Scene4 | Arthur Danin Adler | Columns, Articles, Tales, Drama




			Selected Writings



	RIVERS RUNNING BACKWARDS The timely and jarring juxtaposition of the Hollywood Strike(s) and Christopher Nolan's to-date masterpiece, Oppenheimer, is a painfully recurring echo for historical perspective. SOME OF THESE DAYS Some of these days, You'll miss your honey, Some of these days, You'll feel so lonely, And when you leave me, I know you'll grieve me. EURYDICE DESCENDING How could you possibly love someone else's life more than your own? The open heart of your own life lying in someone else's hands, helpless, beating, unafraid. SILVERWIND Once a girl I knew, all alone and unprepared. Everyone she knew, running scared. Then she found him or maybe he found her. THE CANDLE IS LIT What film artists have known since the 1960's... he was and remains singular among the handful of unique filmmakers in the 20th century. FROM TIME TO TIME Some insist that we must merge human intelligence with so-called "artificial intelligence" (as if there's any difference) to avoid becoming irrelevant. They're wrong. SILVER AND GOLD There, that ought to do it. Now wave goodbye to anguished 2022 and smile hopefully at 2023, asking… What's New?. IN LIEU OF A STORY There is no moral, point or purpose to this non-story. It's an impression, a representation of human life on this tiny rock. TIME FLIES AS TIME FLOWS I know that some readers are disturbed by my repetitive gloomy portrayals of the longevity of this planet as we now know it. One wrote to me and said... MEDEA The stunning climax to her story has stuck in the craw of Western society, particularly Judaic-Christian society for over 2500 years. MARI BEN BARI Of all the people who passed through her life,there were two who brought her the most joy and damage. A man and a woman. IF HOLLYWOOD IS All JEWISH THEN MY MOTHER IS THE VIRGIN MARY There were no Jews in the ancient biblical times. If there was a Jesus of Nazareth, he was not a Jew… he was a Semite, a Middle-Easterner, and a man of color, not a White Christian evangelist. A BRIEF TOAST FOR THIS NEW YEAR'S EVE Timendi Causa Est Nescire the cause of fear is ignorance MIRROR Paul Richter is a quiet man, a loner with few friends. Over a period of time, he engages a casual friendship in a bar with Alec Zorn, the complete opposite of Paul. THE LAST OF MY FAERIES If you don't know what a Faerie is, you're part of half of the current population of 8 billion humanoids. 8 Billion! What an exhausting thought that is!. MINE AND... YOURS I don't believe the community, an individual, or a Japanese billionaire has the right to screw with a work of art that he, she or it did not create. WHERE FEAR STILL HOLDS LEASE Bill Rodman was a prize-winning journalist and newspaperman. He spent most of his career writing about people making a futile mess of their lives. DANCING AGAIN IN THE DARK In these implosive times, imaged by the white-suited lump of a man with white shoes, strolling along the Atlantic City boardwalk, picking your pockets. MANGO NIGHTS AND RAINY DAYS No film before or since defined the nucleus of cinema, the art form of the 20th century, as this masterpiece did. CASTLE KEEP... REVISED What was this all about, over 40 years ago, when there were few personal computers, no internet, no social media, no mobile phones. APROPOS... Think of the silence in the loving eyes looking at you in which you can see yourself... and all the colors of the sea. THE AGELESS AGE OF COHN The time we live in has a malignant fundamental thread, a baseboard that extends to the founding of America. CRUSHED GARLIC According to Sir David Attenborough, garlic is the most important creature in Earth-bound evolution. BRAVE NEW WORLD... HE SAYS With eyes closed and a bloody smirk on his lips. Your penchant for triviality is showing. BITS&PIECES REDUX Have you noticed the number of people who get upset, get depressed about a movie they haven't seen?. BOLEROESQUE I offer you a historic note to the fact that the theatre has always been alive and well. It was a difficult piece to write and even more difficult to perform. But byjees, it worked. A CHILD OF THE FIRST PEOPLE Samye Sampsel Burrus is an internationally recognized artist. She was an award-winning painter, sculptor, muralist, designer and an illustrator and author of many children's books. Above all, she was a Cherokee woman and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. LIGHTING THE CANDLE As each year goes by, more and more people realize what film artists have known since the 1960's... he was and remains singular among the handful of unique filmmakers in the 20th century. A BRIEF ANORECTIC HOMILY ON TIME Who are we? Where are we? What are we doing? The answers merge like sperm into ovum and give birth to the pregnant question of Why?. FOUR VIRGINS AND A SPOON Some things are better left undone, better left unsaid, better left unknown, better left alone. Pithless naysayings that keep the fear pot bubbling. The latter one precipitates an endless stream of pungent doeth nots. LIFE AMONG THE SPECIES A persistent tribute to and an icon for superstition and fear, a stupidly designed structure with an ugly exterior that denied Greek and Roman engineering and beauty… the angry-god cathedral, Notre Dame, burned down. THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT Suppose you stop eating anything for a few weeks or so. You'll end up unsurpisingly thin, very thin, and probably dead. For proof just visit a refugee camp in Yemen or parts of Africa. ANONYMOUS DAYS The one gut-driving, mind massaging, thought enhancing, evolutionary perpetrating influence has been the writings of Shakespeare. The words are in every head, every language, every mathematical thought. \| February 2019 BODY AND SOUL REDUX At 22, she was a woman, not a teeny bopper, not a hip-hopper., not a "who am I? girl-gone-wild", not a single girl who can't wait to grow up and yet can't disrobe from her over-the-head hand-clapping teeny-tweeny costume. 3:10 TO YUMA I'm sitting on a veranda on The Peak in Hong Kong overlooking the harbor late in the afternoon, musing that image. The shimmering blue and glimmering gold of the waters are fading into the smiling grey and black of evening. CIGARILLO Today's "awakening" is only beginning to scratch the surface as it reveals the layers of human patriarchal history. It reveals men smothering women, other men, other species, including we addicts. THE DESERT ROSE A powerful, confrontational eye-to-eye challenge to both the actor and the director. Screw with his dialogue, screw with his vision of the staging, and the production is screwed! AS TIME BRIEFLY GOES BY The perspective of history is a guide-thread in the web of human knowledge. It is the memory in that perspective that defines who we are, where we are, and what it is we are doing. THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY No scientist to date has ever proved that the species Actorus Necessarus exists or has ever existed. There is no fossil record and Charles Darwin blatantly ignored the rumor and myth of this lost mammalian link. AFTER MIDNIGHT How could you possibly love someone else's life more than your own? The open heart of your own life lying in someone else's hands, helpless, beating, unafraid. How is that possible? WINTER HEAT In the Ancient World, that time before Judeo-Christian morality and the steam engine, Art was not usually segregated from the days and nights of journeying through life. SCENE 5 I cannot remember one day of my life in which I did not interact with an animal, usually a pet. A pet, pet… what a word, what a gratuitous, self-hubris-licking word. BILLIE HOLIDAY'S MAGIC I saw her twice during my lifetime (and hers) live! Once at the old Metropole in Manhattan's jazz district, and at the CBS television studios in New York, one Sunday afternoon, during a live broadcast. PnP In these weinsteinian days of sexual harassment and inappropriateness, prostitution (pay to play) is a banner that is spreading over more than sex industry workers. ME TOO There isn't a male on this planet who hasn't stood beneath the banner of Patriarchy, who hasn't harassed or bullied or oppressed a woman casually or intentionally. ALL THE KING'S MEN If they don't deliver, give me the hammer and I'll do it. Nail em up! Nail em up! Nail em up! Nail em up! SOUNDS THAT BECKON For the life of me, I cannot throw away a book, no matter how insipid, or useless, or decrepit. TWO FOR THE ROAD Recently I turned away to the ingratiating slouch of the tube through which I experienced "Star Trek Discovery" and "The Vietnam War". ¡OLÉ! I fell in love with Flamenco, I fell in love with Lorca, I eventually came to understand what Spaniards revered in the ancient ritual of corrida de toros. FAKES AND FORGERIES The driving motive is outsourcing, shadow contracting, tempered with compulsive consumption and no small amount of greed. FIFTEEN MINUTES BACKSTAGE This practice was so prevalent, it became (as it usually does backstage) a superstition. Never start on time! To this day, there are managers who swear by it. 2 PICKLES AND 20 PIECES OF GARLIC Someone once said, "everything is 90% about sex and 10% about nothing else." Fair enough... better than if that were reversed. SLEEPING ALONE I love to fall asleep with someone. I love to wake in the morning with someone. But, now, how long can I sleep with someone? WINDTALKING We're inundated with children who cannot write with their prehensile thumbs and who mumble-speak through their numbed noses. BITS&PIECES: LALA IN LA LA LAND Not having the vision to see a pig fly, a cat's ninth life, a unicorn's breath, an omni-gendered human being, and a trans-human. AS THE WHEEL TURNS AND TURNS A provocative, controversial, insider's look into the Hollywood "circus", the American political system, civil rights and the abuses of law enforcement. AWAKE WITH ANTHONY HOPKINS In the new tv series, Westworld, his portrayal of a lead character offers a perception of a Master Actor at work regardless of the circumstances. WORDS FOR WORDS He had a wonderful sense of humor and a zest for life, the cultures of the world and… baseball! A passionata passion for baseball. WRITER Since I can remember, even before I knew how to write, I wanted to be a writer BITS & PIECES Marrying the Merrisome Jane Eyre, About Horses and A Bridge in Paris. HILLARY IN THE MOVIES In 1964 the idea of a Woman President was as threatening as the idea of a woman's vote. TOUJOURS L'AMOUR A prose(d) poem or a poesied story. SPACE Why don't they call us? If you were they, would you? DAISY, DAISY Give me your answer do! I'm half crazy All for the Love of You. C(Q)UE THE BORGIAS The harvest from the 1500-years Christian usurption of the glory and putrefaction of the Roman Empire. ON THE BEACH There is still time brother! ANDREA DWORKIN She was and remains one of the most important women, one of the most important voices in the twentieth century. WISHING YOU Fundamentalism derived from and integral to all religions, is the most virulent blank- stare terror of the plague. THE BLACKLIST The Blacklist really never ended. It changed Hollywood (and other creative areas) forever. It unleashed an inherent strain of paranoia, xenophobia and bigotry . REMEMBERING IRIS CHANG She was a diligent and perceptive historian who was also a gifted writer. HIM ON STAGE I don't want just a voice I want Him on stage not on the screen, on stage in real time. \| November CONVERSATIONS SELDOM OVERHEARD - "ALIEN ILLICIT" In a loft, in San Francisco, above the fog. Listen, in exactly three minutes the telephone is going to ring. That's the time to finish our little test. You answer it. ONCE MORE WITH FEELING The prevailing art-form of the 20th century is expanding like the universe into an amorphous stew. PEBBLES AND POTATOES We're inundated with children who cannot write with their prehensile thumbs and mumble through their numbed noses. THE LION IN WINTER At least 90% of the humans on this planet have never seen or touched a painting. MR. KANE & MR. WELLES Seventy-four years ago, Orson Welles created 'Citizen Kane' and it remains the zenith, the apex of filmmaking SECOND REUNION The Jew In The Box. SCENE FROM AMERICAN SKYPER Based on a true story. There are many truths in true stories. MANIC DEPRESSIVE It was boring. It was flaccid. It was the Academy Awards. REMEMBRANCE He saw it all, heard it all. He had seen it all and heard it all before. A BRIEF HISTORY OF CATS PART 3 An ongoing history project sponsored by the Felines Forever Foundation. You can contribute your facts, opinions, fears and misinformation. Please do not send us photos, fur, stuffed animals or your pets. A BRIEF HISTORY OF COPYRIGHT PART 1 Possession is 9/10ths of the law and 10/10ths of possession. Notice of copyright has been found in the earliest writings including the hands in ancient cave paintings. HEAVEN Ladies and Gentlemen and adolescents of all ages everywhere, good wishes for the coming year. A BRIEF HISTORY OF CATS PART 3 An ongoing history project sponsored by the Felines Forever Foundation. You can contribute your facts, opinions, fears and misinformation. Please do not send us photos, fur, stuffed animals or your pets. A BRIEF HISTORY OF COPYRIGHT PART 1 Possession is 9/10ths of the law and 10/10ths of possession. Notice of copyright has been found in the earliest writings including the hands in ancient cave paintings. ON COPYRIGHT AND CATS I don't know what is happening. And frankly, I don't care. WHAT'S NEW? Google, a money-printing, identity-shifting video game. TORCH SONG The burning heart - loneliness from love lost. NAKED TIZZY - KRINSKI'S "NUDITY" Explicitly about sex and love but more of a mind's journey through life. \| DARWIN MISSED HOLLYWOOD What Michael Cimino wrought in 1980 is de rigueur today. $12 MILLION, $46 MILLION, SOLD! I find it difficult to write about temporal things that don't matter. AND IN THE BEGINNING Brothers and Sisters here is my homily for today. SANTAYANA AND STAR TREK Welcoming the future. Respecting the past. HOLLYWOOD POLITIQUE The American film industry, especially Hollywood, is a montage of "Arts&Politics" and "Politics&Arts". It all began with the flood of immigration toward the end of the 19th century. \| HOLLYWOOD'S GREATEST SHAME: THE BLACKLIST About a man who refused to genuflect to the authorities who persecuted and prosecuted him. \| WAR FILMS AND NOVEMBER 22 What will we see through the distant window when America's most arrogantly insane war fades. MILLIONAIRES AND HOOKERS Pay-for-sex is almost as old as human history. As someone once said, everything is 90% about sex and 10% about nothing else. HONG KONG NIGHTS AT 4:30 PM Tricky little title isn't it? Comes from a remorseful Mekong Whiskey-Beaujolais hangover driven ditty written in a sweat-dripping room on The Peak. JOHN GARFIELD AND HAZEL BROOKS John Garfield was a movie star in the 1940's and 50's, a counterpoint to Humphrey Bogart, a poster-man for the joyous angst, the bewildering urban stew of New York and its steaming boroughs. OF VIVALDI AND WOMEN What do you know about self-possessed loneliness? Bone-aching, silent, time standing-still loneliness. An aloneness that the titillation of television or drugs or music, even suicide holds out no hands of hope. THE JEW IN THE BOX He sat propped up against the back wall, one of his legs twisted away from him like a puppet's limb. His reddish and blue face was a mask smoothed and scrambled by the plastic bag over his head. BLUE EYES AT NIGHT Two questions, seemingly unrelated and then again, not. What If This Is All There Is? and Whatever Happened To Martin Brest? A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS BUT ONE This is a story that was told to me by a college chum of mine who later became an intelligence operative for the American government. \| ACTOR? LET'S SEE YOUR LICENSE For our own quality assurance, we try to license everything that is important to us, except giving birth to and raising children, of course. \| FIVE REASONS WHY CINEMA IS DYING Well it's not really dying. Rather, the prevailing art-form of the 20th century is expanding like the universe into an amorphous stew. SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED Something momentous has happened. It should have been shouted in large black type across the front page of the New York Times and other news media around the world. It wasn't. THE STRANGER Perspectives: WRITINGS - Monologues \| The Stranger \| There is a sadness that floats on the sea in the afternoon. It has always seemed that way to me. CONVERSATIONS SELDOM OVERHEARD - THE ACTOR Perspectives: Writings - Dialogues \| Conversations Seldom Overheard - The Actor \| A director and his lead actor in the wings just before curtain rise. MEMORIAL DAY - A TIME TO LOVE, A TIME TO HATE-REDUX The challenge of True Believers, of Fundamentalism, all Fundamentalism, Christian, Jewish, Islamic is its mindless, degrading nostalgia. A FABLE FROM THE 'WAR ON WOMEN' Perspectives: Writings - Dialogues \| On a lazy, warm, cloudy, summer's afternon a boy and a girl play hide-and-seek. THE DANCER INTO POET Selena Zachai \| Lorca took everything into his mouth and his nose and his eyes and his tongue. He is the most sensual poet of the 20th century. If he were alive I would smash my way to lie with him to hear him breathe and sing SEA FIRE From The Lyriana Nocturnes CONVERSATIONS SELDOM OVERHEARD Perspectives: Writings - Dialogues \| Salvation THE APPARENT EUGENE O'NEILL The Apparent Eugene O'Neill \| Only in America. LIMA PERU NOT OHIO In my arrogant Manhattan innocence, I had made a naive mistake and so did my editor. I went to Lima in April, on a Friday, Good Friday, which provided a challenging scenario. YO-YO MA AND VIVALDI I have seen and heard the magnificent Yo-Yo Ma play Vivaldi live at Carnegie Hall. And now I hear him again as I sit spinning on the cd, drinking in the laser light. What he and Vivaldi accomplish is the carrying of music as close to the edge of merged media experience without betraying its purity. CONVERSATIONS SELDOM OVERHEARD Perspectives: Writings - Dialogues \| Shadowtalk TRIPTYCH: "THE 99%" Perspectives: Writings - Glyphs \| Triptych: The 99% FADE TO WHITE I point you to David Mackenzie's Perfect Sense, a beautifully crafted but seriously disturbing film about losing the arts of life. It fades to white before it fades to black.. ARTEM SECUNDUM SUUM CUIQUE There is no obscenity in the arts. There is only a perspective that deems and labels out of ignorance, fear, politics, financial gain, and severe self-displeasure. Obscenity is in the mind of the beholder. SINGERS OF SONGS A continuous dimension I travel through is music. It is the balance to my visual world and a purveyor of intimate and relentless privacy. In that dimension, of all the singers I have ever heard, seen, enjoyed, opera, theatre, jazz, pop, only two linger and hover above all the other voices. Both are American. \| THE Q FACTOR George Santayana and others aphoristically proclaimed that to ignore history is to be doomed to repeat it. True? Perhaps, with this caveat: the human species is a collective of behavior, habitual, ritual, repetitive behavior, not doomed to repeat its history, rather self-programmed to recycle itself and its history. UP THE CARRIAGE TRADE !- REDUX I'll take the lower class audiences, they make a playwright's writing-agony worth agonizing over, they make an actor's performance worth its salt and they don't give a damn about directors and dramaturgs and all the other frou-frou functionaries who get in between them and the live bodies on stage. On with the show! And I'll take the upper class audiences too, of course. ORSON WELLES Seventy years ago, Orson Welles created Citizen Kane and it remains the zenith, the apex of filmmaking. It completed the migration of theatre into cinema. No film before or since defined the nucleus of cinema, the art form of the 20th century, as this seminal 1941 masterpiece did. THE STORY OF BLUE Alan Blue didn't die last week. He probably will, soon. He isn't old and he isn't young. He has been a wayfarer through his life, one who never changed. He was an errand boy, a clerk, a waiter, an actor, not a husband nor a father or a relative. THE ACADEMY AWARDS To many people, worldwide, the American Academy Awards is the most important and prestigious event of its kind. Important? No question an Academy Award is worth a small fortune, before and after taxes. Prestigious? Define prestigious. THE LOSS OF SILENCE/EAT AND BE HAPPY This, then, is the holiday season that closes the first decade of the 21st century. It is also the 100th anniversary of one of the most glorious years in Western history, 1910, a year of exciting promise, breathtaking art, panoramic smiles. is not like that. \| VISAGE I live in an ugly country, not the latent, panoramic beauty of America's countryside, rather it's cities and towns. Unlike many places in Europe or Asia, American cities, for the most part, have no center, no town plaza or square. FIRST THINGS LAST The reason I collect these works of art and non-art is because they are part of my time continuum. They exist with me in the present, spread out in all space/time directions, and they are my friends. THE QUIVERING MUSE OF CUISINE Journeying into a cuisine is an addiction, seldom a curse, mostly a delight. I've had as many addictions as you've had, probably more. THE PASSING OF A LIFE Earlier this year, a friend and colleague, Julius Krinski died at 81, in Jomtien, Thailand. A Hungarian/Australian expatriate, he was a remarkable man - an author, a Bon Vivant, and a world-class lover. With a poignant sadness, I remember an interview with him in 2005. VIEWINGS AND AN ACTOR'S LAMENT I decided not to avoid the timely viewings of as many of this year's Oscar nominees that I could take. I took the five leading contenders: The Hurt Locker, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Avatar and Crazy Heart. The first four can be categorized in a simple phrase: they are video games. THE AR Time to turn to The Animating Life Giver. Time to create a new actor, a shape-shifting anthropamorphoid with no baggage, who doesn't have to pee no matter how long a rehearsal lasts. \| February DEATHWATCH REVISITED As I prepare to plunge back into the real-time of theatre, I'm drawn to an acting experience which left me with an immutable rock to stand on. At its core, an understanding, a truth that is as clear today as when I first perceived it. \| IN SEARCH OF HEAVEN'S GATE It is the worst film ever made and released. Worse than any of the spewings of Quentin ("the only way to cut a film is with a bread knife") Tarantino, or Martin ("how do you tell a story?") Scorcese, or Steven ("isn't directing just like producing?") A TRADITION OF ONE I wrote the following column, some years ago, as an ode to young dreams and happy times and in small part to capture the image of the young and happy Niko and I offer it again in his memory. AROUND MIDNIGHT WITH MANFREDO FEST Midnight was the time when I slid into a deliciously dark, smokey jazz club in Chicago and was bewitched by a blend of music I hadn't heard before. CABBAGES AND KINGS They babble. Incessantly. Text messages and emails and voices into little mobiles stuck in their ears and blogs and twitters and facebooks and youtubes and newscasts and talk shows and press conferences. ARS-EXITUS ACT PROBAT AND KURT WEILL Special Issue OWNING PICASSO I have a friend who owns a Picasso... and not much else. Which one? Don't ask, don't tell. He acquired this painting via less than legal and righteous means. REALITY: STAGE IT AND CAGE IT An 'avatar', a virtual creature who embodies the above-described reality of Reality in the media... the candidate for the Vice-Presidency, Sarah Palin. LESTER COLE He was a New York playwright, a prolific screenwriter during Hollywood's golden years, a leader and the most vehement member of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. THE AGE OF ATLANTIS... REDUX For those of you who have written to me from time to time about the 'lady from atlantis', i have some sad news: she died last week at the age of 79. The last time i saw and spoke with her earlier this year. \| JULIET AND HER ROMEO - REDUX Earlier this year, I met Tariz, again, in Bangkok. Her company was in Singapore and she was up north at a festival of international artists. They had not returned to the U.S. since the time I saw them. FAKES, FORGERIES AND THE MADNESSES OF CROWDS Fakes, Forgeries and The Madnesses of Crowds AN ESSENCE OF ACTING \| An Essence of Acting INGMAR BERGMAN The Music of Saraband ACTORS AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN Actots And Intelligent Design VITA BREVIS, ARS LONGA \| Vita Brevis, Ars Longa and Anything Goes means a distinctive View of the Arts. CORRIDA OF ACTORS Corrida of Actors ' TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE \| Cinderella and the Marquis de Sade, a delirious idea. RIDLEY SCOTT The Kingdom of Heaven with Ridley Scott


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