Word: epstein
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According to Joseph Epstein, editor of the American Scholar, "a few things ought to be said on behalf of the 1970s -not least among them that they weren't the 1960s." But for a number of years the 1970s were the 1960s-at least until, say, the fall of Saigon in the spring of 1975. The '60s, which are often said to have begun on Nov. 22, 1963, lingered messily into the '70s, through Kent State, the Pentagon papers case, the McGovern campaign, the long, slow-motion parallel collapses of the Nixon presidency and the South Vietnamese...
Something similar occurs when Martha Schlamme and Alvin Epstein sing the Berlin and Broadway songs of Kurt Weill, as they are now doing at Manhattan's Bijou Theater. Singing is a singularly inadequate word; reincarnation is distinctly more appropriate. When these two are onstage, the audience is inside the skulls and the sensibilities of Weill and his most potent collaborator, Bertolt Brecht. One immediate impression is that the lyricist always has an enormous impact on the composer. Rodgers and Hart is light-years away from Rodgers and Hammerstein. In like fashion, Pirate Jenny of Brecht's Threepenny Opera...
...literary parties. Those who attacked him assumed an attitude of moral superiority. In an atmosphere of growing intellectual conformity, rational debate became irrelevant. During a discussion among antiwar protesters, for example, one participant expressed fear that the Communists might take over Viet Nam if the U.S. withdrew. Jason Epstein, who helped launch the New York Review of Books, scornfully responded: "So you like to see little babies napalmed." End of discussion...
...writers typed them. When one of the cast inquired politely about the plot, Director Michael Curtiz shouted, "Actors! Actors! They want to know everything." Ingrid Bergman complained that she did not know how to act toward the two men because she didn't know her fate. Screenwriter Julius Epstein told her simply, "As soon as we know, we'll let you know." Finally, the director decided to shoot both endings. The first exit-Bergman flying off with Henreid-left Bogart looking so good and noble and selfless that the second ending was never filmed. Though Bogart lost...
...game as played by directors, producers and studios is neither good nor bad; as Epstein observes, previewing and then fixing a film is "like taking a play out of town for a tryout." All's well that ends well as long as the picture does well at the box office. Epstein, for one, boasts that he would rewrite Shakespeare: "I think the worst ending in the world is Hamlet. There is too much blood. There should have been a few less corpses." It looks as if Coppola has been won over to that less-is-more outlook...