277 Search Results for "harris"
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Norma Desmond: "Alright, M
- From: agentriff
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- 2 weeks ago
- Views: 30
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"Step, kick, kick, leap, kick,
- From: agentriff
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Look at all the people!
At all the people.
How many people does he need?
How many boys, how many girls?
How many people does he...?“I Hope I Get It”/A CHORUS LINE
Something is truly amiss when thousands of recent college graduates are unable to get jobs. They have played by the rules. They studied. They burned the midnight oil. They made the grades. But upon receiving their diplomas, they enter a job market that is slamming door after door in their faces.
Just this week, I watched a new documentary, EVERY LITTLE STEP, a multi-camera production that captured virtually every little step of the arduous audition process for the 2006 (and first ever) Broadway revival of the landmark 1975 musical A CHORUS LINE.
It took me back to 1976 when my future wife and I saw it in New York in the first year of what would become its then-record-setting 15-year run. I was in the first two years of my television news career, still taking baby steps to learn, to grow, to get better if only by a miniscule amount day by day. But I had a job—not just any job, but a job doing precisely what I wanted to do with my professional life. I was very fortunate. I knew so then. But looking back from the vantage point of today’s job market, I realize just how fortunate.
There was something about A CHORUS LINE. On its face, of course, it was about young kids trying to make it as Broadway show dancers. But—and this was part of its art—it was—and is—also about, as the original production’s Playbill stated, “anyone who has ever marched in step…anywhere.” And that is all of us.
One of the producers of EVERY LITTLE STEP has pointed out a crucial difference between his movie - and for that matter the original musical -- and all those TV reality shows that promise stardom: "It's not about being a star," he said. "It's about getting a job."
That underlying sense of sweaty desperation beneath the leotards and behind the pirouettes has always been one of the deeply appealing elements of A CHORUS LINE, linking its not-so-young "gypsy" dancers struggling to stay in the game to anyone who has ever fought to get and keep a fulfilling job.
When we saw A CHORUS LINE in 1976—one of the most affecting nights I have ever spent in a theater--watching sweat sling off the bodies of those healthy, young dancers was somehow life-affirming and life-informing. It told my generation if you really wanted to make it, you had to be willing to sweat, to jump, to leap—to go through whatever hoops of sacrifice necessary to get where you wanted to go. And that’s as it should be. I mean, if it’s really worth having, it shouldn’t be easy, right?But in late-2009’s shaky job market, when it's even more difficult to get one's toe in the door, let alone a foot, I wonder what’s out there for young college graduates to aspire to?
In an op-ed piece for the New York Times, Bob Herbert writes, “These recent graduates have done everything society told them to do. They’ve worked hard, kept their noses clean and gotten a good education (in many cases from the nation’s best schools). They are ready and anxious to work. If we’re having trouble finding employment for even these kids, then we’re doing something profoundly wrong.”
What is it saying to educated and eager young people that even with a degree, the work place has nothing, or very little, to offer them? More and more college graduates are working for free, at internships, which is great for employers. And, of course, gaining experience is great for the young worker. But at some point, one has to ask, “Without paid employment, how will they ever be able to leave home and support themselves?”
Today’s economic climate gives an even tougher meaning to A CHORUS LINE’s lyrics:
I really need this job.
Please God, I need this job.
I've got to get this job.There comes a moment in life when you are supposed to step onto “the line" or you are not going to make it onto the line, or achieve exactly what your goal is. Up until now at least, that was supposed to be Life.
You can’t help but feel for today’s young people. Like the brutal audition process of A CHORUS LINE, today’s ever-tighter job picture means that only the very strongest, those who persevere in the face of ever-growing odds, will “make it.” Some will falter, some will be cut, and others will simply give up.
What will it mean to society, what will we all lose, when America’s young talent, brains and muscle are not allowed to work at what they love, are not given the opportunity to strive, to soar...to dance?
--Hoyt Harris
- Blog post
- 3 weeks ago
- Views: 131
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A CHORUS LINE 1975a.jpg
- From: agentriff
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- 3 weeks ago
- Views: 43
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Santa Croce, Night
- From: agentriff
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Florence, Italy
Many famous Italians are buried in the church: e.g., Leon Battista Alberti, Michelangelo, Vittorio Alfieri, Leonardo Bruni, Gioacchino Rossini, and Galileo. The church is one of the finest examples of early Renaissance architecture.
- 1 month ago
- Views: 114
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Florence Night
- From: agentriff
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Fireworks over Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore
- 1 month ago
- Views: 87
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Florence: Palazzo Vecchio
- From: agentriff
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Rack focus on man in Palazzo Vecchio ("Old Palace")
- 1 month ago
- Views: 84
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The Time a Titleist Talked
- From: agentriff
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Description:
Sandra Sebring was feeling a bit upset. But with several things on her mind, she was trying to sort out which one was bothering her most.
As the daughter of First National Bank’s longtime president R. J. McBride, Sandra Sebring had believed most of her life that she had a family reputation to uphold. She felt the same way about her brother James, his wife Mary and their kids.
But her sister-in-law, Mary McBride, who lived four houses down from Sandra and her husband Jack on Beechcrest Drive, was embarrassing the entire family with her nutty behavior--—among other things, Mary’s proclivity for watering her lawn---in her negligee, no less---in the rain. On her way home from the grocery store, Sandra had just driven by Mary’s house during the worst of the afternoon’s downpour. Sure enough, there was Mary standing in her front yard, in a powder-blue, practically see-through nightgown, hand-watering her flower beds while it rained buckets. Sandra knew people in the neighborhood talked about her sister-in-law.
“...about what a nut she is,” Sandra thought.
But Sandra also knew that while Mary was a little “off,” there were plenty of people in this city who made Mary look normal. So, in order to save family face, when playing bridge on Monday nights, she tended to casually defend Mary by dropping lines like, “Oh, Mary’s a little eccentric, I guess”; or “That Mary is so colorful.”
“And besides,” Sandra mused, as she unpacked her groceries, “so what if Mary watered in the rain? The only harm is flooded flower beds at the least, and, at worst, root rot.”
Having mentally reduced Mary’s behavior to nothing to be much concerned about, Sandra moved on to something else that had been on her mind this last week: her golf game. It was off. And not because she was doing anything wrong. Her stance on the green was better than ever. She was addressing the ball better than ever---in fact, addressing it as if it could talk back.
Problem was, lately it had talked back. But because she always played alone, there had been no one else to hear it. Therefore, she wasn’t sure if the bumpy, white Titleist ball had actually said what she thought she had heard.
“Don’t hit me. Please, p-l-e-a-s-e, don’t hit me!”
She’d frozen in mid-swing, the driver poised in mid-air. Dr. Armstrong and the doctors at the state hospital had told her to ignore these voices. They had said that when things like pictures on the wall, people in photographs, her dog Pixie, or things like bananas started talking to her, to just ignore the voices.
“They’re just in your head, Sandra.”
Hearing the doctors’ voices in her head, she took comfort in their words. Relieved, she had addressed the ball again --—“Alright, buddy, no sand trap this time!”--- and had followed through on the swing, slightly squinting her eyes and wincing, just in case the ball screamed .
It hadn’t. Or if it had, the sound was lost as the Titleist soared through the air, straight down the fairway.
“Per-fect!” Sandra said out loud.
Shoot, for a drive that good, she thought, I could take a chorus of screams from all the balls in my bag.
No, it wasn’t Mary’s watering in the rain that had bothered Sandra in recent days.
It wasn’t even the talking Titleist that gave her pause. (Shoot, just last month, she would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that the little man on a can of Chef Boy-R-Dee ravioli had given her tips on how to improve the sauce.)
No, what really had been on her mind was that someone ---some thing--- had been... watching her. She could feel it. It was like that feeling of someone looking at you, that feeling of eyes on the back of the neck. No, it wasn’t quite that feeling. It was more like eyes on the top of her head.
That’s right. Something was above her, looking down.
Looking down...at her. And it seemed to be just above her head, straight up.
Last week, last Wednesday to be exact, just as she’d been on the verge of making a putt on the fourth green, on a perfectly calm day, not a breeze in the air, she had felt herself suddenly wrapped in a swirl of air, like a swirling cloak of air, a cocoon of air spiraling from the top of her head down to her exposed ankles.
She had quickly looked up, expecting for the briefest moment to see a room fan hovering above her head, whirring on “high”, plugged into nothing at all, but going full tilt.
But when she’d looked up, there was nothing, except the ever so slight rustling sound of...of...silk skirts?
Is that what she heard as she stared into a cloudless sky?
With her arms dropped to her sides, her putter lax in her hand, all she saw was a tiny white feather, no more than a fluff of a feather, floating down, then hanging for the briefest moment right in front of her eyes, giving her a good look, before coming to rest on the very tip of her upturned nose.
She felt it.
It tickled.
But, stifling a sneeze, when she tried to brush it away, it was so lightweight that it swirled away on the air current stirred by her hand.
What she couldn’t get out of her mind, though, was that she had seen the color of the feather---not exactly white but more like a white background overlaid by a pearlescent sheen, like the colors inside an oyster shell.
“What bird has feathers like that?” she wondered.
And Sandra Sebring knew from birds.
There were mockingbirds and grackles. There were jays and chickadees.
There were cuckoos.
And there were loons....
- Blog post
- 1 month ago
- Views: 82
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Hoyt, Henry and Herman
- From: agentriff
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Description:style="font-size: 10pt;"style="font-style: italic;"
Blues legend Henry Gray (center)
with Hoyt Harris and Herman Fuselier
Downtown Alive! Lafayette 2 October 2009
DTA! is a free event. The Fall 2009 Series features Grammy nominated artists and performances by renown and up and coming musicians from a variety of genres ranging from Cajun, Swamp Pop, Blues, Southern Rock and more.
- 1 month ago
- Views: 144
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Robert Armstrong
- From: agentriff
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- 2 months ago
- Views: 167
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Hoytinator
- From: agentriff
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- 2 months ago
- Views: 199
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Watch True Blood TV Show Onlin
- From: davemarketer
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Forget about Sex and the City. Watch True Blood TV show online, the HBO unabashedly sexual series. This show centers on Sookie Stackhouse [Ana Paquin], a telepathic waitress who works at Merlotte’s in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana.
When Sookie meets Bill Campton [Stephen Moyer], a 173-year old vampire, the possibility of a peaceful co-existence between vampires and humans is put to the test. That tolerance is stretched almost at breaking point when they fell in love. Add to this murky brew the unsolved murders of several fangbangers, human women who have affairs with vampires, and we have another classic from show creator Allan Ball, who once explored similar dark territory in Six Feet Under.
Whereas Six Feet Under bordered on the prim and grim, Ball gave full reign to his death fixation by injecting True Blood with oftentimes animalistic, life-infusing sex. One of these jaw-dropping sex scenes involved Sookie and Bill making rough sex in the middle of a graveyard. Viewers who have not seen the show can download True Blood online and see for themselves.
True Blood is peopled with interesting characters. Aside from Sookie and Bill, there’s Sookie’s brother Jason [Ryan Kwanten], who is often shot in the buff, humping away at some unfortunate women who almost always turn up dead. And there’s Lafayette [Nelsan Ellis], who part-times as Jason’s gay drug pusher, and Sam Merlotte, Sookie’s boss, who also happens to be a shape-shifter.
Ball had a brainwave about the series after he came across Harris’ Dead Until Dark, the first installment in the vampire series. He read the entire series and became interested in bringing Harris’ vision to the small screen.
The books had two other adaptation options when Ball approached their author. But in the end, Harris chose to work with him because she liked his enthusiasm and felt that Ball understood what she was doing with the books.
When the series premiered in September 2008, True Blood garnered a very modest 1.44 million viewers. By November, however, this figure jumped to 6.8 million a week, which included repeat and on-demand viewings. The series is now HBO's most popular series since The Sopranos and Sex and the City.
If the saying sex sells is anything to go by, then Ball and HBO certainly did find a goldmine in the show. Watch True Blood TV show online now.Discover how you can instantly watch satellite TV on pc for pennies. Also read another article on how to watch satellite TV on PC.
- Blog post
- 3 months ago
- Views: 118
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MomsPledge
- Views: 25
- Since: 4 months ago
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Marvels and Murder at the Worl
- From: agentriff
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Description:Erik Larson ("Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History") brings to vivid life the true story of a serial killer who stalked tourists at one of the greatest world's fairs in American history.
In "The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America," Larson brilliantly weaves the building of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition with the madness of a seemingly charming physician who was one of America's first serial killers.
While the great Chicago architect Daniel Burnham was designing and building the fair---popularly known as "the White City" because it was dazzingly illuminated with tens of thousands of new-fangled electric light bulbs---the sinister doctor had designs of his own: a macabre plot of mayhem and murder in a house right at the edge of the World Expo.The book has the suspense of a page-turning thriller and the"you-are-there" vividness of the best historical re-creation. It's as close to attending this great World's Fair as we are likely to get. The fair featured the likes of Thomas Edison, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley and Susan B. Anthony. George W. Ferris built his Ferris Wheel for this fair which was held in Chicago to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landing in America.
Court of Honor and Grand BasinColumbian World ExpositionChicago, 1893The Chicago Fair's organizers wanted something that would rival the Eiffel Tower. Four years earlier, Gustave Eiffel had built the tower for the Paris World's Fair of 1889 which honored the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.
Although Ferris was initially ridiculed as "a man with wheels in his mind," he did bring his giant wheel to fruition. It was an engineering wonder: two 140-foot steel towers supported the wheel; they were connected by a 45-foot axle, the largest single piece of forged steel ever made up until that time. Thirrty-six wooden cars held up to sixty riders each. The ride cost fifty cents and made $726,805.50 during the fair's run.
The Exposition drew nearly 26 million visitors. It left a remembered vision that inspired the Emerald City of L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz and Walt Disney's theme parks.
While the book reads like a novel, the story is true. As world expos tend to do, the Chicago Columbian Exposition exemplified America's optimism for a fast-approaching new century. But while tourists from around the country and the world descended on Chicago to see the fair's--and the future's-- marvels, Chicago's burgeoning population provided cover for the sinister Dr. H.H. Holmes.
This was the beginning of a phenomenon: an expanding nation of people in ever-growing metropolises which provide anonymity to sociopaths in our midst. The story "feels like" the novelized fiction of E.L. Doctorow ("Ragime") meeting "Sweeney Todd."Cinematic in its vivid and detailed re-creation of a nation on the brink of a New Age---and killers hiding in plain sight---this is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. I highly recommend it.
--Hoyt Harris - Blog post
- 6 months ago
- Views: 333
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Crazy for her close-up....
- From: agentriff
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Description:
SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) is the most acid look Hollywood has ever taken at itself. It is the one movie--if I had to pick just one--that I would take to the proverbial deserted island. Gloria Swanson's aging silent star "Norma Desmond" is theatrical and grotesque, yes, but we have compassion for her as she skates along the rim of insanity for most of the movie before finally slipping totally into madness.
The movie's great closing line---"Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up"---is all that many young people know of this movie. And my heart sinks when I hear someone say, "'SUNSET BOULEVARD'? Isn't that in black-and-white? I don't like black-and-white movies."Well, the two hours of movie that precede that closing line contain some of the greatest dialogue ever written for the screen. And the movie is "written" in a way movies generally aren't today. It depends not at all on explosions and special effects. But when it ends, you will know the main characters as if you have spent years with them.
Co-writer and director Billy Wilder knew Hollywood and wasn't afraid to splash its less attractive side across the screen. It's as if he lifted a rock and revealed the creepy-crawly things that can live under it--and that he knew lived in Hollywood.
As faded screen star Norma Desmond who's desperate for a comeback--or a "return" as she defensively calls it--Gloria Swanson knew firsthand about faded stardom. A major star during Hollywood's silent era, by 1950 she was all but forgotten. So, in some sense, in SUNSET BOULEVARD she is essentially playing (a theatrical exaggeration of) herself. If it's true that writers should write about what they know, how powerful it can be when an actor plays what he/she has lived.
In real life, Swanson was a health nut who fled from the sun, which no doubt protected her skin--she was 53 when she made the film. In SUNSET BOULEVARD she looks great; but the point is not that Norma hasn't aged in the flesh, but that she hasn't aged in the mind: she has become fixed, almost embalmed, at the moment of her greatness and now lives in the past.
When she threatens suicide, her much-younger lover Joe Gillis (William Holden) rebukes her: "Oh, wake up, Norma. You'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left 20 years ago."
But Norma lives in her own dream world. She doesn't know that her butler/former husband and film director Max (Erich von Stroheim, essentially playing himself as well) has protected her for years by writing phony fan letters to her long after the audience has forgotten her.
The brilliance of Wilder's and co-writer Charles Brackett's screenplay is that, while Norma can be bossy to an irksome degree, we begin to see the child beneath her autocratic exterior.
By the time the movie reaches its tragic conclusion, we, like failed screenwriter Joe Gillis, have become ensnared in Norma's grasping talons.
Norma's Descent into Madness
SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)When, in that closing sequence, she descends the staircase of her crumbling Hollywood mansion she is also descending into madness: she thinks she's back in the studio when, in fact, those cameras belong to tabloid news photographers capturing her insanity for the world to see. The sequence is mesmerizing and, as a "mad scene," ranks right up there with Lady Macbeth's.
Joe Gillis narrates: "So they were turning after all, those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merficul, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her."
Chilling.
--Hoyt Harris - Blog post
- 6 months ago
- Views: 171
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The man who made Lahr a Lion
- From: agentriff
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Description:
Forty years after turning Bert Lahr into the Cowardly Lion in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), Charlie Schram was Peter Sellers' personal make-up artist on BEING THERE (1979).
Cast by director Hal Ashby as "Agent Riff", I was the only TV reporter on the set which was otherwise closed to the media. This gave me incredible access to do reports on location.
I did a feature story on Schram. We decided I would interview him while, for the sake of the story, he turned a 29-year-old me into a 75-year-old. As I sat in his make-up chair, my photographer clipped mics onto Schram and me and filmed my transformation in the huge mirror.As Schram began putting subtle smudges of dark make-up below my cheekbones, I asked what he was doing.
"I'm aging you," he said.
"How did you learn how to do this?" I asked.
"In the Thirties, I studied art and sculpture in Paris," he said.During its glory years, Schram had headed MGM's make-up department for 20 years, transforming the young faces of Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner into icons of the screen.
After 30 minutes of sinking in my cheeks, adding lines to my face and putting streaks of gray in my hair, Schram spun my chair around. Staring back at me from the mirror was...an old...me! He had made me so believably old that I FELT old.
At that moment, I realized make-up was half the battle of getting into character.
- Blog post
- 6 months ago
- Views: 237
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From the morgue to the nursery
- From: agentriff
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Description:
The highest I have ever been was the day Hunter was born---and I was stone-cold sober. It doesn't seem fair: Bette did all the work (I WAS in delivery as her Lamaze coach) but while she is laid up in the hospital after labor and delivery, I'm on Cloud Nine.
Although Hunter was born at 1:30 in the afternoon, twelve hours later I'm still zooming on the natural high that we now have this beautiful, healthy son to raise and love.
Unable to sleep at home, at roughly midnight I drive back to the hospital, parking in the back. Because the hospital is closed to visitors at this hour, I know it's pointless to try entering through the front. In the back, I spy a light underneath a door. I try the door. It's unlocked. I quietly let myself in and find myself practically in the dark.But as my eyes adjust as I'm walking through this large dark room, I realize I'm in the hospital morgue. Row after row, there are corpses on tables to my left and to my right.
But I want to see Hunter. I keep walking until I come to a door, exit into a hallway and take an elevator to the maternity floor. As I exit the elevator, I see a light way down the hall. I walk toward it, finding a lone nurse doing paperwork in the nurse's station.
I politely say, "I know it's after hours. But could I get my son from the nursery and take him to my wife's room?"
For the first time, she looks up from her task, recognizes me from the news and says, "He's yours, isn't he?"With that, I go to the darkened nursery, collect Hunter from his bassinet and take him to Bette's room. As she continues sleeping, I hold him for an hour in the dark, thanking God over and over for the gift with which he has blessed Bette and me.
- Blog post
- 7 months ago
- Views: 271
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Komen Race for the Cure. March
- From: agentriff
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Description:
21 March 2009
From left: Evan Anderson, Megan Schiering, Marcelle Fontenot, Hoyt Harris, Tracy Wirtz, Jim Hummel, Rob Kirkpatrick
- 7 months ago
- Views: 432
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