BY BEN WINTERS
As a New Year’s gift to those who care about the state of the performing arts in America, the bosses of two of America’s largest creative centers duked it out in the pages of the Washington Post.
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Michael
Kaiser,
Kennedy Center President |
First came a long opinion piece on Dec. 29 from Michael M. Kaiser, the president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. After throwing down the gauntlet in his lead ("The world of the performing arts is sick and it needs attention"), and denying–as many have stated or implied–that the problems stem simply from "the stock market collapse and Sept. 11, 2001", Kaiser launches into his "five key issues that must be addressed if we are to solve the problems arts organizations face today."
(Kaiser, you’ll note, writes like the administrator of an arts agency, not an artist; he uses the words "must" or "address" approximately every other sentence.)
Issue number one gives an idea of the whole: "organizations must once again be willing to develop and implement large-scale, important projects that are risky and energizing." According to Kaiser, "we have been scared into thinking small. And small thinking begets smaller revenue that begets even smaller institutions and reduced public excitement and involvement."
The Kennedy Center president then gives one example of an organization that has avoided such timidity in recent months–the Kennedy Center. "The Sondheim Celebration we mounted this summer," he writes with one hand, the other busy patting himself on the back, "is one example of the kind of project I am hoping to see duplicated by others." Kaiser offers no indication of how other arts organizations–lacking the prestige, budget, and imprimatur of the Kennedy Center–might create projects on the scope of the Sondheim Celebration (admittedly an incredible event). Nor does explain what would be so "risky and energizing" about other organizations simply "duplicating" what his institution invents.
I am being castigating and reactionary about Kaiser’s piece. Thankfully, I’m in good company.
"Michael M. Kaiser proclaims 'the world of performing arts is sick,’" wrote Reynold Levy, president of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, in a letter to the editor of the Post on Jan. 4. "It needs, he asserts, leadership and concerted action. Fast. But he cites no facts and almost no names in support of his rather sweeping assessment."
So Levy lashes back, cataloging facts and names to rebut Kaiser’s sweep. He name-checks Manhattan outfits like "the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Roundabout Theatre, Playwrights Horizon and the Second Stage Theatre." He heads to Chicago and asks Kaiser if he thinks "the Goodman Theatre, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and at least a dozen other thriving, edgy, Off-Loop Chicago theatres are lacking in energy or risk-taking?"
And of course Levy can’t resist throwing the Lincoln Center Festival of the Arts–an edgy, world-girding event easily on the creative level of the Sondheim Celebration, and indeed including this year a Japanese version of Pacific Overtures–in Kaiser’s face.
"I’d urge Kaiser," Levy signs off testily, "to leave the predictions of Cassandra and the wailings of Jeremiah backstage."
Levy, too incensed by the author’s presumptuousness, skirts what’s of substance in Kaiser’s article, notably bits about the importance of diversity and of recording great performances. Ideally this exchange will lead to more exchanges, and maybe even a debate–if the two can promise not to punch each other.
Hollywood Versus Norway
DVD Jon is free. For now.
That’s Jon Lech Johansen, a 19-year-old Norwegian kid who figured out how to circumvent what’s called the Content Scrambling System, so that he could play DVDs on his computer.
"Johansen was 15 when he developed and posted his program, called DeCSS, on the Internet in late 1999," explains the Associated Press, "enraging the film industry because it feared the software would allow illegal copying of its films."
The film industry is just going to have to stay enraged for now. A three-judge panel in Oslo ruled in the first week of January that DVD Jon hasn’t done a darn thing wrong. The chief judge on the case decided that "no one could be convicted of breaking into their own property, and that there was no proof that Johansen or others had used the program to access illegal pirate copies of films." Basically, the movie people had coded DVDs so that no one could copy them, at the same time making it impossible to play them on "unauthorized equipment"; Jon figured out how to do play them on his Linux computer anyway, and posted the program on the Internet.
Everyone, including the defendant, is predicting an appeal from the prosecution and another round in court.
The Dish on Ingmar
The headline says it all in a delightful little Jan. 6 piece in UK’s The Guardian newspaper. "What did the great director Ingmar Bergman do when times were hard? He made soap commercials."
Hung on an upcoming screening of the nine advertisements (some shot in 3-D, no less!) at the British Film Institute, Geoffrey Macnab’s sly piece explains that the spots "were made as a matter of necessity: he had eight children to feed, a long-running strike had paralyzed the Swedish film industry, and theatres were closed for the summer. He needed to work." Gauging from the article, at least, the commercials are actually pretty good–for soap commercials, and even for Bergman films. Macnab details each one’s little plot ("a fairy-tale princess…rewards a hirsute young pig farmer with 100 kisses for giving her a cake of Breeze soap") and explains that Bergman worked with his same cinematographer from The Seventh Seal and "many other regular crew members."
We’re always seeing little clips of famous stars doing commercials as youngsters–famous directors is something new. Let’s hope the Bergman Soap Series makes it to the states.