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Saturday, November 29, 2008

Friday is tango with favorite partners and some surprising erotic moves from unexpected persons. One of the wonders of the tango world is that you never know what the night will bring.

Saturday morning we visited our great and good girlfriend, Frances Bay, 89 years old and every inch
a star. She’s best known as “Hollywood’s Grandma” because she played Fonzie’s grandmother in “Happy Days” and Adam Sandler’s grandmother in “Happy Gilmore”. I took Frances out to lunch the other day and when the check came, she snatched it out of my hand. “I’m an old lady!” she told me fiercely “and I get residuals!”

the rock opera “Lovelace” about the late star of “Deep Throat”, still America’s best-selling movie in the porn genre and maybe any other. This 90-minute sung-through popera was very well done, with a fine cast directed by the excellent Ken Sawyer, in the little Hayworth Theatre on baja Wilshire Blvd. My full review is on CurtainUp.com.

Although I never met the late Linda Lovelace, I have met Georgina Spelvin, star of the original “The Devil in Miss Jones” who was recently spotted signing her memoirs at Book Soup, the dishy book store on the Sunset Strip. Georgina dashes off a sprightly memoir about a life unlike most others. She survived it and is currently enjoying a happy marriage and accepting awards at Adult Film Conventions.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

The morning I’m on the phone with far-flung friends and relations. The late day there’s a glorious Thanksgiving dinner with a family of friends. Traditional food, untraditional people and a lot of new ones. Hope you all had a HAPPY THANKSGIVING, too, and found things to be thankful for.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Culver City has blossomed into something far more than a bedroom community and home of that giant studio once known as MGM, now same lot, same place as Sony. The heart of town now offers restaurants of every nationality, a multi-plex and two, count them two, world class live theatres: Tim Robbins’ The Actor’s Gang at the charming Ivy Sub-Station, once a city facility, and The Kirk Douglas Theatre, operated by The Center Theatre Group, named for a major donor, legendary movie star Kirk Douglas, usually seen there on opening nights. It’s located in a former movie theatre, renovated in gleaming red that would make Nancy Reagan proud, and practically spitting distance from the former MGM where Mr. Douglas made his bones.
Today the Douglas opened Douglas Carter Beane’s “The Little Dog Laughed”. Beane won a Tony nomination for this Hollywood satire and Julie White won the Tony itself, as deadly chic agent Diane who manipulates her gay client and the play he’s bought into heterosexual megaplex country no matter what lives are warped along the way.
To quote from my full review on CurtainUp.com: “At an awards show, Diane says, “We’re in New York, which we of Los Angeles love, accepting awards from critics, which we love even more so.” Here the show is, in Los Angeles, accepting applause from an industry audience which doesn’t mind being laughed at, knowing that without them, there would be no humor, no money and no play.”
Glimpsed at the after-party were Larry Pressman, who played Woodrow Wilson in the Douglas’s recent play “Of Equal Measure”, and Victor Garber, who starred as Frederick in “A Little Night Music” at the Ahmanson and will be seen next week in the film “Milk”, starring Sean Penn as the late Harvey Milk.
Garber will play the handsome, charming, unaffected San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, murdered by Dan White the same day as Milk. Moscone would sometimes drop in at the writers’ watering hole, The Washington Square Bar and Grill (known as The Washbag) in North Beach, have a drink at the bar and affably chat with anyone who met him. Luckily for me, an old friend had gone to high school with the mayor and I have a brief but warm memory of this progressive public servant. He was just the sort of Mayor San Francisco deserved and just the sort of guy you always hoped to meet at the Washbag.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Friday morning is sacred to reading the reviews in both The New York and Los Angeles Times, making it an excuse for café/croissant at Farmers Market in Los Angeles. Though more crowded and upscale than it was when it started out, I guess that’s true of everything. Among the rising prices you can always find a bargain, like Starbucks wonderful Almond Brioche for breakfast or, for lunch, a slice of Patsy D’Amore’s pizza or a hand-selected lunch from the Pampas Grill’s buffet. Some old Hollywood directors still make it a breakfast must on a certain day each week and it holds great memories for many Angelenos and a whiff of multi-culturism for visitors.
Friday night is sacred to tango. Of the many opportunities, all listed on Tango Afficionado, tonight’s stop was Michael Espinoza’s millonga, following his class at L. A. Dance Experience on Westwood Boulevard. The emphasis tonight was on the music of Nuevo tango and it was delicious. The dancers are all ages and all nationalities. Their common bond is a love of the dance. Tangueros look sinister and dashing in black pants and shirts. Tangueras enter the spirit of the dance with something elegant and sexy, showing the curve of a good leg or the slope of a sweet shoulder. You’ll see people listening, watching, at the hors d’oeuvres table, greeting old friends, making new ones. There’s the mystery of a new partner, the pleasure of a familiar one. Above all, there’s the night and the music and being part of a dance that embodies passion, communion and a wonderful sense of being in the world.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Thanksgiving movie day for my film class. Screened several trying to find the one they would like best. Was leaning towards “Pieces of April” starring Katie Holmes, now unfortunately best known as Mrs. Tom Cruise, who does a lovely job in the title role, playing a hippie girl in New York who can’t cook but bravely invites her estranged conventional New Jersey family to Thanksgiving dinner. Her mother, played unforgettably by Patricia Clarkson as a terminally ill bitch, leads this dysfunctional (what else?) family to Manhattan. A plus in its favor was being written and directed by Peter Hedges, who wrote the marvelous “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”
But the film I chose, one I’d seen many times before, was Woody Allen’s Chekhovian “Hannah and Her Sisters” because, although also featuring a dysfunctional family at Thanksgiving, it’s Allen’s best. His customary neurosis is leavened by love at its most irrational and forgiving, by a hilarious exploration of death and comparative religions, by the warm décor of Hannah’s apartment and one of Allen’s intuitive nostalgic classic pop music scores, featuring Cole Porter and Gershwin.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The first holiday movie for me is “”A Christmas Tale” and it’s home for the holidays in France for a group who give a new meaning to “dysfunctional”. Mother Junon (Catherine Deneuve) is facing looming leukemia which can only be cured by a bone marrow transplant and finding a donor among a group she thought she got rid of by giving birth to them proves to be challenging for any number of reasons. Still haunted by the memory of her six-year-old son who died of leukemia long ago because no donor could be found, she resents her daughter Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), a successful playwright, because she wasn’t a compatible donor, never liked her second son Henri (Mathieu Amalric) and condescendingly considers third son Ivan Melvil Poupaud) her pet. Ivan was pathologically shy until his brother and cousin Simon (Laurent Capelluto) fixed him up with beautiful Sylvia (Chiara Mastroiani, daughter of Deneuve and Marcello Mastroiani who looks as much like her father as Isabella Rosselini looks like her mother Ingrid Bergman). When Sylvia learns about the fix-up, she confronts Simon with their blighted relationship and they try to heal it under the same roof as Sylvia’s husband and children who take it with Gallic equinimity. Elizabeth’s hauntingly handsome teen-age son Paul (Emile Berling) is as neurotic as Henri. Junon’s husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon), a troll-like man of infinite charm, is much older. When asked why by Ivan and Sylvia’s two little boys why, he says he likes younger women.
The warm décor of this family home and the Christmas play the children put on are at curious variance with the inner conflicts of the family but the movie, co-written and directed by Arnaud Desplechin, is consistently fascinating, maddening and curious.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Over the hill to the Valley to visit one of my favorite small theatres, Theatre Banshee, which focuses, though not exclusively, on Irish plays. Co-producers are husband and wife Sean Branney and Leslie Baldwin, graduates of Valencia. That night they were presenting one of famed Irish pubkeeper/playwright’s productions, “The Year of the Hiker”. Only in Ireland! The fine actor Barry Lynch heads a very good cast in this uniquely Irish story which plays on universal themes: father/son, husband/wife, those who stay and those who run away. Worth a visit to quiet Magnolia Blvd, where you won’t have to fight the Melrose traffic. Full review on CurtainUp.com.

Friday, November 14, 2008

When I first moved here, Melrose Avenue was the sleepy main street of a quiet West Hollywood residential neighborhood. A few shops who wouldn’t dream of calling themselves boutiques, a couple of restaurants known mostly to locals. That was Then. Now is WOW, if you like Wow. Every block is lined with, let’s call them shopping opportunities or Shop Ops, restaurants ranging from mid-price like Louise’s Trattoria to high-priced like Citrus, and three or four little theatres, all with soaring standards.
I went over there Friday for my first visit to the Meta Theatre and finding it was my first challenge. The publicity material gave its address at 7401 Melrose Avenue. Actually the entrance is around the corner on Ogden Street and I literally stumbled across it because I had parked on a side street and was walking down Ogden towards Melrose.
Here we saw an excellent production of Keith Bunin’s “The Busy World Is Hushed”. The set’s production values in the tiny space were warm and evocative. The only minus was the acoustics in the little theatre. They may be hampered by the fan but it’s something that needs work. Full review is posted on CurtainUp.com.

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