Band of Thebes

Born October 30: Néstor Almendros

Like so many great artists, Néstor Almendros did not follow a straight path to his genius. Born in Barcelona in 1930, he became disgusted with Franco's Spain by age eighteen and followed his father to Cuba, then went to film school in Rome, tried and failed to work in New York, left for France, was ready to give up at thirty-four, and got an absurdly lucky break: He happened to be on set the day the director of photography quit a short project with Eric Rohmer. From there Almendros became one of the world's  greatest cinematographers, carefully composing each frame and using natural light like a painter on over fifty films, including, in order, Two English Girls, Chloé in the Afternoon, The Story of Adele H., The Marquise of O., Days of Heaven for which he won an Oscar, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Blue Lagoon, The Last Métro for which he won a Cesar, Still of the Night, Sophie's Choice, Pauline at the Beach, Places in the Heart, Heartburn, Imagine: John Lennon, and Billy Bathgate.

For anyone seriously interested in cinema, his book A Man with a Camera is essential reading. Not only does he clarify how the director of photography differs from the cameraman but he devotes a brief chapter to each of forty films. He describes the challenges and innovations of working with directors (again and again it's Rohmer, Truffaut, or Robert Benton) to decide which colors they want the costume and set designers to use and how Almendros will light and shoot each scene. They usually start with fine art. Their initial inspiration for Kramer vs. Kramer, set on the Upper East Side of the 1970s, was Piero della Francesca, with a little Hockney and, for the child's bedroom, Magritte. For The Blue Lagoon, he concentrated on Gauguin. For the Meryl Streep - Robert DeNiro psycho-thriller Still of the Night, he looked to old Fritz Lang movies and Edward Hopper. Remarkably generous with the secrets of his working trade, his autobiography completely ignores his private life. And yet, even though he was closeted, when he had the opportunity to direct his own movie in 1984, he chose to make a documentary about Cuba's persecution of gay men, Mauvaise conduite [Improper Conduct], which won the audience award at Frameline. He also shot ads for Calvin Klein and Armani. He died of aids in 1992 at age sixty-one. Human Rights Watch gives an annual film award named in his honor.

Image: Lalo Borja, photographer.

Office Spinoff Song: "You Look Gay... Hope You Get Killed..."

Kelly and Erin, two of the more appealing characters from The Office, have formed a band called Subtle Sexuality and today released their first single, "Male Prima Donna." Though the subject is ripe to skewer, the lyrics are unfortunate. The lead-up to the second chorus ends:

You look gay in your skinny tie!
I hope you get killed in a drive-by!

Not to be humorless the day the after the hate crimes bill was signed into law, but NBC would never allow the juxtaposition of any other minority group [e.g. You look Jewish / Tamil Hindu / Irish / etc.] with the wish "I hope you get killed." Evidently, everyone involved thought this version was appropriate and funny. Kelly is played by Mindy Kaling, Dartmouth '01, who directed the video and writes many Office scripts. Erin is played by Ellie Kemper, Princeton '02, who writes for The Onion and McSweeney's.

A.S. Byatt at the Strand

Last night at the Strand, A.S. Byatt read from her novel The Children's Book and spoke about her evolution as a novelist. Whereas she used to write "twenty or thirty drafts" when she was younger, she writes "one draft now," after strenuous concentration. She said she "might think for a week about one chapter even though I know most of what will happen." She developed her Russian doll style of text within text while writing her Booker Prize winning Possession because she was "at a period in my life when I couldn't go on with straight realism." It was her way of saying, "Look, this isn't the only way of telling a story. There are myriad ways." 

She said again that one of the seeds of this novel was her thinking about how many great writers of that golden age of young people's fiction raised children who eventually committed suicide. She remarked that two of her ruling metaphors this time were gold & silver and going underground. The name Wellwood, she admitted, was "the surgeon who saved my life."

She said using her initials rather than her given name was "more dignified and more private." She agreed with T.S. Eliot that "the writer should be impersonal."

Answering a question about whether or not her novels are pagan, she replied, "I think my novels are slightly anti-Christian, which I suppose one shouldn't say." Explaining that ever since childhood she was always more interested in the Norse gods, she said she was "not a believing pagan. In fact, I'm an unbeliever. I'm a reasonable person."

Revisiting her dust-up about adults who exclusively read Harry Potter, she said she thought J.K. Rowling was a good writer for children and her "own addiction, and it's just that, an addiction, is Terry Pratchett."

Mild spoiler alert: I asked her about Julian's shift from his obsessive attraction to other boys to his proposing to a woman. This led us to a longish discussion of Lytton Strachey, his letters, and how "they were all gay, and they all got married." She didn't feel Julian had gone straight. Coming back to it a moment later, she said, "And I think Julian still thinks he's gay."

Proving that even brilliant writers can be fallible, The Children's Book was originally titled The Hedgehog, the White Goose and the Mad March Hare. Her next two books are a retelling of Ragnarok, the Scandinavian myth of the end of the world, and a novel about the Surrealists and the psychoanalysts.

(I love this photo by Ozier Muhammad/NYT. Last night photography was prohibited, a shame because she wore comfy red slip-on shoes.)

Scholastic Book Fairs Reverse Ban of Book with Lesbian Moms

Last week, the Scholastic school book fairs banned Lauren Myracle's Luv Ya Bunches for one of its four schoolgirl protagonists having two moms. The author agreed to clean up language such as "geez," "sucks," and "oh my god," but she refused to heterosexualize the lesbian mothers into a straight couple. Scholastic announced they would not sell the title at their book fairs because it failed "to meet the norms of the various communities that host the fairs," according to spokeswoman Kyle Good.

Myracle said, "A child having same-sex parents is not offensive, in my mind, and shouldn't be 'cleaned up. I find that appalling. I understand why they would want to avoid complaint letters — no one likes getting hated on — but shouldn't they be willing to evaluate the quality of the complaint? What, exactly, are children being protected against here?"

Well, Change.org took up the cause and in 48 hours collected more than 4,000 signatures demanding that Scholastic reverse their draconian policy. Yesterday, the company announced the book will appear in their spring book fairs.

Despite this happy ending, the overall principles guiding the book fairs seem confused. They still won't include the gay penguin picture book And Tango Makes Three, but they released a statement saying "we are committed to a review process that considers all books equally regardless of their inclusion of LGBT characters and same sex parents." Luv Ya Bunches was always available in the Scholastic Book Club catalog, and Tango is available on Scholastic's website.

The hair-trigger touchiness is evident at the school level, too. Last year, a Vancouver, Washington school district discontinued the book fairs after one parent complained The Golden Compass was anti-Christian.

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt

Her finest achievement since Angels & Insects and Possession, A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book begins in 1895 in the V&A museum where its first spoken words are, "I said I'd show you a mystery." Although the novel overflows with perplexing objects, that first mystery is a runaway urchin, Philip Warren, who lives hiding in the museum in order to sketch its treasures. The speaker is Julian Cain, the son of the museum's director, who shows his discovery to Tom Wellwood, whose fertile mother Olive is a successful writer of children's books. How their three sprawling families interact, intermarry, and rebel, over the next twenty-five years with one another and with the Fludds, strange potters to whom Philip is apprenticed, forms the bulk of this ravishing 675-page novel. Its major themes of parenthood and childhood, the cost of storytelling and the loss of innocence, both personally and globally, inevitably culminate on WWI battlefields.

Easily traversing all class lines, in settings from London and Kent to Paris and Munich, Byatt immerses the reader in every sensation of the era. Her three dozen (!) main characters are Fabianists, capitalists, anarchists, artists, suffragists, servants, and soldiers; her historical figures include Emma Goldman, Sarah Bernhardt, J.M. Barrie, and gay icons Edward Carpenter, Rupert Brooke, and Oscar Wilde. Among her chief areas of expertise here are fairy tales, pottery, puppetry, poetry, jewelry, theater, commerce, the emancipation of women, and the primal importance of work. And the sex lives of teenagers. When vagabond Philip has a bed all to himself for the first time in his life, "He lay back, and took himself in hand, and worked himself into a rhythm of delight, and a soaring wet ecstasy." Julian at 15 frankly assesses the sexual merits of Tom at 13, and still lusts after him well into college. After a long description: "He was the sort of beautiful boy, quite unconscious of his beauty, who was much discussed and courted both in Julian's prep school, and at Marlowe. Julian had asked himself whether Tom was pretty, or a possible object of passion, and had seen that, in theory, he certainly was. Pretty boys at school became rapidly self-conscious... Tom expected to be full of love and lust, and consequently usually was." Girls' desires are treated just as naturally.

Byatt's compulsive layering of detail is excessive, yet always brilliant. Not content to dazzle readers merely with her own output, she can't stop herself from including selections of works by her characters. But it's essential to see how Olive's fairy tales steal from her children's lives. Or how the intricate narratives of the German puppet shows are pregnant with meaning in the book's broader plot. Julian's wartime poems are so good that one of them, Trench Names, was published in The New Yorker last April.

The Children's Book is an instant favorite. Treat yourself.

Walt Whitman Is the New Brooke Shields / Miley Cyrus

Not being a television user, I had no idea Walt Whitman has become a jeans spokesperson. Yes, that's his rich voice reading "America." Everything that's wonderful about his delivery above is absent below in a didactic interpretation of "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" Nevertheless, a good day for bare chested gay poetry "...full of manly pride and friendship."

Gay Neo-Nazis Top Rome's Film Festival Prizes

Former fashion photographer Nicolo Donato, 35, has won the Rome Film Festival's top prize for his first feature, Brotherhood, about two Danish anti-gay neo-Nazis who fall in love. The jury, headed by Milos Forman, honored the gay drama which had its world premiere at the festival:

"Lars leaves the army and joins a group of neo-Nazis, which organises ruthless raids against Arabs and homosexuals. Apprenticeship to the 'brotherhood' is tough and Lars is supported by Jimmy, who acts as his mentor, charged with testing his trustworthiness and the preparation of fundamentalist far right texts in the style of 'Mein Kampf'. Unforeseeably, a passionate affair ensues between the two men. A love lived in secret, until the group's racist and violent rules end up forcing the pair to face the inevitable quandary: to betray their ideological 'brothers' or betray their lover other and their own feelings. Whatever the choice, it will lead to violence one way or another, whether physical or mental."

IndieWire comments:

"Same-sex relationships were a big theme in this year’s Rome lineup, though the other films were not as successful as Brotherhood in balancing the intersection of love and need for drama. Argentinean film Plan B, the feature debut of Marco Berger, comes off as an amateurishly filmed, written and acted take on the need of two token straight guys to explore their feelings for one another (think a two-dollar amateur Humpday remake as posted in not necessarily connected episodes on YouTube), while the only intermittently fiery local period drama Sea Violet by Donatella Maiorca is a Sicily-set tale of Sapphic desire that necessitates cross-dressing to set things, well, straight."

The ceremony Friday night also honored Helen Mirren as best actress for her role playing Tolstoy's wife in The Last Station. She and Donato (hatted) charm in one television clip; Meryl Streep winning a lifetime achievement award appears in another. Click through the choices.

Political Postcard from Virginia: The Coming Fall

 

Spending an otherwise glorious weekend in Rappahannock County, Virginia, I saw that political posters nearly outnumbered the autumn leaves and, sorry to say, the signs are not good. Next week, to replace their outgoing Democrat governor Virginia is going to elect by a wide margin a Republican theocrat anti-feminist homophobe. The White House and Congress will take this as a bellwether of next year's midterm elections. Recent HuffPost headlines warn "Independents Shifting Away from Obama, Democrats." Those unhappy returns in 2010 are going to terrify Democrat incumbents about their 2012 re-election prospects. While it's very hard to see how this is going to make them more liberal, it's easy to envision them becoming increasingly, desperately centrist.  In the rustling wind you can already hear the excuses that "now isn't the time" for a wedge issue like Don't Ask Don't Tell or that "the country just isn't there yet" on gay marriage. Bolstering that view will be our losing one or both marriage referendum next week. Rather than actual leadership that educates and changes views, we'll get cowardice "pragmatism." In short, the administration's most progressive days are already behind us. After the Hate Crimes Bill signing this week, a sharp fall is coming.

Amelia, Still Missing

Mira Nair's Amelia isn't half as bad as critics are saying, and it isn't a quarter as interesting as it ought to be. One of the few times Hilary Swank gives her character any subtlety is a scene suggesting Earhart's bisexuality, as she vocally admires another woman's legs in a mellow late night bar. It's also a pleasure to see out lesbian Cherry Jones play closeted lesbian Eleanor Roosevelt (though the voice is wrong and she's a either a tad bumpkinish or tipsy from champagne). The young actor playing 10 year-old Gore Vidal nicely criticizes Amelia's choice in wallpaper and wishes she would marry his father, with whom she has a long affair. Ewan McGregor, playing Gene Vidal, is the best of the primary cast, but everyone -- actors and audience alike -- suffers from Ron Bass's script. As ever, it's the most he can do to find the edge pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. Interiors are beyond him. The movie grossed only $4 million in this, its first weekend.

Try one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books, Susan Ware's Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism.

Gay Sex Panic, the Movie: 1950's Men Locked Up for Being Gay

Queer as Folk actor Peter Paige will direct his third feature, an indie adaptation of Neil Miller's harrowing nonfiction book Sex-Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s. No casting has been announced for the drama, which will be produced by Funny Boy Films, makers of Latter Days, Adam & Steve, and Naked Boys Singing! Paige told the Hollywood Reporter, "We're thinking of this film in the vein of 'Capote,' 'Milk' and 'Girl, Interrupted.' It's an intense, dramatic exploration of a dark period in our history."

The book recounts the mass panic in Sioux City, Iowa following the 1955 killing of an eight year old boy. Even after the murderer was caught and convicted, public hysteria was rampant. Authorities arrested twenty middle class gay men completely unconnected to the crime but were labeled "sexual psychopaths" and imprisoned in a mental asylum until "cured." They remained locked up for "prolonged periods of time," treated by the same staff who gave the actual murderer large doses of LSD to help him remember the killing.

Yes, gay history is essential. And yes this is yet another gay movie perfect for Debbie Downer date night.

Born October 23: B.D. Wong, Emma Donoghue

A fourth generation Chinese-American, B.D. Wong made his Broadway debut in 1988 in M. Butterfly, for which he became and remains the only actor to win the five major theater prizes for the same role. But it was not enough to convince David Cronenberg to cast him in the movie five years later, when he chose John Lone instead. Wong starred with Margaret Cho in her much praised, quickly canceled series All American Girl, then played a priest on Oz, and a psychiatrist on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He had a sixteen year relationship with Richie Jackson, an agent, and is raising his son named Foo, the surviving one of two twins born extremely prematurely. Wong wrote a book about the experience called Following Foo.

The youngest of eight children of literary critic Denis Donoghue, Dublin-born Emma Donoghue is one of The Four, contemporary U.K. lesbian novelists, with Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson, and Ali Smith. In her novels she is equally at home in the present (Stir-Fry, Hood) and the 1700s (Slammerkin, Life Mask). Her novel Landing, about a long-distance love affair between two women in Ireland and Canada, mirroring her own life: She lives in Ontario with her partner Chris, their son Finn, and their daughter Una. Donoghue’s most recent novel, about an adulterous wife of a Vice-Admiral in a divorce trial and her feminist best friend in 1860s London, is The Sealed Letter. A Lammy-winning bestseller, it earned grand reviews, like PW saying it "has style and scandal to burn." Next May, Knopf Canada will publish Donoghue's book of criticism, Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature. Never shy in truth telling, Donoghue posts among the recommended reading on her website a list titled "Proofs That Lesbian Fiction Need Not Suck."

Gore Vidal at B&N: "Whores Have Their Own Honor"

You know he's a provocateur, a Scrooge, and a towering figure in American Letters, but did you realize Gore Vidal at 84 is still a precise mimic? Discussing his new photo memoir book Snapshots in History's Glare with Leonard Lopate on stage at Union Square's B&N last night, Vidal adroitly channeled Bush, Joe Alsop, Tennessee Williams, JFK, and Kenneth Tynan. Amid rambling memories he made these statements:

On the gushing praise from the right and the left upon Bill Buckley's death, "Whores have their own honor."

JFK complained to Vidal, "The people I meet are rich and powerful and famous but they have no interest in the country."

"The [American] empire is a total failure. And we are dead broke."

"Harry Truman decided to keep us at war forever."

Commercialism is "to do well what should not be done at all."

Warhol was "endlessly charming," Ben Hur was "dreadful," and Charlton Heston "lies that we never met, so I included this picture of us in the book. He was always strangling me with great manly hugs."

Vidal paid tribute to his partner of fifty-three years, Howard Austen, who died in 2003 and had collected most of these five hundred photos with the intention of creating this book. Some of the other photos were provided by Dick Cavett who sat in the front row with Susan Sarandon. The overflow crowd was nearly six hundred people and, remarkably, they all were good sports about Vidal not signing books after the interview.

Born October 22: Derek Jacobi, Bill Condon

A working class bloke who won a scholarship to Cambridge, Derek Jacobi became one of the university’s best actors and soon after graduation Laurence Olivier asked him to be one of eight founding members of the National Theatre, where his debut role was Laertes to Peter O’Toole’s Hamlet. Thirteen years later, in 1976, he reached his greatest fame with the title role in the BBC’s I, Claudius. As a result, he was able to tour his Hamlet in Sweden, Egypt, Japan, China, and Australia. Renowned for his impeccable performances in productions of the Bard by the RSC, the BBC, and Kenneth Branagh, Jacobi lampooned himself on an episode of Frasier in which he played the world’s worst Shakespearean actor, for which he won an Emmy. Earlier this year, he won best actor at the Olivier Awards for his portrayal of Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Among his numerous other roles are Alan Turing in Breaking the Code, Gracchus in Gladiator, and several characters from Dickens.  Knighted by the monarchs of Britain and Denmark, Jacobi is married to Richard Clifford, his partner of thirty years.

Quick, what did Bill Condon direct immediately prior to winning an Oscar for his adaptation of Christopher Bram’s novel Gods and Monsters? That’s right, the horror sequel Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh. Since then he has also directed the overlooked Kinsey and the overhyped Dreamgirls. Next up, his biopic of Richard Pryor now starring Marlon Wayans who replaces Eddie Murphy.

The Hour Between by Sebastian Stuart

Sebastian Stuart freshens a familiar prep school story of senior year secrets and self-discovery with likable characters and a quick pace in his quietly insistent new novel, The Hour Between. Expelled from Collegiate, Arthur McDougal transfers to a small, alternative academy in Connecticut where he becomes best friends with Katrina Felt, the daughter of a movie star. If the mix of wealthy offspring, lost souls, drugs, sex, and Hollywood exiles sounds like Less Than Zero, don't worry; the damaged rich kids and beautiful people's mental fragility are more reminiscent of Tender Is the Night.

Emboldened by Katrina's manic glamor and outsized personality, Arthur pushes himself into his first gay affair and comes out to his sophisticated Manhattan family. His bravery is more poignant because it's 1967-68, but that era also means teenagers occasionally speak like this, "Power, baby, with a healthy dose of class rage tossed in the mix. He's a bumpkin with a chip on his shoulder the size of Elsie the cow." Even the endearingly uncertain 17 year-old Arthur sometimes lapses into language such as, "Her orgasm's ecstatic timber came crashing down the hill toward us, causing the overgrown grass itself to undulate -- the cherub's smile took on a satyr's glint." Or, "I walked down to the lake -- its surface was alive with dancing raindrops and the wet of the earth and air seemed to merge with the lake, enclosing me in a watery dream." 

Stuart, who turns 60 this year, is particularly deft in his characterizations of older women. My favorite sentence in the book is from Mrs. McDougal, who opens a scene with "Arthur, that is the most absurd idea since Bucky Fuller wanted to put a dome over Manhattan!" Katrina's mother, the smaller than expected movie star, is also perfectly drawn with a delicate understanding of actresses offscreen lost without direction. As Katrina fights to overcome past demons and auditions for the lead in a Broadway musical, the novel delivers spot-on cameo scenes with Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol.

Strict hair-splitters may be disconcerted to see a character studying Maurice early in 1968 (before Stonewall, before Forster's death) although actually the novel could not be published until 1971, posthumously. More forgiving readers should enjoy this heartfelt story of friendship and sex, coming out and growing up. Anita Shreve calls it, "charming, hilarious, effervescent, and dead serious."

British PM Wants Civil Partnerships Performed in Parliament

As part of today's discussions on the equality vote, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will "commit his party to trying to ensure there are 120 female Labour MPs in the parliamentary party after the next election" and he will recommend that civil partnership ceremonies "should be allowed to be held in the Palace of Westminster as a symbol of parliament's commitment to gay marriage and tolerance." Currently the ceremonies are banned from churches, so unlike straight MPs, peers, and their families, gays cannot use Westminster's Chapel of St. Mary. The Telegraph reports

"Mr Brown will instead suggest that other locations in the Palace of Westminster can be used for civil partnerships. One option would be to use Speaker’s House, which is one of the most ornate parts of the Commons, and has the Thames as a backdrop.

"The Prime Minister does not have the power to push through a new measure but can offer suggestions. Senior Labour politicians, including Mr Brown, have often cited the law on civil partnerships as one of the party's proudest achievements.

"Several MPs have entered into civil partnerships including Angela Eagle, the Labour minister, Ben Bradshaw, the Culture Secretary, and Nick Herbert, a member of the shadow cabinet."

Meanwhile, the White House won't say categorically their positions on Maine's Question 1 and Washington state's Referendum 71. Their recent "clarification" remains generic: 

“The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples, and as he said at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, he believes ‘strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away.’ Also at the dinner, he said he supports, ‘ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country.’"

Born October 19: Robert Reed, Divine

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone had always known America’s #1 television dad, Mike Brady, was gay? Although much loved on the set, especially by the child actors, Robert Reed grew increasingly unhappy and resentful that his defining role was beneath his talents as a classical, Shakespearean actor. He fought frequently with the show’s creator, Sherwood Schwartz, which is why he was written out of the series’ finale, although he did return for the reunion shows. He died of aids in Pasadena in 1992, five months shy of his sixtieth birthday. Related: Maureen McCormick (Marcia), says in her memoir Here's the Story that she made out with her tv sister Jan. You may recall Greg’s memoir Growing Up Brady, which described his affair with his tv mom Florence Henderson. Quite the family.

Proving there is order in the randomness of the universe, in high school Divine lived six houses away from John Waters. In movies like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Polyester with Tab Hunter, Waters gave Harris Glenn Milstead starring roles and helped create his immortal drag persona. Divine released several disco songs and albums, but his greatest fame came with Waters’ original Hairspray. After that breakthrough role he was cast as Uncle Otto on Married... With Children, but his obesity caused a heart attack, killing him at 42 in 1988. Among Divine’s many legacies, he was the inspiration of Ursula the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid. 

A Single Man's UK Premiere in London

Tom Ford and three of his actors prettied up the London Film Festival this weekend at the UK premiere of his take on Isherwood's classic gay novel, A Single Man.

Price Wars: Wal-Mart, Amazon Fight for Book Buyers

Usually, bestselling titles enjoy a maximum discount of 40%, because stores traditionally pay publishers 50% of the list price. So it's remarkable that Wal-Mart plans to sell its top ten pre-order book titles for $10 each and give free shipping. For titles that are $29 (Palin) or $28 dollars (Crichton) that means 66% or 64% off list price, not to mention their lost cost of shipping. Better news for literary readers, the chain also will offer its top 200 titles at "50% or more" off the list price.

Also last week, Amazon said they're launching a same day delivery program in seven cities. For a $15 surcharge, you can order a title in the morning and have it delivered before 8:00pm. (Manhattan residents already get this service from B&N.com, and it's free on purchases over $25.) Amazon's cities are Baltimore, Boston, Las Vegas, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington, DC.

Of course you should first try to support your local independent bookseller. Especially after seeing the better than expected Capitalism: A Love Story. Among the many outrages -- Why does your local sheriff's office do the bank's job of evicting people from their foreclosed homes? Why do so many pilots have to get second jobs? -- Michael Moore names the companies that buy secret life insurance policies on their employees and make money off their deaths. Wal-Mart earned over $80,000 on a lowpaid cake decorator who died in her twenties of severe asthma after 18 months on the job. Her family incurred $90,000 of healthcare costs and paid $6,000 for her funeral and got nothing. A latina widow in Houston discovered her husband's bank earned $5 million from his early death from cancer. This is a genuine profit center at the companies, and they lament that they're missing their target death rates of their own people.

Far more blood curdling is Citicorp's memo about the world's "plutonomy" a system by and for the rich that has replaced democracy. Read it if you dare.

Born October 17: Montgomery Clift, Rob Marshall

Montgomery Clift's life was defined by two crashes. After a charmed childhood of long vacations in Europe and the Caribbean, his financier father lost nearly everything in the stock market crash of 1929. The family moved to a modest house in Sarasota, and there Clift discovered acting. By the time he was thirteen he was on Broadway and by the time he was seventeen he was a star on stage. Hollywood wooed him for years and he finally agreed to make his film debut in Howard Hawks' Red River opposite John Wayne, when he was twenty-eight. His second movie, The Search, earned him his first Oscar nomination. He followed that with The Heiress opposite Olivia de Haviland, then was nominated for another Oscar for his scorching pairing with Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun, and nominated yet again two years later for From Here to Eternity, the same year when he starred in Hitchcock's I Confess. He turned down Hitchcock's Rope, uncomfortably about a gay couple who kill a boy, and also turned down the starring roles in East of EdenSunset Boulevard. While filming another movie with his best friend Elizabeth Taylor, Clift drove into a telephone pole and nearly died, eight months after James Dean was killed in a similar crash.  Much has been made of Clift's downward spiral after the crash, often called "the longest suicide in Hollywood," but he starred in eight movies before the accident and eight movies after. His fourth and final Oscar nomination came for his seven-minute role in Judgment at Nuremberg. Addicted to alcohol and pain pills, he died of a heart attack at forty-five, bitter and unemployable. Yes, he is the inspiration of R.E.M.'s song "Monty Got a Raw Deal."

A five-time Tony nominee for his choreography, Rob Marshall stormed Hollywood with first feature, Chicago, winning the Academy Award for best film of 2002. His third movie, Nine, is coming in December and it's wall to wall Oscar winners: Daniel Day Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, and Sophia Loren. Will any character penetrate this much dazzle or won't it matter? Marshall is 49 and longtime partners with John DeLuca.

Happy Trails To You by Julie Hecht

Trying to get people to read Happy Trails to You is a little like trying to get Americans to buy bottled water before 1983. You want me to PAY for a book of seven short stories narrated by a nameless, neurotic Nantucket vegan in which nothing happens? Serious? Yes. Among Julie Hecht's ardent fans are Alice Munro, Ian Frazier, Michiko Kakutani, and Roz Chast. Who else could write a 22 page story in which the main action is a sober Jewish woman going next door to a neighbor's drunken Christmas party and eating one bite of a baked potato? The story first appeared in The New Yorker and the magazine does a fair job of quashing what's special into this forced summary:

"The unnamed narrator, a strict vegan in her early forties whose father has died, visits her elderly neighbor on Christmas Day and is teased by the family for her vegetarianism. When she returns a few days later, the narrator tastes a buttered baked potato and finds herself longing to be part of a big happy family. She regrets not having found solutions to the problems of her father’s old age. When the neighbor’s family passes around drinks, the narrator reminds herself to bring her own water, because the plastic in bottles can seep into water, and ice is often contaminated by bacteria. The only other beverage choice is high-sodium V8. “I have a joke for vegetarians,” a red-faced man says. “If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?” To hell with them, as the narrator’s father liked to say about many things and people. But she’s not going over there, into the forbidden territory of wishing her father and mother were alive. As she gets up to go, a daughter-in-law offers her a piece of cake, “even though you won’t eat it.” “Her husband can eat the cake,” the neighbor says, adding that the narrator’s cranberry bread looks dry. “We put all those bad things in to keep it nice and moist,” the daughter-in-law says. “It’s the oldness of the oven,” the narrator says. “It’s the husband’s fault,” someone says. “He needs more ginkgo!” the red-faced man shouts. “More ginkgo for everyone,” someone says. “And less drinko,” the narrator says. A few days later, the narrator visits her neighbor with a better loaf of cranberry bread. The neighbor’s book case is full of photos, all of good-looking people having fun. “Why aren’t I part of a big happy family? I once heard a psychologist say, ‘Everyone wants to be part of a big happy family. At Christmastime, the feeling is more extreme.’” The neighbor, who is not supposed to have butter, scoffs at the narrator’s suggestion of putting olive oil on her baked potato. “At my age, I can do what I want,” she says and offers the narrator some. It’s the best potato the narrator has ever tasted. She has to resist the urge to grab it and gobble it down, butter and all. While the neighbor carves off some ham, the narrator thinks about arriving late for a visit and finding her father eating a spartan dinner alone. That would have been the right time to get him to move next to the narrator. But her father had said, “Let’s wait and see how I age.” But by the time you see, the person can’t be moved. The narrator flashes a fake smile at her neighbor and says, “Bon Appetit!”

Even better is the title story in which she becomes phone friends with her polar opposite, a light-hearted, gay twenty-something boy from Texas raised by right-wing Christianists. He has atrocious nutrition, smokes, owns guns, and makes her laugh with his tales about his ex-boyfriend who made him come out to his rejecting family against his will then dumped him, or the time he hired disreputable locals to move a house for him, with disastrous results. He tries to convince her that every Rodgers and Hammerstein song name would make a perfect title for gay porn: A Wonderful Guy, I Can't Say No, We Kiss in a Shadow. She laughs, she ruminates on the passing of time, the loss of family. It's nothing, it's everything.

Here's a NYT critic on Hecht's previous collection, Do the Windows Open?, featuring the same narrator:

"Ms. Hecht is a brilliant comic writer. The stories are breathtakingly funny, and over and over again I found myself laughing till I cried. Yet the laughs are unforced and unmanufactured; Ms. Hecht's narrator isn't a comedienne and she doesn't do shtick. Like other classic deadpan talkers (Tristram Shandy, Huckleberry Finn, Thomas Bernhard's narrators), she doesn't even seem to realize how funny she is. The tone is seamless and magnetic and remarkably gentle, even delicate. Moreover, the humor in the stories is so organic to the narrator's rambling and digressive sensibility that it's hard to tell when it becomes fused with sadness or stained with desolation. But suddenly things change. A seemingly drifting series of anecdotes about the narrator's acquaintance with two pixilated brothers who, like her, live in East Hampton, summer in Nantucket and share her nostalgia for New England inns with lovely Christmas ornaments becomes a pointed lamentation for the inevitable loss of freshness and hope in marriage. Entirely silent about love and sex, the stories bulge with excluded middles and metaphysical heartaches."