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…
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…
