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…
Bill Friedkin and Bill Clinton may not have noticed, but the death penalty has been abolished by all Western democracies save one, by the modern countries of the Orient, and by the newly minted republics of the former Soviet Union. That leaves China, Iran, assorted Third World dictatorships, and the…
As soon as Frank Capra stops spinning in his grave, he may find a couple of laughs in Eddie Murphy’s election year farce, The Distinguished Gentleman. This noisy burlesque about political shenanigans owes so much to the Capra classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington that Marty Kaplan — screenwriter, executive…
Alan Farago poses a challenging question at our interview at J.J.’s restaurant several blocks from El Carrusel, where he’s starting his new company, Theater FLX. “Why does the city of Miami think theater is unimportant but finds the money to build monuments?” I can only sip coffee, because if I…
As you read this, Aladdin is drawing hordes of parents and preteen children to multiplexes everywhere. But is it a true kid flick, plugged directly into the subconscious of what Emerson might have called the Overtot? And is it really as timeless as its makers would like to think? The…
It’s no mystery why Home Alone became one of the most successful movies of all time. The first clue lies in that seductive title, a situation that kids with siblings daydream about: a little autonomy in their own houses. Flawlessly defending yourself and your turf, as Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) does…
The solid triumph of Bill Clinton and the brutal lashing of the religious right suggest that the country is ready to move forward again instead of twenty steps back. With a renewed spirit of hope, the mass audience heads to the laboratory, resolved to try brave experiments, such as saluting…
I mentioned in a previous column that this quote is attributed to Eugene O’Neill: “The artist who tries to save the world loses himself.” I’d like to add that, in the case of Edward Albee, the artist who tries to save himself loses his art. Desperate to retain his former…
Dead at 40, Malcolm X saw, did, and experienced more than most people who live to be twice his age. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which Alex Haley wrote as a first-person narrative after interviewing Malcolm for more than two years, is the sort of book that cries out for…
In The Year My Voice Broke, director John Duigan showed a feel for what Wordsworth called the “visionary dreariness” of a certain kind of rural landscape — rolling hills bare except for occasional clusters of giant rocks or the isolated gnarled tree — a landscape short on conventional picturesqueness that…
Remember Wait Until Dark, the 1967 thriller with Audrey Hepburn cast as a blind woman? Alan Arkin was the crazed thug who tormented Hepburn, moving her furniture around and hissing threats. Wait Until Dark was scary fun, yet it also generated an empathy for the disabled woman in her darkened…
Talk about Undead. Vlad the Impaler, Prince of Darkness, Aristocrat of Evil — call him what you will. Count Dracula has haunted the movies since 1921, when the great German director F.W. Murnau first rousted him from the coffin in a primitive silent called Nosferatu. Since then, this durable ghoul…
Since I’m about to deal with a murder mystery/courtoom drama — Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 Broadway hit, A Few Good Men, which is now enjoying a satisfying production at the Caldwell Theatre Company — allow me to play Sherlock Holmes for a moment and hypothesize how this particular work came into…
A member of a gang called the Reservoir Dogs — known only by his alias, “Mr. Blonde” — has just driven from a botched jewelry store heist with a patrolman stuffed in the trunk of his car. Although Mr. Blonde (Micheal Madsen), like his cohorts, suspects that one of their…
If I ever question the validity of devoting so much time to theater criticism in a town like this, there’s no stronger reassurance than the occasional, sudden privilege of attending a momentous event or meeting a luminary from the world of the stage. Last week I enjoyed the honor of…
