Very Mark McCormick

Books like Slogs Need a Good Editor

2009-08-28T16:43:00.000-07:00

Since I visited India in 2004, I've been fascinated with the place, and as I write this I am sitting in the US Airways international first class lounge getting ready to go there for three months. For that journey I will blog not slog at www.markinindia.com. Please follow along. . .

So books about India hold a lot of fascination for me. Usually. The book kept Shantaram kept appearing to me; friends were reading it and recommending it; it was being reviewed in popular press. But I found the size daunting. Finally someone convinced me that if I was going to India I should read it. It would teach me a lot about Mumbai (Bombay).

Indeed it did; indeed it does. But that doesn't make the book successful. Though it is epic in scope and fascinating at times and even occasionally wonderfully transcendent it is too long by half.

What has happened to the role of the editor in crafting the modern novel and film? Fodder for another entry would be my contention that Gen X and Y, the millennials were so pampered that they have become a generations of self-indulgent artists: brilliant, because they got all the right training, but of the belief that even their shit is golden and shouldn't be touched. My case in point is always Paul Thomas Anderson. I believe Boogie Nights and Magnolia would both be brilliant films if an editor were behind him, advocating restraint. Of course There Will be Blood is a masterpiece, and also long, so my own theory has holes. Still.

But such is the case with Shantaram. The narrative is just too damn wordy, the plot too episodic.

But there's something there. Particularly if you are man. If you are a man's man and love street fighting, dangerous adventures, the love of comrades, elusive women, courtly romance, grand gestures of selfless sacrifice, you will like this book.

A few more good things about this book, but first the plot and the problems:

It is a story of an escaped ex-con from Australia who makes his way to Mumbai and little by little insinuates himself and is coaxed and coerced and manipulated into the Mumbai underworld, the mafia. Like all mafia stories, there are street fights, blood battles, illicit trade of all sorts (currency, passports, guns mostly--this is an honorable gang that shies away from the dirty crimes of pornography, prostitution, and drugs). Honor and courage among men form deep thematic rivers and symbolic rituals that run through the story.

And the first person narrator--we are made to believe it's the actual author, and the author's bio supports this--is pretty self-aggrandizing. Among his many adventures, he teaches himself to be a slum doctor and saves many lives at his own peril. He rescues a pretty American prostituted from an evil, cartoonish, Madame. He fights in the Afghani war out of love for his godfather. He's constantly rescuing, saving, fighting for his brothers without question, and somehow, amazingly, and most contrived: throughout all of the bloodshed and killing melees he's smack in the center of, he never once kills anyone. This is important for him to be a true hero (and probably, if it's autobiographical, for him to escape being sent back to prison).

The book is at it's best, to me, when he's not neck-deep in some mafioso scheme. Here is a passage describing ghetto life, where he practices a sort of folk medicine:

In a sense the ghetto existed on a foundation of those anonymous, unthankable deeds; insignificant and almost trivial in themselves, but collectively essential to the survival of the slums. We soothed our neighbor's' children as if they were our own when they cred. We tightened a loose rope on someone else's hut when we noticed it sagging, and adjusted the lay of a plastic roof as we passed by. We helped one another, without being asked, ans if we were all members of one huge tribe, or family, and the thousand huts were simply rooms in our mansion home.

He spends time in an Indian jail, framed for some crime, and even that is a story of his heroic survival, and compassionate sacrifices for prisoners even less fortunate.

He is like a superhero and as such he has his kryptonite. A mysterious woman named Karla, who is the, at times, the latent motivator for his every act. His love for her is boundless and profound, and yet when he has the chance to really possess her, a greater power calls: a duty to his godfather, the mafia boss Khaderbai. He writes of this patriarch (and there are many stunning, insightful sentences like this, but also page after page of self indulgent crap) "It was vassal-love, one of the strongest and most mysterious human emotions."

Another well-drawn character is his friend Prabaker, a sort of cock-eyed optimist, full of common wisdom and deep loyalty. He captures his manner of speech perfectly and the nuances of the Indian side-to-side head wag. Americans nod their heads up and down, shake their heads back and forth, but Indians also do a side to side wag which is a sign of friendship and trust and can mean many other things as well, depending on the facial expression and tone of voice. Last time I went to India I came back using it as one sometimes acquires an accent in a foreign country.

Prabaker at one points says to Lin, the narrator, "'He is down at the seashore, you know, at the place where he sits on the rocks, for being lonely--the same place where you also enjoy a good lonely." Nice.

Speaking of Karla, the sections between them really crackle, but as my friend Robin pointed out: it takes him 300 pages to get in bed with her, and then it's over in three paragraphs. Still, he does romance well, and about another woman he writes, "We were lonely, Lisa and I, and at first we talked to one another as lonely people do--in fragments of complaint, and corners clipped from conversations that we'd already had with ourselves, alone"

But what did sustain me is that it is a good portrait of Mumbai! I mean it's really, really detailed about the culture there, both the local's and expat's habits, hangouts, gestures, motivations, and values. It's a travel guide I intend to use next week to discover some of Mumbai's interesting sights. The city itself is a main character in the book, and in a way the author treats the city with most respect. He writes of it lovingly and with acceptance, recognizing its oozing travails and beauty. Shantaram's Mumbai is a complex portrait of a place of cosmic and tranquil humanity. I can't wait to try on the milieu and surrender to its complexity in a way I was not able to do with this novel. Still, oddly, I do recommend it. Take the good with the bad.

Something Old, Two Things New

2009-06-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

Four quick things:
1. I was on vacation and the only DVD in the house was Ice Storm. I hadn't seen it since it came out in the late nineties. It is an amazingly good movie. If there has been a better American movie made since it came out I can't think of it (maybe In the Bedroom, maybe The Hours, maybe Capote, maybe Juno, maybe anything with Penelope Cruz and a few others--these might be as good, but they're not better), and don't say American Beauty; it is a pale imitation. I love this move so much that I rationed it out over three nights. Watch it again if you haven't seen it in a while. It's funny, sad, wise, beautifully shot, and you can actually see how Ang Lee made this and then a few years later Brokeback Mountain.

2. Speaking of good suburban literature, check out the Franzen short story in the summer fiction issue of the New Yorker. I loved The Corrections and this has the same tone.

3. New season of Weeds just started. Is it just me or has it gone the way of farce like Desperate Housewives and Big Love. Can't watch it anymore; it's episodic and unbelievable. I liked it back in the early days when Nancy was a simple drug dealing surburban mom grieving her dead husband.

4. Finally, I just finished the pilot episode of Nurse Jackie on Showtime. Oh. My. God. I know I was excited at first about United States of Tara, but this is even better. Starring Edie Falco as a drug addled, adulterous, manipulative and conniving (for the good) nurse, it's the best written TV since possibly Six Feet Under, or West Wing. It's even got Anna Deavere Smith in it who I love (from her one-woman shows Twilight: Los Angeles and others as well as her turn in the West Wing as Defense Secretary). Jackie even has a gay best friend and hot husband. It's full of blood, foul language, shocking emergency room drama that wouldn't go on network television, and most of all humor and heart. This could possibly get us through the summer TV doldrums.

Sister Dearest or Pop Porn, Summer in the City

2009-03-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

Hi. I know it's been forever. My friend Jeffrey said I'm taking slogging (slow blogging) to new heights. I've been trying to finish this post, but maybe I feel guilty that I read this yummy piece of trash book about Madonna. Meanwhile, I've seen lots of movies (new Star Trek: super duper fun joyride; see it in iMax if you can), and had lots of serious thoughts about film (like how Kirstin Scott Thomas's performance in I've Loved You So Long is compelling and heartbreaking) and superficial thoughts about TV (Adam was robbed, yes, but Kris is so damn cute!). But first I have to get this entry out of the way.

Read all the way to the end for a verymarkmccormick scoop!

Madonna's brother Christopher Ciccone has written a tell-all book about what it's been like living in his sister's shadow. It's positively the worst book I've ever read, absolute trash, and I couldn't recommend it more highly! Three words: dee-lish-us!

Everyone knows that I've had a nearly three-decade long fascination with Madonna. (Not adoration, fascination; they're different.) It started when I was in college, about 18 years old, working in a Record Bar store in the Pocatello Mall. The manager put on a record, Madonna's first self-titled album. We couldn't believe it was a white girl. It's hard to imagine now with Brittney, Kylie, and dozens of other imitators, but in those days white girls didn't sing like that. We loved it and played it all the time. And we sold the shit out of that record.

Many years later I made a short film about Madonna, starring moi, making the point that most people, especially gay men, have a story about some Madonna song that formed the soundtrack to an important event in their life. That little movie I'm proud to say played in film festivals all over the world.

A story I would have liked to have told in Madonnalogue, but it didn't even occur to me was how being Madonna's brother, and being gay, and having aspirations as a performing artist, even a fine artist--well that could really fuck you up. And it did for poor Christopher.

Basically, he puts the psycho in sycophant. At the same time you can't help but feel for the guy. This is his side of the story, no doubt, but it rings true. Her Madgesty is impossibly imperious from early childhood. There are lots of stories of the "she always got the most cake" variety from their childhood. And still he always craved her approval and attention. She encouraged him to study dance, as she did. And that ensured him a role in her early years as a perfomer. When she was just starting, playing small gay clubs in Manhattan and then London, Paris, and other places, he was a back-up dancer. Through all of this she was at best decent and at worst a total and completely self-serving bitch. And the stories ring true, because they're all so consistent with each other and with what you can hear any night of the week on Extra and Access Hollywood.

The entire arc of the narrative is simply a series of fights about tours, houses, husbands, drug usage (his, not hers--that girl is clean) and email battles. It's written in first person present tense, which can really get confusing when he flash-forwards from the present, to, um, the present. It's an awkward tense; blame his co-writer, no doubt hired to bring semi-coherence to his rambling litanty of slights.

As I said, it's tours, houses, husbands, and drugs. The tours and houses parts are easy to explain. Madonna hires him as a dancer, then dresser, then art director on many of her tours. She treats him like shit, doesn't pay him enough, but gives him just enough affection for him to come back for more. Lather, rinse, repeat. This guy is a glutton for punishment. The exact same pattern is true of her houses: "Christopher will you decorate my house?" "Sure. How much will you pay me?" "A pittance." "Oh, Madonna, you're such a bitch; you underappreciate me; I'm living on the edge of poverty, but okay." "Good, you little fucking ingrate; now I'm going to be the most demanding client you can imagine and then I'm going to withhold the palty sum we agreed to, because I've heard you're doing drugs with supermodels and actresses and that really pisses me off." "Oh Madonna you are so mean. Naomi and Linda and Demi and Farrah--they're all so nice, and they really understand me, and we're hardly doing any coke at all--now give me my fucking money or I'll never speak to you again." "Check into rehab and I'll think about it." "I hate you! But okay. . . dammit!" On and on, I swear, through every goddamn tour and house. Christopher tries to be even-handed in the telling of this, because he wants you to sympathize with him. Sometimes it works. But he'll never work in Hollywood again.

Madonna and Her Husbands
The best parts are the dishy chapters about Sean, Warren, and Guy. He relates how each of them treated him, focusing on how they handled his homosexuality. Here's the summary.

Sean was decent. He treated Christopher well. Sean apparently had a sort of man crush on Charles Bukowski of all people. He was always around the house. Sean was into male bonding rituals and once had Christopher cut his thumb whereupon Sean cut his and they became blood brothers (years later, Christopher was incensed when Sean approached him at a party and, referring to the blood brother incident, asked him if he had AIDS).

Warren was the best of them all. He was secure in his own masculinity and entirely comfortable wtih Christopher's homosexuality. In fact he showed quite a bit of personal, and seemingly purely platonic, interest in Christopher's sexuality.

Guy was a jerk. He was boorish and homophobic, at least in the beginning; much of Christopher's impressions of him were based on their early time together, because during most of Madonna's marriage to Guy, she and Christopher were estranged. Guy and his buddies liked to use words like "twee" and Christopher found it all maddeningly homophobic.

So while reading I couldn't help wondering about the overall veracity of the story. Luckily verymarkmccormick is very connected: Here's the scoop! I once met Randy Taraborelli, who wrote a very good biography of Madonna, semi-authorized I believe. He's a friend of a friend. And he how has now done me two massive favors. The first was that he delivered the movie I made about Madonna to her personally. I was having the hardest time getting it into her hands. I even have another good friend who is close to her longtime publicist and manager Liz Rosenberg. He gave me her address. I sent it to Liz a few times and always heard back, through my friend: "well we didn't get the disc" or "well I'm sure it's here somewhere; I'll make sure she gets it." But I wanted to know that it was in her hands. Randy took a disc to the Golden Globes or some awards ceremony and later said in an email to our mutual friend, "I put it in her purse and said, 'This guy has made a short film about you and it's really good, and I want you to swear by all that is kaballah that you will watch it.'" I have not received the adoring note I had hoped from Madge, but I'm glad it made it into her posession.

Second favor: when I finished Ciccone's book I wrote to him and asked him what he thought. I wanted to gauge how accurate the portrayal was. Here's what he agreed to let me quote:

I loved that book, actually. I devoured it. But then, when I finished I was a little sickened by both brother and sister. Both appear to be hopelessly flawed, at least by his interpretation. She will survive it, of course. Nothing in there was exactly surprising where she is concerned. Not sure about him, though. I think that might be it for Christopher, maybe in the business -- because who can trust him now? -- and most definitely in his sister's life. But I guess he was willing to take that chance.

So listen, I know we're all verybusypeople. But if you have any pool or beach time this summer, this is the perfect accompaniment to your Ban de' Soleil and icy beverage. They should sell a version in a brown paper wrapper.

Love is as Love does

2009-03-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't liked a movie more than Two Lovers in a long time. See it. It's like a foreign movie in many ways: subtle, beautifully shot, surprising, and in the end, nourishing.

Joaquin Phoenix is mesmerizing as Lenny, a guy too old to live with is parents, but too depressed to be trusted alone. He works in the family dry-cleaning business in Brooklyn, but not the cool part of Brooklyn. His mother is Isabella Rossellini. She's a Jewish mother, but one of the nice things about this movie is that no one is a stereotype.

The story is quite simple. Lenny's parents are trying to set him up with the daughter of a their new business partner. She's lovely and lovable, a completely round character, surprisingly, and he is in fact smitten with her. But he becomes obsessed with his neighbor Michelle, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, who I think he sees as someone even slightly more fucked up than himself.

That's it really. He loves two girls in entirely different ways. He makes a hard choice, between these two and in the end he makes a bargain with love to save his own life.

I couldn't stop thinking about this movie, and what it said about lonliness, obsession, about familial love and expectations, and about filmmaking. The plot is so, so simple, that the success of the film can only be credited to the director, writer, casting agent, production designer, cinematographer. These elements are ochestrated finely, and the result is like a Kronos Quartet version of a complex little sonata.

I Wish I Had a River I Could Skate Away On

2009-02-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

There's still time to catch Melissa Leo's Oscar-nominated (and Critics Choice Award-winning) performance in Frozen River before the Oscars next Sunday. It's out on DVD, even BlueRay. Directed and written by Courtney Hunt, the film is also nominated for best original screenplay.

This is a quiet, small, powerful film about motherhood. The plot involves a woman, Ray Eddy (Leo), living in a northern border town near Canada, who's husband has recently left her to go on another gambling binge. She's left with two sons, a sweet five year old, and an angry, hurt, sensitive 15 year-old. The timeframe is a few weeks before Christmas until the day after. I won't repeat to say how it transpires that she ends up getting into the people smuggling business--transporting illegal aliens from Canada to the US--but suffice to say she is doing it out of desperation. She needs money. She has a dead-end job and a deposit on a double-wide trailer she's going to lose if she doesn't come up with the balance / balloon payment. Also, there's no food in the house (but always food for lunch money even if she has to dig under the cusions) and no presents under the tree.

To get the aliens from Canada to the US she and her partner in crime Lila (Misty Upham) have to drive across a frozen river and transport the poor souls back in the trunk. It's a dangerous business with shady characters on both sides, and neither Ray nor Lila are saints. They are purely mercenary and lose a bit of their own humanity every time they make the trip.

The dramatic movement is between the two women as they go from enemies to business partners to friends--in all cases their bond evolves over something related to the unbearable burden of being a mother in poverty. Lila's son has been "stolen" by a sister-in-law, because Lila couldn't take care of it, and Ray's oldest son blames her for driving the father away. In one sub-plot, Leo accidentally seemingly kills a baby of a Pakistani woman and then Lila and, according to Lila, divine providence, bring it back to life. The scenes between Ray and her son are terribly affecting, and I have to say hit me very deeply and personally: I won't go into detail here, but my mother was quite a bit like Ray, our family situation was similar, and sadly I recognized me and my two brothers in the portraits of the sons.

A mother's love will always melt a frozen heart, but like the blowtorch the boy uses to melt the frozen pipes under the trailer one frigid night, sometimes the heat is so intense it can burn the whole house down.

Wrestling with Oscar

2009-02-06T20:14:00.001-08:00

I haven't done any sort of pre-Oscar slog entry and I've seen a bunch of the contenders. I wrote about Benjamin Button, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Happy Go Lucky, and Revolutionary Road here, but I'm a little behind with the rest. Okay a lot behind, but remember, it's a slog not a blog.

I'm always surprised to find out that everyone hasn't seen the major flicks, hasn't read the reviews and is, in fact, waiting for verymarkmccormick to weigh in. Kidding of course: I sense that people are really apathetic about movies this year. So much real-world drama: Michelle forcing Ty to rename the Mahilia and Sasha dolls (I would NOT want to be on Michelle's Obama's bad side), more sex scandals from Ted Haggard, Michael Phelps getting his wrist slapped for a little bongage (don't get me started), Wells Fargo executives swinging from chandeliers in Las Vegas (not), plus who can see movies when they're obsessed with Facebook (I'm just sayin') and keeping their jobs.

Well here are a few mini-reviews, so you'll know how to vote at your Oscar party.

The Reader

Liked it more than I thought I would though I am generally over Kate Winslett. And tired of hyper art-directed movies about the Holocaust. Still, it's a fairly gripping and complex story with a very open ended question at its core: why doesn't the young man say what he knows about his former lover who is on trial for war crimes, knowing that the truth would both shame her deeply, but free her from a lifetime of imprisonment.

I can't even write about The Reader, more than that, because I am humbled by the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis who said it best (stand and up applaud for this fine paragraph--it's so FUCKING true (Sorry, I feel really strongly about this. Emphasis below is mine):

"Although the commercial imperatives that drive a movie like this one are understandable — the novel was a best seller and an Oprah’s Book Club selection, for starters — you have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death-camp guard. You could argue that the film isn’t really about the Holocaust, but about the generation that grew up in its shadow, which is what the book insists. But the film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it’s about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation."

Rachel Getting Married

Loved it. Loved Anne Hathaway in this, and even was sympathetic to her character. You probably won't be. But if you grew up in a wildly dysfunctional family, then were at the center of terrible family tragedy, and then you became a drug addict because of the combination of those two situations, you might be a narcisssist too. Wouldn't this make a lovely double feature with Margot at the Wedding? Date night!

Man on Wire

Up for best documentary. At least I've seen one in that category. Every year I say I'll see more. I think this will win. Vote for it. It got tons of press and rave reviews. It's about the guy who strung a line between the World Trade Center towers and walked across, in the 70's.

The Wrestler

Wow. Really didn't expect to like this. Don't like wrestling, don't like Rourke, don't like the director Darren Aronofsky all that much (though he's super cute in a retro way--very 1940's moustache). But this movie moved me and impressed me. The father / daughter dynamic is intense, and I cried. I love to cry at movies. And the filmmaking is just fantastic. I don't like the handheld camera all that much, but Aronofsky just makes you face this guy's face and life and sorrow and predicament head on. You CAN turn away but try not to. I'm sorry, but I had to when he was slicing the meat at the deli--I just knew he was going to cut himself. I have no idea why this was completly unbearable to watch; the wrestling was much more gruesome, but somehow that blood was pure theater, even though it was real--are you with me? Maybe not--I'm still catching up myself. I just saw the movie a few hours ago. I loved the way the movie plays with reality vs. drama, fiction vs. fact in a sort of dizzying meta way. Rourke and Tomei, play a washed up wrestler and dancer, and they are perfectly cast of course, because of their status in Hollywood, and the wrestling is theater, but Hollywood is a real battle, and the erotic dancing is a total fake as is the transitory beauty of actresses. In that way it is no less conceptual than Aronofsky's Pi, but far more entertaining.

So I would see all these movies, but my money and my heart is still on Slumdog Millionaire for best picture.

Tara Tara Tara

2009-02-02T21:51:00.000-08:00

I'm watching The United States of Tara, third episode.

This is THE new show of the season. This is the new Weeds, the new Mad Men, the new Six Feet Under, the show you'll all be renting next season to watch the first season, because you read it here first, and then soon you read it everywhere, and then everyone at work was talking about it, and then it won a bunch of awards, and then you were behind. So just set your DVR to record it now. It's not one of those shows where you have to watch every episode to "get it."

There are about a thousand things I like about this show. Here are a few:
1. The premise. When I was a kid I couldn't get enough of split personality books and movies (Sybil, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden). This show is about a woman with associative identity disorder, which is, apparently, a controversial diagnosis. Who cares? It's intriguing in a magical sort of way. Who wouldn't want to have more than one personality? (Or "alters"--the clinical term). With more than one personality you have someone else to blame for all stupid shit you do, someone with courage to chew out people you hate, someone with unrepressed sexual desires and lots of self-confidence, which--if you just could just get it through your head--is really all it takes to get laid as often as you want.

2. Toni Collette. She played, of course the quirplucky (invented word: quirky plus plucky) heroine from Muriel's Wedding. But she's becoming the go-to actress for the sympathetic, harried housewife. Her character in its unaltered state is sort of like the character she played in Little Miss Sunshine. But she really chews up the alters: a prissy, but supremely bitchy housewife, a truck driver dude, and a teen-age nymphomaniac.

4. ALL of the minor characters. The husband played by John Corbett, dreamboat from Sex and the City and (remember? god, you're old) Northern Exposure. The kids are fascinating, especially the young precocious, gay son (lots of signals, but the kid's not out yet--he's 13) who gets all the best lines. The family is sweet, because they all tolerate their mother's illness. They are totally embarrassed by her, but at the end of the day they stand by their mom.

4. The writing:
Marshall (13 years old, precocious, trying out for the school musical, Grease) : I can't believe they're mounting such a trite production. I wanted to do No Exit.
Petula (His friend, another prococious teen age girl who has a crush on him): Even something mainstream like Miller or god forbid Wilder. But sex crazed teenagers-it's not even good on an ironic level.
Marshall: (dreamily looking at another student): Is that Jason Moraz auditioning?
Petulia: No I think he's just on crew.
Marshall: I always assumed he was dumb, based on the whole Santana fetish, but his take on Roshomon in film class last week was pretty good. . .

5. The Showtime gloss: They do a great job with production values like art direction and music. It's slick but it looks real, and there's the de riguer indie soundtrack.

So: watch it. Don't wait. Be ahead of the curve. And embrace your inner Tara.

A Blogger with a Slow Hand

2008-12-12T17:09:00.001-08:00

It's gratifying on one hand that so many people have commented that I haven't blogged in a while. It means people are noticing.

Well I realized I'm actually, unwittingly, part of the latest trend in blogging: slow blogging. What I've come to understand about this movement is that some bloggers (like moi) prefer to write longer pieces more thoughtfully than the rapid-fire paced and abbreviated length entries that have heretofore defined the medium.

I do like to write longer pieces, and at the same time I've been going through a lot personally such that blogging has not been a compelling way for me to spend my free time. Why blog when you can whine about your failed romances. Just be glad I spared the Internet and faithful readers that woesome drama. There are far more interesting ones on the screen. . .

But I think of all of you out there each time I see a new movie, get obsessed with a TV show, see a play, or now, as I indulge my latest form of entertainment: play a new video game on my PlayStation 3. More on that in a minute.

Also, I've been getting more serious about painting, oil painting that is, and the occasional Mendocino barn.

I'm going to create a separate blog for my painting hobby for anyone who wants to watch my slow (that word again) progress from absolute childish amateur to pompous amateur. That would probably be an audience of one, my mother, who is always encouraging. I love painting, but I'm not good at it. Still, it gets me out of my head. When I was in high school and college I painted a bit. I was one class short from getting a minor in art. Instead I opted for the infinitely more practical minors in History and Theater. I picked the hobby back up in '08 and took lessons in the summer from Rob Langley, American Impressionist and am now studying with Kristine Reiner, American Realist. I'm trying to develop my own style, which I imagine will be somewhere in between.

But I still watch TV and see movies.

Some people said to me: I got hooked on Mad Men because of your blog. Thank you. The second season really delivered, I think. But I'm always looking for something new and meaty, something I can sink my teeth into (couldn't resist). I became obsessed with True Blood.

Vampires R Us

I should have done a whole blog entry about vampires and vampire movies. I could have compared and contrasted the salty HBO series True Blood with the moody movie Twilight. I suspect true vampire snobs will like neither—finding he former lurid and the latter insipid—but for me I fall for almost anything vampire. It’s like candy for me, or candy for me as a boy: Three Musketeers? Sure! Jolly Rancher? You bet. So different, but both satisfying.

True Blood—the series is over, but I’m sure it’s out on DVD or will be, and it's going to have a second season—is sexy, and first and foremost a vampire movie or story should be sexy. It’s set in some fictional backwoods swamplands in Louisiana, so you get a good dose of voodoo mixed in and some sultry Cajun accents, though most of the actors just play the drawl generic southern. The premise is that vampires have come out of the closet (casket), because a new synthetic blood allows them to feed without killing. They want to be accepted, and they want civil rights. Parallels to gays and HIV are everywhere, completely intentionally. The synthetic blood is like sex with condoms, it postures: it does the job but it’s not as fulfilling. And the vampires’ wish to be mainstreamed is met with suspicion, xenophobia, and out right hostility. There are liberals who accept the vampires, and then there are those that see them as sort of a tribe of goth rockers and want to be one of them: “fang bangers” they’re called.

This is trash of the highest order. But it has the Alan Ball signature (American Beauty, Six Feet Under): moody depth and unexpected three-dimensional characters--even in the minor roles. No one is entirely good or entirely evil. Ball is credited as creator, producer and director, and writer of some episodes. (By the way: name-dropping side note. I met Alan Poul at a party; he was Alan Ball's collaborator of sorts on Six Feet Under--they are both credited with producing and directing many episodes, though I think it's fair to say Ball was more the creative genius of that show. Poul is the genius behind Swingtown, though. Anyway, Poul gave me the adjective "lurid" to describe True Blood, though he had some good things to say about it too.)

All vampire stories have their own spin on the vampire myths and both True Blood and Twilight take creative liberties with the garlic, mirrors, crosses, sunlight motifs and create some new twists. In True Blood ingesting a few drops of vampire’s blood is like taking the drug ecstasy, combined with ‘shrooms and LSD. It has street value. It also has healing properties if you’re hurt. In Twilight, vampires can roam about in daytime as long as it’s not real sunny, thus the location: a gloomy northwestern town, shrouded in mist and clouds.

Twilight is very teen-age-girl. (That’s an actual adjective, by the way, because Tina Wang once used it describe her inspiration for a new collection she presented. It’s quite useful to describe many things as teen-age girls control so much of our economic and cultural lives. You may use it, but please cite verymarkmccormick and Tina Wang if you are questioned on its etymology. This will have to do until the new version of the OED comes out and we both get proper credit.)

As I was saying, it’s easy to see why teen-age girls have made Twilight a box-office success. The narrator is a misunderstood, not altogether geeky nor altogether popular and pretty, teen-ager, with a huge heap of angst on her shoulder. Of course she is starting at a new school and the only guy she likes is the vampire (it’s like me at a party: if there’s one straight guy there. . . oy!). And it’s easy to imagine the rest, which is my way of reminding readers that I’m not much for plot summaries. See Twilight for the moodiness, the somber romantic tone. It’s like a Smith’s song. And see True Blood—more Kurt Cobainish—for a weekly dose of sexy, dark, Cajun mystery, some horror show thrills, and the image of Jason Stackhouse’s butt (Ryan Kwanten). It’s in every episode, and I would say it’s worth the price of TiVo. (I swear this could be a drinking game—it’s laughably consistent)

Movies
I've seen a lot of movies since I last wrote. I want to do a best of '08--maybe I'll get around to it, but meanwhile, here are some mini-reviews.

Happy Go Lucky--Mike Leigh's new film. He's never done any film that's un-interesting. Check out Naked and Vera Drake. His movies tend to be very, very dark, teetering on the razor's edge of overwrought and emotionally profound. This one is different. It's about a cockeyed optimist. You'll wonder if it's really a Mike Leigh film until a pivotal scene with a driving instructor who calls her on her happiness. I've always said moodiness is not a victimless crime, referring to someone whose emotional state roller-coasters, but even aggressive positivity can be mean in a way as we learn.

Slumdog Millionaire--If you only see one movie in the next few months see this. I don't know a single person who wasn't moved by it. It has that formulaic underdog-makes-it-big plot that so many movies rely on, from Rocky to Billy Elliot to Seabiscuit. I've written about that pattern a few times in this blog. But because the hero comes from the slums of India, and because his wretched life is not sugarcoated at all the fairy tale ending really soars.

Milk--The story here is Sean Penn's performance. Sometimes I wonder why I blog at all about exceptionally good performances that have been widely lauded in the press, but I do think that Sean Penn's work here is astounding, some of the best I've ever seen. My friend Greg said he's channeling Harvey Milk, and it feels like that. There's a scene where they're celebrating an electoral victory of a proposition which would have, in the 1970's, made it legal to fire gay teachers. Its a transcendent moment, because Penn projects the joy so powerfully. I thank Penn for this--we need all straight people to do what they can to advance civil rights of gay people to care enough about us to be inconvenienced and to sacrifice their time and money. To be brave. We can't do this alone. We don't have Harvey now. He was brutally assassinated.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button--I was disappointed in this movie, because the pace was lugubrious, but I did like a few things about it: the message (find what you like and be it). I liked the supporting role of Benjamin's mother, Queenie (Taraji P Henson). I hope she gets an Oscar nomination. Pitt's role was understated, but the art direction and score were overstated, so you get the feeling that this film was pumped up to be an Oscar contender. It's contrived for that goal--you can almost hear it being pitched: "Blanchett and Pitt play characters that age over 60 years during the course of the film!" Well that's a triumph of make-up if nothing else, and computer generated graphics as they had to morph Pitt's head on a smaller body for a good part of it. I did admire Blanchett as she moved into middle age and beyond. She wore the weariness gracefully; I believed she was an aging dancer. The movie is just overly-ambitious. I would have liked to have the same story done with half the budget, half the time, with actors half as famous.

Revolutionary Road--Quite liked this movie in the way I like emotionally charged domestic dramas and period pieces like Mad Men. No I'm not going to compare it. The New Yorker review said that's annoying since this movie is set in the 50's and Mad Men is in the 60's, but it does that have that slice of truth about how suburban women perceived themselves and were perceived as social objects before The Feminine Mystique, The Female Eunuch, Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem, Virginia Slims, Charlie perfume, and That Girl. I don't mean to be glib. The reviews I've read can't seem to agree about the meta-themes of this movie: Is it about a feminist polemic or a commentary on suburban angst or the institution of marriage? Is it general or specific? I think what makes it art is that it is all of these things. I'm wondering--and I would love to hear your comments: Are movies about bad marriages, or rather love / hate relationships like The Squid and The Whale, Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf, and Revolutionary Road somehow more compelling to those of us who grew up in chaotic households? I certainly love a movie like this where the characters psychically eviscerate each other--so long as there's redemption. Honestly there's not much in this movie. But it underscores what for me is the greatest requirement of a relationship: to see someone and be seen. If you don't have that: expect tragedy.

Quick TV note:

Damages is coming back. FX is running first season catch up sessions. Try to catch it so you can be a part of the second season. Glenn Close is riveting. I promise. She won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for this role. This is, like Mad Men, True Blood, and a few others, must-see TV.

So What Else Have I Been Doing?
A new genre to my blog: Games. Yes, I've given in, but only for what they call "rhythm games." I have a Playstation 3 now and two games Guitar Hero World Tour (like Rock Band), and Sing Star. I have just one word for this whole world: addictive. I know that gamers look down their noses at TV: they would rather play. But when I'm playing I always think: I should watching TiVo. So don't worry. I haven't turned into a teen-ager . . . yet. But like Benjamin Button, I do feel myself getting younger and younger every day.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope it's better than '08. I'm going to the inauguration. I'm in a state of optimism for many things. Thanks for your patience as I let the blog go for a while. I will keep it up in '09, but I do think the slow blog is -- let's call it a "slog"-- probably my genre. Stick with me, please. And know that your comments and subscriptions keep me going.

Somewhere over this Rainbow

2008-10-13T20:17:00.001-07:00

About once a year I get obsessed with an album. And by that I mean I have to listen to it at least once a day. And then I start really listening hard and trying to hear the lyrics, and then I start memorizing lyrics and looking up the ones I can't quite get on the Web. Then I start even listening to the songs I originally didn't like.

Last year it was Silversun Pickups. This year it's Radiohead's In Rainbows. The albums that get under my skin are usually ones that challenge me. Silversun Pickups is a raucous rock band. Radiohead of course is experimental, alternative, sometimes abstruse. I have never really liked an entire Radiohead album until this one.

The melodies are intoxicating, the rhythms complex. Listen to the cymbal and piano at the end of Videotape. It's like they are characters talking to each other. Yorke's voice is sweet and high and you can see how they've influenced Coldplay and a thousand other commercial bands. I'm not saying anything particularly insightful here. Radiohead is a cult and there are reams written about them. But I encourage you to buy this album and study it. My favorite song is Jigsaw Falling into Place. These lyrics about the hopefullness of picking someone up in a bar, before you both get too drunk, is sublime in its subtlety:

Jigsaw Falling into Place

Just as you take my hand
Just as you write my number down
Just as the drinks arrive
Just as they play your favourite song
As your bad day disappears
No longer wound up like a spring
Before you've had too much
Come back in focus again

The walls are bending shape
You got a Cheshire cat grin
All blurring into one
This place is on a mission

Before the night owl
Before the animal noises
Closed circuit cameras
Before you're comatose

Before you run away from me
Before you're lost between the notes
The beat goes round and round
The beat goes round and round

I never really got there
I just pretended that I had
Words are blunt instruments
Words are sawn off shotguns

Come on and let it out
Come on and let it out
Come on and let it out
Come on and let it out

Before you run away from me
Before you're lost between the notes
Just as you take the mic
Just as you dance, dance, dance

A Jigsaw falling into place
So there is nothing to explain
You eye each other as you pass
She looks back and you look back
Not just once
and not just twice
Wish away your nightmare
Wish away the nightmare
You got the light you can feel it on your back
[A light,] you can feel it on your back
Your jigsaw falling into place

Other albums I've been obsessed with in the past decade or so: Rufus Wainwright's self-titled first album, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach's album, Painted from Memory, Chakha Khan's album of standards with the London Symphony Orchestra, Classikhan, Beth Orton's Without Reservation, The Light in the Piazza soundtrack, Joni Mitchell's Hejira.

And now I will tell you a funny Radiohead story. When I was 39 I was having a mid-life crisis, dating a 23 year old named Charlie. I don't think Charlie would mind if I said he was all of these things: brilliant, sexy, troubled. He liked to drink a lot and then listen to Radiohead at loud volumes. I would wait for him to lose interest and pay attention to me, but it was like he was in another world. We had quite an age difference and our tastes in music had overlaps, but our favorite stuff was really far apart--or was it? Once we went to Yosemite and we agreed that we would alternate choosing CDs, but we would bring stuff we wanted to expose the other to. He brought Radiohead, and I brought Joni Mitchell and Sondheim. Too funny. Charlie had some musical sophistication. He encouraged me to remember my high school band music theory and listen to the time signatures of the Radiohead songs. A waltz is 3/4 time, for example. You can't figure it out with Radiohead. It's all over the map, which is what makes it cerebral and dynamic (click on the image above). And I will say he really got the Joni, and I turned him on to other stuff too, like Rufus Wainwright. We broke up after a short time, and he later moved to New York, but we've kept in touch, and I knew I had raised him well when Charlie, now thirty or thirty-one, told me excitedly recently that he had seen Rufus doing his full length re-creation of the famous Judy Garland concert at Radio City Music Hall. And now he will be happy to hear I'm finally young enough to appreciate Radiohead.

Teach Me Tonight

2008-09-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

A few years ago a great movie came out, Little Children, about a woman in the suburbs who begins having an affair with a stay-at-home dad. Separate but loosely inter-twined plots concern a registered sex offender and a retired cop who is after him. It's a brilliant script and people told me the book, by Tom Perrotta, was even better. The voiceover narratives in the movie, presumably lifted from from the book, were really good. I wanted to read the book but never got around to it.

So when I read the reviews for Perrotta's new book The Abstinence Teacher I was intrigued. Time magazine called him the Steinbeck of suburbia (so what does that make Cheever? or Updike?).

It's a good read, a real page turner, but I did not find it particularly sophisticated. In fact it was a jolt to my palette, because I had just finished Pride and Prejudice (my first Austen). Her prose is psychologically insightful and masterfully florid, definitely a product of its time stylistically, but it's easy to see why we still read Austen.

The Abstinence Teacher is a little too self-consciously political, however. Perrotta has tried create dual portraits, both sympathatic, about somewhat extreme characters on the culture war continuum. The first is about a born again Christian, Tim, who was once an addict, but came under the seductive spell of an evangelical pastor. He finds purpose in the church and eventually even marries a young congregant partly to please the pastor and partly to patch his broken heart. When he was using, he fucked up up his life so bad his marriage fell apart, the usual story. He soldiers on, though, and he's noble. And he's not a conservative Christian jerk. He's an ex-rock 'n' roller, and misses it all. He stays open-minded. To illustrate this, there are long patches explaining why he doesn't agree with his church's stance on gay marriage and other extreme positions.

His foil is Ruth, a sex-ed teacher in town who has braved a controversy caused by her telling her ninth graders that some people like oral sex. She is reprimanded, and the conservative school board adopts an abstinence-based sex ed curriculum she is forced to teach. She's miserable. Add to that, she can't get laid and she thinks she's always going to be single.

They are connected by their daughters' soccer team that Tim happens to coach. Ruth makes a scene one day when Tim, spontaneously, asks the team to join him in prayer after a particularly triumphant win.

They become unlikely friends, and the novel is really about how they are managing their own lonliness and ultimately how they let their attraction for each other (more than physical) subvert their socio-religious leanings.

It's a sweet story and I enjoyed it, couldn't put it down, but it's kind of shallow. A beach read.

Elegaic? Yes, but. . .

2008-09-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

Elegy will make you think, and it will make you feel, but I'm not sure it's a great movie. I would love to hear what others think.

Without being overly personally and so completely subjective, I will say that the movie struck a lot of chords for me: what is the nature of aging and age and what roles do aging and age differences play in romantic love? What is the nature of obsessive love (the Kingsley character, an aging but emotionally and sexually vibrant professor/writer/critic says of his lover (in essesnce), "I was anxious all day until we would speak and then I was I was anxious afterwards." And what is the nature of sex, romance, intimacy, long-term connection? It's all explored here.

I think about these things all the time; I have lived the situations in the film from all sides. And at the same time I have had, for many years, a negative reaction to one particular Hollywood formula: the on-screen love affairs between male actors in their 60's and actresses in their 30's. Pairing Sean Connery with Michelle Pfeiffer--or in the case of Elegy, pairing Ben Kingsley with Penelope Cruz, is quite simply playing out the masturbatory fantasies of the producers who finance these films. No doubt that the world is full of such romances, but how many times is it the reverse situation? So few: The Graduate, a smattering of others.

Okay, so trying to put aside my personal judgments is not easy nor is it entirely possible or required with this hobby (criticism). Even the Kingsley character David Kapesh says (advancing Roland Barthes' thesis): a book is a different book depending on the reader, and the reader will change such that re-reading a book 10 years after reading it the first time, the reader will experience the book through a diffent lens.

Still, that aside--I am really am trying to get to the point: is the movie good?

I just don't know. I have to think about it more. It's a story of Kingsley as an aging writer, David Kepesh, as I said, who falls in love with a student, Consuela Costilla, played by Cruz. He also has a lover who he sees regularly, the more age-appropriate Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson). He lies to Carolyn about Consuela, and never tells Consuela about Carolyn. He is almost estranged from his son, Kenneth (played by the excellent Peter Sarsgaard who needs a leading role, and soon--I love him) who can't seem to get over his past grievance--how Kepesh divorced his mother and abandoned him. And Kepesh has a best friend, George, played by, of all people, Dennis Hopper, who serves as Kepesh's Id in a way--encouraging him to go for the sex, but not get hung up on Consueala. And believe it or not we also have a cameo by Deborah Harry as George's wife--it's brief but credible. Yes, Deborah Harry!

Re-reading the paragraph above, I realized that, for me, the movie's interesting dimensions were in the relationships of secondary characters. Clarkson is a total favorite of mine, and she delivers another of her intelligent, subtle performances. And Sarsgaard as I mentioned does the seething, aggrieved son quite well--totally believable.

And the movie is gorgeously shot. Meaningful light and shadows, deep colors, sensual angles. It's beautiful, if obsessively mannered somehow--perfectly art directed, a little too perfect sometimes, but pretty to look at.

So what's the rub? As you all know I'm a huge Cruz fan. I can't get enough of her, but I have to say I did not like her in this role. I felt she was objectified, and I felt her stretching too hard to be a serious "actress." (P.S. to Penelope: you already are a world class, legendary talent. You have nothing to prove.) I thought the plot was contrived--you'll understand when you see how a certain body part of her is fetishized and then exactly what disease she gets. I thought her vulnerability was forced and her natural charisma was tempered. I found myself actually kind of angry that she was somehow used. Kingsley, on the other hand, played the role with sufficient depth and found many levels to his character.

I want to hear from others on this. What was wrong with Cruz's performance here, or with the direction? Why did the movie ultimately ring somewhat hollow? I've read zero reviews of this film so far. I'll be interested in your opinions, and the real critics.

Forget After Seeing

2008-09-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

I usually don't concentrate too hard on reviews before I've seen a movie that I'm really looking forward to. I will sort of glance at the review sometimes, get the gist, and see the movie anyway, even it's bad. And I try not to read many reviews before I blog about a movie.

The movie I've been most anticipating this fall, the Coen brother's Burn After Reading, has already opened. I saw that the New York Times hated it, said it had no heart. But of course I went anyway.

The preview for this movie is so compelling: Pitt, Swinton, McDormand, Clooney, Malkovich! And the serious auteur filmmakers, returning back to their black comedy tone (Fargo, Raising Arizona) which I prefer over the violently malevolent shades of No Country for Old Men.

Clearly this movie was a palette cleanser for the Coens and their fans. After No Country for Old Men; I'm sure they just needed a break. Problem is, though, you can't go back and make a first film at the height of your career. That's what this felt like.

This movie disappoints on several levels. Pitt is playing a one-dimentional caricature, and frankly so is Swinton, Clooney and Malkovich. You can't like any of them, and worse: you can't really understand them or care about them. There's some giggles, sure, but their talents are wasted here. I really don't feel like dissecting what's bad about each of the performances, but here's a small detail that just drove me crazy: Pitt is supposed to be playing a dumb jock sort of personal trainer. An idiot who gets in way over his head as he tries to blackmail an ex-CIA operative after finding a disc of his personal data. The plot is simply about some how Dormand and Pitt try to get money out of this guy (Malkovich) and then, failing that, out of the Russians. A bunch of little inter-twined sup-plots keep the pace brisk. Anyway, Pitt's character is always carrying a water bottle. When he drinks from it, he holds his elbow up high like a little kid and sucks on the end like a nipple. He does this again and again and it's a piece of body language that is supposed to signal how childish he is, but it's way overdone, and he ends up playing the role (and the directors are at fault here, not Pitt) like a character in a one-laugh Saturday Night Live skit.

As for Swinton, she better be careful. After the (nuanced and interesting) role she had in Michael Clayton as an uptight PR professional, she dons similar hair and affect here to portray a surly adulterous doctor. Swinton could do anything--now that she's proven she can reign her exotic looks and ethereal technique into mainstream Hollywood (yes, the Coen bros are mainstream now), she ought to take a page from Julianne Moore's book and find material that offers more opportunity to display her otherworldly range (check out her early Jarman work) movies that work with rather than hide her rarity.

After seeing the movie I read the New York Times review more carefully and the New Yorker review as well. They panned it. But I disagree with them on McDormand. She's the hardest working actor here, for sure, and though she's plays a raging narcisissist whose sole purpose in life is to get four cosmetic surgeries which she believes will make her more desirable, I kind of liked her. I liked the single-mindedness of her vision. She starts Internet dating and she really knows what she wants, recognizes it when she sees it (someone handsome with a good sense of humor--Clooney), and doesn't take no for an answer--when it comes to the blackmailing scene, not from the CIA, not from the Russians, not from the insurance company who won't pay for her surgeries ("My doctor approved them!"). She kept me chuckling, but one can't help compare and contrast her role here with that in Fargo. In the latter, she was wholly sympathetic and complex.

A few things keep the movie watchable. I loved the short scenes in CIA headquarters--the way the big boss dismisses the blackmailing / murder incident casually, after the under-boss explains sheepishly what's happened. That was classic. And the actor Richard Jenkins (played the dead father in Six Feet Under) plays a really interesting character. So if you watch the minor roles, you'll see some complexity, but it's not enough. And I am entranced by the Coen's camera techniques and quick editing. Also, they can take something that is absolutely gruesome (a character gets shot in the forehead) and make it funny (the shooter freaks out). But this is trickery, not real film making, the kind that moves you and changes the way you see or understand something.

If you like the Coen brothers, I'm sure neither this blog nor wild horses will keep you from seeing this flick. You'll go anyway. I understand. I faithfully march to everything Woody Allen puts out, and usually walk out somewhat disappointed (not this year though). But check out Rotten Tomatoes--the audience rating is in the 70's; the critics' rating in the 50's. I stole the headline from the Wall Street Journal critic. It's appropriate.

Hamlet 2

2008-09-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

If you liked Waiting For Guffman, and you loathe movies like Dead Poet's Society and Mr. Holland's Opus, you'll love Hamlet 2. Standout performances by Steve Koogan as Dana Marschz, the lead character, Catherine Keener as his depressed wife, Amy Poehler as an ACLU lawyer, Elizabeth Shue (as herself), and unknown Shea Pope as the 9th grade theater critic, Noah Sapperstein. He almost steals the show. He had me at Roland Barthes.

It's a story about a crazy-assed, somewhat moronic, but ultimately sympathetic high school drama teacher who stages adapted versions of movies like Erin Brockovich instead of the usual high school fare (West Side Story, Death of a Salesman). Sapperstein, the critic, who pans all of his productions tells him that he should try writing original stuff. It tells you a lot about the movie and the writing and the characters that the protagonist turns to a Freshman dramaturge for advice--and then follows it. In any case Marschz knows he has to do something big to save the deapartment which is being cut due to budget cuts.

To save the department Marschz decides to write and produce a sequel to Hamlet. You may remember that at the end of Hamlet almost everyone is dead. "I have a device to fix that," he tells his wife. "What? A time machine?" she asks. "Yes." And someone named Jesus shows up in the sequel too, inexplicably, but probably just as an excuse for the showcase number Rock Me, Sexy Jesus.

Hamlet 2 is graced by balls-out performances. Most notable is Coogan's anti-hero, the caftan wearing, totally clumsy and admittedly untalented Marschz. But there's als0 the drama geeks Rand, a delightful closet case and Epiphany, a goody two shoes with a dark side.

In a way this movie is solidly in the "lets put on a show" genre, or the genre of British and American formulaic comedies, or inspirational dramas, that show the underdog rising predictably to great glory (Billy Elliott, Kinky Boots, Seabiscuit, Rocky, The Great Debaters, Calendar Girls, The Full Monty, Strictly Ballroom, etc.). Nine times out of ten, I hate this shit, because I like to be surprised

And surprised I was.Here's what got me. The show within the show--I'm not giving anything away by saying that it's a smash. I expected that, but I didn't expect to be moved. I think it was the Tucson Gay Men's Choir singing "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." Magic. What is better in life than completely unexpected tears?

Vicky Christina Barcelona Penepole Patricia Javier

2008-08-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

Woody Allen's new movie is a delightful trifle. At least on the surface. There's a lot to like about this movie, and not a whole lot to pick at. Take the standard ingredients of a good movie: appealing characters. Check. Beautiful setting. Check. Talented cast. Check. Good writing. Check. Interesting story. Check. This movie has all that.

Now consider what makes a movie great. All of the above plus: standout performance. Check. Absolutely, Penepole Cruz makes the movie. To be honest, I was getting a little sleepy with all the wine, sun, glowing skin, minor conflicts and subplots until Penepole Cruz shows. Have I bored you yet with my proclamation that she is the one woman in the world I would sleep with if I had the chance. Yup, she could turn me. (I mean it worked for Tom Cruise, right?) But I digress. Her performance is riveting. You want more, more, more of this crazy bitch. I would say too that Javier Bardem stands out. I love actors who seem to enjoy themselves in all kinds of roles. In No Country for Old Men he was evil incarnate and here is playboy incarnate, and ironically he holds the moral center of the movie. He is certain about his need for love and affection and for caring about women; all the women around him, though, and Patricia Clarkson (frankly underutilized here) are all somewhat confused about what they want.

So the standout performances are there with Cruz and Bardem, but there is one final element that should be in a great movie: a universal and resonant theme. Here's where I can't decide if this movie makes it. Clearly Allen has something to say about romance ("it's love that can never be"--I think he got that part right), and about all the people in the world (all of us, really, at one point or another) who can never really decide about what they want out of love. Do we want security? Do we want passion? Do we want predictability? Do we want uncertainty and surprise? Do we want to stretch our limits or do we want to comfort and safety? We all want it all and we all want nothing to do with it if it gets too, too messy. All of this is in the movie, to be sure, as the main and minor characters work out their uncertainty. Fair enough, and highly entertaining, but for me, at the end, the stakes just weren't high enough in this film, the neuroses weren't deep enough.

Allen went to Barcelona, but like the characters, he was on vacation. He cast Cruz, but he's no Almadovar when it comes to Spanish intensity. But he tries: the best scene for me was a fight scene between Cruz and Bardem in the street outside a cafe. They are yelling, on the verge of physical violence, and the extras walk by, coached to hardly notice the eruptons, for we are to assume this is the way of love in Spain. In Manhattan, Allen's spiritual home, the psychoanalyzed upper class smother their emotions with Jungian rationalizations and passive aggression. Yet in the best Allen cinema, the tears are real (in Manhattan when Mariel Hemingway (Tracy) says goodbye to Allen (Isaac)--devastating) and break through the intellectual crap. In this movie, notwithstanding the force of Cruz, he is tepid: his sex scenes are from the neck up to emphasize a point that even in our deepest passion, we can't get out of our heads.

But as a summer movie it can't be beat. It's a bitter little pill wrapped in butterscotch candy. It doesn't hurt a bit, yet when summer turns to fall, you might find the warmth of your imperfect everyday love more immediate and real than memories of your "romantic" Spanish summer.

Swing on Swingtown

2008-07-20T17:05:00.001-07:00

At first I was excited about this new show, but in a sort of trepidatious way. I thought, "70's swingers; could be fun; could be sexy." I had some high expectations that it could be a sort of period piece like Mad Men, with perfect details (art design) and some pithy insight into the time and place (Chicago suburbs). I watched the first episode and was a bit disappointed, but also kind of intrigued. The disappointment was to be expected, because it is a network show; that means, for a show where a major plot line (swinging) revolves around sex, there is little of it. There was a lot of press about how this could have been a better cable show. I just found it a little predictable at first. The trouble with most network TV is that the characters are so widely drawn they are stereotypes, and the plots quickly devolve to the soap-operatic. Desperate Housewives is a perfect example of this.

So yes, it was kind of predictable and kind of shallow, but for some reason I stuck with it. The characters are all quite interesting and the music and period details did picque my interest.

The series revolves around three couples and their children. Susan and Bruce are best friends with Roger and Janet. They have lived in the same middle class Chicago suburb for years. Their friendship is mostly between the wives, Susan and Janet--as is the case with most two-couple friendships based primarily on proximity. Bruce gets a huge promotion and so he and Susan and their two kids move to a more expensive suburb. That's when everything starts happening--this is all in the first episode. Bruce and Susan's new house is right across the street from Tom and Trina, a coupla wild and crazy swingers. This is like the Chicago version of Ice Storm, but not as dark. Tom and Trina spot Susan and Bruce as they're moving in--actually they're practically drooling at the new meat in town. They are, at first, more like vampires than swingers, but their identity as swingers and the degree to which they prostletyze their lifestyle (yes, I would say this is a lifestyle, so don't go getting all PC on me) becomes very nuanced eventually. They're actually pretty cool about the whole thing, adopting a sort of a "take or leave it, but it works for us" stance that of course makes them irresistable. Hell, I'd do 'em in a minute! Trina is sexy as hell with a killer voice and wise eyes.

Anyway, I digress. Tom and Trina move in for the kill instantly. They invite Bruce and Susan over a party on, I think, on their very first night in the 'hood. Long story short, they seduce them after the party. Oh but I forgot the important part: just as they're about to go over to the party (which they don't know is a swinger party until they get there), who shows up with a covered dish, but their old pals Roger and Janet? So naturally Susan and Bruce invite them to come along. Susan and Bruce just barely fit. At least they are wearing polyester. But Roger and Janet look like chaperones from central casting. The whole point is constantly to portray Roger and Janet as the biggest squares in the world; they're actually complex and nice and even sexy in their own way--it would have been so easy to make them one-dimensional. But Janet, especially, is so tightly wound, and so unforgiving and sarcastic towards this brave new world, and really so deeply hurt that she (thinks she is) losing her best friend to this life of debauchery. So, in brief, their friendship starts collapsing while the foursome of Susan and Bruce / Tom and Trina starts flourishing.

That's all you need to know to pick this up. There are some juicy subplots though, mostly involving Susan and Bruce's' teenage (and lovely, precocious) daughter Laurie who falls in love with her hott(!) Advanced Placement English teacher and tosses aside heartlessly her equally hott, and age-appropriate surfer dude boyfriend (complete with corduory OP shorts). Now that's a predicament I would have very much enjoyed handling in high school. I keep wanting to yell at her "why choose?"

Okay, what I like about this show, and what's most surprising to me, is that the real drama is mostly internal. It's really about each of the characters trying on new roles, new perceptions of themselves and seeing how it fits, then shyly marching around in this new uniform, with a new set of lines, seeing how others are perceiving them. It's touching in a way. The acting is really quite good. I do wish this had been slightly moodier and on Showtime or HBO where it would have more creative freedom. But for network TV it's a wonder: there are no good guys, no bad guys, lots of shades of gray in this moral playground. And they're taking their time to let the story unfold. In the first episode Bruce and Susan lost their cherries to another couple, and now there's a heap of tension around whether they will do it again; they've said it was a "one time thing" but we all know that once you've bitten that apple. . . Now we're wondering if Roger and Janet might be going down the stony end with them. They never wanted to go down the stony end, but once you try pot brownies in some friends' country house where there's a lake outside and inside: (uh-oh!) Twister (!), well anything can happen.

One more detail I'm noticing: the bodies are 70's bodies (except for Tom, above, but he plays an airline pilot and everyone knows they are naturally muscular). Remember before Nautilus machines, before you had two gym memberships? You could stay fit--probably from running, or you could stay thin by chain smoking and watching Watergate hearings all night. But no one was really that muscular. It wasn't a high value. It was more important that you danced well, dressed well, and had nicely feathered hair. At least that was how it was for me, in high school. I never touched a weight machine until college--that was the 80's, and sometimes I wonder: have these pecs made my life any better? What if I had spent that time writing a TV show about Pocatello? Nah, I'll take the biceps.

New Yorker, New York Times, New Post!

2008-07-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

I know I know, long time no blog. But thanks to everyone who said, "when's the next post?" I have more ideas than time these days, but that's an excuse. My computer got stolen, but that's an excuse too. It's been hot, the fires in California, the film festival, a thousand reasons for what amounts to writer's block.

But I've been running across things in magazines I want to share, and in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and in the daily New York Times. Where to begin?

If you are a Mad Men fan--and who isn't who has even seen one episode--you must immerse yourself in the NYTimes Magazine think piece published a few weeks ago. It's a great look at what makes the series the best thing on TV, how realistic it is or isn't, what's the real social comment that the writers are trying to make (this will surprise you--it's not what you think), but mostly it's a juicy portrait of the neurotic Matthew Weiner, the creator and show-runner of Mad Men. And the best news of all: the DVD of the first season is out, so you can catch up on it, before the second season starts on July 27th.

One more from the New Yorker. If you didn't read the elevator article (sorry, Ed!) a few months ago, you will be a total loser at the office water cooler. Everyone is talking about it and the accompanying video. Now here's the thing that's most interesting about the article. This guy's life was ruined by the event. Things happen to us that become bends in our life trajectory--it changes everything, but compare and contrast what happened to the guy in the elevator what happened to Laura Bush.

"I Smoke. I read. I admire."

Did anyone read the Maureen Dowd op-ed in the New York Times about Laura Bush yesterday? Someone has written a fictional account of her life. Fair enough, but the editorial by Dowd about the book, had these really provocative paragraphs:

Once in a while, you’ll read about something she’s said, like that legendary line she uttered to her future in-laws — “I read, I smoke, and I admire” — that makes you realize how intriguing it would be to see the real Laura. One with her guard down and outside of the Kabuki-like job of first lady.
But there’s only one vessel that can ferry you past Laura’s moat, and that’s fiction. Ms. Sittenfeld has creatively applied her crayons to all the ambiguous blanks in the coloring book. It isn’t an invasion of privacy. Art has always been made out of the stories of kings and queens. Fictionalizing historical figures is fine. Fantasies about public figures are inevitable. The question of an ostensibly ordinary girl who lives through extraordinary things will always be gripping. For “Madame Bovary,” Flaubert partly drew on the real-life story of Delphine Delamare, a village doctor’s unhappy wife who had lots of lovers and a premature and humiliating death.
And the story of the quiet, pretty librarian who could suffer the fate of being an old maid if not rescued by the dashing hero is a favorite American narrative — from “The Music Man” to “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
During her husband’s presidential runs, many reporters shied away from asking Laura Bush about the freakishly horrible accident she had when she was 17. Hurrying to a party, she ran a stop sign in Midland, Tex., one night on Farm Road 868 and ran into a car that turned out to be driven by the golden boy of her high school, a cute star athlete she was believed to have had a crush on. He died instantly of a broken neck.
As Ann Gerhart wrote in “The Perfect Wife”: “Killing another person was a tragic, shattering error for a girl to make at 17. It was one of those hinges in a life, a moment when destiny shuddered, then lurched in a new direction. In its aftermath, Laura became more cautious and less spontaneous, more inclined to be compassionate.”
Laura has rarely spoken publicly about it, except to say in 2000 that “it was crushing ... for the family involved and for me as well.”
How could a novelist not be drawn to such a tragedy? It’s easy to imagine all that guilt, shame, conscience, fear, sex and nightmares in the hands of Eudora Welty or Larry McMurtry.

Wow. Did you know that about Laura Bush? I knew she was a big reader, a closet smoker, but I didn't know about that tragic accident. And she made a pretty good life for herself, except she married the most public idiot of her generation. Still, reading this: I love her. And I love Dowd.

And I love New York, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. I have nothing to say about New York really except see Sex and the City. Even though the NYT review called it shallow. Duh! (And not just shallow, but "the pits, vulgar, shrill, and deeply shallow." Thank god movies can be all of those things and deeply enjoyable at the same time, thank god Laura Bush made it, and thank god for Mad Men.

This and That

2008-05-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Bloggers are their own editors, and that is a sad thing. Because if I had an editor, I'm sure that s/he would find all my misspellings and grammar errors. I often find them the day after I post, and I cringe. And a good editor would never let me get away with a headline like This and That, which is a journalistic cliche that probably went out of style with The Reader's Digest and Ladies Home Jounal. I wish Amanda Lorber were my editor.

Who is Amanda Lorber? Well, just when I thought there was nothing good on TV this spring, I had a verymarkmccormick synchronistic experience: I read about The Paper in the New York Times one day and the very next day on JetBlue, coming back from my friend Tim and Lee's place in the Hamptons for Memorial Day, I caught an MTV marathon of the series, and I have just three words: dee-lish-ous. Oh, and as an aside: I encourage everyone to cut up their United Airlines frequent flyer cards and switch to JetBlue. Costs a little more, but with extra leg room, planes that leave on time, overhead bins big enough for a hat box, 36 stations of mind-numbing television in every leather seat, and all the Lorna Doons you can eat, worth every penny.

The Paper is about a high school newspaper in Florida and its imperious, precocious "love to hate" Editor-in-Chief Amanda Lorber. Actually, though she makes some serious mis-steps in the episodes I saw (she should have joined the team on the ropes course instead of finishing her NYU application), she is a mature manager. She dresses down her managing editor for contradicting her in a meeting, and it was a fine example of one minute management: "look, you made me look bad in front of the editorial team, it was inappropriate, and I'd prefer it if you didn't do it again, and if that ruins our friendship, fine."

It took me back to my days as editor in chief of my high school yearbook, The Pocatellian. In those days we didn't have computers; we pasted things up on graph paper and typed out our copy, put it all in a big envelope and waited three months. The newspaper was mimeographed, I think. Now they've all got Macs, of course. It's a tense moment as all 34 pages are "PDF'd" then burned to a disc. I suppose they take the disc to Kinkos and wake up the next morning to boxes and boxes of four color glory: instant gratification for the particular brand of ego-inflated intellectuals-in-training that comprise high school newspaper staffs (and adult bloggers for that matter).

This seems like a rich high school. It's clean, and the boys are metrosexual, bonding and gossiping over expensive haircuts at the spa. There's a delicious bit of hero worship as the paper runs a feature story on some kid named Jan (something like that--someone please correct me), who can apparently do everything: he is a track star, cello player and has perfect SAT scores. He's like a high school celebrity. But some of the alpha males on the newspaper staff get fed up with the girls' idolatry (and their own ambiguous stirrings no doubt) and challenge him to three duals: Rubic's cube, basketball, and a foot-race. I can't tell you the results!

The teacher /advisor is a gem, though; she will remind you of your favorite teacher from high school. The one you could find at her desk at 4 p.m., ready to answer any question you might have had about "a friend" who thinks he or she might be (fill in the blank): gay, pregnant, an atheist, addicted to marijuana, or have an STD.

The last line of the New York Times review describes the lesson that teens (of all ages) might learn from The Paper: "A whole lot of working life involves talking about work, and the hard-driving loudmouth usually wins"

If you're already a fan of The Paper, and have lots of time on your hands, here's a sweet little interview of Amanda Lorber by a fan:

In finding this, I realized that most of the episodes of The Paper are on YouTube. I'm very late to this craze. Gotta catch up. . .

On a totally unrelated topic--or related by the thinnest thread, TV--can we just pause for a moment and collectively reflect on the American Idol season that just passed? Did it not deliver? I think it did. So many of us (and by us I mean me and my loyal group of friends who gathered on Tuesdays for this frothiest of guilty pleasures) were saying that this season did not have the emotional impact of others, or that the franchise had lost its appeal somehow as its warts started showing (what? you mean the judges watch dress rehearsal and even practice their critiques? ohmygawd!), but that the talent at least this year was good, especially the boys, but soul-less somehow. We fretted about the tyranny of David Archuleta's stage dad, and we fell over ourselves laughing as Paula delivered yet another incoherent, slurring, syntax-mangling critique. (Yet she really nailed it when she said she wanted to hang Archuleta from her rear-view mirror--he was just so cute and talented.) We fell in and out of love with Jason as he slipped into a pot-induced stupor of forgetfulness and apathy. We were embarrassed for Amanda as she suffered through yet another Up With People medley choreographed, somehow, it seemed, by the very same person who must have been gainfully employed in the seventies working for The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, and the Donny and Marie Show. We speculated on David Cook's hairline and Ryan's sexuality. We pined nostalgically for our first albums, or the only albums we liked AND our parents liked as Brooke sang another Carole King, another Carly Simon.

In the end, what pushed David Cook over the top? Was it the cougars?

Whatever. It was a good season. And you can make fun of it all you want, but the New Yorker music critic (does anyone know if Sasha is a boy or a girl) finds some merit.

If you're wondering, for my money there is only one Idol and that's Fantasia:

Yellow Brick Lane

2008-05-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

When you watch the Academy Awards, and the Foreign Film category comes up, do you feel guilty that you haven't seen more of the selections? Do you find yourself guessing as you fill out the ballet, then feeling like a total philistine? I do. That's why I was determined to see at least a few films at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival. Thank god for my cinephile friend Jane who looked at the catalog and picked out a few good films for us to see, only one of which I actually made it to, Brick Lane, which I saw last week with Jane and her glamorous friend Kristina. More on the film in a minute.

Film festivals are a trip. You often have to buy tickets in advance, and if you didn't have the foresight to do that days in advance for a hot film, you have to stand in line for "rush" tickets. It somewhat demeaning, but reminds me of yet another verymarkmccormick film and theater-going rule (I must compile these soon): I have never NOT seen something for lack of a ticket beforehand. If you want to see something, even if it were the hottest, hottest possible show you can imagine, like if, for example, Rufus Wainwright decided to do a three evening set called Just Joni, Just Sondheim, Just Barbra, at, say, The Plush Room (if it existed anymore, which it doesn't, which is sad), and IF for some reason you didn't buy tickets to all three, because, for example, maybe you were away in a third world country, in a village without Internet access for a year, well, you could JUST SHOW UP and SOMETHING would happen to get you in. You have to get there early and sometimes pay top dollar, but what is money for, if not culture (and hair treatments apparently, but more on that later, Miss Lee). Anyway, the only time my "just show up" rule has failed me was once in London to see Alan Bennett's Lady in the Van with Dame Maggie Smith. I was something like eighth in line, for cancellations, and the first seven got it. I was stricken. It took me years to get over that.

Anyway, to make a short story longer, I'm just saying, we stood in the "rush" line and got in.

Rush lines can be good. You can catch up on your reading or get to know things about your friends as you stand there in bone chilling San Francisco wind, making conversation to stay warm. I learned these two things. Jane's hair treatment--she gets it straightened to fabulous effect, both visual and tactile--costs $550, and she has to have it done twice a year. I swear I don't think I even spend that much money on shoes. Maybe. No, definitely not. And Kristina once smuggled a bunch of money into some foreign country. Okay it was barely over the maximum amount, and it was for work, but still: glamorous. If we hadn't stood in line, I would not know these things.

Enough about that: on to weightier subjects. This is really a mini-review with a lot of fluff above, because this movie may not get wide distribution. But I'll make my comments general: the best kind of art experience, I've discovered, is one that mixes at least two art forms--musical theater for example, or a dramatic reading of a poem, or a prose poem for that matter (more accessible than a poem), or even a photograph with a strong narrative, a painting with some text, a dance that tells a story--you get my drift.

Brick Lane works as about three different art forms. As a film it is engaging, with a good plot, likable characters, good actors. It's the story of a Bangladeshi woman who moves to a drab street in London, Brick Lane, for an arranged marriage. It is a loveless marriage, but she endures; she misses her sister terribly, and they have an active correspondence over many, many years. Her sister's life, though wildly unpredictable, is at least full of romance and adventure. Still, her sister pines for an idyllic youth that she remembers as being full of laughter and natural beauty. Her memory edits out the poverty, death, and uncertainty that represented life in her Bangladeshi village. Her husband is feckless at best, and when he loses his job, she starts sewing to make ends meet. She meets a dashing young man who wakes her up sexually and politically, but who ultimately objectifies her ("you are the real thing: a simple girl from the village"--though she is no girl and clearly not simple). But to my point about genre-mixing, the film succeeds, because it has all the elements of a well-crafted film, but it is cinemagraphically magical--stunningly shot, especially the scenes in Bangladesh. And at times it morphs into poetry--the flashback scenes, the letters between sisters, an unlikely scene of a woman in a sari making a snow angel.

I loved this movie for the acting and the look of it, and how it worked as poetry and pure cinematography. Yes, it was sad but satisfyingly redemptive. I would say that every single character grows in some small way, as does each strand of Jane's hair, inspiring this haiku:

Jane's black locks
Shining in the rush line wind
Five Fifty??

See, even a blog entry can be two genres at once!

White Hotel

2008-04-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

Edmund White has been one of my favorite authors for many years. I usually read his work, though I admit I didn't make it through his comprehensive biography of Genet. But his books A Boy's Own Story and A Married Man stand out for me. Though it's been years since I read them--the essence remains: literary fiction about memory, with rich description and a sharp sense of place. I met White at a book signing once and asked him about the literary scandal between David Leavitt and Stephen Spender. He was quite jovial and willing to gossip for a few minutes telling me that both David Leavitt and Stephen Spender (who was to die just a year later and was already ancient at the time of the scandal) had called him asking for advice.

Interviews with White reveal him to be very accessible, campy, forthright, sexually progressive, and outspoken. He is one of the most celebrated "gay" novelists of his generation (he talks a lot about whether this moniker is appropriate), and he currently teaches fiction at Princeton.

Hotel De Dream is his most current book, though in 2007 he also published two more, a memoir and book of short stories. I picked this up when I was in New York this spring and was delighted that it had so much New York history and took place very near Union Square which is where I was staying.

It's a story within a story, and like Leavitt's book mentioned above, this one takes liberties with a literary figure, Stephen Crane. (And he throws in some delightful imaginary cameos with Joseph Conrad and Henry James, too.)

The premise is that while American author Stephen Crane was on his deathbed, he was dictating a manuscript to his (common-law) wife. The manuscript was about a boy prostitute that Crane had met during his walkabouts of the city where he was wont to encounter and document all kinds of street life. Crane was famous first as a gritty journalist and also as a novelist. He is credited for bringing a sort of gritty realism to American fiction, sort of pre-dating Upton Sinclair who would create fiction as agitprop naturalism--man against cruel society. If you read Maggie: A Girl of the Streets or The Jungle in college, it was probably in sociology. These are kind of like novels as investigative journalism, and they were profoundly influential at the time and The Jungle at least had some influence on public health policy.

I keep digressing. I really just want to say that this book is really a fun read, because there are three stories--the fictionalized account of Crane dying and his odd attachment to the boy prostitute he is writing about, the story of the boy himself, and his journey from upstate New York farmland into a seedy but fascinating underground world of turn-of-the-century New York City prostitution, and finally the story of the manuscript itself, which ostensibly was called "The Painted Boy." It's unclear if it ever really existed. There's a great Postface to the book where White says the whole thing is "my fantasia on real themes provided by history." It's interesting to note that Crane's common-law wife Cora Taylor was a former brothal madam. It's not hard to imagine that this subject matter captured his imagination.

This book really stayed with me and made me want to read more Crane. And White. Postmodern fiction is such a fun blend of the real and the imagined, and the imagined real. This book's structure is a delight and it's a good yarn too.

The Story of the Story of the Night

2008-04-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts of vacations is that you get caught up on reading. There is something infinitely more satisfying about reading a book in a day or two versus spreading it out over weeks, catching a chapter here or there before sleep or during American Idol commercials (as if I didn't have TiVo. Hah!).

Anyway, I recently traveled to Patagonia, Argentina, and then to Buenos Aires. Two days before I left I had a marvelously synchronistic experience. I mentioned to my Irish colleague and friend Annie Galvin that I recently had occasion to dine with my favorite author Colm Toibin, wondering if she knew of him since Annie is a poet, also Irish. She said of course that he was one of her favorites, and she asked if I had read The Story of the Night, his book set in Buenos Aires. Well, I had no idea that he had written a book set in Buenos Aires and it seemed like the perfect book to take along, so I did.

The book starts out sad, and I almost put it aside, thinking that it might not be the right book for vacation. It was the subject matter that was bringing me down: another gay novel with a closeted narrator, a young English tutor, no less, having only covert sexual liaisons and falling in love with his star pupil. But the book morphs quickly from that familiar plot. Soon the narrator meets some American diplomats (CIA?) and starts a new life as sort of translator/fixer for American businessmen who are swooping in on Argentina in the 80's to start privatizing the industry there. You learn a bit about modern Argentinian history (Peronism, the disappeared activists from the Dirty War).

A note about the style. I don't think I've ever read a book with such carefully controlled sentences and precision, or rather, a book in which the tone is so even. It's a true case of form following function, since Toibin is using the actual sentence structure to say something at once about the repressed nature of the Argentinian culture, the personality of the narrator who is outwardly stoic, and the nature of translation in a secret society. The sentences are uniformly simple and declarative, but with a tension and subtext galore--like every sentence is hiding a deeper meaning. So it reads like an espionage novel a bit, though the main movement is personal and intensely romantic in the best sense--true love found in the most unlikely of situations.

As I said, it starts out sad, and truthfully (and I don't think this is a spoiler) it ends somewhat sad too. But it's a rich kind of sad, a satisfying journey. Take this book on vacation or take it to the park--it's a worthwhile read.

Must Miss

2008-03-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

I make a few treks every year to New York to see plays.

Last weekend I saw August: Osage County. If you google this play you will see that it is a hands down favorite to win the Tony this year for best play. I don't when a new American play has been so celebrated. By Tracy Letts, the play started in Chicago, and then was transplanted to New York with the original cast mostly intact. I had such high expectations for the play, which makes me think of another verymarkmccormick axiom about theater (and movies ususally): the amount of enjoyment you get out of a cultural experience is very often (not always, just often) inversely proportionate to your expectations. That is, if you think think you're really, really going to love a movie or book or play it will often fail to live up to your expectations, but just as often you can be dragged to something kicking and screaming only to find out: hey, I'm having a great time. I don't know why this is.

The play is an epic length exploration of a highly, highly dysfunctional family in Oklahoma. There's not a problem this family does not have: drug addiction, alcoholism, cancer, estrangement, secrets, lies, violence, money, and even (watch out! just when you thought things were looking up) incest.

The play centers around the mother, Violet Weston. This role has been described as a new "great role" along the lines of Martha in Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf, or Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire. This role is like any great diva role you can think of, magnified to cartoonish proportions. She's a monster. If you like dragons, Tasmanian Devils, or the human embodiment of Hurricane Katrina, this is the play for you.

So I had high expectations, very high, and so it should have been no surprise that I absolutely loathed the play. I cannot remember having a more unpleasant experience in the theater, or my expectations so dashed. I was absolutely astounded at how the people around me were laughing at the production, which I found professional and glossy, sure, but the script left me absolutely cold. And so unfunny (one line--the mother berating the daughter for dressing in a pantsuit toa funeral: "you look a magicians assistant"--and the audience guffawed. Huh? Sitcom humor at best!!)

The characters were insufferable, and the play offered no redemption at all and not single likable character (really, I will not be moved from this point--the characters were really quite literally hopeless, with the possible exception of the Native American maid Johnna, the nephew Little Charles and his cousin/sister/lover Ivy). I suppose I was expecting (from reviews) a combination of Caroline, or Change (a Tony Kushner musical that I loved) and Six Feet Under: that is, dysfunction made meaningful, but what it was instead was some bad post-modern Tennessee Williams (or Faulkner) with possibly one decent brooding theme ("I've got the Plains. . . ") of how we've raped the (Mother) land and must find our way back (thus the final, forced, Pieta image).

If you're going to New York, don't see this, see Spring Awakening.

Yes, Master

2008-03-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years when someone has asked me for a book recommendation I usually recommend two Irish writers and two Brits. The latter are Alan Hollinghurst--his best book is The Swimming Pool Library, and Ian MacEwan, most recently famous for Atonement (although Chesil Beach is a gorgeous novella). On the Irish side, its Jamie O'Neall (At Swim Two Boys) and, most eminent of all of these, Colm Toibin.

His book called The Master, about Henry James is a masterpiece. Written in the style of Henry James which makes it once challenging and rewarding it is original, insightful, and at least emotionally accurate, based on everything I've read about James. He paints a portrait of the artist equal parts repressed and brilliant.

I've just finished his short story collection called Mothers and Sons. It is stylistically nothing like The Master, meaning that the diction is not elevated in any way; but it is like The Master in that Toibin has a way of getting to the soulful depths of his characters, and he does favor the shadow side of his characters: that which cannot be said interests him most. The title is intriguing, and I wondered if the conceit of stories about mothers and sons could sustain a collection. Indeed, it seemed almost accidental that each story happened to have a mother and happened to have a son. My guess is that he didn't set out to write a book about mothers and sons, but that he suddenly realized: oh my, look at that, a unifying motif.

I savored every story, especially the novella called The Long Winter which is the only story not set at least partially in Ireland, but rather in Spain. It's the wrenching tale of a young man whose mother disappears into the snowy fields one day. She has gone in search of alcohol, her family having staged a rather hasty intervention. Months pass before the snow melts and proper search for the body can begin. In the meantime the protagonist absorbs hard lessons about loss and longing. This sounds so sad, I know, but in each of these stories there is a strong and subtle feeling of reconciliation with the way things are, and--even in the story of the mother dealing with the shame of her son the priest who is about to be de-frocked--there is hope.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

2008-02-29T19:11:00.000-08:00

This Peter Cameron novel has a winning title and a winning protagonist. Booklist said:

"A critically acclaimed author of adult fiction, Cameron makes a singularly auspicious entry into the world of YA with this beautifully conceived and written coming of age novel that is, at turns, funny, sad, tender, and sophisticated."

The YA stands for Young Adult. Hmm. I didn't think it was a young adult novel when I read it, though I recognized it as a story of a familiar adolescence, one that every sensitive young, artisitc (okay, gay) man shares to some degree: feeling more than a little out of place, but also slightly superior to one's peers, feeling a certain dread about college, because of its unknown adolescent bonding rituals, feeling curious and afraid about sex. I think what makes this book a winner, though, is that Cameron has expressed a universal feeling (adolescent angst) with a specific voice. Everyone can relate.

James Sveck, the protagonist, plays the young misanthrope well, but he shields such a soft core that you can't help but route for him from beginning to end. Though he lives in Manhattan, the slightly neglected son of urbane divorced parents, he spends his spare time on the Internet looking at real estate postings in the Midwest. He longs for a simple, quiet, uninterrupted, private life in a well-crafted bungalow somewhere, and he adores his Grandmother for living a version of this life, gracefully and without sentimentality, in nearby Connecticut. He goes to see her often, because she is one of the few people he actually likes.

He also likes John, a man in his thirties (more or less) who works at his mother's art gallery, where James also kinda sorta works. He figures out that John has an online dating profile, and so he makes up a persona he knows John will like and replies. John goes for the bait. I won't tell you what happens after that.

I recommend this book for people who like quick, escapist fiction with a literary flair.

Some Pop Culture Moments

2008-02-27T20:13:00.000-08:00

Many thanks and welcome to my new subscribers. Tell your friends.

I have been taking it easy culturally lately. Well, not that easy. I did manage to see Away From Her and La Vie en Rose before the Oscars. If I get inspired I'll write reviews, but I didn't love either of these movies, except for the exceptional performances of their leading ladies, Julie Christie and Marion Cotillard, both nominated for Best Actress. Anyway I haven't got time for the pain right now. They are wrenching movies.
Away From Her is about a woman who is very self-consciously descending into the mystery of Alzheimer's. Her bereft husband finally puts her in assisted living. She falls in love with another resident, practically right in front of him. It's almost too painful to watch especially since she vacillates in and out of consciousness about the whole predicament. La Vie en Rose is the life of Edith Piaf. When I saw Marion Cotillard on the red carpet I finally realized how brilliant her performance was. She is 100% movie star when she's not acting, and 100% immersed when she is.

I'd rather dish about the latest YouTube hits and American Idol.

OMG, have you seen this Sarah Silverman video with Matt Damon? About 8 million people have seen it. She is of course the raunchy comedian. Her show The Sarah Silverman show good and subversive the first season, but the second season was over-reaching. She dates late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. I've never seen that show. I don't like late night talk shows. But I do like this video. Totally cute.

But the video that Jimmy Kimmel did in response was over the top. Here it is.

Okay, if you're not watching American Idol you are missing a great season. That show still delivers. Granted it's formulaic by now, and all the judges have become kind of caricatures of themselves, but you can't help getting caught up in the personalities and backstories of the contestants, even if this year they might be a little contrived, as some of the contestants seem to have more of a professional than an amateur background.

But the big story this year is David Archuleta. This kid (17 years old) is about as cute and humble and talented as anyone I've ever seen. He comes from Murray, Utah (a suburb of Salt Lake City), but I don't think he's a Mormon. His wiki entry says his mother is Honduran, but it doesn't mention his dad. Whatever, the kid can really sing. He really sells a song. I remember in auditions when sang Heaven in the pre-Hollywood auditions, he looked right in the backstage camera, just before he went in front of the judges and he said, "I'm going to really make them believe this song." He delivers with emotion. He's an early favorite to win, but mark my words: he's totally on top now, but to keep the drama high there will be a fall from grace, then he'll ascend from the ashes again. Now here's something really amusing: somehow he got in front of the first season's contestants (including Kelly Clarkson) and he sang (he would have been about 10 years old "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls. This song is so gay, even from a 10 year old, but man he really nails it! Here it is:

Treament Treatments: Therapy on TV

2008-02-09T21:15:00.000-08:00

I don’t create the zeitgeist, I just report on it. Let the sociologists figure out why we have a fascination with other people’s therapy sessions, as if our own weren’t entertaining enough—and expensive. With all this therapy, who can afford cable?

No fewer than four recent cable series feature the intimate relationship between therapist and patient, and the latest, HBO’s In Treatment is based solely on this. I know you’ve all been thinking: “Mark loves TV (cable TV—I keep having to emphasize this; network TV sucks), loves therapy; worlds collide! Where’s the blog post?” Here’s are the verymarkmccormick mini-reviews of treatment treatments.

Sopranos—The gold standard. If they released a DVD of just Tony and Dr. Melfi's sessions, I would watch it. Lorraine Bracco won awards for her performance. She played it tough and sexy. Her voice was always slightly boozy to me, and she talked slowly; it was kind of like she had just quaffed a martini to steel herself for the verbal and near-physical (and once an actual physical) assaults from Tony. This façade was perfect for Tony who was kind of dense when it came to the language of feelings. He’d yell and swear; she’d frown and blink a few times behind those thick-lensed glasses, but hold her gaze, shift in her chair, show some leg, bite back. The real genius, though, came out in her own sessions with her shink, Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, played by Peter Bogdonavich. My shrink reports that those consultations were spot-on, the best ever filmed, and of course I wondered: what does he say about me?

Huff—Am I the only one who watched Huff? I loved this show about the psychologist Huff and his less than perfect life. His wife was a complete pill, but his son, brother, and Mom (Blythe Danner! For you youngsters, that’s Gwyneth’s mom) were terrific: complex and good-looking. There were plenty of scenes where he would be administering therapy, but they were kind of soap-operatic: someone commits suicide in his office; another patient stalked him. Best part, like with Soporanos, was his own therapy. He sought out Dr. Lena Markova because she was like the last shrink on earth who still did MDMA therapy. That is of course the pure chemical version of what became the drug Ecstasy. MDMA was used in psychotherapeutic settings until the seventies. It was known to be a truth drug. Some shrinks claimed they could make years of progress in one session using the drug, because it cut through all the bullshit. In any case, can you imagine anything more delicious than a sultry, brainy Anjelica Huston as Dr. Markova, who clears an afternoon of her time, invites him to her swanky house (it was very Stevie Nicks meets Carl Jung) gives him a hit of MDMA then hangs with him as the truth pours out; listening to the tape later, he made important decisions. Sign me up!

Tell Me You Love Me. I’ve written about this show and the therapy scenes. Compared to the others, I would say the therapy itself is less than clinically correct; she seemed too quick to make recommendations that usually take a year or two to draw out. But the acting of the couples was superb. By the end of the season, I cared about most of the couples and about Dr. May Foster.

In Treatment. Okay, it might be too early to tell, but I think this series will become something of an obsession. The structure is simple, but elegant: four nights a week, for 30 minutes we witness "Paul" (played by Gabriel Byrne) and his patients. On the fifth night we witness his session with his shrink, Gina (played by Dianne Wiest (!) Their relationship is clouded—she’s clearly wounded and disappointed by him which suggests a high order of counter-transference is going on. That's shrink talk meaning she's too emotionally involved. That's really the dramatic arc of this show: transference and counter-tranference. In the Monday-Thursday sessions, we see one episode each of the same four patients, so we’re following the progress, and this is going to go on for nine weeks. The series is based on an Israeli series, and apparently it captured the national attention and press. I always think Israelis have good taste. There’s something mysterious about each of the four patients (three individuals and one couple). The cool thing is, if you don’t like one of them, you can ignore that night. I know, you’re thinking, “five nights a week? Come on!” But it’s only 30 minutes. McTherapy.