An Embarrassment of Riches

It's a Hard Knock Life - by Joanna While I love watching a good stage musical, I have always been more fascinated by the view behind-the-scenes. From the initial writing and composing to the auditions, rehearsals, staging, set and lighting design, and costuming, a Broadway production involves a lot of people spending a lot of time together for months on end, creating drama well before the curtain rises. Two recent documentaries did a brilliant job of bringing me backstage.

If you were a 9-year-old girl sometime between 1977 and 1983, the odds are good that you wanted to be an orphan. The musical Annie was a huge hit on Broadway, plus there were four touring companies and a film version; that’s a lot of little girls getting paid to sing and dance. The documentary Life After Tomorrow revisits those “orphans” 30 years later to get their firsthand accounts of sudden fame, stage parents, rehearsals, rivalry, and the devastation of puberty when you are a child actor. Those interviewed include some still-famous women (actress Sarah Jessica Parker, MSNBC anchor Dara Brown) and others who have distanced themselves from show business as much as possible. The film ends with some sweet and funny reunions where the now all-grown-up women find that they remember much of their choreography 25 years after their last performances.

Every Little Step  is a documentary about the auditions for the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, the celebrated musical about auditioning for a Broadway musical. (Meta, anyone?) We get to know some of the young men and women moving through the increasingly difficult process; interspersed with their stories are interviews with, and footage of some of the original participants in the workshops that led to the writing of the play. Like the play itself, this film is heart-wrenching, suspenseful, and hysterical.

For a behind-the-scenes look at plays that were not so successful, check out Kate’s entry on Broadway flops on the library’s Furthermore... blog. 

"Art is mute when money talks"* - by Tama In the early 1960s a librarian and a postal worker fell in love and married. They loved art and began to collect what they could afford, living on her salary, buying with his. At the time what they bought was modern and conceptual art. It was cheap and many of the artists were starving. Now the artists are household names and the librarian and the postal worker own one of the largest and most important collections in the world. And they still live in their one-bedroom, rent controlled Manhattan apartment.

"We never realized something was going to become important...we  never thought of that." Dorothy Vogel

Megumi Sasaki tells the inspiring story of this couple in Herb and Dorothy. The film has garnered a number of awards, including winner of the "Audience Award" at the Hamptons Film Festival, and winner of  the "Best Documentary" award at Provincetown Film Festival.

A Voice Like Egypt - by Markrid

Here's a rare treat for music lovers, armchair travelers, and those who value the cultural background of current events: the 68-minute DVD documentary "Umm Kulthum: a voice like Egypt", narrated in English by Omar Sharif.

Umm Kulthum was an immensely influential Egyptian classical singer. For decades she performed to sold-out houses across the Arabic-speaking world, reviving and expanding the tradition of sung poetry. She was a patriot and a nationalist -"Music must represent our Eastern spirit", she said -  but she was an artist above all. Learn by ear, play by heart, she instructed her musicians; and like "a preacher inspired by her congregation", as novelist Naguib Mahfouz described her, her hours-long concerts would bring her audiences to a state approaching ecstasy. She has no counterpart in the West. She swayed kings and presidents; when she died in 1975, four million people came out for her funeral; and even now, every day at five o'clock Cairo radio plays a song by Umm Kuthum. This short, well-edited film is a fine portrait of a great singer, but it also provides a remarkably compact, insightful look at the evolution of modern Egypt.

Now a Major...Book - by Helen

I rarely watch movies or TV but I thoroughly enjoyed Either You're In or You're in the Way, a book about the making of the independent film, Touching Home (to be released March, 2010).

Twin brothers, Logan and Noah Miller, are determined to honor their father by making a movie about his battle with homelessness and alcohol. They have written the screenplay, but know nothing about acting or making movies so they go to the bookstore, "to make a battle plan, devise a strategy for the road ahead. We wanted books by people who had acturally made movies, not academic works on movie-making, but practical experience from frontline soldiers. We walked over to the entertainment section and plunged in."

The book is written in a unique voice - a combination of the two brothers thinking as one. I love their dogged determination, persistence and can-do attitude.  They need to film spring training in Tuscon this year, not next year: "We had to be an adaptive force. Flexiblilty and quick thinking would be essential: make immediate decisions and act upon them - and work with the consequences, painful though they may be."

Next, the boys need an old car for the scene where they're on their way home from Tucson, canned from baseball. Their friend Shady comes to the rescue. Doesn't this description paint a vivid picture in your mind?

"We drove the Perfect Car around the block. It swayed and creaked. It had no license plates. (Shady had a great story for that one.) The upholstery looked like you kicked a lion in the balls and then threw him inside. The rear window was busted out, looked like you threw a horse inside after the lion. The backseat was portable, the radio had been ripped out, and there was a Cadillac hubcap in the trunk in case you felt like going to the club."
   
They decide that Academy Award nominee, Ed Harris should play the part of their father. They ambush him as he leaves a stage and, talking a mile a minute, win his trust and commitment.

This is a funny and touching story about overcoming many obstacles and never giving up. I admire their determination to keep a promise to their father.  I can't wait to see the movie.
 

If You Are Among the Very Young at Heart - by Tama (watch) I watched Young @ Heart in early December. While raving about it the morning after, a voice in my head said to zip it until I could put together a rational thought. I think I'm ready.

Young @ Heart is essentially the biography and recent history of a chorus of senior citizens. Established in 1982 in Northampton, Massachusetts, all the original members (none are still with us) lived in a senior center. Nowadays the chorus members are in a wide variety of living situations--some in their own homes, alone or with spouses, some in retirement homes or apartments. The choir's music, chosen by their artistic director, Bob Cilman, is not what one might expect--"I Wanna Be Sedated" by The Ramones, for example. Their struggles with "Yes We Can" by Allen Touissant and "I Feel Good" by James Brown are epic, and finally mastered, but, man, they were close ones. Considering the average age of the group members, syncopated vocal rhythms really are the least of their concerns. As a coworker said, "Fix You" by Coldplay takes on a whole new meaning when you see and hear it sung solo by an 80-year-old so weakened by congestive heart failure that he must sit, oxygen canister beside him. And it is perfection.

It is still so difficult to put my feelings about this movie into words. They make it sound trite and "feel good," and that demeans it, somehow. These are real people, forming friendships, rehearsing, traveling and performing together, fighting battles with illness which we see won and lost, and grieving together. They are as different from each other as you and I, but they have that common thread of age. There are moments of pure hilarity, absolute frustration, terrible sorrow, and sheer joy.

These folks master performances that would be difficult for any age, but they're all over than 65, some well past that mark. I can't seem to get a good walk in, but I'll be the first in line to buy tickets if Young @ Heart comes to Portland. Maybe I'll even hoof it to the Max station.

Learn more about the chorus at http://www.youngatheartchorus.com.

Once You Make a Balloon Dog, You Can Do Anything! - by Tama Twisted: A Balloonamentary

Huh. A documentary about balloon twisters. Really? I do love a good documentary but truth is I didn't expect to love this one quite as much as I did, and now I can't stop telling people about it.

Film makers Naomi Greenfield and Sara Taksler met at their freshman orientation a few years ago. It was the classic "Say Something About Yourself" icebreaker, when Sara said "I can make balloon animals." Naomi, next up, said "I was gonna say that!" Bam--instant friends, and now partners in film making.

The charm of their movie lies in the lives of the twisters themselves and their lovely, eccentric, sometimes obsessive personalities. There are Ph.D.s, troubled teens and cancer survivors. They came to twisting for a variety of reasons, and for some, money was a good reason.  And it turns out the money is good, my friends, surprisingly good. We're taken to one of the big twisting conventions, Twist and Shout, where we meet balloon twisters from all over the world who welcome in curious passers-by without reservation, put a piece of latex in their hand, and teach them how to make a doggy.

But there's way more to balloon twisting than doggies. For example, I'd never thought about how easily some balloon shapes lend themselves to representations of the male and female anatomy. There are adult-themed twisters who cater to bachelor and bachelorette parties, as well as gay bars. There are gospel twisters who cater to a different crowd and see twisting as part of their mission. But there's everything in between--a gigantic flying octopus, a Trojan horse, and 100 foot tall soccer players. Literally, the sky's the limit, or not the limit, depending on how you look at it. Is it sculpture? Engineering? Fun and silliness? Yes.

What made my movie-watching experience extra nice was that Naomi Greenfield was there in the theater. She stayed to teach us how to twist a balloon doggy, and then put a movie promo pin on my jacket. She was lovely and sweet to the only two people who were in the theater to see her movie that day and who were mostly thumbs when it came to twisting. I liked her immediately. And next time I meet a twister at the farmers' market, I'll probably strike up a conversation with them as I hand them a donation for that doggy they made for my son.

More at http://www.twistedballoondoc.com/