EXTRA CRITICUM

A Farewell to Dave

In 1980, I was working as a temp in the offices of NBC. A TV screen hovered above my desk, playing the daytime shows. David Letterman was (briefly) on daytime then, until he landed his first late night gig two years later. His acerbic and witty brand of humor was clearly not meant for daytime. We are used to him now, and his style of humor, but he was an original. The thought of Larry "Bud" Melman still makes me laugh. He and his staff invented the Top 10 List. "Dave" has been part of my entire adult life, from age 22, just as Johnny Carson was part of my entire childhood. We aren't friends. We have never met. I have rarely even watched his show in recent years. But 34 years is a long time to remain a familiar presence, glowing pixels through the TV screen or emanating light from the laptop, 5 nights a week - a bastion of comfort in this fast-paced ever-changing world. So I will watch Dave's final show tomorrow night. And It will bring back a flood of memories from the past 34 years. And I will miss him.

On Creativity and Art

There is creativity. And there is Art. 

 Every person is creative. I have had friends tell me, “I can’t sing”. And then I coach them a little at my keyboard. Once they learn a bit about breath and muscle relaxation, and they become a little less nervous and insecure, they can sing. They may not sing well, but they can sing. 

 Everyone can sing. Everyone can act, paint, sculpt, dance, write, compose and photograph. But we don’t all allow ourselves to remove the barriers that have been placed before us through decades of dictums: “You’re not good enough”. “You’re good enough, but not great.” “You’re great, but what’s going to be your real career?” 

 What happened to the countless finger paintings, mud pies, xylophone clangings, woodblock bangings, backyard pirate battles? What happened to dancing like a dervish in the living room while singing along to your parents’  “Funny Girl” Broadway album? Okay, that one is me. They are actually all me. And they are all you, too. What happens to that little kid when we decide to squelch the creativity that is inside each of us, for the sake of something called “real life”?

10 thoughts after viewing all of the 20 SAG Award nominated film performances

1st in a continuing series

 

1. Diseases are like catnip to actors, especially if they can show the progression of the disease from health to illness. (Theory of Everything, Still Alice.)

Is your commitment to a favorite TV series a mellow longterm relationship or an intense hot love affair?

So I’m riding the Bolt bus from Boston back to NYC and the young gentleman next to me opens up his laptop and dons his noise-reducing over-the-ear headphones and proceeds to watch what I can tell is an episode from Breaking Bad. I, of course, am also wearing my noise-reducing over-the-ear headphones, but I have ditched the laptop for this quickie overnight trip and am resolved to write – by pen! - a little blog entry on the difference between watching an episodic dramatic TV show in its weekly format and watching it in a marathon viewing.

Naturally, a pen is nowhere to be found on my person. So I make the universal signal for “Would you mind taking off your headphones so I can ask you if you have a pen, please?” and the young gentleman next to me does so. And what a pen! It’s beautiful. And I seize upon this momentary gateway into human communication to let him know that I love Breaking Bad, and I ask him what season is he on and he says that he is on Season 3 and he has been powering through all the episodes since last week. He travels a lot as a sound designer for musicians on tour and he uses the time on planes in hotel rooms (and apparently on buses) to catch up on the TV series that his buddies have long since watched and have been talking about.

On Moby-Dick, The Bachelorette, Tristram Shandy and other nonlinear musings

I have unplugged my television for the summer.

Well, that’s not quite true. I have opted to bequeath my early 21st century (non-flat screen) TV to a young person in need, and wait at least a month before I purchase a flat screen for myself.

Bringing a life to life: the challenges of writing a biographical play.

After seeing the Broadway production of Matthew Lombardo’s Looped the other night, I was struck by how the playwright endeavored to find a fresh approach to the biographical drama in Act One, and then fell into the trap of good old “confession and reconciliation” banality in Act Two, thereby turning a surprisingly entertaining evening into another disappointing attempt at bringing a life to life.

Disparity between Acts is not the sole domain of biographical plays, of course.  Many a great playwright has been stymied by second acts, and it is no small feat that Looped manages to entertain up until the predictable and preposterous confessional climax.  What keeps the play interesting in Act One is Lombardo’s fine and vital sense of comedy and, mainly, Valerie Harper’s brave and bravura turn as the bawdy Tallulah Bankhead.