Last Dance: Donna Summer, Pop Vocalist, 1948-2012
Ah…love to love ya, baby… RIP, and thanks.
Clarence Clemons, Star Tenor Saxophonist 1942-2011
What makes a great album? It’s a delicate balance of artists, songs and those happy accidents of musicianship. Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run is a textbook example of how the stars aligned to bring us a once-in-a-lifetime work of art. If soul can be defined as an instrument, then pay attention to the work of...
Retrieving My Enthusiasms
It’s a chipmunk world, and I’m just living in it. At the Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock where I’m doing a month-long residency, the animals have it: with their rust-colored coats, those cute chipmunks ripple through the grass like glints of bright copper; cats (domestics named Celeste and Bob) strut across the lawn at night, their...
The Last Cowboy
James Arness 1923-2011, forever remembered as Matt Dillon on television’s long running Gunsmoke. Look closely for glints of a resemblance to his little brother Peter Graves (Mission: Impossible) who died last year.
Double Minority
Following Rick Welts, CNN Anchor Don Lemon comes out as a gay man. See this Towleroad link and the NYT coverage where he discusses the intricacies of being black and gay, frank talk we don’t hear as often as we should. Bravo, Mr. Lemon…
Playing for our team…publicly
Let the walls come down dept: Phoenix Suns president and CEO Rick Welts came out as a gay man this week. See the NYT article here…congrats, Rick…
You wish to have the curse reversed?
New York In A Tizzy Dept: The Times was ablaze this week over the City University of New York’s decision to deny Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Tony Kushner an honorary degree over his alleged inflammatory remarks about Israel. This morning the paper reports their repentance, after other past recipients like Michael Cunningham and Barbara Ehrenreich threatened...
By Threes: Jackie Cooper 1922-2011, Marian Mercer 1935-2011, Arthur Laurents 1917-2011
It took a special child actor to get Oscar nominated for playing someone named Skippy, but back in the 30s Cooper’s stardom rivaled that of his co-star in The Champ, Wallace Beery (above). Later he became a pretty decent grownup actor (TV’s Studio One in the 50s, Superman as Perry White) and a respected director. Always...
Undoing the Folded Lie
In the powerful revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, villains abound: there’s institutional homophobia fed by a conformist über-het society; New York’s red-tape bound local government led by a bachelor mayor rumored to be gay (Ed Koch, though never mentioned by name—oh, those pesky libel laws); the gay community adrift in a sexual roundelay...
At the Whitney and Artists Space, Art by Boys Who Like Boys
Glenn Ligon, Malcolm X Like Stonewall, the art revolution of the 1980s was a coming out as explosive as the times required. Many of the artists who broke out were gay: Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujur, Catherine Opie and Keith Haring marched into our consciousness with forceful works that expressed an era’s glittery...
Michael Sarrazin 1940-2011
A Canadian looker whose best roles came early; he probably killed his own career by turning down the role of Joe Buck (Jon Voight won an Oscar nomination for the role) in Midnight Cowboy. Retrospect: See They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, a career peak not only for Sarrazin, but for Jane Fonda, Susannah York and...
Sidney Lumet, Film Director 1924-2011
Serpico was the first Sidney Lumet film I saw in a movie theater. It was also the first film to make me cry. The scene that got me was the one towards the end where the title character (in an Al Pacino peak) lies in a hospital bed, a bullet hole in face, the result...
