CITY ISLAND STILL: THE WEST BANK CAFE

Above is a still of a scene in "City Island" in which Vince (Andy Garcia) has just come from an audition for a part in the movie and is telling Molly (Emily Mortimer) about the whole rather surprising experience.

We shot this scene in the West Bank Cafe on West 42nd Street in New York City. The restaurant is a haven for actors--the employed ones sit at the bar and tables, the unemployed ones work as waiters--and was in fact the original location I'd written into the first draft script. (This tends to be unusual--whatever real places one writes into a script are somehow always either unavailable, overpriced or closed by the time you make the film). Enjoy the still and don't forget to click to enlarge.

Continuing my shameless plugging habit, here's a very nice review by Ken Francklin of my imminently to-be-released on DVD documentary, "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris. The movie is available on Amazon--the street date is 3/31. And here's another fine write up on the film which appears to have something to do with it screening in Nova Scotia . One of the rare joys to be savored in this business-of-show is making a film that receives near unanimous praise (as has "Tis Autumn") only to find, buried in the muck, the one isolated pan. Since it's always been my theory that for every movie ever made there is one person in the world who thinks it's the greatest movie ever made and one person in the world who thinks it's the worst movie ever made, I'm more amused at how correct my theory is then hurt by the review. In the case of "Tis Autumn", the dissenting opinion comes from a chap from Vancouver who posted his comments on imdb.com under the euphonious screen name of "Spuzzlightyear". Click here to read his moronic review, posted back in late 2006. Then watch the film and feel free to add your comments to the imdb message board of the movie which can be found here.

And now, continuing with our jazz piano themed clip selection from earlier this week, here's my second favorite pianist ever, the supremely majestically grandiosely brilliant Earl "Fatha" Hines. These two clips are from a jazz piano workshop he apparently conducted in Berlin in 1965. Part one is Earl playing "Memories Of You" by Eubie Blake. In part two he performs Harold Arlen's "I've Got The World On A String". Dig the ease with which he appears to sync himself into the music, the joy of the art that seems to be emanating from the man. He was in his mid-sixties here, had been playing professionally since the late 'teens and early twenties and would go on performing for about another fifteen years--truly a career that spanned the entire history of the music.

 Subscribe in a reader

CITY ISLAND MEETS ERNEST HEMINGWAY?

The below story--about Andy Garcia's new Ernest Hemingway project--ran today in the Hollywood Reporter. Andy co-wrote a very good script concerning Hemingway's later life in Cuba--and Ketchum Idaho, where he committed suicide-- and seems to have hooked Anthony Hopkins to play Papa (Andy will direct the film and co-star as the Cuban fishing boat captain who Hemingway employed and was friends with). We were editing "City Island" when Andy had his first get together with Hopkins at a hotel in Santa Monica. He came into the editing room late that day and when I asked him how the meeting went, he said: "I wish there'd been a couple of cameras--we could've made the movie".

All that is well and good, but naturally for this particular self-centered/internet whore/blogger, it is the last paragraph--the one where Andy very nicely plugs "City Island"--that has caused me to share it with you. Viz (and don't forget to click to enlarge):




And now, since you've been a faithful and patient audience as my posting has slowed down over the past few weeks, here's a wonderful and rare piece of footage of my favorite musician ever, Art Tatum, doing his jazz pianarrangement of Dvorak's "Humoresque". Was this from a TV show? (Probably). Why are there edits within it? (Don't know). And have you ever seen/heard more complex and layered piano playing played with such apparent ease and grace? (I haven't...)

 Subscribe in a reader

"HULLABALOO": SIX DEGREES OF CITY ISLAND?

To celebrate the upcoming hullabaloo over the City Island premiere, enjoy the above photo of Vince Rizzo, smoking and reading while posed underneath a skylight. What's he doing? Why? Come to the festival and find out. Or simply WAIT ANOTHER YEAR until the film has run its release pattern and wound up on DVD. (Or, disastrously, wait until somebody shoots a crappy version of it from the back of the theater at Tribeca and posts it on-line...)

And now back to more pressing matters...namely my latest music/tv/media infatuation, the long-vanished but not forgotten television variety show "Hullabaloo". I was pleased to notice that a number of readers responded quite positively to my previous HB clip--the absurd version of "Help", sung (?) by Jerry Lewis and his oldest son Gary Lewis. Why did this show elude my attention for all these years? Obsessively, I've collected what information I could about it and have come up with the following mini-history. But first, let's get in the mood with a specialty number from the Hullabaloo Dancers—a team of four men and six women. Dig the first two mentioned: Michael (or "Mike" as he's referred to here) Bennett and Donna McKechnie who, of course, went on to revolutionize Broadway a mere ten years later with "A Chorus Line". Bennett also directed Katherine Hepburn in "Coco" and later brought us the stunning "Dreamgirls"--which I went to see at least three or four times in the early eighties. (Odd haberdashirial note: at some point during the "Dreamgirls" run, I saw Bennett walking down Fifth Avenue, wearing a full length mink coat). Also mentioned is Patrick Adiarte who went on to star as Ho-Jon in the television series M*A*S*H. Another female dancer, model/actress Lada Edmund Jr. was best known as the caged "go-go girl" dancer in the "Hullabaloo A-Go-Go" segment near the closing sequence of the show. Dig the chicks at 3:05 (or thereabouts) doing that gnarly knee-dance. Ouch...



"Hullabaloo" ran on NBC from January 12, 1965 through August 29, 1966, originally as a one-hour broadcast, airing from 8:30 - 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday. There was no regular host--different hosts presided each week, among whom were Sammy Davis Jr., Petula Clark, Paul Anka, Jack Jones, and Frankie Avalon. The level of talent the show attracted makes it must-see collecting for students of popular culture--Dionne Warwick, The Rolling Stones, Sonny and Cher, the Supremes, Herman's Hermits, The Animals, and Marianne Faithfull were all featured. Apparently the show was bi-coastal, being taped in New York at NBC's Studio 8-H as well as in Burbank, California (the Jerry and Gary Lewis episodes were LA based--I like to think because of Jerry's demands that he not be forced to fly east for this one-off leg-up sop favor to his son...).

Sadly, though the show was in color, the tapes of the broadcasts were destroyed in a fit of housecleaning. Though a few seem to exist in color, the remaining evidence of "Hullabaloo's" existence comes from black and white kinescopes. Oh, well. The material is still here and was recently collected on a two-DVD set which, I understand, is already a rarity. Nonetheless, thanks to youtube, here's another clip--the Animals singing one of my favorite mid-sixties psychedelic/garage tunes, "It's My Life". Dig the girls with the disembodied heads, peering out of the set from behind the band.

Oh: how does "Hullabaloo" connect itself to "City Island"? Simple. The music director was the great Peter Matz...father of City Island's producer (and my dear friend) Zachary Matz. Let's call that the third degree of seperation. The sixth would be the following inane coincidence; at the time Peter Matz was working on "Hullabaloo", he and his young family lived at 2 West 67th Street, off of Central Park West, in NYC. And I (barely verbal yet) lived across the street at 1 West 67th, a fact that neither Zach nor I were aware of until we met thirty years later in Los Angeles.

 Subscribe in a reader

CITY ISLAND PREEMS AT TRIBECA 2009

It's official: "City Island" will have it's US Premiere this April at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. Click here for the New York Times "Carpetbagger" mention of our film's inclusion in this increasingly prestigious film festival--a welcome addition to the New York film scene and a relief from the once omnipotent but now dreary and marginalized New York Film Festival. (Just the titles of the films the NYFF invites cause a wave of exhaustion to sweep over me). I'll be posting more information--about screening times, q&a's and panels that I (and the cast) might be doing as I get this information.

And now, in a spirit of celebration, here is a ridiculous clip from a mid-60's variety show that I've recently become aware of called "Hullabaloo". Dig Jerry Lewis and his oldest son Gary Lewis singing...are you sitting down?..."Help" by the Beatles.

 Subscribe in a reader

NEW YORK F@&#ING CITY ON FILM: MORE HOME MOVIES?

Dig the groove that follows. It's apparently the swinging year of 1964 (when I happen to have been born) or thereabouts. And look at what New York City looked like at that shaky and changing time in the following reel of home movies. Midtown Manhattan is featured--along with many lovely shots of 30 Rock, where my father was then employed. Check out the fact that some men still wore hats--and not BASEBALL CAPS but proper hats for street, office or evening wear. The fifties still loomed large in the cultural zeitgeist--truthfully all decades end about halfway into the next one (which makes it clear sailing now that 20th century truly finished its run late into the last Presidential cycle).

Later in the reel we're in the Village (Greenwich that is), on MacDougal Street and Minetta, in front of Cafe Wha? This was, by the way, the sight of my first apartment in the city--for less than a year I had a walk-up (and five flights definitely defines it as a walk...UP) at 124 MacDougal, A very exciting time of life to live there. In some ways it was the only time to live there. ( I was twenty one and in those days twenty-five was middle-aged in that neighborhood. Now it's filled with a disproportionately large amount of stollers and nannies).

As always with these home movies, the reality of the time is so much better captured than in more planned, stagy capturings of the period. There are, however, a good number of commercial (I hesitate to say "Hollywood" because by then the term was loaded and not always accurate) films that grab the New York of that period in all its glory. Of course Sidney Lumet was the director of several of them. Watch "The Pawnbroker" and you'll a lot of the city in all its grit and glory...in one scene Lincoln Center in the process of being built in the background as Rod Steiger stands on a Lincoln Plaza terrace. Also "Love With the Proper Stranger" with Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood perfectly captures the ambience of the city at the time...gray, jazzy, noir-ish but utterly, beatnick-ly romantic. That film was directed by the recently deceased Robert Mulligan, whose most famous credits remain "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "Summer Of '42" but whose most lasting achievement remains, to my mind, the aforementioned McQueen film. (Professionally Mulligan did everything a director needs to do and more. And yet, curiously, he currently commands only a footnote in cinematic history).

Nonetheless it is the non-professional director of these home movies who gives us the best, most honest and most vibrantly "being there" feeling of the time and place. Questions we might pose: Who was he/she? Where'd they get this camera? Who posted this reel? How did they get this footage? And what's become of some of those 20-ish men and women who are so exuberantly allowing their youths to be captured by this mysterious cameraman? If you're one of them, write to me. But only if you have proof of identity....

 Subscribe in a reader

CITY ISLAND: ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY ON STANDS NOW!

See below--"City Island" has made Entertainment Weekly's first look section. Click on the photo of Andy Garcia and Emily Mortimer to enlarge and read the text.



Below is one of my earliest television memories--the bumper that preceded programs broadcast on NBC in the 1960's. At that time my father worked for NBC news, making documentary films. I remember the peacock and the lovely music (listen to the flutes) from the evenings when his shows were broadcast. I've been investigating (and finding) more home movies of New York in the sixties--the era in which I was born and grew up in the city. I'll post a very interesting and rare find in a day or so.

 Subscribe in a reader

NEW YORK F@&#ING CITY ON FILM: HOME MOVIES?

Welcome home to New York, Raymond. Why thank you. I'm here for a couple of weeks on a variety of things: the cast/crew screening of "City Island", interviews for my new documentary on the history of Cabaret, getting a workshop production together of a musical we wrote based on my film "Two Family House"...

But let's forget these mundane matters and focus on the issue at hand: a fascinating and mysterious bit of film that turned up on youtube, showing various glimpses of New York street life--and views of the skyline--from the 1930's. What makes it particularly interesting is that these are clearly home movies--amateur views caught by a tourist (or perhaps a native who was simply a camera buff). Thus there is something verite--something very of the moment--in these off-the-cuff views of daily New York life, circa late 1930's. (The video is misleadingly titled "New York 1930"; from the look of the clothes and cars it is at least the late 1930's or even possibly the early 40's).

The film clips begin with some skyline views of the city. From the position of the Chrysler Building in the opening shot (with the East River in view behind it) I surmise we are on top of 30 Rock (yes the TV show had a presence in our culture even then--albeit as a semi-new skyscraper with killer views from the top floor). We are thus looking southeast from the terrace and the opening pan treats us to a brief glimpse of the downtown (south) view. At 36 seconds, we cut to a fine northern view of Central Park. When the camera pans downward, we catch a glimpse of the art deco railings that still adorn the roof deck of 30 Rock.

At 1:10 we are treated to views of Park Avenue, shot from a window on I would say, oh, the tenth floor. My guess is that the tourist operating the camera was staying at the Waldorf Astoria and that these views--shot from their hotel room window no doubt--are looking west toward 50th street. (Though perhaps they're further uptown at the Beekman or the Ritz? If I had world and time enough I'd go and figure this out...but I'll leave that, hopefully, for another blogger.) The pan that occurs at 1:33 shows us the vanished Savoy Plaza (inspiration of "Stompin' At The Savoy")--it's the first tower you see before the pan moves eastward on to the Pierre Hotel and the Sherry Netherland, both still standing. The Savoy became the hideous General Motors building in the early sixties.

And then our shooter takes a trip downtown. At the two minute mark we see an elevated train (oh those vexing El trains, all now gone from Manhatten proper..what a different feel they gave the city's streets and canyons!) The sign for Houston Coal at 2:25 (and the view of the super wide street that looks like Houston Street) suggests that we are at...Houston Street and that the El trains are at downtown Manhattan locations. There are some tough looking customers wandering around too--those were the days when you didn't see the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker and "Mr. Big" wandering around the streets of Soho. By 3:45, our shooter has wandered southeast to Chinatown--which looks absolutely unchanged from its present appearence to my eye. Dig all the Chinese lettering on the store fronts and signs--except for the one bold sign that proclaims "LIQUOR STORE".

What I love about this footage is inherent in its limitations; the jittery camera work, the frustrating framings and the lack of coherence in where we are and why (and don't forget the mute sound--thankfully the youtuber who posted this didn't stick some period song behind it) give it a feeling of truth that is missing from the more formal "stock footage" taken at the time (often shot by professionals for film banks) that you often run across. Unanswered questions: who was the cameraman? What kind of camera? What else did he/she/they do on this trip to New York? How often did they show off this reel of film which, one assumes, was made to proclaim to others back home the veracity of their trip to the big city? We'll never know. Or we might--if the person who posted this fascinating piece of archeology ever responds to my e-mail.

 Subscribe in a reader

CITY ISLAND: MEET MICHAEL MALAKOV

Here is the great Alan Arkin (represented both in the flesh and in portraiture prominently displayed behind him) in the role of acting teacher Michael Malakov, whose class Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) attends. In talking with Alan before filming his scenes, I suggested that Malakov might not be a complete failure as an actor who sought refuge in teaching--perhaps he had a sort of/maybe/almost career that fizzled out. Alan agreed and said: "Yeah, he might have been nominated for an Obie...but he didn't win". The marvelous set of distinctions packed in that sentence (an Obie, not a Tony...nominated but not winning) perfectly describes the ruthlessly random nature of show-biz. There's an actor I've always admired (and hardly ever seen) named Robert Fields who sort of fits the Malakov bill--for awhile he appeared to be on the verge of being one of the big ones...and then not much until he resurfaced in supporting parts years later. Mention him to most actors of a certain generation and they'll smile admiringly and say "Oh, yeah, Bob Fields!" But where does it all go?

In closing I'll share a story Alan shared with me on the set. It's the morning after the Oscars (last year) and he won for "Little Miss Sunshine". He drives onto the 20th Century Fox lot, prepared to do a day of press to support and celebrate the film. The guards smile at him. "Good Morning Mr. Arkin. Congratulations on winning the Oscar last night". "Oh thank you, thank you," says Alan. "Everyone at the studio is thrilled. You must be so proud". "Ah yes, thrilled...proud, yes.." says Alan. "My wife wanted me to tell you how much she loved you in the movie." "Oh," says Alan, "please tell her thank you." "I will" says the guard. "Now could you pop open your trunk for me?"

Pause. "What for?"

"Security. We need to inspect the back of your trunk."

Alan thinks about this. He just won an Oscar for 20th Century Fox..but he might also be a terrorist? What the hell is going on here? Are we truly this unthinking a nation, this paranoid, this doctranaire? Is nothing sacred?

"No," responds Alan. "I will not allow you inspect my trunk."

And after some uncomfortable hemming and hawing and phone calls and embarrassed, whispered conversations, the bold decision is made to say the hell with Homeland Security; sanity prevails and Alan Arkin is waved through the gate, trunk unchecked.

Below, Alan literally tears the set apart on The Muppet Show. Don't forget to click the above still to enlarge.

 Subscribe in a reader