Here in Massachusetts, many are acquainted with the idea of offering tax incentives for the production of motion pictures.
We currently offer pretty substantial breaks that have made it more amenable for some Hollywood features and major independent films to be created in the Commonwealth. (However, the current system is somewhat controversial.)
Last month, TimeOut Chicago wrote about how the Illinois legislature was applying the same ideas behind film tax credits to theater productions:
Now, it seems, the city of Toronto is seeing this as direct competition. The originating national touring production of War Horse, the hit West End/ Broadway show, is coveted by both cities. The Globe and Mail reports:
After all, in this Internet age of the citizen critic, for every loss of a voice like the Village Voice's J. Hoberman, we have the rise of a whole chorus of folks like The Reply Girl!
As promised, at my film blog Gate Dimension, I've listed nine hit films from the last 30 years that look at money in more than a cursory way. Most all of them are flawed, some are even middling, but all were popular.
Tom Garvey, writing in The Hub Review,
tries to sort out our current culture's fascination with Downton Abbey. In his contemplation, he gets into the
class/race issue:
When Tom Loughlin first posted a lament over the latest Broadway League numbers at his Poor Player blog, I doubt he realized the firestorm he was kindling.
Indeed, the comments on that original post are cresting over 60, and several other blogs, most notably Parabasis, have been quick to really layinto Professor Loughlin. His post has been called "offensive" and he has been declared an "enemy" and "disavowed" by some.. Yikes.
Today, 99 Seats (Playwright J. Holtham), one of the most vigorous critics of Loughlin's argument, laid out a post on Parabasis entitled OK Then, Lets Really Talk About It. In this post he points out the trouble with the original premise of trying to extrapolate a whole lot about the culture of races and their attitudes towards theater attendance and participation from Broadway League numbers.
Indeed, this has been a common thread through the discussion up to this point.
I'm sure others have been doing this as well, but my first instinct, even before the whole thing blew up, was to take a look at the National Endowment for the Arts research - specifically their periodic Survey of Participation in the Arts. Most all of their reports are available for free in PDF form.
The Boston Globe confirms that David Wheeler, long-time director at the American Repertory Theater and founder of The Theatre Company of Boston, has died.
David was a great fixture on the Boston theater scene and directed many memorable productions at the ART, and his tenure at the Theatre Company of Boston from 1960-1975 reads like a who's who of 70's acting talent. Stockard Channing, Al Pacino, James Wood, Paul Benedict, Blythe Danner and many more luminaries acted in his productions at the Charles Playhouse. Some productions later moved to New York.
His production of David Rabe's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel starred Al Pacino and played on Broadway.
On a personal note, David was my directing teacher and his wife Bronia was my first acting teacher. Through their classes I met the people with whom I would start my theater company and David encouraged us.
This meant a lot to me. I was less than a year out of the Army, with no real theater background. His wealth of experience in the American theater was almost inconceivable, and, yet, he treated every student or member of the Boston theater scene that he came in contact with as a colleague.
I remember him asking me about the Army and I told him what it was like, he said, "you should write a play!" And so I did. (Here's a review.) A few years later I got my first IRNE nomination for Best New Play.
The video is from the first rehearsal of David's production of No Man's Land at the A.R.T. in 2007.
Tom Loughlin, who blogs at A Poor Player, throws out a stark post after reviewing the latest Broadway League and NEA numbers. (83% of Broadway tickets to plays were purchased by Caucasians.)
After years of reading these statistics he comes to the following conclusion:"Theatre is primarily for white people, as both audience members and practitioners."
It is a more thoughtful post than that declaration might make it sound, (if you know Tom's blog you'll know what I mean,) and remember that his thoughts come after looking at the same data in report after report.
For instance, he points out that Buffalo is 38% African American, but out of the 20 theater companies listed in the area, only 2 are African American companies, and one barely produces.
Theater, Loughlin suggests, as practiced in the mainstream today, might not really appeal to other racial demographics in significant numbers. Heck, it barely appeals to Caucasians in significant numbers.
It seemed strange to me that he would single out the race reversing of Williams' plays into his end of the year wrap-up for a year that didn't include a high profile all-black Tennessee Williams production. Although there is the upcoming Broadway-bound production of A Streetcar Named Desire with Blair Underwood and Daphne Rubin-Vega, which I guess he is trying to trip out of the gate.
Lahr didn't even review the 2008 Broadway revival of Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , which starred James Earl Jones and other famous African American actors. Hilton Als covered the production for the Magazine, and wrote only a few sentences dealing with the color-blind casting, summing it up with: "Race plays as much or as little a role in this revival as you want it to." Ben Brantley in his New York Times review was even more dismissive of any problems the race reversal might present. And he pointed out that the director, Debbie Allen, had nudged the period feel of the production enough to leap frog it past the era of Jim Crow.
However, John Lahr did review Yale Rep's 2009 all-black staging of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman for the New Yorker. He opened that notice with black playwright August Wilson's 1996 condemnation of the "folly" of presenting just such a production.
Lahr based his criticism of the casting on the larger themes related to the time period in which the play is set:
Here is his opening gambit concerning the casting (at about 17:00 into the video):
The "mendacity" of the play... Big Daddy, this is a man who has 28,000 acres of the most fertile land west of the Nile. Now, okay, those 28,000 acres of fertile delta land - that wealth - that was built on the backs of slavery. That is the omnipresent, unspoken central sin under which this whole elaborate structure of society, manners, wealth has been built. It's all been built to cut out, to block out, to not see...to actually alibi this unspoken, but omnipresent thing.
His contention is that an all black production actually robs the play of this layer of meaning and that there is a trickle down effect. Elizabeth Ashley actually argued for the production in a way that intrigued Lahr into promising he would see it. Her point was that black family structures and white family structures in the deep South of that time were intertwined "psychologically" and mirrored each other in some respects.
Two British stars take a trip to the North of England together in this Michael Winterbottom project that was edited down from a BBC series.
The Trip is a long form improvisation with a spine
created around the imagined (or real) middle-career and middle-aged
malaise of the actor Steve Coogan. Divorced, in the middle of a
break-up with his American girlfriend, Coogan calls his friend Rob Brydon, a
comedian and impressionist, to accompany him on an all-expense paid trip to
visit restaurants in the North of England for a magazine piece he has been
commissioned to write by the Observer.
Their talents are on full display with Coogan playing broody
and barely amused to Brydon's optimistic, playful needling. Several of the movie's centerpieces involve
the two men dueling with their impressions of iconic stars such as Michael
Caine or Sean Connery. These can go on for a bit, but one of them will always hit
on something deeper in their own relationship as friends or the other's career.
The pair travel through the desolate, but beautiful moors and
end up in the Lake Country, while the deeper themes of time passing us by and
the desperation to make some type of mark on the world start to present
themselves more clearly. Finally, the
two are walking in the footsteps of immortal poets like Coleridge and
Wordsworth, but rather than things getting burdened with too much pretension,
the biting humor of Coogan and Brydon constructs a sturdy engine fueled with
just enough gallows humor to keep us moving along.
2. Bellflower
I wasn't sure what to think of this film once it finished,
but I was feeling many things. Bellflower is a rambling interestingly-shot trip through depression, jealousy and anger as could
only be properly filmed by the twenty- something renegade filmmakers who made
it.
Evan Glodell, the director and writer, puts himself in the
lead as the slacker Woodrow who spends his time fixing up a muscle car named
Medusa. He also tries to build the
perfect flamethrower with his friend Aiden.
Their shared buddy fantasy is that they will be prepared for an imagined Road Warrior-type apocalypse. However,
after Woodrow gets mixed up with a new girl, he and Aiden's lives become very
difficult, very fast.
Flawed, but with a raw artistry and vision,
there is no doubt that these guys have something here, but what it is, I'm afraid I or any critics I have read elsewhere can't describe fully.
3. Another Earth
Yes, the science fiction elements are shaky of course. If you have seen the ads or the poster for Another Earth, you
would know that an identical planet to the size of the Earth would create all
sorts of gravity issues if we could see it looming in the sky like that. Best
seen closer to the fantasy end of science fiction (think Twilight Zone) Mike
Cahill's film is really about coming to terms with ourselves as we are, with
all of our history and finding a way to move forward.
Earth's citizens become aware of another planet, one that
seems remarkably similar to their own, drifting closer to them This
unleashes the imagination of woman who caused a
fatal car accident that derailed her promising young life, (she was on her way to an MIT scholarship) and wrecked the
family of another man. She tries to find a way to
somehow make retribution.
One can easily forgive some of the science flubs, but the
credibility issues with the young woman's strange plan to make amends seems a
bit more outlandish than the huge doppleganger planet that hangs in the
sky. However, the haunting tone and the
camera's love of the beautiful Brit Marling, (also a co-writer on
the film,) makes for a hypnotic experience.
And the first contact of our NASA with the sister organization of that other
Earth is a spine-tingling sequence matched only by the finale, which is closest
thing to the chills I received when I first saw some of the classic Rod Serling
masterpieces.
4. Senna
Know nothing about NASCAR and even less about Formula One
racing? Then you actually might want to check out this documentary about Senna, Brazil's legendary Formula One racing champion.
An aggressive driver on the track, Senna is portrayed as a gentler
and more contemplative man out of the car.
Though the film doesn't hide that he was an intense character, he comes across as humble and self-aware. While he obviously dated some of the world's
most beautiful women, the filmmakers seem uninterested in his romantic life and
only fleetingly feature his family. The
politics and rules of the international governing body of Formula One racing
provide the obstacles and Senna emerges as a pure competitor who must somehow
negotiate his way through this thicket to the championship, despite sometimes being
the best driver. Unfortunately, the movie becomes a little bit of a hagiography
in this area, with only a hint of Senna's own infractions.
With the high decibel roar of the exclusive Formula One
footage to serve as a pillar, the story eschews the static documentary convention
of the talking head, and Sennainstead uses actual period interview audio and a few
voiceovers to thrillingly recreate the fast rise and short life of this athlete
dying young. Senna was killed in an
accident at the age of 34 and the footage taken from his racing car allows us
to be right next to him until the very moment of his fatal collision.
5. Buck
A kind of serene twin to Senna, the documentary Buck shows us another man was born to be the best at what he does. Rather than Senna's high octane pace, this film ambles along and waits until its last
moments to throw you.
Buck Brannaman travels the country running training camps
and seminars for horse owners. He is a protege of a famous horse trainer who
was the inspiration for the novel The Horse Whisperer, which was made into a movie
with Robert Redford. Buck himself served
as a consultant on that film, and his own horse was used for many of the
stunts.
With beautiful sunsets and mountain vistas as a backdrop, director Cindy Meehl gradually reveals Buck's past.
His brother and he were young prodigies who performed rope tricks around
the country, managed by their increasingly abusive father. Buck's gentleness
and understanding of horses is almost magical, but the film has an ace up its
sleeve that leaves the sage cowboy and the audience off-balance.
6. Five Days Gone
Playwright Anna Kerrigan made her first feature film by
scraping together 60,000 dollars and securing an interesting location - a large
estate out in Western Massachusetts. Five Days Gone starts in a New York City bar as two sisters, who never knew each other
existed, meet for the first time after their successful father has recently
died.
While one sister, Camden, grew up with her father and all the money that
that entailed, Alice, played by the writer Kerrigan, grew up poor, never really
knew her absentee Dad and doesn't seem to really care. Camden and her
reluctant husband, invite Alice and her boyfriend to stay for a weekend at the family estate, recently inherited..
A few days on the grounds of
the house, and a slow tension
builds, with hints of Chekhov or Turgnev (Kerrigan admits these are her
influences.) The sparks come a little too slowly and there are some
inconsistencies in the characters that seem engineered to create some needed
conflict. However, the performances of
Kerrigan as the skeptical Alice and Brooke Bloom as the nervous Camden, keep
moving the film into the territory where it is at its most interesting: as a tentative
coming of age story about family and class.
Remember that 60 Minutes piece years ago about the Jim
Roberts cult? You know, the sketchy church that seduces away bright young college students
into a Spartan, separatist lifestyle that prohibits them from ever talking to
the their families again and has them riding bicycles and eating out of garbage cans?
Well, that cult still exists and is as active as ever. Only now, bereaved family members who have
had children seduced into the organization can connect with each other over
the internet. As a network, the families
can run surveillance on the nomadic cult if they suddenly pop up in a metro
area. They share photos online so that
families can see if their sons or daughters are hiding out in the houses the
cult members rent.
Filmmaker Angeline Griego followed this group of family
members closely, and her film, God Willing, documents the attempt of one woman in particular
to make contact with her daughter. It
is as suspenseful as any Hollywood thriller - the cult has been known to
completely blow town at the slightest hint they are being watched.
As they circle their
target, the family members talk about what they know about the cult and about
their loved ones, some of whom have been out of touch for decades
