FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2010
KLMNO
THEATER REVIEW
S
C3
TV PREVIEW
HBO’s ‘Neistat Brothers’: Musings worth meditating on
by Hank Stuever
JONATHAN ERNST FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
HOLDING COURT: In a dress rehearsal for “Thurgood,” Laurence Fishburne portrays the jurist reminiscing about his college days.
by Peter Marks
A good stage actor can im- merse you in his imaginary world. An outstanding one makes you feel you’re the only other person in it. That higher- level mastery is achieved by Lau- rence Fishburne in “Thurgood,” the warmly satisfying one-man show based on the life of the first African American to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Fishburne portrayed the wily, irresistible Thurgood Marshall two years ago on Broadway and now, reprising the role for a three-week engagement in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, he forges an even deeper mind-meld with one of the cru- cial figures of 20th-century American history. George Ste- vens Jr.’s bio-play, solidly staged by Leonard Foglia, persuasively confirms for us Marshall’s pivot- al contribution to the civil rights movement, as the victorious NAACP lawyer in the 1950s land- mark desegregation case Brown
v. Board of Education.
And in his embodiment of the proud, ambitious, restless Mar- shall, who took robustly to heart the idea that the law can be a powerful tool for social change, Fishburne cements a bond of as- tonishing intimacy with his audi- ence. By the time he arrives at the end of the story, as an aged in- sider in one of the nation’s most revered institutions, the actor will have completed the task of confiding the details of Mar- shall’s life in a most entertaining- ly digestible way. Yes, a dimension of hero wor- ship is evident in Stevens’s con-
‘Thurgood’ does justice to the man
ventional script: What you get in “Thurgood” is a charm-infused recitation of the justice’s accom- plishments. (That litany includes Marshall’s boasts of writing 98 majority opinions as a lower- court judge, none of which he says were overturned, and of writing opinions in 322 Supreme Court cases.)
Still, the play allows just enough of a glimpse of the fail- ings of a living, breathing human being — he mentions fondnesses for drink and women — to stave off the lapse into hagiography. Make no mistake, though: this isn’t tell-all dumpster diving for the TMZ generation. It’s the sur- vey of the extraordinary exer- tions of a gifted believer in the system — a celebration, for a change, of the value of public service. In that regard, it’s a play you might want to bring the kids to. And given the punishing ob- stacles to which Marshall was subjected, you really don’t be- grudge him or the play a bit of self-congratulation. The premise of the brisk, 95-
minute production is a nostalgic address by Marshall late in his life (he died in 1993) at his alma mater, Howard University School of Law. Thanks to Brian Nason’s impressive lighting and the evoc- ative projections by Elaine J. Mc- Carthy, the set is transformed seamlessly for scenes in court- rooms and the more threatening locations to which Marshall’s le- gal work took him. Allen Moyer’s austere set is dominated by a gi- ant, stylized rendering in white of an American flag, inspired by Jasper Johns’s signature flags, and that becomes the screen for McCarthy’s images. Only a fraction of the evening
is devoted to Marshall’s quarter century on the high court. The real matters of “Thurgood” are the events and circumstances that cast him as a central player
in Brown v. Board of Education.
Some of the play’s most absorb- ing moments revolve around Marshall’s account of the case, particularly the arguments pro and con before the justices. Fish- burne, a fine mimic, portrays
Marshall as well as the courtly opposing counsel John W. Davis, and in the process brings to the fore the proceedings’ resonant drama. “Thurgood,” in fact, accords Fishburne other delightful op- portunities for thumbnail imper- sonations of figures as varied as Gen. Douglas MacArthur — with whom Marshall locked horns over charges brought against a black soldier in Korea — and President Lyndon B. Johnson, who nominated him to the seat he so coveted on the Supreme Court. The actor also effectively chan-
nels Marshall’s sly tongue. Re- calling, for example, Martin Lu- ther King Jr.’s embrace of Henry David Thoreau’s famous essay on resisting authority, Fishburne’s Marshall tells us how he’d try to bring King back to earth. “I would remind Martin that Tho- reau wrote ‘Civil Disobedience’ in jail,” he says. It’s Fishburne’s enveloping bonhomie, his graceful engage- ment with the character, that ele- vates “Thurgood” to something more than standard-issue, fact- based drama. The portrayal’s so alive you could claim with some justification that the great man spoke to you.
marksp@washpost.com
Thurgood, by George Stevens Jr.
Directed by Leonard Foglia. Costumes, Jane Greenwood; sound, Ryan Rumery. About 95 minutes. Through June 20 at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Visit www.
kennedy-center.org or call 202-467-4600.
Although we think of HBO pri- marily as a maker of high-end Emmy bait and a place to watch “Space Chimps” and “The Hang- over” as many times as humanly possible, it’s clear that the net- work has also become a cultural benefactor, like a MacArthur Foundation that bestows its own style of “genius grants” on a select and lucky spectrum of smarties. Presumably way down the hall from its sports department and its David Simon department, this part of the network functions like a hybrid of the NEA and Sun- dance. Grants and film festivals and fellowships are now merely stops on the way to the final re- ward for comedians, writers and documentarians — an HBO deal. Which brings us to the new se-
ries “The Neistat Brothers,” fea- turing Casey and Van Neistat, whose ineffable oeuvre of short, autobiographical films and Low- er Manhattan artistic exuberance somehow work perfectly as “a handmade, home-video TV show.” That’s how the brothers describe it in a protracted in- troduction in the first of eight episodes (debuting late Friday). Casey is 29 and Van is 35, al- though they will probably live out their lives quite happily seeming like the most crafty and interest- ing 17-year-olds you’ve ever met. The Neistat (pronounced NYE- stat) brothers first got media at- tention in late 2003, when they made a short, prankish film ex- pressing Casey’s outrage that his Apple iPod was designed to die from regular use, requiring him and all other Apple consumers to essentially buy new iPods instead of replacing the lithium battery once it lost its juice. The movie was a viral Internet hit back before YouTube, which is saying something. (I wrote a Washington Post story about the Neistats and the iPod battery backlash soon after their movie went online.) It’s odd to consider that kerfuffle 61
⁄2 years later,
watching people line up around the Apple Store for the slavish, addictive pleasure of buying the latest iPhone, iPad, whatever. The Neistats, to my delight,
have moved much farther on to other things. Success came in- termittently with many dozens more films, art installations and commercial work. They were and still are devoted Mac fans; in- deed, their TV show begins by telling viewers how their lives changed when they spent their tax refunds in 2000 on iMacs, the first desktop models that made film editing seem like a compara- tive snap. Their TV show also feels, at
BOOK WORLD
A young woman’s exhaustive search for love
“A
The book has an interesting
by Carolyn See
nthropology of an Amer- ican Girl” is, among oth- er things, a stern rebuke
to chick lit everywhere. Coming in at some 600 pages, it reminds us that all human lives are poten- tially sacred; that no lives should be judged and dismissed out of hand; that young women, though seen for eons as primarily just attractive objects, actually possess soul and will and sen- tience. This novel follows one girl as she grows up in an Eden she takes for granted with the sole- cism of youth. The actual place is the town of East Hampton on Long Island; the book’s second half is set for four hectic years in Manhattan during the early ’80s, with all its sex and cocaine and money and AIDS whirling in a merciless torrent of social change. The novel, with its many pages and its extensive cast of charac- ters, aspires to comparison with “War and Peace.” It’s as vast and ambitious as the country itself, a panorama of a particular culture being born and dying and being reborn again. But the book is a lengthy exegesis on the merits of first love and true love — in this case, two very different phenom- ena. “Anthropology of an American
Girl” is also a very respectable and serious descendant of the work of D.H. Lawrence. There are repeated references to what it might mean for any of us to be “masculine” or “feminine,” as in: “I discovered my soul’s inven- tion, the feminine genius of me,” which comes smack dab in the middle of the book. And at al- most the very end, the heroine makes this melodramatic plea to the villain: “Don’t let hurting me be the measure of your man- hood.”
history that speaks to the deter- mination of its author: When no one would publish it, she found- ed her own publishing house and released it herself in 2003. She sold out a first printing of 5,000, an almost unheard-of achieve- ment. It seems to have taken her around five years to send it out again to commercial publishers, and one hopes that people were encouraging her all along to shorten the damn thing; it could lose 100 pages and still impart the informa- tion she wishes to im- part, but, obviously, she would have none of that. To quote my children, she’s “a wom- an of strong opinions and she doesn’t mind sharing them.” So here the book stands, once the darling of the underground, now available in commer- cial form. The plot itself is simple. Young Eveline (as in Eve, the mother
And in her senior year, she
ANTHROPOLOGY OF AN AMERICAN GIRL
By Hilary Thayer Hamann Spiegel & Grau. 606 pp. $26
of all mankind), grows up in a small beach community, raised by a divorced mother who works hard to support the both of them and pays Evie the compliment of treating her with benign neglect. Evie saves her filial adoration for her best friend’s mom, but that woman dies in short order, and Evie is left — not really alone, but not really supported either. In her junior year she falls in love with Jack, a beautiful, self-de- structive rebel who’s the son of a monster-father who wreaks hav- oc when he can. Kate, Evie’s best friend, moves in with her after her mom dies, probably — in terms of the narrative — so that Evie can learn to separate from her friends and prepare herself to find the perfect mate.
does find that person, in the form of a substitute drama teacher — a young fellow in his 20s, seven years older than she,named Har- rison Rourke, who is also a pro- fessional boxer with tenuous connections to the New Jersey mob. It almost goes without say- ing that Rourke is dazzlingly handsome, has a sterling charac- ter (according to his own lights), and deeply respects his mother. Both he and Evie struggle against this grand pas- sion, to no avail. By the time she graduates from high school, Evie has broken up with Jack. She and Rourke spend a magical sum- mer in Montauk, plumbing the depths of their attraction to each other. Then the summer is over. Rourke goes off to ful- fill mysterious duties, and Evie enrolls in NYU.
She ends up living with Mark, a snivel-
ing, reptilian, sidewinder-stock- broker who has coveted her for some time. He also hates Rourke with a dreadful hatred, since Rourke is a good person and he is not. But Mark and his family have been there in East Hampton all along — one of the rich fami- lies living cheek-to-cheek with the poor. Evie lives with Mark for three, long, desperately unhappy years, and this is the part of the book that most tries the reader’s patience. “For heaven’s sake,” one longs to say to her, “move back into the dorm if you hate him so much! Especially if you disdain riches as much as you say. Stop being so doleful and spiteful!” But — if I read correctly — the au- thor is making the (doubtful) point that without the correct
times, sprung from the same hip- ster-indie gestalt that makes a good iPad commercial. In this ideal world of DIY projects, we are all young and creative urban guerrillas maxing out our credit cards with new computers and movie cameras, telling stories, working on projects and having “adventures” (as the Neistats like to call even the simplest road trip). Sometimes it’s difficult to find the artistic merit amid all those boys and girls filming plas- tic bags caught in a breeze. “The Neistat Brothers” has a
Dave Eggers-style insouciance and wonder to it, at once old fash- ioned and high-tech; both punk and sweetly tender. In one seg- ment, Casey helps his 9-year-old son make a film about a blue gi- ant who attacks a boat filled with partying beatniks. Van and his wife go on a motorcycle trip through New England, ostensibly to replace Van’s worn-out collec- tion of novelty T-shirts, but actu- ally so Van can finally meet his biological father. (This meeting takes place in the parking lot of the restaurant where his “bio- dad” works. “I’m doing really well,” Van awkwardly but lovingly tells him, “and I’d like to thank you for my life.”) Personal storytelling is to to-
day’s bearded young men what radical anarchy was to yester- day’s. Now every scruffster in Converse sneakers who’s ever read Jean-Luc Godard’s musings on cinema (which Van is fond of quoting) uploads his own ironic musings to an array of social net- works. Whether they are building and racing toy boats or filming the strange, human-like articula- tions of Brighton Beach garbage trucks, the Neistats exhibit an en- thusiasm for life that you can’t help but love. Nothing in “The Neistat Broth- ers” screams “hilarious hit TV show,” which is why HBO is the perfect patron. The Neistats’ fondness for time-consuming methods such as stop-motion animation (using trash or candy or matchsticks to spell out chap- ter titles) feels comfortably old- school. They use actual Super-8 cameras in some segments, in- stead of the software that makes digital video merely look as though it were shot on Super-8. It feels like Casey and Van could have had as much fun in the New York of 1970, or 1870. This is a show about exulting in who you are, wherever you are, using whatever’s around.
stueverh@washpost.com
The Neistat Brothers
(30 minutes) debuts at midnight Friday on HBO.
man to complete her, a woman is paralyzed, a woman is nothing. Mark uses these three years to plot and scheme, to be disagree- able and misbehave at parties, to dabble in cocaine and heroin. (Not Rourke; he’s way too pure for that.) The first 300 pages here are unique, a wonderful rendering of decent kids enjoying a tenuous peace and contentment they can barely comprehend. The second half, the city half, has been done before, mostly by Bret Easton El- lis, but it’s good, nonetheless. We see that the 1980s really are de- finitively in the past; you just don’t see that kind of cocaine around anymore. Two last things: Readers can
judge their emotional age by whether they side with the kids or the parents here. And after 600 pages, you realize what’s been missing all along: not a sin- gle giggle from any of these young girls over a period of five years; not one breath taken in mirth, no code words, no silli- ness, no eruptions of goofy joy. Yes, true love is serious, but please God, not that serious! Nevertheless, I finished this book with regret. Hamann has put together a carefully devised, coherent world, filled with opin- ions that need to be spoken — and heard.
bookworld@washpost.com
See regularly reviews books for The Post.
Sunday in Outlook
The last word on Custer’s last stand. An eyewitness account of Lebanon’s struggles. The perverse persistence of Shakespeare doubters. Stories of Burma’s never-end- ing war. And how air conditioning is burning us up.
/ CASEY AND VAN NEISTAT/HBO
SAIL ON! Casey Neistat, an old-school high-tech adventurer.
Get
JEWELRY CASH
Specializing in
* Certified Diamonds (1 carat and above)
* Gold * FineWatches * Estate Jewelry * Sterling Flatware
DIAMOND EXCHANGE USA
www.diamondexchangeusa.com
Fully Licensed • 40 years Experience BBB Accredited Business • Convenient/Permanent Location
301-230-1212
11136 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852 (across from White Flint Mall) • No Appointments Necessary
The Area’s #1 Jewelry Buyer.
your for
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116