Canadian We Are the World: “Tears Are Not Enough”
Name those Canadians!
From One to Another
Don DeLillo, in a rare interview in the Wall Street Journal today:
Mr. DeLillo, who grew up in the Bronx as the son of Italian immigrants, says his Catholic upbringing inevitably creeps into his work: “It has an effect in ways I can’t be specific about—the sense of ceremony, the sense of last things, and the sense of religion as almost at times an art.”
From one to another, sir: that Catholic upbringing is no joke when it comes to writing. (Protestants deal with other things entirely. They may as well be speaking a different language.)
Also, can I just point out that DeLillo will be the last American writer who’s able to give only “rare” interviews? The publishing world has changed so much since he started that now writers have to show up at any county fair to which they’re invited, no matter how much we hate it. DeLillo is lucky in many ways, but none so much as the fact that he’s the last with privacy, the last who’s able to work through his imagination in seclusion.
Interesting People Who Need One Person Shows
If I can’t hang out with Harry Dean Stanton on Broadway for a night, then the world is a terrible, terrible place.
Need some reading material?
The Onion AV Club’s Random Roles is important when they talk to amazing character actors. To wit:
KEVIN CORRIGAN
MICHAEL SHANNON
Great Oscar Nominations
I am bored by the acting categories. But here are some ones that are rad:
Which Way Home as Best Documentary.
(The current widely perceived front runner, The Cove, is a manipulative piece of crap that was wonderfully skewered by the South Park episode “Whale Wars.”)
In the Loop for Best Adapted Screenplay. Unconvinced that this is a Great Movie For the Ages? Read Armando Iannucci’s piece on the recent Chilcot Inquiry of Tony Blair and Iraq. It will scare you.
The Secret of Kells for Best Animated Feature.
I’m kind of the opinion that, you know, close it down, “Hallelujah.” It’s done. Is any cover going to surpass the raw emotion, feeling, and sensuality of this one? (Timberlake’s cover felt rich with technique, but lacking in soul, to me.)
Then again, I was listening to Jeff Buckley’s album in eighth grade, right as I was surging into puberty. That was a great idea. Mothers, don’t let your naive young daughters listen to Jeff Buckley! They will have wildly overwrought expectations from young men!
(There’s been a Jeff Buckley biopic in the works for years, I believe. Which could be rich, considering he was the son of a wayward troubadour, beautiful in his own right. But they really need to get it going so James Franco can play the part, am I right?)
From the 2001 film Chasing Holden. It’s not very good, obviously, but a funny run-around for the fact that you can’t make a film out of The Catcher in the Rye.
Igby Goes Down is my Catcher-riff of choice, if only for the sparky dialogue:
Igby: Oliver is majoring in neo-fascism at Colombia.
Oliver: Economics.
Igby: Semantics.
Howard Zinn is dead. →
Sad, man.
Thanks for sticking it to John Silber all those years, Zinn. Good Will Hunting link below. (And yeah, I can thank Matty Damon for A) having me read A People’s History and B) mentioning it when I’m interviewing for a scholarship at BU, which…maybe made it harder to get. But it was gotten!)
Love is kind of like this. (I gotta get off the internet to back it up.)