Gossip Central

James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni: Lesson in Survival: 1971 at the Vineyard Theater

A young poet, Nikki Giovanni interviewed an elder statesman of letters, James Baldwin, on television in 1971. Enacted, voiced onstage at the Vineyard Theater, Lessons in Survival: 1971, joins a series of plays produced at this downtown venue that makes use of actual words uttered in real life situations to create a theatrical experience: Tina Slatter’s Is This a Room and Lucas Hnath’s Dana H. Deirdre O’Connell won the Best Actress in a Play Tony Award for her performance, after the work transitioned to Broadway. Bringing true words to theater turns out to infuse otherwise merely remarkable events with even greater power. 

Calling Baldwin (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) Jimmy, suggesting an informality that seems unimaginable today for such an austere figure, Giovanni (Crystal Dickinson) first wants to know why he expatriated to Paris for much of his writing life. To anyone’s ears, then and now, the loaded question would trigger a discussion of the largest subject in American history, the subject of slavery, and though 1971 was well after the emancipation of African Americans, the untoward legacy is foremost still in today’s reckoning for both blacks and whites.

Battleground: What About Women’s Lives?

The abortion debate is personal. If you were around in 1973, as I was, a new hire in the English Department at Brooklyn College, you were privy to the harrowing stories of colleagues who had had unwanted pregnancies. This happened, not because they were reckless, but because of the prevailing notions that women could and would enjoy sex as much as men—a risky choice. Erica Jong’s catchphrase, “the zipless fuck,” was about to be coined. Our Bodies, Our Selves emboldened women to be adventurers. This was new, as women’s lives were expanding beyond their father’s/husband’s purview. Roe v. Wade enlarged those possibilities, eliminating the danger and stigma for sexually active women, “auctoritee,” as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath would have it—women would have self-rule. Agency. And maybe self-love. Implicit in the current reversal of Roe: women’s lives don’t matter.

Watching Battleground, Cynthia Lowen’s powerful, Zietgeist-hitting documentary featured at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, I was struck by how intelligent the leadership of anti-abortion groups are, articulate and persuasive in their ideas about killing babies, Gen Z zealots in preventing this murder—and how young and clueless regarding the hard-fought struggles of pre-Roe women.

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song Plus a Concert and a Tribute to Hal Willner at the Tribeca Film Festival

Music docs at Tribeca have a common thread, record producer Hal Willner. In Angelheaded Hipster, about Mark Bolan and T. Rex, and Hallelujah, a Leonard Cohen biopic through the lens of his now classic song, Willner provides vital information on recordings. His presence in these films prior to his untimely death in the earliest wave of Covid shows how much his career spanned these eras of contemporary music. 

I used to visit him in his toy packed studio on the West side. Howdy Doody dolls, Pee Wee Herman figures grinned into the room from packed shelves where he’d be mixing a tape of poet Gregory Corso reading, or reminiscing about his good pal Lou Reed. The title Angelheaded Hipster comes straight out of beat lore. Bolan may have been a beat contemporary, but his glam persona matches more directly with David Bowie, Klaus Nomi, and Freddy Mercury. 

Hallelujah had a special opening at the Beacon Theater, followed by a concert. Judy Collins met Cohen in 1966 and immediately fell in love with “Suzanne,” recording it that year. On stage, her crystalline voice resonated, capturing Cohen’s special talent and a sense of loss, just as the many covers of Hallelujah in the film brought home its deeply spiritual quality, even as some made the lyrics more secular. As beat muse Neal Cassady used to say, “Sex is holy.”

Elvis: Baz Luhrmann’s Burning Love

“Man cannot live by Batman alone,” said Baz Luhrmann about making his film of Elvis, and yet the film feels like a wild ride at times. Its great achievement is the casting of Austin Butler who, handsome and talented singing many of the songs we know and love, manages to humanize this historic figure. Young Elvis, grows up in the black community, learning music amidst the gospel and rhythms surrounding him, marginalized by poverty. Luhrmann traces the vital American lineage up through monstrous fame choreographed by a mysterious figure known as Colonel Parker, a citizen of no particular country, who manages Elvis’ career. Played with flair by Tom Hanks, this man has the heart of a carnival barker and fashions Elvis in the art of the con. Often feeling like a sideshow freak, Elvis is imprisoned by the colonel’s greed which leads to his drugged demise and addiction to swooning fans. He’s a Shakespearean outsized tragic hero who reflects upon the eras, the ‘50’s, ‘60’s, ‘70’s—as Luhrmann observed, “He defined all of them.”

Meeting Chef Mauro Colagreco: Reinventing Mirazur

Among the many pleasures of the documentary-rich Tribeca Film Festival, Reinventing Mirazur is particularly yummy, the best word for a film about food. Or rather, the transformation of a multi-star Michelin restaurant in Menton, France during Covid. At center is a brilliant chef, the Argentinian Mauro Colagreco, named best in the world, who expected to be studying cooking in Paris for a few months—as one does— that stretched into twenty years, ending up in the most gorgeous setting, on the French Riviera—actually the perfect place for a restaurant that went from just great and innovative food to a more planet-conscious culinary experience. Mauro is a teddy bear of a man in the film, beyond friendly and loving to family and to his restaurant staff. Not that life was easy. During Covid, he could not fly back to Argentina when his beloved mother died. He went through great growing pains as a restaurateur. 

Cut to this film premiere at Tribeca, and an after party at Carbone where he would be the guest of honor. Intrigued and thoroughly seduced by the film, I was pleased to be invited to meet this world-class chef, fueled by the fantasy that he would be dishing out tiny slivers of lamb layered with leaves, as he does in Reinventing Mirazur. When I arrived at Carbone, no one could say he would be there. I had a glass of chardonnay in a corner, and ample samples of Carbone’s signature meatballs and veal parmigiana as the small venue filled with scenesters. The food was delicious.

Lost Illusions: A Classy Take on a French Classic

The French can be vicious, bringing backstabbing to a fine art. Just look at les Liaisons Dangereuses. This year’s winner of seven Cesars, including Best Film, went to Xavier Giannoli’s adaptation of Honore Balzac’s Lost Illusions, a splendidly captivating romp through 19^th century Paris via the extravagant “illusions” of a young, determined, and talented poet, as his ideals are bought and sold by alluringly fancy vipers of the first order. 

Fresh from the rural fields, the ambitious newbie makes his way to the big city’s swank salons, taking journalism as a day job. Needless to say, the work consumes him. He falls for a beautiful kept woman/would be actress, a lover of exceptional skill, who is ill (a little “la Boheme”). Lucien appears to have it all—acclaim, love, all except title, --until he does not. The Devil exacts his price. At Lucien’s inevitable fall, editors, rivals, --everyone exclaims, “Well, who do you think you are?” His shifting identity is just one of his conceits. In the French court of commerce and public opinion, betrayal –and its sister, humiliation--rule.

Weaving such tales of the ups and downs of Fortune’s Wheel with finesse and finery—with cunning contrasts in temptation and scandal, the French are masters. This is great work for an ensemble of actors starting with Gerard Depardieu, Cecil de France, Jeanne Balibar, Xavier Dolan, Salome Dewaels, and more. As Lucien, Benjamin Voisin plays the poet as pouty, seductive, and naïve.

A classic story, classically made! Yes, the French are great at tales of vicious misfortune, and that’s why we love them.