Category Archives: Now Playing

11.04.11
by

Shakespeare meets Kim Kardashian

Are you writing your life story or letting someone else write it for you? What happens when what you want to do runs counter to every logical action you should be taking – at least according to those around you?  Do you follow your inner voice; ignore it’s/your profound urges; or forge a compromise somewhere in between?

That question came to mind after watching the movie “Anonymous” this weekend.

For the 99% of you who haven’t yet seen this movie and will no doubt EVER see it –

“Anonymous” asks the burning 2011 question – did Shakespeare really write all of his own plays and sonnets or was it someone else?   Perhaps accounting for its grosses, the very 2011 answer to this question is:

WHO GIVES A RAT’S ASS! I CAN’T GET A JOB; I’M BROKE; I’M NOT DOING WHAT I WANT IN LIFE; I HATE MY JOB; MY LACK OF LOVE LIFE OR PRESENT LOVER/MATE/HOOK UP STINKS; THE WORLD IS GOING INTO THE CRAPPER SO WHY BOTHER WITH ANYTHYING; AND TO TOP IT OFF KIM KARSDAHSIAN GOT PAID $17 MILLION (despite what her Mama says) TO GET MARRIED ON TV AND HAS FAME, FORTUNE AND UNLIMITED MILES TO EVERY AIRLINES AND NOW GETS WHAT LOOKS LIKE A PRETTY CLEAN, SCOTT FREE DIVORCE SO WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT SOME QUILL PUSHER FROM 400 YEARS AGO WHO WROTE PLAYS THAT I NEVER UNDERSTOOD ANYWAY AND ALWAYS MADE ME FEEL STUPID!?

Uh, okay.  Point taken.  But still —

Here’s the thing —   It’s not really about whether you think this movie, or any movie, TV show, play or web site, is good or bad or indifferent.  It’s really, “can this make me laugh, cry or, perish the thought, think?”  “Anonymous” has made a lot of purists of the literary theatrical world angry about issues that matter to them.   They don’t fancy that some uppity TV writer (screenwriter John Orloff, best known for “Band of Brothers”) is telling the world that a nobleman named the Earl of Oxford wrote all those plays instead of an uneducated former actor (Shakespeare) who also did odd working class jobs before he could support himself with his art.  They think the issue of this movie is whether Shakespeare did indeed write all of that stuff.

I don't even know who you are anymore!

Quite simply – they’re wrong.  As wrong as the rest of us who don’t really want to see films anymore about subjects that, on the surface, don’t lead with our obvious interests.   (Me included – though I did see “Real Steal” and had a fun time!).   What the movie/story of “Anonymous” IS really asking us is this: What happens when you don’t following your heart and are stuck living a life that is dictated by other people?  What the movie “Anonymous” poses is that the REAL Shakespeare was really this educated guy named the Earl of Oxford who was not SUPPOSED to be a writer but live in a respectable way because of what his FAMILY and PEERS expected him to be.  But all the Earl feels passionate about is his WRITING (They called it being a “poet” in those days).  But instead of facing them (family and friends) head on, this RICH KID tried to have it both ways (never a good idea) and be extra crafty.  So he wrote and wrote and wrote anonymously and when he was ready and older (and way less happy) with a huge output of work, he hired a younger guy (Shakespeare) to pass himself off as the public author of all the Earl’s writings so the Earl could continue his anonymous life as a nobleman with the satisfaction that what he wanted to say to the world (and there were a lot of “screw you’s in his plays”) would finally get out there and he could still be “RESPECTABLE” (or be hidden).

Recipe for disaster?  Well, uh, yeah.  As we really know in 2011, you can’t have your cake and eat it too (calling Herman Cain?  Maybe even the Kardashians) because any time you try to live a little bit of a lie or do things for the wrong reasons it just gets worse and worse for you until you end up with, well, living and dying on the twisted end of fame – hounded by the very forces you once were convinced were your “lovers” or even friends.

Number 9 looks just like you

Spoiler: It doesn’t end well for the Earl of Oxford.  So the real 2011 question is – what do we learn from his story?   No – the answer is not don’t make a serious costume drama in 2011 and expect today’s Kardashian-bent moviegoers to attend, even though I’d be hard pressed to mark that answer wrong on a multiple choice test.  Nor is it – I don’t want to be a writer or anything in the arts so I don’t care.  It is – I’m going to have to take my shot; make my mistakes; because in the end at least I’ll know they’re mine.  That alone has to be better than succeeding on someone else’s terms (ask the Earl of Oxford or, well, even Kim Kardashian at this point, who seems to not be quite laughing all the way to divorce court).

Most human beings that I know, myself included, don’t dedicate their life to full service (Gandhi and Mother Teresa were exceptions.  Or – were they?).  So it’s hard to follow the advice of people like Tom Brokaw who this week said that you measure your life by contributions to your government and community, not the amount of toys you can buy; or Steve Jobs, whose sister Mona Simpson eulogized him as a guy who worked every single day of life (including weekends).  This is especially so since they got to play with all the toys they ever wanted.  Brokaw, through his network TV work, had hundreds of acres of farm land in his home state and quite fancy and expensive NY digs, and hobnobbed with every famous person in the world for decades.  Jobs, lauded as one of the great inventors of modern times, still indulged himself with 100s of the same shirts he loved from a single store or flying in the best marble in the world from a particular region in Italy in order to build Apple headquarters exactly the way he wanted.  Yes, one man’s toy is another man’s discarded Kardashian – but still – what’s important to remember is they both got their toys doing what they loved to do.  Just as Shakespeare – or whoever he was – found his only true happiness (and wealth – personal and/or literal – who knows why some hit the money jackpot and get both) from doing HIS writing.   As he wisely once said — the PLAY‘s, the thing.  No matter who he (or they?) really was.  The words still hold true today.

10.14.11
by

Real Horror

A drama teacher once told me that if an actor plays a scene with enough commitment even the most outlandish choices they make would work on some level.  And maybe many levels. At the very least, it wouldn’t be boring.

Such is the case with the new FX one hour camp scarefest “American Horror Story” from the creators of “Glee” (Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk).  If that sounds weird, it is, very.  But it’s not as if the creators don’t know that.  In fact, they revel in it.  Actually, they luxuriate in a bloody bubble bath of it .  Any show that in its first episode shows us:

  1. Evil, ginger-headed twin boys bent on destruction as they enter a haunted house.
  2. A Downs Syndrome girl of indeterminate age warning them they will DIE if they go inside.
  3. Jessica Lange in a stiff sixties wig channeling an L.A. version of Blanche Dubois as she pours Ipecac into chocolate cupcakes for her new neighbor’s teenage daughter.
  4. “Six Feet Under” loony Mom, Frances Conroy, as the uninvited maid of the manor with a lazy eye channeling her best Mrs. Danvers from “Rebecca.”

    Mrs. Danvers

  5. Dermot Mulroney Dylan McDermott  shirtless (and with a new fully worked out body) masturbating intensely in front of a window after his wife refuses sex with him and right after he imagines (or does he?) a much younger Conroy furiously pleasuring herself just 50 feet away in the room across the hall.
  6. Beloved “Friday Night Lights” matriarch, Connie Britton as a grieving Mom and distant wife (Dylan (or is it Dermot?) cheated on her) who breaks down enough to have sex with a guy in a black latex suit she’s only guessing to be her husband (will it be revealed to be Dermot?).
  7. And a basement of an L.A. house of indeterminate neighborhood with endless jars of dead body (or is it baby) parts and limitless powers to claw and maim anyone who comes to close while period music from the 50s, sixties, seventies or beyond plays (music like “The Doors” or your favorite 60s girl group) —

— has something less (or perhaps its more?) than the drama of “Sophie’s Choice” or the integrity of a Shakespearean “King Lear” on its mind.  What, if anything,  that will be in the final analysis, I’m not entirely sure.  But what it is right now – in October 2011 —  is unbelievably entertaining.

Why?  I’ll try to elaborate.

In an age when political candidates and movie stars spend the majority of their time pretending to be something they’re clearly not, or worse, trying to be something they think that we want them to be – anything but themselves – it is refreshing to see something, anything, that is telling you exactly what it is – camp outrageousness.  The first episode alone blatantly steals moments from every classic horror film you can imagine: from “Rosemary’s Baby,” to “Carrie,” to “Poltergeist,” to “The Shining” to “Amityville Horror,” “Paranormal Activity,” The Cabinet of Dr Caligari,” “Harvest Home,” and Hitchcock’s (or is it Daphne DeMaurier’s) “Rebecca.”   Yet there is something unbelievably invigorating when something OR SOMEONE owns who he is.  It’s as if they’re saying – “you don’t like it TOUGH! (as my little sister used to tell me when I wanted one of her dolls toys or asked her for the 12th time to leave my room).  You have to admire the spunk, even when the answer or result isn’t exactly the something that you expected or wanted or even dreaded to hear.

You might ask (if you’re still reading) — Why am I writing about a one hour show on FX that is my latest guilty pleasure (should pleasure even be guilty?) when there is so much else going on in the world much more important.  Precisely because “American Horror Story” is absolutely emblematic of what is literally going on in the world.  Every political idea of today feels taken from another era.  Every new big studio movie (they just announced Johnny Depp is starring in a remake of  “The Lone Ranger” – and not even as the title character – as Tonto!) seems like it’s a remake of something from a bygone era that we’ve already seen, probably a remake from an era even more bygone.  Most television shows feel like redirected retreads of a stand up comic’s sitcom act (except Louis CK); or a feeble attempt to cash in on a trend (“Mad Men” begets the infinitely inferior and now defunct after 2 episodes “The Playboy Club,” and the inevitably soon to be defunct “Pan Am.”).  Even Broadway is spending time and money creating new “remake” American musicals like – “The Addams Family” and “Shrek,” waving enough money that even the biggest Broadway talent (yes, Nathan Lane is  THE box-office Brad Pitt of Broadway musicals) can’t say no and thus fostering the endless, unendurable cycle of, well – what we have.

Nice paycheck, Kemo Sabe

But for those of you writing to tell me you want me to be more optimistic and less complaining – here’s the deal – you can do all of these things – “Lone Ranger,” “Addams Family, “Playboy Club,” Pan Am” and many more of, well, anything if you do them terrifically –if you are just, well, OUT there with them.  Twist the unoriginality – come in with your take and commit to it enough (as my acting teacher once said) that it can’t help be anything but original (if only due to its blatant UNoriginality).

The one misnomer of “American Horror Story” is that it is being broadcast against another not so guilty TV pleasure called “Revenge” that I also very much (no – not because a former student is a staff writer) like.  “Revenge” is a well-done Hampton’s story of, uh – revenge.  In this case the poor person, Emily, is now rich and has returned to the Hamptons because her father was destroyed and she was ripped away from him as a wee child by a group of very wealthy, over privileged, immoral residents of the Hamptons.  “Revenge” is the REAL contemporary American Horror Story and should really be titled as such – rich people preying on the poor and downtrodden (less powerful) to such an extent that the poor seek, well, you know.  We root for them all – they’re our surrogates.  (well, 99% of us).

Watch out Hamptons, here she comes!

“Revenge” has already been renewed (for the season back nine) because in this particular American horror story we are gunning (yes, gunning) for someone to get their comeuppance from the community of wealthy powerbrokers who have been so over privileged for so long that they literally don’t suspect or could ever really even conceive why anyone would go to such lengths to get even with them in the first place – so accustomed are they to living their lives the way they do.  Does that sound familiar?  Or Are we (I?) succumbing to Mob rule as ads for this new and uncannily prescient TV program OCCUPYs the billboards on our STREETS?

The late American genius thinker Susan Sontag once wrote about all this and quite a lot more in her seminal essay of the 1960s, “Notes on Camp.”  As she tried to explain it to the rest of us, entertainment that we find “campy” – meaning over-the-top, exaggerated and in some uptight intellectual circles of that (or this) time perhaps a bit inferior, served a very real and necessary function and, perhaps, was anything but.

“The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious,” Ms. Sontag explained. “Camp is playful, anti-serious.  More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious.’  One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”

To my mind, the Camp of “American Horror Story,” and to a more subdued but perhaps even more accurate sense “Revenge,” are exactly what the entertainment Gods have ordered for what ails us at the moment and we should willingly – no – feverishly – take our medicine on Wednesday nights at 10 pm. (or at some other regular DVR or Hulu designated moment at your own discretion). It’ll either make you smile or make your mouth drop in disbelief from its outrageous, audacious and/or yes, hopelessly derivative camp value.  But it most certainly beats checking out the news, worrying about how you will pay back your student loans, looking at your 401K statement or any present or near future uniquely American horror that might await at your door.