Tribute to David: Kevin Courrier

Given the sad passing of our friend and colleague David Churchill, we've decided to honour him in a manner totally fitting to our memory of him. We felt strongly that we could best salute our late columnist by creating an Omnibus of David. From April 16 until April 24, we plan to publish – daily – the best of David Churchill as chosen by our writers.

Today's piece is from Kevin Courrier.

– The Editors at Critics at Large.

Three years ago, I had an idea to begin an online arts publication that we would call Critics at Large. Having watched film and other arts journalism become more compromised by survivalist careerism, ineptness and a blatant catering to consumerism, I felt the need to create an alternative. Of course, I thought of two people to include in the project, my friend Shlomo Schwartzberg, who had just been callously slandered by our editor at Boxoffice Magazine in Los Angeles; and my dear friend, David Churchill. What I couldn't foresee was how strongly David would become a peerless advocate of the website. He not only came up with ideas such as an omnibus to commemorate 9/11, but that omnibus also led to our first published e-book which was made up of those pieces. After tirelessly editing that book, he pushed for another series of pieces commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Many of our writers, including Mark Clamen, Deirdre Kelly, Bob Douglas and Steve Vineberg, came to know David best during this time because he always read their pieces and wrote to every writer encouraging them and offering critical advice. He was the abiding spirit of Critics at Large and we all know that we can’t replace him.

But David has also been my best friend for over three decades so his loss is felt by me as a deeply personal one. We both worked as film critics, disagreeing on about as many movies as we agreed on, but we quickly saw that the common ground for friendship wasn't about seeking the safety of agreement, it was about the risk of respectfully opening up a space for yourself in the person you cared for. With that in mind, I offered him the opportunity to review movies with me back in the Eighties at CJRT-FM where I produced and co-hosted an arts program (On the Arts). Although he took to the format quickly, David’s rapid-fire manner of speaking took some getting used to – even for listeners who sometimes missed his best points. (But he would also come to meet the love of his life there: his darling wife, Rose, as she was our receptionist.) 

David hadn't written criticism for some time when I invited him onboard Critics at Large, but I sensed that he might be ready for the opportunity. Given the recent tragedy of his passing, I'm eternally glad that I followed my instincts because there are now over 170 fine pieces that David contributed to the site. People all week have been, with their touching tributes, reminding me daily of what a stellar critic (and human being) that he was. Not only could he see sides of a work that might glide past you, he sometimes found interesting arguments in hailing work that most people dismissed. (For an example, simply read his fascinating appraisal of The Invasion.) Although we talked plenty on the phone, sometimes for longer than his employers would have permitted, our conversations sometimes took place between our articles. While he truly enjoyed Mad Men, for example, I found it condescendingly artful. I think it frustrated him that I wrote my piece first because he followed with not one, but two passionate and smart posts that implicitly took the underpinnings out of my critique. (Since I bailed on the show after writing my article, I have no idea if I'd agree with David, but his views are sharply argued.) His lovely piece on Last Orders came from one of my promptings for him to seek out his video shelf for ideas when he, Shlomo and myself were still the only writers at Critics at Large. We desperately needed material to continue to run daily and he always responded – sometimes out of desperation. His fun follow-up to an addendum for his Mini-Masterpieces in Bad Movies post (Cruise into Terror) became a running joke for all of us who kept seeing the damn thing become one of our most popular posts.

Today as I tried to find a post of David's to put up, I was stymied. There are so many that I admire and reading them is still a little daunting since his voice (as Shlomo reminded us in his tribute) is so much a part of what he writes. I hear him talking in almost every article and I know how deeply I'm going to miss hearing that voice. It still stings. His voice had a way, as Susan Green reminded us in her tribute, of disarming us. You can hear that disarming quality so clearly, too, in his lament for the late TV show Invasion and his passionate shot at the elitism of film critics and programmers when selecting their best film lists. One other gift David had was a sure instinct for including aspects of personal memoir when he sometimes wrote. And I always encouraged him in this area because he often didn't reveal these kinds of feelings in everyday conversation. (Just read his appraisal of Peter Jackson's misguided The Lovely Bones for a perfect example.) So I decided today to include a piece of David's which happens to be my favourite in that spirit of self-revelation, as a way of bringing his loving personality into clear focus. After his father died in 2010, I could tell he was grieving, but he was doing it quietly. I wanted him to write a tribute to his dad despite his stoicism. But his father and he weren't truly kindred spirits. They weren't rivals exactly, they just had little in common. So when I prompted him to see if there was any common ground between them, or some unexamined area of their life that he might explore, he phoned me back the next day telling me that he might have found something. Of course, he did. It was a movie that they both enjoyed. As a tribute to both men, and in dedication to their families and for those of us they've left behind, I offer David's most compassionate review. 

Rest in peace, my dear friend.

– Kevin Courrier is a freelance writer/broadcaster, film critic and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams, 33 1/3 Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of The Beatles Utopian Dream). Courrier teaches part-time film courses to seniors through the LIFE Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto and other venues. His forthcoming book is Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism.

Tribute to David: Susan Green

David Churchill (1959-2013) in October 2010.

Given the sad passing of our friend and colleague David Churchill, we've decided to honour him in a manner totally fitting to our memory of him. Since he was such a strong advocate of Critics at Large from the beginning, he was quick to initiate ideas. One thing he was quite fond of were omnibus projects like the Remembering 9/11 collection (which led to our first e-book) and the Titanic 100th Anniversary commemoration. Therefore, we felt strongly that we could best salute our late columnist by creating an Omnibus of David. From April 16 until April 24, we plan to publish – daily – the best of David Churchill as chosen by our writers. 

Today's piece is from Susan Green. 

– The Editors at Critics at Large.

"It’s all part of life,” David Churchill wrote to me in early December about his health crisis.

Despite the geographic distance between us – Burlington, Vermont is 400 miles from Toronto – he was certainly an important part of my life. Although we’d known each other for more than two decades, most of our communications in recent years were via email and concerned his editing of my Critics at Large pieces.

Messages from David were invariably funny, even when debating our differences of opinion or the fine points of grammar. There was once an energetic dust-up about the proper use of commas. Commas! But we were always quick to acknowledge our mutual affection and respect. His encouragement meant the world to me. His sharp wit kept me entertained.

In September 2011, I thought I could detect my own respiratory distress after seeing Contagion, about a super flu that decimates humankind but ultimately is stopped with a miracle drug developed by America’s neighbor to the north. When I sent him the review, this was David’s observation on the coincidence of my possible sniffles and a movie pandemic: “Thanks, darling. Go wipe your nose. I think it's running. And NO we aren't going to give you the antidote. We Canadians clearly aren't that nice :)” Except, of course, he at least really was.

In February, I inadvertently left a Federal passport office with a ballpoint pen bearing the U.S. State Department insignia. In response to the photo of it that I posted on my Facebook page, David commented: “Do I hear a knocking on your front door? Run, Susan, run!” I assured him the sound was merely a government drone overhead. 

David’s sense of humor, ranging from whimsical to barbed, certainly infused his own very smart postings. In a mostly negative 2011 review of The Killing, an AMC murder mystery set in the water-logged Pacific Northwest, his hilariously visceral description of a scene drenched by persistent precipitation: “while the Rain...Just...Poured...Down.” The constant drizzle bothered me, as well, although I liked many other aspects of the series.
 

David, from the shoot-out at Spadina Garden (Oct 2010)

We heartily agreed, however, about AMC’s Rubicon – a spy bleak spy thriller that began well but went steadily downhill and was cancelled after the first season. His 2010 critique suggested the drama was promising, but he began to feel increasingly repelled. In October of that year, I trekked to Ontario for the book launch of David’s excellent novel, The Empire of Death. We also were both part of a Critics at Large meal (Critics at Spadina Garden!) the night before. When talking about our mutual Rubicon disappointment, we zeroed in on an actress on the show who had been truly annoying. David perfectly mimicked her only facial expression: a combination of insipid and wounded. As I recall, nobody else at the table got the joke, but we cracked up.

A few months ago, I told David about a political journalist named Norman Cousins who reportedly had cured himself of a terminal disease in the late 1960s by taking massive doses of vitamin C and watching every Marx Brothers comedy ever made. His reply: “Need a copy of The Court Jester. The ‘vessel with the pestle has the brew that is poison’ routine always gets me laughing like a little kid.”

That little kid in David, whose giggle was memorable, had a playful nature. At the Spadina Garden gathering, he and I had a few moments of silliness attempting to out-shoot each other with our digital cameras.

When too much time went by between my pitches to him with story ideas, David would often prompt me with just two words: “Nudge. Nudge.”

In November 2011, he sent this reassurance about my confusion when it came to some formatting issues: “Any questions, your beloved editor is here to answer them.” 

Oh, how I wish. 

– Susan Green is a film critic and arts journalist based in Burlington, Vermont. She is the co-author with Kevin Courrier of Law & Order: The Unofficial Companion and with Randee Dawn of Law & Order Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion.

Tribute to David: Mark Clamen

David Churchill (1959-2013)

Given the sad passing of our friend and colleague David Churchill, we've decided to honour him in a manner totally fitting to our memory of him. Since he was such a strong advocate of Critics at Large from the beginning, he was quick to initiate ideas. One thing he was quite fond of were omnibus projects like the Remembering 9/11 collection (which led to our first e-book) and the Titanic 100th Anniversary commemoration. Therefore, we felt strongly that we could best salute our late columnist by creating an Omnibus of David. From April 16 until April 24, we plan to publish – daily – the best of David Churchill as chosen by our writers.

Today's piece is from Mark Clamen.

– The Editors at Critics at Large.

When I first met David, he was sitting at a table with Kevin Courrier – I would quickly discover that this was exactly as it should be. This was three years ago. It was only a few days after Shlomo Schwartzberg had generously invited me on board to write for Critics at Large, and we all met at a Chinese restaurant on Yonge Street, in Toronto. It was actually at that same restaurant that the three of them had come up with the germ of the idea for the blog several months earlier: a project born from the love of, and perhaps even the need for, writing. Three years is not a very long time, but it is difficult for me today to imagine a time before that Tuesday night. David, Kevin and I would continue to meet regularly, ostensibly to manage the daily operations of publication and to brainstorm upcoming posts and projects but (as I would come to both expect and look forward to) most of our time was spent simply talking. David and Kevin had been friends for decades, and while they never tired of speaking with one another – eagerly beginning and finishing each other's stories – from the first meeting, I never felt like an outsider. The topics of conversation would vary (personal, political, currents events) but at the core was always the arts: movies, music, books and, the one topic I felt I could contribute to, television. David Churchill – a lifelong writer – had only recently returned to arts writing, but this was the only David I have even known: the one whose eyes shone with engagement when you spoke with him. I don't think I've ever felt quite as listened to as when David was on the other side of the table. These regular dinners (which continued until late December of 2012) remain the heart of what Critics at Large has become for me: a warm, inviting, sometimes hilarious and always engaging, inspirational space of friendship, ideas, and a shared love for the popular arts.

David possessed a fearlessness – in living, and in writing – that I’ve always wished to have. That quality of David has long amazed and inspired me, as a writer and critic, but it would be wrong to imply that David was a passive agent of inspiration. Always encouraging and positive, he would often pull me (it seemed quite literally) to produce what he seemed so much surer than I was I could do. Just one example: regularly, over a period of months, he would remind me – gently, jokingly, and always firmly – that I should write a piece for the 9/11 e-book he was editing from the blog’s writers. I had hedged and procrastinated for so long that it still amazes me that he could always find the energy to bring the topic up as often as he did. When I finally did do it (and it wasn’t even remotely the hurdle I had been imagining it was), David’s email response was immediate, unequivocally enthusiastic, and (due to some all-caps profanity) unprintable here. Later that evening, at our regular meeting, I was greeted by David’s wry, bright-eyed smile. Whether he said it out loud that night or not, the words I hear in my mind are all his (words I know I will hear for years to come every time I miraculously meet a deadline): “I always knew you could do it, brother.”

I’ve chosen David’s review of Sherlock’s second season as a tribute, not only because it displays David’s unique voice – that fantastic admixture of enthusiasm and critical attention – but because it reminds of precisely what David brought into my life, and what is now lost to me with his disastrously premature passing. One of the very first pieces I ever wrote for Critics at Large was a review of the show’s first episode. When David finally saw the show, he loved the series as much as I did but he came to it (as we all do) from a different place. Together, I like to see these two pieces as a conversation, a kind of tribute to the energizing space that David could create, just by sitting across the table.

Next year when Sherlock returns for its much-anticipated third season, it will be bittersweet for me. But I’ve already reserved a glass of wine with David’s name on it ready to raise up when the credits roll.

– Mark Clamen is a writer, critic, film programmer and lifelong television enthusiast. He lives in Toronto, where he often lectures on television, film, and popular culture.

Tribute to David: John Corcelli

David Churchill (1959-2013)

Given the sad passing of our friend and colleague David Churchill, we've decided to honour him in a manner totally fitting to our memory of him. Since he was such a strong advocate of Critics at Large from the beginning, he was quick to initiate ideas. One thing he was quite fond of were omnibus projects like the Remembering 9/11 collection (which led to our first e-book) and the Titanic 100th Anniversary commemoration. Therefore, we felt strongly that we could best salute our late columnist by creating an Omnibus of David. From April 16 until April 24, we plan to publish – daily – the best of David Churchill as chosen by our writers.

Today's piece is from John Corcelli.

– The Editors at Critics at Large.

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
– B. Marley

I met David around 1987 at radio station CJRT-FM (Toronto) through Kevin Courrier who introduced me to his new broadcast partner for movie reviews. We hit it off immediately and I always looked forward to seeing him every week when he came into the studio.

David was (and remains for me) an enthusiastic lover of the arts and in particular music. When I was asked to join Critics At Large, that was co-founded by David, I quickly took the music portfolio with the understanding that I could also write about theatre and the occasional book if it struck my fancy. (Although all of us agreed that we could write about music if we contacted each other to avoid duplication.) Music is my religion and I jumped at the chance to write about it.

In 2011, I had planned to write about Kate Bush's album 50 Words for Snow (EMI), her second release of that year. David contacted me before it came out expressing a keen interest in reviewing it, so once a copy came into my possession, I happily sent it to him, knowing he'd probably write a better review than I.

What follows is David's over-the-top enthusiasm for the album and the artist, Kate Bush. Unlike me, David never failed to get personal with his comments. I would never call any record a "masterpiece" fearing an unauthorized commercial quotation appearing in an ad. My approach is to appreciate the work from afar. Not David. His unbridled support for 50 Words for Snow as a fan is nicely balanced in his review as he maintains his distance just enough to offer his insight into the album and its creator.

– John Corcelli is a music critic, broadcast/producer, musician and member of the Festival Winds Orchestra.

Tribute to David: Shlomo Schwartzberg

David Churchill (1959-2013)

Given the sad passing of our friend and colleague David Churchill, we've decided to honour him in a manner totally fitting to our memory of him. Since he was such a strong advocate of Critics at Large from the beginning, he was quick to initiate ideas. One thing he was quite fond of were omnibus projects like the Remembering 9/11 collection (which led to our first e-book) and the Titanic 100th Anniversary commemoration. Therefore, we felt strongly that we could best salute our late columnist by creating an Omnibus of David. From April 16 until April 24, we plan to publish – daily – the best of David Churchill as chosen by our writers.

Today's piece is from Shlomo Schwartzberg.

– The Editors at Critics at Large.

I’ve known David for many years but it’s only in the last five years or so that we became good friends. He kindly called me in Montreal when I was sitting Shiva for my father – my first inkling that he considered me a friend and not just someone he was friendly with, which he was. But it was Critics at Large that actually brought us closer and allowed me to get to know the David that we are honouring on the site this week. Reading David’s posts introduced me to a passionate and opinionated critic who personified what Critics at Large was all about: views that go against the popular grain, that argue cogently for what one believes in and which demonstrate a concern with the issues of the outside world.

Last year, David also became my regular editor on the site, offering much support for me, a writer who often doubted himself when finishing a piece. He didn’t say everything I wrote was terrific, his favourite adjective for my output, but often enough so I felt better afterwards about what I’d written. I also got to know David better through his curiosity and interest in subjects (the FIFA World Cup™, the British car show Top Gear) I would normally not care a whit about, though we also shared a similar passion for the writer Harlan Ellison, with David contributing a nice addendum to the piece I had written. He was much better at putting his personal views and life experiences into his writing then I was, which was a revelatory approach that journalism school said I should never do.

But David was much more than a good, smart editor. He was so empathetic when someone close to me faced a terrible illness, even showing genuine concern for my situation on the greatest night of his life, his book launch for The Empire of Death. That ability to reach out to someone else at such a crucial time when you could be easily forgiven for thinking only of yourself was a mark of what distinguished David and made so many love him. I’ll remember him for his kindness and for the honesty with which he approached me and my work. We often discussed writing and what we expected of it – David, too, had had a time when he didn’t much like doing it – and while I still have difficulty writing I think David (and our Critics at Large colleague and friend Kevin Courrier, too) taught me, at least, to value what I have to say. I will always be grateful for that. In the way he conducted himself, personally and professionally, David Churchill came across as a real mensch, which is Yiddish for a person of integrity and honor, a description which defines him perfectly. I've chosen David’s impassioned, powerful piece assailing Nicholson Baker’s pacifist but immoral book Human Smoke for displaying what I value most about Critics at Large and David Churchill, a courage to dissent from fashionable thinking, a complexity of view that didn't fit neatly into that political box marked Right or Left and, finally, a well-argued, well-written case for something he deeply believed and a passionate response to someone who vexed him tremendously. We’ll miss your trenchant, critical voice. David. Rest in peace, my friend.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto. He teaches regular film courses at Ryerson University’s LIFE Institute. He has just concluded his course, What Makes a Movie Great?. Beginning on May 3 he will be offering one on science fiction movies and television.

Tribute to David: Deirdre Kelly

David Churchill (1959-2013)

Given the sad passing of our friend and colleague David Churchill, we've decided to honour him in a manner totally fitting to our memory of him. Since he was such a strong advocate of Critics at Large from the beginning, he was quick to initiate ideas. One thing he was quite fond of were omnibus projects like the Remembering 9/11 collection (which led to our first e-book) and the Titanic 100th Anniversary commemoration. Therefore, we felt strongly that we could best salute our late columnist by creating an Omnibus of David. From April 16 until April 24, we plan to publish – daily – the best of David Churchill as chosen by our writers. 

Today's piece is from Deirdre Kelly.

– The Editors at Critics at Large.

I just re-read David Churchill’s zinger of a piece detailing his enduring affection and indebtedness to the late great American film critic Pauline Kael, and admit I several times worried I wouldn’t get through it.

Not because it isn’t cogent: David, whom I met at university, should have been on the inter-college debating team because he has always known how to build and lob a fire bomb of an argument. I was reading him and hanging on every word, convinced that other critics who denounce Kael are doing it for their own self-aggrandizement and are missing the point, as David says, of her commitment to speak the truth. David never did mince words.

And it wasn’t because it isn’t expertly written: David writes the way he talks, with a rat-a-tat clarity and intensity of focus that is by turns profound and funny, with lots of the personal invested in what he is saying. We met in Professor Cameron Tolton’s history of cinema class and both of us were undergraduates also keenly interested in writing criticism. David went to The Newspaper to write on film; I ended up at The Varsity where I wrote on dance and, well, I am getting way from myself again. It’s the reason I had difficulty reading the piece all the way through:

I am bereft.

While reading his heartfelt tribute to a critic who inspired him to become a critic in the first place – he pronounces it strongly here – I kept hearing his voice, and seeing the flash of his eyes as he grew passionate in defence of no holds barred arts criticism. What really mattered to him.

His references to his past at the University of Toronto, where I met him all those years ago, not able not to notice him for the way he used to bound up in class, hurling facts at our only somewhat bemused professor to show off his encyclopaedic grasp of pop culture when he was just 19 and fresh out of Bracebridge (“Bracebridge?” I remember exclaiming, dumbfounded at the thought. “But there’s but one movie theatre in that town. How do you know so much?” He never did tell me.) – they made me so deeply sad again for his recent and sudden parting. I could barely see the words from behind my veil of tears.

Davis had always been so forceful, and I truly had believed him when he told me he was going to defeat the cancer that took him – really, the only thing ever capable of stopping his voice. And so my lingering shock at his departure.

He was electric as an eel: brilliant, and just as quick. I already acutely feel the loss of his energy. Since learning the news of his passing I have felt plunged in darkness. I mourn my friend, and the passing of time, of course. I long again for those galvanizing days back on campus, shot through with lightening bolts of discovery, when we both were bursting with ideas and enthusiasm and nothing, simply nothing, would ever stand in our way.

I am reminded of that fervour we once shared when I read David say in his one-two-punch homage to Pauline Kael, quoting New York Times critic A. O. Scott, “She will not lead you to correct positions, but she is an example of the right way to do criticism, which is with everything you have.”

David then goes on to explain how that example made him the critic he in turn became: opinionated, impassioned, memorable.

“Write from the heart. That is what I learned from Kael from reading her and [from] that conversation I had 30+ years ago,” he says.

“I have never tried to imitate her style (who could?), but I have tried to make the personal public as she often did. Bring your guts, your life, and your point-of view into everything you write.”

Oh how sorely I shall miss that spirit.

– Deirdre Kelly is a journalist (The Globe and Mail) and internationally recognized dance critic. Her first book, Paris Times Eight, is a national best-seller. Her new book, Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, has just been published by Greystone Books (D&M Books). Check out www.deirdrekelly.com for book and event updates.

Tribute to David: Bob Douglas

David Churchill (1959-2013)

Given the sad passing of our friend and colleague David Churchill, we've decided to honour him in a manner totally fitting to our memory of him. Since he was such a strong advocate of Critics at Large from the beginning, he was quick to initiate ideas. One thing he was quite fond of were omnibus projects like the Remembering 9/11 collection (which led to our first e-book) and the Titanic 100th Anniversary commemoration. Therefore, we felt strongly that we could best salute our late columnist by creating an Omnibus of David. From April 16 until April 24, we plan to publish – daily – the best of David Churchill as chosen by our writers.

Today's piece is from Bob Douglas.

– The Editors at Critics at Large.

I met David Churchill when we both played Sunday softball games about thirty years ago. He was reviewing films with Kevin Courrier at CJRT-FM, and because the radio team needed more players, I was invited to participate. Even then his enthusiasm made him a powerful presence. After the team disbanded about five years later, I had no contact with David until 2011 when I contacted him shortly before my first volume was to be published. He had self-published his novel, The Empire of Death, and I was interested in the ways he promoted it. He was most generous with his time and support for my book. After it was published, he conducted an interview with me that was posted in Critics at Large. When I posted my initial piece in January 2013, he was the first person to welcome me aboard with a wonderful email. Unfortunately, it was about that time that he became ill and we had little future contact. Had David lived, I am certain we would have had many lively exchanges and some disagreements. With his passing what I will most remember and treasure was his generous spirit.

When Kevin invited the writers at Critics at Large to choose one of David’s pieces and to write an introduction, I read back over his pieces and was impressed by the wide range of his interests – film, television, theatre, politics and books – and the infectious brio that infused what he liked and the mocking disdain for what he abhorred. Since we both shared a passion for the Bernie Gunther novels of Philip Kerr, I decided to choose one of these reviews.

David Churchill took great delight in writing about the Bernie Gunther novels of Philip Kerr. He wrote three reviews of this series for Critics at Large. Although we did not always agree – he was far more critical of Prague Fatale – you always knew where David stood and his reasons for taking that critical stance. What David understood most about Kerr’s novels was that plot was always secondary to atmospherics and character. David keenly appreciated the research that Kerr undertook whether the novel focused on Nazi Germany or Batista’s Cuba. Although we learn about the texture and mood of the eras that Kerr is writing about, perhaps even more important is the character of Bernie Gunther himself. Gunther possesses an idiosyncratic moral code reflective of the times, where one does not hesitate to lie, cheat and murder in order to survive. David seemed to savour Gunther’s world-weary cynicism, his way with alluring women and the basic noir elements of Kerr’s novels. As a tribute to David, I am reposting his review of Field Grey.

– Bob Douglas is a teacher and author. His second volume to That Line of Darkness: The Shadow of Dracula and the Great War (Encompass Editions, 2011), titled That Line of Darkness: Vol. II The Gothic from Lenin to bin Laden, is available now. For more information, please visit www.thatlineofdarkness.com.

Tribute to David: Tina Libhart

David Churchill (1959-2013)

Given the sad passing of our friend and colleague David Churchill, we've decided to honour him in a manner totally fitting to our memory of him. Since he was such a strong advocate of Critics at Large from the beginning, he was quick to initiate ideas. One thing he was quite fond of were omnibus projects like the Remembering 9/11 collection (which led to our first e-book) and the Titanic 100th Anniversary commemoration. Therefore, we felt strongly that we could best salute our late columnist by creating an Omnibus of David.

From April 16 until April 24, we plan to publish – daily – the best of David Churchill as chosen by our writers. The only exception we made was the inclusion of Tina Libhart, a fan of the site from Waco, Texas, who also became David's friend when he wrote about the television series, Endgame. Her piece begins our week of tributes.

– The Editors at Critics at Large.

There once was a little Canadian TV show called Endgame. It ran 13 episodes during hockey season in 2011. Although I am a native Texan, even I knew that was a death sentence for a TV show – no matter how brilliant or unique it was in a sea of formulaic programming and plastic characters. Despite the odds, a few fans from all over the world rallied to save this show. We started a petition, a Facebook page, and a Twitter campaign trying to get someone, somewhere to hear our outcry of injustice at the cancellation. While we made a bit of a ripple and got some exposure, we were not successful in getting our beloved Arkady Balagan back into the Huxley Hotel.

However, one of the most amazing things happened to me as a result of this little cancelled Canadian TV show; I met David Churchill. I had written something brilliant on the Save Endgame Facebook page about why I loved the show, and he messaged me to tell me he enjoyed it. He then told me he was writing a piece about the show for Critics at Large and asked if he could mention my involvement in the campaign. I immediately became a follower of 'CAL' and was also privileged to meet Kevin Courrier as a result of my friendship with David.

The last time David and I chatted was March 16, 2013. He and his wife Rose were in Florida, and his last words to me were, “Love back at ya. Just about to shut down, so hope to talk soon.” When Kevin wrote me on Saturday regarding David’s passing, I could not breathe. The three of us had talked about them coming to visit me in Texas once David had kicked cancer’s ass. So I am saddened there will be no more chats on Facebook with him, and I will never again get excited to see him online or read his newest blog post on 'CAL.' Moreover, I am gutted that we will never meet in person, I will never hear his laugh, and I will never embrace my friend or look into his eyes or hear him say my name.

David Churchill believed in me. He encouraged me. He inspired me with his brilliance and awed me with his positivity. He deemed me an honorary Canadian and made me feel like I mattered during a time in my life when I desperately needed it. Therefore to be asked by my friend Kevin to participate in this tribute to our friend is indeed an honour (I spelled that like a real Canadian should!).

Kevin suggested the article about Endgame as the one I should use, and I could not have agreed with him more. This is the one where I first learned just how good of a writer David Churchill was. If you read his words, you will find for yourself that the world has lost an incredible writer and an even greater man. However, I take comfort in the fact his genius will live on here and in all of his writings, and his spirit will forever remain a part of those of us who were lucky enough to be loved by him.  

– Tina Libhart is a guest contributor from Texas, who was introduced to Critics at Large by David Churchill. She is a former English major, teacher, and public relations goddess, who now writes when the mood strikes on her blog Verbalizations and Such.

Lucky Guy: Trying to Resurrect the Newspaper Play

Tom Hanks and Courtney B. Vance in Lucky Guy (Photo by Joan Marcus)

The posthumous Broadway production of Nora Ephron’s play Lucky Guy is handsomely staged by George C. Wolfe, against stylish sets by David Rockwell, and it generates considerable energy. It’s a newspaper play, a rousing genre that now, in the twilight of print journalism, rarely gets tapped by playwrights or screenwriters. (Probably the most recent newspaper movie was Hollywood’s 2009 version of the British TV miniseries State of Play; the last one I can recall before that is The Paper, made a decade and a half earlier, in which the columnist played by Randy Quaid is a fictionalized version of McAlary.) Ephron’s subject is the life and career of Mike McAlary (Tom Hanks, making his Broadway debut), who wrote mostly for The New York Daily News in the eighties and nineties. He rose to prominence when he covered the poisoned Tylenol story in 1985 – which he caught by chance because it broke on a Friday night and everyone else in the newsroom was eager to get home for the weekend – won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the brutalizing of Abner Louima by racist cops, and died of cancer at forty-one. Except for the Julia Child section of Julie & Julia, I was never hot on Ephron’s screenplays, but she came up as a reporter, and for a little while you hope that Lucky Guy, with its speedy tempo and its colorful collection of cheerfully profane newsroom characters, might turn out to be a good entertainment. But it’s barely even a play.

The Biggest Secret: Jake Arnott’s The House Of Rumour

The House of Rumour (New Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 448 pp.) is the seventh and most ambitious novel by Jake Arnott, an English writer of what some call “faction” – fiction constructed around real people and events, some famed, others obscure. Engrossing as pure story, the novel is also an education, as the broad outlines of World War II and the ensuing half-century are reconfigured in and by the voices of people whose split decisions nudged the levers of history, or whose visionary hunches foretold its outcomes. The blurbs draw comparisons with Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (at the high end) and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (at the low); reading the novel, I thought of Robert Anton Wilson (especially Masks of the Illuminati, which germinates from similar principles), James Ellroy (American Tabloid, in its interconnections and narrative density), Thomas Harris (canny prose incorporating deep research into language, history, art, science), and David Thomson (Suspects and Silver Light, novels built from the secret parts of familiar, albeit fictional, lives).

The House of Rumour begins and ends with Larry Zagorsky, a minor pulp science fiction writer, living in Los Angeles just before Pearl Harbor, who joins the Mañana Literary Society, described as “the closest thing to a salon that science fiction had at that time.” The Society is unofficially chaired by future SF giant Robert Heinlein; among its members are Anthony Boucher, mystery writer and editor, and L. Ron Hubbard, another pulp workhorse, not yet the creator of Scientology. Also in the Society orbit is Jack Parsons, a charismatic genius researching solid fuel for the newly established CalTech Jet Propulsion Labs – as well as a practitioner of ritual magic and priest of the Ordo Templi Orientis cult. Parsons, like the Mañana Literary Society, actually existed; and if, like me, you hadn't known that, you have plenty to discover as the novel veers back and forth in time, its speculative web drawing in wartime spy capers and UFOs, gender and sexuality, prophecy and the occult, how James Bond was created, and why Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland. 

Eytan Fox’s Yossi: Modest Israeli Sequel Touches the Heart

Note: this review contains spoilers.

A friend once pointed out he gains a much better understanding of the complexities of Israeli society through the prism of the works of director Eytan Fox, Israel’s best filmmaker. That’s because many of Fox’s movies tackle and pull off the tough feat of actually juggling the myriad strains of that fascinating country. Those films have ranged from The Bubble (2006), a sobering look at the seemingly endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as filtered through a love affair between two men, personifying each side to Walk on Water (2004), a powerful examination of German-Jewish and gay-straight relations as showcased through the experiences of a burnt out Mossad operative. But some of Fox’ movies are smaller scaled, none more so than his 2002 movie Yossi & Jagger, which was the first of his films to make an international splash.

The American Absurdism of Carl Stalling

When it came to writing music for animated cartoons, Carl Stalling wrote some of the most outrageously impudent material heard this side of Spike Jones. Thanks to Stalling, it wasn't unusual in a Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies cartoon to hear a happy collision of bassoons, trombone slides, mysterioso strings, violin glissandos and his memorable "boinnngg!" sound created on the electric guitar. Together, these instruments created a bold, anarchic sound for some of the wittiest and purest examples of American absurdism.

In his Memoirs of a Useless Man, the Venetian dramatist Carlo Gozzi said that "dramatic fables" should contain "the great magic of seduction that creates an enchanted illusion of making the impossible appear as truth to the mind and spirit of the spectators." This idea probably best describes the ultimate goal of animation. Even more than dramatic realism, the cartoon demands a suspension of disbelief. And if music is essential to movie drama, it is no less a significant component in animation. As Roy Prendergast accurately pointed out in Film Music: A Neglected Art, the element of exaggeration in cartoons already had its antecedent in the 18th Century comic operas of Carlo Gozzi and others (like Mozart). The rapid, almost frantic rhythm of opera buffa demanded that the music keep pace with the action. This is no less true of animation. Most North American animators looked to the 20th Century neoclassic style already heard in contemporary artists like Igor Stravinsky rather than the 19th Century romanticism preferred by most Hollywood composers. "In dramatic films of the 1930s and '40s the chromaticism of the nineteenth century was appropriate because of the music's tendency to de-emphasize small-scale musical events, thereby drawing the listener's attention to a large sense of movement," Prendergast writes. "Cartoons, on the other hand, are usually nothing less than frantic movement consisting of a series of small-scale events, and the music in cartoons plays at least an equal role with the animation and story in establishing the humourous success of events."

Nothing but Vacancy: Room 237

“I’m not saying we didn’t go to the moon. I’m just saying that what we saw [of the moon landing] was faked, and that it was faked by Stanley Kubrick.”

– some lunatic in Rodney Ascher’s documentary Room 237

In 1980, Stanley Kubrick released his first film in five years, a horror movie based on Stephen King’s bestselling novel The Shining. At some point in the late ‘60s, Kubrick entered a phase in his career where every new project was a huge effort, drawn out over several massively hyped years, to top everything he’d done before, and everything that anyone in movies, and maybe popular culture itself, had done in that vein before. So, just as Dr. Strangelove was taken for the ultimate black comedy of the anti-nukes, antiwar era, and 2001: A Space Odyssey the ultimate sci-fi head trip, and The Shining’s immediate predecessor, Barry Lyndon, was supposed to be the most painterly, lavishly costumey costume drama of all time, The Shining arrived in theaters with the expectation that it would be the greatest horror movie ever made; anything else would be a letdown. The early returns pointed to it being a letdown.

Not Worth the Price: Admission

Tina Fey, Nat Wolff and Paul Rudd in Admission

As lamentable as most American cinema is these days, I think that the comedy genre has fared the worst of all in Hollywood. That’s mainly because while horror and science fiction movies rarely suggest quality in the first place, comedy films always hold out great promise of screen success, because there is no shortage of talented comedic actors (Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Owen Wilson, Cameron Diaz) around and some dramatic actors who display a flair for it (Ryan Gosling, Kristin Bell, Johnny Depp). And while a few quality comedies like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Wedding Crashers (2005) and I Love You, Man (2009) occasionally pop up, by and large the movies that result, from the frantic, tiresome likes of The Hangover (2009) and Bridesmaids (2011) to the missed opportunities of Seeking A Friend For the End of the World (2012) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) to the outright disasters of Get Him to the Greek (2010), Grown Ups (2010) and Pineapple Express (2008), are wretched and unfunny. (I actually pointed out how consistently bad American film comedy was in a post from September 2010; clearly, nothing has changed in the interim.) And if they’re not outright failures, sometimes the films, like Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) or Date Night (2010), are merely fitfully amusing. The latter is the most evident trait of Admission, which strands skilled movie newcomers like Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, as well as veterans like Lily Tomlin and Wallace Shawn in an underdone, predictable and, finally sappy comedy that betrays the promise of its main concept.

Sex, Lies, and Videotape: La Ronde in Toronto

Maev Beaty and Mike Ross in Soulpepper's adaptation of La Ronde (All photos by Cylla von Tiedemann)

Dedicated, with love, to the dear memory of David Churchill

Arthur Schnitzler wrote the play known as La Ronde in 1897 but it would be many years before it was staged, and even then it was considered a scandal. Originally written in German under the tile Reigen, a word like the French La Ronde meaning a dance in the round, it concerns 10 characters engaged in 10 distinct but intertwined acts of erotic coupling. In 1900, Schnitzler printed it as a text for friends and close associates, aware that his subject matter was risqué for the time. In 1903, it was printed for general circulation but was banned for the first time by censors a year later. The play wasn’t strictly about sex, but about how sex cut across social barriers, linking people from different backgrounds. The setting was fin-de-siècle Vienna and while affairs among members of the various social strata took place, the citizenry didn’t want this open secret openly aired.

In December 1920, a brave staging of the play took place in Germany followed by another, in February 1921, in Vienna. Both events were greeted by near universal outrage. The play sparked near riots in the theatres where they were staged. The attacks escalated into virulent anti-Semitism targeted at Schnitzler who was publicly denounced as a Jewish pornographer who later went to court to defend himself against charges of immorality. He eventually withdrew the play from the public.

Much Ado About Nothing and Romantic Comedy

Maggie Siff and Jonathan Cake in Much Ado About Nothing, at the Duke on 42nd Street (Photo: Richard Perry)

Ben Jonson wrote satirical comedies, Shakespeare romantic ones – and then, later in his career, the two plays that scholars have categorized as problem comedies, Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well. Of his romantic comedies, Twelfth Night runs deepest, but Much Ado About Nothing has been the most influential. Almost the entire history of Hollywood romantic comedy, beginning with the first screwball comedy, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, in 1934, flows from its font. These movies were the consequence of the newly enforced Production Code, which forbade the hero and heroine of a romance to jump in bed together before marriage without tragic consequences (invariably for the woman). The Hays Code office, as it was popularly known, sought to neuter romance, but screwball comedy came up with a formula that kept it sexy as well as witty. The protagonists begin as adversaries – like Peter Warne (Clark Gable) and Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) in It Happened One Night – distanced by both class and temperament, yet we can feel the sexual chemistry between them. Each has to learn to get past first impressions as well as to compromise, to come halfway toward the other. Their reward is a happy ending in each other’s arms, when, to use screenwriter Robert Riskin’s metaphor in Capra’s picture, the Walls of Jericho (blankets on a clothesline) erected to keep them discreetly separate from each other in a series of motel rooms come down after the hero and heroine are safely wed.

Art Without Heart: Sam Shepard’s True West

Stuart Hughes and Mike Ross in True West (All photos by Cylla von Tiedemann)

Caution: Spoilers are included.

True West by Sam Shepard is considered one of the great American plays reflecting the country’s changing idealism in the late 1970s. For the playwright, you could say the American Dream never existed in the first place, especially with Shepard having struggled with the family farm and a father who drank too much. Shepard’s life is perhaps best seen as one that was, paraphrasing Richard Gilman on the movie American Graffiti, “only tougher, shrewder, more seeded with intimations of catastrophe in the midst of swagger.”  True West, written in 1980, was Shepard’s seventh play and it’s considered a work that intentionally looks at the clash of one idealistic man against his wayward, independent brother. The dramatic conceit is to use the strained relationship of two brothers, Austin and Lee, as a political and social device offering Shepard’s commentary on the false underpinnings of American culture. After seeing True West you immediately see the author’s disenchantment. It’s an edgy play that wears its political heart on its proverbial sleeve.

Toronto’s Soulpepper production, which opened April 3rd, is adorned with that edginess from start to finish. Right from the opening lines to the dramatic standoff between the brothers, played by Stuart Hughes (Lee) and Mike Ross (Austin), the masculine swagger rarely lets up. On this point, director Nancy Palk and the cast understand Shepard, his point-of-view and his social commentary. It’s also a production that easily finds the black humour of the playwright, which is almost absurdist in its evolution during the course of the play’s 90-plus minutes. Stuart Hughes is marvellous as Lee, the older, pragmatic and slightly reckless brother. Austin is the younger, straight-laced member of the family who’s working on a screenplay for a Hollywood movie. He’s left the distractions of Los Angeles and settled into his mother’s suburban house in central California. She’s on vacation in Alaska asking her youngest son to look after the plants while she’s away. Lee shows up, unexpectedly, after spending a long time in the desert. “I been spendin’ a lot a time on the desert…had me a Pit Bull there for a while but I lost him.” He barely accounts for himself in the story and his vagueness adds colour to his mysterious character.