Liars and Saints

I feel you, Johanna I feel you I was half convinced I'd waken, Satisfied enough to dream you Happily I was mistaken Johanna I'll steal you, Johanna I'll steal you Do they think that walls can hide you? Even now I'm at your window I am in the dark beside you Buried sweetly in your yellow hair I feel you, Johanna And one day, I'll steal you, 'Til I'm with you then I'm with you there, Sweetly buried in your yellow hair. This is among Sondheim's most famous love songs. Bernadette Peters uses it in concert. It was first performed by Victor Garber, in the Broadway debut of "Sweeney Todd," and Garber went on to appear in the James Cameron movie "Titanic"--and now you can see him in "Hello, Dolly!" The song is like something from "Porgy and Bess." I'm sure that's deliberate. Sondheim admires P and B because the verses pack a great deal of meaning into simple language--"fish are j...

Lorrie Moore is maybe my favorite living writer, and her new book of essays is out in a few days. The Times is in love with it. The reviewer especially likes Moore's description of Patti LuPone--and her "wavy stingray mouth."  As usual, in her press materials for the book, Moore seems pleasantly deranged. For example, she advises the readers of the Washington Post: "Don't read all of it, and don't read it in the order in which it appears. I made those mistakes." Then she seems to shudder. What on Earth can she be talking about? Also, she tells the Post: "I don't really think about Trump. I've had enough. The person I'm really wondering about is Marla Maples." This isn't someone deliberately working at being funny. I have full confidence that Lorrie Moore really does sit around wondering about Marla Maples. This is what separates her from the rest of us. Lastly, I'm delighted to see that the new book of essays has not one...

We're all excited right now because "White Houses" has been optioned for TV. It's getting spun as "an American version of 'The Crown'." Which raises questions. How are these two bits of storytelling similar? (1) They both treat the historical record rather lightly. Hilary Mantel has said she would never knowingly falsify history. She will not dirty her hands with "composite characters." Everything she reports is factual, as far as she is aware. This high-minded approach to history doesn't appeal to Amy Bloom or Peter Morgan. So, for example, Bloom invents a circus-worker phase for Lorena Hickok. And Peter Morgan links Elizabeth's triumph in Africa to a stormy visit from Jackie Kennedy, though there's nothing to suggest the two events were actually linked, in actual history. (Lin-Manuel Miranda also uses and abuses history in ways that are convenient for him. e.g. Thomas Jefferson really had nothing to do with exposing Hamilt...

Generally, my aim in this blog is to take well-loved pop-culture staples (“Sex and the City,” “Bridesmaids”) and make you see them in a new, or newish, way. But occasionally I come across a sort-of-overlooked gem, and then, since people don’t really know about it, I don’t need to revise any assumptions. I just need to promote the gem. I did that with the movie “Columbus.” And now I’ll do it with the new novel, “The Friend,” by Sigrid Nunez. Basically, this is a very funny, very sad novel about a woman lazily wondering whether she should end her own life. That’s never explicitly spelled out. But her close friend--an esteemed writer, whom she may have loved--has just offed himself. The woman--who seems to be a proxy for Sigrid Nunez (but is she, really?)--has few strong attachments in the social realm. Her love life seems not to exist. (She has some interesting thoughts about the habits of a flaneur. A male writer speculates that you can’t be a female flaneur, because if you’re female,...

I think we’re all excited for the upcoming televised production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” John Legend, Sara Bareilles--these are not the casting choices I would have made. But still. (Jesus: A thankless role. Maybe it makes sense to put someone as boring and pretty as Mr. Legend in those shoes. He will look nice in his fitted white tee shirts. I *am* excited for Brandon Victor Dixon in the role of Judas--the one great role in this show. Judas is the only guy who regularly gets nominated for a Tony Award--Ben Vereen, Josh Young. Mr. Dixon has approached Tony glory twice: via “The Color Purple,” and via “Shuffle Along.” “The Color Purple” was especially surprising, because the role Dixon was handed was a nothing role. If you spend hours trying to determine Dixon’s sexual orientation online, as I once did, for no clear reason, you will discover a man out in the ether, ranting that Dixon once shtupped his--this random man’s--wife. It’s a strange, passionate, ungrammatical monologue. W...

“Death Wish” is--indeed--about violent death. Bruce Willis leaves his home address in a highly-visible place, in a car. A valet sees the address. The valet then plots a break-in. But: a problem! Willis’s wife and daughter are home. Wife (that’s Elizabeth Shue! from “Leaving Las Vegas”!) tries to end the incident by hurling scalding-hot water at Robber One’s face. But: Boom! Elizabeth is dead. Bruce Willis is frustrated with the cops. What does it take to get justice in the world? Inspired, Bruce purchases a gun and goes around murdering people who are not nice. One sells drugs out of an ice-cream stand and covertly tortures children. Another steals cars from people at gunpoint. By chance, Bruce (a doctor, in the daylight) finds himself operating on the guy who murdered his wife. The guy has a tattoo, and Bruce recalls the tattoo from the valet-parking incident, and he puts two and two together. And so then he goes on an Agatha Christie-ish sleuthing tour of Chicago, and he finds ...

It seems important, now that Bernadette Peters is dominating Broadway again, to collect some trivia. And “trivia” is not really the right noun. -How do you stay so trim at 71? You eat “three smiles of grapefruit” for breakfast. Later: salad and a tiny sliver of salmon. Sometimes, with your assistant, you’ll split a “Kind” bar--and the splitting is important because, of course, it halves the calories. (And the Kind half-bar is for "cheat" days.) -Bernadette never legally changed her name. Really, it’s still “Bernadette Lazarre.” Her mother--a textbook example of the “stage mother” phenomenon--claimed she needed to change it to “Peters” because that’s shorter, and you need a short name if you’re going to appear on a Broadway marquee. But Bernadette--never a fool--observed that the difference between “Lazarre” and “Peters” is just one letter. And so she learned an early lesson about ethnicity, and public perception, and the ugly demands of stardom. -As far as I know, Patti...

Another dark and dreary Monday. Let’s remember some important contrarian advice from Chris Rock: (1) Fuck and go places. Mr. Rock rejects the cliche that “relationships are hard.” They are not hard, he says. You need only: fuck and go places. That is all you should be doing, per Chris Rock. He also suggests that you try not to feel competitive with your partner; “her victories are yours.” And he dismisses the idea of waiting till you’re "in the mood." “You can eat pussy while suicidally depressed.” He mimes this behavior. It’s clear he is deadly serious. (2) Pressure makes diamonds. Bullying is a gift. He suggests that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg would not have gone anywhere if they had not been relentlessly bullied in school. (He even imagines some of this bullying, which, in his mind, takes the form of : “Fucker! Hey, Fuckerberg!”) Mr. Rock believes that the reason we have Trump right now is that we have become powerless in the face of bullying. He suggests that, for...

Oddly, the new horror flick resembles Anne Lamott’s recent novel, “Imperfect Birds.” Do you know that novel? It’s about a girl with a drug addiction. If you’re really into drugs, your parents can send you to a kind of nature-filled boot camp, where you haul tree trunks around and learn self-discipline. Or something. “Imperfect Birds” is about a mother who needs to send her daughter to a place like that. And the daughter is snotty and imperiled. And the mother is in denial--and then sometimes she is fully conscious--and she is constantly wondering if she is doing the right thing. In “The Strangers: Prey at Night,” Christina Hendricks needs to send her kid to boarding school. The kid--let’s call her Daughter--has done some bad stuff (maybe class-cutting, drug-ingesting). Daughter thinks that Mom’s insistence on boarding school is a kind of abandonment; “you’re sending me off because you don’t want to look at me anymore.” Hendricks can’t get through to Daughter; “we are making sacrifice...

Another favorite object of mine: “Where the God of Love Hangs Out,” by Amy Bloom. I bought this at a Borders that no longer exists--next to the Kips Bay Cinema. This wasn’t the original title. It was first meant to be called: “I Love to See You Coming, I Hate to See You Go.” That title was axed--presumably because “See You Coming” evoked dirty thoughts that did not align with the thoughts Bloom wished to evoke. (That said, the cover is dirty. It’s a peach and a cherry, and the cherry has a long stem. We’re meant to think of a penis and a vagina. Bloom is gleeful when it comes to writing about sex. She once published an essay about the loss of her own virginity. “God of Love” has an elderly woman giving her husband a hand job (and comparing the administration of blow jobs to the act of “sucking on a wet mitten”). It has a young man teaching his brother about cunnilingus--through the use of a peach. (“You’ve really gotta get your nose in there.”) It has a young woman with her boyfriend...

These photos are two of my most prized possessions. And they’re free. You can get them on your computer. My husband says I’m obsessed with Laura Dern. He calls her “Lorna Doone,” because it’s just easier to remember. In the “green” image, Ms. Dern, as Amy Jellicoe, is seated, sobbing, on the toilet in her office. The lighting seems surreal; it’s as if Amy were in a sickly sea of green. Makeup runs down her face like warpaint. The shirt seems a bit loud. As I recall, after this sobbing-on-the-toilet sequence, Amy will run down the hallway, after her married boss/boyfriend, and throw herself in front of the elevator doors. She will try to pry the doors back open, screaming out her pain and her need. The married boyfriend is surrounded by colleagues. This moment spells the temporary end of Amy’s (moderately) high-flying career. Mike White, who wrote all of “Enlightened,” seems exceedingly wise. He had been working on some big network show. He was exasperated. The corporate bigwigs we...

I feel a grab bag coming on. -A friend reminded me of an important SJP/Cattrall fact. SJP may have felt compelled to comment on the Cattrall family sadness in press interviews--yes--but did she really need to go and post on Instagram? *That* move does feel calculated and political and gross, and *that* is something Andy Cohen has *not* felt moved to comment on. (I talk shit about Andy Cohen, but in large part I think I’m just envious. I myself would like to have a large media empire and a memoir called “Superficial.” Also, the way he denied knowing Kathy Griffin--like Peter denying his knowledge of Jesus! So brazen and ruthless. I do not have those instincts. Perhaps I would have climbed higher in my early life if I’d taken a page from Cohen’s book.) -You couldn’t pay me to see “The Shape of Water,” but I’m very excited for “The Strangers II: Prey at Night.” “The Strangers I” came out around ten years ago, and it was an especially effective shocker. Basically, Liv Tyler lives i...

It’s time for me to spell out precisely what I think of Kim Cattrall. This came up at the lunch-room table yesterday. I need to clarify my thoughts, both for myself and for the world . Here’s my understanding of the feud. Kim Cattrall was never especially happy on the set of “Sex and the City,” the TV show. Perhaps SJP felt threatened--as Cattrall was the only cast member whose stardom approached the realm of SJP’s stardom. Cattrall found the set cliquish. She felt excluded from events that the other three ladies would skip off to--all the time. But she held her tongue. Then the movies happened. Around the time of “Sex and the City 2,” a really dreadful piece of work, Cattrall said, “I’m done. No more.” Here’s where things get tricky. A script for “Sex and the City 3” surfaced. It’s apparently excellent--a way of redeeming the series. (I believe that.) Cattrall’s view: “I said no, and I stuck with that.” The view from SJP’s camp: “Cattrall strung us along, giving evasive answers,...

It’s not odd to love “Bridesmaids.” There are so many show-stopper moments. The late great Jill Clayburgh, revealing she attends AA just for fun, and describing a young man “blow-jobbing for heroin.” Melissa McCarthy shitting in a sink; Maya Rudolph shitting in the middle of a street, in a bridal gown. Kristen Wiig drunkenly calling a flight attendant “Stove,” then asking, “What, are you an appliance?” McCarthy hoisting her leg in the air and whispering about the “steam heat” coming from her “undercarriage.” Rebel Wilson pouring frozen peas on her bloody tattoo (“It’s a Mexican drinking worm!”). And maybe my favorite moment: Wiig crazily lashing out at a high-schooler patron at the jewelry store, suggesting that this young lady has attained her alleged popularity by sucking dicks. (We haven’t even addressed Jon Hamm’s jackhammering sexual rhythms, and the way he seems to puff mechanical gale-force winds into the beleaguered Wiig’s left ear. This movie is rare for having an exceptionall...

Further thoughts on “Sex and the City”: -“Modelizer” was meant to be a pseudo-branded term. It was meant to fall from our lips: short-hand for someone who dates only models. The term didn’t catch on. But other tidbits from the “Sex and the City” world did catch on. “Manolo Blahnik”--metonymy for the entire fairy-tale planet invented for that series. “He’s Just Not that Into You.” “Magnolia Cupcake.” “Cosmo.” “I’m a Samantha.” “The post-it note.” “The scrunchie.” “Michiko Kakutani review.” “Vera Wang wedding gown.” “Meatpacking district.” Can you think of others? -It’s possible to feel no human connection with any part of “The Modelizer” (Season One), and still enjoy its construction. Fairy tales are about curses and reverses, sudden twists, magical potions, perilous journeys. Miranda attends a dinner party. She believes the conversation is impromptu, fresh: “If you could sleep with one celebrity, which would it be?” We watch the hilarity. Then the rug is pulled from under us. This ...

Here’s everything that fascinates me about Jennifer Lawrence right now. (1) She dropped out of middle school (early high school?) because she felt she wasn’t very smart. But she identified one skill that she felt set her apart. That had to do with reading. When she read a novel or story, she found she could construct a psychological profile for each character. She knew what made the characters tick; she could envision how their mannerisms would look; she could anticipate what they would do next. (This is simply good reading--but proficient actors are, at base, exceptionally strong readers. They take the reading skills that the rest of us have, and they just amp up those skills. An acquaintance, the actress Zoe Kazan, once said that being a performer was just another way of being a literary scholar. I see that in Liz Merriweather, too--the head writer for “New Girl.” When I was in college, she would perform on-stage, and you’d just see her melt into the character. The lines of distinc...

Jennifer Aniston often makes movies that aren’t very good. “Just Go with It,” “Wanderlust,” “Office Christmas Party”--These are all movies I’ve paid full price to see in theaters, and I remember very little about them. But I like and admire Jennifer Aniston. That’s for a few reasons. (1) She turned her “Friends” stint into a major film career--far surpassing the success of all of her “Friends” costars. If you took the other five and made a big ball out of their post-“Friends” careers, it would not match the bright, blazing sun that is Aniston. (2) She resists her “type,” as much as she can. She hasn’t always stuck to mediocre comedies. She made “Cake,” “The Good Girl,” and “Friends with Money,” and I imagine she had to fight pretty hard to create each one of those movies. How many other “Friends” figures are working with Nicole Holofcener and Mike White? (3) She’s genuinely amusing. People forget this. My favorite role of hers is in “Horrible Bosses,” where she’s a sociopathic de...