Liars and Saints

 I spent the week reading "Heartburn," which is such a stunner because of its honesty. Nora Ephron looks closely at the lowest point in her life; also, she refuses to make herself a victim. She pokes fun at herself and even seems to show compassion for Carl Bernstein (while also making clear that Carl Bernstein could benefit from professional help). There is an artist with a "Nora Ephron" heart in "The Simpsons"; the artist is Barney Gumble. Invited to submit a short film to a contest, Barney leans in to self-deprecation. He admits that he is wedded to alcohol; it's a problem of his own making; he is in over his head. Barney's iconic film--"Pukahontas"--features its protagonist in "toothless" mode; Barney is lying in a gutter. Bluntly, Barney makes a suggestion to his audience. "Don't cry for me. I am already dead." We also see Barney alone on a couch; the beer spills onto his chin and onto the furniture. The amazi...

  I was somehow dragged into a Bills v. Chiefs discussion. A friend was describing his irritation w/r/t to the Chiefs, and my husband asked, "Would you root against Audra McDonald simply because she already has so many Tony Awards?" This was meant to be a rhetorical question -- but, in fact, it's possible that I *would* root against Audra precisely for that reason. And it's possible that Audra would root against herself. In one interview, she mentioned her first major Tony Award loss. She recalled feeling relieved and thinking, "Great. Now I can just go out and do my work." I feel it would be terrific if Jennifer Simard defeated Audra this year. (There is no universe in which this will happen.) Jennifer Simard is a genius, and she is now giving a performance in which (nightly) she has to let cum dribble from her mouth. This is easily the most startling and inventive moment on any NYC stage -- from Battery Park to Washington Heights -- happening day after day...

 Nicole Holofcener has cited Mike Leigh as a major influence--but I wonder if the current runs both ways. In her film "Friends With Money," Holofcener looks closely at undiagnosed mental illness. Her star, Frances McDormand, is almost constantly bubbling with rage. She picks a fight with the waiter who does not refill the coffee quickly enough. She begins screaming at CVS when someone tries to cut in line. Mike Leigh's new film, "Hard Truths," seems to repackage the Frances McDormand story. Leigh's central character, Pansy, is weighted with so much inner turmoil that she can't really tolerate another person's breathing. Her child leaves out a banana peel; this is objectively annoying, but for Pansy, the moment becomes cataclysmic. At Pottery Barn, Pansy sees someone with her shoes on top of the cushion on a model couch. Pansy takes this as a provocation; a fight begins. What makes Pansy amazing is that she doesn't even need an irritant to become ...

  Ricky Gervais has said there is mainly one foolproof scenario for comedy. Here is the scenario. A character is dropped into a situation for which he or she is completely unprepared. That's all. I have boundless admiration for "Heartburn," by Nora Ephron, for a few reasons. First, it's a novel no one else would write. Ephron was pregnant with her second child when she discovered that her spouse, Carl Bernstein, was having an affair. Most people would shudder before picking up a pen. But Ephron began taking notes. Second, the voice is so odd. Ephron's narrator--Rachel, a writer--worries about being married. She worries because, she says,  things have stopped happening to me . If you're single, you can generate stories by the dozen. But motherhood means many afternoons alone with a toddler and a stack of colorful blocks. Rachel is upset because she has surrendered all of her literary material. Third, the approach to plotting is unconventional. Who are the chara...

  For MLK Day, we read "Martin's Big Words." It's fine. It links Martin's career aspirations to Martin's father; in the "origin scene," we notice Martin carefully studying one of his father's sermons, dreaming of acquiring "big words." This story doesn't grab Susie. It lacks a castle, a parade of fabulous gowns, magical moments of interspecies transformation. At the climax, Martin does sink his hands into big words; "my children" ought to be judged "by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin," etc. Then--moved by a communal response to senseless suffering--Martin goes off to assist with a sanitation-worker strike. And he is shot and killed. The End. At times, I have tried to alter my daughter's wardrobe to feature Harriet Tubman, Marian Anderson, etc. There is a particular line of items--Piccolina--that is celebrated for this trend. But Piccolina has folded. The business model wasn'...

  Jessica Lange has said, when she takes on a new role, she makes time to watch old Kim Stanley films. She does this to remind herself that great acting is undeniable; worthwhile acting is a way of tapping into a universal human truth. A strong performance is evergreen; it's unassailable, year after year after year. "The Sopranos" is the mesmerizing story of Tony--but, also, it's the story of Christopher.  If a less skilled actor had landed the Christopher role, it's possible fewer scripts would have dug into the Moltisanti story. (For a long while, David Chase had no real plan beyond Season One.) But Michael Imperioli is very good; I think he is as compelling as James Gandolfini.  Imperioli wins his Emmy in Season Five; in Season Six "A," he is the one and only cast member (one set apart from Gandolfini, Falco, Bracco, etc.) to earn an Emmy nomination. All this time, Imperioli struggles with addiction; it's easy to imagine that the pain he explores ...

 "The Note" begins with a stranger. Three friends are vacationing in the Hamptons; they have identified a parking space in a crowded area. They wait for the other car to back out. But--suddenly--a third car emerges. The driver of the third car *steals* the parking space. Worse, he seems to smirk at the friends as he walks away. Appalled by this uncivil behavior, the three friends hatch a plan. They will leave a note on the stranger's windshield; the note will say, "He is cheating on you. He always cheats." This will cause turmoil in the stranger's relationship. Don't get mad, get even. Later, on the news, a story interrupts "our normal coverage." A man in the Hamptons is dead--murdered. As the three friends watch, they realize that this corpse is the stranger who stole the parking space. It's clearly important to come forward, share details with the police. But each of the three friends would prefer not to admit to immature behavior. One is...

It's strange to feel outclassed by a student. Sometimes, if I don't have work scheduled, I consider spending fifteen dollars to purchase the trashy Nicole Kidman thriller, "Malice"; I have an idea that rewatching "Malice" might be a nice way to fritter away a Tuesday morning. But one thing that keeps me from sinking this low--at least thus far--is a student who puts me to shame. My student is not especially fond of the verbal section of the SAT. But I think this state of affairs won't be problematic for her. I think this because--midway through the tenth grade--she is essentially an adult. She schedules her sessions, she handles cancellations, she apologizes if she is giving rather late notice. In a lesson, if I'm offering a puzzling explanation, she cuts me off and finds a polite way to say: "I don't know what you're talking about." (It's so rare to see this level of confidence, even in a high schooler.) I don't mean to put...

  Issa Rae grew up on a diet of Bill Murray films and Eddie Murphy films; one of her favorite Murray outings is "Groundhog Day." Rae's fingerprints are all over the new movie "One of Them Days"--you can hear her actual voice in one scene--and the script's rather elaborate plotting and tidy third act help to evoke thoughts of 1980s Hollywood. This wonderful movie concerns Dreux and Alyssa, two friends in Los Angeles. Dreux is generally responsible, but she can be passive. When her sketchy landlord demands rent money "by 3 pm," Dreux fails (actually fails for a few hours) to realize that the down-to-the-minute deadline will not carry weight in a court of law. Dreux has dreams of corporate success--and the dreams are just a little bit sad, a little confining. Dreux is drawn to a particular guy, but because he lacks standard "blue ribbon" signs of bourgeois success, she writes him off. She decides too quickly. By contrast, Dreux's friend ...

  Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd" ranks among the all-time great adaptations; it's a case of a writer taking another person's work and infusing it with new life. People speak about Howard Ashman's "Little Shop" in a similar way. Ashman's show has become so influential, it has mostly eclipsed the memory of the film from 1960. There is an obvious "dialogue" between Sweeney and Little Shop, though I'm not sure Ashman acknowledged this in print. Sweeney tells himself that he is avenging the "death" of his beloved wife, but soon, he just becomes a mass murderer (and in fact *kills* the same person he claims to worship-above-all-others). Along the same lines, Howard Ashman's Seymour tells us that his greed is in service of his love: There's Audrey-- Lovely Audrey. If life were tawdry... And impoverished as before... She might not like me. She might not want me. Without my plant-- She might not love me anymore. Seymour is wrong...

 It's said that parenthood teaches you how to fail -- to fail with grace -- over and over. My son had a homework assignment -- to design his own Valentine's Day mailbox. "Have fun with it!" ....This is a sentence I particularly hate: "Have fun with it!" I think it's code for another kind of sentence, i.e., "Fuck you!" My child has not yet studied figure sketching (was I being asked to provide a crash course?) -- so I decided on puffy stickers, for the outside of the mailbox. But Joshie's sister, who has no boundaries, began demanding puffy stickers of her own. (The pre-K teacher recently said that my daughter could use some practice with rule-following. "Invent some simple restrictions for the home, and then impose firm consequences." I nodded and said, "I'll get right on that.") Josh has one response to his sibling's neediness; the response is physical force. As Stickergate turned into a barroom brawl, I reminde...

  "Little Shop of Horrors" is a kind of rehearsal for "Beauty and the Beast," in the sense that both stories are about love rivalries. In "Little Shop," the cartoonish wrong choice is Orin, the dentist. He morphs into Gaston, the villain from "Beast." Both characters get show-stopping numbers; both tend to use rather simple syntax. "Shut up. Open wide. Here I come." "It's a beast! He's got fangs. Razor sharp ones. Massive paws! Killer claws for the feast. Hear him roar. See him foam..." (I wonder if Howard Ashman studied Count Carl-Magnus, from "A Little Night Music.") In another corner, we have Seymour/Audrey II, and we have the Beast. These are essentially the same character. Seymour understands what he really should do. "This nightmare must come to an end; there's only so far you can bend. You've got no alternatives, Seymour, old boy, though it means you'll be broke again and unemployed. I...

  When I notice my thinning hair, I'm sort of startled. I imagine that a different "hairdryer technique" might erase the problem. I look at photos from my thirties--and there seems to be a watershed moment, a moment when I switch from "normal" hair to middle-aged hair. I didn't sign on for this. Lucy Sante grew up as "Luc." She suspected that she was really female. She felt uncomfortable during sex; she was dismayed when, in her thirties, her waist thickened from a size 29 to a 34 ("sometimes 36"). Once, she moved into an apartment where a red floral blouse had been discarded. She wore it a bit, in secret, and it became the main topic of her fantasies (possibly for years and years). During COVID, in her sixties, Lucy began experimenting with FaceApp. She could program the app to show her an image of her face with any "gender wish" she had an interest in. This was an earthshaking moment; she thought,  I'm not Luc. I'm Luc...

  One of my favorite children's books, "Owen," concerns a little mouse who won't give up his security blanket. The nutty next-door neighbor warns that Owen will be judged for clinging to the blanket; she advises punitive measures, such as dipping the blanket in foul-smelling vinegar. (The author, Kevin Henkes, is a continual source of free therapy for me. He observes adult anxiety with a compassionate eye. When I was stressed about how to manage my daughter's hair, I would think of a passage from "Still Sal." In that novel, the father runs a brush twice through the lustrous locks of his little hyperactive girl. "Good enough," he says cheerfully, and he moves on with his day.) So far, no one has urged my younger child to get rid of her own security blanket, which takes the form of a stuffed dog, "Tiny Doggie." But the dog is a kind of battlefield. If I want to wash it, I have to trick my daughter into distracting herself; the moment sh...

  If Terence Winter were alive in an earlier era, he would be a great novelist. "Members Only," "Long Term Parking," "Pine Barrens," "The Second Coming," "University": Each of these standout SOPRANOS hours had its origins in Terence Winter's pen. Winter has observed that he himself is around the age of Tony Soprano; when looking for a memorable detail, Winter could just borrow from his own life. (I think "The Sopranos" is at its best when Tony is just a guy in a kitchen. Tony experiences rage when the OJ is "no pulp" rather than "some pulp." He opens the fridge and stares at its contents, selects nothing, then closes the door, his mind in a daze. He has seismic emotional struggles when he realizes he will need to go without smoked turkey. He clenches his jaw when he learns that tonight's dinner will be "takeout sandwiches from Italianissimo." He becomes visibly awkward when he discloses th...

  "The Good Thieves" is an unusual "journey" story. Vita, a survivor of polio, wants to help her grandfather; he has been cheated out of his estate in a town near Hudson, in the 1920s. It's Vita's understanding that a priceless emerald is hidden on the estate. If she can recapture that emerald, she can help her grandfather to buy back his home. Vita is just a child, and she seems to have mainly one talent, an ability to throw knives. She can slice an apple in half--even if she is throwing from a great distance. Fortunately, Vita finds herself in New York City, and many oddball New Yorkers turn up to support her. A little boy across the street tames elephants in a ballroom above Carnegie Hall. Another can perform acts of bravery on a flying trapeze. An unsentimental kid down in the Bowery is able to offer her impressive "pickpocket" talents. As the four children approach their goal, they must think on their toes. A loud cry from one team member seem...

 When I fold laundry, I like a little trash on my laptop screen. "Unsolved Mysteries," "Elsbeth": The show should have a formula that I can follow without mental effort. Also, if I leave the room, I have to be able to supply the "story beats" in my head, so no rewinding is required. (For example: Bathroom break. During this time, it will emerge that the victim had a relationship with a shady guy, and an investigation will occur. But talking heads will confirm that the shady guy was with friends, on another continent, at the time of the murder.) My daughter is the same way. On a weekday, she just wants to stare at animated skeletons. The skeletons sing about brushing their teeth, or about Christmas traditions, or about general healthy living. Susie is transfixed. Hand her a bowl of Coco Puffs, and she is in heaven. I recently tried something different. I walked my daughter to a screening of "Mufasa." But the formula was new, and the movie was bad,...

  "Se7en" is a mixed bag, but it's a movie I really like. It's structurally inventive. Someone is murdering civilians; the murders take unusual forms. An overweight man is forced to eat pasta until he dies; this is, almost literally, the punishment given to Big Anthony in the "Strega Nona" picture book. A cunning lawyer dies after having sawed off a pound of his own flesh; this act is not "gluttonous," it's not its predecessor; it's an act that is meant to represent "greed." Another man dies after having been chained to a bed for a year; his "sin" is sloth. Then the script does something surprising. Detective Morgan Freeman finds the address of the killer. He does this by conducting a kind of library search to determine which "John Doe" has been raiding libraries for books about murder and books by Dante, Chaucer, Milton. This leads Freeman close to the killer--closer than he realizes--but it also does somethin...

 Seeing "Mufasa," with its Lin-Manuel flavor, I was reminded of one of my favorite movie scores, for "Dick Tracy." I have no idea why Sondheim consented to write the music, but his writing is much better than the film he is involved with; it seems effortless, and it seems to say,  Go ahead and give me an Oscar if you feel like it.  (Sondheim did win an Oscar.) In his "I Am" song, Dick Tracy bubbles with happiness. Live alone and like it-- Free as the birds in the trees... High above the briars... Live alone and like it-- Doing whatever you please... When your heart desires... Free to hang around or FLY...at any old time... Dick is a delighted bachelor--unentangled. In an apparent nod to his mentor, Hammerstein (king of sparrow/lark/wing analogies), Sondheim writes of a "bird above the briars." Channeling Bobby, from "Company," Sonhdeim goes on to use a series of "sound" metaphors: No equivocation-- Most of all, no guarantees: ...

  There is exactly one reason why I live in the burbs; it's an ice cream parlor called "Honey and Hive." Were I to exist without small children, I might have a mild appreciation for this store. It has fun flavors, and there is a constant rotation. Butterbeer, Irish cream, maple latte, Mexican "hot" chocolate. But--in terms of flavors--you could have a similar experience in the West Village, at Van Leeuwen. Here is the distinction. If you visit the West Village Van Leeuwen, you are required to hover, like a vulture, by the 3.5 available seats. You must make loud passive-aggressive comments--"Is this area for chatting...or for eating?"--in the hope that your message will "hit home" with any and all thoughtless seated loiterers. The experience is a bit like being stuffed in a tiny coat closet--but recall that you're also holding a small cup of melting, dripping cream. By contrast, Honey and Hive is a vast, empty palace with games for childre...

  What is possible in middle age, in the second half of life? Angie, Mrs. Big Pussy, turns her own world around; she becomes a successful business owner. It seems like Eugene, another peripheral figure in "The Sopranos," might have his own shot at reinvention. An inheritance check arrives; it's for 2 million dollars. Eugene has quite a bit he wants to flee. His son's health is deteriorating; there seems to be no effective response to drug addiction, and the entire Pontecorvo family is coming apart at the seams. Additionally, there is the problem of Eugene's day job. He is asked to murder a stranger, a civilian, because of a financial dispute. That's a bummer. Almost casually, in the Third Act, the writers present a final major problem. Eugene has secretly consented to talks with the Feds; though agents may sometimes feign sympathy for Eugene, these agents have little or no interest in Eugene's "dreams." Eugene will stay right where the government...

 I recently had a bad experience working with an "admissions consultation" group. Every time my student would submit a piece, a shadowy group of judges would meet in secret to rip it apart. There seemed to be an unpublished list of rules for writing--and though I didn't have access to this list, I was somehow meant to intuit the gist of the list, and when my magical powers of intuition failed, I (clearly) became a source of extreme irritation. Once, my student generated a series of questions she had about her future. This was trashed because "rhetorical questions are exhausting for the reader." Another time, my student was asked to design a research project about a topic that interested her. She answered this in an honest way. This was trashed because "a college doesn't want an answer that has a liberal-arts tone. The research project should have an obvious pre-professional thrust. If the student doesn't know what her ultimate career goal is, she sh...

  My town is captivated by "the hell nanny." Hell Nanny had a bad afternoon at pre-K pickup. She was in charge of identical twins, but she forgot this fact, and she secured just one of the two children in her SUV. Then she sped off, leaving the other child alone in the parking lot, where, apparently, an accident almost occurred. Dramatic footage was posted online. Then other allegations surfaced. One former client made a vague reference to this hell nanny, and to "a moment of violence involving our cat." Another said that the hell nanny had sent a child to sleep, then disrupted the sleep and demanded that the little child search for an iPhone charger. My spouse and I have different views. Marc is more sympathetic to the Maplewood mob. I'm skeptical. What is "a violent incident with our cat"? (As moms* begin foaming at the mouth, I'm reminded of Professor Harold Hill. "Trouble! Right here in River City! RIGHT HERE! Remember the Maine, Plymouth ...

 Jon Klassen's "The Skull" has a sensational opening: As she ran....Otilla began to hear her name being called. She couldn't tell if it was someone's voice or the wind in her ears.  Otillaaaa....Otillaaaa.... The narrator never explains what the heroine is fleeing. We only sense that the danger is severe. After running for a long while, Otilla stumbles on a palace, owned by a friendly skull. Otilla and the skull become companions, taking walks, dancing, snacking together. But the skull has a secret of its own. Every night, a headless skeleton emerges and begins a chase. "Come to me!" screams the skeleton. Otilla cannot repress her own painful memories, but she can make life easier for the skull. She throws the headless skeleton from a cliff. Then, she gathers the scattered bones and grinds them into a paste. She dissolves the paste in boiling water, and she dumps the mixture into a bottomless well. Klassen has a remarkable talent for taking children seri...

 Brian Tyree Henry repairs utility poles; this is his job. But, during off-hours, he pursues his passion, which is the study and practice of boxing. He has always loved boxing; some miscalculations have resulted in his *not* becoming a professional boxer. However, he enjoys teaching. He is "the loudest one in the room." A stranger comes to town. It's Ryan Destiny, who wants to enter a "boys' club." Soon, the Olympics will break with tradition and make space for women's boxing. Ryan has a special kind of fury, perhaps because her parents are negligent, perhaps because she has endured sexual assault. She wants to beat people up. BTH recognizes Ryan's extraordinary talent. The boxing part is easy. But it's harder to translate Ryan's wins into a viable career, because America seems unwilling to idolize an "unfeminine" phenomenon from Flint, Michigan. America's neglect enrages Ryan. BTH tries to give a holier-than-thou speech: "...

  Two new friends have entered our lives. The friends are Buster and Rina. People can be a little crazy about playdates. There is an idea that, if you're hosting a playdate, you must interact with your guest at all times. At *all* times. So my dog, Salvy, was actually expelled from his first playdate with a chocolate lab, Buster; Salvy was judged to be uninterested, and he was sent back to my yard. And my daughter had a similar issue; playing with her new buddy, Rina, she dared to wander off toward the Play Doh corner, and this moment of solitude was viewed as a transgression. Buster throws himself into my kitchen. My children--not often fond of rules--suddenly become strict disciplinarians. "Buster, out! Out!" Rina, Susie's new friend, becomes envious of a certain plastic "Elsa wand." Rina wrestles the wand from Susie's hands, then tosses it into the "ashpit" within her family's fireplace. As if feeling guilty, Rina's mother sends an a...

  Drea de Matteo won her Emmy Award not just for "Long Term Parking" but also for "Irregular Around the Margins," a terrific and plausible hour of "The Sopranos." In "Irregular" (a title worthy of praise), Tony is slightly off-kilter, because he believes that he may have cancer. Meanwhile, Adriana has colitis and a deepening addiction to drugs. Because Adriana is attractive and kind, Tony finds himself struggling with boundaries. The two leads head out into the night, in search of heroin--and we can infer how the evening will end. Except that a car crash occurs, and the crash actually spares everyone from a real catastrophe. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Second-tier figures in Tony's life can't accept that this car ride was "innocent." Rumors spread. Adriana must have been dishing out a blow job. That's why Tony swerved and crashed his car. The episode is extraordinary in its handling of an "open secret....