“Jason Johnson, described by critics as ‘the Irish Irving Welsh’, will open up an unusual auction in cyberspace next month: a chance to become a character in his third novel.”
Tag: 10.01.06
A Chorus Line Of Stories (Waiting To Be Paid)
The new Broadway revival of “A Chorus Line” has some of the dancers whose stories were used in the show remembering that they weren’t properly compensated for those stories. “At one point, when we were young and stupid, we kind of signed our lives away, and they exploited that. We were the authors of the show, and we should have been paid accordingly.”
Art In A Million Pieces
“Art, wherever it is made, no longer subscribes to a single dominant trend with a few rambunctious alternatives jostling for supremacy. Art is eclectic — and today we take that eclecticism for granted. Look around. The extreme breadth of artistic diversity is so familiar and so routine as to border on invisibility.”
Cost Of Making TV Skyrockets
“A full season of a television drama now costs as much to make as the average feature film. More than half of the 14 drama pilots produced this fall for the major networks — CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox — cost $6 million or more. That’s up 50% from just two years ago.”
Charles Saatchi, Omnivore
Saatchi, one of the world’s most ostentatious art collectors, says he looks at more art than anyone else. “If you look enough – and I’ve been doing it for a long, long time – you get a sense of what suits you. That doesn’t mean that I don’t make tremendous mistakes all the time, walking straight past something that I discover a year or two later is terrific.”
The Amazing Thomas Quasthoff
“As his fans well know but newcomers absorb with a jolt, the 46-year-old Quasthoff is a thalidomide victim, one of thousands of deformed children born to women who took the drug for insomnia or morning sickness during pregnancy. He spent much of his early childhood in an institution for the severely handicapped and grew up to receive music’s highest accolades, including three Grammy awards.”
Chicago Film Fest Survives (And That’s Something)
Ten years ago the Chicago International Film Festival was in trouble. “What’s certain is that at a time of increased competition among film festivals and entertainment options in general, the Chicago International Film Festival has survived, which is no small feat.”
William Forsythe Takes An Arty Turn
“His work, increasingly, is on display not only on stages but in art galleries as well. He is a choreographer, trained in the classical mould, whose vocabulary grew from dancing with the Joffrey and Stuttgart Ballets. Yet one of his current plans is to make, in an art gallery in Munich, a memorial to the civilians who have died in Iraq in the form of a snowstorm of paper pieces, each printed with a name in Arabic.”
The Disappearing Overture
“An unscientific survey of 30 recent, current or forthcoming Broadway musicals reveals that only 7 have an old-fashioned overture.”
Critics Boo Film Festival Winner
The announcement of the winning movie at the San Sebastian Film Festival irked critics. “Several of them shouted ‘No, no’ and made thumbs-down gestures when it was announced that Mon Fils a Moi, or My Son, had won a Golden Shell.”