evanevanevan

On Monday, I caught the opening performance of the Goodman's new production of Karen Zacarías's The Sins of Sor Juana, a fictionalized take on the life of the fascinating 17th century Mexican poet and nun Juana Inés de la Cruz. Juana was a precociously brilliant child, composing poetry by the age of 8 and mastering Latin soon after. As a teenager she entered the court of the viceroy of Mexico City and became highly regarded for both her intellect and her beauty. Juana joined a convent at age 16, presumably to enjoy greater freedom to write than would otherwise be allowed a woman, and produced a significant output of prose and poetry. She kept her cell essentially as a salon, with many frequent visits from leading thinkers in colonial Mexico. She was ultimately punished for writing a letter to a bishop in defense of a woman's right to an education, keeping her from writing again before she died from cholera.

Unfortunately, the character in Zacarías's play is drawn less from the historical Sor Juana and more from a composite of several Disney princesses. She is strong-willed, quick-witted, and endowed with beauty that's just ethnic enough to be appealingly exotic, and is otherwise entirely vapid. From the very beginning, Juana glows in that princessly manner in her white habit and pure American English, surrounded by side characters sporting black clothing and Mexican accents peppering their dialog with plenty of "¡Ay Dios Mio!"s.

Indeed, Zacarías, who has a long résumé of writing for children's theatre, dips into the well of Disney stock characters throughout: the evil, conniving viceroy; his inept sidekick with unrequited love for Juana; the handsome and clever scoundrel who is surprised to find himself falling for the woman he is meant to deceive; the dim-witted but lovable novice; the irreverent but infinitely wise nursemaid, etc. The only real surprise is that none of them are talking animals, which is a shame cause I like animals.

Like a typical children's play, the narrative is frustratingly linear, with hardly a sentence devoted to anything that does not directly facilitate the extremely familiar plot. The Sins of Sor Juana focuses mainly on the poet's days in the court before becoming a nun, feebly attempting to explain why she entered the convent. Zacarías's version involves the viceroy scheming to destroy Juana's reputation by hiring a charming rogue to pose as an aristocrat to seduce her, with the usual results. Considering Juana's radical writing in defense of the rights of women, the suggestion that she needed the lost love of a man as her poetic inspiration becomes borderline offensive.

Despite her rich historical subject matter, Zacarías fails to portray any particular brilliance in Juana, save for her explicit declarations of her own talent, as well as her incredible knack to quote herself in order to win arguments. I find it remarkable that someone like Zacarías can actually devote her life to writing yet find no other way to telegraph a character's artistic passion than through clichéd exclamations of images suddenly flowing through her head in streams that just cannot be stopped, with Juana comically scribbling as quickly as possible for days straight, the poetry being the only thing keeping her alive. It takes just a few minutes of limp seduction before she is head over heels, and she needs only a single compliment about her writing to win her over into becoming a nun. Zacarías magically transforms a fascinating icon of Mexican literature into the worst kind of self-important and vain "poet" this side of undergraduate art school.

The Goodman also continues its baffling practice of importing television actors from New York and Los Angeles at the expense of local talent for the leads, including Tony Plana of Ugly Betty. Though some of the supporting cast performs admirably, particularly Laura Crotte and Joe Miñoso, the lack of chemistry in the out-of-towners doesn't help to justify their casting, though admittedly they have little in the script to work with. It's a frustrating production, as the director Henry Godinez was also behind Boleros for the Disenchanted, the most satisfying production I've seen in years at the Goodman. Instead, it's just another in the list of duds from the biggest and most consistently disappointing theatre in Chicago.

[new york times]

Thanks, Human Resources, you're the best!

A few years ago, I lived in a rented condo in a building in Bridgeport occupied almost exclusively by Chinese families. One day, we got a call from a rather incoherent Chinese lady, presumably from the condo association. She said that the downstairs neighbors had complained that they couldn't sleep all the night before because of sounds from our apartment that sounded like "working." We explained we had no idea what they were referring to, that we were both asleep at the time and had heard no noises, but if they ever do figure out what the cause is, we'd be interested to know.

The next morning we found a note taped to our door, obviously typed in Microsoft Notepad. I've been looking to find the original copy to scan with no luck, but fortunately I had the foresight to type it up exactly as it appeared on paper, which is below. We left him a message explaining that we were sorry but weren't responsible for whatever was keeping him up at night. He showed up at our door the next morning in his pajamas, with bloodshot eyes, accompanied by an interpreter who spoke only slightly more English. We offered our hypothesis that it was the big radiator things in the roof of the garage directly beneath his apartment, but he scowled and dismissed the idea. He also clearly wanted to enter our apartment to take a look around, for "machinary" I suppose, but we didn't give him the opportunity, and we didn't hear from him again.

The note:

Untitled
From: ### W 31ST st apt:2H owner
To: ### W 31ST st apt:3H

My friend:
We are the people that living under your condo, since you guys moved in, we
have start
hearing a lot of rambling noise that are very disturbing and annoying every night.
We can't stand
this noises because it's getting louder and way more often then it's used to be.
Since we need to
get up and work every day, we require a lot of sleep time. Beside, acording to the
floor plan of this
condorium, the room that coming the noise should be a big bedroom, the noises is
like a
machinary sound. I do not care what you guys are doing up there, but this noise MUST
BE STOP,
if this issue still occuring, then we have no choice but to call the police and let
them enforce the
rule. If you need to talk to us, please contact my cell phone number: 312-###-####.
My name
is Ben.

Thank you.

by Christine, first grader

My Grannie opened the shower curtain. There was a frog. She screamed. It was loud. I said, “What’s wrong?” It was Tuesday. I had to catch the frog. When I caught it. I had to throw the frog. It was a cool frog. It was green. My Grannie was too loud. It was a poison frog. I don’t know why my Grannie said that

"At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen's house) there was an enormous cat which allowed itself to be caressed as if it were a disdainful divinity. He entered the cafe. There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar, sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat's black coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant."

- "The South," Jorge Luis Borges

"There are a few different types of cat-café customers. Newcomers will be so swept up in the distinct atmosphere that they will just sit there stunned. It looked as if most of them had never had a pet cat or even touched one before and it seemed like they were struggling to come to terms with the unpredictable behavior of real cats while their fantasies of docile, purring balls of love were being shot to hell. In an hour’s stay, most could only manage to touch a passing cat just once. Many customers seemed like the shy, meek, silent type who were in need of a hug or two. Since these sorts don’t have the courage to go up to a cat and play with it themselves, they would read a book and sip coffee while they patiently hoped for a cat to come closer. It broke my heart."

- Vice article on cat-cafés in Japan

(via wnderflu)

Tonight begins my new series at Doc Films titled I Was a Teenage Film: The Birth of American Teen Cinema. It runs every Monday night at 7:00 until May 31st. It's about as definitive an Evan-series as you can get, featuring some of my favorite teenage-oriented flicks from the '50s and '60s. My dream was to have a series devoted entirely to beach party movies, but this'll have to do! At least we'll get Beach Blanket Bingo in there - don't miss that one!

Doc Films is located in Ida Noyes Hall at 1212 E. 59th St. in Chicago. Tickets are just $5, or you can get a pass for all 80-or-so films in the quarter for only $30.

Here's the series at a glance, plus my essay for the newsletter and descriptions of each film:

Mar. 29 - The Wild One
Apr. 5 - Blackboard Jungle
Apr. 12 - Rebel Without a Cause
Apr. 19 - Gidget
Apr. 26 - Don't Knock the Rock
May 3 - West Side Story
May 10 - David and Lisa
May 17 - Eegah!
May 24 - Beach Blanket Bingo
May 31 - Lord Love a Duck

I Was a Teenage Film

The Birth of American Teen Cinema

Just before the more celebrated baby boom, there was already a surge of children born in America during the Second World War. Once these children reached their teen years in the 1950s, they benefited from unprecedented economic prosperity. As American families migrated toward the suburbs, teenagers entered a car-based consumer culture, enjoying independence and mobility they never had before. They had a means to get places, time to kill, and money to spend – and film exhibitors were quick to provide a place for them to spend it. In the 1950s and ‘60s, a whole new category of film emerged, targeted specifically at a new teenage market. The early films of teen cinema are certainly of their time, but they had an enduring effect on the way Hollywood movies are marketed to this day.

But beyond the implications it had for the film industry, the birth of teen cinema represents a much more important historical moment. It marks the beginning of the very idea of teenagers itself. Certainly, humans aged thirteen to nineteen existed before the Eisenhower administration, but never before had they been viewed as a distinct group rather than simply an extension of childhood or a precursor to adulthood. Teenagers were developing their own tastes, their own values, their own idols. Restless and misunderstood, American teens found themselves at the beginning of a generational conflict that would build throughout the ‘60s, even if the media’s fear-mongering about a supposed juvenile delinquency epidemic was exaggerated.

The most significant act of teenage rebellion, whether intentional or not, was their embrace of a loud form of African-American rhythm and blues known as rock ‘n’ roll. The inclusion of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” over the opening titles of Blackboard Jungle marked a true cultural sea change, with a reception comparable to the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, complete with riots in cinemas across the nation. Haley, a portly white country singer, was hardly one of the most threatening of rock’s early stars, but the film industry’s capitalization on the trend helped bring exposure to wilder rock ‘n’ rollers like Little Richard, who appears with Haley in Don’t Knock the Rock. Little Richard epitomized the brilliance – and the threat – of rock ‘n’ roll, flamboyantly juxtaposing gospel shouts with raucous piano-playing in songs with coded lyrics about anal sex.

Though the teenage rock rebellion may have been genuine, the rock movies of the ‘50s are an early example of the film industry learning how rebellion could be commodified. The protagonists within the films proclaimed that rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay, yet the studios themselves perceived the music as just another fad. Most teen movies were inexpensive formula pictures with salacious titles churned out as quickly as possible to exploit the latest teenage trend, or to anticipate the next one (there was even a short-lived wave of movies predicting calypso as rock’s successor). With a growing number of drive-in theatres needing double features to show, the demand for these cheapies offered tremendous new opportunities for independent producers. Many found great success in the horror realm, making countless films with teen protagonists and outlandish monsters, combining youth rebellion with the Cold War fear of technology. Eegah!, the horror entry in this series, is certainly one of the strangest of them all, becoming a cult classic long after its initial release.

The most successful of the independent teen movie studios was American International Pictures. Led by Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, AIP produced inexpensive yet extremely lucrative titles for teenagers over multiple decades. They had tremendous success early on with teen horror films like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and The Curse of Frankenstein, but astutely branched out into dozens of other subgenres. In 1963, they cashed in on the emerging surf craze, enlisting teen idol Frankie Avalon and former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello to star in the hugely popular Beach Party. Though Gidget was an important forerunner, Beach Party established the formula for an entire genre of beach party movies. AIP ultimately produced seven, including the wonderful Beach Blanket Bingo, while virtually every other American studio churned out imitations by the dozen. The beach party movies were always essentially self-parody from the start, but they would be further satirized in George Axelrod’s 1966 black comedy Lord Love a Duck.

Not all the teen pictures from the era, however, were exploitation films directed explicitly toward teenage audiences. Many Hollywood films, like Peyton Place and A Summer Place, focused on the changing state of the American family and the teenager’s role within it and were either marketed directly at adults or aimed for cross-generational appeal. Nicholas Ray’s moving Rebel Without a Cause was an exemplary attempt to portray and understand the anxieties of teen culture. Dying tragically in a car crash before the film’s release, James Dean became the definitive teen icon, carrying the mantle of Marlon Brando’s rebellious motorcycle gang leader in The Wild One from the year before. Like Rebel, Frank Perry’s quiet independent feature David and Lisa showed considerable understanding of troubled American youth, though the film has since suffered undue neglect. By contrast, the popularity of West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein’s musical about teenage star-crossed lovers, has never waned.

Good fortune has put this series on the same calendar as our John Hughes retrospective, offering us a view of teen cinema’s birth as well as its artistic zenith. By looking at the cinematic evidence of the creation of teendom, we’re able to see the origin of the truths that Hughes understood so intuitively: that the world of teenagers is a distinct, self-contained universe, governed by its own set of complex rules; that high school life is no mere “microcosm” of the real world, but is the realest world we get, where the stakes are higher, and everything feels more important - because it is.

The Films

Monday, March 29 at 7:00 • 79m
The Wild One
László Benedek, 1954 • “What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?” “Whaddya got?” Marlon Brando’s performance as the leader of a delinquent motorcycle gang was almost too wild for teens in 1954, but it served as an important prototype for the teenpics that followed. When the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club invades a small town, they soon find themselves in fierce conflict with a rival biker gang led by Lee Marvin. The image of a leather-clad Brando astride a Triumph motorcycle has persisted as an icon of youth rebellion, subsequently adopted and amended by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Kenneth Anger in Scorpio Rising. 35mm

Monday, April 5 at 7:00 • 100m
Blackboard Jungle
Richard Brooks, 1955 • In this important early teen film, Glenn Ford plays an idealistic English teacher at an inner-city school who struggles to gain the respect of his unruly students, including Sidney Poitier and Vic Morrow. Though the plot sounds familiar today, the film’s frank portrayal of juvenile delinquency and race issues, along with its rock ‘n’ roll score, was at the time sensational. Teens were driven to riot at several screenings, destroying the cinema interiors. One theatre even played the first reel silently for fear that Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” over the opening credits would incite the audience. 35mm

Monday, April 12 at 7:00 • 111m
Rebel Without A Cause
Nicholas Ray, 1955 • James Dean’s tragic death has only served to freeze him in time as the perennial teenage icon, a martyr for disaffected American youth. Rejected by his peers and let down by his ineffective parents, Dean’s Jim Stark instead founds a surrogate family with fellow outcasts Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo). Nicholas Ray shows a deep understanding of teenage alienation, reaching across the generational divide that even the film’s most well-meaning adult characters are unable to bridge. Shot in gorgeous Cinemascope, Rebel is not only the definitive teen movie but also one of the decade’s greatest films. 16mm

Monday, April 19 at 7:00 • 95m
Gidget
Paul Wendkos, 1959 • Sandra Dee’s first starring role was in this adaptation of a popular young adult novel about a girl who is introduced to surfing life by a Malibu gang led by The Kahuna (Cliff Robertson), but falls for surfer Moondoggie (James Darren). Gidget’s fun-in-the-sun attitude and great pop music (by The Four Preps!) laid the groundwork for the later beach party movies, but its earnest chronicling of a teen’s coming of age makes it sweeter and more down-to-earth than the follow-ups. A nationwide obsession with surf culture and several sequels followed. Archival 35mm

Monday, April 26 at 7:00 • 84m
Don’t Knock the Rock!
Fred F. Sears, 1956 • When white teenagers discovered the rock ‘n’ roll music championed by disc jockeys like Alan Freed in the mid-‘50s, it caused a wave of controversy among their concerned parents. Filmmakers were quick to exploit that controversy, marketing rock films toward teens, while also making pleas to grown-ups to embrace the new sensation. In Don’t Knock the Rock, Freed plays himself, a mediating adult figure defending a teen idol against attacks from a town who wants to ban his music. The film features classic performances by Bill Haley & His Comets and also helped introduce Little Richard to a wide audience. Archival 35mm

Monday, May 3 at 7:00 • 150m
West Side Story
Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise, 1961 • This musical transplantation of Romeo and Juliet into the ethnic warfare between teenage gangs in New York was already a Broadway hit before its popular film adaptation. Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer are fine as the leads, but the supporting cast led by Rita Moreno and Russ Tamblyn is truly exceptional. Leonard Bernstein’s score is one of the great works of 20th-century American art, with songs like “Somewhere” and “Tonight” since becoming enduring standards. He’s assisted by witty lyrics from a young Stephen Sondheim and the inimitable choreography of co-director Jerome Robbins. 35mm

Monday, May 10 at 7:00 • 95m
David and Lisa
Frank Perry, 1962 • Perry's neglected low-budget debut feature follows a troubled teen sent to a mental institution, where a schizophrenic girl helps him confront his problems. This nuanced look at youth mental illness stands in stark contrast to Elia Kazan’s absurdly over-the-top portrayal in Splendor in the Grass one year earlier. Jean Renoir called the movie a turning point in the history of film, saying it achieved “by means of very high caliber, extremely moving actors… a certain contact with the director, which is, all things considered, the essence of art.” 35mm

Monday, May 17 at 7:00 • 90m
Eegah!
Arch Hall, Sr., 1962 • Of the many bizarre horror films churned out on the cheap for teenage drive-in audiences, Eegah! is certainly one of the strangest. Writer/director/producer Arch Hall, Sr. designed the film as a vehicle for his son Arch Hall, Jr. who plays a rock ‘n’ roller attempting to rescue his girlfriend from a caveman (Richard Kiel) who has captured her in his desert cave (the same cave in fact doubled as Ro-Man’s lair in another cult movie, Robot Monster). Eegah! is a classic example of how the emergence of teen cinema opened up new opportunities for independent, low-budget filmmakers. Watch out for snakes! Archival 35mm

Monday, May 24 at 7:00 • 98m
Beach Blanket Bingo
William Asher, 1965 • AIP’s delightful cycle of beach party movies starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon created an entire genre, with countless imitators of its colorful bend of surfing, teen pop, and broad comedy. In the fifth and best film of the series, Frankie, Dee Dee, and the usual gang of teens become obsessed with skydiving after seeing singer Sugar Kane (Linda Evans) attempt it as a publicity stunt. Dee Dee meanwhile becomes jealous of Frankie’s attentions for one of Sugar’s sidekicks. A goofy motorcycle gang led by Eric Von Zipper also shows up. So does a mermaid. And Buster Keaton. It’s, like, the best. 35mm

Monday, May 31 at 7:00 • 109m
Lord Love a Duck
George Axelrod, 1966 • A unique and virtually indescribable film, Lord Love a Duck is a manic yet unusually sophisticated black comedy that satirizes the entirety of teenage culture in the ‘60s. Tuesday Weld stars as Barbara Ann, a teenager who signs a pact with a Svengali-like classmate (Roddy McDowall) to help her achieve social success, including by helping her acquire the 12 cashmere sweaters necessary to join an exclusive all-girl club. The film lashes out in all directions at various topical concerns, lampooning the beach party genre, American consumerism, and even old men’s sexual obsession with younger girls. 35mm

I posted the other day about the 1966 film Georgy Girl and its classic title song. The film was also adapted into a notoriously unsuccessful Broadway musical called simply Georgy (it ran for a total of four performances in 1970). The brilliant yet terrifying iTunes shuffle just reminded me of the musical by playing a song from it covered by The Free Design, a great sunshine pop vocal group from the '60s and '70s who have seen a considerable revival of interest in the past ten years. It's the only song I've ever heard from the musical, but I love it!

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The Free Design - Howdjadoo (Fly Me Down) [from Georgy] [mp3]

Time to finally revive Children of the Future, my long languishing archive of bizarre stories by grade school children taken from their class websites. Here's a classic essay from the old site by Jeremiah:

My Possibility of imagining is to imagine my aunt being married to The Rock (a famous pro-wrestler). If they get married, the Rock will be my new uncle. My aunt likes the Rock.

My aunt has a lot of Rock collections. She has her own room that is covered with the Rock. She has the Rock Book, blanket, magazine, Valentines Cards taped to her mirror, posters, a poster that she made of the Rock, a Rock necklace, Rock shirt, the bramo bull tattoo that the Rock has, and a lot of other stuff that I can’t even name.

On July of 1998 my aunt, 5 of my cousins, and I went to the arena to see the Rock, wrestle just for my aunt to see. My cousins and I were wearing wrestling shirts. My aunt was wearing her jump suit.

Every Thursday at 7:30pm my aunt hop’s in the shower to get washed up for the Rock on smack down at 8:00pm. She puts on her Rock pajamas and gets ready for the Rock. She makes her own sign that says
MY SEAT ISN"T ANY GOOD! You know when you’re at home and not at the smack down.

In conclusion, you should see my aunt’s room and her self to believe it. So what do you think about my paper? Can ya smell what the Rock is cookin!