I don't blame you for feeling jaundiced, Alison--imagine living here in the
hepatitic eye! But screen isn't stage, after all, although both have their
mainstream and their many-streamed alternatives--it's just that LA has more
money than NYC, hence the screen dominance. But I doubt if the mainstream
theater could even claim the seriousness that your "largely issue and
psychology driven...limiting aesthetic" implies. Anything aesthetic or
ideological is way way off Broadway, which is okay because the show business
that is Broadway keeps a lot of theater people in grub and shoes between
serious projects. (I say "shoes" because there really is an old New York
fund to provide actors with one new pair of shoes annually, and many of my
friends have availed themselves of it. Ironically, you have to have a Union
card to qualify for the shoes!)
But mainstream culture is always wanker culture, isn't it?
Cheers,
Candice
on 7/15/01 9:48 PM, [log in to unmask] at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>> And maybe
>> you should see it before you pass judgment on it.
>
> Quite true Candice - and impossible to generalise about so huge a culture
> - although I'm aware of exciting companies my spies tell me the
> mainstream there is largely issue and psychology driven, part of the same
> limiting aesthetic, if rather better done on the whole than here.
>
> But perhaps I feel badly jaundiced by the US colonisation of Oz screen
> culture and it seems everything else, which is largely a fait accompli -
> a few protesting squeaks can't stop the economic juggernaut, esp when the
> politicians are lapping it all up.
>
>> the limitations of which are manifested in the acting
>> of, say, Kenneth Branagh, who loses his mind the minute a sword is placed in
>> his hand.
>
> Are you saying Branagh's a wanker???
>
> Best
>
> A
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