Word: backgrounder
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...Press; 32pp.; $3.95) mixes sophomoric humor with existential despair in a full-color extravaganza that constantly surprises with its design. The opening page shows an archetypical villain, stove-pipe-hatted, handlebar-mustachioed riding his horse. The panels of page two, on the underside, have been lightly printed in the background, backwards, as if you could see through the paper - a kind of literal foreshadowing. Comically frustrated in his villainy, he asks himself "At what point did you stop loving life," as he retires for the evening with a glass of wine and a children's book. When we turn...
...Association, is where Bollywood dreams go to die. All 750 members of this union for film extras once had visions of movie stardom. They drifted to Bombay from all over India. But after years of futile auditions, rejections and bit parts, they ended up as extras, part of the background crowd in a musical number, or among the faceless masses in a street scene. Extras, if they find work, will make seven dollars a day. (The highest paid Bollywood stars make a million dollars a picture.) They are willing to put up with incredible hardship?sleeping on pavements, hunger, illness...
...Denver had a program called Always Challenge Everybody, which urged all airport employees to question unauthorized people in secure areas and report suspicious activities--and offered gifts from airport concessionaires and vouchers for airline tickets as a reward. Since Sept. 11, the airport has also beefed up its background checks, for the first time screening all employees, not just newly hired ones. The airlines have also tightened their background checks of employees, and so have airport vendors and subcontractors. McDonald's lost a number of workers who turned out to be illegal aliens, depleting its staff so quickly, according...
...ticket counters and gates, where random checks are combined with special searches of passengers singled out by computer. The criteria for targeting these passengers, kept secret for security reasons, include such things as buying a one-way ticket and paying with cash. Although profiling by race or ethnic background is officially rejected, it is clear that, informally at least, some profiling is being done. One afternoon at Denver, a German couple about to board a flight to Las Vegas were fuming over having their bags searched for the second time in 20 minutes. "If we treated Americans traveling in Germany...
...Marty Scorsese calls to say sorry, no room at VIP screening of "Gangs of New York." I can hear Geffen laughing in the background the whole time...