About Last Night

A reader writes, apropos of my recent posting
on the postmodern decline of the movie theater:

I decided to brave the storm and go to Times Square to see the latest version of Fellowship of the Rings. Made me think of your latest blog about the demise of the movie theatre. Sorry, this may date me, but for me there’s nothing that will replace sitting in the dark watching a world unfold before me larger than life. I must get it from my mom, who was a teenager in the forties and like most of her friends lived in the movies. She was not content to keep it to herself either – I first saw ‘Gone With the Wind’ on the big screen when I was 9. You forget that for the young, going to a movie theatre is a social thing of getting out of the damn house and even if the whole concept of the dinner -n- movie gets tiring after the third decade, it still gives a couple of strangers something to discuss before they really know each other.

Point taken, and it explains why the movie theater remains a popular destination among the young–why, in fact, they are the only demographic group that still matters to Hollywood. For teenagers, theaters are affordable meeting places whose appeal has little or nothing to do with the aesthetic appeal of Film as Art. This suggests that as the median age of Americans continues to soar (driven by the graying of the baby boomers), the trend away from theatergoing will increase.

Needless to say–or perhaps not–I, too, will miss the uniquely enveloping experience my correspondent so beautifully describes. I think that was part and parcel of the original appeal of movies: the fact that we saw them on a large screen, sitting in the dark. And maybe that helps explain why the appeal of theatergoing has diminished for me, since the theaters of my high school and college days were smallish-screen multiplexes. The transition from a small multiplex screen to home viewing is pretty easily made. I’ve mostly made it, though I feel the tug of the old ways on the rarer-than-rare occasions when I get a chance to see a widescreen Technicolor western in a large theater. Such films were not made to be seen at home–and that’s the only place we get to see them nowadays.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies on TV in the past couple of days, by the way (that’s what catching a bad cold does to you), and it’s been interesting to see which ones work and which ones don’t. Black-and-white films shot in pre-widescreen aspect ratios almost always translate well to the small screen–even William Wellman’s Yellow Sky, a Gregory Peck Western whose early scenes are conspicuously landscape-driven. Widescreen color films tend not to work unless their subject matter is intimate, as in the case of The Cincinnati Kid, the Norman Jewison-Steve McQueen film about big-time poker players. And indie-type flicks, significantly but not surprisingly, always work: Amy’s Orgasm and Kissing Jessica Stein could have been made for TV.

Which reminds me that I’ve been meaning to draw your attention to Cinetrix’s recent posting about the use of music in Magnolia, and why it’s smarter and more essentially cinematic than the fruits of “the so-called renaissance of the movie musical.” V. smart, v. much worth reading.

I just received in the mail the Spring 2004 catalogue of Yale University Press. I opened it to page 35, where I found (drumroll) A Terry Teachout Reader, complete with a thumbnail photo of the dust jacket, whose centerpiece is a reproduction of Fairfield Porter’s lithograph Broadway.

I can already see one problem with the Reader, which is that Yale has placed it under the category “Music/Essays,” which is right and not right at the same time. Yes, music figures prominently in it, but so do lots and lots of other things.

Here’s the flap copy, which I didn’t write:

Terry Teachout, one of our most acute cultural commentators, here turns his sharp eye to every corner of the arts world–music, dance, literature, theater, film, TV, and the visual arts. This collection gathers the best of Teachout’s writings from the past fifteen years. In each essay he offers lucid and balanced judgments that invariably illuminate, sometimes infuriate, and always spark a response–the mark of a critic whose thoughts, however controversial, cannot be ignored.

In a thoughtful introduction to the book, Teachout considers how American culture of the twenty-first century differs from that of the last century and how the information age has altered popular culture. His selected essays chronicle America’s cultural journeyover the past decade and a half,a nd they show us what has been lost–and gained–along the way. With highly informed opinions, an inimitable wit and style, and a genuine devotion to all things cultural, Teachout offers his readers much to delight in and much to ponder.

Anyone who comes from a small Midwestern town is genetically programmed to squirm at the prospect of seeing such effusive words emblazoned on his own dust jacket, but publishing is a business, and a boy, as Truman Capote once said, must peddle his book. At any rate, I’m proud of the Teachout Reader, and to see it in the Yale catalogue is a comfort on a cold, snowy day.

The Teachout Reader will be published in May–posthumously, if I become the first author ever to succumb to the common cold. Otherwise, I’ll be reminding you of its insidious approach, and as of today, you can pre-order it from amazon.com by clicking here.

I rise from my bed of discomfort (my cold is worse, it’s snowing again, and I have a preview tonight) to remind you of what you should already know, which is that my most recent book, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, is now out in trade paperback–and still available in hardcover.

If you like this blog, you’ll like The Skeptic, and so will your friends. So did the critics: the reviews were spectacularly warm, as you can see for yourself by going here.

I blog for pleasure but write to pay the rent. If you’d like to support both causes, think about giving The Skeptic for Christmas, or buying a copy for yourself if you don’t already own one.

To purchase the paperback, click here.

To purchase the hardcover edition, click here.

Now I need to go blow my nose.

Here’s just a quick Saturday evening post while my weekend guests–you know them as Cinetrix and the ‘Fesser–have popped out to see some other friends in the ‘hood. I expect them back in a little while with some Ribs ‘n’ Bibs; a good, greasy time will be had by all.

I know I’ve been scarce around these parts since before Thanksgiving. This was in large part because I was consumed with worry on behalf of the resident cat, Daffy, who had tentatively been diagnosed with a serious heart problem. She had an ultrasound yesterday, though, that revealed a normal, healthy heart. Relief all around.

Next week should be better. I have plans, including an interview with a young filmmaker (and friend of About Last Night) who just had his first film selected for the Sundance Film Festival, in the documentary category. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, all good wishes to poor Terry with his headcold and blizzard. Terr, we’ll call you tomorrow! Hang in there with the Theraflu and DVDs! (Hm, this could be the perfect opportunity for you to watch L’Atalante! I promise you’ll adore it!)

New York is covered with fifty feet of snow. (That’s what it looks like from my window, anyway.) My throbbing head is full of some unmentionable goo. I’m not going to the press preview I was supposed to cover tonight, for fear of being found in a snowdrift weeks from now. I may never post again.

And how’s by you, OGIC?

“Everywhere in the world literature is in retreat from politics and unless resisted the one will crush the other. You don’t crush literature from outside by killing writers or intimidating them or not letting them publish, though as we’ve all seen you can make a big fuss and have a lot of fun trying. You do better to induce them to destroy it themselves by inducing them to subordinate it to political purposes, as you propose to do.”

Kingsley Amis, The Russian Girl

I’m in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, reporting on this week’s major musical openings:

Uptown at the Broadhurst Theatre, “Never Gonna Dance,”
a fizzy, friendly stage version of the 1936 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie “Swing Time,” is pleasing crowds. Downtown at the Public Theater, Tony Kushner’s “Caroline, or Change,”
a pop opera about race relations in the Sixties, is pleasing critics. You wouldn’t think such different shows could have anything at all in common, but they do: They both play it safe….

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about “Never Gonna Dance,” because I really did enjoy it. The problem is that I don’t enjoy the Astaire-Rogers films–I adore them. Next to that solid-gold emotion, anything else (and anyone else) is bound to come off looking like a pale imitation of the real right thing.

At least “Never Gonna Dance” is entertaining, whereas “Caroline, or Change” is a great big self-righteous bore. Had anyone but Tony Kushner written the libretto, everyone in town would be snorting at this eye-rollingly earnest fable of an angry black Louisiana maid (Tonya Pinkins) and Noah, the shy, effeminate little Jewish boy (Harrison Chad) to whom she teaches a Lesson in Love. Or maybe not, since Mr. Kushner, the Arthur Miller of our time, is not so much a playwright as a cultural politician who has an uncanny knack for telling New York theatergoers exactly what they want to hear–and no more….

Also included are words to the wise about Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife, which transferred to Broadway this week after a successful off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons. Here’s the money quote: “This show deserves every prize there is.”

No link, as usual, so to read the whole thing, extract a dollar from your wallet, take yourself to the nearest newsstand, buy this morning’s Journal, turn to the “Weekend Journal” section, and there I am, along with lots of other interesting stuff.

I have a COLD, and I feel CRAPPY. And I don’t have a play or concert or screening to go to tonight, praise be, since New York is in the process of receiving fifteen inches of snow. Did I say arrgh?

Take it away, OGIC! I’m headed for bed….