Review: "Six Degrees of Separation" and Its Legacy

In 1981 a deeply disturbed black seventeen year-old named David Hampton ran away from Buffalo to NYC to start a career as a con man. He had nothing, knew no one, and was lost in the big city. But he was determined, in his own scary way, to "make it there."

He did -- sort of. 

A decade later his bizarre story resulted in a hit play, a movie, and the popularization of the "six degrees of separation" concept into American culture.

In 1983 David Hampton showed up at the home of a wealthy Upper East Side couple, claiming that he had just been mugged in Central Park. He said that he was friends with their children at an Ivy League college and that he was also the son of Sidney Poitier. David "Poitier" was extremely charming, funny, insightful, and he won over the couple instantly. They allowed him to stay the night at their apartment -- only to wake up the next morning to find him in bed with a gay hustler.  David vanished before the police arrived and soon the couple found out that David was a con man who had infilitrated their lives. The playright John Guare knew the couple and, after learning their story, wrote a great play about it -- Six Degrees of Separation -- that eventually became a so-so movie.

The fictional drama expands upon the real story. In the play, David's name is Paul and, after he escapes, the couple try to help the police to find him -- meanwhile he continues to seduce men and con them and others out of money (Paul/David had found this couple in the first place after he had, earlier, randomly seduced a troubled rich kid who really did know this couple's children). But Paul's interuption of this wealthy couple's life makes them realize how fragile, how fake, and how empty their existence truly is. They realize that Paul has, in a strange way, made them examine their lives, their marriage, their relationships with their children, and the whole world that surrounds them -- a world that people like David covet without truly understanding, a world that this couple comes to realize doesn't give them any real happiness. The couple comes to understand the pain that motivates Paul and the pain that they feel but can't acknowledge to themselves -- until Paul forces them to. They come to realize that everybody in the world feels pain, and that randomness, that chance meetings between people, plays a huge role in everyone's lives, and changes their fates. The climax of the play is a monologue that the wife gives. It concludes with:

"I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Fill in the names. I find that A) tremendously comforting that we're so close and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close. Because you have to find the right six people to make the connection. It's not just big names. It's anyone. A native in a rain forest. A Tierra del Fuegan. An Eskimo. I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It's a profound thought. How Paul found us. How to find the man whose son he pretends to be. Or perhaps is his son, although I doubt it. How every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds. Six degrees of separation between me and everyone else on this planet. But to find the right six people."

Heavy.

The play takes the always uncomfortable issues of race, class, privilege, socioeconomic advantage and envy, and puts them front and center. It makes people look at themselves, think about themselves, in ways that are both uncomfortable and illuminating. And thirty years ago, this was an even bolder thing to do than now -- John Guare was ahead of his time. 

I remember as a kid when this play was being staged at Lincoln Center. I was going to school near there and remember seeing the enormous banner for it on the street every day. I also heard ads for it on WQXR -- "See ... Six Degrees of Separation" -- and on TV. It ran from the fall of 1990 to early 1992 -- and a straight play that runs for more than a year is a big hit. The movie came out in 1993 and wasn't a big hit -- but the legacy of Six Degrees of Separation is immense. 

The success of the play caused David Hampton to threaten John Guare with violence, try to get a cut of the play's profits, and eventually sue the playright (unsuccessfully) for $100 million. And Hampton continued his con man life well after the play and movie were produced, using his newfound celebrity as well as new identities to con people. Eventually he migrated, at least for a time, to Seattle but wound up back East, dying in New Jersey in 2003 from AIDS. His life was tragic, obviously, and ironic -- the most legitimate and successful thing he was ever a part of was something he didn't create, wasn't actually involved in, and didn't get to enjoy the money from. He was like the gangster Henry Hill -- a truly bad guy who's life inspired a truly great work of drama. 

The original 1990-1992 NYC run also inspired a lot of careers from actors I love and who found great success afterwards. The most famous person in the cast at the time was Stockard Channing who had already done Grease and would later be on The West Wing. She was one of the only people from the play to do the movie -- and got an Oscar nomination for it. Courtney B. Vance originated Paul, and others in the cast included Anthony Rapp (Rent), John Cameron Mitchell (a huge actor and playright), Evan Handler (Sex and the City, Californication), David Eigenberg (Sex and the City), and Robert Duncan McNeill (Star Trek: Voyager). Later on Kelly Bishop (pre-Gilmore Girls) replaced Stockard Channing, James McDaniel (pre-NYPD Blue) became Paul, and a very young and totally unknown actress named Laura Linney also joined the cast. Another replacement actress was Deidre Lovejoy would later be on The Wire. In the movie, a young actor nameed JJ Abrams had a small part -- and now he's one of the biggest directors in the world. 

But the legacy of Six Degrees of Separation goes beyond the life of this man and the real and fictional drama he inspired: the concept of "six degrees" became popularized, it became conversation fodder, it became an idea, a meme, part of the popular lexicon -- that we're all seperated in this world, in this life, by only six people. It gripped the public imagination. So much so that a popular game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" was created (finding actors who worked with him or worked with other actors who worked with him) that has saved many an awkward conversation. There was even a bad TV show called "Six Degrees" several years ago (that had nothing to do with the play).

Before social media and COVID-19, Six Degress of Separation reminded us that we're all connected to each other, directly and indirectly, one way or another.

I'm pretty sure David Hampton didn't realize, in 1983, that so many great careers would be spawned, and American culture altered, by his one-night con. 

The world truly is a random place. 

Postscript: I never saw the play when it ran in NYC but I saw it a couple of years later in Washington, DC with Marlo Thomas in the lead role. She was great but sadly I don't remember much else about the production.

You can read all of the various articles The New York Times wrote about Six Degrees of Separation here. 

The Dirty History of NYC's Clean Water

If you want to understand the history of America, particulary its growth and development, you could study the history of one thing -- water. Without access to water, without bringing it to all parts of the country, America would not be what it is today.

The history of American water is the history of American power. Who got it? Who didn't? Who brought the water to what part of the country and controlled the flow? Who used it to make money and gain power over others? All the gold, all the land, all the money, all the oil, all the tech, etc. -- none of that would matter if it wasn't lubricated and supported by a constant supply of fresh clean water to the people. 

"Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over," is a quote attributed to Mark Twain -- and man, oh, man, is it true. There have been numerous battles in American history over water including into the present day -- look at Flint, Michigan!

In NYC, we are blessed with some of the best fresh water in the country, and it runs copiously and almost without interruption from our taps. But the history behind our superior and clean water supply is down and dirty.

Prior to the American Revolution, New Yorkers got their fresh water from well springs and reservoirs like the downtown Collect Pond. Attempts were made to create pipes that would channel the water from the reservoirs to buildings but the Revolutionary War delayed these plans. In the late 1790s, those Founding Fathers and musical hip-hop stars Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr -- the most powerful politicians in New York State -- developed a plan to build a massive water system for NYC, sinking more reservoirs in the city and transporting fresh water from upstate down into the city.

But Aaron Burr, lifelong corrupt sneak that he was, had a plan to use it to enrich himself.

The bill passed by the New York State Legislature to create this company and water system included a provision to have the water supplied by a private company -- one that Burr and his cronies owned call the Manhattan Water Company. And the bill included a loophole that allowed the company to use any "surplus capital" i.e. profit for whatever the owners of this company wanted.

So the Manhattan Water Company, under Burr's direction, built a cheap and shoddy system of wooden pipes, keeping the overhead low. While New Yorkers now had easier access to water, it was polluted, and people still got sick from it. The whole purpose of this new system had been to bring clean water to the city and improve public health but greed and corruption kept it dirty and people literally died from it. It wasn't until 1842 that the city took control and built a new aqueduct from upstate, bringing vastly more -- and vastly cleaner -- water to the city, spurring its growth. But that doesn't excuse the fact that, among Aarron Burr's crimes, killing Alexander Hamilton in that duel wasn't the worst thing he did -- he literally comdemned the entire City of New York to drinking and bathing and cooking with dirty water for a generation.

Oh, and what did Burr and his cronies do with the profit they made from the water company? They used it to create a bank, the Bank of Manhattan, that later became Chase and is now called JP Morgan Chase, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world. 

So NYC's water supply and biggest bank are funamentally based on corruption. Nothing changes.

Yet it also proves that access to clean water means economic and population growth, the development of infrastructure and real estate, wealth, political power, and the building of civilization. To paraphrase the movie Chinatown, the history of water in NYC and elsewhere proves that you don't bring water to a city-- you bring the city to the water.

And it's not just money or power the people who build and supply the water gain -- they also control the future.

Richard Hake RIP

The longtime WNYC reporter and local "Morning Edition" host Richard Hake died this weekend at the age of 51. His kind yet authoritive voice was a constant morning companion, an audio balm of sorts. 

Like many a great radio host, you felt like you knew him. I'm really sad that he's gone so suddenly, far too soon, and I'll miss listening to him.

RIP

The Plan to Reopen NYC

Remembering the New York Coliseum

If you go to Columbus Circle, on West 59th Street next to the edge of Central Park, you'll find the blue twin towers of the Time Warner Center. This mighty structure is the home to numerous high end restaurants and stores and spas, luxury apartments and hotel rooms, the music venue Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the cable network CNN.

It's a true 21st century multi-use, multi-purpose behemoth. It's hard to believe that, twenty years ago, what sat on this very spot was an empty shell, the abandoned New York Coliseum.

The New York Coliseum was constructed in the early 1950s by the master builder Robert Moses. A huge post-war project, the building was a kitchy, tacky piece of 1950s nightmare architecture. It looked like an old-school television set without a screen, a boring lump of bad design.

In case you were wondering what I thought of it, I thought it was really ugly.

But for decades it thrived as a convention center, with events like the auto show, flower shows, home expos, and many others being held there every year. Then, after the Jacob Javits Center opened in the 1980s, the Coliseum went into a severe decline, closing in 1986 except for the very rare event.

As kid, whenever I passed it by, I was always amazed that this huge space was just sitting there, existing there, empty and largely abandoned. The only time I remember seeing it used was, once a year, when a bunch of bright red neon letters would be put over the entry, announcing the Coliseum as the location for the New York City Firefighters Annual Physical Exam. In the summer of 1996 I went to the Coliseum for the first and last time when there was a small exhibit about the New Deal (I got to see one of the microphones that FDR used for his Fireside Chats behind a glass screen). The exhibit was great but I remember thinking that the Coliseum was a depressing, sad, old building that was more than long in the tooth and probably doomed.

I was right. In 2000, a year before the original Twin Towers were destroyed, the Coliseum was torn down. By 2004 the Time Warner Center had risen to take its place. Columbus Center was reborn. 

And another piece of NYC passed into history, as unloved with its creator.

A long, long time ago, in an NYC far, far away ...

... there were these things called telephones, that today we call "landlines", and you actually had to pick them up with your hands and dial the numbers with your fingers, then speak into this thing called a handset  ...

... and you could even find some of these things on the streets of the city in contraptions called phone booths ...

... and if you were bored, lonely, or horny, you could call these things called "chat lines" ...

Oh, those were da' days! 

Kids, ask your parents.

Review: "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990)

This is a bad movie -- a legendarily bad one. I've blogged about it incidently over the years.

But the story behind its creation is fascinating. There's even an entire behind-the-scenes book about it called The Devil's Candy which is way better than the movie. 

"Bonfire" is based on Tom Wolfe's massive 1987 novel of the same name about how greed and, obviously, vanity corrupt not only people but an entire city. A high-living Wall Street trader named Sherman McCoy and his mistress get into a hit-and-run accident with a young black man in the Bronx -- and his life becomes a media storm that inflames the entire city's media, judicial, and political worlds.

Because the book was so successful, a movie version seemed inevitable. And then every decision the producers made was wrong.

Who do you get to play the to-the-manor-born, aristocratic Sherman? Why Mr. Middle America himself, Tom Hanks!

Who do you get to play Peter Farrow, the emaciated British tabloid reporter who turns the hit-and-run into a media sensation? Why Mr. Die Hard action movie hero himself, Bruce Willis!

Who do you get to play the 21-year old Maria, a Southerner, Sherman's mistress? Why thirty-something year old Melanie Griffith!

Who do you get to direct this social satire? Why horror/gangster movie director Brian De Palma!

What do you with material that's been highly acclaimed for its smart humor and biting wit? Why you turn it into a raunchy, gross, Animal House-like romp.

As one reviewer said at the time, "You've got to be a genius to make a movie this bad."

The movie really is a mess. It's not funny, not insightful, and doesn't work. 

But, as an NYC movie, it actually works strangely well. De Palma is a great visual stylist. The movie starts with a stop-motion view from the Chrysler Building, to making JFK Airport look positively cinematic, to making the South Bronx look truly menacing, to making Park Avenue and Wall Street look both properly gorgeous and monstrous at the same time, to all sorts of weird camera angles, it's worth see just for its imagery if for nothing else. 

I remember when this movie came out late in 1990. This is a now legendary movie season where lots of big movies with big stars, like "Bonfire", came out and bombed at the box office. Havana with Robert Redford, The Russia House with Sean Connery, and others just all tanked. The Godfather Part III came out and got a decidely mixed reception. 

No, the winners at the box office that winter were a snotty unknown ten-year old in a silly family comedy called Home Alone and an unknown theater actress named Kathy Bates in a horror movie called Misery (that got her an Oscar). 

Ah, memories ...

God Bless Staten Island!

What if you held a protest and nobody showed up?

Even, it appears, the organizers of the protest?

As you're doubtless aware, around the country, a small bunch of morons are holding pathetic rallies where they protest the social distancing effots and lockdowns, etc., that are necessary to stop this pandemic in its tracks. However, that isn't stopping some Republicans from demanding -- SHOUTING! -- that the economy must be "reopened" ASAP so that they can back to their normal lives, making money, and hanging out with people. These idots don't seem to realize or care that, by "reopening", more and more people would get sick, meaning this pandemic would continue even longer, and the economy will only continue to suffer. 

Logic has never been a Republican strong suit. 

While it's an extremely tiny, fringe number of people who are engaging in these dumb rallies, the media is treating it like it's some kind of mass uprising akin to the French Revolution. It's not. It's a freak show. The vast, vast majority of Americans approve the lockdowns and social distancing and don't want to do the stupid and dangerous things these "protesters" are demanding.

Out in the most Republican part of NYC, Staten Island, one of these protests was planned for last Sunday -- only nobody came to it! The cops did, in order to monitor and hopefully break it up, but this turned out to be totally unnecessary. No one showed. 

Call it the protest that never was -- and thank you Staten Island for having some sense.

Proves that, in NYC, even our Republicans are better!

Stay well, Staten Island.

Smackdown! Cuomo Makes Prez His B#%&

Gotta Love New Yorkers

This is a heartbreaking story about a santiation worker named Raymond Copeland, a guy not much older than me who also has daughters, who just died in the line of duty from COVID-19.

Raymond committed his life to serving this city and the ones he loved and did it unflinchingly. He died so that the people of NYC could live. 

I know we all want this situation to end ASAP and hope we can forget it as soon as possible -- but we must never forget people like Raymond or their families, ever.