Archives for July 2, 2004

The second half of the first sentence of the New York Times‘s obituary of Marlon Brando claims that his “erratic career, obstinate eccentricities and recurring tragedies prevented him from fully realizing the promise of his early genius, has died.” For what it’s worth, I never cared for Brando, not even in A Streetcar Named Desire–I thought he was a self-indulgent, undisciplined ham–but it strikes me that his admirers, however fervent, ought to squirm at the use of the word “genius” to describe him.

For that matter, I doubt that any actor who doesn’t also write or direct can properly be described as a genius. (One film does not an oeuvre make, least of all One-Eyed Jacks.) I’m not normally fussy about usage, but one thing that does bother me is what I call Definitional Inflation, and if the word “genius” means anything at all, it means Definition 6 in the Shorter Oxford:

Inborn exalted intellectual power; instinctive and extraordinary imaginative, creative, or inventive capacity, freq. opp. to talent; a person having this.

I suppose you might say that certain interpretative artists have had that kind of power or capacity, but when you compare them to the truly creative artists whose works they interpret, you start to see how high the bar ought to be set. In an art form like jazz, where composition and performance are fused indissolubly, the difference between creator and interpreter is radically ambiguous. In acting, it isn’t: Shakespeare would be Shakespeare if John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier had never been born. In fact (and I’m smiling as I say this, though I’m more than halfway serious), it may be that actors have more in common with critics than with playwrights. They serve as intermediaries between the creative artist and his audience, helping to narrow the gap across which the divine spark of comprehension must fly.

A few film actors–Bogart, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Marilyn Monroe, possibly Robert Mitchum, certainly John Wayne–have succeeded in constructing personas so magnetic as to float permanently free from their actual bodies of on-screen work. Brando wasn’t that kind of larger-than-life artist, though it’s conceivable that he could have been if he’d worked harder at it. Instead, like lesser mortals, he will be remembered as much for the quality of the films in which he appeared as for the quality of the performances he gave. Judged by that standard, my guess is that his memory will fade quickly, since so few of his films are worth seeing today. As for the performances themselves, it’s David Thomson, as usual, who nails it:

Too often, he impersonated characters he had thought out, rather than discover them in himself. Today, for instance, it is hardly possible to be moved by him in On the Waterfront for noticing the vast technical trick he is performing….even allowing for his disillusion with movies, we have to feel a kind of laziness, or a decisive lack of ambition, compared, say, with Olivier.

As epitaphs go, that’s a sad one.

UPDATE: Sarah writes:

Jeez…leave the office for a few hours and you’re the one who breaks the news (to me at least) about Marlon Brando’s death. Anyway, I also think that with time, people will scratch their heads about why he was worshipped so much in certain circles, because so much of the body of work he left behind ranged from disappointing to downright terrible.

But every time I think of Brando, I think of two things: one, James Dean, who also had a similar “magnetism” on screen, but who didn’t live long enough for people’s appreciation of such. And two, that Brando’s ticks and mannerisms always came across to me as a vestige of his early stage career, where the “genius” notices started piling up in the first place. Qualities that work to the back of a playhouse just end up being too caged or hemmed in as applied to a theatrical screen.

Maybe the ultimate problem is that Brando outlived his usefulness in the wrong medium. If James Dean had lived to be 80, would he have had the same kind of momentous decline in fortune and in role choice? Would we even be talking about him at all? I guess it’s just that in recent years, any time I saw Brando interviewed, he had this quizzical look as if he was surprised to still be on this earth. He didn’t age well, and I doubt his acting will, either. Some people leave too early; others really do stay far too late.

Astute as always.

At the consistently wonderful Tingle Alley, Carrie is aflutter about the paperback release of Shirley Hazzard’s National Book Award winner The Great Fire. You usually have to wait a year for the paperback, but Picador jumped the gun by a few months. It is nice not to have to wait until fall for it, and I daresay they’ll sell a few more copies by making it available for summer reading. I know I’ve handed over my fourteen bucks, and the book is in the queue.

Carrie talks about what it was like to read the novel when she took it out of the library last fall:

I borrowed The Great Fire from the library — and from the first page thought it was incredible. When I got to a particularly beautiful sentence I would stop and, because it was a library copy and couldn’t get marked up, write it down in my journal. At some point, I realized I was transcribing the entire novel by longhand. It was ridiculous.

Great minds read alike! This uncannily echoes my account of reading Hazzard’s 1980 novel and Official OGIC Object of Veneration Transit of Venus last spring:

I find myself reading almost every sentence a second time successively. It’s the first book I’ve ever read and reread simultaneously.

What’s more, the revelation at the end of TOV (no relation) changes and deepens the meaning of everything that has preceded it, and will send you straight back to the beginning for yet another rereading. Will this book ever let go of me?

If you aren’t reading Tingle Alley every day, you’re missing out.

“When you are young enough, I thought, all sorts of unrevealed possibilities make you a person, but afterwards when there are no more possibilities you become a type.”

John P. Marquand, Wickford Point

I wandered far afield for today’s Wall Street Journal drama column. For openers, I went to Millburn, N.J., to see the Paper Mill Playhouse‘s production of Guys and Dolls, starring Karen Ziemba as Miss Adelaide:

The Paper Mill Playhouse, which has been doing business for upwards of 60 years, is known for presenting solid musical-comedy revivals, among them a “Follies” so fine that it served as the basis for the first complete recording of Stephen Sondheim’s score. The productions usually include a sprinkling of big-leaguers, often in roles with which they’re not identified (Betty Buckley, for instance, played Mama Rose in Paper Mill’s 1998 “Gypsy”). The 1,200-seat proscenium-stage theater is comfortable and well-appointed, with a leafy courtyard that makes for agreeable intermissions, and Millburn, the small New Jersey town where the Paper Mill Playhouse is located, is easy to reach by car or train.

So what’s the catch? Beats me. This “Guys and Dolls,” which runs through July 18, is as surefire as a stacked deck. To begin with, Paper Mill is using the gaudy sets designed by Tony Walton for the 1992 Broadway revival and subsequently retooled for that production’s national tour. No sooner does the curtain rise than you find yourself grinning happily at Mr. Walton’s Day-Glo cartoons of Times Square in the long-gone days of snap-brim hats and evening papers. They instantaneously create a raffish mood that’s exactly right for a show described by its creators as “a musical fable of Broadway.”

To say that Ms. Ziemba fits in is the grossest of understatements. With her endearingly funny face and comprehensively danceworthy legs, she was born to play Adelaide, and “Guys and Dolls” makes far better use of her great talents than did her most recent Broadway outing, the stale “Never Gonna Dance.” I found Michael Mastro a notch too nebbishy as Nathan, but Robert Cuccioli and Kate Baldwin are pleasingly romantic as Sky, the dashing gambler in search of round-the-clock action, and Sarah Brown, the Salvation Army doll for whom he falls hard….

Meanwhile, back on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I took in the Jean Cocteau Repertory‘s off-off-Broadway production of the Brecht-Weill Threepenny Opera:

Unlike “Guys and Dolls,” “The Threepenny Opera” was meant to be staged on the cheap, and this vest-pocket version is nothing if not frugal. The Bouwerie Lane Theatre–located, appropriately enough, on the Bowery, New York’s historic Skid Row–is approximately the size of a size-10 shoebox, with a stage somewhat larger than a postcard that Roman Tatarowicz, the designer, has filled with what looks suspiciously like junk from the next alley. On the other hand, what could be more suitable? “Threepenny,” after all, is a tale of the lowest of low life, and director David Fuller has made the most of the resources at hand, drawing pungent acting out of a lively cast of unknowns (I was particularly impressed with Lorinda Lisitza as Jenny, Angus Hepburn as Peachum and Stephanie Lynge as Polly).

The Cocteau is performing “Threepenny” in Marc Blitzstein’s familiar English-language adaptation, which softens some of the hacksaw-hard edges of Bertolt Brecht’s book and lyrics but has the advantage of being thoroughly singable. Mr. Fuller’s straight-from-the-shoulder staging is unostentatiously Brechtian in its directness (many of the characters enter and exit through the theater’s emergency door), and though Kurt Weill’s now-acrid, now-oily score is banged out on an upright piano of the tin-pan type, there being no room or money for additional players, even that unfortunate deficiency seems almost appropriate to the occasion….

No link. You know what to do. It only costs a buck. Get with the program.

Fans of Freaks and Geeks, say goodbye to Lindsay Weir. Linda Cardellini, who played the charmingly confused Michigan teenager, has remade herself and her distinctively expressive features right out of existence.

Here are some pix of Cardellini as Lindsay, circa 1999 and wholly adorable. (UPDATE: Having trouble linking to the photo I wanted, but you should be able to see it by going to this fine website and clicking on “Photo Gallery.” It’s the fourth photo in the second row.)

Here’s Cardellini last December, looking a little blonder, a little sleeker, a little more like your run-of-the-mill starlet–but still pretty much herself. Same round face, apple cheeks, and heart-shaped mouth

And–brace yourself–here’s Cardellini this March, looking like a bleached-out, botoxed forty-year-old. Nary a ghost of Lindsay, or character, in sight. She sure doesn’t have to worry about being cast as a mathlete anymore.

Join a generic new show, get a generic new look, I guess. Yeah, I’m emotional. And I have big ol’ case of the freaks, er, creeps.

Related: An oldie but goodie, Nathalie’s definitive take on the loathsome The Swan and the creeping social acceptibility of plastic surgery as routine maintenance. And Terry’s explanation of why Lindsay and F & G mattered.

National Review Online asked me what I was reading this summer. Click here and scroll down to the bottom of the page to find out.

(I might add that I also plan to follow OGIC’s orders
and do the Shirley Hazzard thing as soon as my desk is a little clearer!)

Via Instapundit (who just linked to my Marlon Brando posting, glory be!), this e-mail from one Mark Miller:

I’m a researcher for People magazine and I’m trying to track down anyone who has had a blog entry backfire on him or her either professionally or personally. Any help you can be is totally appreciated.

That’s a great question, which is why I’m passing it on. You can e-mail Miller at markjmill@yahoo.com.