Everyone's a Critic

Early on in the movie Five Year Engagement, my companion nudged me, and whispered, "You don't hunt deer in spring!"

"What?" I said, watching Jason Segel and Chris Parnell gleefully bagging a deer in a woodsy setting where, despite a few leaves on the ground, the trees were very green indeed.

"In Michigan, you hunt deer in fall!" she hissed.

Wow, did a big-time Hollywood production really bungle its fact-checking? But then this (mostly) filmed-in-Ann Arbor movie was already off to a bad start, grounded as it is in the dubious premise that talented San Francisco chef Tom Solomon (Segel) can't find a job commensurate to his talents in our dreary, rainy backwoods college town.

He's stuck here because fiancee and budding psychologist Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt) couldn't get into grad school in Berkeley. She had to settle for the U-M, and he's stuck making sandwiches at Zingerman's--portrayed as a ho-hum deli whose blase employees apparently dozed during Zingy's much-touted employee training program. (Ignored is Zingerman's Roadhouse, where chef Alex Young just won a prestigious James Beard award.)

"Poetic license!" say local fans of this film when they hear my chauvinistic complaints. But I'd cut director Nicholas Stoller more slack if this was a better movie. The plot promises something a little more interesting than typical rom-com fare. Tom and Emily become engaged at the start of the film, not, as is more typical, at the end. Well played by Segel and Blunt, Tom and Violet are a likable couple who genuinely seem to want each other to be happy. They think they can easily surmount old-time gender roles that, a generation ago, would have Violet instead following Tom. In one of the film's few genuinely moving moments, Violet bursts out passionately that she wants it all--making homemade pies, kids, a careers she loves.

Tom appears sympathetic and supportive. But Stoller (a protege of Judd Apatow, inventer of the R-rated rom-com) has made a movie so derivative and predictable the scenes seem old the minute they appear: the zany sets of parents from opposite backgrounds (hers hoity-toity English, his outspokenly Jewish); the egotistical prof Winton Childs (Rhys Ifans), who you know immediately will become Emily's lover; the bewildered couple's drive to the airport. Different bottle, same wine.

In fairness to Stoller, there are a few original touches, like the pink bunny costume Tom wears when he meets Emily (she's dressed as Princess Diana). I wasn't expecting the scene where Tom's employer in San Francisco slices off the tip of her finger. My friend and I flinched, but the twenty-somethings behind us laughed uproariously. Also unexpected: a would-be lovemaking session in the snow--something that, in thirty winters here, never once occurred to me.

The much publicized filming of this movie got Ann Arbor all Facebook shivery: people posting scenes of the shooting; reporting sightings of stars. One Facebook friend briefly appeared in a shot at Zingerman's, and told me if I didn't blink I'd see him. I didn't and did. It's just too bad that the fun of having Ann Arbor briefly bathed in Hollywood lights resulted in this forgettable piece of fluff.

When I was invited to be one of the "stars" in a Dancing with the Ann Arbor Stars benefit, I felt like someone invited to sing a duet with Renee Fleming at the Met after only ever singing in public in karaoke bars. If I'd been asked to jump from an airplane with a parachute of questionable quality I'd likely have been more willing to agree. The idea terrified me.

So my immediate and emphatic response was "No!" But this Dancing with the Stars was a benefit for two organizations very dear to me; the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor, where my daughter, Emily has gone since kindergarten, and Wild Swan Theatre, longtime friends, and simply the best children's theater around. So I finally said "yes." It was the best thing I've done in a long time.

My three minutes and eight seconds of fame in the Dancing with the Ann Arbor Stars was such a delight that ever since that night I have been contemplating a career change. No, not hardly, but I did have a blast. And even more than the performance itself, I enjoyed the preparation leading up to it. After all, practicing for a dance performance is not unlike rehearsing for a concert; endless repetition of an enjoyable activity--always with the goal of an unattainable perfection worth striving for.

My coach was Jackie Steinbacher, a superb dancer and, if possible, an even better choreographer and teacher. We chose Tish Hinojosa's beautiful song, Esperate, and Jackie created a routine that combined moves and steps from cha cha, paso doble, samba, and even a hint of swing. She tailored our dance perfectly to the different moods and rhythmic subtleties in the music and the lyrics, creating a challenging and very satisfying piece that somehow also managed to minimize my many, many limitations as a dancer.

I was as nervous--and then some--for our performance than for any musical appearance I can ever recall. Before we danced, my mouth felt like I'd been eating dry peanut butter mixed with sand, and my hands were so cold it seemed as though I'd been soaking them in a bucket of ice water for a week. I felt sorry for Jackie in her sleeveless top. I hoped she wouldn't cringe when I touched her shoulder.

And then the music started; music, which has been my friend, my go-to safe haven, for most of my life. This would be the secure boat I would sail for the next three stormy minutes. Jackie gave me a reassuring look and we were off. By the time the intro was over and Hinojosa began singing, I was no longer dancing, or sailing, I was flying--anyway, it felt like that to me. It was over much too soon.

Linda Yohn, the renowned long-time host of jazz programs on WEMU, was the MC for the evening. After our dance, she asked me how performing a dance was different from playing music. In all the most important ways, I told her, it's the same; you look to connect with your partner and with your audience. Of course, I needed to learn a whole new vocabulary, but the feeling was the same.

I came away from the experience with a whole new appreciation for the artistry of dancers and with a great deal of gratitude for the opportunity to learn something brand-new in my sixth decade. I also feel a little braver for when another new, exciting, and scary adventure might present itself. I'll for sure say yes again.

The last night was by far the best night of the three nights of Michael Tilson Thomas & the San Francisco Symphony’s American Maverick concerts.

Not that they didn’t perform superbly all three nights with a tight ensemble, well-balanced colors, careful dynamics, and seemingly flawless technique. But on the previous nights the music was garbage as often as not, and no amount of technique can turn garbage into gold.

But with Cark Ruggles’ Sun-Treader and Morton Feldman’s Piano and Orchestra, MTT & the SFS finally got to play true modernist masterpieces, and they gave them performances as great as any ever heard in Hill Auditorium. Sun-Treader is an extremely unlovely and unlovable work with gargantuan dissonances, grinding rhythms, and groaning melodies, but it is beautiful in its way, and a more compelling performance in impossible to imagine – primarily because no other orchestra and conductor are ever likely to play it in Hill again.

Feldman’s Piano and Orchestra is the opposite of Sun-Treader in just about every way: it’s incredibly quiet with extremely spare textures – and virtually no melodies just motive, no rhythms just tempo, and no motion just stasis. But with Emmanuel Ax at the piano, MTT & the SFS made compelling music that fused deep sensuality with profound spirituality.

After the intermission, MTT & the SFS played Henry Brant’s orchestration of Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata. The orchestration was a success, adding, enhancing, and clarifying Ives’ sometimes clotted colors and textures. The performance was a success, too, making the best possible case for the orchestration and the work. But the music is, in a word, boring - because, like most of Ives’ music, it’s incoherent. If the composer had any idea of what he was doing when he quoted Beethoven’s Fifth and Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, it doesn’t show, and if he had any idea where he was going from moment to moment, from movement to movement, or even from start to finish, it doesn’t show. As too often in Ives, invention outstrips sense, and all that’s left is a buzzing, blooming confusion.

But in the end, so what? Like all the rest of the music performed over the last three nights, at least the Ives’ piece hasn’t been played to death. And for this critic, that was enough to justify all everything – except Cage’s Song Books, the worst piece of crap I’ve ever heard played in Hill Auditorium.

The second night of Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony play more or less modern more or less American music opened with what I'd call the worst piece of music I've ever heard if there were any real music in it.

But there wasn't a note of music in John Cage's Song Books - lots of gibberish, plenty of nonsense, and a whole lot of balderdash, but no music whatsoever. There were texts "sung" by three women to any random vocal noise that went through their heads. In the case of Jessye Norman, that'd be quasi-operatic howling. In the case of Joan La Barbara, that'd bleeps, bloops, and burps. In the case of Meredith Monk, that'd be screams, screeches. and shrikes. These noises were accompanied by a handful of musicians from the orchestra making occasional noises on their instruments or anything else that came to hand. And for all the work's half-hour duration, the performers wandered across an onstage set reminiscent of a very cheap off-off-Broadway production.

The first two minutes of this farrago was fairly funny - especially Monk's chicken-imitation. But it was annoying after five minutes, irritating after ten minutes, and infuriating after fifteen minutes. Naturally, the Hill Auditorium audience gave it a standing ovation. I booed long and loud, the first time I've ever booed a classical concert.

The second half was much better mostly because it featured real pieces of music. Henry Cowell's Synchrony based on a theme familiar from Stravinsky was essentially a one-movement Russian symphony tarted up with tone clusters. It was no better than Cowell's Piano Concerto performed the night before, but no worse, either.

John Adams' Absolute Jest takes three themes from Beethoven - the scherzo from the Ninth Symphony plus his Opus 131 and 135 string quartets - and puts them through the orchestral blender for 25 minutes. The first two minutes were relatively interesting though not particularly funny; the rest was full of sound and fury signifying nothing and not at all funny. Adams would do well to recall that the brevity is the soul of wit.

The best came last: Edgard Varese's Ameriques, a brilliant, brutal, and beguiling work for very large orchestra augmented by sirens. Ameriques is literally bursting with everything missing from the rest of the concert's works: intelligence, passion, soul, coherence, energy, wit, and an original but authentic voice.

None of the pieces performed on the first night of the three "American Mavericks" concerts were much good, though the Copland was certainly the best and the Bates was probably the worst.

Copland’s Variations for Orchestra sounded like Webern but with too many notes and not enough sense.

Henry Cowell’s Piano Concerto sounded like Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto but with tone clusters.

Mason Bates’ Mass Transmission sounded like an RVW choral piece on top of a Philip Glass organ toccata with random electronic noises on top of that.

Lou Harrison’ Concerto for Organ and Percussion was astonishingly dull considering how loud it was and astoundingly dreary considering how many drummers were on stage. With all those drummers, you’d think just once they’d wander into a compelling rhythm.

But all that’s perfectly acceptable because all four piece, even Harrison’s dull and dreary concerto, were interesting, something that can’t be said about most of the classical music concerts I’ve been to in the last thirty-four years.

Sure, Cowell’s Concerto was nowhere near in the same league as Brahms’ Second Concert, but at least we haven’t heard it 99,999,999 times. And just because the music wasn’t very good, doesn’t mean it wasn’t interesting. After all, who knew what Cowell or Harrison would do next? And even if what they do next wasn’t exactly a stroke of genius, at least it wasn’t expected. That might not sound like much – and it’s not – but for me, it's enormously more interesting than another night of Brahms.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony played the hell out of everything, except Mass Transmission which, the U-M Chamber Choir sang the hell out of. And surprisingly the folks in Hill Auditorium gave only Copland’s Variations a standing ovation, which shows unexpected taste on the part of the local audience.

I don’t know if I splendid time was had by all, but I more or less enjoyed myself and not once did I feel the overwhelming urge to throttle someone, which hasn’t happened at a Hill Auditorium show in years.

I was standing around the third floor of City Hall, staring out the window, waiting for an interview with Mayor Hieftje when I heard two familiar voices behind me talking about rock music from the 70s, and playing records on a turntable.

I turned around and there were police chief Barnett Jones and city attorney Stephen Postema, walking out of Postema's office and talking about Billy Joel and Japanese pressings and half-speed masters. When Postema told Jones I used to be in the record business, the chief became even more loquacious.

By the time Hieftje got off the elevator and walked over, Jones was in full flow. He was talking about how his 13-year-old wanted to see his collection and how he went downstairs and showed him some of his favorite records by his favorite bands - like the Doobie Brothers.

"But, dude!" I said. "Did he ask you what their name meant?"

"Sure," the chief replied. "I told him when I pulled it out. A doobie is a name for a marijuana cigarette - but they made some great music!"

“A life is more than a moment.” Hazel Bryan Massery has spent half a century repeating a curiously poignant truism—to family, to reporters, to curious audiences around the country. But the person whose affirmation she most wanted ultimately withheld it.

In Elizabeth and Hazel, Two Women of Little Rock(Yale University Press), U-M grad David Margolick tells the story, and then some, behind a famous photograph. In the fall of 1957, Elilzabeth Eckford, 15, prepared with trepidation to start Little Rock Central High—one of nine black students selected by a determined local civil rights leader to integrate an acclaimed but segregated institution. Her face shaded by sunglasses, wearing a crisp white skirt and shirt, and books held under one arm, Elizbeth, as she approached the school, was followed by a menacing crowd. The famous photo, by Central High grad Will Counts, shows a white girl with fury on her face shouting at Eckford. The expressions of others in the photo, all of who are white and either students or spectators, are difficult to decipher. But Hazel Bryan radiates hate.

Elizabeth and Hazel, both fifteen, were caught up in an emblematic moment of the civil rights era. So virulent was the resistance to the “Little Rock Nine,” as they came to be known, that president Dwight Eisenhower called in the National Guard to protect the black students. By then, however, the powerful photograph had appeared in newspapers around the world, getting particularly enthsiastic play in the Soviet Union—a public relations nightmare for the United States in the midst of the Cold War.

That moment, frozen in time by the photo, had profound implications for both women, who, decades after its appearance, came together in a fragile friendship. Though brash and attention-seeking as a teenager, Hazel also was curious and very bright, with an introspective side. After the publicity her parents moved her out of Central High. Five years later, when she was twenty, married, and a mother, she called Elizabeth and, weeping, apologized for her behavior.

Elizabeth accepted her apology, but it was to be another forty years before the two women met, in a visit arranged by photographer Counts. He took a “reconciliation” photograph of the two together, though, of course, it was never distribituted as widely as the original. For four years, the two women, both still in the Little Rock area, spoke jointly to audiences, and even appeared together on Oprah. They also attended garden shows, went out to lunch, and attended a reading by poet Maya Angelou.

Each woman, Margolick writes, “was far more introspective and inquisitive than those around them.” But Elizabeth’s adult life was much more difficult than Hazel’s. She suffered from terrible depression, which she traced to the horrifying year she spent at Central; after the National Guard left, the Little Rock Nine were taunted and even physically attacked—slammed against lockers, shoved on stairs—while the principal looked the other way. She raised two children on her own, and was frequently unemployed, though she finally found some stability working as a probation officer. Hazel stayed happily married to her high school boyfriend, enjoyed economic security, and was involved in many activities, including volunteering with black children and families. She also left her strict Baptist church and took up belly dancing and journaling.

But, after four years of a friendship both seemed to enjoy, the relationship soursed. As Margolick tells it, personal quirks of each woman began to irritate the other. But more significantly, Elizabeth believes that Hazel hasn’t sufficiently grappled with “her racist past and come fully clean.” For her part, Hazel comes to resent that nothing she says or does seems to bring forgiveness. It doesn’t help that Hazel also get grief from white friends who wish she’d just shut up about an event and a time that stigmatized their city.

Margolick closes the book, regretfully, by noting that the two women trapped forever in a photograph have not spoken in several years. It’s as though the anti-integrationists won something after all. Yet Hazel’s mother, once a staunch segregationist, welcomes Elizabeth to her home for lunch. And she votes for Obama. Maybe a life can be more than a moment.

Previous Posts

• FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT GETS OLD FAST, by Eve Silberman
• DANCING FOR STEINER AND SWAN, by Sandor Slomovits
• AMERICAN MAVERICKS NIGHT THREE, by James Leonard
• AMERICAN MAVERICKS NIGHT TWO, by James Leonard
• AMERICAN MAVERICKS NIGHT ONE, by James Leonard
• TALKING ABOUT MY GENERATION, by James Leonard
• THE PRICE OF HEROISM, by Eve Silberman
• U-M vs ND: BLASE NO MORE, by Craig Ross
• Scott Petersen: RIP - A Remembrance by Paul Keller
• THE SOUND OF MEMORIES: PAPA, MARIA, AND ME, by Peggy Page

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