BY BEN WINTERS
Warren Zevon has been dying for a long time. And, though
Warren Zevon dying at all is a tremendously sad thing, this drawn out
public death is especially sad. That the singer-songwriter best known
for 'Werewolves of London' has terminal lung cancer has been public information
for many months. In the New York Times Sunday magazine back in January,
Times rock writer Jon Parales did a touching profile on Zevon, whose songs
have long had a strange, and now ironic, fascination with the world beyond.
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Zevon,
right, being examined by his doctor
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Zevon, thankfully, is still alive, and now comes this
information, reported in mid-July by Rolling Stone: 'The creation of Warren
Zevon's final album, 'The Wind,' was captured by film crews and will be
chronicled in an Aug. 24 episode of VH1's new series 'Inside Out.' The
wry singer-songwriter was diagnosed last year with terminal lung cancer
and allowed cameras to document his musical goodbye.'
Note that the Stone writer (Andrew Dansby) calls it Zevon's
'final' album, which would seem to put the nail in the coffin rather early'the
guy could live another six months and record another album's worth in
that time, after all. (Tupac put out three records after he was gone,
for God's sake.)
The VH1 show will be the first in a new series 'that
follows artists through a 'personal or professional crossroads.'' The
Stone report continues, 'Future episodes are planned for Ol' Dirty Bastard,
who was recently released from prison, and guitarist Slash as he attempted
to put together his new, post-Guns n' Roses band Velvet Revolver.'
It actually sounds pretty good, for a reality show'though
dying of lung cancer would seem to be rather more serious than just a
'personal or professional crossroads.'
According to Billboard, 'Inside Out: Warren Zevon will
feature appearances by Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks
and Mick Fleetwood, and is hosted by actor Billy Bob Thornton.' (Thornton
is apparently a friend of Zevon's and also sings on the album.) Also appearing
will be 'Zevon's two children, including his daughter Ariel, who was pregnant
with twins during filming.'
In case there is any further doubt that Zevon has made
peace with his coming demise: According to early reports, the only misstep
on the record is a rather too on-the-nose cover of Bob Dylan's 'Knockin'
on Heaven's Door.'
GIRL POWER
Laura Collins-Hughes, arts editor at the New Haven Register,
has good news from this year's Playwriting Conference at the O'Neill Theatre
Center: 'Of the 15 playwrights at this year's conference, two-thirds (66.7
percent) are women; of its 11 directors, eight (72.7 percent) are women.'
She ascribes this uptick to new artistic director James Houghton. 'With
the exception of a brief period in the early 1980s, however, the men always
vastly outnumbered them'until, that is, Houghton arrived, and the number
of women shot up. Among the playwrights in 2001, there were 10 women and
eight men.'
Collins-Hughes proceeds to take the pulse of the American
theatre in terms of gender, and the findings are not entirely cause for
celebration.
The League of American Theatres and Producers reports
that the audience for Broadway shows in the 2001-02 season was 63 percent
female'the same percentage of plays by women (63.6 percent) that get script-in-hand
public performances at this year's playwrights conference'but nationwide,
according to American Theatre magazine, only 17 to 18 percent of plays
produced in professional theatres in 2001-02 were written by women. In
the same season, 16 percent of productions were directed by women.'
The struggle continues'
MAMET: STILL REALLY PISSED
In small letters at the bottom of the Web site of the
National Theatre, at present, it says, 'Please note: this play contains
language that some people may find offensive.'
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Mamet
makes no
apologies to the British press for the harsh nature of Edmond, now being performed at the National Theatre and starring Kenneth Branagh |
In a long article written for the Guardian newspaper
in conjunction with the opening of that play, its author'David Mamet'makes
no such apologies. Edmond, he writes 'is a harsh play. I remember when
it was first staged in New York. The critics, rather universally, called
it misguided and excessive. I didn't mind. I thought it was accurate.
I still do.'
That was but one of any number of forceful comments Mamet
makes in the Guardian, seemingly trying to match the aggressive tone of
the play. It's a weirdly rambling article, though, in the course of which
one is regularly taken aback by the startling nature of the language.
(Sounds like a Mamet play, right?) Here's a couple: 'As a Jew, I loathe
'The Diary of Anne Frank' (and I suppose that is how African-Americans
must feel about Guess Who's Coming to Dinner).'
'Question: are white American males sexually insecure?
Answer: yes. Most middle-class marriages in white America are, I think,
as close to sexless as makes no difference.'
'So, though I decry and abominate the computer, the mass
media and, indeed, most things that differentiate the 21st century from
the 19th, I remind myself that I have lived to see the beginning of the
end of American racism.'
No wonder most of the press about Edmond has been around its star, Kenneth Branagh'returning to the London stage for the first time in over a decade'and the National Theatre itself, which is midway through a remarkably successful season. Both Jerry Springer: The Opera and His Girl Friday (in a new adaptation by John Guare) have earned new National Artistic Director Nicholas Hytner rave reviews.