Movies, Plays, and Plays About Movies

A lot of my life has been spent at the movies. Just about as much has been spent at plays--reading them, directing them, watching them, acting in them, and just plain relishing them. I relish the movies almost as much.

Imagine my delight at having been selected to participate in "The Movie Plays," a short play festival to take place in Rosendale the weekend of July 5, 6, and 7.  First come the plays, nine of them, to be selected and produced for the three nights. Submissions are now being accepted, so if you're as inspired by the movies as I am, now's your chance to write a ten- to twelve-minute opus about the movies and have it considered for the program. The only other requirement is that you have to live at least part-time in Ulster County, NY.

Small casts (no larger than 4) and very simple settings are requested.  Our space is limited, there will be three directors pulling the show together, and in ten minutes there's not a lot of reason to try to produce an epic. With the common theme of the movies, the plays will naturally work together well, and we three directors have vowed to work well together too.

The 10-12 minute requirement will be strictly adhered to (this is around 12 pages of standard script format, in 12 point type) and lengthier plays will be rejected.

I'll bet you have an idea already. If you want to work something up, the deadline for submission is a postmark by May 10th, 2013. Please mail 3 hard copies to: Rosendale Theatre, attention The Movie Plays, P.O. Box 545, Rosendale, NY 12472.

The winners will be announced on May 24th. Then the fun really begins--casting, working out sets, costumes, and props (minimal, I warned you), and rehearsing the plays individually before putting them together. If you're not a playwright and don't even want to be, maybe you belong backstage or in the cast. More information will be forthcoming here when those details are worked out.

But, for you writers: manuscripts can be returned if a SASE is included with the submission. Questions should be directed to Susan Einhorn, the Artistic Director of the Festival, at Susan.Einhorn@qc.cuny.edu. I hope you're one of the winners and I'll get to meet you in person!

All You Can Do Is Be

Searching for Sugar Man, Finding Rodriguez

I went to the movie in Rosendale almost reluctantly. It had been an ordinary day and it would have been easy to pour a glass of pinot grigio and unwind in front of another night of mediocre television. But I have an extraordinary little movie house nearby, the Rosendale, and when they're showing a film I feel I should see, I go. Operative word, should. That explains my low expectations.

I never heard of Rodriguez. I had heard that Searching for Sugar Man won an Oscar for best documentary, and I had seen the trailer, which looked intriguing to say the least. I respond to the search for lost souls, and this seemed perhaps to be that. I was open to it, and walking into the theater I felt the crackle of anticipation in the air. The parking lot was almost full, to my surprise, and the theater itself was too. I arrived just in time for the feature. Patrons of the Rosendale are devoted, and they love an intelligent, highly-rated film.

The movie unfolds as a story of a late 1960s/early 1970s poet-musician living on the margins of Detroit. His music is playing, his early promoters are rhapsodizing about his talent, people who knew him are describing his persona and his shadowy existence. He impressed the music bigwigs, they backed him and got albums and cds made. The songs were first rate, the singing haunting. But the albums and cds mysteriously didn't catch on. They didn't sell. He disappeared from the business and the people in high places, who to a man admired him as much or more than any other singer-songwriter of the period (yes, Bob Dylan's name came up every time), were baffled.

There are a couple of twists to the story, heart-lifting twists that I won't reveal as you'll enjoy the movie so much more if you don't know them. In the end we get to know the heart of an American original, the poet-singer-songwriter Rodriguez, whose name will probably never be a household word but who transcended what we usually define as success. His life is special as a saint's, his way of being in the world is simply that: Being. Big things make him smile, but little things count too. He is as natural in the world as a waterfall or a horse--dignified, elegant, beautiful, pleasing.

Searching for Sugar Man made me see things differently. It even made me feel things differently. It made me want to learn how to be more like Rodriguez. And it made me happy to be alive.

An Evening at the Theatre

It wasn't a play at all. I knew I would like it, but I went expecting a play about two 19th century Feminists battling through their letters. What I saw wasn't a play, but a very stimulating presentation by the directors of the Susan B. Anthony House and the Matilda Joslyn Gage House--each reading letters from the two women. Ironically, Sally Roesch Wagner (Executive Director of the Gage Center) read the letters of Anthony, and Deborah Hughes, President and CEO of the Anthony house, read letters by Gage.

That sounds a bit confusing. I think the producers of Brimstone, Booze, and the Ballot took on a bit too much, but by the end a fairly clear picture of the important figures in women's history emerged, and the audience (if I am typical) came away fired up and eager to learn more of the facts obscured by time and deliberate fog machines.

Both performers are eminently qualified to play either role. They are immersed in the study of the women's movement of the 1800's, of which far too little is known today. I felt a little stupid when I heard of Matilda Joslyn Gage for the first time, but I needn't have. Her name has been erased from history except for a few who, for various reasons, choose to seek it out. With Susan B. Anthony, Gage was one of the founders of the suffragist movement. She broke with the group the introduction of religion into the mix. She was firmly committed to getting the vote for women, but would not bend to the forces approaching churches to get involved. Anthony thought it worth the gamble--enough women voting could cancel out the zealots on any topics with zealots on the other side.

Mention was made in the presentation last night of the fly in this particular ointment at that particular time--Frances Willard, founder of the ever-so-passionate WCTU, a women's temperance group that also was working to obtain the vote for women. It seemed to me that, by introducing a religious aspect into the fray, Willard was the cause of rift between Anthony and Gage. Far from a bit player in the drama, she comes over as a powerful force, ultimately very useful in winning that vote, but bringing along with her the Volstead Act and doing a lot of damage to the nation in the name of change. Collateral damage was the loss to the movement of the voice of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a truly brilliant star who should have shone brightly through time, but instead is hardly a footnote in the struggle.

The q-and-a session was far too brief, as I wanted to bring up some questions about Willard's role. One questioner very aggressively made the point that in those early organizational meetings--behind closed doors and unknown to Gage--she was removed from the process unfairly. Wagner and Hughes conceded that that was the way Gage saw it, but their presentation was not about the politics of the organization but rather about the competing philosophies.

The discussion revealed that there is much more to study about the time and its outcomes. And, to me, the role of Frances Willard is every bit as compelling and consequential as the others of that time.

And they all have wonderful stories. It was an inspiring night!

Nostalgia As a Way of Life

The funky little theater smelled of popcorn. Gray heads gathered in the center, parents were filing in with little kids, little girls came in pairs and scattered themselves about the house. A musician prepared the keyboard. We are in Rosendale, an artistic little burg seven miles from home, ready to view the Buster Keaton silent The Cameraman. I've seen a lot of Buster Keaton, going back to the Keaton Festival at the Elgin in New York City in the early 1970s. I am a very big fan.

I find a seat and am at once transported back in time, to a different movie house, the Fairhope, in the 1950's. I am one of the little girls excited about going to a movie with a friend. We are chattering like those two I see, I am already hooked on the movies, and it's only going to get worse. I will come to picture myself playing roles on the screen, imagine how I would read certain lines, tilt my head like that leading lady, swoon in the arms of that big strong actor, play that death scene so elegantly with one eye at a time streaming a tear.

I will grow up to major in drama in college, to take leading roles, to enroll in acting classes in New York, to start my own theatre companies in Geneva and in the U.S. I eat this stuff up and it in turn eats me up too.

But now I'm past all that. I'm retired from it all, sitting in an old-fashioned movie house fairly reeking with popcorn which my gastroenterologist has warned me not to eat. I am surrounded by the innocents on all sides and submerged in my own childhood innocence. I am swept into 1928, with Buster Keaton trying to win the heart of a pretty girl and operate a movie camera with a monkey at his side at the same time. As always in a Keaton film, the audience loves it. They are laughing loudly and the little boy next to me is saying, "Go, monkey!" and bouncing in his seat.

Before the movie starts there is the commercial break. Local businesses advertise on slides, and the Rosendale Theatre Collective makes a bid for money to refurbish. They want to raise $300,000, which doesn't seem to me enough, but I look around Rosendale and wonder how the hell they are going to get that much. I can donate--how much should I give? Should I get involved in helping them raise funds? How could I resist? What can I do?

They seem such an earnest lot, and the cause is definitely my kind of thing. This little town deserves a first rate movie house, and it is doing all it can to create one. You too can partake.

Go to their website and see if you don't wish you lived here. See if you're not moved to open your wallet. And if you're ever in the area, you will want to come to a movie. You may even be allowed to eat the popcorn.

Getting It Ready

Phase One was making the move--packing, camping in the midst of my stuff, mostly in cartons, until the apartment was ready. Now I'm just about at the end of Phase Two, which is, moving into the new apartment and placing my furniture and artwork around the walls. I've  hung some art, arranged some favorite pieces of furniture, and started replacing pieces I sold or gave away long ago.

A new rug pulls the furniture, mis-matched and of different vintage, together to look as if their purchase was planned. A designer once told me that if you pick only things you like, they will work together because they'll all be at the same level of taste--your own. I'm counting on that as the only word for my style is eclectic. There are antiques and mid-century modern pieces, and even the art is from different periods of my life and different schools. Because of my long life, my stuff is my biography--and it's a pretty complex one.

Years ago I had a round oak somewhat-antique dining table. I sold it before I moved to Hoboken, in the orgy of yard sales, giveaways, and general purge of that big move in December 2007. I haven't had a dining space since, but now I do again, and it seemed the perfect place for one of those tables.

 It's a little rickety for a kitchen work surface, but it looks right and it's now awaiting a few more chairs so I can serve someone on it. The place is beginning to feel like home.

At last I have an office, even though it is half of my second bedroom. I can do some work here.

Too Good To Be True

I guess everybody's heard enough about Lance Armstrong to last a lifetime, and about Manti T'eo too. I'm still haunted by both their stories and by the media attention, which to a certain degree was the story in both cases.

I don't pay any attention to sports because I think they are a negative force in American society. I'm one of those scolds who thinks way too much importance is placed on athletics and athletes, and, well, if our gladiators have to take performance-enhancing drugs to achieve the fame they seek, their admirers should be aware of that by now. And if one of them believes a made-up online girl is the love of his life, that's probably because he might have never had much of a life outside the big game.

In the case of Armstrong, not many Americans paid much more attention to the Tour de France than I did until he came along. He carefully crafted the image of guy-who-has-it-all while in reality behind the scenes was a nasty piece of work and had very little going for him. Prevailing in his bout with cancer may have been the only real thing he did, and his fund-raising foundation, while clearly a good way for him to shelter some of his fortune, achieved millions for a worthy cause--but that was likely an afterthought put in place by business advisers. It does not make him a philanthropist.

The troubling thing about his interview with Oprah Winfrey was his flat affect, his apparent indifference to the magnitude of his deception, and his clarity about his intention to appear to be a normal human being, maybe even a good one underneath. He failed at that and I'm sure he hates to fail. He may end up suing Oprah for defamation of character. As usual, I admired Ms. Winfrey for her direct, non-judgmental hits, just asking probing questions as she tried to make some sense of his version of things.

At first I thought of Manti Te'o as some kind of Li'l Abner type--a big bruiser with a heart of gold and the brain the size of an English pea. Now it becomes clear that he was let in on the prank before he revealed it and may have been more of a participant than he claims. At any rate it was a silly-season kind of joke, if that's what it was, and apparently will have no lasting negative pull on his career as a football player.

Back to the performance-enhancing drugs. I don't understand why people are so up in arms about this. As far as I can tell, sports fans want to win and they want it so much this obsession clouds their vision. Sports are not about what we call "good sportsmanship," if indeed they ever were. They are about winning. Baseball players, runners, everybody in competitive sports takes them, and they work. Whether the Baseball Hall of Fame honors them or not, today's baseball players rack up more home runs than the former all-time greats ever did, and they do it every season. Like Armstrong--a cyclist nobody ever spotted as special--who won one Tour de France after another, they know that winning is the only thing, and that there is a short cut to doing it. Why are the fans surprised, much less betrayed? Did they not think of this? If not, why not?

We pay these brutes millions and millions of dollars every year. We want to see them win and we'd like to think they're not the kind of guys who run dogfight rings on the side. But we know that most of them will do anything to stay on top in their field, and that usually means they have to have a little pharmaceutical help to do so. Nobody forces them to take drugs (well, Armstrong did what he could to coerce his teammates to, and did what he could to ruin them if they told the truth about him, but he is an extreme case). The fans are the ones who want to see those high scores, those high batting averages, those bloated muscles. It's not news that drugs are a part of the scene. What would be so outrageous about taking steps to legalize these essential substances?

Would that not make sports fans relax a bit and continue to worship these physical specimens of unreal looks and ability? Their feet would look less clay-like if we just admitted it at the outset.

Work in Progress

You can tell from the picture that I'm making progress. Unpacking, but far from done. I've got a lot to think about as I go into the many cartons I brought from Hoboken to New Paltz--some purging yet to do, a lifetime of stuff that I once treasured or at least thought someday I'd need. Carton after carton was labeled BOOKS. A preponderance of those, maybe half, were marked COOKBOOKS.

A funny thing happened to me a few years ago when I read of a new cookbook that intrigued me. I thought, "I have recipes for most of those dishes already, somewhere in these books of mine," then I had a major revelation. "I don't really need another cookbook." This was followed by the bolt-of-lightning realization, "I can cook. I don't need one more cookbook." I've been cooking for over fifty years and enjoying it. I've tried many cuisines and settled on what I like and do best. I might try something totally different from time to time, from a recipe in a magazine, on television or the Internet. But I simply don't need one more book.

Yet I kept most of my cookbooks. In the same way I've kept most of my books over the years. This time, since I'm renting an apartment for one year, it would be wasted energy to unpack all my books and put them into my many bookcases, as next January I may well be packing for another move. Many of the cartons labeled BOOKS will go unopened into one of the big closets. I'll pick a few boxes at random and unpack them onto the shelves. I expect to like looking at the dust jackets and displaying the 20 or 30 books for all to see how erudite I am and am not. I'll unpack some of the cookbooks and probably use them from time to time--but then, I cook mostly from memory anyway.

A crisis occurred when I realized I don't need all these encyclopedias. I struggled to buy encyclopedias in the early 1970s, when a good set was still a necessity of my life. The Encyclopedia Britannica offered many sales plans--ways for the customer to pay in installments. Their telephone salesman was insistent that I use one of them. When I asked if I could just pay the total amount outright I was told no, that wasn't among their plans. I tried to get off the phone with that guy for weeks. He had my number and kept calling although I told him over and over I didn't want to pay in installments. We reached a stalemate and he finally gave up. On vacation in Maine I bought an unused set from a housewife who had fallen for the telephone pitch and had no use for encyclopedias after all.

I took a modicum of pride up until a few years ago that I was still referring to my Britannicas for little questions that might arise, pulling up biographies and pearls of information from decades past. But more and more I was using the Internet for such information, and by the time I got to New Paltz, with my grandsons lugging the heavy boxes to my apartment and asking, "Why do you need all these encyclopedias?" I finally asked myself the same question and had to admit it had been at least two years since I'd opened one. Now, where to donate them--or do I just put them out with the recyclables? The set is dated 1969 and there is a volume missing. Does anybody read encyclopedias? I can't think who that might be.

I continue to look through detritus and hope it's all valuable. I always thought when I moved the next time I'd find those green earrings I wore so often and suddenly couldn't find. In carton after carton I see forgotten mementos and artifacts of pasts epochs from my past. Most are fun to find; some cause me to ask, what on earth did I ever want this for? So far, no luck on the earrings.