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Story-Telling and Mad Men
Like a lot of people, I’m a little sad about the final season of Mad Men winding down – Is tonight really the third to last episode? – though it feels a bit like a terminal patient is dying a slow...
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Letting Friends Do Their Thing: Writers Versus Bloggers
I’ve been neglecting you, dear readers. I feel it every day. Like a friend who isn’t returning calls or emails – and I have played that part with some dear old friends of late too. “You were always on...
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Summer Writing, and Gardening
I love when summer gets its heat inside the bricks of the house, and the butter in the dish on the counter gets so soft round the clock you have to hold the blade of your butter knife horizontal during...
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Speaking of William Inge
Poor William Inge, Hollywood got a hold of him and chewed up both him and his legacy. A year ago I saw an excellent production of his under-rated play A Loss of Roses by the Peccadillo Theater Company...
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Locally-Sourced Cheese
“Last time I sang in Brooklyn was at my Bar Mitzvah!” Barry Manilow said early in his set last night. If you had told me, as the Barclays Center basketball arena was being built, controversially, that...
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Take It From Jackson, Not Hamilton!
The power of symbols is all over my Facebook and Twitter feeds this morning. Mostly it’s liberals petitioning South Carolina to stop using the Confederate flag in light of the racist murder of nine...
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Kumiko
I guess the reason it took me so long to see Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014) was the fantasy genre implied by the title and poster. I figured it was animation. As a film reviewer back in the 90s I...
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Doug Died
My new writing hero is Doug Legler of Fargo, North Dakota, whose name is longer than his obituary. The shortest newspaper obituary on record. They say this was done in accordance with his own wishes....
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Iran, Where Social Media Falls Short
My Facebook feed, often full of certain and unshakable opinions about world events, has been oddly silent this week following the agreement John Kerry brokered between Iran and the world powers. Is it...
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Richard II
Years ago I spent an evening talking with a film critic who was born in Kenya, and he told me the only British film he ever liked was Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth, a movie I frankly hated. He said it...
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An Actor’s Least Favorite Question
morehastohappen:I know a few actors who are constantly working, but for the most part, even successful ones are wondering what their next gig will be. This blogger below, Patti Murin, puts it very...
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Mistress America
Mistress America is the film Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig were trying to make when they made Frances Ha three years ago – or at least I enjoyed it much, much more. It extends Baumbach’s winning...
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Time and Narrative
As summer ends, in the social if not the geo-physical sense, I’m thinking back on the great films I saw and scripts I read, and nothing moves me to go back for a second visit like this episode of On...
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I Am a Better Person Than Shep Gordon Is*
There’s so much more to SuperMensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon than just old tabloid fodder, though it’s rich in that that too. My first time watching it, I was so dazzled by the anecdotes, I didn’t...
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The Vatican Rag
Pope Francis arrives in the U.S. today, and it’s quite a spectacle seeing so many agnostics and atheists posting quotes by him, as in “See, I told ya, even the pope says so,” about climate change or...
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Laugh It Up
I saw a very unusual play called “Laugh It Up, Stare It Down,” by screenwriter-playwright Alan Hruska, at Cherry Lane Theater this week. It’s about the love between two eccentric savants, a currency...
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Fair Weather Mets Fans
There’s hipster currency in the New York Mets right now, but don’t let that stop you from rooting for them this week in their playoff series against the Dodgers. Sports fanhood has all sorts of...
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Budgets and Crowdfunding: Why So Much? Why So Little?
I’m running a Kickstarter campaign this month, for a short film I wrote and am co-producing. It’s been a comedy of errors at times – the fund-raising, not the film. Although it looks like it’s going to...
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Stella, or The Alternator
When coincidences start happening all around you, you’re doing something right. At least that’s the aphorism as I understand it – Carl Jung by way of the astrology freak I had a crush on in my 20s. And...
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Losing Light in the Catskills
“Phoenicia gets dark!” an actor was telling me on the phone a week and a half ago. “The sun goes down over that mountain, and it gets dark!” “She’s a real Copernicus,” I thought to myself. Of course it...
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