Q: Why do we go after the ones who run away?

A: Immaturity.

I saw Dangerous Liaisons on Broadway, starring Laura Linney and Ben Daniels (making his marvelous Malkovich-ian debut). Also making her Broadway debut: Mamie Gummer, who is going to have to work very hard to step out from under her mom, Meryl Streep's, shadow. I think Mamie will ultimately be a wonderful actress. She's young and she needs practice, but she certainly has some magic already.
This production was astounding. The set and the costumes were magnificent and the transitions between scenes flawless. (Some say that's the true measure of a great director). There was crackling sexual tension on the stage, and just the right amount of gratuitous sex scenes.The director, Rufus Norris, used to be an actor himself which might speak to his smooth direction. And the dialogue. Oh. The dialogue. Perfection.

In fact, I was inspired,right after the play, to go straight to Kim's DVDs on St Marks Place to hire Dangerous Liaisons starring John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Michele Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves. It was exceptional.

Madonna: Unplugged

The interview with Madonna in this week's New York magazine is a triumph. Finally some conscious editorial, a celebrity who has the guts to go there:

Logan Hill: You’re now something of an expert on Malawi. But when the activist Victoria Keelan first called you about getting involved, you said, “I don’t even know where that is.” And she hung up on you. Not too many people hang up on you, do they?
Madonna: I thought that was rather cheeky. She found me quite impertinent in the beginning. Like, “You’re asking the stupidest questions—do you want to help or not?” And she was absolutely correct.


LH: The documentary catches your son David on film before you tried to adopt him. What was that first meeting like?
M: He was basically going to the bathroom on himself. Of course, next day you come back with a truckload of Pampers. It sounds corny, but he just has these big, bright, intelligent, so-aware eyes, and I felt a connection to him.

LH: Tell me about your documentary’s director, Nathan Rissman. This is his first film. He’s a friend?
M: He’s the husband of my nanny, to tell you the truth. When Nathan showed up, it’s like, “Well, he just can’t hang around, he’s got to have a job.” He would make QuickTime movies of my children and e-mail them to me when I was on trips. They were so clever. So when this project came up, it just seemed like a no-brainer. He did everything from gardening to manning the camera for behind-the-scenes B-roll footage. Never did he say, “I’m not going to Starbucks—I’m too good for that.”

Read the whole thing here:
http://nymag.com/movies/profiles/46189/

Sundays at Sunny's

Sunny's Waterfront Bar in Red Hook hosts a reading series, moderated by the author Gabriel Cohen. This past Sunday, Cohen read from his memoir Storms Can't Hurt the Sky: A Buddhist Path Through Divorce. I've read the book. It's great. Kinda like Eat, Pray, Love written from a male perspective. Or what happened to Elizabeth Gilbert's husband after she left for Italy?
In my fantasy world, he could have, like Gabriel Cohen, found himself at a Buddhist talk on How to Deal with Anger at a yoga studio in Park Slope.

The Other Secret

"The 'secret' of life that we are all looking for is just this: to develop through sitting and daily life practice the power and courage to return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment--even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness." -- Charlotte Joko Beck