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December 29, 2008

The end of a holiday week-end. A little tango in Westwood on Friday night, a holiday party yesterday at the home of my 89-year-old girlfriend, wonderful actress Frances Bay, where we met everyone from the director of her new movie “Bare Knuckles” to neighbors and relatives to the chance to catch up with Fran again, already planning her next party, her 90th birthday in January.

December 25, 2008

Christmas Day was a traditional family day in the usual weird and wonderful ways. All morning I was on the phone with far flung relatives. I went to Christmas dinner in the beautiful new home of a treasured friend, classified as a historic home. Many small rooms which she has with great sensitivity and taste heightened with warmth and color. Burnished wood floors, just a few well-placed pieces of furniture positioned in the right places, artworks that range from Victorian etchings to small exotic sculptures from many countries.
Dinner was potluck, conversation varied, directed by a guest who had spent time at The Esalen Instiute (as a former staff member, I recognized the style). He did it superbly and it was much more interesting than free form. There was one clash but there usually is on Christmas, whether it’s family or a new family of friends. I treasure families of friends. They’ve been through recent life with you. I treasure Christmas, cards dribbling in from old and distant friends, Christmas carols, the heightened sense of community, whatever you call it. We are human, we are loving, we are here and, God willing, will be here and human and loving for a long, long time!

December 24, 2008

When I opened my door today, I discovered a large white tent stretched across the patio of my building. Heaters and tables were being set up. My Italian-American neighbor announced he was having a Christmas Eve dinner and invited me to drop in.

Having a previous commitment to help a friend’s diversified family light a Hanukah candle, trim the tree and bake Christmas cookies, it was late in the evening by the time I got home. There was maybe half an hour to visit with neighbors and chat up new faces before heading out to midnight Episcopal Mass at All Saints Church. Despite two parties and driving through the rain, I was very glad I went. The music was beautiful, the poinsettias glowed, and the love and hope implicit in the Christmas message were more welcome than ever this year. As was the chance to wish a Merry Christmas to friends there. And take this chance to wish a Merry Christmas to you.

Greetings to you, far and near,
At the turning of the year.
May your Wassail Bowl be brimming
And your friends come round for trimming
Of your Christmas tree or palm
On a night that’s bright and calm.

O be joyful, near and far,
Underneath the Christmas star,
May your own New Year unfold
Treasures, pleasures, hands to hold
And delight in where you are.

By and From
Laura Hitchcock
Christmas 2008
Value-Magazine.org
CurtainUp.com
Laura-Hitchcock@sbcglobal.net

(323) 656-6309

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December 22, 2008

My kind of week-end. Tango Friday and Sunday, a play on Saturday. The performance was “Smokey Joe’s Café”, a rousing revival at El Portal in North Hollywood, featuring two Tony-nominated Broadway cast members, DeLee Lively, who does a sizzling shimmy, and her real-life husband Robert Torti, who is a suave singer-dancer. Full review on CurtainUp.com.
Friday stopped in at Linda Valentino’s practica to dance with some of the great social dancers she’s trained. Limbered me up for the Ministry of Tango’s Christmas millonga Sunday at a private home in Bel Air. The music was superb, I saw many old friends and made new ones, and had a wonderful evening of dancing, talking and listening.

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December 18, 2008

The Hollywood Arts Council’s holiday party was hosted in the charming Los Feliz Hills home of the publisher and editor of Discover Hollywood Magazine, Oscar and Nyla Arslanian. Guests ranged from John Holly and Ed Murphy, Chairman of the Board and Managing Director respectively, of The Blank Theatre to journalist Rena Dictor LeBlanc.

Between ogling the view from the Arslanians’ balcony, sampling the exotic and delicious buffet, and hanging out at the bar off the dining room to chat with whoever bellied up next, there wasn’t a dull moment.

December 14, 2008

The Oscar Goes To…Because I’ve seen so many new movie screenings lately, I’m giving them a category all their own. You’ll find it under the Arts category.
Otherwise, the week-end included Friday night tango practica welcoming back Linda Valentino, teacher par excellence, where I had many excellent partners and learned to follow the new steps Linda taught them.
Saturday’s highlight was an open house posted by my actress neighbor Peaches, featuring her usual bountiful spread and beautiful friends, including actors and others. Despite dubious rumbling about the possibility of a SAG strike, most of them doubted it would come to that. On a happier note, there were lots of stage appearances and screen triumphs, most notably the nomination of the hostess’s friend Viola Davis for best supporting actress by several awards shows.

December 11, 2008

My last Film class was bitter-sweet. I’ll miss all my students but their assurance that they’ll miss me, too, and the thoughtful gifts they gave me will carry me through until next summer when I may be back teaching a new and different class.
For our farewell holiday screening, I chose a personal favorite: “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Holidays, whatever your persuasion, are permeated with family memories. You can’t get away from it. You can’t walk down a street without being more aware of children and festivities. But lots of us don’t have our families close by at Christmastime and lots of us have developed families of friends that give a new meaning to the sense of community. That’s why I chose this film that follows a group of friends who have been tight since schooldays through the weddings of some, the funeral of one, the suppressed love of one for another, the romantic confusion of the leading characters who marry the wrong people and somehow manage to make the right lives for themselves. Written by Richard Curtis and directed by Mike Newell, Hugh Grant, Andie McDowell and Kristin Scott Thomas play the fun, the laughter, the sorrow, the joy, and the romantic confusion of the characters in this 1994 British hit. There’s lots to laugh at and identify with in this delightful movie.

December 10, 2008

Charlie Kaufman is the only screenwriter/director whose subject is the mind: its fantasies, the use it makes of reality, imagination, will. The first film he has directed, “Synechdoce, New York” is more obsessed with this subject than any of his previous films. The surreal is as strong an element as he can get away with in most of his films and, in this latest one, where he holds the reins, it’s very much in play. The title is a rhetorical term in which the whole of a thing stands for a part or a part for the whole. Thus, star Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays stage director Caden experiences and is inflicted by everything that afflicts humanity. Too self-involved to make either of his two marriages work, he spends 17 years directing a play, subsidized by a MacArthur grant, alternating only with hypochondriacal illnesses. Caden is the only man in the play. There’s something Woody Allen-ish in the way Kaufman surrounds him with adoring blond actresses. Although Kaufman has made the film true to his own vision, his previous films, directed by others, had more pace, character development and sense of timing. This one is redeemed by Hoffman’s humanity which makes Caden constantly sympathetic, no matter how limited his behavior.

December 7, 2008

My head and heart are so full of “Revolutionary Road”, Sam Mendes’s film starring Leonardo de Caprio and Kate Winslet. At first I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to see a film about a dysfunctional marriage. Been there, done that.” But the acting, direction and depth of this story put it, in my mind, on a list of 100 Best Movies Ever Made. Credit, the cast say, must be given to Richard Yates because they all love his novel on which the film is based. Michael Shannon, who plays the exceptional role of Richard, a man who has had a nervous breakdown, 37 shock treatments and a maddening mother (Kathy Bates), gives a vivid cameo performance. Full review under Arts on this web site.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Premiere of “Santa Must Die!” at Tim Robbins’ always avant-garde Actors Gang Theatre. Playwright/director Angela Berliner turns Dickens’ traditional Christmas Carol and its characters inside out. Life on the seamy side includes hedonistic porn (no nudity), homosexuality, cruelty, crudity, and irreverence. David Harris plays Scrooge with manic nastiness. Berliner directs her excellent cast with vitality, though the porn scenes become somewhat repetitious. It narrows down at the end to a heartfelt solo by Chris Schultz that reluctantly expresses latent spirituality. Full review on CurtainUp.com.
Opening night reception at the theatre, followed by Michael Espinoza’s tango millonga at LA Dance Experience on Westwood.

Friday, December 5, 2008

“Jane Austen Unscripted” by the remarkable Improv Theatre at Hollywood’s Theatre Asylum. This group improvises a different story every night from the core narratives and characters of Jane Austen’s novels. They’ve toured the world successfully with unscripted versions of Shakespeare, Dickens, Tennessee Williams and Stephen Sondheim. As Jane Austen wrote in “Emma”, “Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.” Full review on CurtainUp.com.
Being in Hollywood, I wound my way to the Hollywood Dance Center for Linda Valentino’s tango practica. I danced all the time with wonderful dancers, old friends and new.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Christmas season is a good excuse to show my film class John Huston’s 1988 film “The Dead”, based on James Joyce’s most famous short story from “The Dubliners”. It begins at a Christmas party in Dublin in 1904, includes an Irish poem recited by the famed actor Sean McClory and a solo by Frank Patterson, at that time Ireland’s leading tenor. Anjelica Huston as Gretta is her father’s leading lady. Renowned Irish actor Donal McCann plays her husband. At the party’s end, when the two are alone in their hotel room, Gretta speaks feelingly of her first love, Michael, who died at 17 and her husband realizes there are many things he never knew about his wife. He looks out the window at the falling snow and has a sense of the isolation that is part of every life, described by James Joyce in words more beautiful than these.
The class was divided between those who thought it was too slow and those who thought it was unique, special and wonderful. Having interviewed Tony Huston when he wrote the screenplay for this movie, I was glad to hear his work appreciated. John Huston raised Tony and Anjelica in Ireland. “Someone from a different environment wouldn’t have had the ear,” said Tony with a soft Irish accent.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Journeyed downtown to interview Ty Giordano and Michael Arden who will co-star in the Deaf West/Center Theatre Group revival of the 1970s hit musical “Pippin” opening in January at the Ahmanson. Ty played Huck Finn in the award-winning production by the same group of “Big River” which then went on to Broadway. Jeff Calhoun is again directing and, though Pippin is, in his words, “much more sophisticated and abstract” than Big River, it’s also the most exciting prospect to open the 2009 theatre season. Full interview to be published in L.A. Stage Magazine.