“Even after 50 years it is difficult to name a coterie—even a couple of writers—that the NYRB nurtured or found. From Gore Vidal and Christopher Lasch in the early years to Amartya Sen and Paul Krugman today, the NYRB gave space to important figures—but only once they were already important.”
Tag: 01.05.14
Jerry Seinfeld Explains Being Funny
“To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information. The timbre of it, the shape of it, the length of it – there’s so much information in a laugh. A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.”
Spider-Man Bows Out – A Box Office Success That Lost Money
“Spider-Man” had 1,268 performances in all, a healthy run by Broadway standards – but not nearly enough to come close to earning back the original $75 million capitalization to create and stage the musical.
These Artists (May) Own The Moon
“With nations hamstrung from competing, this would inevitably lead to private companies holding power over national governments. This situation has emboldened a group of artists to trump everyone and claim the moon for themselves.”
When The Co-Founder Of An Avant Garde Theatre Moves To Assisted Living
“She had lost leases before during her long life in independent theater. This time was different. ‘I was crying, screaming,’ she said, about leaving her neighborhood. ‘They had to carry me to the car.'”
Heads Up, Downton Abbey Fans: It’s Coming To An End
And guess who’s (maybe) killing it? Americans, with offers of money for a new show drawing Downton creator Julian Fellowes away from Great Britain.
Tribute Bands: How And Why?
“While artists performing others’ songs is as old as pop and rock itself, over the past couple of decades the faithful reinterpretation of earlier groups’ repertoires, looks and quirks, even appropriately-accented onstage chat, has become big business and a process whereby the greats of the past are presented to new generations of fans.”
Robert Indiana’s Career Was Made, And Ruined, By LOVE
“In 1968, Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art bought a painting called LOVE — and made artist Robert Indiana famous. It became a sculpture, a stamp, greeting cards. And it obliterated the rest of Indiana’s career. The artist has been pretty much ignored by the art world for the past few decades.”
Censorship Takes Away The Gay In Egyptian Film
“When Hany Fawzy finished editing ‘Family Secrets’, he thought he had made one of the first Egyptian films to focus primarily on homosexuality. Then Egypt’s censors watched it.”
Blood Is In At The Theatre, But Making Blood Is The Fun Part?
“I special order blood, build pneumatic delivery systems, cobble together elaborate systems of bags and tubes and valves from medical, veterinary, cooking, and industrial parts to solve simple stage moments that need to look effortless but are exceptionally complicated theatrical moments.”