Angelina Might Have a Drinking Problem

The grim, grey disparity of Penn Station’s interiors is hard to face on a rainy Tuesday. I was able to make the situation somewhat lighter by opting for a brief encounter with a newsstand, it’s gossip rag headlines breathing revitalizing breath back into me. One such headline announced that an assistant to Angelexia Jolie is set to reveal such deep dark secrets as Angie’s addictive tendencies (on-line shopping?) and her penchant for locking the kids in the bedroom while she guzzles booze.

Well, if that’s the case: yawn. We’ve seen this before. On MOMMIE DEAREST, every season of DYNASTY, and in the shallow depths of Kris Jenner’s glossy eyes. For chrissake. Come up with some original scandalous behavior. Like…

Maybe Angie should make her brood dress up as equal parts dragons and knights and address her only as Lady Gelina of the Hills of Beverlyshire as she decides which of the up-and-coming actors she has stashed in her velvet lined basement dungeon will be sacrificed for her daily blood-of-youth bath. Or something.

Black Friday, Black Christmas

The holidays have arrived. The time when upper middle class skinny white people give luxury cars affixed with gigantic red bows to each other, and I'm-With-Stupid t-shirt wearing white trash pummel each other with pepper spray and racial slurs to get a discount on an Xbox their obese children will tire of in three days.

Black Christmas 2006

Sadly (?), Black Christmas (2006) makes me feel more Christmas cookie cuddly than these two opposing social echelons of equally perverse people do. I need to hear Zooey Deschanel sing an adorkable version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stat to revive any modicum of holiday spirit I have remaining in my heart.

Breeders

A welcome diversion from the usual NYC Saturday afternoon social philandering of late breakfasts and early drinks came in the form of The AKC Meet the Breeds Show at the Javits center this weekend.

Less of a Christoper Guest-ian pageanatry for blue ribbon pedigrees, Meet the Breeds is more of an informal trade show where 160 breeds of dog and 50 breeds of cat are showcased. Sparsely to decadently decorated booths are manned by breed enthusiasts ebulliently divulging breed information  to spark more affection for their pet. 

Their constant encouragement of guests to physically fawn over the dogs and cats on display (antibacterial hand gel was a pre-requisite for petting the hairless felines) was slightly disarming since 1) they are perfect strangers 2) we're in a city where dog walkers are far more likely to scowl at you for talking touching their pet than encourage you to so do.

Cairn Terrier (AKA Toto) , more photos at  ITakeMyCameraEverywhereIGo.com

On the pomp and circumstance surface, it's endearing to see a person love their animal so much that they’ll stand as a sideline cheerleader for their terrier, hound or shorthair—endearing even if that person is dressed as a ship captain, the cast of Wizard of Oz, or HRH Queen Elizabeth. 

Sure, the cats are squirmy, skittish and plotting the death of the next hand that reaches toward them. And the dogs are obliging to the touchy-feely onlookers because the sheer fatigue from constant human interaction has rendered them immobile. But isn't that what we've built the American Pop Culture Dream on? Good breeding and near-obsessive ogling of the ridiculous and ridiculously beautiful until we've exhausted them? 

Seeing a Westie or Bichon pose diligently at the hand of her master, one can’t help but comparatively recall a toddler in a tiara hoping mommy will love her more if she has the prettiest hair, the nicest smile and the most praise from onlookers (at one point, a woman scolded a small boy who tried to pet her dog while it’s photo was being taken – “Wait! Someone's taking her picture!”). 

Dandie Dinmont Terrier, Photo Credit: Yours Truly

If these dogs and cats were human, their "parents" would likely, and zestfully, fall into role of "momager." But for now, they're just proud pet owners...at least until their little darling gets older, starts dabbling in narcotics and is slammed with a DUI for swerving on the PCH to evade the paparazzi.

Demi Demi Moore

Demi Moore totally has it all wrong. Now that Ashton Kutcher is on TWO AND A HALF MEN, she’s supposed to wait until he’s earning billions of dollars an episode and threatens her at knifepoint in Aspen before getting [drunk, a huge settlement, humiliated in the media and] divorced. 

Don’t these media cheeseballs know anything? In other news, I actually don’t mind Demi and her ageless, Wonder Woman hair. I do, however, routinely cringe at the personification of the word “TOOL” that Ashton is (even if I still love DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR). Looks like you’ve got dibs on him now, Rumer! 

Bride-once

Beyonce finally released photos of her 2008 wedding dress (even fantatical drag queens collectively rolled their eyes a the thought of copying a gown so damn old). I’m thinking she released the pictures not out of the goodness of her little heart but out of fear: she’s afraid that she might fade into brief insignificance after people realize that her single LOVE ON TOP is basically just an early 90s sitcom theme song with 14 key changes. 

Private Lives Go Public

There’s generally an underlying hum of frustration from a certain group of theater-goers (usually of the writerly ilk) who wonder why a self-entitled revival is staking claim on the Great White Way when an unseen play of perhaps equal attraction, glamour, drama and quotable dialogue collects dust on an agent's desk.  

Private Lives, however, is no such revival. Five minutes into the Noel Coward comedy currently in previews at the Music Box Theater, the lyrical Anglophilian banter and nonchalant humor afforded only by brilliant writing will have you enraptured—and all that even before Kim Cattrall sumptuously enters the stage in a terrycloth towel.

Private Lives is the story of Amanda (Cattrall) and Elyot (Paul Gross) who, once upon a divorce five years ago, endured a passionate and tumultuous marriage. The play opens at a luxury hotel in Deauville, France, where Elyot has just brought his new wife, Sybil (Anna Medeley), to honeymoon. Despite Sybil’s constant references to queries about Elyot’s first wife, all is seemingly going well. That is, until it turns out that the suite to which their balcony adjoins belongs to Amanda and her new husband, Victor (Simon Paisley Day) who, like Sybil, perpetually refers to Amanda’s previous spouse.

Unbeknownst to their current other halves, Amanda and Elyot soon discover each other's precarious proximity, and when the flame of their former passion is reignited, they flee Deauville in hopes of starting anew. But, they soon discover once a tumultuous couple, always a tumultuous couple. It’s your worst relationship nightmare, your optimistically fantasized happy ending, and endless, raucous laughter all shaken, stirred and delivered in the most entrancing martini glass you’ve ever laid eyes on. And you won’t want to sip this theatrical cocktail, you’ll want to gluttonously gulp it down and ask for more, more, more.

Cattrall delivers every bit of devil-may-care spice and verve that Amanda commands, fully embodying the entitled, independent flair of the British upper-crust of yesteryear while also seamlessly delivering moments of clarified tenderness (she might very well bring a tear to your eye when she sweetly sings a sentimental song reminiscent of the good times she and Elyot once shared).  

Gross rises to the challenge of playing opposite such a revered iconic actress, successfully making erratic verbal abuse seem comedic and drunken arrogance seem downright sexy.  

Madeley and Paisley Day respectfully give the stage to Cattrall and Gross, though not submissively—they’re as present as their characters require. Yet, when they’re at the helm of the stage in the third act, they’re every bit as captivating as their counterparts.

The stage design may be just a smidgen unspectacular (except for a remarkable, functioning fish tank that is essentially three enormous fishbowls teetering on top of one another, ensconced by a swirling, metal Art Deco ribbon), but who needs lavish stage design when the dialogue and hearty acting chops are already so rich?

Coward once said of Sophia Loren:

She should have been sculpted
in chocolate truffles so that the
world could devour her.

Well, were this production of Private Lives a tray of truffles, I’d gleefully, gladly devour them, bellyaches be damned.  

Private Lives is currently in previews at the Music Box Theater and opens on 17 November, 2011.

Time to Play

PRIVATE LIVES. No, not a book about military personnel or a documentary about transsexuals. It’s a play by Noel Coward and happens to be my favorite stage script ever written. And tonight I head to the Great White Way to see Kim Cattrall starring as the lead in it.

Whoa.

That frisson of delight nearly catapulted  me into another dimension of euphoria. In anticipation of her performance, naturally I took in a few episodes of SEX & THE CITY, namely the one in which she claims to be a woman named Anabelle Bronstein in order to gain access to the SoHo House. So now, not only am Ieven more gleefully excited at the prospect of seeing her on stage, I keeping talking like I’m British…by way of Indja.

Sister I'm a Poet

I’m still finding traces of the bile I spewed after reading the Wilde Boys write up in the NY Times last Friday. If you weren’t privy to this little group, Patrick Huguenin’s article illustrates the origin of the New York City-based poetry group and it’s founding father, poet Alex Dimitrov. Before you think I’m a blithering troll with no need for culture, allow me to explain why the write-up had me alternating between laughter and vomit.

I appreciate the value of poetry and the craft thereof as much as the next artsy homosexual (my first and only cat was named Eliot after Mr. T.S.), but poetry groups immediately make me think of a herd of illegitimately serious twats who will feign offense when I laugh at an author comparing the fart of a bee to a broken marriage. I decided to keep an open mind though…until I read this direct quote from Dimitrov regarding the birth of Wilde Boys:

“I invited the cute gay poets 

right away,” Mr. Dimitrov said. 

“I sort of had a list of gays that I 

wanted to come, and some of them 

that I wanted to sleep with.”

Right. I have to give him props for his honesty. I also have to give him a triple WTF for actually saying it out loud to a Times reporter. The rest of the article goes on to discuss how selective Dimitrov is in inducting new members—suffice to say they have to be hot and snarky (clever?)—and how the “roving salon” has been held in such places as the fabulous Fifth Avenue apartment of two handsome middle-aged men (Tom Healy and Lillian Vernon heir Fred Hochberg) and dangerously hip Brooklyn backyards.

As a writer and artist, I’m thrilled that a creative group has been able to thrive, gain notoriety, and garner the interest of esteemed poets who have attended as special guests and speakers. Yet I couldn’t shake a nagging question: Am I reading something that could be considered fawning admiration or a satire whose obnoxious material would be fodder for The Soup were it televised?

Admittedly, I was a bit biased. One poet mentioned by name in the article frolicked on the beaches of Fire Island with a few friends and me last summer. In short, said poet drove us all a little bonkers and would be utterly forgettable were it not for his grating baby voice, contrived gangly awkwardness, and nauseating need to be coddled by other creatives. Being reminded of him raised my eye-rolling level fifty points.

Eye-rolling aside, as aforementioned, I’m delighted to see a literary group who is apparently thriving with no lull in sight. I’d love, however, to have Alex Dimitrov or any of the other Wilde Boys prove to me that this is more than just an attention-hungry, laughable gaggle of twerps more integrated into crafting perfect hairdos than perfect haiku. 

The Diablo Made Her Do It

We all knew her. The lithe, balletic beauty with swishy hair, glossed lips, and cotton-candy pink polished nails that could scratch across the chalkboard of your fragile high school psyche at any unforgiving second. Call her the queen bee. Call her a homecoming horror. Call her a hidden heartache of beautiful nightmares. But where is she now?

Young Adult (written by Diablo Cody and  directed by Jason Reitman) gives the ugly, honest, wickedly enrapturing answer to that question. Mavis (Charlize Theron) is that very princess whose looks and abrasive entitlement kept her on a prized pedestal in her dumpy Midwestern hometown for years. Shucking the suck hole of suburbia, she escaped to pursue the high life as a writer in Minneapolis, a gilded dream whose amber glow has been significantly diffused. The film opens with Mavis hungover, disheveled and divorced. Living in a derelict, cluttered high-rise apartment, the dysfunction surrounding her a brutal reality of just what a damaged and downtrodden show horse she really is (lest she try to prove to us otherwise later with lipstick, a curling iron and strappy sandals).

She is in the midst of writing the draft of a soon to be canceled young adult book series (think Sweet Valley High) of which she is the ghost writer when she receives an emailed birth announcement from her former beloved boyfriend, Buddy (Patrick Wilson). The birth of her ex-beau's baby strikes a chord with her—albeit one completely off-key—ultimately leading her to throw her hastily packed bags and her far-too-forgiving Pomeranian into her car to drive back home and visit Buddy. Okay...to f**k Buddy and reclaim him as her own at any cost.

Here one might think the rom-com formula would ensue: The damaged woman seeking out the guy who's gonna fix her with love and smiles and a saccharine soundtrack. But this isn't Hope Floats, thank god. This is a film written by Diablo Cody. And Mavis isn't a lovable ne'er do well who's bound to find love in the end. She's a drunk, depressed, venomous woman-child who drives across the state on a delusional mission to steal her ex-boyfriend from his current state of peaceable matrimony and fatherhood.

All signs point to hating the despicable Mavis. She's rude, she's entitled, she's a gluttonous alcoholic. However, with humor, tragedy and something so uniquely devilish, Cody crafts a character to whom you can't and won't turn a blind eye. Theron's glaring beauty has something to do with that, as does her palpably perfect acting ability. But there's something else. Mavis has her moments of tenderness. They're few and far between, but they're there, breaking up her desperately aggressive search for happiness. So when she growls at a waiter, forgets to feed her dog, tries to break up a marriage, and drunkenly brings a family gathering to a horrifying halt, you'll give a hearty holy-shit-did-she-just-say-that laugh. But you can't be mad at her; she's ruined and, sadly, there just might be no saving her.

There are certainly some nay saying Hollywood happy-enders who might question why a feature film by a lauded writer and director has you spending 90 minutes with a deplorable, damaged woman. The immaculate cast and Cody's accurate sense of dialogue that has only evolved since Juno will triumphantly squelch any doubts as to why this precise, addictive movie came to fruition. On the far opposite end of the spectrum from stunted Mavis in terms of development, Cody is clearly flourishing as a writer, proudly proving that films by women, about women can still blow your f**king mind even if they deal with something other than finding the perfect man and hairdo.

At a Q&A following the WGA screening of Young Adult at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International last night, the very down to earth, very humble Cody shared why she wrote the film, why she thought it would never get made, the best kind of mix tape, and the value for burgeoning writers to get as many eyeballs as possible on their work. She also hinted at her next project, her directorial debut that begins shooting in February about a young woman who abandons her hard core Christian family for a life in Las Vegas. Post Q&A, I downed a chardonnay for courage and gushed my admiration to the accessible and exceedingly appreciative Miss Cody, resolutely avoiding any urge to immediately pee my pants and squeal. Mostly...

Look for Young Adult in theaters this December.

Kill List

Ahh. Jolly old England. Where quiet country cottages dot the scenic countryside, Royal gossip trumps celebrity tabloids, bustling foggy fabulous London makes us yearn for Burberry, and Ben Wheatley co-writes and directs a film so wretchedly, ravenously, splendidly disturbing you’ll 1) never want to watch it again 2) want to watch it over and over again to try and find something you missed before 3) promise you’ll really never watch it again.

I had the great fortune to see Wheatley's latest film, Kill List, at Film Society Lincoln Center's SCARY MOVIES 5 series. At first glance, List is a family drama. Behind closed doors it’s a hit man movie—with hammers, guns, fists and knives to prove its gruesome point. And at its core, it’s a freaky supernatural occult horror with a finale that will prompt more WTFs than Kim Kardashian’s disastrous marriage.

Jay (Neil Maskell) is a retired hitman, retired not by leisured choice but by force from psychological duress caused by the death of a colleague. His days in suburbia with wife and son are far from blissful as his spitfire spouse, Shel (MyAnna Buring), fearlessly hounds him about finding more work before the family hits financial rock bottom.

To appease her (and finally have the money to repair his hot tub) he takes an assignment with his best friend, Gal (Michael Smiley) against his better judgment. The peculiarities begin when, rather than have Jay sign a contract, the new client slices Jay’s hand with a blade. And when the first man on the client’s kill list turns out to be a priest who seems to not only be expecting Jay but also utters a genuine ‘Thank You’ before Jay pulls the trigger, the peculiarities, violence and dramatic tensions only continue to escalate until they come to a screeching, terrifying halt in the last five minutes of the film.

In the hands of someone else, so many genres intertwined might become muddled or pointless. But Wheatley (and co-writer Amy Jump) manage to combine drama, action and occult so well that they might very well be creating their own genre. What to call it? Your guess is as good as mine. Just be certain that it’ll scare the s**t out of you.

Now, if Mr. Wheatley could collaborate with Ti West and blow all of our f**king minds, it would be greatly appreciated.