Author: rakemag

For a certain type of person, Stephen King has lived the ultimate American dream. He’s been a wildly successful novelist for more than 25 years, publishing some 60 books, and countless articles, comic books, and even poems. That’s not all—in this televisual age, you can’t be a true creative superstar until you make the leap to the big screen. Did you forget The Shining? How about Carrie? Not only were these memorable movies in their own horrific genre, they’re still counted as classics in any genre. Cripes, the man’s actually written an e-book, and been run over by a minivan. What hasn’t he done? Naturally, rumors suggest he’s less a person than a corporation or a trademark—like, say, The Simpsons, Tom Clancy, or George Lucas. Once you’ve reached this kind of mythic status and reaped the financial rewards, people want to discredit you as an artist. Some say King’s novels are all written by sweatshop teenagers in a secret creative writing program hidden in the Maine outback. Others say King has been recycling the same story since about 1987. We can’t say one way or another. But it is noteworthy that his next book will be a collection of short stories… a decidedly literary genre that you simply can’t hand off to unpaid interns or caged teenagers.

A month after we bought a house from Pete Hautman in South Minneapolis, he slyly asked “Have you found the secret door yet?” and we’ve been looking ever since. This town’s most deserving and least celebrated mystery novelist recently published his eighth novel (three of them are “young adult titles”), a terrific little number called Rag Man, part genre detective story and part unpredictable, noirish thriller. Not unlike the cinema of the Coen brothers. Lookit: Hautman went to school in St. Louis Park with Joel and Ethan, where there must have been something in the water. (Diehard film geeks will recall that Frances McDormand’s husband in Fargo was a wildlife painter obsessed with beating “the Hautmans” in a wildlife stamp-art competition. Pete’s two brothers are, in fact, very successful wildlife painters who frequently win these competitions.) This book has been out for a little while, but go and buy it dammit, along with anything else by Hautman, a darkly comic writer who deserves to be at least as rich as Gary Keillor by now.

You’d think the corporate-HQ-storming antics depicted in Michael Moore’s breakout feature Roger & Me (and his too-short-lived TV Nation) would be enjoying a full-on revival in this heyday for reality–TV and Enronic corporate America. But no—this relentless agitator’s most regular exposure comes by way of his much-forwarded Internet missives in the wake of 9/11. (The January installment was a call for the president’s resignation, calling Bush a “complicit accessory” in the Enron hoo-hah and casually referring to the veep as “Big Dick.”) Just in time for the recession, Moore is on the road to promote his new book, Stupid White Men and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, which promises a fresh supply of wry proletarian rants. The Twin Cities’ mix of passive-aggressive MPR liberals, corn-fed Republican wonks, and carob-munching greenies usually makes for some healthy debate over Moore’s watchdogging and stick-it-to-the-man reflexes, but more often than not, he’s preaching to the choir. Still, his folksy mix of hot-button lefty rhetoric always entertains. More than that, Moore is one of the few liberal pundits with a detectable sense of humor and that in itself is worth the price of admission ($5). In fact, we’d gladly trade away Mark Dayton and the next five seasons of A Prairie Home Companion for more. Where do we sign?

Although the American theater has spent the last 30 years exploring issues of group identity, until recently the agenda has not included folks with disabilities. This show, which originated in Chicago in 1999, takes a step in that direction. The History of Bowling pulls together a collection of monologues and scenes in order to tell the story of a parapalegic and an epileptic who fall in love. It’s a marvelous idea for a play, and the script offers more than a few good moments—keen observations about life as a disabled person, flashes of gallows humor. In total, there isn’t quite enough. The two supporting actors, Gavin Lawrence and Marquetta Senters, are fine. But the two leads, Robert Ness and Ann Kim, come off rather poorly. Forgive us, but when half a dozen scenes end with non-ironic sitcom hugs and kisses, something has gone seriously amiss. We hope this show is merely the first in a wave of plays about disability, a dramatic subject whose time has arrived.

What makes commercial theater commercial is the way it delivers the reassuringly familiar, and Chanhassen’s current revival of The Music Man does not disappoint. The audience for this show expects to see a stage version of the movie version of the original Broadway musical, so that’s what director Michael Brindisi and his cohorts have put onstage. This is not a bad thing. It may feel a bit like visiting a wax museum, but once you get past that aspect of it you can hardly fail to enjoy yourself, because this is a highly professional mounting of one of the best musicals ever written. The songs especially, even after all these years, remain incomparably brilliant, growing organically out of the story in ways that no other musical can match. Keith Rice, who looks a little like Jim Carrey and sounds almost exactly like Robert Preston, turns in a strong, high-energy performance as the title swindler. Other standouts include James Cada and Katherine Ferrand as the mayor and his artsy wife. And you’ll never see a better staging of the famous opening scene—the one in which a gaggle of traveling salesmen aboard a train chant a patter song.

Proof covers all the big themes: death, depression, the relationship of intellect to madness, professional success and personal failure, seduction and deduction, memories of the past and dreams of the future, and does it in a scathingly witty and highly pleasurable evening on a back porch. It is the story of Catherine, whose genius father has just died, and Hal, the former student who wants to use her to get to her father’s unpublished material. Throw in a visiting sister, who wants to put Catherine in an institution, and flashback appearances of Daddy deadest and you have a much more enjoyable and insightful treatment of the relationship of intelligence and insanity than A Beautiful Mind. Higher mathematics is the hinge on which all this pivots, but if you passed ninth grade algebra, none of it will be over your head. This is the national touring version of the production that swept the Tony Awards last year, and won the Pulitzer for Drama for David Auburn. Unfortunately, you won’t see Mary-Louise Parker as Catherine, as we did on Broadway, but you can watch her on West Wing and imagine.

A video rite of passage for anyone who’s ever donned a pair of breezers and nearly had his or her teeth knocked out of his or her head, Slap Shot is to the sports comedy what The English Patient is to the teary wartime epic. You’ll find more than a few non-hockey-buffs who’ll vouch for the 1977 film’s classic status, but its vulgar one-liners, ruthless body-checking, bared butt cheeks, and bespectacled Hanson brothers are best appreciated by those who’ve actually braved the ice. Paul Newman’s performance as a last-gasp hockey coach charged with a team of hard-hitting misfits may not be his most nuanced, but ask yourself: How often do you find yourself quoting lines from Absence of Malice in the wistful company of half-drunk buddies? By releasing Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice—a poorly conceived, straight-to-video sequel starring Stephen Baldwin and Gary Busey—to coincide with this reissue, Universal taints what might otherwise be considered the year’s most triumphant non-Olympic hockey moment. Here’s an audio commentary track by the Hansons themselves and a restored soundtrack featuring Elton John and other giants of 70s dementia.

It began with a simple question: “Kirk or Picard?” No sooner had our lips formed the letter P than the wretched geek leaped from his barstool and set upon us with his Palm Pilot stylus, jabbing us repeatedly in the left kidney and unleashing a spit-drenched litany of Klingon epithets. Only hours later, laid up at the Abbott-Northwestern ICU with a morphine drip and eleven different insurance claim forms in our lap, did we fully grasp our folly. Trek is Trek. To rank any single captain over another—except Captain Janeway—is to unduly divide the Trekker nation. We’d once felt so sure that the venerable Jean-Luc’s glistening pate was a vessel for a mind much greater than that of any generation before him. We’d poured studiously over seven discs with assorted behind-the-scenes featurettes documenting his first tour of duty, repeatedly driven to dumb astonishment by the superhuman steadiness of his command, the genius of his reasoning, the quiet triumph of his most vulnerable invocations. Of the many dastardly villains that lurk in our vast universe, had our very own DVD player proven to be the most treacherous?

Let’s just get this out in the open right away: Is Xena a lesbian, or merely bi-curious? Even if it’s been twelve months since the series ended its five-year run on network TV, it’s important to dwell on these questions of ancient history, rather than the soft issues of “female empowerment,” say, or “historical accuracy” on the Fox network. Of course, it hardly makes a difference if she prefers the company of women. There’s nothing wrong with that, we’d just like to know. Gabby is clearly gay, 100 percent, only the completely naïve would think otherwise. By the way, Hercules was first, but Xena was best in the 90s crush of late-night comic book-inspired TV. While pioneering producer Rob Tapert could never swing the resources—nor the literary pedigree—of a Lord of the Rings, he certainly has the satisfaction of paving the way for today’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden CGI bust-em-ups on the big silver screen. Incidentally, he is also singlehandedly responsible for the film industry’s bumrush of New Zealand as the Led Zep of shooting locations. Best of all, scads of people are going back to the source—real comic books, where it all began and where it will all end (one day). Did we mention Xena may be a lesbian? Cool!

To fill the Sunday night void following the third season of The Sopranos, HBO launched Six Feet Under, created by the Academy-Award winning writer of American Beauty, Alan Ball. That Ball boy happens also to be a recent winner of the Golden Globe for best drama series, thanks to this new gig. The show follows the darkly comic trials of two brothers who take over their father’s funeral home business after a municipal bus broadsides Dad’s new hearse. Set to the twinkling theme composed by the same guy who scored Beauty (Thomas Newman), each episode opens with a death-of-the-week upon which the story is built. Frances Conroy plays the frazzled matriarch to tortured soul David (Michael C. Hall), prodigal son Nate (Minneapolis native Peter Krause) and troubled teen Claire (Lauren Ambrose). Their storylines get complicated with a rich supporting cast that includes Oscar-nominated Aussie Rachel Griffiths as Nate’s girlfriend, Jeremy Sisto as her psycho brother, Freddy Rodriguez as the under-appreciated mortician Rico, and the occasional cameo by dead dad—Nathaniel Fisher—the second ghost dad to appear in this edition of the Broken Clock, do we have a trend going here? Deadly funny!