Pat Cooper signs copies of his memoir at book warming party at Friars Club earlier this month (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Monday, November 15, TGI Friday’s, Penn Station, 2 Penn Plaza, Amtrak level, 5:00
Tuesday, November 16, Borders, 10 Columbus Circle, 7:00
Wednesday, November 17, TGI Friday’s, 34 Union Sq. East, 5:00
Friday, November 19, TGI Friday’s, Penn Station, 1 Penn Plaza, LIRR level, 5:00
Saturday, November 20, Uncle Vinnie’s Comedy Club, 168 New Dorp Ln., Staten Island, $35-$75, 8:00
www.patcooper.com
www.squareonepublishers.com
Born in Brooklyn to Italian immigrant parents, young Pasquale Caputo was expected to become a seventh-generation bricklayer. Instead, he took his chances onstage, where he tried not to lay bricks. Becoming a comic while still a kid, he eventually changed his name to Pat Cooper and ultimately turned into a comedian’s comedian who is not afraid to take on the system. “He has this fantastic capacity to challenge the art form, and has done so with an exquisite approach to the human condition,” Jerry Lewis writes in the foreword to Cooper’s intimate, revealing, and extremely funny memoir, HOW DARE YOU SAY HOW DARE ME! (Square One, November 15, $24.95). The book identifies Cooper’s roots in Red Hook, then traces his path from a rather brief flirtation with the military to his wild experiences in the Borscht Belt and Vegas, telling it like it is, four-letter words and all. The smooth, breezy narrative feels as if Cooper is in the room reading the book to you; in fact, he told the story to his friend and promoter, Steve Garrin, a recording engineer and producer who founded the VoiceWorks voiceover workshop. Writer Richard Herschlag then set it down on the printed page.
On November 3, Cooper launched the book with a boisterous party at the Friars Club that spilled out of the Milton Berle Room and into the Lucille Ball Room. Cooper received tributes from dean Freddie Roman, radio host Lionel, and fellow comedian Jackie “the Joke Man” Martling. Others in attendance included Marilyn Michaels, Joe Franklin, and ninety-six-year-old Professor Irwin Corey, who makes the spry eighty-one-year-old Cooper look like a spring chicken. When Cooper took the podium, he opened with schtick befitting the man whose latest DVD is entitled YOU’RE ALWAYS YELLING!, but he soon revealed his kinder, gentler side, which shows through in the book as well.
“To me, all the years that I’ve been in this business, and to get those kinds of accolades after writing a book, I was mostly in shock because I don’t expect it, I don’t look for it, and when it comes, it’s like a bonus that you never expected,” a humbled Cooper told twi-ny a few days later. “A lot of these people who were very kind to me I don’t know personally, and I was in shock again to think that’s what they thought about me, which is just an extra bonus. So, you know, you go down the road and you say you’re very fortunate, and I just hope this book says something, and I think the word is, and my friends who read the book said, it’s the word dignity, and I hope that’s what I put across. At least people will say, ‘Well, if I didn’t like the book, it had some dignity in it.’”
Cooper will be all over New York City next week, sitting in with Opie & Anthony, Alan Colmes, and Joy Behar and holding signings at several TGI Friday’s restaurants and the Borders in Columbus Circle; he will also be performing stand-up at Uncle Vinnie’s Comedy Club in Staten Island. He’ll be back on December 12 at Di Palo Selects in Little Italy, followed by the highly anticipated “An Evening with Pat Cooper” January 25 at the 92nd St. Y. His appearance at the Y should only lend more credence to those who are sure that Cooper is actually Jewish. “They believed that the skinny kid with the horn-rimmed glasses davened in the morning, did his routines on garlic and saints at night, and said the Shema before going to bed,” he writes in the book. “He was circumcised, not baptized. He was bar mitzvahed, not given Holy Communion. He dropped out of law school, not trade school.”
To enter to win a signed copy of HOW DARE YOU SAY HOW DARE ME!, send your name and daytime phone number to contest@twi-ny.com no later than Tuesday, November 16, at 12 noon. All entrants must be at least twenty-one years of age. One winner will be chosen at random. Good luck!
Screening at Film Forum in a new 35mm print in honor of its thirtieth anniversary, Jean-Luc Godard’s EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF marked a return to a somewhat more accessible narrative for the Nouvelle Vague auteur, although that does not mean it is by any means a traditional story or that it follows mainstream conventions. Arranged in four sections — the Imaginary (Slow Motion), Fear (Run for Your Life), Commerce (Trade), and Music — the film focuses on a smarmy, unlikable cigar-smoking video director, unironically named Paul Godard (Jacques Dutronc), who fights with his ex-wife (Paule Muret), wonders why he can’t touch his eleven-year-old daughter (Cécile Tanner) in rather sensitive areas, has driven away his bicycle-riding girlfriend, Denise Rimbaud (Nathalie Baye), and pays for a visit from Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), a prostitute who recites lines from Charles Bukowski in her head while plying her trade and seeking her independence. Godard frames many of the images like paintings, coming alive with bright, bold colors. Nearly all of the interior scenes are filmed in long takes with no camera movement or cross-cutting (with two notable exceptions), while other scenes are filled with slow-motion shots, forcing viewers to question what they are seeing. Meanwhile, snippets of Gabriel Yared’s score and incidental music are often heard by only some of the characters, who wonder where the sounds are coming from. Godard infuses the film with various thoughts on Marxism, feminism, capitalism, pedophilia, incest, and violence against women; in one unforgettable scene, a businessman arranges a ridiculously funny Rube Goldberg-like foursome, acting like a film director, mocking Jean-Luc Godard’s own profession. Thirty years down the road, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF, also known as SLOW MOTION and, in French, SAUVE QUI PEUT (LA VIE), feels as relevant, as challenging, and as entertaining as ever. (Note: Film critic and Godard biographer Richard Brody will introduce the 8:20 screening on November 19.)
Robert Mitchum stars in Charles Laughton’s lurid story of traveling preacher/con man/murderer Harry Powell, who has the word “love” tattooed on one set of knuckles and “hate” on the other. While in prison, Powell bunks with Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who got caught stealing $10,000 — but the only person who knows where the money is is Ben’s young son, John (Billy Chapin). When Preacher is released from jail, he shows up on the Harpers’ doorstep, ready to woo the widow Willa (Shelley Winters) — and get his hands on the money any way he can, including torturing John and his sister, Ruby (Gloria Castillo). Laughton’s only directorial effort is seriously flawed — the scenes in the beginning and end with Lillian Gish are wholly unnecessary and detract from the overall mood. Stanley Cortez’s cinematography is outstanding, featuring his unique use of shadows, the battle between light and dark (which plays off of several themes: old versus young, rich versus poor, good versus evil, and men versus women), and some marvelous silhouettes. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER will screen Friday and Saturday at midnight at the IFC Center.
