The Play's the Thing

The Oscars were on last night, so I didn’t write a piece, on the assumption that everyone would be watching and gossiping about who won and who was snubbed.

And who wants to read someone like me writing about the terrifying state of our country, when you can celebrate movies that lift you up.

Wait? What did you say? There’s only two movies nominated for Best Picture that lift people up? One of them is part 1 of a franchise in which the main character, in part 2, is slandered as a witch and brutally murdered by the powers that run the kingdom? And that people sing about it?

And the second one is a biopic that is… boring?

Hmm…

Well, surely there might be other films that lift us up.

Emily Perez, for instance.

Oh? Really? Emilia Perez is about a brutal Mexican kingpin in the process of becoming a queenpin who schemes to still wield control and take her children with her into “retirement.” And the movie ends when she and her ex-wife and the ex-wife’s boyfriend are killed in a fiery crash?

But… but… Zoe Saldaña DANCES.

I guess there’s dancing in Wicked, too.

OK, OK, how about The Brutalist? Adrian Brody won the last Oscar he will ever win since he proved in his acceptance speech that he is a palaverous ass.

Oh! I haven’t seen The Brutalist. It’s about a Holocaust refugee who is a brilliant architect, but when he moves to the U.S. is treated horribly by his family and misunderstood by people who could employ him, and he turns to heroin? And there’s a rape scene? And antisemitism?

Well, that’s not very uplifting.

I don’t mean to keep harping on wanting art to make us think and yearn. But it seems to me we are watching brutality and dystopia on the news every night. Art should take us somewhere else, show us our better selves.

Oh my. There are six more of these films nominated for Best Picture. Was there any film that grossed more than $100,000 that DIDN’T get nominated this year?

Let’s just go through this quickly.

The Substance - a film about aging in Hollywood that somehow manages to vilify older women in Hollywood. But Demi Moore was good.

Nickel Boys - about two young men sent to an abusive reform school in the 1960s

Conclave - about a bunch of old men who will kill for the power of the highest religious office in the world

I’m Still Here. Well, that sounds optimistic. It’s a Stephen Sondheim song! Oh… this is about the true story of the wife of a politician in Brazil who was disappeared and murdered by the far-right in the 1970s. Haven’t seen that, and probably won’t.

Dune Part II. Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out why they made Dune Part I.

Anora, which took home five Oscars, is about a young Russian sex worker who falls in love with the son of an evil Russian oligarch (actually, it’s the mother who is evil), and in the end realizes that she will never have the life she wants.

But the lead actress, Mikey Madison, was enchanting.

In Which We Catch the Conscience

OK, maybe watching movies isn’t the best way to feel like we can throw off our dystopian reality and push for a better world.

During the last month or so, when I was trying to escape from the gloom of the new world order and failing at that because I was also trying to catch up with Oscar-nominated films - which only made me gloomier - I watched a few plays, thanks to the National Theatre At Home. Which is based in London.

The National Theatre At Home is so good. I mean, it’s the National Theatre, so of course, the best theatre artists in the world do their best work. But the filming of the plays is really good.

Those really are two different media, ya know.

I finally got to watch Waitress. Oh my god was that good! So much happening that you don’t get just by listening to the music. It’s about hope and love and staying true to yourself. It’s about friendship and community, knowing that people are there for you no matter what you are going through.

And it’s about art. The art of making pies, to be exact. But it’s about how you channel your soul through your art.

I cried.

I did not cry when I watched Prima Facie (which goes off the platform in two days). I was too stunned by the brilliant writing and the unbelievable performance of Jodie Comer, who is the only actor on stage, but somehow makes you see all of the characters she’s talking about.

And I sobbed when I watched Nye, with Michael Sheen playing the Welsh mine worker who rose up to be a cabinet minister and created Britain’s vaunted National Health Service.

Sounds boring, but damn, good live theatre can make you feel so much.

I cried when Nye, as a school boy, was being abused by his teacher because he stuttered, and his entire class held out their hands to be caned, too.

Who would do that in Trump’s America?

I even cried at the end, when Sheen stood proudly in front of a projection that showed the millions of lives in Great Britain that were saved or made better by the NHS in just its first 10 years.

Triumphant. Real. Non-dystopian.

One of my core beliefs is that pop culture shows us who and how to be.

Sadly, what pop culture in my lifetime has shown us is that we all need to be subservient to the power structures set up at America’s founding.

My mother starved herself so she could think of herself as “pretty” in the 1970s. My mother was beautiful. She still starved herself.

Popular movies, magazines and TV shows instilled that in her and so many other women.

I cannot tell you how many wonderful Latino actors I have known on the stage who went to LA to find themselves only called in for the roles of gang members.

Did you know that Esther Rolle, from the sitcom Good Times, played Lady MacBeth on stage?

Pop culture, run by white men, advanced racism and sexism. It created Donald Trump. It has the power to create its antidote.

But only if we tell stories about how powerful WE are. Only if we lift people up to the possible.

I think I am going to watch the National Theatre At Home’s version of MacBeth. Even though it’s about treachery, it’s also about the demise of a brutal king.

That’s the stuff I want to see.

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Breathe. We got this.

I usually write these at my favorite coffee shop in Vegas, Grouchy John’s. If you don’t feel like you can commit to a paid subscription, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee.