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    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      A Concept Album About Dennis Hopper? The Waterboys Made One.

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      The latest addition to Mike Scott’s eclectic catalog features Fiona Apple, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and more exploring the life of the actor and director.In 1977, several years before Mike Scott founded the Waterboys, the band he still leads today, he started Jungleland. At the time, he was an 18-year-old obsessed with music and literature, living in Ayr, a seaside town on the west coast of Scotland. Jungleland wasn’t a band — it was a fanzine named after a Bruce Springsteen song in which Scott wrote about the artists that enthralled him, including the Clash, Richard Hell and the Sex Pistols.Scott, 66, has always worn his enthusiasms on his sleeve, and as the singer, songwriter, guitarist and only consistent member of the Waterboys, he has used his songs to broadcast his passions. The band’s first single from 1983, “A Girl Called Johnny,” is a breathless, saxophone-drenched ode to Patti Smith. The Waterboys’ biggest hit, “The Whole of the Moon,” is an exuberant celebration of the power of inspiration itself.“I like to be absorbed in the things that fascinate me,” Scott said during a video call from his home in Dublin. “Then I go all the way.”This is certainly the case with the Waterboys’ new album, “Life, Death and Dennis Hopper,” due Friday. The record follows the arc of Hopper’s life, from growing up in Kansas through the peaks and valleys of his career in Hollywood to his death in 2010. “It’s not a tribute record,” Scott said. “It’s an exploration. It’s not just Dennis’s story. It’s a story of the times.”It’s also the kind of unconventional turn that has become a hallmark of Scott’s career. In the mid-1980s, “The Whole of the Moon” and the album that spawned it, “This Is the Sea,” showcased the Waterboys’ ability to synthesize Scott’s punk-rock influences and literary aspirations on an arena-sized scale, drawing comparisons with bands like U2 and Simple Minds, and kicking off a mini-movement named after a Waterboys song: big music. But rather than build on this success, Scott reinvented the band, decamping to Ireland, immersing himself in Celtic folk music and making an equally compelling but completely different follow-up album, “Fisherman’s Blues,” in 1988.“It’s just my character,” Scott said. “I want to keep finding new things I can do that I couldn’t do last year. That’s my No. 1 aim. I’m like Sherlock Holmes. If he doesn’t have a case to solve, he gets depressed.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Richard Chamberlain, Actor in ‘Shogun’ and ‘Dr. Kildare,’ Dies at 90

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      An overnight star as Dr. Kildare in the 1960s, he achieved new acclaim two decades later as the omnipresent leading man of mini-series.Richard Chamberlain, who rose to fame as the heartthrob star of the television series “Dr. Kildare” in the early 1960s, proved his mettle by becoming a serious stage actor and went on to a new wave of acclaim as the omnipresent leading man of 1980s mini-series, died on Saturday night at his home in Waimanalo, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. He was 90.A spokesman, Harlan Boll, said the cause was complications of a stroke.Mr. Chamberlain was just 27 when he made his debut in the title role of the idealistic young intern on NBC’s “Dr. Kildare,” based on the 1930s and ’40s movie series. With his California-blond boyish good looks and low-key charm, he became an overnight star, said to be receiving 12,000 fan letters a week during the show’s five-year run (1961-66).Not long after the series ended, he moved to England, determined to shake his pretty-boy image by training as a serious actor. By 1969 he was playing Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theater and surprising the British critics, who called him assured, graceful and plucky. “Anyone who comes to this production to scoff at the sight of a popular American television actor, Richard Chamberlain, playing Hamlet will be in for a deep disappointment,” a review in The Times of London declared.After five years he returned to the United States and to notable stage and screen roles, but it was television, and in particular the mini-series format, that restored his major star status. It began with a role as a Scottish trapper in the ensemble cast of the 12-part “Centennial” in 1978, as viewers began a brief but intense romance with this new programming form, which combined feature-film ambition with the many hours required to tell big stories in great detail.For Mr. Chamberlain, the phenomenon hit full force only when he played the dashing 17th-century romantic lead in “Shogun” in 1980, seducing a new generation of fans. He followed that in 1983 with his portrayal of Ralph de Bricassart, the tortured young priest in the saga “The Thorn Birds,” making him a 49-year-old sex symbol and the undeniable holder of the unofficial title “king of the mini-series.”Mr. Chamberlain received Emmy Award nominations for “The Thorn Birds” and “Shogun,” as well as for “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story” (1985) — in which he played Raoul Wallenberg, the World War II resistance hero — and for “The Count of Monte Cristo” (1975). He won three Golden Globes during his career, for “The Thorn Birds” and “Shogun,” and as best television actor for “Dr. Kildare” in 1963.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Richard Chamberlain Was a Mega Star in TV Mini-Series ‘The Thorn Birds’ and ‘Shogun’

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      The actor, who died at 90, was the most compelling face of a maximalist, soapy television era.When mini-series ruled prime time, their maxi-est star was Richard Chamberlain.Today we call them “limited series.” But in their 20th-century heyday, under another inapt diminutive, mini-series were the megafauna of TV, lavish events that achieved the kind of cinematic spectacle that was otherwise rare in living-room entertainment of the time. They were TV specials that made TV special.In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of mini-series — “Roots,” “The Winds of War,” “Lonesome Dove” — dominated the conversation and minted stars. But perhaps no other actor is more closely associated with the genre than Chamberlain, who died on Saturday at 90, because of his star-making, swoon-worthy, emotive roles in “Shogun” and “The Thorn Birds.”I was young when Chamberlain’s mini-series aired, and “Dr. Kildare,” the 1960s medical series that established him as a heartthrob, was before my time. But his landmark roles helped form my ideas of what TV could do, and what a TV star was.His mini-series were luxury liners and time machines, whisking audiences to other lands and ages in a way that workaday series couldn’t. In “Shogun,” Chamberlain played John Blackthorne, an English navigator taken prisoner in feudal Japan; in the melodrama “The Thorn Birds,” his priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart, wrestled with his forbidden love for a young woman from an Australian sheep ranching family.Locations and budgets helped shape the experience, of course, but so did Chamberlain’s screen presence. A Shakespearean actor in between TV roles, he was able to make the manners of decades or centuries before feel warm-blooded and lived-in. He was dignified enough to carry the stories’ grandeur, expressive enough to put them over as the finest grade of pulp.Though he was a signature star of the 1980s, Chamberlain’s appeal was in a way a holdover of the 1960s and 1970s. He was emotive, with fine features that made a beautiful canvas for fervor and anguish and longing. He could rage and burst with passion, but his appeal was a different mold from the kind of beefy masculinity that would define the 1980s screen celebrity of Stallone and Schwarzenegger.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Scott Rudin, Producer Exiled for Bad Behavior, Plans Return to Broadway

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      Rudin stepped away from show business four years ago amid reports that he had bullied assistants. He says he has “a lot more self-control” now.Scott Rudin, the powerful producer who was exiled from Broadway and Hollywood four years ago after allegations of bullying led to widespread denunciations and even protesters in the streets, has been quietly preparing to return to show business.After what he called “a decent amount of therapy,” apologies to many people and a period of reading and reflection holed up on Long Island, Rudin said that he had decided he wanted to make theater again. He is at peace, he said, with the reality that not everyone is likely to welcome him back.He called his previous behavior, particularly toward subordinates, “bone-headed” and “narcissistic.” He acknowledged that he had long yelled at his assistants (“Yes, of course”) and that he had on occasion thrown things at people (“Very, very rarely”).“I was just too rough on people,” he said.But Rudin — who produced films including “No Country for Old Men” and “The Social Network” and Broadway shows including “The Book of Mormon” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” — said he was confident that from now on he would be able to maintain his exacting standards without terrorizing others.“I have a lot more self-control than I had four years ago,” he said. “I learned I don’t matter that much, and I think that’s very healthy.” Also, he added, “I don’t want to let anybody down. Not just myself. My husband, my family and collaborators.”Rudin, 66, agreed to discuss his ambitious plans in response to requests to talk about indications that he was planning to return to producing. The result was his first detailed interview about his downfall, his time away from Broadway and his hopes to mount a comeback. His return is likely to be controversial, given that reports of the ways in which he berated and mistreated assistants helped lead to a reconsideration of workplace culture in theater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Clive Revill, Original Voice of Emperor Palpatine in ‘Star Wars,’ Dies at 94

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      His voice can be heard for only a minute in “The Empire Strikes Back,” but it provided the first draft of a character that would be a mainstay of the franchise for decades.It was a minute that changed the course of the “Star Wars” franchise. In “The Empire Strikes Back,” the now-celebrated 1980 sequel, audiences were treated to the first on-camera sighting of Emperor Palpatine.After receiving only a glancing mention in the first movie, he could have looked and sounded like anything. A human. A Wookiee. A droid. A turtle. There was, instead, a disfigured, robed face — portrayed by the actress Marjorie Eaton — that terrified fans and etched the character into “Star Wars” lore.But Palpatine’s voice — cool, crisp and commanding — belonged to Clive Revill, who in about 60 seconds set the stage for one of the most feared and infamous characters in science fiction. Mr. Revill died on March 11 in Sherman Oaks, Calif., his daughter, Kate Revill, said on Thursday. The cause, she said, was complications of dementia. He was 94.Palpatine’s appearance, however brief, is pivotal. In the conversation with Darth Vader it is established that Vader, already an iconic villain, has a boss — one whom Vader himself fears. Additionally, Palpatine recognizes Luke Skywalker as a true threat.In just a few lines, Mr. Revill established Palpatine as a cold, dominant figure.When the original trilogy was rereleased in 2004, his voice was replaced by that of Ian McDiarmid, who played Palpatine in subsequent “Star Wars” films, starting with “Return of the Jedi” (1983). But in various iterations of Palpatine since the original — including the franchise films, the video game “Fortnite” and even Lego re-enactments — the character’s voice is built on Mr. Revill’s work.“Those voices are all influenced by this first example,” said Greg Iwinski, a writer on the animated “Star Wars” series “Young Jedi Adventures.” “That was 45 years ago. That’s the importance of that legacy. He was the first guy to do it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      In ‘Streetcar,’ Patsy Ferran Gives Blanche a Nervy New Read

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      The London-based actress has been heralded as one of the most talented of her generation. Still, she worried audiences would balk at her “very unconventional Blanche.”Patsy Ferran will not judge a book by its cover. But covers are important to her. “See?” she said, palming a copy of a Barbara Kingsolver novel at a Brooklyn branch of McNally Jackson bookstore. “Such a good cover. Aesthetics do matter.”Ferran, a London-based actress, is currently starring in Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, just up the road from the store. A latecomer to reading for pleasure, Ferran picked up fiction, particularly American fiction, during the pandemic lockdowns and has yet to put it down. Currently working her way through Percival Everett’s “James,” with Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital” cued up next, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t buy any more books. But the shelves were calling.“I kind of explore cities via book shops,” she said. “That and good coffee.”In the store, Ferran, lively, shrewd and lightly self-deprecating, (“I do my own glam,” she said wryly as she shook out her hair from a woolly hat) picked up and put down several recent paperbacks, enthusing about their feel. “British paperbacks are so stiff, you have to crowbar them open, which I hate,” she said. Ferran decided that she might buy just one. Or two. Certainly not more than three.Ferran is starring opposite Paul Mescal in Rebecca Frecknall’s revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which is running through April 6 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFerran, 35, made her professional debut just after her graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in a production of Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.” More stage roles followed, including her first lead, as Alma in “Summer and Smoke,” also by Williams, directed by Rebecca Frecknall. “This young actor is a genuine marvel, as hilarious as she is heartbreaking,” one critic wrote of the performance. Soon she was recognized as one of the most talented stage actresses of her generation.Small and quick, with dark, curling hair, Ferran was an unusual choice for Blanche. A great American heroine, “an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty” in Williams’s words, Blanche is typically played by willowy, languorous blondes. (Recent New York Blanches include Cate Blanchett and Gillian Anderson). Ferran knows this. She worried that audiences would dismiss her as the wrong cover for this particular book.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Why ‘Last Tango in Paris’ Derailed Maria Schneider’s Life

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      “Being Maria” uses the actress’s own words to show how the star’s frank discussion of the experience was an early salvo in the #MeToo movement.In a 1983 interview for a French television show, the actress Maria Schneider was asked whether she would mind if the program broadcast a clip from “Last Tango in Paris,” a film she had made 11 years earlier. “No,” she said, pleadingly. “I’d rather not.”Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, that movie depicts the heated sexual relationship between a young Frenchwoman, Jeanne (Schneider), and an older American expat, Paul (Marlon Brando). What ended up making “Tango” more infamous than famous was a scene in which Paul forces himself on Jeanne, with the help of a smear of butter.That scene would haunt Schneider, who died at 58 in 2011, the rest of her life. In a 2007 interview, she said that the moment had been sprung upon her with no warning: “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci.”It’s easy to see why this posed a moral and ethical problem for the director Jessica Palud, whose new film, “Being Maria,” stars Anamaria Vartolomei as Schneider and Matt Dillon as Brando.“That was the big question mark when we started writing our film: Do we re-enact the scene or not?” Palud said in a video interview from France. “Everybody I talked to who had known Maria mentioned the trauma caused by that scene, so I just couldn’t avoid it.”“Being Maria” starts with Schneider observing her father, the well-known French actor Daniel Gélin (Yvan Attal) on a set. She is fascinated by the world of filmmaking, and right away we are conscious of the importance of who is watching and who is being watched. When, not long after, the 19-year-old Maria is cast in “Tango” and becomes the focus of attention, Palud felt it was important to continue to concentrate on the woman’s gaze.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Jennifer Tilly Is In On the Joke

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      She has been electrocuted, hatcheted, murdered by a doll with her soul trapped inside it. She has also notched up an epic kill count of her own, decapitating one victim with a nail file, eviscerating another and melting one unfortunate’s face off with boiling water. And that was before she joined “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”“At least in the ‘Chucky’ movies you get stabbed in the front,” Jennifer Tilly says coolly, shooting a knowing look at this reporter as she lands the rimshot.We are in a booth of the Margaux restaurant at the Marlton Hotel in Greenwich Village. It is midafternoon and we are the only customers in the place. Ms. Tilly is wearing a simple black minidress with a flounced neckline cut low. Décolletage is her wardrobe default.Picking at a mesclun salad, Ms. Tilly appears young enough to force a double-take; at 66, she has spent four decades in the public eye. The Academy Award nomination she sometimes fudges in conversation to make seem like a win came so long ago that Bill Clinton was president.That was for her inspired portrayal of a mobster’s floozy hellbent on a theatrical career in Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” The role, as written, was a camp inside a parody inside a million show business clichés. And it was a keystone in a career whose watchword could be “meta.”Ms. Tilly has a knack for embodying characters who somehow stand above or outside themselves. Think the scream queen Tiffany Valentine in the endlessly recurring “Chucky” horror series. Think of her stylized lesbian femme fatale, Violet, in the thriller “Bound,” the directorial debut of Lana and Lilly Wachowski. Think of her turn as a conniving gold-digger in the Jim Carrey comedy “Liar Liar.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More