I had serious work to do, so I took a nap. After dragging it out for as long as possible, I rolled off the sofa and quickly went out, greatly in need of some revivifying fresh air, or air as fresh as it gets around here. Ten minutes later I walked into what passes for...
A racetrack is being demolished, and guess what, it’s not the Arcadian showpiece nestled beneath the San Gabriel mountains but the track of lakes, flowers and paranoia in the heart of Inglewood, City of Champions. In recent years this inner city workingman’s track has...
Richard Hell swaggers up the side-walk, as if in a private movie that is being played out for the pleasure of others, as if he is being watched—which he is. Full of himself. Happy: yes, I suppose that’s another word for it. And why wouldn’t he be happy? He is about to...
I awoke at dawn, fuming. I had been having a drink with an actor friend the night before when he dropped the news on me that his buddy, "Josh," whose latest movie he had appeared in, wanted to “do something.” “He’s a great guy,” I was assured, “very funny.” The bar we...
It doesn’t seem long ago that the sight of a young white face in this supermarket was a rare thing, but now the place is swarming with them. They look like the death of youth culture: mopey advertisements for their own redundancy, they sport an awkward array of...
I found myself at a dinner gathering attended by CalArts graduates. Weak-witted art-damaged blather drizzled around the table. A bearded young man sitting opposite me adopted a tone of authority as he held forth on the subject of Chris Marker, explaining who he was to...
That's what black people are, myths. I come to you as a myth," announces Sun Ra in a scene from Space Is The Place, the marvelously entertaining mixture of blaxploitation, space travel, mysticism and free jazz that screens on one of the many video monitors at the...
A quivering grid of afternoon sunlight shifts across the polished hardwood floor of a long narrow room. But for the drowsy hum of the air conditioner, all is silence and stillness, an ambience ideally conducive to the reception and refinement of clear thought....
It is difficult to imagine John Currin’s work adorning walls more modest than those of the uptown Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan. Currin’s subjects have become progressively more well-heeled as his career has advanced. His signature subjects of yore—the ludicrously...
Pirates received its Los Angeles premiere at REDCAT recently: a visual and aural multi-screen feast/assault that covered all four walls of the theater. The audience, many of whom sat on the floor, were surrounded like the victims of the raid taking place onscreen(s)....
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