Theatre professionals allowing themselves to be addressed as 'Professor' 🙄

"Dined with Augustus and Reginald Dewing at th Cheshire cheese, taking a walk in the afternoon in the Green Park, where Augustus disgraced himself by carrying on a flirtation with a pretty little milliner or shop-girl of some kind or other." 19 May 1861

Many years ago I met Debra Messing. I've never forgotten it. Not because I like her - I never have - but because if you live long enough you learn to recognise a walking black hole. They smile, they joke, they're perfectly polite... and yet...

When a reported asked Richard Rodgers if he knew Lorenz Hart was queer - (I use the word specifically, in the modern sense) - Rodgers grabbed him by the labels & said, 'I haven't heard that. And if you print it I'll kill you.'

I wrote some plays once - three for an evening - they’re sort of about teen girls being glorious monsters who aren’t to be fucked with. Some people read them & said ‘but they don’t talk like this.’ Oh but they do. (The kids who did them had a ball.)

Blue Moon is a gorgeous film. Best thing I've seen Ethan Hawke do, probably. It's daring - almost a filmed play - but dynamic. A smart, sad, funny, & absolutely timely look at real artists & what they're up against.

There are always problems but Philly is the safest it’s been in many years, & it’s been a while since the cops have been caught taking bribes or shooting/beating anyone to death - a lot of this is Krasner & people know it

People want jobs, affordable rent & grocery stores. That's what won. But looking at the number of kids who turned out - kids who grew up taking the subway every day - there's a lot of DON'T FUCK WITH NEW YORK energy too. Makes me proud.

I’m one of the few people who doesn’t like Secret Honor. It’s unmodulated. It does nothing but breathe fire. To get at Nixon you need to see him wrestling with his own knots, which he DID do. Never in public & you have to look close for hints, but he did.

The problem with making a movie about Cheney is he’s a monster. Monsters are boring. He had a lifelong will to power, & achieved it. It didn’t bother him at all. Richard Nixon was a poor kid who wanted to be a great man, but he was ruined by the same forces that let him almost get there. Drama!

At QwikTrip in Wisconsin you cannot - - place bets under the counter - get called Boss by a Yemeni guy as he seamlessly talks to his brother-in-law on speakerphone - get fries at 3 a.m. - buy work shirts, du-rags, or recommissioned carnival prizes - trade with very serious cats

Cheney's theory of executive power is the logical conclusion of Nixon's. That's why he was hired. What Nixon would not do is bomb other countries back to the stone age for pocket money while trying to re-make the world in his own image. He had blood on his hands too, but not like that.

Cheney is dead. In light of Trump we’re forced to re-evaluate his long, complicated history. This will be unfashionable to some, but I have to say - fuck him in hell. He has the blood of millions in three wars on his hands. Trump may say he hates Bush/Cheney but there’s a direct line between them.

Wally Shawn really wanted to do Waiting for Guffman, but Christopher Guest couldn’t find him a part. To make up for it he made the My Dinner With Andre action figures at the end of the movie. He gave them & the doll set to Wally, who keeps it in his apartment.

Holmes is mutable because as written he ‘emits neither heat nor light,’ as Doyle said. But that’s what Brett meant to do. It almost drove Doyle mad, & it broke Brett’s fragile mental & physical health. He said he had to show Holmes the man escaping through cracks in marble, & that’s what he did.

Jeremy Brett lived near Clapham Common & often sat on this bench. A nice tribute this morning for his 93rd birthday. A good actor who made up his mind to do the impossible, & did it. Hastened his own death, but he knew his name would be in lights forever, & I think he was fine with that.

I've lived in the Bronx a long time. I'm on Fordham Rd a lot. It's fast, busy. People going to/from work, shopping. Safe, but tough. Not a place to lounge or get in someone's way. Seeing all these people run smiling towards a politician is wild!!

Scorsese asked him to do The Irishman 'over a hundred times' - he was never going to come out for this, but the tape they use - Pesci detailing how probably the most important scene in Raging Bull was a structured improvisation - is incredible.

One of the proudest achievements of my life is showing a 15yo Kick Out the Jams live on Beat Club. Pristine studio tape, the green screen projections weren't even visible. Did you ever see someone change before your eyes?

For importance I chose VU over Stooges only because VU were a slow-motion Big Bang that’s still going on. 55 yrs later Stooges are still so terrifying you almost can’t look straight at them.

They prepared three sets of steps: difficult, medium, or easy. He demanded the difficult & did it.

I wrote once that the Stooges are the 2nd most important American band after the Velvet Underground, & 'everything a rock 'n' roll band should be' - I prefer the Stooges, just taste, but what they have in common is they're a white man's blues, they go to the same well to make something new

Chris Stein on getting bothered online because he voted for Mamdani - 'HELLO... do you know who I am? ... c'mon do your homework'

Dick Van Dyke. 100. Quit doing Cameos ($1000 a pop) because he was oversubscribed. Took them really seriously. Every one a little performance. Bargain, really. He defines ‘show person’ in the best sense. When the lights go up he always brings it.

This could be a line from one of his books

Wally realised at an early age his plays would never be palatable to people. He’s glad of this in a way - it set him free - but in my experience he assumes just about everybody wants to talk Princess Bride until proven otherwise, & he can sometimes be impatient with this..

Wally may disagree 🙄🤪

My first experience with Relaxium was during the War, about 1944 or 1945. I had made the acquaintance of man named O'Reilly, who was working in a shipyard at the time. O'Reilly was the kind of Irish to beat his wife to death then sob over the body. He looked like Leslie Nielsen, but taller.

Voted for Mamdani. No clue if he'll succeed. 20% of what he promises would improve on standing still, though. Two things strike me - I've never voted for anybody where I feel like they'd give me a fair hearing if I ran into them at the deli, & New Yorkers of all sorts seem glad to see him.

Beano #1489, Jan 30, 1971

Beano #2288, May 24, 1986

Fred Schneider just came up - god I love him - & I remembered how he came out to his mother. He agonised then finally did it while she was vacuuming. She said, 'Oh, I know, Freddie,' & continued vacuuming. Fred, nonplussed, thought, 'Well, I guess I'll go smoke some pot.'

At work I spoke to Malkovich on the phone once. Just for a minute. He had perfect old-world manners & was quite nice to me. I felt unnerved anyway & not because he's famous.

Beano #2129, May 7, 1983

Privilege is no barrier to good art. Sondheim went to George School. But LMM seems to be the picture of what's everywhere now - well-off people who work in the theatre merely because they like it. His default mode is to celebrate things. In the Heights works because that was his neighborhood.

It attempts & often succeeds with interesting techniques. It's daring within its limited commercial realm. It hopefully inspires people that wouldn't go to, work in, or see themselves in the theatre. Like many musicals it's limited & trite. It bores me to death & has no application to real life.

The late Queen’s weakness was conflict. She didn’t like it, & being Queen it’s not like she had practice. The work she did w abuse victims meant something to her, & she understood Andrew was a liability. But she tried to sideline & insulate him at once. For a great politician it was a terrible -

Oldman always wanted to play Smiley again. (A script for Smiley’s People exists.) The beauty of Lamb is he’s Smiley inside out - a mess in life, brilliant & ruthless within. Rarely do you get to play the smartest man in the room who’s also hilarious. It’s got to be great fun.

An elderly Dodger fan in South Texas (he got them on the radio as a boy) once told me I look like Carl Erskine, & was impressed I knew who he was. I never thought of it but I do. I've now been sent this.

Francesca & Marty Scorsese ❤️

Do Mother Goose in any big theatre in America, there'd be bomb threats 🙄

He just like me fr fr

Garry Hynes on Beckett: ‘The closer I cleave to him, the better I understand the plays.’

Got a lock-in at a bar last night for simply 'wearing a cool baseball cap,' 'watching the ballgame,' & 'not being 21 & drunk'

In 2014 Janet Malcolm did a fascinating profile of the sisters & their father - as much about the mysterious vocation of bookselling & New York City as the shop itself. www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

On 46th St I passed a young petite blonde woman in heavy makeup. Heavily ringed eyes. She wore pink and had built a full realistic Barbie box around her, plastic & all.

Billie Whitelaw was a musician. When she did Play in 1964 she was the first actor to respond to Beckett as he wanted - not as psychology but music. She notated her script musically. Beckett never forgot this. She was careful to say he didn’t write Not I for her but she was the one he wanted to do it

Never in person sadly, before my time, but I’ve seen all the tapes I can. Not long ago I was in a shop & pulled down a copy of Rockaby. It happened to be signed by Billie Whitelaw. They’d missed it. $10. Snapped it up at once. Her memoir is basically a manual on how to do Beckett right.

In the space of two weeks I’ve seen Stephen Rea do Krapp & @druidtheatre.bsky.social do Endgame - in both cases Beckett done as well as he can be done, lucid, mysterious, humane, horrifying, hilarious, never more timely. A great privilege.