Some Came Running

"Robert De Niro: Anatomy of an Actor" publication date nears...

In a week and a day, my book for Cahiers du Cinema/Phaidon, Robert De Niro: Anatomy Of An Actor, sees publication. It is only right and fitting, I am told, to use this blog, which is my own, as a vehicle for its promotion. And so. 

Two events celebrating the book are happening next week. The first is its official launch party, on Monday, July 28, at my favorite local bookstore Book Court, on 163 Court Street in Brooklyn. I thought it would make the event more festive if I had along my buddy Dan Callahan, who recently penned a first-rate critical biography of Vanessa Redgrave, a book rightly praised by no less a personage as David Thomson. Dan and I will read from our respective works and kick around a little talk about the iconography of screen acting and stuff. It should be fun. The link to the event is here. 

Then, on Thursday the 31st of July, I'll be doing an event at the Williamsburg venue Videology. This one is me solo, with a moderator perhaps, and since it's at Videology, I'll be talking about the book and its subject with the accompaniment of pertinent clips from some of the films I discuss in the book. That, too, should be fun. The link is here. 

My publisher and I are eager to book more events, so if you're interested, give me a holler via e-mail ([email protected] is my preferred address nowadays). 

The first review of the book is up, over at Slant/The House Next Door, and I have to say I'm pleased with it. If eery notice I get is this thoughtful, I'll be delighted. I'll be posting links to other reviews as they appear. But as I am a firm believer in Fussell's Law (which I've elaborated on before, more than once), I won't comment on the negative ones, merely note their existence. It's a slippery slope in the world of the INTERNET, right people?

Such is the book news of the moment. More to come, and thanks for indulging me. You can just make the whole thing a lot easier by buying a copy yourself, either online or at your local and preferably independent book venue. 

It was/is De Niro

Well, now the paperwork is more or less done and the work is well underway, I feel less antsy about publicly disucssing the book I'm working on. The commission is from Cahiers du Cinema, for an entry in its Anatomy of An Actor series. These are hardcover editions, beautifully designed and copiously illustrated, in which a particular screen performer's body of work as a whole is examined through the critical prism of ten specific roles/performances.  The French critic Florence Colombani has written the book on Marlon Brando, Karina Longworth has written one on Al Pacino, and I am doing one on Robert De Niro, for publication in the Spring of next year. The work on the book is pretty well underway and I am right now feeling as if it might not turn out so badly if I manage not to screw it up. I am grateful for all the good wishes I've gotten from readers and social media contacts already. I haven't read Colombani's text yet but I have read Longworth's, and I sincerely believe she did a great job, and that her insights will get you thinking about Pacino in a way you haven't up until now. If I can achieve something even slightly to that effect in my work, I'll be pleased. 

In the meantime, I have, ahem, a bleg. I really ought to have accosted Kurt Anderson at the screening of To The Wonder we both attended this evening, but I'm shy that way. So. I need to trakc down an article in Spy magazine, from the mid-eighties, which was about how the most celebrated actors in motion pictures weren't really movie stars from a box-office-grossing perspective. This was before Midnight Run and so of course De Niro was Exhibit A in the piece. I'm off to various libraries tomorrow for the second leg of my clippings research, and am hoping it will just turn up, but if anyone can give me a leg up with respect to this particular item, I'd be much obliged and you'd earn a mention on the acknowledgments page (oh, the glory). Please feel free to chime in such data as might be useful below, or send me an e-mail. Thanks!

UPDATE: Article located as of the morning of March 27.  Many thanks to all who gave tips. 

If I may be allowed a moment of self-promotion...

...I'd like to say that I'm incredibly honored and excited to have participated in this. I am actually happier with the essay I wrote than I am with, well, pretty much anything else I've ever written, for which I credit the encouragement and belief of my friend Kent Jones, who edited. I can't wait to see the soon-coming finished product, which, as you can see from the table of contents, promises to be exceptional, and exceptionally varied. 

I smell sequel: "The Girlfriend Experience II," in which The Erotic Connoisseur rehabilitates his image...

Lookatdapuppy.

No Q-Tips will be abused in the making of this motion picture.

Now in the funding stage. Serious inquiries only. 

Get your geek on

FYI, that Popular Mechanics piece on High-Def DVD that I alluded to a few times over the summer is finally in print, and on the web. The web manifestation contains an expanded version of the "must-own" list I compiled for the package as well. The emphasis here was on Hollywood fare getting the high-def treatment, so there's nothing, say, about that 8K disc of Baraka...although I did get Chungking Express into the feature. The piece contains a lot of interesting information about how your Blu-ray sausage is made, if I may say so myself, and also delves into the differing philosophies involved. I've been preparing an end-of-the-year High-Def Consumer Guide to correspond with the publication of the piece, but as the PM piece doesn't provide a link to my blog (it's okay—they don't link to Instapundit when he publishes in there either, so I can't complain), to do so won't necessarily enhance my scheme to monetize this site, which I only started hatching as I was typing the previous sentence. Nevertheless, I hope to post that later in the week. 

Who Loves You?

Seriously. I know there's a lot of film bloggers out there, who, um, blog about, um, film, and, um, stuff.

But how many of those film bloggers will bother to compose a villanelle for your delectation?

You don't know what a villanelle is? Go read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man again. Or the Wikipedia entry on Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Hudson Street Bar," or what have you.

Or...just check out this screen cap...

and follow this link...

Also over at Auteurs' Notebook, part two of my consideration of the "lesser" Berkeleys.

Mr. Dynamite

(Posted by Aaron Aradillas)

Tomorrow night I will be dedicating my Internet radio show Back By Midnight to highlighting the recent relase of the I Got the Feelin': James Brown in the 60's DVD Box Set. The 3-disc set contains:

Disc 1:

The NIght James Brown Saved Boston, a wonderful documentary about the events surrounding the April 5, 1968 James Brown Boston Garden concert that kept the city from going up in flames. From director David Leaf, who is also reponsible for The U.S. vs. John Lennon and Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?).

Disc 2:

James Brown: Live at the Boston Garden, 1968, the complete concert that was originally broadcast on Boston's WGBH.

Disc 3:

An episode of Man to Man: James Brown Live at the Apollo Theater 1968 that hasn't been seen in 40 years. It also contains bonus perfomances from 1967 and 1968 at the L'Olympia in Paris and the "Out of Sight" performance from The T.A.M.I. Show.

Guests will include David Leaf, T.A.M.I. Show diretor Steve Binder, and the Dean of American Rock Criticism Robert Christgau.

The show begins @ 9:00pm ET/8:00pm CT. (The show will be archived on the Back By Midnight page after the broadcast.) I do hope you will check it out.

Here's a little something to get you in the mood.