5 Results
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling: Songs of Innocence and Experience
In his only directorial effort for the big screen, Richard Pryor takes the raw stuff of his life and alchemizes it as art, demonstrating the humor and vulnerability that made him a towering figure in American culture.
All That Jazz: Stardust
Love and death tango in Bob Fosse’s glittering ode to his own mortality.
Grey Gardens: Staunch Characters
In 1998, I interviewed Little Edie Beale, the surviving star of 1976’s Grey Gardens, one of the Maysles brothers’ numerous masterworks (Gimme Shelter, Meet Marlon Brando, and With Love from Truman are equal in technical and emotional innovation).…
Master of Disguise: Paul Robeson and The Emperor Jones
As a member of the Harlem Amateur Players, Robeson had heard a great deal about Brutus Jones from the Playhouse’s set designer, Cleo Throckmorton. Moved by Robeson’s performances with the Manhattan-based troupe, Throckmorton was the first to appr…
She’s Gotta Have It
From the opening credits of Spike Lee’s seminal film, She’s Gotta Have It, viewers in 1986 were able to recognize the presence of an extraordinary talent. For it was Lee, a graduate of the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (which a…