Southern Bookman

Farewell, Dave Hickey, the last gonzo

Dave Hickey like Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson brought an intense personal sensibility to journalism.

The last of a generation that began with Wolfe and Mailer's "new journalism," Hickey gained cultish fame with his 1997 collection "Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy."

The essay collection champions Hank Williams, Liberace, Stan Brakhage, Norman Rockefeller, Chet Baker and other popular artists with the same attention he gives to Cezanne, de Kooning, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. In an essay on basketball, he praises Julius Erving and James Naismith's original game rules.

Hickey, who like Thompson and Mailer defined himself as an outlaw rebelling against prevailing cultural strictures, died Nov. 12 at age 82 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He'd been battling heart disease for years.

A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Hickey as a child moved with his family to Los Angeles. He ridiculed Texas' provincial boosterism, but never lost the state's contrarian viewpoint. When Hickey was 11, his father, a car salesman and jazz musician, killed himself, a major influence on Hickey's independent outlook.

Rootless as a young man, Hickey opened an art gallery in Austin called "A Clean Lighted Place," which struggled against the Texas capital's parochial aesthetic values. He then moved to New York City, where he managed a gallery, reportedly quitting in protest of a Yoko Ono exhibition.

Discovering himself as a writer, Hickey was editor of Art in America before finding a home as a professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, becoming the most famous representative of that school since Jerry Tarkanian's Runnin' Rebels.

In one of the best essays in "Air Guitar," Hickey celebrates Las Vegas for its freedom from New York City and Los Angeles' cultural dogmas. He also loved Las Vegas' wide-open entertainment and gambling culture.

"Air Guitar" and the influential chapbook "The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty," earned him a MacArthur "Genius grant," in 2001, the proceeds of which he fed into Vegas slot machines.

While he appreciated mass popular culture, he also called for a return to rigorous standards in judging artworks. He blasted the contemporary art world for its commercialism and turn from traditional artistic values.

Like his journalistic predecessors, Hickey was accused of machoism, although he considered underappreciated abstract painter Joan Mitchell the best artist of her generation. Feminist critics saw his defense of beauty as elitist. At the end of his career, he published "25 Women: Essays on Their Art." That too was viewed as paternalistic.

Hickey wrote for a variety of publications, including Art News, the Village Voice, Texas Monthly and Rolling Stone. Along with art and popular music, he also wrote about television and the movies.

In "Air Guitar," he recalled the Texas writer Grover Lewis, and Lewis' friendship with Larry McMurtry, ground also covered by a McMurtry memoir.

Hickey biographer Daniel Oppenheimer wrote a warm appeciation of Hickey for Texas Monthly, the first to report Hickey's death.

As Oppenheimer details, Hickey like other literary exiles remained stamped by his native land.

 

it's a Truist story: I'm cheering for Braves against my boyhood team, the Astros

It's strange rooting against my childhood team, the Houston Astros.

Before the World Series, I thought I'd be conflicted. But I'm cheering for the Braves.

After two games in Houston, where I misspent a lot of my misspent youth and saw my first major league game, the World Series shifts to Atlanta on a chilly Friday night in autumn. Each team has won a game.

Atlanta's in the series for the first time since 1999, when the Braves were swept by the Yankees, despite fielding Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Chipper Jones and John Smoltz.

Led by Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens and Mariana Rivera, the Bronx Bombers were too much for Bobby Cox's team, then playing in Turner Field, converted from the 1996 Olympics stadium.

But Mark Bradley, Tim Tucker and Steve Hummer still write for the AJC. Walt Weiss remains with the Braves, this time as a coach rather than a player. And Brian Snitker, manager of the Braves' Myrtle Beach Pelicans in 1999, now pilots the big club.

The Braves have moved to fan-friendly Truist Park in Cobb County. With no mass transit other than Uber and Lyft, parking's a nightmare. but the Battery will be packed, even drawing fans unable to afford the thousands of dollars sought for tickets to get inside the ballpark. Presumably, Donald Trump will get in free. And they accuse the Dems of freeloading.

In 1999, the World Series drew up to 25 million viewers. The Braves and Astros' first game in Houston was watched by around 10 million, the second lowest ratings ever for a series opener, although an improvement over last year's pandemic-marred start between the Dodgers and Rays.

When I was growing up, Houston played in the National League. In my first major league game, seen with my father and grandfather, I watched the then Colt .45s play the St. Louis Cardinals of Bob Gibson and Stan Musial in steamy old Colt Stadium. The now abandoned Astrodome was rising just beyond the right field bleachers.

I still have a hard time seeing the Astros as an American League club, although they made the shift eight years ago and won the 2017 World Series as the American League champions. My thrill over their championship was crushed by the cheating scandal.

I loved the baseball movie "Bang the Drum Slowly," starring Robert de Niro as a mediocre catcher dying from cancer. But bang the trashcan slowly was a disgrace.

However, it's still wrenching for me to view Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and Yuri Gurriel as villains, although Gurriel did break Charlie Morton's leg. And I always liked Dusty Baker.

Despite the aggravating delays, I'll be watching, although the game's an ordeal now. I love Tyler Matzek, A.J. Minter and Luke Jackson as much as the next fan, but the parade of relievers and Fox's long commercial breaks between innings stretch the games to over four hours. Major League Baseball recognizes that the torturous pace is killing the sport, but the games keep getting longer.

Another grumpy old fan's lament: Fox announcer Joe Buck openly soliciting gambling. Say it ain't so, Joe.

Hey, let's not party like it's 1999, let's beat the 'Stros and their fans' silly spacesuit getup. There's nothing like the World Series to excite a city. Even the Tomahawk Chop's been blessed by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, who moved the all-star game from Atlanta to Denver.

I'll be cheering for Ian Anderson, my favorite Ian Anderson since Jethro Tull.

After midnight, I'll rub my weary eyes as Will Smith strikes out Alex Bregman, Yordan Alverez (if he finds a place to play) and Kyle Tucker. 

I might even wear pearls.

 

 

 

 

Voters unexcited about tight Atlanta mayor's race beween Kasim Reid, Felicia Moore

The tight Atlanta mayor's race hasn't excited voters so far.

Former Mayor Kasim Reed and City Council President Felicia Moore are tied, according to polls. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has extensively covered the election, including front-page profiles of each candidate. A small but steady flow of TV ads has appeared, mainly heavy-handed attacks on Moore by Reid's campaign.

But voters don't appear enthusiastic about the nonpartisan election. Perhaps Buckhead residents involved in the outlandish campaign to form a new city have decided not to participate in local democracy. After the exhausting 2020 presidential election and the endless subsequent turmoil, voters are sick of campaigns.

That seems the case in the volatile Virginia governor's race, where Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe's flagging campaign against Republican Glenn Youngkin has panicked the Biden administration and national Democrats.

Reid and Moore are waging a heated battle, with Reid displaying supercilious hostility toward Moore in TV debates. City Councilman Andrew Dickens has run a strong campaign, without seriously challenging Reid or Moore. Attorney Sharon Gay, the leading white candidate, has not capitalized upon the Buckhead dissatisfaction with the city despite strong fund-raising.

Proving again the value of a strong local newspaper columnist, the AJC's Bill Torpy Thursday examined why former Mayor Shirley Franklin vehemently opposes Reid, her former campaign manager.

Franklin called Reid a dictatorial bully, comparing him to former Haitian ruler "Papa Doc" Duvalier. She also said that Reid is falsely taken credit for a city reserve fund surplus that she created.

Franklin is supporting Dickens instead of Moore, who seems to be drawing support from middle-class white voters who still care about the city's future. Dickens is an appealing candidate who doesn't have the citywide recognition enjoyed by Reid and Moore.

Torpy also asked former Mayor Andrew Young why he's supporting Reid. Young seems to endorse Reid's imperious image, decried by Franklin. Young sounded like a grumpy old man who who believes that Reid has a special hold on the office.

The Franklin-Reid dispute points to a split in the black political machine that has ruled Atlanta City Hall for years, beginning with Maynard Jackson. Moore, a veteran member of the Atlanta city council, made her reputation as an outsider independent of the mayor's office.

She's been the target of negative ads from Reid, who holds a sizable campaign funding lead. Reid has attempted to paint Moore as soft on crime, although she like him calls for the hiring of more police officers. Reid has sounded like a GOP candidate in his relentless anti-crime stance.

So far, the mayor's race has received little or no national attention. Neither The New York Times nor Wall Street Journal had so far looked at the race. Outgoing incumbent Keisha Lance Bottoms for a while was a favorite guest on MSNBC, but the network has ignored Moore and other candidates.

Torpy and AJC political columnist Patricia Murphy have kept their attention on the election. But Atlanta voters, like those in Virginia, remain apathetic.

 

Ronald Brownstein's Los Angeles stories

Ronald Brownstein's "Rock Me on the Water: 1974 - The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics" gives a more complex analysis of Los Angeles-centered pop culture in the 1970s than implied by the book's misleading subtitle.

While Brownstein cites the release of breakthrough albums by singers Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt, the release of "Chinatown" and "The Godfather Part 2," and Jerry Brown's winning the California governorship, the book makes a case for other landmark years beyond the arbitrary selection of 1974. He probes cultural changes from the 1960s through the end of the 1970s, not limiting his narrative to that year.

A senior editor at the Atlantic and a CNN political correspondent, Brownstein champions Los Angeles as the center of American culture in the 1960s and 1970s, citing the city's movie, television and music industries. Although Brownstein covers a lot of familiar ground, he gives a fresh perspective in placing the creative endeavors together. He gives detailed biographies of lesser known screenwriters, producers and musicians.

In television, he cites CBS' ground-breaking “All in the Family," "MASH” and "Mary Tyler Moore Show," all of which appeared before 1974 and already at their peak popularity.

While the shows were produced in Los Angeles, the decisions to place them on the air were made at CBS' headquarters in New York City. And executives at "Black Rock" decided what was permissible in the show's scripts.

CBS' hit shows appeared together in a dynamite Saturday night lineup that drew millions of viewers, long before the rise of cable TV and streaming. Network TV's dominance and massive Saturday night ratings are hard to imagine now that the night is a TV graveyard except for college football. 

Along with the innovative and controversial "All in the Family," "MASH"  and "Mary Tyler Moore," the network's Saturday night closed with the middle-American comedies "The Bob Newhart Show" and "Carol Burnett Show."

While "All in the Family" still appears revolutionary, the book points out that lead actor Carroll O'Connor made bigot Archie Bunker appealing and that many in the audience probably agreed with his views. In an interesting diversion, Brownstein examines O'Connor's bitter dispute with series creator Norman Lear. O'Connor wanted more money and control over the series, which Lear refused to give.

After moving to Monday night, "MASH" continued to receive huge ratings, its comic appeal overriding its anti-war attitudes. Its finale in 1983 was at the time the most highly rated show ever. But as Brownstein relates, American tastes turned to the All-American wholesomeness of ABC's "Happy Days."

Later shows like NBC's "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue" in retrospect had more long-term revolutionary significance for the rise of shows like HBO's "The Wire" and "The Sopranos." Brownstein doesn't delve into whether "All in the Family" and its spinoffs had any long-term influence.

"Chinatown," "Godfather Part 2" and Robert Altman's "Nashville" represented the end of the revolutionary era of independent films begun by "Easy Rider," "Five Easy Pieces" and "The Graduate," as Brownstein points out. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, members of a younger generation, ended the era of social commentary in films. Spielberg's "Jaws" and Lucas' "American Graffitti" and "Star Wars" brought the era of mass-entertainment blockbusters.

In music, Brownstein looks at how mogul David Geffen boosted the careers of Browne, Ronstadt and the Eagles. He also touches upon the influential careers of Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Geffen's management led to developments like stadium tours, as Brownstein relates.

Yet Geffen's Los Angeles dominance didn't last. He failed in efforts to sign Bob Dylan to a long-term record deal. And New York and London's punk rock scene countered the rock-star excesses of Geffen's groups. While Browne, Ronstadt and the Eagles reached mainstream popularity, their careers were overwhelmed by a truly transformational talent, Bruce Springsteen, whom Brownstein briefly mentions.

Brownstein's weakest argument is that Brown was a major influence in national politics. He looks at Brown's fitful efforts to gain the Democratic presidential nomination without establishing the long-term relevance of his ideas. Little mention is made of Jimmy Carter's presidency or Ronald Reagan's.

While Brownstein's premise is overstated, he presents a valuable comprehensive survey of Los Angeles' culture during the transition from the socially conscious 1960s to the materialistic 1970s. A sense of loss prevails rather than triumph.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Sixty Minutes" honors New York City firefighters' heroism on Sept. 11, 2001

The heroism of New York City firefighters on Sept. 11, 2001, showed the best of humanity amid the devastation and darkness.

"Sixty Minutes" on Sunday night honored the firefighters' extraordinary courage with a poignant report that should always be shown to new generations.

Correspondent Scott Pelley interviewed Fire Department leaders who witnessed and survived the attacks on the World Trade Center, and descendants of firefighters killed seeking to rescue people trapped in the burning buildings before they collapsed. The heroes' sons and daughters, just children on that tragic day, are now firefighters.

The show also rebroadcast incredible video from Sept. 11.  The first plane travels low across the sky and hits the North Tower as firefighters investigating a routine gas leak watch it pass overhead. A production crew that happened to be filming a documentary on the fire department captured the surrealistic scene.

Pelley's report opened the 54th season of "Sixty Minutes," affirming its prominence in American journalism. While the networks' evening news no longer receives the huge audience commanded by anchorman Walter Cronkite, "Sixty Minutes" is still an essential news voice for millions.

In his closing Sept. 11 tribute, Pelley reached the network's news-writing tradition set by Edward R. Murrow, Morley Safer, Eric Sevareid, Cronkite and others.

"We cannot do justice, in this hour, or any number of hours to the sacrifices of the FDNY, the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority Police, and to those who fought to save lives at the Pentagon, and on Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

At the Trade Center, 2,753 people perished. But there were more than 17,000 in the towers and 99% of those below the fires survived.

That morning, a witness watched firefighters rush to the stairwells and wondered how they found the courage.

After 20 years of reflection, it's clear.

They climbed to rise.

To rise to the cries 1000 feet above them.

To rise to the defense of the firefighter beside them.

To rise beyond duty to a place of selfless devotion."

 

 

"Try to Remember" marks September's arrival

Every year when September arrives, I play "Try to Remember" each day of the month on my piano.

That's one of my rituals to mark the new season. I also read W.H. Auden's "Sept. 1, 1939," and listen to "September Song," especially Jimmy Durante's version on You Tube.

Along with playing "Try to Remember" on piano, I also search YouTube for performances of the song by Jerry Orbach.

Before his 12 seasons as the wise-cracking detective Lenny Briscoe on "Law and Order," Orbach gained fame with his haunting performance of "Try to Remember" in the original off-Broadway production of "The Fantasticks," the longest-running musical ever.

Written by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones - the American lyricist, not the British pop singer - "Try to Remember" is overly nostalgic. Its melancholy lyrics mark the end of the American Songbook era of sophisticated songwriting. While excessively sentimental, the song’s words and melody evoke the new season for me.

Orbach moved on from “The Fantasticks” to star in several Broadway musicals before his long run on “Law and Order.” He also portrayed the warm-hearted father of Jennifer Grey’s Frances “Baby” Houseman in the popular movie “Dirty Dancing.”

After a long battle with prostate cancer that forced him to leave "Law and Order," Orbach died in 2004. Each time I play "Try to Remember," I think of him.

 

Sandra Oh's "The Chair" a balm for a distressing season

In this bleak apocalyptic August, I'm grateful for a new Sandra Oh show.

On the heels of HBO's "The White Lotus," Oh's "The Chair" arrives on Netflix. Oh plays a Korean-American woman named to lead an elitist university's sinking English department.

While I liked Oh in her long run on "Grey's Anatomy" and as a free-spirited California neo-hippie in "Sideways," I fell in love with her watching "Killing Eve" on BBC America.

As Eve Polastri, locked in a love-hate obsession with Jodie Comer's assassin Villanelle, Oh blended world-weariness, alienation from modern conveniences, street-smarts and instinctual brilliance. And that face, registering each emotional shift.

"The Chair" is a new variation on the campus comedy genre, in which Oh portrays Ji-Yoon Kim, whose promotion as department head is baited with potential disasters. According to rave reviews, Kim must deal with an aging faculty seen as out of touch, a reduced budget, woke students and academic politics. Along with her academic duties, she deals with being the single mother of a young daughter.

Along with Oh, the superb cast features several other personal favorites: Mark Duplass as a professor on the verge of an intimate relationship with Kim, Bob Balaban as older Chaucer scholar clinging to academic traditions, and Holland Taylor as a tart-tongued medievalist.

Actress Amanda Peet steps forward as  the six-part series' creator, writer and showrunner, along with Annie Wyman. Peet's husband, David Benioff, and Dan Weiss, famed for creating HBO's "Game of Thrones," are executive producers along with Peet. It's the first venture in Benioff and Weiss's deal with Netflix.

As "The Chair" premiers, Oh fans can look forward to a new season of "Killing Eve," which she's filming on location in London.

HBO's "The White Lotus" reveals how the rich vainly search for fulfillment

Like Holden Caulfield and Huckleberry Finn, Quinn Mossbacher is an adolescent boy with uncommon integrity.

Superbly portrayed by Fred Hechinger on the HBO series "The White Lotus," Quinn in contrast to the other characters on the show displays personal growth and moral self-awareness. Once prevalent in American literature, theater and film, such male coming-of-age stories are increasingly rare.

The son of entitled wealthy parents Nicole and Mark Mossbacher, Quinn at the start of the show is a whiny, ill-formed adolescent addicted to pornography and his cellphone. He's disdained by his sister, Olivia, and her friend, Paula. In director and writer Mike White's six-episode series that concluded Sunday night, the family along with Paula have arrived in Maui, Hawaii for a vacation at an exclusive resort.

Shot on location at the Four Seasons resort during the Covid quarantine, the latest HBO media sensation depicts a new class of entitled and selfish ugly Americans.

The show also tells the stories of a rich young married couple, Shane and Rachel Patton, and a depressed, self-absorbed older woman, Tanya.

The gilded group’s condescending treatment of the resort staff, and their insensitivity to Hawaiian culture, bring comic, repugnant and tragic results.

Because of corona-virus restrictions, the entire cast stayed at the resort during the filming, giving the series the insular atmosphere of a stage production. Along with a few scenes shot on water and in the island's airport, most of the series takes place in the resort.

Aggravated by Paula and Olivia's refusal to let him spend the night in the guest room of the family’s hotel suite, Quinn begins to sleep on the beach, where he begins his transformation. He loses his phone when the morning tide rushes in, but his growing awareness of nature frees him from his addiction to the device.

Awaking one morning, he encounters a group of young Hawaiian men taking their hokulea native canoe into the ocean. Eventually, they invite him to join their rowing crew, and at the end of the show he escapes his family at the airport to stay on the island. The series ends with Quinn riding the canoe with his new friends into the sunset on their way to Polynesia.

In a show whose title contains a reference to “The Odyssey,” Quinn is the new Ulysses, escaping his family for a hero’s quest. Perhaps one day he’ll return home.

Contrasting with Quinn, Shane Patton, played by Jake Lacy with the perfect combination of entitlement and smarmy egoism, displays little self-awareness. Shane's relentless dispute with the supercilious resort manager Armond leads to Armond's personal dissolution through drug abuse and gay sexual excess.

After discovering that Armond has entered his room and defecated on his preppy clothes packed in a suitcase, Shane accidentally stabs Armond with a knife left to cut pineapples delivered to the room.

The circumstances of the killing recall Polonius’ shocking death in “Hamlet.” A wealthy scion accustomed to escaping responsibility for his actions, Patton avoids criminal charges for Armond’s death. He’s no prince of Denmark.

The Australian actor Murray Bartlett defines Armond as an outrageous tragi-comic hero, with more weight on the comedy. Bartlett's Armond takes his place among HBO's gallery of flamboyantly flawed characters. Bleeding to death in an extrvagant bath in the Pineapple Suite that was the original source of his deadly dispute with Patton, Armond displays a haunting smile of satisfaction, as if he has won the ultimate Pyrrhic victory.

Rising above occasional longueurs, White's script excels at characterization. Hastily written to meet HBO's request for a series that could be shot rapidly during the quarantine, the script rarely succumbs to cliches. Armond’s cynical recitation of several lines from Tennyson's poem "The Lotus Eaters" indicates White's classical awareness.

Connie Britton's Nicole adds to her portrayals of strong women, following Tami Taylor and Rayna James. A successful businesswoman still vulnerable to wounding, Nicole with her parenting skills derived from conventional wisdom flails at reaching her children.

Matching Britton's portrayal of a woman facing the travails of aging, Jennifer Coolidge's needy Tanya is another compelling character in the show's abundant gallery.

Coolidge in a recent interview said the call to do "White Lotus" saved her from personal regression during the pandemic. While most shows have a main focal character, such as Tony Soprano, "White Lotus" has several. Yet, Coolidge's performance makes a claim to predominance.

Sydney Sweeney as the manipulative, duplicitous Olivia, and Brittany O'Grady as the conflicted Paula also stand out, as does Steve Zahn as Nicole's erratic, oblivious husband, Mark.

Led by Nastasha Rothwell as the empathetic spa manager Belinda, the hotel staff are portrayed with sensitivity.

With such a variety of characters, fans are likely to see them as archetypes, as was the case with one of HBO's first hits, "Sex and the City," of which a sequel is now in production.

A person will be characterized as an Olivia, or a Quinn, or a Tanya. And sadly, a Shane or an Armond.

"The White Lotus" is the latest HBO Sunday night smash that hits all too close to reality.

 

Documentary on Dominick Dunne shows vanished world of magazine power

Dominick Dunne's celebrity-obsessed career appears impossible today.

Crushed by Hollywood, Dunne rose to fame late in life writing about high-profile trials for glamorous Vanity Fair magazine. Dunne died  of cancer at age 83 in 2009.

The 2008 documentary "Dominick Dunne: After the Party," which I discovered on Amazon Prime, is dominated by interviews with Dunne looking back on his triumphs and disasters. With his aristocratic drawl, patrician glasses, bespoke suits and jeweled slippers, the then 82-year-old Dunne is a figure from a lost world.

Along with scenes of Dunne appearing at crime scenes and trials, where he's greeted by adoring fans, the film directed by Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley offers interviews about Dunne. His son, Griffin, recalls him as an unstable father, while his sister-in-law, Joan Didion, in muffled tones praises him for his resilience.

Former Vanity Fair editors Tina Brown and Graydon Carter, who boosted Dunne's autumnal writing success, also appear, along with the late Hollywood producer Robert Evans and playwright Matt Crowley.

The film also shows critics of Dunne like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who accuse Dunne of sensationalizing and reporting rumor as fact. Dunne's writing led to the conviction of Kennedy's cousin, Michael Skakel, for the murder of Martha Moxley.

Curiously, Dominick Dunne's brother, Didion's late husband and noted writer John Gregory Dunne, is never mentioned, although he appears in a photo with Dominick and Didion. The Dunne brothers had a volatile relationship, at times close, and at other times estranged.

Dominick Dunne recounts the horrible abuse he suffered from his father, a pioneering heart surgeon in Hartford, Conn., and the patriarch of a large Irish-Catholic family somewhat like the Kennedys.

After winning a medal in World War II and graduating from Williams College, Dunne and his wife, Ellen Griffin Dunne, headed to Hollywood, intoxicated by film glamour. Along with a modest career as a producer, including Didion and John Gregory Dunne's "Panic in Needle Park," which gave Al Pacino his first starring role, Dunne and Ellen were known for their lavish Hollywood parties.

As related by Dunne in the film,  he suffered a sudden demise by insulting powerful agent Sue Mengers. Hearing about Dunne's gibe about Mengers' weight, Evans called Dunne to inform him that he was dead in tinsel town. Evans in an interview during the film claims to have no memory of the incident.

After Ellen told him she wanted out of the marriage, Dunne spiraled into drug and alcohol addiction, at last retreating to a secluded cabin in Oregon, where he began to write. Dunn's isolation resembles that of Nicky Pearson, the character played by Griffin Dunne on the NBC series "This Is Us." One wonders if Griffin patterned his acclaimed portrayal of Nicky on his father's withdrawal.

Dominick Dunne says the suicide of one of his brothers ended his seclusion from the world, and he published a couple of fairly successful novels.

A horrible family tragedy, the murder of Dominick's 22-year-old daughter Dominique, led to his superstar career at Vanity Fair. Tina Brown recalls meeting Dominick, and asking him to write about the trial of his daughter's killer.

The electrifying piece expressed the Dunne family's outrage that the young actress' former boyfriend was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder, and received only a 5-year prison sentence, eventually serving just two years.

Eventually, Dunne was frequently featured on Vanity Fair's cover for reporting on cases like O.J. Simpson's trial. The documentary shows scenes of one of Dunne's last Vanity Fair stories, covering the first trial of record producer Phil Spector for the slaying of actress Lana Clarkson. Dunne was incensed that a mistrial was declared after the jury was unable to reach a verdict. Spector was later convicted.

"After the Party" looks back on a vanished era when magazines like Vanity Fair commanded huge newsstand sales and wielded enormous power. The Internet and the rise of online advertising have left the once mighty publications barely surviving. The gossip-TV world in which Dunne also flourished has suffered as well.

Dunne might turn today to a venue like Substack. But online media have failed so far to attract the huge readership and immense power magazines once held.

 

 

 

Learning to love Fran Lebowitz and "Pretend It's a City"

At first, I hated Fran Lebowitz's "Pretend It's a City."

But overcome by Olympics fatigue, I sought relief in streaming land. On Netflix, I rediscovered  "Pretend It's a City," a seven-part documentary in which Lebowitz regales Martin Scorsese with lamentations about New York City's sad decline. Hearing her stories about her rebellious childhood, and her early days in New York City's wild 1970s, I was hooked.

Produced before the Covid 19 shutdown, the series' 30-minute segments show Lebowitz and Scorsese in public appearances before audiences, interspersed with scenes of her walking through Manhattan. Scorsese also talks with Lebowitz at the Players Club, where a pool game is always in progress. 

In other clips, she's interviewed by Spike Lee and Alex Baldwin, tossing barbs and witticisms. A hauntingly beautiful young Lebowitz also appears.

Lebowitz after several years struggling to find a place in the city found success with the publication of "Metropolitan Life," a collection of satiric essays. She published the collection "Social Studies" in 1981, but since then has been plagued by what she calls a "writer's blockcade."

As "Pretend It's a City" reflects, she's built a career as a speaker and TV personality. She first appeared on David Letterman's talk show in the 1980s. Along with public appearances, in which she fields questions from much younger audiences, she also's an actor, known for a recurring role as a judge in "Law and Order."

She appeared as a judge in Scorsese's "Wolf of Wall Street," which orginated an amusing anecdote she tells Scorsese about how Leonardo di Caprio introduced her to electronic smoking.

In her talks with Scorsese, who uncannily resembles Schitt's Creek's Eugene Levy, Lebowitz recalls coming to New York City from Morristown, N.J., when she was 19 and working cleaning houses and driving a cab. She also gives funny anecdotes about New York City life, and depressing observations about how wealth and real estate transactions have devastated the city's artistic culture.

After the show's appearance on Netflix during the pandemic shutdown, Lebowitz was interviewed several times about how she was coping. Although she doesn't cook, dining out at restaurants like many New Yorkers, and doesn't use a cellphone or computer, she valiantly refused to leave the city.

At age 70, Lebowitz looks back at the excitement of the 1970s, when the dangerous city also offered freedom. She regrets the tourist-friendly taming of the city under Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg and the construction of hideous skyscrapers on 57th Street.

As Lebowitz points out, the ultra-tall, skeletal buildings are the product of a curious economic phenomenon. First, she says, New York City built elegant skycrapers like the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. Then contrived Middle Eastern places like Abu Dhabi that envied New York built monstrous skyscrapers. In the last stage, the ultra-wealthy Middle Eastern business leaders copied their outlandish skyscrapers in Manhattan.

Lebowitz's sardonic wit masks an underside of mourning for a lost New York. She also expresses New Yorkers' eternal hope for a better tomorrow.