Gone With the Wind
It’s been 20 years since I’ve seen Gone With the Wind, the jewel in the crown of the Hollywood studio system, released in its pinnacle year of 1939. When I last saw it, in 1989, it was under the most ideal circumstances imaginable — a restored print, at Radio City Music Hall, on a screen 80 feet high. (And, it so happens, sitting next to director James Ivory. A coincidence let me hasten to add; he was not my date.) The impact of David O. Selznick’s lush, meticulous production was immediate and overwhelming, but the callow young writer inside me dismissed the plot as simple romance and soap opera. I’m happy to announce that I greatly shortchanged the value of this American epic. I used to say that Gone With the Wind was okay for, you know, girls, but The Godfather was clearly the superior movie because it contains a powerful socio-political subtext. Well, more fool me.
The Cotton Club
The Cotton Club is the third in our trilogy of Showbiz movies. Like Cabaret and All That Jazz, it concerns the lives of showbiz types and the power the performing arts have to transform. Like Cabaret and All That Jazz, it is directed by a filmmaker who came to sudden prominence in 1972 — in this case, Francis Ford Coppola. Like Cabaret, it throws the lives of its performers against the backdrop of violent social change and grand historical paroxysms. Unlike Cabaret and All That Jazz, it lacks a strong, motivated protagonist, and that makes all the difference in the world.
All That Jazz
At the end of Cabaret, Sally Bowles sings her cheery, upbeat tune about how "life is a Cabaret" and how high living and good times, music and dancing, sex and drugs and booze, are the only way to get through life. The lingering question at the end of Cabaret is: Is that really a way to get through life, or just a way to end it faster? Director-choreographer Bob Fosse is obviously of two minds on this question, which seems to dominate his brief-but-spectacular film-directing career. Cabaret, Lenny, All That Jazz and Star 80 all perceive Show Business as a kind of pathology, an unhealthy compulsion, a road to ruin. (In Cabaret, it is also hinted that the amoral, self-indulgent performers of Berlin are somehow responsible for the rise of Nazism, which seems like a stretch to me, but indicates how seriously Fosse takes his subject.)
Cabaret
A new project has crossed my desk that compels me to watch a specific collection of movies: Cabaret, All That Jazz, The Cotton Club and Gone With the Wind. (And Schindler’s List, but I’ve watched that one recently.)
I remember Cabaret from my adolescence as being a daring, provocative, decadent, weird movie about the rise of Nazism in Weimar Berlin, as told through the eyes of a couple of young folks with complicated romantic lives. And it is still that, but what surprised me on this viewing is that it is, under all its decadence, a fairly conventional love story.
Feeder Birds returns!
Yes, it’s true! The new installment of my long-gestating graphic novel Feeder Birds will be presented as part of
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‘s long-running cartoon-slide-show evening CAROUSEL. If you, like me, are in New York City next week, this will be where you will want to be. In addition to me, there will be actual talented cartoonists present.
WHEN? Thursday, May 28, 2009!
WHERE? The new Dixon Place, that’s where! 161 Chrystie Street, btw Rivington and Delancey!
HOW MUCH? $15 smackeroos, that’s how much.
See you there!
Extra! Extra!
After weeks of ignoring my blog and using it only to promote the work of friends, finally I have something of my own to promote! Right Jab, Left Hook is the heretofore mysterious webseries I’ve been concocting with Venture Bros-star-political-blog-obsessive James
And we’re shooting the pilot next week! More to the point, we need extras! If you live in the Los Angeles area, and your corporeal self shows up on digital video, we want you in this pilot! The pilot takes place at the launch party for the titular website, and so we need people to be at that party. And, just like a real party, there will be a lot of standing around and awkward conversation!
From the call put out by our extraordinary producer Holly Golden:
PARTY GUESTS IN COCKTAIL ATTIRE NEEDED for web series pilot shooting in Culver City May 18, 19 and 20.
This is a pilot being filmed for MyDamnChannel.com (other shows include Pilot Season starring Sarah Silverman and David Cross, Wainy Days starring David Wain).
This pilot stars network talent (The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Starter Wife, The Office).
You should be able to commit to filming from noon to midnight on one of these days.
Some payment, plus credit, copy, and meals.
PLEASE REPLY ASAP W/ PHOTO AND AVAILABILITY TO HOLLY GOLDEN at hollygolden1@gmail.com.
I thank you for your attention.
Snake ‘n’ Bacon lives!
In the seemingly non-stop parade of Alcott-friend projects blasting out into the cultural marketplace at the moment, Michael Kupperman‘s Snake ‘n’ Bacon TV show debuts, tonight, at the home of The Venture Bros, [adult swim]. Starring yet another friend-of-Alcott James
Millionaire does Costello
My heart leaped into my mouth when I discovered that old friend sometime collaborator Tony Millionaire has created the cover for the new Elvis Costello album. Finally, two of my favorite living artists united.
Nota Bene
My deepest apologies for bringing this journal to an unplanned screeching halt. I have been deeply enmeshed in creating the pilot for the webseries I’ve been putting together with Mr. James
However! Regardless of my temporary non-blogging status, I would be remiss if I did not direct my readers attention to another webseries (all the cool kids are doing them now) by Friend of Wadpaw and lj-er
Also note: Firefox does not recognize "webseries" as a word, which certainly must reveal something about something somewhere.
Night owls unite
For 35 years or so, I’ve been a night owl. I do my best thinking at night, after all distractions are gone, the stores are all closed, the phone has stopped ringing and the streets are empty.
As my profession is "writer," it did not become a problem until recently, when I was expected to attend school functions for my children and morning pitch meetings for my work. Someone will mention a morning event I’ll need to be at, and I’ll say "Well, that’s a little early for me because I work at night," and the person will subtly recoil as though they have suddenly noticed that I’m a vampire.