Stage

Tasers vs. talk

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Tasers vs. talk

rebeccab@sfbg.com

At a Feb. 23 Police Commission hearing, San Francisco interim Police Chief Jeff Godown told the civilian oversight board he wanted to investigate Tasers as a less-lethal weapon for San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers. Speaking to a room crammed full of community advocates who had turned out to rail against the idea, Godown seemed to try to preemptively address a concern that opponents were sure to raise during public comment.

“This is not about mental illness,” the chief said. Along with police commissioners who favored the Taser proposal, Godown drove that point home several more times throughout the evening, stressing that Tasers were not being sought as a law enforcement tool for dealing with violent, mentally ill individuals. Nevertheless, he said situations could potentially arise in which the stun guns would be used against the mentally ill, if officers were authorized to carry the devices.

At the end of a marathon meeting, SFPD won approval to spend 90 days investigating Tasers and other less-lethal weapons as possible additions to the police arsenal, which now includes pepper spray and batons as well as firearms. Advocates raised concerns ranging from misuse of the devices to accidental deaths caused by Tasers to documented overuse of the weapons in communities of color. The SFPD, meanwhile, emphasized that it saw Tasers as a way to improve officer safety while limiting the use of lethal force.

 

SHOOTING THE MENTALLY ILL

Throughout the discussion, concern about the use of Tasers as a tool against the mentally ill persisted despite the chief’s assurances. “Like it or not, these issues are intertwined,” said American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Police Practices Director Allen Hopper. He referenced comments made by former Police Chief George Gascón, who now serves as district attorney.

On Jan. 4, SFPD officers fired twice at Randal Dunklin, a wheelchair-bound, mentally ill man who was brandishing a knife outside the city’s Department of Public Health building. Dunklin allegedly stabbed an officer and suffered a nonfatal gunshot wound to the groin after he had tossed the knife. In press comments delivered in the aftermath, Gascón said the situation illustrated why the SFPD ought to carry Tasers.

“Not only was that not an appropriate circumstance for the use of a Taser, there were so many things wrong with the way police handled that situation,” Hopper said, referencing a YouTube video of the shooting that served to highlight key differences between the official police account and the events caught on tape.

Dunklin was the third person in recent months to be shot in an altercation with officers. Vinh Bui, who was 46, was fatally shot in Visitacion Valley in late December 2010. Michael Lee, who was 43, was fatally shot in a residential hotel in the Tenderloin a few months earlier. Both had a history of mental illness.

Police Commissioner Angela Chan told the Guardian that in light of these tragedies, she became concerned that the first commission meeting of the year initially featured a discussion about Tasers.

“I thought, this does not make any sense,” Chan said, because commissioners hadn’t yet looked at creating a specialized police unit for dealing with psychiatric crisis calls, a move she’d urged the department to consider. The commission schedule was rearranged to reflect her concern, and Chan rushed to book experts for a detailed presentation about crisis intervention training (CIT). In a unanimous vote at the Feb. 9 meeting, the police commission approved implementation of CIT.

The specialized policing technique is patterned after the so-called Memphis model, which originated in Tennessee in 1988 in the wake of a public outcry that arose when white officers gunned down an African American man with a history of mental illness.

Memphis model policing emphasizes de-escalation, which is quite different from the everyday command-and-control method cops are trained to use against suspects. Under this model, officers are taught to consider things such as the tone of voice they are using to communicate with the mentally ill person, the distance they are standing from them, and how the individual might respond to their behavior. Whenever it’s safe to do so, officers are encouraged to allow the mentally ill person the time they need to calm down.

Samara Marion, an attorney and policy analyst with the Office of Citizen Complaints, traveled to Memphis to witness CIT officers on duty. “I was absolutely impressed,” Marion said. “It is community policing at its best.”

CIT has been credited with a dramatic reduction in officer-involved shootings against the mentally ill in Memphis. Randolph Dupont, a clinical psychologist and professor at the Memphis-based School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, told the Guardian that studies had shown mentally ill people who dealt with CIT officers were more likely to be in treatment three months later than those arrested by non-CIT officers. “Mental health is a community issue,” he said. “You don’t want it to be a police issue to resolve.”

In San Francisco, the program envisions training about 20 percent of the police force to create an elite unit of CIT officers, selecting those who are more experienced and have better track records in dealing with the public. Once in place, 911 dispatchers would alert CIT when SFPD receives calls involving psychiatric crises. On arriving to the scene, a CIT officer would be responsible for taking charge of the situation and directing other officers.

This is the second time an attempt was made to move forward with crisis intervention in San Francisco. In 2001, the department implemented generalized crisis training to all officers instead of intensive training for a specialized unit. However, that low-level effort was canceled last year due to budget cuts.

While CIT won resounding support from the community, the Feb. 23 discussion about Tasers drew tremendous opposition, with around 50 advocates speaking out against the plan. Hopper’s criticism, echoed by several mental-health providers, was that SFPD’s campaign for Tasers sent a mixed message and threatened to overshadow the CIT effort by seeking a quick fix based on a tool instead of a tactic. And rather than moving toward the goal of de-escalation set by CIT, Hopper said, the use of Tasers could exacerbate a situation instead, making it more dangerous for everyone involved.

“The Police Department — we think to its credit — has recognized that [addressing] mental health issues is a departmental priority,” Hopper said. “We think it’s putting the cart before the horse to give police Tasers before they put that plan into effect.”

A mental-health advocate who said she is “living the Kafkaesque world of a family dealing with mental illness” urged the commission to hold off on talking about Tasers until after CIT had been implemented, saying the two were closely connected.

“If you vote to purchase Tasers, you’re undercutting the message that they need to learn de-escalation,” another mental-health advocate noted.

Yet Marion said she thought adequate time was being allotted to study less-lethal weapons, and did not think this would undercut the CIT effort. “As long as the department continues to be motivated and engaged, I don’t see it being a problem,” she said.

Chan told the Guardian that the day after the Feb. 23 commission hearing, Godown phoned her to say he remained committed to CIT. Although she voted to allow police to move forward with investigating Tasers, Chan said her final support would depend on the success of CIT.

“If CIT is not doing well … I am going to be strongly opposed to any adoption of any pilot program,” Chan said. “I do prioritize one above the other.”

 

DEATH BY TASER?

A Taser is an electroshock weapon that can administer 50,000 volts through two small probes, disrupting the central nervous system and bringing on neuromuscular incapacitation.

While Taser proponent Chuck Wexler, a researcher who spoke at the hearing, emphasized that Tasers “are for saving lives,” studies have shown that the risk of death or serious injury increases under certain circumstances. Someone who is Tasered while fleeing police can suffer serious injuries if they can’t break their fall. There are dangerous implications for people whose heart rate is accelerated due to cocaine or methamphetamine, and as the Memphis Police Department learned many years ago, Tasers don’t mix with flammable substances, like an alcohol-based pepper spray that has since been discontinued.

“Lots of times it’s not about the product itself, it’s about … risk factors,” said Maj. Sam Cochran, who worked with Dupont in Memphis to create CIT. “Under some circumstances, things can happen very fast.”

Safety concerns are heightened when it comes to the mentally ill. It’s common for people experiencing psychiatric episodes to behave violently, speak incoherently, and ignore commands, creating the kind of scenario where law enforcement would likely opt to deploy a Taser. According to an extensive research inquiry on Tasers published by the Braidwood Commission on Conducted Energy Weapon Use, Tasers can be especially dangerous when used against people who are delirious.

“First responders should be aware of the medical risks associated with physically restraining a delirious subject or deploying a conducted energy weapon against them,” according to Dr. Shaohua Lu, who is quoted in the study. “They likely have profound exhaustion and electrolyte changes before delirium kicks in. At that stage, any additional insult (e.g., struggling or fighting) can lead to the body just giving out, resulting in cardiac arrest and death.”

Since 2004, when the city of San Jose first equipped officers with Tasers, seven people have died following police Taser deployments. At least one was mentally ill.

MaryKate Connor, a mental-health provider who founded the now-defunct Caduceus Outreach Services, told the Guardian she didn’t think the police officers could separate the issues of less-lethal weapons and tactics for handling the mentally ill. “The promise of the CIT program, whether the police want to acknowledge it or not, is that this is a huge cultural shift,” she said. “It’s not about finding a new weapon. It’s about finding a less lethal way to respond, period.”

Joyce Hicks, director of the Office of Citizen Complaints, sounded a similar note during the hearing. “No weapon can substitute for sound tactics,” Hicks said.

Choose or lose

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Choose or lose

arts@sfbg.com

FILM With its plentitude of female political stars, the Tea Party finds U.S. feminism at an interesting if inevitable developmental stage — wherein people who never would have gotten this far without liberationists’ path-clearing reject progressivism altogether. They no longer identify with a historically oppressed viewpoint, but rather from an angry, gender-neutral stance of entitlement allegedly stolen by cunning have-nots and slippery liberals.

They’ve never felt enough second-class citizenry to see gender as “the” issue. Yet right-wingers’ international panic button, “Islamic fundamentalists,” are also all about family values. Christian nations dominated world politics for so long it’s understandably hard for Westerners to grasp, let alone accept, that a different age-old faith looks set to control that discourse in our immediate future. (Buddhism, where are you? Oh yeah: busy ignoring all this.)

And the driving forces aren’t assimilationist, like those presumably nice folks whose mosque peacefully shares my Lower Polk neighborhood with a famous tranny nightclub and fire house. Rather, they are the pissed-off rank citizens, recruited by more privileged leaders to relatable activity outrage toward a deep disapproval of perceived Western moral decay. Just like Sarah Palin!

Does she see women’s issues as a significant concern? Most unlikely. She’s never been constrained by her family — more likely, as copious public exposure suggests, she’s been Santa-whipping its cadre of very stupid reindeer toward some destination, even if off a cliff (hello, Bristol, hello).

Palin would doubtless be horrified at the injustices dramatized in potent German drama When We Leave. It’s about Umay (Sibel Kekilli from 2004’s Head-On), who leaves a seriously abusive Istanbul husband with their young son Cem, seeking shelter from her Turkish family in Berlin. Initially welcoming, they grow hostile once the shame of her spousal abandonment ripples endlessly outward.

To keep Cem from being kidnapped and taken “home,” she eventually moves into a safe house. She gets a job, potential new boyfriend (the endearing Florian Lukas from 2008’s North Face), new apartment. But the pull of family is inexorable, and no location-shifting games are ultimately able to protect her.

Feo Aladag’s feature writing-directing debut goes out on a narrative limb with an improbable risk Umay takes at the two-thirds point. It strains credulity, but does heighten dramatic tension. It’s no spoiler to reveal that When We Leave‘s first moments reveal it deals with that near-unbridgeable cultural gap known as honor killings. Still, it might spoil something to say Aladag subsequently licks, seals, and otherwise pushes her emotional envelope to an excessively manipulated degree — D.W. Griffith himself might cry melodrama’s corn level exceeded.

Nonetheless, the real-world realities are more than real enough. Twenty years ago the 1991 Sally Field vehicle (imagine a world in which such things existed!) Not Without My Daughter struck many as suspect and kinda racist for dramatizing a real-life American woman’s attempt to flee her husband’s Iran with their child. Now When We Leave comes as no surprise.

Today, notions of the roles and rights of women in a just society differ painfully around the world, “developed” and otherwise. A basic tenet of U.N., E.U., and other bodies’ diplomatic interventions is that women be given equal rights — or at least legal freedom from domestic violence, rape, underage marriage, and other abuse. After so many decades of progress, it now seems the driving planetary political tide no longer pushes that-a-way.

When We Leave is a flawed drama that nonetheless underlines an increasing, confusing divide between ideological extremists “East” and “West.” How can we be on the brink of global chaos when both most-agitative sides basically agree women should be barefoot and pregnant? Excepting the exceptional women now in political power — too many are often silent, whether due to compromise or sheer denial.

WHEN WE LEAVE opens Fri/4 in Bay Area theaters.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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OPENING

The Adjustment Bureau In this drama adapted from a Philip K. Dick story, a congressman (Matt Damon) and a dancer (Emily Blunt) fall in love, much to the annoyance of the mysterious suits (portrayed by Mad Men‘s John Slattery, among others) tasked with controlling the politician’s destiny. (1:39) Marina, Piedmont, Shattuck.

Beastly Beauty (Vanessa Hudgens) meets beast (Alex Pettyfer) in this teen-oriented drama. Neil Patrick Harris is also involved, hopefully playing a singing tea kettle. (1:35)

Carmen in 3D Bizet’s popular opera hits the big screen, thanks to RealD and London’s Royal Opera House. (2:55)

I Am File in the dusty back drawer of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) wannabes. The cringe-inducing, pretentious title is a giveaway — though the good intentions are in full effect — in this documentary by and about director Tom Shadyac’s search for answers to life’s big questions. After a catastrophic bike accident, the filmmaker finds his lavish lifestyle as a successful Hollywood director of such opuses as Bruce Almighty (2003) somewhat wanting. Thinkers and spiritual leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn, UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, and scientist David Suzuki provide some thought-provoking answers, although Shadyac’s thinking behind seeking out this specific collection of academics, writers, and activists remains somewhat unclear. I Am‘s shambling structure and perpetual return to its true subject — Shadyac, who resembles a wide-eyed Weird Al Yankovic — doesn’t help matters, leaving a viewer with mixed feelings, less about whether one man can work out his quest for meaning on film, than whether Shadyac complements his subjects and their ideas by framing them in such a random, if well-meaning, manner. And sorry, this film doesn’t make up for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). (1:16) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*Last Lions It’s hard being a single mom. Particularly when you are a lioness in the Botswana wetlands, your territory invaded and mate killed by an invading pride forced out of their own by encroaching humanity. Add buffalo herds (tasty yes, but with sharp horns they’re not afraid to use) and crocodiles (no upside there), and our heroine is hard-pressed to keep herself alive, let alone her three small cubs. Derek Joubert’s spectacular nature documentary, narrated by Jeremy Irons (in plummiest Lion King vocal form) manages a mind-boggling intimacy observing all these predators. Shot over several years, while seeming to depict just a few weeks or months’ events, it no doubt fudges facts a bit to achieve a stronger narrative, but you’ll be too gripped to care. Warning: those kitties sure are cute, but this sometimes harsh depiction of life (and death) in the wild is not suitable for younger children. (1:28) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*Machotaildrop Every once in a while you see the Best Film Ever Made. Meaning, the movie that is indisputably the best film ever made at least for the length of time you’re watching it. Illustrative examples include Dr. Seuss musical The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), Superstar (Todd Haynes’ 1987 Barbie biopic about Karen Carpenter), Nina Paley’s 2008 animation Sita Sings the Blues, several Buster Keaton vehicles, and Paul Robeson sightings — anything that delights unceasingly. Now there is Machotaildrop, which the Roxie had the excellent sense to book for an extended run after its local debut at SF IndieFest, a year and a half after its premiere at Toronto mystifyingly failed to set the entire world on fire. Corey Adams and Alex Craig’s debut takes place in a gently alternative universe where pro skateboarders play pro skateboarders who aspire to belonging in the media kingdom and island fiefdom of ex-tightrope-walking corporate titan the Baron (James Faulkner). Such is the lucky fate of gormless small-town lad Walter (Anthony Amedori), though naturally there proves to be something sinister going on here to kinda drive the kinda-plot along. When that disruption of skating paradise takes central focus after about an hour, what was hitherto something of pure joy — a genial, laid-back surrealist joke without identifiable cinematic precedent — becomes just a wee more conventional. But Machotaildrop still offers fun on a level so high it’s seldom legal. (1:31) Roxie. (Harvey)

Nora’s Will There’s certainly something to be said for the uniqueness of Nora’s Will: I can’t think of any other Mexican-Jewish movies that cover suicide, Passover, and cooking with equal attention. But while it sounds like the film is overloaded, Nora’s Will is actually too subtle for its own good. It meanders along, telling the story of the depressed Nora, her conflicted ex-husband, and the family she left behind. When the movie focuses on the clash between Judaism and Mexican culture, the results are dynamic, but more often that not, it simply crawls along. It’s not that Nora’s Will is boring: it’s just easily forgettable, which is surprising given its subject matter. Meanwhile, it walks that fine line between comedy and drama, never bringing the laughs or the emotional catharsis it wants to offer. The only real reaction it inspires is hunger, particularly if the idea of a Mexican-Jewish feast sounds appealing. Turns out “gefilte fish” is the same in every language. (1:32) Albany, Bridge, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

*Of Gods and Men It’s the mid-1990s, and we’re in Tibhirine, a small Algerian village based around a Trappist monastery. There, eight French-born monks pray and work alongside their Muslim neighbors, tending to the sick and tilling the land. An emboldened Islamist rebel movement threatens this delicate peace, and the monks must decide whether to risk the danger of becoming pawns in the Algerian Civil War. On paper, Of Gods and Men sounds like the sort of high-minded exploitation picture the Academy swoons over: based on a true story, with high marks for timeliness and authenticity. What a pleasant surprise then that Xavier Beauvois’s Cannes Grand Prix winner turns out to be such a tightly focused moral drama. Significantly, the film is more concerned with the power vacuum left by colonialism than a “clash of civilizations.” When Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson) turns away an Islamist commander by appealing to their overlapping scriptures, it’s at the cost of the Algerian army’s suspicion. Etienne Comar’s perceptive script does not rush to assign meaning to the monks’ decision to stay in Tibhirine, but rather works to imagine the foundation and struggle for their eventual consensus. Beauvois occasionally lapses into telegraphing the monks’ grave dilemma — there are far too many shots of Christian looking up to the heavens — but at other points he’s brilliant in staging the living complexity of Tibrihine’s collective structure of responsibility. The actors do a fine job too: it’s primarily thanks to them that by the end of the film each of the monks seems a sharply defined conscience. (2:00) Embarcadero. (Goldberg)

Rango Pirates of the Caribbean series director-star duo Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp re-team for this animated comedy about a chameleon’s Wild West adventures. (1:47) Presidio.

Take Me Home Tonight Just because lame teen comedies existed in the ’80s doesn’t mean that they need to be updated for the ’10s. Nary an Eddie Money song disgraces the soundtrack of this unselfconscious puerile, pining sex farce — the type one assumes moviemakers have grown out of with the advent of smarty-pants a la Apatow and Farrell. Take Me Home Tonight would rather find its feeble kicks in major hair, big bags of coke, polo shirts with upturned collars, and “greed is good” affluenza. Matt (Topher Grace) is an MIT grad who’s refused to embrace the engineer within and is instead biding his time as a clerk at the local Suncoast video store when he stumbles on his old high school crush Tori (Teresa Palmer), a budding banker. In an effort to impress, he tells her he works for Goldman Sachs and trails after her to the rip-roaring last-hooray-before adulthood bash. Pal Barry (Dan Fogler) gets to play the Belushi-like buffoon when he swipes a Mercedes from the dealership he just got fired from, and ends up with a face full of powder in the arms of a kinky ex-supermodel (Angie Everhart). Despite cameos by comedians like Demetri Martin and a trailer and poster that make it all seem a bit cooler than it really is, Take Me Home Tonight doesn’t really touch the coattails of Jonathan Demme or even Cameron Crowe — in the hands of director Michael Dowse, it feels nowhere near as heartfelt, rock ‘n’ roll, or at the very least, cinematically competent. (1:37) California. (Chun)

*Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives See “Something Wild.” (1:53) Sundance Kabuki.

When We Leave See “Choose or Lose.” (1:59) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

ONGOING

*Another Year Mike Leigh’s latest represents a particularly affecting entry among his many improv-based, lives-of-everyday-Brits films. More loosely structured than 2008’s Happy-Go-Lucky, which featured a clear lead character with a well-defined storyline, the aptly-titled Another Year follows a year in the life of a group of friends and acquaintances, anchored by married couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). Tom and Gerri are happily settled into middle-class middle age, with a grown son (Oliver Maltman) who adores them. So far, doesn’t really sound like there’ll be much Leigh-style heightened emotion spewing off the screen, traumatizing all in attendance, right? Well, you haven’t met the rest of the ensemble: there’s a sad-sack small-town widower, a sad-sack overweight drunk, a near-suicidal wife and mother (embodied in one perfect, bitter scene by Imelda Staunton), and Gerri’s work colleague Mary, played with a breathtaking lack of vanity by Lesley Manville. At first Mary seems to be a particularly shrill take on the clichéd unlucky-in-love fiftysomething woman — think an unglamorous Sex in the City gal, except with a few more years and far less disposable income. But Manville adds layers of depth to the pitiful, fragile, blundering Mary; she seems real, which makes her hard to watch at times. That said, anyone would be hard-pressed to look away from Manville’s wrenching performance. (2:09) Shattuck. (Eddy)

Barney’s Version The charm of this shambling take on Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel lies almost completely in the hang-dog peepers of star Paul Giamatti. Where would Barney’s Version be without him and his warts-and-all portrayal of lovable, fallible striver Barney Panofsky — son of a cop (Dustin Hoffman), cheesy TV man, romantic prone to falling in love on his wedding day, curmudgeon given to tying on a few at a bar appropriately named Grumpy’s, and friend and benefactor to the hard-partying and pseudo-talented Boogie (Scott Speedman). So much depends on the many nuances of feeling flickering across Giamatti’s pale, moon-like visage. Otherwise Barney’s Version sprawls, carries on, and stumbles over the many cute characters we don’t give a damn about — from Minnie Driver’s borderline-offensive JAP of a Panofsky second wife to Bruce Greenwood’s romantic rival for Barney’s third wife Miriam (Rosamund Pike). A mini-who’s who of Canadian directors surface in cameos — including Denys Arcand, David Cronenberg, and Atom Egoyan — as a testament to the respect Richler commands. Too bad director Richard J. Lewis didn’t get a few tips on dramatic rigor from Cronenberg or intelligent editing from Egoyan — as hard as it tries, Barney’s Version never rises from a mawkish middle ground. (2:12) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (1:47) 1000 Van Ness.

Biutiful Uxbal (Javier Bardem) has problems. To name but a few: he is raising two young children alone in a poor, crime-beset Barcelona hood. He is making occasional attempts to rope back in their bipolar, substance-abusive mother (Maricel Álvarez), a mission without much hope. He is trying to stay afloat by various not-quite legal means while hopefully doing the right thing by the illegals — African street drug dealers and Chinese sweatshop workers — he acts as middleman to, standing between them and much less sympathetically-inclined bossmen. He’s got a ne’er-do-well brother (Eduard Fernandez) to cope with. Needless to say, with all this going on (and more), he isn’t getting much rest. But when he wearily checks in with a doc, the proverbial last straw is stacked on his camelback: surprise, you have terminal cancer. With umpteen odds already stacked against him in everyday life, Uxbal must now put all affairs in order before he is no longer part of the equation. This is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s first feature since an acrimonious creative split with scenarist Guillermo Arriaga. Their films together (2006’s Babel, 2003’s 21 Grams, 2000’s Amores Perros) have been criticized for arbitrarily slamming together separate baleful storylines in an attempt at universal profundity. But they worked better than Biutiful, which takes the opposite tact of trying to fit several stand-alone stories’ worth of hardship into one continuous narrative — worse, onto the bowed shoulders of one character. Bardem is excellent as usual, but for all their assured craftsmanship and intense moments, these two and a half hours collapse from the weight of so much contrived suffering. Rather than making a universal statement about humanity in crisis, Iñárritu has made a high-end soap opera teetering on the verge of empathy porn. (2:18) California, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Black Swan “Lose yourself,” ballet company head Thomas (Vincent Cassel) whispers to his leading lady, Nina (Natalie Portman), moments before she takes the stage. But Nina is already consumed with trying to find herself, and rarely has a journey of self-discovery been so unsettling. Set in New York City’s catty, competitive ballet world, Black Swan samples from earlier dance films (notably 1948’s The Red Shoes, but also 1977’s Suspiria, with a smidgen of 1995’s Showgirls), though director Darren Aronofsky is nothing if not his own visionary. Black Swan resembles his 2008 The Wrestler somewhat thematically, with its focus on the anguish of an athlete under ten tons of pressure, but it’s a stylistic 180. Gone is the gritty, stripped-down aesthetic used to depict a sad-sack strongman. Like Dario Argento’s 1977 horror fantasy, the gory, elegantly choreographed Black Swan is set in a hyper-constructed world, with stabbingly obvious color palettes (literally, white = good; black = evil) and dozens of mirrors emphasizing (over and over again) the film’s doppelgänger obsession. As Nina, Portman gives her most dynamic performance to date. In addition to the thespian fireworks required while playing a goin’-batshit character, she also nails the role’s considerable athletic demands. (1:50) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*Blue Valentine Sometimes a performance stands out and grabs attention for embodying a particular personality type or emotional state that’s instantly familiar yet infrequently explored in much depth at the movies. What’s most striking about Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine is the primary focus it lends Michelle Williams’ role as the more disgruntled half of a marriage that’s on its last legs whether the other half knows that or not. Ryan Gosling has the showier part — his Dean is mercurial, childish, more prone to both anger and delight, a babbler who tries to control situations by motor-mouthing or goofing through them. But Williams’ Cindy has reached the point where all his sound and fury can no longer pass as anything but static that must be tuned out as much as possible so that things get done. Things like parenting, going to work, getting the bills paid, and so forth. It’s taken a few years for Cindy to realize that she’s losing ground in her lifelong battle for self-improvement with every exasperating minute she continues to tolerate him. Williams’ bile-swallowing silences and the involuntary recoil that greets Dean’s attempts to touch Cindy are the film’s central emotional color: that state in which the loyalty, obligation, fear, pity, or whatever has kept you tied to a failing relationship is being whittled away by growing revulsion. Gosling’s excellent stab at an underwritten part is at a disadvantage compared to Williams, who just about burns a hole through the screen. (1:53) Four Star, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Cedar Rapids What if The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) got so Parks and Rec‘d at The Office party that he ended up with a killer Hangover (2009)? Just maybe the morning-after baby would be Cedar Rapids. Director Miguel Arteta (2009’s Youth in Revolt) wrings sweet-natured chuckles from his banal, intensely beige wall-to-wall convention center biosphere, spurring such ponderings as, should John C. Reilly snatch comedy’s real-guy MVP tiara away from Seth Rogen? Consider Tim Lippe (Ed Helms of The Hangover), the polar opposite of George Clooney’s ultracompetent, complacent ax-wielder in Up in the Air (2009). He’s the naive manchild-cum-corporate wannabe who never quite graduated from Timmyville into adulthood. But it’s up to Lippe to hold onto his firm’s coveted two-star rating at an annual convention in Cedar Rapids. Life conspires against him, however, and despite his heartfelt belief in insurance as a heroic profession, Lippe immediately gets sucked into the oh-so-distracting drama, stirred up by the dangerously subversive “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly), whom our naif is warned against as a no-good poacher. Temptations lie around every PowerPoint and potato skin; as Deanzie warns Lippe’s Candide, “I’ve got tiger scratches all over my back. If you want to survive in this business, you gotta daaance with the tiger.” How do you do that? Cue lewd, boozy undulations — a potbelly lightly bouncing in the air-conditioned breeze. “You’ve got to show him a little teat.” Fortunately Arteta shows us plenty of that, equipped with a script by Wisconsin native Phil Johnston, written for Helms — and the latter does not disappoint. (1:26) California, Empire, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Drive Angry 3D It says something about the sad state of Nicolas Cage’s cinematic choices when the killer-B, grindhouse-ready Drive Angry 3D is the finest proud-piece-o-trash he’s carried since The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), which doesn’t say much — the guy works a lot. Here, in his quest to become the paycheck-happy late-Brando of comic book, sci-fi, and fantasy flicks, Cage gets to work that anguished hound-dog mien, while meting out the punishment against grotty Satanists, in this cross between Constantine (2005), bible comics, and Shoot ‘Em Up (2007). Out for blood and sprung from the deepest, darkest hole a bad boy can find himself in, vengeful grandpa Milton (Cage) — a sop for Paradise Lost readers — is determined to rescue his infant granddaughter. She’s in the hands of Jonah King (Billy Burke), a devil-worshipping cult leader with a detestable soul patch who killed Milton’s daughter and carries her femur around as a souvenir. Along for the ride is the hot-pants-clad hottie Piper (Amber Heard), who’s as handy with her fists as she is randy with the busboys (she drives home from work, singing along to Peaches’ “Fuck the Pain Away” — ‘nuf said), and trailing Milton is the mysterious Accountant (William Fichtner). Gore, boobs, fast cars, undead gunfighters, and cheese galore — it’s a fanboy’s fantasy land, as handed down via the tenets of our fathers Tarantino and Rodriguez — and though the 3D seems somewhat extraneous, it does come in, ahem, handy during the opening salvo. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Eagle The mysterious fate of Rome’s Ninth Legion is all the rage lately — well, so sayeth the wee handful of people who caught Neil Marshall’s Centurion last year. For all who missed that flawed if worthy release, The Eagle arrives with a bigger budget and a bigger-name cast to puzzle out exactly what happened when thousands of Roman soldiers marched into what’s now Scotland, circa 120 AD, and never returned. The Eagle‘s Kevin Macdonald (2006’s The Last King of Scotland) bases his film on Rosemary Sutcliff’s popular children’s book, The Eagle of the Ninth, but the theory advanced here resembles Centurion‘s: the army was wiped out by hostile (and occasionally body-painted) natives. Much of The Eagle takes place decades after the disappearance, with the son of a Roman commander (Channing Tatum) scuttling past Hadrian’s Wall to seek truth, clear his family name, and reclaim a highly symbolic bronze eagle. Providing muscle and street smarts (or whatever the equivalent — backwoods smarts?) is slave Jamie Bell. The Eagle is handsomely shot, with some semi-thrilling PG-13 battle scenes, and any spin on Unsolved Mysteries: The Ninth Legion can’t really suck outright. But while Tatum has clearly clocked in the gym time to embody a Roman soldier, he doesn’t possess nearly enough depth (or any interesting qualities whatsoever) to play a character who supposedly has a lot of big emotions to work through. Bell does what he can with his sidekick role, short of performing CPR on his pulse-free costar, but it ain’t enough. Was Vin Diesel unavailable, or what? (1:54) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Even the Rain It feels wrong to criticize an “issues movie” — particularly when the issues addressed are long overdue for discussion. Even the Rain takes on the privatization of water in Bolivia, but it does so in such an obvious, artless way that the ultimate message is muddled. The film follows a crew shooting an on-location movie about Christopher Columbus. The film-within-a-film is a less-than-flattering portrait of the explorer: if you’ve guessed that the exploitation of the native people will play a role in both narratives, you’d be right. The problem here is that Even the Rain rests on our collective outrage, doing little to explain the situation or even develop the characters. Case in point: Sebastian (Gael García Bernal), who shifts allegiances at will throughout the film. There’s an interesting link to be made between the time of Columbus and current injustice, but it’s not properly drawn here, and in the end, the few poignant moments get lost in the shuffle. (1:44) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

The Fighter Once enough of a contenda to have fought Sugar Ray Leonard — and won, though there are lingering questions about that verdict’s justice — Dicky (Christian Bale) is now a washed-up, crack-addicted mess whose hopes for a comeback seem just another expression of empty braggadocio. Ergo it has fallen to the younger brother he’s supposedly “training,” Micky (Mark Wahlberg), to endure the “managerial” expertise of their smothering-bullying ma (Melissa Leo) and float their large girl gang family of trigger-tempered sisters. That’s made even worse by the fact that they’ve gotten him nothing but chump fights in which he’s matched someone above his weight and skill class in order to boost the other boxer’s ranking. When Micky meets Charlene (Amy Adams), an ambitious type despite her current job as a bartender, this hardboiled new girlfriend insists the only way he can really get ahead is by ditching bad influences — meaning mom and Dicky, who take this shutout as a declaration of war. The fact-based script and David O. Russell’s direction do a good job lending grit and humor to what’s essentially a 1930s Warner Brothers melodrama — the kind that might have had Pat O’Brien as the “good” brother and James Cagney as the ne’er-do-well one who redeems himself by fadeout. Even if things do get increasingly formulaic (less 1980’s Raging Bull and more 1976’s Rocky), the memorable performances by Bale (going skeletal once again), Wahlberg (a limited actor ideally cast) and Leo (excellent as usual in an atypically brassy role) make this more than worthwhile. As for Adams, she’s just fine — but by now it’s hard to forget the too many cutesy parts she’s been typecast in since 2005’s Junebug. (1:54) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Gnomeo and Juliet If you willingly see a movie titled Gnomeo and Juliet, you probably have a keen sense of what you’re in for. And as long as that’s the case, it’s hard not to get sucked into the film’s 3D gnome-infested world. Believe it or not, this is actually a serviceable adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic — minus the whole double-suicide downer ending. But at least the movie is conscious of its source material, throwing in several references to other Shakespeare plays and even having the Bard himself (or, OK, a bronze statue) comment on the proceedings. It helps that the cast is populated by actors who could hold their own in a more traditional Shakespearean context: James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Maggie Smith, and Michael Caine. But Gnomeo and Juliet isn’t perfect — not because of its outlandish concept, but due to a serious overabundance of Elton John. The film’s songwriter and producer couldn’t resist inserting himself into every other scene. Aside from the final “Crocodile Rock” dance number, it’s actually pretty distracting. (1:24) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Peitzman)

*The Green Hornet I still don’t understand why this movie had to be in 3D, or what Cameron Diaz’s character has to do with anything, but I liked The Green Hornet in spite of myself. Only in Hollywood could artsy director Michel Gondry hook up with self-satisfied comedian Seth Rogen, who stars in and co-wrote this surprisingly amusing (if knowingly lightweight) superhero entry. After the death of his father (a megarich newspaper owner — how retro!), Rogen’s party boy Britt Reid decides, either out of boredom or misdirected rebellion, to become an anti-crime vigilante only pretending to be a criminal. (And that’s about as complicated as this movie gets.) Helping him, which is to say creating all of the cool cars and gadgets and single-handedly winning all of the fist fights, is Kato (Taiwanese actor Jay Chou, taking over the role Bruce Lee made famous). As himself, Reid is so obnoxious he pisses off newspaper editor Axford (Edward James Olmos); as the Hornet, he’s so obnoxious he pisses off actual crime boss Chudnofsky, played by movie highlight Christoph Waltz — more or less doing a Eurotrash twist on his Oscar-winning Inglourious Basterds (2009) Nazi. (1:29) SF Center. (Eddy)

Hall Pass There are some constants when it comes to a Farrelly Brothers movie: lewd humor, full-frontal male nudity, and at least one shot of explosive diarrhea. Hall Pass does not disappoint on the gross-out front, but it’s a letdown in almost every other way. Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are married men obsessed with the idea of reliving their glory days. Lucky for them, wives Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) decide to give them a week-long “hall pass” from marriage. Of course, once Rick and Fred are able to go out and snag any women they want, they realize most women aren’t interested in being snagged by dopey fortysomethings. On paper, Hall Pass has the potential to be a sharp, anti-bro comedy. Instead, it wallows in recycled toilet humor that’s no longer edgy enough to make us squirm. At least there are still moments of misogyny to provide that familiar feeling of discomfort. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Peitzman)

How I Ended This Summer (2:04) Sundance Kabuki.

I Am Number Four Do you like Twilight? Do you think aliens are just as sexy — if not sexier! — than vampires? I Am Number Four isn’t a rip-off of Stephenie Meyer’s supernatural saga, but the YA novel turned film is similar enough to draw in that coveted tween audience. John (Alex Pettyfer) is a teenage alien with extraordinary powers who falls in love with a human girl Sarah (Dianna Agron). But they’re from two different worlds! To be fair, star-crossed romance isn’t the issue here: the real problem is I Am Number Four‘s “first in a series” status. Rather than working to establish itself as a film in its own right, the movie sets the stage for what’s to come next, a bold presumption for something this mediocre. It lazily drops some exposition, then launches into big, loud battles without pausing to catch its breath. I Am Number Four only really works if it gets a sequel, and we all know how well that turned out for The Golden Compass (2007). (1:44) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

*The Illusionist Now you see Jacques Tati and now you don’t. With The Illusionist, aficionados yearning for another gem from Tati will get a sweet, satisfying taste of the maestro’s sensibility, inextricably blended with the distinctively hand-drawn animation of Sylvain Chomet (2004’s The Triplets of Belleville). Tati wrote the script between 1956 and 1959 — a loving sendoff from a father to a daughter heading toward selfhood — and after reading it in 2003 Chomet decided to adapt it, bringing the essentially silent film to life with 2D animation that’s as old school as Tati’s ambivalent longing for bygone days. The title character should be familiar to fans of Monsieur Hulot: the illusionist is a bemused artifact of another age, soon to be phased out with the rise of rock ‘n’ rollers. He drags his ornery rabbit and worn bag of tricks from one ragged hall to another, each more far-flung than the last, until he meets a little cleaning girl on a remote Scottish island. Enthralled by his tricks and grateful for his kindness, she follows him to Edinburgh and keeps house while the magician works the local theater and takes on odd jobs in an attempt to keep her in pretty clothes, until she discovers life beyond their small circle of fading vaudevillians. Chomet hews closely to bittersweet tone of Tati’s films — and though some controversy has dogged the production (Tati’s illegitimate, estranged daughter Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel claimed to be the true inspiration for The Illusionist, rather than daughter and cinematic collaborator Sophie Tatischeff) and Chomet neglects to fully detail a few plot turns, the dialogue-free script does add an intriguing ambiguity to the illusionist and his charge’s relationship — are they playing at being father and daughter or husband and wife? — and an otherwise straightforward, albeit poignant tale. (1:20) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Inside Job Inside Job is director Charles Ferguson’s second investigative documentary after his 2007 analysis of the Iraq War, No End in Sight, but it feels more like the follow-up to Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005). Keeping with the law of sequels, more shit blows up the second time around. As with No End in Sight, Ferguson adeptly packages a broad overview of complex events in two hours, respecting the audience’s intelligence while making sure to explain securities exchanges, derivatives, and leveraging laws in clear English (doubly important when so many Wall Street executives hide behind the intricacy of markets). The revolving door between banks, government, and academia is the key to Inside Job‘s account of financial deregulation. At times borrowing heist-film conventions (it is called Inside Job, after all), Ferguson keeps the primary players in view throughout his history so that the eventual meltdown seems anything but an accident. The filmmaker’s relentless focus on the insiders isn’t foolproof; tarring Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and Timothy Geithner as “made” guys, for example, isn’t a substitute for evaluating their varied performances over the last two years. Inside Job makes it seem that the entire crisis was caused by the financial sector’s bad behavior, and this too is reductive. Furthermore, Ferguson does not come to terms with the politicized nature of the economic fallout. In Inside Job, there are only two kinds of people: those who get it and those who refuse to. The political reality is considerably more contentious. (2:00) Lumiere. (Goldberg)

Just Go With It Only within the hermetically sealed landscape of the Hollywood romantic comedy can a man’s sociopathic impulse (to lie about being unhappily married to every gullible young woman he sleeps with over the course of two action-filled decades) be smoothed over into a laughable character defect that the right woman will see through or look past and then cure him of. But here we are in Hollywood, or rather, in Beverly Hills, where, as depicted by Just Go With It, the moral continuum seems to range from plastic surgeons who perform good boob jobs to plastic surgeons who perform bad ones. Adam Sandler is one of the good-fake-boob kinds but also the liar liar, and Jennifer Aniston is the long-suffering office assistant and single mom who joins forces with him in the cause of smoothing out a wrinkle in his ersatz romantic life. This involves the construction of an improvisatory tissue of lies so vast that it envelops an entire fake blended family (including not one but two creepily precocious children) and necessitates a trip to Hawaii and nearly two hours of penile-implant, mammary-gland, and alimentary-canal humor to be untangled sufficiently for a happy ending. Sandler and Aniston have a decent comic rapport going, at least until the sappy, sick-making moment of truth, and this reviewer may have snickered at one or two moments, or even periodically throughout the film, but is deeply ashamed of it now. (1:56) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never 3D (1:45) 1000 Van Ness.

The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Albany, Embarcadero, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

No Strings Attached The worst thing about No Strings Attached is its advertising campaign. An eyeroll-worthy tagline — “Can sex friends stay best friends?” distracts from the fact that this is a sharp and satisfying romantic comedy. Perhaps it’s not the most likely follow-up to Black Swan (2010), but Natalie Portman is predictably charming, and Ashton Kutcher proves he’s leading man material after all. They’re aided by an exceptional supporting cast, including indie darlings Greta Gerwig and Olivia Thirlby, and underrated comic actors Lake Bell and Mindy Kaling. No Strings Attached is a welcome return to form from director Ivan Reitman, who gave us classics like Ghostbusters (1984) before tainting his image with Six Days Seven Nights (1998) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006). There are likely going to be many who will dismiss Reitman’s latest out of hand — and with those misleading trailers and posters, it’s hard to blame them. But I advise you to give No Strings Attached a chance: at the very least, it’ll counter the image of Portman tearing at a stubborn hangnail. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

127 Hours After the large-scale, Oscar-draped triumph of 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours might seem starkly minimalist — if director Danny Boyle weren’t allergic to such terms. Based on Aron Ralston’s memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place, it’s a tale defined by tight quarters, minimal “action,” and maximum peril: man gets pinned by rock in the middle of nowhere, must somehow free himself or die. More precisely, in 2003 experienced trekker Ralston biked and hiked into Utah’s Blue John Canyon, falling into a crevasse when a boulder gave way under his feet. He landed unharmed … save a right arm pinioned by a rock too securely wedged, solid, and heavy to budge. He’d told no one where he’d gone for the weekend; dehydration death was far more likely than being found. For those few who haven’t heard how he escaped this predicament, suffice it to say the solution was uniquely unpleasant enough to make the national news (and launch a motivational-speaking career). Opinions vary about the book. It’s well written, an undeniably amazing story, but some folks just don’t like him. Still, subject and interpreter match up better than one might expect, mostly because there are lengthy periods when the film simply has to let James Franco, as Ralston, command our full attention. This actor, who has reached the verge of major stardom as a chameleon rather than a personality, has no trouble making Ralston’s plight sympathetic, alarming, poignant, and funny by turns. His protagonist is good-natured, self-deprecating, not tangibly deep but incredibly resourceful. Probably just like the real-life Ralston, only a tad more appealing, less legend-in-his-own-mind — a typical movie cheat to be grateful for here. (1:30) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*True Grit Jeff Bridges fans, resist the urge to see your Dude in computer-trippy 3D and make True Grit your holiday movie of choice. Directors Ethan and Joel Coen revisit (with characteristic oddball touches) the 1968 Charles Portis novel that already spawned a now-classic 1969 film, which earned John Wayne an Oscar for his turn as gruff U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn. (The all-star cast also included Dennis Hopper, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, and Strother Martin.) Into Wayne’s ten-gallon shoes steps an exceptionally crusty Bridges, whose banter with rival bounty hunter La Boeuf (a spot-on Matt Damon) and relationship with young Mattie Ross (poised newcomer Hailee Steinfeld) — who hires him to find the man who killed her father — likely won’t win the recently Oscar’d actor another statuette, but that doesn’t mean True Grit isn’t thoroughly entertaining. Josh Brolin and a barely-recognizable Barry Pepper round out a cast that’s fully committed to honoring two timeless American genres: Western and Coen. (1:50) Empire, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

“2011 Academy Award-Nominated Short Films, Live-Action and Animated” (Live-action, 1:50; animated, 1:25) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

Unknown Everything is blue skies as Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) flies to Germany for a biotech conference, accompanied by lovely wife Elizabeth (January Jones in full Betty Draper mode). Landing in Berlin things quickly become grey, as he’s separated from his wife and ends up in a coma. Waking in a hospital room, Harris experiences memory loss, but like Harrison Ford he’s getting frantic with an urgent need to find his wife. Luckily she’s at the hotel. Unluckily, so is another man, who she and everyone else claims is the real Dr. Harris. What follows is a by-the-numbers thriller, with car chases and fist fights, that manages to entertain as long as the existential question is unanswered. Once it’s revealed to be a knock-off of a successful franchise, the details of Unknown‘s dated Cold War plot don’t quite make sense. On the heels of 2008’s Taken, Neeson again proves capable in action-star mode. Bruno Ganz amuses briefly as an ex-Stasi detective, but the vacant parsing by bad actress Jones, appropriate for her role on Mad Men, only frustrates here. (1:49) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Ryan Prendiville)

*We Were Here Reagan isn’t mentioned in David Weissman’s important and moving new documentary about San Francisco’s early response to the AIDS epidemic, We Were Here — although his communications director Pat Buchanan and Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell get split-second references. We Were Here isn’t a political polemic about the lack of governmental support that greeted the onset of the disease. Nor is it a kind of cinematic And the Band Played On that exhaustively lays out all the historical and medical minutiae of HIV’s dawn. (See PBS Frontline’s engrossing 2006 The Age of AIDS for that.) And you’ll find virtually nothing about the infected world outside the United States. A satisfying 90-minute documentary couldn’t possibly cover all the aspects of AIDS, of course, even the local ones. Instead, Weissman’s film, codirected with Bill Weber, concentrates mostly on AIDS in the 1980s and tells a more personal and, in its way, more controversial story. What happened in San Francisco when gay people started mysteriously wasting away? And how did the epidemic change the people who lived through it? The tales are well told and expertly woven together, as in Weissman’s earlier doc The Cockettes. But where We Were Here really hits home is in its foregrounding of many unspoken or buried truths about AIDS. The film will affect viewers on a deep level, perhaps allowing many to weep openly about what happened for the first time. But it’s a testimony as well to the absolute craziness of life, and the strange places it can take you — if you survive it. (1:30) Castro. (Marke B.)

*The Woman Chaser First widely noted as Elaine’s emotionally deaf boyfriend on Seinfield, in recent years Patrick Warburton has starred in successful network sitcoms Rules of Engagement and Less than Perfect. They followed The Tick, a shortlived Fox superhero parody series everyone loved but the viewing public. He’s voiced various characters on Family Guy (a man’s gotta work), as well as endearing villain Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove (2000). That latter reunited him with Eartha Kitt, also a co-star in his screen debut: 1987’s campsterpiece Mandingo (1975) rip-off Dragonard, which he played a race traitor Scottish hunk on an 18th century Caribbean slaving isle also populated by such punishing extroverts as boozy Oliver Reed, chesty Claudia Uddy, and creaky Pink Panther boss Herbert Lom. These days, Warburton is promoting a past project he’d rather remember: 1999’s The Woman Chaser, billed as his leading-role debut. It was definitely the first feature for Robinson Devor (2005’s Police Beat, 2007’s Zoo), one of the most stubbornly idiosyncratic and independent American directors to emerge in recent years. Derived from nihilist pulp master’s Charles Willeford 1960 novel, this perfect B&W retro-noir miniature sets Warburton’s antihero to swaggering across vintage L.A. cityscapes. Sloughing off an incestuously available mother and other bullet-bra’d she cats, his eye on one bizarre personal ambition, he’s a vintage man’s man bobbing obliviously in a sea of delicious, droll irony. (1:30) Roxie. (Harvey)

 

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

 

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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THEATER

OPENING

Beauty and the Beast Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Theatre, Bldg C; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. opens Sat/5, 1pm. Runs Sat, 1pm; Sun 1 and 3:30pm. Young Performers Theatre presents the classic fairy tale.

Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Previews Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm (through March 27). Opens March 31, 8pm. Runs Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 1. The Marsh presents a new solo show about aging and mortality by Geoff Hoyle.

James Bond: Lady Killer Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission; 732-9592, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Fri/4, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 26. Dark Room Theater presents an all-new James Bond adventure.

Regrets Only New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Previews Wed/2-Fri/4, 8pm. Opens Sat/5, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 3. New Conservatory Threatre presents a play by Paul Rudnick, directed by Andrew Nance.

Tenth Annual Bay One-Acts Festival Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma; 891-7235, www.bayoneacts.org. $20-32. Opens Wed/6, 8pm. Runs Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through March 26. Three Wise Monkeys Theatre Company presents the tenth incarnation of the curated festival.

BAY AREA

Free Range Thinking Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Previews Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm (through March 12). Opens March 18, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through April 9. The Marsh Berkeley presents a new comedic solo show by Robert Dubac.

ONGOING

Devil/Fish Brava Theater, 2781 24th St; www.criquenoveau.com. $26. Thurs/3-Sat/5, 7pm; Sun/6, 6pm. Cirque Noveau presents a contemporary circus that riffs off of the Faust legend.

*Farragut North NOHSpace, 2840 Mariposa; www.opentabproductions.com. $25. Thurs/3-Sat/5, 8pm. Former Howard Dean speechwriter Beau Willimon’s formulaic but solidly crafted 2008 play about backroom politics and the seamy side of what’s euphemistically called the American democratic process seems like it’d make a good George Clooney movie. George Clooney thought so too. He’s making it now under the title The Ides of March. You can see it sooner and without all those goddamn movie stars in this low-budget, high-octane staging by OpenTab Productions (Fishing). Stephen (Ben Euphrat) is a 25-year-old wiz of a press secretary for a “maverick” governor heading into a major primary battle on the road to the White House. But an unexpected phone call leads “idealistic” power-lover Stephen into temptation, even as it reveals the real dynamics of the electoral system he thought he’d mastered. A battle for career survival ensues with his former boss (Alex Plant), in which loyalty is a password and decency the first sandbag to drop. Opening night had one or two timing issues and some actors lost in shadow, but director Dave Sikula builds the action well and gets strong performances from an uneven but generally winning cast. Particularly nice work comes from a convincingly unraveling Euphant, a coolly compassionate Carla Pauli (as precocious intern–turned–unwitting pawn), and the formidable Nathan Tucker as Stephen’s slickly conniving counterpart and Mephistopheles of the moment.

40 Pounds in 12 Weeks: A Love Story The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 26. A one-woman show about eating and weight loss, by Pidge Meade.

*Loveland Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 26. Ann Randolph’s one-woman show extends its run.

Out of Sight Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through March 27. Sara Felder’s one-woman show extends its run.

Party of 2 – The New Mating Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 1-800-838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $27-29. Sun, 3pm. Open-ended. A musical about relationships by Shopping! The Musical author Morris Bobrow.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through April 9. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Sex and Death: A Night with Harold Pinter Phoenix Theatre, ste 601, 414 Mason; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbraodwaywest.org. $35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 26. Off Broadway West Theatre Company presents two Pinter one-acts: The Dumb Waiter and The Lover.

What We’re Up Against Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, bldg D; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. Wed/2-Fri/4, 8pm; Sat/5, 2:30 and 8pm; Sun/6, 2:30pm. Following the popularity of Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius in 2009, Magic Theatre brings the New York playwright back for the world premiere of a decidedly flimsy comedy about sexual discrimination at a busy architecture firm. Eliza (Sarah Nealis) is the bright and brash new employee who finds herself shut out by an old boys network. Sodden boss Stu (Warren David Keith) resents her heartily for her competence and ambition, while ass-kissing power-jockey Weber (James Wagner) uses the leverage for all its worth. Gender solidarity with sole (but soulless) sister Janice (Pamela Gaye Walker) doesn’t get Eliza very far either. One guy at the firm, Ben (Rod Gnapp), alone knows better (among what amounts to an unbelievably inept staff). Eliza, meanwhile, crafts a form of revenge from her well-guarded solution to the otherwise stymieing “duct problem” in the plans for a new mall, a major account hitting the skids. Ben’s obsession with ducts is something of a key joke here, which ends up being characteristic of a play that stretches its not-very-new conceits thinly over two acts. The glass ceiling, ducts and all, is a bit too transparent in this bloodless production (helmed by artistic director Loretta Greco), leaving precious little to wonder or worry about. (Avila)

William Blake Sings the Blues Actors Theatre of SF, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.brownpapertickets.com. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/5. Actors Theatre of San Francisco presents the world premiere of a play by Keith Philips.

BAY AREA

Collapse Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Wed/2-Sat/5, 8pm; Sun/6, 2 and 7pm. Aurora Theatre presents a comedy by Allison Moore.

Death of a Salesman Pear Avenue Theatre, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 20. Pear Avenue Theatre presents the Arthur Miller classic.

A Man’s Home…an Ode to Kafka’s Castle Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun 5pm (also Sat/5 and March 12, 5pm). Through March 13. Central Works

Romeo and Juliet La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 26. Impact Theatre presents a Russian mafia interpreation of the tragic romantic classic.

Ruined Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-73. Call for dates and times. Through April 10. Berkeley Rep presents Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning play about the lives of women in Africa.

World’s Funniest Bubble Show The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through April 3. The Amazing Bubble Man extends the bubble-making celebration.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Comedy Brains The Cabaret at the Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Sat/5, 8:30pm. $15-35. Scott Capurro and Piano Fight’s ForePlays are this week’s lineup.

Devotion ODC Theater, 3153 17th St; 863-9834, www.odctheater.org. Fri/4-Sun/6, 8pm. $15-18. Sarah Michelson and Richard Maxwell present a new dance work.

Halau o Keikiali’i City Hall; 920-9181, www.dancersgroup.org. Fri/4, noon. Free. The first installment in a monthly lunchtime dance series.

Hope Mohr Dance Z Space at Theater Artaud, 450 Florida; 1-800-838-3006, www.hopemohr.org. Thurs/3-Sat/5, 8pm; Sun/6, 2pm. The company presents its fourth home season with the world premiere of The Unsayable.

Miss Toolbox Pageant Club 93, 93 Ninth St; www.club93sf.com. Thurs/3, 11pm. Free. Witness performers of all genders and sexualities utilizing their style, talent, beauty, and star wattage.

Qcomedy Showcase Martuni’s, 4 Valencia; www.Qcomedy.com. Mon/7, 8pm. $5-16. Performers include Kat Evasco, Dana Cory, Cookie Dough, Maggie Dolan, and Nick Leonard.

Stephen Petronio Company Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission; 392-6449, www.sfperformances.org. Thurs/4-Fri/5, 8pm. $30-50. SF Performances presents Stephen Petronio Dance Company’s 25th anniversary work, I Drink the Air Before Me.

BAY AREA

Bale Folklorico Da Bahia Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley campus, Berk; (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. Sun/6, 7pm; Mon/7, 11am. $5-52. The Brazilian troupe of dancers, musicians, and singers performs Sacred Heritage.

Body of Knowledge Western Sky Studio, Eighth St. and Dwight, Berk; www.bodyresearch.org. Thurs/4-Fri/5, 8pm. $12-20. Karl Frost/Body rearch presents a new work and a happening.

Marga’s Funny Mondays Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Mon/28, 8pm. $10. Marga Gomez hosts a Monday night comedy series.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company Zellerbach hall, UC Berkeley campus, Berk; (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. Thurs/3-Sat/5, 8pm. The legendary company makes its final Bay Area appearance.

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

 

Noise Pop Live Review: Dominant Legs and How to Dress Well

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4

Synth and bass, rock and roll, some combinations are easily matched, but when you put How to Dress Well on the roster, pairings aren’t as obvious. Dominant Legs‘ mangy pop was an odd precursor to Saturday night’s How to Dress Well performance at Cafe Du Nord, but then again, what flatters eerie falsetto and awkward emotions? 

San Francisco’s Dominant Legs played like summer in a bottle. Happy guitars, lots of cowbell and rad bass made the winter weather outside melt. The only thing missing was sunshine, or lights in general. Half the band was hidden from the crowd due to a lack of lighting– particularly the adorable Hannah Hunt. One disgruntled lady in the audience voiced her disapproval by shouting, “We can’t see the pretty girl in the blue dress,” to which Hunt meekly responded, “It’s green.” Case in point. 

The band of five played three brand new songs, two cute and sleepy and one with tropical breeze, but the hits were any that picked up the pace. The real gem was as suspected– “Young at Love and Life.”

There was a brief interlude by Shlohmo and his way cool collection of old school tracks, including my personal favorite, TLC’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend”– brought me right back to Mr. Burg’s fifth grade class.

Then the stage cleared. A lazy stream of fog seeped from a small machine in the corner as Tom Krell grabbed the mic. Immediately things felt awkwardly intimate as the man behind How to Dress Well told the crowd, “This week things have been kind of tough for me,” said Krell. “But I guess we’ll see how it goes.” And it went in all kinds of ways: uncomfortable, pretty, sexy and repulsive. It was Krell, naked (only figuratively), revealing every last detail of his diary in a high-pitched squeal of sorts, accompanied by super smooth, shattering bass, electronics and R&B stylings. 

At first it seemed like a bad dream. My ears hurt. I thought slitting my wrists sounded like a nice alternative to listening to songs entitled, “Suicide Dream 1” and “Suicide Dream 2.”  I did enjoy the projected visual art and it seemed to pair well with the horror escaping his lips. I couldn’t believe all these people had paid to see this guy. Was this a joke? I turned to the dude next to me (just as his friend offered up some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos) and asked him if he ‘really liked this?” He laughed. “Uh…no comment.” Then he thought about it for a second more. “Well, I don’t hate it.”

And surprisingly by the end of his one-man show I realized I also didn’t ‘hate it’ but couldn’t quite get to the ‘liking’ part either. I grew to respect the dude for what he brought to the table. Krell has balls. Really big balls. Who else would stand up there and tell everyone that this song is about how his life “feels closed,” instead of “feeling open, like when I was young.” It was hipster poetry hour and I needed a cigarette. That’s some depressing shit, man. If only I could’ve understood the actual lyrics. Were those real words?

How to Dress Well is what it is, folks but whether it counts as live music, a band or a quality performance is still up for debate. The transition from amazing recorded material to live act still has some kinks; or maybe that’s the intention and you’re cool and totally hip if you get it. I’ve never been one to understand ‘performance art.’ Instead it seems easier to categorize this fiasco as another talented bedroom musician lured from his comfort zone, into the outdoors and onto stages. We should stop being so pushy.

 

 

Chiu announces run for mayor

Sasha Cuttler
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64

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu announced his candidacy for mayor today, becoming the eighth major candidate in a field that will likely continue shaking out in the coming months.

Chiu has been considering the move since at least the start of this year, when he played kingmaker as the swing vote to name Ed Lee as interim mayor, parting from his progressive colleagues to do so. With no strong progressive candidate yet in the mayor’s race, the question now is whether Chiu will try to win over the left and if he can be successful in doing so after making several more moderate moves in recent years.

Chiu’s initial political base will be allies of Chinatown Chamber of Commerce boss Rose Pak, who has pledged to block Sen. Leland Yee from becoming mayor, is close to Chiu, and has been courting someone to run. There have even been widespread rumors recently that Pak and ally Willie Brown have been trying to convince Lee to run, a possibility that those in Chiu’s camp dismiss.

Chiu will made his announcement at 11 am on the steps of City Hall. Sources say Chiu has spent weeks lining up support for his run, so it could be telling to see who shares the stage with Chiu beyond Sup. Jane Kim and others from his immediate political circle. Chiu and Kim are sponsoring the mid-Market tax break that the Mayor’s Office crafted to keep Twitter from leaving town, the most controversial legislation of the year, a proposal that has drawn opposition from many progressives. Some other mayoral campaigns have privately started to grumble about the deal, so it could become a mayoral campaign issue, particularly if the Office of Economic Analysis concludes it will be a drain on city coffers when that report is issued by week’s end.

For more on the implications of Chiu’s leap into the race, read this week’s Guardian.

Comedian Amy Dresner talks sober comedy

Andrew Lam
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3

Twelve-steppers say in order for an addict to get on the road to recovery, it’s essential that they accept their addiction. But for comics Amy Dresner, Ian Harvie, and Felon O’Reilly, successful recovery is not just about acceptance: it’s about turning addiction into one big, serious joke. It might sound like funny business, but standing onstage with the mic and some yuks has been the only way all three have been able to maintain their sobriety. Now, they’re bringing the laughs throughout the country on their “Laughs Without Liquor” comedy tour, donating proceeds to local “sober living” causes along the way. Lucky for us, March 5th brings the tour to SF.

The three comics kicked off their tour in January, performing at the New York Gay and Lesbian Center in a benefit for a drug and alcohol program. But although the comics now travel and tour together, they didn’t always have a lot in common. Ian Harvie is a trans guy who has toured with Margaret Cho, while Felon O’Reilly has been to rehab 17 times and to jail 50 times more than that.

The two met eight years ago while performing stand-up and working out their respective sobrieties in Maine. O’Reilly proposed the “Laughs without Liquor” concept to Harvie, and soon the two were doing sober stand-up together.  Last year the two found comedian Amy Dresner at the Downtown Comedy Club in Los Angeles. 

“I was onstage ranting about rehab and my drug-induced epilepsy or whatever,” says Dresner. She was quickly added to the tour roster. 

Dresner, originally from LA, grew up in a showbiz environment. Her father was a television comedy writer, with friends and connections to household name comics who Dresner met and knew as a child. But comedy was something she left unexplored until her addiction was kicked. “It’s always been my secret dream to be a comic but I didn’t have the balls to do it until a few years ago. It takes real commitment and prior to that, my commitment was to getting high and being depressed.”

Now that Dresner is both sober and leading the life of a full-time comedian, she is able to reflect on how her career and her sobriety inform each other. “I’ve found that for a lot of people struggling with addiction, there is a lot of shame involved. That is another big trigger for self-destructive behavior. So if I can make people laugh at things they feel ashamed of – well, it can be very healing.”

She can also attest to the ways in which sobriety has improved her stage presence. “When you’re a sober comic you are really present and connected to the audience.  You can see what jokes are working and which ones aren’t. There’s no deluding yourself that you killed when you really bombed.”

Dresner appreciates the positive reactions, understanding and support that she has received from her sober audience members. But she wants to be clear that she doesn’t condemn alcohol or the people that drink it. “I think there’s a big misconception that if you are making jokes about sobriety, you are somehow undermining it. Being sober is not the same as being Mormon. We aren’t trying to bring back Prohibition. I loved getting drunk and if I could do it and not crash my car, ruin all my relationships, lose my job and carry my liver around on a dolly, I would.”

But it’s probably best to leave your booze at home if you want to see Dresner in this tour specifically. While you don’t need to take a breathalyzer test to attend, all of the shows on the tour will take place at churches, sober clubhouses, amphitheaters, and other places that are not bars. Instead of spending too much on drinks, your entrance fee will go to support a local sober living facility or treatment center.

The Laughs Without Liquor SF show will take place at a local church with poet and author Bucky Sinister hosting. All proceeds will go to the Castro Club, a sober gathering place and home for queer folks in recovery. 

For Dresner, the upcoming show in SF will hold a particularly special meaning. “I got strung out on speed for the first time in SF, so it will be very ironic to come back and do a sober gig here.”

 

Laughs Without Liquor

Sat/5, 8 p.m., $20

Most Holy Redeemer Church

100 Diamond, SF

(818) 588-7390

www.laughswithoutliquor.com

 

Worst American Idol ever

Zelda Bronstein
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16
Worst American Idol ever

Ok, American Idol. I sat through four hours this week. And yeah, Randy is Randy and Steven Tyler is a rock god and J-Lo is so pretty it makes my teeth hurt, but:

I miss Simon. Because everytime somebody really mangled a song, he’d remind them that “this is a singing contest.”

That’s right: This is a show about singing. But not this year. This year it’s all Total Drama Island. The Pathos! The J-Lo weepfests! The tragedy, the crying, the terrible stories of people’s lives and awful interactions between mean and unpleasant contestants who kick the weak ones out of their groups! Oh, the reality of it all!

An entire episode was devoted to watching anxiety-wracked contestants walk down a surreal flying-saucer-style walkway onto a stage where the judges would try to make them think they were going home, only to let slip at the last moment that they get to come back for another round. Or maybe not. Tears of joy. Thrown chairs. A woman trying to dry hump Ryan Seacrest. And it never ends.

Note to the producers: This is not Survivor: San Andreas Fault. We want to hear the contestants perform. We’ll take the good and the bad, but please: No more of the ugly.

The dance of motherhood as … a dance

Sue Vaughan
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1
The dance of motherhood as … a dance

From Amy Chua’s “Tiger Mother” rules to Ayelet Waldman’s “Bad Mother” guilt, the stories about motherhood are not only filling bookshelves and mommy blogs, they’re being danced on stage.

Sat/26, Ellis Wood, choreographer and mother of three, performs the world premiere of Mom, an evening-length solo, at Fort Mason’s Southside Theater. Speaking about the angle of the work, Wood said, “Motherhood is not the prettiest thing in the world. There are so many sides to it and so many things you didn’t know you were getting into, and so many leaps you have to take, and so many crashes you have to deal with, and the piece addresses that. It’s not a stereotypically pretty picture of mom. Hopefully it’s a more thought-provoking look into a layered experience.”

At 46 with children ages 7, 5, and 2, Wood never really stopped dancing. “There were times when I performed when I was eight months pregnant and that was a lot of fun. If I just had the baby that was harder … but usually I performed.” said Wood. Ideas for Mom emerged when Wood was dancing in Japan just weeks before giving birth to her youngest. She considers the intimate nature of the Southside Theater well-matched for this raw and personal solo, a mix of dance and video.

Wood comes from a dance family. Her parents, Marni and David Wood, performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company when she was growing up. “We used to take classes from them when we were kids, little Graham classes here and there. We used to travel with the Graham company when we were really little, when they would go on tour, and there were always people like Merce Cunningham and John Cage and Carolyn Brown, and it was just normal to have all those people around. I didn’t know then but I think of it now as a special thing … being around people like Martha and [Isamu] Noguchi … I got a lot of info pretty young about the dance world and that did affect my whole path.” said Wood.

Visiting the Bay Area holds special significance for Wood. She has returned every year for about a decade, performing in the city and usually teaching at UC Berkeley, where her parents started the dance program. “My parents built the studio. There was no dance department and they helped sand the floors,” she said. “They literally built the studio, so it has so much nostalgia for me. My dad picked the building on campus that he wanted to be the dance studio. They had a different building chosen for him and he saw this church on the corner of Bancroft and Dana with these beautiful stained glass windows and he said ‘I’ll take this, I want the space.’ He and my mom built the whole dance department there.”

With Mom, Wood refocuses herself, returning to solo work, which is how she started 15 years ago with her solo Canary. Through the years her work has always addressed women either politically or energetically, and at the upcoming performance, audience members will have the opportunity to say a few words about motherhood, which will be filmed and shared at the end of the performance. 

“I had just finished [Ayelet Waldman’s] book Bad Mother,” said Wood. “It’s very provoking and maybe even controversial, but it is interesting and brings up a lot of issues that are taboo and I like that.  So whether I agree or not, it brings up things that a lot of people don’t want to talk about, and hopefully, not in a way that pushes people away, but in a way that draws people.  My goal is to do that too.”

Mom

Sat/26, 8 p.m., $20

Southside Theater           

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

(415) 345-7575

www.fortmason.org

Back to the streets

Andrew Lam
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2
Back to the streets

Coronel knew an old man in Granada who said

(who often said):

“I wish I were a foreigner, so that I

Could go home

— Zero Hour, Ernesto Cardenal

I first came into contact with the work of poet Roberto Vargas a couple of years ago, when I saw his face, projected several stories tall, on a wall just off Valencia Street.

I was riding my bike to the Day of the Dead procession when I came across filmmaker Veronica Majano screening historical footage of the old Mission District on the wall of Dog Eared Books. The footage of Vargas was from a movie called Back to the Streets, and it showed a Latino hippie fest in Precita Park circa-1970. Long-haired Chicanos smoked weed and danced and played bongos on the grass while Vargas read from a stage. On today’s Valencia Street, Vargas was a ghost returned from a long-lost Mission, now standing twenty feet tall on the bookstore’s wall, reading a powerful poem that angrily denounced the SFPD for the mysterious death of a Mission Latino youth in police custody.

The film of Vargas was a beautiful snapshot of Latino youth culture in the neighborhood before gang violence and gentrification, like a Mission High School yearbook scene from an exhilarating era of Latino self-determination. In 1970, the Free Los Siete movement was feeding the community at a free breakfast program out of St. Peter’s Church on Alabama Street and had started free clinics and legal aid programs in the Mission. In the years to follow, the neighborhood would see the founding of the Mission Cultural Center and Galeria de la Raza and the inception of many of the neighborhood’s now world-famous mural projects.

Looking at the groovy scene in the park, it was hard to imagine that just a few short years later, Vargas and other kids from the Mission would be fighting alongside the Sandinistas in the jungles and mountains of Nicaragua. Yet the utopian promise of the era’s poetry, art, and youth culture in many ways culminated in the guerrilla war in which Vargas and other poets from San Francisco would fight and ultimately — in 1979 — help defeat the forces of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.

On Feb. 24, the day of his 70th birthday, Roberto Vargas makes a rare return to San Francisco to perform in a poetry event at the Mission Cultural Center in honor of that Nicaraguan solidarity movement of the 1970s. A video will be shown of footage from that struggle — classic scenes of Vargas and others taking over the Nicaraguan consulate in San Francisco; of the famed nightly candlelight vigils at 24th and Mission BART Plaza in support of the Sandinistas — and Vargas will be reunited on stage to read with old poet friends like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Alejandro Murguía, and Vargas’ old compañero from San Francisco State University’s Third World Liberation Front, actor Danny Glover. The event is not open to the public. Invitations have been given out and the small MCC theater’s 150 seats have already been filled. Yet the event provides an opportunity to publicly honor Roberto Vargas’ contributions to the Mission, and to reflect on the hopes and dreams of Mission past.

 

POETRY AND REVOLUTIONARY VISION

Poetry was a part of Vargas’ world from the beginning. Vargas was born in Nicaragua, but came to the United States when he was a small child. In his 1980 collection of poems Nicaragua Te Canto Besos, Balas, y Sueños, he writes of “living in an offbeat alley called Natoma Street (where I always imagined a lost Mayan city existed beneath the factories).” By the late 1950s, Vargas may have been the first Mission District Latino Beat poet. “I graduated from Mission High School in 1958 and used to hang out in North Beach, going around to see all the poets,” he says. “I met Allen Ginsberg when I was just a 19-year-old kid running around in North Beach. Diane di Prima, Bob Kaufman, Ted Berrigan — all the major poets knew me when I was in my teens.”

After a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps and an attempt at a boxing career that ended with a detached retina (an injury that also helped him avoid the Vietnam-era draft), Vargas went to SF State, where he was heavily active in the student strike of 1968-69. Students walked out of campus and battled riot police while standing on picket lines for five months to demand an ethnic studies program at the university.

In the spirit of the times, Vargas and other poets — including a young Mission Chicano named Alejandro Murguía — joined the Pocho-Che Collective to publish poetry by local Latino poets. The poets went to cut sugar cane in the Venceremos Brigade in Cuba. They put out small poetry chapbooks in the Mission, full of poems that linked Che Guevara’s call for Third World revolution with the experience of the Chicano barrios of the United States in a new vision tropical. In the era after the SF State strike, the city started funding community arts projects in the ghettos. Like all classic zines, the first copies of Pocho-Che were scammed, in this case late at night at Vargas’ new job in the Mission’s Neighborhood Arts Program. In the years to come, the group would eventually publish hardbound books by Vargas, Nina Serrano, and others.

Today, Murguía is a professor in the ethnic studies program at SF State that the strikers fought to originate. He is the author of the American Book Award-winning short story collection This War Called Love (2002) and the memoir The Medicine of Memory (2002). He remembers, “The poetry scene was incipient, very young, and the readings weren’t always very formal. Sometimes they were at community events or protest rallies. But we had contact with Latin America. We knew people who had been in Chile, like Dr. Fernando Alegría.”

Alegría was a poet who had been the cultural attaché to the U.S. under Allende in Washington. Vargas recalls, “Alegría had myself and some other young poets come to Chile and spend a month or two studying with [Pablo] Neruda. But, of course, our plans were canceled by the coup in Chile.”

Murguia remembers the September 1973 coup in Chile that overthrew the popularly elected Socialist democracy of Salvador Allende caused the young poets to organize rare formal readings at Glide Memorial Church in protest. “We had several big ones there,” he says. “There was a broad range of poets — Michael McClure, Fernando Alegría, Jack Hirschman, Bob Kaufman, Janice Mirikitami all read. There was a line going down the block to get in.”

In addition to their mentor, Alegría, Vargas, and Murguía also knew one of their heroes, the Nicaraguan Marxist poet and priest, Ernesto Cardenal. Cardenal lived under the Somoza dictatorship in a sort-of internal exile in a religious artist commune called Solentiname. Vargas wanted to bring Cardenal to read in the United States, but Somoza would not allow the poet, who was critical of the Nicaraguan dictator, to travel outside the country. Vargas went to his old pal Ginsberg for help.

“Because Allen knew me when I was a kid, he helped me with my organizing for Nicaragua,” says Vargas. “Allen was part of PEN, and in 1973 or ’74 he went to the State Department with other writers to put pressure on [Anastasio] Somoza. Eventually Somoza relented and we brought Cardenal to New York for a reading.”

The poetry of Cardenal was a north star to the young Mission poets. Cardenal’s epic 1957-60 masterwork Zero Hour is perhaps the literary foundation of revolution in Nicaragua. Influenced formally by Ezra Pound, Zero Hour weaves a sprawling history of Somozan oppression and U.S. intervention in Nicaragua together with lyrical imagery of Nicaragua’s natural beauty and wildlife. The poem creates a poignant sense that Nicaraguans, unable to enjoy and own these natural riches, had under Somoza become exiles within their own country.

Of particular interest to the young Mission poets, though, was Cardenal’s Homage to the American Indians (1969), a book-length meditation on the glory of Mayan and North American native civilizations. “For us, the work of Cardenal was very important,” says Murguía. “Homage to the American Indians is a continental vision of Native Americans — everything from the San Blas Indians of Panama to the Indians of Omaha to the Indians of Mexico City and Peru.”

In Homage, Cardenal evokes a lost Indian Utopia “so democratic that archaeologists know nothing about their rulers,” where “their pyramids were built with no forced labor, the peak of their civilization did not lead to an empire, and the word wall does not exist in their language.” He writes:

But how to write anew the hieroglyph,

How to paint the jaguar anew,

How to overthrow the tyrants?

How to build our tropical acropolis anew

Cardenal’s poems of this lost glorious past were to Vargas more pointedly a vision of a Latin American utopia that can also be regained in the future. In Cardenal’s work, says Vargas, “There is a longing for the simplicity of that civilization — the creativity, the innocence, the tribalism. Can we get it back after all the dictatorships, after all that capitalism has done? Cardenal showed us what we were, what we had, what we lost.”

Under Cardenal’s influence, the Mission poets turned seeing lost Mayan cities beneath the city’s factories into a literary movement. By 1975, members of Pocho-Che had started a magazine called El Tin Tan with Murguia as editor and Vargas as contributor. El Tin Tan presented a sweeping utopian vision of a borderless invisible Latino republic united culturally and politically under the sign of the palm tree. The poets situated the capital of this world right here in the Mission District.

“To tropicalize the Mission — to see it as a tropical pueblo — was a political act of defiance and self-determination,” says Murguía. “We were saying that we put this particular neighborhood — our pueblo, in a way — not in a context of North American history but in the context of Latin American history. The history of the eastern U.S. doesn’t affect California until 1848 when the first illegal immigrants came to California — not from the South, but from the East.

“El Tin Tan,” Murguía continues, “was probably the first magazine that was intercontinental in scope, a combination of politics and literature and art and different trends from the Mission to Mexico City to Argentina and everywhere in between.” He proudly recalls that it ran the first North American essays on Salvadoran poetry, and translated and printed a short story by Nelson Marra, a writer imprisoned by the Uruguayan dictatorship.

Yet for all its international perspective, El Tin Tan remained firmly rooted in the Mission. Columns by Nuyorican poet Victor Hernández Cruz and news of the assassination of Salvadoran guerrilla poet Roque Dalton ran side by side with the first comics by future Galeria de la Raza founder Rene Yáñez, all folded between wildly colorful cover art by neighborhood favorites like the famed Chicano artist Rupert Garcia and the muralist Mike Rios.

“The magazines were colorful — tropical — on the outside, but very political on the inside,” says Murguía. “That was a metaphor for our own work.”

By this time, Vargas had become an Associate Director at the SF Arts Commission. From within City Hall, he started to pump city arts money into the Mission, helping to fund projects like Mike Rios’ mural of the people holding BART on their backs at 24th and Mission BART Plaza and the Balmy Alley Mural Project — art that can still be seen in public today.

Once, Vargas commissioned a Chuy Campesano mural for the Bank of America building at 22nd and Mission. “I read a poem called “Boa” and had the crowd dancing and chanting, Es la Boa, Es la Boa,” says Vargas. “We were trying to say, ‘You made your millions off our farmers, but now you are on our turf in the Mission here in occupied Mexico. So we’ll put hieroglyphics on the walls of your bank like we used to do!’ Someone from the bank tried to take the mic from me and cops came and escorted us out.”

Vargas’s story of the mural’s dedication ceremony captures the bravado of the era. “It was a beautiful time, all of us young and thinking we were going to change the world. We wanted to change the world through culture.”

The poets organized the community to demand a neighborhood’s arts center, too. In 1977, the dream was realized when the City, with pressure from Vargas from within City Hall in the Arts Commission, purchased an old, five-floor furniture store at 24th and Mission to be made into the Mission Cultural Center. Murguia became the center’s first director.

The Mission utopia was becoming a reality for Vargas. In Nicaragua Te Canto, he wrote:

We used to drive

Our lowered down Plymouths and Chevys

On top of the breast of a mountain to

Make love and drink wine… Never

Knowing what was going to happen after

Mission High School

The Mission is now an expression of real culture, a many-faceted being … both plus and minus with the soul of a human rainbow…My people watching slides of Sandino and Nica history … White children wearing guarachas and afros trippin’ down the streets to party. Young Salvadoran poets discussing the assassination of Roque Dalton … The Mission is now an implosion/explosion of human color, of walls being painted by muralistas. There is a collective feeling of compassion for each other Nicas Blacks Chicanos Chilenos Oppressed Indios. The sense of collective survival, histories full of Somozas, Wounded Knees written on the walls.

In Zero Hour, Cardenal wrote of Nicaragua’s trees and birds and lakes, and their call to revolution, as seen from its mountains:

What’s that light way off there? Is it a star?

Its Sandino’s light shining in the black mountain

 

Vargas, the excited Mission kid, echoed in his work:

 

Tonight I am sitting on a mountain called Bernal Hill …

Tonight I see the flames of America Latina spreading from here …

 

STRUGGLE AND VICTORY — AND STRUGGLE

Perhaps inevitably, the Latin American Utopia Vargas and company created in poetry would seem so tantalizingly close to actualization that they would be forced to pick up the gun and fight for its existence.

When the enormous earthquake of 1972 left Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, in ruins, Nicaraguan refugees flocked to SF’s Mission District. Soon, San Francisco was home to more Nicaraguans than any place on Earth outside of Nicaragua. The family of Anastasio Somoza had controlled Nicaragua with brutal repression for generations. Somoza’s embezzling of relief funds for earthquake victims led to increased revolutionary activity against his rule. Taking their name from Augusto Sandino, a Nicaraguan revolutionary who led resistance against U.S. occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s, La Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) — or the Sandinistas, as they were popularly known — began guerrilla activities in late 1974 by taking government officials and Somoza relatives hostage in a raid on the house of the minister of agriculture. They received a $2 million ransom and had their communiqué printed in the national newspaper. Thus was born the Sandinista revolution.

In the Mission, Vargas, Murguía, and others were in touch with La Frente, and began organizing Sandinista solidarity rallies to coordinate with La Frente’s actions in Nicaragua. Out of offices in the Mission Cultural Center, along with El Tin Tan, the poets published a newspaper called La Gaceta about the situation in Nicaragua. The paper had a circulation of 5000 copies and was available for free all over the district. The sight of pro-Sandinista rallies at 24th and BART Plaza became so common that the plaza was popularly nicknamed Plaza Sandino.

Vargas organized takeovers of the Nicaraguan consulate in San Francisco and traveled the US, speaking about Nicaragua. Yet, soon, this kind of support didn’t seem like enough. In Cardenal’s poetry, victory was inevitable. Cardenal had written that Indian time was circular, that “history became prophecy,” and that therefore the “empire will always fall.” He had also written, “The hero is reborn when he dies. And the green grass is reborn from the ashes.” In poetry, Vargas and Murguia found inspiration to go to war.

In 1976 and 1977, Mission District residents, in solidarity with the FSLN, began quietly leaving San Francisco to join up with La Frente and pick up the gun in the Sandinista Revolution. Among them were Roberto Vargas and Alejandro Murguía.

“It was very romantic,” says Murguía. “If you grew up in the time after Che’s death, when you had Che’s figure calling for “1,2,3, many Vietnams” and a lot of different armed struggles going on all over Latin America, then it would seem logical, I think, if you were kind of young and crazy, that you would want to participate in some of these situations besides just doing solidarity work or organizing rallies. Also, the coup in Chile crushed our generation’s hope for electoral change in Latin America.”

Today, Murguía tries to situate the poets’ embrace of armed struggle within the spirit of those long ago times, but one senses that Vargas would not hesitate to join a guerrilla war tomorrow morning. When I ask him how the young poets made the leap from verse to bullets, he is incredulous at the question.

“We had to fight! There was no other way!” Vargas says. “We had the historical perspective and as a people we were worthless if we let that situation stand. We had our own books out. But are we really revolutionary poets if we just sit back and collect our laurels?”

Murguía compares the Sandinista war with the Spanish Civil War, when there were many international brigades in which writers had been involved. He suggests the poets went to war because they were poets. “If you knew the situation intimately in Nicaragua and you were reading Cardenal’s poems,” he says, “it was easy to see the connection between poets and political necessity.”

Vargas began organizing small, tight-knit cadres for battle in Nicaragua, recruiting his Sandinista guerrillas right off of the streets of the Mission. “I was secretive and I found them one by one,” he explains. “We were very clandestine and very compartmentalized. We never had more than a dozen people in our committee at once.”

Men who were menial laborers in San Francisco would one day be among the most respected heroes of the Nicaraguan Revolution. “When I recruited Chombo [Walter Ferretti], he was a cook at the Hyatt Regency,” says Vargas. “Later, Chombo would become a head of national security in Nicaragua. Another recruit was a former pilot, so I went to talk to him where he pumped gas at 21st and South Van Ness. That was Commandante Raúl Venerio. After the triumph of 1979, he would become the Chief of the Nicaraguan Air Force.”

When in San Francisco, Venerio later served as the editor of La Gaceta. In Nicaragua, the former gas station attendant became a real hero. “They got an airplane and attacked the National Palace,” says Vargas, laughing. “They hit it and split, and got away — real Mission boys!”

Before heading off to join La Frente, Vargas’ recruits would undergo a regimen of training and political education, an informal boot camp largely hidden in plain sight in the Bay Area.

“It was primitive,” remembers Murguía. “We didn’t really have someone with a military background to train us. We got just guns at pawn shops on Mission Street and practiced shooting at the firing range in Sharp Park down in Pacifica. We worked out with a friend who was a black belt in karate.”

Murguía says the most difficult part of training was the daily pre-dawn run of five laps around Bernal Hill. “We would run up the hill counter-clockwise — because that way is more difficult,” he says, “and we would wear these combat boots we bought at Leed’s Shoes on Mission.”

Besides being a part of physical conditioning, the run was a litmus test of the recruits’ commitment. “Doing activity like that is almost impossible if you’re not really psychologically into it,” says Murguía. “Try running five times around Bernal Hill! You start wondering after your third lap, ‘Goddamn! Why am I doing this?‘ Especially when no one is forcing you to do it!”

When I ask if the daily jog of 10 or 12 Latino men in combat boots on the hill at sunrise did not attract any, uh, attention, Murguía shrugs. “There were less people on the hill in those days,” he says. He recalls that the Mission cadres trained in complete anonymity: “We got money to rent planes and we took turns learning to fly the planes around the Bay Area. Nobody suspected anything because nobody knew anything about Nicaragua then.”

When I try to imagine a phalanx of Sandinistas at dawn on today’s Bernal Hill, surrounded by a crowd of early morning dog walkers, I can’t help but laugh. But the cadre’s training was deadly serious, and Murguía says its value was far more than psychological. “What I discovered when I went to the Southern Front was that our San Francisco cadres were some of the most advanced in the war,” he explains. “We understood the political situation and the tactic of insurrection and we had a minimum of physical conditioning. But some of these other cats, man! They literally just walked in off the street!”

For a time, Murguía remained the director of the Mission Cultural Center, while making regular trips to fight in Nicaragua. In 1977, Vargas resigned from the Arts Commission and went to battle for six or seven months. He and Murguía would spend the next couple of years rotating back and forth from the war front in Nicaragua to their solidarity work in the Mission. Murguía describes his entry into Nicaragua, his stay in various guerrilla safe houses in Costa Rica, and his experiences in the war in his 1991 American Book Award-winning fictionalized memoir, Southern Front.

Though Murguía says the actual military war on the ground was largely a stalemate between the Sandinistas and the Somozas’ National Guard, the Sandinistas were at last able to triumph through international pressure, strategic military victories, and a general strike. Somoza fled in July of 1979, and the Sandinistas entered Managua victorious on July 19 of the same year. Cardenal’s poem “Lights” describes the city as seen from a plane that brought the elder poet into a Managua free from the Somoza family’s rule for the first time in 43 years. In Managua, street graffiti declared, El triunfo de la revolución el triunfo de la poesía.

Vargas and Murguía, however, did not enter Managua with the victorious army. The Southern Front did not go to Managua, and Vargas had recently been sent back to the U.S., to coordinate a simultaneous take over of the Nicaraguan consulates in major U.S. cities from coast to coast to coincide with the victory in Managua.

Vargas’ work for Nicaragua did not end with victory. The Mission High kid now found himself serving in the new revolutionary government as cultural attaché to the United States. “I was jailed in the takeover of the DC consulate,” Vargas says, laughing, “but then I came back several months later to serve there!”

The voluble poet grows uncharacteristically silent when I ask him what it felt like to actually win the war.

“To win?,” he asks, pronouncing the word as if he was hearing it for the very first time. “Well … it’s like taking off a huge load, man. Like taking mountains off your back.” He is silent for a bit and then adds, “But what do you win? You win the right to continue the struggle.”

“To win was to reach the objective of getting rid of the Somoza family once and for all,” Vargas says. “But it was not really a win/lose situation.” Indeed, the Sandinistas inherited a country in ruins and in debt, with an estimated 50,000 war dead, and 600,000 homeless. Nicaragua’s left-wing powers would become an obsession for the Reagan Administration, who for the next ten years offered heavy financial assistance and training to the Contras, a coalition of pro-Somoza and anti-Sandinista guerrillas who fought to overthrow the revolutionary government. The U.S. strangled Nicaragua’s economy with a trade embargo like it employed against Cuba. In reality, for the Sandinistas, the war literally never ended.

“Somoza bombed everything in Nicaragua before he left the country. Reagan was spending — what? — $100 million a year annually against us at that time?” says Vargas. “They spent so much for a decade to destroy our little country.”

Nonetheless, poetry remained in the forefront of the Nicaraguan revolution. Cardenal was named Ministry of Culture, and he instituted poetry workshops across Nicaragua as part of a highly successful literacy campaign that raised literacy from just 12 percent to over 50 percent in the first 6 months of the revolutionary government. Soon, poetry was being written and taught in the tiniest villages and in the fields.

“We tried,” Vargas says bluntly. “We were doing very important land reform, incredible stuff for the economy. But it was dangerous to be a good example. We had the potential, but we had to hold off this enormous power [of the U.S.] for decades. Ultimately, we had to step back so they would not destroy Nicaragua.”

In 1990, Nicaraguan voters, weary of war and economic misery, chose to elect FSLN President Daniel Ortega’s U.S.-backed opponent, Violetta Chamorro, in the presidential election. “We lost the elections,” says Vargas. “But we had to allow them to demonstrate that we were not like Cuba or other revolutions. We lost beautiful young men and women to get that liberty.”

I ask Vargas to consider the successes and failures of the Nicaraguan revolution. He pauses and then seemingly changes the subject, excitedly telling me of the time he brought Ginsberg to meet the Sandinista soldiers. “Ginsberg was fascinated by the Sandinistas,” says Vargas. “And he wanted to see what he had been supporting on my behalf all these years. So I took him to the fighting along the Honduras border in 1984, during the Contra war.”

When Ginsberg went to the war zone, he brought not a rifle but a concertina. “I took him to meet these young soldiers in a trench. They see Allen with the concertina and they were like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ I told them he was a very famous poet. At once, they all started taking bits of paper out of their pockets that they had written poems on and started reading them to Allen. So there we are, with these soldiers in the trench with their rifles reading poetry, and Allen just wailing away on this concertina!”

I think of the strange road from Cardenal’s vision of lost Mayan cities to Vargas’ dreams of a Bernal Hill utopia to Ginsberg listening to soldiers’ poetry in a Nicaraguan trench, and I see that Vargas has answered my question with his own, the question asked by revolutionary poetry.

 

LOST CITIES, AND NEW ONES

The lost moment with Ginsberg in the trenches is like a missing chapter out of Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives. Indeed Vargas’ story in many ways embodies that of Bolaño’s exile poet generation, of which he wrote, “They dreamed of a Latin American paradise and died in a Latin American hell.” Except for one crucial difference: Vargas is very much alive and still fighting.

Today, Vargas still puts in a tireless 50-hour work week as a labor organizer for the American Federation of Teachers in San Antonio, TX. During our conversation, he excitedly tells me of an action he is organizing for next month, a march of teachers on the Texas capital to protest budget cuts to education. “I camp out in the teacher’s lounge and talk to them when they are on break,” he says. “I signed up 50 new members last week!”

As he nears 70, the poet shows no signs of slowing down. “I can’t afford to!” he says. “My youngest son is only 17. When I get finished putting him through college, then maybe I can take a break.”

But work seems like more than necessity to Vargas; political struggle is the central theme of his life’s work. “Work, work, work, Erick,” he tells me. “That is what we have to do. I could go back and forth about what went wrong in Nicaragua, but there is more work to do and I have to stay positive. It is all part of the process.”

When Vargas comes back to the Mission Cultural Center this week, he will literally return, full circle, to a building he helped build. “We had no money to hire laborers, so we’d be there with our kids every weekend, building the place,” he remembers.

One of those kids was Vargas’ son, Mission poet Ariel Vargas, who will read in public with his father for the first time this week. “Cardenal baptized him when Ernesto came to bless the new Mission Cultural Center in 1977,” Vargas says. “He had offered to baptize any children who also might be there. In the end, there was a line of families around the block on 24th Street who had brought their children for Ernesto Cardenal to baptize. Ariel had already been there every weekend on his hands and knees sanding those huge gymnasium-like floors with us. The Mission Cultural Center is still there and that is our monument.” As he discusses the Mission, Vargas forgets the problems of the Nicaraguan revolution and begins talking nonstop again at last. He comes back to the stories that started our conversation. “You know, I lived at 110 Mullen on Bernal Hill,” he says, his excitement gathering. “Mike Rios was my neighbor. Rene Yáñez lived on the block. So it was all happening right there! Carlos Santana lived down the block at around 180 Mullen or something. We used to hear him and his band jamming all the time. The Arts Commission had a stage truck and I’d take it out to Precita Park and put the stage down for Carlos to play on.” I think of Cardenal’s vision of the repeating cycle of time, the promise that the empire will always fall and the hero will always be reborn. Much in the Mission has changed. But Vargas, the old poet, still looks out from Bernal Hill today and sees lost cities beneath the surface.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Live Review: Prince at the Oracle Arena

John Elberling
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11
Live Review: Prince at the Oracle Arena

At this point in his 35-year career, Prince is perhaps justified in expecting us humanoids to happily accept anything handed down to us from Mount Paisley Park. But at the Oracle Arena in Oakland on Mon./21 — the first of three last-minute concerts planned for the Bay (Thursday’s show was announced Monday night, after more than 30,000 tickets were sold for the first two performances in less than 72 hours), the mood was a curious mixture of intense, polished skill tinged with unexpected insecurity: Prince, in full 52-years-young prodigy mode, broke from the action in one instance with a surprising, “Are y’all having fun?” And heated anticipation and adulation gave way to a brief outbreak of boos — the audience pressed hard to get into the show, and was loathe to give up its ground after the first encore, hollering with displeasure when the house lights came up.

It was a mixed bag, albeit an entertaining and fascinating one, from an entertainer who can still pull out the stops, fingering his fretboard with one hand while slicking back his short crop with the other. A playful Prince alternately grinned at his band, placated the fans with hits, and happily jammed at length on one of his many Telecaster-style guitars, pacing himself all the while with breaks featuring guest Sheila E. and his backup vocalists. His impassioned take on “Cool,” the song he bestowed on the Time back in 1981, said it all: Prince was out to reestablish his own ageless brand of awesome, and have fun doing it. 

Opening the show was white zoot-suited Oakland native and psychedelic funk-rock pater familias Larry Graham, the bassist who broke ground and moved major booty with his slapping technique as part of Sly and the Family Stone. Fronting his band, Graham Central Station, Drake’s uncle got the audience primed with a sing-along to his 1980 slow-dance hit “One in a Million You,” before immediately ripping into a jaw-dropping bass demo that had him scraping his strings against a mic stand and probing them with his teeth — an exhibition that would have had Jimi Hendrix pondering the possibilities of the low end. The kicker: a lengthy Sly and the Family Stone medley, including a moving “Family Affair,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” and “Dance to the Music,” with a finale that had Prince rising up from the bowels of the glyph-shaped stage, clad in fuzzy après-ski boots, to join Graham and crew for “Everyday People” and a palpably joyful “I Want to Take You Higher” that inspired everyone onstage — and a good batch of the crowd — to leap in unison.

The psych-funk-rock lineage clearly established, Prince remained the main Event-with-a-capital-E. The artist presently known as Prince is still an eerily, extraterrestrially-gifted performer, capable of shredding in hair-band-esque Eddie Van Halen mode, then tossing his leopard-pick-guarded guitar off the stage, and finally breaking into a fluid yet precisely controlled slew of popping, locking contortions in what looked to be flared satin PJs. A big-screen closeup of his posterior moving ever-so-minutely in time to the beat captured the detail with hilarious exactitude.

I had to laugh, marveling at the calculated, smooth perfection of the maestro’s moves, though Prince’s absolute, practiced fluency in so many modes of American music — rock tear-throughs, blues jams, soul breakdowns, pop sing-alongs, R&B balladry, jazz interludes and conga workouts with Sheila E. by his side — is seriously hard to question, and in keeping with the title of this tour, “Welcome 2 America.” This not-of-this-earth visitor has conquered the musical languages of the land, turning the tables on the natives.

Still, nothin’ compares 2 love, and Prince was out to please Monday — sprinkling his set with hits like “Raspberry Beret,” “Controversy,” and “Kiss” and unleashing a violet confetti downpour with “Purple Rain” — while seemingly just as eager to embrace the contributions of Carlos Santana, who was lent the Princely guitar; Bay native Sheila E., who sang “The Glamorous Life” to loud home-girl cheers; and backup vocalist Shelby Johnson, who memorably emoted through “Misty Blue,” as Prince playfully pulled Larry Graham up to enact a faux-romantic reunion.

The guest appearances may not have matched the celebrity drive-bys at his recent NYC dates — those ranged from Alicia Keys and Questlove to Cornel West and Kim Kardashian (who got kicked off stage for less-than-stellar dancing) — and new twirlers the Twinz weren’t in the house to add considerable sex appeal, but I, for one, left sated after a two-hour performance that included an hour-long encores. Prince’s displays of slink-worthy lewdness have been replaced by exhibitions of guitar hero virtuosity — “I don’t know how you feel, but I’ve missed you something horrible,” the gold-satin-draped artist cooed to us over a hot gold guitar toward the end of the show — but that made it no less a close encounter of the Princely kind.

PRINCE
With Larry Graham
Wed./23 and Thurs./24, 7:30 p.m., $71.50-$238
Oracle Arena
7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl.
www.livenation.com

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

THEATER

ONGOING

The Dog and Pony Show The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Sun/27. No horses in this show, actually, and no people either, just dogs. That’s the claim anyway. But while she manages to largely steer clear of ponies, in her new solo show, Michigan-based performance artist and NEA Four alum Holly Hughes ultimately segues not so subtly from her lifelong obsession with dogs to the life lessons we might glean from them. Treats along the way can take the form of amusing personal observations about Dorothy and Toto’s misadventure in the Wizard of Oz, a clip of the Obamas wagging the White House dog on Barbara Walters, or Hughes and her partner of 16 years at home in cozy domesticity—just two women, nine animals, and one sectional sofa. Her own family’s love for animals developed in the absence of much love for anyone else, Hughes tells us. Fortunately her monologue, directed by Dan Hurlin, resists being a bummer thanks to Hughes’ indomitable good nature. It’s her very cute and talented Norfolk terrier who steals the show, however, via a video segment at a Michigan dog competition. Maybe that’s as it should be in this unabashed bow to the bowwow. (Avila)

*Farragut North NOHSpace, 2840 Mariposa. www.opentabproductions.com. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 5. Former Howard Dean speechwriter Beau Willimon’s formulaic but solidly crafted 2008 play about backroom politics and the seamy side of what’s euphemistically called the American democratic process seems like it’d make a good George Clooney movie. George Clooney thought so too. He’s making it now under the title The Ides of March. You can see it sooner and without all those goddamn movie stars in this low-budget, high-octane staging by OpenTab Productions (Fishing). Stephen (Ben Euphrat) is a 25-year-old wiz of a press secretary for a “maverick” governor heading into a major primary battle on the road to the White House. But an unexpected phone call leads “idealistic” power-lover Stephen into temptation, even as it reveals the real dynamics of the electoral system he thought he’d mastered. A battle for career survival ensues with his former boss (Alex Plant), in which loyalty is a password and decency the first sandbag to drop. Opening night had one or two timing issues and some actors lost in shadow, but director Dave Sikula builds the action well and gets strong performances from an uneven but generally winning cast. Particularly nice work comes from a convincingly unraveling Euphant, a coolly compassionate Carla Pauli (as precocious intern–turned–unwitting pawn), and the formidable Nathan Tucker as Stephen’s slickly conniving counterpart and Mephistopheles of the moment.

*The Last Night of the Barbary Coast SOMArts,934 Brannan; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5 and 9pm. Through Sat/26. A fresh theatrical breeze blows in from the rank and churlish alleyways of Gold Rush San Francisco’s notorious red light district in writer/director Jessa Brie Berkner and Idora Park Theatre Company’s beautifully detailed musical tale. Set on and around a gorgeous rotating roulette-wheel stage (crafted by Simon Cheffins and Jack Ruszel, and hauntingly illuminated by lighting designer Zoltan DeWitt), Last Night of the Barbary Coast tells the story of a young Midwestern woman (Tristan Cunningham) who joins a traveling troupe of vaudevillians, searching for an unknown freedom in the chaotic landscape of the Old West as a performer and prostitute. A set of 49er archetypes (smartly outfitted by costumer Lucid Dawn) overflow the ample SOMArts stage with the all the flouncing brawn, sashaying bodices and boozy bluster of a saloon floorshow, alongside live musical accompaniment from vocalist-instrumentalist Freddi Price’s lush and moody nine-piece Alchemical Orchestra. Told in snatches of dialogue, song and pantomime (smooth choreography by Ena Dallas), Berkner weaves an inspired narrative from personal family legend and characters derived from the tarot deck’s Major Arcana. The result is a dynamically staged, alternately somber and spirited exploration of the precarious freedom possible in life and art. (Avila)

Party of 2 – The New Mating Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $27-29. Sun, 3pm. Open-ended. A musical about relationships by Shopping! The Musical author Morris Bobrow.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through April 9. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Treefall New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. $24-40. Call for dates and times. Through Sun/27. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a tale of erotic attraction by Henry Murray.

What We’re Up Against Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, bldg D; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2:30 and 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm; Tues, 7pm. Through March 6. Following the popularity of Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius in 2009, Magic Theatre brings the New York playwright back for the world premiere of a decidedly flimsy comedy about sexual discrimination at a busy architecture firm. Eliza (Sarah Nealis) is the bright and brash new employee who finds herself shut out by an old boys network. Sodden boss Stu (Warren David Keith) resents her heartily for her competence and ambition, while ass-kissing power-jockey Weber (James Wagner) uses the leverage for all its worth. Gender solidarity with sole (but soulless) sister Janice (Pamela Gaye Walker) doesn’t get Eliza very far either. One guy at the firm, Ben (Rod Gnapp), alone knows better (among what amounts to an unbelievably inept staff). Eliza, meanwhile, crafts a form of revenge from her well-guarded solution to the otherwise stymieing “duct problem” in the plans for a new mall, a major account hitting the skids. Ben’s obsession with ducts is something of a key joke here, which ends up being characteristic of a play that stretches its not-very-new conceits thinly over two acts. The glass ceiling, ducts and all, is a bit too transparent in this bloodless production (helmed by artistic director Loretta Greco), leaving precious little to wonder or worry about. (Avila)

 

BAY AREA

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs Berkeley Rep, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Call for dates and times. Through Sun/27. In his latest monologue (playing in repertory with another, The Last Cargo Cult), Mike Daisey explores the deeper implications of his own, and our, obsession with technology through a parallel look at the career of Apple’s megalomaniacal founder, and Daisey’s own reconnaissance trip to Apple’s manufacturing center in southern China. The story is well-crafted, Daisey’s delivery dependably expert—even if his humor occasionally strays into the more obvious, belabored humor of the office water-cooler wag—and the real-world vision of hell he paints in a behemoth suicide-ridden factory called Foxconn (apt if understated name there) all too salient. But the story gives us back as revelation what we already know, surely, about the horrifying labor system behind our various electronic gizmos and much else besides. It’s a kind of liberal conceit to play along with the indignation and head back out into the world fully willing to do battle against corporate capital, or at least sign an online petition. As a performer, meanwhile, Daisey has not budged from the formula he originally borrowed from Spalding Gray but made it even more his own. Indeed, to call his approach “indebted” to Gray is like saying the black market iPhone knock-offs he describes are merely an homage to Apple’s product. Beside his professed love for the latest high tech wizardry comes this uncanny attachment to the utterly low-tech, analog-monologue style of the late master.

Collapse Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through March 6. Aurora Theatre presents a comedy by Allison Moore.

Seagull Wed, 7:30pm, Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm; Tues, 8pm. Through Sun/27. Marin Theatre Company presents a new translation of Chekhov’s great play from former Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director Libby Appel. The translation feels crisp and lucid, but artistic director Jasson Minadakis’s production remains fairly unmoving despite some effective moments among a skilled cast, including the dependably charismatic Howard Swain (as the doctor). The surprising lack of connection or spark between the principal characters—especially the jaded writer (Craig Marker) and the infatuated, soon-to-be-ruined Masha (an otherwise vivacious Liz Sklar)—results in a dutiful production without that pent-up Chekhovian atmosphere that should envelop and follow you for hours if not days to come. (Avila)

World’s Funniest Bubble Show The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through April 3. The Amazing Bubble Man extends the bubble-making celebration.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BAY AREA

Marga’s Funny Mondays The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Mon/28, 8pm. $10. Marga Gomez hosts a Monday night comedy series.

 

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

 

“My girlfriend is a hacker”: Inside the EFF party

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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2

On our way to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s 21st Birthday party, my programmer friend explained to me why, if it weren’t for the work of the good folks over at EFF, neither eBay nor WikiLeaks could do their thing.

See, it’s all about encryption, a topic my friend is slightly obsessed with. It used to be illegal for anyone but the government to send encrypted information through electronic channels, he explained, using technology that’s now commonplace and used in any website that requires a log in. In the 1990s, the EFF came along with a lawsuit to open up the ability to offer a secure transfer of information to the masses. The tech law firm prevailed, and soon it became possible to securely log in to a website and enter your credit card information without fear that it would be intercepted. Hence, the trail was blazed for online shopping.

From minds far more subversive than that of Meg Whitman sprang a very different use of the technology. Utilizing encryption software, WikiLeaks designed a way for whistleblowers to securely submit classified documents to an online repository.

That’s just one of many accomplishments that EFF could point to at its Feb. 16 celebration. A nonprofit, EFF “fights for freedom primarily in the courts,” according to its website, taking on the US government and major corporations on issues that threaten Internet freedom and digital rights. EFF boasts more than 61,000 contacts through its Action Center, which it uses to beat back bad legislation and raise awareness.

Just in the last few weeks, EFF has taken on the FBI over its plan to expand federal surveillance laws, weighed in on net neutrality, fended off against attacks from Congress over its aggressive protection of online privacy, and spearheaded a program that allows web users to surf secure all the time.

The EFF staged its 21st bash at Bricks and Mortar Media (BAMM.tv), a “content creation factory” in SoMa.

The place was adorned with festive, futuristic hacker art, from a flat-screen monitor displaying a word cloud, to a stage setup featuring an aerial array of computer bits and video game controllers.

One room featured a live video feed projected onto the wall with a strobe-light effect, and partygoers delighted in throwing kung-fu kicks in front of it and watching themselves flicker on screen like action figures seconds later.

In true tech-pioneer fashion, the night featured live nerdcore performances. What’s nerdcore? Let me put it this way. When the star of Dual Core shouts into the mic, “Throw your hands in the air if you’ve got mad skills,” the people he’s addressing really do have mad skills – like programming, web design, developing apps for mobile devices, managing vast databases, creating video games, and yes, even hacking. One of Dual Core’s raps included the line, “My girlfriend is a hacker.” He’s clearly smitten.

Several chiptune artists also performed, including Crashfaster  — “a chip musician, retro remixer, and low-bit concert promoter whose outreach has galvanized the Bay Area’s vibrant chiptune community,” according to EFF – and Trash80, “the eminent chip musician behind ArduinoBoy — software that helps integrate the Nintendo Game Boy into any existing electronic music arsenal.”

I had the honor of chatting with Doctor Popular, described on EFF’s site as a “professional yo-yoer, nerdcore artist, and innovator.” The good doctor makes music using only an iPhone, iPad, and some wires. He told me he writes songs using a handful of apps while riding CalTrain from San Francisco to San Mateo for his day job at a company that makes video games.

And oh, the nerdy crowd! The knowing glint in their eyes, those people who really understand how to manipulate technology. They program software, develop apps, eat, sleep and breathe online communication, whip out iPhones and Droid phones and talk about video games, latest versions of browsers and operating systems, and other matters that this reporter could not quite comprehend, because they were using acronyms.

They were gracious. “Sorry,” some one said to me after launching into a paragraph of alphabet-soup gibberish to my programmer friend. “Sometimes I forget, and then I notice people’s eyes glazing over.”

And yet, when you hang out with hardcore nerdcore fans, you learn the most fascinating things. For example, how when you begin typing “Torrent” into a Google search engine, the word “torrent” will not show up in the automatic feed that suggests search terms. Why? Well, there are theories.

The children

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
The children

Robert Moses may not know it, but he is a pied piper. The ability to hold the attention of 200 hormone-packed middle school students at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday in early February must qualify as some kind of superhuman ability.

But Moses, choreographer and artistic director of Robert Moses’ Kin, defers to his own pied piper, the one on stage who immortalized the German city of Hamelin. As the fabled character, Dexandro “D” Montalvo twitches, churns, and first commands the rats; then, with beckoning index fingers, he mesmerizes the “children” to follow him who knows where.

The Sunset District students may not have known the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who was cheated out of his justly earned wages and took awesome revenge. But they surely recognized the popping moves Montalvo so skillfully threaded into his character. One way or another, the kids were hooked. For close to an hour, they sat quietly and took in what Moses and his dancers had to show them from their upcoming world premiere, Fable and Faith.

As a kid, I was terrified by the Pied Piper story. No good grades or cleverness — usually assigned to boys anyway in fairy tales — were going to get me out of this scenario. No prince was coming, and there was no happy ending. I was going to be locked in that mountain. The adults had royally messed up. My mother assured me that “it’s just a story.” Well, mom, you were wrong.

Myths, fables, and fairy tales tell us about the way the world works. “Actions”, Moses explains after the performance, “have consequences. The stories talk about life, adversity and perseverance through hard times.” He admits that some of them can be problematic. Stepmothers, for instance, get a “major bum rap.”

Perhaps that’s what initially drew Moses to last year’s The Cinderella Project, which will be performed with the new Fable and Faith before going on tour later in the spring. Cinderella Project, his first collaboration with writer/actor Anne Galjour, who also wrote and performs the text for Fable and Faith, was informed by interviews with contemporary constructed families rooted in love, not blood. “Still, tough as it was,” Moses notes, “Cinderella stuck to who she was and it turned out alright.”

In the 1950s, there was a move underfoot to clean up some of these old tales; the thinking was that children’s psyches would be damaged by so much darkness and uncertainty. Fortunately, the stories have survived, though it’s good to know that Rapunzel no longer gets locked up in the tower because she was pregnant — it was just the evil deed of a jealous witch.

Moses takes a common sense, “age-appropriate” approach when he reads to his own two children, ages five and three. It was this fatherly task of sharing an imaginary world — everything from Dr. Seuss and the Brothers Grimm to African American folktales and Greek mythology — that got him to think about the contemporary resonance of some of these once-upon-a-time tales.

“Think of it,” he says. “Children are being abducted. Or today we talk about ‘the wolf at the door.’ ” In Fable and Faith, the wolf (Montalvo) goes to see a psychiatrist (Katherine Wells) to find out why he is behaving the way he does. The back-and-forth exchange in words and movement ends on a note of real poignancy.

Formally, Moses and Galjour decided on a structure “in which stories clash into each other.” The setting, they felt, had to be a village. “It’s where life happens,” Moses says. Elaine Buckholtz, who started lighting with Contraband and who has become a magician of visual installation, will do the honors on Fable and Faith. To keep a child’s presence at the forefront of these adult dances, Moses is partnering with the San Francisco Boys Chorus. They will perform, among other selections, the “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem.

As the students were leaving for their classes, a teacher turned to me and whispered, “We have been very lucky this morning.”

FABLE AND FAITH

Fri.18-Sun./20, 2 p.m.; $25–$35

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Novellus Theater

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2700

www.ybca.org

Live Shots: 7th Annual Black Choreographers Festival, ODC Theater, 02/16/2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3

I believe it’s almost everyone’s dream to be able to fly and for some, it is a reality. I stopped by ODC Theater this week to check out a final rehearsal of a dance piece choreographed by Raissa Simpson and actually got to watch her fly across the stage. OK, she was actually attached to cables, but there was still quite a bit of airborne action going on, and to be honest, it made me a little jealous.


This weekend, ODC is hosting the Black Choreographers Festival, which brings together a smorgasbord of dance talent, in celebration of African and African-American traditions and culture. And, from what I saw during rehearsal, it’s bound to be a vibrant and exciting show. There was not only an element of theater and drama in Simpson’s piece, but also an awesome hot pink prom dress that one of the dancers was sporting. So go get your fill of perfect pirouettes and fabulous flexion, You won’t regret a minute of it.

7th Annual Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now
Feb. 17-19, 8pm and Feb. 20, 7pm
$10-$20
ODC
351 Shotwell, SF.
www.odcdance.org/performance.php?param=48

 

Eye dance: Eonnagata and the heroics of being seen

John Elberling
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Eye dance: Eonnagata and the heroics of being seen

Consider the need to be seen. The dance world is consumed by this challenge. Dancers repeatedly put ourselves in situations where we have optimal visibility via auditions, performances, and even day-to-day classes. Choreographers market themselves to be presented through grants and venues. But is this need, this desire to interest and engage and ultimately compel people to watch us, heroic, or simply pathetic? Suppose for a second not the plight of a common dancer trying to be seen, but of a very high profile dancer or choreographer, who for better or worse is seen, has been seen, and who people clamor to see. Would the work err more toward heroic because it is practically their duty to be seen?

On February 9-10, Cal Performances presented Eonnagata, a dance-theater work created and performed by Sylvie Guillem, Russell Maliphant, and Robert Lepage. Dancers everywhere are familiar with legendary French ballerina Guillem, and her focus of-late on the contemporary realm has turned many a classicist onto different kinds of dance. French-Canadian Lepage is a playwright, actor, film director, and stage director known for his versatility in nearly every form of theater craft. Maliphant is a British choreographer noted for merging ballet with contact improvisation, yoga, and martial arts. Together, with lighting designed by Michael Hulls, and costumes designed by the celebrated Alexander McQueen, they collaborated to create Eonnagata, a fusion of Japanese Kabuki theater, martial arts, and contemporary dance chronicling the life of Charles de Beaumont, Chevalier d’ Éon, a French diplomat and spy of the 17th century known for cross-dressing tendencies that eventually led to his gender being completely obscured.

While I enjoyed Eonnagata tremendously, for me the larger question beyond whether or not the piece was likeable was what the piece aimed to accomplish artistically. Eonnagata sought to ignite a discussion on gender while also capturing the essence of a truly eccentric life. Engaging in that particular work allowed Guillem, Lepage and Maliphant to send a message through their high profile status that this was the kind of work important to them. Is that where dance bridges from pathetic to heroic, when the point is no longer simply to be seen but to actually say something as well?

The high status of the artists involved in Eonnagata lent an air of legitimacy to the work and an abundance of resources were made available to them that they might not have enjoyed if they were under the popular radar. However, when I ask myself if Eonnagata would still have been heroic, or for that matter even worthwhile, had they not been superstars, the answer is a resounding yes. So it is not the product or the acclaim but the endeavor itself that is heroic.

But back to the need to be seen: if a dance is not seen is it still worthwhile? There’s a part of me that says yes. Had Guillem, Maliphant, and Lepage come together in a studio every day for a year and never shown anyone results, the effort would still have been a valid endeavor, seeing as most artistic processes don’t use all of the choreography generated in the final performance product. But at the same time, there is a sense of responsibility, especially for dance celebrities, to share their art because they can reach a larger audience and thus expose dance to people who might not otherwise seek it out. Perhaps with certain status one goes from needing to be seen to being obligated to be seen.

As a dancer, I feel an immense need to be seen. However, it is not just a narcissistic hope for admiration, but also a hope that I may articulate something meaningful. After all, I still need to see dance as well.

Life after death

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Life after death

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM “I like telling the story of life better than I do living it,” Spalding Gray explains in Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine, a tribute to the late performer that cobbles together interviews and scenes from Gray’s trademark autobiographical monologues (including the award-winning Swimming to Cambodia, made into a film in 1987). Without using a narrator or any other talking heads, Everything emerges a poignant portrait — and a masterful work of editing, considering the man left hours and hours of storytelling behind.

“Behind,” that is, when he committed suicide in 2004. Everything doesn’t mention Gray’s death, but it looms over the whole movie, particularly since Gray — whose mother killed herself in 1967 — was fascinated by mortality. It’s hard to accuse Soderbergh of deliberately culling foreboding clips, since death (Gray’s mother’s, and fantasies about his own demise) was a theme the performer revisited obsessively.

That’s not to say he was totally without joy. He lights up when discussing his love of acting, sparked early in life and encouraged by a teacher who remarked on “Spud’s” excellent timing. Though he mostly kept to the stage (“I’m an inverted method actor. I was using myself to play myself. I was playing with myself!”), he did appear in several films — he met Soderbergh when the director cast him as a (suicidal) character in 1993’s King of the Hill; Soderbergh also directed the film version of performance piece Gray’s Anatomy (1996). The birth of Gray’s first child — a typically overwrought life experience since his baby mama wasn’t his long-term partner, but a woman he’d been having an affair with — turned the self-absorbed Gray on his head. He married his son’s mother and built a life with her, her daughter from a previous relationship, their first son, and their soon-to-arrive second son.

Though Gray did most of his monologues seated behind a desk, there’s a performance excerpt in Everything where he recreates his family having a spontaneous dance party to Chumbawumba’s “Tub Thumper.” It’s a transcendently playful moment, and the audience erupts into stunned applause when a grinning Gray shuffles back behind his desk.

But as Gray fans know, the famously morbid storyteller wasn’t demon-free for long: a gruesome 2001 car accident while vacationing in Ireland left him physically mangled and mentally shaken. Three years later, he took his fateful last trip on the Staten Island Ferry. With the blessing of Gray’s widow, Soderbergh took on the mighty task of telling his friend’s life story; like Gray, Everything‘s a downer, but moving, and not without thought-provoking after effects. 

AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE opens Fri/18 at the Sundance Kabuki.

Empress yourself

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Empress yourself

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO It certainly has not escaped my attention that this whole amazing Arab youth uprising thing is taking place during Fashion Week. It’s a mitzvah! But while Hunky Beau and I have been busily rooting through Reuters for inspiring pics of various hipster Egyptsters and Tunisians turnin’ in out (or, conversely, signs of any uprising under the Manhattan tents — watch out for Joseph Altuzarra, y’all), I’ve tried to have more than fast-forward fashionistas in my forethoughts and yummy Yemenis on the Bahrain.

Specifically: gay democracy. It’s time once again for an annual event that still remains charmingly underground here, yet has a heavy impact on San Francisco’s charitable community and global gay image. For serious, the wigs alone weigh like 20 pounds. Yes, it’s time to elect a new Empress of San Francisco — and this year the candidates have come out fighting, but graciously.

If you’re unfamiliar with our nearly 50-year-old Imperial Court system, which originally took ironic inspiration from beloved-yet-deranged San Francisco scallywag Joshua Norton, who in 1859 declared himself Emperor of the United States — and which first found full flower in 1965 with majestic Absolute Empress Jose Sarria I, The Widow Norton, while later helping to lead the community through gay liberation and the AIDS crisis — then hie thee ho to the newly revamped www.imperialcouncilsf.org website for a highball full of essential history.

Empress 2011 will wholly dedicate the next year of her life raising tens of thousands of dollars for good causes through nightlife affairs and traveling to regally represent our fair burg at Imperial Courts around the world. And this year’s candidates make for a feisty ballot: Saybeline, glamorous longtime luminary of the LGBT fundraising scene, and rousing dark horse Monistat, the party promoter voted Best Drag Queen in the Guardian’s Best of the Bay poll.

If elected, the youthful Monistat promises to tap her extensive database of “promoters, DJs, performance artists, and venues” to “refresh” the institution. She also invokes her considerable party stamina, promising to give us night after night (after night) of fundraising in face.

Saybeline vows to throw “open the doors to younger members of our community” and to “engage and encourage them” to become more involved in community service. She puts forth her “two decades of experience in volunteering and organizing fundraising events” as one of the main reasons to grant her the crown.

The crown is stunning, btw.

There are two great guys running for emperor as well, Frankie Fernandez and Ray MacKenzie, and voting should be hot and heavy. Everyone 21+ who lives in San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo is welcome to vote. So hit the polls and enjoy our freedoms while we wait for that exhilarating youth uprising to finally spread to Iraq! Oh wait …

SAN FRANCISCO EMPRESS 2011 VOTING DAY Sat/19, free. Noon–7 p.m. at Castro Muni Station, Castro and Market, and 11 a.m.–6 p.m. at Project Open Hand, 730 Polk, SF. www.imperialcouncilsf.org

>>Read Marke B.’s full interviews with the Empress 2011 candidates here

 

SLUMPFEST

“Slumps” = Cali-meets-Detroit (a.k.a. Calitroit) hip-hop beats. And this massive charitable beat battle, featuring two dozen future underground hitmakers, will surely tease out more than a few sublime J. Dilla apostles.

Fri/18, 9 a.m., $10 or $7 with can of food. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

 

HOTTUB

Gotta give shouties to my fave Oakland female electro-hop terrors, rapping us up in cataclysmic Four Loko bliss. They’ll demolish the stage with the Tenderlions, Kool Karlo, and Frite Nite DJs.

Fri/18, 10 p.m.–3 a.m., $5 before 11 p.m., $10 after. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

The shakes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
The shakes

THEATER When your free-form sister (Amy Resnick) arrives from Los Angeles with a yoga mat, but without a job, a place to go, a return ticket, or a care in the world—except for an unopened package some guy named Bulldog asked her to hand off when she got to Minneapolis — it’s unsettling. What’s even shakier, though, is such a visit combined with a marriage teetering on the brink, a job or two in the balance, and a worldwide economic depression. It’s then that foundations critically loosen, supports buckle, things suddenly fall apart. But is it all just Rumsfeldian “stuff” happening, or some human-made flaw in the system?

That’s a question lurking teasingly, even frustratingly at the heart of Allison Moore’s Collapse, an inconsistent but often bright new comedy now enjoying a sure and high-spirited production under director Jessica Heidt at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre. And by heart we mean the play’s operative real-life metaphor: the deadly Aug. 1, 2007 collapse of a Minneapolis bridge. The piece of Interstate 35W that plunged into the Mississippi River that day was in heavy and regular use, a standard steel-truss arch bridge whose soundness no one would have thought to question. A broken stretch of it appears here as the impressive principal feature in Melpomene Katakalos’ scenic design, filling the length and height of the back of the stage and looming over the action throughout.

Officials pronounced the likely cause of the accident a design flaw, coupled by extra weight. That’s a description that could fit the whole socioeconomic system girding the play’s action and themes. Set in 2009 against the literal backdrop of the bridge and the figurative one of the current economic crisis, nothing is as secure as it once seemed in the staunchly middle-class home of attorney Hannah (Carrie Paff) and her husband David (Gabriel Marin). David, we learn, has not been going to work much and has become a queasy, quasi-alcoholic—more of a poser than anything else, since he secretly drops most of his beer on the house plant, but anything to justify his ungovernable fear since miraculously surviving the bridge collapse in 2007.

As flaky sis Susan (played with a hilariously reckless, chirpy energy by Resnick) arrives from LaLa Land with her disturbingly large suitcase, Hannah has been concentrating the couple’s energies on having a child. A professional and beautiful woman used to getting her way and now (in Paff’s nicely nuanced performance) increasingly at a loss as things slip out of her grasp, Hannah pushes the baby idea to erase another recent, related tragedy, even as her position at the firm looks precarious.

She also pushes David (played by Marin with a comically anxious, hangdog moodiness) toward AA. Somehow she ends up going instead, on his behalf, as David decides to deliver the shady mystery package himself. When in the hallway Hannah meets a charismatic black man named Ted (a charmingly imposing Aldo Billingslea) — nickname, Bulldog — an affair looks in the offing, and a crime caper, to boot.

Heidt’s strong cast transforms the unmoored quality among these four characters into some good laughs. But Moore’s writing is up and down. The dialogue is crisp at times, labored at others. Moreover, the characters can come too laden with undeveloped contradictions. Most unsettling is the sudden shift in the final scene, which forgoes comedy for a forced sincerity that brushes any larger political point under the condo rug. When an emotional David asks his wife, “How do we keep collapsing?,” her response tolls an unsatisfying reaffirmation of marital harmony: “Maybe we can’t. Maybe we can just figure out how to fall together.”

While set amid an ongoing social crisis, Collapse edges away from that terrain as if from a dizzying height and retreats into personalizing discourse about romantic love and middle-class domesticity. That’s the kind of turn that leads from the potentially subversive back toward the status quo. 

COLLAPSE

Through March 6; $34–$55

Aurora Theatre

2081 Addison, Berk.

(510) 843-4822

www.auroratheatre.org

 

Send in the clowns

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Send in the clowns

arts@sfbg.com

STAGE/PUPPETRY It’s been more than 10 years since Brooklyn-based Kevin Augustine brought his life-sized puppets and existential worldview to the Bay Area, and during that time he’s not been idle. Augustine’s last full-length show, 2008’s Bride, a charged exploration of theism, garnered much critical acclaim as well as an UNIMA-USA Citation of Excellence in Puppetry — the profession’s highest honor.

Just one month after Bride‘s successful New York City run, Augustine was already nurturing the delicate sprouts of the show that has become Hobo Grunt Cycle. After briefly considering a Civil War theme, Augustine expanded his vision to encompass the broader topics of modern warfare: weapons technology, the psychological effects of war, the physical effects of violence. He began to direct his creative energies toward answering a question he felt central to the topic: What progress have we made?

“The whole idea of warfare, of training ourselves to kill other human beings, seems so archaic,” he explains over the phone.

Part of Augustine’s brainstorming process includes sketching possible characters. One of his images, a soldier in fatigues with the face of a world-weary clown, helped spark his conviction that the hierarchies between the world of the soldiers and the world of the clowns were very similar. “There are always the clowns who get hit in the face with the pie,” he points out. Drawing from the comparison between low-caste clowns getting knocked around by their “superiors” and low-ranking Dogfaces getting shafted on the battlefield by theirs, Augustine started to craft Hobo Grunt Cycle‘s narrative around a hobo clown (played by himself), while adding a parallel narrative that involves war veterans (played by puppets).

The use of tramps and clowns as protagonists is not exactly new territory for Augustine — his previous productions Big Top Machine and Once Vaudeville feature one or the other. Both can be likened to the classic archetype of the fool or trickster, which makes them perfect for illustrating uncomfortable human truths via puppetry. What’s different for Augustine as a playwright is that most of Hobo Grunt Cycle is performed in silence, a nod to the tradition of pantomiming tramp-clowns such as Emmett “Weary Willie” Kelly, as well as a symbolic comment on the blanket secrecy that shrouds many veterans of conflict during and after their tours of duty. When one soldier character is finally allowed some exposition, Augustine is representing vets such as the “Winter Soldiers,” who have been able to break this silence and speak out about their experiences.

More than just the rich, dark nuances of Augustine’s playwriting set Lone Wolf Tribe apart. The puppets themselves are incredibly distinctive. Trained in theatre and — briefly — sculpture, Augustine had no formal puppetry experience when he began working on his first puppet show in 1995.

“I started as a solo performer,” he jokes. “But it got lonely, so I added the puppets.”

Starting from scratch, without preconceived expectations of puppetry’s limits, Augustine began creating life-size puppets to his own singular specs: warped, clumsy, vulnerable bodies with grotesque features and complex emotions. The foam-rubber he carves his puppet heads from allows for an unsettling realism in terms of facial textures — sleepy half-lids, arched brows, curled lips, rutted terrains of wrinkles and lines. Most of his puppets are manipulated by whole teams of hired-gun puppeteers, who must perform heroic acrobatics as they make the puppets dance, shamble, and limp across the stage.

So does Hobo Grunt Cycle answer its central question? Augustine remains unconvinced that progress has been made.

“I believe we haven’t progressed in terms of violent conflict because we’re stuck in our adolescent stage of development,” he says ruefully. “We see things only from our point of view, and always in terms of right and wrong, mine and yours, us and them — which prevents us from seeing that all human beings [and all puppets?] have the same needs.” *

HOBO GRUNT CYCLE

Thurs./17 through March 5; $15-$25

Exit Theatre

156 Eddy, SF

(415) 673-3847

www.theexit.org

Gleaming the Cubist

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Gleaming the Cubist

RARE SILENT FILM In the 1920s — avant-garde heyday for so many forms of media — ascendant youth culture, “machine age” fetishism, the off-leash romping of bob-haired women, and myriad other factors induced fierce resistance to much now considered of crucial historical and artistic import.

Not to say all this contested art was necessarily good. But much was arguably hated beyond reason. A major case in point plays in Feb. 24 as part of the Pacific Film Archive’s “Cinema Across Media: The 1920s” series. Marcel L’Herbier’s 1924 L’Inhumaine, “a fairy story of modern decorative art,” is a remarkable time capsule of avant-garde trends at their temporal and geographic peak — even if Paris then wasn’t having it.

These were heady times. Privileged intellectual L’Herbier was a heady guy, missing World War I combat service because an angry lover shot off his finger. Attracted to film’s possibilities after mulling career paths from composing to diplomacy, he began directing in 1918. Some soon hailed him as France’s greatest contributor to the medium. Cinema being bandied about then as the ultimate art form combining all before it, such praise was bound to induce hubristic abandon.

L’Herbier’s taste for rarefied experimentation was shared by close friend Georgette Leblanc, an operatic soprano famed for her Carmen and for originating other musical and acting roles. She was long-term muse to Symbolist playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, the millennial stage’s leading innovator. By 1924 that relationship was over, as was her singing career. Not one to be left behind, Leblanc proposed bankrolling a film that she would star in, directed by L’Herbier.

L’Herbier was amenable. He’d started his own production company to avoid the financial problems of prior lofty projects, but only sank deeper in hock. L’Inhumaine was to be a cinematic summit of prominent avant-gardists, its cubist sets alone the work of four designers including painter Fernand Léger and architect Robert Mallet-Stevens. A key sequence at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées called on all Leblanc and L’Herbier’s fashionable connections to impersonate some 2,000 concert-goers whipped into a near riot by the heroine’s infamy and artistry.

Unfortunately, actual public response to their end-product was equally rowdy. Critics heaped scorn; box office was catastrophic; and Leblanc did not deign to grace the silver screen again. It is easy to view L’Inhumaine as her fault: a teetering monument to an Olympian ego.

She plays Claire Lescot, “famous singer, bizarre woman,” who reigns over a salon of great minds and power-mongers enslaved by the fickle attentions that have branded her “inhuman.” When a young engineer (Jaque Catelain) announces he’ll kill himself if she doesn’t give him some sugah, she harrumphs “If you destroy your life so easily, it can’t be worth much.” He promptly plunges a race car off a cliff.

Squat, heavy in war paint and emotional lifting, 50-year-old Leblanc is clearly the most fascinating woman in the world here by write-in vote of one. L’Inhumaine‘s ungainly mix of vanity showcase, modern art trappings, and sci-fi eventually sees our songbird — not silent cinema’s most vivid profession — conquer tout le monde via a radio-television transmission. Which strangely also allows her to see les misérables briefly elevated by her art around the globe. When a jealous rajah poisons her, her “modern magician” scientist lover allows conquering Death itself in a cacophony of machinery and montage.

L’Inhumaine reflects its moment as much as the next year’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). That it was received more like 1923’s Salome — the infamous Rudolf Valentino-funded Art Nouveau version of Oscar Wilde’s play, which for reasons both credible and malicious was branded a “riot” of homosexual aesthetics — laid in the extreme disconnect between cutting-edge techniques and woozily old-hat theatrical content. There’s no denying the film is whopping camp, albeit camp curated (as L’Herbier intended) to complement the hugely influential International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts opening in Paris in 1925.

This failure must have been tough, but the director persevered. His 1928 Zola update L’Argent (recently revived by the San Francisco Silent Festival) integrated modernist design and conventional storytelling far more successfully. While his sound-era films were considered less innovative, he remained a significant industry force, moving into producing cultural programs for TV.

When L’Herbier died in 1979, even L’Inhumaine had been partly rehabilitated, its ultramodernism treated (as is so often the case) more kindly in retrospect. Fifty years had transformed La Lescot’s grandiosity from ridiculous affectation to charming folly. 

L’INHUMAINE

Feb. 24, 7 p.m., $6.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

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