The Daily Show

Last week - on June 29, 2010 - Asit kindly let me tag along with him to a taping of The Daily Show.  It's the first time I've ever gone to see a TV show recorded and it was a pretty interesting experience, though most of the comments I'd make fall in line with general chatter I've heard about what happens when you get too close to the magic of modern media.

Here's the door into the theater (the sign reads: Abandon News, All Ye Who Enter Here - gotta love the Dante reference):

And here are our fancy, high-security tickets into the taping:

They say 25 and 26 but I think they really meant 125 and 126, or 225 and 226...whatever the number, we still got inside.  We had reserved spots but they overbook every show so if you want in, you have to show up early and wait around.  I think we waited for about 2 hours.

We were shown into the theater probably half an hour before taping started.  We settled down and then the self-described "warm up monkey" came out to loosen up our laughing muscles and also warn us that, as the show's only laugh track, it was our solemn duty to laugh loud and often.  The price of entry, as it were, given that admittance was otherwise free.

If you watch The Daily Show, you know that Jon Stewart makes a habit of chatting up his audience before the show starts.  The chatting up is pretty carefully timed - I think it lasts about two minutes - he came out when the warm-up monkey was done and took a few questions.  It's a neat way of going a little above and beyond, being generous with his audience, but also, I think, a way for him to warm himself up.  Our first question was about his favorite cheese, so we mostly got a long monologue on the subject of cheese.  His favorites are semi-soft, and he thinks jack cheese should not be loaded up with foreign objects like pepper.

The thing I noticed most, once taping got started, was how obvious it was that Jon Stewart is acting.  Watching on TV, his manners and gestures always seem very natural to me - of course I know that he's acting, and the shows are very obviously scripted and carefully constructed, but I've always had the impression that I'm watching Jon Stewart more or less be himself.  And maybe that's true, or maybe that's not - clearly I'm not qualified to judge, since I have no standard of comparison - but sitting in the live audience, it was very obvious that his constant gesturing, raised voice, and focused intensity are unnatural.  That it's not at all like having a conversation with a normal person, not on TV, where arm-windmilling and mugging for the camera would be disconcerting instead of hilarious.

I've heard actors say that before, that taking up space and moving your body on and off the stage are different things, and complain that non-actors lack affect.  We don't choreograph our thoughts and emotions with our bodies, or at least we don't do so intentionally.  The result is that "normal" body language looks very dull and wooden on TV, I think.

Other than that, the taping was pretty quick - not surprisingly, it lasted exactly as long as the show does - there wasn't much delay as people or props were ushered on and off the set, or cameras were moved about.  The guest was Helen Mirren, which I found terribly exciting.  She was gracious and gorgeous, and she looked like a breath of fresh air in a sleek black sheath with a little tie-front white shrug on.  The interview, however, seemed pretty stiff to me, and she didn't linger once it was over.

So there you go, a little run down of being an audience member at The Daily Show.  It'd be interesting to  check out a few other live tapings, just to make the comparison, and it was interesting to see the set - it looks just like it does on TV, but somehow less impressive.  Definitely a fun thing to do, and I recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to attend.

I Am Love

I Am Love is an odd movie.  It's full of things that ought not to work.  I kept thinking things like, "Oh no, not another movie about falling in love through the erotic powers of food," or "Really? A lesbian subplot featuring prurient close-ups of hot girls kissing?" and "That twist at the end, so cheap."

There's more, too.  It's shot oddly - there are outdoor night-scenes that are very poorly lit, so that all the actors are dim and grey; there are lengthy close-ups of rain on statues and multiple flat, disposable-camera style shots of buildings passing by from the window of a car.  The movie is lulling, a slow burn rather than a firecracker.  Especially at first, it's hard to really get a grip on what's going on - all the characters are self-controlled, not particularly emotive, and it's a game of reading into their non-reactions as events unfurl.

But it does work, despite all of the elements that would sink a lesser movie.  Because all of the twists and turns that would have evolved into high drama in another film are dulled or blunted here, I Am Love is a film all about subterranean, core-deep tectonic shifts that slowly build up pressure until finally, as the movie nears its conclusion, the cracks that begin to visibly split the family apart really do feel like earthquakes.

After I walked out of the theater, while I was hashing out my thoughts with my cousin, who'd accompanied me, and then later as I read through a few reviews, I realized exactly how well-balanced the movie is.  My cousin asked if I thought it was a movie that glamorized adultery and leaving one's family to pursue the thrill of true love.  And I answered: no, I didn't get that sense at all.  That was what Tilda's character did, yes, but it didn't seem like a victory or a prescription; and there's another sub-plot, about a son who finds a nice girl and settles down with her, who seems perfectly happy to do the expected thing, that's presented with the same lack of judgment.

And the things that stuck me most, which seem to strike everyone the most, are all self-consciously quiet.  A scene when Tilda asks her housekeeper to have dinner with her while they're both doing chores in the laundry room.  A shot when Tilda's character laughs, a rare occurance, while sitting on the toilet.  A tense, absolutely perfect moment between Tilda and her husband near the conclusion, when a scene ready-made to overflow with sturm and drang instead went the way of a silent but shocking nuclear explosion.  The movie is full of scenes that illustrate the power of understatement.

Final note: I just re-read the New Yorker's review of the film (Second Helpings) - it's utterly glowing, beginning with the strict admonition to see the movie in theaters rather than waiting for it to come out on DVD.  The only thing that the author, Anthony Lane, complains about is the scene where Tilda's lover gives her oral sex.  It cuts between the coupling and shots of insects going about their business, and he's right that this is not exactly a fresh metaphor - but the whole movie is like that, full of cliched imagery that still somehow works.  In the same paragraph, even, Lane gushingly describes the film's metaphorical use of the changing seasons, from winter to spring.  If he's willing to enthuse about the weather, his excuse about the bees doesn't hold water.  When I watched the sex scene, I remember thinking about This Film Not Yet Rated, which argues very strongly that the ratings board penalizes movies that show female pleasure and in particular oral sex on women.  Even at the time, I was surprised and delighted to see a filmmaker so clearly and unapologetically go there.  Shame on you, New Yorker critic, for jumping on the bandwagon and telling us that scenes of cunnilingus are unnecessary.  The truth is precisely the opposite.

Brooklyn Photos

Kids playing in front of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; they're leaning over a fountain

Koi feeding frenzy at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

 

Witty graffiti.  I love this kind of conversational graffiti - like person who wrote it is trying to make a little offhand comment to all the other people in the subway.  It brings New Yorkers together.  This one's an ad for vodka.  The text reads, "Our ambassador Paul tried it. And he was all 'This is so good I would bathe in it.' So being the marketing guys at 42Below, we let him. Is that so wrong?"  So the grafitti artist wrote, "It is if your vodka 'is so good'."

In the Company of Writers by Charles Scribner Jr.

In the Company of Writers is, more or less, a publishing memoir.  The author, one in a long line of Charles Scribners, helmed Scribners during a pretty fascinating, transitional period in the industry - and in his own company.  He took over at the tail end of the Max Perkins era, when Scribners was a powerhouse of major voices in literature (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc.), and stayed on through the company's merger with Macmillan, when Scribners became an imprint of a major conglomerate instead of an independent company.

He's so matter-of-fact about the position of privilege he was born into that it's impossible to resent him for it, and he didn't squander his advantages - he had an excellent education, for example, and so he became a student of Latin and Greek, was passionate about the history of science, and had an active life of the mind well into his twilight years.  He seems - and, really, it's impossible to know the truth through the text - but he seems like a true gentleman, in the best sense of the word.  And he describes his years at Scribners, working with authors like Hemingway, coping with the paperback revolution, and just generally staying afloat, with appealing candor.  There are some great little anecdotes, too.

Either because the author himself was influenced stylistically by his authors, or because much of the book was crafted out of an oral history (Scribner was too old to undertake a memoir on his own, so he told his story and let someone else do the writing), or thanks to the intermediary who translated Scribner's speech into text, the book is gorgeously written and gives a stylistic nod to Hemingway.  Before I read Hemingway, I really resented the overwhelming influence he has exerted on American writers.  Now that I've read Hemingway, I wish more people would write like him.  I guess that's how it goes sometimes.  So the prose here is gorgeous, and it's a pretty quick, easy read.

I really liked this book.  It captures a time and a place, and it seems really wise to me.

Hubris

The New York Times has these ads running around town right now.  I know people who find the NYT motto "All the news that's fit to print" unbearably  arrogant, but as a mission statement I think it's excellent.  It's ambitious and bold and...oh yeah...it's about their desire to cover the news.

These ads, on the other hand, are just narcissism.  As though, for some reason, the New York Times wants to position itself as the Paris Hilton of news organizations.  

Wouldn't it be nice.

I was chatting about the new Sex & the City movie, and how I don't plan on seeing it.  I was a fan of the TV show, not a huge fan but I made a point of watching new episodes when they came out.  I liked the love letter to New York, I liked the idea that people could be friends even when they were so different, I liked the clothes, I liked that all the girls met each new romantic adventure with hope, though the shows contained no shortage of disappointment and frustration and heartbreak.

The new movie has been so widely and thoroughly panned that I don't need to describe, here, why I don't plan on seeing it.  But during this little chat I did think of something that would have made a 2nd Sex and the City movie watchable, justifiable, and interesting.  What if it had been a movie where those 4 well-heeled, materialistic girls...were poor?  What if some of them suffered a lot during the economic downturn, but others didn't...would the friendship endure, and how?  What if Big didn't work for a year and a half - would Carrie still find him so utterly hot?

It would have been nice to see a movie about a friendship that lasts through disasters and disparities of that magnitude.  And I bet it could have been fun and inspiring as well.

It was suggested to me that there were probably a lot of other potential plots that could have resulted in a better movie than the one we got.  No doubt.  Any other ideas?

Can you believe this is a Dunkin Donuts? It is.

In Carroll Gardens, on Court Street.