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The Hack That Broke the City / Judith Butler on “Judith Butler” / The Facebook Harvard Reunion Summer for Hedonists: A Multipart Special
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The Age of Louis A conversation
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By David Marchese
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Julia Louis-Dreyfus & David Mandel on America’s Worst Presidents p.84
The Fred Armisen Comedy Industry p.93
Writing Lessons With Lena Dunham & Judd Apatow p.82
Louie Anderson Is His Own Mother p.80
Tracee Ellis Ross Is Not Hers p.86
Aping Trump p.90
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TELEVISION:
TV comedies are now where TV is at its most revolutionary. By Matt Zoller Seitz feature
In Conversation: Louis C.K.
The comedian who ushered in this darkly comic era on why he’s now so smitten with tragedy. By David Marchese 34 the culture pages
The Culturati Caucus
137 TV-makers on what’s making them laugh most 76
What the ‘Girls’ Writers Know
About writing sex, and character 82
I’m Not the Worst President. But Who Is?
Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus ponders her competition 84
America’s New Sitcom Mom Black-ish’s Tracee Ellis Ross 86
Fred Armisen Can’t Stop Making Comedy Mania and Portlandia 93
And If All This Comedic Angst Has a Capital, It’s Here L.A.’s new neurotic soul 100
Tracee Ellis Ross
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plus: Louie Anderson on channeling his mother (p.80), Darryl Hammond on making Trump great (p.90), and Allison Janney on her Bewitched obsession (p.98)
june 13–26, 2016
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The National Interest
As the likelihood of a Trump presidency drops a bit, the horror of it rises By Jonathan Chait 17
Encounter
When Muhammad Ali walked the streets of New York. And helped an old woman cross them. By Mark Jacobson 20
Fame and Fortune
Searching for the secondmost-successful person at Mark Zuckerberg’s ten-year college reunion
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The gender pioneer surveys her cultural footprint. By Molly Fischer 38
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What terrorism could look like in the (already upon us) future. By Reeves Wiedeman 46
By Reeves Wiedeman 22
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How to cool a city, from street spritzes in Japan to man-made wind in the Middle East 28
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Photographers capture their friends in the season’s swimsuits 54
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Critics
movies by David Edelstein Johnny Depp’s bad influences pop by Craig Jenkins The boomer-rock boom 103
10 Comments 12 Backstage at the Vulture Festival. 14 Reread 119 Marketplace 126 New York Crossword, by Cathy Allis 128 The Approval Matrix
Party Lines
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Twenty-five picks for the whole summer 111
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Comments L
ST R S B EC T O16 0 DO 2
P
U
The uncanny echoes of two campaigns.
S
By Frank Rich p.32
Frank Rich
p.6
1
When Reagan Was Trump
The Scatological Sciences p.112 /A Particularly Scary Mosquito p.17 / The Economics of Peak TVp.122
Can a Viral Felon Conquer Hollywood?
By Jessica Pressler p.54
May 30–June 12, 2016
®
What
The Donald The Ronald Shares With
The Trump candidacy looks a lot more like Reagan’s than anyone might care to notice.
There Is Nothing Simple About Hillary Clinton By Rebecca Traister
Photograph of Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan inside the Trump campaign office in Manchester, New Hampshire, in December.
32 n e w y o r k | m a y 3 0 – j u n e 1 2 , 2 0 1 6
Days before Hillary Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nomi nee, Rebecca Traister’s profile of the candi date stirred a lively debate about the suc cesses and failings of her campaign ( “A Woman Running for President,” May 30–June 12). The New Republic’s Alex Shephard said that Clinton’s campaigning, described in the story as awkward, has undergone recent improvements. “Over the last week she’s seemed not only a natu ral campaigner but an inspiring one. When 1
she looked out and said ‘Tonight’s victory is not about one person, it belongs to generations,’ it was hard not to get chills.”
Many readers thought the profile was both intimate and evenhanded. “Easily the best piece I’ve read on HRC this season,” tweeted Vanity Fair’s Bryan Burrough. “Good access, balanced, thoughtful.” One anecdote in the story struck a chord with readers: After Traister asks Clinton about the sexism she’s faced, the candidate shares a story from her college years about being harassed while sitting for the LSATs by men who felt she was trying to take one of their spots in law school. One said to her, “If you get into law school and I don’t, and I have to go to Vietnam and get killed, it’s your fault.” Commenter StPeteMichael wrote, “I don’t believe for one second her story about the LSAT at Harvard. This is more of her play for sympathy and victim ization.” “I believe it,” responded Zanzi Annie. “As I had the exact same situation happen to me at the LSAT a decade later (so minus the Vietnam War statement).
Her statements reflect the sexism many of us have encountered when we dared to enter a traditionally male stronghold.”
Many others were moved by how far we’ve come since the day Clinton took her exams. “I got choked up reading,” wrote Bustle’s 10 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Photograph by Benedict Evans
Rachel Krantz. “I also learned from it that Clinton was born in a year when there were no women serving in the Senate. We’ve come a long way, baby. Almost all the way to the nuclear launch codes.” “Reagan’s apocalyptic theme, ‘The Empire is in decline,’ is interchange able with Trump’s, even if the Gipper delivered it with a smile,” wrote Frank Rich in his story on the similarities between the former president’s campaign and that of the current Republican nomi nee (“What The Donald Shares With The Ronald,” May 30–June 12). Commenter Jeffrey.Davis, a “lifelong Democrat” by his own admission, agreed with Rich’s assess ment: “I can still remember my parents arguing with people, yelling, ‘Reagan can never be President! He’s a buffoon!’ The 2
truly scary thing about this article is that it doesn’t even touch upon the fact that Reagan didn’t have the support of a fully functional propaganda machine—i.e.,
Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. Trump does! Talk about bringing a bazooka to a street fight! The Democrats have got to learn that a policy wonk can’t win a beauty pageant. And that’s what the Presidential Race is, folks!” At least one commenter felt the comparison was unfair to Reagan. “Perhaps he was still mostly known to the hoi polloi for his show business roles,” wrote Classicist. “But he at least had actual governing experience and was able to articulate reasonably consistent policy positions which, whatever you thought of them, at least gave the impres sion that he had thought about the issues for more than a fleeting moment.” “The difference between Reagan and Trump that comforts me,” wrote MWnyc: “Rea gan was a disciplined candidate. Donald
Trump seems not to have a disciplined bone in his body.” Many readers were intrigued by Rich’s comparison: “If you think there has never been a candidate like Trump and he can never win, go read Frank Rich’s column,” tweeted Tom Beer. “Landing in jail and seeing his mug shot go viral was the best thing to ever happen to Jeremy Meeks,” reads the headline of Jessica Pressler’s story on the handsome felon who became internet famous while serving time (“The Felon Is Hot,” May 30–June 12). “Americans love a redemption story,” wrote Clarknt67. “If 3
his desire to turn his back on ‘the life’ is sincere, then good for him. If he is just
looking to score quick cash off his infamy, with the help of sleaze purveyors, it won’t work out well.” “But America loves a fall from grace story even more,” argued aztecace1. Commenters were generally supportive of Meeks, despite the protests of some, like dudie.small, who wrote, “This is an affront and major insult to all lawabiding people who work hard to live and survive … how dare they give this lowlife any consideration.” “Never under stood all the hate directed at this guy and the women who went gaga over him,” wrote DCSpence. “Women go gaga over good-looking dudes! As well they should. Nothing new or wrong about
that. I hope he turns his life around and spends the next 20 years making money and keeping his nose clean.” Many just appreciated Pressler’s skillful writing. “The description of [his agent’s] spiritual awakening is the best paragraph I have ever encountered in an interview ever,” wrote chipsandguac. L Send correspondence to comments@nymag.com.
Or go to nymag.com to respond to individual stories.
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Backstage
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Reread bears no resentment; he won’t hurt; he affirms; he’s adorable. He won’t talk to us like Jesse Jackson, and he won’t be killed, like Martin Luther King. He sells Jell-O.” —John Leonard, October 22, 1984
The Golden Girls
“There are real people on The Golden Girls. They aren’t teenyboppers, nor do they surf or snort. … [The] jokes are as obvious as the weather or a broken arm. But between the jokes … there is respect and affection and worry. We are talking about friends, with calluses on their experience to improve their grip.” —John Leonard, October 14, 1985 “Golden Girls has settled for senior-citizen sex jokes, and needs a brain transplant.” —John Leonard, December 2, 1985
October 22, 1984
Season One, Episode One
Our contributors’ first impressions of legendary TV comedies. By Christopher Bonanos
All in the Family
“All in the Family does not have the explicitness of satire. Instead, it attempts to take a complete orthodox television idea—the family group— and implant its message in verbal slapstick. This relies, wishfully, on a belief that the grotesque parody of embedded bigotry will strike chords of self-recognition in the audience ... But the trouble is that the virus being dealt with is more resilient than that, and it really is an insult to the gravity of the disease to hope that it might so easily be countered ... I do not question CBS’s motives, only their judgment. After years of flak from paranoid politicians about the liberal conspiracy, they’ve blown another cause by using the wrong ammunition.” —Clive Irving, February 15, 1971
Saturday Night Live
“At 11:30 on Saturday night, NBC is presenting ... the first attempt to program for, and with, the generation that grew up with television. Based on a first look, it is an uneven show, with all of the pitfalls and possibilities of something never tried before. But in intention, outlook, and personnel, NBC’s Saturday Night is surely the sharpest departure from the TV-comedy norm since
14 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
the debut of Laugh-In ... The promise of Saturday Night is enormous.” —Jeff Greenfield, October 27, 1975
Cheers “Based only on a few episodes, Cheers has already been saluted as an Athenian classic, and many viewers have been primed to expect a cascade of laughter. Cheers is smartly written and even more smartly cast ... But it’s also a very mild, unassuming and sugar-sprinkled comedy, one that makes you smile fondly rather than laugh.” —James Wolcott, October 25, 1982 The Cosby Show
“The Cosby Show is a valentine to middle-class American family life, goodwill and domestic mess, vicissitude suborned by giggle. Outside the townhouse, there seem to be no streets. It is as if they made M*A*S*H without a Korean War ... The Cosby Show may be the best-written and best-acted new series of the merchandising season, but because it never gets out of the house it causes cabin fever … Tirelessly, Cosby reassures. Love goes on, even if it’s black. Children get his message, especially if they’re white. Cosby isn’t dangerous, in the way that Pryor and Eddie Murphy are, with their secret thoughts and seethings. Cosby
Roseanne “Tired as I am of beautiful people who are sad inside their money, I’m equally suspicious of blue-collar cute. But Barr, a talk-show and HBO regular, is a mistress of the drop-dead one-liner. She gets off more of them per sitcom than anybody since Jack Benny, which is going to be exhausting for the writers.” —John Leonard, November 7, 1988 Will & Grace “In what has to be a first, it actually got queerer as it got closer to airing: Originally, Will seemed straight, but now he’s out—as is his super-queeny pal, with whom he even discusses cruising on the Internet. That’d be astonishing enough, but the show, about Will and his best (female) friend, Grace, is quite funny to boot.” —Ariel Kaminer, September 14, 1998 30 Rock
“The surprise to me is how overcooked and puerile 30 Rock seems, a deep-down conventional sitcom trying too hard to be hip, as if to find its inner Larry Sanders. Alec Baldwin is a hefty bag of tricks as network vice-president of East Coast programming and microwave ovens, but otherwise there was only one good joke in the pilot (about Urkel and black nerdiness).” —John Leonard, September 25, 2006
Girls “From the moment I saw the pilot of Girls, I was a goner, a convert. In an office at HBO, my heart sped up. I laughed out loud; I ‘got’ the characters—four friends, adrift in a modern New York of unpaid internships and bad sex on dirty sofas. But ... as a person who has followed, for more than twenty years, recurrent, maddening debates about the lives of young women, the series felt to me like a gift.”—Emily Nussbaum, March 25, 2012
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The National Interest: Jonathan Chait Donald Trump’s Very Good If Very Bad Month A Trump presidency just got a lot less likely— and a lot more terrifying.
in one sense, and one sense only, the events since Donald Trump became his party’s presumptive nominee have been reassuring. The ensuing weeks made clear that Trump has absolutely no idea how to run a presidential campaign and lacks the most rudimentary grasp of its basic elements, like having a reasonably sized staff, adequate funds, and knowledge of which states to campaign in (he cannot be disabused of his belief that he can win in overwhelmingly Democratic California and New York, a state where he has actually spent some of his sparse funds on a dedicated pollster). A Trump victory is plausible only in the case of a gigantic external shock that overwhelms his incompetence: the onset of a recession, perhaps, or an indictment of Hillary Clinton. On the other hand—and it is a big other hand, with long fingers—we have learned that if those or other nightmares do transpire and Trump prevails, his presidency would be far more dangerous than seemed imaginable not long ago. june 13–26, 2016 | new york
17
intelligencer
A Trump presidency has become a lower-probability but higher-impact event, its risk profile looking less like another George W. Bush presidency (unlikely; very bad) and more like a gigantic asteroid striking the Earth (quite unlikely; catastrophic). What has been revealed since Trump’s nomination became inevitable is the nature of the power relation between Trump and other figures in his party. In late February—to take one time-capsule moment of mainstream conservative thought—the columnist Ross Douthat predicted, “If Trump is the nominee, neither Rubio nor Cruz will endorse him.” By spring, Rubio had indeed endorsed Trump, and it is just a matter of time before Cruz follows suit. Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist who had tried to organize a super-pac to stop Trump during the primaries, has since declared that he is organizing one to help elect him. Trump’s Republican opponents had once vowed to wage a vigorous independent right-wing campaign against him, becoming a kind of Republican Party in exile, perhaps led by Nebraska senator Ben Sasse or even Mitt Romney. By the end of May, a leader was identified: David French, a blogger for National Review with no experience in elected office and who withdrew from consideration shortly thereafter. Officials who had once called Trump “a madman who must be stopped” (Bobby Jindal), less qualified to be president than “a speck of dirt” (Rand Paul), and “our Mussolini” (Congressman Chris Stewart) have since endorsed him. The consolation of endorsing your Mussolini is that you figure at least he’ll be your Mussolini. A version of this scenario inspired Republican leaders who nervously endorsed their new leader on the premise that the party would restrain his barbarism. “The House can be a driver of policy ideas,” Speaker Paul Ryan noted, insisting that “when I feel the need to, I’ll continue to speak my mind.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised, “He’ll have a White House counsel. There will be others who point out there’s certain things you can do and you can’t do.” Instead, the disintegration and debasement of his internal enemies, many of whom submitted after he belittled them, seems to have only confirmed Trump’s confidence in the soundness of his methods. His megalomania has soared to new heights. “I will give you everything,” he told a crowd of bikers over Memorial Day weekend. “I will give you what you’ve been looking for, for 50 years. I’m the only one.” Here he was suggesting he might sic government lawyers on the corporate holdings of Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, which had covered Trump in ways that displeased the candidate. There he was launching a racist tirade against the “Mexican” judge (born in Indiana) in the fraud trial of Trump University. The latter comment created a minor crisis for his colleagues. Trump’s bigotry was so unvarnished, and its target so crucial to his party’s long-term demographic survival, that few members of his party could excuse it. Ryan, appearing at an unfortunately timed event in Washington, D.C.’s poor and heavily black Anacostia neighborhood to promote his party’s alleged concern for minorities, conceded that Trump’s slur was “sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment.” However, Ryan insisted, “at the end of the day this is about ideas. This is about moving our agenda forward.” Ergo, his 18 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Endorsement Justifications “You have to listen to people that have chosen the nominee of our Republican Party. I think it would be foolish to ignore them.” —John McCain “You’re either on the team, or you’re not on the team.” —Mike Huckabee “I want to be helpful. I don’t want to be harmful.” —Marco Rubio “I cannot believe this. He’s my friend, though. I think he ought to be president.” —John Boehner “He’s not a perfect man, but what I do believe is that he loves this country and that he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and that he will listen to them.” —Rick Perry
endorsement of Trump stood. Later, Ryan clarified that his denunciation applied to Trump’s statements but not to Trump himself, whose values he was not judging. (“I don’t know what’s in his heart.”) It was just a thing Trump said—many times—for some reason nobody in his party could figure out. Republican voters, on the other hand, were judging Trump’s diatribe. And far more favorably. A poll found that, by a three-to-one margin, Republicans deemed Trump’s comments not racist. Once again, for all the nervousness he has engendered among the conservative elite, the people who vote Republican side with Trump. Unlike Ryan, whose job approval is underwater among Republicans, Trump is a popular and almost unifying figure among the rank and file. He has already secured support from 85 percent of Republican voters—nearly the same number as Romney had soon after he’d become the presumptive nominee, and slightly above the levels enjoyed by John McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2000. Ryan’s clarification that Trump’s racism would not preclude his endorsement was a confession that Trump holds the whip in their relationship. Ryan’s policy proposals—deregulating Wall Street, reducing taxes on the highest earners, cutting social spending—have never attracted voters to his party. What has attracted them are the social values Trump represents. Ryan’s goals require Trump’s voters. The converse does not hold true. This dynamic would be even more pronounced under President Trump than with Candidate Trump. History suggests that the most important limits on a president’s abuse of power come from the objections of his fellow partisans. When Franklin Roosevelt proposed to pack the Supreme Court with additional seats that he would fill, conservative Democrats rose in outrage and blocked him. Nixon was driven from office in large part by the dissent of Republicans like John Dean (who testified against him) and Barry Goldwater (who told him his support had collapsed). But these events took place in a very different political atmosphere, among ideologically heterodox parties with deep traditions of bipartisanship. Trump would ascend to the presidency in a polarized country. The inevitable conflict over his abuses would take the form of a partisan will to power. And yet if he wins the presidency, Trump will own the party he is currently leasing, and his influence over its members will spread. He will enjoy not only the trappings and formal powers of the office but also the heartfelt, cult-of-personality loyalties that presidents command from their supporters (which run especially deep on the right wing, with its elevated concentration of authoritarian personalities). Trump’s authoritarianism is one of the few consistent aspects of his worldview, expressed over many years and through his various jaunts across the ideological spectrum. He has praised leaders in Russia, China, and North Korea for crushing dissent. He regards all criticism as corrupt and illegitimate. For all the fearful commentary this has inspired, we have mostly contemplated Trump in his familiar context as a bellowing tabloid character or renegade candidate, and not in his prospective role as the leader of a governing party. When (not if ) a President Trump sets out to crush his enemies, tens of millions of Republicans will thrill to his cause and ■ demand he prevail.
intelligencer
Encounter: Muhammad Ali
What the world looks like without a Greatest. By Mark Jacobson
I
t is one of my great half-hours. A hot summer’s day in 1969, walking down Seventh Avenue at age 21, thinking about who knows what, and there he was: Muhammad Ali, bigger than any life anyone was entitled to, except maybe him. He was banned from boxing at the time, his title taken away because he wouldn’t fight in the Vietnam War, saying he had nothing against “them Viet Cong” who’d never called him that N-word. Exiled from the throne, he was on Broadway instead, in a musical called Buck White, singing a couple of songs, one called “We Came in Chains.” “Hey, Champ,” I called, because I knew that’s what you say when you see the King. He had some guys with him, maybe his cornerman Bundini, maybe Gene Kilroy, maybe some Fruit of Islam guys he knew from uptown. He looked busy, but he turned my way, beckoned me closer. “Help me out here, man,” he said in that voice I had heard so many times on the radio, on the TV, talking with Howard Cosell, proclaiming yet again how great, how really, really great he was. A little old lady was trying to cross the street, but there was too much traffic. Ali motioned for me to take her left hand. He had the right. Taxis barreled toward us, but Ali held up his palm. The cars stopped, maybe the whole world stopped, while we walked to the other side of the road. “We got you across, ma’am,” Ali said. The lady kissed him, he shook my hand, and that was that, as I stumbled down toward 48th Street, where the music shops used to be. Still buzzed, I was standing outside Manny’s when Bob Dylan came out the door. He, too, had some guys with him. I didn’t call him Champ or anything else because with Dylan, you don’t. It was breaking the rules just to watch him disappear into the crowd toward Sixth Avenue. Yet what a haul: My two great heroes, twin lodestars of my existence then and maybe still, in half an hour. Ali’s dead now. Just as well: Parkinson’s is a nightmare. My grandmother died from it. He’d done enough. In his primary function as a boxer, it had been over since that
20 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
dreary night in 1980 when he fought Larry Holmes, his former pupil. We went to the Garden that night to watch the closedcircuit on the big screen. There was some hope. Ali had gotten himself into shape, down to 217, a weight he hadn’t made in years, said he was ready “to dance all night.” But by the middle of the first round, with Holmes pumping that ramrod left jab into his mentor’s suddenly stationary face, the disaster was clear. “He’s got nothing. Nothing at all,” said the guy next to me. It had been so glorious for so long. That first night against Sonny Liston in 1964, I listened to the fight under the covers in my Queens bedroom on the radio. Ali was already my guy since the ’60 Olympics. The way everyone said he was behaving at the weigh-in, supposedly scared out of his mind, had me worried. But by the second round, you knew it had been a trick, a lure, part of a cosmic plan, because Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. then, a “slave” name, to be sure, but a beautiful one nonetheless) wasn’t scared or crazy: He was following a blueprint of his own. The fight lifted me right out of bed, got me bouncing on the balls of my feet, ducking shots, throwing them until my parents screamed about what the hell was going on up there. It was a school night, after all. So many times since then he’d come through, been the center of things, with Joe Frazier and later in Africa, a whole continent screaming “Ali, bomaye!” (“Kill
him!”) There was also that one night in 1966, against Cleveland Williams. It was before the suspension that robbed him of much of his foot speed, when he flew around the ring, the soles of white leather shoes seemingly never touching the ground. Williams, a big and dangerous guy, dropped to the floor from the sheer dizzying wonder of it all. But in 1980, he was catching the ground, Holmes beating him up. For months Ali had been screaming, “Hoooo-lmes! I want Hoooo-lmes!,” building up the fight the way he learned from watching Gorgeous George send crowds into a frenzy, using those showbiz moves he got from Lloyd Price, Mr. Personality. But now the fight was over, stopped in the tenth. If Ali had landed a decent shot, no one could remember it. Yet there he was, inside his dressing room, screaming, “Hoooo-lmes! I want Hoooo-lmes.” Holmes, a decent man, knowing what he’d done and knowing that he would go to his grave with people hating him for it, understood Ali’s joke and tribute, and appropriately broke into tears. In the years that followed, when we fight fans got together, the topic came up: Could you choose the precise moment Ali got Parkinson’s? Was it that night against Holmes? Was it in the second round against Earnie Shavers, a massive hitter, at the Garden in 1977? Or that stupid fight against the Japanese wrestler Inoki, who kept kicking him in the leg? Or was it simply from being Ali, the stress of the nonpareil? The unspoken virtue of Ali’s dancing style was that, for all the physical poetry of his attack, a fighter’s last line of defense is his chin. How much can he take? It is one of the million phrases around the fight game: “He’s got a lot of heart, too bad he’s got to show it.” This usually applies to the Rocky types, the “tomato cans” who take a licking yet keep on ticking to the delight of the bloodthirsty crowd. Ali wasn’t that, but the basic idea applies. He took a lot to prove he was the Greatest. For my particular generation, this is the dying season, icons dropping like flies. In this procession of doom, Ali is a Big Ticket, but he’d probably have been the first to tell you to look on the bright side. Last week, I was up on 125th Street, where a guy was selling T-shirts, the kind with the press-on photographs. He had one with a shot of Ali standing next to Prince, who, as a younger man, looked properly impressed, even a bit giddy, to be in this company. Now, I’m a big Prince fan, but he’d never be my guy, that one you came up with. So I got the shirt for my daughter, who loves Prince in the way I always loved Ali. Now we can ■ mourn, and celebrate, together. Photograph by Sandro
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
21
intelligencer
Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Coffin, Bede Moore, and Samyr Laine as freshmen roommates at Harvard in 2002.
Fame and Fortune: Reeves Wiedeman Status Update At a Harvard ten-year reunion with Mark Zuckerberg’s classmates. 22 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
“all these people seem terrible on Facebook, but in person they’re sort of nice,” a member of the Harvard class of 2006 said, surveying her classmates who had gathered for a barbecue at their tenth reunion over Memorial Day weekend. The most prominent person in the class, however, was not there. In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg began work on Thefacebook.com, and had he not joined Bill Gates and Matt Damon as Harvard dropouts, he might have been just another one of his overachieving classmates. Instead, he made more money than all 1,650 of them combined. Among the many industries that Facebook has disrupted is the reunion, but nearly half the class had decided to show up for a real-life status update, despite a warning from the university about a mumps epidemic. (“What could be more quintessentially Harvardian than a 19th-century disease that isn’t transmitted sexually?” one ’06er said.) The organizers had tried to stress that the digital age only made reunions all the more meaningful. “Perhaps we share more honestly with no pressure to garner ‘likes,’”
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wrote the class secretary in her intro to the Red Book, a bound class directory with updates written by the graduates themselves. Some people go on for pages, or compose entries to a tune from Les Misérables: “I dream of Harvard years gone by/With precious friends, each day a story.” “The Class of 2006 is full of competitive type-A overachievers that, unfortunately for me (and quite frankly for you too), includes Mark Zuckerberg, who I think we can all agree has probably won this round,” wrote one alum. He then described his “deadbeat life,” which included earning a Ph.D. and working for the National Institutes of Health. “I had no idea he was gonna fucking build Facebook,” Bede Moore, an Australian rower who was one of Zuckerberg’s freshman-year roommates, told me. Moore remembered Zuckerberg as friendly, unlike the version of him in The Social Network. “I mean, let’s also not kid ourselves,” Moore said. “He was super-nerdy.” Facebook launched during sophomore year, and by graduation, it had a valuation of $750 million, which turned out to be a pessimistic projection. “There’s a bunch of people from our class doing really brilliant things—they just don’t happen to be the most successful person of our entire generation,” Moore said. “It’s a joke with our class: ‘Who’s coming in second?’” Of course, this is Harvard, so there are a few candidates. If we exclude Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, 45, who spent a decade taking classes between tours, the class’s first celebrity was Nick McDonell, who wrote his debut novel in high school, to considerable acclaim. He recently published book No. 7. Several people pointed to Elise Stefanik, who had announced her candidacy for a congressional seat in upstate New York (which she won) by posting a photo on Instagram, which Zuckerberg owns. Others said that they had recently been served Facebook ads featuring their classmate Alexa von Tobel, who has become a prominent personal-finance guru. The official hashtag for the weekend was “#legendary06,” and a wide range of skills were on display at both a series of ted Talks by members of the class and a talent show, during which one person performed Kesha’s “Tik Tok” in sign language, another sang “a short song about misery,” while a third read from a novel he had written about finding millions of dollars under a bathroom sink. No one had eradicated mumps, but the class included a doctor on a Native American reservation, writers for Game of Thrones and Parks and Recreation, and the COO of the Harlem Children’s Zone. Zuckerberg’s departure and quick success did not launch a string of expensively educated dropouts heading west. The class
had entered college on the heels of the first dot-com crash, and nearly half of those with job offers at graduation went into either consulting or finance. “I don’t think it’s endemic to people from here to take a big risk, because they feel they have a lot to lose,” Alexa Hirschfeld, an ’06er who cofounded Paperless Post, told me. If Zuckerberg’s classmates took any inspiration from him, it seemed to be less that starting your own company was the key to success and more that joining Facebook was a good idea. One person told me that a friend of hers had been among the company’s earliest employees, with a job in recruitment. “She’s really, really, really, really, really, really happy now,” she said. In the Red Book, another person recalled a trip to Bali, where he intended to find “an infinity pool worthy of an Instagram shot”: “After a week of lobotomized relaxation within the walled confines of the Four Seasons, I started to step out … I was riding on the back of the scooter of a friend of a friend of an expat I had met on an unnamed iPhone app. And I smiled. Because after years of ever-increasing precision and ambition and discipline and single-minded drive, I suddenly realized that I still had the ability to surprise myself … That was when I decided that everything needed to change.” He quit his job and went to work at Facebook. On the last day of the reunion, after a memorial service for the six members of the class who had died—one from cancer, two from a heart attack, and three from suicide—the class gathered for waffles branded with the university crest at a brunch in Kirkland House, the dorm where Zuckerberg had built Facebook. Zuckerberg’s name is listed in the Red Book despite the fact that he didn’t graduate. One ’06er said that she
“There’s a bunch of people from our class doing really brilliant things— they just don’t happen to be the most successful person of our entire generation.”
had spoken with someone in the development office who said that donations from the class had been down. “The working theory in the alumni office is that because this is Zuckerberg’s year, people think they don’t have to give any money,” she explained. One attendee described his peers to me as “pathologically competitive”—when one person told me Stefanik had been the youngest U.S. congressperson ever, at age 30, a chorus of (male) classmates jumped in to point out that she was the youngest congresswoman but had been preceded by many men—but the professional envy seemed to have dimmed since the last reunion. This year’s Red Book was more about chronicling a cool vacation, or trumpeting your law firm’s maternity-leave policy. It included several rejections of Lean In, by Harvard grad Sheryl Sandberg. Bede Moore didn’t live with Zuckerberg the next year, when he made his roommates unfathomably rich. Moore and Zuckerberg hung out just before Zuckerberg left for California—a decision he told Moore he had reached when two-thirds of the campus had been using Facebook at a single moment. “Even at that time, I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, shit, I should totally go into tech,’ ” Moore said. Moore briefly avoided the business track of many of his classmates, earning an advanced degree in history, before taking a job with the Boston Consulting Group. That took him to Australia, where he met a girl and requested a transfer to Indonesia. Eventually, he and his girlfriend poured all their life savings into a start-up that sold high-end clothes to Indonesians: Eight years after his former roommate had launched his company, Moore had become an entrepreneur, too. But the site shut down last fall, and when I asked Moore whether he regretted not living with Zuckerberg, he started his reply several times before settling on an answer. “Do I think that it would have been interesting to have worked with Mark in the construction of that company and to be on the inside of Facebook? Yeah, that sounds really interesting,” Moore said. “And would the outcome of that—getting a lot of money—be great? Hell, yeah. Who would say, ‘I wish I didn’t have $600 million?’” That figure happens to be the estimated Facebook windfall of Chris Hughes, one of Zuckerberg’s sophomore roommates, whose role as the site’s early spokesman was the closest to Moore’s skill set. But Moore, who is now married and expecting a child, is happy with his life. “To be like ‘I wish I changed the course of my existence for money’ is kind of a problematic thing to say,” Moore said. After the reunion, he was going back to Sydney to start work■ ing as an employee at a start-up.
SWAN LAKE One Week Only • June 13 – 18
Considered the world’s quintessential ballet, this fable of ill-fated romance, dreamlike transformation and selfless compassion is performed to Tchaikovsky’s famed score.
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center | 212.362.6000 | abt.org Casts, prices and programs subject to change. No refunds or exchanges. Photo by John Grigaitis.
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june 13–26, 2016 | new york
25
41 min u tes w ith …
Gary Johnson
The Libertarian presidential candidate roams Times Square making his #NeverTrump pitch. by mark jacobson
G
ary johnson, the 63-year-old Libertarian Party nominee for president, is taking a brisk walk through a packed Times Square. Not that the crowds impede Johnson, who once climbed Mount Everest with a broken leg. “I knew my leg was broken before I started, but it was healing, so I went ahead,” says the candidate, who, in addition to ascending the highest peak in all seven continents, completed the 26.2-mile “Bataan Memorial Death March” across the White Sands Missile Range in combat boots. The Times Square tourist gauntlet is not without its challenges, however, especially when a phalanx of furry Elmos converge like a scrum of shag rugs. Tip bags in hand, they have apparently mistaken the candidate for one more rube out-of-towner. “Beat it. That’s Gary Johnson. He’s running for president,” shouts a man in the uniform of the Gray Line tour-bus company, shooing the Elmos away. Johnson shakes hands with the Gray Line man as a massive digital billboard featuring bikini-clad models frolicking in the surf plays above his head. The candidate, who lives in the exhippie mecca of Taos because he “loves the skiing,” pauses to consider this moment in time and space. He isn’t exactly a nobody, after all: He built his own multimilliondollar construction business and ran for New Mexico governor without previous political experience (using his own money) and won, twice. Now he’ll be on the presidential ballot in all 50 states, just like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Regardless, getting recognized at the Crossroads of the World, that’s “something,” Johnson says. At the start of this election cycle it seemed this might be the Libertarian year. When Rand Paul, Republican senator of Kentucky, son of longtime movement patriarch Ron, did his Mr. Smith Goes to Washington thing last spring, staging a ten-and-a-halfhour filibuster against the Patriot Act, Libertarians rejoiced. Finally, they thought, their small-government–individual-socialresponsibility–low-to-no-tax version of American freedom would get a fair hearing. But Rand turned out to be more Bambi in the fog lights of the Trump 18-wheeler, 26 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
dropping out of the GOP primary fight in February. So, after a Memorial Day weekend convention that featured six candidates being vetted on matters like whether being forced to carry a driver’s license was an intolerable example of federal overreach, Johnson emerged as the Libertarian Party standard-bearer. Johnson had also been the choice in 2012, when he attracted less than one percent of the electorate (or, more positively spun, 1.3 million votes). But this year, already the looniest election cycle since the Bull-Moosery of 1912, things will be different, Johnson tells me as we stride past the McDonald’s on 42nd Street. For one thing, he’s running with Bill Weld, another former two-term Republican governor. Weld isn’t exactly the popular choice of the party’s base—he hadn’t even called for the abolition of the IRS, a virtual Libertarian litmus test—but “purity” isn’t his main concern this time around, Johnson explains. His previous running mate, former Orange County judge James P. Gray, got “exactly no national coverage.” It is all about the numbers, Johnson says. According to the rules, which he contends are rigged to favor the two big parties, he needs to poll at least 15 percent of prospective voters to be included in the upcoming presidential debates. A recent Fox News poll has him surging at 12 percent, suggesting that 15 might actually be possible. Nearly 50 percent of voters are registered Independent, “which means they’re looking for another voice,” Johnson says. It is his position that he can do “real damage” should he manage to get on the same stage as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. “There are 30 million Libertarian voters out there right now, except they don’t know it yet. It is my job to make them recognize that fact.” As one of these potential 30 million, I wondered what Johnson could do to get me in touch with my inner Libertarian. He was already off to a great start, since as governor he’d been, as he likes to say, “the highest-ranking American elected official to call for the legalization of marijuana.” Johnson has remained admirably faithful to the cause; after a bad paragliding
fall, he’d learned for himself the virtues of medical marijuana. A believer in the “physical and psychic” benefits of the vegetable mind of the planet, Johnson became the CEO of Cannabis Sativa, Inc., in 2014 because he “wanted to change the world.” Plus, there are many Libertarian platform points most sentient voters would likely support: the battle to defend the First Amendment in our Matrix-like tech age, the opposition to xenophobic immigration legislation, reluctance to charge into overseas military adventures. But it’s hard to tell whether Johnson is the man to plead the party’s case. However swashbuckling he may be on a mountainside, he isn’t all that thrilling as a campaigner. Halfway into our trek through Times Square, I already had two-thirds of his talking points memorized. His only spate of internet virality so far came when he called Trump “a pussy,” a charge he continues to apologize for. Is this enough to win over Republicans who can’t stomach prostrating themselves before the dean of Trump University or to convert the die-hard Bernie Bros? To shake the notion that the Libertarian Party bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a secular prosperity-gospel club for Robert Heinlein– reading white alpha males, with a couple of weekend drum circles thrown in? I lay out a scenario. “Suppose I’m a Trump voter. I used to have a good job in an industry that got closed down. I got a wife, three kids, a house underwater. Everything I expected about this country has turned to shit. Trump seems my only alternative. Tell me why I should vote for you.” Johnson keeps walking, pondering. “Look, I’d tell you what I’ve done, what I did in New Mexico, where I don’t think I ever compromised my Libertarian views. I’d tell you how I will apply these same ideas to the country: the basic platform of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism.” “Yeah, but … this person feels desperate. You’re face-to-face with the guy, he wants to be convinced.” He walks faster. “Convinced? I don’t know about that. I’d tell him what I had to say, let him think it over. If he still thought he’d vote for Trump, he should vote for Trump. I’m not going to try to convince anyone how they should vote.” This seems a unique political stance, but Johnson is sticking to it. He says he understands the system might just be too broken, too corrupt, for him to hit that magic 15 percent. His is the high road. “People see the light, sooner or later. I have faith in the American public,” he tells me, right around the time a whole new bunch of Elmos ■ appear, surrounding him again.
P H OTO G R A P H : CO U R T E S Y O F G A RY J O H N S O N
intelligencer
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
27
The Urbanist:
How to Cool a City In the quest to combat rising temperatures, urban planners get creative.
it is, undeniably, getting hotter: In India, temperatures recently reached 123.8 degrees masdar city, and more than 2,400 people in abu dhabi, died of heat-related illnesses last see page 32 year. Thailand had its longest heat wave in 65 years, and Phoenix recorded its earliest 90-degree day ever. Global temperatures are on pace to make 2016 the hottest year on record, and people in urban areas— more than half the world’s population—are going to feel the brunt of it. Of course, climate change isn’t just an city-dweller’s problem—the onslaught of droughts and superstorms and rising seas will affect everyone. But the hive of human activity in cities, from the heat-absorbing asphalt to air-conditioner exhaust, contributes to a “heat-island” effect. Cities are often up to five degrees hotter than their surrounding areas, and those temperatures are rising at twice the rate of the planet overall. Within the next century, metropolises like New York could have triple the number of days over 90 degrees. To stay cool, cities are having to transform themselves, sometimes from the ground up. edward hart
➵
28 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Create a Windy City Stuttgart Average Summer High: 74˚ 90˚-Plus Days in 2015: 15
Take a city that sits in a valley basin where heat and smog get trapped, add to it more than a century as a hub of the German automotive industry, and you get a place that’s doubly screwed when it comes to heat and pollution. As far back as the 1930s, city planners have combated that one-two punch with zoning measures that create green ventilation corridors, open paths that allow natural wind patterns to flow down the valley basin, pulling cold, clean air through the city. This approach has been so effective that Beijing announced this year that it would be implementing its own version.
P H OTO G R A P H : K A R I M S A H I B / A F P / G E T T Y I M AG E S
Try an Urban Spritz Tokyo Average Summer High: 82˚ 90˚-Plus Days in 2015: 16
Illustrations by Joe McKendry
In Japan, uchimizu, the practice of sprinkling water on sidewalks and in gardens, dates back to the Edo period. It keeps city streets clean and cool—the water’s evaporation helps lower the surrounding air temperature. In recent years, the practice has taken on a more communal aspect with uchimizu events aimed at both lowering heat and raising awareness of global climate change. Cities around Japan have also added mist machines to supplement the traditional rite. The ones at Tokyo Station City can cool the air temperature by about five degrees.
Lighten the Alleyways, Chicago Average Summer High: 82˚ 90˚-Plus Days in 2015: 18 With 1,900 miles of alleys—about 2 percent of the city’s overall surface area—Chicago is, as the New York Times dubbed it, “the alley capital of America.” But these small service streets use a ton of asphalt. And this black tar absorbs the sun’s heat. So in the mid-aughts, Chicago pioneered a “Green Alleys”
program, which has repaved 200 alleys with environmentally sustainable lighter concrete that reflects more of the sun’s rays. The new coating is also permeable, which allows rainwater to seep into the ground rather than becoming runoff. While less than 1 percent of Chicago’s alleys have been converted so far, this is now the default material used in alley reconstruction in the city. The program has quickly become a model for trash-strewn service streets in at least a dozen other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and Seattle.
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
29
the urbanist
Louisville, Phoenix, Atlanta, Greensboro, and Detroit are the fastest-warming heat islands in the U.S., according to Brian Stone Jr. of Georgia Tech’s Urban Climate Lab.
Hot Cities
A L I T T L E G R E E N G O E S A L O N G W AY Vegetation cools cities by providing shade and helping to convert water to vapor (called evapotranspiration), thereby cooling the tree and the air around it. Green interventions can dramatically cut urban heat, especially in downtown areas that are a morass of concrete, steel, and asphalt. “Trees are our most efficient city workers,” says Michael Embesi, Austin’s Urban Forestry Division manager. “You don’t pay them, but they’re continually providing services to our citizens.”
And Then There’s the Culinary Approach to Personal Heat Management
The rooftop garden of a Seattle apartment building.
Hot tea Many in the Middle East and North Africa swear that nothing cools you down better than drinking something hot. Science is on the hot-tea drinkers’ side. Hot drinks initially add to your body’s temperature, which causes you to sweat, and when the sweat evaporates, it cools you down. This only works if it’s not too humid out. If it is, you’ll just be raising your body temperature without the cooling effect of the evaporation.
Foods can produce increased circulation and what scientists call “gustatory facial sweating,” i.e., sweating on your face, which cools you down when it evaporates. According to Michael Pettid, author of Korean Cuisine: An Illustrated History, during the summer, “the qi within your body is cold, whereas the air outside is hot, so the idea of how to balance that is to eat spicy-hot foods.” The Koreans even have an expression for this, yi yeol chi yeol, which means using heat to regulate heat; in other words, fighting fire with fire.
Build a Forest Louisville
Mix and Match Your Greenery, Seattle
Canopy the Parking Lots, Austin
Average Summer High: 88˚
Average Summer High: 75˚
Average Summer High: 95˚
90˚-Plus Days in 2015: 38
90˚-Plus Days in 2015: 12
90˚-Plus Days in 2015: 121
Freshwater eels
Hailed as the fastest-warming heat island in the country, Louisville is set to embark on a series of ambitious measures to turn the tide. Atop its agenda is a proposal to plant 450,000 new trees. Tree coverage is at its worst downtown, where vegetation covers about 8 percent of the area, and temperatures can be up to 20 degrees hotter than nearby suburbs and countryside.
Inspired by a program from Berlin, Seattle Green Factor requires certain projects to meet a minimum score in landscaping new developments, giving developers a variety of ways to hit the threshold: vegetated walls, rain gardens, green roofs. Developers get bonus points for using native plants, planting along the sidewalk, or creating food gardens. Washington, D.C., also opted for this model.
Austin has been planting at least 3,600 new trees each year since 2001. The city has also put in place an ordinance that requires all new parking lots to have 50 percent canopy cover within the next 15 years. “Shade is one of the easiest things we can relate to, especially if you’re standing out in one of these parking lots in the middle of July,” says Embesi.
The Japanese eat 100,000 tons of unagi, or freshwater eels, each year, but the cuisine is usually in peak demand during the dog days of summer—unagi is thought to have a restorative effect on the body when it’s been depleted by natsubate, or summer fatigue. There’s even a day, usually in late July, on the calendar where eating eel is purported to give you the biggest boost, the Midsummer Day of the Ox, often called “Eel Day.”
30 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
P H OTO G R A P H : CO U R T E S Y O F C I T Y O F S E AT T L E O F F I C E O F P L A N N I N G A N D CO M M U N I T Y D E V E LO P M E N T
Spicy food
YO U M AY NEV ER M A K E I T BA C K H O ME T H E SA ME .
GoToBermuda.com
the urbanist
Why Skyscrapers Don’t Keep Us Cool Despite their long shadows, tall buildings can make it harder for heat to escape at night. The taller and closer buildings are, the more likely waste heat will get trapped in the city and make the air temperature hotter.
Hot Cities
Some cooling methods have been around for millennia.
And Paint the Town White New York City Average Summer High: 82˚ 90˚-Plus Days in 2015: 20
Make Your Own Wind Masdar City, Abu Dhabi Average Summer High in Abu Dhabi: 107˚ 90˚-Plus Days in 2015: 242 For almost every metropolis on Earth, the cityscape and topography are relatively immutable. Not so for Masdar City. This desert enclave in Abu Dhabi is a ground-up testing lab for just how cool you can make a place. A model urban development largely paid for by the
32 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
government, Masdar City first broke ground in 2008. Construction has been plagued by setbacks. So far only about 5 percent of the original master plan has been built, and only 300 or so students from the Masdar Institute (envisioned as the MIT of the Middle East) live there. Still, the city is truly cool. When the desert is 95 degrees, the temperature on the city’s streets can be about 68. A number of features
contribute to the temperate weather, like strategically angled roofs, close-set buildings, and the crown jewel of this urban heat oasis: the nearly 150-foot-tall wind tower in the campus courtyard. This monolith funnels cooler winds from above down through Masdar’s streets, creating a constant cooling breeze so that you always feel like you have central air— even when you’re in the middle of the desert.
In Manhattan alone, there’s up to 40 square miles of rooftop space, making rooftops a huge source of untapped potential in the fight against city heat. The black asphalt on many New York roofs can reach 190 degrees on a summer day. Through the NYC CoolRoofs program, the city has helped reduce the surface temperature on 6 million square feet of scorching asphalt by using lighter-colored coating that reflects more of the sun’s rays and absorbs less heat. The city plans on keeping apace of a million square feet of new roofing each year. By one estimate, this could ultimately cool New York’s air temperature by about two degrees. And these white roofs undoubtedly help lessen the urban-heat-island effect. They have an ancillary benefit too. Because the rooftops absorb less heat, the internal temperatures of buildings can be significantly lower, cutting down airconditioning bills and reducing carbon emissions. The city of Toronto has taken another tack: In 2010, it became the first North American city to require vegetated green roofs on new developments, resulting in more than 1.2 million additional square feet of green space. Green roofs provide more insulation during winter and prevent rainwater from becoming runoff. Widespread green roofs also could reduce the city’s overall temperature by three degrees.
P H OTO G R A P H : D U N C A N C H A R D / B LO O M B E R G V I A G E T T Y I M AG E S
The Masdar Institute’s wind tower is an update on an ancient design called a malqaf, or “windcatcher.” The use of windcatchers stretches back to the days of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt, and they are ubiquitous throughout the Middle East. In Iran, they’re known as badgirs. These wind towers capture oncoming cool air, piping it through a building and pushing out the stale, hot air. Other centuries-old cooling techniques are also finding new forms, like the Indian baoli. When these enclosed wells began springing up 1,500 years ago, they were sources of drinkable water in parched regions of northern India. The cooling effect of the water’s evaporation combined with the below-ground construction, where the air is naturally cooler, meant that these stepwells were often oases from the heat. In designing the Pearl Academy’s campus in Jaipur, India, Manit Rastogi installed a contemporary take on the baoli in the heart of the institute. Another heatthwarting design making a comeback also hails from Indian and Islamic architecture: elaborate lattice screens known as jali cool down buildings by breaking up light while allowing air to flow through.
LOUIS
C.K. when you watch comedy on television these days, especially shows that don’t seem to care if you’re laughing or wincing, there’s a good chance you’re watching something indebted to Louis C.K. As the creator of FX’s Louie, the 48-year-old comedian pioneered the filthy and emotionally fearless, auteur-driven and defiantly non-pandering genre of prestige comedy. But just as his footprint became inescapable, C.K. put The comedian who his namesake show on hold for Horace and Pete, a ten-part upended the conventions of kitchen-sink tragedy he self-financed and surprise-released TV comedy on why the on his own website in January. Emotionally brutal, and ecopresidential election is like your parents nomically self-sufficient, the latter series suggests a new way fighting and how tragedy forward for the comedian. This summer, he’ll lend his voice to can be so delightful. the animated movie The Secret Life of Pets, and he’s devoting the next year to touring his stand-up act. “Part of what keeps me going is that I keep learning and trying to figure things out,” he says during one of our long talks—the first at the Hudson Diner in the West Village on May 12, the second on the phone before a gig in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on May 20. “But comedy is something that I’ll never figure out.” david marchese
In Conversation.
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Photograph by Nigel Parry
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thing to do.
Then you said publicly that you regretted sharing that opinion. I found it weird that you seemed uncomfortable with the idea that you’d divulged too much of your own political thinking. You’re a guy who tells jokes about why your 4-year-old daughter is an asshole.
As far as talking about what’s deep in my gut about certain subjects, I’ll put that out there because I know I do that really well, and I’m a unique originator of certain thoughts. Politically I’m not an expert. And also there’s very little rational intake of political thought. People get so upset that they don’t hear what you’re saying. So what I hear you saying is that you’re endorsing Donald Trump.
going to do that?” “I just think we should. It’s only fair that everyone gets to use the plane equally.” And then Trump says, “I’m going to fly so well. You’re not going to believe how good I’m going to fly this plane, and by the way, Hillary never flew a plane in her life.” “She did, and we have pictures.” “No, she never did it.” It’s insane.
Mom.” After the election, imagine how you would feel about each other. It’s terribly, terribly interesting. You’ve been saying lately that you’ve quit the internet.
I don’t look at any of it now. I don’t believe you.
Obviously I sell my shit on it: my standup tickets, Horace and Pete. I just don’t look at any web pages.
You mentioned in a radio interview how interested you were in this election cycle. What specifically are you finding so interesting?
So if you’re not looking on the internet, what do you jack off to? Are you one of those weirdos who buy porn on DVD?
It’s very emotional. There is a fear of Hillary, you know? I think some of it has to do with Hillary being such a strong candidate and being a woman. The response to her is very male. The other side is very maleoriented. Trump is a man. Well, he’s a boy, and Bernie is an old man. Neither is a feminine person. Obama’s a very feminine person. I don’t mean effeminate.
Here’s a weirder option: Take a little longer and try to get your imagination frothed up to where it gets you off. What a strange exercise! I hadn’t done that since 1998. And how’s that going for you?
It’s gone pretty well. I kinda like it. It also means: Maybe store it up for a while and wait until you actually have a sexual urge.
You mean he’s not macho?
You’re 100 percent right. I’m very pleased with everything he’s done. I don’t know, celebrities saying things politically is obnoxious, because you’ve got a bullhorn that was given to you for one reason and you used that bullhorn for something else. But also I think when there’s somebody as terrible as Trump running, you’re a little bit of a coward by keeping it to yourself if you’re really concerned about it. I felt like I had to raise my hand and be counted because I believe he’s a bigot with a hole in his heart. A guy who shouldn’t be anywhere near the fucking thing is the Republican nominee. How are you feeling about Hillary and Bernie?
I keep going back and forth. Sometimes I think the system is so deeply fucked up that somebody as disruptive as Bernie—maybe he doesn’t even do a good job as president but he jars something loose in our system and something exciting happens. I mean, Hillary is better at this than any of these people. The American government is a very volatile, dangerous mechanism, and Hillary has the most experience with it. It’s like if you were on a plane and you wanted to choose a pilot. You have one person, Hillary, who says, “Here’s my license. Here’s all the thousands of flights that I’ve flown. Here’s planes I’ve flown in really difficult situations. I’ve had some good flights and some bad flights, but I’ve been flying for a very long time, and I know exactly how this plane works.” Then you’ve got Bernie, who says, “Everyone should get a ride right to their house with this plane.” “Well, how are you 1.
Footnotes:
Louis C.K. and Steve Buscemi in Horace and Pete.
Everybody has both masculine and feminine sides, but Obama is feminine inside. There ain’t no femininity in Trump. There’s none in Bernie. These are both really emphatic guys saying, “We got to do this!” Hillary’s trying to say, “Guys, this is reality. These are complex issues.” And those two are going, “I don’t want to fucking hear it!” It’s weird to watch. It’s like if you had an election in your family. Imagine that when you were a kid there was an election to decide whether Mom or Dad would be in charge for the next four years. Or if some group of siblings got together and said, “We’re going to get this woman to replace
2. In an email promoting the sixth episode of Horace and Pete, C.K. wrote of Trump, “We are being Germany in the ’30s. Do you think they saw the shit coming? Hitler was just some hilarious and refreshing dude with a weird comb-over who would say anything at all.”
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On Conan, C.K. recalled choosing not to reach for his phone for distraction: “We don’t want that first bit of sad, we push it away with a little phone or jacking off or the food. You never feel completely sad or completely happy. You just feel kinda satisfied with your product and then you die.”
I don’t know what it’s like for women, but for a lot of guys I know—and myself— masturbation is an anxiety release. If I’m trying to get some work done and getting irritated, just go rub one out and it calms you down. It’s a shame to do that as a swapout for real sexual connection to your virility and your sexual drive. I don’t have a perfect record, but I am trying to see if I can just let a sexual urge be. Having an internet prohibition really helps. I sometimes have gone to jerk off when I’m not even hard. I’m in a bad mood, so let’s put on Google and find something to get me off. That’s happening every second around the world. 3.
C.K. and Steve Buscemi star as the titular cousins, Brooklyn bar-owners struggling, and mostly failing, to deal with their tragic family history and the patronage of some real buzzkill clientele. Imagine C.K.’s antisocial humor crossed with bizarro Cheers—a place where everyone knows your name, but no one really wants to see you.
This interview was condensed and edited from two conversations.
P R E V I O U S PAG E , S T Y L I N G B Y R E B E CC A R A M S E Y; G R O O M I N G B Y M A R C E L DAG E N A I S. T H I S PAG E , P H OTO G R A P H CO U R T E S Y O F LO U I S C . K .
David Marchese: You were in the news for calling Donald Trump Hitler1 and saying not to vote for him. Louis C.K.: Yeah, yeah. That was a messy
We don’t get along—that’s the human race. The idea of America is that we can be mean to each other. There’s a lot of bored masturbation going on.
Boredom is a big word. Boredom is depression in some cases; maybe it’s ennui, whatever that means. I spent an awful lot of time doing useless shit on the internet. I’d rather not know what happened all day in the news is the other thing. I read the physical New York Times in the morning and then I pick up the Post at some point. And I watch TV and listen to the radio. It seems like the internet has been good to you, though. When you talked about how everything is amazing and we’re all miserable, or about why cell phones are the worst2 — those things got shared 10 million times.
That’s true. There’s a positive and negative version of the viral thing. That version you just described feels like a positive. But then there’s this other version where people want to feel upset, so when the story is about “racist comments by a comedian,” that kind of thing, people are like, “Oooh, I don’t like racism,” so they leave a comment and pass it along. That’s very powerful—that impulse to read something that upsets you. It becomes click-bait. The click-bait is such a lucrative piece of business that no one is leaving it alone. That’s one of the reasons I did Horace and Pete the way I did.3 The idea was that if I don’t let it get sucked up in the click-bait, will people spread it on their own. I was more excited to have it spread from the Twitter accounts of people with 400 followers instead of the people with 400,000. You think the internet is devolving?
The internet’s been around long enough that it’s in its high-school phase. You know, elementary school is just reflex and fun. It’s, “Oh, look at that! Oh, look at me for a minute!” It’s little fights that don’t add up to much. Then middle school becomes this “cool” thing, who’s in and who’s out. But high school is like, I hang out with this group of kids by the red lockers at the end of the hall and we all like Dungeons & Dragons. You can find somebody you like online. There are people who watch Horace and Pete. Somebody who catches something on BuzzyWuzzy for a 4.
In May of 2015, Gawker posted rumors suggesting C.K. had masturbated “in front of women at inappropriate times.”
5.
second, they’re not going to be compelled either way. The idea of click-bait and what you see as online misinformation—is part of what you’re thinking of the Gawker items from last year? 4
No. I don’t care about that. That’s nothing to me. That’s not real. For me, Horace and Pete was derailed in terms of its trajectory by this idea that spread online that it was canceled and that I lost money.5 A good friend of mine who’s a movie producer emailed me and said, “Hey, I’m really sorry about Horace and Pete.” Having to disabuse people of this thing could really hurt me with something like the Emmys if people perceive the show as a dead project. I took that pretty fucking personally. You didn’t feel any compulsion to address the Gawker stuff? I’ve never seen you talk about it.
Well, you can’t touch stuff like that. There’s one more thing I want to say about this, and it’s important: If you need your public profile to be all positive, you’re sick in the head. I do the work I do, and what happens next I can’t look after. So my thing is that I try to speak to the work whenever I can. Just to the work and not to my life. As far as the work, you’ve referred to Horace and Pete as the best thing you’ve ever done. Why are you so proud of it?
Louie probably is the best thing I’ve ever done, but this is the newest, and when things get in your rearview mirror creatively you don’t care about them anymore. So Horace and Pete feels vital. It has a big energy for me because it’s so different. But when I think about it now, those two shows are probably tied for first. What feels so vital about the show?
Tragedy is an amazing playing field to be on. It’s brand-new for me. One thing about tragedy is there’s always hope and light and expectation, and then reality takes it away. So dashing characters’ hopes—it felt complete. I think about the characters still. I think about them like they’re real people. Horace and Pete was tragedy, but it seems that sort of philosophical, serious subject matter is something that comedy is increasingly addressC.K. told Howard Stern funding ‘Horace and Pete’ left him “millions of dollars in debt.” He later clarified that he was joking: “I was, technically—I took a line of credit to finish the show. But there’s no other way to make a TV show! Every TV show that you ever see is running a deficit.”
ing on television. What’s caused that shift?
There are these trends where people start going to a certain place to hear a certain sound. I remember there was this online forum called A Special Thing, back in 2005 or something. It was a forum for Tenacious D,6 and you could talk about other comedy on it, too, and it became this culture. The users were very wellexpressed prolific writers about comedy. Folks loved the thing, and it was just beside the point that it was a Tenacious D forum. I think that people in television and comedy got interested in weird ideas and got talking about some more intense life things, and TV is where the conversation is happening. It’s the forum. So this is just a spontaneous thematic blip?
Whenever something succeeds in comedy, people get into it. There was a trend not long ago in comedy starting with Ricky Gervais’s The Office about people behaving a certain way around each other. That comedy wasn’t about, Oh, shit, I’m going to die some day. It’s about, What the fuck is this guy looking at me like that for? And then there’s straight-up misanthropic comedy like Larry David’s. Big issues are not his beat. It’s about letting your ugly self be out there. Drama goes in cycles too. Sometimes drama is about everybody who had aids in New York in the ’90s, and sometimes it’s all about people wearing Elizabethan collars and getting cholera. It’s trends. Everybody’s kind of getting off on this trend now. I think they’re getting a little sick of it now, too. It’ll probably disappear soon. Was it freeing to get away from the Louie character with Horace and Pete?
In a way, yes. The thing that’s tricky about Louie is that it’s autobiography. I made that decision early on, never knowing what impact it would have on my life. I never thought that the show would be widely known. I don’t even have a different last name on Louie. That was stupid of me. I didn’t think it would make me famous. I just figured, I’m going to tell these weird little stories about my life (Continued on page 116) 6.
Jack Black and Kyle Gass’s musical-comedy project spoofs occult themes and the over-the-top masculinity of metal and hard rock with songs like “Master Exploder” and “Dude (I Totally Miss You).”
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It’s Judith Butler’s World
The gender pioneer surveys the current pop-culture landscape—which owes a lot to her once-radical philosophy. By Molly
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F YOU WANTED TO choose a celebrity avatar for everything supposedly weird about The Youth, you could do worse than Jaden Smith: a gnomic tweeter, sometime crystal devotee, self-described “Future of Music, Photography, and Filmmaking,” who has little attachment to the gender binary. Earlier this year, the 17-year-old son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, brother of Willow, appeared in a Louis Vuitton womenswear campaign. Jaden Smith, quasar of contemporary teen behaviors, wears a fringed white top and an embellished, knee-length black skirt. ¶ Wait, though. Rub your eyes, refocus your gaze, and really, is there any real reason why this ought to be weird? He looks good. And gender norms—they are pretty arbitrary, right? Smith also wore a dress, with a loose sport coat and sneakers, when he took The Hunger Games’ Amandla Stenberg to the prom. (Stenberg, meanwhile, recently came out as bisexual over Butler’s landmark book. Snapchat, though she’s also shrugged 38 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Fischer
at conventional identity politics: “I don’t really see sexuality in boxes,” she has said.) Smith’s insouciant attitude toward gender looks less like affectation than evidence of a world that has changed profoundly in the two decades since his father starred on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Or, for that matter, since his father refused to kiss a man onscreen 23 years ago. Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out last year was a Kardashian-scale teachable moment— the opportunity for patient, prime-time explanations of why not to take gender for granted. But beyond the “transgender tipping point” heralded by Time and the broader awakening of identity politics, there is another revelation going on: a growing acceptance, especially among a broad swath of young people, of easy gender fluidity and ambiguity. In 2014, Facebook stopped limiting its gender options to male or female and began giving users some 50 other choices (from neutrois to genderqueer to cis). In 2015, the site abandoned that preset menu altogether and just let users enter up to ten terms of their own. We find ourselves poised someplace between gender mattering tremendously and mattering not very much at all. The impulse to reexamine assumptions has had practical consequences—genderneutral college dorms and high-school bathrooms—and cultural ripples. Writers like Jill Soloway (creator of TV’s Transparent) and Maggie Nelson (author of the queer-family memoir The Argonauts) have found human drama in gender’s mutability. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed offers an illustrated list showing “What People Say to Gender Nonbinary People vs. the Subtext We Often Hear,” and Rookie presents the recent comic “My Gender Is Weird.” Here’s Teen Vogue on another photo of Jaden Smith in a skirt suit: “The midi skirt set sends up a poignant rejection of heteronormativity.” What sage could have predicted that heteronormativity would eventually make its way into the Photograph by Collier Schorr
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Jaden Smith, 2015.
Gender Trouble hasn’t changed—chapters still feel like long-distance runs. And yet completing this feat of endurance today leaves the liberal-artsy reader with a curious sense of lightness. The feeling is not of your worldview’s being upended but rather thoroughly explained. That gender is not an essential biological fact: Sure. That it comes into being through repeated actions, so, like, I become recognizable as a “girl” by doing girl things: Okay. That the world as we know it has generally presumed everyone to be straight; that people who don’t play by the rules, gender-wise, straightnesswise, pay the price; and that, while maybe we can’t totally escape all of this, we can find ways of questioning it, possibly even undermining it, and so making life more livable for everybody: Yeah, sounds about right. Alexandra Kleeman, a young novelist
whose book You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine concerns femininity in all its elaborately constructed strangeness, told me about the day early in her first semester of graduate school at Berkeley (where Butler teaches) when she saw the professor sitting on a curb, talking on her phone. Butler was crouched down near the ground; she looked so small, said Kleeman, “and yet she contained all that theory.” In conversation, various Butler admirers and former students I spoke with tried to suggest her presence via celebrity comparison: Bob Dylan, Jon Stewart, Serena Williams. Like many famous people and not many academics, “Judith Butler” is both an exciting idea and an actual person. At 60, Butler has the lean, undeniable elegance of a cross-dressing Shakespearean heroine—a version of androgyny that has less to do with masculinity or femininity than with pants’ being expedient attire. Once, to her amused interest, a German newspaper described her as looking like “a young Italian man.” She wears a lot of black and gray. Her hair is short, side-parted, and falls forward a bit as she talks, requiring her to push it back with both hands. Butler grew up in Cleveland, where her father was a dentist and her mother’s family owned movie theaters. When she was 12 or 13, a friend of her mother’s interviewed her as part of a teachertraining program. Asked for her dream job, the preteen Judith said she hoped to be a philosopher or a clown. This answer sounds either impossibly innocent or impossibly precocious; given that she was a middle-schooler who pestered her rabbi with questions about Martin Buber, probably the latter. Butler was an intense, focused reader. She was also gay, and so applying to colleges brought its own set of considerations. Butler went to Bennington because “it seemed to be a place where, as a young queer kid, I would be okay in 1974,” she says. “I knew that there were other people there who were at least minimally bisexual.” (Her parents, while not always wholly comfortable with her sexuality, were ultimately accepting. She remembers that her father was very happy when she came home from college with a Jewish girlfriend.) After two years, she transferred to Yale for its philosophy program, where she remained through graduate school. Butler was active in New Haven and Yale women’s groups, and her time on campus coincided with the emergence of women’s studies as an academic discipline. She wrote her dissertation on Hegel and received a Ph.D. in philosophy. With Gender Trouble, published when she was 33, Butler began articulating a
P H OTO G R A P H : J AC S O N / S P L A S H N E W S
I
was watching Scandal the other night,” Butler tells me, “and there was a great moment where a black character says, ‘Oh, race is just a social construct.’” She enjoys observing this kind of cultural cross-pollination. “I thought it was
hilarious! It was a moment where an academic argument was brought into popular culture.” (Butler also watches Transparent, which she considers “enormously entertaining” but “much better on Jewish life than it is on trans life. It’s a little bit of a throwback to the La Cage aux Folles idea of transgender.”) This kind of thing happens with some frequency now, and often transcends mere hilarity, as when Laverne Cox talks in interviews about Simone de Beauvoir. “Laverne says, ‘It was that phrase, that one is not born but rather becomes a woman, that made it possible for me to think that I could become trans,’” Butler says. “You know, it’s kind of trippy that here’s this popular-culture person who has read and struggled with ideas, and went out into the world, and brought them with her” to reach new audiences. “My mother’s generation, in their mid80s, they’re having major debates about these issues,” she tells me. “It’s all on the table. And it’s all speakable.”
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vocabulary of teen magazines and shareable web content? Only, perhaps, the queer theorist Judith Butler. Butler laughs when I tell her about the Teen Vogue verdict on Jaden Smith. “I think there aren’t very many of us who could have foreseen it,” Butler says, considering the blossoming mainstream interest in gender issues. We are speaking shortly after President Obama publicly voiced his support for transgender rights in the fight against North Carolina’s bathroom law, and gender—as something in need of definition, as something potentially ambiguous or complex—is at the center of national debate. “Such an utterance coming out of a U.S. president would be impossible in the 1990s,” Butler says. Gender Trouble, published in 1990, made Butler a star: It introduced “performativity,” the idea that gender isn’t something we are but something we continually do, opening the door for “cultural configurations of sex and gender [to] proliferate,” as she put it in the book’s conclusion, “confounding the very binarism of sex, and exposing its fundamental unnaturalness.” If not for Butler’s work, “you wouldn’t have the version of genderqueer-ness that we now have,” says Jack Halberstam, a genderstudies professor at Columbia. “She made it clear that the body is not a stable foundation for gender expression.” For much of her career, Butler was known mostly within academia, in part because of the difficulty of her prose. And yet the work Butler demands of readers is of a kind that, more than ever, they are willing to do now—if not necessarily while reading theoretical texts, then in moving through their daily lives. People outside the academy question their assumptions; they wrestle with unfamiliar ideas and examine their own discomfort. “Don’t laugh,” read a recent headline in the Washington Post. “I have a serious reason for raising my cats gender neutral.” (The reason: as a reminder to use the right pronouns for nonbinary friends.) Theoryspeak, meanwhile, has infiltrated civilian vocabularies. Trope and problematic and heteronormative; even, in a not-quiteButlerian sense, performative—the sort of words that rankled queer theory’s culturewars critics—are right at home on Tumblr and Twitter. In a broad-stroke, vastly simplified version, the understanding of gender that Gender Trouble suggests is not only recognizable; it is pop.
All Japanese, all female, and All That Jazz.
Photo: Takarazuka: Maiko Miagawa and Nobuhiko Hikichi
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categories, “lesbian” included, could be “instruments of regulatory regimes, whether as the normalizing categories of oppressive structures or as the rallying points for a liberatory contestation of that very oppression.” It’s not that she rejected the label, she continued, but that she would like to remain “permanently troubled by identity categories.” In fact, she added, “if the category were to offer no trouble, it would cease to be interesting to me: It is precisely the pleasure produced by the instability of those categories which sustains the various erotic practices that make me a candidate for the category to begin with.” Butler resisted attempts to pin her down, but she couldn’t avoid the flattening force of her reputation. In the early ’90s, a University of Iowa undergrad published a zine called Judy!; she called Butler “a bit Gap” but “still a fox.” Recognition beyond academia took longer. It wasn’t until 1998 that the New York Times explained the rise of queer theory to its readers, though the paper had cited Butler alongside Cornel West as examples of superstar professors the month before. (Butler’s first appearance in those pages was a letter to the editor in 1995: She took on the authors of an op-ed criticizing gangsta-rap lyrics by turning their Plato reference against them. “Whether it’s Sophocles or Snoop Doggy Dogg, the social distress they represent will not be eliminated by condemning the representation,” she wrote.) By the late ’90s, Butler had the kind of entrenched status that attracts critics. For several years, the journal Philosophy and Literature ran a “Bad Writing” contest of academic prose. Butler earned the dubious honor in 1998 with this sentence:
One of many tributes circulating on the web, this one made by “Hannah, busy Ph.D. student and founding member of the JB fan club.”
theory of gender that fit into the Continental tradition she’d studied. The book drew on Foucault, Freud, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Irigaray, Wittig, Kristeva, and de Beauvoir. (Hegel, Derrida, and Nietzsche lurked in the background.) But Butler begins her analysis in a place that’s recognizably practical: How does “womanhood” get defined; on what assumptions does it depend? And, if a feminist movement defines itself as fighting for women’s rights, whose rights does it have in mind? Halberstam, who was in grad school (and genderqueer) when Gender Trouble came out, remembers the book as a revelation, an escape from the “suffocation” of the era’s identity politics. “Academic feminism was riddled with problems at that time based upon these phrases like The personal is 42 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
political that had led to people sort of sitting around in circles holding hands and telling each other about their lives,” Halberstam says. “Gender Trouble gave people a way of thinking critically, philosophically, abstractly about what it means to be in a political struggle where the category of womanhood, rather than holding together and cohering, might well be splintering and falling apart.” She and her fellow queer theorists were responding to forces already alive in the culture, Butler says, bringing an intellectual framework to bear on the efforts of activists. In an essay (that began as a talk she gave at Yale in 1989, at the Conference on Homosexuality), Butler puzzled through what it meant to perform her particular identity category—to “theorize as a lesbian.” All such
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
The following year, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote a long takedown of Butler for The New Republic. Nussbaum took issue with her prose, which she called “exasperating”; she argued that it obscured derivative thought. Most significantly, though, Nussbaum disapproved of Butler’s version of feminism: In her view, Butler was ignoring the “material suffering of women who are hungry, illiterate, violated, beaten” in favor of focusing “narcissistically on
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personal self-presentation.” Butler’s work, she argued, amounted to an ineffectual, passive, “hip quietism”; “gays and lesbians do not achieve legal protection” through intellectual activity like Butler’s, she added, almost as an afterthought. The complaints of Butler’s critics back in the ’90s and today’s critics of campus p.c. culture share a skepticism at the power of words to shape the world. In formulating her idea of gender performativity, Butler had drawn on the work of J. L. Austin, the philosopher of language who first proposed “performative utterances”: These are speech acts that don’t just describe reality but change it, like saying “I do” in a wedding ceremony. Her move was to apply this idea to actions as well as words. But as Austin pointed out, performative acts can still be “infelicitous”—saying “I do” doesn’t change things if the people saying it aren’t allowed to wed. There’s always the element of social context, a need for recognition and reciprocity. Paying attention to matters like pronouns “acknowledges and takes very, very seriously the idea that language matters,” Butler says. “I always feel rude when I interrupt someone to say, ‘No, don’t call me that, that’s not okay,’” Butler tells me. “I feel like, Ugh, I’m the police, I’m patrolling everybody’s language. On the other hand, I don’t want to live with gender references that are really offensive to me.” A particular conundrum is getting addressed as a “lady” in restaurants. “It’s just like—Oh my God, I have not been in the struggle for this long to be called a ‘lady.’ Sometimes I’m with folks, born to various genders, who want to be a lady. For them it’s fabulous to be a lady. And I love ladies; don’t get me wrong,” she says. “I’m glad we live in a world in which there are ladies.” In a small class, Butler asks students’ pronoun preferences; sometimes they care, sometimes they don’t. “It’s the most immediate, local way to make an intervention,” she says. “But it doesn’t exactly attack the foundations of transphobia or homophobia,” she continues, in a vein Nussbaum might appreciate. “I don’t think we can engage in the kind of linguistic idealism that would say that, ‘Oh, if we only change our language, we change the world.’”
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t be rke le y, where she’s worked since 1993, Butler is in many ways surprisingly accessible for an academic celebrity. She shoulders a standard teaching load. This means that during the spring semester of 2016, for example, she could be found twice a week in a classroom with 50 undergraduates, leading a 100-level complit lecture on “Dramas of Queer Kinship.” Butler is an easy performer, beckoning stu-
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dents to scoot their chairs forward. Watch her address a crowd and you become aware of how her writing is animated by her presence—if reading her work is strenuous, in person it’s Butler herself, and not her audience, expending energy. Butler used to have an office alongside the rest of her colleagues in the comp-lit department, but the traffic she attracted eventually became oppressive. Now she works amid the art-history department: The Van Gogh postcard outside her office door is camouflage. Still, I pass a pair of students craning their necks. “That was Judith Butler who just went by us,” one says, “going into the bathroom!” Butler came to Berkeley not long after Gender Trouble made her reputation. Part of the Bay Area’s appeal was the prospect of a comfortable place for her to have a family—somewhere to raise a child and have that child feel at home. Wendy Brown, Butler’s partner, is a politicalscience professor at Berkeley, and their son, Isaac, is now 21. “Once, when he was younger, I said, ‘So, how is it for you having queer parents?’ ” Butler remembers. “He said, ‘That’s not the hard part. The hard part is having two academics.’ ” Isaac has long curly hair and studies music at Wesleyan; in an interview he and his band gave as freshmen, he said his dream date was Beyoncé or Grace Kelly. “Their feminism is much more clear than mine when I was their age,” says Butler of her son and his (mostly heterosexual) male friends. She had a conversation with a group of them not long ago about navigating campus sex in an ethical way. “For them, it wasn’t a sense that they needed to be a cop but that they needed to show up and exemplify a different kind of culture and be in conversation with other men who resist that.” These situations don’t always have to be a matter of policing behavior, she pointed out, with an academic’s idealism and a parent’s eye for positive reinforcement. “Like, Yes, I like to party; I like to dance; I like to have sex! But let’s think about the conditions under which that can work. It’s the basis of sexual ethics. What kind of community do we want to build?” Isaac belongs to a generation for whom Butler is part of the canon. Today, it is possible to go online and read Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity as explained with cats. There are Facebook pages like “Judith Butler Is My Homegirl.” Quotes from Gender Trouble are reliably reblogged on Tumblr. And yet, Maria Trumpler, director of Yale’s Office of LGBTQ Resources and a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, says that for the kids she sees at Yale today, 40 years after Butler was an under-
graduate there, Gender Trouble is “really oldfashioned.” The last four years in particular have seen an enormous growth of student interest in identities “beyond the binary,” Trumpler says, like agender, bigender, genderqueer. Butler is thrilled to see the work that has gone beyond hers. “I didn’t take on trans very well,” she says of Gender Trouble. The book doesn’t account for the experience of gender that someone like Caitlyn Jenner describes when she says her brain feels “much more female than it is male,” for example. “So, in many ways, it’s a very dated book,” Butler says. “And it’s one that wasn’t able to profit from the extraordinary scholarship that’s happened in that area in the intervening years.” David Halperin was another early queer theorist and is the author, most recently, of How to Be Gay. He teaches at the University of Michigan. These days, he says, students learn Butler’s ideas “in courses on social justice, where everything is turned into a kind of sermon about what the proper political views are to have about minorities and equality, stigma, multiculturalism, and so on.” The ideas become “a series of political lessons,” often encountered second- or third-hand in other texts. Lara Sokoloff, a member of the Yale class of 2016, who did her thesis on gender politics, sees Butler as “very much this maternal figure in gender studies.” “When we did all this back then, we were trying to find ways to say and think what had never been said or thought,” Halperin says. The shift from marginal to mainstream can be startling for academics who made their names as radicals. Butler has begun to anticipate the freedom of her eventual retirement from Berkeley. (“Self-care is important, especially as you age,” she says; she goes to yoga twice a week and swims almost every day.) Retirement “deinstitutionalizes your work,” she explains. “It doesn’t diminish the amount of work.” Even as society has caught up to the questions she raised about gender, even if in some senses it’s surpassed her, she’s looking toward other, still-thorny issues. In recent years, Butler has been considering how we define the human. Whose lives do we see as valuable; whose deaths are therefore grievable? She’s written on post-9/11 “war on terror” rhetoric, Guantánamo, Israel, and police brutality. Difficulty, for Butler, often remains the point. But the possibility of things getting a little easier is one of the charms of this new world. A project she’s been talking about lately with the psychologist and writer Ken Corbett, a friend, is a new version of Gender Trouble—illus■ trated, for kids ages 8 to 12.
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The day cars drove themselves into walls and the hospitals froze
A scenario that could happen based on what already has.
BY
REEVES WIEDEMAN
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
R. KIKUO JOHNSON
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N DECEMBER 4, 2017, at a little before nine in the morning, an executive at Goldman Sachs was swiping through the day’s market report in the backseat of a hired SUV heading south on the West Side Highway when his car suddenly swerved to the left, throwing him against the window and pinning a sedan and its driver against the concrete median. A taxi ran into the SUV’s rear fender and spun into the next lane, forcing a school-bus driver to slam on his brakes. Within minutes, nothing was moving from the Intrepid to the Whitney. When the Goldman exec came to, his driver swore that the crash hadn’t been his fault: The car had done it. ¶ Moments later, on the George Washington Bridge, an SUV veered in front of an 18-wheeler, causing it to jackknife across all four lanes and block traffic heading into the city. The crashes were not a coincidence. Within minutes, there were pileups on 51st Street, the southbound BQE, as far north as the Merritt Parkway, and inside the Midtown Tunnel. By nine, Canal Street was paralyzed, as was the corner of 23rd and Broadway, and every tentacle of what used to be called the Triborough Bridge. At the center of each accident was an SUV of the same make and model, but as the calls came in to the city’s 911 centers in the Bronx and Brooklyn, the operators simply chalked them up to Monday-morning road rage. No one had yet realized that New York City had just been hit by a cyberattack—or that, with the city’s water system, mass transportation, banks, emergency services, and pretty much everything else now wired together in the name THE _ REAL _ HACKS of technological progress, the worst was yet to come. ¶ A thirdThe fictional account imagined here is based on dozens of conversations with cybersecurity experts, hackers, year resident in the emergency room at Columbia University Medgovernment officials, and more. An attack of such scope ical Center in Washington Heights walked through the hospital as is unlikely, but each component is inspired by events that can, and in most cases have, happened. a television was airing images from the accident on the George Washington Bridge; that meant several crash victims would soon In 2015, carmakers began paying greater attention to the fact that some new vehicles, be heading her way. When she got to her computer, she tried lognow connected to the internet, had become ging into the network to check on the patients who were already as hackable as laptops. In March, researchers there, but she was greeted with an error message that read we’re found hackers were able to access the ignition on Audi, BMW, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, not looking for bitcoin this time.
O
Columbia, like major institutions across the country, had spent the past few years fighting so-called ransomware attacks, in which hackers locked a hospital or city hall or police department out of its own network until a ransom was paid. Hospital security teams had gotten wise to the problem, but every network’s defenses had the same vulnerability: the people who used it. For weeks, a group of hackers had been sending LinkedIn messages to employees at Columbia pretending to be recruiters from Mount Sinai. When an employee opened an attachment featuring the recruiting pitch—as ten of them did—and enabled the macros as prompted onscreen—four of them did—they unknowingly unleashed malware onto their computer and gave the hackers a beachhead. After months of lurking, the hackers blocked Columbia’s doctors and nurses from accessing their network, including patient files. Doctors couldn’t access prescription records telling them which patients were scheduled to take which drugs when and resorted to improvised paper-record keeping, which many of the younger doctors had never done before. In nearly every corridor, they were consulting with one another in a panic, asking how much of their own expertise was really stored in the cloud and had just disappeared. The crowd in the waiting room swelled and grew more tense as nurses ran by patients, unable to give updates on when they might be seen. Various procedures were taking longer than they should have—one man was kept on a powerful antibiotic for several hours, with serious side effects, before a delayed lab result came back reporting that he should go off the medication—and the staff was having trouble keeping track of patients. A little before noon, a man walked into the hospital looking for his wife, whom he had dropped off early that morning for a simple surgical procedure. A few minutes later, the nurse told him that it appeared his wife had been discharged. 48 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Kia, Lexus, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Range Rover, Subaru, Toyota, and Volkswagen cars.
Homeland Security recently estimated that one major cyberattack—the NSA chief has said it’s a matter of “when, not if”—could cost $50 billion and cause 2,500 fatalities. In February, a hospital in L.A. paid 40 bitcoins, or about $17,000, to get back into its system. Russian hackers have even set up English-language call centers to explain to victims how to acquire and send bitcoins. Hackers recently sent Pennsylvania drivers fake traffic tickets with malware, using GPS data so the tickets seemed to be from red-light cameras on their route home. The average data breach is only identified five months later; hackers were allegedly inside a Ukrainian utility network for six months before shutting off electricity. In March, a D.C.-area hospital system was hacked and forced to keep paper records. They got so overwhelmed they turned away cancer patients with radiation appointments.
Most New Yorkers were proceeding with their day unaware. But the city’s head of cybersecurity had begun to connect the dots: Six hospitals had already informed him that their systems had been shut down, and the city had sent out warnings to all the others. One Police Plaza had just reported that it, too, was locked out of the programs it used to dispatch officers and emergency personnel, which made responding to the traffic accidents around the city that much harder. After a few phone calls to friends in the private sector, the cybersecurity chief got more nervous. At the beginning of 2017, one friend told him, she had been called to investigate a mysterious occurrence at a water-treatment plant: The valves that controlled the amount of chlorine released into the water had been opening and closing with unexplained irregularity. An alarm had gone off, so none of the tainted water had reached consumers, and the company’s CEO brushed off the consultant’s request to make the news public so others could prepare for similar attacks. At MetroTech, New York’s cybersecurity chief pulled out the Office of Emergency Management’s 42-page booklet on how the city should react to a cyberattack—a copy of which he had printed out and stashed in his desk drawer in case his department’s own network was compromised—and was flipping from page to page when he got a call from a reporter. At 12:30 p.m., the Times published a story reporting that “government officials” believed that the city was being hit with a wave of cyberattacks that appeared to be ongoing. A tipster claimed the hackers had caused at least a dozen car crashes and debilitated multiple hospitals and agencies—with more to come. If they could crash a car, could they crash a subway? The Times report included a line from a nurse at New York–Presbyterian who said that the initial message announcing that the network was blocked had included a link to a web page that was displaying a timer ticking down to 1 p.m. and text that read more patients will be arriving soon. TH E G ROUP OF European black-hat hackers who launched the attack against New York had spent much of the previous decade breaking into American corporate networks—credit-card companies, hospitals, big-box retailers— mostly for profit, and sometimes just because they could. When those attacks became routine, the group moved into more politically inclined hacks, both against and on behalf of various governments, rigging elections and fomenting dissent. In the summer of 2016, the hackers received an anonymous offer of $100 million to perform a cyberattack that would debilitate a major American city. The group’s members weren’t much interested in death and destruction per se, so they declined their funder’s request for a “Cyber 9/11.” But to self-identified anarchists with a reflexively nihilistic will to power, the proposition had some appeal. Causing disruption was something that had been on their minds recently, as their conversations veered toward the problems with global capitalism, the rise of technocentrism, bitcoin, and the hubris required to nominate a man like Donald Trump. Their animus got more personal when American authorities arrested a wellrespected white-hat hacker who had broken into an insulin pump in order to show the dangers of connecting devices without proper security. The black hats were on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum but had more empathy for their fellow hacker than they did for the American people, who, they felt, deserved a comeuppance—or at least a very loud “Fuck you.” The plan was to show how much of modern life in a city like New York could be disrupted by purely digital means. The hackers would get paid, but they also hoped their attack would dent America’s complacent faith in order and in the technology and political authority that undergirded it. As a bonus, their services would be in even greater demand. No one had pulled off an attack of this magnitude, but it was possible to piece together a plan from various hacks that had been executed before, which, taken together, were a sort of open-source blueprint available to anyone with an interest in remote-control terrorism (and the time and manpower it required). This group was small, relatively speaking, and benign, relatively speaking. isis, for
Within minutes of the outage, the Dow had plunged.
New York’s first head of cybersecurity started the job earlier this year. In April, Newark’s police were locked out of their computer system for three days. Investigators recently reported a similar incident at an undisclosed water company. Hackers are often identified by the malware they use: One group is known as Sandworm, because references to the sci-fi series ‘Dune,’ which features giant desert worms, were embedded in its code. The hacker world divides into white hats, who are the good guys, and black hats, who are out to cause havoc or for personal gain. According to the FBI, those hit by cyberattacks have paid more than $200 million in ransoms so far this year, compared with just $25 million in all of 2015. Earlier this year, Congress was the target of a string of ransomware attacks. An Italian company called Hacking Team has been criticized for offering hacking services to dozens of countries, many with poor human-rights records. Andrés Sepúlveda, a Colombian hacker, recently told Bloomberg that he had helped rig elections in nine different Latin American countries, including by installing malware on campaign routers to spy on digital and phone communications. Last year, a researcher claimed he had hacked into a plane’s seat-back entertainment system and could then access the cockpit controls on a Boeing jet flying from Denver to Chicago. Boeing has said this is impossible. In 2014, a company tracking medical devices at more than 60 hospitals found malware in every hospital. Last year, another researcher was able to manipulate several drug-infusion pumps so he could, potentially, deliver a fatal dosage of medication. june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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Their networks dark, hospitals fell into chaos.
instance, might have a more pronounced bloodlust but not (yet) the technical capabilities; Chinese or Russian hacking operations would have many more resources and a much more sophisticated strategy that could bring even more targets, like nuclear-power plants, into play. These hackers decided to start with cars. The team’s members found a particular automaker’s flagship SUV especially hackable, bought one to test their work (to help fund the operation, they had pulled from the millions they had made in several attacks against financial institutions, including a recent hack of the Central Bank of Bolivia), and, within a month, could shut off the ignition, turn off the brakes, and cause the steering wheel to jerk to the left. Several other members of the team spent months trawling Shodan, a free search engine, launched in 2009, that allows savvy users to find devices with unprotected connections to the internet, from wind turbines to thermostats to Wi-Fi-enabled baby monitors. As they looked for ways to demonstrate vulnerability—to show just how many mundane features of urban life had been opened up to hackers in recent years—they found themselves focusing on something most New Yorkers use every day. The vast majority of the 70,000 elevators in New York City are not connected to the internet, but building managers had begun taking elevator manufacturers up on their offers to install remote-control systems as a way to cut costs. And so, an hour after the SUVs started crashing, a resident who had recently moved into a new tower in Hudson Yards was riding up to her 22nd-floor apartment when her elevator suddenly jerked to a halt. Across town, a bank of elevators in a Downtown Brooklyn office building that had installed the same software stopped working, with several members of a new-media start-up onboard one car. It didn’t take long for them to begin sharing their lighthearted grievances on social media. One of them pointed out a remarkable coincidence on Facebook: His friend in a different building had gotten stuck in an elevator too. By now, officials at U.S. Cyber Command were monitoring the situation in New York. Both the Department of Homeland Security and fema had conducted practice operations to see how they would respond to a cyberattack, but this was the first time anyone in the government had been called to respond to a major incident, and it wasn’t entirely clear who was in charge. American intelligence had long suspected 50 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
It took several years for hackers allegedly working for the U.S. and Israel to develop Stuxnet, a computer worm that disabled an Iranian nuclear reactor in 2010. In 2015, for an article in Wired, two hackers in St. Louis took control of a Jeep traveling 75 mph, sprayed wiper fluid so the driver couldn’t see, then cut the transmission. In February, hackers stole the credentials of several employees in the Bangladeshi Central Bank using malware that tracked keystrokes as the employees entered passwords and were then able to transfer $81 million into private accounts. (They might have stolen more had they not misspelled the word “foundation” in one of the transfers, triggering an alarm.) The underlying system of financial transactions, known as SWIFT, has since come under scrutiny after similar attempted attacks at other banks. In 2014, an Ohio man remotely accessed the thermostat in the home of his ex-wife, who’d left him for another man. “Since this past Ohio winter has been so cold I’ve been messing with the temp while the new love birds are sleeping,” the man wrote in a review of the thermostat on Amazon. “Doesn’t everyone want to wake up at 7 a.m. to a 40-degree house?” He gave it five stars. In April, the Government Accountability Office reported that the Pentagon lacked a defined “cyber incident” chain of command.
that this particular group of Europeans might have more-than-indirect ties to the Russian government, but Putin wasn’t saying so, and the Russians quickly denied any involvement, as did the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans. If they were all to be believed, there were just a few hacker groups with both the expertise and the resources to pull off a multipronged cyberattack, and this one was near the top of that list. But there was only so much the government could do. The group’s members worked separately, and the Defense Department had only the vaguest sense of where they might be. Dropping bombs wasn’t an option.
B
Y T H E T I M E T H E F D N Y rescued the woman in Hudson
Yards from her stalled elevator, and she had walked up seven flights of stairs to her apartment, grabbed a beer, and turned on the television, she found CNN airing footage of Wolf Blitzer stalking around the network’s midtown newsroom as befuddled members of the IT department, which didn’t have any better ideas, began unplugging every nonessential device they could. Companies started urging their employees to take the stairs, while many simply sent employees home. The mayor decided to continue running the subways, but at a delay to stagger trains and prevent accidents. Some people didn’t feel like risking it and trudged home through the snow instead. No one wanted to drive, and Uber, which had a number of drivers who used the targeted model of SUV, added a warning to its app that it couldn’t guarantee rider safety. (Still, demand drove surge pricing up to its maximum of 2.8 times the normal fare.) The security consultant who’d found the mess with the water-treatment plant went on TV to tell people that it appeared cyberterrorists had tried to hack the water supply. False reports of attacks on the stock exchange and Amtrak and a gas pipeline and a factory shot around Reddit and Twitter, until nobody wanted to do much of anything but get home, unplug their wireless router, and hope for the best. “With cyberattacks confirmed against cars and several hospitals, it’s impossible to say what might happen next—” Blitzer said, before televisions around the city went blank. When the power went out, at 1 p.m., hundreds of subway cars carrying thousands of passengers who had decided to risk the ride suddenly found themselves stuck between stations; one group that got trapped in an L train under the East River had to walk more than half a mile underground to get to First Avenue, using the light of their dying cell phones to navigate. Many of them said later they were expecting another threat—a bomb, a gas attack—figuring whatever sinister group was behind all this was sophisticated enough to coordinate that, too. Aboveground, traffic lights were out, so anyone willing to drive a car was crawling slowly through the snow. Many of the stranded were worried that the hackers had targeted their bank accounts, spiriting away their savings to some untraceable, block-chain account, possibly to fund future attacks—which were surely coming, according to the panicked chatter on the street. But all the ATMs were down, which made it hard to check. Credit-card readers didn’t work, and neither did Apple Pay, so anyone who’d gone cashless couldn’t buy anything. Stores around the city closed, and sporadic bouts of looting cropped up, along with rumors exaggerating the extent of it and the violence associated with it. Wall Street kept trading on backup generators, although most people wished it hadn’t: Within minutes of the outage, the Dow had plunged. For the hackers, getting access to the power grid had been simple enough. They mailed a USB stick to engineers at several companies that operate power-generating facilities in the New York area, with an attached letter saying the stick included an explanation of their benefits package for the upcoming year. Most of the engineers plugged the thumb drive into a home computer, but several took it to work and opened the document there. Knowing what to do once they had breached the system was, for the hackers, a more difficult matter. In preparation, they had filled out the team with several electrical engineers who had been involved in a 2015 attack that knocked out power for several hours to a region in Ukraine the size of Connecticut. After the team got inside the utility’s networks, the electrical engineers spent several months poring over the code, examining the particular system and equipment that the utility was using, and chatting online with an engineer from one of the utilities whom they had found grousing about his job on a Reddit forum. After six months of trial and error, working on a mirror system they had built themselves for testing, the engineers were able to
Chinese hackers are suspected in many attacks, such as the 2015 Office of Personnel Management breach, which disclosed the personal information of 21.5 million people. In 2013, seven Iranians allegedly got enough control over a Westchester dam to potentially open the sluice gate. North Koreans have been blamed for both the 2014 Sony hack and an attack on a South Korean nuclear-energy company in 2015. The U.S. has killed two ISIS hackers in airstrikes. One of them allegedly gave up his location by clicking a link he shouldn’t have. A 2013 report found that more than half of the world’s securities exchanges had been hit by a cyberattack. In 2008, hackers allegedly caused a pipeline in Turkey to explode by breaking into the network through surveillance cameras, which connected to the pipeline’s controls; the hackers were able to raise the pressure in the pipeline until it blew up. Several years ago, a German steel mill
was hit with an attack that prevented its blast furnace from shutting down properly, resulting in significant damage. When the 2003 blackout hit, there were more than 400,000 passengers trapped on 413 trains throughout the subway system. It took nearly three hours to evacuate the cars and 36 hours to resume full service. A recent study found that nearly half of us will pick up a random USB stick on the street, plug it in, and open whatever we find. Most major utilities are required to follow a set of cybersecurity regulations, considered reasonably robust. (For instance, many require two-step identification to access control systems.) But smaller utilities are often not held to the same standard. Two days before last Christmas, a worker at the Prykarpattyaoblenergo control center, in western Ukraine, watched as the cursor on his monitor began moving, then proceeded to shut down 57 different substations, leaving more than 230,000 Ukrainians in the dark. The hackers had used malware called BlackEnergy—common enough that it comes with its own “help” file. The U.S. government has acknowledged that a version of BlackEnergy has already been found inside domestic industrial systems. june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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develop several pieces of malicious code that, once inserted, were capable of damaging transformers and generators throughout several parts of the grid. Power companies are used to handling outages with a variety of causes— hurricanes, squirrels, tree limbs—but given the events of the day, Homeland Security had already deployed members of its Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team to New York by the time the power went out. As the DHS teams fanned out to the control centers at various utilities, reports had begun to trickle back from engineers who were inspecting substations in the field. While some had simply been knocked offline, one worker called back with worse news: Several transformers at one substation were broken. Workers at other facilities called back with similar news. The control center had noticed nothing amiss, which didn’t make sense, until the team from the DHS realized that the attackers had manipulated the displays on the control-center computers so that they were presenting information from 24 hours earlier, when everything had been fine. It was just a few lines of code, but the damage would last: Transformers are expensive pieces of equipment, and the utilities hadn’t stockpiled enough to replace every one. Getting certain parts could take months. As night fell, the New York City sky was an inky black. Every building with a backup generator became a gathering place, while everyone else curled up with candles at home. (The FDNY had its busiest night of house fires since the ’70s.) Several people who lived in homes neglected by slumlords, with only electric heaters to keep them warm, were found suffering from hypothermia, and several more died of carbon-monoxide poisoning from a portable generator. The uncertainty over who was doing the attacking, and what the next attack might be, sent many people to bed with a looming dread. Something worse was coming, they were all sure, and every device they owned could be turned against them and was now a threat. A S T H O S E W H O W E R E A B L E to sleep began to wake up the next morning, the attacks seemed to have stopped—though no one could say for certain. Security teams at every company and government agency had worked through the night to safeguard their systems, and the Pentagon, joined by intelligence agencies around the world, was trying to track down the offending hackers, who seemed to have decided to stand down and withdraw for a while. Traffic was light in and out of the city, and the subway remained closed as power came back on in spurts: Parts of the city had electricity within 24 hours, but it took days for other areas to come back online. When the subway finally started running again, it did so with delays and was filled with passengers who glanced anxiously at one another whenever the train unexpectedly hit its brakes. The city’s head of cybersecurity was fired, as were several of the engineers who had plugged in the USB sticks. Only a dozen people had died in the attack, but the city had undeniably changed. No buildings had been destroyed, no bombs had exploded, no money had been stolen, but each scenario now seemed not just possible but imminent. The direct economic cost was sure to be significant—the Dow dropped a thousand points by week’s end—and the personal trauma was still ongoing. The man whose wife had supposedly walked out of the hospital after having her surgery had spent all day and night searching for her, until his cell phone finally died. He went to the hospital the next morning and pleaded with anyone he could find. Eventually, one nurse, who hadn’t slept in 24 hours, found his wife in cardiology, lying down in a hospital bed with an IV still stuck in her arm. But the worst damage was psychological. Because the grid that powers New York is connected with a larger regional grid, the outage affected tens of millions of people and set off a national debate that was more unhinged than most—a fearful swirl of xenophobia, Luddism, and political grandstanding. Everything that had looked like progress over the previous two decades now looked more like a Trojan horse: “Smarthome” devices and driverless-car initiatives became political footballs. For every measure to increase funding
If they could crash a car, could they crash a subway?
52 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Last year, the Associated Press reported that, about a dozen different times, hackers had gained enough access to control portions of America’s power grid. Just a week before the Ukraine attack, a power plant in Westchester was knocked offline when some equipment was hit by a particularly large bird dropping. The Department of Homeland Security has 691 people working in cybersecurity but has said that it needs many more and that it has difficulty attracting talent. In Ukraine, the utility was able to get the power back on by switching to manual operation, something that would be much more difficult in the more modernized American grid. In 2007, American hackers working in a government lab were able to destroy a generator simply by writing 21 lines of malicious code that caused it to spin out of control. Some of the generator’s parts were found 80 feet away. Only three incidents of physical damage caused by cyberattack have been publicly reported: the government-sponsored generator hack, Stuxnet, and the German steel mill. Electrical transformers, most of which are built overseas, can weigh more than 200 tons and have to be transported on railcars and barges. One transformer can take as many as 18 months to acquire. In 2015, Lloyd’s of London published a report imagining a cyberattack in which 93 million people along the East Coast were left without power for days—a threat it judged to be within the once-in-200-year probability that insurers should prepare for. Such an attack, Lloyd’s estimated, could set back the American economy by more than a trillion dollars. A similar incident happened earlier this year at the D.C.-area hospital that was hit with a ransomware attack.
When the power went out, so did the subways, stranding riders.
President Obama has proposed spending $19 billion on federal cybersecurity funding, an increase of 35 percent from last year.
for cybersecurity, there was a congressman demanding that even white-hat hackers, who tried to probe systems as a way to point out vulnerabilities before the bad guys got to them, be thrown in jail. The president’s domestic agenda was shelved, as the next 18 months required convincing the American people that their government was capable of protecting them from their own devices, even as security experts acknowledged that there was no way to build a world of interconnected systems that was completely secure. Americans had spent the past decade and a half gradually coming to terms with the fact of anti-American Islamist terrorism, mostly by comforting themselves that the perpetrators were far away, separated by not only geography but the massive buffer of America’s nationalsecurity apparatus. Now even that apparatus seemed vulnerable to malicious redirection. Air-traffic control, a local bank, the iPhone app that came with an electroshock function—cracking those seemed suddenly like child’s play. It was hard to blame people for their anger when they had been told to trust that the devices they brought into their lives were safe, only to find that many of them weren’t. Parents who had done their Christmas shopping on Cyber Monday returned anything with a Wi-Fi connection. Everyone had to be reminded again of all the incredible benefits of a connected world. Doctors had to convince people that their implantable defibrillators couldn’t be hacked. Americans begrudgingly accepted the inconveniences experts said were necessary—triple verification, firewalls between firewalls, encrypted encryption—but the phrase cybersecurity theater soon joined its airport predecessor in the lexicon of nanny-state policies. Copycat attacks sprang up around the world: trains going haywire in Japan; smart thermostats freezing pipes in Minneapolis; Chinese hackers noodling around a water utility in San Francisco. Americans suddenly realized that, although they had spent plenty of time anguishing about how to protect the country’s physical borders, with every device they bought, they had been letting more and more invaders into their cities, their homes, and their lives. They had moved everything they did online, thinking they were moving into the future; they woke up the morning after thinking they’d moved into a war zone instead. What frightened people most wasn’t the attack itself, but rather what it foreshadowed. The day after, the hackers had sent a drone flying over the city dropping leaflets with a simple ■ message: we’ll be back. It almost didn’t matter whether they would.
Some companies have launched “bug bounty” programs, in which third-party hackers are invited to attack a company’s system to probe it for vulnerabilities. After starting such a program earlier this year, General Motors reportedly got more than 100 submissions in three days. Soon after, the Pentagon launched a similar program. In March, a Justice Department representative said the Islamic State was “actively attempting” to cause major damage in the U.S. by means of cyberattack, and last month, the U.S. government acknowledged that it was conducting cyberattacks against ISIS. A loose coalition of hackers affiliated with ISIS recently announced that they were organizing under the banner of the United Cyber Caliphate. But most of the group’s attacks have been rudimentary: This spring, it published the names and addresses of 3,602 of New York’s “most important citizens,” which turned out to be a seemingly random list of names. iPhones are actually relatively secure, as evidenced by the difficulty the FBI had accessing information on the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, which makes them unlikely targets for hackers. In 2014, security researchers found that they could hack into certain types of Bluetooth-enabled defibrillators and deliver shocks to a patient’s heart. june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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THE CUT
F RO M L E F T:
Floral Zimmermann zip one-piece, $375 at zimmermannwear.com; burgundy J.Crew seamless one-piece, $118 at jcrew.com; Ward Whillas reversible one-piece, $260 at everythingbutwater.com.
PHOTO GR APHER:
Zora Sicher WHERE:
Prospect Lefferts Gardens
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I ALWAYS LOVE TO SEE in a magazine real girls, real women of New York, wearing swimsuits. I got all the girls together. We just were like, “Okay, let’s see who looks good in what, who feels comfortable in what.” Most of them actually wore one-pieces. You think of Sports Illustrated and the sexualized girls in swimsuits. But it was important to me to do something pretty real, not just the typical swimsuit stuff. That day it got hot out, like really hot out. At one point, I was shooting and I threw a swimsuit on just to be with everyone, the wine-red one-piece.
HOT TOWN Photographers and their friends took the season’s freshest swimsuits for a spin on the first weekend of summer.
F RO M L E F T:
Floral Zimmermann Eden Halter one-piece, $295 at zimmermannwear.com; pink ALIX Delano spaghetti-strap one-piece, $198 at alixnyc.com.
55
Marisa Chafetz WHERE:
Long Island
WE’ VE B EEN FR I EN DS since elementary school. She does this kind of stuff all the time, like climbing high up a tree in a bikini and acting spontaneous and adventurous in a wholesome way. I feel like when I have memories in my head of summer, I imagine my friends illuminated by a streetlight or a pool light, like their faces are either blue or orange.
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PHOTO GR APHER:
56 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Missoni bikini, $740 at 1009 Madison Ave.; 212-517-9339.
Bobby Doherty WHERE:
Rockaway Beach and Bedford-Stuyvesant
I D ON’T LI KE TO bring cameras to the beach because I get paranoid about them getting all messed up with sand. Which is why I only shot Polaroids. Polaroids are instant nostalgia, and pictures of people on the beach having fun are also kind of timeless. So it’s really only the bathing suits that tell you when and where you are.
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PHOTO GR APHER:
T O P: Green Vilebrequin swim shorts, $590 at vilebrequin.com. B OT T O M: Topman swim shorts, $35 at topman.com.
Ysa Pérez WHERE:
The Standard, Miami Beach
THE STANDARD in Miami is an oasis. There’s yoga all the time, a beautiful pool with music underwater, and it’s on the bay. You can pull a boat in there if you want to go have lunch. ¶ I was with my classmates. We take jiujitsu together, Brazilian jiujitsu. We train with a black belt. It was like, “I get to see you guys outside of class!”
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PHOTO GR APHER:
O N H E R: Kendall + Kylie palm-print Bardot bikini top, $48, and bottom, $35, at Topshop, 608 Fifth Ave., 212757-8240. O N H I M: Topman parrot-print swim shorts, $40 at topman.com.
Tim Barber WHERE:
Delhi, New York
I’M STAYING UP here in the country for most of the summer. I have a small cabin up on the hillside, at the end of a dead-end road. There’s a little pond to swim in. It was superhot, really nice weather, so we were swimming a lot. It was just perfect all weekend.
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PHOTO GR APHER:
C LO C K W I S E F RO M T O P L E F T: Hilfiger Collection bikini, $290 at 681 Fifth Ave., 212-223-1824. Tory Sport swimsuit, $185 at 129 Fifth Ave., 212-777-2226. Tommy Hilfiger trunks, $60 at tommy.com. Cover swimsuit, $190 for similar styles at neimanmarcus.com; Cocodune bottoms, $82 at cocodune.com.
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WHITNEY YOU CAN SEE AMERICA FROM HERE
DANNY LYON: MESSAGE TO THE FUTURE JUNE 17–SEPT 25
Danny Lyon, Crossing the Ohio River, Louisville, 1966. Vintage gelatin silver print. 8 x 12 1/2 in. (20.3 x 31.8 cm). Silverman Museum Collection. © Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
Whitney Museum of American Art 99 Gansevoort Street whitney.org @whitneymuseum
STRATEGIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . b o o z y m i l k s h a k e s . . . . . . . . . . . . atlantic city pool parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . t h e n u d e b e a c h w i t h t h e h o t t e s t p e o p l e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v e r y a d u l t s l e e pawa y c a m p s
The Hedonist’s Summer A season to do things you might regret later, or not. Like eating nothing but fried food and partying with a human candelabrum (or Scott Disick). Inside, a range of options for having more fun than you probably should.
Photograph by Hanna & Foulkes
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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Pour Hot Wax on a Human Candelabrum
And Seven Other Really Wild Parties: june 18
june 24
Dark Venus Fetish Ball
Horse Meat Disco at Output
Upscale kink party; fetish-, fantasy-, or formalwear required; on-site “S&M salon” providing BDSM instruction. Diamond Horseshoe, 235 W. 46th St.; tickets from $30.
Kick-start your Pride weekend with a rager courtesy of the London DJ crew– roving queer dance party. 74 Wythe Ave., Williamsburg; $45.
62 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
july 15–17
july 15–17
Gratitude Migration
Unter x the Bunker 36-Hour Party
Burning Man–meets– Jersey Shore weekendlong beach party; camping, DJs, fire performances, art boats. 2 Beachway Ave., Keansburg, N.J.; tickets from $275.
Expect techno-heads swigging Club-Mate at this 36-hour rave from after-hours crew Unter and electro label the Bunker. Secret location; ticket information TBD.
july 22–24 Pines Party 2016: Xanadu
All-weekend Fire Island party; BYO spandex and roller skates. Fishermans Path, Fire Island Pines (locations vary); tickets from $75.
august 20
location outside the city (more info and transportation provided after purchase of $450 ticket at illuminatiball.com).
august 27
Illuminati Ball
Brooklyn Bike Rave
Occult masquerade inspired by the Baroness and Baron de Rothschild’s legendary 1972 Surrealist Ball. Secret
Seven-mile waterfront ride culminating in a bash under the Manhattan Bridge archway. Location TBD; $50.
P H OTO G R A P H : A D R I A N B U C K M A S T E R . I L LU S T R AT I O N B Y M U R P H Y L I P P I N COT T
on june 16, artist Abby Hertz teams up with the circus-meets-cabaret party venue House of Yes for an evening of excess. It begins at 7 p.m. with a ten-course dinner presented on naked bodies by servants on collar and leash. At 9:45 p.m., four witches walk onstage to enact a sex-magic ritual meant to open the room’s erotic energy before a genderbending rock-and-roll performance by Missyou. Then comes the interactive candelabra (guests drip hot wax onto nude performers) and Hertz’s pussy-painting act (exactly what it sounds like). 2 Wyckoff Ave., Bushwick; $75 for the main event.
the hedonist’s summer
Call an Uber for Your Suitcase
“Once I packed so much luggage for five days in the Hamptons I sent it in its own Uber and messengered my hatboxes.”
Stacey Bendet, CEO and creative director of Alice + Olivia
Go Skinnydipping in the Bronx River
Head to the Nude Beach With the Best-Looking People A review from one anonymous lurker. “Gunnison Beach in New Jersey has plenty of attractive people … the ladies especially there are just amazing. They’re not high maintenance, not the kind of people who need to have some perfect tan to look good for everyone back home. Some do wear fancy hats, though. The National Park Service officers keep a tight grip to make sure no one is making sexual advances on anyone. It’s supposed to be a wholesome location. But I’m 39—I still notice when someone looks attractive.”
Play With Fire At a new class at the Floasis, a performing-arts center in Bushwick (1342 DeKalb Ave., Ste. A), you can learn to swallow flaming torches and twirl lit-up sticks, fans, and whips.
“Every summer I go skinnydipping in the Bronx River where it meets Gun Hill Road. There’s a stairway to the river right at Magenta and Bronx Boulevard. You walk down the stairs and through all these archways, but once you go around the corner, it’s like a jungle in the middle of the Bronx. It’s always kind of cool and refreshing, and this is farther upriver, so it’s got a little less of the city in it.” Baron Ambrosia, chef, filmmaker
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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the hedonist’s summer
Go on a Fried-Food Diet Your fried-foods summer bucket list. by rob patronite and robin raisfeld 1. Pommes Frites’ fries. 2. Tarallucci e Vino’s cacio fritto (that’s fried Pecorino with dipping sauce). 3. Lilia’s cacio e pepe fritelle. 4. Wildair’s fried squid, spring onion, lemon, basil. 5. Cuchifritos’s alcapurrias. 6. Bon Chovie’s fried anchovies. 7. Sweet Afton’s deep-fried McClure’s pickles with smoky sauce. 8. Delaware and Hudson’s funnel cake. 9. Delaware and Hudson Tavern’s Buffalo broccoli rabe. 10. Colicchio & Sons’ zeppole bananas Foster. 11. Tacoway Beach’s fish tacos. 12. Fuku+’s Sweet and Spicy Fuku Fingers. 13. Hard
Times Sundaes’ bacon-wrapped deep-fried hot dog. 14. Insa’s seafood corn dog. 15. Littleneck’s clam roll. 16. Zadie’s Oyster Room’s fried oysters. 17. Otafuku x Medetai’s octopus balls. 18. Otto’s Tacos’ Gorgon. 19. Tapestry’s fritto misto. 20. Don Antonio by Starita’s Corna di Maradona fried calzone (filled with ricotta and pork rinds). 21. Salvation Burger’s fried blueberry pie. 22. Wassail’s smoked potato croquettes. 23. Nix’s fry bread. 24. Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen’s hot chicken. 25. Eastwood’s Israeli Scotch egg.
A gluttonous heap of Pommes Frites’ fries.
64 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Photograph by Bobby Doherty
the hedonist’s summer
Have Sex in an Alleyway
“I found two alleylike streets in New York that I really like: one between Canal and Walker, and another, Extra Place, between Second and Bowery. Remember, the only thing wrong with public sex is getting caught.” —Justin Shock, co-owner of feminist bookshop Troll Hole Do Paddleboard Yoga in Prada
“I’ve done yoga on my stand-up paddleboard out on a lake in Fishers Island— headstands, back bends, splits—in an evening gown.” —Amy Fine Collins, journalist Take a Nude SelfPortrait on a Roof
“Do it on the rooftop on your favorite building. I’ve snuck up onto Bushwick rooftops for this. It makes you feel so sexy, wild, and free. Then post it on Instagram.”
Stay Inside on a Beautiful Day and Get a $480 Body Treatment instead of lying out in Central Park, you can look at it through the window of your Asian-inspired suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel spa. There, a decadent new twohour-long experience has been created in honor of the Year of the Fire Monkey. A small tingsha cymbal rings to signal the beginning of the treatment, and aesthetician Edyta ceremonially washes your feet and the insides of your toes in a lacquered footbath of tangerine-scented water, then pats them with rose oil. This is followed by a fullbody scrub with chrysanthemum, which you rinse off in a pomeloinfused rain shower before returning to your pagoda bed for a classic ylang-ylang-scented massage, made even more stupefying by the culminating chime of the cymbal.
Have Someone Hand-Feed You Freshly Picked Cherries
Or Get a Totally Irresponsible Tan “i put this homemade oil over sunscreen. I use three black-tea bags, a quarter-cup of lanolin, four tablespoons of coconut oil— which makes your skin a reflective surface—and four tablespoons of avocado oil. I boil one cup of water—once it’s bubbling, I remove it from the heat and add in the tea bags. Then I let it steep for 20 minutes. After that, I add the lanolin, coconut oil, and avocado oil to a blender and blend until it’s creamy. Then I add the cooled black tea to the blender and pulse everything until it’s combined. Once it’s finished, I put the whole thing into either a spray bottle or a squeeze bottle and apply it all over my body. The stuff can stain, so I always wear a black swimsuit when I’m using it. I usually stay outside for an hour with it—30 minutes on the front, 30 minutes on the back.” —Erica Stolman, Fashionlush blogger and hometanning expert
battleview Orchards in Freehold, New Jersey (about an hour drive from the city), offers allyou-can-pick cherries starting in mid-June. After picking, recline on the grassy fields between rows and rows of cherry trees, and if you ask nicely, one of the friendly staff members will handfeed you your pickings.
Pound an 80-Proof Milkshake Or a boozy snow cone. Or a frozen Red Bull–and–vodka.
Salvation Burger Grasshopper Milkshake
230 e. 51st st.; $14 A New Orleans cocktail becomes a shake with housemade mint ice cream, crème de menthe, and chocolate liqueur. Alcohol content: approx. 2 oz. 48-proof liqueur. Sincerely Burger Salted-Caramel-andMaple-Bacon Milkshake
41 wilson ave., bushwick; $9 As if caramel and bacon weren’t indulgent enough, the bar adds bourbon. Alcohol content: 1.5 oz. 86-proof Evan Williams.
—Andrea Mary Marshall, artist
66 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Clean Shave Ice
riis park beach bazaar, rockaway park; $9 These snow cones may be all-natural, but they’re not health food—try adding whiskey from the adjacent bar to the orange-ginger. Alcohol content: 1.5 oz. 80-proof whiskey.
OddFellows Vodka–Red Bull Popsicle
freehold brooklyn, 45 s. 3rd st., williamsburg; $8 In ice-pop form, the drink of college is better than the sum of its parts. Alcohol content: 30 to 40 percent ABV (“Equivalent to a cocktail,” warns a staffer).
Milk Bar Fancy Shakes
382 metropolitan ave., williamsburg; $10 The Birthday Cake Fancy Shake’s decadence is near obscene: It’s Cereal Milk soft-serve, whole milk, cake truffles, and spiced rum. Alcohol content: 2 oz. 70-proof um. Lo-Res’s Root-Beer Float
Rocka Rolla’s Frozen “Coffee Thing”
486 metropolitan ave., williamsburg; $7 This creamy drink’s made with milk and Oslo coffee and topped with a hit of Evan Williams. Alcohol content: approx. 1.5 oz. 80-proof bourbon.
163 metropolitan ave., williamsburg; $11
The Gatehouses at Kings County Distillery’s Whiskey Pop
Beer floats with stout are common; less so the rootbeer-and-whiskey float served at the bar beneath Nitehawk Cinema. Alcohol content: 1.5 oz. 80-proof Zackariah Harris bourbon.
The strawberry pop’s made with chocolate whiskey and served in a glass—add a pour-over ounce of bourbon. Alcohol content: approx. 2.5 oz. 90-proof whiskey.
299 sands st., brooklyn navy yard; $12
Photograph by Bobby Doherty
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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the hedonist’s summer
for a quick $325k, this Jordan Belfort–worthy estate on roughly six and a half acres in Water Mill, New York, can be all yours through Labor Day. Inside, there are ten bedrooms and fuchsia velvet furniture galore. Outside, there’s a freestanding fireplace beside the big heated pool, plus a pool house where the thong-clad pool boy can stay. hamptonsrealestate.com
Throw a Kegger at a Yankees Game The Staten Island Yankees, that is.
A thousand bucks gets you a luxury suite at the waterfront stadium (20 tickets, so $50 a person), which you can fill with a hot-dog buffet and a personal visit from Scooter the Holy Cow. You have to pay extra for a keg, but the ferry ride is included. Or, do it up at Coney Island, where a suite at a Cyclones game costs $700 for 12.
Shower en Plein Air the glorious sense of liberation that comes with showering in the great outdoors while a gentle breeze hits your netherparts and the Freedom Tower watches from above is available to all. At Jimmy, the rooftop bar of the James hotel in Soho, find two outdoor showers by the pool, accessible to non-hotel guests during summer-weekend pool parties, beginning at 3 p.m.
68 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Charter a Boat for 48 of Your Closest Friends The Capt’s Lady holds 49 people, along with a crew that does all the messy work of fishing—baiting, unhooking, and filleting your catch, which, up through September, will most likely be fluke or sea bass. (Call Captain Tony at 917-5608224; $43 a person for a sevenhour weekday charter, departing from Sheepshead Bay.)
Play Pin the Tail on the Veniero’s 1) Get a table at the old-school East Village bakery, and spread out the pages of its dessert picture menu. 2) When the waiter arrives, close your eyes, point anywhere on the pages, and say, “I’ll take these.” 3) Open your eyes to see what you ordered. 4) You win.
P H OTO G R A P H : CO U R T E S Y O F S A U N D E R S & A S S O C I AT E S
Rent This Insane Hamptons House
The perfect way to enjoy Patrón is responsibly. Handcrafted and imported exclusively from Mexico by The Patrón Spirits Company, Las Vegas, NV. 40% abv.
THE PERFECT MARGARITA DESERVES THE PERFECT TEQUILA.
HANDCRAFTED IN SMALL BATCHES, PATRÓN TEQUILA IS THE PERFECT START TO EVERY MARGARITA YOU CAN IMAGINE.
the hedonist’s summer
people who love to make out in public know that dark spaces of air-conditioned museums are perfect for a spontaneous tryst. At the American Museum of Natural History, find your way to the Hall of South American Peoples. Dip into the two-row screening room of the documentary To Survive: Indians of Amazonia—Richard Kiley’s dry narration will transport you to days of back-row makeouts in Anthropology 101. More-adventurous pairs can kiss under the elephants in the dimly lit Akeley Hall of African Mammals. Choose the right bench, and a quartet of pointy-horned gemsbok make for a captive audience. Across Central Park, visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Asian Art wing: The Astor Chinese Garden Court is the perfect hideaway. 70 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Blow Your Rent Check on a Single Cocktail
order the new $500
Le Roi at the Baccarat hotel, and the barkeep will
mix Nolet’s Reserve, Grey Goose VX, and Lillet Rose and serve it in a personalized, engraved Baccarat crystal glass. Meanwhile, the London hotel’s new Billionaire Margarita ($1,200) involves organic Cara Cara– orange bitters and Patrón en Lalique Serie 1— a $7,500-a-bottle tequila.
Get High on Ice-Cream Sandwiches There’s a trendy, linesdown-the-block ice-cream parlor, which shall remain nameless, that’s known to keep a stash of ice-cream sandwiches infused with a “special” secret ingredient. An anonymous tipster ate a whole one and says it’s a doozy. Another off-thebooks stoner option: a bar with old-world charm and $10 cocktails in a certain family-oriented outerborough neighborhood where those in the know can ask to boost any cocktail with a few drops of the bartender’s homemade “infused” bitters. Photograph by Noah Kalina
L LU S T R AT I O N B Y M U R P H Y L I P P I N COT T
Make Out in the Dark, Air-Conditioned Corners of Museums
944 LAKES. ENDLESS OPPORTUNITIES TO PADDLE THE SUMMER AWAY. CANOEING
L A K E W E N T WO RT H , WO L F E B O R O
V I S I T N H . G OV
tktktktk Stuff Your Face With One Single ParticularlyBad-for-You Type of Food
july 4 The Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest
on coney island. The record: 69 hot dogs in ten minutes. The jackpot: $40,000. (Next available qualifying heat: June 19 at Citi Field.)
july 9–10 N.J. Bacon Fest
at the tuckerton seaport. A weekend devoted to the crispy treat, featuring a bacon-eating competition and mini-pig races.
august 8 The Tioga Downs World Chicken Spiedie Eating Championship
in nichols, new york. (For the uninitiated, a chicken spiedie is a local type of spit-roasted chicken sandwich on a bread roll.)
august 19–21 Hudson Valley Ribfest
in new paltz, new york. Sixty barbecue teams face off for the title of best in show.
Attend Clothing-Optional Adult Sleepaway Camp
september 10 Seventh Annual Pig Island Festival
in red hook. A pork-only outdoor eating extravaganza.
Camp No Counselors
72 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
The Glen Wilde Bungalow Colony
Camp for Park Slope Parents
the glen wilde bungalow colony
is a collection of 18 houses on 11 acres of water, woods, barbecues, and fire pits. The closest thing to structure are the board games in the closets and the huge collection of classic VHS movies. (For now, only six of the houses are rentable. Open through September; $175 per night; 44 Church Rd., Mountaindale, N.Y.; theglenwilde.com.)
Camp for Leather Daddies
Camp for the Murray Hill Crowd
the woods campground
camp no counselors
is an LGBT camp on a 100-acre ground. The season is divided into themed weekend events—Leather Weekend, Redneck Weekend, Frat Party Weekend—and clothing is optional. (Open through October. 3500 Forest St., Lehighton, Pa.; $110 for a two-night stay; thewoods campground.com.)
involves coed cabins that bunk about 20 revelers. Activities include dodgeball, archery, friendship-braceletmaking, and, just like the camp of your youth, plenty of sex and booze. (Sessions available September 8–11. 532 NY-74, Paradox, N.Y.; $550; campnocounselors.com.)
Be Marie Kondo’s Worst Nightmare Located along Route 90— a scenic byway in the Finger Lakes—is the 50-Mile Garage Sale. This 1980s-founded tradition takes place during the last weekend in July and features all manner of antiques, collectibles, and other junk as far as the eye can see.
google “clubs with pools NYC” and you’ll find New York Sports Club and Equinox branches. But just a couple of hours south, “club with pool” means one thing: the Pool at Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City. At night it becomes “the Pool After Dark,” where bikini-clad waitresses serve cocktails to revelers who can dance until dawn or tuck away in private cabanas and hot tubs. Past “Epic Saturdays” at the Pool boasted appearances from Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian and Brody Jenner—this summer’s equally stellar lineup includes Amber Rose, Scott Disick, and Ice-T and Coco. Reporting by Belle Cushing, Arianna Davis, Molly Elizalde, Jason Feifer, Bennett Marcus, Rob Patronite, Robin Raisfeld, Hilary Reid, Katy Schneider, Abby Schreiber, Lauren Schwartzberg, Alexis Swerdloff, and Mary Jane Weedman.
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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P H OTO G R A P H S : TO M B R I G L I A / F I L M M AG I C / G E T T Y I M AG E S ( D I S I C K ) ; CO U RT E SY O F C A E SA R S E N T E RTA I N M E N T ( P O O L ) ; CO U RT E SY O F C A M P N O CO U N S E LO R S ; F LOTO + WA R N E R ( T H E G L E N W I L D E )
Have a Quiet Atlantic City Weekend With Scott Disick
PHOTOS © MATTHEW MURPHY AND JOHAN PERSSON.
ª
WINNER OF EVERY MAJOR BEST MUSICAL AWARD
2013
TONY AWARD
2014
®
GRAMMY AWARD ®
KINKYBOOTSTHEMUSICAL.COM | Ticketmaster.com or 877-250-2929 |
2016
OLIVIER AWARD
FEATURING 16
ORIGINAL SONGS BY
CYNDI LAUPER
Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 W. 45th St.
The CULTURE PAGES INSIDE:
What the Girls Writers Know • Veep vs. History • Tracee Ellis Ross • Louie Anderson
SNL’s Trump • Fred Armisen • A New Comedy Capital •
Louie Anderson in Baskets
P H OTO G R A P H : B E N CO H E N / CO U R T E S Y O F F X
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TV COMeDY WILL BRea K YOUR Hea RT Twelve explorations of a paradigm shift.
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TV’S BEST COMEDY
COMeDIeS, IN THeORY As “serious” TV has become plot-obsessed, it’s comedy that’s now plumbing the depths of human character—and owning the era. By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
35%
Veep “That show is so well-everything: well written, well directed, well acted, well edited.” jon glaser, comedian-actor
28%
31%
Broad City “It’s in their title: broad. They’re such funny, physical performers.” ellie kemper, actress
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt “One of the most dense shows as far as jokes.” breckin meyer, actor
TV’S BEST NEW COMEDY
34% “WHERE IS THE TELETHON for the noble writer?”
Gretchen shouts. “Bravely drinking coffee, spilling his blood to get his feelings out, filling two, maybe three whole pages before his heroic effort is cut short by his desire to watch internet porn or get a snack!” This outburst is the nerve-jangling high point of “There Is Not Currently a Problem,” an episode of the FXX sitcom You’re the Worst; it happens after the heroine, Gretchen (Aya Cash), insults her dunderheaded novelist boyfriend, Jimmy (Chris Geere), amid a group of friends who can’t leave a gathering because the Los Angeles Marathon has blocked off local streets. She blasts the other guests for “sucking the air out of the room with their self-pity-riddled nonproblems” and caps her tirade by slamming one of Jimmy’s hardbacks down on a mouse that Jimmy has been chasing; one scene after that, Gretchen is sprawled on a bed, telling a friend that she can’t tell her boyfriend that she’s been clinically depressed since childhood. The guests euthanize the mouse with carbon monoxide by stuffing it in a shoe box affixed to a car’s tailpipe; two episodes later, a doom-spiraling Gretchen stalks a more privileged happy couple and briefly abducts their infant daughter and their dog. ¶ You’re the Worst is billed as a comedy. But it’s more accurate to call it a CIT—comedy in theory. It runs 30 minutes (minus ads) and boasts eccentric, energetic characters. But it’s not consistently light, and it shows no interest in being lovable or comforting. Sometimes it’s ha-ha funny. Sometimes it’s funny-strange. Other times it’s defiantly not funny. When the 76 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Catastrophe “In an era of misanthropic comedy, it’s really a positive story.” ana gasteyer, actress
27%
Difficult People “Billy Eichner created an incredible character; Julie Klausner is a master of being politically on-point and irreverent.” shakina nayfack, actress
26%
Baskets “A revelation as far as being both laughout-loud funny and hard.” julie klausner, actress-comedian
reporting by Samuel Anderson, Heather Buckley, Ericka Goodman, Bennett Marcus, Kelly Marino, Jenni Miller, Trupti Rami, Vicki Salemi, Hillary Sheinbaum, Fawnia Soo Hoo, Jennifer Vineyard, and Katherine Ward, Tolly Wright, and Jada Yuan.
Survey respondents: Carlos Alazraqui, Dan Amboyer, Stephen Amell, Marie Cecile David Caspe, David Chase, Michael Che, Deon Cole, Gary Cole, Eliza Coupe, Elisha Chris Geere, Nick Gehlfuss, David Giuntoli, Jon Glaser, Ben Gleib, Gideon Glick, D Keegan-Michael Key, Candice King, Julie Klausner, Zachary Knighton, Jenni Konn Noah, Marti Noxon, Conan O’Brien, John Oliver, Adam Pally, Tom Perrotta, Luke Pe Shapiro, Alia Shawkat, Christian Slater, Scott Speedman, Yvonne Strahovski, Matt
30%
32
%
31
%
45 %
Archer “He’s such a jackass. It cracks me up.”
josh holloway, actor
29% Fresh Off the Boat Will Forte Last Man on Earth “His half-beard was hilarious and should be done over and over again.”
Make Donald Drumpf Again
“They make me laugh, they make me cry, they make me cringe.”
The Carmichael Show “It’s a multi-cam sitcom, which is unheard of to be good.”
vincent rodriguez iii, actor
zachary knighton, actor
Last Week Tonight
30%
jessica williams, comedian
29%
Tituss Burgess
28%
Louis C.K.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Horace and Pete “The show was breathtaking, and so was he.”
“For his ability to bring humanity to the most ridiculous moments.”
josh sapan, amc ceo
guy branum, writer
BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
40%
CULTURaTI CaUCUS
WHAT MADE ME LAUGH THE HARDEST
Veep
27%
27
Catastrophe
Amy Schumer
“She, and all great comedy, normalizes relationship struggles.”
Inside Amy Schumer “She’s untouchable.”
constance wu, actress
aya cash, actress
MOST UNDERRATED COMEDIANS
FUNNIEST DRAMA
20%
41%
Broad City
Nathan Fielder
(various moments)
Nathan for You
“It’s laugh-out-loud funny when so many comedies are eschewing jokes for half-drama.”
“His show is absurdly specific in premise and execution. There’s never been anything like it.”
chris schleicher, writer
Orange Is the New Black “There’s a lot of social relevance, but they come at it from a very hysterical, comedic point of view.”
luke del tredici, writer-producer
sarah schapiro, showrunner
natalie zea, actress
30%
36%
28%
Richard’s Face-plant
Louie Anderson
Tina Fey “She’s the gold standard.”
Lena Dunham
Sharon Horgan
The Late Late Show
Louis C.K.
31% %
Adele’s Carpool Karaoke
“He’s not even pure comedy anymore, but Louis’s all over the place. In a good way!” campbell scott, actor
gideon glick, actor
28%
44%
34%
“She has this great mix of elation and sorrow.”
Conan
One person’s punch line is another’s sucker punch—comedy is perhaps the most personal cultural form. Then there’s the complicating notion that on TV lately a lot of ostensible comedies aren’t even trying for laughs. But despite the fact that comedy is increasingly hard to pin down, here’s what 137 performers, writers, producers, and executives deemed TV’s best. TV COMEDY’S MOST IMPORTANT PERSON
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
North Korean Talk Show
“She expanded what you could be in a television show: themes of body image and female unlikability.” rachel bloom, actress
Silicon Valley
28% Farewell Mr. Bunting
‘SNL’ sketch
Baskets “We know he’s highly acclaimed, but he’s still underrated.” joe weisberg and joel fields, showrunners
17% Better Call Saul “This darkness creeps in, and the comedy that comes out of that darkness is brilliant.” philip winchester, actor
e Anderson, Carol Barbee, Derrick Baskin, Samantha Bee, Lynn Bixenspan, Rachel Bloom, Desmin Borges, Alex Borstein, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Guy Branum, B.J. Britt, Mehcad Brooks, Sterling K. Brown, Jere Burns, Sarah Wayne Callies, Linda Cardellini, Aya Cash, a Cuthbert, Elizabeth Daily, Luke Del Tredici, Michelle Dockery, Colin Donnell, Kether Donohue, Lena Dunham, John Early, Dave Ebert, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Cole Escola, Raúl Esparza, Stephen Falk, Ben Feldman, Joel Fields, Katy Frame, Lyle Friedman, Ana Gasteyer, Dan Goor, Peter Gould, Chris Geere, David Alan Grier, Frank Grillo, Jonathan Groff, Meredith Hagner, Lena Hall, Dan Harmon, Briga Heelan, Megan Hilty, John Hodgman, Josh Holloway, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Jason Jones, Rashida Jones, Jeremy Jordan, Ellie Kemper, ner, Padma Lakshmi, Damon Lindelof, Lisa Ling, Jay Martel, Andrea Martin, Tatiana Maslany, Debi Mazar, Rose McIver, Michael McKean, Aline Brosh McKenna, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Breckin Meyer, Lea Michele, Mandy Moore, Larry Murphy, Shakina Nayfack, Trevor erry, Adina Porter, Danny Pudi, Andrew Rannells, Shonda Rhimes, Krysten Ritter, John Roberts, Vincent Rodriguez III, Melissa Rosenberg, Josh Sapan, Chris Schleicher, Adam Schlesinger, David Schwimmer, Campbell Scott, Rhea Seehorn, Matt Senreich, Sarah Gertrude t Thompson, James Urbaniak, Timothy Van Patten, Milo Ventimiglia, Damon Wayans Jr., Carl Weathers, Joe Weisberg, Dan Wilbur, Jessica Williams, Casey Wilson, Philip Winchester, Constance Wu, Natalie Zea, Ian Ziering, Constance Zimmer
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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PHOTOGRAPHS: LACEY TERRELL/COURTESY OF HBO ( VEEP); LANE SAVAGE/COURTESY OF COMEDY CENTRAL (BROAD CITY ); ERIC LIEBOWITZ/COURTESY OF NETFLIX (UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT ); COURTESY OF AMAZON (CATASTROPHE, HORGAN); COURTESY OF HULU (DIFFICULT PEOPLE); BEN COHEN/COURTESY OF FX (BASKETS); RAY MICKSHAW/COURTESY OF FOX (FORTE); ERIC LIEBOWITZ/NETFLIX (BURGESS); COURTESY OF COMEDY CENTRAL (C.K., FIELDER); ALI GOLDSTEIN COURTESY OF COMEDY CENTRAL (SCHUMER); NICOLE WILDER/COURTESY OF ABC (FRESH OFF THE BOAT ); JESSICA MIGLIO/COURTESY OF NETFLIX (ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK)
FUNNIEST LATE-NIGHT SEGMENT
THE COMEDY MORE PEOPLE SHOULD BE WATCHING
BEST COMEDIC ACTOR
C O M E D Y, i n T H E O R Y
I’ve urged people to watch shows like ‘You’re the Worst’ only to have them grouse, “You call that a comedy?” characters are at their, well, worst, you want to avert your eyes, because what they’re going through seems so mortifyingly personal and because creator Stephen Falk and his writers show their travails in the most unexpected, even alienating manner. If you came into “There Is Not Currently a Problem” right after Gretchen’s collapse, you might mistake You’re the Worst for a dark drama with seriocomic overtones. And if you decided to start watching during the episode with the yuppies and their child, you’d assume the show was about them, because it starts with their lovemaking and then follows them around L.A. for several minutes before revealing Gretchen as a supporting character, peeping through the couple’s window. We’ve left the age of Difficult Men—to borrow the title of Brett Martin’s 2013 book about Sopranos–Mad Men–Breaking Bad–style drama—and entered an age of Difficult Shows. You’re the Worst, Orange Is the New Black, Lady Dynamite, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Master of None, The Carmichael Show, Jane the Virgin, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Baskets, Veep, Silicon Valley, Archer, Catastrophe, Mom, Blackish, Fresh Off the Boat—there’s infinitely more tonal and aesthetic variety in these mostly-funny-but-not-always comedies than in any comparable list of dramas you could put together. Even a short list gives you a sense of the extraordinary variety and vitality. HBO’s controversy-magnet Girls, about North Brooklyn hipsters blundering their way toward maturity, features tearful arguments, awkward-explicit sex, and explosions of rage that teeter on the edge of physical violence (see season five’s finale, in which Jemima Kirke’s Jessa and Adam Driver’s Adam destroy an apartment during a fight). Louis C.K.’s self-distributed, limited-run barroom-ensemble piece Horace and Pete—the follow-up to his formally innovative FX program, Louie, itself a consummate example of a CIT— looked like a 1970s-era three-camera sitcom, but it turned out to be a heart-ripping kitchen-sink theater production, with subplots about mental illness, domestic violence, and infidelity playing out in monologues (including an eight-minute showstopper delivered in close-up by guest star Laurie Metcalf). 78 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
You’re the Worst and Netflix’s BoJack Horseman tackle depression head-on, more brutally than most dramas; the latter is outwardly an animated showbiz satire set in a world where anthropomorphized creatures jostle against humans, but with each passing season, its fascination with narcissism and delusion makes it feel like the continuation of Mad Men by other means. Silicon Valley and Veep are more stinging in their critiques of power centers (respectively, the Northern California tech scene and Washington, D.C.) than their dramatic analogues Halt and Catch Fire and House of Cards. Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, starring Ellie Kemper as a woman raised in a religious cult, is as joke-filled as a show can be, but it’s also about somebody recovering from something so horrific that if the show were a drama, it might be too bleak to watch (Hulu’s The Path, about members of a present-day religious cult, essentially lives within the past that Kimmy left behind— and it’s a tough sit, to put it mildly). Amazon’s Transparent, starring Jeffrey Tambor as a Southern California patriarch transitioning from male to female, is a half-hour show that superficially suggests a singlecamera, movie-styled sitcom. But after one or two episodes, it too becomes as hard to fix with a reductive label as its main character. It jumps around in time and alternates sensitive but droll comedy with painful scenes where characters confront their delusions, prejudices, and untreated emotional wounds. This revolution is just as important as the one that reshaped TV drama after The Sopranos, but it has happened mostly under the media’s radar, maybe because so much attention was focused on whether there would ever be a proper successor to the adventures of Don Draper or Walter White. That so many of the most fascinating half-hour shows feature racially mixed and gender-balanced casts—in contrast to male-driven, often violence-filled dramas—is a big reason why. Horace and Pete, Netflix’s Master of None, Black-ish, The Mindy Project, Fresh Off the Boat, Transparent, and The Carmichael Show explore contemporary social issues in ways that most dramas just aren’t built to do (especially the period ones). Ten years ago, you never would have anything like the recent
Mindy Project episode where Mindy Kaling’s heroine, an Indian-American doctor, defends herself against another Indian-American’s accusation that she’s a “coconut”—brown on the outside, white on the inside—or the episode of Master of None in which Aziz Ansari’s hero confronts the same harsh reality of racially insensitive casting that once made shows like Ansari’s unbankable. Nor would you have seen anything like Horace and Pete’s “rapid response” jokes about Donald Trump’s candidacy and the Hulk Hogan– Gawker case, which were possible only because the show was a low-budget labor of love, each episode written and shot in the span of a week. Showrunners have availed themselves of every tool in an overstuffed creative kit, unleashing a rainbow spectrum of comedic approaches and focusing the spotlight on women, people of color, gay, bisexual, and transgendered characters, and beleaguered white men who are more anxious than glamorous. And they’ve given writers and directors the freedom to confound loyal viewers who know to expect the unexpected. To what do we owe this great flowering of possibility? One factor is distribution. There’s a precedent for creative restlessness in TV comedy, but it never had much of a legacy because until fairly recently shows had to be across-the-board mainstream hits to get renewed. That meant for every truly original sitcom like Seinfeld or The Simpsons that ran for years on a network, or The Larry Sanders Show, which enjoyed six seasons under the protection of ad-free HBO, you had many critically acclaimed flameouts, like NBC’s Buffalo Bill (1983–84), a Dabney Coleman vehicle about a hateful daytime-talk-show host; ABC’s Hooperman (1987–89), a singlecamera John Ritter cop show for which the term dramedy was coined; and CBS’s Frank’s Place (1987–1988), a single-camera, laugh-track-free sitcom with a predominantly African-American cast that looked like a high-quality Hollywood feature and had a bluesy, lived-in feeling that mainstream ’80s audiences couldn’t process. Even the more tonally adventurous comedies, including Norman Lear’s socially aware sitcoms and MTM’s WKRP in Cincinnati, were more regimented in their approach, rarely throwing audiences
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C O M E D Y, i n T H E O R Y
My Christine Louie Anderson’s indelible comic creation.
it’s hard to know whether the character of Christine Baskets on FX’s Zach Galifianakis–starring, Louis C.K.– executive-produced comedy Baskets came as more of a surprise to viewers or to the actor who portrays her, Louie Anderson. Never played as a mere punch line, Anderson’s Christine was the among the season’s most moving comedy surprises. The veteran stand-up—whose most memorable TV work prior to Baskets was hosting Family Feud—talks about the role. 80 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Distinctions that once delineated the comedy-drama divide—hero versus antihero; classical structure versus experimental or improvised storytelling; 60 versus 30 minutes—mean little, and this applies to hour-long shows as well as halfhours. Just as Girls, You’re the Worst, and short-lived but acclaimed half-hour shows like Togetherness were billed as comedies but often played like dramas, the Breaking Bad follow-up Better Call Saul runs in an hour time slot, features many of Bad’s characters, and boasts periodic eruptions of violence, but it’s at least five-sixths a patient, introspective character comedy. Another hour-long series, the CW’s Crazy Ex-Gilfriend, is a weekly musical comedy that’s as discomfiting as You’re the Worst or BoJack Horseman. It stars Rachel Bloom as a lawyer who left a lucrative job in New York City to chase an ex-boyfriend in West Covina, California, and must now confront the possibility
that she’s not the plucky, lovelorn heroine in one of the rom-coms she loves so much but a villain: “the bitch in the corner of the poster.” I’ve often urged people to watch series along the lines of You’re the Worst only to have them grouse later that it upset them: “You call that a comedy?” one asked. CIT is admittedly not an inviting acronym—it sounds like you’re describing a failure rather than a show that achieves precisely what it sets out to do—but what else can we call such odd ducks? All this innovating has been hell for the Emmys, where shows like Orange have actually switched categories; Louis C.K. has reportedly submitted Horace and Pete as a drama. We may be headed toward a future where the labels “comedy” and “drama” and “hour” and “half-hour” no longer tell us anything useful about a show, and we’ll have to think about them, live with them, in order to fig■ ure out what they are. No joke.
louis c . k . called me
and said, “I’m doing a show with Zach Galifianakis, and we want you to play his mother.” And I said, “Yeah. That’s great.” You want to work, you know? ¶ I knew that this role was gonna get attention. Like, How is he gonna do this? I’m not going to do Mrs. Doubtfire. I said, “I want this to be real.” One of the things I did was I watched Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent. He did beautiful things about the way he’d touch his hair. It was a good example for me. With Christine, there wasn’t any big “Let’s talk about this part.” The role is a tribute to my late mom in some ways. I never had the idea of putting on her clothes. That wasn’t my thing. But I loved who my mom was, and she saved us from our dad, who was a monster. I look so much like my mom anyway. And so I put the character’s clothes on—it’s a weird thing: You leave your underwear on; they didn’t give me women’s underwear—then I get the wig on and then when you do your makeup, the funniest thing happens. You automatically purse your lips and say, “Huh, I look pretty good.” Christine was alive right then. There was no talk about changing the voice; there wasn’t any of that stuff. I knew that character because I knew my mom so well. And I just channeled my mom in the sense of finding such wonder and joy out of something as silly as, like, “Oooh, Tango Wango: a new soda flavor!” But I have five sisters, and each one believes Christine is them. They think she’s perfect. as told to david marchese
P H OTO G R A P H : B E N CO H E N / CO U R T E S Y O F F X
curveballs so intimidating that they wondered what they were looking at. The fragmenting of TV audiences in the age of cable and streaming has been a boon for artists and rebels. It means that it takes fewer eyeballs to make a show a “hit.” Another factor is emphasis: Most dramas are plot-driven, stringing audiences from revelation to revelation, whereas comedies are character-driven. Game of Thrones, Empire, The Americans, Mr. Robot, Homeland, House of Cards, and the Shondaland shows (How to Get Away With Murder, Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy) are all about their twists, and they’re strategic about giving characters pretty basic motivations, such as a thirst for power, money, or validation. But comedies like Girls, Transparent, BoJack Horseman, and Catastrophe focus on unpacking their characters’ demented psychology, and they often detour into narrative cul-de-sacs (see the Girls episode about Shoshanna in Japan).
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C O M E D Y, i n T H E O R Y
Yassir Lester I came from stand-up. The stuff I’d written was very formulaic in its structure— it’d be like someone buying a piece of bread and someone else going, “You’re toast!” But Girls is about taking chances. Like, in the seasonthree finale, where Laird is rambling for a minute and a half, and then Adam just goes, “Shut the fuck up.”
Sarah Heyward There’s a scene in season one: Shoshanna was supposed to be asking Ray to take her virginity. After Jenni read my first draft, she said, “Great. Now can you rewrite it without ever mentioning sex?” My mind was blown.
Tami Sagher I didn’t come on as a writer until last year, but when I was watching a sex scene with Lena and Adam, I remember thinking, Oh, I can write that? I’m scared of even writing that in my journal.
Lena Dunham I used to believe jokes were somehow pandering, but Judd and Jenni helped me realize comedy is a universal language. There’s a reason we giggle at inappropriate times, use humor to survive, and there’s no shame in just making a fucking joke and seeing if it works.
WHaT THe GIRLS WRITeRS KNOW In advance of the show’s final season, its writers share the lessons they’ve learned.
as the story goes, the Frasier writers’ room was deafeningly quiet: If and when you spoke, you’d better have been damned sure you had a good joke to share. One couldn’t find a better counterpoint than the unruly writers’ room for Girls. In between shoots on the HBO series’ sixth and final season, the people who put words in Hannah and friends’ mouths gathered to reflect on going deeper than punch lines. as told to gazelle emami 82 n e w y oby r kRuven | a p r iAfanador l 18–may 1, 2016 Photograph
Jason Kim One scene I’m proud of was when Elijah goes to Dill and pitches becoming his boyfriend. It’s a breakup scene, and to find the humor in a breakup was a challenge. A lot of people perceive comedy writing as “What’s the funniest joke?”
Murray Miller I used to work on a Seth MacFarlane cartoon, where, literally, if you say something emotional, you’ll be fired. I was even handed a form that was like, “Here’s how the scenes break down,” and there were three-joke structures. It was remarkable to learn on Girls, “Oh, there are no rules.”
Jenni Konner The scene where I grew most as a writer was the entire plotline where Hannah’s dad comes out—the dinner party where their marriage falls apart. I had to tap into a different part of my brain that wasn’t trying to be seen as a 20-something. It’s weirdly personal despite being totally outside my experience.
Max Brockman I was 23 when I started [on Girls], and I wasn’t a writer on the show. I was an assistant. I was so young that I don’t think I quite understood the notion that the funniest idea is always the one that is the truest to the characters you’ve created.
Judd Apatow The most difficult thing is learning how to work with other people. It made Lena really nervous, writing with other people. I said, “Why don’t you just try tonight?” And then she had fun. She took that and turned it into this larger collaboration.
Bruce Eric Kaplan (not pictured) My favorite scenes have been ones where the characters were aching to express themselves: the Hannah-Marnie fight from the first season, the Jessa-Katherine scene from the same episode. The thing I am aware of constantly is getting out of the way of the characters.
april 18–may 1, 2016 | new york
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C O M E D Y, i n T H E O R Y
Dinner should be part of the criteria for a list of the worst presidents.
Warren G. Harding (1921–23)
JLD: Harding and Selina have
(But Who Is?)
Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus and showrunner David Mandel consider Selina Meyer’s place in White House history. on hbo’s gleefully acidic political comedy Veep, President Meyer is still relatively new to the Oval Office, but she’s been there plenty long enough to warrant comparison with some of her real-life predecessors— and current hopefuls.
William Harrison (1841) DM: Harrison got sick because
he didn’t wear a coat at his inauguration speech. Gary would never let that happen! JLD: And it would be chic, and she would not get pneumonia. End of story. DM: Although if it was a very light chic coat, she might’ve. JLD: If it was a sheared mink. DM: Would she pick chic over warmth? JLD: She might pick chic, and that’s the Achilles’ heel. DM: The good thing is she didn’t have a formal January inauguration. She could’ve died in the name of fashion. JLD: That could be in her future. DM: That is still on the table, but she already outpaced Harrison—32 days in office. JLD: Right, that’s all he’s got: his death!
James Buchanan (1857–61)
Buchanan all but caused the Civil War. JLD: You can’t eclipse starting the Civil War. Selina hasn’t started a war outside the borders, either. DM: Not yet. JLD: Not yet. I would say she’s hawkish, but she’s restrained hawkish. DM: Have you heard the rumors about Buchanan? JLD: Mrs. James Buchanan. DM: Yeah, DM:
84 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
David Mandel: Selina, to me,
represents both candidates. She’s as much Trump as Hillary. Julia Louis-Dreyfus: It’s bizarre how prescient the show has become. DM: Are we bringing it to life with some sort of wicked chant? JLD: I sure as shit hope not.
he had a good buddy who was referred to as Mrs. James Buchanan. Historians think he was possibly the first gay president. Also, when we talk about earlier presidents, we have to talk about slavery. People forget how many of them owned slaves. JLD: Selina does not own slaves. Unless Gary falls into that category. DM: Gary is borderline, but technically there aren’t any ownership papers. JLD: And he’s paid. We think.
Andrew Johnson (1865–69)
DM: Johnson, you know, erased
the progress of the Civil War. So far, Selina has not done that. And he was basically impeached by the Republicans. Selina: never impeached. JLD: And you don’t want to follow Lincoln! DM: You want to follow Johnson. Follow him. Follow Harrison. Follow any of the guys we’re talking about. Don’t follow Lincoln. It sort of reminds me of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner for the last eight years: You don’t want to follow Obama. He gets up there and does a killer number, and then the comedian is supposed to go. JLD: Oh, Obama owns it. DM: It’s such a smart, biting wit. JLD: Selina would bomb at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. DM: Especially with Mike writing her jokes. She would be in real trouble there. Although I don’t think bombing at the White House Correspondents’
Herbert Hoover (1929–33)
Hoover: the Great Depression. JLD: By the way, Selina avoided a monster economic crisis. Oh, wait. Has that aired? DM: I think it will by the time this comes out. JLD: Sorry. DM: We get lost . But I would say the worst it got under Selina’s administration would’ve been—a medium depression? A smallish depression? JLD: A depression we can live with day-to-day. DM: The kind of depression where you still get up and go to work. It’s manageable with proper medication. JLD: You’re just a little bit more sad. DM :
Richard Nixon (1969–74)
DM: There are a lot of similari-
ties between Nixon and Selina. I’m not talking about the crime part, but Nixon was a guy who just wanted the presidency above everything else. JLD: Nixon had the secretary, Rose Mary, who was devoted enough to put herself on the line and erase 18 minutes of that tape. Selina is similarly surrounded by devotees. DM: Gary would eat 18 minutes of tape. Literally eat it if he had to. JLD: And Mike would inadvertently erase it.
Gerald Ford (1974–77)
He did the pardoning of Nixon, which is his legacy. DM: And it’s probably good that he did it. JLD: I’m not sure I’m going to agree with you on that one. DM: I do think it might not have been a great thing for America to have— JLD: That shit to deal with? DM: But you know, Selina’s a likable person; that likability would keep her around No. 12 or 13 on a list of worst presidents, not in the top ten. JLD: Which is a good thing for a comedy show. as told to kevin lincoln JLD:
P H OTO G R A P H : CO U R T E S Y O F H B O ( V E E P )
I’m Not the Worst President
similar sexual drives—they’re quite voracious. That said, Harding fucked some poor young woman in a closet. DM: Selina used a closet in her seduction of Charlie Baird. JLD: But she had the good manners to take him upstairs to the residence to do the deed. She didn’t do it in a closet up against the mop bucket. DM: The other thing about Harding, and I admit I only know this from Boardwalk Empire, is that his administration was really corrupt. I don’t think Selina’s people are enough on the ball to steal money. JLD: If they did, it would be inadvertently. Write that down. That sounds like a story line. DM: All right, your job’s done! We’ve got season six!
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C O M E D Y, i n T H E O R Y
AMeRICa’S NeW
Black-ish’s Tracee Ellis Ross on her own mother,
86 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
SITCOM MOM and her own personas.
By CARL SWANSON
j u n ePhotographs 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1by 6 |Ruven n e w yAfanador o r k 87
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racee ellis ross is early, as she usually is—“Being prompt is very serious,” she says—when I meet her on West 57th Street. She’s wearing her favorite vintage jeans, a greenish Yohji Yamamoto duster she’s had for a while, and brandnew Prada platform brogues. She’s chatting animatedly on her phone with her father, Bob Ellis Silberstein, the gallant young music manager her mother, Diana Ross, married in 1971 after her epic relationship with Motown founder Berry Gordy became suffocatingly complicated. But that tumult ended long ago, and today her dad is a semi-retired 71-year-old who is, right now, telling his daughter about his morning bike ride in Central Park, followed by a walk with his dogs, Tupac and Snoop Dogg.
I don’t mind waiting. Even watching the star of ABC’s Black-ish talking on the phone on the sidewalk is fun: Ross is antic and expressive, unable to not perform. I keep thinking of her turn on Sesame Street when she did a bit about the letter B— introducing bear, banana, basketball, and Big Bird with Muppety, pop-eyed delight. Dad update over, we walk down the block to the Wayfarer, a bilevel restaurant that seeks to evoke a kind of vaguely Vegas Rat Pack swank. And Ross notices the picture first, at the top of the stairs: “See?” she says, when she spots her mother-as-icon among photos of JFK, the hippie crowd at Woodstock, and a Playboy Bunny. She thinks it’s probably from Mahogany. Then the waitress arrives, and Ross squeals. “Your hair looks so dang cute!” “Thank you!” says the server, who has twisted it up in a casual, boyish blonde sideknot. Ross orders mint green tea, which comes in a mug with a walrus drawn on it, which she also finds cute, and adds selfconsciously: “I actually made that sound!” (That squeal.) Ross was born in 1972, three years before Mahogany was released, at the height of her mother’s pop prowess. She grew up singing in school talent shows and trying on her mother’s fabulous clothing. On her bedroom wall, she taped up clippings from fashion magazines and practiced walking while holding her butt cheeks. (The idea was that if she could walk and still have flesh in her hand, she was too fat.) But she’s in many ways more like her father—the charming ham—than her rigorously elegant mother, closer in persona to 88 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Lucy Ricardo than to Mahogany’s fashiondesigner-on-the-make Tracy Chambers. (Although Tracee did work as a fashion editor for a while when first out of school.) Ross is a comic actor, body-image activist, and social-media paragon of positivity. For eight years, she cultivated not-quitemainstream fame as the neurotic but grounded lawyer Joan on Girlfriends, a sort of women-of-color version of Sex and the City that, for all its wacky geniality, managed to tartly explore things like relationships where the woman is more successful than the man and even the Iraq War. Produced, for some reason, by Kelsey
Grammer, it ran on UPN and then on the CW through 2008. On Black-ish, her character, Rainbow “Bow” Johnson, is like Ross, mixed-race. Unlike Ross, she’s an anesthesiologist and a mother of four, soon to be five. The show is Michelle Obama’s favorite, and it’s been a critical success. Ross tells me she recently bought the Prada brogues as a present to herself when the show was picked up for a third season. Ross describes Black-ish with a formulation often used in interviews by its creator, Kenya Barris (who also happens to be married to a real-life doctor named Rainbow), as “a show about a family which doesn’t Black-ish’s Johnson family.
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lot of Black-ish’s comic energy derives from Dre’s discomfort with that kind of belief. “The show is generally told through Dre’s eyes,” Ross says, sipping from her walrus cup. Unlike Joan, her often unlucky-in-love character on Girlfriends, she thinks Bow “has a lot more faith. She’s a lot more comfortable in her skin. She has a trust in the experience in life, there’s an ability to lean back and let Dre be nuts and not have that be a comment on why she does or does not love him.”
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Being Donald Trump Saturday Night Live’s Darrell Hammond deconstructs his impression.
1. The Mind-set “We call it ‘Trump Vision.’ You see it in Tom Brady, Derek Jeter: people who expect things to work out for them. I bought a book called Learned Optimism, by Martin Seligman, and after I read it, I knew what to do—just keep marching forward. It’s the inability to compute negativity.” 2. The Voice “I created an amalgam that captured all five of his voices,” from softest to loudest. “For the pure Trump sound, I use the word person. It has a tonal quality that I want.” 3. The Body The impression starts with “home base,” as Hammond calls it. “Trump tilts his head slightly backward, narrows is eyes a little bit, purses his lips, and surveys everything.” There are also gestural tics, like “the rubber band,” in which Trump “looks like he’s using his hands and stretching a large elastic band” in front of his body.
As told to Jesse David Fox
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happen to be black.” It’s a tacit diagnosis of, for example, The Cosby Show (which was clearly an influence on him, along with All in the Family). His show is about a “black family,” and Bow is not Clair Huxtable. What that means in terms of storytelling is that it’s about the neurotic, occasionally heart-rending, and often acrobatic identity politics of affluent African-Americans. As the voice-over (by Anthony Anderson, who plays Dre, Rainbow’s husband—he’s an ad executive in charge of reaching the “urban” demo) says in the first episode, ventriloquizing for Barris: “When brothers start getting a little money, stuff starts getting a little weird.” Especially as their kids grow up surrounded by smugly comfortable white people. Ross is impatient with what she sees as the stalled conversation about “diversity” in TV—as she recently told Slate’s DoubleX podcast, “I still am confused why we have to consider things black shows or not black shows”—and Black-ish takes on that idea directly. So does Ross’s life story: She was raised in Beverly Hills, Connecticut, New York, Switzerland, and Paris, was educated at Dalton and a Swiss boarding school and Brown, and topped all that off with a Wilhelmina modeling contract during high school. You can see her stomp her way through a couple of Thierry Mugler shows on YouTube; she’s beautiful, but she has way too much personality for modeling. (“It didn’t work for me,” she once said. Photographers were always saying: “Can you stop talking and try to look sexy?”) She is more like the kids who bedevil Dre: She has thought plenty about blackishness and privilege and traditions that rub up against life choices. “I grew up in such a mixed world,” she says. “I was having dinner with all my girlfriends the other night, and my friend Monica was like: We’re like the fucking United Colors of Benetton: Korean, Chinese and Italian, Trinidadian, Polish, Ethiopian. And that’s just at one table. That’s what my world looks like all the time, without effort. We can be all these things and be ourselves.”
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Bow does get made fun of, quite a lot, for being biracial. It can feel at times hectoring, even abrasive. And apart from a few asides (on the pilot, she says: “You think I’m not black? Why don’t you tell my hair and my ass”), her character doesn’t make much of it. “Yes, I’m not really sure what that’s about, to be honest,” she says resignedly. “Sometimes, I’m like: Wait, what?” It’s hard to say whether she’s talking only about her character. I ask whether it’s true that Barris wrote the Rainbow character for her. “He says he did,” she deadpans. (People in Hollywood are apt to make such revisionist declarations: After all, she still had to audition.) “I believe he had me in mind. He knew that I could—we have always been in line for what he wanted for this role.” She’s hardly press-shy. But she keeps her
her eldest, Rhonda, born after she married Silberstein, that she had been Berry Gordy’s biological child. Rhonda is today a singer who sometimes opens for her mother. Tracee’s kid sister Chudney is a TV producer. Silberstein and Ross split in 1977, with relatively little apparent rancor. He’s semi-retired now and is “brilliantly funny,” his daughter says. “He’s very personable and charming. I get my sense of humor from my dad.” Diana Ross remarried in 1985 to the Norwegian shipping magnate Arne Naess, and their two sons are Evan, a singer who is married to Ashlee Simpson, and Ross, who describes himself on Twitter as an “adrenaline junkie.” Among her siblings, she takes the lead. When Entertainment Tonight interviewed them all a few years back, she quickly and determinedly stepped up
“I doubt I will be arriving in a helicopter at the Super Bowl anytime soon.” personal life private. (Her mother taught her the value of “mystery.”) She isn’t married and doesn’t have kids, which might be why she is so delighted with her TV family. “Anthony is just a different kind of person than I am: the way he jokes with [the kids on the show].” She giggles. “Half the time, I’m looking at them behind his back and saying, Don’t pay attention to him, ignore everything he’s saying, it’s all good.” Ask her what she watches on TV, and she reels off The Good Wife, Game of Thrones, Broad City, Veep, Mr. Robot, House of Cards. What about that other show that helped persuade network TV to diversify its casting and greenlighting, Empire? Maybe because it’s beating Black-ish in the ratings, Barris dissed it in The New Yorker recently (“Just because someone is black and they do something doesn’t mean it’s dope”). Ross says, diplomatically, that “it’s not my kind of show,” but adds, “I don’t not like it.” She says, however, that she’s looking forward to Lee Daniels’s upcoming girl-group show, Star. iana ross married Robert Ellis Silberstein in 1971. (Silberstein de-ethnicized his name to Ellis for a while, which, come to think of it, was a bit Jewish-ish of him.) She has five children, three of them from that marriage— though she waited 13 years to explain to
D
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when questions turned to their mother, staying on message (“Our mom is a mom before she’s anything else”) as her siblings nodded along. According to J. Randy Taraborrelli’s Diana Ross: A Biography, Tracee was a bit of a snitch as a child, keeping a notebook of things that went on in her mother’s entourage and reporting them back. When she adopted the “Ellis Ross” construction as an adult, she jettisoned her middle name, Joy, to do it, which she says annoyed her mother at the time. You can spend a lot of time with Ross on YouTube, where over the past few years she inexplicably but delightfully has taken to explicating rap songs with arch naïveté under one of her several guises, #TMurda. Ross loves social media and has several personas beyond her official one, which is itself thoughtfully constructed and might be best classified as “empowering.” TMurda is more informal and whimsical, however, and in that role she spends a lot of time addressing rappers—say, the duo Rae Sremmurd, the auteurs of “No Flex Zone”—while a singalong ball bounces over the borderline nonsense of the lyrics themselves, which she has retrieved from the website Genius. (She started doing this when she realized that she was singing along in her car without knowing what she was saying.) And she’s that person in person, which is to say bright-eyed, rigorous, and
maybe a bit befuddled—or playacting that she is—all at once. #TMurda is only one of several alter egos: Madame Hiver, whom she describes as “an extravagant, lovable, alcoholic life coach to the stars,” who performed at the February 2015 Rachel Comey Fashion Week dinner, where she delivered a monologue on “the doorway to the soul”— a.k.a. the vagina, including advice on how to let yours sing. And there is also Caliope Champignon, “an opinionated French fashion blogger who claims to have ‘created’ Barneys New York.” (Caliope has her own Instagram account.) “So it’s performance art to a certain extent,” she says. “These women are not necessarily based on someone I know, they’re more sort of— um—manifestations of shadow qualities of myself which I have allowed to turn into full people by giving them clothing and looks and voices.” Someday she’s hoping to do a one-woman show, perhaps based on these or other characters. But in the meantime, there’s her iPhone, always at the ready. She has a tripod for it, and a remote control. Ross is also a consistent presence on BET. That’s where she hosted the recent Black Girls Rock! special, in a zippery red bodysuit, trading wigs to do a zany tribute medley onstage that channeled Chaka Khan, Queen Latifah, Janet Jackson, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and—wearing a glittery disco tunic—her mother (“This is a first! I love you, Mom!”). Yes, she can sing, but she admits that there’s a reason she’s become primarily a different kind of performer instead. “Unconsciously, I went in a different direction,” she says. Even as she restages her mother’s video for “Work That Body” for the internet? “I mean, this whole idea of being in someone’s shadow or something? I never really identified with that expression. If anything, at a very young age, I felt like I needed to really be me, in order to earn the attention which was coming my way because I was a part of someone that they loved. She’s great, but I doubt I will be arriving in a helicopter at the Super Bowl anytime soon.” She pauses, considering, then laughs. “I am not limiting my future,” she says. “But that doesn’t seem like me.” On BET, she seemed most comfortable of all, trying on personas. “Sometimes,” she says, “when I’m having a bad day, one of the things I do is play dress-up.” And she is not above raiding her mother’s exquisite and extensive wardrobe to do that. “Yes! I have stolen … I guess you could call it ‘gifted.’ But it’s really stolen when you shove them down your shirt to ■ get them out of the house.”
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As Gustavo Calderon, Archer
As Vivienne “Big Vivvy” Van Kimpton, Documentary Now!
As Dr. Weiss, The Jim Gaffigan Show
As Martin, Unsupervised
As Dead Janitor, Deadbeat
As Garry Epstein, Difficult People
As Brandon, New Girl
As Mr. Bunting, Saturday Night Live
As Vince, Portlandia
As Little Bobby Durst, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
P H OTO G R A P H S CO U R T E S Y O F T H E N E T W O R K S
As Jesus, Man Seeking Woman
As Himself, Late Night With Seth Meyers
FReD ARMISeN CaN’T STOP MaKING COMeDY
You’ve seen him on SNL, Portlandia … and everything else. By BORIS KACHKA
Vintage and Custom Drums, up on the third floor of a slender building in the Theater District, is neatly organized and surprisingly quiet. A former recording studio retrofitted for a niche upscale market, it feels exactly like the kind of place Fred Armisen— drummer, self-mocking hipster, TVcomedy perpetual-motion machine— would recommend for an interview. Armisen doesn’t so much arrive as nonchalantly materialize. His swept-back hair recedes slightly over gray temples—he’s 49—but his face is ageless and so is his style: chunky black glasses, black Keds, flannel shirt, canvas jacket. “Is Jeremy still working here?” he asks a manager, before inquiring about kits once owned by jazz greats Joe Morello, Elvin Jones, and Mel Lewis. STEVE MAXWELL
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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C O M E D Y, i n T H E O R Y
“When it comes to drums, we’re allowed to name-drop,” he says. “Oh, look at these old timbales! They’re my favorite instrument in the whole world. Tito Puente used to play them, and as Fericito I played them.” Fericito, a manic, gold-toothed timbalist with corny punch lines, was the character Armisen chose to play when he auditioned for Saturday Night Live in 2002. “So they’ve been sort of like my good-luck charm,” he says, rolling his fingers over the weathered twin drums: trat, trat, trat-trat-trat-trat. Armisen owns a kit from the store; he spent seven years drumming in the Chicago post-hardcore band Trenchmouth. SNL employed him for 11 years, and unlike Trenchmouth, it gave him what he wanted—fame. This afternoon, he is due back at Rockefeller Center for the Monday pitch meeting that launches his one-week return to host the season-41 finale. He flew in yesterday from his Los Angeles home to the apartment he keeps in Manhattan. This morning, he prerecorded a bit for the Peabody Awards, and before the pitch meeting, he’ll need a haircut. (He grew it long for a movie shoot.) After the finale, he’ll start collaborating with Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney guitarist, on season seven of Portlandia, the sketch-show send-up of bourgeois bohemia that anchors his happily harried life. Later, they’ll shoot it in Portland, where Armisen has a third home. Repairing to an insulated demo room, Armisen turns his soft staccato my way. “First of all, I love your name. I’m a really big fan of Boris Karloff,” he says. “He was like, ‘I’m the monster guy.’ I love the idea of ‘Pick your little corner shop and your life will be happier.’” But what would you call Armisen’s niche? In addition to Portlandia, he’s in the middle of season two of IFC’s Documentary Now!—uncannily faithful documentary spoofs co-starring SNL alum Bill Hader and co-written by Seth Meyers; he’s the bandleader on Meyers’s Late Night talk show, fronting an indie-rock supergroup of his own creation; he co-produces a Latino comedy website; he appears in a few movies and animated series a year; and he pops up without warning in cameos across the universe of Peak TV. The litany of those cameos calls to mind “Did You Read?,” the classic Portlandia sketch of literate one-upsmanship. Did you see him as an erotica-writing roommate on New Girl? An adult-baby fetishist on Broad City? An aspiring musician–health inspector on Bob’s Burgers? A Venezuelan functionary on Parks and Recreation? A mysterious foreigner on Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Another mysterious foreigner on 30 Rock? A telethon caller with no lines, also on 30 94 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Rock? Celebrity monster Robert Durst on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt? Did you see him? Did you see him? Armisen has the soul of a performance artist, the native gifts of a polyethnic codeswitcher, and the work ethic of Prince, whose tireless experimentation he emulates. In an earlier age, “I think Fred would have been a local late-night basic-cable star with a weird talk show outside of Chicago,” says Robert Carlock, a top writer for SNL, 30 Rock, and Kimmy Schmidt. “He needed more than three networks. But then a lot of us are sucking on that manyteated monster.” Armisen is feeding on it with the bottomless appetite of a onetime drummer who dreamed of being Keith Moon, only to languish in the bitter backwash of the Smashing Pumpkins. “Yes, I’m really tightly scheduled, but I love it,” says Armisen. “I love the chaos. I love the mania, the insanity of having to fly to Italy and missing the flight back. I love working, and I love overworking. I just want to obliterate everything and turn everything into a blur! I want to burn through all of it. All of these projects, it’s not even enough. And it’s all with my friends, with people I love.” The week we meet, his friends at SNL are counting on him. Show creator Lorne Michaels pushed hard to slot him into the finale. Does he feel any pressure? “No, because who cares about bombing?” he says. “I got into comedy from bombing. I had a manager who gave me notes—‘You have no jokes, you’re just doing all these characters’—and even back then, I remember thinking, That’s fantastic. I bombed my way into SNL.”
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rmisen was born in Mississippi, where his halfGerman, half-Japanese father met his Venezuelan mother. Dad went on to work for IBM, and the family lived mostly on Long Island, with a twoyear stint in Brazil. Returning to New York with a samba obsession, the preteen Armisen took up drumming. He soaked up punk and Devo, Andy Kaufman and his mother’s idol Chevy Chase. He went to the School of Visual Arts, met Trenchmouth singer Damon Locks, dropped out, and moved to Chicago. “I always wanted to be famous,” Armisen once told Howard Stern, “but I thought it was going to be through drumming.” As a recipe for world domination, “it doesn’t make any sense,” he tells me. “But then it turned out that it did.” Wherever he was— in the tour van, behind the drums, working the phones at the Chicago club Lounge Ax—Armisen was a one-man band of
pranks, impressions, and kid-gloved mockeries. His first filmed appearance as Fericito is in the Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. Af ter Trenchmouth dissolved, Armisen drummed for the Blue Man Group, learning to take himself less seriously and honing his first full-blown characters. Zach Galifianakis was an early booster. Portlandia director Jonathan Krisel remembers asking Galifianakis who was the funniest member of SNL. “Clearly it’s Fred,” he said. “He will do a joke for just one person.” What finally got Armisen noticed was a 20-minute video motivated by pure frustration. By 1998, he was embittered by the music industry’s empty promises, so he decided to make fun of its annual confab, South by Southwest. Impersonating interviewers who were German or deaf or blind or mentally disabled, he was like Sacha Baron Cohen stripped of malice. Some of his victims were in on the joke. Behind the camera was Sally Timms, a singer with the Mekons and Armisen’s first wife. HBO saw the tape and booked him to do interstitials. After moving to L.A., Armisen began performing at Largo, where future Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk first saw him—probably playing a jazz aficionado who belittles the audience. “It’s a great Fred character,” says Odenkirk, “a huge asshole who’s got his assholeness well hidden.” Odenkirk put him in an unproduced Fox pilot, Next! Then SNL called. During Armisen’s long tenure there, “he just got clearer on the pure essence of his comedy,” says Michaels. “When he would do the ‘Prince Show,’ the character was still reverent and still funny. He wasn’t in any way mocking Prince … there’s no meanness in what he does.” “It isn’t like a moral thing,” Armisen says of his do-no-harm philosophy. “I learned at SNL that it’s a bummer to bum people out. When you’re being mean to someone, you can feel the audience just get cold.” Brownstein says it’s one of her favorite things about Armisen: “He’s not making you laugh out of spite or bitterness but out of a positivity. That’s why people are so fond of him.” In person, Armisen is relentlessly, almost unnervingly nice. He thanks me profusely for praising him and compliments me on seeing all of Portlandia. When I ask whether comedy ever frustrates him as music did, he says, “No … it’s one easy ride, right?” Later, I ask what he thinks of critics—of his less-p.c. performances or his selfconfessed womanizing—and he answers in his syncopated upspeak: “You have to understand how lucky I feel. I was on
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Saturday. Night. Live. I played with the Clash! On what planet would I look at anything in my life in any less-than-stellar way?” Armisen and Bill Hader left SNL at exactly the same time. “We made a deal,” says Hader. “We said we should wave to everybody and step off the stage together.” Greeting them on the other side was the many-teated monster. The occasional MacGruber aside, padded movie spinoffs are no longer the default SNL retirement plan; the great zombie-character apocalypse of the ’90s is over. Documentary Now! is the newer, better model. It grew out of “Ian Rubbish and the Bizzaros,” a sketch starring Armisen as a British punk who fell hard for Margaret Thatcher. The team turned down a proposal to flesh it out further. “We already did that,” Hader says. “Let’s not belabor a thing; let’s create something new.” Michaels produces most of Armisen’s shows, niche products one and all. “They’re so built around his talent,” says Michaels. “I don’t think it’s ever going to be a mass sensibility, but for the audience that loves it, it’s significant enough that the shows can exist.” But Peak TV isn’t paradise; it’s a gig economy, rewarding hustle. “I remember reading that the Flaming Lips did a show at the Peach Pit on Beverly Hills 90210,” says Carlock, citing one of alt rock’s weirder moments. (They cameoed more comfortably on Portlandia.) “Having the confidence in yourself to say ‘Yes’ to things that might not be cool, or something agents want you to do, or a good use of your time, and making it interesting—Fred has that.” It’s in the nature of sketch comedy that the best projects start off as larks. Portlandia emerged from ThunderAnt, a series of internet skits starring Armisen and Brownstein. Then it became IFC’s signature show. Some dangerously serious topics surfaced last season. “Fred” and “Carrie”— the most “real” characters in the catalogue—realize they are aging. Fred’s hair goes gray overnight, which shocks him because he thinks he’s 32. “That’s a very real thing,” he tells me, “where the math doesn’t seem to work. ‘But I’m a drummer! I’m not a grown-up!’ ” For season seven, Krisel promises to pull back from the longer character arcs of season six. Portlandia’s eighth season will be its last, leaving Armisen without a long-term character arc of his own. He seems unconcerned. “I work better when I’m juggling projects,” he says. “Nothing worse than watching someone really embrace what they’re doing, if they love it too much.” His reluctance to stay in one place might have something to do with his roots, which are broad but not deep. “I don’t wallow in pride 96 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
When the Joke Isn’t Funny Comedy stars explain how they rescued a floundering bit. By JESSE DAVID FOX
Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Julie Klausner, Difficult People
Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, W/Bob & David
The bit:
The bit:
A Darwinian comedy song.
A failed Saturday Night Live audition.
The bit:
The problem:
The problem:
The problem:
The fix:
The fix:
The fix: “The sketch clicked,”
“We wrote this stream-ofconsciousness song,” says Bloom, “where my character’s enemy, Valencia, talks about how women have to compete to get the best sperm. It was too obvious. ”
The spirit of Valencia’s musical number was changed from negative to positive. “She doesn’t tell herself ‘I hate other women.’ She tells herself ‘I love other women’— because a villain does not think they’re a villain.”
The final version: “Women Gotta Stick Together,” a goofily sincere ballad. “It’s this hippie-dippie femaleempowerment song, but the joke is that everything she says is disempowering. She’s singing with a big smile on her face, but what she’s saying is terrible: ‘It’s my duty to tell this girl that she’s fat.’ The contrast made it work.”
“Originally,” says Klausner, “my character told [co-star] Billy Eichner’s character, ‘Do impressions of all of Lorne Michaels’s best friends.’ Just be like, ‘Oh, I’m Steve Martin,’ and pretend to shit in your own hand and eat it.” But the joke just wasn’t working. The audition was relegated to an offscreen aside. “We kept running into a problem with Billy sabotaging himself, and we figured out he doesn’t have to. Billy and Julie live in a world that gets in their way. The characters are not crazy—it’s the world around them that’s garbage.”
The final version:
Billy tells Julie the unseen audition went well but that he didn’t get the job because he’s “pretty green.” It’s later revealed that the show’s cast is entirely made up of children. “If Difficult People takes place in a world where SNL casts 5-year-olds, then it’s a really unfair world. It’s so funny.”
A parody of “The Most Dangerous Game.”
“We don’t do specific genre parody that often,” says Cross about the initial humans-hunting-humans effort. “We’d normally find some way to spin it. But it didn’t grow.”
Cross explains, “when the hunter wasn’t just giving an advantage to his prey but also debasing himself in the process.”
The final version:
The hunter’s method for leveling the playing field becomes increasingly absurd: from drinking cough syrup to putting scorpions on his face. “It played so well,” says Odenkirk. “You could imagine it having been done in vaudeville.”
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BeCOMING ENDORa
By ALLISON JANNEY
The seven-time Emmy winner—she’s twice won Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her role as Bonnie Plunkett in the CBS sitcom Mom—reveals a lifelong obsession. as told to kenny herzog
“agnes moorehead as endora is in the makeup of who I am as an actress. Back when I was watching Bewitched, I wasn’t as fascinated with Endora as I was with Elizabeth Montgomery’s Samantha. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown an appreciation for what Agnes did. She was a character actress; I’m usually the character part. I was a figure skater and dancer, and I’m very aware of making grand gestures—I just loved Endora’s physicality. I’ll steal from the best if I have to. Agnes was so over-thetop in the most fabulous way. Years of watching her have done their work on me. It’s subconscious, but I’m able to take risks that are big and bold because I’ve seen women make choices that motivated me. I’ve been inspired by Agnes’s attitude as Endora more than anything else, her sense of self. I still think that if I twitch the right body parts, I’m going to be able to blink and be all the way across the country.” Photograph by Emily Shur
H A I R B Y J I L L C R O S B Y F O R C LO U T I E R R E M I X ; M A K E U P B Y CO L L I E R S T R O N G F O R C LO U T I E R R E M I X . S O U R C E P H OTO G R A P H : A B C / P H OTO F E S T.
for a kind of food or tradition,” he says. His Japanese grandfather “wasn’t like a grandfather. He made my grandmother pregnant and then left. He had kids all through Europe.” Was that hard on the family? “He was having a good time, and it turned out fine. My dad’s side was pretty crazy.” “Fred is a mysterious guy to me,” says Odenkirk. “He is a very independent guy. He’s not married, he travels from city to city, and I think he likes that life a lot. He’s a little hard to know, but he seems to know himself pretty well.” Or maybe he’s still figuring it out. Armisen’s second marriage, to Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss, dissolved after eight months. She publicly called the experience “traumatic and awful and horrible,” and approvingly quoted a friend: “The greatest impersonation he does is that of a normal person.” Unburdening himself to Stern and later to WTF host Marc Maron, Armisen admitted to being “a terrible husband,” an inveterate cheater at war with his own worst tendencies. He tells me that even public aspersions on his reputation only help him grow: “Everything is a process to make your life better—everything.” He’s been dating Orange Is the New Black actress Natasha Lyonne for almost two years. “I’m trying to be less selfish. I want to give more than I’m used to giving.” The Saturday after we met, Armisen gave SNL a rousing finale, beginning with the theater of awkwardness that was his monologue. In the format of a one-man show teeming with terrible accents, he recast his 2002 audition as a hackneyed parable—a paean to the art of bombing. (After some sleep—presumably—he performed the following morning at the Vulture Festival.) Armisen’s deep commitment to character makes everyone I talked to confident in his ability to anchor a feature role—if he even wants it. “Somebody as distinctive and entertained by variety as Fred is going to go crazy trying to pursue the development world of L.A.,” says Odenkirk. “And to build himself up into what? His route, from my point of view, is just don’t die. Someone will come up with a great Being There role.” That Hal Ashby classic starred Peter Sellers as a simpleminded gardener who bumbles his way into power. An admirer of Sellers, Armisen has the same ability to project a sort of blank stillness—at least in front of a camera. Back at Maxwell Drums, before racing on to the next appointment, he’s waylaid briefly by a fan and his preteen son—the latter banging away on a muffled kit. Armisen advises him to try an electronic model. “You sound great,” he tells the ■ boy. “Never stop.”
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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AND IF ALL THIS COMeDIC ANGST HaS A CAPITAL, IT’S HeRE Silver Lake is TV’s most neurotic neighborhood. By ADAM STERNBERGH
Los Angeles Eastside Neighborhoods
You’re the Worst
Eagle Rock
Love
Los Feliz
Togetherness Silver Lake Echo Park
Transparent
FOR BASICALLY THE entire history of television, if a show was explicitly set in Los Angeles, you knew what that signified: beaches, Hollywood, blondes of both sexes, cool cars, and money, money, money. Law, for example, would just be a generic show about lawyers, but L.A. Law is about lawyers steeped in sunshine and SoCal glamour. Even caustic comedies like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Larry Sanders Show were set against the backdrop of vacuous Hollywood. “Previously, L.A. bought into the image imposed on it by other cities that it was the beautiful dumb one,” says L.A. Times TV critic Mary McNamara. “It was La-La Land.” A new breed of L.A.-based comedies 100 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Casual
has arrived—and the L.A. they’re based in, and which they comedically exploit, may not be the one that reflexively springs to mind. It has its origin with Jill Soloway: Back when she was writing her debut film, Afternoon Delight, which came out in 2013, she considered several possible cities as settings, but she settled on the neighborhood she lives in: Silver Lake. If that place sounds familiar, it’s likely because (a) you live in L.A., (b) you’ve read something recently-ish about the ascendance of the city’s hipper eastern neighborhoods, or (c) you currently watch comedies on TV. Soloway set not only her film in Silver Lake but also much of her subsequent Amazon series, Transparent. Another comedy, on
FXX, You’re the Worst, is set in Silver Lake and the surrounding neighborhoods. Last year, when Casual premiered on Hulu, the comedy set in or around Silver Lake was already becoming a recognizable trope. HBO’s recently canceled Togetherness, about 30-somethings navigating modern marriage, took place in Eagle Rock, and this year Netflix debuted the comedy Love, which takes place in and around its creators’ neighborhood of Los Feliz. The Silver Lake show (and here, no doubt to the irritation of L.A. residents, I’ll use “Silver Lake” as shorthand for Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Echo Park, and Eagle Rock) is an entirely new genre of comedy. These shows are different from L.A. comedies like Entourage or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air because they’re not at all about the glamour and wealth of L.A. The characters may hold minimally satisfying jobs at the fringes of the entertainment industry—writers, music producers, publicists, tutors to child stars—but they aren’t fantastically successful or even reliably employable. And while these shows are definitely related to the larger genre of comedies about restless urban singletons, such as Girls and Broad City, the Silver Lake shows have a distinct flavor from their crosscountry cousins in New York. If Seinfeld was patient zero for shows about nothing, it also pioneered a distinctly New York–y juxtaposition between trivial matters and characters who fret about those matters in a near-constant state of comic exasperation. In the Silver Lake shows, there’s a sun-baked equanimity to their brazen aimlessness. The neurotic sputtering of George and Elaine, or Hannah Horvath, or even Abbi and Ilana, would be entirely out of place here, as characters hotbox or gather at night to write fake theme songs to existing movies. The representative episode of the genre might be You’re the Worst’s “Sunday Funday,” in which the four leads— Gretchen, her sort-of, not-really boyfriend, Jimmy, and their sidekicks Lindsay and Edgar—plan a free-form day of drunken brunching and pointless cool-kid high jinks, such as visiting a petting zoo and racing shopping carts. As Edgar says, “I’m from L.A.—fun hipster shit is just poor Latino shit from ten years ago.” It’s tricky and, frankly, perilous, to try and pinpoint the beginning of Silver Lake as a trendy enclave, but the Silver Lake comedies date back approximately to 2014, when both Transparent and You’re the Worst debuted. There are a few reasons for their rise. The advent of
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single-camera streaming shows—what we might call the indie-film-ification of TV comedy—means more shows are shot on location, rather than on sets, so they can take place in L.A. instead of on a soundstage in L.A. that’s dressed to look like New York. The economics of Peak TV also mean that more comedy creators are living in—and setting their shows in— these neighborhoods. “Back in the go-go ’90s, when you were on your second year of a hit show and you’re immediately getting a $2 million studio deal, there was a large component of TV writers who lived on the Westside,” says Stephen Falk, a resident of Los Feliz and the creator of You’re the Worst. “Now there’s been a slow migration east. People want to be in the cool place, and the Westside has lost that—it’s a little akin to Manhattan versus Brooklyn.” Nearly all the Silver Lake shows gently (or not so gently) satirize people more or less exactly like the people who make them. “We knew we were going to focus on the Eastside,” says Paul Rust, who co-created Love with his wife, Lesley Arfin, and stars in the show. “We figured we’re already doing a lot of navelgazing, so let’s focus on the neighborhood we live in.” L.A. has long been a city of distinct neighborhoods, but in the national imagination, the whole city’s been lumped under the general classification
For Your Consideration: Not Me Silicon Valley’s T. J. Miller explains why he doesn’t want an Emmy.
of Hollywood. “So much TV is made here,” says McNamara, “but it took so long for you to see a Los Angeles that was not either a very grim depiction of South Central or Beverly Hills—the palm trees and the swimming pools and the movie stars and the beach.” Falk grew up watching Cheers, set in Boston, and Seinfeld, set in New York—both of which, of course, were filmed in L.A. “Los Angeles in television spent so long pretending to be something else,” he says. “Now maybe there’s a younger generation of writers who are from L.A., who live here, and who don’t have any problems with representing the city in which they live.” There’s also a lot that the Silver Lake comedies leave out—for starters, given that they take place in such a diverse city, they’re notably white. And they tend toward a granular focus on the particular foibles of a subset of a demographic. “I’m a firm believer that specificity leads to universality, rather than the other way around,” says Falk. “So rather than set a show in a city I’ve been to and like, like Seattle or Austin or Chicago, I figured I would have a little more authenticity writing about the neighborhood in which I live.” Of course, this works well when there’s one or two shows set around your neighborhood, but it becomes a problem when there’s, say, half a dozen and counting. “To be honest, I’m not particularly
MANY TIMES IN THE last few months, I’ve thought about what I would say if I were to win an Emmy, standing behind that podium with a gleaming, golden statue in my hands. My latest draft is: “I’m grateful, but I disagree.” Then I’d moonwalk offstage. It’s not that I wouldn’t appreciate an Emmy and everything that comes with it (TV work in perpetuity; the opportunity to write my own show; the words “Emmy winner” in parentheticals next to my name wherever it’s printed—I love parentheticals). In fact, I’m incredibly grateful for any accolades I can hoodwink the entertainment business into giving me. And I also have no problem with Hollywood’s obsession with self-congratulations. Artists want to be congratulated because they should be. We’re more important than most politicians right now. Beyoncé
excited about the crop of new shows that mostly came out on our heels,” says Falk. “It all feels a little watered-down to me. Love came along and shot in the exact same diner and the exact same booth we’d used for one of our sets. To me, that doesn’t help my show at all.” But really, other than an overbooking of shooting locations, what’s to stop Silver Lake from becoming the new locus of TV comedy? If the whole country can laugh at Archie Bunker in Queens, or Sam and Diane in Boston, why not Mickey and Gus, or Jimmy and Gretchen, in Echo Park or Silver Lake? Rust thinks these lives, too, can be made to feel universal. “A lot of times, we talk about keeping the focus of the show on these two people falling for each other,” he says, “because there’s no more universal experience than ‘I like this person and I hope she likes me back.’ Then that allows you to add in the more specific observations.” Though, he adds, “we’re very proud we’ve never used that word in the show: the H-word.” I initially assume, given the show’s L.A. setting, that he means “Hollywood.” “Hipster,” he continues—citing the word that’s most often affixed to Silver Lake. “To me, it seems unnecessary. Why would we make a joke about a coffee shop being a hipster hangout? It’s like, I’m pretty sure that by now everyone likes coffee.” ■
did more for women in America with Lemonade than any of the platforms Hillary is running on possibly could. And John Oliver has done more for my happiness and understanding of the world than Donald Trump has done for real estate, ties, and steaks combined. Silicon Valley is a great show. It might be the best comedy on television. And if the academy feels I have stood out to the point of deserving an award, I won’t pawn it. But I will make the case that I can’t do the work I do without the ensemble, writers, and Mike Judge, who allow me to do that work—and that work is making weird faces and insulting rich tech people. And having a toddler body that deserves the cover of Toddler Body Quarterly February 2017. Mostly, it’s the speech. Sure, I’d love to be able to explain that, while it’s rarely recognized as such, comedy is an
important survival tool that can occasionally liberate us from the tragedies of everyday life, the meaninglessness that is ad infinitum—but to say this in an acceptance speech would be boring, and I’d probably get played off by the orchestra faster than I could condense my thoughts. On the other hand, if I gave a funny/ absurdist Emmy acceptance speech, which I would aim to do, they might ask me to host next year’s Emmys, which is what happened after I won a Critics’ Choice Award in 2015 and was drafted to host the 2016 ceremony. And 2017. And I think that nobody, least of all Neil Patrick Harris, wants to see me host another awards show. So please give the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series to someone who will make a sincere and boring but poignant speech that begets them work, and begets me beignets. I love beignets.
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David Edelstein on Johnny Depp … Craig Jenkins on new albums by Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, and Paul Simon.
Johnny Depp in Alice Through the Looking Glass.
P H OTO G R A P H : M OV I E S TO R E CO L L EC T I O N LT D / A L A M Y S TO C K P H OTO
M O V I E S / DAVID EDELSTEIN
Bad Influences Why have Johnny Depp’s movies been so bad lately? Blame his idols. it’s unappetizing, the prospect of scoring easy points off Johnny Depp over his string of commercial and critical failures, the most recent of which is the phantasmagorical nothingburger Alice Through the Looking Glass. Then there are the sordid (though vigorously contested) accusations of alcoholism and violence that have attended his divorce from Amber Heard. And let’s not forget his pointedly slummy bearing in public. So I want to begin by saying that Depp remains, in spite of everything, an actor of enormous charm, and one who at his best has a contagious delight in playing dress-up and wearing outlandish makeup and adopting funny (both strange and ha-ha) voices, who prides himself on embracing a mode of performance that most leading men would find too “out there”— though he has likely inspired a generation of them to indulge their own goofy sides onscreen.
But Depp’s compass, always wobbly, seems to have gone haywire, and I sense that it’s not a temporary phase but the cumulative effect of choices—creative and personal—that he made more than two decades ago. Hard as he works, he’s plainly in love with the kind of dissolution that passes itself off as madcap, countercultural defiance, even when it’s just … dissolute. And his role models tend to be legendary examples of prodigal waste: brilliant, selfdestructive child-men who lead unwary followers over cliffs. Is Depp on the precipice? His transformation began with his apparent liberator, the ostentatious weirdo Tim Burton. Depp—after an unstable childhood in Kentucky and Florida— became an instant heartthrob in the fledgling Fox network’s then-hip, now laughably tacky undercover-cop series 21 Jump Street, and he came to hate the job and the bland fate it portended. In 1990, he perjune 13–26, 2016 | new york
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suaded Burton to cast him in the title role of Edward Scissorhands, a whey-faced ghoul-boy whose inventor (Burton idol Vincent Price) gave him scissors in place of hands, so that he hurt people he longed to embrace. It was a tender, marvelously designed film, and also a monument to— and justification for—Burton’s morbid selfpity. In Depp, he found a dream alter ego: not some nerdy misfit who had freakishness thrust upon him but a beautiful young man who could have passed for “straight” and chose to cultivate his inner freak. In Burton, Depp found someone who could help him to express poetically his sense of himself as a wounded outsider. After that, Depp would be aggressively offbeat. In the next five years, he acted in Arizona Dream, Benny & Joon, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood, Don Juan DeMarco, and Dead Man. Apart from Don Juan DeMarco (more about which below), those films ranged from noble tries to jolly entertainments to, in the case of Jim Jarmusch’s Western Dead Man, a near masterpiece. Although none were hits, Depp was right to be proud. He told interviewers that he just wasn’t a “blockbuster boy.” He thought of himself, he said, as a musician— and he remains one, performing in the Alice Cooper–led “supergroup” Hollywood Vampires. The most worrying thing was Depp’s attempt to emulate (especially in Benny & Joon) the poetic deadpan of Buster Keaton. You might ask, “What’s wrong with that?” Well, the true genius of Buster Keaton was that his great, heavylidded “stone face” served as a counterpoint to an elastic body that could be buffeted by the gale winds of fate and miraculously right itself. Depp’s Keatonesque persona was often endearing but just as often dear. And then came Don Juan DeMarco with Marlon Brando. It’s worth lingering on Brando, arguably the greatest of all film actors. No one could be so huge yet so subtle. No one could think so wittily in character. In an essay on Last Tango in Paris, Norman Mailer wrote that every line Brando spoke sounded like an imperfect compromise among five different, equally inadequate things he might have said. So Brando was capricious and deep. He was also a damaged child, abandoned by his mother (the town drunk) and physically abused by his father. He came away with a self-loathing that he treated with sex (lots of it) and then food (lots and lots of it). In a career of ups and downs, he scaled the heights in 1972 in Last Tango in Paris. But in his autobiography, he wrote that Last Tango “required a lot of emotional arm wrestling with myself, and when it was finished, I decided that I wasn’t ever 104 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
again going to destroy myself emotionally to make a movie. I felt I had violated my innermost self and didn’t want to suffer like that anymore.” He stuck with that decision. Never much for rehearsal or memorization, he also developed a system whereby he wore a tiny earpiece, through which an assistant fed him lines. He argued that this made his acting more spontaneous. Depp was smitten—and it can’t have hurt that his title character was one of those counterculture emblems, an apparent madman whose insistence that he’s Don Juan ends up helping his benumbed therapist (Brando) to rediscover romance and fantasy. Depp could perform for Brando and have his own madness sanctified. (He even dared to cast Brando in his directorial debut, The Brave, which he pulled from domestic circulation after a cataclysmic Cannes Film Festival premiere.) But Depp’s infatuation wasn’t with the Brando who trained under Stella Adler and learned to release his volcanic emotions onstage and in movies. It was with the crazy, lazy Brando, who skipped (often entertainingly, but still …) along the surface of his roles. Depp’s next guru was even farther gone: Hunter S. Thompson at his most alcoholic and paranoid, his brain addled by years of amphetamines. So Depp was inspired by men who indulged their appetites (or, as therapists say these days, “selfmedicated”) to the point where they became cartoons of themselves. It’s no wonder that acting became like free jazz, played better when drunk—in spirit if not literally. Of course, Depp gave more disciplined performances, like his fine, believable work in Donnie Brasco as a cop who goes undercover and becomes a surrogate son to a mob middleman played by Al Pacino. It helped that he couldn’t compete with Pacino in the scenery-chewing department—no one can. He also had a chance, as a man whose loyalty is divided, to play subtext, which isn’t his forte. In general, Depp plays one dimension at a time, hiding behind harlequin masks instead of opening himself up. Emotionally, he doesn’t release. Here’s an odd thing. In interviews, Depp has said that there was physical abuse in his home when he was growing up, and he has admitted to having an explosive temper—as evidenced by his trashing hotel rooms while dating Kate Moss and Winona Ryder. But it’s hard to visualize those episodes. Russell Crowe hurling a phone at some luckless employee: Sure, you can see that, because you sense Crowe’s volatility in his acting, even when he’s playing gentle men. If you heard that, say, Robert Duvall had a short fuse, you’d have no problem imagining it. With most good actors, the emotions are
close to the surface. With Depp, not so much. To get a sense of Depp the holy terror, you have to watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as a hotel-trashing movie star in Woody Allen’s Celebrity—very likely modeled on DiCaprio’s co-star in Gilbert Grape. (Depp has admitted that he was heavily “self-medicating”—his words— during that shoot.) No, there would be little Method selfexploration in Depp’s work, only whimsical caricature, from his loving Thompson imitation in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to his macabre Willy Wonka in Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—a man deformed by a cold father and given to torturing little kids. His Sweeney Todd was underpowered musically but otherwise demonically committed. And, of course, one role did finally make him a “blockbuster boy” after all: Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, in which his marvelously tipsy, swishy shtick recalls both Brando’s foppish Fletcher Christian and another of Depp’s role models, Keith Richards. (Although Richards has never lost his musical chops, the history of rock and roll is littered with the corpses of musicians who emulated him without having his superhuman constitution.) Depp’s fortunes have shifted in the past few years. Although the latest, dire Pirates film made a billion dollars worldwide, his Jack Sparrow feels played out. He was a clownish Barnabas Collins in Burton’s camp travesty Dark Shadows. His Tonto in The Lone Ranger was meant to be subversive, to send up the kind of Western in which White Father Knows Best, but the point got blunted in all the mayhem. His Terry-Thomas impersonation as the title character in Mortdecai was fun for five minutes and then grating—he couldn’t change gears. He looked apathetic, checked out in the increasingly silly cautionary sci-fi flop Transcendence. He began well in the underrated (but still not very good) thriller The Tourist, but apart from his voice—a resonant purr, as distinctive in its way as Orson Welles’s more basso stylings—he was all surface. On a more serious note, he worked hard to humanize the murderous Boston gangster Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, and his watchful, paranoid vibe was impressive. But it still felt like an impersonation. He was a sober Hunter Thompson. In an excellent though dispiriting 2013 Rolling Stone profile by Brian Hiatt, Depp was unusually introspective. Near the end, he summons the spirit of his Obi-Wan: “And then there’s the voice Depp hears in his head sometimes—all the time, really. It’s Marlon Brando’s growl, and this is what it says: ‘Fuck it. Fuck it. You don’t
need this shit. Fuck it.’ Depp laughs hard relating this, as if Brando is yelling it in his ear. ‘Marlon got to a point in his life where he just said, “I don’t care,”’ says Depp, smiling like a fugitive with road’s end in sight at last. ‘And that must be some species of nirvana. It has to be. It’s freedom.’” But when you hear Brando’s audio diaries in last year’s superb documentary Listen to Me Marlon, you understand that “I don’t care” wasn’t freedom for Brando, just as shooting guns, drinking himself into oblivion, and blowing his head off wasn’t freedom for Thompson. Depp clearly still cares, but whatever he’s going through now, he looks like a man in hell. His and Heard’s pubic-service message to keep Heard out of an Australian prison for sneaking dogs into the country was clearly meant to be ironic—an imitation of a bad actor reading bad lines badly, as if with a gun to his head—but left a bitter aftertaste. He looked like a man at the end of both his marriage and his tether. Depp does not seem the type to go Full Brando or Full Thompson—his work ethic is too strong, his interests too varied. Maybe he’ll realize that he’s tired of the imitation game and doing ghoulish kiddie stylings for Tim Burton. Maybe we’ve seen only the surface of his talent and he’ll stop hiding and go inward for inspiration, like the Brando of Last Tango. Maybe there are altogether dif■ ferent kinds of miracles to come.
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the beginning of 2016 saw new albums from the biggest pop stars of the current era, including Kanye West, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Drake. But now, apparently, it’s the old folks’ turn: In May and June, boomer icons Paul McCartney (73), Bob Dylan (75), Eric Clapton (71), Neil Young (70), and Paul Simon (74) are all releasing new material, demonstrating the
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Paul McCartney recording for Skype’s Love Mojis earlier this year.
many ways a rock legend can hold court a half-century into his tenure. What suddenly scared them out of the woodwork? Maybe it was the 50th anniversaries of some of their landmark albums (respectively: the Beatles’ Revolver, Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, Cream’s Fresh Cream, Buffalo Springfield’s self-titled debut, and Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme). There’s also Desert Trip (a.k.a. Oldchella), a classic-rock music festival happening in Southern California in October, whose lineup includes Dylan, Young, and McCartney (along with the Who, the Rolling Stones, and Roger Waters, who must have missed the memo about putting out new records to sell at the merch table). Is all this new product just prudent boomer capitalism or something more? Of these artists, Sir Paul has kept himself busiest. He dove back into pop culture recently via sessions with Kanye West and Rihanna that yielded the latter’s hit “FourFiveSeconds” and the former’s acclaimed singles “All Day” and “Only One.” He also wrote a song for the 2014 video game Destiny, cut a deal with Skype to record the soundtracks for a set of animated emoji, and made a six-part virtual-reality documentary about himself—in other words, he seems intent on making inroads with a younger generation that considers the Beatles’ music distant oldies. To that end, he’s also just released Pure McCartney,
a best-of compilation of his solo years, available in two- and four-disc versions, for which he handpicked the songs and sequenced them himself, in nonchronological order, sandwiching forgotten nuggets and latter-day gems between better-known classics. (See the two-disc edition’s segue from “Band on the Run” into the underappreciated 1979 disco romp “Arrow Through Me,” or the way both editions stick the 1997 John Lennon tribute “The Song We Were Singing” between the more popular “Silly Love Songs” and “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.”) Releasing a career-spanning boxed set just before a festival is a canny business move, but it’s hard to fault McCartney for wanting to liberate a few great songs from the mostly inessential albums on which they first appeared. On last year’s Shadows in the Night, McCartney’s fellow Desert Trip headliner Bob Dylan transformed ’40s and ’50s standards made famous by Frank Sinatra into heartfelt chamber music. In May, he released a follow-up collection featuring more Sinatra reworks titled Fallen Angels. The new record matches the melancholy mood of its predecessor but picks up the pace, settling for peppy torchlight jazz where Shadows hewed somewhat darker. Central to the appeal of both albums is Dylan’s leathery voice: drizzled over these airy, emotive jazz romps, it hits like a sip of aged bourbon, giving old warhorses like
“It Had to Be You” and “Young at Heart” a weathered beauty. Dylan has always been a keen interpreter, from his early days sponging up folk standards on the Village club circuit, so while this step toward the Great American Songbook feels like an odd turn for a gifted writer, it is in keeping with the reverence for genius pre-pop songwriting that ushered Dylan into renown in the first place. The joke is that old rockers always end up covering standards, and it’s funny for a guy as puckishly unpredictable as Dylan to go the same route. But he’s too sharp a student of the American song to ever make one of these albums a bore. Fallen Angels and Shadows in the Night aren’t the best of the latter-day Dylan oeuvre, but they’re leagues better than they’d ever seem on paper. Last summer, Neil Young’s album The Monsanto Years showed he could write a protest song as stinging as the ones he wrote during the Nixon and Bush administrations, attacking greedy corporations and GMOs with help from Promise of the Real, his new psych-rock backing band featuring Willie Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah. This month, Young and Promise of the Real will release Earth, a 100-minute live album made up of Monsanto tracks and deep cuts, overdubbed with sounds from nature: “Vampire Blues,” from 1974’s On the Beach,
showcases a chorus of screeching rodents, and “Love and Only Love,” from 1990’s Ragged Glory, ends with chirping crickets and screaming livestock. The animal noises might be an obstacle for some, as will the Monsanto-heavy track list, but if you can get past them, the wry humor, caring environmentalism, and blistering guitar work make for a pretty intriguing listen. Another guitar god back in action this year is Eric Clapton, who has reunited with Slowhand producer Glyn Johns for his new album I Still Do. Like Clapton’s last solo outing, 2013’s Old Sock, I Still Do offers up mostly covers, but the wanderlust that dragged Sock into ill-advised genre experiments has been reined in. What’s left is the blues, and in the hands of one of rock’s greatest players, this batch of Dylan, J.J. Cale, and Robert Johnson songs simmers. Clapton has always lacked a vocal presence to match his fretwork, but Johns and a band of crack session musicians keep these songs afloat. Check the rendition of “I’ll Be Alright”—better known to most as “We Shall Overcome”: Clapton and his guitar hang back behind a punch-drunk lineup of accordion, piano, and backup singers, giving the effect of a lazy livingroom get-together, sounding joyful and spontaneous rather than fussed over in the studio. Clapton has been hinting at retire-
A N A R T IN S TA L L AT I O N B Y N YCH O S F E AT. S I G M U N D F R E U D
E X P L O R E YO U R S U B C O N S C I O U S . J U N E 16 -18 , 2 0 16 F L AT IRO N P L A Z A , 2 3 R D S T R E E T, N E W YO R K T H E R A P Y.V IE N N A . IN F O # V IE N N AT H E R A P Y
ment for years now, citing minor health issues and a distaste for the rigors of touring (he won’t be appearing at Desert Trip). If this ends up being his final album, it’s not a bad one. Made in the same off-the-cuff spirit as I Still Do is Paul Simon’s latest, Stranger to Stranger. Simon’s greatest gift has long been his ability to match a deliberate pen to music that seems freewheeling in contrast, but he lost some luster on 2006’s Surprise and 2011’s So Beautiful or So What. Though both proved that Simon remains a formidable songwriter, the arrangements of the blippy, Brian Eno–assisted Surprise and the syrupy Phil Ramone–abetted Beautiful occasionally grated. Stranger to Stranger has a few production quirks—including the ethereal polyrhythms from Italian dancemusic producer Clap! Clap! on “The Werewolf” and “Wristband”—but there are fewer of them to distract from Simon’s sharp writing and sprightly mood. Since he began his solo career in the early ’70s, Simon has settled into a groove that yields roughly two albums per decade. As the only album of this batch composed of original compositions, Stranger to Stranger feels less like a businessman seizing an opportunity than a careful songwriter working at his natural pace. It’s not just a good album, it’s one of ■ Simon’s best.
PARTY LINES
Edited by Jennifer Vineyard
CHANEL FINE JEWELRY DINNER NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY. JUNE 2.
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Jemima Kirke Haley Bennett
Phoebe Tonkin
Dakota Fanning
TANGENT
“Sometimes, I just wet my pants. You’d never know. It’s a thick suit, and I wear a couple of pairs of underwear.”
—Michael Shannon, on having to drink for hours onstage in Long Day’s Journey Into Night
—Zadie Smith
Molly Ringwald
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“My best friend Sarah and I, we were big Prince fans. He was playing the O2 in London, we snuck in, and he came to check out the stage. He stood right in front of us, and he had a tiny butt. We reached out and took a picture, but if I was more rock and roll, I would have squeezed his butt.”
George Dawes Green
David Copperfield
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Michael Shannon
Jessica Lange Savion Glover
Danielle Brooks
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108 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
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Photographs by Patrick McMullan
P H OTO G R A P H S : CO U R T E S Y O F G E T T Y I M AG E S ( FA N N I N G , TO L D E O, TO L D E O) ; CO U R T E S Y O F B FA ( B E N N E T T, D E N G , S T E N B E R G , TO N K I N , W I L L I A M S )
“I once read a horror story about a girl whose head was affixed to her body by a blue ribbon. So whenever I see these very chic women wearing ribbons around their necks, I’m like, Are they undead? What’s happening?”
& Leaders IN THE
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1.
14. 2.
6.
11.
Do nymag.com/agenda.
T h e C U LT U R E PA G E S
To
Twenty-five things to see, hear, watch, and read.
Summerlong Edition
MOVIES
1. See The BFG
Your first good cry of the summer. In theaters July 1.
After proving himself in the world of grown-up cinema, Steven Spielberg returns to the realm of “family” entertainment with an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s friendly-giant epic. Response at Cannes was mixed, but we non-cynics can pray that Spielberg will mine both the childlike joy and the mature darkness in Dahl’s masterpiece, and that the giant (voiced by the bottomlessly soulful Mark Rylance) will rekindle that old E.T. magic. david edelstein POP
2. See The Cure It’ll be just like heaven.
Madison Square Garden, June 18 through 20.
England’s premier gloom merchants recently embarked on a two-month North American tour that promises a mix of classics, rarities, and new material in celebration of nearly 40 years of goth-rock excellence. Their mid-June MSG date sold out so quickly that they’ve added two more; come early for the opener, Scottish indie-rock trio the Twilight Sad, whose autumnal mood pieces should set the scene quite nicely. craig jenkins THEATER
3. See Takarazuka Chicago All that jazu.
David H. Koch Theater, July 20 through 24.
You might not expect the Lincoln Center Festival to present Kander and Ebb’s Chicago as one of its few theatrical offerings—especially when, 13 blocks south, the show’s commercial revival is still the longest-running domestic musical in Broad-
JUNE 15–SEPTEMBER 5
way history. But the version playing for four days this summer, from Japan’s Takarazuka Revue, turns the quintessentially American amorality tale into an all-female, all-Japanese fun-house mirror, revealing its inner avant-garde. jesse green ART
4. See Nicole Eisenman:
Al-ugh-ories
Watch her moves, painters. New Museum, through June 26.
The New Museum is killing it this summer with five solo shows by women artists. Start with Nicole Eisenman’s masterful images of people having sex, Netflixing and chilling, and getting down on the train or in beer gardens. With each surface and subject, this MacArthur winner gives you much to chew on and ruminate over. jerry saltz TV
5. Watch The Night Of Dark stuff.
HBO, July 10 at 9 p.m.
Based on the BBC series Criminal Justice, this mini-series follows the ordeal of Naz (Riz Ahmed), a college student who’s sent to Rikers Island after being accused of murdering a one-night stand (John Turturro plays his defense attorney). Written by Richard Price (Clockers) and by producerdirector Steven Zaillian (Searching for Bobby Fischer), it has the down-and-dirty feel of a ’70s Sidney Lumet thriller; atmosphere and characterization are everything. matt zoller seitz DANCE
6. See Twyla Tharp Dance Here last fall, back this summer. Joyce Theater, July 11 through 23.
It’s a rare treat to see Twyla Tharp’s own troupe on a local stage, rarer still twice within a year, so this summer season is not to be missed: It spans a wide swath of Tharp’s career, from 1976’s Country Dances to a premiere set to Beethoven’s Opus 130, all on the Joyce’s intimate stage, where her expertly chosen, highly individual dancers should shine. rebecca milzoff POP
7. See Disclosure And get there early.
Forest Hills Stadium, June 18.
They’ve mastered a build-and-release endorphin rush blending Chicago house and U.K. garage, but one of Disclosure’s greatest gifts has always been their smart choice of friends who can sing—Sam Smith, Jessie Ware, Miguel, and Gregory Porter have all lent pop structure to the young duo’s tracks. On their sophomore effort, Caracal, Disclosure adopted an R&B sheen, and they’ve invited appropriately great openers to this show: Mobb Deep and ebullient L.A. rapper-of-the-moment Anderson .Paak. BOOKS
8. Read
I’m Just a Person
Tig Notaro’s truths. Ecco.
As Tig Notaro’s growing fan base suffers through an appearance-free summer (she’s finishing an Amazon show based on her groundbreaking “Hello, I Have Cancer” routine), her memoir of a very bad year is more than just a placeholder. Delving into the roots and consequences of her almost-simultaneous breakup, mother’s death, and hospitalization for two near-fatal illnesses, the print version is more thorough and meditative than the live take. A high-wire balancing act of clarity and pathos over a minefield of sentimental death-traps, it’s also very funny. boris kachka NEW MUSIC
9. Hear
the public domain
The hive mind sings.
Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center, August 13.
With the internet continuously evolving into a vast collective brain, the Pulitzer-winning composer David Lang has written a communal choral work for (hopefully) 1,000 singers, recruited from all over New York. The world premiere is one of 50 new works commissioned and performed to celebrate the Mostly Mozart Festival’s 50th summer. justin davidson THEATER
10. Go to New York
Musical Festival
Words and music.
Various locations, July 11 through August 7.
A Dust Bowl journey? A Scrabble hustle? The real story of the Mona Lisa? These are among the promisingly oddball stories being told at the 13th annual NYMF (it’s pronounced nymph), which in previous seasons helped to develop shows as dijune 13–26, 2016 | new york
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P H OTO G R A P H S : R U V E N A FA N A D O R ( T W Y L A T H A R P ) ; R I C K K E R N / G E T T Y I M AG E S ( T H E C U R E ) ; CO U R T E S Y O F S TO RY T E L L E R D I S T R I B U T I O N CO. , L LC ( B F G ) ; J E N N I F E R W E N M A ( PA R A D I S E I N T E R R U P T E D) . I L LU S T R AT I O N S BY M U R P H Y L I P P I N COT T.
For full listings of movies, theater, music, restaurants, and much more, see
verse as Next to Normal, Yank!, and [title of show]. This summer’s offerings: full productions of over 20 in-development musicals, plus concerts, readings, workshops, and more. j.g. MOVIES
11. See Southside
With You
In the beginning … In theaters August 26.
The end of summer brings an indie that could be thrilling—or appalling. Richard Tanne’s Southside With You is the story of Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date, when they (played by Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter) saw Do the Right Thing and melded their minds. A real-life Before Sunrise? We can hope. As we reach the end of the Obama years, we might be ready for a cleareyed look back at this America-hating Antichrist and his wife—and see two of the most extraordinarily decent individuals ever to occupy the White House. d.e. ART
12. See Stuart Davis:
brought the full panoply of American loud color and crazy configurations, creating his own brand of the European movement and, in the process, laying the groundwork for Pop Art. This show focuses on his oft-ignored late work; come, dream this American dream of a permanent optical nowness. j.s. TV
13. Watch
Any Given Wednesday With Bill Simmons
Will it be a touchdown? HBO, June 22 at 10 p.m.
The longtime ESPN fixture and founder of the great, sadly defunct website Grantland (as well as the new the Ringer) goes all Bill Maher on us with this new weekly talk show, featuring a mix of guests from the worlds of sports and pop culture. Promos make it seem insufferable, but Simmons has a knack for drawing smart people into his orbit; it could turn out to be a show you hate to love or love to hate. m.z.s. OPERA
In Full Swing
14. Hear Paradise
Whitney Museum of American Art, through September 25.
A vocal highlight of the Lincoln Center Festival.
Not just another Picasso.
You think America didn’t have a Cubist? You bet your life we did! And a hot one too. Stuart Davis
Chinese and Western music form a volatile mixture that sometimes fizzles but often sparks. In his 80-minute opera, the composer Huang Ruo, born in China and based in New York, has his heroine follow a similar journey, toggling between Chinese and Western vocal techniques, between the Peony Pavilion and the Garden of Eden, all accompanied by a blended orchestra. j.d.
PERFORMANCES of the SUMMER Our critics pick the actors they’re most looking forward to seeing onscreen and onstage. DAVID EDELSTEIN ON MOVIES: Evan Rachel Wood in Into the Forest (July 22) Mark Rylance’s voice in The BFG (July 1) Alexander Skarsgard in The Legend of Tarzan (July 1) MATT ZOLLER SEITZ ON TV: John Turturro in The Night Of (HBO, July 10) Marco D’Amore in Gomorrah (SundanceTV, August 24) Merle Dandridge in Greenleaf (OWN, June 21)
Interrupted
Gerald W. Lynch Theater, July 13 through 16.
JESSE GREEN ON THEATER:
Daniel Radcliffe in Privacy (Public Theater, July 5–August 14) Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays in Oslo (Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, June 16–August 28) Jonathan Pryce in The Merchant of Venice (Rose Theater, July 20–24)
PROUDER THAN EVER A year with so much to celebrate. You have shown us again what can happen when people come together to fight for their rights with vision, passion, and commitment. They can change the world. The struggle continues for justice, dignity, and safety. We are one vibrant community and can all take pride in that. www.ujafedny.org.
facebook.com/ujafedny twitter.com/ujafedny instagram.com/ujafedny
POP
15. See Dolly Parton Country queen in the big city.
R E A D T HE SU MM E R ’S M O S T A NT I CI PAT ED B OO K
Forest Hills Stadium, June 25.
Hot on the heels of her well-received Coat of Many Colors NBC biopic, Dolly Parton embarks on the “Pure & Simple” tour, in support of a new double album of the same name comprising one disc of hits and another of new material. Though Parton’s known for glitz, that’s not the mission here: Both tour and album promise to strip her sound down to the basics. Dolly doesn’t always come here when she tours, so make this late June stop in Queens a priority. c.j.
e story h e bоds friendship endure even as our pa s diverge.
“Impossible to resist.” —EMMA STRAUB — — — — —
BOOKS
16. Read Barkskins
“By turns hilariously funny and painfully perceptive.”
After 14 years, a new Annie Proulx novel! Scribner.
Take a beachy week, or a rainy one, or the whole summer: This multigenerational saga by an American master of sentences will be worth the missed barbecues. The author of The Shipping News goes full maximalist, following two French immigrants who join forces to tame the infinite woodlands of Canada’s “New France”; their families grow rich off its lumber, then chase its retreat across borders and centuries. b.k.
—J. COURTNEY S U L L I VA N
THEATER
— — — — —
17. See Runaways Let me be a kid.
“Engrossing, funny, and wise.”
New York City Center, July 6 through 9.
The opening production of this summer’s Encores! Off-Center series is, unexpectedly, a memorial to its author, Elizabeth Swados, who died in January at age 64. Her 1978 musical is dark in any case, telling in song, dance, poems, and soliloquies the stories of real New York street kids, some of whom appeared in the original Public Theater cast. Director Sam Pinkleton likewise has recruited a nontraditional “wolfpack” of youngsters for this production. j.g.
—EDAN LEPUCKI
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
TV
18. Watch
Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com. t f @eccobooks
The answer is still no.
Lifetime, June 18 at 8 p.m.
James Franco helped oversee Melanie Aitkenhead’s bizarre but gripping remake of the trashy 1996 Lifetime movie about a teenager (Tori Spelling) who falls in love with a boy who turns out to be a maniac (Ivan Sergei). This one is a halfmocking thriller about supernatural “nightwalkers” (lesbian vampires, basically), but for all its self-awareness, it has a genuinely dark charge. Leila George plays the heroine, Spelling her mother, Sergei a literature professor; Franco cameos. m.z.s. ART
19. See Future Present László Moholy-Nagy’s restless mind.
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Guggenheim Museum, through September 7.
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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Once upon a time, the early-20th century was on fire with artistic revolutions. This Hungarian polymath did them all, and not only did he walk the walk—making great paintings, sculptures, photographs, and becoming a famed Bauhaus teacher—he talked the talk. Moholy-Nagy was all about art for the “betterment of humanity” and utopian visions of architecture for the people. This first comprehensive U.S. retrospective is a beautiful dip into vibrant times. j.s.
THE FRESHEST FESTS
Nymag.com’s Vanita Salisbury guides you through a few of the city’s summer music extravaganzas and their headlining stars. WHAT
In Kenneth MacMillan’s masterful interpretation of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy, the lyric beauty and passion of star-crossed lovers are perfectly underscored by Prokofiev’s music.
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center | 212.362.6000 | abt.org Casts, prices and programs subject to change. No refunds or exchanges. Diana Vishneva and Marcelo Gomes. Photo by Rosalie O’Connor.
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WHO
South Street Seaport, July 9
Guided by Voices, the Strumbellas, Car Seat Headrest
Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival
Various venues, July 13–16
Nas, Fabolous, Talib Kweli
Panorama
Randalls Island, July 22–24
Kendrick Lamar, Blood Orange, Sufjan Stevens, LCD Soundsystem
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!
Prospect Park Bandshell, through August 13
Andra Day, Beirut, the Lumineers, Digable Planets
Afropunk
Commodore Barry Park, August 27–28
TV on the Radio, Janelle Monáe, Gallant, Living Colour
ROMEO ANDJULIET One Week Only • June 20 – 25
WHERE
4Knots Music Festival
For more of Salisbury’s picks, go to nymag.com.
MOVIES
20. See Wiener-Dog Welcome to the doghouse. In theaters June 24.
If there’s one filmmaker who can be counted on to follow his black heart rather than the hope of a box-office killing this summer, it’s Todd Solondz. His misfit regular, Dawn Wiener (played here by Greta Gerwig), now has a dog, WienerDog, who for much of his apparently short life encounters a variety of desperate, beleaguered souls played by the likes of Ellen Burstyn, Julie Delpy, and Danny DeVito. If anyone can purge the increasingly insufferable indie darling Gerwig of her mannerisms, it’s Odd Todd. He transcends cynicism to a level of nihilism that is religious—and profound. d.e. BOOKS
21. Read The Nix
Take a chance on newcomer Nathan Hill. Knopf, August 30.
Hill’s mother-son drama promises high risks and high rewards. The young author brings us two contentious political conventions, neglectful parenting and filial yearning, a metaphorical mythical beast, one very long sentence, formal
tricks reminiscent of A Visit From the Goon Squad, and bizarre set pieces à la John Irving—a huge fan of the book. By Labor Day, you’ll fall in love or be crushed, or possibly both. b.k. THEATER
22. Listen to
Leslie Odom Jr.
MARTIN CREED
Style to spare.
S-Curve Records.
On his self-titled debut recording, Leslie Odom Jr. (he’s Hamilton’s Aaron Burr, sir) performs a series of standards (from “Look for the Silver Lining” to “The Guilty Ones”) in a cool, haunting style I can only describe as “jazzy choirboy.” His takes on show tunes like “Love, Look Away” and “Joey Joey Joey” are ethereally beautiful, with spare, elegant arrangements by Joseph Abate to set them off. j.g.
juNE 8–AugusT 7 “Clever, dumb, smart and stupidly gorgeous” —The Guardian (UK)
POP
23. Listen to Pagan
Nothing sacrilegious about Palmistry’s tunes.
armoryonpark.org or (212) 933-5812
Mixpak, June 17.
thompson arts center at park avenue armory 643 park avenue at 67th street
Singer-producer Benjy Keating may hail from London, but the spectral songs he crafts as Palmistry easily evoke Kingston. Armed with a beguiling wisp of a voice, splotches of rhythm and melody, and an open heart, he embodies the too-short, love-stricken lightness of summer and all its sweat-flecked wiles. His new album is a breeze of gossamer confections that strip dancehall down to its basic elements. c.j.
SEASON SPONSORS
© Martin Creed, Work No. 1094, 2011
CLASSICAL MUSIC
24. Go to Make Music
New York
The streets and parks are alive … Various venues, June 21 (go to makemusicny.org).
For a decade now, every summer solstice has resounded with a citywide burst of outdoor music: hundreds of concerts, thousands of musicians, millions of sounds permeating the humid air. This year, the festival includes a complete performance of Philip Glass’s Piano Etudes on Pier 1; Shimmer, for 16 cymbal players in Madison Square; and Sxip Shirey’s The Gauntlet, which the audience will experience by filing between rows of singers on the High Line. j.d.
Toll-Free Helpline For Parents
1-855-DRUGFREE
ART
25. See
Where Are We Now (Who Are We Anyway?)
Vito Acconci’s big questions.
MoMA PS1, through August 30.
All New Yorkers worth their stay-here-for-thesummer salt will make it out to Long Island City to see the art world’s Johnny Cash, Vito Acconci. No conceptual artist was better in the 1970s at yanking back art’s skirts in performances: Signature works include events where he masturbated under a gallery floor while murmuring to visitors above, waving lead pipes at visitors while being blindfolded, and following strangers around the city. I maintain Acconci is one of the greatest artists alive. j.s.
SOLUTION TO LAST ISSUE’S PUZZLE F R A T D U B T A B S A M I S H
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T J R E E R N T E C H M H O I A L P H I A E V I V E G N C O S H R L I E O L W I S E D I D O R G E S E
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A movie about the women changing the art world stitch by stitch EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT
STARTS FRIDAY, JUNE 24 OPENING WEEKEND Q&A with Director UNA LORENZEN, Moderated by VOGUE KNITTING’s TRISHA MALCOLM. Visit ifccenter.com for details.
Louis C.K. CO N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E 3 7
over here in the corner. One of the reasons I picked FX is because it was obscure. Then a few years later I’m like, Boy, my shit’s really out there. What effect has that had on your personal life?
It’s hard to date when people know who you are. I don’t really want to date somebody who has seen me before. But that’s out of the question, so it’s a little isolating. It’s weird. You’re obviously someone who pays close attention to the business part of what you do. What about the TV business most needs reforming?
I remember when I was doing Lucky Louie, there was a show called Emily’s Reasons Why Not.7 It was built on a very popular actress, and they made a bunch of episodes before airing any of them. This is what happens a lot in television when someone has so much popularity that their agents leverage it. They say, “This person is so popular that you have to promise all these episodes—produced—and sick amounts of money no matter what happens.” That forces the studio into covering their liabilities. And the way they do that is they send executives to the set, they pore over every script and make sure there’s nothing that could possibly upset anybody, and they make sure that it’s treacly and has lovable moments. There’s no way that process can make a good show. Then they throw an enormous advertising-and-promotion budget at it because you forced them to spend so much fucking money. The first episode of Emily’s Reasons Why Not aired, and the next day it was gone. That’s work that nobody ever saw because the stakes became too high. What would be a better way of doing it?
If everybody goes in and says, “Look, this probably isn’t going to work because most art isn’t good.” Even great writers usually write shit. Being a great writer means writ7.
In a 2006 review for the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley wrote that the sitcom is “a tepid knockoff of Sex and the City” and that star Heather Graham is “about as engaging as rock salt.”
8.
ing shitty stuff and not giving up. It doesn’t mean you just sit down and it comes out beautiful. So you should go to the studio and say, like I did with FX and Louie, “This might not be any good. Let’s make this for as little as possible. Let’s make one and see how it goes, but if we need to, we can all walk away without any huge penalty.” The idea that we get the studios and the networks to give us money as a guarantee against failure? That’s how they negotiate now: Even if this tanks, you give me a million dollars. So it’s a system that kind of chugs along and sometimes great shows get made. Everybody makes fun of network television, but there are all kinds of interesting shows on TV right now. ABC has gone and decided they’re going to make shows for black people. It’s fucking great. It feels like the larger culture is saying, “We’re tired of hearing about the feelings of average white guys.” Which is pretty much your core constituency.
When I first moved to New York and started auditioning at all the clubs, there was a guy who ran the Comic Strip. His name was Lucien Hold. He became a friend and I ended up working there a ton. But when I auditioned for him, he said, “You’re funny, but you’re a young white guy and I got enough of you.” And I said, “All right, you won’t hear from me again.” So I actually had an uphill battle because I was a white guy. I had to stand out. It’s a weird experience, because if you’re a minority you’re trying to seize a small part of the market because it’s flooded with guys like me. If you’re a guy like me, you’re trying to distinguish yourself from the horde that you belong to. But what ends up happening as you get older is you don’t think about that kind of thing anymore. You are who you are. If you try to figure out who you are in terms of the spectrum of American culture, you’re just lost. This idea that you speak for a certain type of “average” white dude—presumably that includes a lot of Trump voters and Bernie bros. Do you understand these guys who think that they’re under cultural attack?
Oh, Jesus, no. White guys are fine. Nobody’s turning us down for a job. There’s nothing that’s being taken away from us. That’s a load of shit, people who think that. Most people are good people, and most people who are tasked with hiring or promoting take people at their value. That’s my experience anyway. But of course that’s
9. In an episode in season four, Louie acquiesces to a date with a waitress at the club (Sarah Baker). When he reflexively tells her she isn’t fat, she responds with a poignant monologue on the way fat women are treated by average-looking guys, like Louie: “Do you know what the meanest thing you can say to a fat girl is? ‘You’re not fat.’”
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my experience—because I’m a privileged white guy. As a white guy, things are pretty much always as I remember them being. I remember Venus and Serena Williams, they once said there’s a lot of racism on the tennis tour. And somebody asked Martina Hingis about it. She stuck her stupid face in it and said, “I haven’t seen any racism.” Well, you’re fucking Swiss! That’s not nice of me to say. Was it Hingis? I’m not sure. Whoever it was is probably very nice. Yeah, men, we’re fine. The level of privilege is so high that if we lose a little bit, there’s a panic: What’s happening to us? Your daughters are 10 and 14 now. Have you ever talked with them about your stand-up? Are you worried about how they’ll feel when they hear your jokes about their mother giving you the saddest hand job in the world?
My kids and I share the same sense of humor. It’s not like they’re some preacher’s kids—they’re my children. They know what it means to exaggerate a feeling to an insane amount. They think it’s funny when I yell about how frustrating they are, because they know that in reality we have a great time at home, so it’s ridiculous to them, all that stuff. As far as sex, that’s grown-up stuff, and they haven’t seen that, to my knowledge. They probably won’t want to. But anyway, they find a lot of people a lot funnier than me. Like who?
My kids and I were listening to satellite radio in the car and Norm Macdonald came on. And he’s doing a bit about the choice of a serial killer to make the grave shallow. He takes you through it. He says, “If I was a murdering psychopath, here’s how I would handle it.” And he tells a long story about standing outside of a woman’s yoga place with a cheese sandwich. To try and lure a woman away he says, “You like cheese sandwiches? I got a whole fucking van full of them.” And when he says “a whole fucking van full of them,” my 14-year-old daughter just died laughing. She’s an intersectional radical feminist, and she finds Norm Macdonald to be the funniest fucking dude. Are you a feminist?
I don’t feel strongly enough about anything to give myself a label. My daughter is a feminist and I identify with her, with her rights and her feelings, and I’m listening to her. I’m learning from her. But I think the second you say “I am this,” you’ve stopped listening and learning. This is an interesting area for you, because
10. In July 2015, Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer paid $50,000 to shoot a lion in Zimbabwe. After posting a photo of himself with the carcass online, he faced death threats and widespread criticism.
An anti-apartheid activist in South Africa during the 1960s and 1970s who was killed in police custody.
people have held up certain jokes of yours as being feminist. I’m thinking about “the No. 1 threat to women being men and the No. 1 threat to men is heart disease.” And then people have pointed to certain episodes of Louie, like the episode with the “fat girl” speech8 or the episode where your character stops his notreally-girlfriend from leaving his apartment and forces a kiss on her, as proof that you’re a misogynist creep. Do those discussions make you think more about how different types of people might hear your material?
No. Why would I do that? I don’t know, because you might learn something.
Everybody’s point of view is legitimate. The goal of the things I say onstage or in my shows isn’t to please everyone. My goal is not to have everyone say, “This was an excellent indictment of this bad thing.” I’m confounded by people who want that from art. “Boy, that sure showed that woman to be strong! That means that was good!” It’s so much more interesting to shed light on these things that we all argue about. We don’t have to agree on everything, and that’s okay. After I made the episode about the fat girl, I read a blog post by a young woman who was furious. She said, “I’ve been talking about this all these years and nobody gives a shit. The fact that this guy’s being carried around on people’s shoulders by some feminists makes me sick to my stomach.” And I read it and I was like, You’re totally right. I completely see that. Would that make me go, I better not touch that note again? It’s the opposite. It’s exciting to be a flash point. It’s a valid thing to have your feelings violated and hurt. Sorry, but it is. So you’re saying you have zero internal censors? You did stop saying “faggot” in your act.
Yeah, I don’t use that word anymore. But I mean, come the fuck on. How much do you want to protect each other? You discredit groups by saying they can’t be portrayed as weak. That’s a huge discredit to women to say you can’t have a woman be in a position of weakness. For a stronger person to physically assault a weaker person, there’s just no greater crime, but everyone can insult everybody. We don’t get along— that’s the human race. The idea of America is that we can be mean to each other. I really hate that line of thinking, the idea that we just need to accept meanness.
But here’s the thing: Part of what’s happened with American culture is the shit we 11.
A smoking, wannabe-hip priest in sunglasses, Father Guido Sarducci rambled his way through Vatican gossip briefs and reviews of the pope’s musical efforts.
12.
choose to get angry about. The outrage economy. Everybody’s just such a sucker for this shit. Remember the dentist who killed Cecil the lion?9 People said, “We’re going to get that motherfucker!” There’s no humility. Nobody goes, “Jeez, I dunno anything about this. I’m going to keep my voice out of it.” I saw somebody who has 20 million Twitter followers write that the dentist should lose his business and his home and his whole life. Twenty million Twitter followers—that’s an enormous amount of influence to just go, “I am encouraging people to destroy this man’s life, and two minutes later I’m going to tweet about something completely different.” When I read that tweet I thought, I want to run into that person and say, “How’s it going?” “I’m sorry, what do you mean?” “Your campaign against that guy—how’s it going?” I mean, for you to say something that fierce about another human being, you must be like the Stephen Biko10 of activists against this one guy. But this person doesn’t give a fuck. There’s such careless outrage. I’m not an insult comedian. I’m not a person who tries to hurt people’s feelings. I don’t like downgrading people. But you’ve gotta strike out in all directions. You’re not an insult comic, but I think it’s fair to say that your work generally skews dark. What are you optimistic about? What makes you happy?
Trillions of things. I feel safe talking about dark subjects because they exist in a world full of life and beauty. Everybody who’s alive is choosing to be. You can take yourself out anytime. The whole population is a bunch of people who are choosing to keep trying. Obviously my kids and other people in my life that I love are a big part of what keeps me going, and I try to be useful to my family members. I try once in a while to call a friend and say, “Hey, what’s going on in your life? Is there anything that I can help you with right now?” Or I’ll throw influence or work at somebody who needs it. A lot of times it’s just, like, listening to a person. Life is busy. Listening is like the No. 1 thing that actually cures almost everything. A lot of times in life there’s not a solution to your situation. Sometimes something just sucks. When you’re in one of those moments where you think this is just bad, after you get it off your chest you go, “All right. I’ll be okay.” People need to be listened to. How are you feeling about your stand-up set these days? An Emo Philips joke: 13. “I like libraries. I was in one in New York, the guy was very rude. I said, ‘I’d like a card.’ He says, ‘You have to prove you’re a citizen of New York.’ So I stabbed him.”
The late-night 14. talk show ‘The Chris Rock Show’ aired from 1997 to 2000, winning one Emmy.
The best I ever was as a stand-up was 2006 to 2011. That was when I just toured all year round and made a special every year. I was dedicated and obsessed with stand-up. I was so good then. Ever since then I’ve been damned good but not as good, because I’ve been making my TV show and doing standup in the off-season. So after Horace and Pete I decided I’m not going to shoot Louie anymore, and I’m on tour now. I was developing the material in clubs constantly, going to L.A. and doing the Comedy Store twice a night. I’ve got a murderous 80 minutes of material right now. Can you explain the difference, practically, between the stand-up you were doing at your peak and what you’re doing now?
I think I’m a better comedian overall than I was back then, but back then I was better at performing. When you’re that greased up onstage, you just have a higher comedy IQ. It’s the ability to go on any stage in the country and be perfectly present and able to maneuver the set and have great timing. Some of it is being in physical shape. When you’re under pressure or strain, you get dumb, you know? It’s why I started working out in boxing gyms, because you watch a guy who’s fighting, he’s in a terribly arduous moment and he’s making intelligent choices. So to me that’s when you’re 55 minutes deep into your sixth show of the week, in your fifth city of the week. You have to be able to be great right in that moment. You have to be, “You’re not going to believe what I’m going to do next.” The audience is tired, and you have to have more energy than anyone in the room. You have to be able to control the pace. At my show last night, I was talking to myself a little bit while my mouth was moving delivering material. I was thinking, You’re going too fast. Cool it. You have plenty of time and loads of shit to say. You say that you’re a better comedian overall now. In what way?
I know how to carry a subtle idea and make it mean something. I’m doing a bit right now about the kind of person who makes the choice to teach public school. It’s just a real quiet back-and-forth. For me, that’s an evolution, because I started in the clubs in Boston, and you had to get huge laughs or you might actually get beaten up. There was always that feeling that you had to be on the balls of your feet, killing the whole time—that makes for a good 45-minute act, but you’ve got to evolve past 15. A Michelle Wolf joke: “Nothing electrifies a room more than the words ‘Hillary Clinton.’ I think it’d make a really good safe word. Then you’d know to stop but you also couldn’t keep going.”
A Barry Crimmins joke: “We have a presidential election coming up. And I think the big problem, of course, is that someone will win.”
june 13–26, 2016 | new york
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that to be worth watching for over an hour. Being great in first gear is something I’m constantly trying to get better at. What was it about comedy that made you think, That’s what I have to do?
Anytime I heard stand-up comedy or saw someone doing it, I was electrified. It made me go crazy. It was fun. It felt friendly. It made everybody open up. Whenever I saw somebody talking, just being themselves and saying stuff that’s a little inappropriate but saying it fearlessly, then everyone laughing and taking part in it, I just loved it. This is a weird source of inspiration, but there was an album that I had, it was Father Guido Sarducci from Saturday Night Live.11 Paul something? Don Novello was the comedian’s real name.
Yeah. So he did a comedy album, and it’s him doing his stand-up act for a bunch of nuns in a convent. Maybe they were studying to be nuns. And for a Catholic he’s being very provocative; it’s a freeing, funny record. It’s silly and deliberate. I used to listen to it constantly. And Emo Philips,12 he did a record at Harvard that’s also great. Jokes always have the potential to fail, so it’s a dangerous place for everyone in the room to be in, and when it goes well it’s warming. It’s cathartic. So when I was on the outside looking in, I just would go, Wow, what a lovely thing. Music is wonderful, and I always loved movies, and I always loved television, but stand-up was this direct, frank, humane thing. It always felt good. So the first time I ever heard that there was a way that I could do it, or try it, I knew instantly I was going to. What comedians are you seeing now who you think are great?
Samantha Bee. Samantha is inevitable. She’s the next thing. We’re all talking about the same shit, but there’s always somebody out there that’s hitting a chord like nobody else, and that person is her. I remember when I worked on Chris Rock’s show on HBO,13 Chris was that person at that time. Chris was just devastating. He was a black man and he was saying things from that point of view, but he was saying it with personal intelligence and hilariousness. I’ll take some credit, because he brought together a great writing staff and we created great pieces for him, with his leadership. What is it about Samantha?
This is the new thing with her: She’s not smug. All of these guys, even Jon Stewart, who’s a fucking genius, he would 16.
Shandling’s influential HBO hit ‘The Larry Sanders Show.’
17.
get upset but he always stayed cool. Guys like to be a little above it. They like to be in control. Even after ranting, they suddenly calm down and smile. But Samantha doesn’t do that. She’s really fucking mad! She’s like, Yes, I am a fucking feminist! She’s right about everything that I see her talk about. She’s by far the most interesting as far as, here’s my take on this shit that everybody else is chewing on. Who else?
As far as stand-ups, Michelle Wolf 14 is great right now. She’s relentless, funny, consistent. Then there’s guys like Barry Crimmins,15 who is a political satirist from the ’80s. I’m actually shooting a stand-up special for him that I’m producing and putting on my website. Barry’s a great voice from the past who’s still kicking. When you talk about Samantha Bee speaking to what people are thinking about in the best and most provocative way—did you ever feel like you were that person?
I don’t look at myself from the outside in that much. I think there’s been a few times where I’ve hit a chord that’s felt like, Hey, that’s a great way to say that, that feels important right now. I’ve kind of stumbled into those moments. But for every bit I’ve done, like, this is the way to say that technology has robbed us of feelings, I also have one that’s about diarrhea or my father’s balls. I’m so equally happy to be gross and talk about having Hitler blow me if I had a time machine. Do you care if people lean more toward one side of your material than the other?
I know that if I just talked about bright, crispy things that have wider meaning, then I’d be at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I’d be a Kennedy Center kind of guy, but that’s not fun. It’s the same on the other side. There’s a lot of people who love my disgusting stuff that probably think I’m a fucking jack-off asshole social-justice-warrior type. It makes them want to vomit when I talk about something that has meaning. I agree with both. I hate both sides of my act equally. But I’m compelled to do both. The confessional, auteur thing that you did with Louie is all over comedy television now. How does it feel to have this style you helped create become its own sort of cliché?
George Carlin once said that Americans have this unique ability to take any idea, good or bad, and run it into the ground. Anything that works gets repeated
Waters’s film ‘Pink Flamingos’ (1972) follows drag queen Divine as she battles for the title of “the filthiest person alive.” The movie ends with Divine eating an actual dog turd.
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18.
Writer and director of dozens of movies, John Sayles spent $60,000 to fund his critically acclaimed 1979 drama ‘Return of the Secaucus 7.’
and then diluted. That’s normal. I don’t own whatever DNA is in Louie that was passed on through some strange television asexual reproduction. Certainly there’s people that came before me that did something similar to what I was doing. Some of my heroes did it. Garry Shandling’s show16 was so much about this one kind of corrupt, messed-up guy. Even Jerry Seinfeld’s show was a version of it. So I don’t know if I accept your argument. It goes way back. I kind of took my version of it and passed it on. There’s plenty of DNA in my show. What John Waters17 did is not far from what I do—making my own things the way I want to and ignoring the idea that I need permission. It’s like, I was talking with my mom about the environment and how it’s going to shit. She feels the same way, but she’s 70-plus so she’s got a different take. She goes, “You won’t be here.” And I said, “But my kids will.” She said, “Even in your kids’ time, it’s not going to matter.” “What about my great-grandkids?” She says, “Well, they’re only an eighth yours.” So you only have to feel an eighth responsible for them?
Yeah. Your part of their pedigree is fractional. That’s how I feel about Louie. When somebody does something independent, they go, “Hey, that’s a new idea,” but I mean, John Sayles,18 that guy used to make his own movies and patched together the financing. It’d be easy to just run a career and go be in three big studio comedies every year and go be in a big network series. There’s this road I could just take, but I’m more excited by people like Lina Wertmüller,19 that fucking Italian lady and those crazy movies that she made: Swept Away, Seven Beauties. Because your stuff is so confessional and so autobiographical, do you ever get sick of being in your own head all the time?
Oh, definitely. Actually, in the last few years, a lot of my act has gravitated away from me. It’s more generalized. It hits harder, it’s better. There’s a lot of things that have changed in the last few years about my act. I used to say “fuck” constantly. When I saw my special Shameless, I say “fuck” every other word. It’s hard to watch, and then by the time I got to, I think, Oh My God, that special, I don’t say “fuck” until like 14 minutes in. So yeah, I think I’ve changed. I’m more interested in other people’s lives than my own, generally. I get n tired of my own shit. 19.
The first woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, Wertmüller made 24 films, including the 1975 black comedy Seven Beauties, about an Italian WWII deserter who survives a concentration camp by trying to seduce a female officer.
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Go With the Grain
13 14 15 16 19
New York Crossword by Cathy Allis
1
2
3
4
5
17
7
8
18
22
19
23
37
42 53
43
59
60 65
36 39 40 41 42 44 47 52 55
48
80
128
131
132
93 95 96 97 98 99 101 104 107
81
82
83
119
120
89 93
94 98
102 103
104 105 106
112
123
66 68 69 70 72 74 77 79 84 86 88 89 90
51
68
113 116
58 59 61 62 63
50
73
97 101
127
Across
67
88
115
Pusher buster Film co. with a roaring logo Cold-shoulder Waldorf-salad ingredient Taxi alternative Not 1-Down Manilow song setting, the __ Conan of “Conan” What happens when de grain begins to grow? En __ (on tiptoe, in ballet) Beethoven title name Ship in a 1492 trio Evening, in ads Elemental bit Ritual of a grain-growing tribal group? Beverly Cleary heroine __ Quimby Davis of “Thelma and Louise” Nth degree Yalie Law degs. Kind of mall Designer Mizrahi “Love Is a Battlefield” singer Pat How rain fell, vis-à-vis an ancient grain?
47
72
92
111
122
46
66
96
114
25 26 27 28 30 31
87
100
107 108 109 110
49
30
62
71 79
91
99
1 5 8 12 17 18 20 21 22
78 86
95
45
61
77
90
16
57
70
85
15
35
56
64
84
121
29
34
44
69 76
14
40
55
58
13
25
33
54
63
12 21
39
41
75
11
28
32
38
52
10
20
27 31
74
9
24
26
36
6
117
124 125
126 129
130 133
Fight site Out of kilter Restorative resort Source of downloadable music Like favorable weather for a grain? Deer dad Old-style verb with thou Hitchcock role, often Beaver’s project Saunter Folkie who sang about Alice Torah cabinets Grain farmer’s autobiography? Add yeast to Black Friday mo. Winning streak Lieu Function as de grain strainer? Cry from a fed-up employee On the lookout Webby or Obie __ Paulo, Brazil SpongeBob’s habitat Prefix with dermis Done for Motifs Extreme viewpoints regarding a grain?
126 n e w y o r k | J U N E 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
118
134
114 115 116 117 121 123 127 128 129 130 131 132 133
Month after Shevat Joint in a jerk test Ripped Sleep-medicine subject Prove false Nifty speech about a grain? Rubicon crosser Swiss expressionist painter Paul Sugar Plum Fairy’s skirt Sr. income sources Senior Capital on a fjord Surname all poets have in common? 134 Talk up
Down
1 In the buff 2 He came after Cain, but Cain came after him 3 Notes after do 4 Big name in shortening 5 CXV x X 6 Actress Close 7 Litter-producing events? 8 “MythBusters” subj. 9 Refusals 10 An Ivy in Philly 11 Rudimentary 12 Blood-typing letters
Trojan War king Broadly spotted horse Spill the beans Blofeld, to Bond Mother of Perseus, by Zeus as golden rain 21 Puccini specialty 23 Spinks in boxing history 24 Daily charge 29 Paces in musical scores 32 Hindu royal 33 Research facil. 34 Sworn statements 35 Are 36 Pack again, as groceries 37 Final Oldsmobile 38 Sal of “Exodus” 43 Dresser part 45 Agts. 46 Perhaps not even that much 48 Part of SDS 49 Florence’s river 50 Sailors’ affirmatives 51 “__ la vie” 53 Duck __ (seek shelter, as under a desk) 54 “Cheerio!” 55 Mined matter 56 Distance swimmer Diana 57 Eleanor in a Beatles title 60 “Never would’ve guessed that” 64 Yemeni’s eastern neighbor 65 File-folder feature 67 Suffragist Bloomer 71 Sportscaster __ Albert 73 Use beams surgically 74 “Dark Angel” star Jessica 75 Walk dizzily 76 Fill with freight 78 “Slammin’ Sammy” 80 The “coral” of lobster coral 81 Belief in God through reason 82 Patrick __, Tony winner for “Marat/Sade” 83 Author Ferber and actress Best 85 Some Art Deco works 87 Love of art objects 91 Terrier type 92 Genesis kingdom 94 Campus mil. program 97 Fledgling business 100 “Wild Bill” Hickok was killed playing it 102 Concerning 103 Brown-coated ermine 105 Derby’s place 106 Liveliness 107 Ball, e.g. 108 Just right 109 Went on wildly 110 Expunge 111 “Wall Street” role Gordon __ 112 See 122-Down 113 “Peachy!” 118 Emperor after Claudius 119 Jacob’s twin 120 Admin. helper 122 With 112-Down, Chapel Hill athletes 124 Moray, say 125 “The Matrix” hero 126 Directly, in directions
The solution to last week’s puzzle appears on page 115.
June 13–26, 2016. VOL. 49, NO. 12. New York Magazine (ISSN 0028-7369) is published biweekly, plus two special issues, Spring/Summer Weddings (March) and Fall/Winter Weddings (October), by New York Media LLC, 75 Varick Street, New York, N.Y. 10013. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. Editorial and business offices: 212-508-0700. Postmaster: Send address changes to New York, P.O. Box 62240, Tampa, FL 33662–2240. Canada Post International Publications Mail Product (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 40612608. Canada returns to be sent to Imex Global Solutions, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. Subscription rates in the U.S. and possessions: 26 issues, $59.97. For subscription assistance, write to New York Magazine Subscription Department, P.O. Box 62240, Tampa, FL 33662–2240, or call 800-678-0900. Printed in the U.S.A. Copyright © 2016 by New York Media LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. Founding chairman, Bruce Wasserstein; chief executive officer, Anup Bagaria. New York Magazine is not responsible for the return or loss of unsolicited manuscripts. Any submission of a manuscript must be accompanied by a SASE.
crossword
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Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies.
hig hbro w Here’s a comforting Times headline: “Paul Ryan Calls Donald Trump’s Attack on Judge ‘Racist,’ but Still Backs Him.”
In a blow to dutiful pack-tourism, the Louvre and Musée D’Orsay were closed for a few days because of floods in Paris.
Mark Danner’s grim chronicle of our anti-terror stalemate, Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War. Whatever else you think of him, Bernie Sanders has shown that democracy in America is not just a rich person’s game.
Martin Creed punks up the Park Avenue Armory. Photographer Dennis Morris sues Richard Prince, as well as Gagosian gallery, for copyright infringement over pictures of Sid Vicious.
Somehow, the Kickstarter campaign to turn Trafalgar Square into a mini-golf course failed.
Ato Blankson-Wood is straightup great in The Total Bent at the Public Theater.
Are further de Blasio troubles ahead with the arrest of union leader Norman Seabrook in an FBI probe?
Mike Nelson’s creepy sleeping bags full of detritus, Untitled (Public Sculpture for a Redundant Space), hidden in the bushes on the High Line. Debt Collective—the activist group buying up discounted debt—accuses John Oliver of ripping off their idea.
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge— named for the Italian explorer whose surname is often spelled with two Z’s—is the target of a renaming campaign. (The MTA says it’s too expensive to change all the signs.)
There is a new all-nude restaurant in London named Bunyadi.
Meryl Streep’s Cole Porter– singing Donald Trump (in orangeface) at the Shakespeare in the Park Public Theater gala.
Trust them: “FBI officials say they are careful to avoid illegally entrapping suspects” in their steppedup ISIS stings.
Who you gonna call? In his new memoir, Bobby Brown says he once had sex with a ghost.
Twenty-eight were injured in a tween riot during a N.J. concert by singing 16-year-old YouTube twins Grayson and Ethan Dolan.
American Ballet Theatre revives the crazy colorful sets of the late artist Natalia Goncharova for The Golden Cockerel. The city’s Board of Standards and Appeals actually says no to two condo-development schemes on Central Park West.
NYC will get a second space-age building designed by the late Zaha Hadid, this one also in West Chelsea.
According to a new study, Instagram usage is down 23.7 percent this year, Twitter 23.4 percent, Snapchat 15.7 percent, and Facebook 8. We just hope people aren’t resorting to reading magazines to pass the time.
Tidal started streaming 15 more Prince albums— including The Black Album and The Rainbow Children— on his birthday.
bri lliant
des picable
Homegoing, the debut novel from young Ghanaian-American Yaa Gyasi, lives up to the hype of its tweet-blurb from Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Cambridge University statistician David Spiegelhalter blames binge-watching for declining … Which might be a fair trade-off. sex rates in the U.K. …
Dad-bod discrimination! Scott Speedman, 40, tells Stephen Colbert that the director of his new show, Animal Kingdom, told him he shouldn’t be shirtless. Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian have an E! reality show (maybe they should rename the channel K!).
A Texas couple staged “murder themed” engagement photos, explaining, “What is the most trustworthy thing to do with your significant other? To have to hide a body together.” They’re going to be great parents. Researchers have found a cook-itand-it-might-not-die, heatresistant E. coli strain. Well done!
128 n e w y o r k | j u n e 1 3 – 2 6 , 2 0 1 6
Before their performance in North Carolina, the cast of Kinky Boots sang their transgender-bathroom protest song: “Just Pee.” A monkey fell or jumped on a transformer at a dam in Kenya, setting off a nationwide blackout. All part of the monkey master plan.
Who’s in the bag for the plastic-bag lobby? A movement grows in Albany to ban the plastic-bag fee.
Aussie pop star Betty Who’s shimmery, very ’90s cover of Donna Lewis’s “I Love You Always Forever.” British cigarette packs are now covered by the world’s ugliest color, Pantone 448 C (just like your lungs!).
lowbr ow
Attention day-drunk connoisseurs! According to Grub Street, the Fort Greene restaurant Colonia Verde’s Bloody Mary is the best in New York.
Renée Zellweger’s thoughtful interview in British Vogue about why she took a break from being famous.
Yara Greyjoy finally gets some lady love on Game of Thrones. Lifetime series UnReal returns, ever more cannily over the top.
P H OTO G R A P H S : B RYA N S M I T H ( S E A B R O O K ) ; K I C K S TA R T E R / LO N D O N D E S I G N F E S T I VA L ( T R A FA LG A R ) ; CO U R T E S Y O F T H E A M E R I C A N B A L L E T T H E AT E R (G O L D E N CO C K E R E L ) ; C A R L S WA N S O N / N E W YO R K M AG A Z I N E ( M AG A Z I N E S ) ; PAT R I C K M C M U L L A N ( Z E L LW E G E R ) ; L I Z C L AY M A N ( B LO O DY M A RY ) ; N E T F L I X / I N S TAG R A M ( N E T F L I X ) ; TA M B A KO T H E J AG U A R / F L I C K R ( M O N K E Y ) ; A S H A P OY Z E R ( E N G AG E M E N T P H OTO) ; R O B K A R DA S H I A N / I N S TAG R A M ( B L AC C H Y N A )
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