Forster started strong but faded and had a hard time finding work for decades. But “the drought ended with a chance encounter with Tarantino at a West Hollywood coffee shop where Forster regularly had breakfast. Tarantino told him he was writing an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, which would become Jackie Brown, and asked Forster to read the book.” – Los Angeles Times
Category: people
How David Hockney Self-Promoted Himself Into The Art World When He Was Young
Hockney, as a brash young artist in the 1960s, made some bold moves. “In the previously unknown letter, scrawled by Hockney while he was studying at the Royal College of Art in London, the 23-year-old brazenly adopts the tone of an established artist and invites Helen Kapp, the curator of the Wakefield gallery, to see his work as if she were an old friend.” – The Observer (UK)
John Giorno, Who Starred In The Andy Warhol Movie ‘Sleep’ And Tried To Move Poetry Off The Page, Has Died At 82
Giorno wanted more for poetry than simply the page, good as that is. He “turned to the world of art and the mechanisms of mass media to shake poetry loose from the page and embed it more deeply in the fabric of everyday life.” – The New York Times
Performance Artist Carlos Celdran Has Died In Exile At 46
Celdran was arrested and convicted in the Philippines for a dramatic performance protest, and he fled to Spain to escape his sentence. Celdran, who led walking tours all over Manila that he turned into plays, “had a charm that appealed as much to people in Manila’s glitzy hotels as to people in the slums, where his friends included cigarette vendors and drivers of the horse-drawn carts that plied the tourist neighborhoods.” – The New York Times
When A Star Stares Right Back
Why did The Washington Post reviewer (and the now-infamous headline writer) have such a hard time dealing with singer Debbie Harry’s memoir? Perhaps because “she always comes off as tough and matter-of-fact and New York–y,” and the Post reviewer wanted a lot more. – The Atlantic
Meet The Eton-Educated, Non-Binary British Iraqi Draq Queen
Amrou Al-Kadhi: “When I started doing drag, it felt like the ultimate rejection of everything I was taught in the Middle East. … I felt like I was lying. I was trying to live out things that I didn’t actually believe about myself. Everyone was looking to me as this voice of liberation. And I just wasn’t that … Whenever the drag came off, I would have a nervous breakdown.” – The Guardian
Why Mark Bradford Is One Of The Most Important Artists Of Our Time
For example: “There’s nothing revolutionary about an artist creating a foundation. But the nonprofits set up by Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell and Robert Rauschenberg, to name three, were created to launch after the artist’s death. Bradford, 57, founded Art + Practice for immediate impact. He provides as much of the organization’s $1 million annual budget as needed. And he does it his way, generally declining grants so that the nonprofit can remain independent and flexible.” – Washington Post
Ciaran Carson, Poet Who Captured Belfast, Dead At 70
“With a rich accumulation of poems, metafictions and other unclassifiable prose works, … he superimposed a psychic overlay on the city’s mundane streets and terraces, its feuds and factions, the aggravations and atrocities of the bloody 30-year Troubles.” – The Guardian
The Time I Played Chess Nude With Marcel Duchamp
Eve Babitz: “I took the smock off, letting it fall beside me, but Julian kicked it far across the slippery floor, out of the way in a corner. I sat down quickly at the chess set and wondered if we could just pose or did we actually have to play, but Marcel — whose obsession with chess made him give up not only art but girls — was waiting for me to make the first move.” – Literary Hub
Marshall Efron, Star Of Idiosyncratic TV Comedies, Dead At 81
“An actor and humorist, [he] was a core figure in two of the quirkiest television shows of the 1970s, The Great American Dream Machine and the children’s program Marshall Efron’s Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Sunday School.” – The New York Times