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You wish to have the curse reversed?
May 7, 2011
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…
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By Threes: Jackie Cooper 1922-2011, Marian Mercer 1935-2011, Arthur Laurents 1917-2011
May 6, 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…
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Undoing the Folded Lie
May 3, 2011
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…
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Twilight world from a distance, and up close
May 2, 2011
Alvin Baltrop took the long view. I relish his head-spinning panoramas of places that no longer exist; Baltrop’s camera captured the looming gilders inside abandoned hangars and the wide expanses of wooden piers along the Hudson in the West Village, ones that hadn’t seen a ship’s arrival in many a moon. But look closely, and…
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At the Whitney and Artists Space, Art by Boys Who Like Boys
April 28, 2011
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…
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Lady Sang the Blues…Phoebe Snow 1950-2011
April 27, 2011
Were any of us prepared for the phenomenon that was Phoebe Snow? In 1974 I was a senior in high school; along came Phoebe with her magnificent debut, a bouquet of tunes (Poetry Man, Harpo’s Blues, Either or Both, I Don’t Want the Night to End, Take Your Children Home, It Must be Sunday, No…
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Michael Sarrazin 1940-2011
April 20, 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…
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Sidney Lumet, Film Director 1924-2011
April 12, 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…
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Lanford Wilson 1937-2011, Farley Granger 1925-2011
March 30, 2011
Angels Fall. Burn This. Balm in Gilead. The Fifth of July. Redwood Curtain. Lanford Wilson wrote these and more; when I saw them back in the 80s I felt privy to what seemed a golden age of theater. To experience his plays is to witness the theater at its most human, but also its most…
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