Liars and Saints

I did read Natalie Wood's daughter's memoir, and it's not that great--it has lines like "Moving forward meant letting go of the past"--but here are the tidbits you may want: *The official story about Wood's death: She was on a boat with her husband and with Christopher Walken. Everyone was drinking. Walken said, "It's important that Natalie continues to have a screen career." Wood's husband became angry; he thought this was a boundary violation. There was shouting. Wood went to bed. Later, maybe? Wood became awakened by a dinghy, and she went out to secure it so it wouldn't bang against the side of the boat. She slipped; she was drunk; she sank to her death. Something like this. *Natalie Wood starred in "West Side Story" and in "Gypsy," but the writer, Arthur Laurents, didn't like her. No word on Sondheim's thoughts. *Natalie Wood had a crazy, overbearing stage mother. This mother would go around sa...

I hate almost everything about email, and one thing I especially hate is the autoreply. I hate the autoreply because I feel it shouldn't have to exist; I feel, when I am on vacation from my job, the thought of even *drafting* an email to me should be barred from entering any colleague's head. If I were to write an honest autoreply, it would be this: What are you doing? There is truly nothing that you and I need to discuss for the next week, via email or any other kind of communication. Whatever you wrote below? I won't be reading it when I return. Try again in twelve to fourteen days. Since this isn't possible, I have gone with the following: Thank you for your email; I will be away for the week. If there is an urgent matter, please contact XXXXXXXXX. "Thank you for your email" is bullshit; really, it means, "Good God, you're a piece of work." I considered writing, "With urgent matters, please contact...." But t...

A major treat of parenting has been my rediscovery of folk tales and fairy tales. Not that I ever really forgot them. But now they are back in my life in a big, big way. The gateway drug was James Marshall. Late in his career, Marshall turned to retellings, "Goldilocks" and "Red Ridinghood" among them. Though Marshall stays fairly close to the original (or "pseudo-original") text, his pictures tell their own stories: a shoeless Prince lazily reading novels when he should be dating, a crazed Fairy Godmother sticking halfway out of the frame, a pig in suspenders and a banker hat. Everyone now calls Marshall a genius, and that's fair enough. You can see the joy in the retellings. I've traveled farther afield, with "Rumpelstiltskin" and "The Ugly Duckling." The authors are titans in their own way: Paul Zelinsky and Jerry Pinkney. I think neither has Marshall's sense of humor; neither has Marshall's flair for langu...

Great summer reading is "Something Wonderful," by Todd Purdum. I'll tell you why: *This is a smart, gossipy history of the collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Purdum includes many first drafts by Hammerstein (OH was less gifted than Rodgers, according to Sondheim, but OH worked hard) -- and it's a treat to see how, for example, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" grew out of some bad, bad drafting. *Each major R and H work gets its own chapter, so it's easy to dip in and out while still feeling you have had a full meal. For example, you might say, "I need to know everything possible about SOUTH PACIFIC tonight." Like a short story, the Purdum SOUTH PACIFIC chapter will give you everything you need to know. *If you're a nerd, like yours truly, you might wonder how Celeste Holm landed her role in OKLAHOMA, or how World War II impacted Hammerstein's choices, or how Hammerstein rewrote the ending of...

At times, I feel I have two sons, not one. My older son is my husband. He--Marc--doesn't get much time with the baby during the day, so at bedtime, he is hungry for fun. I want to wind down; Marc wants to tickle the baby. I want to sing soft lullabies; Marc wants to give high-decibel renditions of "Seventy-Six Trombones." For a long while, I could read a book while my baby slowly grew tired. I believed that the deep calm in my soul was somehow flowing out of me and into my baby, who would then fall asleep on his own. Those days are over. My son has discovered that I still exist behind the book, even when the book is blocking a direct line of view. So, as I try to read my gruesome mystery, my son slowly cranes his neck until he is peering at me around the corner of the hardcover; my son has a look of undiluted self-delight. He does not grow bored with this game. My husband learned the game, and now he does it, too; sometimes, I have an infant peering a...

I'm excited about "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," a docuseries set to premiere on HBO this Sunday. I'm excited for a few reasons: *Liz Garbus. You won't see her on camera, but she is the brain behind the story. Garbus's curiosity and intelligence are often on display on TV. They're on display in "There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane" and in "Who Killed Garrett Phillips" -- two of my favorite documentaries. They're on display in "Lost Girls," an intermittently-successful film on Netflix. (Even when Garbus doesn't knock one out of the park, she still gives you a thoughtful study of gender in America, and an opportunity to see Amy Ryan being ballsy, scene after scene.) *Patton Oswalt. "Gone in the Dark" is (oddly) one of the great love stories in recent years, and I look forward to seeing Oswalt describing his efforts to finish his wife's work after her death. *Michelle McNamara. Ms. McNamara ...

As the Fourth approaches....just a moment to remember the greatest "Star-Spangled Banner" of all time, Whitney Houston's: *Houston was 27 years old when she performed this song at the Super Bowl. *She had pre-recorded the song. At the actual event, she sang live into a dead mic. One otherworldly feature of this moment is how utterly at ease Houston seems, despite being viewed closely by trillions of people. *Houston and her team made the song in 4/4 time; it had usually been done in 3/4 time (brisk, a little waltzy). Making things 4/4 meant slowing things down, increasing the level of technical difficulty, creating a bluesy aura. Producers worried that the audience wouldn't like this, and would struggle to sing along. Houston shrugged. Meh. *The recording became a huge hit, and after 9/11, it became a huge hit ONCE AGAIN. The post-9/11 run meant that "Star-Spangled Banner" was the final Top Ten hit of Houston's career. *Whitney Houston w...

"When Harry Met Sally" is not the masterpiece people want it to be. Oh, sure. It's clever. The fake orgasm! The "dating rolodex" that Carrie Fisher keeps in her purse! The way Sally places an order in a diner! But this isn't a movie with living, breathing characters. It's a movie where Nora Ephron talks to Nora Ephron. Harry is Nora. Sally is Nora. I think Nora knew that, and I think Nora's greatest strength was in the form of the personal essay. But maybe you can't put bread--or enough bread--on the table, if you're simply writing personal essays. I grow tired of the formula even before it's written out. Boy and Girl will attempt to arrange the love lives of others, but, in trying, they will fail. In failing, they will find themselves coming closer together. Sex will be a disastrous event, a detonation of a small bomb, and then there will be weeks of silence. Boy will recite all the particular quirks he loves in Girl: "...

Lilly the mouse gets a purple plastic purse, and she wants to display it at Show-and-Tell. She knows her teacher won't mind. That teacher--Mr. Slinger--is a model of pedagogical excellence. He says, "Howdy!" ....He never says, "Morning, Pupils." He provides tasty cheesy snacks. He has an "Inspiration Lab" in the back corner. He rejects rows in favor of world-rocking "semicircles." He drily refers to his students as "rodents" -- and, indeed, they are, because everyone in this book is a mouse. Lilly gets impatient because of her purse. She needs everyone to see and admire it RIGHT NOW. This impatience leads to speaking out of turn. And the purse is confiscated. Lilly retaliates by drawing a brutal caricature of Mr. Slinger--"Fat, Mean Mr. Slinger"--and leaving it for her nemesis to see. Meanwhile, her Christ-like foil (Mr. Slinger) writes Lilly a loving and tender note and slips her extra cheese snacks in a bagg...

My husband says his favorite movie is "Field of Dreams," but it's really the John Travolta version of "Hairspray." I know this in my heart. When my husband first saw "Hairspray" -- on a flight to Singapore -- he watched alone, and he was so moved, he immediately went back to the beginning and watched a second time. There is so much ebullience in this musical, it seems to have been written especially for Marc, and I think the moments that speak most powerfully to him are: "Good Morning, Baltimore!" ...."Welcome to the Sixties!" ...."The Nicest Kids in Town!" ....and "You Can't Stop the Beat!" (I may have added exclamation points where they aren't needed, but something actually tells me they might be there in the script.) Days after a "Hairspray" re-viewing, my husband is still murmuring to me....apropos of nothing...."Why didn't Nikki Blonsky go on to a fabu...

"The Bridges of Madison County" was a critically-reviled bestseller, then it was a weirdly-dignified Clint Eastwood movie, then it was an ill-fated musical. You can say many things about Jason Robert Brown. One thing you could say is that lazy cliches fill his writing: Love-lorn searchers are always wandering in deserts, stopping in diners, living their lives out on the road. A more charitable thing you could say: JRB writes simply and directly about love, he "risks sentimentality," and he "connects" with many people, with apparent ease, on a regular basis. "It All Fades Away" is a standard JRB ballad. A troubled lover describes how all of life's diversions fade away in the company of love. "It all fades away with you." Like Sondheim, JRB manufactures a neat twist at the end, involving one small word. At the end, "It all fades away BUT you." (*Correction below.) In old age, the Clint Eastwood character will re...

My own comfort viewing right now is "The Good Wife," and I'll give you my three reasons: (1) Ask any gay man what he wants. The answer? Christine Baranski squaring off against "Scandal"'s Kate Burton, in a tense discussion about courtroom politics. "The Good Wife" can offer this. (2) A TV show should be kind to Broadway. Broadway stars need to earn a living, and they do this by turning in brief performances in big-budget TV shows. I'm still in Season One of "The Good Wife," and I've already seen: a pre-"Hamilton" Renee Goldsberry, a pre-"Saint Joan" Condola Rashad, a "Pal Joey"-era Martha Plimpton (I should say.... EMMY AWARD WINNER Martha Plimpton), and a pre-"Anastasia" Mary Beth Peil.....And this is just Season One! And they are all fabulous women! (Add Kate Burton--once again--and I start to have flashbacks to "Spring Awakening" ....) (3) This show is almost entirel...

One book that excites me right now is "Go To Sleep (I Miss You)" -- a graphic memoir about parenthood. If you're writing about your own life, you have to make yourself a weird, dynamic character; you have to recognize at least some of the absurdity in your own behavior. Lucy Knisley knows this, and she does the work very well. She recalls worrying--while pregnant--that having a kid would derail her important comic-book art. (We see an image of this art, a lady farting, in an upper corner.) Knisley mocks her own self-importance: "Charles Dickens said each baby born is better than the last. But....seriously, though....Mine is the best...." Knisley finds a vein called parental ambivalence/lunacy: how a new parent will urge, and urge, and urge the stormy baby to go to sleep....THANK GOD!!! .....and then, within moments, discover that she misses that stormy baby....How new parents--after they put the kid to sleep--will spend several minutes looking a...

I don't think an artist has to be a terrific person to crank out works worth reading. One of my all-time favorite writers, Richard Yates, was, I'm certain, really repugnant on a regular basis. But something seems to be missing from the current J.K. Rowling discussions. Why aren't people pointing out that her writing is generally pretty bad? (OK, Laura Lippman pointed this out on Twitter, but that's the one example I can think of. Oh, also, Alison Lurie once said it's a bit strange and not really suspenseful to unmask your villain so quickly. Voldemort isn't exactly Sondheim's Mrs. Lovett, in terms of surprising-us-and-generating-suspense. But Lurie likes other aspects of Rowling's work.) Among the most painfully-slow novels I've read in recent history was Rowling's "Career of Evil." This is about a group of people who want to be disfigured; the thought of losing a limb is a source of excitement. It's also about a murder...

Part of the genius of "Hamilton" was: combining influences. From Richard Rodgers to Ron Chernow to Beyonce to Nicki Minaj to Andrew Lloyd Webber. I'm also pretty sure, at times, Lin-Manuel Miranda is offering a memoir: Something tells me his own wife has said to him, "That would be enough." And "Philip, you outshine the morning sun" -- strikes me as autobiography. As you watch "Hamilton" on Disney-Plus, here are some influences to consider: *Rodgers and Hammerstein. Aaron Burr says, "You've got to be carefully taught. If you talk, you're gonna get shot." Burr doesn't seem to recognize the irony in Hammerstein's words--and this foolishness is true to Burr's character. *Stephen Sondheim. Close to the end of Act One, let's have a big climactic number that unites multiple plots through multiple melodies. ("Tonight Quintet.") That's what is happening with "Non-Stop." *H...

The great cartoonist, Jason A. Katzenstein, has a comic memoir coming out, "Everything Is an Emergency." (It's about JAK's OCD.) While awaiting that, you might enjoy Katzenstein's piece in "Current Affairs," entitled: "Some Things I Could Do with the NYPD's 6 Billion Dollar Budget." (This guy is very liberal, so understand that's a part of this. The piece imagines that the NYPD has been de-funded and dismissed.) https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/06/some-things-i-could-do-with-the-nypds-6-billion-annual-budget JAK alternates between the absurd and the real. For example, you could use the NYPD's budget to put up large Times Square billboards about your personal fondness for the comedian Richard Kind. ("My KIND of Guy....") Or, simply, you could use the money to fix the subway. You could pay each FRIENDS co-star 1 million dollars for a special reunion episode, in which "Joey has Covid." ("The...

Here is the most-perfect paragraph on parenting I know of, from an essay by Phillip Lopate: What is important to an adult and what matters to a child are so often at variance that it is a wonder the two ever find themselves on the same page. Parents may feel an occasional urge to spend money extravagantly on their offspring, only to discover that it means very little to the children themselves. You buy an expensive antique Raggedy Ann doll for your kid that she tosses in a corner, thinking it ugly and musty, meanwhile much more enthralled by the shiny plastic action figure they give out free at McDonald’s. And yet, if you’re like me, you keep falling into the trap of costly, unappreciated presents, perhaps because they’re not really for your child but for the child-self in you who never got them when you were growing up. Lopate is arguing that adults are fools; adults have sentimental ideas about childhood, and children themselves don't share these ideas. A very "iffy...

At some point in his career, Stephen King took a teaching stint that necessitated moving to a new house. The house marched up to an unusually busy street. Large trucks raced down the street; this area was so dangerous, pet-deaths were commonplace. Local children had redesigned a certain patch of land as a pet cemetery, and then they put up a sign, with little-kid spelling: "Pet Sematary." Discovery is looking at the same old materials available to literally everyone--and then seeing something new. Stephen King took his unusually-disturbing new town, and he took a memory of "The Monkey's Paw" (I think), and he made "Pet Sematary." (Remember "The Monkey's Paw"? It's about bringing a child back from the dead. It's a be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenario.) King is celebrated for his character development, and you can see why, in "Pet Sematary." As a young-ish father, I can understand the protagonist, Louis, a...

My favorite place is Disney World. It is so emphatically *my* place, whenever, like, a bank asks me to create a secret trivia question, as a form of ID, and I say my favorite "childhood" place was Disney World, I think, ha ha, my favorite place PERIOD is Disney World. (Oops, I just published that and released it into the world.) My husband sometimes makes a grand romantic gesture, and his grandest yet--around three years ago, today--was to take me to Disney World before proposing marriage. It was nine hundred degrees, and you had to fight to get a ketchup-coated rickety half-table in a dirty fast-food bodega, and my husband does not share my sentimental attachment to Howard Ashman, or to Lebo M., but, still, he endured this weekend. I'll always thank him for that. Like most gay men, I particularly love the Haunted Mansion, in the Magic Kingdom, because it's sort of saucy and risque. I have a memory of a headless bride chasing a man with a battle axe. And t...

The greatest season of any TV show in all of history is the first season of Glenn Close's "Damages." This is like a haunted-house tale. Our avatar, Ellen (Rose Byrne), arrives at the chamber of secrets. Patty, Glenn Close, has hired Ellen. There is a major legal case, involving multiple murders. Patty herself might be capable of murder. She might try to murder Ellen. Ellen feels deep ambivalence toward Patty--and it's the same ambivalence that we feel, in the audience. We recognize that Patty is a terrible person. At the same time, we want to spend more and more hours with her, because she is brilliant and charismatic; she is Glenn Close! The main story is: Will Ellen succumb? Will she go to the Dark Side? Will she become another Patty? As she wrestles with her job, she displays a fair amount of Glenn-Close-sparked "fire"; she has much more chemistry with Close's character than with her ostensible fiance. (The murder of the fiance is almost ...

Now and then I like to return to Nora Ephron's essays, because they're worth the re-visit. I think Ephron knew she was dying when she wrote "I Remember Nothing," her final collection. Or she had a strong suspicion. There are a few things to love about this book. First, it's exactly the length a book of essays should be: maybe 140 pages, not much more. (Who wants a fatter essay collection than that?) Also, the book ends with two wonderful lists. The first is: "What I Won't Miss." (The title makes me think:  This person was aware of her impending death .) Among Ephron's dislikes: email, dry skin, panels on Women in Film. (Fabulous specificity.) The second list: "What I'll Miss." Among the items: Pride and Prejudice , coming over the bridge into Manhattan, reading in bed. I love Ephron's book because it sneaks in a fair amount of wisdom. For example: If you can write a parody of a certain newspaper, then you can als...

"Carousel" is on tomorrow night! Get ready. The stats: *Unlike "South Pacific," "Sound of Music," and "Oklahoma!" .... "Carousel" has a plot in which the two leads don't happily skip off together. They marry too soon, and the guy becomes abusive (and this is a thing that sometimes shows a correlation with marrying very young) .....and the guy dies in a foolish way. And all of this happens well before the story ends! *"Carousel" is based on a play, and in that play, blossoms fall from a tree. The characters attribute this to the wind. But Oscar Hammerstein had a better idea. He had one character say: "Actually, there isn't any wind tonight." And a famous response: "I guess it's just their time ." Cosmic mysteries! Goosebumps! *The famous "Carousel Waltz" that opens the show came from some scraps that Richard Rodgers had sitting around. Aha! I'll just paste these togethe...

My favorite pop song is "The Heart of the Matter," by Don Henley. There, I said it. At some point, allegedly, Joni Mitchell remarked that a song is a thought you have as you're inspecting the rear-view mirror. The point you wanted to make. The thing you remember--a bit too late--as you're driving away. Nora Ephron said, "If you slip on a banana peel, you're a punchline. If you then write a story about how you slipped on the banana peel, you're suddenly in control of the joke." Don Henley can be simple and direct, because he knows he has a compelling situation. He is addressing an ex-lover, having heard she has "moved on": I got the call today. I didn't want to hear. But I knew that it would come. An old, true friend of ours was talking on the phone: She said you found someone. Then the words do something thrilling; they go in directions uncommon for a pop song. I thought of all the bad luck, the struggles we went throu...

Long ago, Native American populations in California actually designed wildfires--started fires on purpose. This kept the vegetation under control; a small fire helped to ensure that large fires wouldn't happen down the road. Also, certain trees seem to be designed to welcome fire; a little fire helps these trees go about their business. But, over several decades, there was a push to stamp out forest fires. No more fires! The push was mostly successful. But a paradoxical effect is that the kinds of vegetation that really, really aggravate a forest fire are now plentiful. So, if a fire does happen to start, it can spell disaster. And the climate has changed. Dry wind and intense heat are now a given. And one particularly terrible utility, PG&E -- think of the Tilda Swinton character in "Michael Clayton" -- allows its wires to fall into disrepair, and its vegetation grows unruly, and then horror stories recur. The town of Paradise basically disappeared a...

Like so many others, I was delighted by Taylor Swift's "Tweet to Donald Trump" last week: "After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? 'When the looting starts the shooting starts'??? We will vote you out in November." I just want to point out how closely Trump matches Ms. Swift's famous Lex Luthor, Jake Gyllenhaal. (Yes, of course Trump's offenses are on their own plane; there is an orders-of-magnitude distinction here. Still, I see rhetorical patterns in Swift's work.) Swift--notably savvy about language and subtext--likes to "make the implicit explicit." In Swift's various attacks on Gyllenhaal, the writer highlighted semi-covertly-nasty remarks that Gyllenhaal would make: "Find your peace of mind with some indie record that's much cooler than mine ." "He didn't like it when I wore hi...