I Wish I Was Special

Posted on January 28, 2013 by sheila

Radiohead’s “Creep” was a monster hit, a hit kept growing and growing and growing (you all will remember the entire YEAR when you could barely turn on the radio without hearing it.) Nobody in the band appeared to anticipate that this gloomy eerie song would strike such a deep chord. The song’s success took them by surprise. They had been at a turning point as a band, and when “Creep” took off, they rode that wave and toured for something like two years straight, on the strength of that one single. It’s a great song, one of those songs that taps into the anxiety of a certain time of life, a certain TYPE of person (in a similar way that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” did), and it’s a song that means a lot to me. It’s so honest. It’s the sort of honesty you might cringe away from, or resist recognizing in yourself.

When you were here before
Couldn’t look you in the eye
You’re just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You’re so fucking special
But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
I don’t care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
When I’m not around
You’re so fucking special
I wish I was special
But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
She’s running out the door
She’s running out
She run, run, run, run
Run
Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You’re so fucking special
I wish I was special
But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong here

When I first saw the trailer for The Social Network, I was completely awestruck by the cover of “Creep” that played over it. The song is already eerie, but that cover takes it to another level. It sounds suicidal. Or homicidal. In a very calm and terrifying way. I Googled around feverishly to find out who it was: turns out it is an all-female choir from Belgium called Scala & Kolocny Brothers, and I have since become a big fan of all of their stuff. At the end of their cover of “Creep”, the entire choir whispers, “I wish I was special” and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

The song is great enough to be able to “take” many interpretations. It’s a monologue. It requires honesty, and an understanding of what the lyrics mean. However, if you speeded up the pace and put a pop beat into it, you would need to justify that choice. [To clarify: if a cover is done well, it justifies its own existence.] (Side note, in re: bad covers: I remember watching American Idol, and watching Taylor Hicks dance around as he sang “Living For the City”, and I wondered if he even knew what the hell that song was about. Why are you SMILING, white boy? Nothin’ to smile about in that song. Ignorant. You see a lot of that in today’s music with amateur singers: a total divorce between performance and content.)

I am sure others out there have covered “Creep”, because it is such a fine song and provides the performer with a wealth of opportunities. First of all, it’s deep emotionally, twisty and painful. You can do a lot of acting and personalizing with it. Second of all, while it starts slow and methodical, it ends in a huge finish. If you have the pipes for it, “Creep” can be a showstopper.

I didn’t think anything could top Scala & Kolocny’s cover, but for today, this one has.

Broadway singer Carrie Manolakos, singing a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”, that has to be experienced to be believed. She sang this at La Poisson Rouge, coincidentally (where the Bowie/Presley birthday bash was held).

I am blown away.

Hats off.

Posted in Music | Tagged | 32 Comments

The Books: Show and Tell, ‘Woody Allen: The Imperfectionist’, by John Lahr

Posted on January 27, 2013 by sheila

On the essays shelf:

Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles, by John Lahr

John Lahr probably needs no introduction and his father certainly doesn’t. John Lahr’s father was Bert Lahr, most famous for his role as the Cowardly Lion in Wizard of Oz. John Lahr has grown up to be The New Yorker‘s senior drama critic (he held that position from 1992 until the fall of 2012, when he stepped down to focus on profiles).

Show and Tell is made up of some of his most famous profiles. He has written many books, maybe the most famous being Prick Up Your Ears, about playwright Joe Orton (which was then turned into a movie, which Lahr produced). He also wrote a book about his father (it’s apparently amazing, I haven’t read it). Most interesting, though, are his long in-depth profiles of various actors, entertainers, and writers in the pages of The New Yorker. I look forward to his columns. I like his perspective, and the amount of research he has done. He wants to dig below the surface, and of course with some of these well-known celebrities, that is not easy to do. John Lahr has a great eye for the anecdote that will crack open the mystery of the personality. He thinks like an actor. (I’m all about actor anecdotes. Tell me stories of process, of rehearsals, of how you work … it’s all fascinating.) I value Lahr’s work because of those insights. He understands, growing up as he did with an actor-father, the amount of work it takes to have a career in that racket, and he also understands that talent is only part of the battle. What is it that makes someone unique, as an artist? There is no right way to follow that path. There is no template. Nobody invents the wheel, but we each have our own process. These New Yorker profiles are wonderful “process” pieces.

Even here, with Woody Allen. The Woody Allen piece was written as Allen was preparing to film Deconstructing Harry. The Soon Yi thing had broke, and he was persona non grata in polite society, and still featured on the tabloid pages almost daily. Lahr visits Allen in his apartment, and over the course of a couple of meetings, talked with Allen, not just about the controversy (although they get to that too), but about his work process, his idols, how he got started, how he worked. Allen is typically close-mouthed about his process, and famous for keeping strict control on the set (actors typically only have the pages of their own scenes, not the entire script, etc.). But he trusted Lahr, he was a great admirer of Lahr’s theatre reviews, so he was (perhaps) more open than he would be with, say, a reporter from People magazine.

In addition to chatting with Allen, Lahr talked to all of these actors who had worked with him over the years – Dianne Wiest, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and a ton of others. And here is where we get the glimpses of Allen’s process: who he was on set, how he directed, etc. The stories are well-known. The stories are also similar. He was not, say, an Elia Kazan, who worked very differently with Brando than he did with Barbara bel Geddes, or Karl Malden. Kazan tailored his directing style to the strengths/weaknesses of each actor, using that psychologically. That’s not Allen’s thing. His thing is: Cast well, and that is more than half of your job. He is a genius at casting. And when something isn’t working … there are times he is not sure how to fix it (people have lost their jobs in that case. Allen perhaps thinks: “Well, this person is clearly mis-cast. Not their fault. Have to find a better fit.”) Dianne Wiest, however, tells a brilliant story about her struggle in the first week of shooting Bullets Over Broadway (which, of course, ended up being one of her greatest triumphs as an actress. But she did not nail that right away. She thought he would fire her. She thought she deserved to be fired. She wasn’t “getting it”. Again: nothing personal.)

Lahr is interested in all of these elements of Allen’s fascinating and prolific career. Even in the midst of the Soon Yi shitstorm, he was planning his next project, moving on. He has a habit of working (thank God). He is not, say, Kubrick. Allen has done, on average, a movie a year since he started working. It is a phenomenal body of work. (Mitchell and I discuss Woody Allen here.)

Here is an excerpt about Woody Allen’s meticulous casting process, as well as his process on-set. This is just a small excerpt of a very long piece. I highly recommend seeking out the entire collection.

Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles, ‘Woody Allen: The Imperfectionist’, by John Lahr

The Woody Allen casting call is something of a legend in the business. It is held at his screening room, and Allen, who rarely sits during an audition, usually tries to head the actors off on the threshold of the screening room before they can take up a beachhead and sink into a chair. Even prior to meeting Allen, they are primed by [Juliet] Taylor with a litany of caveats: “You shouldn’t be offended,” “He does this with everything,” “This can be very brief.” Just how brief Allen demonstrates by going into his spiel: “We’re doing this around September. There are a number of uncast roles. Juliet Taylor thought you might be right for one of them. I just wanted to see you. Just to take a look at you physically so I don’t have to do this from photographs. We’ll let you know about this. Thank you.” By the clock, with pauses and a few cordial nods of the head, it’s maybe thirty seconds. When Taylor or Allen were considering English actors Sir Ian McKellan or Sir John Neville for parts in “Mighty Aphrodite”, Taylor had to take Allen aside. “You have to let him sit down,” she told him. “He’s a knight.” She adds, “Somebody else would come in who wasn’t a knight but was very prominent. Woody would say, ‘But they’re not a knight. Why do I have to let them?'” Goldie Hawn, for her first meeting, swept into the screening room and, because of her star status, was given the couch. “She was beautiful, she was full of energy, she was great, she lit up the room,” Allen says. “After the first ten seconds, I didn’t have to have any more of her, that was enough.” But not enough for Goldie. “I was just eating the air in the room, because he was saying nothing,” says Hawn, who launched into an extensive, buoyant account of her travels. Allen cut her off with a joke. “Could you leave the room, so I could talk?” he said.

Allen is always looking for what he calls “thrill capacity”. “Any artist – you see it very clearly in jazz musicians – comes out there, and what differentiates the great ones from the lesser ones is that they can thrill you with the turn of a phrase, a run, or the bending of a note. This is true of acting.” He goes on, “You never know what Diane Keaton’s going to do or what Dianne Wiest is going to do or what Marlon Brando’s going to do. The same with Judy Davis. If you do ten takes with her she’ll do it ten different ways.”

Allen preserves a kind of authorial detachment from the actors; he stands apart from them, watching, judging, mulling, and then, like a novelist scrapping and recasting a chapter, he has been known to dismiss an actor and reshoot the scene. “He doesn’t want to stand there and beg a performance out of you,” [Sidney] Pollack says. “So he watches, and if it isn’t working you’re fired.” (There have been a couple of dozen casualties over the years.) Allen also doesn’t talk much to the actors. This can be disconcerting and demoralizing for the ensemble. Barbara Hershey, whose “favorite thing is to put my head together with the director and create the character,” got no joy from Allen in “Hannah and Her Sisters.” “I never wanted to tell her anything,” Allen says of his laissez-faire approach. “I would tell her not to think about it. ‘Just get out there. Do what you feel in the moment. Fight for your survival. If you’re doing something wrong, I’ll tell you about it.'” The method saves Allen a lot of time and boredom. “That would be tedious to me,” he says. “To have actors come over, sit down, and to go over all that nonsense with them. You accept the part. When you read the script, I assume you have enough brains and common sense to know what you’re getting into.”

Many actors find the experience cold, but it is also freeing and – in Allen’s hands, anyway – effective. Hawn likens Allen’s directing style to good parenting. “We have a tendency with our own children to impose what we believe their life should be,” she says. “We put in front of them all the do’s and don’ts, shoulds and shouldn’ts. So we corral the spirit. Woody gives you the space to experiment with your creativity, to feel abandonment. Therefore, you start to discover what else you can do.”

“Woody throws you into the Mixmaster and turns on the switch,” Alam Alda, a veteran of three Allen films, says. “One of the things that happens is that actors are so without their usual props – without the usual acting tricks that they can rely on – that they reach out to each other on-screen in an extraordinary way. You see wonderful relating in his movies. People really look like they’re talking to each other. The other reason they look like they’re talking to each other is that they really are listening, because they don’t know what the other one’s gonna say. They know the gist of it, but he seems to deliberately write it in a formal, uncolloquial way and asks you to make it colloquial. Most of the time he’ll say, ‘That sounds too much like a joke. Mess it up a little bit so it doesn’t sound so much like a joke.'”

In “Everyone Says I Love You”, there is a scene where Alda and his family argue over breakfast about family matters, for which, Alda says, “he did more directing there than in the entire first movie I did with him.” Allen himself uses the scene to illustrate his “typical way of directing.” “It would be one master shot – everybody’d be in it,” he says. “I’d get the actors together and tell them, ‘These are the points that I need to make. I want to know that you’re going to Le Cirque tonight, that the mother feels that she’s championing the ex-con, and that the right-wing son is against her. I want that to come out.'” Allen goes on, “I just want the whole family to have breakfast and talk among themselves. So I say, ‘Step on each other’s lines. If you have a line that you want to be heard, fight to get it out. If you have exposition that’s important, get it in somehow.'”

Allen is not easy on his actors, or on himself. “He’s a sweet man, but he is not sweet when he’s working,” Wiest says. “Working with Woody is sweating blood, because he hears if you don’t hit the notes. He’s got great musicality. It’s about hitting the notes. It’s precision within the feeling. You’ve got to put the bead on the string, but before you even get to the string with Woody the bead has to be precisely round. It has to be great.” Wiest, who in “Bullets Over Broadway” was made to descend a staircase about thirty times, knows Allen’s look of displeasure – what she calls “a mild and gentlemanly disgust.” She explains, “His head is tilted to one side. The left side of his mouth is up, the right side is down. His eyes are downcast. It’s a thoughtful pose. But I know what’s coming. I know it’s not good for me.” After the first day of shooting, Allen phoned Wiest. “You know, it’s terrible. It’s terrible!” Allen told her. “I told you so!” Wiest remembers telling him. “I think you should get someone else.” He said, “No, I think it’s something to do with your voice. We’ll reshoot it.” Wiest, who has a high-pitched speaking voice, lowered it, and after the scene was reshot Allen said, “That’s it.” Wiest says, “That was it. That was the character. I’d be in the middle of a take and he’d go, ‘Voice! Voice!'”

“It’s just not good,” he told Diane Keaton in the first week of shooting “Manhattan Murder Mystery”. She explains, “He just will think of another way if it doesn’t work. But if you’re not cutting the mark, you’re gone. It’s not about friendship. It’s not about anything. It’s about the work.” Allen does not regard his judgments as ruthless; in fact, he sees his lack of ruthlessness as a weakness. “I’m the opposite of a perfectionist. I’m an imperfectionist,” he says. “I’m uncompromising with what I want to do with my work, but I’m not ruthless. I wish I was more ruthless. I feel that my work would be better if I could bring myself to express feelings of impatience or anger that I have but don’t like to burden other people with.” He goes on, “A more mature person would not go through that kind of mental anxiety. He would say, ‘I’m sorry, we agreed that the costumes would all have red feathers on them and I’m not shooting unless they have red.’ But I’ll say, ‘Well, all right, we’ll do it this way.'”

Not always. On “September”, Sam Shepard was granted permission to improvise a speech, and, according to Wiest, ended up talking about leaving Montana to go East to medical school. As Wiest and Allen were walking back to the dressing room, Allen turned to her. “Montana? Montana?” he said. “The word ‘Montana’ is gonna be in my movie?” It wasn’t.

Posted in Books, Directors | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Happy Birthday, Paul Newman

Posted on January 26, 2013 by sheila


Paul Newman in “Slap Shot”

Here’s the piece I wrote for House Next Door when Paul Newman passed away.

Posted in Actors, On This Day | Tagged | 4 Comments

Playtime Continued

Posted on January 26, 2013 by sheila

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Jacques Tati’s Playtime (my thoughts here).

So how fortuitous that The Siren would be nursing her own obsession with the film (and I am so bummed I missed the large-screen showing at Walter Reader). I loved what Siren wrote here:

But there’s an essential goodness in this movie–if not flat-out optimism, then an allowance for grace, for kindness, for people to delight you no matter how lost and bewildered we all are. Monsieur Hulot eventually gets his meeting with his heel-clacking bureaucrat. Lovely Barbara does meet up with Hulot during the peerless restaurant scene. As the restaurant falls to pieces around him, the loudmouthed American businessman, far from running the staff ragged and gasbagging about French incompetence, turns calamity into a chance for a Boys’ Own Treehouse; if only making Play Time had worked that way for Tati himself.

I also loved to read Ed Howard’s thoughts (great screengrabs as well).

Ed writes:

The more the restaurant falls apart, the more the people there seem to enjoy themselves, and the staid, ordinary dinner transforms into a wild, frenetic party with a packed dance floor and little pockets of merry-making scattered around the room. Tati captures everything with his long shots, packing the frame with people, all of whom have little bits of business and subtle sight gags: there’s too much to focus on at any given moment, since literally every shot is packed with visual humor and miniature narratives playing out on the fringes of the image.

Playtime has great reverb.

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The Books: On the Pleasure of Hating, ‘On the Pleasure of Hating’, by William Hazlitt

Posted on January 26, 2013 by sheila

On the essays shelf:

On the Pleasure of Hating, by William Hazlitt

My favorite quote about hatred is from Rebecca West:

“A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.”

It is something I keep in mind when I am reminded, repeatedly, that I must forgive, love, be soft, be open, be receptive to the other side’s point of view. I am a fan of hatred, when used sparingly. It can be quite bracing, and it can be an excellent reminder of who you are, and what you will not stand for. I think hatred has its place. Both personally and politically. Of course, when you operate solely FROM hatred, you are a lost soul, and not worth listening to. In fact, I hate people who operate solely from hatred, how’s that. And if you are in politics and you operate solely from hatred, then I hate you even more, and consider you my enemy and will work as hard as I can to keep you away from office. So like I said. Hatred has its uses. It can make things very clear. It can also poison your entire existence. So you have to keep a watchful eye on your soul and spirit.

I was originally drawn to 19th century writer William Hazlitt because of the title of this one particular essay (published in The Plain Speaker in 1826). I understand the pleasure of hating, I understand hatred’s uses, and when it is used as a “lamp” as I tread over the “dark places of life”, it becomes indispensable. (It has certainly saved much of my heart’s softness/receptivity in the past couple of months. Without hatred, I would have drowned completely. Of course, West is talking primarily politically there, but it works on a personal level as well.) People always reference this particular essay of Hazlitt’s, and it is the title of the little collection I have. I was so curious to hear his thoughts. What does he mean by “pleasure”? What is his take? Is it mine?

Suffice it to say, no, it is not my take.

Hazlitt’s essay on “hating” is really about how everything good in this life eventually goes sour (friendships deteriorate, we dislike books we once adored, etc.), and he wonders why that is. Why on earth can’t things STAY good? (Remember, he was hugely influenced by Rousseau. He really believed people were inherently good. So this essay is, in many ways, an admission of a failure of philosophy.) His conclusion is that humanity finds great pleasure in “hating” things, and the pleasure in hating is even greater than the pleasure in pleasure – so that is why things are the way they are. I wouldn’t call Hazlitt a positive individual, not really, but this is certainly one of the most sour things of his I have read. He sounds bummed out. He has thought long and hard on the topic. He clearly writes from his own personal experience, which includes a disastrous first marriage, and lots of passionate male friendships (with Coleridge, Wordsworth, and others) that were eventually destroyed (mainly through his own actions). When he was a young man, he had lots of friends. By the time he wrote this essay, that was changing. He was becoming isolated. He had dust-ups with lifelong friends. His publishing opportunities diminished. He found himself unable to continue, in many respects. A lot of this was political. He was hounded by his political opponents (so ferociously that he sued at one point, and won). So it is obvious where he might be coming from.

Humanity, according to Hazlitt, clearly PREFERS being angry and hateful. Otherwise we would stop. He also sees things dialectically, as I think I have mentioned before. Love cannot exist without hate. We only know what we love when we put in opposition to something. It is a pessimistic outlook on humanity’s prospects, which sort of stands out in Hazlitt’s work.

This is one of his most famous essays and should be read in its entirety (so much food for thought), but here is an excerpt.

On the Pleasure of Hating, ‘On the Pleasure of Hating’, by William Hazlitt

Nature seems (the more we look into it) made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men. The white streak in our own fortunes is brightened (or just rendered visible) by making all around it as dark as possible; so the rainbow paints its form upon the cloud. Is it pride? Is it envy? Is it the force of contrast? Is it weakness or malice? But so it is, that there is a secret affinity, a hankering after, evil in the human mind, and that it takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction. Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, wants variety and spirit. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal. Do we not see this principle at work everywhere? Animals torment and worry one another without mercy: children kill flies for sport: every one reads the accidents and offences in a newspaper as the cream of the jest: a whole town runs to be present at a fire, and the spectator by no means exults to see it extinguished. It is better to have it so, but it diminishes the interest; and our feelings take part with our passions rather than with our understandings. Men assemble in crowds, with eager enthusiasm, to witness a tragedy: but if there were an execution going forward in the next street, as Mr. Burke observes, the theater would be left empty. A strange cur in a village, an idiot, a crazy woman, are set upon and baited by the whole community. Public nuisances are in the nature of public benefits. How long did the Pope, the Bourbons, and the Inquisition keep the people of England in breath, and supply them with nicknames to vent their spleen upon! Had they done us any harm of late? No: but we have always a quantity of superfluous bile upon the stomach, and we wanted an object to let it out upon. How loth were we to give up our pious belief in ghosts and witches, because we liked to persecute the one, and frighten ourselves to death with the other! It is not the quality so much as the quantity of excitement that we are anxious about: we cannot bear a state of indifference and ennui: the mind seems to abhor a vacuum as much as ever nature was supposed to do. Even when the spirit of the age (that is, the progress of intellectual refinement, warring with our natural infirmities) no longer allows us to carry our vindictive and head strong humours into effect, we try to revive them in description, and keep up the old bugbears, the phantoms of our terror and our hate, in imagination. We burn Guy Fawx in effigy, and the hooting and buffeting and maltreating that poor tattered figure of rags and straw makes a festival in every village in England once a year. Protestants and Papists do not now burn one another at the stake: but we subscribe to new editions of Fox’s Book of Martyrs; and the secret of the success of the Scotch Novels is much the same-they carry us back to the feuds, the heart-burnings, the havoc, the dismay, the wrongs, and the revenge of a barbarous age and people-to the rooted prejudices and deadly animosities of sects and parties in politics and religion, and of contending chiefs and clans in war and intrigue. We feel the full force of the spirit of hatred with all of them in turn. As we read, we throw aside the trammels of civilization, the flimsy veil of humanity. “Off, you lendings!” The wild beast resumes its sway within us, we feel like hunting animals, and as the hound starts in his sleep and rushes on the chase in fancy the heart rouses itself in its native lair, and utters a wild cry of joy, at being restored once more to freedom and lawless unrestrained impulses. Every one has his full swing, or goes to the Devil his own way. Here are no Jeremy Bentham Panopticons, none of Mr. Owen’s impassable Parallelograms (Rob Roy would have spurred and poured a thousand curses on them), no long calculations of self-interest — the will takes its instant way to its object, as the mountain-torrent flings itself over the precipice: the greatest possible good of each individual consists in doing all the mischief he can to his neighbour: that is charming, and finds a sure and sympathetic chord in every breast! So Mr. Irving, the celebrated preacher, has rekindled the old, original, almost exploded hell-fire in the aisles of the Caledonian Chapel, as they introduce the real water of the New River at Sadler’s Wells, to the delight and astonishment of his fair audience. ‘Tis pretty, though a plague, to sit and peep into the pit of Tophet, to play at snap-dragon with flames and brimstone (it gives a smart electrical shock, a lively filip to delicate constitutions), and to see Mr. Irving, like a huge Titan, looking as grim and swarthy as if he had to forge tortures for all the damned! What a strange being man is! Not content with doing all he can to vex and hurt his fellows here, “upon this bank and shoal of time,” where one would think there were heartaches, pain, disappointment, anguish, tears, sighs, and groans enough, the bigoted maniac takes him to the top of the high peak of school divinity to hurl him down the yawning gulf of penal fire; his speculative malice asks eternity to wreak its infinite spite in, and calls on the Almighty to execute its relentless doom! The cannibals burn their enemies and eat them in good-fellowship with one another: meed Christian divines cast those who differ from them but a hair’s-breadth, body and soul into hellfire for the glory of God and the good of His creatures! It is well that the power of such persons is not co-ordinate with their wills: indeed it is from the sense of their weakness and inability to control the opinions of others, that they thus “outdo termagant,” and endeavour to frighten them into conformity by big words and monstrous denunciations.

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others. What have the different sects, creeds, doctrines in religion been but so many pretexts set up for men to wrangle, to quarrel, to tear one another in pieces about, like a target as a mark to shoot at? Does any one suppose that the love of country in an Englishman implies any friendly feeling or disposition to serve another bearing the same name? No, it means only hatred to the French or the inhabitants of any other country that we happen to be at war with for the time. Does the love of virtue denote any wish to discover or amend our own faults? No, but it atones for an obstinate adherence to our own vices by the most virulent intolerance to human frailties. This principle is of a most universal application. It extends to good as well as evil: if it makes us hate folly, it makes us no less dissatisfied with distinguished merit. If it inclines us to resent the wrongs of others, it impels us to be as impatient of their prosperity. We revenge injuries: we repay benefits with ingratitude. Even our strongest partialities and likings soon take this turn. “That which was luscious as locusts, anon becomes bitter as coloquintida;” and love and friendship melt in their own fires. We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves.

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Diary Friday: “When I was sitting there, did he glance down at me when I didn’t know? I’m going crazy.”

Posted on January 25, 2013 by sheila

Welcome, to my junior year in high school, when I had a giant crush (really more like a full-blown love affair – totally one-sided) with a guy named David. It’s really heating up here. In my own mind.

Feb. 8
We went bowling today. Great! I broke all my previous scores and got a 73! J., Kate, April and I were all in the same section. Dave and Jeff were right beside us. As we were all putting on our shoes, April groaned and said, “I forgot my glasses again!” So far, she’s forgotteen them every time we’ve gone. We started jokingly making fun of her. Dave and I were sitting back to back and suddenly he turned around, grinning. “Why do you speak to April in this manner?” I can’t even remember what I said. [Wow, that was a gripping anecdote, Sheila. Thanks for sharing!]

The class was great. I’d go up there to bowl, and once I sent the ball heading straight for the pins, I heard Dave call, “That’s the way!” He was WATCHING ME!! [I just need to interject and acknowledge that I KNOW how ridiculous I sound. Thanks.] I got a strike, too, and he was clapping and smiling. I’ll admit it in here to you–you’re just a diary– I really think there’s a chance. I know there is. [The first of 5,498 times I will say that in my life thus far. And, like all 5,495 times, I will be WRONG. You do the math.] He talks to me all the time, he goes out of his way to talk to me.

When we got back to the gym, we were early and had 15 minutes left. I was sitting on the bleechers with Kate, J., and April. Dave was off somewhere talking but then he strolled over and I just knew he was coming over to us. [Wow, what was your clue, Sheila? That he was WALKING TOWARDS YOU?? Oh my GOD, what does it all MEAN???] He leaned on the bleechers behind me. Behind ME! [We heard you the first time.] He rested his forehead on his fist. I had to crook my neck all the way back to look at him. He said, with a sighing voice, “Wait till you guys are seniors– second semester–“-he groaned, a real live groan [I am not sure what the significance to me of “real live groan” was. A “real live groan” as opposed to a “completely counterfeit groan”…] “I don’t care anymore! Either I’m in or I’m out – just get me out of here. I have the worst case of senioritis.”

Then, almost as one, all four of us said something like, “It’s settling in early!”

He smiled. “Really? Well, your junior year should be your peak. Everything you do should be the best.”

I said, “If this is the peak of my life, I’d really like to see my depressed moments.”

J. burst out laughing.

I laughed too and looked up at Dave. He was grinning down at me in this way – I don’t think I’m tricking myself here. It seemed like a very fond grin. Does he look upon me fondly? [This was almost too embarrassing for me to share.] When I was sitting there, did he glance down at me when I didn’t know? I’m going crazy.

The bell rang. Dave kept talking to me as we picked up our books. Of course, all my friends drifted subtly off, leaving the two of us alone. What great people they are! [Indeed. Even as a virgin teenager, I knew to be annoyed by cock-blockers.] Anyway, Dave was saying, “If you’re in sports, you’re the best. In your case, if you’re in drama, you’re a smash hit!”

Oh!! I forgot! I’m so dumb! Judy quit about 2 weeks ago, I am now in the play! Mrs. Stanley!

So, I smiled sort of sarcastically as we walked along, and said, “I have two lines in the second act. Count ’em: TWO.” [Sheila, don’t be self-deprecating. It is not a good look.]

He shrugged and smiled — This is the best part. “Better than I have.” In fact — he said it TWICE. Count it – TWICE. [He must be utterly and hopelessly in love with you.]

I wonder if he’ll come to see the play. OH GOD. I get to faint in it, and burst into tears. I play a real wimp. I like her, though.

Before I close, I have a tres tres tres hysterique story. I almost lost control in French class.

Tor – a kid in class – is moving. Too bad. I don’t know what his problem is. He is getting Fs in everything. [Hahahaha. I’m sorry. Just putting those couple of sentences together … it’s making me laugh.] We had an open book test in English, and he failed it. Mrs. Franco was saying to all of us, “Well, when I’m looking over your grades and I see that you have a stream of 100s and then a freak 40, I’ll just drop the 40.” Tor then raised his hand and said, “Uh … could that work in the opposite way?” [Hahahahaha. Poor guy.]

Anyway, he’s moving to North Carolina and he was absent a few days ago to go down and see the house. So in French (Mr. Hodge has a discussion time every class in French), Mr. Hodge was asking Tor questions about the house. Simple questions. This is our THIRD YEAR OF FRENCH, after all. Mr. Hodge was asking: how many bathrooms, bedrooms, big or small yard. Tor didn’t understand a word of it. I swear, too: the sun rose on his face. He was turning purple! He stumbled along. Dave, who sits right beside him, became the interpreter. It was so so funny.

Mr. Hodge would ask the question. There’d be a long silence, and then Dave would mutter under his breath, “How many bathrooms?” All eyes were on poor Tor. I, personally, was watching Dave, who kept grinning over at me, slightly, like, “Get a load of this guy…”

Then, Mr. Hodge asked him if the house had a cellar. Tor sat there, silently, face like a beet. Dave interpreted, and then Tor said, with conviction, the only word he knows for sure in French, “Oui.” Extended vocab there. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t make fun, but this story is so hysterical.

Mr. Hodge then asked if it was a wine cellar. Tor’s face was a total blank. He nodded anyway, without Dave interpreting, which was a dumb move. He got trapped. Mr. Hodge then asked what color wine they stored down there — blanche, rouge, rose. Tor, in his panic, only heard the word “coleur”, only understood the word “coleur”, so he said, in English, obviously thinking that Mr. Hodge had asked him what color the HOUSE was: “Uh … greenish…”

Oh my God, I thought I was going to have to leave the room.

Everyone BURST into laughter. I laughed so hard my stomach ached. Davide’s face at that moment will be engraved in my brain forever.

J. and I kind of could not stop laughing about the green wine all the way thru class and on into lunch.

After school, I went over to Betsy’s so we could practice Guys and Dolls. She had gotten a letter from a guy she really likes …he was telling her about hmself, he was like, “I am a Christian. Perhaps a stumbling one, but a Christian.” Isn’t that so sweet? Not every guy would come out and say that. [I love this entire paragraph. Betsy, still a dear friend, and I practicing our Guys and Dolls number, and talking about the sweet Christian boy. Friendship.]

We had a really good talk on her couch and then we watched Little House on the Prairie. Oh my God, Carrie fell down the well. Betsy and I were laughing so hard at Michael Landon trying to cry. [We actually STILL laugh about this.] But at the end of the show, when they saved Carrie, tears were streaming down my cheeks. Betsy laughed SO HARD at that, because we had been making fun of it all along, and suddenly I succumbed. They got me.

I’m crying a lot, lately. Not about me,but at movies, TV shows, awards ceremonies, ballet, certain commercials. I get a lump in my throat about practically anything.

I think I may be sensitive to a fatal extreme. I hope not.

Posted in Diary Friday | 13 Comments

iPod Shuffle

Posted on January 24, 2013 by sheila

“Canary In a Coalmine” – The Police. God, I was so obsessed with them in high school. I love this song, and I remember it seemed like the height of sophistication and intelligence that I understood the metaphor of the title. Great album.

“Sweet Sacrifice” – Evanescence. Chick can sing.

“Me & My Monkey” – Robbie Williams, live at Knebworth, for 350,000 people. What a rush. He’s great live, too: the voice holds up. He’s a great live performer. This, as we all know, is not so true nowadays with all of these Made-In-the-Studio singers, who rely on tricks and autotunes and anything else.

“I Really Don’t Want To Know” – Elvis, in concert. This is from the concert televised following his death, when he seems ill and tired. You can hear it in his voice. But still, man, still: he’s still in there, projecting it out. Even not at his best, he’s better than most. But to hear Elvis sing this when he’s at the height of his powers is something else!

“Greystone Chapel” – Johnny Cash. “This song was written by a man right here in Folsom Prison … I hope we do your song justice, Glen.” Electric.

“Everybody’s Fool” – Evanescence. They’re so dramatic. I love it. Women are dramatic, we feel stuff and we mean it. Someday I will gather my forces together to write about Sucker Punch, which is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last 5 years. It’s all about the interior life of women, and the space we have to carve out for ourselves, and how difficult that is in a patriarchy, how overblown things start to seem when you are hemmed in on all sides. Yes. That’s what Sucker Punch is about. This song reminds me of Sucker Punch.

“Happy Birthday” – Marilyn Monroe to J.F.K. You can’t believe that this was even allowed to happen.

“Don’t Leave Me Now” – Elvis Presley. I love this performance of his: it is a perfect example of how self-aware he was. He was imitating himself, and early, because he knew what worked. But he could poke fun at it, too. Listen to how I ache my voice on the high notes, listen to the chug-chug of my lower registers … He was aware of every single thing he was doing and he knew the effect he wanted. Don’t listen to the people who think he was just an instinctive performer. They’re wrong. He was a highly conscious individual and knew exactly what he was doing. From the get-go.

“Ace of Spades” – the great great Link Wray. He’ll always make me think of Kim now.

“Jerry Rigged” – Mike Viola and the Candy Butchers. One of the best songwriters writing today. I think he has a new one out.

“I’ll Remember April” – Bobby Darin. SWING IT.

“Old Dan Tucker” – Bruce Springsteen, from his awesome We Shall Overcome album. Great banjo.

“Atlantic City” – Bruce Springsteen. This should satisfy the poor commenter who asked on one of my Shuffles: “Why no Springsteen?” (Uhm, cause this is a SHUFFLE. Ie: RANDOM.)

“Don’t Be Cruel” – Elvis Presley, sung in the boxing ring-like stage surrounded by an audience on all sides in the 1968 NBC special. He is on FIRE.

“Hound Dog” – Elvis, live, in Vegas. “The only way you can sing this song is leaning over like this … you can’t sing it standing straight up cause it’ll strip your gears, boy.” His banter sometimes makes him sound crazy, I love it. He’s at home on that stage. “The sound’s gotta come from the floor, you know, and go right up your leg …”

“If You Love Me (Let Me Know)” – Elvis, covering Olivia Newton-John. This was on Moody Blue, released after his death. He sounds great, but there’s a part of him that is phoning this one in.

“Just You Tonight” – Lucy Kaplansky. I’ve seen her a bunch and I love her so much. Siobhan took me to see her for my birthday last year. She writes great heartbreak. It hurts.

“Riding the Rainbow” – Elvis Presley, from the unfairly maligned Kid Galahad. He’s very good in that movie, there are some good songs involved (this is one of them), and it’s all very entertaining. I don’t know what people WANT from this man if they dismiss Kid Galahad. Sure, it’s not Taxi Driver, but that’s your problem if you expect that.

“The Bullfighter Was a Lady” – Elvis Presley, from Fun in Acapulco. Elvis is singing the SHIT out of this song. He can do anything.

“Bitch Please II” – Eminem. From the crazy-good Marshall Mathers LP. This is pretty fierce.

“Wake Up Alone” – Amy Winehouse. God, I miss her.

“Bitter They Are, Harder They Fall” – Elvis Presley. Elvis is magnificent here. He has no fear. I love big melodramatic heartbroke ballad Elvis.

“Heartbreak Hotel” – Elvis, in the 68 comeback special. The first song he sang in the informal sit-down session. You can hear women literally moaning in a carnal manner all around. It’s alarming. He’s shy. He doesn’t know how to start. He jokes, “Good night” and goes to leave, and the women moan in despair. The song is a bit high for him. He struggles. When he finishes he says, “Man, that is the worst job I have ever done on a song.” Love you, Elvis. You never lie.

“Run, Freedom, Run” – the big inspirational production number from Urinetown. Hysterical and rousing.

“I’m Movin’ On” – Elvis Presley. This is hot. Great band, great steel guitar, and sexy-pants Elvis. Love this. Love how it builds, too. These guys are jamming.

“Roll Over Beethoven” – The Beatles, live at the BBC. It’s rough, raw, and real.

“Bleeding Me” – Metallica, from S&M, their great double album concert that they did with the San Francisco Symphony. One of my favorite albums of theirs. Their song translates well to a giant orchestra, it really adds something.

“Our Song of Love” – Pat McCurdy. A friend of mine from years past. He’s a big star in the Chicago-Milwaukee area. Plays constantly. If you live in the area, check him out. He’s always playing. His shows are like visiting a cult meeting.

“Good Boys” – Yipes! Speaking of Pat McCurdy … this was an earlier band of his. He actually was on Star Search back in the day. He lost to Sawyer Brown. Weirdly enough, I watched Star Search as a tween, and was obsessed with that particular season, because I loved Sam Harris, one of the contestants (member him?) So, when I was in junior high, 14 years old, whatever, I watched Pat McCurdy compete on Star Search. 10 years later, this would be going on. I don’t even think I put it together at the time, “Oh God, I must have seen you on Star Search back then …” It took a while for that to sink in. Life is weird.

“Diamonds Are a Best Girl’s Friend” – Marilyn Monroe. Perfection.

“Then We Are Decided” – from Jesus Christ Superstar. “The difference is they call him King … the difference frightens meeeee!” It should frighten you.

“Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)” – Queen. God, it makes the hair on my arms rise up. Talk about missing someone. I have never recovered from his death. He has left a hole. He will never be replaced.

“All My Loving” – Jim Sturgess, from Julie Tambor’s Across the Universe, which I thought was adorable and very entertaining.

“Next Time/I Wouldn’t Go Back” – from the musical Closer Than Ever. I LOVED this musical in the late 80s, early 90s. I think of it as the thirtysomething of musicals. It has a Baby Boomer self-obsession to it, but the singers are incredible, and the songs are undeniably great. But it sort of had its day (at least for me).

“Don’t Rain On My Parade” – Barbra Streisand. When she’s on, nobody’s better. This is thrilling.

“True Love” – Elvis Presley. Now this is really interesting: Elvis singing with a quartet. Of course, he always sang with a quartet (the Jordanaires). But this is a different sort of arrangement. They all sing together, like a barber shop quartet. It stands out in Elvis’ work. It’s old-fashioned. You so rarely got to hear Elvis sing WITH someone. This is lovely.

“Make Me Know It” – Elvis, from the great Elvis is Back album, released when he got out of the Army. Elvis sounds great, irrepressible, free, there’s a joy in what he is doing, a new adult brand of confidence and control.

“Yo George” – Tori Amos. Not my favorite (I prefer her when she’s rocking and pissed off, not introspective and sensitive), but I like the “madness of King George” dovetail in the lyrics.

“Russians” – Sting. Ah, Sting. Giving us his treatise on the Cold War. Thanks, Sting. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it until you enlightened me! I tease. This is a good song.

“Advertising Space” – Robbie Williams’ tribute song to Elvis! More here.

“Rose Tint My World” – from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Damn, I’m liking this Shuffle. You never know with Shuffle. Rocky Horror was so huge to us in high school: the coolest hugest thing EVER.

“The Things You Do To Me” – the great and sultry Wynona Carr. I am so glad I discovered her.

“Breadfan” – Metallica. Hard and fast, just like I like it.

“Let Him Fly” – the Dixie Chicks cover of the great Patty Griffin song.

“When I’m Gone” – Eminem. One of his self-pitying anthems.

“We Are the Champions” – Queen, live at Wembley Stadium. It’s just goosebump-inducing to hear that enormous crowd singing along with him at the tops of their collective lungs. JOY. Life-affirming.

“Starting Today” – Elvis Presley. On one of the mish-mash albums put out while he was in the Army. A beautiful ballad. Hard to believe this is the same guy as the one who sang “Trouble” or “I Got a Woman” or “Santa Claus Is Back In Town”.

“For the Heart” – Elvis. Late-ish Elvis. The Judds covered this song as well. I like him here, I like the sound he and his guys are going for. It’s funky country.

“Down to the River to Pray” – Alison Krauss. Haunting.

“Is It So Strange” – Elvis. This, for me, is the most romantic song he ever recorded. I think June Juanico may agree. It was “their” song. Imagine breaking up with someone and then having him record “your” song a month later. Imagine driving around in Biloxi, heart broken, hearing “your” song on the radio. OUCH. Hats off, June. Love sucks.

“When You Were Mine” – Cyndi Lauper. She’s so awesome. Great song. She hit while I was in high school and even then you could tell: something important was happening with this woman. She was releasing something important in the culture, space that was then co-opted by Madonna. But Cyndi was there first. She staked out her claim. You could FEEL it happen. The space … for us … girls … got bigger.

“Your Face” – Cliff Eberhardt. One of the most heartbreaking songs ever written. As a matter of fact, I can’t listen to it.

“Outrageous” – Britney Spears. Yes, Brit-Brit, we know. You’re outrageous. Relax.

“Ashley” – Green Day, from Dios, which just came out. The whole thing is great. I’m loving it so far (the triple release they just came out with). Some of it is a bit stock, but some have that Green Day “thing” that happens when they tap into something real.

“Welcome to England” – Tori Amos. See, this is the Tori that starts to drive me insane. I like it, I get it, but … somehow, her music leaves me OUT. I know I am in the minority on this. I know that rabid Tori Amos fans disagree with me on this one. But something about her distances me. I was a fan before she even hit it here in a big way. I saw her play at Park West in Chicago before Little Earthquakes came out. Just her on a stage, in jeans, with her piano. She was incredible. Great onstage too: funny, sweet, and a real show-woman. But the interior nature of some of her stuff leaves me cold.

“The Colors Of My Life” – Jim Dale and Glenn Close, from Barnum (on Broadway). Okay, this is the weirdness of Shuffle. Really, Barnum? I saw this show on Broadway when I was in high school, with Tony Orlando as PT Barnum, and he was fantastic.

“Nowhere Man” – The Beatles. Rubber Soul is one of my favorite albums of all time.

“Hailie’s Song” – Eminem. This is really sweet. Eminem, sweet? Sure. Get to know him, you’ll see it. He sings the majority of this. And honest: “My insecurities could eat me alive.” Listen to how he sings those words.

“Bird Dog” – The Everly Brothers. These guys are so much fun. I used to have them on vinyl. That makes no sense. I am a child of the 80s. But I always loved them.

“Trou Macacq” – Squirrel Nut Zippers. Insane and fun.

“The Water Is Wide” – James Taylor. I have to be careful listening to him. He can crack me open and ruin my whole day in one guitar strum.

“Break Your Heart” – Mike Viola and the Candy Butchers. Never get sick of him. His music has actually helped me. Not just the lyrics, but the chord changes … I don’t know: they speak out the hurt, the life, they say “this is what it feels like, doesn’t it?” Yes, it does.

“Jingle Bells” – the Glee cast version. I like this very much. I like the arrangement a LOT.

“Eternity” – Robbie Williams. I love it when people comment here who also know and love Robbie. It’s so hard to describe it if you are not already on board the Robbie Train. He is so good. The real deal.

“Don’t Put It Down” – the cast of the Broadway revival of Hair. Balderdash. It must have seemed very deep when it first came out. Typical hostility towards Southerners! They’re all just stupid rednecks.

“I Want Your Sex, Pts 1 & 2” – George Michael. This album basically ruled the airwaves for a year when I was in college. I associate it very much with a guy I was dating in a tormented off and on way at the time. I was a virgin, and felt this song was far too bossy.

“Heartbreak Hotel” – Elvis Presley, from Prince From Another Planet, the recently re-released concert album from his triumphant 4 sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in 1972. This is an insanely hot version of this song. I thank very much Troy Y, from the indispensable Mystery Train blog, for sending this to me in the middle of the Hurricane Sandy devastation. It really brightened those dark couple of weeks following that damn storm.

“Ducky” – by Bleu. I believe I have made my feelings about him clear.

“Talk To Me of Mendocino” – Kate McGarrigle, Rufus & Martha Wainwright, from the great McGarrigle Hour. Mother and children singing. It’s too much for me.

“Where Do You Come From?” – Elvis Presley, from Girls! Girls! Girls! The song is quite stupid and over-the-top, and Elvis does his best, which is pretty damn good. He justifies a song’s existence by singing it. This is almost 100% the case, even when it comes to “Old MacDonald”.

“My Baby Left Me” – Elvis Presley. Early Elvis, it’s just astonishing to hear this back to back with “Where Do You Come From?” I suppose you could look at it as sad, like “God, look at what ‘they’ in Hollywood did to Elvis …” But as I have made clear, I refuse to be sad about Elvis Presley, because it is a waste of time and also dismisses the vastness of his talent and accomplishments. While no one could prefer “Where Do You Come From?” over the great “My Baby Left Me”, what I hear is: listen to how he transformed itself, listen to his versatility: he was greater than even HE knew back in the old Sun days. Or … maybe he knew all along.

“Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely)” – Pink. This song is an anthem. I relate to it.

“I Won’t Stand In Your Way” – The Stray Cats. An awesome ballad. One of my favorites of theirs.

“Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” – Rufus Wainwright. I’m not so sure of his latest albums, although I’ll hang in there with him. He’s wonderful.

“Black Velveteen” – Lenny Kravitz. I’ll buy anything this guy does. Fan for life.

“Patch It Up” – Elvis, live in Vegas. I’m not a big “Patch It Up” fan. Just doesn’t hook me, although when he starts to go up that scale, the chorus echoing him … his voice is so impressive. Exciting.

“Black Coffee In Bed” – Squeeze. Squeeze IS college to me. I hear this song and see my freshman dorm room, my posters, my books, my green shirt, dancing at a frat party with my friends, drinking beer out of plastic cups. Squeeze is completely attached to one time, one place, to me.

“You Learn” – Alanis Morrisette. From that first album that TOOK. OVER. THE WORLD. Good God, you could not escape this girl. I fell into her clutches, too, and I’m still there. For better or worse.

“Over Our Bodies” – Longpigs. Longpigs, you say? I have one album. Every song on it is fantastic. What happened to them? Never even checked.

“Live and Let Die” – Wings. I’m a little bit obsessed with this song.

“Little Child” – Des’ree. God, member her? This was a great album, although she really only had that one big hit.

“Rent” – the cast of Rent. I think I said this last time: why does this song come up on EVERY Shuffle? How does that happen? This song rocks, but I roll my eyes at the sentiment. “Eviction or pay.” Yeah, guys. That’s not unfair. That’s LIFE.

“I Need Your Love Tonight” (take 5) – Elvis Presley, from those raucous 1958 sessions I mentioned a while back. They did countless takes of this song. It’s amazing when you hear the final version, how polished, how fun and free it sounds, especially when you know how hard they WORKED this song, even re-arranging it. Elvis would get befuddled during some of the takes and burst out laughing. This is a pretty good take. You can hear him clapping during the guitar break.

“Going Back to Orleans” – Jesse & Buzzy. Insistent rough rhythm & blues, that makes me think of what Keith Richards said about “the rhythm of the tracks”. That rhythm is here.

“Extraordinary” – Liz Phair, on what the idiots call her “sell out album”. Shut up. I wish she’d “sell out” more often if it resulted in an album like this one. I love the honesty in this song: “I am extraordinary if you’d ever get to know me.”

“Sister Suffragettes” – Glynis Johns, from Mary Poppins. Hahaha.

“The Light of Day” – Brendan Benson. Another of my favorite songwriters out there today.

“The First Time I Saw Your Face” – Elvis, recorded 3-15-71. A bit of a snoozefest, pal.

“Here We Go Again” – Paramore. I forgot about them for a while. I like them. I like her.

“Gold Into Straw” – Brendan Benson. I’ve said it before: he seems incapable of writing a bad or boring or stock song. His stuff excites me. The way I discovered him is perhaps embarrassing: there was that Apple commercial, with a “jingle” – “well, I don’t know what I’m looking for …” and it called to me. Something about it. So I Googled the lyrics, found him, and whaddya know, every single song he has written is as great as that one. I’m a huge huge fan. So thanks, Apple. I probably never would have found him otherwise.

“Shakin’ All Over” – Wanda Jackson. Hotness personified. A song to dance to, or, better yet, grind up against each other in the back of a purple Cadillac Eldorado. She sang this when I saw her.

“She Wears My Ring” – Elvis Presley. From Promised Land, a really good album. Elvis had loved this song for years. He milks it, baby. I like his vibrato here. He had great control. Listen to him. Listen to what he is DOING with that voice.

“El Condor Pasa” – Simon & Garfunkel. I grew up listening to them. My parents had all of their stuff. It’s in my blood.

“This Time / I Can’t Stop Loving You” – Elvis, rehearsing for Vegas. He’s goofing off, changing lyrics. “I forgot to wear my cup … that’s just my way of loving you.” He finds it hilarious. And he’s right. I love the recorded rehearsals for his big 1969 opening. Things are loose, crazy, and yet watch … watch how he lets the goofing off go and gets down to work. The goofing off serves a purpose, and it always did with him.

“Desire” – U2. It’s a bit otherworldly, it exists on some other higher plane.

“Fancy Forgetting” – from the original Broadway production of The Boyfriend. I saw this show when I was a kid at the local university and it helped launch me into an obsession with the 1920s that led to my novel about flappers, written when I was 12, and everything else. The Boyfriend was a huge part of making me ache to go back in time.

“Hard Luck” – Elvis Presley, from Frankie and Johnny. The movie is pretty forgettable but in the middle of it is this bluesy song with Elvis singing, only with a lonely harmonica accompanying at first. Unfortunately, the mix of the song is par for the course in terms of Elvis’ Hollywood years: his voice is pushed so far out in front of the accompaniment that it, frankly, sounds weird. Why do that to him? (I mean, I know why, but this song has a real chance to live, to stand on its own … if his voice was pushed back, and integrated into the accompaniment). I like him a lot here. It’s a dumb song, but he’s doing some interesting things with it, and it sounds like he’s having fun. Great harmonica, too.

“Blue Christmas” – Elvis, singing in a riveting bluesy manner in the 1968 special, in black leather. Women are flipping out. They aren’t screaming. They MOAN. They suddenly erupt into shrieks and then trail off into moans and cackles. It’s insane. And through it all is the best version of the song Elvis ever did.

“Henry Ford” – from the Broadway production of Ragtime, a magnificent accomplishment. How do you weave all of the threads of that book into a musical? Well, it seems made for it. Ragtime holds it together. This is Henry Ford’s big production number. Great score.

“I’ll Be On My Way” – The Beatles, live at the BBC. Beautiful. They make my heart ache.

“A Shot of Rhythm & Blues” – The Beatles, again, live at the BBC. It’s thrilling.

“Drowse” – Queen, from Day at the Races, I believe. What an album.

“Our Father” – Wynona Carr. This sounds like it was actually recorded in a church. You can hear people, a crowd. She is so incredible. If you haven’t had the pleasure … check her out.

“Llorando” – Rebekah Del Rio, made famous by one of the best scenes in a film not only in the last 20 years, but perhaps ever.

“Green, Green Grass of Home” – Elvis Presley. Great soothing country Elvis. I love country-music Elvis.

“Follow That Dream” – Elvis Presley, the title song of Follow That Dream, one of his best movies and best performances (but you never hear anything about it. Well, that will change, if I have anything to say about it). I love this song. He’s so joyful.

“Spanish Lady” – The Irish Tenors. My dad made fun of them. “They’re just copycats. Not as good as the Italians. Get outta here.” I see his point, although I do own the album. I always think of Dad’s cranky comments when their songs come up. Mum and I laugh about how Dad’s commentary lives on. He dominates, still.

“It’s Still Here” (takes 1, 2, 3) – Elvis Presley. This is late Elvis. Such a great performance. They didn’t do a lot of takes. And each one is perfection. This is obviously very very personal for Elvis. It’s almost hard to listen to, the pain is so palpable. Beautiful.

“Peter’s Denial” – from Jesus Christ Superstar. “You’ve got the wrong man, lady.” Poor Peter. He’s so human.

“To the Sea” – Jack Johnson. His stuff is a bit cutesy for me, but I do like him and I like this.

“The Violet Hour” – The Civil Wars. An incredible singer/songwriter duo. My brother has informed me they have broken up. Too bad, although their name would suggest the end was always a done deal. Their harmonies are perfection, their songs filled with heartache and longing. My cousin Mike introduced me to them.

“Where the Streets Have No Name” – U2. One of their finest songs. It always makes me think of that great scene in Fearless when he crashes the car into the wall. Great use of song as accompaniment in a film.

“Curtain Call: Hair (reprise)” – from the Broadway revival of Hair. It really is a terrific ensemble.

“Electric Chapel” – Lady GaGa. I love the rock-star metal opening. This is a great song. I’m a big fan.

“We Will Rock You” – Queen. An anthem. Timeless. This song will never die.

“Top of the World” – Pat McCurdy. McCurdy’s going all Dylan here.

“Paid For Nothing” – Pat McCurdy. A McCurdy cluster. This is live. I miss going to see his shows. Every Monday night, for 4 years, I was at Lounge Ax with Mitchell, “going to Pat”. We discussed him as though he were a place, not a person.

“It Was a Very Good Year” – Robbie Williams, from his Rat Pack inspired album, Swing When You’re Winning. This album was a dream come true for him. I prefer his versions over the Michael Buble versions. He feels more authentic. He swings.

“Coffee Tea & Sympathy” – Robbie Williams. This song is in my Top 5 Robbie songs. It gets me every time.

“One Hundred and Two” – The Judds. I rarely listen to them anymore although there was a time when I bought every single one of their albums. I still love them.

“Maybelline” – Elvis Presley, live on the Louisiana Hayride, 1955. Elvis introduces the song, he’s 20 years old, and he’s starting to feel his fame and power now, you can feel it, although that doesn’t stop him from getting stuck in a huge stutter. He has to stop speaking altogether, leaving the sentence unfinished. “We ain’t been doin’ it b-b-b-b-but … Yeah.” You can hear the crowd whooping and hollering during the song. This did not become one of their hits. This, I believe, is the only recording of it.

“February Stars” – Foo Fighters. Classic. That album, The Colour and the Shape, took over my whole life for no less than a year. I literally could not listen to it enough. I still can’t, frankly, although I have moved on from that original mania. It’s like The Eminem Show, another album that took over my life and my listening for a good straight year.

“The Pledge” – Brendan Benson. So much fun! This sounds like a hit from the 1960s, with his own individual spin on it. He’s so good.

“No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” – Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand. Outrageously awesome.

“Promise Her Anything (But Give Her Love”) – Dean Martin. There are so few perfect things in this life. Dean Martin is one of them.

“Porte En Arriere” – Emmylou Harris, Kate & Anna McGarrigle – from The McGarrigle Hour album, which has already come up. If you haven’t had the pleasure, do yourself a favor and check it out! And there’s a documentary that just came out, directed by a Facebook friend of mine, Lian Lunson, about a tribute concert for Kate McGarrigle (mother to Rufus and Martha Wainwright).

“Come Follow the Band” – Jim Dale, as Barnum on Broadway. Honestly, two Barnum songs in one Shuffle? What the hell is going on?

“Crack a Bottle” – Eminem, Dr. Dre & 50 Cent. I love it when Eminem sings. It’s adorable. It really is. He says he ‘can’t sing’ but that’s not true. He sings most of this.

“Break of Dawn” – Stevie Wonder. I always get excited when he comes up. Not a bad song in the bunch.

“Sonnet 10” – Rufus Wainwright. I guess I find this self-indulgent. I like the idea and I love him for following his own star and doing what he wants to do. It’s just not my cup of tea.

“Boardmeeting” – Timbaland, featuring Magoo. From Shock Value, a great album.

“What’d I Say” – Elvis Presley, in rehearsal for Vegas. A jamming rehearsal session. Elvis forgets the lines, and what ends up coming out is hysterical. “Put your dress on, go on home …” He starts laughing at times, too.

“If That Isn’t Love” – Elvis, from the wonderful Good Times album. This is very church-y. The arrangement is classic gospel. And Elvis, man: he is singing the hell out of this song. He has a very full and rich sound here.

“Southern Song” – Pat McCurdy. One of his goofball hits. Totally offensive.

“Jerkwater County” – Mike Viola and the Candy Butchers. The guitar is so interesting here. Like I said: his chord changes, the sounds he comes up with … they pierce right through me in a way that feels involuntary.

“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” – The Beatles. I was a little bit obsessed with this song when I was a pipsqueak of 9 or 10. I saw the entire thing unfurling like a movie in my head. I kept seeing this lunatic creeping around with a silver hammer. What the hell was his problem? Can’t anyone STOP him?

“Darts of Pleasure” – Franz Ferdinand. I was really into them for about an afternoon. The bloom is off the rose.

“Push” – Madonna. From Confessions on a Dance Floor. Catchy. I love this album.

“I’ll Stick Around” – Foo Fighters. From their first album, which was such an exciting event to those of us who missed Kurt Cobain. I remember my sister Jean saying to me, in a hushed tone of awe, “Have you heard Dave Grohl has a new band?” Me: “WHAT?” Jean: “And, Sheila. He plays the guitar.” Me: “WHAT???” It’s a great album. Perhaps you “had to be there” but I imagine those of you out there who were huge Nirvana fans and then moved on to embrace the Foo Fighters will relate to that story.

“An American Trilogy” – Elvis Presley. He did this medley every show. It was deeply personal, a statement of who he was, his vision of the universe, of America, of the South, of our racist past, and our future of hopefully integration and redemption. It’s all there.

“Blueberry Hill / I Can’t Stop Loving You” – Elvis’ concert in Memphis at the Mid-South Coliseum in 1974. Hometown boy made good, real good. It was an enormous event, of course. And Elvis rocked the planet. The album of this concert sounds great, it has my favorite version of “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”. Those who dismiss the entire decade of the 70s as some falling-off or decline in power are really stretching it. Yeah, maybe in 76 and 77 he started to really fail. But that still gives us a good 6 years to work with. This concert is phenomenal.

“The Good Life” – Pat McCurdy. Okay, I’m sick of him showing up now. Go away.

“Cad É Sin Don Té Sin” – The Cassidys. An Irish group. I love their stuff.

“Thunder On the Mountain” – Wanda Jackson, from the Jack White produced album that came out a couple years ago. A huge bluesy rocking sound. Fantastic band, boogie-woogie piano, horns, screaming guitars, and the great great Wanda Jackson.

“I Can’t Make It Alone” – the great Maria McKee. I have been into her for years, starting out with Lone Justice. What a voice. I am so happy that we have become friends in the last couple of years. She came to my reading in Los Angeles. She was a beautiful listening presence, sitting there in my cousin Mike’s living room with the rest of the crowd. She’s so talented.

“Body and Soul” – Tori Amos. Now that’s more like it, girl. Get pissed, get enraged.

“One Track Heart” – Elvis Presley, from Roustabout. Honestly. This is RIDICULOUS.

“Only the Strong Survive” – Elvis Presley, from the phenomenal From Elvis in Memphis, recorded in 1969 at American Studios. Just looking at the song list from those sessions (it ended up being two albums) gives me goosebumps. Suspicious Minds, In the Ghetto, Long Black Limousine, True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, Power Of My love, I mean the list goes on and on. Elvis engineering a comeback with the help of producer Chips Moman (I found his musical note on the sidewalk in Memphis.)

“Don’t Let Go” – Weezer. I love these guys. Their songs are short, fast, and specific. They get in, they get out.

“Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little” – the chattering ladies in The Music Man. Hahaha. “BALLLLLLLzac.”

And I think that’s a good place to stop.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

The Return of Nancy Savoca’s Dogfight

Posted on January 23, 2013 by sheila

For a while now, Nancy Savoca’s masterpiece Dogfight has been out of print. It had been released on DVD, with a wonderful commentary track by Savoca, but it was threatening to slide into obscurity. (I have made a couple of requests/suggestions to Criterion that they release this baby. I will continue to do so.) So very good news: the great Warner Archives has just released Dogfight on DVD, with the Savoca commentary.

The news was flying about Twitter yesterday, and so I figured I would provide a link to one of the pieces on my site of which I am most proud: a conversation between me and Matt Zoller Seitz about Dogfight.

I am very proud of what we did there, and proud of that comments section (people are still showing up to share their thoughts about the movie), and Nancy Savoca herself placed a link to our conversation on her homepage.

Thank you, Warner Archives, for the great work you all do. Purchase Dogfight here.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Stuff I’ve Been Reading

Posted on January 23, 2013 by sheila

— I finished Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, and it is just as good as everyone has said, even better, and I could not put it down. What a last line! Goosebumps. Now onto the sequel! Off with her head!

— Sophie in North Korea: amazing commentary and photographs.

— “I Will Ruin Him” – a pretty harrowing piece about being stalked. He appears to have written a book on his experience, and if this essay is any indication, it will be very upsetting reading. I have been stalked in a similar manner. It feels just like he says it feels. It is a “personal emergency” because your name is being attacked. Your reputation.

— Olywn Hughes SPEAKS. What a perpetual crankypants. But hearing from Olywn is so rare, I ate this up.

— Fascinating photos and commentary about the Salton Riviera, outside of Palm Springs. Of course this makes me think of one of my obsessions: the boat cemetery in Central Asia, although the Salton Riviera is not quite a worldwide environmental disaster. Still, the eerie photos compare.

— Member the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the 1980s and 90s? Sure, you do. Well, Jessa Crispin (aka Book Slut) informed us that it is the 20th anniversary of that scare, and she has a ton of fascinating links. The Frontline documentary on False Confessions was horrific, a living nightmare. Things may be shitty but at least I didn’t falsely confess to murder, under brutal interrogation, and at least I didn’t have memories implanted in my brain by charlatan therapists that I had been forced to drink blood by my satan-worshipping daycare worker. So one thing led to another and I am now deeply engrossed in Kenneth Lanning’s 1992 FBI report on the Satanic Ritual Abuse phenomenon. Lanning actually did not go along with the flow at the time, always thought that this was a false scare, that therapists were capitalizing on it, and that people were being “given” false memories through coercive therapeutic techniques. Thank goodness for brave critical thinkers. Strangely enough (and wonderfully enough), one of my favorite writers, Joan Acocella (I excerpted heavily from her book of essays recently) has written a book on the “MPD” phenom around the same time, which wasalso tied into the SRA scare. I have the book, and will read it soon. Acocella is a dance writer, but her topics are wide and varied and I love that she would have taken on this still-controversial subject.

— Interesting essay about suicide, and the prevalence of suicide in English history (there are a couple books coming out on the topic).

Numerous believers have made themselves desperate by nursing a sense of their own unique culpability. This kind of suicidal despair – convincing oneself that one is permanently cast out from the possibility of forgiveness – is terrible to read about. Take William Cowper. He was destined for the law, a profession for which, due to his morbid fear of public speaking, he was wholly unsuited. The prospect of being examined in 1763 at the bar of the House of Lords drove him to a series of frantic measures. About a week before the examination he bought a half-ounce of laudanum. Unable to consume the fatal dose, he thought of escaping to France. He resolved to drown himself, then tried to stab himself with his penknife, and finally hanged himself with a scarlet garter which broke just as he lost consciousness. On coming to, he heard the sound of his own groans and assumed he was in hell. A period of bitter misery ensued; Cowper attempted suicide on at least one further occasion. But conversations with his brother and chance readings in the Bible began to chip away at his certainty that he was the helpless prey of a furious, vengeful God. On July 26, 1764 he picked up a Bible and opened it, randomly, at Romans 3.25: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God”. In an instant, Cowper found strength to believe in the redeeming power of Christ, and was lost in tears of grateful ecstasy.

— My friend Dennis Cozzalio, he who helms the indispensable Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, pulls out all the stops with a magnificent post about special effects, from Superman to Life of Pi, but honing in on Zelig as the real groundbreaker. Not to be missed.

Seen today the movie looks like a standout in Allen’s career, one of the most original and innovative movies of the decade of the 1980s, regardless of its comparatively insular qualities and supposed lack of thematic scope. But Zelig’s real impact, as it turned out, was in the suggestion of what could be done with that familiar newsreel imagery. Cinematographer Gordon Willis ingeniously mocked-up and graded down the gorgeous monochromatic imagery he perfected for Manhattan and Stardust Memories so that footage of the “little lost sheep Zelig” could be seamlessly integrated into the same picture with historical figures like Babe Ruth, Calvin Coolidge and even Adolf Hitler. The meager audiences that turned out in theaters marveled at Willis’ achievement— Zelig and Willis were even mentioned on the front cover of the highbrow film journal People magazine upon the film’s release, a level of mainstream coverage which would require a sex scandal some 10 years later in order for Allen to duplicate.

— Speaking of not-to-be-missed essays by friends of mine, Steven Boone writes a magnificent essay on Spike Lee and Django Unchained which is the best thing I have read on the controversy, and on the movie itself (which I really liked, with a couple of minor quibbles). But it’s a challenging work of art, and I had been dying to know Boone’s take. So there it is. A pretty raucous comments section too.

Posted in Miscellania | Tagged | 14 Comments

2012. Love You, Hate You, Next.

Posted on January 22, 2013 by sheila

I rarely do these things, but I saw this at my friend Ted’s place and thought I’d fill it out. On my own terms.

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before?
Put together a New York reading of my script, at The Vineyard, which led to the next item.
Signed with a major agent, and came up with career plan with said agent.
Went to Graceland.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t do resolutions.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No. Unless I’m forgetting someone. Sorry.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
Elvis-Land.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?
Oh, don’t even start with me with that bullshit.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
June 25. The reading at the Vineyard in New York City. A triumph. Yes, hopefully only the beginning, but totally a Night for the Books. A high watermark. Thank you Kerry O’Malley, Aaron Mathias, Greg Santos, Jack Cumming and Doug Aibel at The Vineyard. And all of the other people who helped make that happen (including the amazing audience.)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I feel like I covered this.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Probably trusting when I shouldn’t have.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, thank goodness. I am very grateful for my health.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Honestly, a pair of jeans. My weight has been bugging me, and I’m working on it, but I have stopped wearing jeans because I hate feeling like a stuffed-Cornish-hen in them. But I found a pair of jeans that I love so much, that I think look great on me, that are comfortable, awesome, etc., that I am now back in Jeans-Wearing-Mode, now that I know what works. I bought a couple more pairs. And my sister Jean gave me skinny jeans for my birthday and I love them.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
President Obama standing up for gay marriage.
My friend Alex going back to grad school.
My sister Jean rocking the planet in Boot Camp, while juggling new responsibilities at her job and being a good wife and mother.
My sister Siobhan for having one of her songs play in a commercial.
My brother Brendan for his hilarious appearances on Burn Notice and for continuing to be an amazing dad to Cashel, who is doing so great.
My mother, for blowing me away daily with her kindness, her strength, her courage.
My friend Brooke for striking out on her own and forming her own casting company.
My friend Mitchell, for his continued success in improv and Santaland Diaries, and for rocking the planet in whatever he chooses to do.
My friend David, for his work with the Food Bank, his creation of the Back Pack Pals program, and all the incredible charity work he’s been doing.
Pretty much everyone I know is up to something awesome. If I know you, I am proud of you for what you are doing in your life, and I celebrate you.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Anyone who had the gall to make a stupid comment about rape (although, conversely, I am glad these people spoke out so freely: it is their truth and it is better that they are in plain sight so we know what we are dealing with). The people who seem to feel Sandy Hook was a conspiracy. Glenn Greenwald’s condemnation of Zero Dark Thirty before he had even seen it.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Books. Memphis trips. Road trips. Staying in random ratty motels when I need to get away. I keep an allowance separate so I can stay in a motel at least once a month.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
My reading on June 25. I could barely sleep. It was glorious. I also got very excited about both trips to Memphis I took this year.

16. What song will always remind you of 2012?
“Cherry Cherry”, unfortunately.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?

b) thinner or fatter?
c) richer or poorer?

I prefer not to compare. That way danger lies.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Exercise.
Be kind to myself.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Crying. I probably cried for a total of two months this year.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
With family.


21. Did you fall in love in 2012?
Nope.

22. How many one-night stands?
Rude!

23. What was your favourite TV program?
I am finally on the Downton Abbey train and I can’t get off.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Yes.

25. What was the best book you read?
Lolita.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I don’t know that I discovered anyone new this year.

27. What did you want and get?
An agent. Some serious representation for my work.

28. What did you want and not get?
It’s really “the substance of things hoped for” I mourn. But that’s always the case. I’ve been mourning that shit for 20 years.

29. What were your favourite performances this year?
Kerry O’Malley and Aaron Mathias in the roles of Neve and Jack in the reading of my script, July and Half of August. They were both magnificent.
Joaquin Phoenix in The Master
Jack Black in Bernie
Scoot McNairy in the one-two punch of Argo and Killing Them Softly. This guy is the real deal.
Tommy Lee Jones in Hope Springs (loved him in Lincoln, too, but he KILLED me in Hope Springs)
Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey
Don Cheadle in Flight (Denzel was awesome, too, but I’m always about the support-staff, how crucial they are to a film’s success. To my mind, Cheadle MADE that movie happen. He was a worthy enough foe to Denzel so that you can really feel the stakes. Great performance).
Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty (the whole cast was incredible).
Jafar Panahi as himself in This Is Not a Film (my review here)
Bobby Moynihan in Certainty (review here)
Kristen Harris in Passionflower (I interviewed her here)
Anupam Kher in Silver Linings Playbook. I laughed every time that doctor opened his mouth. My favorite bit was his offscreen observation, “This is very very manic indeed.”
Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained. He was quite frightening.
Shawn Christensen in Curfew (definitely in my Top 10 of the year, despite the fact that it is 19 minutes long). Review here, interview with Christensen here

There’s still quite a bit this year that I have not seen. I have not seen Amour (I am avoiding it like the plague, although I will get to it.) I haven’t seen The Perks of Being a Wallflower or Holy Motors.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I didn’t do anything on my birthday, and none of your business.

31.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More sex.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?
Clearly it had to do with finding the right pair of jeans.

33. What kept you sane?
Elvis.
My friends.
Stephen King.
My family.
My writing.
Hope.
Coffee.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Healthcare and the anti-woman rhetoric filling the airwaves.

35. Whom did you miss?
Dad. Every day.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Aaron Mathias and Greg Santos. True friends.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012:
I can do anything I set my mind to. I can move mountains. I can make shit happen. It’s easy in New York to feel like you are spinning your wheels. I had felt that way for about five years, even though I wrote a whole damn book in that time (un-published, but whatever, I wrote the damn thing). But the hustle for this script was distinct and different. The point is to hustle so hard for yourself that other people end up hustling for you. Shit starts to happen when other people are doing the heavy-lifting for you. That’s what it means to have a team, to have representation. But that can only happen if you’ve put in the hours and hours (and years) of work. People don’t back flukes. They back what they think is a winning prospect. I worked my ass off from 2009 to 2011 on that damn script. With help from cousin Mike, and Mitchell in Chicago, I had two readings of that thing in Los Angeles and Chicago in 2011. I could have stopped there. I could have waited for Steppenwolf to call. There were a couple of interesting Chicago bites after the reading (including Steppenwolf), but the lesson is: keep moving, always keep moving. Next, next, next. So I upped my game, and asked for help. I knew I had to move it out of my circle for the next New York reading. I couldn’t limit it to people I knew. I needed to pack that audience with not just friends and family who loved me (although I needed them there too), I needed to pack it with industry people and theatre people hungry for a new voice, for a new project, for new material. My cousin Kerry was instrumental in making that happen, as was Greg Santos’ brilliance with press releases and invitations. It took a LOT to get that reading organized. It basically took from November of 2011 until almost the week before the reading, June 2012. We had an actor signed up for it, a big star, but his schedule wouldn’t allow him to do the reading. But we hung on there with his schedule for no less than three months, and the reading was canceled three times. Finally, with no hard feelings, we moved on to find someone else. I looped my casting friend Brooke in. Kerry reached out to people. And I started racking my brains of actors I could approach – people with a little bit of New York cache. I found him in Aaron Mathias. I had seen him in an independent film, Things You Don’t Understand, and fell in love with his performance. I had interviewed David Spaltro, the director, so I decided, what the hell, let’s take a risk and see if I can talk to Aaron. Spaltro arranged an introduction, Aaron responded to the script like crazy (“Thank you for ruining my afternoon” was the first thing he said to me after reading it), and was absolutely a dream in the role. It all seems inevitable, now that it went down that way, but it was pretty touch-and-go there for about four months. And Kerry was moving to Los Angeles in July. We HAD to do it the week we did it. It is amazing how complicated it is to get two actors in one room for a rehearsal and a reading. But anyway, it worked. And the audience was made up of loved ones, friends and colleagues, as well as industry people, who immediately began circling me like sharks afterwards. It was beyond my wildest dreams. I am still proud of myself that I stuck with it, that I not only wrote the damn thing, and got it to a place where I felt ready to start shopping it around … but that I kept pushing on with the “reading” process, an essential part of making sure the thing had legs, was play-able, was something an audience would respond to. The amount of work that went into it is something I almost think of with dread now, as I launch my next two projects, like: “Ugh. Here go the next two years of my life.” But it was amazing what I was capable of once I put my mind to it. NOTHING would stop me. I still feel unstoppable. Nobody can take it away from me. That train has left the station.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Look at her face
She’s crying
See her disgrace
It’s blinding
I hope you figure it out

Look at her face
She’s blinded
By her mistakes
It’s lying
I hope you figure it out

I wanted you bad
Regretful and true
You looked back in front of me
Completely in view

This kid’s got your back
The sunlight is true
Look back in front of me
Completely anew
I want you to notice

Feeling your styles the causes your blankets that saved me
Over and over and over and over you played me
Afraid of rejection the places we went that defaced me
Over and over and over and over you saved me

Look at her face
She’s crying
See her mistakes
They’re blinding

I hope you figure it out

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 34 Comments