On May 6, 1953, Jerome Robbins was front-page news in the Forward for an act that would haunt him for the rest of his life. An above-the-fold headline — published next to an unrelated photo of a handsome young harbor boss named Francis Kelly, who appeared to be wearing lipstick — read “Acclaimed Dancer Gives…
In “What Big Ideas,” Season 2, Episode 4 of HBO’s “The Deuce,” the Hi-Hat Bar got a new patron: Photographer Nan Goldin. Proving once more that it’s not just TV, but HBO, a highbrow platform for educated art-loving types, series co-creator David Simon snuck the activist-artist Goldin into a scene in the seedy Time Square…
American audiences may not be familiar with the name “Serge Alexandre Stavisky” or his many aliases, but the French recognize the Russian-born Jewish con man’s decline as helping ease their country’s slide into Fascism. A new restoration of director Alain Resnais’ 1974 film “Stavisky” opens Wednesday at New York’s Film Forum and plays through October…
What would today’s Democratic Party, with its progressive and moderate divisions, make of Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Maybe more to the point: What would he make of the state of our politics today? These are some of the questions raised by “Moynihan,” a new documentary about the long and varied career of the titular senator, diplomat,…
This weekend much of America was interrogating questions of masculinity. Following Brett Kavanaugh’s explosive display at his Senate hearings on Thursday, when toxic masculinity and male privilege seized the dais, many men and women are scrambling to find a suitable, constructive alternative. Writer-director Matan Yair’s debut feature film, “Scaffolding,” which premiered in New York September…
Matthew Weiner was reflecting on his management style this Yom Kippur, but continues to deny charges of misconduct involving a female employee. In a Vanity Fair profile released in advance of the “Mad Men” creator’s new Amazon series, “The Romanoffs,” Joy Press, the piece’s writer, noted that Weiner appeared “palpably nervous, his conversation a tangle…
“I’ve lived for eight months as if on the other side of the mirror,” an exasperated Kirill Serebrennikov told a judge in Moscow on April 18 of this year. It was the Russian-Jewish director’s most recent day in court since being placed under house arrest last August on corruption charges that are widely considered to…
When “The Waverly Gallery” makes its official Broadway debut on October 25, Elaine May will appear as Gladys, the Alzheimer’s-afflicted grandmother in Kenneth Lonergan’s 1999 comic drama that brings multiple meanings to the term “memory play.” Fans of the comedian/actress/writer/director, who has been American comedy’s insurgent genius as well as its Jewish mother, have greeted…
Putting to rest decades of speculation, former “Sesame Street” writer Mark Saltzman has confirmed to Queerty that Ernie and Bert are an item – at least in his eyes. Not only are the couple lovers, Saltzman says they are avatars of himself and his late partner Arnold Glassman. “I always felt that without a huge…
40 years ago David Fantle and his writing partner, Tom Johnson, saved up enough money from their summer jobs to fly to Los Angeles for interviews with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. They were 18-years-old Minnesotans with no credentials other than chutzpah and a love for Golden Age cinema. They had never done anything like…
This December, Universal Pictures will re-release “Schindler’s List” on the occasion of the Oscar-winning film’s 25th anniversary. As Slate reports, the Holocaust drama that earned Steven Spielberg his first Academy Award for Best Director will return to theaters on December 7. The film, about the German industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson, who was nominated for…
