NYCweboy

Seven Minutes

My friend Red is getting married.

This is one of those wonderful bits of "personal business" that's been providing some of my offline distraction lately - I'm thrilled for her, and for Steve, her fiance, and I'm in the wedding party. (And by the way, not all the "personal business" is nearly so wonderful... but never mind. Let's stay in the happy place.)

So last night we had a little engagement party for Red and her man down in a dive bar on the Lower East Side - well, really more of a "dive bar" in that it seemed like one of those artful reconstructions of the real thing than the actual thing itself - and I was reminded of what it is to be friends with my Red... part of a smart circle of really interesting folks.

It was great to see the "Brandeis Girls", friends from her college years who've remained remarkably tight knit and connected; and the other ones, like me, that Red's collected over the years, and who bounce off one another in interesting ways making fascinating sparks.

I mention all of this because I wound up in a long, fun conversation with an actor friend in this circle, husband to one of Red's most supportive friends (and beautiful, even at nine months pregnant like last night). Joey is a real working actor, a journeyman who's found his niche in many ways, and works pretty regularly in a field that's not the most secure. After talking about his most recent theatrical experience, we moved on to a wide ranging musing about acting, writing, and creative pursuits generally.

We talked about the challenge of talking about writing, or really any creative endeavor - that really, you don't want to share much, that we hold our work close to our hearts, and the act of showing them is a brave one. And that, if you share to much, it may keep you from creating the work: talking, rather than doing. I was sort of interested to hear Joey say that he doesn't talk about acting, and it's true - he'll tell you what he's done... but not the process of what he's doing, how he finds a character or creates a role.

Writing is hard; we were both keenly aware of it (and so was Red, who admitted the grind of daily blogging was getting to her). And it's hard, sometimes, to get started and keep going. Joey mentioned a playwright acquaintance who was a runner, like he was, and they talked about the "seven minute warmup" of running - that you have to run for about seven minutes before the endorphins kick in and it becomes a kick, even fun, to do it. But you have to go through the first seven, often painful and difficult, minutes to get there... you can't avoid it.

The creative process, he pointed out, was very similar; you have to take those "seven minutes" of pain to get to a place where the writing, or the whatever, just flows, and when you do - like a painter friend he has who can go days just painting and sleeping in his studio space - you may not want to stop.

And I thought... Exactly.

It was just the conversation I needed - talking to someone who "gets it" about the creative process, the process of creating. Letting out, for just a moment, the dreams and ideas that animate what we do.... and remembering that what we do is hard, and rewarding. And we do it because it's hard... and rewarding. And I thought it might be nice to share that with you.

And to get on with the seven minutes. Thanks, Joey.

Work!!!

I don't miss cable - much - but if I did, a big piece of my pain would be missing RuPaul's Drag Race... which I sort of dismissed, ahead of time, as gimmicky and a little obvious. Wrong, girl... utterly wrong.

Queerty has a nice sum-up of this week's premiere, and you can watch the show in segments here, for free.

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised; it would be easy to work up a cliche of bitchy queens, backstabbing and cattiness... but that's Project Runway (if you ask me), and that kind of underlines the difference between fashion and theater. The drag queens I have known - one of my first writing gigs out of school was for the local gay rag, covering drag shows - have always struck me with being fundamentally decent, both to outsiders and to each other. They know what they do... and they know that it's hard. There's a mutual respect among peers for doing the work.

Sure, the show is over-the-top and the girls work it... that's the show's real strength (and if I had to do a design your own costume contest... and then show it to Bob Mackie, I'd just die). But what touched me, and will keep me coming back, was seeing the backstage, we're all in this together vibe. And credit to Ru, for doing the best out-Tyra of Tyra and the Next Top Model thing... she still knows how to work it, too.

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The Long Weekend: Just In Time

I freely admit to being a little old school about my entertainments: I was raised on movie musicals, Broadway shows and the Great American Songbook.  Although I love pop music and today's latest hits... the eclectic nature of my tastes brings me back to the classics, all the time. But at the same time, I'm not really a full-on Show Queen; J's brother... shall we call him F in Balto... is the real deal.  Next to him, I'm just an interested bystander.

In the course of thinking about some new critical writing I wound up searching out the old "French Mystique" number from the end of Blazing Saddles.... that, in turn, led me to a You Tube search of Madeline Kahn, which led me to Madeline performing "Getting Married Today" from a Sondheim Tribute Concert. That led me to Carol Burnett performing the same song in Putting It Together (which I saw, on Broadway), which led me to another version of the song I liked best that Carol did, "Could I Leave You" (can't find Carol's version, but here's Dee Hoty):

In the meantime I found this sketch of Carol Burnett and Robin Williams which I think is from one of Carol's shows on CBS. I've never seen them work together, and it's just... well, you have to see it, because Carol's a consummate comic actress... and Robin Williams is crazy:

In any case, all of this led me to trip over a strng of Judy Garland performances... so, just to pass along something I love, here is Judy doing Just In Time from Live at The London Palladium. Judy did a number of different arrangements of Just In Time, but for my money, this one, which was the one she was doing towards the end of her life, is the one that just sends shivers up my spine... mostly because the urgency of finding someone... just in time... really hits home the way she sings it:

And, just for shits and giggles... here's the French Mystique:

Gone Fishin'...

As previously announced, the NYC Weboy will be on a hiatus from blogging here for the rest of August. Please scroll down, as it's likely that J in Baltimore and RedStar may fill in the gaps with musings, links and photos of their own. You may also find me blogging some critical things over at newcritics. I will not be checking this blog on any kind of a regular basis, but I can be reached via e-mail (nycweboy at nycweboy dot com)... and I do welcome correspondence. I will resume blogging the Tuesday after Labor Day. Yes, that means I will not blog about the Democratic Convention... but just assume I liked Hillary's speech, that the VP selection is not my favorite choice, and I wasn't all that impressed with Obama's speech.

Have a great summer. Enjoy.

And For The Rest Of You, Swags

It's usually a risk to see a Broadway show late into its run. For one thing, it's tired; the performers have been doing 8 shows a week, over and over, and there's bound to be a certain... lack of freshness.  The buzz around even the most amazing show is bound to have slipped as well. And frequently, the show's original stars - the real "marquee names" who probably justified the multimillion enterprise - have long gone.

In short, there's a reason I'm not dying to see Hairspray again, now that Harvey Fierstein is two shows away.

I saw Grand Hotel well into its run, when Karen Akers had been replaced by someone who looked and sounded like an uncanny carbon copy, and it had this kind of sluggishness.  Everything moved... but just a little slowly. Then again, as Forbidden Broadway nicknamed it, the "Grim Hotel" was never really tat much of an "up" show.

By rights, Curtains should suffer just so; it's not exactly up - though it's certainly not a down show, by any means. It's been close to a year, the awards it won in 2007 are largely fodder for poster text, and it is probably soon to close. Yet it was a delight; all of its main stars are still there, still tearing into it with zest, taking it out with a bang, not a whimper. Fred Ebb should be proud.

Ebb, of course, was the lyrics writing half of the legendary team of Kander and Ebb. Along with John Kander, they've created some of post Golden Age Broadway's greatest hits, and helped to define the modern musical.  Curtains, the show that was coming together at the time Ebb died, was carried into its final stages with the assistance of Rupert Holmes; but it stands as a final testament to Kander and Ebb's lifetime of collaboration - a celebration of the theater they loved, and a wicked parody done by truly knowing minds. It's not perfect, but for what it is, it's terrific.

Crrritic!

My first post is up over at Newcritics. Check it out.  And check out Tom on John Adams. And this really interesting Lance Mannion post on Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys.

I may cross post eventually; but for now I'd like the two to have separate lives (and to get you to visit newcritics, which is a great place).

More up here shortly...

Okay... But It Probably Speaks More to My Feelings About Joan Collins as Alexis

I am truly blushing at the latest link from James Wolcott:

Inspired by the Siren's Joan Crawford birthday wishes, NYCweboy unveils his shrine to Cukor's The Women, where Crawford and Shearer had their memorable slag match over some dope named Steve.

I can't say The Women (based on the Clare Booth Luce play that she apparently batted out in a blink) is one of my film faves. The clackity-clack of the gossip and wisecracks I find wearing, and Rosalind Russell's peacock hen performance is an endurance test that I can never quite pass. Though it's still worth its weight in platinum compared to the recent stage edition starring Cynthia Nixon as Mary the betrayed wife (Shearer) and a shrilly miscast Jennifer Tilly as Crystal (the Joan Crawford role). Crystal, as her name indicates, should be a cutting, bright schemer with ratlike cunning, not a breathy honey pot of a bimbo.

Reading NYCweboy's terrific take on the Crawford-Shearer showdown scene makes one realize that what he admires in Crawford ("the unapologetic nature of her work--tough, uncompromising, sexual") speaks to his support of Hillary Clinton.

I actually saw the Cynthia Nixon version on Broadway - and, like Shearer, I'm not sure Nixon was right for Mary Haines; she's smarter than that, and it showed. And I can see Wolcott's point about Jennifer Tilly, though I found her kind of inspired - she handled the famous "bubble bath" sequence with Mary's daughter with some aplomb, I thought (Crawford, in what I think may be her only work with Virginia Weidler - MGM's precocious  "little rich girl" of 1939 in The Women and The Philadelphia Story - was hard as nails). And Tilly's no bimbo, which I thought came through in her work, but maybe not. See? I could go on and on... and thanks to the Self Styled Siren herself for her kind, and illuminating comments (and may I recommend her in depth follow up on Joan's work in A Woman's Face, which I've seen once, but long ago).

The Wondrous Silences

Last week marked the renewal of the Weboy's High Culture License.  A trip to the theater, the symphony, and the movies - the former 2, at least, likely to elicit "oohs and aahs" from co-workers for their general imprimatur of "classy" - made me feel less like the world I'm in is a cultural wasteland.

The play was William Inge's Come Back Little Sheba, centered around th lead performance of S. Epatha Merkerson, a/k/a everybody's favorite senior police officer on Law and Order (I hadn't been counting, but she's been in that part for 16 years). Merkerson's casting in the role was interesting because the casting was basically colorblind, and added a layer of interracial relations to the proceedings.

Though I thought I knew the substance of the play - I think of it as part of the "neo realist" part of the fifties, where theater and TV especially tried to do dramas that captured the very everyday nature of some conflicts and problems - but really, I didn't.  Merkerson plays Lola Delaney, a housewife married to a midwestern chiropractor, who, she reveals fairly early on, is a recovered alcoholic. Due to the state of their finances, they have needed to take in a boarder, a young woman named Marie, who is involved with a man back home, but is having a fling with the handsome sorts star who models for her art class.  Doc, the recovering alcoholic, has taken a shine to Marie, and disapproves of her liaison. And it all falls apart, when Lola arranges a dinner for Marie and her soon to be fiance, and Doc disappears on a drunken binge, only to return in a nearly murderous, alcoholic rage.

One can see how the play was a revelation for its time - alcoholism was still not widely discussed at the time, and the role of Alcoholic's Anonymous even less so, and Inge works in a lot of AA material, including a general sense of hopefulness about recovery that's welcome. But he does it all with something of heavy hand, and though the actors tried heroically, the dated impressions of drunken binges and out of character behavior didn't entirely work - though it makes a nice counterpoint to the sweet, sad, poetic drunks of O'Neill and say, Tennessee Wlliams.

What did work was Merkerson, whose abilities and talents are rarely on display in L&O. In this play, she found the heart of Lola's character, the world of a codependant woman trying, as best she knows, to deal with a bewildering problem she can't really fix. It would be easy to make this a tale of being beaten down and hopeless, and Merkerson really refuses to wallow: this Lola is a woman who plays the hand she's dealt, as best she knows how. And it's all the more heartbreaking because her choices are so circumscribed. There's a moment in the second act where, surrounded by reminders of Doc's alcoholic rage, she literally finds herself unable to carry on, to even move. It's a stunning, revelatory moment, and Merkerson makes it entirely true.

The thing is, what worked in this production best were moments like that, in the silences. What was left unsaid, what went unexplored... these are the things that made this Come Back Little Sheba so affecting as drama.  I suspect that wasn't always the case.  I suspect that, back then, even the modest admissions shown here - of day-to-day coping with alcoholism and its aftermath, of knowing that young single "nice girls" could be sexually active before marriage, of the emotional problems that underpin marriage... must have seemed, in themselves, like a revelation. That's not the case now - our world has moved, we know more, we talk more about these things (though, arguably, we could stand to do more of it).  It's the play that feels dated, slightly archaic, something of a throwback.  that it has the power - as it did for me - to continue to move an audience, and catch us short, was a tribute to sensitive, thoughtful direction and talented, impressive actors. I'm glad I caught it; I'm sorry, since it closed this weekend, that you can't.  But if someone has the brains to film it and bring it to TV or cable, try and catch it. Merkerson, and her costars, are wondrous. Especially in the silences.

The Olbermess

For weeks, my friend J in Baltimore asked me to write something positive about Keith Olbermann and his show on MSNBC.  This was several months ago, and because I like J's suggestions, I tried, for quite a while to think of how to write it. When I had cable, I would, on occasion, turn to Olbermann. Though many in the blogosphere and in the real world laud Olbermann as  the liberal backstop to an increasingly conservative screed on TV, I was less unabashed; I found him snarky, a little off-putting, one of those "glad he's on our side, though I'm not sure that's helpful," type opinion. I give Olbermann credit for understanding the blowhard nature of his competitor, Bill O'Reilly, and knowing enough to tweak O'Reilly in ways that he can't help but respond to; it's amusing, I'd agree, as is his "worst person in the world" stuff that make conservatives howl.  But if you ask me does any of it lift our national conversation... well, no.  It's fun, perhaps, to see people who've been given free reign get the what-for from a thoughtful opponent... but it doesn't really prove that we're any better than they are.

Ultimately, though, J felt, as I did, that Olbermann was more problem than positive, and then he asked me to say that too. In that context, and in the spirit of my post this morning, I offer this link to Olbermann's screed from last night; which, naturally has become the clarion call for the Obama supporters.  As Olbermann mentions me (in a broad brush swipe at all Clinton supporters), I feel compelled to say that if I agreed with any of Olbermann's high dudgeon, I too would share his passion for the topic: it would be inconceivable for me to support Clinton if I thought what he said was both true and truly outrageous. I find it neither.  Indeed, mostly his outrage seems calculated, and more for the cameras than for the merits. As I said this morning, I think we're challenged by a conversation we don't have words for, and it strikes me that Olbermann is groping - often unsuccessfully - for the words that would better explain his point, and instead lurches around, pulling any and every thing he can lay his hands on (what this has to do with that Nightline sports clip is beyond me) to make a point that's really not worth the nine minutes and sustained yelling he throws at it. As I also said, a few days ago, I think Olbermann may have simply, like many of us, slipped over the edge in letting the passions of the day take hold over a more measured, thoughtful take on the divisions and differences between the campaigns.

Riverdaughter, over at her blog The Confluence (which I highly recommend) has the more pointed response to Olbermann's screed.  I can't muster the energy to get into it as she does.  Given that Clinton has also herself made a more complete statement distancing herself from the implications of Ferraro's comments, I wonder if Olbermann is satisfied yet... or if, as I expect, he thinks he caused it.  I mean it is, after all, all about him.

Go Ask Alice

J points me to the passing of Alice Ghostley yesterday, one of the premiere comedic character actresses of her generation.  Ghostley - in case you somehow live under a rock and never watched Bewitched - specialized in a ditsy, dithery woman of a certain age, your dotty Aunt (as she was as Esmerelda on Bewitched, and years later on Designing Women) always getting into one misunderstanding or another, so hilarity can ensue.

These are the moments where I never feel as white and suburban as my best friend - I liked Ghostley's work, but other things, sophisticated things, grab my attention more. Sophisticates like the also just passed Brett Somers (joining her Match Game co-conspirator Charles Nelson Reilly) were what I aspired to be.  Still, he's right to say that Alice deserves a place in the pantheon - no one, really, did it better.  And it's the ensemble that makes the show.  How do you make people laugh? Go ask Alice.

(J gave me that last line.  My thanks, friend)