Who: Rebecca Hall, Ruth Negga, André Holland, David Nugent What:Screening and conversation Where:92nd St. Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St., Buttenwieser Hall and 92Y online When: Friday, December 3, $25 in person, 6:30; $20 online, 8:20 Why: In her directorial debut, Passing, award-winning actress Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona,Machinal) makes her father, the late Sir Peter Hall of the RSC and the National Theatre, proud. The black-and-white Netflix drama stars Tessa Thompson as Irene “Reenie” Redfield, a Black woman living in Harlem who meets up with an old friend, Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga), who is living her life passing as a white woman. Although Reenie is uncomfortable with Clare’s decision, she takes advantage of certain situations where she can pass as well. As Clare starts spending more time with Reenie, her secret threatens to be exposed. Set during the Harlem Renaissance, the tense, beautifully photographed Passing, based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, also features André Holland as Reenie’s husband, Brian Redfield, Alexander Skarsgård as Clare’s bigoted spouse, John Bellew, and Bill Camp as Hugh Wentworth, a friend and mentor to Reenie. On December 3, the 92nd St. Y is hosting a rescheduled hybrid event in which the Ethiopian-Irish Negga (Loving,Shirley), Alabama-born Holland (Selma,Moonlight), and London native Hall will screen and discuss the film with Hamptons International Film Festival artistic director David Nugent at Buttenwieser Hall; the conversation can be livestreamed beginning at 8:20.
Faith Salie shares her quest for approval in one-woman show (photo by Daniel Rader)
APPROVAL JUNKIE
Audible Theatre’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 12, $46-$56 www.audible.com
In her one-woman show, Approval Junkie, actress, author, and television and radio correspondent Faith Salie explains that when she would share a personal or professional success with her father, he would say, “I’m impressed, but not surprised.” I was impressed and surprised by how much I enjoyed the monologue, in which Salie details her lifelong quest for approval, from being an anorexic Georgia high school beauty and talent show contestant to auditioning for acting parts to getting married and wanting to have children. She also admits to being an applause junkie. “I’m half a century old, and I give a ton of fucks that you’re sitting at my feet,” she tells the audience. “Y’all came to the theater. And I’m pretty sure you’re wearing pants. And I hope you’re smiling behind those masks.”
Salie, an Emmy winner who appears regularly on NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! and CBS Sunday Morning, is charming and likable — and brutally honest. She talks about some intensely private moments, but as much as she’s after our approval, she takes a humble, self-deprecating approach, telling a story that, in many ways, could be about any woman, although she acknowledges her significant privilege. She doesn’t brag about her accomplishments or look for sympathy for her failures; she just wants us to enjoy ourselves and, hopefully, learn about how we don’t need to search for approval ourselves around every corner.
Faith Salie accepts approval on opening night of Approval Junkie (photo by Daniel Rader)
The show is adapted from her book of the same name, which has two different subtitles: Adventures in Caring Too Much for the hardcover, My Heartfelt (and Occasionally Inappropriate) Quest to Please Just About Everyone, and Ultimately Myself for the paperback and ebook. For ninety minutes, Salie, in a lovely dark blue jumpsuit and beige heels (the costume is by Ivan Ingermann), walks across Jack Magaw’s spare set, which features a central platform, two small speakers where she sometimes sits, and a stained-glass-like backdrop of abstract geometric shapes on which video and animation are occasionally projected. Salie shares funny and moving stories about going to an Ayurvedic Healing Center in a Sarasota, Florida, strip mall to exorcise the darkness out of her in order to please her wasband (what she calls her ex-husband); being retweeted by Hillary Clinton and Mandy Patinkin; her desperation to look good at her divorce hearing; and attempting to be a hit on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox program. She remembers that early in her career, she took vocal lessons from acting coach Lesly Kahn, who asked her, “Why aren’t you as pretty as I want you to be?” She answers now, “I don’t know — I’m not as pretty as I want me to be.”
Directed by actor and producer Amanda Watkins, the play — which continues at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre through December 12, after which an Audible audio recording will be available — has a warm, welcoming atmosphere. Even when lines fall flat, and a bunch do, Salie proceeds, okay with that momentary lack of approval. Except for the animation at the beginning and end, the projections are random and inconsistent; you’ll find yourself time and again thinking something will be shown when nothing is. And that’s okay too.
It’s all bookended by tales about Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s book The Giving Tree (Salie calls the titular tree “the ultimate woodland approval junkie”) and Salie’s friendship with 104-year-old Ruth Rosner, a journey from childhood to old age. Describing Rosner’s sudden fame from Salie’s television profile of her, Salie says, “We all want to sit at the feet of someone with a century of wisdom and hear that once you get old enough, you stop striving, you figure it all out. You have, as the kids say, ‘zero fucks to give.’ But it doesn’t work that way. It feels too good to take a bow.” In this case, Salie has our approval, and she can take a well-deserved bow. (Salie will be taking part in an Audible Theater online 92Y conversation about Approval Junkie with writer and comic Josh Gondelman on November 30 at 7:00.)
John Sims speaks out in multimedia presentations at La MaMa
Who:John Sims What: Five-day multidisciplinary residency Where: The Ellen Stewart Theatre, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club When: December 1-5, pay what you can $10-$60 Why: Conceptual artist and activist John Sims has been working on the multimedia project Recoloration Proclamation for two decades; it is now ready to be unveiled at La Mama, where the Detroit native is the 2021 artist-in-residence. From December 1 to 5, Sims will present six programs hitting on topical issues involving race, slavery, the Confederacy, police brutality, and inequalities that came to light during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The residency kicks off December 1 at 7:00 with an installation viewing and artist talk featuring the AfroDixieRemixes Listening Session — fourteen different Black versions of “Dixie” — and the world’s largest AfroConfederate flag, followed December 2 at 7:00 (and December 5 at 2:00) with a film screening of Recoloration Proclamation. On December 3, 4, and 5 at 7:00, Sims will take part in live performances of 2020: (Di)Visions of America. It all forms a unique self-portrait of the artist as well as a multidisciplinary look at the mind-set of contemporary America as Sims seeks redemption and rebirth through peace, liberty, and justice.
Kurt Vonnegut travels through his extraordinary life in Unstuck in Time,
KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME (Robert B. Weide & Don Argott, 2021)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, November 19 www.ifccenter.com
“I had never seen him so at ease; they had found each other, as the subject and the filmmaker. It felt like a friendship,” Nanny Vonnegut says about her father, author Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and director Robert Weide in Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, an extraordinary documentary opening November 19 at the IFC Center.
In 1982, twenty-three-year-old Weide wrote a letter to Vonnegut, wanting to make a film about him. Much to Weide’s surprise, the award-winning author of such novels as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle wrote him back, agreeing to the project. Shooting began in 1988 and continued through Vonnegut’s death in 2007 at the age of eighty-four and beyond. During those years, the two men became good friends, so much so that Weide began doubting his ability to complete the film. “I don’t even like documentaries where the filmmakers has to put himself in the film. I mean, who cares?” he asks in one of several sections where he talks to the camera, concerned that he was becoming too much a part of the story.
After a moving moment in which he discusses putting the camera down and simply enjoying his time with Vonnegut, Weide admits, “Prior to that, I had always been concerned that the friendship might infringe on the film; this was the first time I realized that things had flipped so entirely now that I was worried about the film infringing on the friendship. That was a realization for me that I was maybe in trouble.”
Fortunately, however, Weide and codirector Don Argott, who was brought in to help navigate through Weide’s fears of having grown too close to Vonnegut, keep the main focus on Vonnegut, who opens up about his childhood, his schooling, his early jobs, and, ultimately, his writing career, reflecting on a life well lived yet filled with tragedy, from the death of his sister and her husband to his mother’s suicide and his experiences in Dresden during WWII. Vonnegut is shown giving a lecture in a church, taking a train with Weide, driving through his hometown of Indianapolis, visiting the house where he grew up — and getting sentimental when he sees the casts of his and his siblings’ hands on the top of a small cement wall — and attending his sixtieth high school reunion.
Vonnegut’s brother, Bernard, gives Weide boxes and boxes of home movies and slides, while their sisters, Nanny and Edie, and Vonnegut’s nephews, Jim, Steve, and Kurt Adams — who Vonnegut and his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, took in after the deaths of his beloved sister, Alice, and her husband, James Adams — speak openly and honestly about him, including their extreme disappointment when, upon finally gaining success as a writer, he dumped the devoted Jane for younger photographer Jill Krementz. Over the years, Vonnegut kept sending Weide tapes of his numerous public appearances, so the film includes a treasure trove of clips from speeches, television appearances, and commencement addresses as well as early, annotated drafts of Vonnegut’s writing.
The film discusses the aforementioned books in addition to The Sirens of Titan,Breakfast of Champions, and Mother Night, which was turned into a 1996 movie written by Weide, and explores such favorite Vonnegut characters as the author’s alter ego, Kilgore Trout, and Billy Pilgrim. The title of the film comes from the first line of the second chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five: “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” The concept of time is a leitmotif of the documentary, highlighted by the comparison between the decades it took Weide to complete the film, which is significantly about the making of the film itself, and the years it took Vonnegut to finish his last novel, Timequake, which ended up being significantly about the writing of the book. And just as Vonnegut and his children share poignant memories, Weide inserts some of his own, particularly about his wife, Linda. The parallels between Weide and Vonnegut are striking. “How fucked up is that?” Weide says after noting another coincidence.
Robert B. Weide and Kurt Vonnegut became close friends while making documentary over several decades
Weide also speaks with Vonnegut’s friends and fellow writers John Irving and Sidney Offit, his publisher Dan Simon, his biographer Gregory Sumner, novelist Dan Wakefield, and In These Times editor Joel Bleifuss, who gave Vonnegut a forum in his final years. Actor Sam Waterston reads from several of Vonnegut’s works. “He made literature fun. That was huge,” critic David Ulin says.
Along the way, two elements stand out: Vonnegut’s love of laughing — his infectious laughter is sprinkled throughout the film — and his ever-present Pall Mall. In a cute touch, Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm,Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth) and Argott (The Art of the Steal,Believer) animate smoke coming out of his cigarettes in still photos.
On the first page of chapter two of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut also writes of Billy Pilgrim, “He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. He says. Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.” Weide and Argott have captured the essence of Vonnegut the person and Vonnegut the writer in Unstuck in Time, a must-see, utterly fun portrait of a man who never knew what part of his life he was going to have to act in next but always did so with a contagious sparkle.
Emi (Katia Pascariu) goes on a strange journey in Rade Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN: A SKETCH FOR A POSSIBLE FILM (BABARDEALA CU BUCLUC SAU PORNO BALAMUC) (Radu Jude, 2021)
Film at Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Francesca Beale Theater
144/165 West Sixty-Fifth St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, November 19 www.filmlinc.org filmforum.org
Radu Jude’s brilliantly absurdist Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn lives up to its title, a wildly satiric takedown of social mores that redefines what is obscene. Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2021 Berlinale, the multipart tale begins with an extremely graphic prologue, a XXX-rated homemade porn video with a woman and an unseen man holding nothing back. In the first main section, the woman, a successful teacher named Emi (Katia Pascariu), is distressed to learn that the video is threatening to go viral. She determinedly walks through the streets of Bucharest, buying flowers (which she holds upside down), discussing her dilemma with her boss, the headmistress (Claudia Ieremia), and calling her husband, Eugen, trying to get the video deleted before her meeting with angry parents at the prestigious private school where she teaches young children.
Jude and cinematographer Marius Panduru follow the masked Emi — the film was shot during the pandemic, so masks are everywhere — on her journey, the camera often lingering on the scene well after Emi has left the frame, focusing on advertising billboards, couples in the middle of conversations, people waiting for a bus, and other random actions, before finding Emi again. She sometimes fades into the background, barely seen through the windows of a passing vehicle or amid a crowd crossing at a light. She gets into an argument with a man who has parked on the sidewalk, blocking her way; she insists that he move the car, but he unleashes a stream of misogynistic curses. Swear words are prevalent throughout the film, mostly adding poignant humor.
The second segment consists of a montage of archival and new footage that details some of Romania’s recent history, involving the military, the government, religion, fascism, Nazi collaboration, patriotism, the two world wars, the 1989 revolution, Nicolae Ceaușescu, domestic violence, jokes about blondes, and the value of cinema itself. The bevy of images also points out which NSFW word is most commonly looked up in the dictionary, as well as which is second. (The film is splendidly edited by Cătălin Cristuțiu, with a fab soundtrack by Jura Ferina and Pavao Miholjević.)
It all comes together in the third section, in the school garden, where Emi faces a few dozen masked, socially distanced, very angry parents and grandparents who want her fired immediately, while the headmistress demands a calm discussion. The masked Emi is a stand-in for all of us, facing the wrath of the unruly mob forcing its sanctimonious platitudes on others when it really needs to look at itself. It’s a riotously funny sitcomlike debate in which Jude roasts many common, hypocritical beliefs held by Romanians (and people all over the world) that have not necessarily changed much from the news clips shown in the previous part.
The cartoonish cast, which includes Olimpia Mălai as Mrs. Lucia, Nicodim Ungureanu as Lt. Gheorghescu, Alexandru Potocean as Marius Buzdrugovici, and Andi Vasluianu as Mr. Otopeanu, really gets to strut its stuff while making sure their masks are properly covering their mouths and noses. They argue about beloved national poet Mihai Eminescu and Russian writer Isaac Babel, delve into various sexual positions, repeat Woody the Woodpecker’s trademark call, and quote long, intellectual passages from the internet as Jude (I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians,Aferim!) reveals where society’s true obscenities lie. It’s an irreverent tour de force that offers three distinct endings to put a capper on the strangely alluring affair, turning a scary mirror on the sorry state of twenty-first-century existence.
Playfully subtitled A Sketch for a Possible Film in a reference to André Malraux’s description of Eugène Delacroix’s belief that his sketches could be of the same quality as his paintings, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Romania’s official Oscars submission, opens November 19 at Lincoln Center and Film Forum.
Who: Zhang Yang, Peter Loehr, Richard Peña What: Film conversation Where:China Institute online When: Wednesday, November 17, $10, 8:30 Why: China Institute’s ten-part “Seeing China Through Film” continues November 17 with a discussion about Zhang Yang’s 1999 Shower, a touching tale of a family-run bathhouse in Beijing, starring Zhu Xu as the father and Pu Cunxin and Jiang Wu as his sons. Zhang (Sunflower,Paths of the Soul) will be talking online about changes in China since the late 1990s and the battle between tradition and modernity with series curator and Columbia film professor Richard Peña, the former head of the New York Film Festival, and Peter Loehr, whose Imar Film Co. has produced several of Zhang’s works, including Shower,Quitting, and Spicy Love Soup. The series previously featured Jia Zhangke discussing his debut film, The Pickpocket, film historian Christopher Rea on Yuan Muzhi’s Street Angels, Chen Kaige on his debut, Yellow Earth, and associate professor Weihong Bao on Zheng Junli’s Crows and Sparrows. Note that the films are not screened with the conversation but should be watched in advance; free links are usually provided.
The life and times of Aulcie Perry on and off the court are detailed in Dan Menkin’s latest sports documentary
AULCIE (Dan Menkin, 2019)
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at West Seventy-Sixth St.
Tuesday, November 16, $15, 7:00 cinematters.eventive.org
The closing night selection of the 2020 Israel Film Center Festival at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, Dani Menkin’s Aulcie is returning November 16 at 7:00 for a special screening, followed by an in-person Q&A with Menkin. Israeli director Menkin followed up his 2016 documentary, On the Map, about Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv’s unlikely victory in the 1976-77 European Champions Cup, with this inside look into the life of one of its stars, Aulcie Perry. After being the last man cut from the New York Knicks in 1976, Newark native Perry was recruited to play for Maccabi in Israel, where the 6’10” black man — an unusual sight in the Land of Milk and Honey — quickly became a superstar, helping the team to championships, falling in love with top model Tami Ben Ami, and hanging out in hot clubs, living the high life. But it all came tumbling down in a haze of drugs, and Menkin traces Perry’s attempt to put it all back together, primarily by finding the daughter he has not seen since she was a baby.
The film is set up as Perry’s confession to that daughter, Cierra Musungay. “I always knew one thing: that I wanted to tell you my story, the way it is, with the good and the bad,” he says at the beginning of the documentary. “So where do I start? People say you start at the beginning. But I wanted to start at the end, or when I thought the end was coming.” He was inspired to track her down after facing a serious health scare. “I think, that only when I almost died, I started to really live. And that’s when I wanted to find you and, maybe in some ways, find myself,” he adds.
Writer, producer, and director Menkin goes back and forth between archival footage, animation by Assaf Zellner, and interviews with Aulcie’s sister Bernadine Lewis, his friends Wayne Tyre and Roy Young, his ex-girlfriend Juanita Jackson, his son Aulcie Perry Jr., and many men from his Maccabi family, including former teammates Earl Williams and Tal Brody, team president Shimon Mizrahi, co-owner Oudi Recanati, coach Zvi Sherf, and manager Shamluk Maharovsky, who was like a father to him. “In Israel, there wasn’t that much prejudice against Black players, and he felt at home here,” NBA commentator Simmy Reguer says. “Aulcie came in like a blessing from the gods,” fellow Jersey native and team captain Brody recalls. And Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff explains, “At Maccabi Tel Aviv, Aulcie Perry was Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar rolled into one.”
Now seventy-one, Perry is honest and forthright throughout, admitting his failings and wanting to make up for lost time. He offers no excuses for his precipitous fall, and he’s not seeking sympathy. He’s a man who made mistakes and wants a chance to set things right. Aulcie is a cautionary tale of redemption with heart and soul, focusing on the need to be part of a family, no matter how different and unexpected it may be.
