Half-Priced Books: selfie by the author
Jamie Jobb’s Backstage Pass
Current Table of Contents
Updated: January 13, 2023
Recollections
The Steeple & The Showgirl (28 December 2022) Aspen is a peculiar high-profile slow-news small-town, with gig workers living elsewhere while most of its quaintly unaffordable Victorian streetscape sits semi-occupied by international jet-set big-wigs with more than one abode to attend. Residing in the middle of that cultural club sandwich were long-term landed-locals who’d been there a while and could afford to live in or around Aspen’s finery. Which brings us back to the aforementioned entertainment/education/religion editor who had deep contacts in town, as we would expect. I can’t recall her name now, but I’ll never forget what happened after she assigned me to take a photo of American Theater Institute’s final production of the season – “Everyman: Aquarian” – at the newly-completed fully-ecumenical Aspen Chapel on Meadowood Drive just outside town.
My Pulp Fraction (30 May 2021) KA-BOOM! Another sudden wooded thump knocks upon our front porch; we hear it all throughout the house! The mailman cometh; and another newspaper from another city stumbles to the front door of 257 Main. Some of my friends collected baseball cards, postage stamps, rare coins, dolls; I collected American newspapers. I ordered them through the mail and kept them in my room, stacked one atop another. This ever-expanding Paper Collection quickly became my own self-guided tour of The United States. Me – a budding author stuck in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere – learning to write by rustling up America’s great newspapers and hoarding them into my room.
Ode to Middleport (6 August 2021) Forty-four years after visiting my hometown featured in the report of my newspaper collection, I wrote this poem about the old river town where people sometimes paint their houses and never tear down the post office just to replace it with a new one.
My Long, Dark Night Caged by Sarge Bright (16 April 2021) I was furious; jailed by a janitor! I went back to the press box – the only place I could go without jumping out of the building – and called my editor, who luckily was still near the phone wrapping up for the night. He got quite a chuckle out of my unfortunate incident, as if it may have happened before to other young reporters who dared visit that precarious location with only one route out.
The Toilet Papers (2 April 2020) The State of Alabama hosted perhaps the most notorious Rolled Trees of all time, those known as “Toomer’s Oaks” which grew at the entrance of the Auburn University campus across the street from Toomer’s Drugs. After major football wins by the Auburn Tigers, fans would “roll The Oaks”. The hundred-year-old Auburn trees needed no introduction in The Deep South. Tales of Toomer’s Oaks were legend across Dixie, or at least in the Southeastern Conference. But things got ugly in 2011 when those oaks suddenly upped and died, as they say down South. It turns out, a transplanted Alabama fan, Harvey Almorn Updyke, Jr., pled guilty to poisoning the famous oaks shortly after Auburn miraculously beat ‘Bama, 28-27, in the 2010 Iron Bowl, when the Crimson Tide blew a 24-point lead.
Silent Write, Holy Write (29 July 2021) Brief essay on the futility of procrastinating playwrights reserving time to watch other procrastinating writers muted in the process of writing uninterrupted for ninety minutes.
Eraseball (26 July 2021) Milwaukee’s “Brewers” disparage wine-makers and members of Alcoholics Anonymous, while our own San Francisco “Giants” look down their snouts onto the heads of short people, who as Randy Newman has pointed, out have “no reason”. Of course, the Kansas City “Royals” seem to believe they are subjects of the United Kingdom and not the country that kicked their ass.
Frequently Unanswered Questions (18 April 2022) Who mows Scotland Yard? How many square feet in a mushroom? When you’re expeditious, who pays for it all? Who misunderestimates the Ministry of Disinformation? And so forth?
More Frequently Unanswered Questions (29 November 2022) Who sleeps in Carnegie Hall? Where is Rhode Ireland? What’s ostentatious in Austin Texas? How should a muleskinner pack a burrito? Who flocked to Birdland? And on and on?
Further Frequently Unanswered Questions (28 October 2023). Who solved Nelson Riddle? Who does His Majesty look up to? Who wears a bald sombrero? Can you hear Bronx Cheers in Brooklyn? Who shoots fake selfies? And ad infinitum.
Pun-Intended Humor (11 April 2024). Should a defendant take the fifth, or drink it Why don’t steelhead trout rust? Who tells the Finnish when to quit? Nobody wants to be a gravedigger … all that skullduggery. If advanced life sent E.T. to Earth, why didn’t he bring a smart phone?
Characters/Interviews
The Brain at the Bait Shop, Harlan Bailey (23 August 2022) - Harlan Parks Bailey II was a unique fellow – a lively, well-read yet shy extrovert, a curious man of thunderous humor and lightning insights: everybody’s best friend. While his father grew up in hardscrabble West Texas, his mother was Italian-American from a California fishing village. A quick study with keen eyes and ears, Harlan had his own peculiar way with words. His pen forged a mighty hook.
Edward Leedskalnin (14 January 2016) Instead the self-taught stone mason spent twenty-eight years moving and carving tons of coral rock to create -- all by himself -- a machismo monument to his failed love. Note: Ed stood all of five feet tall and weighed not quite one hundred pounds. Leverage was his friend; brute force was not. Quack publications speculated that Ed had some special command over the electromagnetic spectrum and that he could levitate heavy objects. Ed knew his works were grounded in common mechanics.
C.C. Cardin – One Act Leads To Another (17 May 2017) Yes, it was a cab driver who picks up a young woman in the 1940s, during the War years. She had a baby out of wedlock, and as happened with young women in those days, she was thrown out of her parent’s house. She could not come back as long as she had the baby. So, she’s riding around looking for the father of the baby’s parents after he was killed in the War. She really has nowhere to go. That’s how it starts.
Paul Mariano – Nobody Sent Them Back (7 July 2017) When I worked in the Public Defenders Office for thirty years, I got approached a number of times by private firms, I had a good reputation as a trial attorney. And I turned them down because I was happy doing what I was doing. I liked that you could practice law, be a good lawyer, and you also could be a social worker to a certain degree. And the other thing was, it’s kinda like performance. You could be a gamesman. I always said that the best lawyer is always one-third lawyer, one-third social worker and one-third gamesman.
“The Unread Kid” (10 December 2017) Trick question for any pre-school actor: Where’d you go to acting school? For young thespians of the 21st Century, the answer seems to be “anywhere we get wifi”. Kids also may shoot video rehearsals as part of their acting practice. Who needs a camera when you’ve got a movie studio in your pocket? Who needs public or charter schools when you can teach yourself almost everything on You Tube?
A Tale of Two Sports Writers (24 October 2018) Pope made his presence widely known particularly among the press box set. Although rather short, he was extremely focused through those thick dark tinted-glasses. Pope was so good at interrogation, he could have been a dang judge himself! If he’d wanted to. The “sportswriter’s sportswriter” indeed! Pope never left The Herald, once he got there. Even when the paper began to crumble around him. He lived to be 88. Putnam was a fly-on-the-wall, a where’d-he-go kinda guy. He loved to hang out in bars, and was probably the closest things Miami had at the time to measure up to Jimmy Breslin in that writers heyday of New Journalism. He lived to be 75.
Henry Keeps Score (6 June 2018) Martinez’ new paraprofessional team harkens back to days a century ago when scores of local baseball clubs flourished in an area now dominated by Athletics and Giants branding. In those days local leagues were also organized in refineries and other industrial workplaces along the Contra Costa shoreline. Baseball has moved on, in other words. And so it was that nine-year-old Henry Cao went to the new ballyard with friends on Saturday night, then returned with us Sunday for the Clippers first-ever day game. My wife is Henry’s tutor and we knew about the scoreboard issue. But we also know Henry is good at math, so we figured he could use a scorebook to follow the game.
Why Joe Left Town (25 May 2018) If they’d remained in Martinez, fishing knots would have been the only ropes the DiMaggio boys would have known. Papa didn’t like his sons wasting time playing ball. But few people realize the real reason the DiMaggios had to leave Martinez in the first place. Their move was the result of an odd accident involving a passing train and Joe’s sister, Frances DiMaggio, who was seven at the time.
When’s a Clipper Not A Clipper? (25 May 2018) In the 1930s, windy New York sportswriters considered DiMaggio as speedy and graceful in center field as a 19th Century “clipper ship” was on the horizon. Like Joe’s gliding outfield strides that smothered line drives – these tall-masted sailing vessels were capable of making the world’s difficult waters ride easy. At the time, tall ships had not been seen on the docks of New York City and San Francisco for half a century. But readers knew what the sportswriters meant when they hung that antique maritime nickname onto the lofty Yank.
Vernacular Bagman & Their Ballyard Jargon (24 May 2018) The main reason an Eephus pitch seldom gets thrown in games is simple: it’s murder on a defense when a hitter clocks wise to the timing of the ball. Kinda like batting practice. Ted Williams notoriously knocked his second of two consecutive Eephus pitches into the seats for a three-run eighth-inning homer in the 1946 All Star Game. The first major leaguer to hurl an Eephus was Pittsburgh Pirate Rip Sewell – the same guy who served up Ted’s gopher ball, although nobody called it by that name until Rip’s teammate Maurice Van Robays concocted the term. “Eephus ain’t nothing,” he said. “And that’s what that ball is.”
Ten Bucks for One Field of Dreams (24 May 2018) But on these underfunded local teams, a self-certain attitude always persisted – “If-you-build-it-they-will-come”. Indeed three of these 20thCentury “Field-of-Dreams” ballparks have survived to this very day – and that’s half of the Pacific Association’s venues. The Vallejo Admirals still use that town’s charming old wooden ballyard in Wilson Park, the San Rafael Pacifics call venerable Albert Park home and the Sonoma Stompers use Arnold Field just a short walk north of the town square.
“Can of Corn” and Other Ballyard Jargon (18 May 2018) According to Major League Baseball’s Official Glossary, when 19th century grocery store clerks needed an easy way to reach stacked canned goods in high places, they used long hooked sticks to knock them down. As the cans fell, the clerks would open their aprons and catch them -- like an outfielder catching a fly ball. After such a “basket catch”, other nearby clerks would yell out: “Can of corn!”
Music
Ray Bonneville: One-Man Bard (18 June 2020) Grow up hearing enough bog-bound beats of DeepSouth boogie woogie, and our ears eventually attune themselves to certain styles of guitar pickers who sonically align themselves with those two-handed piano players. Nimble-fingered folks, they all forge their own peculiar sliding-scales onto those slow ox-bow bends of that wide and meandering river known as “The Blues.” Thumb pickers – aka “slack-key” or “slide” guitarists – were particularly revered in Dixie all along Big Muddy Mississippi for the rolling twang that sprang from their strings and rang from their broken bottlenecks.
Tuba Skinny: Diggers of Dixieland (27 November 2021) New Orleans’ free-flowing “Digger” approach to jazz continues to inspire a new slew of sidewalk players – particularly the Steady Eight And A Half who compose the street-savvy dixieland ragtime and blues band known round the world as “Tuba Skinny” – an obvious homage to the legacy of Anthony Lacen. In its short lifetime, Tuba Skinny has become as synonymous with New Orleans as The Po’ boy or The Muffaletta – their totally unique musical cuisine could have been gumboed nowhere else on Earth.
Hoagy Charmichael (7 October 2015) Like most folks of her generation, Mom loved big bands. But like me, she couldn’t hold a tune. Hoagy was hardly an accomplished vocalist himself, but he grew up to become America’s most inventive and adventurous songwriter, who was also a premiere bandleader, composer, pianist, actor and singer. My Mom loved Hoagy Carmichael songs and the fact that she couldn’t sing them any better than he did made it all OK. You may note that there’s an ease to his singing, like Buddy Ebsen’s ease of dancing. It kinda just happened.
Gamble Rogers (8 October 2015) Rogers was a superb Southern story master whose “Oklawaha County” became Florida’s fictional cousin of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon in the North Country. With his guitar punctuating his storylines, Gamble was widely known for his Merle Travis country finger-picking style where the thumb plays a steady bass pattern while the other fingers work the treble strings. As he matured on stage, Rogers began to elaborate his stories between songs. Soon, his shows were more story than song and Gamble’s name began to get mentioned with Pete Seeger, Mark Twain, Will Rogers. His words carried that much weight.
Fred Neil (10 October 2015) Fred Neil was one cool catfish who could drag his voice down among the lowest bottom feeders, not quite as deep as Paul Robeson -- but very deep. The uniquely talented “singer-songwriter's singer-songwriter,” as he was often called, crafted his lasting legacy as an original Greenwich Village folk-rock pioneer and mythic South Florida recluse. He was prolific in all popular vernacular American musical styles -- blues, folk, jazz, gospel, pop, rock -- and he often fused them into tunes. That was impressive enough but up close in performance, his audience stood in absolute awe of his effortless twelve-string guitar soaring above his haunting bottomless basso profundo. Neil was an exceptional singer-songwriter but his songs were just his bread-and-butter. His exquisitely enthused twelve-string riffs laid a perfect counterpoint to the dark gravy of his deep vocals.
Loudon Wainwright III (15 October 2015) Wainwright writes about the hard stuff -- bad habits, gender wars, therapy, breakups, parents, siblings, generations, genetics, sexual confusion, family holidays, jealousy, celebrity, ladykillers, one-night-stands, drinking, depression, discipline, diapers, faulty logic, faded memory, missing inspiration, health care, aging bodies, longing times and overuse of the word “like” ... And that’s not even “the half of it” as they say in East Virginia (Midwestern joke). Look at his record as a father who writes songs about his family. Clearly he can express his demons in his lyrics.
Biff Rose (23 October 2015) Paul “Biff” Rose was a voltaic-green yet unpredictably-talented Hollywood sketch-writer/comedian who worked with George Carlin and Mort Sahl before launching his own solo songwriting career behind a piano in the late 1960s. Before his “electric carrot”introduction, Biff appeared on Carson’s network tv show a dozen times in twenty-four months – quite an accomplishment for a seriously jabberwocky folk singer! He also appeared on “American Bandstand,” “The Merv Griffin Show,” “The David Frost Show,” and “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”, so his friendly face found quick fame on American mainstream media at that shell-shocked moment of history. But his celebrity was fickle and fleeting.
Thelonious Monk & Bob Dylan (18 November 2018) All the broken notes and syncopated fractions of chords flowing from the flat fingers of Thelonious Monk bespeak without words the offbeat verbal gymnastics of modern song-poet Bob Dylan. And while Monk never seemed to perform the same tune the same way twice, the same goes for Dylan’s performances.
Bob Brozman (5 October 2015) Just composing such a cross-section of world music would have been enough for most musicians. But Brozman, a self-proclaimed “roving guitar anthropologist”, took his project to obsessive lengths. Every note from every instrument on every tune on the album flowed from the fingers of that one man pictured twenty seven times in a fez above. Presenting himself as a totally digital one-man band -- “The Bob Brozman Orchestra” -- he dubbed new tracks over-and-over the initial track, himself playing each new instrument onto the others one-at-a-time!
“Haunted Windchimes” (17 September 2015) We could call their music “bluegrass” perhaps, at least in their original number of players (five) and most of their instrumentation (ukulele subs for fiddle). But sometimes their odd toolbox makes them sound almost like a jug band. On any given tune, they may employ melodica, tambourine, harmonica, concertina, banjo ukulele, soprano ukulele, baritone ukulele, toy piano, or kazoo. But no jug, not yet.
Armando’s Pulls The Plug (16 April 2020) Roy Jeans, the emcee and a local legend, makes his living as a house painter. So, as he says, “I have a lot of paint.”Indeed, Armando’s was distinguished by the unique colorings found on every surface inside the club. So we broke down the interview into those obvious surfaces: the chairs, the door, the stage, the walls, the pole and the road.
Tear Down The Walls II (22 April 2020) Vince Martin and Fred Neil gained a bit of fame in the mid 1960s for “Tear Down The Walls”, their gentle anthem which became a campfire favorite among student protestors of the time. The “folk song” certainly was more akin to The Smothers Brothers than to say Stokely Carmichael. And by the end of the decade the sentiment of that tune had soured as the political landscape rumbled with campus violence.
Shut in the USA (17 May 2020) With that effort in mind, I’ve decided to publish this perpetual work-in-progress and very incomplete list I’ve assembled over the years of small music houses across the USA which were kindredly spirited to the coffeehouses of my youth. With Covid-19 shuttering public gatherings, it’s unclear how many of these venues will survive any reopening.
New Mountain Music (17 August 2019) A listing of stringed quintets that base and bounce their sound off a bluegrass foundation.
Film
Brit Wit: A-H and Brit Wit: I-Z (15 November 2022) - One great way for an American filmmaking student to study “foreign films” is to binge on British movies in all their luscious regionally-convoluted “foreign-sounding” English. It helps to know that in addition to its rigid class structure, Great Britain also has a unique diversity of widely-scattered and nationally-respected regional accents, which help specify the hard-hitting hilarity further. Here we examine twenty-one examples of dry British humor filtered through their funny “foreign” films. It might help to have a map to regionalize locations when exploring these movies – oddball proper names help distill this other-worldly humor.
The Comic Documentary (19 November 2022) - Everyone knows “the truth hurts”. But sometimes it can be quite funny. Particularly when the story being told is framed around some kind of True-or-False know-it-all documentary narrative, like National Geographic or Philomena Cunk. Socialized multi-media skulduggery in the form of clickbait fuels Faux News to the point where what’s True and what’s False on the screen in front of us is directly proportional to what the screen wants to sell to us. So True-or-False, maybe it can be a little bit of both? There’s always two sides to every story: the murder and the dead guy, the selfie and the schtick.
Curveball Comedies (15 October 2022) - When movie critics were searching for a term to define a new type of film comedy that arose between the start of The Depression to the aftermath of World War II, they settled on “screwball” because these films tended to run faster than normal knucklehead comedies like The Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. New York Giant Carl Hubbell used screwballs in the 1934 All-Star Game to consecutively strike out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin – Hall-of-Famers all. Afterward in American slang, the pitching term came to describe anything fast and erratic.
Screwball Comedies (15 October 2022) Reviews of Trouble in Paradise, Million Dollar Legs, Design for Living, It Happened One Night, Twentieth Century, Ruggles of Red Gap, Theodora Goes Wild, Libeled Lady, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, My Man Godfrey, Nothing Sacred, Easy Living, The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, You Can’t Take It With You, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Joy of Living, Fifth Avenue Girl; His Girl Friday, I Love You Again, The Bank Dick, Ball of Fire, Love Crazy, That Uncertain Feeling, To Be or Not To Be, Arsenic and Old Lace, Adam’s Rib, Born Yesterday, Beat the Devil, The Captain’s Paradise, A Thousand Clowns, The Knack, Morgan.
Knuckleball Comedies (15 October 2022) Reviews of Little Murders, The Ruling Class, Being There, The Man Who Stole The Sun, Melvin and Howard, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, All of Me, Moscow on the Hudson, Brother from Another Planet, Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, Brazil, After Hours, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Things Change, Beetlejuice, Married to the Mob, Women of the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; Quick Change, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Soapdish, The Fisher King, The Player, Bob Roberts, Six Degrees of Separation, Schizopolis, The Birdcage, Flirting with Disaster, Palookaville, Citizen Ruth, The House of Yes, Bulworth, The Slums of Beverly Hills, Election, Nurse Betty.
Anti-War Comedies (10 October 2022) - Throughout every century, civilization has suffered the senseless waste and abject suffering of war. And while war is not known for its humor – that hasn’t stopped the world’s filmmakers from producing seriously funny comedies during wartime. It’s fair to say that in attempting to make sense of barbaric nonsense, these films do not condone war in any shape or form. That’s the job of those who peddle propaganda. Honest feature filmmakers know war is a crime against civilization, no matter who’s on the other side. They also know wartime is fraught with deep ironies, which provide the foundation for these bitter comedies.
Hal Hartley (30 September 2022) - Most American film fanatics have never heard of Hal Hartley who is probably more popular in Europe or Asia than he’s ever been in his native United States – hailing from the lost suburbs of Lindenhurst, Long Island. After absorbing a couple Hartley films, something slowly starts to dawn upon the viewer as his characters dance, chat, shake, wax philosophic, fall silent and occupy the frame in odd arrangements with one another. They might be expected to do almost anything next … but nobody is smiling.
Ealing Comedies (25 September 2022) - Ealing Studios began building its international reputation by producing giddy “Ealing Comedies” that were perfectly suited for their place and time – the war-torn British Isles right after Those Tight Little Islands beat back Hitler in World War II. These rare films now are known as a collective response of the stout British defense against a relentless Nazi blitzkrieg. Foremost, these comedies were stories of place – with the community itself coalescing as a “character” in the story. Like other European countries after the war, British film crews took their cameras on location to capture the verisimilitude of the day. However, long dialogue scenes stillneeded studio sound stages. Ealing Studios certainly got a lot out of their small footprint on Ealing Green.
The Last Cinéaste (15 September 2022) - The ultimate Cinéaste, Jean-Luc Godard, passed away on 13 September after ninety-one prolific years outstanding alone on this planet, outliving his contemporaries all-the-while. Some called him “The Bob Dylan of movies”. Certainly his legacy is a “French National Treasure” as Emmanuel Macron has pointed out. Reportedly Godard died by “le suicide assisté”,thus stirring up public debate on that subject and creating controversy even at his final exit.
Sneak Peek Behind The Silver Screen (11 August 2017) The screen was so full of tiny holes, you could actually see the movie playing on the wall behind the screen! The explanation for this odd fact of light was quite simple: projectors in the booth upstairs were fueled by carbon-arc rods which gave off too much bright white light, so the screen had to be perforated in a regular pattern to allow excess illumination to bleed through. Filtered by these thousands of small pinpoint holes, the movie appeared simultaneously as “half-tone” on the back wall behind the screen! This was common throughout the industry; The Movies demanded lots of light – on the set and on the screen. And much of it was wasted behind the scenes.
Jonas Mekas: “Personal Documentary” (24 September 2015) It would be great to have a film clip of what I saw there in the Florida jungle sinkhole full of rushing water: a small middle-aged man flying through the trees yelling like Tarzan on a vine in bellbottom pants! Instead I’m left with the diary filmmaker’s paradox regarding “decisive moments” -- Why do some moments get captured, but most do not?
Jacques Tati (30 November 2015) Although known as a funny Frenchman, Jacques Tatischeff knew his last name was an aristocratic Russian name of great antiquity. But it was a little too long for theatre marquees, so he shortened it to its most linguistically logical reduction: Tati. One very short name for a ridiculously elongated man who based his odd walk on someone he knew -- an architect. Accentuated by his odd rain hat, Tati lurched forever forward, bouncing off his toes and steadfastly leaning into any force opposed to him. On the set, he had a special way of lacing his shoes as an orthotic reminder for his odd gait.
Pierre Étaix (23 September 2015) For half a century, the truncated filmmaking genius of Étaix was unknown even to avid cinema students outside France. Certainly we didn’t hear about him here in the USA. The great critic Roger Ebert – who died in 2013, the year Étaix films appeared on screens worldwide – never had a chance to review any of the Frenchman’s work.
Étaix and a Half (29 August 2018) Étaix, a circus clown, understood Fellini's expansion of cinema's visual horizons and payed homage to Fellini's "La Strada" as well as "8 1/2" in the Frenchman's feature "Yo Yo" (1965). It is not coincidental that Fellini also shared Étaix esteem for clowning and mime. Fellini devoted a segment of The Clowns (1970) to Étaix and his wife Gustave Fratellini.
Mike Leigh (22 October 2022) Imagine you’re an actor and you get a personal note from Mike Leigh: “I’d like to have you work in my next film.” Of course you say “Yes!” because actors seek these prized roles with the acclaimed writer/director/producer from the United Kingdom. Whatever these roles may be. That’s the whole point with a Mike Leigh acting assignment. The director knows who he wants to work with when he begins a film. He just doesn’t have much of an idea who his characters are or what the story may be. That’s premature speculation at this point in Leigh’s process. It’s just enough for him in the beginning to know who each actor is.
Preston Sturges (20 October 2022) In nine years, from 1940-48, Sturges wrote and directed nine of the most articulated and ridiculously funny movies ever screened -- before or since. They’re listed below, with links for your convenience. You may note that these films are still funny seventy-five years after they were made. Nobody wrote like Preston Sturges. Nobody had the convolution of mind for it. Imagine a stage-frightened Robin Williams living and working in Hollywood after The Depression (not his personal one) and World War II, but being unable to act … he could muster the courage only to write.
Billy Wilder (21 October 2022) Marvin knew a Billy Wilder Picture meant big box office, lines around the building, full usher crews, two doormen, overtime. Our theater had one screen and fifteen hundred seats. Sometimes a film would play there several months, selling out the house two or three times a day! Imagine that kind of sustained crowd in today’s world of Multiplex Galore and Netflix-on-demand.
Woody Allen – Part One and Part Two (3 December 2022) Certainly Allen can craft a perfect narration. He wrote one for Sandy Baron in “Broadway Danny Rose” (1984). It’s brilliant: Baron sitting around a table with other comics spinning yarns in flashback. Sandy’s “reminiscence” is the longest story, and main narrative thread of the film. Although Woody does cut back to his table scene, most of Baron’s shaggy-dog monologue is voice-over – and it truly propels the story. Jump forward twenty years and we find Woody regressing with over-narration seriously bogging down his screenplays. It’s as if he’s channeling his Inner Robert Benchley. The obvious culprit: Woody’s short-story narrative voice occupies too much room in his scripts which should be rejoicing in his dialogue and silly situations, but not muddling through overstated plot-points and I-told-you-so expositions.
Gig Young (4 January 2018) Barr liked the name "Gig Young" so much he decided to keep it as his own on screen. Warners agreed, and he was so credited in subsequent roles, right up to his final film role as Jim Marshall in “Game of Death” (1978). He ended up making 55 pictures in thirty years, and won an Oscar for his performance in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969). The original credits for "The Gay Sisters" listed "Byron Barr" as playing "Gig Young" but after Barr assumed that screen name, the credits were changed in later release prints. This creates a confusing mess for anyone who sees the film in the Twenty-First Century where "Gig Young" is vaguely recalled from his dim but considerable celebrity from the Twentieth Century.
“Ricki and The Flash” (17 September 2015) Demme’s design team creates an authentic looking Salt Well, the fictional Tarzana dive bar where Ricki’s band hangs out. But so much screen time gets devoted to Meryl and The Flash playing live there, that the dive scene becomes, paradoxically, the obverse of what the filmmakers intend. The Salt Well starts to feel too slickly blocked and choreographed for any true salty-dog LA dive. Initially, it’s impressive to see Streep channel her inner Bonnie Raitt but after what seems an eternity of cover tunes for all ages, her constant concert rubs the story thin. Instead of an uplifted finale, the whole show grinds to a coarse halt -- with no encore.
“Love and Taxes” (5 December 2022) This is an oddly coherent true romance of Love and Taxes, of course. But also it’s a touching tale of Options and Duty. Signatures and Fatherhood. Civics and Pay Back. Not to mention a "bun in the oven". And the film ends in a singularly profound moment which must be seen in a theater with an audience (see sidebar) to fully experience its resonance. It’s a summary emotional moment too strong for “spoiler alerts” because it’s far too complex to explain in words on a page.
Theater
Cindy Lou Johnson – playwright (18 September 2015) Cindy Lou Johnson, the playwright who directed and wrote this film, has a breezy writing style that is rooted in screwball comedy classics and continues that tradition set in motion by writer-directors Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. Johnson (“The Years” “Brilliant Traces”) writes poignantly funny plays about women on the verge of marriage, one way or the other, although Beatrice isn’t about to get married in this film. An NEA playwriting fellow, Johnson also has tv writing credits for a series on the California Gold Rush and HBO’s “Vietnam Stories”.
“The Motel Room and The Mountaintop” (20 February 2017) The spiritual underpinnings of this work are clear and necessary for the Legacy of King. But as told here, Weathersby does not depict The Reverend Doctor as a Holy Man. He smokes, he drinks, he argues, he cries, he flirts … flying around the room like Gene Kelly. Weathersby is an obvious musical comedy veteran. But he also handles the difficult text with élan … neither actor leaves the room until the end.
‘Let Me Hear You Smile”- Part One and Part Two (17 September 2015) Resurrecting this obscure failed play makes sense as it can resonate to Baby Boomers now old enough to provide an appreciative audience for it four decades later. “Let Me Hear You Smile” begins with the three characters battling retirement and forgetfulness as they turn 70, then it progresses to their 40s when they’re more memorable but almost menopausal, before ending with the trio entering grade school at the turn of the century -- the 20th Century. None of them speaks as an adult in the final stanza. Sound vaguely familiar?
“Esperanza” Means Hope (29 May 2016) Esperanza has the courage to follow her path, wherever that may lead. I realized that though I was happy and completely fulfilled being a wife and Mom, I still missed the passion that comes from creating and telling my story. For me, that passion comes to life in my personal writing and composing. The willingness to be vulnerable and put our creative soul out there is a dangerous thing. We have to be prepared to be judged, to be rejected or simply ignored. We finally come to the realization, however, that that doesn’t matter. We write because we must. There’s no other choice if we want to live passionate lives.
Stand-Up Drama: Writing on Our Feet (1 July 2019) It doesn’t help my mind to know that the story my mouth is trying to tell is all about vertigo. In fact, my short one-man play is called “Vertigo Blues or Gravity’s Got Me Down”. Perhaps the title is too prophetic for earthquake-prone San Francisco Just thinking about vertigo makes me dizzy. And the fact that I’ve suffered a pair of concussions over the years also compounds my performance problem.
Randall Jay Nott: An Egoless Theater Zealot (6 November 2019) Most recently, he was widely recognized in East Bay community theater circles as an actor, director, photographer, videographer, writer, lighting engineer, sound designer and all-round stage-tech guru—the guy in the booth the actors salute after they take their bows. “An egoless theater zealot,” as a fellow actor put it.
Open Community Theaters (29 July 2019) Listing of Northern California community theaters open to outside groups and solo performers.
Television
“Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” (17 September 2015) Suddenly a soap opera! After the late night news on a UHF Channel. With no laugh track, of course. And very little sappy soapy organ music. Just the dull fluorescent hum of studio wildtrack, perhaps a muffled cough or a crewman’s dumb stumble off camera. Plus very strange storylines and a sudden silly cliffhanger ending every night. Those of us raised on Saturday afternoon serials always appreciate a lame cliffhanger.
“Calling for Help on a Land Line” (21 June 2018) Woeful as Mary's plight seems as presented in this scene, it fails to account for further woes involving her neighborhood teenaged mass murder, slaughtered goats and chickens, getting tied up with a cop in a Chinese laundry, overtures to open marriage and S.T.E.T., getting the brushoff from the Lackawanda Institute and an eight-year-old evangelist, not to mention Coach Fedders and the chicken soup! No ... Mary's troubles are so overflowing she barely knows where to begin seeking help. Fortunately, Mary had a land line in her kitchen which connects her to the Help Line Lady.
“It’s Garry Shandling” (7 December 2022) Shandling, was drawing on his inner Ernie Kovacs, himself a quite funny man who didn’t hide the fact that it was all a show, his tv show. Kovacs was keenly aware of the magical fact of television: Everything gets squeezed into a box (the tv) and out through the frame (the screen). We could see Kovacs biting the tongue in his cheek in a skit because he had the audacity to do his routines live.
“Frank’s Place” (18 November 2022) What made the show special were all the supporting characters: Miss Marie (Frances E. Williams) was the waitress who never got up from her seat and knew voodoo when she needed it. Sassy Anna-May (Francesca P. Roberts) served more than meals at the restaurant. Tiger Shepin (Charles Lampkin) tended bar with a keen ear and an eye on the door. The Reverend Tyrone Deal (Lincoln Kilpatrick) did most of his missionary work in Frank’s bar, and was often joined there by notorious NOLA barrister Bubba Weisberger (Robert Harper) who was just enough out of place in the South to feel right at home at Frank’s Place. Street-smart Bubba knew how to clean up Frank’s Crescent City troubles.
“Slings and Arrows” (5 December 2022) We know The Bard is in for a heavy shakedown at the end of the pilot episode when a major character gets run over by a truck and turns into the show’s ghost! Let’s review the details: A series about acting starts when a Shakespearean actor gets drunk and ends up plastered recumbent in the middle of the road, only to be run over by a truck screaming in big letters the word “HAMS”. Printed right across its front. Ham Actor Killed -- news at eleven! This foreign-sounding English-language program premiered in November 2003 and ran for three seasons to achieve a kind of cult status among folks concerned with the history and future of theater. It’s a bitter-sweet backstage office sitcom about a fictional dysfunctional Shakespearean theatre festival in New Burbage Canada (could that be Stratford, Ontario?) which is attempting to nurture its “declining subscriber base” by choosing an artistic direction somewhere between The Bard and The Great White Way.
Reality TV – Part One - “An American Family” (6 October 2015) Although no one knew it at the time, “An American Family” launched “reality tv” when it was filmed in Santa Barbara in 1971 and aired in winter 1973 on public television of all places! Back then, it was a curiosity on PBS otherwise known for its wildlife documentaries. This time they focused the wildlife cameras on people -- or rather “Californians”, a species foreign to most of the rest of the USA at that time. The documentary film crew lived “in the wild” with a family long enough to capture an actual divorce scene through an open doorway! It was very dramatic then and did not seem staged.
Reality TV – Part Two - “Southern Charm” (6 October 2015) Whitney is a seemingly shy multi-talent who can produce, direct, act and play guitar. Listed in International Movie Data Base, he’s “a player” of sorts, certainly in his Mom’s new hometown of Charleston. He seems very wise, as a filmmaker, to have realized that he could cast his loopy Peter Pan “friends” most of whom seem bred to drink and celebrate their celebrity in this very intoxicated “reality show” with humble ratings and a cult following.
Reality TV – Part Three – “UnReal” (6 October 2015) The backstage show-within-a-show quality of “UnReal” takes a bit of adjustment on the part of the audience. And it can make anyone uncomfortable, particularly if we can’t distance our feelings from all the connivingly “UnReal” plots. It’s a fast-moving story with lots of interruptions, so it’s best seen on a DVR, You Tube or portable device so you can pause and rewind. Plus, the characters on this program would not survive on a kinder, gentler show like, say “Big Bang Theory”. The storylines are not particularly funny and almost every character is quite nasty. “UnReal” doesn’t give us much to root for.
Tonto Talk (22 December 2019) Jean-Luc Godard would liked to have shown Film Socialisme without any subtitles at the Cannes film festival, but both his French distributor Wild Bunch and the festival urged him to provide English subtitles. He agreed, provided that he could make them "his way" -- a request that was met favorably. There wasn't much hesitation from Wild Bunch since "the film was already experimental as it was." Godard then asked Lenny Borger and Cynthia Schoch, who did the English subtitles for his two previous features, Éloge de l'amour (2001) and Notre Musique (2004), to translate the French dialogue entirely, without telling them why.
Audience Participation
Anna Deavere-Smith: Audience Participation (23 January 2020) Smith is a larger-than-life woman who commands any space she occupies. Watch her work on stage a few minutes and it’s easy to imagine her as a child -- larger than her peers -- who got in tons of trouble for mimicking everybody around her. But actually she is extremely empathetic. Indeed, she occupies each of her characters’ physical presence through their very own words which she draws out of them with a tape recorder. Smith constructs every solo performance from these raw audio logs. Indeed, they are actual “logs” -- verbatim transcriptions -- of her taped interviews which are presented on stage as if we’re just “hanging out” with her.
“Shelter-In-Place” (23 March 2020) With little warning our region was told to “shelter-in-place” last week, on the morning after the Ides of March – the annual date Empire Romans settled up debts. That immediate but unenforceable order affected millions of people, as would any quake which requires no warning when announcing its own shockwaves in extreme present tense A week after our shelter-in-place began, one billion earthlings now are estimated to be sequestered in their homes. But “shelter” jargon feels completely unsuited for the impending doom and sudden economic collapse prompted by rogue contagion currently plaguing our planet. Recall: “The” Homeless rarely shelter anywhere.
The Digital Box Office (27 March 2020) Suddenly gig workers of all stripes were unemployed – busboys, bartenders, waiters, ushers, musicians, dishwashers, retail clerks ... all sorts of performers, crews, athletes – all standing by, idling in situ. High-salaried MLB, NBA, NFL players and famous guys like Jimmy Kimmel (bless his heart) can afford to stay home during such a crisis. But unendowed small-time performers live by the tip jar, if not door receipts. Now what?
An Audient Dreams of Gathering Crowds (5 April 2020) The brief report that follows is from Jill Bourque, mentioned in “The Digital Box Office” previously on these pages. Jill’s on-line audience streaming service, RushTix, has compiled the list and offers it to anyone evaluating the best way to round up an audience on line.
Home Alone with Take-Out Theater (29 April 2020) At one priceless moment in the short piece, Sussman pulls out what must be his most prized possessions as a writer: his own journal from when he was six-years-old! He clearly delights to read his own youthful “flowery prose” documenting the day JFK came to town on a train: “How caboose! So cool! But I fear Kennedy's charisma may obscure the neocolonialist Cold War wolf hiding in the sheep’s clothing of volunteerism.”
“The Audience That Ain’t There – Part One (26 April 2021) My wife recently attended a mass meditation on Zoom where people talked while attempting to quiet their minds. I declined invitation to a Zoom call because I couldn’t understand what writers-watching-other-there in silence. Bored homebound creativity confronts harsh Lockdown truths as a performer’s attention gets filtered through wifi. Rendered bits get lost in the translation of excited electrons. People who are born-to-perform understand the truth of their existence: nothing beats an actual audience, sitting there right in front of you. Breathing the same oxygen, in the same room, at the same time. With earned applause that’s spontaneous and not at all “tracked”.
“The Audience That Ain’t There – Part Two (30 May 2021) Before Lockdown, this handy bifurcation of “narrative” styles worked well for anyone who needed to weed out the Willie Lomans among public speakers. But as the internet beget the death of the salesmen, YouTube began to suggest a new hybrid performer, a two-faced Janus figure – someone who can narrate out of both sides of a mouth – and sell an idea meant also to tell a story.
Photography
The Picture-Story (30 October 2022) For the last nine months, I’ve been photographing the slow demolition of a 12-story steel and concrete building down the street from our house. I’ve kept the camera charged and the tripod ready, legs extended out full. So I can just grab the camera bag, grab the ‘pod and get out the door whenever my ears inform me that the high-rise demolition machines are getting active again. As I covered this on-going event, I recalled mountain-man John Lindstrom’s picture-story lectures. I also recalled the great Magnum photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who considered photography an art that seeks “to preserve life in the act of living” because photographers “deal in things which are continually vanishing.”
“The Rad Lab” (11 December 2015) Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter, Howard Wolowitz and Rajesh Koothrappali would hang here if they weren’t fictional nerds from the hit sit-com “Big Bang Theory” (see S8, E19). Old Blues still lovingly call the place The Rad Lab. But installations within it also have been known as The Cyclotron, The Bevatron, The Synchrotron and currently The Advanced Light Source. Each time the contents of the original domed structure have been reconfigured for deeper scientific studies.
“Privacy Island” (18 May 2016) Clearly, with tons of traffic whizzing by her preoccupied head, the young woman was in no wide-angled frame of mind. But that didn’t really matter at all. Despite her careless spirit, she taught me a valuable lesson by just sitting there, posing in the middle of the street: Slow down and smell the pictures.
Selfie Lighting for Talking Heads (9 May 2020) Obviously, most talking heads put more effort into dressing their dens and living rooms than considering how to properly light these “sets”. Further muddling the picture is the fact home video “broadcast quality” ranges from HD 1080p all the way down to fuzzy VHS. Who knew that to put on a “shelter-in-place” news show, networks would have to rely on their individual correspondents’ varied broadband connections?
“Bookend Rendezvous”
Nervous Fever? “Just Throw Money” (13 October 2017) History can be most unkind to anyone born ahead of one’s time – especially someone from the Nineteenth Century who may have suffered from what my friend Marin County comedian Mike Duvall liked to call a “chronological order disorder”. That strange affliction includes associate maladies known as“Nervous Fever” and “Nervous Prostration”.
Writers Writing About Writing (13 February 2019) “Writing, too, is ninety percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you. If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don’t only listen to the person speaking to you across the table, but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door.”
Marquee Shade & Ghost Light (6 March 2020) Although less notorious than Frank Rich, Carlson is a recognized expert in western theater history. But it’s not easy to comprehend an author who asks “How do theaters mean?” Upon reflection, that’s a very probing question when you face it head on. Put another way: How do theaters tell and sell themselves to the public? What is their story, beyond those fleeting moments of poetry dramatically presented on stage?
One-Act Plays
“North Bitch” or “The Sheets of San Francisco” (29 October 2021) Not Long Ago, film crew-mates on divergent career paths collide head-on with colluding forces of ride-share transport and rouge law enforcement in The City’s most traditional neighborhood. An untrue unrequited love tale of sex, drugs and b-roll. Dogs may show up for their daily work detail, but with LSD circulating again, who can remember anything?
“My Staged House” or “Broken Homemakers of Strawberry Point” (9 June 2021) Is California ready for a statewide singing license? Or a running back willing to change teams? Or a judge who never occupied “the closet” now actually coming out of one? And what’s the true worth of 3,700 square feet of bay views if they can’t be shared? Nobody knows the answers to these questions except the bartender at The No Name, and she’s not talking.
“My Psychic Spouse” or “Homeless House-Sitters of Sausalito” (7 July 2021) When two of the wealthiest people on earth – widely known for their psychic abilities – suddenly foresee their own obituaries, what are they to do? Meanwhile, when two of the most liberated people on earth – widely known for their folksy civic pioneering – suddenly inherit wealth beyond their wildest dreams, what are they to say? As before, nobody knows the answers to these questions except the bartender at The No Name. And you know what she’s not doing.
“RadLab Rats” or “Picnic in People’s Park” (2 March 2021) A gnawing problem for graduate students ends up front-page news when a RadLab experiment runs afoul of People’s Park gossip. Also troubled as they part ways on the tenure track are a wife who wants to get ahead and a husband who’s losing his mind. Meanwhile a pair of vagabond “trimmigrants” know how to lay out a top shelf Thanksgiving feast with no table necessary.
“Hazmat Suits” or “The God-Awful Truth of Unintended Consequences” (8 October 2021) A pair of privileged-but-busted Marin County trust-funders hope to recharge careers in Berkeley, while neighboring grad students mark time between research grants. Nobody seems to want to know the answer to: “What’s that smell?” Meanwhile at the Albany Bulb, Mad Marc’s Castle is been repurposed for a new diaspora. Who knew People’s Park would get so politically overcrowded? Or that fluttering butterflies could launch such ecological turmoil?
“Vandals in Sandals or "South Beach Spell Check” (21 August 2021) Three septuagenarian insomniacs suffering self-righteous indignation use recycled spray-paint cans to befuddle the guardians of Government Cut as South Miami Beach goes on high alert to protect South Florida’s maritime commerce. Sarge Marge, a Canadian special agent new to the tropics, gets enlisted to uproot the vandals using “enhanced deposition techniques”. But first she must find them, and then process the toenail.
“Plumb Line & Sinker" or "The Leaning Towers of San Francisco” (28 October 2016) Deep in a downtown San Francisco high-rise root cellar with seismic monitoring equipment and wine bottles stacked behind backlit glass cabinets, Occupational Safety and Health Administration Risk ManagerHoney Ginseng greets Homer B. Goodrich. He wears official badge, flat-top cap and ridiculous outfit with bow-tie. Honey holds up fancy RFID Scanner full of dials and lights. They agree, to say the least, that the scanner says something is off kilter.
“Autocar” or “Six Characters in Search of a Designated Driver” (17 February 2022) In a future when cars go driving themselves, passengers find they are just along for the ride. What can they do, but talk … MARTINI: How would I know? DMV only issues licenses. (beat) You’re the Designated Driver. NASH: No! CalTrans is in charge of roads ... We don’t handle drivers! You’re Designated Driver!!! I’m Designated Shotgun!
“Baggage Claim” or “Late for Thanksgiving” (17 February 2022) He sits facing upstage with his back toward us. Erect and waiting motionless. She enters left quickly crossing right. Frantic. She drags a pair of large suitcases. They’re heavy.
Full Plays
“Joe Fish Ties The Knot” or “Last Gillnet on Grangers Wharf” – Act I -
“Joe Fish Ties The Knot” or “Last Gillnet on Grangers Wharf” – Acts II and III -
(26 March 2022) Brothers Mike and Joe know it's a tough way to make a buck when they fish for a living off one boat. Particularly when they enjoy no comforts of “union” like the rest of the “blue class” workers who surround them on the Shoreline. And especially in 1953 when California Fish and Game is considering termination of their livelihood by outlawing their gillnets in the Carquinez salmon run. Further complicating matters is a two-timing widow who, of course, returns to town. What ensues is a cannery of worms, so to speak, run by her flickered flame, the County Sheriff’s captain, along with his bee-bop bandmates, a pair of wharf rats embroiled in a smooth criminal shakedown that accounts for more than one frantic ramble up and down Snake Road. Not to mention The Devil’s Lounge, Napa State Hospital and IRS visitations, or a creek monkey with a smoking problem after a desperate race against fate all the way to Lovers Point.
Solo Performance Scripts
“Henri Freud’s War on Tourism – Act One” (15 August 2021) A femme-fatale suffering stage fright and identity theft hornswoggles Henri into a desire discordant relationship to end all desire discordant relationships. Of course, this leads to a run-in with the National Guard on the Golden Gate Bridge. Something about the distinction between “stable bedding” and “horse manure”. No amount of negotiations outside the No Name Bar can settle said dispute, so Henri finds himself in an odd series of misunderestimations with higher authorities at a Hard Site in a foreign land. What’s an up-close-and-personal investigatin’ journalist supposed to do to land an interview in such a delicate situation.
“Henri Freud’s War on Tourism – Act Two” (15 August 2021) Two tiny creatures, Jorge and Martha, help Henri understand that nobody is truly “alone” – particularly in the parallel universe of solitary confinement. But he knows he can’t act like he’s ignorant if he’s gonna be taken seriously enough to get embedded for an up-close-and-personal interview.
“Hitched Up Real Tight” (29 June 2019) Tall guy. Heavy-set, dressed like a golfer. Could be a professional. Carries a single golf club – a putter! Strange guy to be hitch-hiking out here all alone in the dark. Kinda like a ghost. Or Max von Sydow.
“Vertigo Blues” or “Gravity’s Got Me Down” (24 June 2019) A plot as twisted as Lombard Street: Fake suicides, recurring charades, mistaken identifications. A fateful necklace, the mysterious wife, a possessed mistress. Catatonic acrophobia, a dummy bell tower, the sudden nun. A green hotel. The ironic reappearance of Judy from Salina! All of it cascades into a dolly-zoom nightmare: “The Vertigo Effect”. Designed by Paramount’s second cameraman Irmin Roberts. The dolly moves the camera forward, while the zoom moves backward – warping perspective of the viewer … me!
Playbills
“Vandals In Sandals" PLAYBILL (7 July 2017) Playbill for staged reading. Three down-on-their-luck Miami Beach bums – MORTIE (Edwin Peabody); BERNIE (Remington Stone); VINNIE (Sal Russo) – find themselves at odds with local law enforcement – HANDLEBAR WAXMAN (Randy Anger) and detective DICK DICKENS (Ryan Terry). What’s a good cop/bad cop to do? Call for outside reinforcements -- SARGE MARGE (Linda Sciacqua).
“Joe Fish Ties the Knot” or “Last Gillnet on Grangers Wharf” (November 2021)
“Joe Fish” PLAYBILL (30 August 2018) However, one day Joe’s sister Frances ventured too close to railroad tracks near their home and a hot charcoal from a passing locomotive damaged her eye so severely that the local doctor could not treat it. The family eventually was forced to move to San Francisco for better health care. There – in North Beach – the three younger sons learned to play baseball well enough to earn their living on ballfields instead of papa’s boat. This play presumes a parallel story where Joe’s sister wasn’t so badly injured and the “Pescatori” family didn’t need to leave The Shoreline …
The author plays hardball with Madison Bumgarner
