C-Span’s “Booknotes” is a serious place to talk books. Host Brian Lamb has a big following, but the appeal of the show is in its simplicity. “This is not a show done for intellectuals. A lot of people thought it was in the beginning. They started to hear me ask some very basic questions, and they’d say: ‘Oh, my goodness, why is he asking those stupid questions?’ So: Why is he asking those questions? ‘I want to know the answer’.”
Tag: 02.06.03
Can A Show Be An ‘Enemy Combatant’?
Overseas opposition to the Bush administration’s foreign policy has taken an unusual turn in London, in the form of a wildly popular (and wildly unsubtle) satirical play called The Madness of George Dubya. The show, which is about to move to a new venue to accomodate the demand for tickets, portrays the American president as “a pajama-wearing buffoon cuddling a teddy bear while his crazed military chiefs order nuclear strikes on Iraq.”
A Broken Industry
In the U.S., orchestras are in fiscal trouble. In Canada, it’s a full-blown crisis. Orchestras in Calgary, Winnipeg, and Edmonton are all facing uncertain futures, and Toronto narrowly avoided financial catastrophe last year. Robert Everett-Green finds much irony in the dichotomy between orchestras which continue to perform at an admirably high level, and a system of arts funding so inadequate that it might as well not exist at all. “What needs fixing is the whole system, including the relationship between arts groups in the same community, and the chain of responsibility that governs the individual organizations.”
The Film Of Pi
Fox Pictures has purchased the film rights to author Yann Martel’s Booker award-winning novel, The Life of Pi. The book, which briefly caused a bit of trouble for the author after Martel revealed that he had appropriated the basic concept from a review of a Brazilian novel which he’d read years before, may prove challenging to adapt for the screen, since it is largely metaphorical, and focuses on a young Indian boy stranded at sea with a Bengal tiger.
Classical Figures
The marketers of classical music have increasingly embraced the ‘sex-sells’ notion that the rest of the music industry bowed to long ago. These days, it’s not just a few crossover artists using their looks to sell their non-visual product, but an industry-wide trend which is dividing musicians and fans down the middle. “It feels increasingly desperate,” says one talent booker, but a publicist points out that “this is one of those issues that seems only to trouble people in classical music… You have to play by the rules of pop culture, to go with the visual orientation of the culture right now.”
Doing Britney One Better
Meanwhile, over in the world of pop music, the marketing of sex has never been questioned as a way to sell records, and a new teen-pop act from Russia is provoking howls the likes of which haven’t been heard since Britney Spears first donned a schoolgirl outfit to pout and kick at the camera. But really, hasn’t pop pushed teen sexuality as far as it can go? What’s left to shock us? Well, meet Tatu, the teenage exhibitionist lesbian pop duo. Oh, and they sing, too.
Changing The Way We View Art
Back in 1999, Malcolm Rogers made himself rather unpopular with his staff at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art, when he consolidated several departments, and even let a few long-tenured employees go. “The radical restructuring made international news in the art world as Rogers dismantled curatorial fiefdoms and folded decorative arts into American and European painting departments. Rogers’ rallying cry was ‘One Museum,’ where curators would work together to display artworks in different media and incorporate work from other cultures and historical periods that served as influences. Paintings, sculpture and decorative arts would be displayed together so that objects could ‘speak’ to each other. Now Rogers’ revolution is starting to evolve in the galleries.”
The Spacey Factor
Actor Kevin Spacey is to become “director of a new, permanent Old Vic theatre company, which will stage shows for eight months a year, leaving the theatre open to other groups, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, for the summer months. The Oscar-winning actor, 43, will star in two productions a year, as well as directing shows and tempting stars keen to follow the growing Hollywood tradition of taking pay cuts for prestigious outings on the London stage.”
The Arts Of Protest
Increasingly, artists seem to be speaking up about politics and the looming war with Iraq. “I don’t think it’s an accident that in totalitarian societies they always arrest the artists first, though we don’t seem particularly dangerous. I think the responsibility of the artist, each of us in our way, is to tell the truth. And the truth generally involves a great deal of ambiguity, and in times of war ambiguity and paradox are the first things to go. People want simple black and white answers.”
A Yank In London
Kevin Spacey “has become such a fixture of London life that he felt compelled to reassure people that ‘in no way should this decision be viewed as abandonment of my own country.’ Asked whether his commitment to the Old Vic had limits, he said, ‘It could be 5 seasons, it could be 10, it could be 20’.”