A Calendar of Hollidays: Part One

Having finally gotten over The Doc Holliday Cold, during which I watched a lot of Westerns, I started thinking about how all the Hollywood Docs compare to the real Doc (and each other). So let's start off with an obscure Doc and then a classic one:

The Doctor in Need of Redemption. Cesar Romero, Frontier Marshal (1939).

Answer to the trivia question: who played Doc Holliday and the Joker?

Watching Frontier Marshal (which is a "special feature" on the new two-disc Ford At Fox edition of My Darling Clementine) will give anybody who's familiar with Clementine a pretty frightening case of deja vu. It's like watching the two early versions of Maltese Falcon: you not only get echoes everywhere, you get echoes in strange voices. There's nothing quite like watching Ricardo Cortez mortalizing the same lines that Bogart makes immortal, unless it's watching Randolph Scott lighting up the same set pieces that Henry Fonda makes dark, and realizing that the classic you grew up watching is an adaptation of an Ur-Tombstone movie that was made seven years before.

How alike are they? Both movies are based on the Stuart Lake bio of Wyatt Earp. Both have a saloon girl in love with Doc Holliday (in Frontier Marshal he's Doc Halliday); both have a girl from his past show up in Tombstone, a girl Wyatt Earp is obviously sweet on; both have Doc operating to save someone from a gunshot wound (because in both movies, Doc is a medical doctor and not a dentist). The major differences? In Frontier Marshal, Wyatt Earp has no brothers (!); instead of the actor doing Hamlet we get Eddie Foy (bonus points for historical accuracy); and Doc is killed before the OK Corral gunfight (whoops--take those bonus points away). Also: Doc drinks milk (!) until he gets depressed, then he starts in on the whiskey.

That's more like it.

Self-destructuive drunkard that he is, Doc finds redemption when he saves the life of a little boy who gets a bullet in the neck as part of a horse-by shooting, assisted by Nancy Kelly as (well) Clementine. (Hard not to think of it in those terms.) After which, with his arm around his girl, stone-cold sober and proud of himself, Doc gets shot by one of the Clantons as he's leaving the saloon. Shot dead, as in too dead to fight at the OK Corral. Which, because this film's Wyatt Earp is an only child, means that Randolph Scott gets to go up against everybody (including a spineless Lon Chaney Jr.) and finish them all off to avenge Doc. (Halliday even gets the closing shot, as his saloon girlfriend rides off to her future past his grave in Boot Hill. No dying in bed for this Georgia gunman.) In my opinion, if you're going to fictionalize history this much? Change the names.

How does Romero stack up on the Doc Holliday list? Pretty low, actually; about the same level Randolph Scott stands on the Wyatt Earp list. Stolid would be a compliment. Neither actor has the chops to give the camera more than a surface portrayal of his character. Scott makes you wish you were watching Ride The High Country or Seven Men From Now; Romero makes you wish that you were watching Anthony Quinn. And, all in all, the movie itself makes you wish you were watching My Darling Clementine.

The Mountain of Health. Victor Mature, My Darling Clementine (1946).

Primarily a John Ford movie with some pretty jarring David Selznick-authorized post-production inserts (they jump out at you like salmon when you know what to look for), this film feels and looks older than it is, like it was made in '39 or '40, rather than just after WWII. But the Clanton family scenes are a dead giveaway that we're a femme fatale short of a noir movie here (is there anything more noir than the line "When you pull a gun, kill a man?"). And if we're talking dark? Look no further than the man mountain playing Doc Holliday:

Don't mess with me or I'll fall on you.

He wears black like a bad guy, and he coughs about once every ten minutes to remind you that he's supposed to be wasting away from consumption, but I'm sorry, Victor Mature has consumption like grizzly bears have anorexia. There's no way this guy is being eaten away by anything, except maybe pride because he's stealing the movie from Henry Fonda. And boy, does he. When Mature is on screen, you can't take your eyes off him. This is where the tradition of Holliday Trumps Earp in Tombstone movies begins.

I am drinking Henry Fonda's milk shake.

Historically, we're no closer to the real Doc Holliday than we are in Frontier Marshal. He's still a medical doctor and not a dentist, and in Clementine he got his degree in Harvard. But there's something in Mature's performance (the sweat that never seems to leave his face? The sense that there are rocks and avalanches grinding beneath his cheekbones?) that prefigures every doomed thug and gunsel from No Way Out to Night And The City. This guy has a jumbo-sized death wish, and the camera loves every second of it, nowhere more than when he's reciting Shakespeare like Edwin Booth on steroids:

Historically, Mature's Holliday is as fictional as Romero's Halliday, but because Mature is larger than life, his performance conforms to the Liberty Valance Law ("When the legend becomes fact, print the legend"), and works on a mythic level above history. The gunshot victim he operates on? Dies in the night. His Boston girl? So obviously in love with the town Marshal. What else can this hulk do but take his boots off, sneak into a stable, and then start coughing so he gets himself shot? One of the top five Hollidays for sure.

Long Weekend Update

Adding Machine. You're probably thinking, "Oh Great, a musical version of an Elmer Rice play; that's gonna be this year's definition of depressing." And yes, you're right, it is, but in a good way. The score is amazing, the acting and singing top notch, and the libretto/script takes the theme of the play and rides off in a couple of wonderful directions, all of them designed to make you say "I'm giving my notice at work tomorrow" when you walk out. Best line: "I might as well be alive." Go see it.

In Bruges. That's In Fucking Bruges, you fucking gobshite, because this is a fucking Martin McDonagh script, and you know what that means. "No I don't know what that means." Well I'll tell you what that means. "You tell me what that fucking means then." It means the end echoes back to the beginning quite fucking literally; it means a lot of the dialogue is q&a repetition, with deadpan riffs and total silliness ("This is the shoot-out"); and, oh yeah, it means a fucking shoot-out in fucking Bruges with actors still able to walk around after getting fucking drilled with fucking dum-dum bullets. And if you want to see why Colin Farrell keeps getting miscast as a fucking leading man, go watch him clean up in this flick in a character part that he totally makes his fucking own.

Arrogant Pricks. Giving Roger Clemens the benefit of the doubt when it comes to steroids doesn't change the fact that he attacks anybody who says anything against him, acts like he's above the law, pretends to knowledge of other people's memories, and sits in front of television cameras with a "How dare you accuse me -- I've won the Cy Young award more times than you've had sex" look on his face. All he needs is the smirk and he's a certain ex-owner of a baseball team telling us all how wonderfully things are going in Iraq. Which leaves the question: are all Texans this ass-holy? Or is it just Texans who have anything to do with baseball?

Atonement. Thank you, Kiera Knightley. Because you are the film equivalent of a Tootsie Roll Pop with nothing inside it, the kind of candy that can't even satisfy a sweet tooth? I thought James McAvoy was a fecking eejit for wanting you, and spent the whole movie imagining how fantastic Cate Blanchett would have been instead of you.

Sick, sick sick. Okay, I know I'm on the mend, but that's no reason my stupid body can't seem to stay awake for more than three or four stupid hours at a stupid time. The farching idea. Just because I'm fighting an infection, popping painkillers, and switching back and forth between alcohol and antibiotics, that's no reason for this stupid machine in which my brain and soul are trapped to shut down over a long weekend. Can't it shut down during the stupid work week for feck's sake? Stupid flesh and blood.

The sky is the killer of us all. And when I have been awake this weekend, I've been reading this:

coney island oasis

The Soul of Love

If souls can touch, then ours embrace
Defying distance, time and space.
If love can write, then mine will pen
As brilliantly as halogen.

If souls can walk, then hand in hand
Ours wander in a promised land.
If love can run, then mine will climb
Mount Everest by dinnertime.

If souls can speak then ours will sing
A double note that's deafening.
If love is noise, then mine's a sigh
More piercing than a baby's cry.

If souls can feel, then mine will bleed
Until your life is free of need.
If love is pain, I will endure,
Rejecting every certain cure.

If souls have blossoms like a rose,
Then ours will bloom where nothing grows.
If love is thorns, mine is a crown
That I will sport without a frown.

If souls can sleep, it is no lie:
Yours sings to mine a lullaby.
If love can die, this much is true:
The sum of mine will die with you.

If souls are skin and love the whip,
Then mine is scarred from head to hip.
If love is wings, our souls will fly
Beyond this world of wind and sky

To where two souls can intertwine,
Where mine is yours and yours is mine,
And love, brave love, beyond compare
Is everpresent everywhere.

It's Valentine's Day, Charlie Brown!!!!!

Ain't love grand?

Hi! I'm Sarah Michelle Gellar! I'm here in my pretty little Valentine's Day number to guide you through the 11 Commandments of Love and Romance. Do you want to know how to win a man like a sideshow prize? Do you want to become fulfilled, desired, and happier than a heroin addict? Do you want to be so deliriously happy that you throw up in your own mouth whenever "he" touches you?


Then just follow these 11 easy rules!



1. Listen to what men are really saying. When a guy says "Do this, or it's over," what he's really saying is, "The only way I'll ever go out with you is if you do exactly what I say."

The price of love is total obedience.

2. When men get caught cheating, it's always the woman's fault. You just know that ten seconds before Marion turned around, Jack was telling the cab driver to head for the Empire Hotel.

It's all that slut Connie's fault--honest!!

3. Every heart needs a second home.

Because the home it has in my chest

is emptier than my brain.

4. The day youth becomes an obstacle to love is the day alcohol becomes an obstacle to inebriation.

Tell it to Woody Allen.

5. An office romance is its own punishment.

From the memoirs of Condoleeza Rice.

6. Men who say they don't want your pity will still settle for your body.

Men who say they don't want your body? Gay.

7. Every skirt-chasing flirt needs an anchor. Do yourself a favor and tie him to one, okay?

"I love the guy . . . the way

the turkey loves the axe."

8. Save the L Word for the right moment. Nothing ruins an affair more than dropping the word "love" into a romantic evening that reminds your honey of the time her father took her to that lighthouse when she was 12.

Hey look--it's Stephanie Powers!

9. In any group of three people, there is at least one whore. The operative words here being "at least".

Pick out the whore in this picture.

Hint: it's the one with the pallette.

10. Don't become a slave to unreasonable expectations.

Tough luck honey -- that's all that's out there.

11. And whatever you do, never -- NEVER -- go out with Batman. You'll always come in second.

Still the single best comic book panel in history.

The Actor Who Wrote Hamlet

The Third Series of Arden Shakespeare editions has produced the best evidence yet that what scholars refer to as the "text" of Hamlet is actually a script. Three scripts in fact: the so-called Bad Quarto of 1601, the Second Quarto (Q2) of 1602, and the First Folio of 1623. How are they doing this? Instead of conflating all three source scripts into a single version that was never produced by the pen of Shakespeare, Arden is giving primacy of place to Q2, both because it was printed during Shakespeare's lifetime and because it's generally recognized to be derived from a copy of Will's handwritten manuscript (what scholars call "foul papers" and theatre people call a "cut and paste draft").

Junking the 300-year-old tradition begun by Nicholas Rowe when he combined Q2 and the Folio to create a so-called complete version of the play, the current Arden edition is (perhaps inadvertently) supplying the best possible evidence that Shakespeare was first and foremost an actor who happened to write plays. Which is a necessary corrective to blowhards like Harold Bloom, who want us to picture Shakespeare in his study writing beautiful lines of poetry and then gagging when he has to hand them over to (barf) actors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like all playwrights, Shakespeare spent the better part of his time re-writing, whether it be for a road production of an otherwise lengthy play (the only version of Macbeth we have is so short that it's almost certainly a stripped-down touring script) or an updated version of an old favorite (the two versions of King Lear; the "newly corrected and augmented" Love's Labor's Lost).

And thanks to this new edition of Hamlet, you can see the writer at work. How? Because every now and then you're brought up short when a familiar line becomes totally unfamiliar. Like this one: "Tis not alone my inky cloak, cold mother." The Folio has "good mother," and every conflated edition for the last three centuries follows it. But that's not what was printed in the Second Quarto. You'll look in vain here for the "Denmark's a prison" scene; that's only in the Folio. And in the Folio version? No "How all occasions do inform against me." That's Q2 only. And what are we to make of the fact that Polonius in Q1 is called Corambis? If Q1 is the transcript of an actor's memory of a playing script, does it correctly record an early version in which the character names were different (Rosencraft for Rosencrantz) or is it just the actor's memory at fault? Making things even more complicated: Q1 and the Folio version contain the same "additional" passages which are missing from Q2. So instead of a clear Q1 to Q2 to Folio transmission, you have Q1 to Folio, with a bank shot to Q2. Does that mean we're dealing with two different drafts of the same play? It does to me, but what do I know? I'm no university professor; I'm just a theatre writer who acts now and then.

On one level, this is the most conservative edition of Hamlet I've ever read. Which on another level makes it the most radical edition ever. By in effect unstitching the quilt of Hamlet that has been taught and performed for 300 years and displaying it as three separate blankets, you get a clear and refreshing sense that Shakespeare's true home is the stage, not the study. And any editor who upholds a conflated version of the script as the true Hamlet is also upholding an elitist vision of Shakespeare The Poet -- because God forbid our Great Poem Of Hamlet was written by (barf) an actor. Well guess what? It was. Wrtten and rewritten. So there. And you know something else? The Hamlet we know as Shakespeare's version of the story was performed for 15 years between the time it was written and the time Shakespeare died. As a theatre writer who acts now and then, I'm betting it was rewritten at least five different times during that period. I'm betting that at some point in 1608, Shakespeare walked into the Globe with a new cut and paste draft and said:

Okay, everybody, listen up--this afternoon's show? "How all occasions do inform against me" is out. Prayer scene is out. "To be or not to be" comes two scenes earlier. Advice to the players is out--nobody ever listens to it, and everybody thinks it's me talking anyway, so it's gone. The Mousetrap is in--that means no dumb show, Player King, don't forget this time. The rest of you leads, I got a ton of new lines here. Gertrude? In this version, you're in on it with Claudius. Claudius? In this version I'm actually going to use your name in the dialogue instead of a stage direction so everybody in the audience will know what your name is for once. And oh yeah--the Ghost. Claudius, today you double the Ghost. Laertes, tomorrow you double the Ghost. Friday--Hamlet, you play everybody--what the hell, it's all one big soliloquy, right?

What Is It About Hillary?

When I see stuff like this, and read articles like this and this, I don't know whether to laugh or cry over the way women are objectified in our culture.

Never mind that the joke of having a Hillary nutcracker depends on the fact that “strong woman = ballbuster” never needs to be spoken out loud –- it’s a given, like “strong man = role model” and “weak man = pussy.” What strikes me as interesting is that the joke is based on two separate premises: the generic premise based on a sexual stereotype and the specific premise that Hillary Clinton is one nutcracking bee-yatch.

The generic premise says that any woman who attempts to compete as an equal on a male playing field must be competing primarily to stick it to men. As a penalty, the criticism she gets is half-nitpicky, half-gotcha, and the bar for her achievements is always set a little higher than it is for her male co-players, which means that in order to be equal to those men, she has to be superior to them. If she fails at this, her entire sex fails; if she succeeds at this, it only proves that her entire sex will do anything to stick it to men. And if she makes the slightest mistake, especially the kind of mistake that’s excused in one of her male co-players? She gets the book thrown at her. (Hi, Martha Stewart!)

The specific premise says that Hillary Clinton wears the pants in the Clinton marriage -- which means it’s only a matter of time before somebody starts marketing a doll of Bill Clinton in a dress. (You’d think, right? But interestingly enough, the logical corollary to ballbuster Hill –- “Bill has no balls” –- doesn’t seem to have the same currency in the Penile Hive Mind. Unless I’m missing something. My God -- could it be that the Penile Hive Mind is only equipped to dish it out and not take it?)

So we’ve got a joke based on a generic sexual stereotype (woman = nutcracker, and vice versa), as well as a specific swipe against an individual woman who embodies the unspoken male fear of the powerful (and therefore castrating) woman. And I wish I knew what it was about Hillary’s embodiment of this cliché that pushes the Rant Button in people. There’s definitely something about her personally which drives some folks gleefully bazoo. They so totally delight in trashing this woman. I mean me, I think Barbara Bush has it all over Hillary as a vengeful, grudge-keeping termagant (oops -- another stereotype), but you don’t see Barbara Bush nutcrackers on E-Bay. And not just because you never saw her in pants. (Although if you ask me, that has a lot to do with it. Barbara Bush could be an axe murderer, but as long as she wears a granny dress, the PHM gives her a pass as a man-hater.)

So chalk up the Hillary Nutcracker as another in a long line of misogynist jokes, and remember -- that sound you hear in the background is a lot of people with two X chromosomes grinding their teeth like Marge Simpson. Will Homer ever change? Nope. Will stereotypes ever change? Sure. (Two words: Stepin Fetchit.) But the double-standard operates here as well. If a woman doesn't agitate for change? Change never happens. If a woman does agitate for change? She's out to stick it to men, which means she becomes the problem, and change never happens. It's a Red Queen's Race and it always has been: women have to run as fast as they can just to stay in the same place, and if they let up for even a second, they're back where they started. (Insert picture of Bugs Bunny holding up a sign that reads DEPRESSING, AIN'T IT?)

As for me, I have my doubts about Hillary as a politician, but they have nothing to do with her sex, any more than my doubts about Obama have to do with his race. And I suggest that if another company came out with an equivalent Obama toy -- say, the Obama Lawn Jockey? -- there would be such a chorus of pundits using the words "vile" and "disgusting" that those two words would quickly become meaningless.

Just as meaningless –- if you stop to think about it-- as a criticism based on a sexual stereotype. If I can quote myself, from an unfinished project about women in the workplace:

WOMAN #1: He called me a bitch in front of the entire meeting!
WOMAN #2: Good for you.
WOMAN #1: Good for me?
WOMAN #2: Calling a woman a bitch is what a man does when he can’t think of anything else to criticize you for.

Weekend Update

This day job is a test; this is only a test. A test of my ability to deal with anger, resentment, and all those other pus-filled boils which my ego delights in bursting. Anger is all about ego; ego is all about fear. What am I afraid of? It's a day job. The only thing I should be afraid of is letting it become my whole life.

One more memory gone. Fazil's closed on Friday. Is there an actor in this city who didn't rehearse there at least once for something? I was trying to remember (DJ--help me out here): wasn't this where we rehearsed Don Juan in Hell's Kitchen? And didn't I have the sit-down reading of the first draft of History Of The Lagers there too? The sad thing, if it's true? I haven't been inside the place for over ten years.

Call me "Old Spice."

Trusting my friend Kathleen's taste in music yet again, I saw the Melanie C show at Hammerstein Ballroom Saturday night. (That sound you just heard? Half my friends doing a double-take.)

It was a good show. (That sound you just heard? Those same friends doing a triple-take.) Besides being ripped like Rambo, Melanie has a Jonatha Brooke voice with a deeper tone, and while her solo stuff may not be Spice-Girl-hooky, it's Dusty Springfield good. I can see the Pet Shop Boys writing for her so easily.

The floor was about three-quarters filled, with the front really crowwded and the back full of dancers. Good dancers too. The camera and cellphone screens focused on her were like little monitors all night long.

Three times during the show she stopped to collect gifts and cards and flowers from the mob at the front of the stage. She got more swag than a presenter at an awards show. Worked harder for it, too.

Bonus moment for pop culture fanatics: all the other Spice Girls watched the show from a roped-off area about 20 feet from where we were sitting in the balcony, although the verdict is still out on whether Skeletor Posh was there.











Thank you, tooth pain. I can barely open my mouth, and my lower jaw is so swollen I look like a catfish. The way the universe works? This means I will get a movie audition sometime in the next 20 minutes.

72nd and broadway

The 39 Steps @ The Roundabout

Along the lines of "Dying is easy; comedy is hard," writing about something you despised? Easy. Writing about something you loved? Hard. Because what more needs to be said besides "I loved it" and "you should go see it?"

How's this:

"Y'know," I said as I walked out of The 39 Steps, "I am never going to be able to watch the movie now with a straight face."

"So you've seen the movie?" said a woman behind me. "We never saw the movie and we were wondering how close it was to the original."

"It is totally the original," i said. "Scene for scene almost."

"Except not as funny," said one of the ushers, who has probably seen the show every night since it opened and still has a big grin on her face when she talks about it.

Four actors, two of whom play about 20 characters each. Two hours of charming, silly fun. The best Hitchcock cameo ever.

I loved it. Go see it.

For a behind-the-scenes slideshow, go here.