Four French Horn Players Take On Lady Gaga, Queen and More

From ArtsBeat at NYT:

"The publicity photos make them look like either the Four Hornswomen of the Apocalypse or neon-colored aerobics instructors. They go by the stage names Freedom Barbie, Velvet Barbie, Jungle Barbie and Attila the Horn. They play arrangements of songs by Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Queen and other pop acts.

The name of their band is Genghis Barbie, and the group consists of four conservatory-trained French horn players: Danielle Kuhlmann, Jacquelyn Adams, Rachel Drehmann and Alana Vegter.

Ms. Vegter brought the group to ArtsBeat’s attention. Back in June 2008, an article in The New York Times chronicled Ms. Vegter’s year teaching at a public school in Brooklyn. At the time, she was a member of the Academy, a fellowship program sponsored by Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and Carnegie’s education arm, the Weill Music Institute. The program offered the fellows musical training and concerts at Carnegie Hall, along with the obligation to teach youngsters."

How interesting. Ms. Vegter, at least, sounds like the real deal. I hope they record an album...

'Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark' gearing up

From SF Chronicle:

"The musical has been in the works for more than six years, starting with an announcement about the show in 2004. Since then, producers have come and gone, and so have some cast members - Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming were once cast as Mary Jane and the Green Goblin.

Spider-Man may be the hero on the stage, but it is Cohl who might be considered the production's savior after he came in and financially stabilized a musical that had been dogged by money problems.

'The budget's OK,' he says. 'It's a new budget every day.'

When open, this reported $60 million show will have 41 cast members, 18 orchestra members and about 18 new songs by U2's Bono and the Edge. It will have as its main lead a singer in a rock band whose biggest acting credit so far is in Taymor's upcoming adaptation of 'The Tempest.'

Yet there seems no panic, no screaming. The cast seems loose, the engineers unruffled, the pauses between resets without tension. Someone on the technical side even has her tiny dog on her lap, its head bathed in the light of a computer screen."

I'll probably be cruelly disappointed, but I'm really looking forward to the musical. So help me God, I will get up to New York to see it.

Emma Stone Cast in Spider-Man, But Not as Mary Jane

From Vulture:

"When news leaked that Marc Webb's Spider-Man reboot was looking at Emma Stone to play its female lead, the idea of casting the sultry redhead as Mary Jane seemed like a no-brainer. However, in Sony's just-released announcement that Stone has indeed been cast in the film, there's a twist: She'll actually go blonde as Peter Parker's other love interest, the sweet, doomed Gwen Stacy. Does that mean that the fair-headed actresses we thought were being considered for Gwen -- including Dianna Agron and Mia Wasikowska -- were dyed-red herrings who were actually up for the other part of Mary Jane? (Or is there a second twist, and Aunt May just got a whole lot younger?) [EW] 

Read more posts by Kyle Buchanan 

Filed Under: spider-man, emma stone, movies

I was really excited when I heard she was cast as MJ in the new Spidey reboot. A lot less so that she's been cast as Gwen Stacy. 

UPDATE: On second thought, I'm calling bullshit on this. Everything I've heard said she's going to be Mary Jane and I can't see her playing anyone but Mary Jane, if for no other reason than the red hair.

Alfonso Cuaron Has Finally Found Someone to Star in Gravity

From Vulture:

"After Natalie Portman passed on the starring role in his outer-space thriller, Alfonso Cuaron appears to have finally found a leading lady for Gravity: Sandra Bullock. Bullock is in negotiations to take on the part of an astronaut opposite Robert Downey Jr. in the film. Everyone from Angelina Jolie to Marion Cotillard to Blake Lively had been connected to the part, but Cuaron had settled on Portman once Jolie was officially out of the picture. However, after Portman turned it down, Bullock was approached immediately. While the Oscar winner is also in talks to star in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it now looks like this space odyssey will be her first post–Blind Side project to hit theaters. [HR]
Read more posts by Josh Duboff

Filed Under: gravity, alfonso cuaron, movies, sandra bullock, the industry"

Sandra Bullock in space! Excellent.

Gemma Arterton's meteoric rise

From SF Gate:

"Gemma Arterton's career is on a fast track. In movies for just three years, she already has played title roles in the BBC miniseries 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' and in 'The Disappearance of Alice Creed' and 'Tamara Drewe.' In between she did stints as a Bond...

And she did Tess! I'll keep an eye on this one.

Movie Review: Tamara Drewe Is Slightly Infectious

From Vulture

"Tamara Drewe is based on a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds, which was inspired by Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, and after a spate of graphic-novel movies that aim, inexplicably, strenuously, and, in the end, self-defeatingly to evoke their source material, it’s a relief to find one that puts the spirit of the thing ahead of the form. Director Stephen Frears gets the feel of Simmonds’s frames: Busy but airy, the characters in their frailty looking precarious against the fixed, implacable landscape. And because this is a Hardy-inspired, he juggles an unusually large number of characters — and perspectives. 

Gemma Arterton’s Tamara Drewe, chatty lifestyle columnist for a London newspaper, is the last character to arrive in this small English backwater, but she’s the catalyst, the one who sets everything in madcap motion. She has two key attributes: She’s utterly gorgeous, showing up in a pair of short-shorts (you can see them on the poster) and riveting the gaze of men and women both. And she knows that her gorgeousness is provisional. She grew up with a near-Cyrano-size honker she had fixed, and now she can’t quite believe her new power. 

Tamsin Greig’s Beth Hardiment owns this writer’s retreat with her husband, best-selling mystery writer Nicholas. She doesn’t just cook and clean; she’s a kind of muse, giving him ideas and typing his handwritten drafts. But the aging fop cheats on her like mad — which gives hope to the schlubby, radiantly unsuccessful Hardy scholar played by the superb American stage actor Bill Camp. Perhaps, he thinks, Beth could be his muse. Luke Evans is the dreamy handyman who loves Tamara, Dominic Cooper the rock-star drummer who plays his sticks up and down her body to seduce her. (In the original, it’s an officer’s saber — nice transposition!) Most deliciously of all are two saucy local high-school girls, Casey (Charlotte Christie) and Jody (Jessica Barden). It’s the latter who, desperate to snare the drummer for herself, sneaks into Tamara’s house and sends a lascivious e-mail in her name that ushers in the apocalypse. 

Tamara Drewe feels too slight to earn its eventual casualties (although it mercifully omits the death of one of the girls in the graphic novel), but in its unpretentious way, it has the fullness of an eighteenth-century novel in which fate is inexorable and character equals destiny. In place of Hardy’s cosmic emotion, though, you’ll find a perverse little Mona Lisa smile that’s blessedly contagious. 

Read more posts by David Edelstein 

Filed Under: movie review, gemma arterton, movies, tamara drewe"

Graphic novel inspired by Far From the Madding Crowd? Hardy scholar gets the girl? "... in its unpretentious way, it has the fullness of an eighteenth-century novel"?! Forget Netflix; if this, by a miracle, makes it to Charlottesville, I'm going to the theater. It appears Gemma Arterton really is everywhere. She was a Bond girl, I mentioned "The Disappearance of Alice Creed," an Australian film recently released, now this, but most of all, there's what comes next....

Madonna Surprises LaGuardia Teacher

From Gothamist:

"With her daughter Lourdes attending LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, it was only a matter of time before mama Madonna turned up in the halls. One teacher there allegedly had a run in with the star while putting some finishing touches on a set—a friend of his wrote on her blog that just a few days ago the teacher's iPod rotated to a Madonna Mix he had made and "the volume suddenly increased to maximum level. He swung around... and there she was, smiling and pulsing a bit with the deafening beat of 'Ray Of Light.' She let him recover from the shock and said, 'That’s better!' and turned and went out of the shop and back to whatever celebrity-parent-at-school thing she was dealing with." Follow the sound of your own songs, that's one way to assure you're going to get recognized.

Reminds me of the anecdote--self-narrated, so take it with a grain of salt, especially given the self--where Madonna ran into Martha Graham at Martha Graham's Dance Studio. And also, it reminds me of the fact I once had a huge crush on this girl who attended LaGuardia (the Fame school). Cue the sigh.

Meet the New Girl: Melodie Monrose, Shy Girl Turned Supermodel?

Melodie Monrose (Wilhelmina)

From Cut: 

"It's been a whirlwind month for Melodie Monrose. The Martinique beauty was minding her own business — reading books, going to museums, and doing other normal 18-year-old things — when she was discovered mere weeks before the spring 2011 castings began. Monrose flew to New York days later, and signed with Wilhelmina on the spot. Though she arrived late to the casting circuit, she snagged a slot in Vena Cava's line-up on Day One of New York Fashion Week. This resulted in high profile bookings for Marc Jacobs, DKNY, rag & bone, and Jason Wu later in the week. When she arrived in Milan, Monrose was booked for Prada, Missoni, Bottega Veneta, and Gucci. We managed to steal a few minutes of the rookie's time before she jetted off to Paris to walk for Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino. Click ahead to read a brief Q&A with Monrose, and then visit her new model profile to see loads of on and off the runway pics.

What was your childhood like?

I was a quiet and very, very shy girl. I always had my face in a book! My mother, who is a teacher, encouraged me to study. I have one older brother that I love so much and I'm proud of my family and happy with the support they've given me to do this job.

What do you do on your days off?

I try to take as much rest as possible. I like to see my friends, discover new restaurants, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE museums, especially Parisian museums. And all the usual things like shopping, seeing movies ... I really like Pedro Almodóvar's movies. He is amazing.

Describe your most memorable day of New York Fashion Week.

The day of Marc Jacobs's show. I thought I didn't have this show and I was a little bit sad because I'm a big fan of the brand and then they confirmed me on the morning of the show. I think it was the most beautiful show I did for spring 2011. Michelle Lee and everyone at KCD was so kind to me and I couldn't believe that I was this new girl walking in such a big show. But overall, I can say that I enjoy doing every show and it was a really amazing experience.

Who is your favorite supermodel?

Noémie Lenoir, because every angle I see this woman [from], I stop to think 'Wow, this girl is just awesome!' And maybe I identify a little bit myself because she is from a French island, too. I also really love Coco Rocha. She is just amazing to watch pose and move. She has been teaching me how to be a better model. 

Are you listening to any hot jams right now?

'Empire State of Mind,' by Jay-Z and featuring Alicia Keys. Everything in this song is true. New York is the place where your dreams come true. I just love this city. 

If you could meet anyone, dead or alive, who would you meet?

Marilyn Monroe, because she is the incarnation of femininity and glamor — a legend . 

Tell us a secret.

When I was child, I dreamed about becoming a designer! I dreamed about becoming the next Karl Lagerfeld. I gave up this dream when I was younger because everybody was telling me it wasn't possible. Now I realize you have to be very creative and very talented to be a good designer. You need the proper training and passion. Maybe someday after modeling ... Hopefully being around all of these talented designers will teach me a little bit more every day, and then who knows? 

Explore other rising stars (plus all the big names) in our extensive Model Manual, featuring runway pics, glamorous editorials, model bios, career timelines, and more.

Read more posts by James Lim 

Filed Under: bottega veneta, dkny, gucci, jason wu, karl lagerfeld, marc jacobs, melodie monrose, missoni, models, noemie lenoir coco rocha, prada, rag & bone, valentino, vena cava, wilhelmina models, yves saint laurent"

Gasp-inducing beauty. And she loves museums and Almodóvar--I'm sold!

Greta Gerwig Starring in Whit Stillman’s Next Movie

From Vulture:

"So it looks like director Whit Stillman's long-awaited fourth movie will soon be upon us! It's been twelve years since the release of his Last Days of Disco, but Greenberg's Greta Gerwig — who seems like a great match for Stillman — tells WWD she starts shooting his Damsels in Distress in two weeks. 'I play a girl named Violet who runs a suicide-prevention center at a liberal arts college,' she says, echoing an earlier synopsis of the plot. "She prevents suicides through the powers of '30s song-and-dance numbers. So it’s a very dark comedy.” Hooray! [WWD via Playlist]

Read more posts by Willa Paskin

Filed Under: casting couch, damsels in distress, greta gerwig, movies, whit stillman

I second that hooray! I am so excited I couldn't help but read the synopsis that's floating around the internet.

Iran’s Interrupted Lives

From NYRB:

Human rights advocate Shiva Nazar Ahari, 26, was sentenced to a six-year prison term in Tehran on September 18, 2010 

In late September, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New York asserting his government’s respect for human rights, several young students in Iran were receiving lengthy prison sentences for their efforts to speak out in defense of those rights. Indeed—as a small photography exhibition about student repression in Iran at Georgetown Law School this month powerfully reminded us—hundreds of Iranian students, journalists, and bloggers have been jailed, many of them in deplorable conditions, since the disputed elections of June 2009. And though the matter has received little attention in the press, many more continue to be arrested and sentenced. 

I was struck by the setting of the exhibition. In Georgetown’s McDonough Hall, where it was held, law students hurry to and from classes. They walk past or stop to look at the photographs—photographs of men and women, also students, the same age as themselves. But these men and women are Iranian. The Georgetown students are free to come and go, to speak their minds, to argue with their professors; the Iranians in these photos have experienced life differently.

This video requires the Flash plugin.

A slide show from “Interrupted Lives: Portraits of Student Repression in Iran”

Ashkan Sohrabi died from bullet wounds during the mass protests that followed last year’s contested presidential elections. Shiva Nazar Ahari, 26, an advocate for women’s equality and for children and political prisoners, was being sentenced in Iran this month to a six-year prison term for her peaceful activities, even as the exhibition was ending. Manijeh Hoda’i, a Tehran university student, one of the many pictured here, was executed along with her brother in 1982 for opposition to the Islamic Republic. Ahmad Batebi was sentenced to death when The Economist pictured him on its front cover holding aloft the bloody T-shirt of a fellow student during student protests in 1999. His sentence was reduced to ten years under international pressure, but he did not escape mistreatment and solitary confinement. He crossed the border into Iraq in late 2007 and is now living in the United States.

The record on display of students arrested, jailed, tortured and executed makes for grim viewing, all the more striking for its spareness and understatement. Beside each photograph is a brief description, powerful in its simplicity, providing name, age, university affiliation, circumstances and dates of arrests, sentencing, eventual fate. At the bottom of each panel, in tiny print, are the names of the thousands of students caught in the web of Iran’s intelligence apparatus, its secret police, and its judicial and prison system. There are echoes here of the Vietnam War Memorial’s wall of names, except that those commemorated in this exhibition had their lives destroyed by their own countrymen, not by an enemy army.

Sponsored by the Abdorrhaman Boroumand Foundation and the Georgetown chapter of Amnesty International, the exhibition was organized by two sisters, Ladan and Roya Boroumand. Their father, after whom the foundation was named, was an Iranian lawyer and democracy activist who was assassinated in Paris in 1991, almost certainly by Iranian agents. Among other valuable work, the Boroumands have created a database of some 12,000 executions carried out in Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

The display at Georgetown included three small school desks, the kind in which political detainees in Iran are required to sit to write responses during interrogations and, once they are broken, to put on paper their “confessions.” Roya Boroumand, who takes me through the exhibition, asks if I want my picture taken sitting behind one of these desks. I shudder and refuse. I have no desire to relive the long hours, days and months I spent under interrogation and writing answers to questions at Evin Prison.

The exhibition is aptly named “interrupted lives.” These young men and women, you think, should be playing soccer and basketball, could have gone to graduate school, might have been lawyers and doctors. Instead, jail and exile, and aborted schooling and careers, have been their fate. Manuchehr Es’haqi was arrested at age 13 and spent ten years in jail for “corruption on earth.” He now repairs coffee machines in Sweden. He looks at the camera through haunted eyes. “I am still not really living. Nothing makes me really happy,” the small inscription quotes him as saying.

Hamed Ruhinejad, a university student arrested after the 2009 elections, lingers in jail, despite multiple sclerosis and the loss of sight in his right eye. Bahareh Hedayat, the well-known human rights and women’s rights activist and a leading member of the Office for Fostering Unity, a student organization, has been in and out of jail since 2006. Only 25, she was sentenced in May to nine-and-a half years for speaking out on rights issues. 

Thousands of young Iranian exiles, fleeing the unwelcome attention of the secret police, have sought refuge in towns and cities across Turkey, waiting for a government to grant them asylum. The country of my birth, I think to myself, brutalizes its own youth, robs them of their futures because they dared dream of freedom and liberty. 

There are now a considerable number of political exiles in the United States as well. I met three of them at the exhibition. Ali Afshari, who is pictured in the exhibition giving a speech during his days as a student leader in the 1990s, was imprisoned three times and tortured. He refers in a matter-of-fact way to “the time when I was broken.” He gave his interrogators the “confession” they wanted, recanted once out of prison, and came to the US once he was allowed to leave the country.

In 2009, physics student Ali Reza Firuzi Ali, 19, was sent to Evin Prison for insulting the Islamic Republic on his blog and for “acting against national security, propaganda against the Islamic Republic, and organizing illegal gatherings.' 

Kian, a photo-journalist, was beaten up and his equipment seized on two occasions during the post-election protests last year. During a desperate search for medical attention after the second beating, he accidentally ended up in a hospital belonging to the Intelligence Ministry. A sympathetic doctor hastily patched him up and sent him away before he caught the attention of security agents. He speaks of a continuing clampdown in Tehran and parents who try to keep their children off the streets. 

The other exile I spoke to is a political blogger who recently fled Iran and understandably did not want to give his name. However, he wanted to talk about Hossein Derakhshan, the father of political blogging in Iran. Derakhshan has a controversial history. Once an advocate for democracy, he turned into an unrelenting critic of the reformist Green Movement. Some even suspected him of working for the government. Whatever his loyalties, somewhere along the way, he seems to have fallen foul of Iran’s security agencies. He has been held in prison for the past two years. My interlocutor’s concern for Derakhshan was not misplaced. A few days after my interview, on September 22, sources close to Derakhashan’s family reported there had been a trial and that the prosecutor had asked for the death sentence. 

No one knows how many bloggers there are in Iran. John Leyne of the BBC cites a figure of 65,000. My interlocutor says there are many “social bloggers” but perhaps only 100 serious political bloggers. Still, they play an important part in keeping political networks alive and as sources of information for the international press, whose direct access to Iran is increasingly limited. The intelligence agencies regard them as dangerous. In addition to Derakhshan, several other bloggers have ended up in jail, sometimes for sending out a single message. 

There are exhilarating moments in the exhibition. One photo shows a lone, chador-clad woman facing a clutch of soldiers. They point batons and bayonets at her; she points back with a single, angry finger. Another photograph shows a student at Amir Kabir University, as he stands during a speech by President Ahmadinejad. He is holding a hand-made poster high above his head. It reads: “Amir Kabir is no place for you, Fascist President.” An amusing montage of headshots shows men wearing women’s scarves or in full hijab—a tactic adopted by protesters in 2009 to show support for a student leader whose picture in female dress the security authorities had faked, claiming he fled a demonstration in women’s clothing. 

I leave the exhibition angry at the thought of so many lives fractured, but also uplifted by the courage of these women and men who return to the battle again and again despite arrests, jail and even the threat of execution. The words of Shiva Nazar Ahari remain with me: “After all, this is our country. If we leave, there will be no one left.” 

“Interrupted Lives: Portraits of Student Repression in Iran,” was shown at Georgetown University Law School from September 13 to September 17, 2010. A film and slide show about the exhibition is available on the web site of the Boroumand Foundation."

Required reading. Everyone on earth should see this exhibition. I wish I had been able to see it myself.

Is Christopher Lloyd In Over His Head in Death of a Salesman?

From Vulture via NYT:

"Sure, Christopher Lloyd is unimpeachably terrific and has plenty of experience playing reality-detached cranks forced to contend with jerks named Biff — but is the actor, known mostly for comedy, the right guy to play Death of a Salesman's Willy Loman, one the hardest roles in all of American drama? Not even poor Christopher Lloyd seems to think so! In a profile in today's New York Times, Lloyd discusses playing Loman in an upcoming way-off-Broadway (it's in Vermont) production of Salesman, and it's hard not to feel for him.


Lloyd tells the Times' Dave Itzkoff that he got the job because someone at the 300-capacity Weston Playhouse — where Lloyd and his brother, Sam, starred in a few plays before he got famous — asked last year what sort of role he might be interested in taking on. "I thought about it overnight," says Lloyd. "And I just sort of — Death of a Salesman.' But maybe he should have thought about it a little harder, because he sounds pretty nervous now (the show opens today). Check out all this self-defeating quotage:

“The first act feels like a three-act play, it’s so full of life and situations,” Mr. Lloyd said. “And then there’s a second act. Which is even worse.”

And:

[Director] Steve Stettler said, is that Death of a Salesman requires “an actor who still has the memory and the stage power to loom.”
Mr. Lloyd said the memory part of the equation did not come easy for him. (“Some people have quick retention,” he said. “I’m not one of those.”)

And:

“There are some roles I’ve gotten,” Christopher Lloyd said the other day in his gravelly, jittery, half-mumble of a voice, “that when I get the script, sometimes I ask, ‘Why me?’ It’s not that I object. It’s like, ‘What do they see in me that they want to see in this role?’”

And:

“This isn’t like coming up, doing a show and going home,” he said. “Whatever deficiencies I have, or where I fall short, I know I’m giving it everything I have to give.”

In fairness, Lloyd is similarly modest and effacing about the rest of his acting (he recalls his nervous audition for Back to the Future: "I never assume too much, and I didn’t want to compromise my prospects by talking too much"; and his first-ever play at the Weston: "I'm sweating and signaling for lines. It was a desperate situation") — so maybe he's just gone Method and decided to give interviews as Willy Loman, in which case this may yet work out.

Surprise of a Salesman: Christopher Lloyd [NYT]


Read more posts by Lane Brown
Filed Under: gigawatts, christopher lloyd, death of a salesman

The whole interview's well worth reading and endears me to Christopher Lloyd in a way I didn't think was possible. I'm sure you did a bang up job, Doc Brown.

Salvador Dali and Coco Chanel

http://thatgirlhaslove.tumblr.com/post/215376743

Momma: 1964

From Shorpy Historic Photo Archive:

'Cornett family, Kentucky, 1964.' Vivian Cornett (1928-1994) and one of her twelve children on the front porch. Print from 35mm negative by William Gedney. Gedney Photographs and Writings Collection, Duke University. View full size.

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This Is the Chanel Window at Selfridges in London

From Cut:

"If you think King Kong makes no sense in the Arctic, consider that the fall 2010 Chewbacca suits didn't make much sense on the runway, either. [Design Scene]

Read more posts by Amy Odell 

Filed Under: high five!, chanel, designers, fall 2010, selfridges

Sensical or not, I LOVE this image.

Is Jewel Helping Write Britney Spears’s Next Album?

From Vulture:

"Based on Twitter screen grabs, an investigative Britney Spears fan site believes its figured out which songwriters might be holed up together in Texas right now helping Britney Spears write her seventh album. The lineup allegedly includes Toby Gad, who wrote Beyoncé's "If I Was a Boy," NeonHitch, who wrote songs for Ke$ha, Popwansel, who has produced songs for Nicki Minaj, and, oddly, singer-songwriter Jewel. With all those minds put together under the Texan sun, surely something radio-friendly will be born. [ONTD, AMP Radio]

Read more posts by Mike Vilensky

Filed Under: britney spears, jewel, music

I've never been a big fan of Britney, but the increasingly drugged-out, overproduced, where's her voice--what is her voice--arc of her career has made me long for even the most cloying ditties of her early days. Let's see what comes out of this mess.

James Franco Selects His Favorite Poems

From Vulture:

Today, Howl opens in theaters, with James Franco inhabiting the role of Allen Ginsberg circa the mid-fifties, as his most famous poem creates a national controversy. Franco is no stranger to poetry himself, however: He studied it at Warren Wilson College, and, as a director, he is currently filming a series of short films, each based on a different poem. This got us thinking: What poems and poets are Franco's favorites? We asked the bazillion-hyphenate artist, and he thoughtfully obliged. Franco selected eighteen poems, and then wrote a personal introduction to some of them below. Click through to read most of the poems. (Owing to copyright restrictions, we weren't able to link to full text of them all.)

• C.K. Williams, 'Tar'

• C.K. Williams, "The Gas Station" (found in Williams's Collected Poems)

• C.K. Williams, "From My Window" (also in Collected Poems)

Franco: Here are three poems by C. K. Williams from his book Tar. Tony Hoagland gave me this book when he was my adviser at Warren Wilson College. Look at the blurring between the past and the present as the speakers look back on memories. The physicality of the scenes and the specificity gives them direct power, the W.C. Williams idea of 'no ideas but in things.' But this is complicated here because the speakers are tying up these concrete memories with their musings. The past infects the present, and in the poems, the two time frames are blurred on an emotional plane. He uses an incredibly long line in all the poems in this collection, which gives a sense of spoken speech, but he turns the poem on incredibly sharp description. 

• Allen Ginsberg, 'America'

• Tony Hoagland, 'America' 

Franco: The 'America' poems, by Ginsberg and Hoagland, show two men taking account of the present state of things. They are both working in an idiomatic manner so that the poetry of everyday speech is uncovered. They are also working in a political mode without being idealistic, something very difficult to do.

• Frank O'Hara, 'The Day Lady Died'

• Frank O'Hara, 'Ave Maria'

• Frank O'Hara, 'Personal Poem'

Franco: The O'Hara poems are beautiful and deceiving. On one level they feel frivolous, but O'Hara always ties them up with a significant event or line that pulls everything taut and reveals the connections and meaning underneath the seemingly desultory elements. C. Dale Young gave a great lecture at Warren Wilson College last summer on the depth beneath O'Hara's 'Ave Maria.' Using the movies and simple diction and surface structure, he speaks of a secret inner life that transforms sensuous experience into spiritual experience.

• Frank Bidart, 'Herbert White'

• Spencer Reece, 'The Clerk's Tale' 

Franco: Frank Bidart's 'Herbert White' and Spencer Reece's 'The Clerk's Tale' are two poems that inspired me to make short films. They have both become friends. These poems are both portraits of loneliness. Bidart wrote 'Herbert White' when he was a graduate student at Harvard. In Robert Lowell's workshop, someone said that there were some subjects not fit for poetry, and the subject of Frank's poem was one of them. But Frank proves him wrong. Through this portrait of his anti-self Frank achieves great depth. Spencer worked at Brooks Brothers for over a decade. This poem is a kind of portrait, but it moves beyond portraiture to subtle art. There is great sorrow but also great strength in the poem. The miraculous thing is that it is an accumulative effect, it is hard to nail emotion down to any single line.

Other Franco Favorites:

• John Berryman, 'Dream Song 4'

• John Berryman, 'Dream Song 14'

• Louise Glück, "Purple Bathing Suit" (found in Meadowlands)

• Robert Creeley, "Bresson's Movies" (found in Echoes)

• Robert Creeley, 'The Rain'

• William Carlos Williams, 'Danse Russe'

• Czeslaw Milosz, "The Merchants" (found in New and Collected Poems)

• Denise Levertov, 'The Mutes' 

Read more posts by Brienne Walsh 

Filed Under: exclusive, allen ginsberg, howl, james franco, movies, poetry

Unsurprising choices--especially given his time in an MFA program--but not terrible. Even his explanations aren't as bad as I expected them to be. (Though they are execrable: it's simply that my expectations were so low.)