Mention breakout 1980s novelists, and the names Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney inevitably top the list. But back in the day, Tama Janowitz was easily as big a deal as either of those boys. Witty where they were edgy, she set her comedies of errors among the rubble of Alphabet City and the rarified air of Upper East Side townhouses, and she lampooned the rites and rituals of the creative class with a rouge-tipped mischief that recalled the love child of Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker – if either had been the type to wear Godzilla earrings. Continue Reading →
Archive | Essays
Casting ‘He Wanted the Moon’
At the risk of sounding callous, Hollywood has always clamored for sagas about mental illness, especially when they’ve been books first. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Girl Interrupted,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Sybil,” “Ordinary People,” “I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can”: The list goes on and on. It’s not that all these movies are great (though I’m certainly fond of them). It’s that they possess all the key elements of a classic Hollywood weepie: Hero faces dark night of the soul; hero lives to tell the tale. But what of the hero who doesn’t live to tell the tale? Very few movies to date have told those stories, no doubt because they don’t offer the inspirational endings that fill multiplex seats. Continue Reading →
What We Owe to Mike Nichols
When Mike Nichols died in 2014, the news was met by such an enormous outpouring of grief that it’s surprising that, in the eighteen months since his passing, the director’s cinematic legacy mostly has been overlooked. As is the case with the late, great Robert Altman, it’s as if no one knows how to approach Nichols’s immensely varied – some might go so far as to say uneven – body of work. Continue Reading →