PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture ‘Oh, my Gawd!’ Rachel Bloom and Fran Drescher are making a ‘The Nanny’ musical
It’s a tale (nearly) as old as time: A millionaire Broadway producer meets a bridal shop worker from Queens, hires her as a caretaker for his children, then eventually takes her to wife. Now, that classic story will become a stage musical. Yes, a Broadway treatment of hit 1990s sitcom“The Nanny” is forthcoming. As Deadline…
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Culture In 1960, Clifford Odets wrote his final film — for Elvis
Wise men say only fools rush in to a vanity film project for a singer of limited acting ability. That didn’t stop Clifford Odets, at least when it came to the King of Rock and Roll. The year was 1960, and the socialist playwright was entering his third and final decade working in film. His…
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Culture How Elizabeth Wurtzel, ‘Prozac Nation’ author and breast cancer advocate, shaped America
Elizabeth Wurtzel, whose bracingly candid memoirs brought attention to the deeply-rooted problems of addiction and depression in America, died in a Manhattan hospital on January 7. She was 52 years old. Wurtzel died as a result of leptomeningeal disease, a complication that occurs after cancer spreads to cerebrospinal fluid, her husband, Jim Freed, told The…
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Culture What ‘The Good Place’ says about Jewish ethics
This article contains spoilers for all four seasons of NBC’s “The Good Place.” Like many things in Judaism, notions of the afterlife can seem to be a jumble of competing interpretations. There’s no consensus as to what the life-to-come may look like, but one suggestion of heaven is the yeshiva shel ma’ala — or the…
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Culture As Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial begins in New York, new assault charges emerge in LA
On Monday, soon after a walker-bound Harvey Weinstein limped into New York’s State Supreme Court in Manhattan for the preliminary steps in his first criminal trial, the movie mogul was hit with new rape and sexual assault charges in California. Los Angeles prosecutors released a criminal complaint with new charges against Weinstein made by two…
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Culture The Golden Globes were a massive bummer
Ah, the Golden Globes. The Oscars’s boozy, antic European cousin. It seems like each year the Hollywood Foreign Press-hosted event reflects a larger conversation around race, gender and politics — but often with a lag. When Ricky Gervais hosts, there is, along with an air of celebrity ego-slashing, there’s often a literal delay to mute…
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Culture Something old, something blue: Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody’ enters the public domain
The theme to Manhattan — both the borough and the film — has entered the public domain. George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” penned in 1924, for bandleader Paul Whiteman, entered the creative commons as of January 1, 2020. (2020 marks only the second year since 1999 that new works have become available in the US,…
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Culture Meet the comics bringing Jews and Muslims together through stand-up
In April of 2019, comedian Eitan Levine held a five-day comedy festival at his New York apartment. Yeganeh Mafaher was part of a diverse slate of comics who graced Levine’s living room with her set, which explores — among other topics — being Iranian-American and looking like Anne Frank. The two had not met before…
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