Who: Dylan Baker, Eric Bogosian, David Cale, Michael Chernus, Richard Kind, Anson Mount, Billy Crudup, Gaby Hoffmann, Danny Mastrogiorgio, Craig “muMs” Grant, Marin Ireland, Matthew Maher, and Jennifer Tilly
What: Eric Bogosian’s 100 Monologues
Where: The Players, 16 Gramercy Park South
When: Monday, November 16, and Tuesday, November 17, $122-$222, 7:30
Why: In his 2014 book, 100 (Monologues), Eric Bogosian writes, “I did not set out to write monologues, but the more involved with the form I got, the more interesting it became to me. I liked the energy and excitement of speaking directly to an audience. I liked arranging the portraits of characters to create a larger whole. I liked the difficulty of writing and performing such complex stuff.” On November 16 & 17, a prestigious group of actors will join Bogosian at the Players to perform many of his monologues, in a two-night benefit supporting PS122’s “Give Performance Space” campaign, raising funds as the ultracool downtown institution prepares for the grand reopening of its renovated space at First Ave. and Ninth St. next summer. Among those performing hand-selected monologues are Dylan Baker, Jennifer Tilly, Billy Crudup, Gaby Hoffmann, Richard Kind, Anson Mount, Marin Ireland, and Bogosian, directed by longtime Bogosian collaborator Jo Bonney.
When old man Fletcher (Danny Glover) takes off for a week, leaving Mike (Mos Def) in charge of his soon-to-be-demolished video store called Be Kind Rewind (they don’t have any DVDs or recent movies), his most important rule is to “Keep Jerry Out.” Jerry (Jack Black) is a crazy conspiracy theorist who covers himself in metal to ward off alien rays. After a botched attack on the local power plant, Jerry becomes a walking magnet (in a laugh-out-loud hysterical scene) and unknowingly erases all the videos in the store. Taking a page from the Little Rascals plots when Spanky and Alfalfa would suddenly put on a show for some local cause, Mike and Jerry recruit Alma (Melonie Diaz) as they proceed on their very strange attempts at Sweding — making their own versions of such films as Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, and Robocop and renting them out as if they were the real thing. Following the brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the extremely strange The Science of Sleep, writer-director Michel Gondry has fashioned a really stupid movie that has an overabundance of heart and charm. Glover and Mos Def are soft and gentle in this Capra-esque comedy, offsetting Black’s hyperactivity. Every time you’re ready to write the film off as being just too silly and ridiculous, something comes along to make you double over in laughter. Be Kind Rewind kicks off the Museum of the Moving Image series “Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact,” being held in conjunction with the