Were I to write about any other topic today, it would seem strange. Even so, I don’t feel I have anything true and proper and unique to contribute to the conversation. So I’ll defer to Prince himself, who got the sentiment correct, right down to the month. Continue reading Prince Rogers Nelson, 1958 – 2016
When I suggest that boxing, like comedy, is about rhythm, he nods. “My trainer, Dave Paul, he said, ‘G’—he calls me G—he said, ‘G, you have an unusual rhythm of your own that’s sort of, uh, no rhythm whatsoever. And yet that works for you, because they can’t figure you out.’ So sometimes when I’m in the ring, it’s like you can’t tell whether I’m about to tell a joke, or throw a punch, or start a punch and not finish it, or pass out. So some guys can’t read me. They come in close—just like when an audience leans … Continue reading Garry Shandling, 1949 – 2016
“TOMORROW BELONGS TO THOSE WHO CAN HEAR IT COMING” Fittingly, it is unreal, like an elaborate ruse. In my heart, it is simply another strange, challenging expression of restless artistry. David Bowie always had an otherworldly authority to him, even aside from the instances in which he purposefully claimed alien personae, so it stands to reason that a late-in-life guise, a long-gestating follow-up to Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke, would involve something more ethereal. Here’s a method to haul the heavens down to the earthly firmament, claiming an angelic cloak nicely timed to coincide with the release of a new … Continue reading David Bowie, 1947 – 2016
I never got to see Ernie Banks play. Less than three weeks before I was born, Banks became the ninth Major League Baseball player and first who logged significant time at shortstop to hit his five-hundredth career home run. He retired as a player after the following season, announcing it in December, 1971. There was no march of adulation through the league, no expectation that other teams would pay their respects in pre-game ceremonies or groove him easy pitches in the All-Star Game. At the age of forty, he simply decided he’d spent enough time with a mitt on his … Continue reading Ernie Banks, 1931 – 2015
I regret that I know the work of Mike Nichols primarily — almost entirely — from the movies he made. That’s no slight on his cinematic output. Nichols signed his name to a multitude of classic films, consistently bringing a distinctive sense of style to his efforts, one paradoxically defined most by its tricky invisibility. Nichols didn’t really have a signature, at least not one beyond a crisp mastery of the visual language of film. There was a spacial airiness to his compositions that made the films feel as though they’d been shorn of clutter. He had the efficiency of … Continue reading Mike Nichols, 1931-2014
Her friends, it seemed, called her Betty. I believe this to be the case because I once saw Lauren Bacall make an appearance on The Tonight Show back when Johnny Carson, the only host of that program who truly mattered, presided over it. He kept calling her “Betty,” always with a level of purely smitten appreciation that I rarely saw in the preternaturally composed entertainer. It wasn’t hard to figure out why this upstanding Midwestern gentleman might find himself a little bit swoony in the presence of her. She was decades past her debut as a willowy ingenue in the … Continue reading Lauren Bacall, 1924-2014
I remember watching Happy Days on the first night that an episode entitled “My Favorite Orkan” aired. I didn’t know that was the title of the episode. I only knew it was like nothing I’d ever seen on the nostalgia-driven sitcom. It was remarkable enough that the program focused on a space alien who visits the Cunningham home, but the actor playing that extra-terrestrial was an absolutely astounding force of nature, bending off oddball jokes at a rate that raced ahead of the speed of thought. I was seven years old, and I was prepared to tell everyone it was … Continue reading Robin Williams, 1951-2014
Gordon Willis was nominated for the Best Cinematography Academy Award twice. Only twice. It’s unbelievable, and it stands as one of the greatest injustices in the overstuffed annals of egregious omissions of the august award-giving body. Let’s illustrate the extent of the oversight further: from 1972 to 1974, Willis was the cinematographer on four different Best Picture nominees, three of which actually claimed the top prize, and though his category often went in rough lockstep with Best Picture Willis wasn’t among the competitors once during this span. To make it even more clear, practically ever obituary and remembrance cites his … Continue reading Gordon Willis, 1931-2014
Without exception, it was a pleasure to watch him meet a role. Even in those rare instances when the ideal dynamics of the part eluded him or there simply wasn’t enough there–not necessarily there on the page, since there’s reason to believe he was capable of bringing more than he found–for him to build a fully-realized, deeply-felt character, it was clear that Philip Seymour Hoffman took to his roles with a deep integrity designed to gain him insight. He was a character actor in the truest sense, including the predilection to disappear into roles, changing his physical appearance to suit … Continue reading Philip Seymour Hoffman, 1967 – 2014
Here is a story told to me lately by a man named John Cronin, who is the director of the Pace Academy for the Environment, at Pace University. Cronin has known Seeger for thirty years. “About two winters ago, on Route 9 outside Beacon, one winter day, it was freezing–rainy and slushy, a miserable winter day–the war in Iraq is just heating up and the country’s in a poor mood,” Cronin said. “I’m driving north, and on the other side of the road I see from the back a tall, slim figure in a hood and coat. I’m looking, and … Continue reading Pete Seeger, 1919 – 2014
Coffee for Two 