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Not at all devoid of creative power but devoting it to the rearranging and resuscitating of the past
For the first time in my life, I was sad that I didn't live near Pittsburgh. It turns out that I really want to see the photography of Duane Michals, currently being celebrated at the Carnegie Museum of Art:
Michals's contradictions are all wonderfully on display in The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy, in which the photographer's friend the actor Joel Grey (who in recent years has pursued a second career as a photographer) plays the Alexandrian poet in skits loosely based on Cavafy's poems. For all his feeling for Cavafy's exquisite melancholy, Michals cannot resist giving the poet’s career some moments of almost Charlie Chaplin hilarity. Grey brings to the photographic sequences a practiced performer's sophisticated body language and changeable, expressive face. He provides a welcome vitalizing foil to the succession of imperturbably handsome young men, Cavafy's love objects, encountered in cafés, in rented rooms, and on the street.
There's a book, but naturally it's out of print. (This is why we need used book stores. Joel Grey as Cavafy is exactly the sort of thing I would have encountered in McIntyre and Moore's, probably between the illustrated screenplay of Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) and Derek Jarman's sketchbooks.) I was temporarily morose. Then I re-read the article header. The exhibit is coming to the Peabody Essex Museum in March.
All right. That's on the calendar.
Michals's contradictions are all wonderfully on display in The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy, in which the photographer's friend the actor Joel Grey (who in recent years has pursued a second career as a photographer) plays the Alexandrian poet in skits loosely based on Cavafy's poems. For all his feeling for Cavafy's exquisite melancholy, Michals cannot resist giving the poet’s career some moments of almost Charlie Chaplin hilarity. Grey brings to the photographic sequences a practiced performer's sophisticated body language and changeable, expressive face. He provides a welcome vitalizing foil to the succession of imperturbably handsome young men, Cavafy's love objects, encountered in cafés, in rented rooms, and on the street.
There's a book, but naturally it's out of print. (This is why we need used book stores. Joel Grey as Cavafy is exactly the sort of thing I would have encountered in McIntyre and Moore's, probably between the illustrated screenplay of Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) and Derek Jarman's sketchbooks.) I was temporarily morose. Then I re-read the article header. The exhibit is coming to the Peabody Essex Museum in March.
All right. That's on the calendar.
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I have not encountered in quite some time a purer example of a thing I didn't know I needed but I really do.
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Yes; that's Joel Grey. I discovered him in high school with Cabaret and then saw him in a supporting, one-scene-stealing part in the revival of Chicago in 1996 and I have loved him ever since. Having him turn up late in Dancer in the Dark couldn't save the movie for me, but it at least distracted me from how much I wanted to throw a brick through the TV.
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From your mouth to central casting's ears.