Philadelphia City Paper, July 3rd, 2014 by Philadelphia City Paper

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STAY UP LATE AND SLEEP THE MORNING AWAY. SEPTAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RUNNING 24 HOURS. The Broad Street and Market-Frankford Lines are running all night long, all weekend long, all summer long.

Friday and Saturday nights Learn more at ISEPTAPHILLY.COM

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Publisher Nancy Stuski Editor in Chief Lillian Swanson Senior Editor Patrick Rapa Arts & Culture Editor Mikala Jamison Digital Media Editor/Movies Editor Paulina Reso Food Editor Caroline Russock Senior Staff Writers Daniel Denvir, Emily Guendelsberger Staff Writer Ryan Briggs Copy Chief Carolyn Wyman Associate Web Producer Carly Szkaradnik Contributors Sam Adams, Dotun Akintoye, A.D. Amorosi, Rodney Anonymous, Mary Armstrong, Meg Augustin, Bryan Bierman, Shaun Brady, Peter Burwasser, Mark Cofta, Alison Dell, Adam Erace, David Anthony Fox, Caitlin Goodman, K. Ross Hoffman, Deni Kasrel, Alli Katz, Gary M. Kramer, Drew Lazor, Gair “Dev 79” Marking, Robert McCormick, Andrew Milner, Annette Monnier, John Morrison, Michael Pelusi, Sameer Rao, Elliott Sharp, Marc Snitzer, Tom Tomorrow, John Vettese, Nikki Volpicelli, Brian Wilensky Editorial Interns Maggie Grabmeier, Jim Saksa, Diane Bayeux, Katie Krzaczek, Indie Jimenez Production Director Michael Polimeno Editorial Art Director Allie Rossignol Advertising Art Director Evan M. Lopez Senior Editorial Designer Brenna Adams Editorial Designer Jenni Betz Staff Photographer Neal Santos Contributing Photographers Jessica Kourkounis, Mark Stehle Contributing Illustrators Ryan Casey, Don Haring Jr., Joel Kimmel, Cameron K. Lewis, Thomas Pitilli, Matthew Smith Human Resources Ron Scully (ext. 210) Circulation Director Mark Burkert (ext. 239) Sales & Marketing Manager Katherine Siravo (ext. 251) Account Managers Colette Alexandre (ext. 250), Nick Cavanaugh (ext. 260), Amanda Gambier (ext. 228), Thomas Geonnotti (ext. 258), Sharon MacWilliams (ext. 262) Office Coordinator/Adult Advertising Sales Alexis Pierce (ext. 234) Founder & Editor Emeritus Bruce Schimmel

citypaper.net 30 South 15th Street, Fourteenth Floor, Phila., PA 19102. 215-735-8444, Tip Line 215-735-8444 ext. 241, Listings Fax 215-875-1800, Advertising Fax 215-735-8535, Subscriptions 215-735-8444 ext. 235 The printing of City Paper was provided by Calkins Media (215-949-4224). Philadelphia City Paper is published and distributed every Thursday in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Chester, Bucks & Delaware Counties, in South Jersey and in Northern Delaware. Philadelphia City Paper is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased from our main office at $1 per copy. No person may, without prior written permission from Philadelphia City Paper, take more than one copy of each issue. Pennsylvania law prohibits any person from inserting printed material of any kind into any newspaper without the consent of the owner or publisher. Contents copyright © 2014, Philadelphia City Paper. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Philadelphia City Paper assumes no obligation (other than cancellation of charges for actual space occupied) for accidental errors in advertising, but will be glad to furnish a signed letter to the buying public.

contents Cover story, see p. 12

Naked City ...................................................................................7 A&E................................................................................................20 Movies.........................................................................................23 Events..........................................................................................25 Food ..............................................................................................29 COVER DESIGN BY ALLIE ROSSIGNOL

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news blog citypaper.net/nakedcity politics, opinion, a million stories

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3] T he city defends its decision to forgive SEPTA’s $22 million tax debt, saying it was unlikely to win its lawsuit and collect the money. And SEPTA says it refuses to do the right thing and pay up because the city would just blow it all on school nurses.

[ 0]

A Chicago company buys the parking garage beneath Love Park for $29.6 million and says it will replace all of its current employees with Teamsters. And then, once they’re all inside, the structure will be sealed off, because the Love Park Rat King demands a sacrifice.

[ - 1]

A tlantic City’s Showboat casino announces it will close. “We did it!” says Revel.

[ + 1] The mayor of Atlantic City says his home-

town’s future is in tourism and conventions, not casinos. “And after that: crime and despair. Probably some poignant photo essays about the state of the American dream or what have you.”

[

1] L ocal DJ Lee Mayjahs admits to having defaced the Kurt Vile mural in Fishtown and apologizes. Conspiracy theorists decry the whole thing as a marketing ploy, claiming Lee Mayjahs is just the fall guy.

This week’s total: -8 | Last week’s total: +2

bio

[

A 72-year-old Bucks County woman’s lap- top explodes, spraying her with battery acid. And everybody agrees the .gif would have been hilarious.

[ - 1]

thetic device that works like a “robotic suit of armor.” OK, cue a montage of spinning newspapers and exploding monuments, then dissolve onto a wide shot of a crumbled cityscape. Insert Title Card: 2019 — An army of the mechanized disabled has driven the rest of humanity underground …

[ + 2] The FDA approves a Philly-tested pros

A ccording to a new report from the American Society of Civil Engineers, Pennsylvania has the highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges in the country. But that number will eventually come down on its own.

[ - 5]

America’s Worst Politicians

CP’s Quality-o-Life-o-Meter

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country A

thebellcurve

naked

the

50 45

From all points of the compass, here are the bottom-feeders of public office.

ing George III was “a Tyrant … unfit to be the ruler of a free people,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence exactly 238 years ago this week. Tommy had it right. Ever since then, Americans have been calling out their leaders. “Tyrant” was just the start. We’ve moved on to crook (Nixon), liar (Clinton) and moron (Dubya). Whether or not you agree with the peanut gallery, there’s no denying that such written assaults on public honchos are as American as baseball, apple pie and the iPhone. So on this Independence Day, those closest to American politics — 50 writers and editors of the alternative press from across the land — have combined their collective genius. They’ve named 53 of the nation’s worst elected leaders from 23 of the largest states and the District of Columbia, then separated them into five categories: hatemongers, sleazeballs, blowhards, users and boozers, and horn dogs. Philadelphia City Paper has room in print for only a sampling of this hall of shame. For a detailed list, go to citypaper.net You’ll find stories on more than the usual stodgy Washington losers. Try Colorado Sheriff Terry Maketa, who allegedly had sex with three underlings and then lied about it. Or check out Idaho Senate GOP leader John McGee, who stole and crashed an SUV, admitted to drinking too much and went to jail. Upon returning to the Statehouse, he was accused of groping a female staffer. Want a little old-school corruption? There’s Washington, D.C. Councilman Michael Brown, who once accepted $200,000 to stay out of an election and was later indicted after grabbing at a cash-stuffed duffel bag offered by an undercover FBI agent. Of course, there are some big names, too. South Carolina’s “Luv Guv” Mark Sanford made the list. So did Texas’ Green Eggs and Ham filibusterer Ted Cruz and Minnesota loon Michele Bachmann. Even pol wannabe Donald Trump snuck in a side door. So before you head out for the fireworks or raise a toast to Tommy, Ben and the boys, consider this roll call of worst pols. — Chuck Strouse, editor-in-chief, Miami New Times

seconds during a TV debate with her gubernatorial rivals and claiming her dad died fighting the Nazis when he actually worked in a munitions depot during World War II and died 10 years after the war ended. But who cares about that when there are “Messcans” to whoop on? Wahoo! Brewer spent millions in donations on appeals to a U.S. District Court’s injunction against most of 1070. Then, in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court overthrew a large part of the statute as unconstitutional. Still, it had its intended effect. More than 200,000 Hispanics fled the state because of 1070 and other anti-immigrant laws, according to one estimate. They took their purchasing power with them to other states, making Arizona’s recession even worse. Brewer still plays the race card, even as a lame duck with zero political prospects. For instance, she stubbornly refuses to relent on her executive order denying driver’s licenses to so-called DREAMers who qualify for deferred action under a federal plan. Recently, the governor has tried softening her image by pushing through a Medicaid expansion and overhauling Arizona’s inept Child Protective Services. Nevertheless, her political gravestone is destined to read, “Signed SB 1070.” — Stephen Lemons, Phoenix New Times

✚ South: ✚ West: ➤ Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer In 2010, Brewer affixed her signa-

ture to the infamous, immigrant-bashing legislation called Senate Bill 1070 and rode a wave of xenophobia to electoral triumph, a book deal, conservative accolades and liberal opprobrium. She did this despite massive goofs such as claiming that headless bodies were routinely found in the Arizona desert, blanking for several

➤ Florida Gov. Rick Scott He looks like Voldemort, speaks in

the high-pitched timbre of a Wes Anderson movie villain and wants to drug-test as many human beings as possible. More disastrous for Florida residents, he’s recklessly rejected federal stimulus packages and dismantled regulatory agencies. He’s Rick Scott, and he’s America’s least popular governor for damn good reason. Backed by a wave of tea party support — and bankrolled by $70 >>> continued on page 8 c i t y pa p e r . n e t | j u l y 3 - j u l y 9 , 2 0 1 4 | P h i l a d e l p h i a C i t y Pa p e r |

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✚ America’s Worst Politicians <<< continued from page 7

million of his own cash — he won a shocking gubernatorial victory in 2010. The win was all the more remarkable considering Scott’s background: His fortune came from founding a health-care empire, later called Columbia/HCA, which paid the single largest Medicare fraud fine in U.S. history — $1.7 billion for stealing from the feds. Scott showed that his wanton disregard for regulation didn’t end with his golden parachute from his felonious firm. In the governor’s office, he quickly stripped millions of dollars from the state health-care agency and laid off environmental regulators. He also signed new laws requiring all welfare recipients and every state employee to undergo random drug testing. How did he get around the slightly sticky wicket that a firm he owned makes millions by administering such tests? He signed the company over to his wife. (The courts have since thrown out the drug-testing laws for violating the Fourth Amendment.) He’s made other shady moves. Scott rejected $2.4 billion in federal aid to build a high-speed train in Central Florida and lied about the state having to eat cost overruns for the project. During the 2012 presidential election, he tried to suppress black votes with blatantly race-based bans on Sunday early voting (which black congregations dominate). He also tried to kill a prescription-drug database that has decimated oxycodone abuse, while his underfunded health-care agency has allowed steroid clinics — like the Biogenesis clinic at the heart of last year’s Major League Baseball scandal — to proliferate. And through it all, Scott has largely flouted Florida’s “Sunshine laws” by hiding his correspondence from the public and resisting reporters’ attempts to hold him accountable — all while grinning like a demented right-wing Skeletor for TV cameras at scripted events. Is it any wonder his opinion polls have struggled to top 30 percent since he was elected? — Tim Elfrink, Miami New Times

✚ North: ➤ Wisconsin state Rep. Brett Hulsey You have to hand it to

the two-term Democratic state representative from Madison: Brett Hulsey knows how to grab headlines. But in his quest for publicity, he has also made himself irrelevant. Not a great trade-off. The former county board supervisor and environmental consultant almost immediately pissed off his Democratic colleagues in the state assembly by constantly grandstanding during that chaotic period after Gov. Scott Walker proposed ending collective-bargaining rights for most public workers. Once he even jumped up to the podium at a news conference to give an impromptu Democratic response to a speech Walker had just made. His colleagues were not amused. Then things got weird. News surfaced in July 2012 that Hulsey had pleaded no contest

you can read the complete

| P h i l a d e l p h i a C i t y Pa p e r |

LeAnna Washington

to a disorderly conduct charge for flipping off a 9-year-old boy while both were swimming at a local beach. A little less than a year later, Hulsey’s legislative aide asked to be reassigned, saying she felt threatened by her boss’ plan to use a box cutter to show her how to defend herself. Hulsey soon after told a reporter that he was going through a particularly difficult time and was receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from childhood abuse. Knowing his chances to retain his seat were slim to none, Hulsey didn’t seek re-election. But he didn’t go away either. He threw his hat into the ring for Wisconsin governor, challenging frontrunner Mary Burke in the Democratic primary. In the lead-up to the state Republican Party convention, Hulsey thought it would be a good idea to show up dressed as a Confederate soldier and to distribute Ku Klux-Klan-style hoods to delegates there. He said he wanted to call attention to the GOP’s alleged racist policies. News of his plans drew worldwide attention, none of it good, and he called off the stunt. But it pretty much burned any remaining relationships with colleagues who might have still admired his smart analysis and progressive stance on issues. — Judith Davidoff, Isthmus

✚ East: ➤ Pa. state Sen. LeAnna Washington LeAnna Washington, 68,

was not one to let her July birthday go by without a big bash that doubled as a campaign fundraiser. Problem is, she used her state office staff to plan and promote her elaborate gala, according to a grand jury report released this past March. In fact, some of her staffers allege they spent the weeks and months leading up to the party concentrating entirely on the celebration. Those who objected say they saw their salaries cut or were shown the door. When a former aide challenged the senator, telling her it was illegal to use her state office staff this way, she allegedly blew up at him: “I am the f---ing senator, I do what the

citypaper.net

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Daryl Metcalfe

wall of shame online

f--- I want, … and ain’t nobody going to change me,” she told him, according to the grand jury report. “I have been doing it like this for 17 years. So stop trying to change me.” The Democratic senator is accused of spending between $30,000 and $100,000 in state taxpayer funds on her annual gala fundraiser and now faces felony charges of conflict of interest and theft of services. Voters in the Democratic primary in May told Washington she could no longer have her cake and eat it, too. She lost her bid for nomination to another term of the Senate seat she has held since 2005. — Lil Swanson, Philadelphia City Paper ➤ Pa. state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe State

Rep. Daryl Metcalfe likes to walk softly and carry a big flamethrower. Whether it’s gay rights, immigration reform — which he has called “illegal alien invasion” — or requiring voter ID cards, you can count on the eight-term Republican from western Pennsylvania to unleash a double dose of inflammatory rhetoric. As chairman of the powerful House State Government Committee, Metcalfe authored a controversial voter ID law and then drew fire when he went on a Pittsburgh radio station to complain about people who were too “lazy” to apply for the ID card. Then, when newbie state Rep. Brian Sims, the first openly gay lawmaker in Harrisburg, tried to speak on the House floor last June in support of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, Metcalfe relied on his direct connection to the Divine to deny Sims the right to speak: Metcalfe said Sims’ intended remarks were “in open rebellion against God’s law.” The far-right conservative took the limelight in Harrisburg in 2001 when he introduced a resolution asking the federal government to fund and deploy a national defense missile system. No one could figure out why state lawmakers should be debating the issue, but the measure passed anyway. His latest crusade, launched in June, was to call on Gov. Tom Corbett to appeal a federal court decision that struck down the ban on same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania. He is consistent, at least, and he sees himself as being ahead of the curve. As Metcalfe, 51, once told the liberal news website Talking Points Memo: “I was a tea partier before it was cool.” . — Lil Swanson, Philadelphia City Paper

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By Daniel Denvir

City’s most vulnerable treated like garbage ➤ This week I’ve been writing about vulnerable

people whom the powerful treat like throwaway problems. For example, in Harrisburg, House Republicans threatened to deny Philadelphia schools critical funding unless city Democrats backed a separate measure that would cut retirement benefits to future public employees. “If Philadelphia Democrats aren’t going to be there for what needs to be done, then nobody’s going to be there for them,” state Budget Secretary Charles Zogby told WHYY last week. “And they can go home and tell their constituents why they couldn’t get money for the school district.” Zogby, who orchestrated the state takeover of Philly schools in 2001, today plays the role of cinematic Mafioso: “Hey, pal, shame if something happened to that school district of yours.” On Sunday, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett reiter ated Zogby’s threat. On Monday, the legislature passed a budget without pension cuts — and Cor bett, who promised to veto any budget that lacked such a measure, declined to sign it as of press time. Though the state controls the city’s public schools, Corbett has deeply reduced their funding. The recent comments are a stark reminder that state Republicans don’t always consider Philadelphia’s youth, disproportionately black and poor, to belong to the commonwealth as a whole. Yet more remarkable: This horse trading was not over any new state funding but rather over the state simply allowing the city to hike its own cigarette tax. In a surprise move, more moderate Senate Republicans on Monday inserted the tax hike in an unrelated measure, which now faces a very uncertain future in the conservative House. This, after City Council recently boosted the share local taxpayers pay to schools, moving to provide $150 million, but still leaving the Philadelphia School District with a $66 million budget gap. Thousands of teaching and staff positions have already been lost. Schools have been closed, libraries have been shuttered, violence has erupted, counselors cannot address complex student needs, nurses at many schools are part-time and arts and music are anemic. It could get far worse. Corbett, under political siege in large part due to education cuts, had proposed new state schools’ 22

[ the naked city ]

funding in his budget proposal. But a huge revenue shortfall and Republican aversion to taxing natural-gas drilling put that at risk. The approved budget delivers far less than Corbett had proposed. Before its passage, the District had said “way over 1,000 layoffs” would result without a cigarette tax and Corbett’s proposed spending hike. “It becomes a question whether we would have the bodies to lay off and still maintain schools functioning,” says School District spokesperson Fernando Gallard. Superintendent William Hite has also requested an additional $224 million to start rebuilding the District. That seems unlikely. I asked Stephen Miskin, spokesperson for Republican House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, what pension reform, whatever its merits, has to do

City school kids were caught in the horse-trading. with the city’s cigarette tax. “Pensions and education funding are and always have been tied together,” said Miskin, noting that pension costs are eating up an ever-growing share of state spending. “It’s bankrupting the districts.” And last summer, he said, the state voted to funnel more money to city schools — but that allowed Philly to hike its own sales tax and redirected $45 million in federal dollars. Republicans nonetheless believe that every dollar that goes to Philadelphia is one dollar that doesn’t go somewhere else. “Our members got beaten up back home in their own districts, mainly because of that cash, the $45 million,” says Miskin. “Their point was, what makes those kids more important than our kids?” Turzai, angling to replace out>>> continued on page 10

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â&#x153;&#x161; Hostile Witness

[ the naked city ]

<<< continued from page 9

going House Speaker Sam Smith, cannot support tax hikes without alienating right-wing legislators whose support he needs. This is not a policy question but a political one. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Right now,â&#x20AC;? says Miskin, â&#x20AC;&#x153;the policy merits to our members is â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to raise taxes.â&#x20AC;? Corbett faces a tough re-election fight and cannot seem to navigate between his partyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right wing and a general electorate prepared to blame him for school-funding problems. And so Republicans, who control the entirety of state government, hope to blame Philadelphia Democrats. The state budget is setting up Philly schools for renewed and deepening disaster in September. That means a wave of negative headlines ahead of Election Day. If Republicans further starve Philadelphia schools, students in this city will suffer. It could, however, prove helpful for Democrats in November. Strangely, the fate of Philadelphia students and the state Republican Party now seem closely entwined. â&#x17E;¤ Sad to say, the homeless arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t treated any

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better. Last Sunday, I was biking along Spruce Street just after 5:30 p.m. when a man without either arm tumbled into the street. He was likely homeless, very likely drunk and quite possibly mentally ill. He somehow got himself out of the street and laid down in the middle of the sidewalk. I encouraged him to make his way back to his perch on a nearby stoop, next to a tall boy of Colt 45. I called 911 at 5:41 p.m. and told the dispatcher that the man needed immediate medical attention. He was stumbling and could not speak. As he tried to stand up, his pants kept falling down. Time passed, and it began to rain, but no ambulance was in sight. The man stumbled toward a shirt that was lying on the ground and tried to pick it up with his prosthetic hook. I kept telling him to sit down, and to stay awake. Another spill into the road would be dangerous. I called 911 again at 5:52 p.m. and was told the ambulance was on its way. But when I called again at 6 p.m. something odd happened: I was transferred from 911 to the Fire Department dispatcher, who told me that there was no record of any ambulance having been sent â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but that one was leaving now. I provided the same information for the third time. The man at some point started walking east toward Broad Street, his pants falling to his knees. Fearful for his safety, I followed and watched as he peed against the wall of the Atlantic Building. A security guard employed by Post Brothers, the developers who own the building, emerged and started yelling at him to pull up his pants. I asked the guard not to yell, explaining that he was extremely sick and that I had called an ambulance. Instead, the guard called police, to

whom he complained about both the man and myself â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and then, in a menacing sort of way, berated me. Post Brothers CEO Mike Pestronk wrote me by email that the guard, who works for a contractor, â&#x20AC;&#x153;did not go through proper protocolâ&#x20AC;? and that they â&#x20AC;&#x153;have let all parties know that this behavior was not acceptable.â&#x20AC;? The ambulance finally arrived around 6:10 p.m. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 30 minutes after I first called. The city Fire Department boasts an average response time of 6.5 minutes for medic units. According to the Fire Department, my â&#x20AC;&#x153;first two calls were interpreted and dispatched as a police matter by the police communications staff. The third call was the first call to be transferred to PFD.â&#x20AC;? The ambulance arrived about eight minutes after the Fire

The ambulance finally arrived 30 minutes after the first call. Department received my last call, and transported the man to Hahnemann University Hospital. I do not know his name and, because of medical privacy rules, do not know what happened to him. Why, I asked the Police Department, did two calls that clearly identified a medical emergency get routed to police? Spokesperson Lt. John Stanford told me that police are often dispatched first to deal with the mentally ill or intoxicated. But he says that an error may have been made in this case, and they are investigating. Thirty minutes was too long for a man who, among other things, was at risk of getting hit by a car. Our most vulnerable citizens deserve better. (daniel.denvir@citypaper.net)

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her dad the bottle of morphine and that he should not be taken to the hospital because he wanted to die — that got lumped together to make another key part of the case against her: She gave him his morphine so he would die. Mancini argues she never said that. Cattermole also testified that Mancini had asked her to do something: “To get more morphine because her father had not died yet.” In hospice records, Cattermole wrote that Mancini had told her upon her arrival, “I gave my father the bottle of morphine to drink, all of it, and I need more morphine.” Cattermole also told the ER doctors the same thing, and they recorded in their records that Mancini “actually wanted to have more Roxanol provided,” and it’s in the records of the coroner and police. Mancini says that she never said anything like that: “Complete perjury. It’s a bald-faced lie.” Regardless of what was actually said, which is one person’s word against another, “asked for more morphine” was another key part of the commonwealth’s case. NEAL SANTOS

PART TWO OF TWO

A Bitter End B Y E M I LY G U E N D E L S B E R G E R This story has been split up over two issues because of its length. You can read the whole story online at citypaper.net, or here’s a brief recap of Part I: ON FE B. 7, 201 3 , Barbara Mancini, an emergency room nurse from Roxborough, was in Pottsville taking care of her 93-year-old father, Joseph Yourshaw, who was in pain and frequently said that he wanted to die. He asked her to hand him his bottle of hospice-prescribed morphine, she did, and he drank it. A hospice nurse stopped by about an hour later, and Mancini filled her in on what had happened — that her father had long had a Do Not Resuscitate order on file, and that he didn’t want to go to the hospital. The nurse called 911. Police and paramedics took him to the hospital, where he died four days later. Mancini was charged with a second-degree felony and spent a year fighting it, which cost more than $100,000. Part II focuses on what happened after Yourshaw was taken to the hospital.

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he disagreements about the death of Joseph Yourshaw start when hospice nurse Barbara Cattermole comes by the house about an hour and a half after he swallowed an overdose of morphine. Since the Hospice of Central Pennsylvania (HCP) declined to comment on the part of all its employees, everything from a hospice employee is from testimony at Mancini’s preliminary hearing. A major point in the commonwealth’s case against Mancini was multiple accounts that she’d said she “gave” her father the morphine. Mancini insists she meant “handed.” Cattermole understood it as “administered.” Everyone who heard Cattermole’s account of what happened before they heard Mancini’s understood it to mean “administered,” too — and that includes the hospital, the coroner, the pathologist and the police. The second semantic trouble spot comes from two separate things Mancini says she said to Cattermole and Police Capt. Steven Durkin — that she had given

• •• O P I AT E S L I K E H E R O I N and morphine kill people by essentially relaxing the central nervous system so much that the brain forgets to tell the lungs to keep breathing, called “respiratory arrest.” Guides for how to identify and handle opiate overdoses always say to check for slowed breathing, which is cited variously as between 8 and 12 breaths per minute. Roxanol, the brand-name oral form of morphine Yourshaw had been prescribed, reaches its peak effect after an hour and continues to work for two to four hours. Yourshaw swallowed the Roxanol at 11:30 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2013. Cattermole arrived at the house about an hour and a half later. She wrote in hospice records that during her vitals check, Yourshaw’s respiration was 16 breaths per minute. His respiration had also been recorded at 16 the last time a nurse had seen him two days earlier, which had not been noted as a cause for concern. When Yourshaw arrived at the hospital at 1:50 p.m., it had been more than two hours since he’d ingested the Roxanol. He was out of it, but his respiration was again recorded at 16, though “shallow.” It’s not surprising that the hospital was not treating this as an all-hands-on-deck urgent situation, and didn’t immediately move to treat him until they were able to contact his wife. At 2:35, it’s noted that a hospice nurse (Barbara Cattermole) is present, and records reflect that she filled in the hospital staff with her version of events. “Hospice worker to me stated … that the daughter had given the Roxanol. Do not wish her to be involved and actually wanted to have more Roxanol provided and then asked the Hospice worker to leave.” About this time, three hours after he’d swallowed the drug, Yourshaw’s respiration was recorded at 20. At 2:45, Yourshaw’s charts note, “WIFE AND DAUGHTER AT BEDSIDE PT SNORING AT THIS

TIME.” The daughter was actually a daughter-in-law; Mancini was at the police station, where she was being booked on charges of causing or aiding suicide. At 3 p.m., three and a half hours after he’d swallowed the morphine, Yourshaw’s respiration was recorded at 22. Around that time, Mancini got a call on her cell phone. “I was in the police station sitting next to the guy who arrested me, and my mom calls my cell phone and says, ‘They want me to sign a consent for treatment, what should I do?’” says Mancini. Captain Durkin “overhears this and says, ‘Let me talk to the ER doctor.’ He takes the phone and says to the ER doctor, ‘If he dies now, it’s going to go worse for her.’” “That was my mother’s choice, if you want to call that a choice: Honor my dad’s wishes, or try to help me.” Her mother, Marguerite, signed the permission to treat her husband, and he was given a dose of Narcan at 3:40 p.m. From hospice records: “After patient received dose of Narcan he awoke and was calling out for his daughter Barbara. ‘Don’t let anyone hurt Barbara’ He kept repeating this over and over. He also became agitated.” At 3:50 p.m., his respiration was recorded at 20. Around 4 p.m., more hospice staff shows up, including supervisor Deb Hornberger — she was the nurse Mancini spoke with on the phone on Feb. 1, when she’d called and asked for a morphine prescription. Her father had been suffering more pain and she had finally been able to persuaded him to consider using something more than Tylenol — until then, he’d refused all medications the hospice offered. From hospice records: We proceeded to [Yourshaw’s] room and upon entry, he stated, “Get those foreigners out of here.” His wife stated, “They are not foreigners, they are hospice staff.” The patient stated, “I don’t know them so they are foreigners.” “The hospice people showed up to fill in the ER on my dad’s history,” says Mancini, and “suddenly it appears that my father has a history of dementia and depression. Which he did not, ever.” She finds this very suspicious. The ER admission staff, she knew, wouldn’t have just assumed dementia from the circumstances. “You’re supposed to have a physician diagnose dementia,” says Mancini. “You can’t just write it down.” The attending physician, Dr. Timothy Henninger, writes that the information had come from Cattermole: “According to [her] statement to me, states that the daughter had given him a bottle of Roxanol. … He also has a history [sic] dementia” and that when he’d enrolled in hospice had “seemed a little depressed, but was not suicidal.” Until that point, HCP hadn’t been acting as if Yourshaw had dementia or clinical depression, nor writing it down on his charts. There are notes that he has some memory problems, that he sometimes seems “sad/depressed” and that he’s often grumpy and negative; there are far more consistent notes that say he’s alert and has his judgment intact. And in the

areas where it’s important, he’s treated as competent. He signed his own forms admitting him into hospice, and his physician’s plan of care states “patient may self-administer medications.” And nurse Cattermole allowed him to refuse the e-kit containing all his medicines without consulting with his family. Mancini says after HCP employees spoke with Dr. Henninger, “suddenly dementia appears on that ER record, and then on the hospital records — because what one doctor writes down, the rest write it down afterwards.” HCP, again, declined to answer questions. Mancini suspects the reason the records start stressing dementia and depression only after her father’s overdose is that the hospice was trying to cover its ass. “They realized they’d failed my dad, and I believe that they wanted to divert scrutiny away from their failure and onto me.”

••• THE H O SPI TAL D I D N ’ T have much opportunity to observe Yourshaw’s mental status, anyway — his hour of post-Narcan fury was the storm before the calm. By 6:20, when he was moved from the ER to a patient room and Mancini was allowed to visit, he was unresponsive. By the next morning, Yourshaw’s charts note that he’s semi-comatose and has the beginnings of bedsores. The morning after, he’s developed rhonchi (rattling, snore-like sounds) and wheezes in both his lungs, and the beginnings of a rash around where he’d been catheterized. All of these conditions worsened over the next three days. On the morning of Feb. 11, a chest X-ray revealed that his lungs, which had been clear when he was admitted, were now full of gunk. He was put on a respirator. The attending doctor records telling the family that Yourshaw was not going to make it “because of the respiratory failure and probable aspiration pneumo-

nia.” Attempts to help Yourshaw were stopped at 8 a.m. At 8:39, he “was given morphine for any respiratory distress,” though at a very low dosage. After four days in the hospital, Joseph Yourshaw died at 4:42 that afternoon. The hospital didn’t list an official cause of death; the field was left blank. Dr. Kimberly A. Hashin’s discharge diagnosis: “1. Respiratory failure. 2. Aspiration pneumonia. 3. Drug overdose. 4. Acute on chronic kidney disease. 5. Diabetes mellitus type 2 uncontrolled. 6. Failure to thrive.” It seemed very clear to Mancini that her father had died of pneumonia. At the time of his death, she says, he’d been out of the danger zone for morphine toxicity for days. “You develop pneumonia very quickly in the hospital. He had a high fever, he had a rapid heart rate, junky-sounding lungs,” and other symptoms that signaled pneumonia. “The way a narcotic overdose kills you is you stop breathing. He didn’t! He didn’t stop breathing!” As of 6 p.m., about an hour after Yourshaw’s death, records show that Schuylkill County Coroner Dr. David Moylan had already arrived at the hospital, spoken to the family and viewed the body. He ordered full autopsy and toxicology reports, so it was midJune by the time the final coroner’s report and death certificate were issued. Cause of death: morphine toxicity complicating hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Manner of death: homicide. “When I found out what that death certificate said, I remember saying to my husband, ‘I’m screwed. They’re using me for politics,’” says Mancini.

• •• T H ERE A R E F I V E government-recognized manners of death. There’s natural, accidental continued on page 14

A HAPPY DAY: Barbara Mancini with her parents, Marguerite and Joseph Yourshaw, at her 1988 graduation. OPPOSITE: A portrait of Mancini today. C I T Y PA P E R . N E T | J U L Y 3 - J U L Y 9 , 2 0 1 4 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

“When I ran for coroner, I ran as a pro-life coroner. You might say, ‘What the heck is a pro-life coroner?’” and undetermined. “One that was initiated by the own person, that would be a suicide,” says coroner Moylan. “A homicide is a death that has been influenced by the hand of another person.” Only homicide results in prosecution. In many areas, including Schuylkill County, the coroner is an elected official who isn’t required to be certified as a pathologist or medical examiner, nor have any special medical qualifications. Smaller counties, where there are fewer resources to retain a medical examiner full-time, tend to use the coroner system. In most cases, the coroner outsources the death examination, but retains the right to make the final decision on the cause and manner of death. Dr. Moylan has more medical qualifications than most coroners; he’s an oncologist with degrees from M.I.T. and Georgetown Medical School. But Moylan’s not a medical examiner or pathologist. Two years after being elected Schuylkill County coroner, he set his eyes on an ambitious prize: the U.S. House of Representatives. Moylan, who describes himself as “a constitutional conservative, and proud of it,” in May defeated two opponents in the Republican primary and is now preparing to challenge incumbent Democrat Rep. Matt Cartwright for his seat in Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District in November. Moylan announced his candidacy on the Sam Lesante Show, a conservative-leaning television talk show produced and shown in Northeast Pennsylvania. “What has motivated me to throw my hat in the ring … is the sanctity of human life. That’s why I get up in the morning and go to work, because I believe in trying to extend people’s lives,” Moylan told Lesante. “When I ran for coroner, I ran as a pro-life coroner. “You might say, ‘What the heck is a pro-life coroner?’ It’s important that every decision you make as a coroner to determine the cause and manner of death — how does that affect the sanctity of life? So I’ve done that for the past year and a half.” Moylan, a practicing Roman Catholic, says he believes faith has a place in science, but declined to give specific examples of how his beliefs have directly impacted a cause-and-manner-of-death decision. He says that faith had nothing to do with his judgment in the cause and manner of Yourshaw’s death. “I just read the causes that came from my pathologist, Dr. [Rameen Starling-] Roney. What did the patient die of? Morphine poisoning.” Moylan says

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he also merely agreed with and certified StarlingRoney’s judgment on the manner of death being homicide rather than suicide. “His analysis, after poring through copious records, was that this man died at the hand of another human being. And that’s what was submitted. It had nothing to do with religion.” Moylan says he recalls being at the autopsy, but not what was discussed. The section of the autopsy report dealing with the circumstances of death, which is what Starling-Roney would have been using to determine manner of death, reflects that he made his decision on manner of death based on hearsay that Mancini never had a chance to deny. StarlingRoney notes that Yourshaw “reportedly had suicidal ideations” without saying where that had been reported. Starling-Roney also writes that Yourshaw “asked his daughter (who is a nurse) to give him morphine so he would die,” a phrase she says was mistakenly attributed to her somewhere along the line. Moylan says he has no doubt that his office properly attributed Yourshaw’s manner of death. “Homicide doesn’t mean murder — it could be manslaughter, it could be many things. It just means ‘death at the hand of another human being.’ And that’s what occurred here.”

••• MAN C I N I WAS C H ARG ED with the seconddegree felony of causing or aiding suicide, which carries a potential 10-year prison sentence. She was not interested in cooperating with the prosecutor by entering a plea bargain. “To take a plea bargain, you have to plead guilty to something. And I didn’t feel like I was guilty of anything! So to hell with that!” says Mancini. She says her first attorney “was all about getting a plea bargain” and was surprised by the hard-line stance Senior Deputy Attorney General Anthony Forray took — that Mancini needed to waive her preliminary hearing before a deal could be discussed. (The Attorney General’s Office declined comment for this story.) Forray wrote in an email to Mancini’s first lawyer on June 6, 2013: I have suggested you should waive the Preliminary Hearing … if you want a Preliminary Hearing you have that right. Put this on the front page of the paper and try to

aggressively attack the hospice witnesses, the EMT or the police at a Preliminary Hearing and I guarantee you have a zero chance of a plea resolution. This is a Defendant who is charged with a felony 2. The standard range for conviction is jail time. She has a lot to lose, beyond her nursing license. Mancini didn’t take very well to what she perceived as being pushed around. She got a new lawyer, Fred Fanelli, whom she picked because he’d demonstrated his willingness to fight the state Attorney General’s Office and win. They went ahead with the preliminary hearing, after which they got all her father’s medical records in discovery. “After the preliminary hearing, when [Forray] realized he had some problems with his witnesses, he called my attorney on three separate occasions to talk about a plea bargain,” Mancini says. She still wasn’t interested. “If they were going to pursue this with the vehemence that they did, I was going to fight back tooth and nail,” she says. “I wasn’t going to just lie down and let things happen to me. I’m gonna fight back!”

• ••

T H E R E ’ S S O M E T H I N G N O TA B L E about the transcript of Mancini’s court proceedings — how often the Constitution and Supreme Court are referenced. It sounded very much like the defense was building a record for use in a much higher court. “We would have been prepared to stand by her all the way to the top,” says Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices (C&C), the nation’s biggest, oldest and most influential right-to-die advocacy group, which contributed $20,000 to offset Mancini’s legal defense costs. Coombs Lee says her organization acted merely as “a knowledgeable, interested third party,” but this is a little modest; C&C’s legal affairs and advocacy director, Kathryn Tucker, acted as a consultant to Mancini’s defense, and wrote a “friend of the court” brief in support of her petition for habeas corpus. These briefs are usually written by advocacy groups with big legal budgets, but they’re hardly ever seen as early as a preliminary hearing. Throughout the hearing process, Forray sounds irritated with C&C, saying in the commonwealth’s brief opposing habeas corpus that he “has never encountered a situation where an outside group has been permitted to make such a filing at the trial level,” and that he believes “we are being put in a situation where we have to respond to arguments that should have never been permitted to be raised by anyone other than the attorney hired by the Defendant to represent her.” He further wrote that C&C “has chosen to attempt to make this a ‘media circus,’ by arranging a media event on the day prior to the Preliminary Hearing.” It is almost certainly the reason Forray was granted a gag order preventing all involved from talking to the press until the case was resolved. continued on page 16

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Some significant players in the national battle over end-of-life issues thought this case had a lot of potential. Coombs Lee says that it was Fanelli’s strategy to start raising constitutional implications early and often, but that it was “a good call — this has been litigated at the level of the Supreme Court,” which ruled “that people have a right to as much medication as it takes to relieve their own suffering at the end of life, even if the consequence is abbreviation of that life.” This is also a little misleadingly modest. The case Coombs Lee is referring to, plus a few others that set important precedents, was argued before the Supreme Court by Tucker for a past iteration of C&C. In short, some very significant players in the national battle over end-of-life issues thought that this case had a lot of potential, right from the beginning. “I think everybody understood that this was a big case — not only because of Barbara Mancini’s personal jeopardy, but also because of precedents in Pennsylvania,” says Coombs Lee. “These questions — How am I going to die? Will I be able to have the medication that I need? Will my decisions jeopardize my family? — are hot-button items for a generation of baby boomers as we deal with our parents and think about ourselves. I think there was a widespread understanding that a high-level appeal would be a teachable moment for the nation.”

••• BUT, OF COURSE, the case didn’t get to the appeals process, because it didn’t even make it to trial. Judge Jacqueline Russell ruled that the prosecution’s case relied on “little independent investigation, significant hearsay, including double hearsay received from third persons, speculation, guess and defendant’s alleged incriminating statements” too much for her to conclude that Joseph Yourshaw’s death had even been a crime. The commonwealth’s case had been this, as taken from Forray’s closing statements at the preliminary hearing: This was a lot more than simply handing a bottle of medicine to someone. … There was no morphine in the home. Who was responsible for requesting the morphine to be in the home? The defendant. The defendant, on the day in question, indicates that she handed him the bottle because he wanted to die. She’s an RN. She knows the

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effect of morphine. … She very much knows exactly what she wants to do and goes ahead and does it. And … the most compelling evidence from Nurse Cattermole when the bottle didn’t do the trick, she wanted Nurse Cattermole to get more morphine to do the trick. The next time the two sides argue in front of a judge, at the habeas corpus hearing, even the dry formality of a court transcript can’t hide how much this sounds like something out of a corny TV legal drama. There are interruptions! Stammering! The surprise introduction of game-changing evidence! The new evidence was the hospice doctor’s initial, undelivered morphine prescription that the prosecution had overlooked. F AN EL L I : I studied those hospice records, and I’m telling the Court as an officer of the court that … Opioids were prescribed for Mr. Yourshaw … in advance of the phone call by Miss Mancini to the hospice people. If I’m wrong, then counsel should have no objection to that because the records will prove him right; but if I’m right, then the Court should have all of the information before relying on the inference by Mr. Forray that Miss Mancini on her own was seeking out opioids … to assist her father in causing his own death. MR. F O RRAY: Your Honor, as I stand here, I’m not aware of that information; and, again, based on the testimony of the hospice nurse, the team leader, she apparently was unaware of that information either. So as an officer of the court I’m telling the Court I don’t know that that information does or doesn’t exist. F AN EL L I : [I]t’s right in the record. I’m not making it up, and I don’t doubt for one second Mr. Forray may not have read this, OK, but it’s there. Eventually Judge Russell asks to see the records. Fanelli passes up Yourshaw’s admission plan of care from 2013, with the original morphine prescription highlighted. The next thing recorded is: T H E C O U RT : Do you want to continue with your argument at this point in time, is that what you’d like to do?

Fanelli says yes and rattles off his defense arguments, but from then on, it feels like a football game in which one team is up by 50 points at halftime. “It seems to me that the total substance of this case against my client is her alleged statements as to what she thought and what her father thought,” Fanelli said. Judge Russell agreed. But Fanelli’s final point was about a larger-scope issue that, since the case was thrown out, still remains unaddressed: That the statute Mancini was charged with violating was too vague. “There are so many problems with this statute that need to be addressed and fixed legislatively after it’s declared unconstitutional,” said Fanelli. Why did Attorney General Kathleen Kane approve the aggressive pursuit of such a loser of a case for so long? It’s unclear. Even opponents of assisted suicide were puzzled. “It is odd to see one like this prosecuted,” one told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, then worrying that the publicity this was getting might screw up their efforts with cases “that really call out to be prosecuted.” Kane’s office declined to comment about the case for this article, and hasn’t spoken about it at all since Russell’s ruling was handed down. All Kane said, as a defensive-sounding postscript to the press release announcing that her office wouldn’t appeal Russell’s ruling: “If the citizens of the Commonwealth disagree with an existing statute, it is incumbent upon the people to work with the General Assembly to amend the law. Until amendment occurs, it is the legal responsibility of prosecutors to enforce the law as it currently exists.” In other words — get off my back.

• •• P E N N S Y LVA N I A S TAT E S E N. Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery Co.) has been trying to amend the law for years; since 2008, he’s introduced the Death With Dignity Act three times. His interest in the subject, he says, started when he watched his brother-in-law Taylor die a painful death from lymphoma at 42. From Leach’s Senate memo introducing the act: “If any pet owner in America had forced a dog or cat to endure what Taylor had to endure, he would have been charged with animal cruelty. Yet human beings are, under current law in Pennsylvania, condemned to suffer unspeakable agony with no legal recourse. I believe this has to change.” But change is slow in coming. “What happened is what happens with almost all legislation in the [state] Senate, which is that it’s introduced, and then it lies in quiet repose in the committee until the end of session, at which point it dies and has to be reintroduced. We don’t pass much of anything, really, and we move even less that’s controversial.” Leach laughs ruefully. “It’s not like there’s some big-money lobby behind it. So we just have to rely on, at some point, someone who’s in a position to move [the bill] having continued on page 18

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a situation in their own life, or a situation that they’ve heard about, that makes them decide this is important to discuss.” Leach remains really invested in the issue. “It makes you think about what you’d want if you were in that position — what would you want your options to be? Who would you want to make the decisions? And I think almost nobody wants the government to make those decisions.” The first state to pass aid-in-dying legislation was Oregon; its 1996 Death With Dignity Act “allows terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose.” Since then, Washington and Vermont have passed similar legislation. (Aid in dying is also legal in Montana, and New Mexico via court decisions.) The New Jersey state assembly will vote on another measure in the next month or two. Leach’s act “was based on the Oregon one, which has survived Supreme Court scrutiny and is clearly constitutional,” he says. In it, a terminally ill patient could access medicine that would end his life painlessly without needing to lie about his intentions or putting his family at legal risk. There would be many hoops to jump through first: “Two separate doctors — one can be a treating physician, and one would have to be an independent doctor — would have to sign a report saying that the patient has less than six months to live” before that patient would be eligible to ask for the prescription. “It’s important to know what happens in reality with this,” adds Leach. Oregon’s act requires the state to “collect information about the patients and physicians who participate in the Act, and publish an annual statistical report,” so the data from there is particularly thorough. And only 71 of the 122 lethal prescriptions written in Oregon in 2013 were actually used. “When things get really bad, just knowing they have options gives people the strength to hang in there,” says Leach. “Many people who go through the trouble of getting the medication never take it. Others who do take it — in most cases, they get it six months out, four months out, but they don’t take it until the last couple of days” of their lives. The average person in Oregon who gets one of the prescriptions is white, better-educated than average and dying of cancer, with a median age of 71. A tiny number said they were taking this course because of the potential cost of treatment; nearly all cited the same things Joseph Yourshaw talked about: Loss of autonomy, loss of dignity, being unable to do the things that give life meaning. Leach says opponents of aid in dying often bring up such what-if hypotheticals that rarely happen in practice, but the root of their opposition is deeper. “Most people, the real reason they’re opposed to it, at the end of the day, is religion.” Believing that ending one’s own life is a sin no matter what the circumstances is fine, he says. “But I don’t know why anyone

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has the right to use the power of the state to force their religious views on other people.â&#x20AC;? Leaving Pennsylvaniaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s law as vague as it is, Leach says, means thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always a risk that what happened to Mancini will happen to someone else. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The charges against her were dropped, but she had to go through an awful lot. And we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want family members who are trying to help their loved ones being subjected to the sort of things Mancini was subjected to.â&#x20AC;?

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MAN C I N I R E TUR NE D T O her job in the ER of Lankenau hospital on April 28, after nine months of unpaid leave. She eased back into it with shorter hours, but is now back to working regular shifts. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gone really well, better than Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d expected,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I just didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be able to handle doing it. And when I went back, it was almost as if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d never left. She was offered her job back almost immediately after her charges were dismissed. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ready to return right away. I stayed out another two months because â&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;? she pauses. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Honestly, I went to counseling, â&#x20AC;&#x2122;cause I felt I needed some help before I went back. Working in an ER is a fairly high-stress environment, and I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to risk messing up. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Being away for nine months, I thought Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have forgotten how to start an IV â&#x20AC;&#x201D; turns out I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any problem with that. I had my insecurities just because of what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been through, but it ended up being just fine,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everybodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been very supportive and understanding, and horrified by what happened. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is not a day that goes by that I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think about this. And sometimes I spend a lot of time â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it intrudes on my life, all the time,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m trying to move on with my life. But the way my dad died â&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;? she pauses. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t imagine that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll ever get over that. Maybe itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible someday, but it seems unimaginable to me right now.â&#x20AC;? (emilyg@citypaper.net)

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reeltalk By Sam Adams

LIFE ITSELF

[ B+ ] ALTHOUGH ROGER EBERT was still undergoing treatment for cancer when Steve James began filming his documentary on the great film critic, Life Itself was transformed into a memorial by Ebert’s death in April 2013. But James’ film is less like a eulogy than a wake, a commemoration of his living spirit rather than a meditation on his loss. James owes at least a chunk of his career to the way Ebert and Gene Siskel took up the cause of his documentary, Hoop Dreams, on their TV show, but Life Itself isn’t hagiography. Ebert went into the hospital shortly after James began to film, but rather than cutting off contact, Ebert encouraged him to keep the cameras rolling; at times, he motions James closer, or scribbles on the pad he used after he lost the ability to speak the equivalent of “Make sure you get this.” Perhaps he suspected it would be James’ only chance to capture him, or maybe he knew it would be riveting on screen. Ebert’s absence from much of the filming removes the push-pull quality between filmmaker and subject that enlivens James’ best work, especially 2002’s Stevie. The movie’s most engaging sections challenge the myths that have grown ever-larger since Ebert’s passing, including one exploring his contentious relationship with his late TV partner. Rather than diminishing either, the testimony from their respective widows enlarges them both, filling in the bodies attached to their iconic thumbs. For Ebert, movies were inextricable from life; no matter what his subject, he was always, on some level, writing about himself. That quality percolates through Life Itself, a sense that whether it’s talking about his friendship with Werner Herzog or his struggle with alcoholism, one is never far from the other. It’s a loving portrait, but not blindly so, and, perhaps most importantly, a movie Ebert himself would surely have embraced. Opens at Ritz Five on Fri., July 4. (s_adams@citypaper. net) 20 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

SNAP TO IT: Saxon Palmer and Raviv Ullman in Deathtrap at the Bucks County Playhouse. MANDEE KUENZLE

curtaincall By David Anthony Fox

BUCKS IS BACK ➤ WHEN I LAST VISITED the Bucks County Playhouse (BCP) — in

August 2002, to review a production of Camelot — I felt sadly certain I wouldn’t be going back. Though the show had charm, it was one step away from community theater, with scenery and costumes that might have been borrowed from the local high school. The Playhouse was in dire need of a physical and artistic overhaul. It was a far cry from Bucks County’s glory days as a major regional venue. Since it opened in 1939, the Playhouse had boasted casts that included Helen Hayes, George C. Scott, Julie Harris, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, Robert Redford, Bernadette Peters and many more. Important plays were presented there in important productions. And its setting in New Hope, backed by the Delaware River, is one of the loveliest of any theater in America. All this seemed destined to be lost in 2010, when BCP closed its doors. But this is the (too rare) theater story with a happy ending. Through the heroic efforts of a number of important theater people — they include Tyne Daly and producer Jed Bernstein — the Playhouse was renovated and re-opened in July 2012. Even better, under the current leadership — producing director Alex Fraser, executive producer Robyn Goodman — the BCP is

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also aiming to recapture its centrality as an important venue. Playhouse leadership is accomplishing this through a savvy twopronged strategy that harkens back to its earliest days. On one hand, they’re setting themselves up as a tryout house, where potential producers can see how plays work in production before possibly bringing them to Broadway. (Terrence McNally’s Mothers and Sons, starring Tyne Daly, is one recent example.) The other strategy involves old-fashioned crowd-pleasers, for which the summer months are ideally suited. Fraser and Goodman are putting significant resources into these productions, including some stellar actors. Through July 13, you can see Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, featuring the redoubtable Marsha Mason. Then, beginning on July 17, they’ll be scoring a real coup — Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike, winner of the 2013 Tony for best play, will take the stage — with the author in the wonderfully rich role of Vanya. Also in the cast is Marilu Henner, who ought to be sensational as the self-centered but delightful Masha. For Durang, this is playing for the home team — he is a longtime resident of Bucks County. For the audience, it’s a home run. (david_fox@citypaper.net)

Shakespeare this summer: Read at citypaper.net/arts

✚ Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., New Hope, Pa., 215-862-2121, bcptheater.org.

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movie

shorts

FILMS ARE GRADED BY CITY PAPER CRITICS A-F.

Begin Again

✚ NEW BEGIN AGAIN A haiku: Love blossoms between an electric eel and a pile of laundry. (Not reviewed) (Ritz East)

LIFE ITSELF | B+ See Sam Adams’ review on p. 20. (Ritz Five) SNOWPIERCER A haiku: Is this really a movie about a train that outruns climate change? (Not reviewed) (The Roxy)

THIRD PERSON A haiku: Look at the poster. She is totally pooping papers out her butt. (Not reviewed) (Ritz Five)

YVES SAINT LAURENT A haiku: A French fashion star’s lifelong quest to design the ultimate pantsuit. (Not reviewed) (Ritz at the Bourse)

✚ CONTINUING CHEF | B+ Little details make a big difference in Jon Favreau’s searingly sincere peek into the insecure world of modern chefs,

where passion and creativity fight for breath amid a crush of egos as puffy as well-set soufflés. It’s the feel-good movie version of a proper Reuben: The second it’s dropped in front of you, you know exactly what it’s going to taste like, and you are happy about it. A former hotshot who’s lost direction but refuses to admit it, Carl Casper (writer/director Favreau) walks out on his cantankerous boss (Dustin Hoffman) after a brutal writeup from a wide-reaching web critic (Oliver Platt). The chef, who’s got all the markings (knife tattoo) and habits (sipping agua from quart containers) of a longtime burner ballerina, begins a viral Twitter spat with the reviewer and later parlays the buzz into a food truck he hopes will coax him back into relevance. L.A. restaurateur Roy Choi, brought in as a consultant, lends an energy and credibility to Favreau’s kitchen scenes, nailing the coarse vernacular and emphasizing a reality food movies often fudge: Cooking’s a lot of damn work. There’s never any question whether or not cheffy will get his groove back, but the predictability of the proceedings is tempered by the growth of Casper’s bond with his young son (Emjay Anthony), who’s eager to pick up pop’s trade. Favreau mostly avoids culinary cliché by reminding us that many sets of human hands are responsible for what’s placed on your plate. —Drew Lazor (Ritz East)

EDGE OF TOMORROW | B Blessed with more vigor and personality than director Doug Liman’s last swing at sci-fi, 2008’s flaccid Jumper, Liman’s latest has plenty of special effects, with polished CGI bringing mechanized soldiers, plus the nasty alien race they hate, to scrappy life. There are no star-power issues, either, with Tom Cruise making large-toothed Tom Cruise-y faces all over the place. But it’s the storytelling that’s ultimately responsible for C I T Y PA P E R . N E T | J U L Y 3 - J U L Y 9 , 2 0 1 4 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

the movie’s kiddish allure, combining the infinite-lives appeal of a shoot-’emup video game with a military puzzle pandering to armchair strategists. Sometime in the non-specific future, Earth is colonized by hostile invaders known as “Mimics,” ghastly tentacled monsters that make landfall in Western Europe. A pretty-boy PR officer with no actual fighting experience, Maj. William Cage (Cruise) bristles when the supreme general (Brendan Gleeson) forces him onto the frontlines of a massive Normandy-like beach siege to “sell the invasion” to the public. Shanghai’d for resisting the order, he’s thrown into live combat by Kentucky-fried master sergeant (Bill Paxton) and promptly dies a bloody death. That’s not a spoiler: The second he perishes, the day inexplicably reboots to the very beginning of his service, giving him the opportunity to improve — and bolster the chances of unlikely war hero Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) uncovering, and destroying, the source of the Mimics’ power. Conceptually, Edge has a bit in common with Duncan Jones’ 2011 sleeper Source Code, focusing on an investigator who’s somehow able to use time as a treadmill en route to a shrouded endgame. Liman, however, is more nimble in his efforts to sidestep redundancy, even managing to have a little fun at his own expense. —DL (Wide release)

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS | B Like raw onions, the TV show Parenthood or your mean aunt’s predilection for pinching your arm fat, The Fault in Our Stars is not just likely to make you cry — those tears are backed by science. Yet what separates the YA cancer romance from other weepfests is not the

depth of the melancholic lows, but the personal, palpable highs ballasting the other side of the scale. Smart, cynical Hazel (Shailene Woodley), strapped to an oxygen tank 24/7 ever since thyroid cancer spread to her lungs, is encouraged to attend a support group by her upbeat parents. Here she meets Augustus (Ansel Elgort), a former athlete who lost his leg to osteosarcoma, and the pair embarks upon the borderline-obsessive brand of a teenage love affair anyone who’s been a teenager is familiar with. When their characters are finally forced to spar with eventuality, Woodley and Elgort offer some of their strongest, saddest work. If it feels like they’re trying exceptionally hard to bandsaw your most fragile emotions, they are. Don’t feel bad for feeling worse — this is what they trained for. —DL (The Roxy)

JERSEY BOYS | C Clint Eastwood’s attempt to turn a smash jukebox musical into a Coke Zero version of Goodfellas with singsong interludes comes off just as stilted as you might expect, and not even jolting performances from the magnetic quartet in question can salvage the film. Tracing the Four Seasons’ rise to American pop royalty from their felonious beginnings outside Newark, Jersey Boys, on paper, is an Alger tale that carries a mean tune. Encouraged to take the stage by his street-hustler pal Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza), Frankie Valli (Tony winner John Lloyd Young) is the kid with the magic falsetto, which carried DeVito and his other bandmates (Michael Lomenda and Erich Bergen) to multiple number-one hits and decades of chart dominance. But that radio-friendly output was made

possible by a slew of shady supporters, from avuncular mob boss Gyp DeCarlo (Christopher Walken) to the hardcore loan sharks who preyed on DeVito’s poor judgment. The split between the band’s scrubbed-clean image and the back-alley dealings that put them in front of the public is the most compelling aspect of the Seasons’ history, but Eastwood sees no virtue in balance, allowing his signature drab palette to creep so far into the storytelling that it becomes more about shadows than sound. —DL (Wide release)

IDA | AStark and stone-faced, director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida reveals itself slowly. At first, it appears to be a near-silent Bressonian drama set in a Polish convent. But then Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young, pretty novitiate, is called before the mother superior, who encourages her to visit her only living relative before taking her vows. Thus Anna meets Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a former state prosecutor who informs her niece that her name is not Anna but Ida, she’s Jewish, and her parents were killed during the Nazi occupation. The pair set off on a road trip to find their graves, giving Anna her first exposure to the outside world, including “carnal thoughts,” anti-Semitism and John Coltrane. The Paris-based Pawlikowski, returning to his native country for the first time in his career, keeps the focus on the two women and the subtle ways in which their journey changes them. At first they’re bemused by one other; Wanda stifles laughter at her niece’s innocence, while Ida reacts to her aunt’s cynicism and provocations with the self-satis-

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WWW.CITYPAPER.NET/WIN No purchase necessary. Admit two passes will be available while supplies last. Note that passes received through this promotion do not guarantee you a seat at the theatre. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis, except for members of the reviewing press. Theatre is overbooked to ensure a full house. No admittance once screening has begun. All federal, state and local regulations apply. Recipient of tickets assumes any and all risks related to use of ticket and accepts any restrictions required by ticket provider 20th Century Fox and their affiliates accept no responsibility or liability in connection with any loss or accident incurred in connection with use of a prize. Tickets cannot be exchanged, transferred or redeemed for cash, in whole or in part. We are not responsible if, for any reason, winner is unable to use his/her ticket in whole or in part. Void where prohibited by law. Participating sponsors, their employees and family members and their agencies are not eligible. No phone calls. DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is rated PG-13.

IN THEATERS JULY 11 www.dawnofapes.com

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faction of the genuinely faithful. These small gestures are indicative of the film’s tone, which faces unfathomable horror with subtle grace, making its conclusions all the more harrowingly resonant. —Shaun Brady (Ritz Five)

THE IMMIGRANT | B+ James Gray’s evocative period piece follows Marion Cotillard’s wayward Pole through the golden door and onto the mean streets of Manhattan where she quickly falls prey to Joaquin Phoenix’s mercurial wheeler-dealer. Gray doesn’t spare the portentous symbolism (see the prostitute garbed as Lady Liberty for proof), but he’s working in an old-fashioned idiom that supports it. The film’s classicism can be stifling — it has a touch of the self-willed masterpiece about it — but it falls away when Jeremy Renner comes on the scene as a stage magician whose dedication to sleight of hand makes him paradoxically honest. The movie’s centerpiece, a pageant for quarantined deportees at Ellis Island, is a tragic encapsulation of the American Dream in all its chimerical promise, part aspiration, part lie — and one of the most thrilling sequences in recent memory. —Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse) OBVIOUS CHILD | B As statements of purpose go, it’s hard to beat the one that opens Gillian Robespierre’s first feature, where comedian Jenny Slate regales an audience with a standup routine about vaginal secretions. But where a movie like 22 Jump Street marshals gross-out humor for its own sake, Robespierre’s simply marking out her territory: This is a movie about what goes on down there;

[ movie shorts ]

those with fragile sensibility need not apply. Slate’s Donna is a go-nowhere protagonist whose already-tenuous existence is wobbling as she approaches 30. But the movie is uncharacteristically frank about Donna’s situation, especially when she accidentally gets pregnant during a one-night stand and quickly decides to have an abortion — too quickly, in fact: She has to wait two weeks until the fetus is far enough along to abort. It’s less an achievement of the film’s than a sad commentary on the culture surrounding it that this is even remotely notable, and to her credit, Robespierre doesn’t treat Donna’s decision as a wrenching dilemma: She’s single, semi-employed and practically bankrupt; what else would (or should) she do? But if Donna’s choice is an easy one, it doesn’t make much sense to use it to frame the film as a whole, which therefore lacks much in the way of dramatic tension or anything beyond low-grade moping around. Robespierre wants to steer clear of off-the-shelf self-actualization, but she doesn’t replace it with anything. Fortunately, Slate proves a winning companion; it’s a hang-out movie, and she’s fun to hang out with. —SA (Ritz Five)

citypaper.net/events

events LISTINGS@CITYPAPER.NET | JULY 3 - JULY 9

[ the people in the neighborhood love it ]

WHERE SHOULD WE LOOK?: The Crookes play The Barbary on Tuesday. JAMES DODD

Events is our selective guide to what’s going on in the city this week. For comprehensive event listings, visit citypaper.net/events. IF YOU WANT TO BE LISTED: Submit information by email (listings@ citypaper.net) or enter it yourself at citypaper.net/submit-event with the following details: date, time, address of venue, telephone number and admission price. Incomplete submissions will not be considered, and listings information will not be accepted over the phone.

7.3

weirdest a couple years ago: “I’m nasty like Jabba having a baby by Snooki.” Oh man, that is nasty. Horrible, really. Kinda fogs up your head for awhile, like a bad dream. The point is, Kass has a way with words. Tonight the HRSMN/Golden State Warriors alum plays Philly for the first time in a while. —Patrick Rapa

7.4

thursday

friday

[ hip-hop ]

[ concert/fireworks ]

RAS KASS

FOURTH OF JULY JAM

$7-$10 | Thu., July 3, 11 p.m., with The Other Elements, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215291-4919, kungfunecktie.com.

FREE | Fri., July 4, 7-11 p.m., Benjamin Franklin Parkway, welcomeamerica.com.

The hip-hop galaxy is aswirl with insane boasts, but veteran L.A. spitter Ras Kass dropped one of the all-time

Last year, while panic-running up the Parkway alongside a couple hundred fellow Philadelphians — what set us off? Cops running in the other

direction — I muttered that familiar phrase we all mutter several times in our lives: This is absolutely the last time I go to the Fourth of July Jam. So we take a couple years off. Maybe watch it on TV. Gradually we forget the crowds, the traffic, the mud, the garbage dunes, the amateur displays of bottle rocketry. And we give it another shot. Though I realize we’re not all on the same schedule. If this is your year to relearn the lesson and once again brave the company of your fellow human beings, you have chosen a pretty good one. The Roots, of course, will be there, as will host Marlon Wayans, pop/hip-hop superstar Nicki Minaj, actress/singer Jennifer Hudson and British ginger-songwriter Ed Sheeran, along with Aloe Blacc and Ariana Grande, about whom more information is available via google.com, most likely.

Fireworks follow the music. All told, a sweet evening of free entertainment. Are you sure this is absolutely the last time you go to the Fourth of July Jam? —Patrick Rapa

7.5 saturday [ galleries ]

PHILADELPHIA TRUCK EXPO FREE | Sat.-Sun., July 5-6, 6 p.m., Crane Arts Icebox Project Space, 1400 N. American St., 215-2323203, cranearts.com. As if pickup trucks weren’t beautiful enough, Crane Arts Icebox Project Space curators Timothy Belknap and Ryan McCartney present the second installment of their off-thewall exhibition Philadelphia Truck Expo. From a pool of

open submissions, the curators have chosen 10 or so artists to build large-scale, unique art pieces installed directly into the beds of pickup trucks. On July 5, artists and representatives from galleries and Philly organizations roll into the Icebox Space with their unique takes on the prompt, and attendees are encouraged to ogle the popped-hoods or to sit behind the wheel of the art pieces. One artist, Mark Rice, has installed a mini travel-trailer to the back of his pickup that he converted into a makeshift craft store, where he will be selling his own handmade art pieces for $1 to $12 a pop. In the 2012 expo, each truck bed housed interactive artworks, including video projections. This year’s exhibition promises even bigger and better works that are undeniably Built Tough. —Maggie Grabmeier

7.8 tuesday [ rock/pop ]

THE CROOKES $12 | Tue., July 8, 6:30 p.m., with Young Buffalo, The Barbary, 951 Frankford Ave., 215-634-7400, thebarbary.org. Sheffield, England has a reputation for producing handsome post-punk originals. Take Clock DVA and the Human League (not “Don’t You Want Me” Human League, but rather the “Being Boiled” Human League). You can add the gloomily romantic Crookes to that list, with the release of its most recent album, Soapbox (Fierce Panda Records), in 2014. Like a sad, louder version of the Smiths (without Morrissey’s Tennessee Williams tendencies), the art-jangle guitar-pop quartet

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[ events ]

askpapa

E VA N M . L O P E Z

By Ernest Hemingway

Celebr ating Americ an Craft Beer and Classi c Arcade Games

Monday to Friday: Happy Hour Special 1/2 Off Small Plates

PENNSYLVANIA BREWERIES NIGHT!-7/17

BARCADE .COM

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➤ TIME TO SPEND Hi Papa: I’m getting married. I think a big wedding’s a waste of money because we’re just paying for our friends to get hammered. But my fiancée really wants one. What should I do? —Cheap Bastard Bastard: I have been married many times and I never found any success fighting with a woman before the wedding. You should save it for later when you are trying to have a drink with a friend and she is trying to get you to come home. Then you can tell her, “You have already taken everything from me. Leave me be.” It is not worth it to fight about this. If you do not give her what she wants, she will take it. That is what women do. At least this way you get a drink or two out of it. Dear Papa: I just moved and met my new neighbor. He’s a very friendly guy who’s always there to say hello — in fact he’s too friendly, which is the problem. Every time I leave the house I have to extract myself from a 20 minute conversation ranging from nothing to his specific ailments. What’s the best way to let him know that I love to chat with him but sometimes I have things to do? —Friendly in Fishtown Fishtown: Is your neighbor an old man or a young man? Old men carry their despair with them and there is nothing you can do besides hear them out, at least for a short while. He might talk about having gout from eating rich foods or how his wife has left him because he never gave her a proper wedding. To interrupt or break it short would be rude and it wouldn’t change anything anyway because we both know that old men do not stop talking until they are dead. If he is a young man, though, and he delays you on your way to some business or a bar, slap him on the back, smile and tell him, “You talk too damn much.” (askpapa@citypaper.net)

NOW OPEN!!!!!

Hemingway communicates with writer Alli Katz via Ouija board. Send her your questions for him.

f&d

foodanddrink

feedingfrenzy By Caroline Russock

➤ NOW SEATING

Good Stuff Eatery | Season 4 Top Chef-contestant Spike Mendelsohn is expanding his D.C.based burger mini empire, Good Stuff Eatery, to Rittenhouse. With an eye toward sustainability and a good lookin’ selection of burgers (beef, turkey and portobello) and wedge salads (classic, American, Greek or Caesar), Good Stuff also boasts a killer toasted marshmallow milkshake complete with charred flecks of ’mallow. Open Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-11 p.m., Sun., 12 p.m.-8 p.m. 108 S. 18th St., goodstuffeatery.com. K-Top | Although K-Top bills itself as an Asian fusion restaurant, a place to make a night of it might be a more apt description. On the ground floor, the menu is heavy on Korean dishes, with kimchi jigae and baby octopus dolsot, but venture further and you’ll find a selection of Chinese, Japanese and Thai plates as well. Upstairs K-Top is kitted out with plenty of private karaoke suites, where the hourly prices drop depending on the size of your food-and-booze tab. Bonus points, K-Top is open until 3 a.m. on weeknights and 4 a.m. on weekends. Open Mon.-Thu., 4 p.m.-3 a.m.;Fri., 4 p.m.-4 a.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.- 4 a.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-3 a.m. 911 Race St. 267-909-9306 k-top911.com. ➤ LOOKING FORWARD

SouthStar Lofts | Carl Dranoff’s SouthStar Lofts, at Broad and South streets, is going to be home to two exciting new eateries. The first is Juniper Commons, the latest from Kevin Sbraga. According to Sbraga, “It’s going to be a fun, casual American restaurant with a throwback to the ’80s.” An ’80s throwback? We’re pretty sure he’s not talking about raspberry vinaigrette and Jell-O Pudding Pops. First word on the street was that Juniper Commons was going to be a rotisserie spot, but Sbraga says it’s a little too early to make any assumptions. Sbraga’s neighbors at SouthStar are going to be Doug Quint and Bryan Petroff of New York’s Big Gay Ice Cream. The pair started out serving chocolate and dulce de leche-dipped soft-serve — the Salty Pimp — from a food truck five years ago before moving into brick-and-mortar digs in Manhattan, L.A. and now Philly. Got A Tip? Please send restaurant news to restaurants@ citypaper.net or call 215-735-8444, ext. 207.

MELON GAZPACHO: Canary and lemon drop melons are buzzed into a purée with cucumber, sherry vinegar and garlic scape. The beaker of soup is poured tableside over a bowl of compressed melon beads, avocado and fried bread crumbs. NEAL SANTOS

[ review ]

CHARLIE’S ANGEL Upscale cocktails and innovative plates, all vegan, at Charlie was a sinner. By Adam Erace CHARLIE WAS A SINNER|131 S. 13th St., 267-758-5372, char-

liewasasinner.com. Daily, 4 p.m.- 2 a.m. Plates, $7-$12.

don’t talk about Charlie,” Nicole Marquis demurs — somewhat theatrically. Figures. She was an actor and Shakespeare scholar before opening Hip City Veg, the vegan fast-casual precursor to her new venture, a sultry full-service restaurant and cocktail den with an enigmatic name: Charlie was a sinner. “It just popped into my head. I thought, that is so incredibly random, yet for some reason I totally had a story in my mind for who this was,” she says. Someone with poor capitalization and punctuation skills? You’d think, but when prodded, Marquis alludes to an ex who broke her heart. “It’s complicated” she says. What’s not complicated is why Charlie is worth your time even if you’re not vegan. With a menu by Mike Santoro — his role has evolved from collaborator to legit exec chef since saying R.I.P. to the Mildred — and drinks in vintage-cut crystal by Pete Venuto, a veteran of Starr’s Ranstead Room and Dandelion, Charlie joins Vedge as the city’s second serious plant-food place. What this restaurant has that Vedge does not is Marquis, a smooth-as-butter

“

hostess floating between guests and staff, shaking hands and running food. She’s Charlie’s angel. What Vedge does have is a staff that knows what they’re doing. I felt like an intruder when I drifted in one morning — Charlie was open at 8 a.m. until new hours took effect last week — for a mug of Stumptown’s Holler Mountain blend (with almond milk) and a gooey vegan cinnamon bun (the only option) at the empty bar. At dinner another day, a runner set down a bowl of polenta and called it gazpacho, while my server told me Mezcal Buck contained tequila. Does the gin martini also contain rum? The sunchokes in papillote made a dramatic entrance in a steam-filled balloon of food-grade cellophane. But the way the runner cut it open with a pair of kitchen shears … let’s just say you would not want him doing surgery on you. Our hostess was sweet and as peachy as a Georgia bake sale, but it took a long time to be greeted by our server. It took forever to get drinks. It also took forever to get our bucatini with meatballs South Philly marinara — this South Philly kid approves — and wheat-gluten meatballs, the final course that came 20 minutes after everything else. We waited a long time for the check. There appeared to be an event going on, but that’s no excuse. Train your staff, restaurateurs. Train your staff. When the cocktails did arrive, they helped. Barring a few requisite brown-liquor elixirs — farro-infused old fashioned, anyone?