Especially before the age of information-packed technology, historians tended to obscure a great deal. Lately, in the new decade of “the woman” (thanks, Hillary!), scholars and artists appear to be discovering a whole crop of creators previously overlooked or completely ignored. Ask for the greats of the arts and you…
Nearly a decade ago film critic Vincent Canby of the New York Times vilified the work of French director Alain Corneau, dismissing it as “lethargic, pretentious, overblown, neopoetic nonsense.” Since that review, no American distributor has been daring (or batty) enough to market another of Corneau’s movies in this country…
In A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess’s brilliant novel (later made into an equally stunning film by Stanley Kubrick) about the way society controls individual thought, the violent lead character is captured by government officials and forced to undergo a unique form of torture/behavior modification. With eyelids forced open so that…
It’s about time Van Damme, Gibson, Stallone, and the rest of the macho fantasy boys got a good beating. It comes at the hands of Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson in the satirical Loaded Weapon 1. This goofy pair of police partners (Colt and Luger, of course — one…
Allow me to launch right into this commentary with no preamble, as my excitement can hardly be contained. The Miami Actor’s Studio has managed to present a brand-spanking-new play — Power in the Blood by Sarah E. Bewley, rightful winner of the 1992 State of Florida’s Individual Artist’s Grant for…
Despite what many playwrights like to think, I believe that any work is written three times: by the author, by the director, and by the participating actors. A produced play then could be compared to a three-story building. The all-important foundation and first floor of the structure is without a…
Extreme Close-Up was Paul N. Lazarus III’s first feature film, and the independent producer had delivered it on time and under budget. There was just one remaining hurdle — the rating. Lazarus had promised his backers the film would receive no worse than an R from the MPAA. This was…
As Peter Brook of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and so many others like him and after him realized, a classic play is most worth doing if the director bestows new insight, or a new interpretation on the work. Brook brought King Lear to powerful, violent life reflecting his explosive society…
When Fatal Attraction came out five years ago, a lot of critics noted the cleverness of its central reversal: making Michael Douglas, the picture’s straightlaced, family man hero, into a sort of masculine damsel in distress. Many of these same critics gleaned other intriguing subtexts from it: the war between…
In life — and especially in the arts — people are fond of excusing failure by blaming it on societal prejudice. “If only I wasn’t a woman,” (or black, or short) “then I would have made it.” While many instances of such bigotry can be cited, there’s another harsh but…
How does a moviemaker reinvent the man who reinvented the movies? Richard Attenborough, brave soul, throws all his daring and affection into this daunting task, and a bit of foolishness, too. Attenborough’s ambitious biopic Chaplin will never be mistaken for Citizen Kane (or for Gandhi), but it’s no W.C. Fields…
A writing professor once warned me that no matter how hard a playwright tries to avoid it, one character in the piece usually represents the writer, and that role often evolves into the most meaty and authentic. Sure enough, upon yet another examination of The Little Foxes, Lillian Hellman’s classic…
A few weeks ago, when I dismissed The Bodyguard and The Distinguished Gentleman as limp vehicles for “dwarf stars,” I received voice-mail messages from annoyed readers. They weren’t Mark David Chapmanesque, If-my-man-Kevin’s-in-it-then-it-must-be-mannah-from-Heaven-so-you-better-put-your-grubby-hands-behind-your-head-and-get-in-the-damn-Chevette-type people. They were just confused as to exactly what, in my book, constituted a worthwhile, quality “star vehicle.”…
Everyone who commits the slightly demented act of remaining in theater remembers when that thrill of the stage first seized them. For me it was being cast as Lola in my high school production of Damn Yankees. I walked around the streets of Queens brazenly singing such classics as “Whatever…
The ultimate plain-talker, Jimmy Hoffa was never known as an author of fine ironies. But one real beauty clings to him eighteen years after his disappearance: He remains a hero to a lot of the people he stole from. Director Danny DeVito, screenwriter David Mamet, and leading man Jack Nicholson…
Coproducer/cofounder of the new Miami Skyline Theatre Allen J. Zipper impresses me as not only a practical and inspired man, but also a most amusing one. For years he worked in the marketing, public relations, and production departments of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, as well as working as an actor…
Can evangelists be parodied? It’s doubtful. The most full-throated parody withers in the face of reality. When Alec Baldwin played the young Jimmy Swaggart, cousin and close friend of the young Jerry Lee Lewis, in Great Balls of Fire!, he was pallid. If I’d been the great, dynamic performer Swaggart,…
First off, the homage to Magritte so prominent in the ads for Barry Levinson’s gaudy, grandly entertaining live-action cartoon Toys — Robin Williams against a cloudy sky, wearing a red bowler hat with a window through which we see the same image repeating itself on a smaller and smaller scale…
People in the arts love to expound theories about talent: Is there such a thing? Can it be developed? Are some lucky souls just born with the right stuff and everyone else is lost? Is it just luck or a smart mouth? In teaching, I like to offer my own…
Ebenezer Scrooge has been learning the error of his ways for 150 years now, but The Muppet Christmas Carol may mark the first time that frogs, pigs, assorted vermin, and pop composer Paul Williams have gotten in on the redemption of the world’s most famous miser. Charles Dickens still dispenses…
Whether he’s doing the bugaloo in his underwear, hanging around the pool hall with Paul Newman, or playing hero in airplanes and race cars, Tom Cruise remains Hollywood’s most insubstantial matinee idol — cute as a bug, light as a feather. That’s right: the Troy Donahue of his time. In…
I, unfortunately, vividly remember George Peppard’s sad impersonation of acting last year in The Lion in Winter. I’m steeling myself to face the prospect of Marlo Thomas interpreting John Guare’s masterpiece, Six Degrees of Separation, in the coming season. And I’ve recently come from viewing another impotent TV hack, Adrian…
