Salon.com > Cynthia Joyce

New Orleans hearts fried chicken

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 11:55:00 +0000

In New Orleans, most people have long since lost their sense of urgency about the state of emergency Hurricane Katrina left behind, and on a midweek afternoon in March, there were long, slow-moving lines everywhere you went: at the still-understaffed post office; in front of the many taco stands that have sprouted up post-storm; in front of the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters, where people were filing billions of dollars in damage claims. The only place where impatience was palpable was in the line of cars that was pulled over so a presidential motorcade could pass.

John Currence was in line at Lowe's. Wearing his trademark bandanna and work boots, the chef-owner of City Grocery in Oxford, Miss. (and recent nominee for a James Beard Award, the country's highest culinary honor), looked every bit the construction crew chief he'd become over the last year and a half. Along with hundreds of donors and volunteers recruited by the Oxford-based Southern Foodways Alliance, Currence has led the effort to restore Willie Mae's Scotch House, a local restaurant and culinary landmark in the historic Treme neighborhood that was all but destroyed by flooding post-Katrina.

John Edwards makes it official

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 03:11:00 +0000

Sixteen months after Hurricane Katrina, many of the street signs are still down in the hard-hit Ninth Ward of New Orleans, but it wasn't hard to find former Sen. John Edwards there on Thursday morning. The satellite dish of the CNN Gulf Coast Bureau truck was a beacon for reporters trying to pick Orelia Tyler's house out of all the other gutted houses with FEMA trailers parked outside.

So was the mere presence of a crowd. In this nearly deserted swath of the city, where few locals have returned and screen doors dangle from abandoned houses, a gathering of more than three people is pretty conspicuous. At least 40 people, mostly members of the media, had converged on the house on Stemway Drive to hear the fresh-faced ex-trial lawyer from North Carolina announce his bid for the Democratic nomination for president. Outgoing Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich are already on the campaign trail, but with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama not expected to signal their intentions until early next year, Edwards is the first high-profile Democrat to make it official.

The cat comes back

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 13:00:00 +0000

Prior to the arrival of this year's polished and sweetly upbeat "The Greatest," listening to any one of Chan Marshall's six previous records required bracing yourself to get seriously bummed out -- though, if you were depressed already, well, you weren't likely to find more soulful solace anywhere.

Marshall, the itinerant chanteuse who performs under the name Cat Power, chalks up her Southern gothic sensibility to an unusual and unstable Southern childhood in the '70s. "Did I grow up eating government cheese? Yes," she said during a recent interview with Salon. "Did I go dumpster diving while my parents were at Charlie Daniels Band concerts? Yes. And did I grow up in the tobacco fields of North Carolina and in youth groups singing Christian hymns? Yes."

N.O. better blues

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 11:00:00 +0000

People had been talking for weeks about how the New Orleans premiere of Spike Lee's much anticipated Hurricane Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke," was sold out, so it was a little eerie when we arrived at New Orleans Arena Wednesday night to find that fewer than half of the 14,000 who'd reportedly snatched up the free tickets actually showed up for the event. Maybe they'd heard there would be no alcohol sold in the arena. Certainly Lee's ambitious film -- sweeping in its scope, emotionally intense and a challenge to watch in one sitting -- could drive just about anyone to drink. It's also possible that all those people who didn't show up don't live here anymore. The new New Orleans can be a pretty lonely town sometimes.

Which is partly why watching a Katrina documentary with thousands of other local residents -- certain to be a gut-wrenching experience -- also carried with it the possibility of catharsis. All summer long, apprehension about the first anniversary of "The Storm" (First? Really? Why does everyone look 10 years older already?) has been steadily building. With so many people still assessing their losses, coming up with a meaningful commemoration can be difficult. I know that 11 months ago I would never have predicted that I might be sitting in the arena across the street from the Superdome -- eating nachos, no less -- eager to watch more footage of what I thought I'd witnessed too much of already.

Bamboom!

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 00:10:00 +0000

I asked my lady what could I do
to make her happy and to keep her true
she said my friend one thing I need from you
is a little tiny piece of the big bamboo

She wanted big bamboo four feet long
big bamboo so full and strong
big bamboo stands up straight and tall
only big bamboo pleases one and all...

-- from the Calypso traditional "The Big Bamboo"

Get a bamboo enthusiast talking, and it's not unusual for the excitement -- about the plant's miraculous properties and environmentally important uses -- to get a little out of hand. Even a casual investigation quickly reveals that bamboo doesn't just attract admirers, it inspires a heavy-breathing obsession, as the following tome from American Bamboo Society pages illustrates:

"Bamboo feels so good. Grasp a culm and energy is defined. A strong culm advances from underground to sky, often many tens of feet, many meters, in a matter of weeks. All of it is there from the moment it breaks ground. Every thrusting inch, foot or meter, from node to node, every future leaf is compactly folded in place ready and willing to come out."

Beyond the fringe

Fri, 22 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Just when you thought we'd reached the saturation point with TV veriti, along comes a bumbling Brit to breathe new life into the well-worn "cultural travelogue" genre. Louis Theroux, son of author Paul Theroux and host of the hilarious new Bravo series "Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends," delves into a different American subculture every week on a quest to understand people's idiosyncratic passions. Whether he's dealing with televangelists or porn stars or drag-car racers, the genuine respect Theroux shows his subjects has a very humanizing effect, and it's ultimately what makes the series so winning.

Theroux, 29, came to television by way of "TV Nation," the predecessor to Michael Moore's "The Awful Truth." (Fans of that show may recall how Theroux distinguished himself
with a brilliant segment in which he waged "psychological warfare" on the media circus surrounding the O.J. Simpson murder trial.)

Tainted love

Fri, 17 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

French director Catherine Breillat's "Romance" -- a movie in which the sex is real and not simulated -- has already sparked debate: Is it trash or is it art? The question seems beside the point. "Romance" may be one of the most sexually explicit movies to make its way into the mainstream, but Breillat's exploration of female sexual fantasy is often deliberately un-sexy. In "Romance," a young woman aggressively seeks a variety of sexual encounters after her boyfriend, with whom she's deeply in love, refuses to have sex with her. It's not that the fantasies she fulfills for herself -- which include bondage and anonymous sex -- won't be recognizable, or at least understandable, to many women. But Breillat's movie is more than just a study of female wish fulfillment. It goes deeper than that. "Romance" is about the profound sense of loss that one woman feels when she tries -- and fails -- to possess someone else.

Like the film itself, Breillat is a study in contradictions: ambitious, provocative, occasionally arrogant. Here, she explains why no man could have made her movie.

Given the exact same script, could a man have made this film?

Arabian knights

Thu, 09 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

He's been called the "Arab Tarantino," but 36-year-old director Ziad Doueiri resists comparisons to his tragically hip former colleague. (Doueiri worked as a cameraman on three of Tarantino's films.) Despite his Santa Monica address, penchant for Drum cigarettes and new status as a leading voice in foreign film, the UCLA film school graduate feels a tighter kinship to the likes of John Boorman, whose "Hope and Glory" inspired Douieri's own semi-autobiographical debut, the wonderful "West Beirut." "I kept thinking, 'I hope people don't think I plagiarized him,'" admitted Douieri during a recent interview in New York. "I was worried about that, big time."

Though there are obvious parallels between the two films, "West Beirut" is very much Douieri's own story. Set in 1975, when Beirut was divided into two territories (Christian and Muslim), his follows the carefree teenager Tarek (played by Doueiri's younger brother, Rami), through the chaos of civil war -- a situation which affords him a new freedom. Unfazed by the turmoil escalating around him, Tarek and his best friend Omar (Mohamad Chamas) continue their pursuit of girls and Super 8 film, and are only occasionally forced to confront the gravity of their circumstances -- like when Tarek witnesses, at the start of the war, the April 1975 massacre of a group of Palestinian bus riders by Christian Phalangists.

Give Pokimon a chance

Tue, 06 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

So you're a fan of Pokimon?

I love it.

Why do you love it?

A couple of reasons. One is that it doesn't involve death,
that's the main reason.

Pokimon can die, but when they're in battle, they don't die;
they faint. You can restore their health by bringing them potions, or bringing them to the
Pokimon Center. So it's not based on death. You don't just end.

Another thing I like about it is because you have to think -- you
don't just grab a gun and kill someone. There are weaknesses
and resistance, but you can't just kill a Pokimon.

In games like [James Bond] "007," all you do is just pick up guns and kill people.
It's boring and there's too much death involved. When you die [in "007"] the
blood goes all over the screen. Like, that's definitely not
something that's ... I'm thinking of putting "007" in the fireplace.

And what are Pokimon, exactly?

Pokimon evolve -- sort of like people, like kid to teenager to grownup.
They evolve either out of age or by what's called levels. The highest level is usually 150 --
but it's a really special Pokimon that makes it to that level. Most only make it to 100.

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Ask a stupid question …

Fri, 18 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

A plea to the members of the press: Will you please stop asking Chris Rock such serious questions? It's no wonder the comedian seemed like he'd had the funny knocked out of him when he announced the release of his new HBO special, "Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker," at a press conference Wednesday.
There we were, a roomful of reporters given a chance to ask Rock -- a guy who baldly talks about prison sex and black-on-black crime in his monologues -- anything we wanted, and the best anyone came up with was, "Now that your friend Adam Sandler has become such a big success, he's refusing to talk to the press. Could you see yourself making the same kind of decision?" You could practically hear the hurt in the guy's voice when he asked it.
Rock answered without hesitation, and without the hint of a laugh. "Yes."
You could hardly blame him. The man is a social satirist, after all, not a sociologist. What was he supposed to do with questions like "How do you feel about the state of black comedy today?" -- make a joke?
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“Girls' Guide” rocks!

Tue, 15 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

If there is truly such a thing as an inner child, I suspect that for many women she is about 14 years old -- the age at which we first meet Jane Rosenal, the star of "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing," Melissa Bank's hilarious and poignant debut collection about growing up girl. In seven interrelated short stories, we watch Jane work her way from wary adolescence to weary adulthood, from boringly idyllic summer trips with the family to romantic getaways gone awry. And though almost every part of Jane's life (her jobs, her boyfriends, her family) changes along the way, her voice --- strong, sarcastic, suspicious, yet stubbornly hopeful -- remains constant throughout.
A lot of reviewers have been comparing "The Girls' Guide" to "Bridget Jones's Diary," as well as to a slew of other recently published single-women titles, and the comparison isn't entirely off the mark: Jane is definitely looking for Mr. Right. But what she wants is not just someone to walk down the aisle with but also someone to walk her dog with. From the very first story through to the end -- in which a 30-ish Jane follows a "Rules"-style guide and finds, to her horror, that it actually works -- it's clear that, for her, finding the man is just a piece of the puzzle, not the puzzle itself.
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American Amazon

Tue, 12 Jan 1999 11:14:00 +0000

No matter how many updates there may be on the female action hero, no matter how many technological innovations or anatomical enhancements, no one could ever replace Sigourney Weaver's Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley. When Weaver first brought that character to life in the first "Alien" movie 20 years ago, she became the anti-Barbie -- big-brained and small-chested. She was the first of a new generation of actresses to play a strong female lead with composure and dignity, not like some high-strung thoroughbred waiting to be broken. Two decades, three sequels and hundreds of slain extraterrestrials later, Ripley still reigns as film's finest female ass-kicker. She's what G.I. Jane wishes she could be when she grows up. (Indeed, the bald Demi Moore character was a cheap ripoff of the "Alien 3" Ripley -- but where Weaver sans cheveux was all androgynous innuendo, Moore just looked like the victim of a grade-school scissor incident turned sour.) Without Ripley, there would be no Lara Croft; and without Weaver, the coldly beautiful Gillian Andersons of the world wouldn't have a career.
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Screensaver: On his own turf

Thu, 07 Jan 1999 18:13:00 +0000

Sitting at his desk in a modest midtown Manhattan office, writer-director Paul Schrader doesn't much resemble the renegade wild man he's been portrayed as in various Hollywood chronicles (most notably, Peter Biskind's recent '70s nostalgia tome, "Easy Rider, Raging Bull"). The only names he drops are those of his family: his wife of 15 years, actress Mary Beth Hurt, and their two children. Nor does his mildly gruff manner give him away as the rebel writer behind "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," "American Gigolo" (which he also directed) and more than a dozen other films over the last two decades. It's just as well, because Schrader isn't particularly interested in talking about his, or anybody else's, notorious past -- he's too busy juggling his current projects. There's "Bringing Out the Dead," due this year, which he adapted from a Joseph Connelly novel (Martin Scorsese is directing); "Forever Mine," a love story starring Gretchen Mol and Joseph Fiennes, also due out this year; and, of course, "Affliction," adapted from the Russell Banks novel, which is currently winning critical acclaim and just earned Nick Nolte the National Society of Film Critics award for best actor.
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Marriage among the mullahs

Wed, 16 Dec 1998 13:51:00 +0000

The scene is a small courtroom in Tehran. The cast is a steady stream of veiled women who have come here in an attempt to change their lives. There's the 16-year-old girl who wants to leave her 38-year-old husband and go back to school; the mother of two grown children who wants to punish her husband of 30 years for beating her; the young mother who wants to leave her husband for another man but doesn't want to give up her children. Three very different circumstances, with seemingly one solution: divorce.
Or maybe not. As the captivating documentary "Divorce Iranian Style" shows, Islamic law makes it almost impossible for women who want a divorce to get one without the consent of their husbands. And because men risk losing their financial security if they divorce, they often choose to stay married -- even if their wives make their lives a living hell.
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The original regular

Fri, 21 Aug 1998 18:42:00 +0000

It's the rare artist who, upon breaking new ground, chooses to stay there and wait for the prefab suburbs to sprout up around her. But Liz Phair is a rare artist, one who bulldozed right through the bedrock with her 1993 debut, "Exile in Guyville," reinventing the regular-girl-with-guitar genre with a potent mix of musical ingenuity and sexual bravado. Phair won over legions of giddy male fans with lines like "I want to be your blow-job queen," but it was mostly women who identified with the emotional scars she revealed just as explicitly: "You've never been a waste of my time/It's never been a drag," she droned sarcastically on "The Divorce Song," spitting out the words as if she were trying to expel a bitter aftertaste.
"It was like her mouth was moving, but my words were coming out," a friend recently said to me, describing how she felt when she first heard the songs on "Exile." Sure, plenty of pop stars have inspired imitators, but Liz Phair was possibly the first pop star to make women feel like she was impersonating them.
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“The Opposite of Sex”

Fri, 22 May 1998 19:00:00 +0000

From the very first voice-over in Don Roos' irreverent new comedy, "The Opposite of Sex," it's clear this isn't the kind of movie that wants you to care about any of its characters. "If you think I'm just plucky," warns DeDee Truitt (Christina Ricci), the film's sardonic central character, "then you're out of luck. I DON'T have a heart of gold, and I'm NOT going to get one."
The point of this obnoxious little tirade is to fly in the face of Hollywood convention, to make viewers aware of their expectations -- and by extension, their demands -- for reasons, or redemption, or some kind of resolution. But too often, the narration causes the opposite to happen: It's the film, not the viewer, that feels self-conscious.
DeDee Truitt is a trash-talking, troublemaking 16-year-old whose hateful stepfather has just died of colon cancer ("couldn't have been a more appropriate way for that asshole to go," deadpans the remorseless DeDee). Leaving her mother behind in Lousiana, DeDee seeks refuge at the home of her half-brother, Bill (Martin Donovan), a well-respected, openly gay high school teacher in South Bend, Ind. Although Bill still mourns the death of his stockbroker boyfriend, Tom, who died of AIDS and left him all his money, he has tried to rebuild a life with Matt (Ivan Sergei), a beautiful but daft 24-year-old who is 10 years his junior ("sometimes just nine, depending on the month," Matt helpfully points out).
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Movie Interview: The importance of being Wilde

Thu, 07 May 1998 19:12:00 +0000

When the current dissection of Oscar Wilde is complete -- and the fact that there are presently two plays, a film and a soon-to-be-erected statue in central London celebrating his life and work suggests that it very nearly is -- it's likely that Brian Gilbert's film "Wilde" will be remembered not so much for its generous depiction of Wilde's life but for the poetic justice of having cast Stephen Fry in the starring role. Comparisons between Wilde and Fry are as predictable as they are irresistible: real-life Renaissance men, celebrated for their wit and charm; both equally committed to the classics as to contemporary culture; and both equally incapable of living up to their own celebrated image.
Three years ago, Fry disappeared after walking out on the not-so-well-received West End production of the play "Cell Mates," in which he had the starring role. His friends feared suicide, with good reason; when he turned up a few weeks later, Fry admitted that he had attempted to take his own life.
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A director of “Character”

Fri, 03 Apr 1998 20:56:00 +0000

Last Monday night, when Sharon Stone announced the Academy Award winner
for best foreign language film, Mike van Diem, the Dutch director of
"Character," did a little victory dance in the aisle before charging
the stage to make his acceptance speech, a breathless promise to American audiences that "the subtitles are great."
Three days later, van Diem is seated proudly next to the award in a San Francisco hotel room, and although he is visibly tired, his excitement has barely subsided. Based on the classic Dutch novel of the same name about a young man's lifelong struggle with his tyrannical father, "Character" is van Diem's feature film debut. Prior to this, he was the director of a popular Dutch television drama, something he describes as a cross between "L.A. Law" and "thirtysomething" ("thirtysomething lawyers with a lot of personal problems," he says with a laugh). From television drama to award-winning epic film may seem to some like a great leap, but van Diem says it was a natural one. "Directing the series was like making mini features -- the writers and cast were so great. Working with them for two years definitely gave me the confidence to direct a film of this scale."
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Death and Violence in Rock 'n' Roll

Fri, 20 Mar 1998 14:10:00 +0000

If, as the rave generation has proclaimed, rock 'n' roll is indeed dead, then Mikal Gilmore has written a fitting eulogy with his "Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock 'n' Roll." In this collection of profiles, interviews and essays written for Rolling Stone, the L.A. Weekly and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner during the past 20 years, Gilmore probes the dark side of rock history with a searing passion. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gilmore doesn't lament that rock 'n' roll has seen its best days: "I am thankful that I was allowed to come of age in an historical moment -- that is, to 'grow up' -- when rock 'n' roll made some bold and upsetting advances," he writes in his introduction. "And I am thrilled with the realization that I will 'grow old' with music that will continue to do the same."
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the price of eggs in america

Thu, 05 Mar 1998 20:38:00 +0000

When Jennifer Nardini was in her final semester at the University of
Washington in the spring of 1996, she was, like many college seniors,
idealistic, adventurous -- and broke. So when she heard about women who
were making easy money by donating their eggs to the University of
Washington Fertility and Endocrine Center, she was intrigued. Though she
hadn't yet given much thought to having children herself, she'd always
assumed she'd have them some day. But in the meantime, if she wasn't ready
yet, why not help someone who was?
"You get 1,700 bucks, some shots, and then they take the stuff out," she
remembers thinking. "People strip for money, I figured, why not donate your
eggs? It didn't seem like such a big deal."
Having watched her own roommate go through the two-month cycle of birth
control pills and hormone injections without suffering any side effects,
Jennifer eagerly signed on with the clinic's growing stable of donors. She
filled out a 15-page questionnaire about her medical history, answered
myriad questions about her current hobbies and interests, and signed the
legal consent forms; when the clinic called weeks later to tell her that a
couple had chosen her as their preferred donor, she was thrilled. "I didn't
really know how I felt about the possibility that 18 years from now someone
could contact me and say, 'You're my mother,'" she admits. "But I thought
the happiness I'd get from helping out a couple would balance out any
weirdness."
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