I'm back in the writing saddle after quite some time, and it took unexpected memories of an underknown movie star to do it. The helicopter-shot hunting sequence in Tony Richardson's 1963 Tom Jones brought that equestrian cliche to mind, because in it a saddled Sophie Western is plucked off her runaway steed by a steed of another kind, the ready, randy Mr. Jones. Yes, Susannah York died recently. She had ensorcelled my adolescent eyes not once but twice, the second time as creepy Childie in 1968's The Killing of Sister George. We … [Read more...]
Hats Off to the Ghosts of Us
Digital inebriates, slow down for just a moment. Anyone invested in media currency and the gives and takes of reputation is entitled to a rest, and an antidote. I'd like to offer a holiday reminder that the value of our gawking intercessions may be weighted and elucidated by a smart salute to the past. (And to a young James H. White, who produced the film above.)Historians know I'm right, for their present, crossing the street, always looks both ways. Also, because I recently visited the original Disneyland in Anaheim, I was driven back … [Read more...]
Gay Performance, or Why the Director of the National Portrait Gallery Should Resign
This is a short post about long-held beliefs.If you know the abbreviated world of performance art or the run-on-sentence world of gay activism, you've heard of Tim Miller. Thirty years ago, the nervy tyke co-founded PS 122 on First Avenue and Ninth Street in Manhattan's East Village. His lightning struck twice in Santa Monica, when he co-founded the performance space Highways more than 20 years ago. Tim is also known nationally as one of the NEA Four. Although I've seen Tim perform throughout his career and urge you to attend his latest, … [Read more...]
Why Donuts Are Like Sex, Plus a Letter From Jackie Robinson
Chock Full o' SomethingYes, we can be nostalgic, really nostalgic, for something we never knew.Of course, we've understood for eons that nostalgia -- a warm haze of sentimental regret for a more beneficent past -- needn't have anything to do with what we actually did or saw. My own nostalgias usually hang on something edible: a stuffed artichoke, a cold piece of buttered toast, a dripping pickle. Each of these personal -- Brooklyn -- icons kicks off an emotion-larded story, a tale whose verifiable details left the premises long ago, but … [Read more...]
Why I’ll Never Again Read the Washington Post
Speech after long silence; it is right,Ever take a really deadly poetry class, the kind where only the strongest or strangest works survive? The line above always pops up unscathed, even after Prof. X throttled, stabbed, garroted and buried it. "The word speech stands for love," he said, shooing away all other options. "What does that make silence?"Devoutly to be wished. I had never seen a poem with a semicolon. Yeats. Nice.Out There regulars know that I've been silent for a while, and it took vileness and death, the silence of suicide, to get … [Read more...]
French Dip, or Roast Beef Regret
Recently I took a short break from intense and gratifying work with 25 theater and arts critics in Los Angeles, at the NEA Institute in Theater and Musical Theater, and avoided lunching yet again at the gastronomically hypnotic Lazy Ox Canteen. Instead, I strolled on a gorgeous bright day from our Little Tokyo hotel past Olvera Street, bathed in hubbub and jacaranda light, to Philippe the Original, the not-original, post-WWII site of one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles. I had mentioned Philippe -- everyone calls it Philippe's -- to my … [Read more...]
Michael Jackson — There, I Said It
Never in a thousand million years would I ever have expected to write anything about him. Music was always for the others to write. Maybe I could tiptoe toward cabaret, but that's because Bobby and Blossom warbled words I had already memorized as script for my own performing life -- singing lustfully, wrenchingly, privately. You see, I have no voice, but the person looking back at me in the mirror will make you weep with his.Yet I was asked, and being just a guy who can't say no, I complied. Jackson's been dead a year. I like "death bump" … [Read more...]
Nutcracker, As It Were
Dear readers, I just received the following email ("this message was sent to Jeff"): Moscow Ballet seeks freelance writers to produce 200-400 word blurbs on Moscow Ballet and the following subjects: health, fashion, European culture, accessories, jewelry, motherhood, travel and perfume. Remuneration of $15 per accepted story paid within 5 business days. Send letter of interest and contact information to sally@nutcracker.com. www.nutcracker.com.Now, I knew this sort of thing went on, but treated the fact as if it were a faint dead-mouse … [Read more...]
My Balenciaga Moment
More than 30 years ago, the creator of "Out There" slowly strode down a beach-house staircase in a black-tulle '50s Balenciaga. It fit him like the glove his then-thin body required, deserved. Never had a shirt or pair of pants supported and caressed him in such a way, as if it were a fabric lover. Drag wasn't even close to the point; no hairy surfaces were threatened by the primal relationship between his static carcass and that mobile dress. As he descended, the gown's original partner viewed her errant garment and its new mate with … [Read more...]
Answers to ‘Out There’ Movie Quiz
At the end of the previous entry -- "Baseball Barf, Excreted Espresso, Carole Lombard" -- I asked readers to find the hidden film titles that peppered the deathless prose and send them in, winner and list to be posted. We finally have a victor, though competition wasn't exactly stiff: cinephile Bill Stern of Los Angeles, who is also director of the Museum of California Design. Upon compiling the list, however, this writer realized that the contest is inherently unfair, because almost any noun, and even some gerunds and a few quirky … [Read more...]