies for the city, about his associations with questionable characters, and, most of all, just about what a weirdo he is.
Well, now, Vanity Fair has written an article about his first year in office and concludes much of the same thing as I did. Read it, then read my blog post from nine months earlier, and see if I wasn't ahead of the curve in this assessment of Mayor Adams.
That said, I will give him this -- Mayor Eric Adams is who he says he is, and his resume prior to being mayor was impressive -- more than two decades in the NYPD followed by service as a State Senator and a Brooklyn Borough President. He is, at least in NYC political terms, the real deal, l'article genuine -- even if we don't know where he really lives. To sum up Adams, he's a political heavyweight and a policy lightweight.
Even though there's a stench of dishonesty and sleaze around Eric Adams, he is who he says he is and worked really hard to get where he is -- literally over decades.
Which, of course, brings us to George Santos, the new Congressman-elect from Northeast Queens (and Nassau County but who cares about that?) who's entire life -- his education, his resume, his finances, his religion, maybe even his sexual orientation, is completely bogus. How a complete charlatan like this could get elected in the New York area is well, if not completely, described by Steve Isreal who used to represent this district in Congress several years ago. His conclusion is that Santos got through due to complete and utter apathy by the NY political class, the media, and voters. This is obvious, not only in the case of Santos, but in the case of a recently elected Brooklyn assemblyman named Lester Chang who, it turns out, doesn't really live in the district. If his opponents and the media had done their homework before the election, they would have exposed all this and the voters would have known that frauds were running to represent them. But they didn't know, and now New York has these twin political messes to deal with.
And it got me thinking.
Recently New York magazine published a bunch of articles about "nepo babies" or people who have succeeded, in this case, in showbusiness largely because they have parents who were already in the business -- and had all of the connections and power needed to launch their kids' careers. Nepotism is as old as human history, of course, parents have always wanted to give their kids and family members every advantage to succeed -- power begets power, wealth begets wealth, opportunity begets opportunity. There's a reason why so much of human history has had hereditary monarchies and titles, why the legal concepts of inheritance and primogeniture exist, and so forth -- families want to keep their wealth and power intact for generations to come; they want, in a word, legacy.
For example, the great director John Huston has been dead for over 35 years but his son, daughter and grandson all have big acting careers. The Huston name is still important in Hollywood today, even decades after the big man's death (and John Huston's father was an actor as well so there you go).
The triumph of nepotism in America, of course, makes a mockery of the concept of "meritocracy", a cherished American notion that everyone who achieves success did so only through their hard work, and that nothing else matters. This is and always has been BS, of course -- hard work without connections is meaningless. Family support can be vital. But nepotism is powerful not only because powerful, wealthy, and highly-connected people can create great opportunities for their kids. It's also because people who come from such families have what you might call instant credibility, you can do an instant background check on them, you know who they are because you know who their parents and families are. You know the ecosystem, the environment they came out. Nepo babies are a brand, of sorts, a known quantity, and there's an almost instant comfort level with them because you know "their people."
That's why, decade after decade, people named Kennedy and Bush kept getting elected to political office. We know them, even if we don't really like them.
And that is the huge barrier that people without such connections, without such family power, who are starting out in their careers, face. They're outsiders, unknown, almost bewildering creatures. Such career strivers, such outsiders trying to get inside, are often derisively called "climbers" or "gatecrashers" or "wannabes." They are held suspect until they prove themselves worthy. They have to prove themselves a lot, they have to be the best of the best of the best, they have to smart and crafty as hell, they have to be able to find and exploit every opportunity, they have to work really hard and have a lot of extra special luck to "make it" -- and, as soon as they do, such "self-made" people become "nepo parents" all their own.
George Santos and Lester Chang felt that they needed to lie and cheat in order to thrive. They are blatant climbers but they obviously didn't posses the superior skills, hard work, or clear opportunities to succeed honestly, to succeed on their own -- so they lied and cheated. They're flimflam men, and they are the kinds of people that scare what you might call the Establishment, the gatekeepers, the powers-that-be. The Establishment doesn't want criminals or liars or people they deem unworthy in their midst. So this is why nepotism and "nepo babies" thrive -- better to go with who you know, better to stay in your comfort zone, better to give opportunities to the people are already "pre-approved." The Establishment doesn't want to let in someone who hasn't, in their view, demonstrated the superior abilities to earn membership in it -- but coming from the right family means you're there already.
The Establishment doesn't lift the gate to just anyone who doesn't already have family on the other side of it.
In many ways, I feel sorry for Santos and Chang -- they see what others have, namely money and power, and these guys want it to -- but they have neither the connections nor the skills nor the opportunities to get it on their own, they are unable to do the very hard work to get it, to prove that they're better than the nepo babies around them -- so they lie.
And compared to these guys and any other possible "flimflammers" in our midst, going with a nepo baby is a safe choice.
This summer I finally got around to seeing a movie that had been on my "When I get around to it" list for literally decades -- the original 1980 classic Fame.
The late great movie critic Robert Ebert wrote a review of Fame when it was originally released that is so good, so beautifully descriptive, that I'll quote part of it here (I certainly can't write anything better):
"Fame" is a genuine treasure, moving and entertaining, a movie that understands being a teen-ager as well as Breaking Away did, but studies its characters in a completely different milieu. It's the other side of the coin: A big-city, aggressive, cranked-up movie to play against the quieter traditions of Breaking Away's small Indiana college town. Fame is all New York City. It's populated by rich kids, ghetto kids, kids with real talent, and kids with mothers who think they have real talent. They all go into the hopper, into a high school of kids who are worked harder because they're "special" -- even if they're secretly not so sure they're so special.
Fame centers around a bunch of kids over their four years at the High School of the Performing Arts, otherwise known as "LaGuardia." On the one hand they are regular high school kids, blossoming teenagers with all the regular wants and fears and academic pressures, but, in addition to their studies, they are also training to become actors, dancers, and musicians. Drawn to the school from all walks of life, from across all five boroughs -- rich and poor, black and white, very talented to barely talented -- they work hard, dream hard, and experience numerous joys and heartbreaks. The movie centers around Montgomery, an actor and closeted homosexual; Lisa, a dancer who becomes an actor; Coco -- a dancer and singer; LeRoy, a dancer who is as troubled as he is talented; Ralph, an actor and aspiring comedian, along with Doris, a shy fellow actor who falls in love with him; Bruno, a brilliant musician; and Hillary, a wise-cracking dancer who falls in love with LeRoy. The movie does not have a simple, straightforward plot but, instead, shows a series of interlinking stories, following the characters as their lives change and evolve over their four years together.
Released in May 1980, Fame became a sensation, a surprise box office hit considering that it had no famous stars, no simple or traditional plot, and was about, of all things, a bunch of odd-looking teenagers at a performing arts high school in NYC. It came at a pivotal moment for both New York City and America: NYC was still recovering from its mid-1970s almost-bankruptcy, and was still plagued with its "Fear City" moniker; culturally, however, it was thriving -- "Saturday Night Live" was the hottest thing on TV, Woody Allen was at the height of his career, Studio 54 was raging, and Broadway had big shows like "A Chorus Line" and "Annie" running. And then here comes along this little gem of a movie about a bunch of ragtag NYC kids trying to make it through high school while starting a career in the arts -- and audiences loved it.
America, on the other hand, was changing -- Ronald Reagan and the triumph of cultural and economic conservative was months away, and the country seemed more than ready to rid itself of the tumult of the 1960s and '70s. Fame, in some ways, was a last hurrah of that era, a paean to a time that was troubled but also creatively alive and exciting, a celebration of the arts and artists, and a love letter to NYC, a city that the rest of the country loved to hate. It was an early middle-finger to the political and cultural world to come -- but also, ironically, the unofficial beginning of the 1980s teen movie crazy.
Even though the movie is called Fame, it could also have been called "Sweaty" -- the students literally sweat for their art (especially the dancers) as much as they are sweating about their futures of making it in showbusiness. There are many uncomfortable scenes where the characters face the limitations of their talents, their relationships, their aspirations, their place in this crazy world of the arts. While this movie is a celebration of the artistic spirit, it's not sentimental in any way -- it brutally shows you the grimy, often sleazy showbiz world these kids inhabit, without sugarcoating it.
In that way, it's a real NYC movie.
As you might imagine, Fame is full of amazing acting, dancing and music. There are beautiful scenes of dancers moving gracefully, of musicians giving their all to make the best sounds they're capable of, of actors trying to nail a scene, and also wonderful show-stopping songs. These include the Oscar-winning title song "Fame (I'm Gonna Live Forever)", "Out Here on My Own", "Hot Lunch", and the amazing final number "I Sing the Body Electric" that is performed in rousing spirit at graduation. Everyone in the whole movie sings, "And in time, and in time, we will all ... be ... stars!" Most of them, of course, will never become stars -- but they can and should always dream.
And that's what this movie is all about -- always dreaming, never giving up, even when the world tells you that you should.
Fame has had a surprising after-life since it came out over 42 years ago. In 1982, it became a TV show that ran for five years, with some of the movie's actors joining the show along with a whole new cast of characters and stories. In the late 1990s there was a second, short-running series called "Fame: LA" with all new characters and stories set on the West Coast. And then, in 2009, there was a remake called, unimaginatively, Fame that the critics hated but had some box office success (Kelsey Grammer was in it if you can believe it). Fame was a forerunner to other "I wanna be in showbusiness" projects like Smash or Glee or even The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. In seems, in this era of a million TV shows, like the Fame property or IP or whatever is just ripe for a comeback -- heck, if they can bring back Full House and Quantum Leap, why not Fame?
A few ironies about this movie and my review of it:
First, the director. Even though Fame is a down-and-dirty NYC movie, it was directed by a British guy -- Alan Parker -- whose previous film had been the intense, Oscar-winning, Turkish-set triller, Midnight Express. Fame was obviously a big change of pace, and he would go on to direct other arts-centric movies like The Commitments and other intense movies like Mississippi Burning. A great talent, he died in 2020.
Second, Irene Cara. Oh, how I loved her! I was already planning to write this review before I learned, just days ago, that Irene Cara who played Coco in "Fame" had died at the age of 63. She is amazing in this movie, and performs its most brutal, emotionally intense scene. She also sings most of the songs, luminously, and, if someone became a big star out of "Fame", it was her. Three years later she would win an Oscar and a Grammy for writing and singing the song "Flashdance ... What a Feeling!", easily the best dance pop song ever. She was an amazing talent whose career and life ended far too early -- but her songs will truly "live forever."
Third, and finally, my "history" (of sorts) with Antonia Franceschi, who plays the funny, horny, and super-talented dancer Hillary in Fame. Antonia was a young aspiring dancer at the School of American Ballet when she was cast in Fame and, interestingly enough, even though the movie became a huge hit, Antonia eschewed an acting career to spend the next twelve years as a dancer at the New York City Ballet before embarking on a long career as a choreographer. Very recently, I contacted her to see if she would do an interview for this blog but it didn't quite work out, even though she was very polite and informative in her replies.
But here is the plot twist (of sorts) that was promised ... drum roll ...
I've blogged about how, back in the mid-1980s, I appeared in "The Nutcracker" at the New York City Ballet. Well, I recently went back to look at one of the old programs I saved for my run in "The Nutcracker" and guess who appeared with me (and many others) in the opening party-scene -- that's right, Antonia Franceschi! So yours truly, Mr NYC, has performed on stage with a cast member from Fame! How cool is that?
Fame is truly a classic, a movie that may be decades old but that feels so fresh, so alive, so true-to-life that it never gets old, never gets boring, never feels outdated.
It's a must-watch for anyone whoever was young, whoever loved the arts, and whoever loved NYC.
This past week I was in Germany for a work BUT I did get to do two side trips -- one to the Rhine River Valley and another to the city of Heidelberg. Both are located in the State of Hesse and are beautiful and fascinating. they gave me a new appreciation for Germanic culture (the good kind, not the obvious scary kind).
One of the first things we saw (after a scary by amazing cable car ride) was this huge statue erected right after the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, a monument to the triumph of Kaiser Wilhelm 1 in that war, uniting Prussian and various German principalities into the mighty German Empire (it lasted until 1918 after World War I, the country then turning into a socialist republic, followed by the Nazi-era Third Reich, followed by the Federal Republic of West Germany/Communist-era German Democratic Republic, followed by the present-day re-united Federal Republic of Germany -- I know, it's exhausting).
Anyway, this statue is of Germania, the Goddess or Godmother of Germany, dating from the time of the Holy Roman Emperor -- she's Germany's Romulus, its spiritual founding mother and the personification of its people. Beneath her are figurines of Kaiser Wilhem and his generals and information about the great victors that made the Empire.
Then we trekked around a path that provided amazing vistas of the Rhine River, vineyards, and castles popping out of the trees below. Hesse is the home of Riesling, the wonderful white wine, so vines are everywhere, and our hiking trail even had a small "wine hut" where we stopped for a spritz -- a small glass of Riesling combined with water. It was very refreshing and fortified me to the complete the hike.
We also saw some nice architecture, a funny sign, and a beautiful old church before we took a ski-lift ride back down and had a lovely dinner (I didn't take pictures out of fear of dropping my camera but I've committed the images of the great view to memory).
Next day we went to Heidelberg via the Autobahn -- I was told there's no speed-limit on this infamous highway but the cars didn't go any faster than you'd find on an American one.
When we got to Heidelberg, the first thing we saw was anti-vaxx march which was a little depressing but, hey, it confirms that Germany is a free country (I took a video of it but it's too large to upload here). On a happier note, we took a tram to another cable car that took us to Schloss Heidelberg, a castle with a long, amazing history that connects it to various wars and royals and that has spectacular views of the city of Heidelberg and the Neckar River that flows through it. It was overwhelming -- and it included some interesting signs and modern art on the grounds.
I spent most of my time working but, on my final night, I got to enjoy some delicious Lager in a stein and schnitzel for dinner.
All in all, a great trip, and I hope to visit others part of Germany some day!
About a year-and-a-half ago I blogged about one of my favorite movies -- Jim Jarmusch's 1991 classic Night On Earth. Set in five taxicabs in five cities around the world on one night, it's a funny and heartwarming look at the interactions and fleeting relationships that cabbies and their passengers develop.
The movies takes place in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki. The NYC story is about a guy trying to get from Manhattan back to Brooklyn and is picked up by a German immigrant -- who can barely drive. Along the way they find the guy's sister-in-law walking the streets, and craziness ensues. The German cabbie was played by the great Armin Mueller Stahl, and his passengers were the brilliant Giancarlo Esposito and Rosie Perez.
Recently Giancarlo and Rosie, who are both in big shows right now, gave a joint interview where they talk about the first movie they did together -- Spike Lee's 1989 classic Do The Right Thing -- and then Night on Earth.
Nothing better than two great actors reminiscing about two great movies they made more than 30 years ago -- and showing that talent and superior work at truly timeless.
