PAFF 2012: DARK GIRLS



On the "set" of Dark Girls.

In the b(l)ackground

By Ed Rampell

Bill Duke is best known to audiences for appearing in highly commercial  action pix, such as Ah-nold Schwarzenegger's two 1980s hits, Commando and Predator, plus Action Jackson, as well as in 1970s TV crime fighting series like Kojak, Charlie's Angels and Starsky and Hutch. The 6'4" shaved head African-American actor is less known as one of Hollywood's working directors, not only of many television programs, but of features, such as the Whoopi Goldberg Sister Act sequel, the made-for-TV movie about the Black Panthers' forerunners, Deacons For Defense, plus 1993's The Cemetery Club. In the latter, Duke raised eyebrows by breaking the mold and directing a mostly Caucasian and female cast led by Olympia Dukakis and Ellen Burstyn.

Now the surprisingly soft spoken Duke is shattering celluloid stereotypes again by co-directing the hard hitting, eye opening documentary Dark Girls, about "colorism" -- not only within the African-American community, but among non-blacks here and peoples around the world. Colorism is a sort of preferential judgment system based solely on skin color and tone, the caliber of hair (how straight is it?) and eye color -- as opposed to assessing individuals on what Dr. Martin Luther King called “the contents of one’s character.”

In particular, as the title suggests, Duke's doc looks at how this phenomenon affects females of color, although it is the first in a trilogy to include Yellow Brick Road (about the "high yellow"/"mulatto" phenomenon of the perception of lighter skinned people) and What is a Man. Dark Girls' interviewees include a number of extremely insightful psychologists, as well as children, teens, adults and elders impacted by colorism, such as African-American women are the least married demographic in the USA by far. Most of the documentary’s subjects are black; many of the onscreen victims of colorism are full of anguish, especially as this form of racism often comes from others of African ancestry. Comic Michael Coylar scores some pithy points about the color barrier couched in wit, while The Help actress Viola Davis insists upon not remaining helpless while racial scorn is heaped upon her.

One of the recurring interviewees is a lighter skinned mom who frets over having a darker daughter who denies her own Negritude and refuses to identify as being black. However, this mother seems completely oblivious to what appears to be her own hair straightening and dying blonde of her locks -- what message does this send to her little girl?

Like Bed Stuy-born Chris Rock’s 2009 directorial debut, Good Hair, Duke fearlessly takes on sensitive subject matter -- call him the “Duke of Curl.” When asked why Duke was "airing blacks' dirty laundry" he replied: "Because it's stinking up the house." Along with co-director D. Channsin Berry, Duke belies cultural cliches and goes where angels fear to tread, by tackling a touchy subject few would deal with (although Spike Lee boldly did in his controversial 1988 musical School Daze). Duke’s well-made nonfiction film anticipates and deals with a lot of my “what about” thoughts, such as, for example, the fact that while Thailand is full of dark skinned people, only the lighter skinned Asians appear on television.

However, I would have liked a brief look at Frantz Fanon’s groundbreaking book about the psychopathology of colonialism, Black Skins, White Masks – especially since Fanon himself was a psychiatrist, as are many of this film’s talking heads. Plus, the doc is totally devoid of any sort of class analysis of colorism -- just as plantation masters benefited by perceived divisions between house and field hands, today’s divided working class profits our corporate overlords. Ever since the Roman Empire, divide and conquer has been the name of the oppression game. Nevertheless, Dark Girls is a major, must see work.

The screening of Dark Girls I attended was completely sold out, and was followed by an extremely lively Q&A with Duke in person.



PAFF 2012: TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE

Toussaint Louverture (Jimmy Jean-Louis) in Toussaint Louverture.

Rise above

By Ed Rampell

Every once in a while a movie comes along that sweeps audiences off of their feet. Toussaint Louverture is one of these breathtaking movies. This two-part, three hour-plus saga about the leader of the Haitian liberation struggle, Toussaint Louverture (Jimmy Jean-Louis) is in the same league, and has the epic sweep of classic biopics, such as David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, Warren Beatty’s Reds, Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi as well as the recent feature about another Western Hemisphere leader, Lula, The Son of Brazil.

In a sense, Toussaint Louverture has been long in the making. By the 1930s, Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, who made revolutionary classics such as 1925’s Battleship Potemkin, was interested in making a film called Black Majesty featuring Toussaint’s co-leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, which is outlined in Vladimir Nizhny’s book Lessons With Eisenstein. Eisenstein had wanted the indomitable Paul Robeson to play Dessalines (or one of his comrades) -- can you imagine how electrifying this work would have been? In any case, it was not to be.

Nor (so far!) has Danny Glover’s projected movie about the Haitian Revolution, which was supposed to be a collaboration with the film industry of Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Toussaint has been depicted in a handful of short, documentary and feature films, notably in director Jean Negulesco’s 1952 Haitian Revolution drama Lydia Bailey, starring Anne Francis and Dale Robertson, with Trinidad-born Ken Renard (a big and little screen veteran who appeared in the South Seas set TV series Adventures in Paradise and with John Wayne in 1969’s True Grit) as Toussaint. The Haitian Revolution also inspired Gillo Pontecorvo’s (Battle of Algiers) classic about Third World liberation struggles called Burn! (Marlon Brando once told Larry King Burn! was the most important movie he’d ever acted in).

In any case, French TV director/co-writer Philippe Niang finally pulled it off with the action packed Toussaint Louverture. This made-for-TV movie looks great. It has lush production values and superb period costumes, which enhance its ambiance of authenticity. It was not shot at the actual prison where Toussaint was held (which I coincidentally visited last August at Le Doubs) but in the south of France, while the Caribbean sequences were lensed at Martinique. The film’s trajectory as it follows the title character’s revolutionary evolution from slave to the “New Spartacus,” general and governor of the “world’s first Black republic,” as Haiti is called, has the ring of truth. Haitians at the PAFF premiere told me it was “90 percent accurate.” The politics are also sharp and complex, full of contradictions, political infighting and faction fights. The cause also, alas, took its toll on Toussaint’s private life and family, especially on his wife Suzanne (Aïssa Maïga).

But Toussaint comes across at all times as an extraordinary, dignified individual -- the real deal, who is at the same time made of flesh and blood: No statue is he. This is in no small measure because Haiti-born actor Jean-Louis stars in the title role. He is stellar, delivering an Oscar-worthy performance that required great presence as well as acting skill, as Toussaint ages during this biopic that spans his tumultuous yet glorious life.

THEATER REVIEW: 20TH CENTURY

Myrtle Clark (Beth Leckbee) in 20th Century.

Backward times

By Ed Rampell

There’s no reason to board a streamlined train and chug down (or rather up) to the Sierra Madre Playhouse to see 20^th Century – unless, that is, you relish experiencing laugh riots on the live stage. Bard Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1930s play and movie versions of 20^th Century retain the rat-a-tat repartee of this screwball script, while Michael Lorre’s adept direction maintains the comedy’s madcap pace.

Egomaniacal theatre impresario Oscar Jaffe faces personal and professional ruination -- unless the producer can persuade his ex, movie star Lily Garland, to return to the footlights on the Great White Way to play the lead in a Jaffe production. Oscar woos and wows Lily with promises of the greatest female role ever in a Broadway adaptation of the age-old “Passion Play” – which, the fading showman hopes, will restore both his show biz fortunes and relationship with Lily.

Unlike in the 1934 film version this entire theatrical production takes place aboard the fabled 20^th Century Limited train as it speeds from Chicago to New York’s Grand Central Station. Kudos to set designer Adam Smith, who has turned the Playhouse’s stage into the interior of a streamliner worthy of, well, the wealth of nations. A little motion, however, would enhance the illusion of being on a swiftly moving train, but that’s a mere quibble, as the set, with its luxury lounge, sleeping quarters, et al, is a co-star.

Arthur Hanket as imperious Oscar, however, is the first among equals in this ensemble cast composed of zany characters brought to life by zesty actors. With his wild grandiose mood swings and theatrical elocution, Hanket steals every scene he’s in. (In Charles Bruce Milholland’s source material, Oscar was reportedly inspired by producer David Belasco, the so-called “Bishop of Broadway.”) In Howard Hawks’ 1934 movie, John Barrymore portrayed Oscar, and hammy Hanket does the “Great Profile” proud.

As Lily Garland (uh, or is that the character’s real name?) Stephanie Hanket Erb holds her own in the role Carole Lombard immortalized onscreen. In his efforts to win the winsome actress who has gone Hollywood back to him and the legit stage, it’s no holds barred for Oscar. He discovered and knew Lily when, and holds this over her head with relish.

The rest of the ensemble cast keeps up with the leads’ onstage antics. In a dual role, Grant Bociocco depicts a female nurse and goes all Groucho as rival producer Max Jacobs. La-La-Land denizens are used to wannabe writer/ waiters with scripts in their pockets waiting to pounce on celebs and suits, but Barry Saltzman has a comic turn as an adulterous doctor, no less, aspiring to turn in the stethoscope for the stage. Another standout is Beth Leckbee as Myrtle Clark, who plays an atheist’s delight: A bible thumper running amok aboard the train who, like many religious zealots, is filled with delusions – which are only matched by Oscar’s Newt Gingrich-like delusions of grandeur.

This character and the “Passion Play” subtext, however, triggered a religious controversy and attempts at censoring the 1934 screen version. The Hays Office, which oversaw the then-recently enforced notorious Hollywood Production Code, was anxious about the show's implicit critique of Christianity. The Hays Office's Grand Inquisitor, Joseph Breen, was nervous that “there will be serious difficulty in inducing an anti-Semitic public to accept a [motion picture] play produced by an industry believed to be Jewish in which the ‘Passion Play’ is used for comedy purposes.”

Furthermore, the Clark character (male in the movie) is what we would today call a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian who ends up in a mental asylum. Interestingly, the only actor from the Broadway play who was also in the film’s cast was Etienne Girardot, who portrayed this proselytizer. Given the current brouhaha over religion -- from the Planned Parenthood dispute to the controversy between the Obama administration and Catholic hospitals over contraceptives -- this topic remains timely.

Another important point is that 20^th Century was co-written by a Jew, Ben Hecht, whose screen credits include the 1930s classics Scarface and Nothing Sacred. In 2009 I saw a remarkable play called The Accomplices about the FDR administration and American Jewry during the Holocaust, and while many closed their eyes, nobody else did more to raise the alarm about what was befalling European Jewry before the U.S. entered WWII than “premature antifascist” Hecht. This courageous playwright/screenwriter was the great American champion of the victims of the Shoah, who campaigned relentlessly on their behalf in the press and staged star studded mass fundraisers at venues (such as, I believe, Madison Square Garden), to rouse the conscience of Roosevelt and the world before it was “safe” to do so

20th Century runs through March 17 at the Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, CA 91024. For tickets and info: (626)355-4318; www.SierraMadrePlayhouse.com.

FILM REVIEW: JOURNEY 2

Hank (Dwayne Johnson) in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Numbing down

By Ed Rampell

There have been at least half a dozen screen versions of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island, including two silent and one Soviet adaptation, and the latest incarnation is a good fun flick with 3D IMAX special effects. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island plays fast and loose with authors Jonathan Swift, Robert Louis Stevenson and especially Verne. The novels by that sci-fi pioneer have been adapted for the screen at least as far back as 1902, when Georges Melies shot Verne’s A Trip to the Moon, which Martin Scorsese revisits in his multi-Oscar nominated Melies biopic, Hugo.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is so titled because it is produced by some of the same producers of the lame 2008 adaptation of Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth starring Brendan Fraser and Josh Hutcherson, who reprises his role in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island as Sean Anderson, the scion of explorers. In this loose sequel of sorts Dwayne Johnson portrays Hank, who has married Sean’s mother -- played by Kristin Davis (Charlotte in Sex in the City). Hank has a hankering to be a good stepfather to the alienated Sean, which leads to their joint adventure in quest of Sean’s long lost Indiana Jones-type grandfather.

Their odyssey takes them to the Pacific Islands, and for some mysterious reason the titular isle is located near Palau, although in Verne’s novel it is situated 1,600 miles east of Aotearoa/New Zealand. At first it seems to make sense, as Palau is famous for its 100-plus Rock Islands, but these mushroom shaped limestone formations topped by jungle greenery and ringed by beaches are never mentioned or glimpsed onscreen – although they would be glorious in 3D and IMAX. Instead, it’s pretty obvious that this movie was shot, in part, on location in Hawaii.

Since I’ve lived in both Palau and Hawaii, it’s obvious to me this island was shot in the latter, not the former. And although the pic identifies Palau as being in the “South Pacific,” it’s not: Palau is located in the Western Pacific. Ditto for casting. The Puerto Rican actor Luis Guzman (HBO’s How to Make It in America series) plays Gabato, a bumbling Palauan helicopter pilot who provides much of the flick’s comic relief that comes perilously close to Stepin Fetchit-like celluloid stereotypes. Gabato also references himself as “Polynesian,” but Palauans are Micronesians.

Salinas-born Vanessa Hudgens, who plays Gabato’s daughter, Kailani (Hawaiian for “heavenly sea”), portrayed a Latina in the High School Musical TV series. According to IMDB, this actress is “is of mixed cultural background, as her father is of Irish and Native American descent, and her mother… is of Chinese-Filipino-Spanish descent.” Well, at least the Philippines is about 500 miles from Palau; a tad closer than Puerto Rico, located clear on the other side of world of a continent or two (depending on where you stand).

In that grand Dolores Del Rio/Conchita Montenegro/Raquel Torres tradition, Hispanic actors (mis)represent indigenous Pacific Islanders. Some may protest to this writer -- who co-authored Made In Paradise, Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and the South Seas with Luis Reyes -- that actors can portray any ethnic type and one doesn’t have to be a chicken to know an egg. Fair enough. But as far as Haole-wood and the majority dominant culture it’s selling tickets to is concerned, if you’ve seen one Islander, you’ve seen them all. It remains a mystery to me why so few Hollywood pictures ever get the ethnic Island casting right -- especially when there are so many gifted Pacific talents.

Interestingly enough, Johnson, who is actually part-Samoan, is never specifically referred to as being Polynesian. However, he has a lovely scene singing and strumming the ukulele; the song is reprised during the final credits, which proves that not only does the ex-wrestler have a decent voice and musical ability, but that he has a “co-producer” credit. Having said that, Johnson has a light comedic touch and a telegenic, charismatic presence, although for some reason he doesn’t disrobe. Maybe the pecs and abs are aging? I don’t know why they chose not to lose his shirt – I would have loved to see his entire Polynesian style tattoo. But in any case, you really haven’t lived until you've see "The Rock" in an IMAX 3D close up.

Speaking of which, director Brad Peyton’s 3D IMAX whizbang wizardry is good, especially the scene where the characters ride gigantic bees, as if they’re “paniolos” atop galloping broncos. But some of the island backdrops look kinda cheesy and painted, and flowers and other flora likewise look unrealistic. The secret to attaining Samuel Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” is to provide enough realism for the beholder to buy into it. The 1961 Mysterious Island version with special effects by the immortal Ray Harryhausen was actually more spectacular. Who can ever remember the actors who discover that the “beach” they’re walking on is really the shell of a giant crab?! And the new adaptation replaces the original Civil War era hot air balloon with a helicopter. Of course, the movie includes that old South Seas Cinema cliché of an exploding volcano.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a an entertaining escapist flick co-written by literary kleptomaniacs (including Brian and Mark Gunn) excavating the literary estates of Verne, Swift and Stevenson. (Can you say: "hodgepodge"?) The screening I attended was preceded by a dee-lightfully DAFFY Warner Bros. cartoon in IMAX and 3D, which brought back happy memories of double features that often included cartoons.

FILM REVIEW: RAMPART

Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) in Rampart.

Culturally bred killer

By Ed Rampell

Character studies can simply be presented as straightforward dramas. Or they can be encoded in genre conventions, which might improve their box office heft with the multiplex popcorn crowd. For instance, on the surface Bridesmaids is a wild and crazy comedy about females behaving badly. However, it is also -- or really -- about commitment-phobic, lonely, aging Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) and her problems relating to and connecting with lovers and friends.

In the same way, Oren Moverman’s Rampart is about a bad cop behaving badly and worse. “Date Rape” Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) is enmeshed in police department corruption on steroids, specifically the “Rampart scandal” that shook the anti-gang unit of LAPD’s Rampart Division in the late 1990s. Brown operates within the framework of police brutality gone berserk, as the men in blue willy-nilly pummeled suspects black and blue, planted evidence such as illegal drugs, peddled narcotics and perpetrated one of the worst, most far reaching cases of proven police misconduct in U.S. history. Indeed, instead of “serving and protecting” the Rampart section of Los Angeles, the criminal LAPD officers who ran amok were way worse than gangbangers, as they were protected by badges and uniforms, and our man Brown seems like one of the most rabid of these mad dogs in blue.

However, beneath the surface, Harrelson is providing an intimate portrayal of a man who is undergoing a severe midlife crisis. Indeed, Brown, who is a military (perhaps Vietnam?) veteran, is coming apart at the seams. Both his professional and private life is falling apart. His unusual living arrangement with, if I understood correctly, both of his ex-wives -- who are, strangely enough, also sisters -- Cynthia Nixon (Sex in the City’s Miranda) and Anne Heche (co-star of another HBO comedy, Hung), is likewise disintegrating.

To be fair to the bedeviled Brown, he does strive to be a good father to his daughters, little Margaret (Sammy Boyarsky) and teenager Helen (Brie Larson), who creates sexually charged artwork that would make a Madonna backup dancer, well, backup, and whose sexual preference, Rampart suggests, is being shaped by her ne’er do well dad.

Like a latter day John Wayne character, Brown lives by a moral code, believing that “soldiers” like him are part of the thin blue line, all that’s standing between law abiding citizens and the jungle out there. Like the Duke in innumerable Westerns, Brown’s vision of his role is racially tinged. What Brown fails to realize is that his Tarzan is worse than the “apes” who may be swinging on the vines of the banyan trees.

Although he’s clearly an antihero at best, what mitigates Harrelson’s character is that he picks up and beds attractive women (Audra McDonald and Robin Wright) during the course of the movie. Nothing warms the cockles (so to speak) of the male moviegoer’s heart more than onscreen masculine conquests, so this makes the mostly despicable Brown more appealing. However, upon closer inspection, his relationships with these women, as with his ex-wife sisters (and daughters) ranges from alienation (from Sartre to Camus to Genet on the estrangement scale) to tortured.

Harrelson’s acting ranges, like his character, from over the top to nuanced, and the now 50-plus actor’s body fits Brown’s persona, as an aging man who has seen better days and is losing his grip. In addition to Harrelson giving one of his best performances ever, the topnotch cast also includes Steve Buscemi and Sigourney Weaver as civilians who try to rein in the out of control Brown’s reign of terror and Ned Beatty as a onetime dirty cop (now a filthy ex-cop). Ice Cube plays the inevitable Internal Affairs-type investigator who tries to nail Harrelson’s wayward peace officer. Ben Foster, who co-starred with Harrelson in Moverman’s outstanding 2009 antiwar drama The Messenger, has a small role, if not a cameo, rather craftily playing a wheelchair-bound veteran.

Helming his second feature, Moverman proves himself once again to be a director of conscience, consciousness and cinematic ability. Rampart has great close-ups (including opening shots that evoke Brown’s hard ass persona) and a good use of subjective camera. Moverman goes all sixties cinema in a freewheeling sex club scene that reminded me of the Warholian party in 1969’s Midnight Cowby; I half expected Dustin Hoffman to appear, denouncing: “Wackos! They’re all a bunch of wackos!” Moverman’s movies move.

He also co-wrote the script with James Ellroy (1997’s L.A. Confidential), no stranger to the cops gone bad genre. In 1969, New York Mayor John Lindsay assigned NYPD brass and officers to see Costa-Gavras’ classic Z which, among other things, deals with police excessive use of force. Here’s hoping Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will likewise make Rampart required viewing for all of those city officials who ordered law enforcers to raid the Occupy L.A. encampment at City Hall, along with the 1,400 LAPD pigs and others who participated. Perhaps a few light bulbs may go off above the heads of the police force notorious for its history of excessive use of force: Brutalizing Rodney King; cowardly fleeing L.A. when rioters outnumbered and outgunned them; perpetrating the Rampart scandal; assaulting innocent demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention; attacking journalists and peaceful protesters at a May Day rally; laying siege to Occupy L.A.; etc. Yes, “o’er the ramparts we watched, were so ungallantly streaming…”

   

     

     

  

THEATER REVIEW: THE INDIANS ARE COMING

Woo (Peter Chen) in The Indians are Coming.

Rowland out the punches

By Ed Rampell

There is a saying that “the personal is political,” and playwright Jennifer Rowland does a skillful job interweaving private lives with public service in The Indians Are Coming To Dinner. The Indians in the title refers to people from India, not America’s indigenous people.

Rowland’s tragicomedy is set during the Reagan era, wherein stage and big and little screen veteran Michael Rothhaar plays Harold Blackburn, an archetypal WASPy upper class Republican. Harold laments having been pushed as a young man by his domineering late father (whose portrait dominates Tom Buderwitz’s set and which lighting designer Leigh Allen highlights throughout the action) to abandoned an alluring State Department career to go into the family business. After years of running this reasonably prosperous if dull company, Harold receives intimations that the reelected Ronald Reagan is considering tapping Harold to become Our Man in India. Following Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, it’s believed that the Reagan regime requires an extremely talented diplomat to represent Washington at New Delhi.

Harold gets it into his head that he’s just the man for the job, and his youthful dreams of diplomacy and a life abroad in the Foreign Service return and reanimate him. So being a Reaganite, Harold sets out to secure his overseas sinecure by, naturally, politicking, and schemes to make a good impression on his old friend Anil (Kevin Vavasseur), who is visiting the States with his family. Harold believes this distant relation of the Gandhis is extremely influential in India, and a kingmaker vis-avis vetting Harold for the post he’s now yearning for.

To make his ambassadorial aspirations come true, the whiskered, rotund Harold buffoonishly garbs himself in an outrageous outfit befitting a maharajah, conjured up by costume designer by whimsical Audrey Eisner. The man who would be ambassador impresses his family and servant into service in order to create a feast designed to impress Anil. Of course, this would-be banquet provides the play’s comic pratfalls. Along the way, Harold – who prides himself on being considered not just a good, but “a great guy” – reveals his true stripes as a petty tyrant. He coerces dutiful Nora-like wife Lynn (Sara Newman-Martins) and faithful servant Woo (the droll Peter Chen) into concocting cuisine with an Indian flare in order to literally curry favor. Hippy dippy son Christopher (Justin Preston), a high school student who has been, shall we say, Bogarting that joint, my friends, is imposed upon to attend the repast.

So is daughter Alexandra (the gifted Thea Rubley), who has flown home to San Francisco from her college to pursue her dream of becoming an opera singer by trying out at a hard to get into audition, which could lead to going to Italy and the launching of her singing career. Operatic music is a recurring theme in Indians; Harold is a big fan of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, the first opera Harold shared with Alexandra when she was a little girl.

But the monomaniacal Harold selfishly believes that his daughter has crossed the continent solely to partake of the all important dinner aimed at buttering Anil up so that he’ll give the nod to Reagan to send the Blackburns globetrotting off to India. Does Harold subvert Alexandra’s dreams, just as his patriarch had done to him? Does Harold do to Alexandra what the hunchbacked Rigoletto inadvertently did to his daughter, Gilda?

Rowland has written a clever, resonant, sly script. When Harold finally gets down to brass tacks and confronts Anil about the ambassadorial endorsement he’s seeking, Anil’s reaction is a plot twist this reviewer didn’t see coming. The stuff that dreams are made of!

Julia Fletcher ably directs this world premiere production that deserves life beyond a small Venice playhouse. Burderwitz’s split level set is imaginative as it divides the spatial – and emotional – spaces of the play up. Chen subtly spoofs “Oriental” screen and stage stereotypes, just as Vavasseur and Rikin Vasani (as Anil’s son Deepok) provide some instant comic karma by poking fun at the “enlightened” spirituality of Eastern religion. When, like Ibsen’s Nora, Newman-Martins at long last has her Doll’s House moment, she too shakes off the caricature of the long suffering wife who silently suffers as a mere extension of her husband. There’s more to Lynn, after all, than being mere comic relief.    

Rubley is a real standout; not only is the recent USC grad a fine actress with promise, but she has the lovely singing voice her character requires in order to convey the role’s authenticity. As Harold, Rothhaar convincingly portrays a man who is a needy, bundle of contradictions, who -- with youthful dreams thwarted -- grasps once more for that elusive brass ring as old age approaches. Rothhaar’s Harold has an air not unlike that other salesman, Arthur Miller’s immortal, yet all too human, Willy Loman. Alas, as Harold seeks to have attention paid to him, Harold is the low man on these Indians’ totem pole. But he should not despair: If New Delhi eludes him, there will always be a role for Harold as one of Reagan’s mass murderers in his Central American Contra war. Beside, as we see in this comedy drama about foiled fantasies of what one could have been had he/she remained true unto his/her own self, there are more ways to kill sopranos than with bullets.


The Indians Are Coming To Dinner runs through March 25 at Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291. For info: call (310)822-8392 or see www.PacificResidentTheatre.com.

FILM REVIEW: CRAZY HORSE

A scene from Crazy Horse.

Shut up and dance

By Ed Rampell

It’s doubly ironic from a schoolboy-ish point of view that the latest documentary by venerable filmmaker Frederick Wiseman is called Crazy Horse, since his first documentary was titled Titicut Follies, which was shot at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts in 1967. Of course, the follies in Crazy Horse are quite different from those of the madmen in Titicut Follies, as the new work is about the world famous Parisian striptease club of that name.

Film historian David Thomson has described Wiseman’s nonfiction films as “hand-held eavesdropping records of actuality,” and there’s plenty of that cinematic surveillance in Crazy Horse. The octogenarian documentarian was given wide access to the nightclub for 10 weeks, and even allowed to go where no man has gone before: Inside the strippers’ dressing and undressing rooms, which is usually strictly off-limits to males. Over the course of his coverage Wiseman shot plenty of  backstage material, offstage meetings, rehearsals, costume (or lack thereof) fittings, makeup sessions, and the like, as choreographer Philippe Decoufle prepares for the new show “Desirs.”

Crazy Horse may appeal to voyeurs who desire to ogle females of a certain type jiggling about, but curiously, although a few of the dance routines are mildly arousing, this doc is mostly quite non-erotic. First of all, it is not true that the women are entirely naked; they all wear what looks like a pirate’s eye patch over their genitalia, and not a pubic hair, let alone labia, is to be glimpsed in this entire two hour-plus film. (And believe me, I looked – for purely journalistic purposes, but of course, in my endeavor to better serve you, Dear Reader.) In addition to these pubic patches, all of the strippers look almost exactly alike, and this is by design. The women are carefully selected to meet the “aesthetic” measurements prescribed by Alain Bernardin, who established the cabaret in 1951.

The women are almost all Caucasian (although from a variety of European nations) with the same body types. So viewers hoping to behold the wonderful world of women in all of their glorious varieties, ethnicities and shapes are bound to be disappointed. At one of the club’s weekly auditions, a tranny tryout is rejected on the grounds that employing transvestites, transsexuals, etc., is against Crazy Horse’s rather conservative code. On the other hand, this orthodoxy doesn’t rule out a dance number that arguably borders on sexual harassment. (The recent case of alleged rape of a hotel maid by IMF big wig Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a Frenchman, shined a light on France’s different attitudes towards harassment in comparison to stricter U.S. standards.)

Onscreen there are interviews with costumers, choreographers and the artistic director, Ali Mahdavi, who is obviously sexually obsessed with Crazy Horse. Mahdavi appears to be gay, and it’s bizarre to think that a gay male is in a position of power in order to co-create and co-present the supposed image of female sexuality. (This could explain those pesky pubic patches.) Lest you think this is a homophobic remark, let me quickly add that the same thing also applies visa versa: It would likewise be strange for straights to determine what is meant to be sexy to and for gays. The result of this process is icons like Rock Hudson, celluloid stereotypes of heterosexual “virility,” who are, in reality, homosexual offscreen. All of this causes lots of confusion and ambivalence for people finding and seeking his or her own sexual identities.

In any case, audience reactions are barely touched upon in Crazy Horse, and none of the strippers are ever interviewed. And why would they be? The audiences who have flocked to the Paris’ “nude chic” club for the past 60 years are going for the “girls’” bodies, not their brains. They are just pieces of flesh, tits and assess meant to titillate and amuse audiences. In one scene where they watch the missteps a video of a male ballet dancer they come across as being silly and vapid, if not stupid.

But I for one would have been interested in finding out more about these women: Why do they strip? Is it for the money? If so, how much do they make? Are they working their way through medical school to become neurosurgeons? Where do they come from? Is this a way to escape the grinding poverty of post-socialist Eastern Europe? What are their sex lives like? Are they exhibitionists? Do the nearly nude rehearsals and performances turn them on? (We’re told that touching during the all-female dance routines makes them uncomfortable.)

But the film, apparently like the club, is unconcerned with the women’s minds. And perhaps this is the sly point that Wiseman is wisely making in this behind the scenes look at yet another institution and its power relationships, in the maestro’s 37^th documentary. Wiseman remains the filmic fool who goes where angels fear to tread and dance.