Bebe, It’s You!

Bebe Neuwirth won television audiences hearts as the stiff and repressed but always lovable Lilith Sternin on Cheers, but she had been dancing ballet and acting on Broadway for years before that. Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts has enlisted the versatile singer/actress/dancer to open their terrific 2011/2012 Season. I had the pleasure of speaking to Ms. Neuwirth the day after 9/11; we talked about her career, and where she wants to take it in the future.
Neuwirth was honored to be one of a huge group of Broadway stars who gathered on Times Square to sing “New York, New York” as part of “Broadway Remembers 9/11”, which was a recreation of a performance done right after the attacks to help Broadway and New Yorkers gain some comfort and be able to return to normalcy. At the time, Neuwirth remembered, “I had just started rehearsing a play for Lincoln Center and when it happened, I thought, “I can’t go back to the play, I mean, what’s the point? I should be down there on the piles helping the guys and feeding people. Then, I realized through the wisdom of the people at Lincoln Center who were saying, “No this is exactly what you should be doing.” It was really (a) pretty awful (time).”

Stories With Piano is the name of the show that Neuwirth is bringing to Scottsdale with pianist Scott Cady, which she hesitates to call a cabaret performance. “It’s sort of hard to describe, because some of the songs are from Broadway shows, but some of them are from Tom Waits and there’s a Beatles song in there and there’s an Edith Piaf song in there. It’s such a broad range that I don’t really know what category it falls into. They are a group of songs that either tell a story in a narrative way or they are a moment in a person’s life that is so compelling or so emotional or so deep that you know there’s a big story behind it,” she explained.
“It’s an interesting thing to stand on stage as yourself and not be a character like Jenny in Threepenny Opera or (Chicago’s) Velma or Morticia (from The Addams Family), I’m just me. I don’t want to stand onstage and tell you all about myself because I just think that’s far too narcissistic and boring an exercise for me. There are some people I want to go and hear exactly who they are. I want to hear Elaine Stritch’s show, I want to hear those stories, but it’s not for me to do. I do think that there’s a reason that I choose the songs that I choose. There’s something about them that I can relate to, so there is something that you might know about me (after the show)… maybe,” she said, laughing.

Born in the country outside Princeton, New Jersey, Neuwirth developed a love of ballet at an early age. “I’ve been in ballet classes since I was five and been on stage since I was seven (in ballet), so it’s really when I’m dancing that I feel most comfortable and most at home. I enjoy television and film a lot and I enjoy being in a play or singing in these concerts that I do immensely, but there’s something a little bit different when I am dancing onstage. It’s been the one constant in my life. It’s the one thing that I’ve always done, and I mean always!”
Her first Broadway role was quite a coup, playing Sheila in A Chorus Line at age nineteen in 1978. The show was a phenomenon in the pre-Phantom of the Opera days. “The show was only three years old at the time. Picture a Broadway without helicopters landing onstage or chandeliers rising up or people dressed up as cats so much that you don’t even see the person anymore. It was a different time, maybe a more human time on Broadway. It was just thrilling beyond words. I got to work with (creator) Michael Bennett a lot.” Neuwirth started in the tour, then graduated to the Broadway production, where she got to work with more experienced dancers who had done shows with legendary choreographers like Gower Champion and Bob Fosse. “They had amazing stories and if I paid attention to what they were doing and how they worked, I could learn a lot. It was a gift. It was a real blessing in my life.”

Neuwirth went on to work with Fosse, winning Tony Awards for revivals of Sweet Charity and Chicago. With two Emmys for Cheers and a new album called Porcelain coming out in October, can a Grammy be far behind? The title refers not to Neuwirth’s ivory complexion, but rather to porcelain’s strength and fragility. “It has an interesting duality,” she concluded, referring to both the ceramic and her CD.
Her biggest Broadway triumph was the result of a concert version of Kander & Ebb’s 1975 Chicago at Encores! At City Center. No one thought it would go further, but the audience response “blew the roof off of the theater. It was like seeing an old friend that you just love so much when we gave the audiences Chicago again.” Ten years after blowing audiences away as merry murderess Velma Kelly in the sleek Chicago revival that followed and after hip replacement surgery in 2006, Neuwirth returned to Chicago playing the other killer, foxy Roxie Hart. It was a great experience, both because she got to see the show from a different angle, but also because it set aside any worries that she wouldn’t dance again.

“There were two things going on,” she explained. “One was the absolute exalting feeling of being able to dance again after excruciating pain and going through an operation and all the physical therapy and being able to dance on Broadway again. I can’t come up with words to tell you how happy that made me. And the other thing was being able to experience the show from a different perspective made me appreciate it all the more.”
“I’m so grateful and humbled by that,” Neuwirth responded when reminded of her iconic status in the GLBT community, from playing so many strong and empowering women. “That’s inspiring to me.” She is very happy about New York approving marriage equality. “Sometimes, when (same sex) couples come and tell me that they just got married and that they wanted to come see me in a show, I find that extremely moving, because marriage for anyone is a big deal. To be included in the celebration of that means a lot to me.”
One of Neuwirth’s favorite causes is animal rights. “I love animals and they can’t speak for themselves, they can’t do anything for themselves. It’s like children, you have to stand up for people and creatures who can’t speak for themselves. There are people who do so much more greater work than I do, but I help out when I can.” Before coming to Scottsdale, she will be doing a benefit for Equine Advocates and the Henry Street Settlement. “They have an equine sanctuary in upstate New York and they bring kids and women (who’ve been abused) up to the farm to visit with the horses. Horses are mystical creatures and if you’re in the presence of a horse, something happens to you. Some of these city folks are a little scared at first by this big animal and then something just opens up inside of them and there is this healing that takes place. They learn the stories of these horses that had suffered abuse in their past but were rescued and brought to this farm. It’s a really interesting link between the two groups and they’re helping each other right now.” She also praised Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore for a huge pet adoption event called Broadway Barks. “They’re a couple of heroes, and I help them out when I can.”
When asked what she’d tell aspiring GLBT youth who want to follow in her footsteps. “When kids want to be what they want to be, it might feel unattainable,” she responded. “I got bullied by a girl in school also, not to compare myself to anyone, and everyone has their own story to tell. Bullying is lousy no matter the degree, but there was a girl who made my life hell in the fifth grade, really horrible, and you know, I hate her to this day. I think to myself, if I ever saw her on the street at the age of fifty-two, what would I say to her? Here’s what I think, and I don’t know that I have any qualification to give out any advice on this because I understand that the bullying that you’re talking about is really profound and ultimately sometimes tragic. I would say, be yourself and believe in yourself. You are a gift to the world and acknowledge that because that is the truth. It used to be upsetting to me that I wasn’t like ‘that person’ or ‘that person’ and maybe I should change. It took me a while to realize, “No, exactly who I am is exactly who I should be. That’s the best I can do.”
Bebe Neuwirth: Stories With Piano will be performed at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts this Saturday, October 15. Click here for more information and tickets.

Myths & Nightmares

During my time in a Roman Catholic seminary twenty years ago, the late philosopher-professor Joseph Campbell was revered for having situated Christianity within what he termed the "monomyth," a millennia-spanning heroic adventure found in every human culture. Today, Campbell -- who was raised Catholic -- would likely be condemned as an apostate given the Church's current, conservative climate.
For the uninitiated, the new documentary Finding Joe (opening today in Los Angeles and soon to rollout nationally) serves as a crash course in Campbell's life work involving myths, slaying and/or befriending figurative dragons, and the ultimate encouragement, drawn from Hindu tradition, to "follow one's bliss." Utilizing interviews with such diverse personalities as Deepak Chopra, Mick Fleetwood and Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) as well as a number of clips from movie classics including the Star Wars saga, The Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz, Finding Joe provides considerable insight into Campbell's writings if not necessarily the man. (To learn more about Campbell himself, check out Bill Moyers' late 1980's PBS series, The Power of Myth.)

The film -- written, produced and directed by Patrick Takaya Solomon -- is nicely shot and edited but generally employs a standard "talking heads" approach and lectures more than it engages. It is strongest whenever it quotes Campbell directly, with such reflections as "Many of us are metaphorically-impaired" (referring to the equation of mythology with metaphor) and "I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive" among the stand outs. There are also some charming vignettes sprinkled throughout in which children dramatize chapters from Campbell's seminal work, A Hero with a Thousand Faces.
There is also wisdom to be found in Campbell's conclusion that true power results when each of us learns to "love and accept yourself as you are." Finding Joe may not be the most accomplished piece of cinema, especially when compared to some of the Campbell-inspired films it spotlights, but its subject remains undeniably inspiring.

What might ultimately emerge as one of the best movies of 2011 also opens today in LA and New York City: Jeff Nichols' excellent suspense-drama Take Shelter. Frightening, moving and thought-provoking by turns, it stars Michael Shannon (an Academy Award nominee for 2008's Revolution Road and soon to be seen as the villainous General Zod in the Superman epic, Man of Steel) as Curtis LaForche, an unassuming Ohio sand miner with a loving wife (Jessica Chastain, current belle of the cineplex ball in the wake her eye-opening turns in The Tree of Life, The Help and The Debt) and deaf daughter.
Curtis is well respected at work and in their community. However, just when the LaForches are prepping their daughter for a cochlear implant that will, if successful, enable her to hear, Curtis begins to have apocalyptic visions and nightmares involving a devastating storm, flocks of angry crows and a pack of seemingly-escaped mental patients out to get his little girl. He subsequently becomes obsessed with expanding and fortifying the family's storm cellar, much to his friends' and neighbors' consternation. Are Curtis's dreams prophetic, or is he succumbing to the same paranoid schizophrenia that struck his mother (a cameo by the always welcome Kathy Baker, of Picket Fences and Edward Scissorhands fame) when she was the same age as Curtis is now?
I think master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock would have approved of Take Shelter, especially with its visual allusions to The Birds and its beautifully ironic finale (which will likely polarize audiences). Shannon deftly balances the stoic and the terrified, and Chastain gives another, now seemingly expected great performance. Also fine are the movie's eerie storm effects and other effective scares dished up by Nichols along with visual effects supervisor Chris Wells (Avatar, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and editor Parke Gregg.
In the end, Take Shelter powerfully illustrates that the only real safety to be found when disaster looms -- whether real or imagined -- is with the one(s) we love.
Reverend's Ratings:
Finding Joe: B
Take Shelter: A-

The Ides Of March

The world of politics provides all the drama—and satiric fodder—any filmmaker could ask for. And even though the public has shown indifference to such movies in recent years, Hollywood keeps making them. The Ides of March has star-power on its side, with George Clooney and Ryan Gosling in the leads, but even if people are attracted to theaters by their presence they’re not likely to leave feeling satisfied. The Ides of March has nothing new to offer in its portrait of the campaign trail, and doesn’t seem quite sure what—
—story it really wants to tell.
Clooney plays a popular governor who’s facing an opponent in the Democratic primary, the final stepping-stone on the way to a presidential run. Philip Seymour Hoffman is his campaign manager, but Ryan Gosling is his number two, a media specialist and political junkie who actually believes in his candidate. The story deals mainly with his education and disillusionment at the hands of smarter, more ruthless professionals—and one character who’s a relative innocent.
I can’t write off a film that offers juicy roles to Clooney, Gosling, and Hoffman, as well as Paul Giamatti, Jeffrey Wright, and Evan Rachel Wood. But there are few surprises (let alone shocks) in this back-room tale, although the filmmakers seem to think they’re dealing with dramatic dynamite.
I heard good things about Beau Willimon’s play Farragut North but never got to see it, so I can’t compare this adaptation, which I’m told expands on the play considerably. Willimon is credited with the screenplay along with Clooney (who directed the picture) and his longtime producing partner Grant Heslov.
It’s a shame to see so much talent expended on a film that, while slickly made, is so routine and unmemorable. There have been great political movies over the years, like State of the Union, The Best Man, Primary Colors and Bulworth. The Ides of March simply isn’t in their class.

Real Steel

From the billboards you might think this is another Transformers movie—heaven help us—when in fact, Real Steel is a cross between Rocky and The Champ. It’s formulaic and unashamedly manipulative, but it’s played with sincerity…and it works.
This project has been in development for years, under Steven Spielberg’s watchful eye, and bears only superficial resemblance to the Richard Matheson story that inspired it. (You may remember its first adaptation, as a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone called “Steel,” with—
—Lee Marvin.) The screenplay is credited to John Gatins, with story credit to Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven.
The time is the near-future. Hugh Jackman plays an irresponsible, washed-up prizefighter who ekes out a living as manager for boxing robots. When his ex-wife dies, he’s forced to spend a summer looking after his 11-year-old son—a boy he’s never really known (played by newcomer Dakota Goyo) who just happens to be a savvy superfan of robot boxers. It’s the kid who has faith in a “junk pile” Jackman is ready to write off. With some t.l.c. and Jackman’s boxing experience, the discarded machine takes them to the Big Time, and helps cement the damaged relationship between father and son.

Under Shawn Levy’s direction, the story never misses a beat, with fully-committed performances by Jackman, Evangeline Lilly (as the woman who’s always believed in him), and fresh-faced young Goyo, who bears a strong resemblance to Ricky Schroder and has the same ability to win you over at emotional moments, even if you’re trying to resist.
Technically, the film is one of those modern marvels in which it’s impossible to tell where reality ends and CGI takes over. (In fact, the key robot characters were actually constructed as animatronic “puppets” standing eight feet tall. It’s only when they walk or box that they’re not real.) But this movie lives or dies with the human element, and if you’re a sucker for a story involving an underdog—and a father’s redemption in the eyes of his son—you’ll willingly surrender to Real Steel. If you’re looking for something gritty or only interested in high-tech combat between machines, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Treasures Of The West

Preserving rare old films is crucial, but the National Film Preservation Foundation believes it’s just as important to bring them to the widest possible audience. That’s why its Treasures from American Film Archives series is so valuable. Treasures 5: The West gathers an exceptionally wide range of films from 1898 to 1938, including early documentaries, promotional shorts, home movies, newsreels, cowboy yarns, and Hollywood feature films. Together they give us a compelling look at how the real West was depicted in the early 20th century, and how the mythicized West captured the public’s imagination.
The meticulous care that has gone into this release sets a standard for everyone in the archival community. Each film is thoroughly documented, onscreen and in an informative booklet written by Scott Simmon. You can even learn at precisely what speed the—

A scene from Life on the Circle Ranch in California—as staged for the camera.
—silent films were transferred, from original materials held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, National Archives, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and the New Zealand Film Archive. Every selection features a commentary track by an expert, including world-class film scholars and Western historians who provide often eye-opening counterpoint to the images we see.
For instance, I found Life on the Circle Ranch in California (1912) an absorbing look at ranch life in the early 20th century, until I listened to Donald W. Reeves, from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, who revealed that much of the film was plainly staged, demonstrating behavior that no real cowboy or rancher would tolerate. So much for “seeing is believing.” (There is still much of value here, including a living lexicon of cowboy terminology in the title cards.)

The misleading title sequence from We Can Take It.
In a similar vein, I’ve always been fascinated by the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s, which is promoted in a 1935 silent short, We Can Take It. The film opens with a shot of enthusiastic CCC boys gathered in front of the camera—including some black faces in the crowd. I remarked to my wife that I never realized the CCC was integrated. Then I listened to Neil M. Maher, author of a book about the CCC, who debunked that shot and several others like it by explaining that the camps were definitely segregated. These scenes were filmed for propaganda purposes. Again, the information Maher provides doesn’t negate the significance of the short; it places it into historical context and separates truth from what we might call public relations.
The forty disparate films on this three-disc set offer an infinite number of discoveries—from social, historical, ethnographic, and cinematic points of view. Here is a rarely-seen 1914 feature film based on Bret Harte’s Salomy Jane featuring a Latina leading lady, Beatriz Michelena…an early color short extolling the glories of California fruit (and fruit pickers) called Sunshine Gatherers…a docudrama about hobo life, Deschutes Driftwood…Romance of Water, chronicling the story of bringing H20 to Los Angeles…a demonstration of How the Cowboy Makes His Lariat…the first dramatic film shot in Yosemite, The Sergeant, from 1910…and early examples of Western dramas starring Bronco Billy Anderson, Tom Mix, and real-life outlaw Al Jennings.

Clara Bow in the great outdoors in Mantrap.
There are two slick Hollywood features among these more primitive efforts, transferred from beautiful 35mm negatives. Mantrap (1926), directed by Victor Fleming, stars a radiant Clara Bow as a city girl who impetuously agrees to marry Ernest Torrence and live in his backwoods home. Womanhandled (1925) is a lightweight farce starring Richard Dix and Esther Ralston that plays on Easterners’ romantic vision of the West, as opposed to the reality of life on a modern ranch. The latter film is missing about ten minutes of footage, which doesn’t affect the simple story. (Only a non-profit endeavor such as this would release a partial feature for the value of its surviving content. What’s more, the NFPF was able to license both of these still-copyrighted features from Paramount, which is great news for silent film buffs—and Clara Bow fans.)

Silent-film comedienne Mabel Normand escapes from some angry Indians in the amusing 1912 Biograph short The Tourists, directed by Mack Sennett on location around the train depot in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
As the project has called on a variety of experts, it has also drawn on a number of sources for original music scores, curated by Martin Marks of MIT. Familiar and talented composer-pianists like Michael Mortilla and Stephen Horne are joined here by promising students who are newcomers to the world of silent-film accompaniment.