SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Chris, University of San Francisco
Tell us about your look: “I like dark, primary colors. Today I’m wearing all blue and black.”
Fashion
Ballet without borders
a&eletters@sfbg.com
REVIEW For its first appearance — with three new works — at the Jewish Community Center Sept. 3-4, the Courage Group attracted a large, appreciative audience. It’s easy to see why. Over his company’s seven years of existence, Todd Courage has developed a choreographic language that is ballet-based but thoroughly contemporary in the way it tears — sometimes humorously, sometimes sarcastically — at ballet’s edges. He loves its linearity, so he chooses from existing steps and combinations and then stirs them into a melting pot, where they become just one of the ingredients at his disposal.
Musically, he is equally selective. He patches his scores together like a quilter. You quickly learn to forget about context and go along for the ride. Some of the musical transitions may jar, but most of the time they develop something akin to an aural logic. I found myself amused by Bach and Handel playing hopscotch with each other. Chris Fletcher was the program’s excellent sound engineer.
Courage may be more of a mixmaster of dance than an innovator, but he has developed his own voice and the skills to articulate his intentions. This trio of works, at the very least, indicates that he knows where he wants to go. And he is in a hurry to get there. All three are foaming with ideas; they also tend to wander. Tighter control, not necessarily of individual sections but of the overall trajectory, is an issue.
Placing six shallow women and a deep one at the top of the program, with tall Peta Barrett as the odd one out, was a risky choice. The dancers looked awful in the way they stomped through their steps, apparently indifferent to the opening phrases of Bach’s glorious "Violin Concerto in D minor." Then the possibilty arose that Courage has perhaps seen too many students tear mindlessly through ballet class. This may have inspired him to start out with a deadpan version of every teacher’s terminal frustration.
In the second movement, when Barrett calmly unfolded her limbs, the audience could breathe a sigh of relief. Her partnering of the company’s smallest dancer, Christina Chelette — including cantilevering leg hugs — suggested an emotional relationship between equals despite physical differences. The rest of six alternated between Bach and Handel in choreography in which the dancers did just fine. They might momentarily have sunk into a ballet pose, but some of the most effective sections, such as canonic entrances of purposeful walks, were beautifully simple. Courage also recognized one of dance’s great secrets: the beauty of unisons.
dirty girl dug into one of the choreographer’s previous preoccupations — the awkwardness of pubescence. In 2006’s High Anita, it was cheerleaders. Here the cheerleaders went to a slumber party and gave the heroine a sponge bath. girl‘s humor is somewhat creepy as these young women veered between innocence and sex kittens. The choreography was game-based and influenced by teen fashion imagery. Dressed in the tiniest of skirts with flaming ruched red underwear, the dancers negotiated their way between the strictures of the Voice of God (Barrett) and the demands of their budding sexuality. The former yielded a spanking, the latter offered birthday cake frosting to lick. You can read into those images anything you want. The audience, probably remembering their own in-between years, clearly appreciated Courage’s lighthearted approach. I thought it just a tad too silly.
The quite substantial but you can’t hide introduced the evening’s lone male dancers, Nol Simonse and Brendan Barthel. First seen in languid duets, they eventually folded themselves into the women’s ensemble. Simonse, sinewy and liquid, was a joy to behold. This was Courage at his best: mirror images for the men, a violent female duet, whispering voices and moonwalks, full body contact, and a finger to a chin. can’t hide is too episodic and packs in too much material, but John Adams’ splendid "The Chairman Dances" kept them going all the way into the dark.
Red Crawfish
paulr@sfbg.com
The color of cooked crawfish isn’t red, exactly — more a garnet. If it were a wine, it would be a medium-bodied pinot noir. Certainly it would never be mistaken for cooked lobster, which (pace Red Lobster) isn’t red at all, but more of an inflamed orange. You see plenty of crawfish being rushed from the evening kitchen at Red Crawfish in the Tenderloin; the crustaceans make the journey in shallow white bowls and reach tables full of eager patrons who’ve fitted themselves out with plastic bibs in anticipation of mess.
Red Crawfish, like the Green Hornet, has something of a dual identity. By day it’s a quasi pan-Asian place tending toward Chinese and Vietnamese favorites. But as the sun sets, it dons a Cajun guise, and a menu filled with familiars like five-spice chicken and beef noodle soup suddenly develops a bayou section that includes (besides crawfish) treats such as gumbo and Cajun fries.
The dual-identity restaurant is a rare phenomenon, but not an unknown one. Some years ago there was a spot on lower Haight Street that appeared to be an all-American café by day but turned into a Senegalese joint on certain nights of the week. And, in the present moment, we have Coffee Bar, which daytimers know as a coffee bar but becomes host to Radio Africa Kitchen several nights a week. Red Crawfish is close kin to these spots, but it has the additional charm of joining compatible, if unlikely, cuisines without fusing them. The Cajun dishes remain Cajun and the Asian dishes Asian, but they do make a nice harmony: a communion of spiciness.
The cathedral in which this union takes place is unprepossessing, in true Tenderloin fashion. The dining room is deep and very narrow — a half-storefront — with a long mirror along one wall to give the illusion of greater spaciousness. Ceiling fans do offer a hint of New Orleans. But the furniture, though plain, is well-made, the tabletops are clean, and you are greeted and seated promptly when you step through the door.
The Cajun dishes are dialed up according to the patron’s preferred level of heat (on a four-step scale) and style of seasoning. For the seafood combo ($13.99), for instance, you choose among lemon-pepper, garlic butter, and red crawfish flavor palettes. The last turned out to be a deep red, slightly oily, iridescent soup flecked with dried chili and giving a faint charge of fruity acidity; had it been spiked with a mild vinegar? In this shallow pond frolicked shrimp (partly shucked), oysters (fully shucked), and chunks of calamari and white fish. The second-lowest level of heat ("spicy") proved to be more than sufficient, while the pre-shucking, while probably indicative of slackerdom on our part, also made the dish much easier to eat and enjoy and at the same time limited the mess. That’s a lot of upside.
Cajun fries ($3.99 for a semi-gigantic plate) were fine but ordinary. We did detect a faint dusting of cayenne pepper on them, but not enough to make a serious impression. Better, for flavored-up starch, were the garlic noodles ($6.50). They would have gone brilliantly with the gumbo ($10.99), but the gumbo was somewhat late in arriving. In fact, it arrived last and, like a folk act following a death-metal group, its luster was at first somewhat dimmed by the potency of the seafood combo that preceded it.
But the gumbo found traction after a bite or two and was thick and satisfying even without rice — or garlic noodles. The thickener was okra, whose flavor has a ghostly bite, and the result wasn’t particularly pretty: a bowlful of lumpy gray-green sludge. The lumps, though, consisted of delectables such as shrimp, chicken, and pork, and added enough heft to make the gumbo into a (potential) meal in itself.
An unexpected rival for meal-in-itself (although not heart-healthy) honors might be the beignets ($4.50), a quartet of deep-fried pastries shaped like little top hats and served with a pair of massive ice-cream torpedoes. The ice cream was vanilla, and the torpedoes were cross-hatched with chocolate sauce, and that alone would have been enough for two people — even two hungry, greedy people bewitched by the crunchy fattiness of the beignets. (To describe these as "deep-fried" does not quite capture the reality.)
In sunshine — or fogshine, as the case may be — the restaurant slips into east Asian character. Salt and pepper calamari ($5.50) are batter-fried and presented with a nuoc nam-based dipping sauce whose sharpness helps cut the grease. Mixed vegetables with tofu ($5.95) sets a low mountain of broccoli florets, carrots, cabbage, and tofu cubes on a huge pediment of white rice. The vegetables are crisp and fresh; the soy-heavy brown sauce, a little bland. Five-spice chicken ($7.50), on the other hand, with egg rolls and vermicelli, is enhanced with mint, which brings both color and sweet breath to the rescue. That color is green, by the way. *
RED CRAWFISH
Sun.–Fri., 10 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sat., 5–10 p.m.
611 Larkin, SF
(415) 771-1388
Beer and wine
MC/V
Moderately noisy
Wheelchair accessible
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Bryan, Balboa and Arguello
Tell us about your look: “I got these glasses from the thrift shop in LA.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Ashley, University of San Francisco
Tell us about your look: “This is all American Apparel.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Mystery Lady, Union and Laguna
Ariel says, “I took this woman’s photo because I thought her glasses were amazing … but then her bus came and she ran off! I tried to get her name and story but she was too fast!”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Nadia, Fillmore and Post
Tell us about your look: “I was a top model when I was a young woman in Bulgaria.”
Border bender
a&eletters@sfbg.com
Heading south across the Rio Grande, their pants and shoes raised high over their heads, a 13-year-old Mexican American girl named Romy (Maria Candelaria) and her two sort-of fathers — inveterate bad boy Lupe (Sean San José) and straight-laced new stepdad Ben (Johnny Moreno) — wade into the past as their only way forward. In what you could call a return to the repressed, they find themselves in an in-between world of haunted memories and intersecting fates, devilish plans and sweet, unexpected salvation.
This is Octavio Solis territory par excellence, the playwright who for the last three decades has mapped landscapes personal, psychical, and political at once: this is Dreamlandia, or the coma realm where Lydia communes with her counterpart Ceci across space and multiple other barriers. Here, in lyrical, fiercely funny and sublimely violent El Otro — revived, and revised by Solis, as part of Thick Description’s 20th anniversary season — Texas and Mexico dissolve in peyote-fueled depths of meaning and contradiction along a border never as solid or sure as anyone thinks. Even the tattoo off her dad Lupe’s back (Rhonnie Washington) — a black man in a black cowboy suit riding to the rescue with irrelevant Berlitz Spanish — is anything but two-dimensional.
But back to the setting: it’s the 1980s, it’s a Monday, it’s Reagan’s "Morning in America," which is to say it feels like the start and the end of something big. Romy, having lived with Lupe since her mother Nina (a sharp Presciliana Esparolini) left him for good, is getting the hand-off. Nina’s new love, Ben, pressed and manly in his private’s uniform, has come to pick her up and take her back to her mother. But Lupe isn’t willing to let her go that easy, insisting Ben accompany him to retrieve a present he bought her. Lupe’s behavior — erratic, coy, in no way to be trusted — worries the private everyone insists on calling "Sarge." But he sees no alternative and does his best to be mature, responsible, and agreeable as both Lupe and Romy gradually reduce him to a shattered mess. What emerges afterward is a secret family history just hinted at before, and a strange, almost surreal plot of atonement-revenge devised by Lupe in cahoots with a rancher (Richard Talavera) and his wife (Wilma Bonet).
In what Thick Description announced will be its last production in its Potrero District black box theater, artistic director Tony Kelly stages the play in stark, bare-bones fashion, the play’s moods and settings conveyed largely by the actors, along with choice lighting cues from Rick Martin and flashes of musical coloring courtesy of Vincent Montoya, with Seventy and the Tattooed Love Dogs.
The spare stage gives rein to a fluid pace in sync with the play’s consciousness-slipping style, but Kelly’s normally very sharp eye seemed less trained than usual at times. The music cues could feel cramped and sometimes engulfed a line or two, and opening night’s performances were in some places still gelling. San Jose prowled and shook the stage with a ferocious, concentrated energy and a crisp sardonic wit, but that intensity was matched only part of the time by Moreno’s proudly square and increasingly overwhelmed stepdad, or by Candelaria’s Romy, who felt initially a bit rote and could be difficult to hear. Both actors came much more to the fore in the second act, however. And as a first act closer, it’s hard to beat Rhonnie Washington’s entrance as El Charro Negro, one of Solis’ more fanciful and inspired creations and a consistent treat throughout in Washington’s hands (who is back in the saddle after having originated the role in 1996).
Well-pitched performances came too from Lawrence Radecker as Ross, an increasingly light-headed and blood-bespattered cowboy, and Michael Bellino as the border patrol cop wrestling with his backlogged conscience after he catches Mexicans sneaking the wrong way over the river — a real fuse-blower, the sight acts on him like a nonsense rhyme on one of those Star Trek robots with the smoldering ears.
Solis, enjoying an impressive string of productions of late, including last season’s excellent Bay Area premiere of Lydia at Marin Theatre Company, crafted an enduring work in El Otro for all its pop references and rough edges. At the best moments in this admittedly fitful but worthwhile production, the flow of language — mingling flights of poetic revelry, whimsical and nightmare imagery, casual and colorful vulgarity and deadpan humor — seems to hover and soar just over the stage. At the same time, it never loses sight of the ground, and in fact more than once plunges deep into the mud: playing movingly with life and death in the viscous slime and churning waters of that border-defining river.
EL OTRO
Through Sept. 13
Thurs–Sun, 8 p.m., $15–$30
Thick House, 1695 18th St., SF
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Myloan, Buchanan and Union
Tell us about your look: “I’m on my way to my birthday dinner tonight at Osha Thai.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Natasha, Charlton and Union
Tell us about your look: “We’re trying to get our new store White Label going and we stock all the latest fashion. This outfit is from there.”
Prison report: CDCR won’t admit mistakes
By Just A Guy
Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His blogs typically run twice a week.
It was a good week for Jaycee Dugard, who was discovered after being imprisoned for 18 years in an Antioch backyard. But it wasn’t a good week for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, which missed several opportunities to solve the case, including two visits to the home of Phillip Garrido, the paroled sex offender who is charged with kidnapping Dugard.
But at least Contra Costa Sheriff Warren E. Rupf had the courage to admit the mistakes, ask forgiveness and take steps to assure that something like this would never happen again.
What was the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation response? Remember, CDCR is responsible not only for people in prison but for people on parole. In typical fashion, agency spokesman Gordon Hinkle denied that anything had gone wrong or that CDCR had been remiss in any way, and said that that the parole agent had gone in Garrido’s backyard but because of the way it was situated didn’t find anything strange.
Wait: These agents visited a registered sex offender’s house once a month, yet found nothing awry?
Far be it for the people at CDCR to even admit that they are doing a poor jobs. They never admit responsibility for anything. Yet they are tasked with rehabilitation.
Isn’t a key component of the rehabilitation process admitting your mistakes? What kind of example does it set when the entity so concerned about the public’s safety is incapable of admitting it has done something wrong performed poorly?
Examples like this should make it obvious that CDCR is not protecting you but protecting itself through a continuous enterprise of lying, hiding the truth, covering up the facts and skewing information in order to paint a picture or inmates as unrepentant evildoers bent on destruction — while coloring itself as a benign bureaucracy with the unenviable job of keeping us at bay by “walking the toughest beat.”
The beat is so “tough” that the parole agents didn’t thoroughly investigate the back yard of a convicted sex offender. I guarantee my parole officer would investigate my back yard if it were in such disarray – at the very least, the yard was ripe to be a meth lab and Garrido’s deranged rants would be a cause for concern.
But you know what one of the big problems with the scenario is? The parole agent probably had 200 people to watch, 100 of them no nonviolent offenders, so he or she didn’t have time to thoroughly investigate what was going on.
Wait – it was 18 years! Good job, CDCR.
Government’s number on priority is to protect the public, but with that comes a responsibility to define what the public is being protected from. Do we really need to be protected from a casual drug user, or even addict (any more than we need to be protected from a casual drinker or even an alcoholic)? If drugs were decriminalized, taxed and regulated by the FDA — or even handed out free to registered addicts – a large percentage of our property crimes would disappear. The black market would collapse, prices would drop and drug-related murders would decline.
But most important, parole officers wouldn’t have to be so overwhelmed that they don’t have the time to investigate the jungle-like backyard of a convicted rapist who believes he was inspired by God to commit atrocities on teenage girls.
Who are the real criminals here?
Ted Kennedy: always a liberal
By Bruce B. Brugmann
I liked Ted Kennedy for lots of reasons. But I think I liked him the most because, in carrying the Kennedy family torch for all these decades, he was the most liberal of the Kennedys and he never backed down from calling himself a liberal, even when the word went out of fashion and lots of “liberals” were ducking for cover. To me, a liberal is someone who tries to make things better.
Kennedy spent his Senate career working tirelessly and effectively to make things better, for all of us, and applying his liberal voice to a breathtaking range of issues from health care reform, to civil rights, to opposing the Gulf and Iraq wars, to backing Obama at the right moment.
If Kennedy had not been stricken in the middle of his greatest battlle and his greatest cause (“health care for all is the cause of my life”), I’m certain that single payer health care would not have been taken off the table so cravenly and there would at minimum be a real public option with real public support and without a lot of cowering Democrats and Republicans. And there would be real health care reform, perhaps a version of Medicare for all, with a liberal Ted Kennedy imprimatur. He was the one politician in all these years and all these battles who could have made it happen. Alas. Alas.
The Boston Phoenix, the liberal alternative newsweekly of Boston and New England, has covered the Kennedys and liberal Ted since Steve Mindich founded the paper in l966.
Click here to view its splendid coverage, updated regularly.
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Lindsey, Webster and Union
Tell us about your look: “My style is eclectic. I like to mix some classic pieces and then some more trendy pieces together.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Kristy, Octavia and Union
Tell us about your look: “I have 17 red purses!”
Fall into dance
Recession or not, dancers gotta do what they gotta do. Here are 10 performances that will reward your time and dollars.
Capacitor It’s been a decade since Jodi Lomax brought her (at the time) odd mix of science, dance, and circus arts to the Bay Area. Previous works have been inspired by astrophysics, plate tectonics, and forest systems. The new The Perfect Flower promises a more intimate experience. Sept. 18-19, Cowell Theater; www.capacitor.org.
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company If you saw the gorgeous first section of Margaret Jenkins’ Other Suns at Theater Artaud, you don’t want miss the now finished piece, created and performed with China’s renowned Guangdong Modern Dance Company. Sept. 24-26, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.mjdc.org.
Contemporary dance from Africa French-born Maimouna Couliblay (Sept 25-27, Dance Mission Theater; www.dancemission.com) found her artistic voice in Mali; her Hééé Mariamou is inspired by growing up in the ‘hood, Parisian style. Soweto’s Gregory Maqoma (Nov. 4-7, YBCA; www.ybca.org) brings solos inspired by Akram Khan, Faustin Linyekula, and Vincent Mantsoe.
Suzanne Farrell Ballet Farrell, the high priestess of the Balanchine legacy, programmed and narrates an intriguing selection of the master’s pas de deux’ and solos. Should be a treat for all Balanchine lovers. Oct. 24-25, Zellerbach Hall; www.calperfs.berkeley.edu.
Trey McIntyre Project McIntyre has done well as freelancer of fast-paced, musical, and accessible ballet choreography. His brand-new company includes, among others, former Lines Ballet dancer John Michael Schert. Oct. 30, Jewish Community Center for San Francisco; www.jccsf.org.
Monique Jenkinson As ODC residency artist, this dancer/performer and fashion maven — best known for impersonating a man impersonating a woman — has been hard at work on Luxury, which extols the guilty pleasures of life. Nov. 7-8, ODC Theater; www.odcdance.org.
DV8 Physical Theatre Choreographer Lloyd Newson is the John Osborne (Look Back in Anger) of dance. He’s tough, and he hits hard. In To Be Straight with You he takes on religion, sexuality, and prejudice. Nov. 12-14, YBCA; dv8.co.uk.
Performing Diaspora This event rethinks culturally specific dance such as Haitian, Cambodian, or Kathak. The three weekends showcase artists who love the genres they were raised in but want to put their own 21st century stamp on them. Nov. 5-22, CounterPULSE; www.counterpulse.org.
San Francisco HipHop Dance Fest The combination of kids, adult aficionados and professional hip-hoppers make this one of the fall season’s juiciest festivals. What started as a local blast has also turned into a global encounter. Nov. 20-21, Palace of Fine Arts; www.sfhiphopdancefest.com.
Night repper
D Tour and Rogue Wave Joe Granato’s award-winning doc about musician Pat Spurgeon, with an acoustic post-screening performance by Spurgeon’s Oakland band. Sept. 3, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; www.sfmoma.org.
"Cocky White Guys" Jesse Hawthorne Ficks of Midnites for Maniacs serves up a triple platter of cockiness: Risky Business (1983), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), and the very closet-gay Last American Virgin (1982). Sept. 4, Castro; www.castrotheatre.com.
"Speechless: Recent Experimental Animation" The program includes the 3-D amazements of local wonder woman Kerry Laitala’s enticingly titled Chromatic Cocktail Extra Fizzy. Sept. 8, Pacific Film Archive; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.
SF Shorts This year’s lineup includes over 60 short films and music videos. Sept. 9-12, Red Vic; www.redvicmoviehouse.com.
Bigger Than Life Nicholas Ray’s gonzo look at suburban family ideals gone amok was too weird for 1956. Todd Haynes has stolen from this movie as much as from any Sirk work. Sept. 10, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org
Lucha Beach Party Will the Thrill takes his showmanship to the Balboa, along with Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters (1969) and longtime contender for best movie title ever, Wrestling Women vs. Aztec Mummy (1964). Sept. 10, www.thrillville.net
Rialto’s Best of British Noir A chance to see Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) on the big screen. Sept. 11-16, Castro; www.castrotheatre.com.
"Top Bill: The Films of William Klein" The great photographer’s underrated film output gets a thorough survey, ranging from his prescient and sharp 1960s portraits of Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver to his madcap yet dry looks at fashion in Paris. Sept. 11-Oct. 11, Pacific Film Archive; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.
Independent Erotic Film Festival Good Vibrations presents the event’s fourth incarnation. Highlights include a potential screening of Gerard Damiano’s The Devil in Miss Jones and a program of 1920s peep show reels. Sept. 12-17, various venues; www.gv-ixff.org.
Spectrology Mad Cat Women’s Film Festival presents a one-off screening of a new work by Kerry Laitala. Sept. 16, El Rio; www.madcatfilmfestival.org
Film Noir at the Roxie You can always count on the Roxie to play host to the less obvious dark alleys of noir. Sept. 17-30, Roxie; www.roxie.com
Liverpool Lisandro Alonso’s highly acclaimed 2008 film finally get a SF gig. Sept. 17-20, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.
Iranian Film Fest This year’s festival focuses on women’s roles in Iranian society. Sept. 19-20, various venues; www.iranianfilmfestival.blogspot.com.
"Life’s Work: The Cinema of Ermanno Ulmi" A comprehensive retrospective of films by a director known for his masterful renderings of work, such as 1961’s Il posto. Sept. 25-Oct. 30, Pacific Film Archive; www-bampfa.berkeley.edu.
Grease Sing-Along The San Francisco Film Society presents this key 1978 addition to the canon of Randal Kleiser. Sept. 26; www.sffs.org.
The Room Avoid The Room at your peril. Sept. 26. Red Vic; www.redvicmoviehouse.com.
Dario Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy Together at last: Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Mother of Tears (2007). Be there or be violently stabbed by a hand in a black glove. Oct. 1-4, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.
The Red Shoes A new print — which debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 gem. Oct. 1, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; www.sfmoma.org.
Found Footage Festival Trash is a treasure as curators Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher host the fourth incarnation of the event. Oct. 2-3, Red Vic; www.redvicmoviehouse.com.
"Julien Duvivier: Poetic Craftsman of Cinema" The lengthy and perhaps erratic career of the man who made Jean Gabin an icon gets a full treatment. Oct. 2-31, Pacific Film Archive; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.
Barry Jenkins’ Shorts The San Francisco filmmaker shares his work to date, including his feature debut Medicine for Melancholy (2007). Oct. 3, Artists’ Television Access; www.othercinema.com
"Nervous Magic Lantern Peformance: Towards the Depths of the Even Greater Depression" Ken Jacobs in the house, aiming to "get between the eyes, contest the separate halves of the brain" with a magic lantern that uses neither film or video. Oct. 7, Pacific Film Archive; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.
Pink Cinema Revolution A series for the Japanese genre and industry that has schooled some master filmmakers while titilutf8g audiences. Oct. 7-25, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.
Robert Beavers The experimental filmmaker’s fall stint in the Bay Area includes four programs presented by SF Cinematheque. Oct. 8-10, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.sfmoma.org, www.ybca.org.
"Eyes Upside Down" Great title. A program of films curated by the writer P. Adams Sitney. Oct. 11, www.sfcinematheque.org.
Arab Film Festival This year’s festival lasts ten days. Oct. 15-24, various venues; www.aff.org
French Cinema Now Contemporary film in France condensed into a series. Oct. 29-Nov. 4, Sundance Kabuki; www.sffs.org.
Halloween Gore ‘n’ Snorefest Thrillville returns to the Balboa with Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) and Zontar, the Thing From Venus (1966). If only the characters of these movies could time travel to meet one another. Oct. 29; www.thrillville.net.
"Running Up That Hill" Michael Robinson, creator of the eye-blinding and hilarious video Light is Waiting (2007), borrows a title from Kate Bush for this program, which he’s curated. Nov. 6, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.
It Came from Kuchar Jennifer Kroot’s documentary about the Kuchar brothers hits the screen after raves at Frameline. Nov. 14, Artists’ Television Access; www.othercinema.com.
New Italian Cinema The San Francisco Film Society presents a sample of recent films from Italy. Nov. 15-22, Sundance Kabuki; www.sffs.org.
Recent Restorations: George and Mike Kuchar You can never have too much Kuchar. Dec. 10, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; www.sfmoma.org.
Electric truth
johnny@sfbg.com
1. New wave of California painting My thoughts on the topic are still percoutf8g, but it will soon be time to take on the inspiring subject of new California painters. Amanda Kirkhuff’s superb oil portrait of Lorena Bobbitt, currently up at [2nd Floor Projects], is one touchstone. Neil Ledoux’s brown invocations at Silverman Gallery earlier this year is another. The next few months bring a blitz of lively, original paintings. Brendan Lott serves up ugly-beautiful America. (Oct.-17-Nov. 14, Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, www.baerridgway.com) Alika Cooper continues her film femme fatale fascination with some Farrah. (Sept. 3-Oct. 17, Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, www.wolfecontemporary.com) Kim Cogan pictures San Francisco. (September, Hespe Gallery, www.hespe.com) Nancy Chan sets friends floating in space and Matt Momchilov confronts weird normality head on. (Sept. 11-Oct. 17, Eleanor Harwood, www.eleanorharwood.com) But most of all, I’m looking forward to Conrad Ruiz’s sure-to-be-orgasmic debut SF solo show. (Dec. 11-Jan. 23, 2010; Silverman Gallery, www.silverman-gallery.com)
2. "When Lives Become Form: Contemporary Brazilian Art, 1960s to the Present" Tropicália can’t be revived often enough, even if Os Mutantes have — shame, shame — soundtracked a McDonald’s commercial. This survey, which includes fashion and architecture in addition to visual art and music, has been traveling the globe. Finally, SF gets a chance to see the movement Hlio Oiticica built. Nov. 5-Jan. 31, 2010; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, www.ybca.org
3. "Moby Dick" After last fall’s show devoted to L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, CCA Wattis Institute’s trilogy of shows inspired by novels goes fishing for Herman Melville’s biggest catch. The range of artists taking part is impressive, with the likes of Tacita Dean placed next to local talents such as Colter Jacobsen. A number of works by filmmakers — including Buster Keaton, Jean Painlevé, Peter Hutton, and Kenneth Anger — are on deck. Sept. 22-Dec. 12, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, www.wattis.org
4. "On View: Candice Breitz" A working class hero is something to be. Breitz’s video portrait of 25 John Lennon fans singing along to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (Apple/EMI, 1970) sounds derivative of Phil Collins’ karaoke vids of Smiths fans, but in pop, no ideas are original, and all ideas are meant to be stolen and transformed. Plus the musical source is so damn good. A side video, 2005’s Mother — the title of one of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band‘s best songs — mines cinema. Oct. 1-Dec. 20, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, www.sfmoma.org
5. "Wonderland" Lance Fung’s curatorial idea to bring together 52 artists (43 from San Francisco and nine from other countries) for 10 site-specific projects in the Tenderloin has greater potential than any standard museum or gallery show. Oct. 17-Nov. 14, various sites, www.wonderlandshow.org
6. Photography Decades of work by an autodidact who learned from Warhol, studied under Irving Penn and at least briefly influenced Larry Clark comes together in "Ari Marcopoulos: Within Arm’s Reach," Marcopoulos’s first midcareer survey (Sept. 23-Feb. 7, 2010; Berkeley Art Museum, www.bampfa.org) Charles Gatewood’s raw and candid portraits of celebrities — no, he doesn’t only aim his camera at naked bodies with piercings — are gathered to form a countercultural scrapbook. (Sept. 3-Oct. 31, Robert Tat Gallery, www.roberttat.com) Johan Hagemeyer turns now-endangered California nature into a subject of eternal awe. (Sept. 9-Nov. 3, Scott Nichols Gallery, www.scottnicholsgallery.com) Hiroshi Sugimoto captures the surreal beauty of lightning in a manner Jean Painlevé might admire. (Sept. 10-Oct. 31, Fraenkel Gallery, www.fraenkelgallery.com) And San Francisco itself is the subject of the first entry in the vast retrospective "An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area." Sept. 10-Oct. 31, SF Camerawork, www.sfcamerawork.org
7. "There’s a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak" Where are the wild things this fall? On the movie screen — thanks to Spike Jonze’s adaptation of a children’s classic by Maurice Sendak — and in the museum, where this show presents watercolors, sketches, drawings and dummy books. Sept. 8-Jan. 19, 2010; Contemporary Jewish Museum, www.thecjm.org
8. "Bellwether" As New Langton Arts goes down amid dissent and criticism, the vibrant but at times diffuse Southern Exposure introduces a new Mission District home space with a 10-artist show that includes contributions by Renee Gertler and Lordy Rodriguez. Oct. 17-Dec. 12, Southern Exposure, www.soex.org
9. "The Art of Richard Mayhew" The Museum of the African Diaspora plays host to one-third of a three-part retrospective of the artist and activist’s career. The show includes work from the late 1950s through the 1970s, a time span that includes his beginnings as an artist and his work with Spiral, a group of black artists including Romare Bearden. Oct. 9-Jan. 10, 2010; Museum of the African Diaspora, www.moadsf.org.
10. Solo and duo shows a go go Ara Peterson proves once again that few people chart — and bring dimension to — color with such power. (Nov. 6-Dec. 18, Ratio 3, www.ratio3.org) David Hevel gathers hideously pretty sculptures of Bernie Madoff, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Brangelina. (Sept. 10-Oct. 17, Marx & Zavattero, ww.marxzav.com) The late illustrator Charley Harper — beloved by Todd Oldham — gets a tribute. (Sept. 24-Oct. 31, Altman Siegel Gallery, www.altmansiegel.com) Local minimalist Todd Bura presents another open puzzle. (Sept. 18-Oct. 25, Triple Base, www.basebasebase.com) Pop goes berserk in the works of John De Fazio, and Daniel Minnick reinvents the American photo booth (fall, [2nd floor projects], www.projects2ndfloor.blogspot.com) Katya Bonnenfont proves — with a light and lovely touch, and against most evidence in galleries — that design can be art. (Oct. 22-Dec. 24, Haines Gallery, www.hainesgallery.com) And last, Luke Butler brings hotness and comedy together through razor-sharp collage. Sept. 11-Oct. 17, Silverman Gallery, www.silverman-gallery.com.
No brainer
a&eletters@sfbg.com
FALL ARTS PREVIEW Who would have pictured Green Day’s anthemic 2004 punk-rock concept album, American Idiot (Reprise), as the stuff of musicals? It took merely two unlikely kindred spirits, meeting in the fall of 2007 for the first time: the Oakland band’s lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong and Tony-winning Spring Awakening director Michael Mayer.
Armstrong — that punk-rock diehard who even now plays Gilman with his side project Pinhead Gunpowder? Turns out that as a tyke growing up in Rodeo, he serenaded the elderly and infirm in local hospitals with standards and show tunes from musicals like Oliver! and Annie Get Your Gun.
"That’s how I learned how to sing," says Armstrong, laid back and low-key in stark contrast to the manic rabble-rouser who’ll soon take command over a stage at San Jose’s HP Pavilion. He’s on the phone from his Oakland home during a brief stop in Green Day’s arena tour for 21st Century Breakdown (Reprise), the follow-up to American Idiot. "There’s a real old-school craft to it," he continues, measuring that quality against Shrek, Legally Blond, and other recent disposable Broadway musicals. "That’s kind of a corny way of doing things, but when you see something like Spring Awakening, it’s … it’s real life, and it’s something that everybody relates to, and it’s inspiring and emotional. American Idiot was really tailor-made for something like this to happen to it, y’know."
At the same time that Armstrong tried to heal the ailing with music — and ’80s-era punks everywhere greeted "Morning in America" with a snarl — the generation-older Mayer was earning his MFA on the other side of the country in theater at NYU. No surprise, then, that Mayer "felt such a surprising kind of simpatico" on meeting the Green Day leader. "Even though we come from different worlds and are such different people," Mayer says, "you know, at the end of the day, Billie Joe is such a showman! Such a theatrical guy. Not since Al Jolson have I seen someone so in love with the audience and with putting on a performance for them."
Mayer radiates a similar high-wattage intensity, one that’s fully prepared to kick out the jams. Wide-eyed and unblinking behind his black frame specs, clad in a Justice League T-shirt and floppy shorts, he’s hiding out with me in what looks like an old classroom within the downtown Berkeley building enlisted for rehearsals of the musical version of American Idiot. "I feel like where we connect is old school," he says of Armstrong, slapping the table for emphasis. "Tin Pan Alley." Slap. "Vaudeville." Slap. "That’s the music he grew up with. He became a punk-rocker — I became a theater homo!"
Together, Armstrong and Mayer are making a piece of theater that combines the musical’s narrative tradition and holy union of song and dance with a breed of feisty alternative rock fed by the streetwise political punk of Gilman Street. A musical that unites the ironclad craft of the American Songbook and the heady, arena-sized artistic ambition of classic rock. Now, in the wake of the Broadway acclaim of Los Angeles punk vet Stew’s Passing Strange (which also got its start in at Berkeley Repertory in 2006 and has just been transferred to film by Spike Lee), American Idiot appears poised for critical and popular success when it opens Sept. 4.
American Idiot arrives at a time when musical theater is going through a wave of growing pains. The genre is casting about for ideas, whether they are from films like Shrek and Billy Elliott (to cite a Tony success from last year), or — as with Spring Awakening, which spotlit music by Duncan Sheik — from rock songwriters more comfortable with the life of gritty clubs, merch tables, and tour buses than the mountain-moving, time-devouring, and costly group mechanics of putting on a full-tilt musical. Unlike singularly conceived rock operas like the Who’s Tommy, the first notable union of an established rock band and theater on Broadway, so-called juke box musicals — collections of songs by one group like Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys — have met with mixed results.
"There’s a whole variety, like Ring of Fire, the Johnny Cash one, that just haven’t made it," opines Michael Kantor, writer of the Emmy-winning 2005 PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical. "It’s very much dependent on the conception of the director and the book writer who is putting together the story that’s going to encapsulate the music. I do think Broadway right now is keenly scavenging from movies or recordings — anything they feel like they can get quality material from as a launching point."
With the closing of a host of musicals earlier this year, producers are looking for the new and innovative. "Many of the most important musicals," Kantor theorizes, "have come from the most unexpected sources or most unusual approaches." And there’s the scramble for the youth entertainment dollar, as the High School Musical TV-music franchise taps into the passion so many kids have for song, dance, and drama. "Kids are always attracted to musicals," Kantor muses, "but once they get into their midteens, a lot of them lose their interest in musicals as an art form and gravitate to other stuff. High School Musical catches them at their natural inclination for that kind of entertainment. The question is, will a show like [American Idiot] capture that much-sought-after 18- to 30-year-old demographic, which is when musicals tend to lose people. Kids go off to college, it’s not too cool to like musicals, and a lot of adaptations are mainstream or traditional — and it doesn’t appeal to rebellious youth."
Young people also might have a hard time springing for costly theater tickets — yet the kids were out in force, filling the HP Pavilion last week when Green Day played to a hometown crowd with a show punctuated by pyrotechnic pillars of flames and fireworks-style explosions, gleeful costume changes, and squirt-gun shenanigans with Armstrong’s mom. It was a big-room amplification of the string of Bay club dates Green Day played earlier this spring at intimate venues like the Independent, DNA Lounge, and the Uptown.
Below a cleverly conceived 3-D urban skyscape backdrop, Armstrong fully embraced his onstage ham and flexed his crowd-control abilities à la Bugs Bunny in a Looney Tunes cartoon, taking running leaps from the monitors, stage-diving, soloing in the bleachers, donning a faux police cap and mooning each side of the audience, and entreating all assembled to raise their fists or sing along, before launching into more serious numbers like "Murder City," written about the Oakland riots that followed the Oscar Grant killing. Live, the band couples the playfully goofy, childlike comedy that tickles the 14-year-olds up front with the palpable sense of morality — driven by a beaten yet still beating anarchist heart — found on its increasingly serious-minded, idealistic recordings.
Armstrong won’t be onstage for the American Idiot musical — though the production includes a live band — and it’s not the Billie Joe Armstrong or Green Day Story. Instead, the musical is embedded in a specific time and hybridized with video-screen projections that simulate a familiar media-saturated landscape: it’s 2004, in the dark years. America has sent its idiot back to the White House, and we’re on the brink of Hurricane Katrina. Across that stage comes a series of almost archetypal characters one recognizes from the album: the Jesus of Suburbia, here dubbed Johnny for the lead actor it was written for, John Gallagher Jr., who won a Tony for his portrayal of Moritz in Spring Awakening; his antagonist St. Jimmy; and the rebel girl Whatshername.
Just about a week before the concert, the hyperactive, pogo-friendly energy of a Green Day show appeared to be finding its perfect translation at a rehearsal for American Idiot. Three weeks in, the cast — including Passing Strange‘s Rebecca Naomi Jones, here portraying the riot grrrly heroine Whatshername — tackled a round of "She’s a Rebel." In leggings and a Green Day T-shirt, Jones bounced on her toes as a barefoot Mayer dispensed hugs to cast members. A scruffily bearded Gallagher circled the group, then took his place in the desk jockey center for "Nobody Likes You." Choreographer Steven Hoggett tweaked the movements of the cast members as they tossed papers and marched up and down a moveable metal staircase
"When someone is a 20-something with all that angst and energy — where do you put that?," Hoggett said later by phone, pondering the task of "putting songs on their feet onstage." The goal of the choreographer who won an Oliver for his strong, subtle work in Black Watch and came up in the ’90s U.K. clubbing scene: create movement that serves Green Day’s songs and isn’t "too showbiz." To that end, he took in a Green Day show in Albany, N.Y., and fell in love with the mosh pit. "That was absolutely brilliant," he remembers. "Nerves gave way to absolute revelation. It’s just seeing what thousands of people do when they see Green Day — this is the world we need to do onstage."
Collaborating mainly via phone, e-mail, and text with Armstrong from 2007 through 2008, Mayer wanted to focus on a trio of friends — Johnny, Will, and Tunny — as he created the libretto. In true rock operatic form, all the dialogue is sung, using just the songs’ lyrics and text from the special edition CD of American Idiot.
Mayer and arranger Tom Kitt, whose work eventually scored him a spot creating string arrangements for Breakdown, took apart the songs — "letting them breathe in a theatrical way," as Mayer puts it — and placed the lyrics in the mouths of various characters. B-sides and new numbers like "Know Your Enemy," "21 Guns," and "Before the Lobotomy," which Armstrong offered to Mayer during the making of Breakdown last year, were inserted into the flow. Nonetheless, Mayer maintains it was crucial to him to preserve the original track order. "I didn’t want to violate the form of the record," he says. "I wanted to expand it, because the record’s only 52 minutes, and that’s not a full evening, and with these extra characters, they need more material to serve the arcs of their journeys."
It’s been a very personal journey for lead actor Gallagher, who confesses that he’s been a huge Green Day fan since fourth grade, when he’d wait eagerly for the trio’s "Basketcase" video on MTV. His character is Johnny, the Jesus of Suburbia, or as he describes it, "the son of rage and love." Raised in a broken home. Johnny is on "this path, caught between self-improvement and self-destruction, which is something I think we can all relate to," says the actor, who until not long ago had a band of his own. He and Mayer came up with the notion to deepen and intensify Johnny’s descent into drug addiction. "When the chips are down, it’s always easier to just implode on yourself rather than explode outward in a positive fashion that might be helpful for others."
Countering that is the positive process, littered with emphatic yesses, according to Mayer, of putting together American Idiot. In contrast with the difficult but rewarding eight-year gestation of Spring Awakening, Mayer — who has worked on such disparate productions as Thoroughly Modern Millie and the national tour of Angels in America — sees this musical’s trajectory as absolutely charmed. The spell has been in place from the day he proposed his idea to Green Day’s management in 2007, to the moment he was allowed six months to put together a libretto (a process that flew by in six weeks because Mayer says he was so "charged" by meeting Armstrong), to the instant last year that he and coproducer Tom Hulce decided to stage the musical at Berkeley Rep, a company he’d been wanting to work with for years, with his friend, artistic director Tony Taccone.
It’s all coming strangely, beautifully, together — like a punk-rocker besotted with pop hooks and a theater-infatuated one-time Julliard instructor. "It makes me very, very nervous," Mayer confesses, chuckling. "Oh, it’s terrifying! There’s something wrong with it — it’s too joyous. It’s been too easy in terms of everything falling into place."
AMERICAN IDIOT
Sept. 4-Oct. 11
Tues., Thurs.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Wed., 7 p.m.;
Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.
(no matinees Sept. 5–6 and 12–13); $16–$86
Berkeley Repertory
Roda Theatre
2015 Addison, Berk.
(510) 647-2949
Events listings
Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.
WEDNESDAY 26
Lincart Summer BBQ Lincart, One Otis, SF; RSVP to hope@lincart.com. 6pm, free. Celebrate Lincart’s new location (down the block from their old location) with a thought provoking group show, live flamenco dancers, and old fashioned BBQ on the roof deck.
Pecha Kucha Autodesk Gallery, 2nd floor, One Market, SF; pechakucha-sf.com. 7:30pm happy hour, 8:20pm presentations; $5 suggested donation. Meet designers from many creative fields, share ideas, and watch as 8 – 12 participants present 20 images of their work. This month’s theme is "substance."
THURSDAY 27
The Adderall Diaries Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF; (415) 970-0012. 7pm; $20, includes copy of book. Author Stephen Elliott will read from his new book, The Adderall Diaries: A memoir of moods, masochism, and murder, with Tobias Wolff, Bucky Sinister and others.
12 Hot Dates, 1 Fun Night El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.bca12.com. 5:30pm, $20 suggested donation. Bid on potential dates with 12 smart, sexy, fun men and women of various ages, sexual orientations, and ethnic backgrounds. All proceeds benefit Breast Cancer Action.
FRIDAY 28
Art for AIDS Bonhams and Butterfields Auction House, 220 San Bruno, SF; artforaids.org. 5:30pm, silent auction, 6:45pm, live auction; $75 includes local food and wine. More than 135 modern and contemporary works of art will be auctioned off to benefit the UCSF AIDS Health Project.
SATURDAY 29
Commemorate Casper Banjo Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; (415) 643-2785. 3pm, free. Celebrate the life of Oakland artist Casper Banjo, who was tragically shot to death by a police officer last year while carrying a replica gun, with guest speakers and musical performances. Banjo’s work is currently on display as part of the MCCLA’s current exhibition 3 Worlds.
Save the Streets Summer Jam Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 245 Valencia, SF; (510) 888-9890. 8pm, $20. This event aims to help stop gun violence amongst Bay Area youth, featuring hip hop artist San Quinn and host KMEL’s Chuy Gomez. All proceeds go towards spinal chord research.
SUNDAY 30
Bride Mob ATA, 992 Valencia, SF; (415) 824-3890. 5:30pm, $5 suggested donation. Celebrate your inner bride with DJ Brawlio, a wedding party cover band, a bridal fashion show, raffle, and more at this event hosted by Saltwater, an local independent film production. After the party, the bride mob will descend on Valencia!
Plate to Plate Start and finish line at McCovey Cove, behind AT&T Park, across the Lefty O’Doul Bridge on Third St., SF; (415) 447-2316. 9am, $39 to register. This 5k run and walk starts at McCovey Cove, goes along the Embarcadero, across home plate in AT&T park, and back to McCovy cove. All proceeds to benefit Project Open Hand, which provides meals for people living with serious illnesses and seniors.
MONDAY 31
EAT 111 Minna, SF; eatat111minna.blogspot.com. 5pm, free admission to the grand opening with RSVP to eatat111minna@gmail.com. In the burgeoning tradition of guerilla gourmet dining, this new weekly event is a cross between dinner, happy hour, and a night club with $5-10 small plates, artwork, and live music.
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Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Karine, Laguna and Union
Tell us about your look: “I only shop at thrift stores.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Danielle, Union and Fillmore
Tell us about your look: “This outfit is comfy.” (Danielle’s friend Joel: “Danielle was voted best dressed at our business school this year!”)
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Cheryl, Union and Fillmore
Tell us about your look: “Almost all my clothes are secondhand. I got this scarf from Crossroads.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Karen, Union and Laguna
Tell us about your look: “I got this jacket from my sister.”
Street Threads: Look of the Day
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Bernadette, Union and Octavia
Tell us about your look: “I like to be unique and different from everyone else.”