All Picks posted by Hilton Als
She is the best Emma we’ve ever had because her director, Vincente Minnelli, not only made a story about a woman’s self-destruction, he made a film about a female actor’s narcissism. In the movie, Jones, who had won an Oscar five years before playing a saint, is ravaged [more]
From “My Lunches With Orson” edited by Peter Biskind: Interviewer: How did [Hedda Hopper] know about things like you and Lena [Horne]? Orson Welles: She offered fifty dollars for information and people called her up. Not friends, but waiters or valet-parking people, anybody. Somebody reported that I went [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCO_1GcoV0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbpfdC7Fdnw
The marvelous thing about hearing Capote read this is realizing how long he lived with Holly’s voice, and the source of Holly’s voice. I laughed during his introduction; “Shall I read something from ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’ That or a short story.” The last he says like a stern [more]
One of the great artists who taught me to see the world differently because she saw the world differently. Everything she did was based on an internal cinema, the projectors of which turned at a very interesting Gance-like speed sometimes, or Falconetti-like speed at other times, all the [more]
Some years ago the singer Rickie Lee Jones took me to a Lou Reed concert; she had never seen him perform. About half way through the set she said, incredulous: But he can’t sing. What was astonishing to Rickie was the lack of musicality in Reed’s voice–it’s flat [more]
When I was a student at SUNY Purchase in the late nineteen-seventies, there were two other students of color, one of whom became a treasured friend. Near Halloween, there was a knock on my dorm door (I had never been away from any length of time before). Opening [more]
It was another big night at the joint in the valley the night I met Orson Welles. Orson was in Hollywood for the first time, like me. I liked him and he liked me, and jazz. We started hanging around together. So when I’d finished at the joint [more]
When Vincente Minelli was asked to come to Hollywood–he had been a very successful scenic designer in New York–the studio brass asked him what he’d like to do. He said: I want to to do a black musical. Like Welles, Minnelli used to hang in largely mixed show [more]
This season, the black story line on Boardwalk Empire, does something so extraordinary I didn’t think it was possible–certainly not on television, or in film: it presents an entirely authentic nineteen-twenties Negro world, part Harlem Renaissance perversity, and part Macbeth, all without sacrificing style. In Peter Biskind’s recent [more]
She was the daughter of a geisha, and an actor; she herself was trained as a child on the shamisen, an incredibly ornate and beautiful instrument. As an actress, her body was an ornate and beautiful instrument, played in films by Mizogushi and Kurosawa–or would appeared be a [more]
The foremost interpreter of her former husband, Harold Pinter’s, female characters. No one has ever said “Hmm,” like her. It sounds like something between a full stop, a pause, and a dismissal. One thinks of Merchant’s voice as it might have sounded reading certain sections of George W.S. [more]
The most important and emotionally accurate moment in director Steve McQueen’s Steven Spielberg-eque evocation of slavery is due to Alfre Woodard. About half way through the film, Woodard, one of our greatest actresses, sits on a verandah, her cheeks rouged, pouring tea. She is a slave married to [more]
From Orson Welles. Volume 2: Hello Americans by Simon Callo: Agnes Moorehead gave an account of working with [Welles] that illuminates the way he collaborated with actors. She felt the scene [in The Magnificent Ambersons where Aunt Fanny’s (Moorehead) feeds her nephew, George (Tim Holt) food before breaking [more]
Jocelyn Alice. Canadian Singer. I heard her on a Target commercial and there was the shiver of greatness through the pop–a version of “So Groovy,” that was so powerful I had to find her. Glad for the useful magic of Youtube. She’s a great singer because she’s a [more]
From James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work (1976): Sylvia Sidney was the only American film actress who reminded me of a colored girl, or woman–which is to say that she was the only American film actress who reminded me of reality. All of the others, without exception, were white, [more]
From Orson Welles Volume 2: Hello Americans by Simon Callow: Agnes Moorehead was perhaps the most remarkable of all the actors in the Mercury stable. Like many of the others, she had first worked with Welles on radio…In addition to the high spirits and technical skill of the other [more]
From My Lunches with Orson, edited by Peter Biskind: Interviewer: Dorothy Comingore, another fresh face, was so great as Susan Alexander, Kane’s mistress and second wife, the one based on Marion Davies. How did you find her? Orson Welles: Chaplin, you know, told me about her. Interviewer: What [more]