twi-ny recommended events

FUN CITY — NEW YORK IN THE MOVIES 1967-75: THE LANDLORD

Young Elgar Winthrop Julius Enders’s (Beau Bridges) spoiled life of privilege is about to dramatically change in THE LANDLORD

THE LANDLORD (Hal Ashby, 1970)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, August 18, free with museum admission, 2:00
Series runs through September 1
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

When rich kid Elgar Winthrop Julius Enders (Beau Bridges) finally decides to do something with his spoiled life of privilege, he takes a rather curious turn, buying a dilapidated tenement in a pregentrified Park Slope that resembles the South Bronx in Hal Ashby’s poignant directorial debut, The Landlord. At first, the less-than-worldly Elgar doesn’t quite know what he’s gotten himself into, believing it will be easy to kick out the current residents and then replace the decrepit building with luxury apartments. He pulls up to the place in his VW bug convertible, thinking he can just waltz in and do whatever he wants, but just as his car is vandalized, so is his previously charmed existence, as he gets to know wise house mother Marge (Pearl Bailey), the sexy Francine (Diana Sands), her activist husband, Copee (Louis Gossett Jr.), and Black Power professor Duboise (Melvin Stewart), none of whom is up-to-date with the rent. Meanwhile, Elgar starts dating Lanie (Marki Bey), a light-skinned half-black club dancer he assumed was white, infuriating his father, William (Walter Brooke), and mother, Joyce (a delightful, Oscar-nominated Lee Grant), who are in the process of setting up their daughter, Susan (Susan Anspach), with the white-bread Peter Coots (Robert Klein).

Elgar has a whole lot of learning to do in Hal Ashby’s New York City-set black comedy

Based on the novel by Kristin Hunter, The Landlord is a telling microcosm of race relations and class conflict in a tumultuous period in the nation’s history, as well as that of New York City, coming shortly after the civil rights movement and the free-love late ’60s. The film is masterfully shot by Astoria-born cinematographer Gordon Willis (Klute, Annie Hall, Manhattan, all three Godfather movies), who sets the bright, open spaces of the Enderses’ massive estate against the dark, claustrophobic rooms of the dank tenement. Screenwriter Bill Gunn (Ganja and Hess) and Ashby avoid getting overly preachy in this at times outrageous black comedy, incorporating slapstick along with some more tender moments; the scene in which Joyce meets Marge is a marvel of both. And just wait till you see Coots’s costume at a fancy fundraiser. The Landlord began quite a string for Ashby, who followed it up with Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There in a remarkable decade for the former film editor (In the Heat of the Night) who died in 1988 at the age of fifty-nine. The Landlord is screening August 18 at 2:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “Fun City: New York in the Movies 1967-75,” guest curated by J. Hoberman and continuing through September 1 with such other Big Apple fare as The Angel Levine, The French Connection, Coogan’s Bluff, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and Taking Off.

NEW YORK METS SOCIAL MEDIA NIGHT

Mets media guru Jay Horwitz will be honored with his own Mini Me bobblehead at Social Media Night benefit for Shannon Forde

NEW YORK METS vs. DETROIT TIGERS
Citi Field
123-01 Roosevelt Ave. at 126th St.
Friday, August 23, $35, 7:10
www.newyorkmetscom

When we were at a Mets spring training game in Port St. Lucie back in March, we saw a surprising sight. A large group of autograph seekers were gathered around a schlubby older man, thrusting baseballs, photos, shirts, hats, and other items at him for his John Hancock. Two men approached us and asked who the guy was. We told them that it was Jay Horwitz, the team’s longtime PR guru, and they got all excited and immediately sped over to join the crowd like they were Mookie Wilson dashing for home. Horwitz, the Mets’ vice president of media relations, has been the team’s mouthpiece since April 1980, and he is now a Twitter sensation, with more than twenty-five thousand followers. He posts numerous times a day, writing about how the team is doing (“Gonzalez Germen impressive on and off mound. First save and did great job in doing his post game interview in English.”), pointing out odd stories (“Meet the only elephant who is a Mets fan at the San Diego Zoo. His name is Horace. Big fan since 1978. pic.twitter.com/0TeUYyF3d1”), answering questions directly, and joining the debate about recently being caught on camera with his finger in his nose (“Plan to appeal my nose case to Supreme Court. Judge Roberts saw game and said it was a scratch not a pick. Says I have the votes.”) On August 23, the Mets will honor Horwitz, who just turned sixty-eight, with his own bobblehead as part of Social Media Night, which is also a benefit for Shannon Forde, the team’s forty-one-year-old senior director of media relations and married mother of two who has been battling Stage 4 breast cancer since last August. Fans who buy $35 tickets through this link will receive the bobblehead, which Horwitz has dubbed Mini Me (“After an extra inning game and a two hour bus trip to SD, Mini Me sleeps in today. Have to get up soon. pic.twitter.com/fLcuyjNfBU”), with a portion of the proceeds going to Hope Shines for Shannon. In addition, the interleague game against the first-place Detroit Tigers will be followed by a concert by Third Eye Blind (“Semi-Charmed Life,” “Graduate”). When asked by NY Sports Dog back in 2008 what his secret was, Horwitz said, “Never lie. You can’t lie in New York with all the exposure here. Be up front with people even in the worst of times.” Clearly, it also helps to have a wacky sense of humor, especially as a member of the Mets franchise.

CUTIE AND THE BOXER

Documentary tells the engaging story of a pair of Japanese artists and the life they have made for themselves in Brooklyn

CUTIE AND THE BOXER (Zachary Heinzerling, 2013)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves., 212-330-8182
Opens Friday, August 16
www.facebook.com/cutieandtheboxer

Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer is a beautifully told story of love and art and the many sacrifices one must make to try to succeed in both. In 1969, controversial Japanese Neo Dada action painter and sculptor Ushio Shinohara came to New York City, looking to expand his career. According to the catalog for the recent MoMA show “Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde,” which featured four works by Ushio, “American art had seemed to him to be ‘marching toward the glorious prairie of the rainbow and oasis of the future, carrying all the world’s expectations of modern painting.’” Four years later, he met nineteen-year-old Noriko, who had left Japan to become an artist in New York as well. The two fell in love and have been together ever since, immersed in a fascinating relationship that Heinzerling explores over a five-year period in his splendid feature-length theatrical debut. Ushio and Noriko live in a cramped apartment and studio in DUMBO, where he puts on boxing gloves, dips them in paint, and pounds away at large, rectangular canvases and builds oversized motorcycle sculptures out of found materials. Meanwhile, Noriko, who has spent most of the last forty years taking care of her often childlike husband and staying with him through some rowdy times and battles with the bottle, is finally creating her own work, an R. Crumb-like series of drawings detailing the life of her alter ego, Cutie, and her often cruel husband, Bullie. (“Ushi” means “bull” in Japanese.) While Ushio is more forthcoming verbally in the film, mugging for the camera and speaking his mind, the pig-tailed Noriko is far more tentative, so director and cinematographer Heinzerling brings her tale to life by animating her work, her characters jumping off the page to show Cutie’s constant frustration with Bullie.

Ushio Shinohara creates one of his action paintings in CUTIE AND THE BOXER

During the course of the too-short eighty-two-minute film — it would have been great to spend even more time with these unique and compelling figures — the audience is introduced to the couple’s forty-year-old son, who has some issues of his own; Guggenheim senior curator of Asian Art Alexandra Munroe, who stops by the studio to consider purchasing one of Ushio’s boxing paintings for the museum; and Chelsea gallery owner Ethan Cohen, who represents Ushio. But things never quite take off for Ushio, who seems to always be right on the cusp of making it. Instead, the couple struggles to pay their rent. One of the funniest, yet somehow tragic, scenes in the film involves Ushio packing up some of his sculptures — forcing them into a suitcase like clothing — and heading back to Japan to try to sell some pieces. Cutie and the Boxer is a special documentary that gets to the heart of the creative process as it applies both to art and love, focusing on two disparate people who have made a strange yet thoroughly charming life for themselves. Cutie and the Boxer opens August 16 at Lincoln Plaza and the Landmark Sunshine; Ushio and Noriko will be at the latter for several Q&As over the weekend, including some with Heinzerling as well.

FUN CITY — NEW YORK IN THE MOVIES 1967-75: LITTLE MURDERS

Alfred Chamberlain (Elliott Gould) takes a break in Alan Arkin’s LITTLE MURDERS

LITTLE MURDERS (Alan Arkin, 1971)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, August 17, free with museum admission, 5:30
Series runs August 10 – September 1
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Alan Arkin’s directorial debut is a hysterically absurdist foray into the urban paranoia that haunted a lawless New York City in the late 1960s and 1970s. Based on Jules Feiffer’s first play, which was a Broadway flop in 1969 but became a hit in London and off Broadway, Little Murders centers on the offbeat relationship between the determined and domineering Patsy Newquist (Marcia Rodd) and the calm, easygoing Alfred Chamberlain (Elliott Gould). They first meet when Patsy tries to save him from getting beaten up yet again by a group of thugs, but he doesn’t want any help; he never fights back, instead letting them tire themselves out. A former successful commercial photographer, Alfred now spends his time taking artistic pictures of feces he finds on the filthy streets. He and Patsy sort of start dating, but Alfred, who regularly says, “I don’t know what love is,” is too passive for Patsy, who makes it her project to mold him into a stronger man, as if he were one of her interior design projects. The black comedy reaches new heights when Alfred meets Patsy’s rather eccentric family, played by the three actors who originated the roles on the stage. Vincent Gardenia is her high-strung father who laments what has become of the city, Elizabeth Wilson is her prim and proper mother who only sees what she wants to see, and Jon Korkes is deliciously funny as her crazy brother, who finds humor in just about everything. Meanwhile, wherever Patsy goes, a heavy-breathing phone caller follows.

Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, and Alan Arkin discuss the wacky wedding scene in LITTLE MURDERS

Little Murders is one of the great unsung films of the 1970s, a wickedly funny, at times manic examination of love, fear, family, faith, and violence. The story is highlighted by several riotous monologues about the state of the world, including an epic rant delivered by Lou Jacobi as an angry judge and an oddball hippie speech by Donald Sutherland (Gould’s M*A*S*H costar) as an alternative minister. Arkin also appears as Lt. Practice, a cop stuttering about how many unsolved murders there have been in the past six months. The film is shot in a beautifully subdued, lurid palette by Gordon Willis, who photographed such other seminal New York-set ’70s pics as The Landlord, Klute, The Godfather I and II, Annie Hall, and Manhattan. A genuine underground cult classic, Little Murders is screening August 17 at 5:30 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “Fun City: New York in the Movies 1967-75,” guest curated by J. Hoberman and continuing through September 1 with such other Big Apple films as the French Connection, Across 110th Street, Born to Win, and The Landlord.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “SAVE OUR SHIP” BY CATHERINE IRWIN

It’s been ten years since Catherine Irwin’s debut solo album, Cut Yourself a Switch, and as her sophomore Thrill Jockey release, 2012’s Little Heater, so clearly displays, that has been way too long. On the 2012 disc, the Connecticut-born Irwin, who cofounded the alterna-country band Freakwater with Eleventh Dream Day’s Janet Beveridge Bean a quarter-century ago, continues her exploration of folk, country, and American roots music, combining lovely melodies and lilting harmonies with stark, incisive lyrics. Recorded in Woodstock, the album features such gorgeous tracks as “Mockingbird,” “Sinner Saves a Saint,” “The Whole of the Law,” and the swamp-blues “Piss to Gin.” You can catch Irwin at Union Pool in Brooklyn on August 15, playing with the Phantom Family Halo and Old Baby. In addition, you can stream all of Little Heater here.

BEACH SHOW: RESTORE ROCKAWAY BENEFIT

Rippers
Rockaway Beach
Beach 86th St @ the Boardwalk
Saturday, August 17, free with donation, 6:00
www.facebook.com/events
www.restorerockaway.org

In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, Rockaway Beach has become the place to be to catch unique events that show that things are slowly but surely coming together. Last week, Creative Time hosted the second annual Artist Sandcastle Competition, and earlier this summer MoMA PS1 installed VW Dome 2 at Beach 94th St. and Shore Front Parkway as part of its “Expo 1: New York” exhibition. But there is still a lot of work to be done, of course, and much of that is being organized by the nonprofit Restore Rockaway, which is dedicated to helping small businesses get back on their feet and “making sure Rockaway doesn’t lose the positive momentum and economic improvements it has seen over the last few years, [which] will be crucial to its long-term prosperity.” On Saturday, August 17, five local bands will be playing — perhaps in their bathing suits — a benefit at Rippers, on the boardwalk at Beach 86th St., promising “gnarly tubeage” with punk trio Sleepies, wild art rockers Eula, nerdcore postpunk foursome Big Ups, garage rock quartet Shark? and grunge shredders Low Fat Getting High. Things get under way at 6:00, and it’s pay-what-you-wish, with all proceeds going to Restore Rockaway, so reach deep and get ready for one crazy party.

YOUNG JEAN LEE’S WE’RE GONNA DIE

Young Jean Lee faces her fear of performing and people’s fear of death in WE’RE GONNA DIE (photo by Blaine Davis)

Claire Tow Theater
LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St.
Through August 17, $20
www.lct.org
www.youngjeanlee.org

Seeking to comfort instead of confront the audience — a departure from her usual practice — experimental writer and director Young Jean Lee investigates such themes as loneliness, romance, family, aging, and death in her eloquent, sparkling musical show We’re Gonna Die. When challenged by avant-garde theater collective 13P to do the craziest thing she could think of, the Brooklyn-based Lee decided to star in a new play, facing her own deep-set fear of performing. The woman behind such innovative productions as Lear, The Shipment, and Untitled Feminist Show came up with We’re Gonna Die, a song cycle in which she presents a series of monologues followed by related musical numbers played with her band, Future Wife. Delivered plainly by Lee at the front and center of the stage, the stories are organized like a chronological narrative of her life, told in the first person, beginning with her childhood and moving through to the current day. Although the confessional tales, which cleverly explore terrible, painful, heartbreaking events and memories, are all true, the only one that actually happened to Lee directly is the long, powerful story about her father’s battle with cancer; the others were shared with her by friends.

Young Jean Lee and Future Wife go nuts at the end of dazzling WE’RE GONNA DIE (photo by Blaine Davis)

Such songs as “Lullaby for the Miserable,” “Comfort for the Lonely,” and “When You Get Old” incorporate various indie-pop melodies, featuring Mike Hanf and Benedict Kupstas on guitars and keyboards, Andrew Hoepfner on bass, and Booker Stardrum on drums. One of Lee’s central themes is that bad things can happen to good people and that we are all basically the same. “Who do you think you are / to be immune from tragedy? / What makes you special / that you should go unscathed?” she sings in “Horrible Things.” The show, which debuted at Joe’s Pub in April 2011, opened the new Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center last year, and now is kicking off LCT3’s second season, comes to a rousing conclusion with “I’m Gonna Die,” as the band rocks out before performing a riotous dance number with Lee, choreographed by Faye Driscoll, and getting the audience to sing along, everyone staring death in the face together. “I’m gonna die / I’m gonna die someday / Then I’ll be gone / and it’ll be okay,” Lee repeats over and over. Directed by Big Dance Theater’s Paul Lazar, We’re Gonna Die is an absolutely thrilling and involving sixty minutes from an immensely creative and talented artist who is special indeed, no matter what she claims onstage. (Lee and Future Wife have also just released a CD of We’re Gonna Die that includes the songs from the show but with the monologues spoken by an all-star lineup of guests that includes David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Colin Stetson, Kathleen Hanna, Drew Daniel, Sarah Neufeld, and Martin Schmidt.)