Bad Marketing Ideas

Believe it or not, only one of these is a fake. Can you guess which? I'll give you a hint, it's not the one that bought advertising time during Project Runway (raise of eyebrow).

Kant '08

Bobofag proudly admits that he was once a nerdy philosophy minor in college. His thinking still occasionally drifts toward the metaphysic and epistemic. So he did laugh most heartily when he saw this attack ad on youtube. Good Kantian that he is, Bobfag does not endorse it's contents:

Bobofag loves Frank Gehry.

I made my first pilgrimage to the Walt Disney Concert Hall last night, and it provided me as close to religious sensations as a secular gayboy can hope for. I was in no secret way obsessed with Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim museum ever since I first saw pictures of it in the 90's. Whether one viewed it as the climax and pinnacle of the 20th Century's Architectural Narrative or the Beginning of the 21st's (for surely it was one of those two) The Guggenheim was, by any measure, breathtaking. Though I have not had the good fortune to see Bilbao's great new tourist attraction, I had been chomping at the bit to go inside Gehry's Concert Hall in downtown LA, a building that was planned before the Guggenheim and resembles the structure in style and material. At least on the outside. Before last night I knew I loved the Concert Hall's exterior: an elegant and disorienting scrap of tangled silver metal which looks entirely different from any particular vantage point. More enlightening however than playing peek-a-boo Rashomon with the outside is stepping into the Hall itself. My fears that the Concert Hall was just "Guggenheim-lite" were totally unfounded.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall may be the best place in the world to listen to orchestral music, period. (I say "orchestral" because referring to the entirety of symphonic music as "classical" does a disservice to both the music and the listener. The Classical period is a specific time in music history sandwiched between the Baroque and the Romantic. Smothering centuries of musical history with the fusty title of "Classical" can only serve to further keep the fine arts in the realm of the pretentious bourgeoisies, divorced from the life of the proles below. No doubt some would have it that way, but only because their enjoyment of "classical music" is predicated by the sense of superiority they receive by listening to it. I'll have none of it. I will not partake in pushing, though nomenclature alone, average people away from enjoying amazing works of art. The ticket prices do a good enough job of keeping the riff-raff out, no? But I digress...) If Bilbao is anyone near as effective a place to see works of art as The Disney Concert Hall is a place to hear great works of music it would have to be a gallery in competition with the Louvre and MOMA.

The first thing that strikes you about the room is it's warmth; light, smooth wood is everywhere and the fabric pattern on the seats is floral and decorative-tres Californian too. The orchestra is seated in what feels like the rooms center, with audience all around. In actuality it's probably about a fourth closer to the "back" wall with more audience facing the conductors back than his face-as it should be. The ceiling is devoid of sharp angles, the whole space above you curves and undulates-it looks like it's morphing. The effect is perfect and conceptual too; after all, what is music but waves? Behind the orchestra is a massive organ with pipes that spit out in gold. This is surrounded by large jumbled wood planks which, I couldn't help but notice, resemble oversize French Fries. For me, the only other piece of architecture that has this same burst of beauty and composition is the stained glass window behind the altar of St. Peter's in Rome. Whether or not these decorative elements were chosen for acoustic purposes I know not. I do know that the sound of the orchestra in this room was unparalleled in my experience. While the expression that "one could hear a pin drop" is a cliche, Gehry's masterwork gives it meaning. (Sadly, along with the subtleties of Schumann, every cough from the preponderantly geriatric crowd is equally amplified.) The program I saw last night had four works by Wagner, Beethoven, Dvorak and Strauss, respectively. The first and last were my favorite, (Strauss' way with a waltz is unique in emotional depth) but all sounded impeccable.

Most concert halls have the power to make an everyman feel like an aristocrat but Gehry's work here makes the aristocrat feel like an everyman. Such is the egalitarian and unpretentious (though hardly unambitious) design of the Disney Concert Hall. It is a sort of Stoddard Temple brought to life and updated for the 21st century. A secular cathedral built to exalt not the God's but the genius of man; with it's own congregation (subscribers) and tithing system (box office) the analogy is apt. Such is the success of this building that I'll take Frank Gehry over Notre Dame any day.

Big Mac...

Yes, today is the day of Atonement. No, it's not cause for a trip to the synagogue. Its the day the film version of Ian McEwan's much lauded novel hits the mega-plexes. Though it's still all the buzz for Oscar recognition, the reviews have been decidedly mixed, especially among the top tier critics. No matter, I'll probably pay my ten bucks anyway, even if the film is a pretentious, Merchant-Ivory poseur, war-time anglo-orgy. "Pourquoi?" you ask. My new favorite blimey boy toy James McAvoy is the star. Though I have only seen him in one movie (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) I think he's the cutest pin-up from across the pond since Paul Bettany shacked up with Russell Crowe. Somewhere Hugh Dancy is cursing the fates and looking for his stolen career. It's McAvoy's moment now. (Is it wrong I still find him sexiest as a goat?)

Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Though Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd are probably better films, Edward Scissorhands is Tim Burton's defining masterpiece as cinema auteur. Crystallizing and distilling the directors thematic preoccupations, Scissorhands is a remarkable achievment of artistic purity and personal expression.

The persona of Edward himself is Burton's cinematic avatar par excellence. With his wily main of black hair, emotional isolation and unique talents, Edward is a none-too subtle representation of Burton himself, or at least Burton as a child. The story is a fairy tale in unambiguous terms, with an eldery woman recounting the story to her young granddaughter the way one might Hansel and Gretel or the Ugly Duckling. Most of Burton's stories have been fairy tales of one kind or another but here his commitment to the narrative structure is total. As such, the world created for the movie is fully fantastical, though refracted from reality in clever and effective ways. The ludicrously colorful suburb that serves as the films location is nothing less than a fantasized (infantalized?) version of the Burbank neighborhood that Burton grew up in, though it is as unreal in design and detail as anything in Middle Earth. (Burton however asks us to embrace the fantasy as fantasy while Peter Jackson wants us to embrace it as real.) The Gothic castle where Edward is discovered, hilariously located just down the block, is a warehouse of Burton-ana, the whimsically macabre inner mind of pre-adolescent Burton, literally constructed in the middle of middle class domesticity. It anachronisity is, of course, comically massive, a reflection of Burton's depth of feeling about his own off-beat sensibility.

The plot of the movie is well known and so I won't go into much here except to say that Edward, the unfinished creation of an old, reclusive, inventor (Vincent Price in his last screen role) is discovered alone in his castle by a friendly Avon lady (a wonderful Dianne Wiest) who, seeing a helpless and lonely child, takes him in. As he becomes the town novelty, Edward attempts to fit into suburban life-he even falls in love with Weist's teenage daughter Kim (Winona Ryder)and she with him. Tides turn and Edward becomes manipulated by local hooligans, one of which is Kim's bully boyfriend Jim. Tensions escalate and finally Edward is driven back to his castle where, defending his love, his murders Jim and with him any chance to return to the world below.

The film marked the first collaboration between Depp and Burton and there is little question that in Depp Burton had found his muse. His performance is a beautiful and minimalist character study notable for it's voluminous expressiveness and almost total lack of dialogue. But performances in Scissorhands are all the service of the film's fully conceived production design by Bo Welch where fairy tale whimsy meets a toothless but effective form of social satire. The music by Danny Elfman is the composers supreme achievement, light and mysterious with innocent yet eerie choral passages (performed by what sounds like the Vienna Boys Choir)it is no coincidence that the Edward Scissorhands became a popular ballet by Matthew Bourne. So complete and successful is Elfman's score here that future endeavors would become an exercise in diminishing returns with the composer sounding either tonally monotonous (Batman Returns) or simply unmemorable (Sleepy Hollow, Big Fish). This of course is not helped by Burton's usual overuse of scoring for easy and oppressive emotional manipulation. In Scissorhands though, the music serves an invaluable ingredient to a meticulously crafted mise en scene.

Edward Scissorhands is a total externalization of Burton's internal emotional state, exemplified by the manifestation of scissors for hands. Edward's difference-his dangerous appendages-is also the thing that gives him his talents. Of course, so it goes with Burton, who has taken the macabre sensibility that isolated him as a child and turned it into a wildly successful film career. Perhaps Scisccorhands is an exorcising of Burton's fear that his difference would be his undoing;he locks Edward away for all time, alone in his castle, expunging the person he might have become. Edward ultimately couldn't survive amongst the mortals below, Burton figured out how. Almost uniquely innocent for a major motion picture not geared to children, Edward Scissorhands, for all it's personal quirks, is a story that a great many related to- we all feel a little bit of Edward inside. And that peice of us that has scissors for hands is a thing of beauty. As Edward sculpts a massive piece of ice, Kim lovingly dances in the impromptu snowflakes; Burton has given us one of the loveliest moments in American cinema.

Woody Supports the Writers Strike.

Sondheim: Company (1969)

If there is one moment in Stephen Sondheim’s career that catapulted the writer from being a talented young tunesmith to the once and future king of the American musical it was in year 1969 and the shows title was Company. Nominated for more Tony Awards than any show in Tony history (a record it held until “The Producers” cleaned house in 2001) Company ushered in a new level of sophistication on Broadway; never before had a musical been so utterly modern and willing to buck convention. And never before had the distinct musical vocabulary of modern life merged with classic Broadway so effectively. The show also marked the first collaboration between Sondheim and the director Hal Prince, though Prince had produced many of his previous shows. The partnership went on to become one of the greatest artistic collaborations of the 20th Century. It all began with Company. Though somewhat mired in the sexual politics of it’s time, the show still speaks to audiences in the 21st Century, the brilliance of it’s music and lyrics untainted by time. The Tony-winning revival of the show in 2006 is proof positive of that.


Told in an “emotional narrative” that eschews traditional temporal linearity, Company was and is a textbook example of what some call “concept-musicals.” Any musical play that attempts to tell it’s story in a manner inconsistent with the Rodgers and Hammerstein mold could fit under this label though this description hardly does them justice. At their best, concept musicals arrive at the intersection of music, book and lyrics through an overarching dramatic idea (concept) that allows audiences to expand their expectations of what a musical is. A concept musical dares to reorganize the very DNA of musical theatre. Many, if not most, of Sondheim’s shows are conceptual in this way, perhaps none is so self-evidently so as Company. The music here is used as a counterpoint to bookwriter George Furth's self-contained comic scenes (which provided the genesis for the musical in the first place.) Characters rarely sing to each to each other and the “plot,” what there is of one, is not advanced by the songs in customary fashion. But unlike Forum, where the songs could be excised with little effect to the plot and comedy, Company is hollow and dramatically inert without it’s score.


Focusing on the romantic exploits (and non-exploits) of the perennially single “Bobby,” Company is an investigation into the topsy-turvy world of contemporary marriage and all its glorious ambiguity. Bobby’s journey is one of self-discovery- the subjective experience of opening oneself up to love (and pain) is actualized onstage. Alternating between scenes of Bobby socializing with his married friends (One is lonely/ Two is dreary/ Three is Company, /Safe and Cheery.) and romancing three single women, the dramatic core of Company is Bobby’s quest in deciding whether or not a married life is worth the emotional sacrifices that come part and parcel with the tux rental and wedding vows. The show is relentlessly honest (and funny) in its dissection of this antediluvian institution. All of it played against a nuanced and vibrant representation of New York City circa 1969. Each character has a musical moment which expresses their perspective on married life, from the resigned complaint of the married men who are “Sorry/Grateful,” about their lot, to a bride suffering a mental breakdown as she prepares to walk down the aisle. The musicalization of these moments vibrate with energy and wit. The lyrics are almost unmatched in the annals of American Musical Theatre. About what makes marriages work: "It’s not talk of God and the decade ahead/ that allow you to get through the worst. /It’s “I do” and “you don’t” and “nobobdy said/ that” and “Who Brought the subject up first?”/ It’s no surprise that the New York City public arts project called “Poetry in Motion” put the text to “Another Hundred People,” in it’s subway cars, right next to W.H. Auden and William Butler Yeats. The lyrics are that good. “Another Hundred People” is a reaction to living in the crowded metropolis where anonymity is all but guaranteed; everyone is disconnected in a "city of strangers." Unlike most songs about the Big Apple it dares to have a complicated and even melancholy perspective, though the song is, in its own way, a joyous celebration of the city it laments.

In it's denouement Bobby decides that, despite the inevitable disappointments and compromises that come with marriage, without commitment and love there is simply no other way for “Being Alive.” Climaxing with this number, some have accused Sondheim of copping-out; looking at marriage and relationships soberly and without mawkishness only to retreat to sentiment and sexual conservatism. Not naive to these sentiments, Sondheim himself wanted to end the show with a song in which Bobby decides that to be married is to live “happily ever after…in hell.” It was at the insistence of director/producer Hal Prince to end the show more unambiguously positive that Sondheim wrote his climatic aria. For my part, I think “Being Alive” is the perfect conclusion; a finale that denied the character this breakthrough- that would be the cop-out. Negativity is often conflated with profundity in artistic endeavor, especially by intellectuals and critics. "Being Alive" has been easily dismissed as simple commercial compromise or worse. Those who find the song a sentimental and unworthy finale haven’t paid close enough attention to the terse and fiery lyrics Mr. Sondheim gives Bobby to sing: "Somebody need me too much/Somebody know me too well./Somebody pull up short, and put me through hell,/ and give me support/ for Being Alive." Sondheim does not deny what he has told us for the last two acts, rather he embraces the negativity and ambiguity he has so delicately cultivated and put them to use in a number of raw emotional release.


Company was the show that crystallized Sondheim’s artistic persona, for better and for worse. Sophisticated, intellectual, cold, urban, ironic, unsentimental, pretentious, self-indulgent, highbrow, complicated-the characterization still hangs over Mr. Sondheim’s head and it was Company that put it there. In many ways it is all those things (though I wouldn't use the term self-indulgent) but more than a series of reductive adjectives Company is an experiment in the structure of musical theatre and it’s ability to relate to modern life. Though I sometimes think Company might be my favorite Sondheim score (a mantle place that is constantly shifting) it is not the composers best show by any stretch. The character of Bobby remains too much of a cipher throughout and his relationship to the other characters can range from perplexing to contrived. It is, in many ways, a better cast recording than show. But, whatever its faults, Company remains one of the most important and brilliant shows of the second half of the 20th Century; a “cabaret of urban Neurosis” (to use Ben Brantley’s phrase) than camouflages its bitter taste with a chaser of musical genius and a dessert real emotional vulnerability. As John Lahr wrote in his New Yorker review of the recent revival, “Company expressed not America’s big heart but its numbed one; it brought the musical up to the minute….Sondheim’s revolution was one not just of style but of soul.” I’ll drink to that.