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    Robert Gottlieb’s Books Go Up for Sale

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    Robert Gottlieb didn’t just edit books. He voraciously read and collected them.On Saturday, a portion of his personal library — his books on show business — were sold at a fair in the lobby of the Metrograph theater on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.When Mr. Gottlieb, who died last June at 92, wasn’t heartlessly lancing thousands of words out of Robert Caro’s biographical volumes or marking up the manuscripts of Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie, he loved watching movies. Along the course of his career, he built a vast collection of books on Hollywood’s golden age.His family was unsure what to do with the collection until earlier this year, when they started talking with Metrograph, a two-screen cinema that is a pillar of the downtown art house scene.Visitors lined up to buy “My Life with Chaplin,” “Fasten Your Seat Belts: The Passionate Life of Bette Davis,” “Little Girl Lost: The Life & Hard Times of Judy Garland” and hundreds of other books. When they opened them, they found a stamped seal reading “From the Library of Robert Gottlieb.” The books were priced around $15 to $40.Reinaldo Buitron, 28, a documentary filmmaker, flipped through a book about the Italian director Roberto Rossellini.“Being able to touch the same books Gottlieb had in his own home is surreal,” he said. “I see we admired the same films, and that makes me think we might have gotten along. That we could have sat for dinner and talked cinema and about his opinions on semicolons.”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

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      Keanu Reeves Wrote a Book. A Really Weird One.

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      Keanu Reeves doesn’t know exactly where the idea came from, but one day — sometime around the release of “John Wick: Chapter 2,” starring Keanu Reeves, and before he started shooting “The Matrix Resurrections,” also starring Keanu Reeves — he imagined a man who couldn’t die.“It became a series of what ifs,” he said. “What if they were 80,000 years old? Where did this character come from? What if they came from a tribe that was being attacked by other tribes and wanted to ask the gods for a weapon, and what if a god replied, and what if that birthed a half-human, half-god child?”From there, Reeves added, “It went from this simple premise and gained in complexity and continued to grow.”For a while, the character only existed in Reeves’s head. Then he wondered, What if this immortal warrior became the basis for a comic book? An action movie? An animated series?“And then, there’s another what-if,” he said. “What if it became a novel?”Reeves’s ancient warrior has since become the anchor of a growing multimedia franchise. The comic he imagined and co-wrote, BRZRKR (pronounced “berserker”), grew into a 12-issue series that has sold more than two million copies. A live-action film, starring and produced by Reeves, and an animated spinoff are in development at Netflix. More

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      Robert Towne, Screenwriter of ‘Chinatown’ and More, Dies at 89

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      Celebrated for his mastery of dialogue, he also contributed (though without credit) to the scripts of “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Godfather.”Robert Towne, whose screenplay for Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” won an Oscar, and whose work on that and other important films established him as one of the leading screenwriters of the so-called New Hollywood, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.His publicist, Carri McClure, confirmed his death on Tuesday. She did not cite a cause.Mr. Towne’s Oscar was part of a phenomenal run. He was nominated for best-screenplay Oscars three years in a row; his “Chinatown” win, in 1974, came between nominations for “The Last Detail” and “Shampoo,” both directed by Hal Ashby. He had also worked as an uncredited script doctor on “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) and “The Godfather” (1972).He was widely regarded as a master at writing dialogue, though he was less gifted at meeting deadlines — he was notorious for delivering long, unshapely scripts way past their due dates. The film historian David Thomson called him “a fascinating contradiction: in many ways idealistic, sentimental and very talented; in others a devout compromiser, a delayer, so insecure that he can sometimes seem devious.”Mr. Towne speaking at the Writers Guild Awards in Los Angeles in 2016.Phillip Faraone/Getty Images North AmericaMr. Towne later directed a few movies, and occasionally appeared onscreen, but he left his most lasting mark as a writer. And although he remained active into the 21st century, his reputation is based largely on the work he did in the 1970s.Beginning in the late 1960s with cutting-edge movies like “Midnight Cowboy” and “Easy Rider” and running through “Raging Bull” in 1980, the New Hollywood was a pinnacle for American directors, who followed the French auteur model of making idiosyncratic, personal movies, and also for talented screenwriters like Mr. Towne and a small army of gifted actors, like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, who did not fit the old Hollywood mold.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

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      Shay Youngblood, Influential Black Author and Playwright, Dies at 64

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      She wrote memorably about her upbringing by a circle of maternal elders and the life lessons they imparted, and of her yearning for the mother she lost.Shay Youngblood, a novelist and playwright whose works about her upbringing by a churchgoing cohort of “Big Mamas” and her adventures in Paris as a young aspiring writer inspired a generation of young Black women, died on June 11 at the home of a friend, Kelley Alexander, in Peachtree City, Ga. She was 64.Ms. Alexander said the cause was ovarian cancer.Ms. Youngblood, whose mother died when she was 2 years old and whose father was not in her life, grew up in a housing project in Columbus, Ga., where she raised by her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, along with a close circle of eccentric and adoring maternal stand-ins.The Big Mamas — stoic, arthritic and wise — had much to impart to the young Shay: their dim view of most men; their love of music, dancing and church; their often bawdy humor; their dignified, powerful resistance to the indignities and horrors visited upon them by the racist white employers for whom they worked as maids.Ms. Youngblood said that she prayed often for her mother to return, but that as she grew older, she appreciated the richness of her upbringing and turned the experience into her first book, “The Big Mama Stories” (1989), which before being published was adapted into her first play, “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery.” First produced by the Horizon Theater Company in Atlanta in 1988, it has since been staged all over the world, in schools and local theaters.“The simple act of centering on the stories of Black women, with barely any references to the men (white or Black) in their lives, is itself an act of resistance,” Kerry Reid wrote in a review for The Chicago Tribune when “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery” was produced in Chicago in 2017, 20 years after its first staging there. “And the women we meet in Youngblood’s unapologetically fierce, funny and ultimately hopeful memory-play-with-music might make you want to jump up at the curtain call and ask all of them to run for office.”Lisa Adler, Horizon’s longtime co-artistic director, recalled that when Ms. Youngblood gave her the play in its original raw form in the early 1980s, when they were both in their early 20s, she thought: “This isn’t quite a play, but it’s something. I’ve got to do something!” She convened the director Glenda Dickerson and the dramaturgs Gayle Austin and Isabelle Bagshaw, and together they shaped the work.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

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      A New Norman Mailer Documentary Explores His Thorny Legacy

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      “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” hits on an ingenious structure that avoids hagiography even as it includes friends and family.Given the hagiographic bias of most celebrity documentaries, “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” (in theaters) sails into choppy waters. The director Jeff Zimbalist had to figure out a way to sum up one of the 20th century’s most admired, and most notorious, cultural figures. Mailer’s legacy as a novelist, speaker, filmmaker and pop culture icon — the movie reminded me how often he’s mentioned in “Gilmore Girls” — is full of bad behavior and also brilliant work, and making a film about such a person seems nearly impossible in our nuance-averse climate.The key is to play with the documentary’s structure, eschewing the usual soup-to-nuts setup. “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” is admittedly designed as a roughly chronological recounting of the writer’s life, covering all the highlights: six wives (one of whom he famously, horribly stabbed with a penknife), nine children, a stint in the military, best-selling novels, a fascination with brawling, combative TV appearances, opinions about God and machines and Americans’ midcentury impulse toward conformity.But Zimbalist hits on a great idea: arrange the film in terms of what Mailer’s friends, enemies and acquaintances believe his “rules for coming alive” might be. The author’s life and legacy can thus be traced through those rules, and his evolution as a person — and he did evolve, constantly, insatiably — starts to make more sense. What emerges is a portrait of a man as often at war with himself as with his family, friends and countrymen, driven relentlessly toward machismo and always spoiling for a fight. This is not a person you can present neutrally to an audience.There are seven rules, announced in intertitles, including, “Don’t Be a Nice Jewish Boy,” “Be Wrong More Than You’re Right” and “Be Willing to Die for an Idea.” It’s an appealing structure, and the many interviewees discuss the ways Mailer embodied them, supported by archival film and interviews with the man himself. There’s a lot of footage to work with. By midcareer, Mailer was ubiquitous on camera; as one person notes, he seemed to never turn down an opportunity to be interviewed or share his views publicly.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

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      Kinky Friedman, Musician and Humorist Who Slew Sacred Cows, Dies at 79

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      He and his band, the Texas Jewboys, won acclaim for their satirical takes on American culture. He later wrote detective novels and ran for governor of Texas.Kinky Friedman, a singer, songwriter, humorist and sometime politician who with his band, the Texas Jewboys, developed an ardent following among alt-country music fans with songs like “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” — and whose biting cultural commentary earned him comparisons with Will Rogers and Mark Twain — died on Thursday at his ranch near Austin, Texas. He was 79.The writer Larry Sloman, a close friend, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Friedman occupied a singular spot on the fringes of American popular culture, alongside acts like Jello Biafra, the Dead Milkmen and Mojo Nixon. He leered back at the mainstream with songs that blended vaudeville, outlaw country and hokum, a bawdy style of novelty music typified by tracks like “Asshole From El Paso” and “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You.”With a thick mustache, sideburns, a Honduran cigar and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat, he played his own version of Texas-inflected country music, poking provocative fun at Jewish culture, American politics and a wide range of sacred cows, including feminism — the National Organization for Women once gave him a “Male Chauvinist Pig Award.”Mr. Friedman in performance in 1975.Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty ImagesBehind the jokes, he had serious musical talent. He sang with a clear, deep voice, modulated with a gentle twang, and played guitar in a spare, straightforward style borrowed from one of his idols, Ernest Tubb.He toured widely in the 1970s, with his band and solo, including on the second leg of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1976. He performed on “Saturday Night Live” and at the Grand Ole Opry — Mr. Friedman claimed to be the first Jewish musician to do so (though in fact others, including the fiddler Gene Lowinger, had beat him to 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

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      The Folger Library Wants to Reintroduce You to Shakespeare

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      After an $80 million expansion, the Folger Shakespeare Library is reopening with a more welcoming approach — and all 82 of its First Folios on view.Social media is awash with pictures of jaw-dropping libraries, elaborately styled home bookshelves and all manner of drool-worthy Library Porn. But for understated dazzle, it’s hard to compete with a wall in the new basement galleries of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.For decades, the library’s 82 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio — the largest collection in the world — were locked away in a vault, with access granted only to select scholars. But now, anyone can enter the public galleries and see them displayed in a special wall case, laid flat with spines out.In the dim, curatorially correct lighting, they glow like some kind of mysterious dark matter. But during a preview of the building, which reopens this weekend after a four-year, $80 million expansion, the Folger’s director, Michael Witmore, reached for a sunnier metaphor.Six of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s copies of the First Folio. The library has placed all 82 of its First Folios — the largest collection in the world — on permanent display.Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesThe Folio — a collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, published by his friends in 1623, seven years after his death — is “the ultimate message in a bottle.”“And the miracle is that every generation opens up the bottle and it turns out the plays, the message, was addressed to them,” Witmore said.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

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      Elinor Fuchs, Leading Scholar of Experimental Theater, Dies at 91

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      First as a journalist and later as a professor at Yale, she provided the intellectual tools to help actors, directors and audiences understand challenging work.Elinor Fuchs, whose impassioned insights into contemporary theater — first as a critic prowling the avant-garde scene in New York, and later as a professor at Yale — made her one of the leading scholars of the modern American stage, died on May 28 at her home in the West Village of Manhattan. She was 91.Her daughter Katherine Eban said the cause was complications of Lewy body dementia.Professor Fuchs specialized in dramaturgy, or the construction of a play, including its dramatic structure, its characters’ motivations and technical issues about set design and lighting.In conventional times, dramaturgy can seem to be an arcane, even slightly stuffy field. But in Professor Fuchs’s hands, it became a vital tool for examining the revolutionary new forms of theater emerging in the 1960s and ’70s, forms that complicated — or dismissed entirely — conventional notions about character, dramatic arc and authorial intention.Unlike many other theater scholars, Professor Fuchs first came at these questions from a journalistic point of view. After attempting a career as an actor and writing a play, she turned to freelance theater criticism for what was then a bountiful crop of alternative weeklies around Manhattan, including The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News.She found herself drawn to challenging works like “Leave It to Beaver Is Dead,” a 1979 play at the Public Theater that included a full-length rock concert as a third act. The New York Times panned it, and it soon closed.But Professor Fuchs loved it, recognizing the play and other experimental fare as not just a new take on theater but also a whole new, postmodern cultural sensibility — even though at first she struggled to explain 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

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      ‘Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’’ Review: A Bittersweet Premiere

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      An Arabic production of Wajdi Mouawad’s 1991 work, planned to open in Lebanon, was canceled because of his perceived ties to Israel. It found a home in France.What happens when the roots you long for keep eluding you? This question has long been central to the work of the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, and never more so than in a new production of his 1991 work “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.”Currently the director of Théâtre National de la Colline, a high-profile Parisian playhouse, Mouawad was born in Lebanon. In 1978, he fled the country’s civil war with his family, at the age of 10. As a writer, he has returned to his Lebanese heritage over and over — and this year, he went back to the country to stage his first production with local actors, an Arabic-language adaptation of “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.”But in April, just weeks before the premiere, Le Monnot playhouse in Beirut was forced to cancel all performances of the play over Mouawad’s perceived ties to Israel, which Lebanon considers an enemy state. Several Lebanese lobbying groups had called for the show to be stopped, with one, the Commission of Detainees Affairs, filing a legal complaint with the country’s military courts and demanding Mouawad’s arrest.According to a report in the French newspaper Le Monde, Mouawad was accused of allowing the Israeli Embassy in France to pay for three plane tickets in 2017 to bring two Israeli actors and a translator to the country for his production “All Birds.” In another perceived transgression, last season Mouawad programmed a work by the Israeli artist Amos Gitai at the Théâtre National de la Colline.Mouawad quickly left Lebanon. In a public statement, the Beirut venue blamed “unacceptable pressure and serious threats made against Le Monnot as well as some artists and technicians.”It was an astonishing turn of events for a playwright who has always asserted his Lebanese identity, regardless of his childhood exile, and dissected it onstage. In the end, in lieu of Beirut, “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’” premiered over the weekend at the Printemps des Comédiens, a theater festival in Montpellier, France, ahead of an international tour (whose dates remain to be confirmed) with the cast that was scheduled to perform in Lebanon.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