I'm fascinated by stories of failure. As a failure myself, it's so much more interesting than success. That's why I read books and watch documentaries about movies that flopped, about wars that went wrong, about various other things that went awry. Somewhere along the way someone made a decision or decisions that seemed correct at the time -- but that turned out instead to be really wrong. Failure is about the intersection of intent with human falibility, about the clash between dreams and reality.
I'm a fan of failure.
Therefore, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, I'd like to share these hilarious clips from the 1994 movie The Madness of King George where George III mourns the "paradise lost" that was "the colonies." Of course two decades later the musical Hamilton would have a more comic take on George III's defeat -- but after 250 years, we won't "be back."
Well this is certainly a Mr NYC first: I'm reviewing a current Broadway show that I had previously blogged about as being a historical curiosity relegated to the distant past.
I'm talking of course about Chess, the messy and failed 1988 musical that has been revived to massive success on Broadway. In 2021 I wrote a lot about how its various problems and controversies doomed it almost 40 years ago, and I mused about whether any producers might have the courage to rework and revive it.
And they did!
Perhaps Mr NYC played a small part on this? (Who knows, only that I was ahead of my time.) So here's my review of the revival:
Set in 1979, the plot involves two brilliant chess masters, American Freddie and Soviet Russian Anatoly, who are set to compete in Milan. The match is heavy with Cold War politics, and the CIA and the KGB want Freddie to lose the match so that the Russians will be willing to engage in the Salt II Nuclear Talks. Freddie doesn't want to do this, obviously. Caught between them in Florence, Freddie's lover whom he mistreats and who, through various personal and political events, moves over to Anatoly -- who then defects to England with Florence, leaving his wife and children behind. Eventually, four years later, they all come together at another chess match in Bangkok -- the all of their fates intertwine and explode.
This version of Chess has a new book that simplifies and clarifies the story. Some of the songs have been put in a more logical order that does a better job of pushing the narrative story. As for the story itself, it still doesn't really work as being quite as compelling as it aims to be, and the characters are a bit two-dimensional. That said, it never lags and you're never bored. Not at all! It's massively entertaining.
Chess is both helped and hindered by a narrator who explains all of the action and the historical context of the show. Because this version is being staged almost 40 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is therefore presented in a "once upon a time ..." fashion which gives the audience more perspective -- something obviously not possible in 1988. So that was good. Unfortunately the narrator tells a lot of dumb, corny, jokes that gives the show some humor (it's otherwise pretty heavy) but that is tonally dissonant with the rest of the story.
However, the songs are amazing, and the production is brilliantly staged.
Lea Michele, as Florence, is beyond great -- she is a true Broadway star, the best of her generation, and her version of "Nobody's Side" is so hot, so on fire, it nearly burns the theater down. Aaron Tveit as Freddie and Nicholas Christopher as Anatoly are also great, incredible singers and actors who play these tortured geniuses struggling to survive. The rest of the supporting cast is strong and I must give a shout-out especially the ensemble which is on stage for the entire show and sings and dances throughout, performing many complicated numbers. They are the heart of this show and are wonderful.
So see Chess for a good time, a piece of fun Broadway theater -- a reminder that yesterday's failure can be tomorrow's triumph.
There are, and have been, royal scandals galore -- Mrs Fitzherbert! Mayerling! Rasputin! Wallis Simpson! Epstein! Megxit!
And, of course, Diana.
Her notoriously failed 1980s marriage to the then-Prince of Wales/now King Charles III has become the stuff of legend.
The irony is that, while the marriage itself was a failure, as a royal union it was a huge success: Diana produced an heir and a spare, and they've now produced heirs and spares. The marriage of Charles and Diana may not have lasted but its legacy has kept the dynastic royal line for the House of Windsor secure for the rest of this century.
But did you know that the future Monarchs of the United Kingdom have not only American but also NYC blood?
See, Princess Diana's great-grandma was a New York-native named Frances Ellen Work. She was a classic "dollar bride", a rich new money American who married a broke English bloke with a title.
The marriage was as big a disaster as Frances Ellen's great-granddaughter's -- and Frances' father forced them to get divorced and bring her two sons back to America (much like Queen Elizabeth would force her son to divorce Diana and hand over their two sons). Frances Ellen's rich American father not only hated his British ex-son-in-law but gnerally hated the lust of Britain's nobility for American women and money.
And here we get to a hinge of history.
Frances Ellen's father stipulated in his will that his sons must never go back to England. They must agree never to set foot in the UK or forfeit their $14 million inheritance. But, when the old man died, the sons appealed to their relatives -- who had also inherited money -- to see if they would agree to waive this clause and let them get their cash without the travel restriction. They agreed. And then one of the sons, Edmund, moved to the UK, married a woman named Ruth, and they had a daughter named Frances. This Frances then married Viscount Spencer and their daughter Diana would then go into history.
Imagine, for moment, if Edmund's relative's had so no. Imagine if they had enforced this clause. Edmund wouldn't have moved to the UK, married, and fathered Princess Diana's mother. And the course of British and world history would be very different.
But it's not. And one day the crown of the UK will be worn by someone with NYC lineage.
Listen to this great podcast about the life and legacy of Frances Ellen Work. It's a story of booze, bucks, broads, gambling, divorce, and glittering crown.
The subject of immigration has been a political hot topic for years, decades, now. It's a paradox: America is a country built by immigrants, almost all of us are the children of immigrants, and yet most of this country hates immigrants.
America is a contradictory country if there ever was one.
But a lot of the war of American immigration comes between those whose families have been here for years, decades, or centuries and more recent arrivals. For a lot of people, the old immigrants (i.e. them or their families, usually white) were great but the new ones (usually not white) ... not so much.
One of my favorite movies about the clash between the Old World and the New, between the nativist Whites and non-White arrivals, is the 1985 crime flick Year of the Dragonthat came out in the summer of 1985, forty friggin' years ago.
It's a tight, fast-paced crime thriller about an out-of-control NYC cop named Stanley White (played amazingly by Mickey Rourke at the height of his 1980's movie career) who is determined to take down the Chinatown gangs, the Triads. The Triads are at war with the Italian mob, the Thai mobs, as well as each other. The main crime boss Stanley is trying to bust is a young, handsome, very smart guy named Joy Tai (played really well by John Lone).
The problem is that Stanley is being thwarted by his bosses in the police department who are willing to look the other way as long as they get their bribes. Into the mix comes a young, gorgeous, Asian-American TV reporter (played by an ex-model named Arianne) who wants to help Stanley bust the gangs, free the slave labor that the crime bosses exploit, and make Chinatown a crime-free, honest place. (In their first meeting he tells her, "You're a helluva lot sexier than those other broads on the other channels." Sweet man.)
See, Stanley is a tough, politically-incorrect, totally honest, incorruptible cop who doesn't care how the Chinese did things in the old country, or how they ignore law enforcement -- no, he's gonna make them follow the law like everyone else, "even the Polacks." What evolves is a cool story about how personalities, violence, greed, and an overwhelming passion for culture and justice make NYC (and America) a wild place. I won't give it away but the ending chase scene is classic. Quentin Tarantino himself said it's one of his favorite scenes in all of cinema, and that Year of the Dragon is one of his personal favorites.
Mickey Rourke is great in this movie, a really fun, blazing talent. It's a shame that his movie career became so hit or miss (mostly miss) after this but his perfomance is a reminder of what a talent he is. John Lone was also great in this movie, and shortly after that he starred in the 1987 Best Picture Oscar-winner The Last Emperor because of his performance in this movie. The only sore point is Arianne - she really can't act and she didn't have much a movie career after this. Even the director said afterwards about her performance "I tried ..." But all of the other actors are good, and
Year of the Dragon was the first movie that director Michael Cimino made after the historic debacle of Heaven's Gate in 1980. Cimino's first movie, the 1974 Clint Eastwood crime caper Thunderbolt & Lightfoot had made Cimino a notable director but then his 1978 operatic Vietnam masterpiece The Deer Hunter made him an Oscar-winning, big-time director. But his attempt to make another epic masterpiece with the Western Heaven's Gate was such an overlong, ponderous and financial failure that he didn't make another movie until this one in 1985 -- and it was a return to form, in a way, back to the taught crime movie that started his career. And interestingly, even though this movie really captures Manhattan's Chinatown well, you really feel and small the streets when you watch it, it was actually all shot on a soundstage in North Carolina!
Cimino was an intriguing figure -- a director of both great talent and great sloppiness. I've blogged about his bizarre life and career many times over the years but when he hit -- like with Thunderbolt, Deer Hunter and Year of the Dragon, he hit the bullseye.
Even though this movie came out forty years ago, I think it's more relevant than ever. Watch the whole thing below and let me know what you think!
One hundred years ago today, the third, relatively short, novel by F. Scott Fitzgeral. Titled The Great Gatsby, it got mixed reviews, sold poorly, and was generally viewed a failure.
Now, a full century later, its regarded by critics and generations of readers as one of the greatest novels ever written, and the greatest American novel of the 20th century.
The American dream -- its unending allure and its many dangers -- that the novel explores and lays bare, remains essential, more relevant than ever before.
The green light still shines bright. And tonight, the lights of the Empire State Building will turn green.
I've written a lot about Gatsby over the years so I won't rehash it here. But I always go back to this book, always re-read it, because the of the haunting final line: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Thirty years ago today, right here in NYC, the 37th President of the United States Richard Nixon died at the age of 81.
Like many, Nixon has always fascinated me -- he was perhaps one of the smartest people ever to become president and his rise from poverty in California to the heights of American power is truly astonishing. But he was so paranoid, so full of rage and anger, that he never seemed to enjoy his historic success or where his brilliant mind had taken him in life. Ultimately his rage and paranoia overwhelmed his genius and accomplishments, leading to his presidential and reputational demise.
But I come not to praise or criticize Richard Nixon but to bury him (again) along with the other US Presidents who have died in NYC. Nixon is the most recent of four presidents who expired within the five boroughs. The others are:
- James Monroe, 5th US President, died in NYC on July 4th, 1831 from heart failure at the age of 73.
- Chester Arthur, 21st US President, died in NYC on November 18th, 1886 from a stroke at the age of 57. He's also only one of two presidents (the other being George Washington) who took the oath of office in NYC as well.
- Herbert Hoover, 31st US President, died in NYC on October 20th, 1964 from an internal hemorrhage at the age of 90.
I won't speculate if any of the current living presidents will pass away in NYC but I can't think of a better place for someone who achieved America's highest office to go into their permament reward.
And how appropriate that a criminal case against another former president is opening today in NYC on the anniversary of the death of this other criminal president -- an accountability that Nixon himself managed to avoid.
Two vaunted pieces of NYC culture are the 1972 movie The Godfather and the 1996 Broadway musical Rent. This year Rent celebrated its 25th anniversary and, next year, The Godfather will celebrate its 50th.
One is about the mafia in the 1940s and '50s; the other is about young people in the 1990s. While both works couldn't be more different, they remain beloved classics since they are brilliantly crafted stories about the city as a place of great opportunity and great danger. In short, both stories are about NYC as a place where the American dream thrives -- if it doesn't kill you first.
There is a new genre of info-tainment that's becoming more popular: books, documentaries, podcasts, and movies about the creation of classic works of entertainment. Sometimes, even not that classic.
And this year is no different. There is a new movie coming soon about Jonathan Larson, the creator of Rent, based on a meta-musical he wrote about the making of Rent called tick ... tick ... Boom. It's directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Also, there is a new book called Leave the Gun, Take the Cannolis about the making of The Godfather. You should read this fascinating excerpt about how Marlon Brando came to play -- and discover -- the character of Don Vito Corleone, one of the most iconic performances in cinema history.
Whenever you encounter a masterpiece, a perfectly realized work of art, it's easy to believe that it somehow grew out of the earth, emerged complete from the ground, like some kind of beautiful plant. But no. There was time when their creators would struggling, working hard, putting the pieces together, re-working and re-writing and re-doing it all, probably fighting feelings of failure and doubt, doing their level best to create something good -- and they had no idea at the time that they were creating something that would resonate across time. They just wanted to get it done and get it done as best they could. History would take it from there.
Can you love a city like you love a person? Can the pure romantic ardor for a particular urban environment replace, or possibly distract from, the complicated and messy entanglements of relationships?
That question, and the quixotic attempt to find the answer, is posed in the brilliant and gorgeous 2013 Italian film The Great Beauty. Set firmly in the calamitous Berlusconi period, the movie follows the sometimes glamorous, sometimes dissolute, often quite empty life of man named Jep. Recently turned 65, Jep works as a celebrity journalist, 40 years removed from his one and only triumph as a novelist. He spends his nights partying or interviewing his article subjects and sleeps away the daytime. He hangs out with his pretentious friends, drinks and smokes, and walks -- a lot -- around the city that entraps him and that he irrationally loves and cannot escape -- Rome. His goal, for too long, was to be the king of the Roman high life, the man who went to every party and could "make them a failure."
Now that phase of his life has left him sad. Jep needs a new purpose.
The film is a series of vignettes, a necklace of tales wrapped about the throat of a city that cages a man trying to find a goal in his rapidly receding life. In walking around and enjoying Rome, Jep is running away from his emotions, from a long and now deceased love, from a past once full of promise that has become a present of aimlessness, hopelessly trying to replace it with a passion for the great beauty of the Eternal City.
The movie's love for Rome, and its wistful meditation on the ravages of time and misplaced priorities, captures exactly what this blog feels about NYC -- and the course of life. Both the film and the blog are about how the love for a city affects and distracts us, and how the simple love for a plac helps us to leaven but also sometimes exacerbates the complexity of human entanglements. You can love a city -- a great city, a great beauty, like Rome or NYC -- but ultimately it cannot fulfill you like the love of a person. It can supplement but not replace that kind of love, enhance but not complete it. In loving a city, there is ultimately a sadness because it cannot really love you back.
But even then, you still can't abandon it.
If the 1974 movie Chinatown is about the corrupt and disturbing undercurrents of a big city -- in that case, Los Angeles -- revealed by private detective Jakes Gittes (one of its more infamous citizens), The Great Beauty is about the unrealistic romantic promise of one -- in this case, Rome -- by one of its obsessive inhabitants. One is about the darkness, the other about the light, of an alluring metropolis. But the two films, along with morose and romantic Issac in 1979's Manhattan, look at the man in the city, about the city, and of the city -- and how the man and their relationships with others are defined and mixed up by the city.
It is both a great and awful thing to have a great beauty in your life -- whether it's Rome, Los Angeles, NYC or someplace else. And yet that love for a city is the seed that can grow into a love for a person, and for life in general, and for something that is forever timeless and can give us true happiness.
In some ways, that's what Mr NYC is all about for me.
P.S. This expression of a complicated and ultimately unknowable love for a place, its people, and life, is best expressed not in words but in music.
The theme of The Great Beauty captures the film's melancholy romance about Rome the same way that the theme to Chinatown expresses that film's sleazy gaze and understanding of Los Angeles or the way that Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in Manhattan perfectly encapsulates the nervous energy and excitement of NYC.
You should listen to all three and you'll see -- or hear -- what I mean.
I recently watched the 1955 movie The Night of the Hunter, a gothic thriller directed by the great actor Charles Laughton, about a psycho preacher terrorizing two kids. At the time of its release it was a critical and commercial failure but, since then, it has come to be regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made -- and highly influential on directors like David Lynch, Spike Lee, and the Coen Brothers.
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies. Produced between his signature hits Company in 1970 and A Little Night Music in 1973, Follies was an odd and unconventional show about old-school entertainers reflecting on their broken lives. It was so unusual that, at the time, the critics hated it and audiences ignored it. But, in the intervening fifty years, Follies it has come to be seen as a classic, a proud entry in the Sondheim canon, with some brilliant songs like "I'm Still Here."
Sometimes something or someone is a failure in its or the person's time but becomes a great success later on. (Hopefully this blog will enjoy that same trajectory!)
This unusual fate has not befallen the Broadway musical Teddy & Alice. Produced in late 1987, it ran for two months before closing, an utter failure. Unlike some shows -- i.e. Chicago -- that failed in its original run but then was restaged to great success decades later, Teddy & Alice has never been revived on Broadway and remains totally forgotten.
So the ever-contrarian Mr NYC is going to remember it.
Recently I was strolling through Times Square and passed by the Minskoff Theater. I strained to remember that I saw a show there once, a long time ago, but couldn't remember it and then ... LIGHT BULB. I remembered the show! Teddy & Alice! It's a silly musical about President Theodore Roosevelt and his wild daughter Alice. The songs were adapted from John Philip Sousa and most of them are, well, forgettable. I don't really remember anything about the show itself but I remember that I saw it for two reasons: 1) A kid in my class was in it, playing one of Teddy's many children. He was telling everyone the show was about to close, and the tickets were super cheap, so my mom got two tickets and we went the night before it cloesd. 2) It was the first time I had ever heard of President Teddy Roosevelt and my impression of him was actually formed by this show.
While the show itself was forgettable, the star of it was not -- Teddy was played by Len Cariou, a veteran stage and TV actor who was in the original run of Sweeney Todd. These days he's best known for being on the show Blue Bloods that's been running for about a decade. He was amazing as Teddy, he carried the show brilliantly, and it's too bad that he never got the recognition for it that he deserved.
I doubt that Teddy & Alice will ever be revived -- it's one of those shows that came and went so quickly, that failed so quietly, that was not a "notorious" or controversial failure (like the musical version of Carrie that closed after one night), that it's just slipped out of the collective Broadway memory. So, in a way, having seen the show, puts me in a small and select circle of people who had an experience that was unique, a brief moment in time, and that will never be repeated.
Happy New Year! This is when we make resolutions and forge plans to achieve great success in the coming twelve months. That's why, contrarian that I am, this first post of 2021 will be about failure.
After the 2020 we all had, can you blame me?
I love stories about failure. They prove that the universe is a random, weird, mostly cruel, sometimes kind, totally unpredictable place. I'm a connoiseur of the genre.
Let's paraphrase Leo Tolstoy who wrote that all happy families are basically the same while all unhappy families are unhappy in unique and different ways. So it is with success and failure: all roads to success are basically the same and straightforward (the idea, the struggle, the setback, the breakthrough, the triumph) but the roads to failure are much more bizarre and interesting.
I've chronicles my share of failure stories on here over the years -- this blog being perhaps a prime example of failure.
So here's another one: the story of a musical version of Frankenstein that premiered exactly 40 years ago today -- and closed after one night. Hopes were high that this show, the most expensive musical of all time at the time, would start 1981 on Broadway with a creative and financial bang. Instead, it failed -- the reviews were terrible, there was no advance box office sales, it was a disaster by every metric. The producers saw that this show had no future except red ink and empty seats so they killed it that night. Interestingly, this show had a notable cast (some of whom were fired before the show actually played its one offiicial show) including future Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest, the late great David Dukes (not to be confused with the white supremicist), and a guy named William Converse-Roberts who would go on to be the ex-husband on The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. The creators would go on to have decent careers but no big Broadways triumphs. But on the night of January 4, 1981, a month after John Lennon's murder and Ronald Reagan's inaugeration, the future for everyone on the show looked dark.
But even though this showed was a bad flop, it makes for a great -- and successful -- story.
P.S. The whole horror genre has had a lousy history on Broadway. Whereasa it's a staple of the movies, theater audiences aren't interested. Fascinating how a whole genre can work in one medium but not in another.
Forty years ago today one of the most infamous movie reviews in American history appeared in The New York Times. It was written by Vincent Canby, the most respected movie critic in America, and he was reviewing the new movie Heaven's Gate by director Michael Cimino. Cimino's previous film, The Deer Hunter, had won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director the year before. Heaven's Gate had just had its premiere in NYC the night before, and this movie and review were much anticipated.
And movie history changed.
Canby wrote: "'Heaven's Gate' ... fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of 'The Deer Hunter', and the Devil has just come around to collect ... an unqualified disaster."
Ouch.
United Artists, the studio that had financed and produced this movie, cancelled its scheduled wide-release in December. Cimino went back to the editing room, cutting down his nearly four-hour disaster into a two-and-a-half less-of-a-disaster. It was released in April, 1981 and earned about $1.5 million against a roughly $40 million-plus budget. It was the biggest failure in American history at the time -- and United Artists was sold to MGM and effectively ceased to exist.
One movie had brought down an entire studio. Like 9/11 or the Trump Presidency or COVID-19, something unthinkable had become quite real.
Cimino's career nose-dived after this -- he only made four small movies afterwards and then nothing at all before his death in 2016. His career was one of the quickest rises and falls of anyone in the history of movies. Over the years many people related to this movie -- either directly or indirectly -- have shared their memories of this unprecedented flop. It premiered in NYC on November 18th, 1980, and has become perhaps the most infamous movie premiere ever -- a party no one wanted to go to, a party everyone hated, a party that quickly turned into a kind of funeral. It was like being at the election night event for a losing candidate -- a candidate losing big.
Of course, in the forty years since, many other films have come and gone that failed bigger than Heaven's Gate. But this movie remains the most expensive failure in history -- it took down a studio, one started by, amongst others, Charlie Chaplin.
What's also sad is that Heaven's Gate had the potential to be a truly great movie -- another Godfather, another Chinatown, another Gone with the Wind. It was a revisionist anti-Western, a re-examination of America's founding myths of the West being this vast welcoming space where immigrants to roam free and realize their dreams. The film, based very loosely on Wyoming history, was about how, in the late 19th century, immigrants were murdered by wealthy cattle barons who resented and feared immigrants' enchroachments on their land (sound familiar?). These murders were, apparently, sanctioned by the Federal Government and President Benjamin Harrison. It was an American genocide, and all perfectly legal. Sadly the movie's notorious production and failure overwhelmed any interest in its plot or the history behind it -- and, instead, it was derided as American history's most expensive "minor footnote."
The movie also became a footnote in Hollywood history, a not-so-gentle reminder that no one controls or has the final say over history -- any kind of history.
If you want to more of Mr NYC's Michael Cimino/Heaven's Gate coverage, go here.
We love money. We are a capitalist and Calvinist people -- we believe that accumulating dough is a smart and moral thing to do; that people who have "made it", who have "lived the American dream" possess not only intelligence and talent but also a kind of virtue, an inherent goodness -- because, of course, all of their wealth came from "hard work."
Yes, this is the big lie we tell ourselves when it comes to wealth in America -- that it is mostly gained through effort and diligence, through "grit" and perseverance -- not luck or privilege or anything else. As a relatively young country, we Americans love to hold ourselves apart from other older nations and societies where wealth was attained so long ago that no one remembers how it was gotten in the first place and that is simply passed down from century to century without merit. No, in America we earn our money -- and anyone who doesn't recognize our "hard work" and virtue in attaining it, any government that seeks to tax it, and anyone who dares criticize it is "anti-American."
Case closed!
What's also, I'm sure to some, "anti-American" is losing wealth, of having all your hard-won money and its residual privileges fade away. No, in America we believe that wealth should beget more wealth (it often does), that making more and more and more and more money is the only way to go -- it's not enough to live the American dream once, oh no, you and your family must keep living it over and over and over again ...
The America dream, this virtuous pursuit of wealth, is endless -- and exhausting.
So at the risk of seeming "anti-American", at the risk of going against our country's mythology, I will state proudly that I love stories about decaying wealth and privilege -- of fallen status, of dissipation. Why? Perhaps because I have a tragic sense of life. Perhaps because stories of failure are, in so many ways, more interesting and revealing about human nature than stories of success.
This is a long way to say that this troubled year marks the odd anniversaries of two very different but nonetheless brilliant films about decaying American wealth and privilege -- the documentary Grey Gardens from 1975 and the comedy Metropolitan from 1990.
Both are about white people who grew up in wealth and have seen or are seeing it slip away. Grey Gardens is about Jackie O's cousins the Beales, a mother and daughter living in squalor in their once gorgeous Hamptons home. They spend their days remembering their time as grande dames of New York society, anger and rage and confusion at their plight popping up every so often. Metropolitan is a much more genteal but nontheless honest look at NYC debutantes who are increasingly aware that the wealth and privilege they grew up in, the glowing world they expected as children to inherit, might not always be there for them -- and they don't know what to do about it (one character says he'll solve it by marrying a rich woman).
Although both films are over a quarter, and almost a half-century, old, in this age of deep income inquality, of white rage and diviseness, of institutionalized racism and sexism finally being held to account, of the horizon of the American dream shrinking, they feel more prophetic and relevant than ever before about how wealth and privilege ultimately lead to a kind of insanity and misery.
I've blogged about both before so, instead of doing so again, I'll include links to my previous posts as well as recent profiles of the films and people involved here and here and here and here.
This is anti-Americanism as its very finest -- and funniest. It's the dark and darkly comic side of the American dream, of the emptiness of money and materialism and status, and of how the gaping whole of need that exists within all of us can never be filled by them.
In the summer of 1970 the Velvet Underground made its last hurrah in NYC. From June to August, for nine weeks, the band played two shows a night at the now vanished club Max's Kansas City on Park Avenue South. One of their shows, on August 23, 1970, was recorded and later released in 1972 as Live at Max's Kansas City.
The Velvets had a short and tumultuous existence. Formed in the mid-1960s, under the guidance of Lou Reed and John Cale, they produced four albums in almost as many years. But only a couple of years in, Cale left the band. The albums didn't sell. Their original partnership with Andy Warhol ended after their first album. So, by 1970, the band was on the verge of collapse. This nine-week gig turned out to be a finale (of sorts). Lou Reed would leave the band afterwards. Their final album, Loaded, would come out in November 1970 to little interest. And that, it would seem, would render the band to history -- forgotten, a failure, a footnote.
Instead, the Velvet Underground made history. It wrote volumes in the history of rock'n'roll. It will be remembered forever.
Generations of musicians and songwriters would cite the band as an influence -- including U2, Joy Division, Sonic Youth, REM, Talking Heads, and David Bowie. When the band re-united for a European tour in 1993, it was a sensation. They were inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. They've been included on soundtracks for movies like Juno and Orange is the New Black. They've even inspired museum exhibits. To paraphrase, anyone would bought a Velvet Underground album back in the day probably ended up starting a rock'n'roll band.
But history is only understood in hindsight -- it's made in the (then) present, forever grinding forward. In July 1970, before the famous recording was made, the Village Voice wrote a short article about this now legendary gig, about how the band sounded as good as it ever did, and that playing in NYC again after three years meant that they were "back where they belong."
P.S. The Velvets gig at Max's KC ended on August 28, 1970. Five days later my parents got married in NYC. History is funky like that sometimes.
Of all the classic TV shows set in NYC, Central Park West is ... not one of them!
But it's an interesting, if not a good, show to remember nonetheless.
A lil' context: Central Park West, branded CPW (because, you know, that made it sound "hipper") premiered in the fall of 1995. Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place were on FOX and very hot at the time. In fact, they were easily the biggest nighttime soap operas on TV, the 1990s successors to shows like Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Knots Landing, etc. CBS was doing lousy in the ratings and was desperate to attract younger viewers and recapture some of its glory. So they hired Darren Star, creator of those aforementioned shows on FOX, to come over to CBS and work his nighttime soapy magic there.
It didn't work. CPW failed -- big time. The show got lots of promotion but audiences didn't care. CBS even tried re-tooling the show, firing some people, bringing in new ones -- and it still tanked.
CPW on CBS was DOA.
The show was meant to be a comeback vehicle of sorts for Mariel Hemingway. She had broken out in Woody Allen's Manhattan in 1979, then made some movies that weren't very successful, so CPW seemed destined to start the next chapter of her career. Didn't happen. She was fired in the middle of the season and replaced by, naturally, of all people, Gerald McRaney. Yes, the producers of CPW believed the way to save the show was to Send the Marines! Specifically, a fictional TV Marine.
Still didn't work. Hiring McRaney and an aging Racquel Welch, in an attempt now to attract older viewers, made no difference. And a show where most of the drama was centered around publishing failed to excite people no matter how many beautiful people were jumping into bed together. Oil in Dallas and wine in Northern California's Falcon Crest might have had sex appeal in the 1980s but publishing in NYC in the 1990s just didn't inspire the same frisson.
So who cares about Central Park West, especially Mr NYC, twenty-five years after its short existence?
Well, because CPW was, in retrospect, a little ahead of its time. If it had premiered a few years later, it might have been a big hit. This was when America's view of NYC was more NYPD Blue and less Sex and the City. The idea of NYC as a glamorous dreamscape wasn't fully believable to middle America -- yet. In fact, Darren Starr would, after this failure, find his next big success by creating ... Sex and the City!
It's ashame, however, that the show failed to re-ignite Mariel Hemingway's career. She's such a talent and never had the kind of career she deserved. But the show also had a guy named John Barrowman, who went to great success with the BBC show Torchwood. And any show with Madchen Amick is, by definition, worth watching.
If you want to watch any of CPW, you're in luck -- the YouTube Gods have made the whole thing available for you.
Last week the MTA formally retired the R-42 model subway cars from circulation, the oldest ones remaining in the fleet. They had been shuttling New Yorkers around since 1969, half a century of loyal service. The R-42s were rather dull but very solid cars with unbroken grey seats and wide spaces, acommodating a lot of people.
The subways have evolved a great deal in the last 50 years, going from a literal hell-whole to something out of the space age.
In late 1972, Vivian Gornick wrote a now classic essay about the nightmare that was the then-NYC subway. With great narrative detail, she paints the picture of a system -- and a city -- on the verge of collapse, a repository of societal failure.
Today, obviously, the city and the subway are much improved -- and the R-42s witnessed this change first-hand.
Many years ago Howard Stern was interviewing movie icon Warren Beatty and got right to the point: "You make great movies," the King of All Media told the legendary Hollywood actor/director/Lothario, "if you didn't bang all those broads ... we'd talk about the movies, but the broads get in the way." (Then Stern told Beatty something about smelling his hand and the interview was over.)
Howard spoke the truth.
No matter how great a film icon Mr. Beatty is, no matter how many great movies he's directed and starred in, he'll best be remembered for his other great "productions": Natalie Wood, Joan Collins, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, Madonna, and many others.
Born in NYC in 1893 to affluent Cuban immigrants, Mercedes was a playwright, poet, and novelist. Her career trajectory was a little less Warren Beatty and a little more Llewyn Davis -- professionally, she was a failure, her work forgotten, her career unsuccessful. But she's remembered nonetheless. Why? Well, personally, she had some very successful "productions": Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, and many others.
Even though she married a man, Mercedes was a notorious, unashamed lesbian at a time when this could literally land you in jail. She made lovemaking into an art form, her skills became as legendary as any movie or work of literature. Most of all, she had a boundless, rapacious spirit. Mercedes was someone the world wanted to classify one way -- a boring married lady who did nothing -- and she refused to stay in her lane. Instead, she travelled the world, wrote prolifically, and seduced many women. She's probably best remembered for the quote: "I can get any woman away from any man." Fearless! Mercedes lived the life she wanted, even if it didn't always bring her happiness. (Maybe the "broads" got in the way of her having a more successful career but, honestly, I'd rather be remembered for "productions" like Mercedes de Acosta and Warren Beatty than any play or movie.) Sadly, Mercedes died in poverty in 1968, taking her legendary skills into the afterlife. In many ways, her life was sad but she was brave, she was courageous, and -- if sometimes a little fearless and irresponsible -- she lived her truth until the end.
As the second decade of the 21st century ticks to a close, lots of 10 Best of the Decade lists are being crafted (Top 10 Best movies, TV shows, albums, tech innovations, etc). And if you're following movies this holiday season, then there's one actor, one mug, you can't escape: Adam Driver, who first appeared on the great NYC-centered show Girls in 2012 and is now starring in one movie after the other (just this fall, he has The Report, Marriage Story, and the next Star Wars movie).
But back in 2013, he still just "that guy from Girls", and one of his first movies was a small part in the brilliant Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis about a failed folk singer in 1961 Greenwich Village. (The titular character is played by Oscar Isaac who went on to reteam with Driver in the Star Wars flicks.)
I've blogged extensively about this movie, about how subversive and beautiful and dark it is, about how it's a great NYC movie but also how it also stands everything about American movie making on its head. According to many critics, it's one of the best movies of the entire decade -- and it's certainly mine.
There's one scene in the movie that makes it transcend from merely good to truly great (this critic even says its the best scene in any movie in the entire decade): when Llewyn auditions for the music producer Bud Grossman. Everything about the scene is perfect: Llweyn and Grossman sitting across from each other on the vast floor of a nightclub, resembling not a producer and an artist but an interrogator and a hostage or a jailer and a prisoner, chairs stacked on tables in the background, morning sunlight inappropriately sneaking in. There's a sense of foreboding and doom in the entire mise en scene, the darkness that is the folk singer's life drowning out any light of a better future. Hoping to get Grossman to represent and promote his career, Llewyn sings his heart out, giving a moving and deep performance, leaving his entire soul on the shiny and impersonal club floor. When he's done, a quiet moment ensues, Grossman looking at him tentatively, before delivering the devastating verdict, the career death sentence: "I don't see a lot of money here." Grossman gives Llewyn some unhelpful advice about staying out of the sun and joining a trio before Llewyn leaves, his hopes blown out casually and easily like the tiny flames of birthday candles.
This scene shows the wafer thin line that exists between success and failure, between hope and devastation, between dreams and reality. It demonstrates the capriciousness of life, the chaos we all live in and try to escape. And it does it brutally and unsentimentally but also beautiful. Truly classic.
Currently the greatest country in the world is being stunk up by Donald Trump, a wannabe presidential Lone Ranger, and his bizarro Tonto/lawyer, the former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani. They seem to be having American history's most destructive bro-mance -- a criminal president being aided by a pathetic has-been henchman.
How did this happen? How the hell did we get here?
In NYC, for decades, Trump was a goofy real estate guy and media character, Giuliani a respected "law and order" prosecutor and mayor. It was hard to think, back then, that they would transmogrify into a neo-fascist buddy horror show, threatening to undermine our democracy and national security, pushing us to the brink of the biggest Constitutional crises since Watergate. Oh no. It seemed unimaginable just a few short years ago.
But here we are, and America is reaping the foul whirlwind. You should read this massive article that explores the Donald/Rudy tango, going back decades. The truth is that they were never particularly close and never really liked each other very much. However, at this perilous moment, they seem to need each other -- Trump thinks Rudy will save him from impeachment and historical disgrace, and Rudy is just happy that Trump is giving him a great last gasp of relevance, keeping him in the public eye.
Politics is a cruel business which is why so few decent people get into it. You have to fight like hell to get elected to office and, once you do, work like a dog just to keep it. All the while you have people actively conspiring to get you thrown out, you have the press breaking your balls, you have to spend lots of time raising money, and it's very hard to actually get anything in government done -- it's just part of the job. And what's worse is that once you do leave office, for whatever reason, you immediately become irrelevant, a nothing. As the saying goes, all political careers end in failure.
So this whole nightmare with Trump and Rudy is about two old guys who have been around forever, who understand that their time on the public stage is coming to and end, fighting like hell to stave off irrelevancy, to ward off the inevitable failure. They are drowning, gasping men, trying not to get swallowed by the tides of time and history.
And it all started here in NYC more 40 years ago.
By the way, there's currently a proposal in Albany to end what's called fusion voting (candidates runing for office on multiple party lines). Without fusion voting, Rudy would never have even become mayor more than a quarter century ago. We are always living in interesting times.
This is a post about my favorite kind of person, the NYC hustler -- in this case, a few of them. They include a poet, a movie theater programmer, a nasty guy who wrote nasty books, and a kooky faith healer. It's also about a structure that could have become one of our iconic buildings -- and was! -- until it wasn't.
They were (and are) regular New Yorkers who hustled in their odd respective fields and found great success -- and, in one case, great failure. All of them except one are gone now but let's remember them:
The poet was named Marie Ponsot who just died at 98. She was one of the last links to the Beat generation, a contemporary and colleague to folks like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and others. Her poems were about the complications of love and existence and she won big awards and taught at Queens College. Interestingly, she took a long hiatus from her career to raise seven kids but then later resumed publishing and teaching to great acclaim. Then there's Ben Barenholtz who used to program the downtown Elgin and Waverly movie theaters before having a very successful career in film distribution and producing -- including taking a chance on a couple of young filmmakers called the Coen Brothers. Ben's biggest claim to fame, besides launching two of America's greatest cinematic talents, was basically inventing the Midnight Movie. In 1970, he started programming movies at or past midnight, a move that people thought was crazy at the time -- until it was met with massive success. The midnight movie is now a tradition around the world and this guy was the hustler who started it.
And then there's another writer, a wacky guy named Harold Robbins who died almost 20 years ago. A Jewish kid from Brooklyn, he migrated to Hollywood where he wrote trashy books that become popular trashy movies. He made tons and tons of money and lived it up in lavish style. Lots of coke, lots of booze, lots of broads, lots of craziness ensued. He was also a complete liar, trying to convince people that he was some kind of war hero -- his life was fiction as much as his books. Of course, it all ended in tears -- by the time he died he was broke, disabled, homeless. He's one of those guys who lost everything but gained every kind of amazing experience in life that most of us could only dream of.
Okay, so this one isn't gone, she's still alive and apparently thriving. She's another New Yorker gone Hollywood -- Audrey Hope, "crystal healer" to the stars! She apparently uses crystals on the bodies of celebrities to help them restore "balance" and achieve "wellness" and all sorts of crap and yet apparently she makes a great living and is very popular. Talk about a hustler but apparently she's totally legit. Gotta give her credit for that! And keeping with the crystal theme -- did you know that Bryant Park is only a park today because the structure that once stood there, the New York Crystal Palace, burned down in 1858 (part of it also burned down in 1856)? This was a huge exhibition space, domed and massive, based on a similar structure built and designed by Prince Albert in London. It was, at the time, the tallest building in the city. The Crystal Palace was deemed so impressive and major that, at the opening ceremony in 1853, it was dedicated by then President Franklin Pierce. Within just a few short years it was gone, a hustle that failed. But for a time it reigned in glory. (It reminds me that great speech Tywin Lannister gives in Game of Thrones about how the castle Harrenhal was supposed to be the great legacy of the lord who built it but then it was destroyed by dragon fire by Aegon Targaryen). These are my kinds of people, the hustler, the strivers, the people who took chances and made something. In many way, this little blog is my attempt to be one of these kinds of people -- people we should never forget.
The 1950s and '60s are romanticized as the Mad Men era -- the "great America" that so many people want to somehow, spiritually and socio-economically return to; a time when people knew their place i.e. white men in power, blacks at the back of the bus, gays in the closet, and women either in the kitchen or only working as secretaries, nurses, and teachers.
'Dose were da' days!
It was a time when it was great to be a "mad man" -- oh yes, you could have three martini lunches, smoke everywhere, and bang your secretaries with abandon (no annoying sexual harassment laws or HR rules or hashtags to kill the fun).
It was white male nirvana.
Then there was the architecture. Lots of gorgeous but decaying buildings were being torn down at this time and replaced by boring Bauhaus inspired-monstrosities. Function, not beauty, dictated architectural style. And brand new diners (remember those?) and airport terminals were opening and they looked weird -- lots of curves and arched ceilings and warped roofs -- like spaceships out of Forbidden Planet.
One such prime NYC example was the TWA Terminal at JFK airport that opened in 1962.
It was a huge, hulking sweep of curves and open spaces, blindingly white, and it feels very 1960s post-modernesque. It was a functioning terminal for decades until TWA went out of business and the terminal closed in the early 2000s. It sat empty, ready to be bulldozed, until some developers bought and decided to turn it into a hotel.
And now the hottest new hotel in town is far from midtown Manhattan -- it's in southeast Queens!
Today the new TWA Hotel opens to much fanfare. It's obviously a massive, expensive undertaking ($300+ million) with a myriad of rooms starting at $250 a night. There are expensive restaurant (Jean-Georges has one there) plus luxury retail stores, and a 150 person bar inside an airplane tethered to the hotel. Everything is luxury and luxuriously kitschy -- taking something that was once plebian and turning it into something grand. Apparently the owners of this new hotel have huge ambitions for it, they think it'll have nonstop full capacity, and that travellers to and from JFK will want to pony up that much money to spend the night before either flying out or after having landed.
Either the new TWA hotel will be a huge success or a colossal failure. I'll be watching its fate with keen interest.
Sidenote: I almost exclusively flew on TWA to and from college back in the 1990s. As I mentioned yesterday, I just passed the 20th anniversary of my college graduation so this nostalgia-themed hotel opening today is somehow -- le sigh -- appropriate.
It's just reminder that the present becomes the past quickly, today's ordinary stuff becomes tomorrow's cherished relics, today's noise becomes tomorrow's history, today's frustrations becomes tomorrow's nostalgia.
