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    A Tireless Actress, Back at the Scene of the ‘Crime’

    Before the pandemic, Catherine Russell had missed only four performances of an Off Broadway perennial since 1987. She was onstage for its reopening.On Sunday, before a small, masked, spaced-apart audience at the Theater Center, the most persistent show in New York made a return after what might be described as — in the scheme of things — a brief intermission.Warren Manzi’s “Perfect Crime” opened on April 18, 1987, and stubbornly stayed put. The unflashy murder mystery has remained more or less the same as everything changed around it. It took a pandemic to shut the show down for 13 months.Until then, Catherine Russell, now 65, had missed only four performances in the lead role of a possibly murderous psychiatrist. She is also the general manager of the Theater Center, which is also the venue for “The Office: A Musical Parody.” That show is running again, too; Russell hands out tickets at its box office.“Perfect Crime” was the first Off Broadway show with a live audience to open with approval from Actors’ Equity. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke before Sunday’s show, telling theatergoers, “The show must go on.” Russell has been outspoken in her belief that the show might have gone on much sooner.After her 13,524th curtain call, Russell selected a familiar spot in her book-lined office onstage to talk about 34 years of “Perfect Crime.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Congratulations on reopening. How does it feel to be back?It’s wonderful being onstage in a room full of people. I value that so much, and this is what I always wanted to do. I’m selling the tickets before the show to the other show. I get offstage, and I go downstairs and take the garbage out of the dressing rooms on the third floor. Occasionally I plunge a toilet. I love every part of it.I’m a person who likes stability who chose a field that wasn’t very stable. But I’ve been able to have a fairly stable life in the theater.What was it like to suddenly lose that stability last year?I was fine! I missed being onstage, but it was fine not doing it. I didn’t dream about it.You weren’t itching to do a version on Zoom.Oh God no. I went to the theater every day to work. It’s a few blocks from my apartment.If I were not near a theater, I think I would have missed it. But I was still here, in my home away from home, teaching acting privately, and working toward reopening. We found extra unused paint and repainted walls unusual colors, fixed seats, Marie Kondo-ed the backstage areas.I did a lot of research on how to make it safe, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how, not just for me to get back onstage, but for theaters to open again in New York. We have our Atmos air scrubbers over there. It’s very safe here.Russell, as a psychiatrist, with costar Patrick Ryan Sullivan in the murder mystery.The Theater CenterYou also organized a lawsuit against the city and state, pushing for reopening?I felt really strongly that everything needed to be closed down and I was fine with that. But then things started reopening. Restaurants were open, gyms were open. Bowling alleys is what pushed me over the edge. I have nothing against bowling, but if you put your fingers in these holes and wear rented shoes, why can’t you go to the theater? It was nothing malicious, but theater fell through the cracks.The suit is still going on. We’re pushing for 50 percent capacity. I think we will prevail.Mr. de Blasio was here tonight. Did you bring this up with him?No. I don’t know if he knows that I’m suing him. I’m grateful that he and [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo let us open. But I’d like to be more open.I’m also raising money to convert a garage down the street into a five-theater complex. We need more Off Broadway theaters, especially now after Covid. Smaller theaters are going to be more practical — it’s a lot easier to raise money for an Off Broadway show than a Broadway show. And I really think we need more midtown theaters that are clean and safe, and Covid-safe, that people feel comfortable going to. I built this place 15 years ago. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. So I kind of want to take what I learned here and apply it.You must have missed interacting with audiences.In normal times, I love talking to people after the show and hearing what they thought about it. Occasionally someone will wait for me afterward and say: “You know what? I’m a librarian and I’ve never missed a day of work.” That sort of mentality, showing up to work every day, strikes a chord in many people. They admire that.There are no times when your heart’s not in it?People sometimes come thinking, She’s going to be phoning it in. And I’m kind of like, Screw you! You can think I’m stupid or something for doing it, but I am not phoning it in. I’ve done it when I didn’t feel well, I was really tired, when I was grieving horribly. But honestly, if I thought that I was phoning it in, I would say it’s time to go.“She’s a really complicated character, and it’s fun to find different aspects of this character as I’ve gotten older,” Russell says.John Taggart for The New York TimesDo you feel you’ve missed out on anything because of your commitment to the show? There must have been a few refused dinner invitations over the years.I was actually engaged to somebody else when I first started doing “Perfect Crime.” He said it ruined his life. He did not want to be married to somebody who would be onstage eight times a week. Though I didn’t know the play was going to run this long … obviously.But I was blessed to eventually be married to somebody who understood it. We got married at City Hall at 11 o’clock and had lunch at The Palm. Then I went back to work and he took a nap, and we were both really happy.I notice there’s a prop book of the complete works of William Shakespeare there. Do you ever fantasize about doing another play eight times a week?I’m happy in this play. She’s a really complicated character, and it’s fun to find different aspects of this character as I’ve gotten older. I haven’t gotten bored doing it.One good thing about doing a play like this, it lets out whatever you’ve been feeling during the day. I can cry onstage, pick myself up, walk off the stage, and whatever I’ve been feeling is gone. Do you know what I mean? I don’t want to say it cleanses the soul. That sounds pretentious. But it’s a good way to use all the stuff that’s happened to you in your life.Does the character feel different to you today?I think that my performance is a little different after the year that we’ve had. At the end of the play, I used to fall apart more. But she pulls herself together. She’s a little steelier, a little stronger. More

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    Felix Silla, Cousin Itt on ‘The Addams Family’ Dies at 84

    He made a strong impression in his best-known role, even though his face wasn’t seen and his voice wasn’t heard.Felix Silla, the actor best known for playing the hairy Cousin Itt on the sitcom “The Addams Family,” died on Friday. He was 84.The cause was cancer, Mr. Silla’s representative, Bonnie Vent, said in a statement. She did not say where he died.Mr. Silla, who stood less than four feet tall, appeared as Cousin Itt in 17 episodes of “The Addams Family,” although his face was not seen and his voice was not heard. Sporting a floor-length hairpiece, sunglasses and a bowler hat, Cousin Itt spoke in a high-pitched mumble (his voice was provided by someone else in postproduction), which was understood only by the other members of the family.“The Addams Family,” seen on ABC from 1964 to 1966, was based on Charles Addams’s New Yorker cartoons about a family that was (in the words of its theme song) “mysterious and spooky.” Cousin Itt, who became a fan favorite, was created specifically for the show.Mr. Silla in 1965 as the hairy Cousin Itt in “The Addams Family.” With him, from left, were John Astin (as Gomez Addams), Carolyn Jones (Morticia Addams) and Ted Cassidy (the butler Lurch).Walt Disney Television, via Getty ImagesMr. Silla’s face also went unseen in other roles, including the robot Twiki on the 1979-81 NBC science fiction series “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.” He was unheard there as well; Twiki’s voice was provided for most of the show’s run by Mel Blanc.He played an Ewok who rode a hang glider in the “Star Wars” film “Return of the Jedi” (1983). Four years later he was in Mel Brooks’s “Star Wars” parody, “Spaceballs.”“Felix knew a lot about making characters come to life with no dialogue,” Ms. Vent said.Viewers had a chance to see Mr. Silla’s face in the 1975 film “The Black Bird,” a comedic sequel to “The Maltese Falcon,” in which he played a villain named Litvak who menaces Sam Spade Jr. (George Segal).Mr. Silla did stunt work in “E.T.” “Poltergeist,” “The Golden Child” and other films. His many TV appearances, in addition to “The Addams Family” and “Buck Rogers,” included roles on “Bewitched,” “Bonanza” and “H.R. Pufnstuf.”His final big-screen role was in “Characterz,” a 2016 film about costumed mascots.Felix Silla was born on Jan. 11, 1937, in Abruzzo, Italy, and came to the United States in 1955. He toured with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus as a bareback rider, trapeze artist and tumbler. He began working in Hollywood as a stuntman in 1962.He is survived by his wife, Sue, and his daughter, Bonnie. His son, Michael, died last year.The New York Times contributed reporting. More

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    Taking Over Victory Gardens to Make a ‘Theater for All’

    CHICAGO — Ken-Matt Martin, the incoming artistic director of Victory Gardens Theater here, said he never has revealed this publicly before, but he has a Sankofa bird tattooed on his back.This mythical creature, with a name that means “return to retrieve” in Ghana’s Akan language, is depicted with its feet pointing forward and its head turned backward — a reminder, Martin said, of “making sure you have a reverence and understanding of the past so that as you move into the future, you know what the hell you’ve come from. That’s key to how I move, how I operate in the world.”And that’s the delicate balance Martin, at 32, intends to strike as he takes the reins of this 47-year-old Tony Award-winning institution that had an even more tumultuous 2020 than most theater companies.Between late May and early June, a key group of affiliated playwrights quit en masse, protesters demonstrated outside the boarded-up Lincoln Park theater, and its white executive director, who recently had been named artistic director as well, and board president resigned.Victory Gardens has a new board president, Charles E. Harris II, and a new acting managing director, Roxanna Conner, and on March 17 it announced that Martin would become its third artistic director since its 1974 founding. He begins April 19.That this new leadership triumvirate is entirely Black represents a first for Victory Gardens, a theater that has championed diversity while sometimes struggling to live up to those ideals. And this shift is being echoed throughout the Chicago arts scene, where Black leaders have secured the top jobs at House Theater, Sideshow Theater Company, Hubbard Street Dance and the Second City.These moves came in the wake of the social-justice movement spurred by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and fueled by the demands of the “We See You, White American Theater” national coalition of theater artists of color.“I would not be in the position I’m in if we had not had that collective awakening this past year,” said Lanise Antoine Shelley, the House Theater’s new artistic director.“Sure, something is shifting,” Martin said, “but you’re also talking about highly qualified people getting jobs that they’re more than qualified for.”The cast of “Prowess,” a play by Ike Holter that Martin directed at the Pyramid Theater Company, which he co-founded in Des Moines, Iowa.Mark TurekPunctuating his assertions with laughter while sitting outside a South Loop cafe blocks from his apartment, the Little Rock, Ark., native was casual and comfortable as he discussed the weighty issues facing theater and the larger culture.“I woke up this morning and was like: You know? I’m not going to be cagey today. I’m just going to tell it straight,” he said.He wore a baseball cap from Brown University, where he received his M.F.A. in directing, and a black mask from Chicago’s Goodman Theater, where he was serving as associate producer alongside the longtime artistic director Robert Falls when he landed the Victory Gardens job.He was introduced to the entertainment world at age 12, when his mother drove him to Atlanta to audition for the Nickelodeon series “All That.” He landed a bit part and when that contract later prohibited him from taking a role on another network, he said he became determined to learn the business side of entertainment.In Little Rock, Martin said, the majority of his classmates — as well as teachers, principals, and doctors — were Black. Moving to predominantly white Des Moines, Iowa, where he earned degrees in musical theater and public relations at Drake University, and encountered racism on the street, was a shock to the system.Yet he remained in the city to pull off what he said will remain his crowning achievement: He co-founded the Pyramid Theater Company, which has thrived connecting the work of Black playwrights and artists to majority-Black audiences.Martin said it took “chutzpah” to make that happen in such an environment: “There were people saying, ‘We don’t need another theater. You all need to be working to make the theaters we already have more diverse.’ ”Antonio Woodard, left, and Tiffany Johnson in the Pyramid production of James Baldwin’s “Amen Corner,” which Martin directed.Andrea MarkowskiIn 2015 Martin began a yearlong Goodman Theater apprenticeship. Afterward, as he pursued his M.F.A. at Brown University, he did work at the affiliated Trinity Repertory Company, where he recalled being asked at a meeting: “Hey, can you help us figure out how to better market this show to Black audiences?”“Mind you, I’m a student.” He laughed. “What does that say that you have to come to me to figure that thing out?”As producing director at the Williamstown Theater Festival, he spent the non-summer months in New York City negotiating contracts and transfer deals while having such random encounters as passing Adam Driver in a stairwell while the “Star Wars” actor practiced lines for a play.“I’m the only person of color, period, in 90 percent of the conversations that I’m having,” Martin recalled, “and yet here I am, just this kid from Little Rock, and I can run into Kylo Ren on the way to my office.”The Goodman enticed Martin to return to Chicago in November 2019 to take the No. 2 artistic position to Falls. Martin did hands-on work with such productions as Jocelyn Bioh’s “School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play,” which had an artistic team of all Black women.“None of us had been in a room like that before,” the show’s director, Lili-Anne Brown, said. “He understood how significant that was, and he worked to uplift it and protect it.”Ciera Dawn in the Goodman Theater production of “School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play,” which had an artistic team of Black women.Liz LaurenThen the pandemic hit, live performances were suspended, and the team had to navigate a new path through the shutdown and ensuing social unrest.Martin stressed the need for “nuance” as he discussed the Goodman. He referred to Falls and the Goodman executive director Roche Schulfer each as a “mentor” and “dear, dear friend” yet said his experiences there and at Williamstown and Trinity Rep solidified his determination to pursue a leadership position.“What I wasn’t interested in doing any longer was being the Black or brown shield and token within some of these larger institutions that had snatched me up,” he said.“The theater’s mission literally says to be a theater for all,” Martin says.Nolis Anderson for The New York TimesA few miles north of the Goodman, Victory Gardens had its own problems.Founded in 1974 and now based in the historic Biograph Theater in upscale Lincoln Park, the theater has traditionally focused on a diverse range of new work by Chicago writers. The theater’s first official playwrights’ ensemble included Steve Carter, Gloria Bond Clunie and Charles Smith, as well as John Logan, Jeffrey Sweet and Claudia Allen, who wrote extensively about L.G.B.T.Q. characters. The Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz joined later.In 2001, Victory Gardens became the third Chicago recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater. When Dennis Zacek, the first artistic director, announced his retirement in 2010 after 34 years, the board named the acclaimed director and playwright Chay Yew as his successor, making Yew a rare artistic director of color at a major American theater.Lucas Hnath’s “Hillary and Clinton” had its premiere at Victory Gardens and later was presented on Broadway, starring John Lithgow, left, and Laurie Metcalf.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYew shook things up over his nine years in the top job, bringing in his own ensemble of playwrights while aiming for a younger, more diverse audience and tallying his share of successes. (Lucas Hnath’s “Hillary and Clinton” had a Broadway production in 2019.) After Yew announced his departure, the board in May 2020 named Erica Daniels, already its executive director, as its new executive artistic director. In response the playwrights’ group resigned, blasting the board for not communicating with the theater’s artists or for conducting a national search.The administration’s decision in early June to board up the theater’s frontage — at a time when other theaters in Chicago and New York were opening their doors to protesters decrying racial injustice — inflamed tensions. About 100 activists assembled outside the Biograph on June 6 and posted messages such as “BLACK LIVES MATTER. But do they matter to this theater?”Two days later, Daniels resigned, as did Steve Miller, the board chair. A more inclusive, transparent search process followed.“I was one of the loudmouths yelling at them, and months later they asked me, ‘Do you want to be one of the people who helps us chose our next artistic director?’” said Brown, the “School Girls” director. “Victory Gardens’ board has done more work at transformation than anyone else I’ve seen.”She was pleased with the choice of Martin, saying, “I think this is an opportunity to show everyone in the national theater forum what it really can look like to gut rehab a historically white institution.”Falls said seeing Martin leave the Goodman was “bittersweet,” but “it’s a fantastic moment for him and the city of Chicago and nationally. He’s an extraordinary person and a wonderful artist who brings a plethora of skills that most people do not have in running a theater.”Like just about every theater company, Victory Gardens is trying to figure out when and how it will welcome live audiences back into the building.Martin said he also intends to use the connections he made at Williamstown to give more Victory Gardens productions an afterlife in New York and elsewhere. And he expressed interest in bringing back older Victory Gardens playwrights to foster “larger intergenerational conversations.”“But at the same time, yeah, I’m going to have some new writers,” he said, “because I know a lot of dope writers.”He spoke most energetically about the need for Victory Gardens, onstage and off, to reflect and engage with the city’s broad range of communities. “The theater’s mission literally says to be a theater for all,” he said.He hopes to draw on the wisdom of an emerging “cohort” of fellow artistic directors of color in theater — not to mention the inspiration of that Sankofa bird — to pull it off.He’s not worried.“If I figured out how to get Black people to come to a theater in Des Moines,” he said, “I can probably figure out how to get all peoples within this larger beautiful city to come out as well.” More

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    Jimmy Kimmel to Mike Lindell: The Obsession Is Mutual

    “Mike Lindell doesn’t seem to understand I’m his biggest fan,” Kimmel said of the MyPillow C.E.O. “I have no idea what he is doing, but I love it.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘Machines, Vaccines and Me’Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, is a frequent target of late-night hosts who skewer him for supporting former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. Having been barred from Twitter over those claims, Lindell launched his own social media platform on Monday with a livestream set to last 48 hours. Jimmy Kimmel’s name has come up more than a few times during what he described as Lindell’s “yellathon.”“It’s quite a production. Phones are ringing, there are crank calls pouring in, the lights went out. He kept ranting and raving about the same things over and over again — machines, vaccines and me,” Kimmel said.“A lot of people said the C.E.O. of a pillow company couldn’t successfully launch a major social media site, and those people were 100 percent correct.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s been going nonstop since 7 o’clock this morning. In 17 hours, he’s taken maybe two breaths. At one point he claimed they had 75 million people watching. Even Trump was like, ‘Oh, please, quit exaggerating.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s like the Jerry Lewis telethon if Jerry was on a public access channel and crack.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“What Mike Lindell doesn’t seem to understand is I’m his biggest fan. I have no idea what he is doing, but I love it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Of course I would have him on our show, under two conditions. Number one, he has to actually come into our studio — I need to see him in person. I want to smell the knackwurst in his mustache. And number two, I would like to conduct our interview in a bed, surrounded by pillows. Just me and Mike snuggled up side by side in a California king surrounded by sacks of goose feathers.” — JIMMY KIMMELSunday Night SpecialPresident Biden and former President Barack Obama appeared alongside several celebrities on an NBC special Sunday night encouraging Americans to get vaccinated.“Almost no one watched that special. It had very low ratings. Why would we? We already had a special to promote the vaccine — it’s called the news every day for the past 13 months.”— JIMMY KIMMEL“The stars turned out in force to promote the vaccine, from Kumail Nanjiani and Ellen Pompeo, to Amanda Seyfried and Jane Seymour. And you can trust Jane Seymour, because she’s a medicine woman.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Another highlight came when Dr. Anthony Fauci was interviewed by actor Matthew McConaughey. Wow, the sexiest man alive was interviewed by Matthew McConaughey!” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Life on Mars Edition)“NASA made history today with a successful helicopter flight on Mars. This marks the very first time an aircraft has been flown on another planet. ‘Helicopters on Mars’ — sounds like a band Jude Law was in at school.” — JAMES CORDEN“That’s right, a little helicopter detached from a rover and now they’re both exploring Mars. Or as Pixar put it, ‘Sold!’” — JIMMY FALLON“The flight lasted a total of 30 seconds. The men on the team said it was a complete success while the women agreed so they wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings.” — JIMMY FALLON“It wasn’t a long flight, it lasted just 30 seconds and reached an altitude of about 10 feet. It may not sound like a lot, but 10 feet means Ingenuity can dunk.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I say they’ve got two more flights before it ends up stuck on the neighbor’s roof.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Today’s mission was the first of several, because the helicopter could make as many as five flights in the coming weeks — although, to save a couple bucks, one of those flights has a layover in Charlotte.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe stand-up comic Tig Notaro told Jimmy Fallon all about her role in Zack Snyder’s new zombie film, “Army of the Dead.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightCher will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutThe closure of the ArcLight chain includes the Cinerama Dome, which was first shuttered when the pandemic hit.Kate Warren for The New York TimesThe director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Old Guard,” “Love & Basketball”) writes that the loss of ArcLight theaters in Los Angeles will be felt by filmmakers as much as by moviegoers. More

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    Brooklyn Man Finds New Life in Crime (Writing)

    It was over lunch in 2013 that the literary agent Eric Simonoff asked Jonathan Ames, “So what do you want to do with your writing career?”Ames replied, “Have you read Richard Stark?”Simonoff confessed that he had not. Moreover, he had no idea who Richard Stark was.“Well,” Ames explained to his old friend and new agent, “I’d like to be like Richard Stark.”Richard Stark is one of the pseudonyms for the prolific writer Donald Westlake who, under that name, published over 20 novels centered on a character named Parker. The Parker series, with titles like “The Hunter,” “Butcher’s Moon” and “Nobody Runs Forever,” features a classic antihero: a no-nonsense criminal who speaks tersely and acts decisively, most often with his fists.Ames, in his 20-year writing career, had written perhaps most frequently about a character named “Jonathan Ames.” Before he departed New York for a television job in Los Angeles in 2014, he was well known in his hometown as an essayist, novelist, performer and bon vivant. “Jonathan Ames” turned up as the lead in his comedic confessional essays, collected in books like “What’s Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer,” and in the short story “Bored to Death,” which in 2009 became an HBO comedy series starring Jason Schwartzman. On that show, Schwartzman is a neurotic Brooklyn writer who dreams of writing pulp novels and who, inspired by his love of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, decides to advertise his services as an amateur private detective.“We were shooting the first season and we were coming up with the graphics for the opening, which showed a pulp novel called ‘Bored to Death’ opening up and showing the actual words of my story,” Ames, 57, said this month over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “I said, ‘Oh my God, this is so cool. I wish I was writing books with covers like that.’ And one of the writers said to me, ‘Jonathan, you have a TV show now.’”The implication, of course, being that whatever rung on the literary ladder that involves writing pulp fiction, Ames, a newly minted HBO showrunner, had long since climbed past it. “But he picked up on something,” said Ames. “The fact that, even then, my Holy Grail was to be writing crime novels.”This month, Ames has captured his personal Holy Grail, in the form of a detective novel titled “A Man Named Doll.” Published by Mulholland Books, it is the first in a proposed series (there’s already a Netflix film in the works) about a Los Angeles-based ex-cop and private detective named Happy Doll. (No spoilers, but suffice to say that the circumstances leading to his unusual first name are not, themselves, happy.)“A Man Named Doll” comes out on April 20.Crime readers may notice some superficial similarities between Doll and the kind of fabled gumshoes that Ames has long been enamored with — figures like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe or Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, or quick-fisted pulp avatars like Parker or Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. But it quickly becomes clear that Happy owes more to the rumpled Marlowe played by Elliott Gould in Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” than to any hard-boiled toughs inhabited by Humphrey Bogart.Doll, for example, may be the first private detective in Los Angeles who’s in Freudian analysis five days a week. He is certainly the first one to describe his relationship with his beloved dog as “disturbed,” saying, “We’re like two old-fashioned closeted bachelors who cohabitate and don’t think the rest of the world knows we’re lovers.” Doll is less Jack Reacher than, well, Jonathan Ames.“He’s a neurotic Reacher with the soul of a poet,” said Joshua Kendall, the editorial director of Mulholland. When he received “A Man Named Doll,” he said, he recognized it as perfect for Mulholland, an imprint that specializes in both contemporary and classic genre fiction. But he also realized that “one of the great pleasures of the book is seeing the Ames pop out.”Of Ames’s detour toward crime writing, Simonoff, his literary agent, said, “He was clearly called in this direction. But the novel also exhibits the charm and quirkiness of classic Jonathan Ames. There’s a sweetness to it that isn’t there in the typical Parker novel.” (Since their lunch, Simonoff has happily brushed up on his Westlake.)Ames has spent most of his decades-long literary career bed-hopping promiscuously between forms and mediums: He’s been genre-fluid but pulp-curious.“Bored to Death” was a warmly satirical take on hard-boiled themes, set against a hipster Brooklyn backdrop. And on assignment from the online publication Byliner, Ames wrote a novella-length story, “You Were Never Really Here,” which was adapted into a dark and violent film directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Joaquin Phoenix that premiered at Cannes in 2017. With that story, Ames said, “I did have this goal of not being funny at all. I just wanted to write something really lean and dark.” He loved the challenge of creating “an express train of a plot, where you can’t put it down.”There is a well-worn piece of writing advice, often traced to Aristotle, that contends that the perfect ending of any story should be surprising yet inevitable, and the fact that Ames has written a detective novel seems exactly that: surprising yet inevitable.“At a certain point in my life, starting back in the ’80s, I began to read almost entirely crime fiction,” Ames said. “You’re studying the form — you’re kind of doing an apprenticeship.”Adam Amengual for The New York TimesOther authors have veered unexpectedly into crime writing, either as a commercial diversion or out of love for the form. Graham Greene famously classified certain of his novels as “entertainments.” (Ames said, “I often liked the entertainments best of all.”) Denis Johnson wrote the pulp homage “Nobody Move,” and the Booker Prize winner John Banville wrote crime fiction as Benjamin Black.Yet for Ames, “A Man Named Doll” is not a dalliance with detective fiction so much as the consummation of a decades-long courtship. “At a certain point in my life, starting back in the ’80s, I began to read almost entirely crime fiction,” he said. “You’re studying the form — you’re kind of doing an apprenticeship.”“A Man Named Doll” feels both like the culmination of that apprenticeship and the logical successor to his comedic autobiographical writing, in which, after all, he cast himself as a lone figure roaming in the naked city, a broken romantic embroiled in adventures that often veered toward the illicit.Ames’s former teacher, Joyce Carol Oates, once gave a quote to The Paris Review that has stuck with him. Oates, he recalled, had said that, in “Ulysses,” James Joyce had used the structure of the “Odyssey” as “his bridge to get his soldiers across.”For him, pulp has become that bridge, he said.“The soldiers being my wish as a writer to observe, to describe, to form sentences, to entertain and to share my fears, my hopes, my, you know, despair — and maybe some of my courage. It’s important,” Ames added, “to try and pass on courage to the reader.”Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: The Oscars and a Greta Thunberg Documentary

    This year’s Academy Awards ceremony airs on ABC. And PBS airs a three-part documentary pegged to Earth Day.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, April 19-25. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1958) 6:30 p.m. on TCM. A new documentary about Ernest Hemingway from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick has Hemingway back in the spotlight (in certain circles, at least). A few years before his death in 1961, the directors John Sturges and Fred Zinnemann came out with this Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway’s famous novella “The Old Man and the Sea.” Spencer Tracy plays the old man of the title, an aging fisher who scuffles with an enormous marlin in Cuban waters. Tracy gives “an affecting demonstration of primal fortitude,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1958 review for The New York Times. But the film at large is flawed, Crowther said, in part because “an essential feeling of the sweep and surge of the open sea is not achieved in precise and placid pictures that obviously were shot in a studio tank.” Call it imitation crab.SELMA (2014) 5:20 p.m. on FXM. David Oyelowo — whose directorial debut, “The Water Man,” is expected to be released early next month — plays the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in this historical drama about civil rights activists’ famous march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery in 1965. Oyelowo is accompanied by a formidable ensemble cast, which includes Oprah Winfrey, André Holland, Wendell Pierce, Tessa Thompson and Lorraine Toussaint. Ava DuVernay, who directed, “writes history with passionate clarity and blazing conviction,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “Even if you think you know what’s coming,” Scott added, “‘Selma’ hums with suspense and surprise.”TuesdayINDEPENDENT LENS: PHILLY D.A. 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, is part of a wave of progressive prosecutors who have been elected across the country in recent years. This multipart documentary from the filmmakers Ted Passon and Yoni Brook, airing as part of PBS’s “Independent Lens” series, looks at the inner workings of Krasner’s office and the ways he and his team pursue criminal-justice reform.WednesdaySKYFALL (2012) 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on BBC America. A year has gone by since life changed, and expectations shifted, for us all. This refers, of course, to the delay of “No Time To Die,” the newest James Bond movie, which was supposed to come out in April 2020 before being postponed by the pandemic. It’s now planned for release this fall. In the meantime, fans can revisit this highly regarded entry in the decades-old franchise, which pits Daniel Craig’s Bond against a tech-fluent villain played by Javier Bardem.ThursdayGreta Thunberg in “Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World.”Jon Sayers/BBC StudiosGRETA THUNBERG: A YEAR TO CHANGE THE WORLD 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Thursday is Earth Day. After audiences potentially do something proactive on behalf of the environment, they can settle down, relax and watch this three-part documentary about the climate activist Greta Thunberg. While the program, produced by the BBC, bears Thunberg’s name, it’s not a biography; it focuses on her conversations with an array of climate experts, with whom she shares the screen. “You are listening to me right now, but I don’t want that,” Thunberg says at the start. “I don’t want you to listen to me — I want you to listen to the science.”FridayA BLACK LADY SKETCH SHOW 11 p.m. on HBO. The first season of this show, created by Robin Thede and co-executive produced by Issa Rae, found comedy in a fake courtroom and an imagined, comically specific support group, in an airplane and at a wedding altar. The second season, which debuts Friday night, brings a fresh set of sketches and a slate of celebrity guests that includes the actress Gabrielle Union and the singer Miguel.SaturdayA scene from “Moana.”DisneyMOANA (2016) 6:50 p.m. on Freeform. One of the beauties of animation is the way that it allows voice actors to step into characters completely different from themselves: Eddie Murphy can play a donkey; Owen Wilson can play a talking car. There’s less of a gap between voice and onscreen presence with Dwayne Johnson’s character in “Moana,” though: He plays an impossibly muscular version of the Polynesian demigod Maui whose biceps are about the size of his head. Maui accompanies Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho), the daughter of a village chief, on a quest to save her island, and the environment. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott called the film’s plot “a mélange of updated folklore, contemporary eco-spiritualism and tried-and-true Disney-Pixar formula.” There are, he added, “some touching and amusing zigzags on the way to the film’s sweet and affirmative conclusion.”SundayTHE OSCARS 8 p.m. on ABC. There are several ways that this year’s Academy Awards ceremony could make history. There’s a possibility that all four acting categories could be awarded to people of color. Chloé Zhao, the filmmaker behind “Nomadland,” could become only the second woman to win an Academy Award for best director (and the first Chinese woman, and the first woman of color, to win that award). Regardless of the winners, this ceremony is recognizing films released during a year in which movie theaters were largely closed, and many big-budget films were pulled from release and pushed to future dates. The best picture nominees are “Minari,” “Nomadland,” “Promising Young Woman,” “The Father,” “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Mank,” “Sound of Metal” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” For results and commentary throughout the evening, follow live coverage on The Times’s app or website.Carey Mulligan in “My Grandparents’ War.” Wild PicturesMY GRANDPARENTS’ WAR 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Carey Mulligan is up for the best actress award at Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony, for her role in “Promising Young Woman.” Over on PBS, she’ll be featured in very different surroundings, as the guest on the Season 2 finale episode of “My Grandparents’ War.” The program follows famous people as they learn about their grandparents’ experiences during World War II. This episode finds Mulligan in Japan, where she explores her grandfather’s time as a British naval officer. More

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    in Theater

    How Helen McCrory Shone, Even in a Haze of Mystery

    She was unforgettable onstage playing seemingly serene women who rippled with restlessness.Selfishly, my first feelings on hearing that the uncanny British actress Helen McCrory had died at 52 were of personal betrayal. We were supposed to have shared a long and fruitful future together, she and I. There’d be me on one side of the footlights and her on the other, as she unpacked the secrets of the human heart with a grace and ruthlessness shared by only a few theater performers in each generation.I never met her, but I knew her — or rather I knew the women she embodied with an intimacy that sometimes seemed like a cruel violation of privacy. When London’s theaters reawakened from their pandemic lockdown, she was supposed to be waiting for me with yet another complete embodiment of a self-surprising life.Ms. McCrory had become world famous for dark and exotic roles onscreen, as the fiercely patrician witch Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies and the terrifying criminal matriarch Polly Gray in the BBC series “Peaky Blinders.” But for me, she was, above all, a bright creature of the stage and in herself a reason to make a theater trip to London.More often than not, she’d be there, portraying women of wit and passion, whose commanding serenity rippled with hints of upheavals to come, masterly performances in masterworks by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Pinter, Ibsen, Rattigan and Euripides. Sometimes, she’d take you to places you thought you never wanted to go, to depths where poise was shattered and pride scraped raw.How grateful, though, I felt at the end of these performances, even after a pitch-bleak “Medea,” at the National Theater in 2014, which she turned into an uncompromising study in the festering nightmare of clinical depression. Granted, I often felt sucker-punched, too, maybe because I hadn’t expected such an ostensibly self-contained person to unravel so completely and convincingly. Then again, that was part of the thrill of watching her.Her “Medea,” also for the National Theater, dared to hit rock bottom before the play had even started.Richard Hubert SmithMost of Ms. McCrory’s fans felt sucker-punched by her death, I imagine. Aside from her family — who include her husband, the actor Damian Lewis, and their two children — few people even knew she had cancer. The announcement of her death was a stealth attack, like that of Nora Ephron (in 2012), who had also managed to keep her final illness a secret.I have great admiration for public figures who are able to take private control of their last days. Still, when I saw on Twitter that Ms. McCrory had died, I yelled “No!,” with a reiterated obscenity, and began angrily pacing the room.Damn it, Ms. McCrory had within her so many more complex, realer-than-life portraits to give us. Imagine what we would have lost if Judi Dench, Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren had died in her early 50s.McCrory, center, with Emily Watson, left, and Simon Russell Beale in “Uncle Vanya.”Stephanie Berger for The New York TimesLike Ms. Mirren, Ms. McCrory, at first glance, exuded a seductive air of mystery. Even in her youth, she had a sphinx’s smile, a husky alto and an often amused, slightly weary gaze, as if she had already seen more than you ever would.In the early 21st century, I saw her as the languorous, restless Yelena in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” a role she was born for (in repertory with a lust-delighted Olivia in “Twelfth Night,” directed by Sam Mendes); as a defiantly sensual Rosalind in “As You Like It” on the West End; and (again perfectly cast) as the enigmatic friend who comes to visit in Harold Pinter’s “Old Times” at the Donmar Warehouse.In those productions, she brought to mind the erotic worldliness of Jeanne Moreau. It was her default persona in those days, and one she could have coasted on for the rest of her career. She brimmed with humor and intelligence, and I could imagine her, in another era, as a muse for the likes of Noël Coward.But Ms. McCrory wanted to dig deeper. And within less than a decade, between 2008 and 2016, she delivered greatness in three full-impact performances that cut to the marrow of ruined and ruinous lives. First came her electrically divided Rebecca West in Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm,” a freethinking “new woman” torn apart by the shackling conventions of a society she could never comfortably inhabit. Then there was her heart-stopping Hester Collyer, an upper-middle-class woman destroyed by sexual reawakening, in Terence Rattigan’s “The Deep Blue Sea.”In between, she dared to be a Medea who had hit bottom before the play even started. In Carrie Cracknell’s unblinkingly harsh production, Ms. McCrory played Euripides’s wronged sorceress as a despair-sodden woman who believed she would never, ever feel better. It was the horrible, dead-end logic of depression that drove this Medea.“Nothing can come between this woman and her misery,” observed the household nanny (played by a young Michaela Coel). But it was Ms. McCrory’s gift to lead us into that illuminating space between a character and her most extreme emotions, and to make us grasp where those feelings come from and how they have taken possession of her.I never failed to experience that flash of revelation watching Ms. McCrory. London is going to seem so much lonelier whenever I return to it. More