“(W)hen my partner and I started our company, Frank & Wally Films, back in 2003, we were fresh out of Michigan law school and strapped for cash. We could barely afford to buy drinks when we schmoozed at the Chateau Marmont, let alone fly from Hollywood to New York or Paris or Sydney on a moment’s notice. So I decided to work the system. My goal was to get to these meetings by attaining frequent-flier platinum status on Northwest Airlines.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
At 2 Columbus Circle, A Transformation Under Wraps
“The controversial white block of a building is still shrouded in dark netting. The hard-hatted men perched on the surrounding scaffolding won’t wrap up their work until the middle of next year. But behind the scrim, the ‘lollipop’ building at 2 Columbus Circle is steadily changing into a new home for the Museum of Arts and Design.”
Is This A New, Less Corny Era Of Musical Theatre?
“Grey Gardens” and “Spring Awakening” are not your parents’ Broadway musicals, and they may mark a significant shift in musical theatre. “These two daring, surreally unusual musicals — both transfers from the 2005-06 Off-Broadway season — have dominated Broadway during the past six months. Together, they will likely walk away with many of the Tony Awards in the major musical categories. … In Times Square, audacious visions are the new black….”
In Our Responses To Art, The Unconscious Is Key
“The connections that paintings and dance performances, movies and novels and music make to us beyond our conscious perceptions of them are primary and transporting. Our unconscious, deep-seated responses are what bring us back to the arts for more and more, nourishing and renewing us just as food and air and water do. At the same time, we’re carried away from our sensory and analytical selves, lifted or plunged into a web of emotion and association, a fretwork of glinting filaments radiating out in so many directions.”
As Roundabout Grows, So Does Competitors’ Anger
“The Roundabout Theater Company, the largest nonprofit group rolling dice in the Broadway casino, is adding a fourth house to its empire. The plan has outraged many of the company’s commercial competitors, who are further peeved that the Roundabout will almost certainly open the new space with a revival of its smash 1998 production of ‘Cabaret.'”
Novelists Head Off To The Bank, Notebooks In Hand
“Why has investment banking, instead of soldiering in Iraq or drug abuse, become the issue of the day for talented young American novelists?”
Authors Declare Their Font Loyalties
As Helvetica enjoys its moment in the spotlight, “Slate asked a number of prominent writers to tell us what font they compose in and why. Courier was the clear favorite among our unscientific sample, but Times New Roman, Palatino, and something called Hoefler Text had their champions as well. (It seems to come down to whether a writer’s formative experience came on an Olivetti or an Apple.)”
James Beck, Critic Of Conservation, Dies At 77
“James Beck, a Columbia University art historian who became well known as a critic of what he viewed as the ruinous conservation of world masterpieces, including Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, died on Saturday in Manhattan. … It was the extensive restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescos, begun in 1980, that initiated his vigorous critique of conservation in the art historical field. He argued that the Michelangelo frescos were being drastically overcleaned….”
At Cooper-Hewitt, Good Design For The Poor
“The world’s cleverest designers, said Dr. (Paul) Polak, a former psychiatrist who now runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe’s richest 10 percent…. ‘We need a revolution to reverse that silly ratio,’ he said. To that end, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, which is housed in Andrew Carnegie’s 64-room mansion on Fifth Avenue and offers a $250 red chrome piggy bank in its gift shop, is honoring inventors dedicated to ‘the other 90 percent,’ particularly the billions of people living on less than $2 a day.”
Cannes Recognizes Romania’s Emerging Cinema
“The message from the Cannes Film Festival juries was clear: Romania rules. In its closing ceremony on Sunday the festival bestowed two of its most important prizes on Romanian films, affirming the vitality of this recently emerging cinema.”