EXTRA CRITICUM

Pulled from the Archives: Teco, Outlaw, Sullivan

We're introducing a new feature to the site. Every couple of weeks or so, the editors at E.C. will take a stroll through our archives and pull a group of interesting posts that are loosely related in theme to offer up to our readership for a second read. If you have a favorite post you'd like us to "pull from the archives," just email us and we'll try to locate it for you. Or, you could also just use the handy Lijit Search box in the right sidebar.

Gershwin Employment Service by Paul Outlaw

Bring Back the Talk-back, Please. by Rolando Teco

Brush Up Your Cole Porter by Robert David Sullivan

The Class Bias Shaping American Theatre

The other night Gary Garrison and I attended the inaugural ceremony for the New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award, which was given to the immensely talented and shockingly young Tarell Alvin McRaney. In his remarks, McRaney (who is African American and 28 years old and pictured here) referred to his background, having grown up in, as he put it, "the part of Miami that is not South Beach." He was raised by his single mother in Liberty City, which from the sound of things, may be Florida's version of South Central L.A.

I was struck by how much stage time during the event was given to McRaney's background. His plays are not exclusively autobiographical in content, so the only reason for all this attention to his humble origins just may be how unusual they are in a field cluttered with trust fund babies or at least children of privilege. And this got me thinking: Is the lack of serious governmental funding for the Arts in this country directly resulting in the majority of our new plays being written by children of privilege?

A reading of my new play tomorrow in NYC!

So I disappear for two months and come back in time to make a Shameless Self-Promo? Classic, Warnock...

However, I am back from the first round of editing Best Lesbian Erotica, and the Absolut International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and the Lammies and all kinds of other things that I do instead of writing, to mention something that I do that has to do with writing:

Put Words in Mister Softee's Cone Contest: Best Lyric Wins Big!

In the recent flurry of commentary over our four 2nd looks at the 1985 film, After Hours, it came to light that Andrew Altenburg had been trying to put lyrics to the Mister Softee ice cream truck tune for years. See following quote:

Well, I never did actually finish the Mr. Softee lyrics but maybe now that I have a little extra time on my hands (see my post from late yesterday) maybe it's something I can work on...

We at Extra Criticum decided to help him finish this vital cultural project by soliciting you, our readers, as our best resource. Come up with your lyric to the Mister Softee tune (provided in mp3 below) and you may win one of several as-yet-undetermined door prizes as well as the satisfaction of knowing that you have breathed new life into this classic tune, a fixture of the New York City landscape for at least 25 years. [Enter your lyrics in the Comments section below]

Download MrSoftee

25 Years Later: "After Hours"

I haven’t seen Martin Scorcese’s After Hours since it came out in 1985 and I was a 21-year-old who had never been to New York. Since then I’ve spent a lot of time in Manhattan and have met plenty of strange characters after midnight, so I get the movie in ways I didn’t before.

For example, I now get the joke about New Yorkers seeing neighborhoods outside of their homes and workplaces as mystifying, and often terrifying, places. I loved the shots of street signs near the end of the film, showing Griffin Dunne’s progress from SoHo to Midtown. When I lived on 180st Street, I often had the experience of watching the numbered streets go up, from the window of a cab or subway train, and feeling that I was inching ever closer to the comfort of my bed. Another favorite After Hours image was the Mr. Softee ice cream truck, turned sinister when lit by street lamps instead of the noontime sun.

Giving my After Hours some Lovin'

A few weeks ago Rolando, Robert and David and I all met for lunch and as we're a movie-savvy bunch the conversation naturally turned to our favorites. And one by one we each agreed that Martin Scorsese's After Hours was one we really liked. But after seeing it a couple times in late 1986, would it still hold up 23 years later?

Initially I was drawn to the movie because Teri Garr was in it. I enjoyed Garr as the Disbelieving Wife in Close Encounters and then as the Disbelieving Girlfriend in Tootsie. I always felt Garr's pain in these movies, she's always kind of outside the extraordinary events going on around her and her characters are like us, doing the best we can in trying times. 

After Hours: A Male Paranoid Fantasy of Female Volatility?

It had been at least 20 years since I’d last seen Scorcese’s fever dream on film and my take on it has changed substantially, no doubt, in large part to how I have changed.

When I first saw the film, I remember being fascinated by the connections that took the main character Paul Hackett (played beautifully by Griffin Dunne)on his topsy-turvey journey through the hidden layers of lower Manhattan after dark. It seemed to me then—and it still does today—that the string of coincidences and recurring themes that carry him on his meandering path could only be the product of a dreaming mind.

Watching it today, I was struck by the volatility of most of the female characters he meets along the way. 

After Hours Re-Viewed

Not too long ago a bunch of E.C. writers had brunch. Over mimosas and blueberry pancakes, a question was posed: does After Hours hold up? 

I don't remember the first time I saw After Hours, or whether I first saw it in a theater or on VHS or on cable. I do remember enjoying it immensely and watching it more than once in the 80s and early 90s. And though I hadn't seen it in probably 15 years, it always occupied a special place in my heart because of where it was set and where I was in my life when I watched it. So, how would I respond to it in 2009, now that the setting has become unrecognizable and I'm in a very different place? This is, after all, what we mean when we ask does a film hold up. So does it?

The Most Pathetic Movie of the Year

I used to have a friend who said, “I can’t relate to anyone who isn’t pathetic.” I thought those were wise, if unusual, words. We are ridiculous creatures, us humans. All that strutting and fretting. Anyone who can’t accept that in themselves is probably not a person I want to spend a lot of time with.

It’s an interesting word, pathetic. In the modern world it is entirely pejorative. But the root of the word is “pathos”, which means a quality that inspires tenderness or sympathy. Works of art are often lauded as being “rich in pathos”, yet to be rich in pathos is, grammatically speaking, to be pathetic. That said, I don’t think any critic ever praised a movie by saying, “It’s the most pathetic movie of the year!” If they did, it probably didn’t make it on to the poster.

Heat Of the Moment

I have something to reveal. Something no one who immerses himself in pop culture should admit and that is that I am always at the end of every trend. It’s true. If you see me embracing a trend, it is over. I am the harbinger of the end of fads. I resist and resist and embrace it just near the end. I’m like the human equivalent of Oprah because once she’s covered a trend, girl, you know it’s way past it's expiration date.

Stephen Belber: "Why Bother?"

Fascinating piece by playwright Stephen Belber in the Los Angeles Times. (Thanks to Thomas Cott of You've Cott Mail fame for flagging this)

My name is Stephen Belber and I am a playwright ... and I'm not sure why. Or let me put it this way: I make a tidy living writing studio screenplays; an indie movie just came out that I wrote and directed; and if all goes well, I'll be directing another of my scripts in the near future -- all of which has led me to seriously question the Sisyphean endeavor that is playwriting. I mean let's be serious, even Tony Kushner's writing movies now, so what kind of wall are the rest of us banging our heads against?

click here to read the whole piece.

And for another take on things, see Rolando Teco's post, Is Theatre Worth Saving?

Point Counterpoint: Licata and Teco on Fame v.7 (THE END)

E.C. Authors David Licata and Rolando Teco recently embarked on an extended conversation on the subject of fame. Here's part seven, the final installment of their exchange:

Take the Broadway Legend Quiz

Six pictures of six Broadway legends appear below. All are dead. Three were actors. Three were playwrights. See if you can identify all six faces. (If you can ID all six faces AND correctly link them to their clues below, you win a free EXTRA CRITICUM t-shirt.)

1.

2.

What city will be the next NYC?

The changes--some more obvious than others--in the pulse of New York City have lately sent me into drifting daydreams imagining where else I might prefer to make my life as an artist. One of the trends that seems to be causing not just me but many of my friends and colleagues to wonder the same thing is a slow brain drain from the city. It just feels like the city has become less and less hospitable to creative types. The fact of the matter is: artists thrive when they are surrounded by other artists, so I'd never consider going somewhere where we were hard to find. And New York still boasts the highest concentration of artists of any place in the country but, honestly... how long can this last?

A few months ago, E.C. author and demographic guru Robert David Sullivan turned me on to this NEA study on Artists in the Workforce 1990-2005.

Full of Glee But Not As Much Fun in Mudville

Tonight, I watched the premiere.. er, the ‘preview’ episode of FOX’s GLEE, the new show about a high school glee club. For the first 50 minutes I was in love, didn’t want it to end. The writing was so sharp – great one liners likening cheerleading practice to waterboarding and hepatitis (Jane Lynch’s gym teacher is tough as nails, cynical, bitter and proud of it) – and the story had so much heart – likeable “losers” want to belong to something special and think glee club is their ticket to fame inasmuch as ‘fame’ can be had in high school.

But while I was enchanted with the characters as they told their backstories, future conflicts fell into place, and as musical numbers came and went, I found myself getting angry.