Salon.com > Kera Bolonik http://www.salon.com Wed, 30 May 2012 12:26:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 “Smash”: An irresistible take on Marilyn, musicals http://www.salon.com/2012/02/06/smash_an_irresistible_take_on_marilyn_musicals/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/06/smash_an_irresistible_take_on_marilyn_musicals/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:40:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12306351 I’m a bad gay. I don’t like musicals. I am not a “Gleek” (though I am awestruck by "Glee’s" bold portraits of gay adolescent life  — I’d have given anything to watch a show like that when I was 15). I have trouble suspending disbelief when people spontaneously break into song; I get squirmy and my eyes dart around as if the singer is prancing naked in front of me, and I’m trying to give her privacy, whether or not she wants it.

So I am not exactly the ideal audience for "Smash," the new series NBC has been promoting like crazy (the pilot is already posted on Hulu), by playwright Theresa Rebeck ("The Understudy," "Seminar"), about the making of a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe. (That's this season. If the show gets renewed, we will watch another musical develop throughout the next season — a sort of musical-theater procedural. "Law & Order: The Musical!") The pilot opens with "American Idol" runner-up Katharine McPhee belting “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” daydreaming of her Broadway debut while auditioning before an underwhelmed director: For a curmudgeon like me, that has skin-crawl written all over it. Except that I was absolutely, instantly bewitched. By the writing. By the acting. By the story and the stories within the story. Even by — especially by — the music. That credit goes to the Tony-winning team Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman ("Hairspray"), who wrote more than a dozen original songs for the series, classically great musical-theater numbers that recall Jule Styne, even a little early Sondheim, and are performed only by those striving to be on the stage (no, Debra Messing will not break into song, nor will Anjelica Huston) — at auditions, or practiced at home, or in fantasy sequences — with lyrics that masterfully mirror both the theatrics of musical in progress and the goings-on of the actors’ lives.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/02/06/smash_an_irresistible_take_on_marilyn_musicals/feed/ 22 “Saturday Night Live” phones it in, again http://www.salon.com/2012/01/17/saturday_night_live_phones_it_in_again/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/17/saturday_night_live_phones_it_in_again/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:51:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12182321 After a week in which Mitt Romney's "I like to fire people" gaffe caught fire and fellow Republican candidates denounced him as a vulture capitalist, his campaign must have winced when they tuned into "Saturday Night Live" and saw Jason Sudeikis, as the GOP front-runner, sitting in a South Carolina diner. Turned out it had nothing to worry about -- on "SNL," Romney was the same mildly robotic guy as ever, only now he also liked to fire his breakfast. When his waitress asked him how he liked his eggs, Sudeikis-as-Romney cracked, "laid off."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/17/saturday_night_live_phones_it_in_again/feed/ 33 “Chelsea” has a Chelsea Handler problem http://www.salon.com/2012/01/11/chelsea_has_a_chelsea_handler_problem/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/11/chelsea_has_a_chelsea_handler_problem/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12087361 "Are You There, Chelsea?," the title of Chelsea Handler’s new series premiering tonight (8:30 p.m., 7: 30 central) on NBC, is really a question best left in the writers’ room. If you have to ask, the answer is probably “no.”

Like her or not -- Handler's scorching, raunchy humor isn’t for everyone -- the comedian should be front and center. Why wouldn’t she be? Handler has become a household name, as the host of a 5-year-old late-night talk show, "Chelsea Lately," and as the author of four best-selling books. The sitcom, which was green-lit by Handler’s now-ex, Ted Harbert, the CEO of Comcast, is based on "Are You There, Vodka, It’s Me, Chelsea?," a collection of essays detailing her soused and saucy antics.

So, where is Chelsea, then? Roseanne starred in "Roseanne." Jerry starred in "Seinfeld." Louis C.K. stars in "Louie." Even her caustic pal Whitney Cummings -- who barely registered a blip outside of the comedy circuit until this past fall -- stars in her eponymous sitcom. Handler appears in only seven of the 13 episodes, cast -- by choice, she says -- as the conservative Christian sister to her fictional twentysomething alter ego. (Handler claims she was too busy with her talk show to be the sitcom’s star or head writer.) Instead, Laura Prepon (Donna Pinciotti from "That '70s Show") plays young Chelsea Newman, ventriloquizing Handlerisms like a white kid reciting a Chris Rock monologue (if only she were savoring the jokes as breathlessly. If only the jokes were so worthy) while Handler's presence in these early shows underline how flaccid her emasculating quips sound when intoned by anyone but her.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/11/chelsea_has_a_chelsea_handler_problem/feed/ 13 The year Claire Danes won our hearts, again http://www.salon.com/2011/12/30/the_year_claire_danes_won_our_hearts_again/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/30/the_year_claire_danes_won_our_hearts_again/#comments Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=11300431 Back in 1994, when my female and gay-male friends longed to gaze into the beautiful, vacant eyes of Jared Leto’s TV alter-ego, Jordan Catalano, from the short-lived ABC series "My So-Called Life," my 23-year-old self was admittedly crushed out on its star, Claire Danes. OK, maybe “crushed out” is not the right word (though not untrue) — I was awestruck by 15-year-old Danes’ portrait of Angela Chase, a gawkily pretty sophomore eager to strike out on her own, or at least wedge some distance from her overbearing parents and swap her smart, nerdy childhood friends for an edgier crew. Maybe it wasn’t a stretch for this intelligent adolescent to depict another. But it was no less bold to play her angsty doppelgänger so faithfully, with such honesty and rawness — her lip quivering, her voice teetering on the edge of whine, her tear-swollen eyes twittering, searching for Jordan and then cowering, avoiding direct eye contact. She let Angela be irritating, sometimes infuriating, because, well, the character’s 15. But even at that young age, Danes had the instincts to do the near impossible: elicit a viewer’s sympathy for an unsympathetic character. She rendered Angela so vivid, so familiar — but not familiar like you’d seen this person on TV before, because you hadn’t — that you’d cringe, laugh, cry and cringe some more because you either personally identified with the kid, and were mortified by watching a chapter of your life unfold before your eyes, or you identified her as someone you knew.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/30/the_year_claire_danes_won_our_hearts_again/feed/ 11 My coming-out mix tape http://www.salon.com/2008/06/28/mix_tape/ http://www.salon.com/2008/06/28/mix_tape/#comments Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2008/06/28/mix_tape New Wave music was once my life raft, as it was for so many angst-ridden Gen X teenagers in the 1980s. In my hyperbolic mind, I was a poster child for misery, desperate for company, and isolated by my parents, who grounded me nearly every week of my pubescent life, fanning the flames of my self-loathing. But that wasn't the sole or even the greatest source of my anguish.

I was roiling with a sexuality crisis that I couldn't bring myself to give name to or otherwise articulate, even within the privacy of my own mind. It may seem overly dramatic and -- in light of the immense progress we've made in the past two decades -- even inconceivable in this day and age for a kid to be terrified of associating herself with the word "lesbian." But this was the 1980s. The only gay programming we had was gay deprogramming: LOGO was far from a concept, and the only queer characters I saw on big and small screens were bloodthirsty or dejected or predatory.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/06/28/mix_tape/feed/ 72 Rites (and wrongs) of Jewish passage http://www.salon.com/2005/07/06/oppenheimer/ http://www.salon.com/2005/07/06/oppenheimer/#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2005 20:22:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/07/06/oppenheimer I dreaded my bat mitzvah 21 years ago. I wasn't worried about screwing up my debut on the "bimah," where I'd chant a portion of the Bible -- I'd logged nearly a year of preparation with our synagogue's cantor, and five years of Hebrew school. But as an eighth grader who'd just turned 13, I was the youngest of my classmates to become a bat mitzvah, and I knew I'd have to subject my friends -- both Jewish and Gentile -- to yet another long, arduous religious service. I prayed my parents would let me reward everyone's patience with a kick-ass party. Most of my peers had DJs at their b'nai ("b'nai" denotes the plural form) mitzvah receptions -- one girl even had a band -- which had the effect of transforming those standard gefilte fish and pasta salad buffet luncheons into rousing school dances, while the grown-ups poured themselves endless goblets of that sickeningly sweet Manischewitz wine.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2005/07/06/oppenheimer/feed/ 0 Journey to the “planet of thin” http://www.salon.com/2004/03/17/passing_for_thin/ http://www.salon.com/2004/03/17/passing_for_thin/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2004 21:22:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2004/03/17/passing_for_thin From the earliest years of her Montana childhood until she was a 42-year-old New York literary agent, Frances Kuffel ate with a vengeance. Her 338-pound body made her the subject of ridicule and forced her to suffer excruciating physical pain. Kuffel was 44 before she ever got a pedicure, or wore a tailored suit, a cashmere sweater, or even a pair of lined pants. Running was out of the question, because most days, walking was too much for her to bear. She'd had sex before, but she'd never gone out on a date, or even been told she was pretty. The world was something she observed from a distance.

But in March of 1998, Kuffel decided to make a radical change after recognizing the parallels between her eating habits and her best friend's alcoholism. She braved her first Overeaters Anonymous meeting at a Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., church basement that day, wearing elastic-waisted pants ("Lane Bryant's largest size"), a black T-shirt ("permanently stiff with perspiration under the arms"), Keds without socks, and an unlined raincoat. There she encountered a room filled with women of all shapes and sizes: "These women got it, had done it all," she writes. "Eaten, been fat, lost their lives, come into a church basement and admitted the problem." Kuffel cried through those first few meetings before her 18-month journey to the "Planet of Thin" took off. And though she was quick to lose the weight -- 188 pounds in all -- through a carefully regimented diet and, eventually, an exercise program, she was slow to realize that life was to be experienced, and that she could become an active participant in it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2004/03/17/passing_for_thin/feed/ 0 Shaken and stirred http://www.salon.com/2003/07/08/burroughs_3/ http://www.salon.com/2003/07/08/burroughs_3/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2003 16:53:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2003/07/08/burroughs When author Augusten Burroughs first came to New York at 23 to take a copywriting job at Ogilvy & Mather, he owned only a yellow inflatable raft for a bed, a cheap phone, a Braun travel alarm clock and a copy of "The Andy Warhol Diaries." It appeared he traveled light, but actually Burroughs carried a lot of emotional baggage. In last year's mordantly funny memoir "Running With Scissors," Burroughs wrote that when he was 12, his newly divorced, bipolar poet mother pawned him off on her crazy shrink, Dr. Finch, an onanist who got aroused by pictures of Golda Meir and sought prophecies in his own fecal matter. (His license was eventually revoked in 1986.) Finch taught Burroughs how to fake a suicide attempt to get out of going to school, and hosted a steady stream of patients in his roach-infested, anarchic Northampton, Mass., household.

By far, the most menacing resident was Neil Bookman, a 33-year-old who preyed on Burroughs; the two embarked on a disturbing relationship that was encouraged by the doctor. By the time Burroughs left Dr. Finch's house at age 17, he had no formal education, yet he'd had countless sexual escapades, witnessed primal scenes between his mother and her lesbian lover, and watched enough psychotic breakdowns -- his mother's, and those of Dr. Finch's various patients -- to shock even the most seasoned psychoanalyst.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2003/07/08/burroughs_3/feed/ 0 Muzzling Moore http://www.salon.com/2002/01/07/moore_11/ http://www.salon.com/2002/01/07/moore_11/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2002 17:53:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/01/07/moore It was the kind of battle that provocateur journalist Michael Moore would ordinarily consider red meat: a major media corporation threatening a writer's freedom of speech. Moore's new book, "Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation," which pointedly criticizes President George W. Bush and his administration, was due in stores on Oct. 2. As with many books scheduled for release in the weeks that immediately followed Sept. 11, plans to ship the title to stores were put on hold. According to HarperCollins, "both Moore and [Judith Regan's HarperCollins imprint] ReganBooks thought its publication would be insensitive, given the events of September 11."

By mid-October, there were 50,000 finished books (out of an announced first printing of 100,000) collecting a month's worth of dust in a Scranton, Pa., warehouse, and ReganBooks had yet to schedule a new release date for "Stupid White Men." It was holding off in hopes that Moore would include new material to address the recent events, and would change the title and cover art. Moore says he readily agreed to these requests. But once HarperCollins had his consent, it asked Moore to rewrite sections -- up to 50 percent of the book -- that it deemed politically offensive given the current climate. In addition, the Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing house wanted Moore to help defray half the cost of destroying the old copies and of producing the new edition, by contributing $100,000 from his royalty account.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2002/01/07/moore_11/feed/ 0 How low can they go? http://www.salon.com/2001/12/10/women_s_mags/ http://www.salon.com/2001/12/10/women_s_mags/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2001 20:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//style/2001/12/10/women_s_mags When Mademoiselle died a very public death in October, media eulogizers across the nation remembered the magazine with yearning and disdain: They celebrated its illustrious literary legacy, but recalled with bitterness the decade-long identity crisis that preceded the magazine's demise.

After 66 years of continuous publication, Mademoiselle had become little more than a product-pushing, "Sex and the City" fanzine, a far cry from the magazine that launched the careers of writers like Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Chabon and Jennifer Egan -- and won O. Henry Awards (43) and a National Magazine Award for Fiction in the process.

Its disappearance from newsstands marked an official departure, but there are those -- editors and readers alike -- who believe that Mademoiselle died, along with a handful of other "women's glossies," when they stopped publishing fiction back in the 1990s. The move was seen by some media analysts to have been financially inevitable, but was interpreted by many in the worlds of media and publishing as a surrender to simplistic marketing instincts and a misinterpretation of readers' interests and aptitude.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2001/12/10/women_s_mags/feed/ 0 Harry Potter hanky-panky http://www.salon.com/2001/01/12/potterfix/ http://www.salon.com/2001/01/12/potterfix/#comments Fri, 12 Jan 2001 21:19:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/01/12/potterfix To err is human. But to correct surreptitiously is fishy, especially to Harry Potter fans.

In July, careful British and American readers of J.K. Rowling's children's fantasy series took immediate notice of an error that appeared in the fourth installment, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." The mistake concerned the order of Harry's parents' emergence from villainous Lord Voldemort's wand in the novel's climactic scene. In the previous Potter books, Rowling makes it quite clear that Voldemort killed first James and then Lily Potter. In "Goblet of Fire," however, the ghosts of the evil wizard's victims emerge from his deadly wand, we are told, in the reverse order in which they were killed, yet James steps out of the wand before Lily.

This led many of Rowling's most ardent fans to speculate that the discrepancy was intentional, a plot twist to be picked up in Harry Potter V, a notion that sent readers' imaginations running wild and inspired innumerable theories. According to Brian Dorband, one of more than 500 members of the international HPforGrownups mailing list on eGroups, this has been a subject of discussion for months. The "list mom" for HPforGrownups, Penny Linsenmayer, says that members have been coming up with theories "ranging from the perfectly plausible to the insane."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2001/01/12/potterfix/feed/ 0 The e-book wars http://www.salon.com/2000/10/20/frankfurt/ http://www.salon.com/2000/10/20/frankfurt/#comments Fri, 20 Oct 2000 08:24:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/10/20/frankfurt Nobody is more eager for literary kudos than the e-book community. This loose conglomeration of pioneers, small-business owners and dreamers was publishing e-books -- content produced in digital format, to be read on a computer or on special electronic reading devices -- long before New York publishing houses suddenly became enamored with the notion after Stephen King reportedly sold 400,000 copies of "Riding the Bullet" in less than 48 hours. And until two weeks ago, many in the e-book community had reason to believe that they would finally get that recognition Friday, at the Frankfurt Book Fair during the first annual International eBook Awards ceremony.

The four winners of the awards -- for best fiction and nonfiction original e-books, and best fiction and nonfiction e-book conversions -- will each receive $10,000, and the best overall original e-book (fiction or nonfiction) will receive a grand prize of $100,000. Perhaps more important to an industry that has been laboring in obscurity, the winners will also gain the attention of publishing's major players during its most prestigious international conference, a gathering where the rights to books, often by authors of world renown, are sold.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2000/10/20/frankfurt/feed/ 0 A list of their own http://www.salon.com/2000/08/16/bestseller/ http://www.salon.com/2000/08/16/bestseller/#comments Wed, 16 Aug 2000 19:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2000/08/16/bestseller It takes a wizard to change the course of the Times.

For more than a year, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has occupied the top three slots of the New York Times' adult fiction bestseller list. Last month it was about to capture a fourth when the 68-year-old national institution debuted its first new offshoot in 16 years and effectively evicted the Potter books from the prime real estate they had monopolized for more than 20 months.

Harry Potter managed to grab the top four slots on the new list, a children's books bestseller list that includes 11 other children's and young adult (YA) titles. The new list is located below the adult roster in a quarter that is considered either a ghetto or a lucrative niche, depending upon whom you ask.

"It's been a long time coming," remarks Joanna Cotler, publisher of Joanna Cotler Books at HarperCollins Children's, "and I'm thrilled that Harry Potter is what finally pushed them into it. I've always looked at the New York Times' bestseller list as wonderful free advertising. Now children's books get it, too."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2000/08/16/bestseller/feed/ 0 A conversation with James Dale http://www.salon.com/2000/07/17/dale/ http://www.salon.com/2000/07/17/dale/#comments Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/07/17/dale On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of the Boy Scouts of America having the constitutional right to exclude gay people. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist interpreted the First Amendment's protection of the freedom of association to mean that the Supreme Court could not force one of America's most treasured institutions "to accept members where such acceptance would derogate from the organization's expressive message," thus overturning last year's New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that the Scouts had violated the state law banning anti-gay discrimination.

The Dale of Boy Scouts of America vs. Dale, No. 99-699 is a 30-year-old advertising director of POZ magazine and a one-time assistant scoutmaster of the Boy Scouts. I befriended James Dale in 1988 during our freshman year at Rutgers, where we were both drawn to the State University of New Jersey for more than just the classes. With its liberal reputation, and proximity to New York City, Rutgers promised to be a comfortable environment for people like us to come out.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2000/07/17/dale/feed/ 0 Martin the moribund http://www.salon.com/2000/04/05/arnold_2/ http://www.salon.com/2000/04/05/arnold_2/#comments Wed, 05 Apr 2000 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/04/05/arnold Every Thursday for the past two years, people in the publishing industry have been gathering around the proverbial water cooler to discuss Martin Arnold's column, "Making Books," in the arts section of the New York Times. Their fascination, however, is anything but reverent; instead, it's with a mixture of amusement and bemusement that book editors, agents and publicists ask how a reporter at the paper of record could be so out of touch with his own beat.

To the dismay of those who consider the book industry interesting, Arnold covers inane topics that run the gamut from writers' pets that appear in author bios ("No doubt years from now those afflicted with bibliomania will look back and be puzzled as to why so many of our present-day writers included their dogs and cats and other curious items and achievements in their book flap 'About the Author' sketches") to publishing houses' thirst for new novelists ("Keep pecking away at your personal computer. There's a growing market for first novels, and there may be a yearning editor looking for you"). In the words of one literary agent, Arnold "writes as if he has no sense of the industry."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2000/04/05/arnold_2/feed/ 0 Give me a dick or give me death! http://www.salon.com/1999/09/23/girly_girl/ http://www.salon.com/1999/09/23/girly_girl/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/1999/09/23/girly_girl Women I know, namely lesbians, are wont to inquire whether I'm a femme top or a
soft butch bottom. They ask if I have an inner gay man or an inner straight
woman. Do I like straight-acting, straight-appearing dykes, or do I prefer
more traditional-looking Sapphists?

Never having composed a personal ad, I retort, I possess answers to none of
these questions. "Well," these women ask, "what were you like as a little
girl?"

One thing I'm certain of: I was never a little girl.

It is not that I was robbed of a childhood. I was very much a kid, a small
one at that. But while other girls my age immersed themselves in play worlds
that included rainbows and unicorns, Barbie and baby dolls, kiddy kitchenware
and cosmetics, I was drawn to boy toys like "Star Wars" action figures,
Matchbox cars, Erector sets and the like. I coveted male privilege. From the
age of 4 until I was 10, I actually prayed to God, Santa Claus, "My
Favorite Martian," Samantha on "Bewitched" -- anyone who, in my mind, posessed
the power to grant me a wish -- for a penis. The boys I knew had license to be
kids, to play with games that were designed for children, not
adults-in-training. I wanted those games. I longed for those privileges. Give
me a dick, was my cry, or give me death.

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