Gossip Central

Ric Burns on Making Oliver Sacks: His Own Life: Narrative is Therapy

Waxing euphoric, documentarian Ric Burns, exclaimed, “The story in 14,233 lines was an attempt to get to the bottom, to heal the world.” He was not speaking of Doctor Oliver Sacks and his biopic, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, of the noted neurologist and writer of Awakenings (1972) and The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1985), the subject that brought us together on the phone this week, but of a current project on Dante, the Italian Renaissance author of The Divine Comedy: “Now in 2020,” said Burns, “Everything needs healing.”

The theme of healing unites these films for Ric, the younger brother of Ken Burns, to whom he apprenticed himself for the mini-series The Civil War and other projects, before striking out on his own. Oliver Sacks: His Own Life was featured in last year’s New York Film Festival—he says of the prestigious festival: “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” but as he’s made the rounds, including the 2019 Hamptons International Film Festival, he’s found, “People really gravitate toward Oliver Sacks.”

John Waters on Fire: New York Film Festival Poster Boy

Speaking of bad boy artists such as himself, writer William S. Burroughs proclaimed that “You become respectable if you stick around long enough.” John Waters, the creator of the nastiest images in movie satires, would gag at the implication of respectability, and if you check out the irreverence of his poster for the 58^th NYFF, you can see his level of impropriety at work. No boundaries. Nothing sacred. Some of our finest directors—Scorsese, Almodovar, Godard, Varda, Jenkins-- trashed. How very John Waters!

And yet, the bad boy in brocade jackets is on a roll! This past May, when he received an honorary degree from The School of Visual Arts, Waters wore a traditional gown, cap, and latex gloves, all in black, his signature pencil thin ‘stache under an artsy mask. Pulling it off, he consoled the graduates who’d been robbed of a “normal” graduation: “If you do die tomorrow, at least you’ll have a college degree.” As SVA’s President David Rhodes conferred upon him a Doctor of Fine Arts, Waters thanked everyone for their support of a lunatic: “Just call me Doctor Dirt.”

Ethan Hawke Lights Up Tesla

In director Michael Almereyda’s poetic hands, genius inventor Nikola Tesla is an absorbing if brooding subject. In Almereyda’s latest movie Tesla, he is the focus, and played by Ethan Hawke who had starred as Hamlet—the archetypical absorbing if brooding subject-- in Almereyda’s 2000 movie. Here Tesla fascinates, having also been depicted, a secondary character in 2019, in Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s The Current War, played by Nicholas Hoult. In this past December’s run-ups to Oscars, in the last gasp of influencer screenings, Michael Shannon who stars as George Westinghouse in that movie asked if the Motion Picture Academy members were paying attention to that very special and important truth-based drama. Alas, I had to report, they were not. This glimpse of history was simply not electric. And Almereyda’s movie, now screening as part of a tribute to his oeuvre at the Museum of the Moving Image, may not be on the awards radar either, but in its poetry of image, performance, an a-chronology of vision, it is a bold and beautiful work, and memorable for Ethan Hawke’s Tesla. You’ve gotta love his slightly off rendition of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

Poetry in a Pandemic: Bukowski, Towle, Giorno, La Prade

For Charles Bukowski’s 100^th birthday, coronavirus or not, attention must be paid. Famous in movies portrayed by Mickey Rourke (Barfly) and Matt Dillon (Factotum), the subject of a 1973 documentary by Taylor Hackford, Bukowski was a one-of-a-kind, sexy despite huge facial crevices left by acne, crude: he once described writing a poem was like taking a big bear shit. Now there’s a new documentary assembled from a rare, rediscovered 1981 interview by Silvia Bizio, an Italian journalist, You Never Had It-An Evening with Bukowski, directed by Matteo Borgardt, and whether or not you agree with Bukowski’s view of poetry composition, it is a must-see for a glimpse of this boozing, chain-smoker who fascinates with every word.

Charlize Theron in The Old Guard: Some Myths Don’t Die

From the look of Charlize Theron throughout her new Netflix movie, The Old Guard, immortality is not what it’s cracked up to be. Grimacing while engaging in the most athletic combat against warriors, scientists and opportunists who want to package her “gift,” she’s not having it. Called “Andy,” short for Andromache, so you know she goes back to Greek myth, she has already endured the fall of Troy and murder of her son. But through the ages, with medieval torture repeated endlessly, she’s the embodiment of the Myth of Sisyphus. Loneliness, watching loved ones die, may be worse, or facing drowning over decades as she does, having committed the sin of witchcraft alongside fellow immortal Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo), encased in an Iron Maiden. And yes, a legend Andy is, all fierce, her body finely tuned, not a gussied-up Wonder Woman. Watching Andy go through her paces is thrilling.

Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin Star in a Revival of Same Time, Next Year to Benefit Guild Hall, Directed by Bob Balaban

In case you were wondering what A-list actors were up to sequestered in the time of COVID-19, Bob Balaban works hard as ever from his home in Sagaponack, developing content for when “the gates are lifted,” and looking to help the community. With an idea for supporting Guild Hall, he got Alec Baldwin who got Julianne Moore, the result: a benefit staged reading of Bernard Slade’s two-hander, Same Time, Next Year opening on July 12 on Zoom.

Said Josh Gladstone, GH artistic director, confronting the challenge of keeping its virtual doors open, “this is our third Zoomed show. “Balaban brought the idea to us.” Alec Baldwin supports so many cultural projects out east, and Julie wants to, but usually has scheduling difficulties; now she is out in Montauk, and everyone is free.

Willem Dafoe in Abel Ferrara’s Tommaso: When in Rome . . .

Abel Ferrara makes movies the way Jack Kerouac writes fiction, in controlled spontaneity. The idea for Tommaso, about a filmmaker living in Rome, came to Ferrara as he was making another film, Siberia, a more challenging work demanding a greater budget for mountaintop scenes in five feet of snow, and forest exteriors. Tommaso is shot in Rome, where both he and his star Willem Dafoe reside in the same neighborhood; with interiors in Ferrara’s home, Tommaso is a take on his own domestic scene. His wife Cristina Chiriac stars as Tommaso’s wife, their daughter Anna Ferrara stars as their daughter. What a daring set up! Your friend playing an aspect of you making love to your wife!

As Dafoe explained the process in an interview on this past week, the actors know the start point of a given scene, but don’t know where they will end up. Dafoe, a great theater actor, handles the improvisation, especially well, partnering with cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, but, he says, he finds more freedom in more structured filmmaking. Still, their close relationship helps with an improvisational strategy: Ferrara could tell Dafoe a story, and he, says Dafoe, “tries to inhabit what he’s talking about.”

Remembering Photographer Elsa Dorfman

A longtime collaborator with Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, and other literary figures, photographer Elsa Dorfman was a true American original. A portrait artist often associated with her main instrument, the large format 20" x 24" inch Polaroid camera, Dorfman, an influence to poets, and, from all reports, a great friend, died this week at 83.

In 2017, I met her when her pal Errol Morris made a film about her, The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, his most intimate documentary. Usually working with out-sized personalities, McNamara to Rumsfeld, the murderous gasman of Zyklon B, to name a few, documentarian Errol Morris has the further distinction with his 1985 The Thin Blue Line, of having changed the course of one man’s destiny with his investigative work, unearthing evidence that showed he was innocent of murder.

Elsa Dorfman, a neighborhood friend seems a smaller portrait indeed, but the filmmaker caught up with this mild-mannered photographer just as the Gentle Giant movers were removing some large-scale Polaroids for storage, so his picture of her surprises as it covers the technical aspect of Polaroid photography, and perhaps, the end of an era. This conversation from that time, as the film was about to open after a distinguished festival run including the New York Film Festival, reveals something of Dorfman’s charm. Errol and Elsa complete one another’s sentences.

John Waters Cajoles Graduates at SVA Commencement: Become Covid-19 Commandoes!

Superstars Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey may be grabbing headlines offering online encouragement to college graduates this season, but John Waters did the job this week, dispensing discordant wisdom to designers and other artists graduating from The School of Visual Arts. The ceremony, usually held at Radio City Music Hall, featured far flung speakers, Waters himself at a podium with curtain backdrop from his home in Baltimore, setting of his most famous satiric films including his underground homage to filth, Pink Flamingos, and his breakout commercial hit, Hairspray. A dapper dresser in brocade jackets, Waters wore a traditional gown, cap, and latex gloves, all in black, his signature pencil thin ‘stache under an artsy mask. Pulling it off, he consoled the graduates who’d been robbed of a “normal” graduation: “If you do die tomorrow, at least you’ll have a college degree.”

Kristin Scott Thomas in Military Wives: A Virtual Premiere

Virtual premieres are new to me, and definitely to Kristin Scott Thomas who attended for her latest film Military Wives this week. After explaining that the film opened in the UK for five minutes before being shut down in the pandemic, the director of this feel good movie, Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty), introduced his stars, Sharon Horgan and Kristin Scott Thomas, while Thomas groused about the bleating of sheep being shorn. Isn’t that the way with Zoom? You may overhear the chit chat as you wait to be admitted. One advantage of a virtual premiere, she said getting into the novelty, “You can wear your own dress.”

In Military Wives, a movie about a women’s chorus of military wives based on a true story, she plays Kate, a mother who has lost her teenage son in war. A control freak, and Kristin Scott Thomas is a master of contained rage, (her next role as Mrs. Danvers in Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of Rebecca should confirm), her bossy character commands the women’s group to sing. And sing they do, getting as far as London’s Royal Albert Hall. Sharon Horgan plays Lisa, another commanding leader of this group, orchestrating the music and writing lyrics. As she describes this character, her reaction to her husband going off to Afghanistan is red wine. Who can’t relate to that? “This is the right film for isolation and anxiety. You will reach for tissues and laugh out loud.”