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Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: Art Isn't Easy

In a "quality film" season deeply truncated by the pandemic - we will never know what we're not seeing until well after the fact - it's easy to overstate the relative importance of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom finally getting a film adaptation. No doubt, it would be a contender even in normal circumstances. But this is not normal, and this Ma Rainey will shine more so by being the only game in town.

The second recent adaptation of an August Wilson play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom secures the down payment on Denzel Washington's commitment to produce the full "decalogue" of August Wilson's plays, meant to cover the twentieth century experienced by black Americans. First up was Fences, which won Viola Davis her Oscar. And here, as Ma Rainey, her presence makes clear how these projects will be approached: as prestige vehicles with top flight casts, big name directors, and handsome productions.

Whether that's the best approach is harder to say; I suspect few will want to quibble, but like Olivier in the forties, filming Shakespeare's major works as prestige projects, the approach to Wilson may just be a necessary, well intentioned step towards cementing his importance. Later, when the stakes are lower and/or different, we can take apart these works and evaluate different ways of seeing them. But for now, presenting them as Very Important Art may be just how we get from here to wherever it is we wind up.

As it is, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is an impressive mounting of an important works - the performances sing, and much of it is richly emotionally resonant. But for its impressiveness, choppy storytelling and the weight of expectations does rob the overall work of some of its potential audience impact. It's very well done; which is not the same as creating a visceral audience connection or response.

The setting is a sweltering Chicago recording studio in the twenties, where Ma Rainey, the Queen of the Blues, is set to record some sides. A "small" play, the action revolves around the interplay of her band, particularly a talented trumpet player with dreams of stardom; and Ma herself, the definition of diva, complete with a small entourage of a young man and woman who both attend to her needs and demands.

While overall, there's not necessarily much happening - the recording process at the time requires perfect takes captured mostly with hope and prayer - the tensions of recording, the demands of performance intersect with Wilson's storytelling, which is the real draw here. There are beautifully laid out monologues (acting arias, really) for several of the male principles, and Rainey herself talks about her realistic assessment of just how much stardom she has and its actual worth. Lost in these stories, the film takes on incredible depth, profound sadness, and the omnipresent powerlessness of people trapped in a society that can rob them of their humanity in a flash.

The role of Levee, the young trumpeter with big dreams, was the last project Chadwick Boseman filmed before his untimely death this past year, and it is definitely a rich, brilliant performance. Never one to phone it in, his commitment and intensity shines through, and I wouldn't rule out posthumous recognition. As big, important roles in major works go, this is a dream job for many young black actors, and having seen it, I can now see why. Still, "over the top" doesn't fully convey what Boseman has to try and make sense of here in his performance. As good as he is - and he's masterful - the screenplay isn't doing him a lot of favors, and it would be miraculous to pull off where this story goes. Boseman delivers a lot of miracles; so many, that what's not working here is definitely not on him.

As for Davis, I'm not entirely sure she's exactly right for the role; now in that rare position of stardom where her capabilities are matched to the best material, it's gratifying to see her stretch and take on roles outside of her comfort zone. Hell, we should all have so much willingness to dare to try. But this isn't an especially up piece of work to begin with, and there's a sense of joy missing from her solid, but often grim seeming, performance. Seeing the role, I'm curious how a number of "singers who act" (Jennifer Hudson leaps to mind) might tackle the part. No doubt, Davis is a fierce actress at the top of her game, and reverent with the material. I'm just not entirely convinced reverence is what this film needed most. 

George Wolfe's long history directing Wilson, and overall artistic commitment to chronicling the black experience makes him a natural for directing this, and he does what he can to open out what is, ultimately,  a great one set play (or one great set). More frustratingly, there's a choppiness to the storytelling that feels unnecessarily forced. I'm not sure film is Wolfe's strongest medium. As for the script, Ruben Santiago-Hudson has a sure hand for adapting works to film, and here he mostly seems to get out of the way and let Wilson's words speak.

And again... whether that's the best approach, or not, could be, and probably should be, debated at length. As it stands, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom lets an impressive cast, led by 2 stars in their prime, set a marker for bringing Wilson effectively to the screen. It may well be expecting too much to get a fully transcendent, moving experience to boot. In its best moments, this Ma Rainey really sings. Getting to a film that's more than moments may require trying less hard to make very important art. 

Stop The Presses

Only a week or so in, and one of the main themes of this Trump Presidency (feel free to substitute "Trump Nightmare"... but remember, you're not dreaming) has surely revealed itself: the tortured role of the press and mass media in the age of a raging narcissist.

In addition to two painful meetings with various media outlets - an interview with the Times where he basically admitted his campaign was a big lie, and a name calling session with TV network hosts and executives - Trump spent the weekend berating the cast and audience at Friday's performance of Hamilton on Broadway, when the audience booed Mike Pence and the cast begged him to treat everyone decently. Oh, the humanity!

In the rush to sort out Just Whose Fault We Got Trump, "The Media" has been a popular choice. It's certainly true that the refusal to take on Trump in a serious way, to often broadcast him uninterrupted  at rallies laying out falsehood after falsehood, surely didn't help. Still, no one culprit really can take all the blame. I think - and this is a longer discussion - that one thing we all need to face is that in some ways, Trump was more inevitable than anyone would like to admit.

The question is, though, now that we've got him (at least, temporarily), will the media know what to do with him? 

There are some railing about the press "normalizing" Trump. There are others already building up conspiracy theories that every Trump move - like the Hamilton tweetstorm - is a brilliant trifecta of savvy mental manipulation by Trump against a gullible public. And through it all, there's Trump himself, just blathering away, looking endlessly foolish.

I think one thing that's not quite clear yet is what the media array of a Trump led USA really looks like. We forget that a lot of who and what dominates media now - from Lester Holt to Anderson Cooper to Megyn Kelly to even Rachel Maddow - are developments of, and partly because of, the Obama years. It's very likely that we will see new stars, and new shows, that arise because a different kind of media will be needed in the Trump, um, era (that sounds awfully permanent - ed.).

That the media we have can't quite cut it seems quite clear - I wouldn't call it "normalizing," but I think traditional Washington hands are truly flummoxed by what you do with an outlier like Trump, so beyond their sense of political norms. It's the way Mitt Romney is being discussed for Secretary of State - it's such a relief to hear a familiar, even "Establishment" name, that people aren't paying attention to perfectly reasonable reasons why Romney is completely ill suited to the task. Panel discussions that seemed entertainingly contentious prior to the election - oh look, they're ganging up on Jeffrey Lord! - now have an uncomfortable air of fear from one side, and excessive self satisfaction on the other.

It's also the case that the new opposition hasn't quite figured out how to effectively challenge Trump's obvious impending ethical failures and corrupt intentions. "Ivanka Trump met with Shinzo Abe!" plays great at a Chevy Chase dinner party - it's a little obscure and secondhand for the case against a man who apparently plans to let out his hotel in DC to foreign dignitaries eager to curry his favor. Proportion, people; clarity and outrageousness. These items are key.

Still, I wouldn't discount the fact that Trump, in these things, is his own worst enemy and best taken at his word. The Hamilton brouhaha was silly and - despite claims to fire up his base - mostly pointless. Keening at Alec Baldwin merely invites what will surely be heaps of scorn and derision from pop culture icons in comedy, music, theater, television and film. Hating Trump won't just be popular... I guarantee Hollywood knows it's profitable, too.

And then there's those meetings with news outlets, which seemed to catch the  people in them off guard at the depth - wrong word? - of his thin skin.  There's a delicate dance between public figures and the press chasing them - the fawning that's required to get access, but the distance to look dispassionately and even critically is rarely in the right balance. But my guess is Trump did himself no favors mocking people like Martha Raddatz and Katy Tur, trying to manhandle his way to favorable coverage. Trump is apparently in no media to give the media much of anything; and in turn, I'm not sure the news outlets owe him anything at all.

In part, Trump is parroting a right wing line railing against the "MSM" as conservatives love to do, saying they never get a fair, or positive shake. When he claims The Times is at death's door, he's not so much concerned about ad revenue (a business I'm fairly sure he doesn't really get) as he is that people make choices about news sources based on reading only what confirms the views they like. There will be media sycophants chasing Trump because it's easier, and more fun, to be liked. But The Times will make money regardless. And the people they really represent - the Upper East Side world of the owners and their close associates - are the very people who have made Trump's social climb the struggle he hates. They will never let him in, and he knows it.

What Trump wants from the press isn't really important - "Stop calling me a thief" he says, as if that will stop them from reporting every time he steals. He wants the attention, he just doesn't want to people to see who he really is amidst the glare. And that, really, isn't in his control. In fact, it's not really in the control of mass media. Certainly not in America. And Trump's just not careful enough (as that "hot mike" moment on Access Hollywood really showed) to understand that for the image to be the reality, you kind of have to really be it. Trump is President. That doesn't make him presidential. And he's not really ever understood the difference. Trump's need to be liked - his need for mass love - is actually the thing that makes him weak: he chases the press for attention and they, in turn, should realize they're the ones with power in this situation.

Regardless of that power, we will just be setting up unreasonable expectations if we expect the press to solve our national Trump problem all on their own - that they will magically produce the perfect scandal that ruins him before he can do too much damage. There will, over time, I hope, be less trying to explain away his worst actions and words, and a better ability to call things out for what they actually are.  But even so, all the reporting in the world will mean little to an audience that's in no mood to hear it. Trump doesn't need or want to stop the presses, but his real power, thus far, is like The Shadow of radio lore - he clouds men's minds. Even though there's some movement to buyer's remorse, Trump's loyalists are still defined most by hearing what they want to hear. That's not a media problem. That's all of our problem. And the solution is something more than black and white... and read all over.

 

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Alone, Yet Not Alone

I'd been trying - as part of my general "time to reboot consistent blogging" strategy - to put together a piece on Justin Bieber, because his arrest really caught my attention.

And then Philip Seymour Hoffman died.

There's been the usual mix of sarcasm and disdain expressed for Bieber's behavior, a sadly familiar spectacle of acting out and getting caught. It's been harder (though not nonexistent) to find those who worry about the kid (he's only 19!) and hope he gets himself some treatment.

There's an awkwardness in America to discussing and dealing with drug use, abuse and addiction issues, a remnant of our distant history of puritanism, a distinctly American sense of privacy and suggestions that difficult family matters be kept behind closed doors. We are at once a people who want uncomfortable matters swept quietly aside, yet fascinated with the intimate details of each other's lives. It doesn't help that popular culture both rewards and gives notoriety to bad behavior and acting out, our fascination with a life that dares to color outside the expected lines vexing our expectations that people stay within those lines at all times.

When a drunken celebrity - often a young woman - is caught on camera stumbling and slurring and causing a scene, it's the mix of fascination and revulsion that propels it, often, into our national consciousness. Less consideration is given to how we (or more to the point, the person doing it) got to that moment, or what happens next. We talk vaguely of "the downward spiral of child stars" as if its an interesting abstraction, and less the painful trajectory of actual people and their actual lives.

I've been thinking about this a lot in the couple of weeks since Bieber's arrest in Miami, about signs and warnings, and downward spirals. Those who follow celebrity gossip closely - or not even, since I really don't invest the time in it writing like this might suggest - could tell you that Bieber's slide has been widely seen and discussed, bubbling just beneath the kind of coverage that happens once an arrest is made, or the problem becomes impossible to hide. Like Lindsay Lohan, Bieber's early life has been carefully dressed for PR purposes as less chaotic and tumultuous than it might seem on closer examination, the kind of warning signs of someone at risk long before the fame and the easy access arrives.

Addicts tell surprisingly similar tales of pain, isolation and loneliness leading to use and abuse of substances. I've thought about that as well with the Bieber story, how sad can it be to have all that he seemingly has, yet to seem so alone, so fragile, so determined to anesthetize oneself?

But what also comes to mind is a grim reality that's less discussed, partly because, I suspect, Bieber's kind of success doesn't necessarily evoke sympathy, or a certain kind of respect. One can miss the kid's obvious talents, his appealing singing voice, the grace of his dancing, his natural ability as a performer. Some talents, once squandered, can be lamented and and missed. Whitney Houston, or Heath  Ledger come to mind. But a Bieber, whose celebrity has trumped his talent... that lament can seem less obvious. But it's still there.

The sad reality is that Bieber's career has been the first, most obvious casualty of his behavior. Though he's toured successfully in the past few years, his status as a teen idol has been almost completely eclipsed by newcomers (One Direction, as well as newer teens like Austin Mahone and Cody Simpson) and established acts (Justin Timberlake, most obviously, has reasserted himself as the kind of heartthrob act Bieber aspires to be). His arrest occurred on the eve of the Grammys, where he was hardly missed, and in no contention for any award. The music world has already moved on, and so has much of the listening public. He hasn't charted a single, or released new material in some time. It's hard to see how he can collect himself, or his thoughts, for a project anytime soon.

That's where, to me, this story of Bieber intersects with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Amidst the lamentations for the loss of a prolific, widely admired actor, there's been the kind of immediate reassessment that happens with death, where the work takes on a fresh glow, and critics tend to emphasize the good and ignore the rest. Hoffman was indeed an actor of amazing range and depth, but he hadn't necessarily enjoyed anything like a career renaissance in recent years. His performances in The Hunger Games were not entirely well received, and underscored a kind of typecasting he endured as a smug, especially cold villain in big budget films. He had more opportunity to showcase his ranginess in smaller dramas, yet even there, it's hard to point to exceptional work in recent years.

Many will protest "but what about The Master?" No doubt his work was intense and skilled; but the film is chilly, dense, hard to love, and failed to find an audience. That's not a failure of the performers, per se, but it goes to a question that lingers about Hoffman, his addiction issues, and his admitted spiral into relapse. What choices might he have made had his addiction been less present, his sobriety more certain? Sober choices are smarter ones, more thought out, riskier yet also less dangerous, based upon more than a check, or a need to prove oneself. Onstage, his turn as Willy Loman was similarly curious, not a bad choice, necessarily, but an awfully big bite for an actor so young, in some ways still maturing and finding all of his potential. It's telling, that the reactions were so mixed, and so extreme; those who loved it, those who didn't have the heart to say it didn't really work.

It's hardest, I think, to have such a phenomenal talent, one that's expressed so young and so well and so naturally that it seems effortless. Hoffman's early roles have a sureness to them that really was breathtaking. Or think of Whitney Houston as Clive Davis found her, such an amazing raw talent for singing and interpreting a song just waiting to fly. And yes, Justin Bieber and his soaring young tenor, that need to be in front of an audience, that eagerness to please and to succeed. Judy Garland always spoke of the inner resources and energy it took just to be the Judy Garland audiences came to expect, capable of singing and performing others just couldn't touch. It should be easier, effortless, not isolating and difficult. And that's not really the case. It isn't easy. There's a lot of effort. And sometimes, it's easier to just fake it. Go onstage a little drunk. Phone it in. When you're that good, you can get away with it. At first, for a while, maybe before people notice, or suspect. For a while anyway. Especially when they don't look. Or pretend not to see.

We'll never know, now, what might have been, the actor Hoffman might have become, the actor he might have been in a more sober state. That loss is genuinely painful to contemplate, as is that question of what or who could have intervened, or knowing that no one could stop a path of self destruction unless he decided himself. If Hoffman's death is a cautionary tale, can someone get it to caution Justin Bieber, to help him see that there's no one to stop him self destructing except himself? I wish he would. I hope he does. The alternative remains too tragic. But not unthinkable, or unforseeable. If we choose to look.

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Les Miserables: There's A Grief That Can't Be Spoken

Of all the "big eighties" musicals (Phantom, Cats, Dreamgirls, etc), I've long suspected that Les Miserables is the best known and least understood of the bunch. More than the others - only Phantom really comes close - Les Miz isn't really so much a traditional musical comedy as much as it is light opera, a style very popular early on in American musical theater, but that eventually got subsumed into the opera houses of most of America (along with Gilbert and Sullivan and Porgy and Bess). Light operas and operettas were the sort of thing Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald did for MGM, where there was a lot of emphatic singing and usually little spoken dialogue, but it didn't quite qualify as "serious" opera because they were more recent, and tended towards more popular melodies.

Few people get that Les Miserables, in French, was originally more of a song cycle with some staging, before Cameron Mackintosh swept the whole thing up, translated it into English and gave it an elaborate staging in London. Even then, the initial reaction to it as a piece of theater was as more of an event, not easily categorized as traditional, straight musical theater. As it made its way to Broadway, Les Miz became treated more conventionally, even though, as a show, it actually has next to no spoken dialogue, is mostly sung-through, and relies heavily on recitative as well as traditional "numbers," which often function, in the show, more as solo arias, or duets and trios, amongst main characters. It's a short hop, really, from Les Miz to La Boheme, shorter than the hop to, say, a Phantom. The musical themes assemble and reassemble in the different numbers, and the show's first act closer, "One Day More," gradually blends the different threads preceding it into a stunning thematic whole.

Thus, in some ways, it's unfair to come to Les Miz expecting the familiar contours of the form that's been identified, since World War 2, as the American musical comedy. Les Miz is more thematically dense, more musically demanding, even if it does not, fully, fit the form of conventional opera. More than any show in recent memory, it is a singer's show - it requires, first, singers who can act more than actors who can sing (never mind dancers; the show is almost entirely free of traditional choreography). Arguably, Les Miserables has attained its cult status, and its rabid fan base by being staged as a musical, while playing to its operatic pretensions.

And so Les Miz arrives on film, proving that it still has worlds to conquer, its operatic pretensions in place, its place in pop culture secure. Tom Hooper's adaptation is all the junkies could expect - big, bold, brash and full of soaring musical moments. However well made, it cannot entirely mask the show's book flaws, and while visually magnificent, it can often feel somewhat less than the sum of its parts. And as always, the show rises and falls, most, on the strengths and weaknesses of its singers.

Many have argued that the film's weakest link is Russell Crowe as Javert, obviously the most actorly of the film's lead singers. Crowe has worked hard, and he does have singing experience (a band with him and his brothers is big in Australia), but his limited range is apparent, and at times he does struggle. But I think Crowe is being sold short for what he brings as an actor (and then too, the part of Javert is easy to treat harshly). At his best - his version of Stars, or Javert's eventual death scene - Crowe wisely undersings and retains the humanity of his character where others would go for bombast, or reach for the rafters. Crowe knows film well enough to understand its intimacy, and he connects with the camera in ways that others don't do quite as well. It's an idiosyncratic, star turn performance that works more than it doesn't.

On the other hand, there's Hugh Jackman, muscling his way through Jean Valjean with his usual scene chewing, always "on" qualities, who seems genuinely miscast. Valjean is the show's most brutal part, a screamingly high tenor role where the singer has to hit the highest notes with a full on belt. It's a singing skill that really encompasses a handful of men (there have been, I think, maybe 8-10 Valjeans  on Broadway in the life of the show)... and Jackman just isn't one of them. It's painful, really, to see the vocal strain as he tries to put over crucial numbers, none more so than the cruelly high "Bring Him Home." Lord knows, Jackman's qualities of pure showmanship can overcome most obstacles... but a note out of reach doesn't magically get reachable. And his acting can only take that so far.

The film starts with Valjean being paroled after 19 years in hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread during the French Revolution. Unfortuately, his parole makes him (shades of today) a virtual persona non grata in civilized society, and so he faces an agonizing (those notes!) dilemma of turning to crime or hiding in a new identitity. Assuming a fake name and a false identity, Valjean becomes a town mayor and factory owner, where a young woman named Fantine loses her job when the other women turn on her because of the foreman's obvious preference for her good looks. This leads Fantine on her own downward spiral, which she describes in her number "I Dreamed A Dream."

Anne Hathaway's appearance, 20 minutes in (she's gone by about 20 minutes later) is the film's down payment on greatness, and Hathaway shines so bright the effect is nearly mesmerizing. Gaunt and grim, she slogs her way through Fantine's travails, and though she's not the vocally strongest Fantine (Patti Lupone, for Christ's sake, was the original), Hathaway has that quality I've only seen in Marion Cotillard on film, of truly being able to act a song so thoroughly, all other doubts wash away. Bewildered, hurt, scared and desperate... all of this and more plays across her face as she attacks the song, sometimes letting emotion overwhelm her notes, other times, hitting them all the harder and more accurately to let the music do its job. Her performance is the most solid Oscar entrant I've seen all year.

Les Miz is a sprawling show, and Fantine's death leads to the real meat of the show, where Valjean adopts Fantine's daughter, Cosette, from a rapacious couple of innkeepers whose every thought is stealing (the Thernadiers, here played expertly by Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen). Still running from his jailer Javert, Valejean and Cosette wind up in Paris in 1832 as an eventualy botched student revolutionary protest sweeps up a group of young men, including Marius, Cosette's suitor, and the Thernadier's daughter, Eponine.

This is one of the great legendarily down shows, and virtually all of the show's most memorable numbers are death scene last gasps, interpsersed with dripping declarations of undying love and the occasional call to stand up and fight for freedom. The ideas are big, the music swells, but the lyrics are often surprisingly small, and often trite. Les Miz succeeds best, and affects most, when its not trying too hard, pushing too high, or smacking us with the obvious. But even its most shameless moments can pack a surprising punch.

After Hathaway, Jackman and Crowe, the biggest vocal surprises are Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried as the lovers Marius and Cosette. Redmayne is a foursquare romantic tenor in great voice, and Seyfried has a glorious light soprano that lifts her material way higher than I remember when I saw the show. The Eponine role is a natural stunner and she delivers. Carter and Cohen are aces as the Thernadiers. And the smaller roles - Gavroche, Enjolrais - work as reliably as one should expect.

Tom Hooper's direction is less assured than one might expect, as he seems to struggle with balancing the intimacy of the characters and their solos with the bombast and enormity of the action surrounding them. Les Miz, on stage, is memorably presented on a spinning disc, rotating characters on and off, and Hooper does his best to try and recreate the effect with pull backs and dolly shots to surround the sets, but he also frames his soloists in super tight, unforgiving closeups (Hathaway's lack of Hollywood vanity is remarkable), and the mix of shots doesn't make either choice necessarily effective. Hooper's focus on soloists robs "One Day More" of some its punch, Fantine's death is poorly staged, and Jackman's showiness would look less desperate if Hooper pulled back. None of this can diminish the power of the strongest numbers (Dream, On My Own, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, Master of the House), but  by the end, the show feels more like a slog than a journey.

Still, for its flaws, indeed perhaps because imperfection keeps this monster human scale rather than enormous and bloated, Les Miserables manages a surprising amount of subtlety, genuine emotion, and soaring power. Indeed, the film's attempts at intimacy solve a number of the second act book problems the show carries with it, which allows the show to feel more like an altogether more inclusive whole. All of which make it, for me, the Oscar contender to beat for Best Picture (I'll do Lincoln shortly), and a glorious adaptation of a misunderstood theatrical event. Someone may try again... but good luck with that. This one will stand pretty tall regardless, for a long time. 

Rock Of Ages: Sticky Sweet

Rock and Roll has a long, checkered history on film; in part, I suspect, it's because the anarchic rebel heart of rock can't really be subsumed or captured by Hollywood's embrace of the most "conventional" conventions. So much of what defines pop culture - the very structures of our popular entertainments - are the hoariest notions of storytelling enshrined onscreen. From HIgh School Confidential to The Girl Can't Help It, through Help! and the counterculture apex of Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, into the seventies era morass of Streisand's A Star Is Born and Midler's Rose.... Hollywood's history is littered with attempts to use "rock" as a way to give voice to a "youth culture" as a way to challenge a "status quo" that fails on all counts. 

If Rock of Ages is a dreadful dud - and it's surely one of the most dreadful, duddiest attempts out there - it would be a mistake
to isolate it as a lone example of the "rock musical" gone bad. "Rock musicals" are, in fact, generally problematic, the good ones (I'd say, well, Hair... and then what? Grease?) not so far from the bad, and all struggling with, as I said, trying to square a circle of presenting youthful rebellion in a clean, neat Hollywood package.

Sloppy and lazy, Rock of Ages pulls together a fairly random set of eighties "rock" songs, packages them up with a fairly limp familiar plotline of "I wanna be a star!" and flails around in search of a conclusion. Originally created for the theater, Rock of Ages - still running - is mostly a tired excuse to pull in kids my age with a vaguely familiar soundtrack of songs from our youth, packing them in even if, under even mild examination, the show is illiterate and incoherent. One of the most obvious problems is the show's soundtrack, which  vaguely assembles  eighties "hair metal" songs, a genre which, I'd argue, isn't really a genre at all: the real story of the eighties is how the notion of "rock" splintered apart after a seventies era apex of Album-oriented rock (AOR, in radio parlance) and hard rock ubiquitousness. By the mid-eighties, "rock" was, in many ways, nearly dead, with hair metal and other sub-genres simply serving as the dead end for diehards - who, it could be noted, amount to a white working class of mostly men holding out against the resurgence of dance and urban music that was really changing the face of pop.

That whitneness is a large chunk of Rock of Ages' dilemma onscreen, only partially solved by the late appearance of Mary J. Blige, in what appears to be the show's second act. By then we've been introduced to Sherri, a young aspiring singer who leaves Oklahoma to come to LA and pursue her dream. She quickly gets mugged (this happens in more Broadway shows than you might think), and meets her male counterpart, also an aspiring singer who works in The Bourbon Room, a larger scale club space that has a long history of launching and promoting up and coming rock acts. Drew, the young man, brings Sherri to the cliub, gets her a job, and the two begin a fairly conventional romance.  The club, meanwhile, under pressure from Moral Majority types, is struggling to stay in the black, and the owner pins his hopes on a desperate plan to revive the club's fortunes with a concert by popular band Arsenal, fronted by the charismatic, yet odd, Stacee Jaxx.

Tom Cruise, as you may have heard, plays Stacee Jaxx, and the performance is, by now, classic Cruise: a true movie star, Cruise may not be the strongest actor, but he plays Tom Cruise really, really well, and to the extent that Stacee Jaxx works, it's because Cruise exudes the star quality needed to pull it off. Say what you will, but Cruise has never been one to just phone it in, and he's not starting now. There's an intensity and determination to his performance that goes a long way to lifting this material above where it might be otherwise, and Cruise deserves credit, as he did in Magnolia, with proving that he's at his best, often, in these supporting roles where he can dare to be less than entirely likable.

But Cruise is no singer, and it shows. As much as he swaggers and stomps through his backstage drama, once he's onstage as Jaxx, Cruise's studied approach to "Rock God" reveals his limitations. Compare Cruise, for instance, to Blige, and the contrast is obvious: Blige, as usual, inhabits her singing with a passion that's almost impossible to bottle. Cruise, by contrast, gives the impression of moving across the stage, striking pose after pose, vaguely reminding us of other stars (Jagger, Tyler... you know the drill), without a real feel for how these stars found their stage presences in the songs they sang. It doesn't make him a failure in the part, but it's a reminder, however subtle, that Cruise is, in some ways, enitirely miscast in this role, struggling to make it work.

Much of the casting is similarly head scratching: actors with no real musical background, like Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Paul Giamati (who makes the film's irredeemable villain so irredeemable as to be a cartoon), against more traditional musical theater types like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Diego Boneta and Julianne Hough, and more rock and radio based types like Blige and Russell Brand.  That the musical theater types fare best (CZJ, however thankless her role is as the uptight antirocker, can't hide her ways with a good number) gives away the game that for all its claims to a rock and roll heart, Rock of Ages is grounded, really, in terribly conventional musical theater cliches: this is a showbiz, backstage musical with "rock songs" where 42nd Street should be, which goes a long way towards explaining why it doesn't really work.

As the young leads, Hough and Boneta are pretty enough - too pretty, really, on both counts - but they're both saddled with some of the worst of this film's material, particularly Boneta, mouthing words to Foreigner and Journey songs that seem, in context, like gibberish. Hough, as she demonstrated in the Footloose remake, is tougher and smarter than the limited, good girl in trouble business she has to put over here. Her character's hardest choice is going from waitress to stripper, and Hough radiates the kind of unreality that she's too sweet to get too jaded from it all, but even she's too smart to buy it.

The film struggles, really with the challenge of being "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" while being the more PG-13 "Smooches, Occasional Drinking and Pop Rock" family friendly alternative. No one in the movie gets stoned, never mind the odd absence of coke or heroin, even in an ostensible mess like Stacee Jaxx (Cruise is no one's idea of a hardcore alcoholic, no matter how he strolls around, scotch bottles in hand). And while the film pants with a kind of soft porn leeriness, the sexual situations are mostly tame, even in an obvious over the top number like the version of "I Want to Know What Love Is" that Jaxx sings while laying Malin Akermann's patently unbelievable Rolling Stone reporter on the back room pool table. Raunchy sex never had it so sad.

Most everything is this film is a pale carbon of other, not necessarily better, but still more committed rock films. Mark Wahberg, I think, can rest easy knowing that his own turn in Rock Star - along with Jennifer Aniston's - has more heft than anything Hough or Boneta can produce. Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous is way more true to the seventies era ethos of groupie/rock god, Rolling Stone excess than anything here. Blige's turn as a strip club owner with a heart of gold is essentially Cher's role in Burlesque, and both women have the star power to exceed weak material, but even Burlesque feels more ultimately authentic than anything Rock of Ages can conjure. 

Perhaps most weirdly, the flm can't shake the odd homoerotic undertone of its material; there's a whole lot of creepy male bonding on display here, too much crotch level interest in the men's leather pants to be ignored (Cruise, ever the tease, can't resist parading around in codpiece, jockstrap and assless chaps, and even his twin gun tats aimed at crotch level are really gay porn iconography). The film's cringiest, yet oddly sublime scene has Baldwin's club owner finally admitting his dirty desires for Brand, as the club's manager, to the tune of "Can't Fight This Feeling" the REO Speedwagon tune rock fans are most likely to call "That's so gay." That Brand has the verve to do the number in his best Freddie Mercury impression only adds to the subtlety, and to his credit, Baldwin is actor enough to sbubsume his "straight stud" history and commit to the moment at hand.

Fundamentally, though, that psychotic number is, in a nutshell, all the Vegas-y, trashy incoherence that sums up everything wrong with Rock of Ages: the wrong material, the wrong performers, the wrong (and false) emotional notes (as a runner up, among a "hard to choose just one" field, let's nominate Blige's strip club ode to "Any Way You Want It"). Director Adam Shankman can't begin to find a sustaining tone for this material, veering between satire, leaden humor, and melodrama without ever touching passion, intensity or ecstasy in any real way. Shankman managed to make sense of all of this with Hairspray (and try not to imagine how Blige could have steamrolled the Queen Latifah role there, either), but that just underlines where pop rock conventions and Hollywood work best in familar frames. Rock of Ages can either fit in the box and be denuded of its real danger and pathos... or it can soar. This film decidedly doesn't, with it's feet firmly on the floor, however strewn with used beer cans.

Finally, this film deserves two final slaps: one for the shoddy score, which is too lazy to include either Def Leppard's title track or Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie", despite the obvious references to the lead character. Too many of the numbers smash together incongruous pairings (Harden My Heart and Shadows of the Night? We're Not Gonna Take It and We Built This City?), and find little musical payoff. Too many of the songs, especially the Foreigner material, turn out to be full of weak lyrics (making Mick Jones his generation's Jerry Herman, I think). Even the moments that work - especially Cruise's actorly reading of "Pour Some Sugar on Me," which was already all about sex, but becomes all about sex and Tom Cruise - have a sleazy obviousness that's trite. And yet more insulting, if that's possible, is the sleazy costuming which make the eighties look even worse than we all might remember them - from Zeta Jones' ill fitting suits to Hough's hooker streetwear, to Boneta and Cruise in tight jeans and nothing to the imagination tops, this film makes a whole era into a sleazy looking cartoon. And that, I suspect, is its real point. Hot and sticky sweet... those used to be good things. I swear.

This American Lie

Maybe it's just a matter of timing - I didn't see it until late Friday afternoon, and the paid blogosphere does seem to cut out before Happy Hour on Fridays - but I'm surprised that the exposure of Mike Daisey as something of a fraud isn't resonating more on the right.

That may sound odd, but bear with me.

The discrediting of NPR has been an odd hobbyhorse of the right's most ardent screechers, something about the confluence of soothing voices, liberal boilerplate, and perceived objectivity, from what I can tell (roll that all up in a ball and you get... Nina Totenberg). James O'Keefe, in one of his more amusing sideshows, helped take out the head of fundraising at NPR with a tape of a conversation with a fake Middle Eastern investor, which led to a stunning series of off-point comments from senior officials at NPR that mostly made matters worse. NPR was also at the center of the Juan Williams "scandal", in which Williams was dropped as a commentator after telling Bill O'Reilly that he harbored suspicions that Muslims on his flights were possibly terrorists. 

Given all that, surely someone on the right will spend the weekend chortling as This American Life, one of NPR's most popular shows, has had to retract its most popular podcast, an episode recorded with Mike Daisey about Apple's dubious record manufacturing iPads and iPhones in China. Adapted from his monologue "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory" garnered a lot of attention, and started a string of modestly bad press for Apple, which has tried to minimize the fallout while trying to beef up standards at its plants (and I say "modestly bad" because none of it has really hurt Apple's sales or profits). 

Daisey's claims - that Apple's plants were rife with child workers and exposure to dangerous chemicals, among other horrendous practices - had been questioned by knowledgable reporters (though the practices were also confirmed by their reporting), but it wasn't until this week that Marketplace, PRI's business show (also on NPR), found Daisey's chinese translator who was with him on that trip, who said much of what Daisey claimed to witness - speaking to child workers, or observing workers injured from chemical exposure - never happened. Daisey calls it "dramatic license", now, and TAL is red faced.

But this isn't really just about This American Life; the New York Times has already had to issue its own correction to an online op-ed Daisey wrote making similar claims, and the Associated Press is looking at retracting coverage they did of Daisey on the topic as well. Others will surely follow. Even New York's Public Theater, where Daisey's show has been running, had to issue a statement generally supporting Daisey, but admitting that the show is not exactly entirely accurate (and that's okay, cause that's how drama works. Or something).

Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this - this is a "Mainstream Media" disaster of large proportions, undermining a popular storyline (corporate malfeasance! Cheap Chinese manufacturing practices! Labor rights!) that the right already can't stand. And this, really, is a classic unforced error: no James O'Keefe fakery needed, no dicey ideologue like Juan Williams to make the scapegoat. This was, as Ira Glass admitted, simply shoddy journalism that tends to undermine the credibility of a show like This American Life - failing to ask basic questions, check primary sources, or to make sure that information was fully confirmed. It doesn't help that TAL often comes off as smug, slightly sanctimonious, and hipper than thou on most topics it covers; this was hubris waiting for a fall.

Conservatives may shy away form this because it is, after all, Apple; on the one hand, an emblem of exactly the kind of capitalism they want to enshrine, while at the same time, a do-gooder sort of firm that liberals love to shop because it seems hip and cool and socially conscious. Embracing the discrediting of Daisey, when Apple still faces unpleasant questions about its corporate actions and conditions in factories, could easily be a two-edged sword, and it may just be that conservatives miss the connections: all that raling against MSM and bad journalism is less potent when there's no obvious political payoff.

On the other hand, it's the very clean spin of the Daisey case that I think should give lefty defenders of NPR through the previous scandals some pause: it's one thing to have been pranked by O'Keefe and his ilk, it's no fun having to defend the notion that Juan Williams didn't deserve all of what he got... but the through-line here is much like the unraveling of the NYT after Jayson Blair: lying to your editors shouldn't be this easy, and it's just arrogance to have missed the signs that this report was seriously flawed. Many lefties will, no doubt, want to take the line that Daisey's real disaster is undermining the efforts to investigate Chinese factories. But this, really, amounts to "he may have stretched the truth, but he wasn't wrong" and that's not true. This wasn't stretching, it was fabrication and falsehoods. Journalism can't let that stand. And NPR, as a whole and not just on one program, probably needs to reexamine its mission and how that mission is pursued. 

Most imortantly, though, is that listeners probably need to also ak more questions, and take less reporting at face value. That's the reality of our current American Lives.

Articles We Never Finished Reading: All This, And Daddy Issues Too?

Seriously?

“Horizon” was the first play by O’Neill I ever read, at 9 or 10, and as a black-and-white introduction to a dramatist’s worldview it’s not inappropriate reading for preadolescents. (On the other hand, its portrait of life as a dream-smothering joker might well scar a sensitive, unformed mind. Thanks a lot, Dad, for the recommendation.)

- The often astonishing Ben Brantley, piling daddy issues on top of his so-so critical writing, in a review of Eugene O'Neill's Beyond The Horizon at Irish Rep.

Down East

Apparently, I decided to take some time off.

I feel better about these occasional pauses if I make a decision ahead of time - plan ahead, that's what I prefer (which, objectively, I also disapprove of in myself - I'd love to be a more "seat of the pants" kind of girl/weboy... but it's just not happening). Instead, life just kind of catches up to me... and something's got to give.

There's this debate, each time, in me: do I write about the not writing, or just move on as if everything just resumes normally? I hate to just leave the breaks unacknowledged, and sometimes writing about not writing is all I've got to give. And blogging, after all, was something I started so I could write about what's happening. Or not happening. Sometimes, not writing is all.

The past week was hard, but satisfying - a lot of productive time at work, a chance to show myself as someone seriously interested in management. I wasn't always like this; it's a recent development. For a while, I figured being a writer/barista was enough; then writer/shift supervisor. Now, maybe some sort of manager. Maybe that's the best I can do on spontaneous plans: I'd rather not have a career with goals, just let it unfold as it unfolds.

I'm weird that way.

This past week also marked the beginning of serious rehearsals for my summer foray into musical theater; last year, I reawakened my theater interests with a local production of Annie. This year, I'm happily back in the thick of my summer troupe doing Curtains. It's much fun... but a week of rehearsals only to get up at 4:30 to open the next morning does take a lot of a person.

So, here I sit, a week or so later, ensconced in my Aunt and Uncle's house in Maine, back for a slow summer weekend, and a chance to decompress. As usual, the relaxed air - and reduced heat - makes contemplation a little easier. 

Yesterday was an easy day, with a relaxed lunch, some time on the internet, and an amazing dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants. Tonight, it's a cookout after this morning's breakfast at the local maple syrup store. And probably a trip to the local museum.

Starting Tuesday, it's back into the thick of work and rehearsals, and who knows how that will go; another short break may be in the cards. For now, it's a nice break Down East, and a chance to reconnect. And that's pretty good.

A Few More Words From The Terrible TV Criticism Of Alessandra Stanley

It's false equivalency time!

On Monday’s episode of  MTV could show minors in the kind of flagrante delicto that is usually reserved for mature audiences. Yet most adult Americans still can’t watch Al Jazeera English on television — even now, when the world is transfixed by images of Egypt in revolt.

It seems like a perverse application of free speech. But sex is sexier than foreign affairs and it certainly sells better. Freedom of expression is guaranteed to all Americans, but mostly it follows the money.

Yes, that's right, Alessandra Stanley has decided to link Skins and the Egyptian Revolution, as presented by Al Jazeera!

Can you figure out how to veer from discussing the slanted coverage of a news network to the sleazy business of selling teen sexuality on a scripted British import? Neither can Stanley, though she lurches all over the place, and eventually settles on "ratings" as her basis for cable systems not carrying Al Jazeera but still carrying MTV. That's not "analysis", that's desperation.

And, as if that's not enough, Stanley isn't done throwing in the kitchen sink:

To be fair, Al Jazeera English may be providing the most up-close and personal coverage round-the-clock, but it isn’t necessarily the best. And “Skins” isn’t the worst series for young people on cable, not by far. That would be “Jersey Shore.”

"To be fair"? How about "to try and throw in yet another complete non sequitour"?

And "Jersey Shore"? Seriously?

None of this is necessarily surprising - Stanley's long been the best example of worst criticism the Times has to offer... which is saying something in a pool that includes, still, the blatherings of Ben Brantley. Still, even for Stanley's usual lousy standards, this column was especially, awesomely, bad.

It's a shame, because the Times has actually been putting some effort into recasting its Arts pages, improving the quality of coverage, smoothing out its terrible instincts for flashy trash and simultaneous Upper East Side superiority (Which explains the Music department's apparent schizophrenic love of gangsta rap and opera). The Sunday section is almost readable again, Brantley is balanced with the perceptive analysis of Charles Isherwood, Manohla Dargis seems to be less and less of a presence on the film side. But for all the good... there's still Stanley and her astonishingly lame TV reviews. Does this nightmare ever end?

By the way, just to wrap up how lousy this column is: the problem with Skins is that it's not very good, which is the kind of situation where pushing the envelope on salaciousness is meant to cover weak writing and fairly bad acting (it's hard to find great acting talent under 18, and the market is seriously tapped out). Skins is mostly further proof that British shows rarely transfer well to America (The Office is an exception that actually helps prove the rule). Al Jazeera's inability to increase its presence on American cable systems deserves a full, separate article. And Jersey Shore's popularity, while mind blowing, is not inexplicable, and mostly a reminder that America's television habits are not generally, a reflection of good taste. Which, really, should help Alessandra Stanley, and still, somehow, doesn't.

Life Upon The Wicked Stage

I didn't - seriously - plan on a 4 week semi-hiatus to pursue a dream of community theater. When I started rehearsals, I figured I could blog on off days, or days where I just had rehearsal and not work. Neither of those quite happened, never mind the days of getting up 4:30 to work, with rehearsal starting at 7 that evening, home at 11 to do it all again.

What did happen was something of a creative reawakening, at least for me; it's partly the chance to go back and do things I never felt I did enough of in my - gloriously misspent - youth, and partly it's a chance to be around people who do the things I like to do for the same reason - a love of doing it, just for the joy of seeing it through.

Annie is a show which covers a wide swath of ages among performers - we have children age 5 and up, and adults into their fifties and sixties (never mind our director, who's been at this for 40 years with no real sign of slowing down) - and so the experience has been a cross section of the life in performing. You see everything from the nergetic dreams of the young to the seasoned, even world weariness of the elders, all enthralled with playing dress up, pretending to open invisible doors, and sing cheerful songs about the Depression.

If I have never been quite so tired, I have also been never quite so happily at peace.

And so today, in preparation for opening night I have brought a fresh tube of mascara (I still need to stop for some foundation), I need to move a  button on my butler outfit, press my clothes, and make photocopies of script to use during the simulation of a radio broadcast. I am reminded of one of J in B's best creations ever - the drag name of Vera Similitude. It's fun trying to make everything so real.

All of this has gotten me thinking about performing, about the life we lead and how much of it is, indeed, a performance; these things I remember about the people who can be so dramatic - I really do find myself at home with theatrical people - remind me that the capacity for it carries over into life generally. Acting, oddly, is what makes me impatient with people who "fake it" in real life; for goodness sake, commit to your performance. Don't pretend. Good acting isn't defined by the audience not believing it.

I'm sure this experience has changed me, as experiences do - I have met a whole new group of people, deepened existing friendships, learned a few things about myself, and, at this late age, even learned a few things about acting and singing on stage (if only confirming that someone in my high school career clearly missed the fact that I am quite capable of a solo on stage. Take that, Mr. Vogelman). It isn't easy - what thing worth doing ever is? - and it requires conservation of energy... but for those moments, on stage, flying without a net (literally, as I tripped over someone in dress rehearsal), it is breathtaking and fun and joyous. Life upon the wicked stage for me.

And so, with performances getting under way, the end is in sight, one way or another. As yesterday demonstrated, I am getting back into the grrove of balancing writing back into the daily schedule of things. And though I've managed to keep my distance from a lot of daily news, I'm not completely out of the loop, and find myself, yet again, with a lot of things to say. And now, with the time to say them... and my creative juices flowing a bit more vividly than they were... this should get interesting. Well, I like to think it's been interesting all along. But a blog should make a fine stage, and spotlight - for some time to come.