this week in literature

STRANDED IN THE JUNGLE: JERRY NOLAN’S WILD RIDE

stranded in the jungle

Tuesday, November 7, Rough Trade, 64 North Ninth St., free, 8:00
Thursday, November 9, the Delancey, 168 Delancey St., free, 7:00
www.halleonardbooks.com
curtweiss.com

In his new book Stranded in the Jungle: Jerry Nolan’s Wild Ride (Backbeat, October, $24.99), Curt Weiss, a former member of the Rockats and Beat Rodeo (under the pseudonym Lewis King) and author of the blog “I am the coolest man on earth,” goes deep inside the rock-and-roll tale of Jerry Nolan, an underrated drummer with such bands as the New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers, and the Idols. Nolan, who died in 1992 at the age of forty-five, played with such punk icons as Sid Vicious, Richard Hell, Johnny Thunders, Arthur Kane, Glen Matlock, and many more. On November 7, Weiss will be celebrating the release of the book — which boasts the subtitle A Tale of Drugs, Fashion, the New York Dolls, and Punk Rock — at Rough Trade in Nolan’s native Williamsburg with a reading and Q&A. On November 9, Weiss heads to the Delancey on the Lower East Side for a meet-and-greet cocktail party, live performances by the Pipptones, Greg Allen’s Fringe Religion, and special guests, a book reading and signing, and Q&A sessions with Weiss, reporter Roger Clark, and photographer Roberta Bayley. Both events are free.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: BEST OF THE BOROUGH

Strike

Sergei Eisenstein’s classic Strike will be screened at the Brooklyn Museum with a live score conducted by Hisham Akira Bharoocha

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum celebrates the world’s preeminent borough in its monthly free First Saturday program in November with “Best of the Borough.” There will be live music by Alsarah & the Nubatones, Phony Ppl, and DJ Ian Friday; a curator tour of “Arts of Korea” with Joan Cummins; a hands-on art workshop inspired by Mickalene Thomas’s extraordinary “A Little Taste Outside of Love”; a scholar talk and book signing with Chip Colwell, author of Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture; a Brooklyn Dance Festival showcase with by the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, FLEXN, Kristin Sudeikis Dance, SynthesisDANCE, Concepts in Choreography, and the Francesca Harper Project; a pop-up gallery talk on Ancient Egyptian art; a book club reading with poet Tommy Pico from his latest book, Nature Poem; and a special screening of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 classic, Strike! with a live score conducted by Hisham Akira Bharoocha and featuring Angel Deradoorian, Jeremy Hyman, Nicos Kennedy, and Joe Williams. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Roots of ‘The Dinner Party’: History in the Making,” “Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt,” “Robert Longo: Untitled (Raft at Sea),” “Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo,” “Arts of Asia and the Middle East, “Infinite Blue,” “A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt,” and more.

A NITE TO DISMEMBER: THE HAUNTED LIBRARY

Tony Curtis dances with glee as he readies for Nitehawks A Nite to Dismember, which includes The Manitou

Tony Curtis dances with glee as he readies for Nitehawk’s “A Nite to Dismember,” which includes The Manitou

Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, October 28, $65, 12 midnight to 6:00 am
718-384-3980
nitehawkcinema.com

Nitehawk Cinema’s fifth annual “A Nite to Dismember” is dedicated to horror films based on novels, including several bloody-strange choices that should get your blood flowing for Halloween. Running a mere 540 minutes, “A Nite to Dismember: The Haunted Library” begins at midnight with Roger Corman’s 1964 favorite The Masque of the Red Death, starring Vincent Price and Jane Asher, based on the Edgar Allan Poe book and the Poe short story “Hop Frog.” Batting second is James Whale’s seldom-screened The Old Dark House, based on J. B. Priestley’s Benighted and boasting the spectacular cast of Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Eva Moore, Gloria Stuart, Melvyn Douglas, and Raymond Massey. Next up is Hideo Nakata’s genuinely creepy and scary 1998 game changer, Ringu, based on the Kôji Suzuki book; the flick was followed by sequels and a decent Hollywood remake, but there’s nothing like the original. In the cleanup spot is Jennifer Kent’s 2014 sleeper hit, The Babadook, about a children’s pop-up book with some downright frightening elements. The all-night scares conclude with a very odd yet inspired selection, William Girdler’s 1978 The Manitou, based on Graham Masterton’s first novel and featuring Michael Ansara, Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith, and Tony Curtis in a supernatural tale about a neck tumor that turns out to be the rather unhappy title character. The evening will also include a new short film, a costume contest hosted by Jameson Caskmates, FG. Freaks candy from Eugene J., David Lynch Organic Coffee, a library of horror books curated by Sam Zimmerman, Kris King, and Caryn Coleman, trivia with prizes from Shudder and Out of Print, gift bags, and a free eggs-and-tater-tots breakfast if you make it all the way through.

THE BABADOOK

A mother (Essie Davis) and her young son (Noah Wiseman) must get past terrible tragedy in The Babadook

THE BABADOOK (Jennifer Kent, 2014)
nitehawkcinema.com
www.thebabadook.com

A sleeper hit at Sundance that was named Best First Film of 2014 by the New York Film Critics Circle, The Babadook is a frightening tale of a mother and her young son — and a suspicious, scary character called the Babadook — trapped in a terrifying situation. Expanded from her 2005 ten-minute short, Monster, writer-director Jennifer Kent’s debut feature focuses on the relationship between single mom Amelia (Essie Davis), who works as a nursing home aide, and her seemingly uncontrollable six-year-old son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who is constantly getting into trouble because he’s more than just a little strange. Sam was born the same day his father, Oskar (Ben Winspear), died, killed in a car accident while rushing Amelia to the hospital to give birth, resulting in Amelia harboring a deep resentment toward the boy, one that she is afraid to acknowledge. Meanwhile, Sam walks around with home-made weapons to protect his mother from a presence he says haunts them. One night Amelia reads Sam a book that suddenly appeared on the shelf, an odd pop-up book called Mister Babadook that threatens her. She tries to throw it away, but as Sam and the book keep reminding her, “You can’t get rid of the Babadook.” Soon the Babadook appears to take physical form, and Amelia must face her deepest, darkest fears if she wants she and Sam to survive.

Writer-director Jennifer Kent brings out classic horror tropes in her feature debut, the sleeper hit THE BABADOOK

Writer-director Jennifer Kent explores classic horror tropes in her feature debut, the sleeper hit The Babadook

The Babadook began life as a demonic children’s book designed by illustrator Alex Juhasz specifically for the film — and one that was available in a limited edition, although you might want to think twice before inviting the twisted tome into your house. The gripping film, shot by Polish cinematographer Radek Ladczuk in subdued German expressionist tones of black, gray, and white with bursts of other colors, evokes such classic horror fare as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, where place plays such a key role in the terror. The Babadook itself is a kind of warped combination of the villains from F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Hideo Nakata’s Ringu. Kent, a former actress who studied at Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art with Davis, lets further influences show in the late-night television Amelia is obsessed with, which includes films by early French wizard Georges Méliès. But the real fear comes from something that many parents experience but are too ashamed or embarrassed to admit: that they might not actually love their child, despite trying their best to do so. At its tender heart, The Babadook is a story of a mother and son who must go through a kind of hell if they are going to get past the awful way they were brought together.

NYFF55 SPOTLIGHT ON DOCUMENTARY: VOYEUR

Voyeur

Gerald Foos and Gay Talese discuss voyeurism and journalistic ethics in eye-opening documentary

VOYEUR (Myles Kane & Josh Koury, 2017)
New York Film Festival, Film Society of Lincoln Center
Sunday, October 15, Francesca Beale Theater, $15, 9:00
Festival runs September 28 – October 15
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.org
www.netflix.com

“I’m a natural person to write about a voyeur because I’m a voyeur myself,” award-winning, bestselling journalist Gay Talese says in Myles Kane and Josh Koury’s Voyeur, which is getting a bonus screening at the New York Film Festival on October 15 prior to debuting on Netflix on December 1. The documentary makes a voyeur of the viewer as well as it follows the thirty-five-year journalistic relationship and offbeat friendship between Talese, longtime New York Times and Esquire writer and author of such books as Honor Thy Father and Thy Neighbor’s Wife, and Gerald Foos, the owner of a Colorado motel who claims he spent decades spying on people from a special crawl space he built above the rooms. In January 1980, Foos, owner of the Manor House Motel, wrote a letter to Talese, offering him a story about what he was doing; Foos considered himself a researcher, not a pervert or a peeping Tom. Using archival footage, news reports, and new interviews, Kane and Koury follow Foos, his second wife, Anita, and Talese as the journalist prepares to write a major piece for the New Yorker in advance of the release of his latest book, The Voyeur’s Motel. New Yorker articles editor Susan Morrison considers Foos a disturbed sociopath in need of attention, while Grove/Atlantic senior editor Jamison Stoltz and publisher Morgan Entrekin have their doubts about the veracity of Foos’s eerily specific tale. So as questions arise about key facts and Talese’s professional ethics, Foos wonders if he should have remained silent — “I’m used to private spaces, places that nobody could see me and I could see them,” he explains — and an angry Talese faces a potentially tarnished legacy.

Voyeur

Gerald Foos turned the Manor House Motel in Colorado into a research facility where he spied on couples having sex

Kane and Koury, who previously collaborated on such documentaries as Journey to Planet X, We Are Wizards, and We Will Live Again, often use a model of the Manor House to depict certain events while also re-creating scenes of Foos watching couples having sex — including one time when Talese joins him in the snooping and experiences a wardrobe malfunction. (Kane and Koury also let the camera lovingly follow Talese as he impeccably dresses himself, every detail crucial to his overall appearance, much like a journalist getting every single fact right.) Over the years, Talese and the Fooses developed a unique kind of bond that is unusual for a writer and his subject, but the erudite Talese, now eighty-five, defends his actions. “My life has pretty much been living through other people’s experiences and to be a very accurate chronicle, an observer, watching other people, listening,” he says. “I take my time, and I am genuinely interested in the people I am writing about because there’s something about them that I feel I can identify with.” It is fascinating to watch the reactions of Foos and Talese as the article comes out, the book is published, and all hell breaks loose. Voyeur raises significant issues about truth in journalism, the writer’s ethical responsibilities, and the lure of salaciousness. Early on, Talese, in his writing bunker filled with decades and decades of carefully organized files — in a way similar to the collections of baseball cards and other objects Foos keeps in his basement — says, “The story never ends. Stories never die. A lot of reporters think when they leave a story, it’s all over. Sometimes it’s just beginning.” Kane and Koury stick with the story and end up with quite a tale, something that is not about to die anytime soon.

INSPIRING WONDERSTRUCK: THE WIND

Lillian Gish in The Wind

Letty Mason (Lillian Gish) is being driven crazy by internal and external sources in The Wind

THE WIND (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
Museum of the Moving Image, Redstone Theater
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, October 15, $15, 2:00
Series runs October 13-22
718-777-6888
www.movingimage.us

Author Brian Selznick’s 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret proved to be movie magic; it was turned into the film Hugo by Martin Scorsese, which garnered eleven Oscar nominations and won four. In conjunction with the theatrical release of the latest movie based on a Selznick book, Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Selznick’s 2011Wonderstruck, the Museum of the Moving Image is hosting the series “Inspiring Wonderstruck,” consisting of nine films that influenced and inspired the author. One of the most direct influences was Victor Sjöström’s 1928 now-classic silent film The Wind, starring Lillian Gish as Letty Mason, a young woman traveling from Virginia to Texas to live with her cousin Beverly (Edward Earle). Traveling from the cultured, civilized East to what was still the wild West, the uncertain Letty must confront the fierceness of nature head-on — both human nature and the harsh natural environment. On the train, she is wooed by cattleman Wirt Roddy (Montagu Love), but her fears grow as she first sees the vicious wind howling outside the train window the closer she gets to her destination. Once in Sweetwater, she is picked up by her cousin’s neighbors, the handsome Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson) and his goofy sidekick, Sourdough (William Orlamond). Both men take a quick liking to Letty, who seems most attracted to Wirt. Soon Beverly’s wife, Cora (Dorothy Cumming, in her next-to-last film before retiring), becomes jealous of Letty’s closeness with her husband and kids and kicks her out, leaving a desperate Letty to make choices she might not be ready for as the wind outside becomes fiercer and ever-more dangerous. The Wind is a tour de force for Gish in her last silent movie, not only because of her emotionally gripping portrayal of Letty but because she put the entire production together, obtaining the rights to the novel by Dorothy Scarborough, hiring the Swedish director and star Hanson, and arguing over the ending with the producers and Irving Thalberg. (Unfortunately, she lost on that account, just about the only thing that did not go the way she wanted.)

The Wind

Letty Mason (Lillian Gish) and Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson) have some tough decisions to make in Victor Sjöström’s silent classic

Sjöström (The Phantom Carriage, The Divine Woman), who played Professor Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and cinematographer John Arnold create some dazzling effects as a twister threatens and Letty battles both inside and outside; she is regularly shot from the side, at the door of the shack where she lives, not knowing if she’d be safer inside or outside as the wind and sand blast over her. The film, an early look at climate change, was shot in the Mojave Desert in difficult circumstances; to get the wind to swirl, the crew used propellers from eight airplanes. Dialogue is sparse, and the story is told primarily in taut visuals. “Lillian Gish [is] at the height of her powers, fighting the wind and insanity nonstop for the entire movie,” Selznick says of The Wind. “A silent film made just after the silent era ended, the film is now recognized as one of Gish’s greats. The character of Lillian Mayhew, played by Julianne Moore in Wonderstruck, is directly inspired by Gish, and the fictional movie within a movie, Daughter of the Wind, is exactly that, an offspring of this very movie.” A restored 35mm print of The Wind with the original music and effects soundtrack is screening October 15 at 2:00 at the Museum of the Moving Image. “Inspiring Wonderstruck” runs October 13-22 and also includes, among others, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, Haynes’s I’m Not There and Poison, Diane Garey and Lawrence Hott’s Through Deaf Eyes, Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Hal Ashby’s Being There as well as a preview screening of Wonderstruck, followed by a Q&A with Selznick, production designer Mark Friedberg, and costume designer Sandy Powell and a book signing with Selznick.

PERFORMA 17 BIENNIAL

performa 17

Multiple venues
November 1-19, free – $40
17.performa-arts.org

The seventh Performa biennial takes place November 1-19 in multiple venues around the city, featuring an impressive roster of international artists pushing the limits of what live performance can be. This year’s lineup includes ten Performa commissions and dozens of events, from film, poetry, and dance to architecture, music, and comedy, arranged in such categories as Performa Projects, Performa Premieres, and Pavilion without Walls. In addition to the below recommendations for this always exciting festival, there will be presentations by Kendell Geers, Xavier Cha, Yto Barrada, Brian Belott, Flo Kasearu, Jimmy Robert, Mohau Modisakeng, Kelly Nipper, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Nicolas Hlobo, Kris Lemsalu with Kyp Malone, the Marching Cobras of New York, and others at such venues as Abrons Arts Center, BAM, the Met, White Box Arts Center, Marcus Garvey Park, the Connelly Theater, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Harlem Parish, and the Glass House in New Canaan.

Thursday, November 2, 7:00
Friday, November 3, 7:00 & 9:00
Saturday, November 4, 7:00

Teju Cole: Black Paper, BKLYN Studio at City Point, 445 Albee Square West, $15-$25

Thursday, November 2, 9, 16
Barbara Kruger: The Drop, Performa 17 Hub, 47 Walker St., $5, 4:00 – 8:00

Sunday, November 5
Monday, November 6

William Kentridge: Ursonate, Harlem Parish, 258 West 118th St., $25-$40, 7:00

Sunday, November 5, 12, 19
Eiko Otake: A Body in Places, Metropolitan Museum of Art, free with museum admission, 10:30 am

Wednesday, November 8
Estonian Pavilion Symposium: Call for Action — Key Moments of Estonian Performance Art, lecture and screening with curators Anu Allas and Maria Arusoo, free, Performa 17 Hub, 47 Walker St., 5:00

Thursday, November 9
Friday, November 10
Saturday, November 11

The Tracey Rose Show in Collaboration with Performa 17 and Afroglossia Presents: The Good Ship Jesus vs The Black Star Line Hitching a Ride with Die Alibama [Working Title], the Black Lady Theatre, 750 Nostrand Ave., $15-$25, 7:30

Friday, November 10
Zanele Muholi on Visual Activism, grand finale of two weeks of meetings, performances, discussions, and art-making, the Bronx Museum, 1040 Grand Concourse, free, 7:00

Friday, November 10
through
Sunday, November 19

Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley: The Newcomers, with Lena Kouvela and Sarah Burns, 28 Liberty Plaza, free, all day

be here now

Saturday, November 11
Architecture Conference, with Giovana Borasi, Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, Yve Laris Cohen, Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe), and Elizabeth Diller, Performa 17 Hub, 47 Walker St., free, 2:00 – 6:00

Monday, November 13
Tuesday, November 14

Wangechi Mutu: Banana Stroke, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, free with museum admission, 7:00

Monday, November 13
through
Friday, November 17

Kwani Trust: Everyone Is Radicalizing, multimedia installation and public programs, Performa 17 Hub, 47 Walker St., free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm

Wednesday, November 15
Thursday, November 16
Friday, November 17

Anu Vahtra: Open House Closing. A Walk, Performa 17 Hub, 47 Walker St., free, 5:00

Thursday, November 16
Julie Mehretu and Jason Moran: MASS (HOWL, eon), Harlem Parish, 258 West 118th St,, $25-$40, 7:00 & 9:00

Thursday, November 16
Friday, November 17
Saturday, November 18

Gillian Walsh: Moon Fate Sin, Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, 131 East Tenth St., $22-$25, 8:00

NOH-NOW: LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT

Luca Veggettis Left-Right-Left will make its North American premiere at Japan Society October 13-14 as part of NOH NOW series

Luca Veggetti’s Left-Right-Left will make its North American premiere at Japan Society October 13-14 as part of “NOH-NOW” series

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, October 13, and Saturday, October 14, $35, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

In May 2014, Italian director and choreographer Luca Veggetti brought Project IX — Pléïades to Japan Society, a graceful collaboration with Japanese percussionist Kuniko Kato and Japanese dancer Megumi Nakamura that was the finale of the sixtieth anniversary season of the institution’s performing arts program. Veggetti and Nakamura are now back for the North American premiere of Left-Right-Left, part of Japan Society’s 110th anniversary and the series “NOH-NOW,” which blends the traditional Japanese musical drama with contemporary styles. The work, commissioned by Japan Society and Yokohama Noh Theater, is conceived, directed, and choreographed by Veggetti, with the esteemed author and scholar Dr. Donald Keene of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture serving as project advisor and text translator. The three-part piece is inspired by the ancient play Okina, a sacred ritual about peace, prosperity, and safety. It will be performed by butoh dancer Akira Kasai, contemporary dancer Nakamura, and butoh-trained dancer Yukio Suzuki, with music director Genjiro Okura on noh small hand drum and Rokurobyoe Fujita on noh fue. Child noh actor Rinzo Nagayama will recites the new English translation of passages from Okina and another popular traditional noh play, Hagoromo, about a celestial feather robe. The lighting is by Clifton Taylor, with costumes by Mitsushi Yanaihara. “Noh has very precise patterns in the space that the performers follow,” Veggetti says in a promotional interview, explaining that his goal was “to use this archaic blueprint form and infuse it with different choreographic ideas, with that to find a language that is somehow organic.” Left-Right-Left, or “sa-yu-sa” in Japanese, will be at Japan Society on October 13, followed by a Meet-the-Artists Reception, and October 14, followed by an artist Q&A. In addition, Okura, Grand Master of the Okura School of kotsuzumi, will lead a noh music workshop on October 14 at 10:30 am ($45). “NOH-NOW” continues November 3-5 with the world premiere of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Rikyu-Enoura, December 7-9 with Leon Ingulsrud’s adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s Hanjo, and January 11-14 with Satoshi Miyagi’s Mugen Noh Othello.