"They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?"

I'm presently making a huge mistake:

I'm attempting to multi-task while watching Richard Linklater's Waking Life.

Bad move. Most of the film is dialogue/discourse, and most of the discourse is thick with philosophy and heavy ideas. A lot of the people are speaking quickly and I'm having trouble keeping up, since I'm not devoting my full attention to it. What I'm catching, though, I love. It's giving me a much clearer sense of Linklater and his aims in film.

Now that I've seen Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, A Scanner Darkly (which I really didn't like), and this, I guess I have to go back to the beginning of his filmography and see Slacker and Dazed and Confused. And I want to find subUrbia on VHS still, since I really enjoyed reading the play.

As far as I can tell, 1990s Linklater seems to be preoccupied with Gen X angst and 20-somethings coming of age. One thing I love about Before Sunrise and Before Sunset is that in seeing how Jesse and Celine grow and mature between 1995 and 2004, you consequently see how Linklater's grown. I also like that about Ethan Hawke. Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites and Before Sunrise is not the same as Ethan Hawke 10 years later.

A lot of people don't like him. I do. The more interviews I read with him, the more I respect him. Gen X-ers came of age in the mid-'90s and he had to do it on film for an international audience. It seems like he had to endure condemnation for that for so long, that looking back, he has a different kind of an attitude that seems to say, "I'm doing what I want, I'm looking for fulfillment, and if you don't like what I'm doing, fuck you." Very Jersey, haha. He did, if I recall, go to high school here. This is from an interview that came out right after he did Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

EW: Do you feel more in the zone creatively now than you did at the peak of your infamy as a Gen-X icon 10 years ago?
Hawke: Absolutely. We as a culture love to celebrate people in their early 20s. But it's not a comfortable place to be in your mid-20s. You don't know who you are as a person. You're screwing up left and right. It's very awkward. I've found that the older I get, the easier it is to be the person you want to be. Self-importance has a stranglehold on people in their early 20s. That's the razor's edge you need to walk: to take yourself seriously but not too seriously.

Did it make you feel vulnerable to revisit [your] novel [when adapting it for film] after being so criticized for its self-absorption?
If you're me, there's a lot of advantages that come with it and a lot of disadvantages that come with it. People never hesitate to tell me when they think I'm an asshole.

So aren't you tempted to bury that part of yourself and hope people forget?
I can't. I buck at that. I was too young to be held accountable for how you felt about me when I was 23. I enjoy life too much to let myself be defined by that.

Are you happy with how it turned out?
It was a weird opportunity to get to make such a personal film in such a corporate age. To use cinema for self-expression in an age when everything is supposed to be a commodity for sale, I felt so privileged, and all of that was such a luxury. People who don't like my film don't like it passionately because they get this idea that self-reflective art is an act of egregious narcissism. And if that is true, what do we say to Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, to Proust to Whitman? You start to take a certain pride in their hatred of it. But the truth is, I'm really not only interested in self-reflective art. There's also a bunch of other stuff I'd rather do.

That's encouraging.

I understand why people denounce anything that even hints at self-importance and -involvement--I do it too. But part of me thinks, what is art for, if not for expression? And what's wrong with a little self-reflection, when so many people go through life without ever stepping back and really looking at themselves? Or without anyone ever really looking at them?

I'll probably look back at this some day and laugh at how self-involved and self-reflecting I was. I kind of am already. I'm okay with that. Everything is absurd, and sometimes all you can do is laugh at it all.

"To me, a voice without soul is not a voice worth listening to...

...I don't want to waste my time just listening to technique or gorgeous high notes. It's all great if it's there, but if it doesn't have a raw, soulful emotion behind it, it just isn't worth it."
- Matt Doyle

There are a few things that you need to know in order to understand me at all. One is that I believe in a lot of things that are difficult to verbalize because they're very ambiguous--I'm not big on absolutes. Another is that, like any remotely complex person, I'm full of contradictions. Another is that I'm very intuitive in nature--I know how I feel and what I think, but I don't always have good explanations for these feelings and thoughts. Writing is frequently how I search to express what I mean. Thank god for the backspace key. Me in a nutshell is pretty much any INFJ description you find.

Because of my ambiguity and dislike of extremes, I find myself feeling torn about a lot of things. One of these things is art. Many of my friends are intellectual and artistic snobs, in the least offensive way possible. They have higher standards for "art" than many, and don't throw the term around lightly. I'm pretty sure they'd look at a lot of modern art and wonder why it's art.

I do that too, sometimes. I think there are many works that I would concede have artistic qualities but are, on the whole, not art. And really, why is Jackson Pollock considered brilliant? I'm sure Wikipedia would tell me, but I don't think I care. What I do care about is Andy Warhol's belief that art is for everyone.

I can't decide to what extent I agree with him. On the one hand, I do believe that something need not be "high art" for a person to enjoy and appreciate it, and I don't believe that a person has to recognize that something is art or understand why they like it in order to appreciate it. I also understand that something can be technically bad, but still evoke reactions from some that high art would evoke from others. I can appreciate Warhol's notion of "corporate art" and why Pop Art is important. On the other hand, though, so much enters the mainstream that just isn't good. I just read a post on Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog entitled, "Lil Wayne's 'Prom Queen': Make it go away!" that has the tag, "Ouch! That was my ear!" I haven't heard it and I really don't want to, but it's the 9th most downloaded song on iTunes right now, which angers me.

I indulge in my fair share of music that is varying degrees of cheesy and dubious in quality. I'll admit it: I listen to Fall Out Boy. Yep. And when the mood hits, I listen to old-school Celine Dion. (But NOT "My Heart Will Go On.") So what? I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the ear for music that I deeply wish I had. I don't have the understanding of the theory aspects of music, I have no rhythm, and my attempts at piano and cello were technical failures when I was younger, even if my parents and teachers thought otherwise. I don't have a sophisticated ear, and I occasionally enjoy unoriginal sequences of power chords and over-processed, unexceptional voices. Or, I excuse those if I react to the sappy or silly lyrics. I'm okay with that. That used to embarrass me, but now I don't really care. I like what I like and that's that. This is an even sillier reference than my Devil Wears Prada one, but it fits--that chick flick Music & Lyrics. The musician defends himself to the doubtful lyricist, claiming that a three and a half minute pop song can do more to cheer up a person than any novel or film can do in three and a half minutes. I suppose he's right.

At the same time, though, I completely agree with the quote I opened with. "Fun" music is great. I like to sing it at the top of my lungs in the car on my way to and from school. Sometimes I'll even dance to it alone in my room. But at the same time, any music with soul is so much better. And by "soul," I mean passion--I love hearing a song and feeling instinctively that it was a product of passion, something that the singer and writer really believes in. I love Tapestry because I feel like Carole King really feels every word she sings. I love Chris Ayer because I feel like he believes in everything he writes. And The Cure's "Pictures of You" gets me every time.

There's a Pericles quote that I really like: "All things good should flow into the boulevard." They should. But of course, they don't. Not always. If we're going to go Warhol, "You don't decide what's good." And in our world you can't really dismiss the "bad", anyway--it still has a significant impact on the mainstream audience, which is huge. The good stuff's there, though. You just have to find it.

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Now playing: The Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight

Ethan Hawke --> Broadway --> August: Osage County --> Film Adaptations.

Ethan Hawke. I'm more of a fan now than I used to be. Obviously, I enjoy Dead Poet's Society, and I think he was brilliant in Before Sunrise and especially Before Sunset, but I also know that his writing attempts and directing efforts have been said to be less than stellar. And really, I have zero desire to see, ever, his modernized Hamlet. One of his most recent films, though, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead pairs him with Philip Seymour Hoffman, and also features Marisa Tomei and Albert Finney, and it's very good. Excellent direction and writing helps, but Hawke more than held his own against the powerful PSH. Plus, he's going to be in one of the vignettes, I think, in the upcoming New York, I Love You, which I'm really looking forward too--it's fashioned after Paris, je t'aime, which came out a few years ago and was nicely done.

Hawke's done a fair amount of theater work also; though I've never seen him in anything on stage, I hear The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard's 9-hour 3-play epic, was really something. That was on Broadway a couple years ago, and Hawke I think was nominated for a Tony as Best Featured Actor or something for his performance. This interview was shortly after.

Is it ever awkward to direct a friend and work on another friend's script?
I've done it my whole life. I've done six movies with Richard Linklater. I've done a couple of movies with Andrew Niccol. I enjoy getting to work with people who are like-minded. You have to treat each other with as much respect as possible, and then your friendships deepen. The only thing I've learned is that you can't ever do each other a favor. If you want to do your friends a favor, you should pick their kids up after school or lend them your umbrella. If you do each other favors in your work, your friendship doesn't last very long. Josh [Hamilton] and I have worked together so much, not only through the theater company we ran; we were in the movie Alive together and we did Hurlyburly and Coast of Utopia together. We've literally spent years backstage together. When he hears me waxing poetic in the director's chair, he rolls his eyes. He was 15 minutes late to rehearsal yesterday, and I laid into him in a way that I would only with somebody I've known for 20 years.

Why have you remained so loyal to the theater?
I guess it's my first love. There's something about the theater that's not precious; it's so humble and human. There's a myth out there that movies are immortal. But the truth is, the first movie I made, Explorers, when I was 13, is really dated. You can watch it, but it's not the same. The music is kind of cheesy. It feels like the early '80s. But if somebody comes up to me and says, "I saw you in A Joke," which was the first production Malaparte did, there's some magic to that. It means we shared an evening together once 15 years ago, and if they loved it, it's not dated in their minds. It's still fresh and relevant.

Mary-Louise Parker once said that nobody in Hollywood cares about people's theater credits. Do you find that to be true?
They're slightly intimidated by it. They feel that it's somehow legitimate, and that bothers them. But they haven't seen any of it and they don't really care. Who's a better actress than Mary-Louise Parker? Nobody. She should be in everything! Let's face it, they hire [movie] directors who are ad guys. Every now and then there's a serious filmmaker, but most of them want a product, they don't want art. Art is dangerous. Art is scary. Art is movies like Apocalypse Now that they're not going to know how to sell. They don't want people to take risks. If they're going to spend that much money, they want to know how many units they can sell. It's like Coca-Cola to them.

What are your favorites of the films you've acted in?
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. And Gattaca. There are a few that I like, but those three might be my favorites.

Damn straight, they should be. I am by no means a connoisseur of Ethan Hawke's body of work, but I feel like it's not completely out of line to say that it's likely they're the best work he's done, and perhaps the best he'll ever do. Film-wise, that is. I hear The Coast of Utopia really was amazing. I like how he, like PSH, considers theater to be his first love.

I do find it interesting that he says that Hollywood doesn't respect Broadway cred. A couple other interviews I've read with major theater players have said the same thing, and I just think that's funny, when you see more and more frequently, big stars going to New York from Cali to prove themselves through theater. That revival of American Buffalo that was barely open? It starred John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment. And a couple years ago, Three Days of Rain was on Broadway with Julia Roberts. Personally, I would have gone to see either of her costars over her--I love Paul Rudd, and Bradley Cooper is pretty good too.

Also, the mention of Mary-Louise Parker...she's coming back to Broadway this season in the Roundabout's production of Hedda Gabler, which is very highly anticipated. I know the story is German and the eponymous character is a really strong female part, which is refreshing. It's one of the reasons I loved August: Osage County--Tracy Letts wrote several great parts for women in the show. The mother and her three daughters really are the stars. Speaking of that--it's being made into a film for 2011! That's so exciting. I hope, though, they don't ruin it by trying to recast it...the original Steppenwolf cast was amazing. I can't think of a single star who could play Barbara better than Amy Morton.

It seems I never wrote about it. Well. In the play, an Oklahoma family patriarch, Beverly Weston, hires a woman, Johnna, to help around the house. His wife Violet is sick in all sorts of ways, and their relationship is very dysfunctional--he drinks, she pops pills--and they have three middle-aged daughters. Their middle daughter Ivy lives near home. Their oldest daughter Barbara lives in Colorado and works at a college, as does her soon-to-be-ex-husband Bill; their daughter Jean is a cool, complacent, pot-smoking fourteen-year-old. Their youngest, Karen, is recently engaged to a greasy guy named Steve, and she lives in Florida. All three girls, plus Violet's sister Mattie Fae, her husband Charlie, and her son "Little" Charles, come to the old family homestead when Bev disappears shortly after hiring Johnna. All sorts of hijinks ensue and the play approaches about a thousand and a half different issues, from the mundane like drugs and alcohol, to the taboos pedophilia and incest. It's very well done--the pacing alone is an accomplishment, as the play runs about three hours and never drags. Originally, Bev was played by the playwright's own father, until he passed away. The entire cast was from the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, which was started by Gary Sinise, Terry Kinney, and Jeff Perry. Nearly everyone moved with the show when it went to Broadway, and it was nominated for/won a host of Tonys. Letts also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for 2008, which made me happy.

Anyway, it's being adapted for film, and first off, I hope the changes aren't too devastating, even though I have a feeling they will be. They're going to try to condense a 3 hour play to a 2 hour movie, maybe even shorter, and unless it's done well, the pacing is going to be destroyed and it's all downhill from there. And the cast--there are very few Hollywood names I can imagine in it. Maybe I'll adapt plays and screenplays for film after college. I'm taking a course "From Fiction to Film" presently and I bet I could do a much better job than half of these. Adaptations are, I feel, not given enough respect. They're a lot harder to pull off than you'd think. Often, while the structure and plot and characters are important, what you're really trying to maintain is the integrity of the theme, the tone, and the "meaning" in general. I used to nitpick and hate when the movie deviated from a book at all, but now I'm at a point where I can mostly separate my feelings for a book from my feelings for a film. Mostly. Hehe.

And again, I'm off on tangents and writing way to much. Meh. Stopping now.

One of the more upsetting things about New York...

Excerpt from an interview with Raul Esparza, one of my other latest favorite Broadway actors. Saw him last February in The Homecoming, which was extremely weird (and speaking of which, Harold Pinter died the other day...), but he was brilliant in Speed-the-Plow, and a real scene stealer, which says a lot--he was up against two popular TV stars, Jeremy Piven and Elisabeth Moss.

You've been so prolific in the past six years in New York. Have you come across any stumbling blocks in getting the parts you want to play?
I've been really, really blessed. And I've been able to do projects that I've been excited about. The biggest thing that I worry about is the lack of new writing and the ability to create new work. I haven't had a lot of opportunities to do that. We seem to be in a time where there are so many rules, or where shows are trying to make music that is really great—I mean who doesn't love Abba?—serve a story. But then you're not really dealing with acting; it's sort of a wink and a nod, and everybody's having a great time going, "Isn't this funny that we're trying to make these songs dramatic?" That trend in New York does worry me: "Let's go with properties that we already know." It's not giving writers a chance to have a voice and make mistakes.

Yeah, for musical theater fans, it's a little scary.
I think it is. I'm sure the pendulum will swing back. It's just so expensive, I can understand why producers are afraid to take chances. If you think about it coldly, I think that Sondheim would have a tough time starting his career now. You know? Who's going to take a chance on a musical about lunatics like Anyone Can Whistle? People would be like, "Are you crazy? No. We're going to adapt Mr. and Mrs. Smith.'"

Love him. This is from back around 2006, 2007 when he was in Company, which was supposed to be great, though I've heard firsthand that it was pretty dull. The following question after this was if he'd seen Spring Awakening yet. Haha. He did and said he liked it. Really though, it's so rare now that something new and original dramatic pieces come out, and it's scary. It's scary that no one's taking chances, though understandable, and it's a huge threat to Broadway, and even off-Broadway. Especially for people my age looking for futures in it. Thanks to Andy Warhol and Marc Jacobs, I can accept that popularity is not necessarily a bad thing, and it isn't always terrible that art and commerce are so permanently linked, but it is still stifling. There are voices to be heard that are getting lost in the shuffle, I think, because no one thinks anyone wants to hear them.

Though, the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York is always supporting and producing new plays. It's the pet project of John Ortiz and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who was featured in a great article by the New York Times recently.

While movies typically require an elaborate and expensive mechanism, plays can be relatively simple to produce. Every year, LAB has a two-week “summer intensive” workshop during which 35 to 40 plays are rehearsed and read. Company members — there are about 100 — offer their critiques and the artistic directors then select the 10 or 15 plays they would like to see go to the next step. “Most of us liked ‘Philip Roth in Khartoum,’ ” Hoffman said. “Some of the women had problems with it, but I asked my mother to come to a reading, and she thought the female characters rang true.” Hoffman lit another cigarette. “People only want to invest in a play that they think will do well. They are not interested in risky theater. But even more traditional theater is pure risk, which is what I love about it. You roll the dice for the thrill of rolling the dice.”

LAB is the company that produced a number of Stephen Adly Guirgis's plays, including one of my favorite plays ever, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. I wish I'd gotten the opportunity to see it performed. It's this amazing dissection of the actions of Judas against Jesus, and it shows his trial in limbo. The NYT article mentions him--Stephen Adly Guirgis’s play, “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” directed by Hoffman in 2000, cemented LAB’s reputation as a theater company committed to significant new voices. “I used to think I was Catholic until I met Stephen,” Hoffman joked. “But I am not Catholic the way he is. He is tortured and haunted by that religion, and you see it in his work.” I've read Jesus Hopped the A Train and two of Guirgis's other plays, Our Lady of 121st Street and In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings. They were all good, but not as good as Judas Iscariot. I'd wanted to see his latest, The Little Flower of East Orange, when it was playing last spring, but I didn't get a chance to.

These men are fierce. There's no other way to describe them. They write, act, direct with incredible intensity. Bennett Miller, who directed PSH in Capote, first met him at a theater camp in Saratoga over twenty years ago, and said that everyone liked him because he was serious about acting.

Haha, it's funny...this Times article...I think I mentioned that theater is my first love and you never get over your first love:

...It is easy to forget that Hoffman is a major movie star with an Oscar on his mantel. He appears not to have a trace of ego. “That’s why I wrote the character of the saintly nurse Phil Parma in ‘Magnolia’ for Phil,” said Paul Thomas Anderson. “Phil is that good — he’s committed to art and not in a phony, grandstanding way. He really wants to live a life in the arts that means something.” There are few other Academy Award-winning actors who have devoted themselves to the full-time running of a theater company. “It sounds noble, but it’s really not,” Hoffman said. “I do this because it gives me a home, a place where I can come and work. The movies are great, but they require a different kind of concentration, and then they’re over. Theater was my first love, and it’s been the biggest influence on my life. The theater is why I got into acting and why I’m still in acting...I’m happy here,” he said, sounding surprised at his glee. “You never forget your first love.”

I used to be on the fence about how I felt about PSH--I still haven't seen Capote, but I think I slightly resented him for beating Heath Ledger for the Oscar in 2006--but ever since Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I've been warming up to him. Now I'm definitely a fan...

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Now playing: Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy

Equus and yet more theater musings.

Yep, got stage seating for the day before Spring Awakening closes. I couldn't help it. I got the email as I was sitting at my desk about to do some work, and so I got first pick over the seats. The timing was perfect. I couldn't pass it up. So worth it. I'm so excited.

I went to see Equus yesterday. Well, the day before, now. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was truly excellent. Weird, but excellent. I was deeply disappointed that the theater was half empty. Granted, it was a matinee the day after Christmas, and it was a pretty dark, eerie play. But still. It must be so demoralizing to perform for such a weak crowd.

I picked up the play today when I was at the library; I want to look it over again. I dozed off during a slower part in the first act, and either way, it was a little confusing: the set was extremely bare, and there were several parts that were supposed to be flashbacks, so it wasn't the easiest to follow. Plus, Richard Griffiths's character, Dr. Martin Dysert, went off on a lot of long asides to the audience, which was kind of obnoxious. But of course, he was brilliant, so it didn't matter.

The story is, Dysert is a child psychologist in a hospital in England. The magistrate frequently sends hims headcases who are sentenced to psych treatment instead of prison. He's dissatisfied with his life--he's been working there for 9 years, helping kids isn't fulfilling him, and his marriage stalled a long time ago. At the beginning of the show, the magistrate comes to him believing he's the only one who can help her latest case, who she just managed to get off of the jail charges--Alan Strang, who has blinded six horses with a spike.

At first, Alan refuses to speak, and responds only with jingles from commercials. Dysert slowly manipulates him into speaking, and it both fascinated and terrified by the boy, who was raised by an atheistic father and deeply religious mother, and has somewhat transferred his worship of Jesus to a horse figure, Equus. He works during the week in an appliance shop, but through a girl named Katie, he has gotten a job at a nearby stable on the weekends. Horses have always fascinated him, and he loves working with them, but he refuses to ride them. Instead, once every three weeks, he sneaks into the stable and takes out one in particular--Nugget--and rides nude through the fields, screaming his passion. Dysert is torn between pity and sympathy: while he recognizes that Alan is miserable, he envies the passion, the worship he feels, that is absent from his life. He also realizes that if he "cures" the boy, it is quite likely that the boy will fall into an inescapable numbness. He points out to the magistrate: the boy is ardently worshipful, full of spirit and a vivid (though, yes, agonizing) liveliness, yet he's the one who's "insane"?

In the end, Dysert gives Alan a placebo, getting him to tell the full story at last. The boy tells how he found himself attracted to Katie, and though he tried to and wanted to make love to her, he couldn't, when she took him to the stable, because all he felt was horseflesh. All he could feel, see, smell, was horse, and he could do nothing because Equus was watching him. Dysert makes empty promises to the boy, swearing that he will make the nightmares end and help him, knowing that he can't deliver. The play closes with Dysert covering Alan with a blanket and letting him sleep.

I had had my doubts about seeing Daniel Radcliffe as Alan. I know there had been a lot of talk about "Harry Potter" being naked on stage, but honestly? After the first few minutes, I forgot it was him. He was quite good--very intense, and clearly dedicated to the role. Alan must be such a draining character to play eight times a week, and twice on Wednesdays and Sundays. So emotionally taxing. And uncomfortable. I think I'd be very uncomfortable, becoming Alan Strang eight times a week for six months. It was uncomfortable enough, watching him. And the horses! They were played by people wearing creepy giant wire head-pieces, and horseshoe-shaped, elevated foot-pieces--they weren't really shoes as much as platforms. Their six stalls were the major set pieces, along with a square platform with four rectangular blocks and a circular brick walkway on it. The lighting was dim, and served to create a lot of the setting--rearranging the blocks and changing the lighting signified a different or multiple scene and time. It was definitely one of the most interesting pieces of ever seen, and even though it was extremely strange, creepy, and unsettling, it was satisfying.

That sounds odd, but it's true. I enjoyed the second act more, particularly Dysert's musings to himself and to the magistrate about which was better: his own responsible, satisfactory life in which he "helped" children, or Alan's life--tortured and painful, but passionate and emotional. I completely sympathize with him. The magistrate argued with him, that there's more than one way to feel passion, and Alan's way lacks maturity and also is extremely difficult--like the way Nick Ray "refused to mature if that meant feeling less." Dysert wishes he hadn't done that, in a way. The magistrate's is the Bridge of San Luis Rey argument--the "passion" exhibited by Alan is self-interest; it exists for itself. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Well, I know how I feel about it--I sympathize with Dysert. But my brain tells me the magistrate is right. I'm not sure if I want to feel that way though.

Equus just reaffirmed my latest thought that perhaps theater work is for me. I don't know though. It also reminded me of Albee's declaration that all playwrights should be experimenting and pushing limits, because I definitely feel that Peter Shaffer did that with this. Though I like the notion that art is for everyone, pieces like Equus is definitely not the kind of thing that would be popular, but I like that: it takes an open mind and a certain sensibility and taste to enjoy and appreciate Equus.

I was also reminded of an interview I read with Matt Doyle. (I swear I'm not a creeper/fanatic. I just happen to agree and react to a lot of what I've read about him. And I happen to have read this recently, so it's fresh in my mind.) A Spring Awakening Fan Club member asked him, "When you lived in London, were there any West End show [sic] you saw that you wished would come over to the US?" He responded:

I saw a lot of theatre when I lived in London. I'm not sure if I want anything to come to Broadway from the West End. And I don't really think Broadway shows should go to the West End. They are two completely different worlds. Broadway is a much more commercial theatre world that runs off of the big budget musicals and London is a much more open place for theatre that has a lot of funding for straight plays and classical theatre. I love both worlds for what they are. However I do wish there was more classical theatre in New York! It's a shame how little there is.

Ugh. Of course American theater is much more commercial and big budget; it's American. Art and commerce are inherently linked here; more now than ever before. I fully appreciate that and all, but at the same time, part of me wishes it wasn't true. Jeremy Piven walked out of Speed-the-Plow the other night, and audiences were [rightly] furious. He's being replaced, I heard, by another big name--William H. Macy, a Mamet veteran. Big names are practically essential for straight plays these days. Equus ran in London before moving to Broadway, taking Griffiths and Radcliffe with it, and I feel like without those two names--especially the latter--it never would have made it. The half empty theater proved it. Broadway is so expensive now--regular orchestra or front mezzanine seats run around $125 now--and I almost feel bad going to see Spring Awakening again when there are a ton of others I want to see, and I have no money. It's rough, and because of the economy, Broadway is taking a huge hit.

So many huge shows are closing in a few weeks: Hairspray, Spamalot, Spring Awakening, Gypsy, Grease. I just saw a NY Times article that said both Equus and August: Osage County have been running with 54% attendance, which is positively criminal; Avenue Q, with 69%. Rent closed in September, and hyped shows American Buffalo and A Tale of Two Cities were barely open before shutting down. It's horrible, and largely because of the economy. Family-oriented shows are still open--the Disney stuff is still going strong, and Shrek just opened. Guys and Dolls is set for another revival, along with West Side Story and Hair, and they'll probably do well for a while with big names and their status as classics, but what about everything else? The Roundabout has a huge slate of plays that sound great set to open this season, and I hope they all do. But who knows. It's the shows that don't have the most popular appeal and potential for commercial success that are taking the biggest hit, and I hate that.

That comment above, about how Broadway is so much more commercial than the West End, is doubtlessly true, and between that and these economic problems--it's crippling theater, and other artistic mediums as well, I'm sure. Theater, though--Broadway is so much less accessible to the general public, and has a much smaller audience than other mediums, which is a shame. Sure, the film industry and music industries will suffer, but theater--half of Broadway is closing, it seems, and it hurts to think about that. It's like that Billy Joel song, "Miami 2017"--"I've seen the lights go out on Broadway."

I'm going to move to Europe.

I have more to write about (including another Matt Doyle thing, haha), but I'll do it another time. It's 3:06 and I'm beat, and I didn't mean to write this much, at all. The whole Broadway situation is just breaking my heart, and I couldn't help a bit of a tangent. Silly blog posts should really not be this damn long. Haha.

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Now playing: The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 3

Remembering Andy Warhol

I just realized I never posted this. Oops.

So here it is. A bunch of people who knew Andy Warhol recalling different things about him for Interview. Andy Warhol fascinates me. He's something completely different from anything, really, that I've ever seen or known. That's why hearing what other people had to say about him and his work really interested me.

Glenn O'Brien: What did you learn from Andy?
Pat Hackett: Throw everything away! It only gives people material to build their misconceptions of you on.


WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF ANDY?
Betsey Johnson: A silent, mysterious spirit.
John Giorno: I took hold of his limp hand, squeezed and held it, and we looked into each other's eyes. Andy hummed, "Ohhh!"

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM ANDY?
Irving Blum: The importance of going forward and keeping your focus.
Chris Stein: To relax. that might sound odd, but I always thought that he somehow managed to let things roll off him. And he could be invisible and a celebrity simultaneously.

That's something that I find particularly interesting: everyone seems to remember Andy as being a huge public figure, yet a willow-the-wisp who did more observing and listening than anything else.

Jill Selsman: Always listen, even if it seems like you're not listening, because there are some pretty good ideas out there from the most unlikely sources.
Paloma Picasso: Not to worry if people like you for the wrong reason. Just use that energy to build on it.
Nick Rhodes: To surround yourself with inspirational people.

Sigh. We do what we can. I guess you should be able to find inspiration in everything, but it's not always as easy as I think it should be, and sometimes finding the people that will inspire you the most is the hard part.

Robert Hawkins: Graciousness and humility equal beauty. How to pain the "kinetic cliche" brushstroke. (Swooshy S-shapes)
John Waters: To always have a sense of humor and to never brag and to make sure to praise what everyone else hates.
Debbie Harry: To be a good listener.
Francesco Clemente: That painting is alive. The notion of masterpiece is dead.
Stephen Shore: I watched him make aesthetic decisions. It was my first real exposure to aesthetic thinking. I also appreciated his sense of detached enjoyment of American culture.
Bebe Buell: That presentation is key. He was magical in his delivery.
Walter Steding: To have faith.
Patty D'Arbanville: To sit back and watch.
Cornelia Guest: To be interested in everyone and everything.
Ronnie Cutrone: 1) That art is a job like everything else; 2) That romantic love is all illusion; 3) That it's really hard to be famous and that everybody famous must deserve it even if I can't see it; 4) Don't waste time defining art (you can't), just do it; 5) That there are no bosses--we all serve art if we're good enough to get the job of making it.

At first I didn't understand what Shore meant, but I think I know now. The conscious framing of a photograph is an aesthetic decision. The choice of color, style, arrangement of anything - the clothes you choose to wear in the morning - I think I'd consider those aesthetic decisions.

I'll get back to Cutrone's comments another time. Too much to say to those. I think they're all interesting if not universally applicable lessons though.

Haha, also. It's so easy to demand someone to have faith. To actually have it is a whole different matter completely.

WHAT DID ANDY LEARN FROM YOU?
Benjamin Liu: Not all Asians are like Yoko Ono.

HAHAHA, love it.

Ivy Nicholson: He learned that a woman could love him. He once told me that he loved me more than his male friends because I was more masculine than them.
John Wilcock: ...Over the years I have noticed echoes of other things I said [in Andy's work]. Andy was like all true poets--bad poets imitate, good poets steal. He incorporated ideas from everywhere and everyone.

Creation is nice, but I think pure, completely original creation is extremely rare these days. But I do also think that reinterpretation is an offshoot of creation.

WHAT'S YOUR MOST VIVID MENTAL IMAGE OF ANDY?
Farrah Fawcett: What I remember most about Andy is that he was the only person I had ever met who seemed even more shy than I am around strangers.
Diane von Furstenberg: He was never alone. He was always surrounded by a group. At the time it was Fred Hughes, Candy Darling, Jane Worth (who became my first model). Andy was a voyeur. He did not communicate much, but made people pose and act in front of him. He always had a tape recorder or a camera on hand.
Ultra Violet: The first time I saw him lose his wig, I was unable to pull my eyes away when I saw a metallic metal snap embedded in the front part of his skull.

Yeah, that just freaks me out. :: Shudder ::
But I think it's so interesting that he was never alone, because I think he was perpetually lonely.

DID ANDY SAY ANYTHING THAT STUCK WITH YOU?
Walter Steding: "You're not the one who decides what's good."
Bob Colacello: "If I let myself have feelings, I'd commit suicide."
Nick Rhodes: "If you don't go, you won't know." He could easily become more enthusiastic about going to a dull event than a grand affair and it usually paid off.
Patti D'Arbanville: "Pretty will get you pretty far." He was right.
Vincent Fremont: "If you are not having fun with the work you are doing, then don't do it."

That's going to go on my wall.

TELL US SOMETHING MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ANDY.
Ivy Nicholson: We were threatened by one of his boyfriends, Rod la Rod. Andy took my hand and led me to the backseat of his car. He was on L.S.D. We soul kissed for one hour and a half. 100 percent love.
Chuck Close: Andy seemed to be part of that cliche, "What you see is what you get." But he was actually more than what people expected. I think he was earnest and serious.

Some people are more than what you expect. Some people are less. Some are just what you see. I think I'd always like to be more than what people expect. I mean, I don't think I would ever consciously try for that. I wouldn't try to not be myself. But it'd be nice if it just worked out that I was more than people expected. I would like that.

Ultra Violet: One time, alone on the fire escape at the Factory, I grabbed him and said, "Let's make love." He got stiff and cold as he resisted me. He let out a loud moan as he wriggled out of my embrace. I thought he was afraid of heights, but I realized he was afraid of me.
Francesco Clemente: He was lonely.
Stephen Shore: One day, when he came into the Factory, he asked me if I had happened to watch a certain movie that was on channel 2 late the previous night. It was a terrible 1930s tearjerker starring Priscilla Lane. I said that, in fact, I had. He asked me to tell him the story, because he said he had started to watch it but had begun to cry and cried himself to sleep. He added that when he woke up, the TV was off. His mother had looked in, saw Andy sleeping with the TV on, and turned it off.

I love that story. I don't know why, but there's something wonderful about it. I may figure it out day, but I don't think I want to. I think I'd just like to leave it as a little sketch like that.

Nick Rhodes: He sometimes liked to carry a fistful of loose diamonds in his inside jacket pocket. He was excited by the fact that nobody knew they were there.

I would have liked to meet Andy Warhol. No, not even. I would have liked to observe him. My dad says he saw him with Ultra Violet in the Village one day when he was young. I can't even fathom what it would be like to bump into that man on the street.

Robert Hawkins: Andy loved them more than they knew.
Susan Blond: He returned phone calls. Andy might buy a painting with a woman with her eyes crossed. He liked the mistakes in things.

I feel like that Robert Hawkins bit is true of a lot of people, though. I think most people love others more than they know. I love everyone more than they know. But in the big picture, isn't it kind of silly that they shouldn't know? Everyone should know how much they're loved. Yeah.

I also like the mistakes in things. I like the mistakes in people, too.

DID ANDY CHANGE THE WORLD? IF SO, HOW?
Elizabeth Taylor: Andy saw the world through different-colored glasses, ones that we will never imagine. He was fortunate but tortured. Torture of his kind seems to plague all great artists because of their vision. They see deeper, they think deeper, and they translate their ideas from the mundane to the realistic. Not that there will ever be anything realistic about Andy's vision. It will never be conceived as mundane or realistic--only poetic, and visionary, and mind-blowing.

I don't think you could ever really ask for more than that. I don't think I could, at least. Though, at the same time, I feel like he probably sacrificed so many basic human experiences - not consciously, I mean - to be that way. Rather, I feel like he probably lost out on so many basic human experiences in being that way. I like that contradiction in how I view him, though - I'm not sure if I should admire and respect what he did as an artist, or if I should pity him for missing out on so much.

Palomma Picasso: I'm not sure he changed the world. But he certainly figured out where it was going before anybody else.
Francesco Clemente: Real artists leave the world alone.
Walter Steding: No, he let it happen.

I like that. Those. All 3. It's a different perspective, a way I never thought about art and the world before.

Bob Colacello: Not as much as Ronald Reagan, but quite a bit. He identified the 20th-century cult of fame and promoted it. He legitimized photography, pornography, and television as art. I'm not sure if this was good or bad.

I don't know either, but I sure appreciate the first and last parts, and I definitely know others appreciate the middle, haha.

Bryan Ferry: He was the prime mover in opening the doors of the art-world to a much greater public.
Chris Stein: He changed the relationship between art and commerce, uptown and downtown.

That idea still blows my mind. I guess I got caught in that trap of thinking of art as something non-profitable, of thinking of artists as independent spirits who either are true to themselves or sell out for money, and that it's anathema for it to be otherwise. But Warhol really believed that art and business could - should, really - go hand in hand, that the best art was business art, commercial art. I still don't know if I can personally think that way, though.

Betsey Johnson: He brought art to the masses that the masses enjoyed.
Kenny Scharf: He redefined what it meant to be an artist and opened up all the boundaries that were so in place at the time. He made it okay to exist in the world outside the art world--the world at large.

I'm sure there are people who still can't handle that idea, that art is for everyone and everyone can appreciate art, and that "art" has a much broader definition than the one critics assign it. I'm not even sure if I fully can. But shouldn't it be that way? Shouldn't as many people as possible experience beauty and art and culture in whichever ways they can?

Even if you don't like Andy Warhol or his work or what he did or anything about him, you can't deny that if he'd never existed, today's world would be a vastly different place.

Marc Jacobs by Glenn O'Brien

So I'm aware that it's been a while, and I don't have much to say, I just want to share this and something else since I never got around to writing about it. Maybe I will in the future.

"The only time anything ever changes is really when you're respectful and disrespectful at the same time."
- Marc Jacobs

"I got over intimidation from the art world when I realized that I was allowed to feel whatever I wanted and like whatever I wanted."
- Marc Jacobs

"But it took a really long time for Pop to happen fully. Because the art world thinks one way and the artists think another way."
- Glenn O'Brien

"Pop said, 'Art is for everybody.' And then the dealers said, 'No, art is to sell for $100,000.' And so the mechanism of the market fought against what Pop was saying. Or pretending to, anyway. But I think now we're finally finding a way that art can be both that incredibly precious object and also something that everybody can have."
- Glenn O'Brien

MJ: Art critics are like every other critic. I mean, I'm not judging. Well, I guess I am judging.
GO: It's okay to judge the judges.
MJ: I think something happens with age. And I find this really a lot in what I read from certain art critics: For people who are all about change--people who are supposed to be intellectually and culturally drawn to the idea of change and how the voice of a creative person affects the world on a bigger scale than just the canvas--I would expect a person in that position to have that open mind. It's only a sign of age that they become so locked in their own rules that they forget that this is what it's all about. Whether you like Damien Hirst's work, whether you like Takashi's work or Jeff Koons's work or Richard Prince's work or whatever great artist you're talking about, they are doing something that has changed the perception of today's culture. Whether you like it or not, there's a validity to it. For all the critics who made fun of this installation of a Vuitton shop within Takashi's MOCA exhibition . . . I saw it as like Martin Kippenberger's subway grate, you know? It challenged this sort of categorizing. Like, what is the art here? is it what's on the bag? Is it the action of buying the bag--that's the art? Is it watching the people buying the art? Because it's installed in an exhibition in a museum, is it some kind of conceptual performance piece? It operates on so many levels that it's hard to categorize.

I thought, Well, isn't that what the state of art is right now? It's not so easy to define. "Oh yeah, they're a painter, they're a sculptor. . . ." It's just labels. When you go into a record store and it says "alternative" to describe a sort of music, isn't every music an alternative to another type of music? These labels are ridiculous. I think the need to label things and have things fit so nicely into their boxes is just old.
... [Discussion of Pop art.]
MJ: ...I had a conversation with Elizabeth Peyton and I told her that I tend to think of artists as being divinely inspired somehow. In terms of creativity, part of my intimidation was, "I'm a designer. I make clothes and bags and shoes. I have a job that involves making creative choices, but I'm not a divinely inspired human being like an artist!" And she said, "You can still like what you like, and, you know, we like clothes, too!" Stuff like that has made me lose my intimidation about art and putting something up on a pedestal. I realized, I don't have to look at it that way. I can like it, but it doesn't have to be this precious thing full of pretense. I saw this documentary on Jeff Koons, and his attitude about art being generous and people not having to have this highly cultured or educated background in order to appreciate it, what a relief! You know? And I think, going back to what you said about Pop, that was so much of a relief to me. It was good to look at it. It felt like mine.
...
GO: One of the things that people really didn't get was when Andy talked about business art. He was saying, "I think if I were starting all over, I would do business." When I went to L.A. for the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and then saw the Murakami show at MOCA, I thought, Wow, Andy would be so jealous. he'd be so jealous that Koons and Murakami have, like, 200 people working for them--Andy never had more than 50.
MJ: Yeah!
GO: They are the fulfillment of everything he was talking about. He saw that we live in a corporate world and that there's nothing wrong with an artist using corporate techniques to work. You don't have to starve at your easel alone in the garret.
MJ: Yeah!
GO: You've managed to come into a multinational corporation and bring a real artistic approach to it. That's a breakthrough.
MJ: Well, yeah. Again, I didn't mean to do it.
GO: That's all right. We forgive you.

Chris Noth by Ron Galotti

Sooo. Interview magazine is my latest obsession. Well, not obsession...preoccupation? I just read, finally, the June/July one celebrating Andy Warhol's 80th birthday (aside from, ya know, the fact that he's dead) and it was great. It had a lot I want to jot down notes about so I'm going to break it up. There was this short interview of Chris Noth (Mr. Big on Sex and the City) by the guy who inspired his SatC character, Ron Galotti. He's a former magazine publisher that once had a relationship with Candace Bushnell, the creator of SatC and the real-life Carrie Bradshaw. They had a lot to say on New York City, and I liked it.

RG: I miss on occasion, being smart, which New York provides--you know, that sensibility. But with the exclusion of that, I would say nothing else.
CN: Well, yeah. New York is pretty much commercialized to the point of no return...I came here as an actor in '78. It's a city for me to work in. But the excitement of New York was the varied and diverse eccentrics who were able to live there, and the different neighborhoods and the different kinds of places that they created. That's all been washed out...It's very suburban. The art scene really left, except in patches. It's all about a sort of a corporate sensibility, and it's squeezed out room for any other kind of sensibility--money talks, bullshit walks, I guess...I mean, I think we all have those stories of struggling in New York. But the fact of the matter is, we were able to do that. The city provided a cushion, so to speak, where we could struggle.
RG: Oh, no. None of us can do that anymore. Too expensive.
CN: What does that mean when you say that, though? That means that only certain kinds of people can be in the city. People pooh-pooh the idea that everything changes. But if you get so rarefied that you can't live in the city unless you're making a quarter-million dollars a year, then what does that mean?
RG: I don't think a quarter of a million is going to cut it!
CN: Hell. Shit.
...
RG: When I was a kid, we hitchhiked all over.
CN: Oh, Jesus Christ. I'd hitchhike to the Berkshires, across the country. It was a way of life... So when you say, "Well, you can't hitchhike anymore," what does that mean? It means it's a fearful environment where no one can trust to pick up a stranger, or a stranger can't trust to get in a car. I remember girls used to hitchhike. There's a great chapter [in On the Road] of Kerouac hitching south and west, and hopping trains, and experiencing life in America, and opening himself up to finding answers. That search I find lacking. That openness. Right now, we've got ourselves stuck in one thing, which is to make money as fast as we can--because it's hard to live in this world without it. Let's face it.

It's funny, because I was reading an article in Newsweek the other day by a recent college grad who lives with three or four other girls in the city, and she says it's completely feasible - you just have to realize that 1) you can't have that glamorous, high lifestyle that people kind of associate with living in New York, and 2) 80% of your paycheck is going to go to your rent. But, it's not impossible. I like that these guys, though, point out that it's not as easy as it once was, and even though it's possible, it's not the same. They make it seem like there's no room for that exploration, for residing in the city while searching and creating and experiencing. Unfortunately, I'm inclined to think they're right.

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Now playing: Aimee Mann - Save Me

Art and Money

So this past fall, I was going to go to this forum at the New York Public Library sponsored by the photography journal Blind Spot, which quarterly publishes work by both renowned and up and coming photographers. It's a pretty big deal. But anyway, they were cosponsoring a 3-part forum. The first part was a discussion between two photographers. The third part was "Truth and Authenticity in Photography" - to what extent does a photographer record and to what extent does he create an image? The second part was entitled "Money, Money, Money, Money," which was a panel discussion about commerce and art.

The NYPL described as: "In an era when creativity and innovation have a price tag and the lines between art and commerce are increasingly blurred, how do artists negotiate this terrain? Are commercial entities like Prada, Apple and Louis Vuitton modern-day Medicis or are these corporations and their consigliere simply bandits brokering on the fame of the artist? Is art in the service of commerce or vice versa?" The panel included creative directors and CEO's of magazines and fashion ad agencies, photographers, and co-founder of the Kate Spade label, Andy Spade. I thought it sounded interesting, but I ended up not going.

The concept did get me thinking, though, about how closely art and commerce are tied in our society. Let's say you write a brilliant novel. A brilliant novel that could change the lives of men everywhere, but with no popular appeal whatsoever. With a very small potential audience. What good is that, then? You have something brilliant, but something that a) no one will ever publish, and if someone does, b) no one will ever read it. Does art (or anything, for that matter) have value if it has no audience? And I mean outside the creator's self and close friends and family and whatnot - I guess one should at least be glad that his loved ones will experience it. But if, on a large scale, no one is affected by it, or experiences it, is it still important? I mean, sure, in theory, you should create for yourself. But once you create something beautiful, if there's no way for you to share it, what good does that do? Yet, should you keep a mass audience in mind when you create, so as to have the means to share it with others? And thinking that way, how many undiscovered masterpieces exist to no one's knowledge?

And outside of that, if you're going to make a living solely by committing yourself to your art, it must have some kind of popular appeal on one level or another. Otherwise, you'll never make any money, and won't be able to live without doing something else. Which is why I wish I never had to worry about money and could just do whatever I liked. Haha.

Sooze: That’s my worst fear. Making a sound and no one hears it.
– Eric Bogosian, subUrbia