Author: greg

WTC? What WTC? I Don’t See Any WTC

According to Alex Frangos’ report in the Wall Street Journal, roughly $1.8 billion of the $4.6 billion insurance proceeds for the WTC have been spent so far on things like buyouts (is that Westfield, the Autralian mall company that used to have the retail rights?) and $15 million/year in management fees for Larry Silverstein. [Not mentioned: the eight figure monthly lease payments Silverstein pays to the Port Authority to stay in the game.]
What IS mentioned, though, is Silverstein’s heartfelt but hmm, never-mentioned-until-now love of Tribeca:

To woo tenants, Silverstein Properties is trying to distance the building from the image of the Trade Center, though it literally sits on the site’s edge. Instead of 7 World Trade Center, the building will be marketed under a newly created street address, 250 Greenwich St. The idea, according to someone familiar with the matter is to emphasize the building’s proximity to TriBeCa, the trendy neighborhood to the north. It’s also a tacit admission, according to real-estate executives, that the World Trade Center name scares prospective tenants.

Showdown at Ground Zero [wsj, sub. req.]

“Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

After a couple of months of interviews and trying to wrap my head around the question of why there were no expensive women artists, I read Linda Nochlin’s seminal 1972 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” It was tremendously prescient and helpful; many of the explanations people had given me for why women’s art wasn’t, in fact, undervalued–or why it shouldn’t be selling for more–were identical to the rationales Nochlin laid out–and then demolished–thirty years ago.
When I spoke with Prof. Nochlin, she was much more optimistic, though; from where she sees it, in the art history world–she’s a professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, and is co-curating an upcoming show of feminist art at the Brooklyn Museum with Maura Reilly–things have improved dramatically since she wrote “WHTBNGWA?” The number women making and showing art have increased; curators and critics and historians are paying them equal (or requisite) attention; and she never hears her current crops of students qualify a work based on the artist’s gender, now it’s really about the work.
So you’ve come a long way, baby, I guess.
“Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” by Linda Nochlin

Edward Jay Epstein, Hollywood Accountant

Move over, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
In his article in Slate, “Paranoia for Fun and Profit: How Disney and Michael Moore cleaned up on Fahrenheit 9/11”, Epstein shows how Moore played up Disney’s refusal to distribute his Cannes-winning doc, and how Disney happily extracted some serious participation–they netted $75 million of the film’s $228 million worldwide box office, plus another $3mm for DVD royalties– from the distributors they “sold” it to.
Given Disney’s ongoing interest F9/11‘s performance, it sounds more accurate, if not technically true, to say they didn’t “sell” the film, so much as they outsourced distribution.
But Epstein’s talking about the accounting world’s reality, where, as he’s written previously, Hollywood studio films are all German productions now.
As for Moore, he made at least $27 million, not counting what he may have pocketed for producing the film itself (Epstein notes that it cost far less to make than the $6 million Miramax fronted for production, not including Moore’s acting, producing, writing, and directing fees. [Of course, clearing the music could’ve eaten up that much, too, so who can say?])
Next on Epstein’s list (I hope): “Sadistic Religiosity and Jew-baiting for Fun and Profit: How, verily, Mel Gibson got is reward from The Passion”

At Least The Bathtub’s Not Leaking

While Kevin Rampe jumps from the LMDC, Larry Silverstein may be getting the push. NY1 hears creaking and shouts of eminent domain from Pataki’s office, as if he wasn’t the visionless machinator behind the whole fiasco. Now opportunists like Sheldon Silver and Chuck Schumer, and the previously stiff-armed Mike Bloomberg smell political smoke wafting from the pile that is the WTC site redevelopment process.
Once everything’s cleared away, Liebeskind’s Bathtub Wall may be the only thing left, by default. Except that, as Miss Representation points out, confusion and indecision and compartmentalized “fixes” only further the interests of the Port Authority, whose unaccountable activities–if not their plan–are already in slow, bureaucratic motion.
The leadership and vision void MR sees at the center deserves scrutiny and attention, and some day it’ll get rigorous analysis, too. But in the mean time, I’ve got an all-too-familiar fear, a dread of another collapse that could have, should have, might have been avoided.
Now that the Times said it, it must be true [missrepresentation.com, via curbed]
Officials Consider Eminent Domain At Ground Zero [ny1]

Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P

And that stands for Port Authority or Pataki, take your pick.
The Port Authority has apparently threatened some of the architects involved with various aspects of the WTC site redevelopment with breach of their confidentiality agreements if they talk to one other about possible solutions to the growing number of architectural casualties in the master plan. So what’s a muzzled starchitect to do? Why, talk to the NY Times architecture critic, of course.
Who then writes a damning criticism on the crumbling folly of the Port Authority’s handling of the master plan, the redevelopment, and the memorial. The problem? Imperiousness and “the mix of secrecy, self-interest and paranoia that have enveloped the site from the outset – a climate that favors political expediency and empty symbolic gestures over thoughtful urban planning discussions.”
Sounds like New York real estate and politics to me.
At Ground Zero, Disarray Reigns, and an Opportunity Awaits [nyt]

Socks, Fries & Videotape

The Guardian reports that Steven Soderbergh’s new series of HD films will be released by Mark Cuban’s and Todd Wagner’s 2929 Entertainment simultaneously in the company’s theaters, on their HD TV channel, and on DVD. Given the reach of the channel and the market for an unknown DVD, my guess is the initial buzz and revenue will still come from theatrical, but those ratios will change over time, both as the release and the series plays out and as more titles have multi-channel releases.
A couple of weeks ago, I’d read somewhere (?) that Soderbergh was casting the film’s non-actors by cruising malls and fast food restaurants in Ohio, looking for people with the right look. Of course, Gus Van Sant did this for Elephant, too, but he only went to A&F.
Soderbergh’s revolution [guardian.co.uk, via kottke]
Related: The Cuban Revolution [wired mag]
The Wagner Revolution [oh wait, no. Xeni?]
[5/5 update: Guess she doesn’t read the blogs, but now that it’s been in THR, Xeni namechecks the story, adding some transcript from her Cuban interview.]

Olafur Eliasson: West of Rome, East of LA

Who’s the must-have light installation artist in Los Angeles these days? If you answered, “James Turrell,” pack up your Uggs and get out. In Pasadena this week, Olafur Eliasson debuted a modernist hill houseful of installations and interventions, organized by his Italian gallerist, Emi Fontana.
Check out pictures and descriptions at arcspace, or pour yourself a glass of whine at artforum diary, which features largely content-free Olafur soundbites and bitching about the opening’s lack of valet parking. Or go yourself, until May.
Olafur Eliasson: Meant to be lived in [arcspace.com]
LA Residential [artforum diary]

But what are a thousand words worth?

It turns out I’ve got about 1,000 words a day, maybe 2,000 if I’m just doing stream of consciousness.
Anyway, as you can guess from the last few days’ posts [sic], that wordstream has been gobbled up by another project. Now that’s it’s to bed, they’re backing up in my head while I’m at the Outer Banks. So you just wait until Saturday morning, when you’ll find me curled up on your doorstep, like an unwanted drunk.
In the mean time, please go register for a bunch of classes at The New School.

Wreading Writers’ Weblogs

Used to be when Roger Avary was the only screenwriter with a weblog. No more. Here are three other screenwriters’ blogs that are well worth reading:

  • JohnAugust.com: In addition to film credits such as Go, Big Fish, and the upcoming remake of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, August answered script-related questions for years on imdb’s message forums. His weblog consolidates all these resources into one, happy spot.
  • The Artful Writer, by co-authors Craig Mazin and Ted Elliott, strikes a very serious-sounding note by focusing on “information, theory, and debate for the professional television and film writer.” One recent post, though, is an insightful and entertaining glossary of comedy writing terms [part I, part II], developed by the Zucker brothers and Jim Abraham to help “explain to each other why we’re wrong.”
  • Meanwhile, John Rogers (from Cosby to Catwoman has been assembling an excellent collection of comedy writing jargon, too, at his blog, Kung Fu Monkey.

    • Why is this Calatrava Moment different from all other Calatrava Moments?

    calatrava_south_st.jpgAccording to the Curbed Theory of NY Media Darling Architects, full-force Calatrava-hatin’ should’ve kicked in in January. But here it is April, and there’s a snuggly celebration in the Times by Robin Pogrebin, and it’s got subtexts packed so tight, I can’t figure out what the real story is:
    It’s what New York’s all about, baby: reinvention “he considered himself more an artist than an architect.” Really? Because he used to be “the bridge guy, the engineer who also did architecture.”*
    Can you believe it, he’s in a museum show! In NYC!: True, Sandy does have a show coming up at the Met six months from now. Odd that there’s no mention of his MoMA shows, either last year’s “Tall Buildings” or that little ol’ one-man show in 1993. Or the Municipal Art Society’s St John the Divine exhibit that debuted his first NYC project.
    $45 million condos at the Seaport don’t sell themselves, pal: I think we’re getting warmer. Says connoisseur/condo developer Frank Sciame, “Standing there in front of his sculpture, that’s how this started.” Or as he puts it in Absolute magazine, “In addition to being a work of art… it will also be a place to live.”
    He’s the only thing right about the WTC site: Ah-ha. “It helps us immensely to have someone give us a solution that is workable from an engineering point of view, as opposed to just an architecturally beautiful feature.” Translation: Thanks for playing, Danny. There are some lovely parting gifts for you on the way out.
    See, if only we’d let the Port Authority make every redevelopment decision for the WTC site unilaterally, we’d be much better off. Ahh, I’m inspired already.

    An Architect Embraces New York     [nyt]
    Calatrava’s Tower: Even More Egregiously Expensive! [curbed]
    * like the suit who calls himself a filmmaker but ends up writing all the time has room to talk.

    ACFWLF

    nakadate_finch.jpg
    The soft, supple opening to Charlie Finch’s latest column on Artnet:

    We first met Laurel Nakadate in 2001, right after she received her MFA from Yale. While in New Haven, Laurel lived in a single-room occupancy apartment house full of lonely, homely, aging single men whom she proceeded to bait and cocktease mercilessly in her video work.

    By “we,” I think he means “me and my lonely, homely, single hand.”
    Critic, art world svengali, and breast man Charlie Finch sticks his own hand into “perky, dewy” video artist Laurel Nakadate’s career, apparently without realizing that he’s already soaking in it.
    If someday she comes out and says her work is about a young artist who graduates from Gregory Crewdson’s Yale and tries to get ahead in the art world, I will die laughing. And give her the Turner Prize.
    Nakadate’s show is up at the otherwise redoubtable Danziger Projects through May 14.
    Danger is Her Game [charlie finch on artnet]

    Daddy, Tell Me A Back Story

    The problem is that Penn can’t play just any agent trying to do his job. He has to have his own traumatic back story and overflowing well of grief over a dead wife, because what’s a Penn performance these days without the actor emoting in close-up for a camera frozen in awe? (You can practically hear the director say, “And now, ladies and gentleman, the stylings of the premier actor of his generation.”)
    …
    After all, [Kidman] has a back story of her own…

    In the true spirit of diplomacy, Edelstein lets both the director and the writers have it in his Slate review of The Interpreter.
    Lost in Translation [slate]

    Ada Louise Huxtable: The WTC Horse Is Out Of The Barn

    No honest questioning of the Silverstein/Port Authority 10mm sf program. No more Libeskind master plan. No political backbone or redevelopment vision. No appreciation for the arts as anything but a criticism-placating bullet point on a mission statement. No program apparently required for this amorphous-at-best Freedom Center museum thing, which is going ahead full force anyway. And now no fundraising for no performing arts center, which was originally pitched as a central requirement for the site’s viable rebirth.
    Ada Louise Huxtable’s pissed, and–if she thought it’d help–she wouldn’t take it anymore.
    Death of a Dream: There won’t be a creative rebirth at Ground Zero after all. [wsj, via curbed]