(5) It's the season of Nicole Kidman. Not only is "Destroyer" on the way, but also we can expect the second truckload of "Big Little Lies."
Here are some things I've learned from reading obsessively about Nicole Kidman. She doesn't care too much if the art that emerges is perfect. She just keeps making movies, as an act of exploration. I really buy that rhetoric. Maybe I'm just diva-smitten. Kidman insists on having a busy work schedule, because, otherwise, she becomes shy and forgets to trust her instincts. For "Destroyer," she demanded to play both her character-in-youth and her character-in-maturity. ("I wanted the full story, even if this required CGI.") As a Dostoyevsky-reading child, Kidman developed an interest in human behavior, and that interest hasn't really led her too far astray yet. Thank you for bearing with me.
(4) As you prepare for "Merrily We Roll Along," there is one other thing you should note about "Not a Day Goes By." At the end, the speaker observes: "Until I die, I'll die day after day after day..." This is something you can get away with in a poem. Two different understandings of death: the literal one, and then death-in-life, life as paralysis. All of this seems so effortless, you forget to consider the care that went into the drafting.
(3) There is a difference between padding-for-commercial-reasons and padding-that-feels-light-and-airy. Why is that?
When I saw the soul-dead new "Grinch," I observed that several interludes were not very clever and did nothing to push the plot along. They were there to fulfill some kind of corporate mandate. In "Charlie Brown Christmas," there's padding, as well, but it doesn't feel that way. Snoopy impersonating a penguin isn't necessary. Lucy bizarrely insisting that January snowflakes are superior to December snowflakes: not necessary. But also: not soul-dead. Delightful. The world is strange.
(2) There's an odd controversy over having adults play kids in "Mockingbird."
I wish people would direct their thoughts to loftier planes. It seems entirely reasonable to me that an adult could play a kid onstage: Adult actors should be imaginative and capable of playing a child, persuasively. For Pete's sake, on Broadway, Sarah J. Parker once played a dog. Theater, by its very nature, allows for experimentation; in some ways, it is *more* flexible than movies or TV. (I fell in love with theater, in childhood, when someone used two flashlights, to represent the headlights of a racing car, in "Once on This Island.")
(1) Who ought to get a Golden Globe for "Assassination of Gianni Versace"?
If anyone, it's Judith Light. At times, her work bordered on scenery-chewing. But, at the least, she wasn't ever easy to take your eyes off of. Light said, early in her career, she made a choice not to turn opportunities down in the interest of being high-minded. She was not going to wait for Chekhov. She was going to do the work God handed to her--whether that was a soap opera or "Who's the Boss." She wasn't interested in glamour or prestige--just working. How that commitment has paid off! What a compelling Third Act we are witnessing! God Bless Her.
Here are some things I've learned from reading obsessively about Nicole Kidman. She doesn't care too much if the art that emerges is perfect. She just keeps making movies, as an act of exploration. I really buy that rhetoric. Maybe I'm just diva-smitten. Kidman insists on having a busy work schedule, because, otherwise, she becomes shy and forgets to trust her instincts. For "Destroyer," she demanded to play both her character-in-youth and her character-in-maturity. ("I wanted the full story, even if this required CGI.") As a Dostoyevsky-reading child, Kidman developed an interest in human behavior, and that interest hasn't really led her too far astray yet. Thank you for bearing with me.
(4) As you prepare for "Merrily We Roll Along," there is one other thing you should note about "Not a Day Goes By." At the end, the speaker observes: "Until I die, I'll die day after day after day..." This is something you can get away with in a poem. Two different understandings of death: the literal one, and then death-in-life, life as paralysis. All of this seems so effortless, you forget to consider the care that went into the drafting.
(3) There is a difference between padding-for-commercial-reasons and padding-that-feels-light-and-airy. Why is that?
When I saw the soul-dead new "Grinch," I observed that several interludes were not very clever and did nothing to push the plot along. They were there to fulfill some kind of corporate mandate. In "Charlie Brown Christmas," there's padding, as well, but it doesn't feel that way. Snoopy impersonating a penguin isn't necessary. Lucy bizarrely insisting that January snowflakes are superior to December snowflakes: not necessary. But also: not soul-dead. Delightful. The world is strange.
(2) There's an odd controversy over having adults play kids in "Mockingbird."
I wish people would direct their thoughts to loftier planes. It seems entirely reasonable to me that an adult could play a kid onstage: Adult actors should be imaginative and capable of playing a child, persuasively. For Pete's sake, on Broadway, Sarah J. Parker once played a dog. Theater, by its very nature, allows for experimentation; in some ways, it is *more* flexible than movies or TV. (I fell in love with theater, in childhood, when someone used two flashlights, to represent the headlights of a racing car, in "Once on This Island.")
(1) Who ought to get a Golden Globe for "Assassination of Gianni Versace"?
If anyone, it's Judith Light. At times, her work bordered on scenery-chewing. But, at the least, she wasn't ever easy to take your eyes off of. Light said, early in her career, she made a choice not to turn opportunities down in the interest of being high-minded. She was not going to wait for Chekhov. She was going to do the work God handed to her--whether that was a soap opera or "Who's the Boss." She wasn't interested in glamour or prestige--just working. How that commitment has paid off! What a compelling Third Act we are witnessing! God Bless Her.
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