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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

CAAF: Culture clash

March 31, 2008 by cfrye

Last week I discovered the show Damages and watched all 13 episodes of Season 1 over a marathon of on-the-couch dinners and before-bed cups of tea (see Top 5 at right). One of the best parts of the show is Ted Danson’s character of billionaire Arthur Frobisher, the defendant in an Enron-esque class-action lawsuit brought by the former employees of his bankrupt company. Danson was nominated for a Golden Globe for his part, and if the world were a right one, his giant block of a brow and his white, wolfish chompers also would have gotten nods.
As his case comes closer to trial, Frobisher is taking a p.r. beating in the media and, against the advice of his attorney, he arranges to have his biography written. Now Frobisher is very much Forster’s man on the golf course, and it’s clear he expects this project to be a glossy piece of hagiography, one that will chart his self-made rise to captain of industry, his triumph over childhood dyslexia, his family values, etc. etc. In due time, a biographer is procured — a nervous plug of a guy named George, “a fellow from Yale, writes fiction no one reads but he’s one hell of a biographer” — and the project commences. Yet as the interviews between writer and subject continue Frobisher’s confidence visibly wavers as he becomes more nervous about how his biographer (and hence history) will judge him. He pays a midnight visit to his biographer’s tiny city apartment to drum up camaraderie. The attempt fails, and, desperate, Frobisher tries one last sally:
FROBISHER: Tell me about your book.
GEORGE: My novel?
FROBISHER: Sorry, your novel.
GEORGE (looking pained & emo): It’s hard to describe.
FROBISHER: Just tell me what it’s about, will you?
GEORGE: On the face of it, it’s a love story. It’s about nostalgia and how that affects our core relationships —
FROBISHER (incredulous): Jesus, George! I mean, that sounds like crap! Are you kidding me? Look what you’re doing here? (motions around apartment) You’re living in — You’re sleeping on a futon. C’mon! Of course you’re writing about my life. You don’t have one!
A short scene but the “On the face of it, it’s a love story” line and the sputtering “You’re sleeping on a futon” (I do!) are killers.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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