Category: Article

We grownups are very strange, indeed, and often fail to see what’s obvious, important, or interesting. So posits Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic tale of a world that’s best seen through the eyes of a child. We see Jeune Lune’s persistently youthful artistic director Dominique Serrand as something of a little prince himself–after all, he has been officially knighted by his French compatriots, and has a particular flair for flights of fancy; if last spring’s workshop production is any indication, le petit prince will inhabit a particularly lustrous vision of Saint-Exupery’s vast deserts and miniature planet-scapes. 105 First St. N., Minneapolis; 612-333-6200; www.jeunelune.org

Dance without music would fall pretty flat, but it seems that many modern choreographers are afraid to make bold choices in this area, lest it overshadow their own work. Not Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. The last time the Belgian choreographer came to town, in 1999, she and her company worked with Steve Reich’s thunderous composition Drumming. This time Joan Baez is her muse; more specifically, songs from Joan Baez in Concert, Part Two, which takes turns both tender and outraged as Baez responds to the Vietnam War. The folk legend’s message is relevant all over again, and de Keersmaeker, in a solo performance, demonstrates why her own work has inspired a generation of artists. 612-375-7600; www.walkerart.org

Every Saturday, James McManus’ poker column appears in the New York Times. An odd gig, if you can get it–and even ten years ago, McManus, a novelist and teacher, would have been completely unqualified. However, in 1999 Harper’s magazine hired him to write about the World Series of Poker, and thus began his obsession with the strange world of high-stakes cards. In fact, when we first phoned McManus, he had to make sure we knew that “the rake” is a poker term (um, we did know).

But when he’s not peering over the shoulder of a card sharp, McManus has bigger concerns. After his oldest daughter was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, he become a keen observer of the American health care system; in 2003, Harper’s sent him to the medical mecca in Minnesota whose patients include politicians, dignitaries, CEOs, and oil magnates from around the world–that is, the Mayo Clinic. McManus signed up for what may be the most thorough physical examination available anywhere. In his book Physical: An American Checkup, he shares what the rest of us are missing.

You got what is called the “Executive Physical” at the Mayo. Is it superior to the treatment the average patient gets?
No. It’s the exact same physical. I was sitting next to a senator, but we were sitting amongst ordinary Minnesota citizens. But for an extra three hundred dollars, the executive patients get scheduled very efficiently. The waiting in line, the six- or seven-hour gaps between appointments disappears. The theory is that some people’s time is more valuable than other people’s time. It’s very important to note that the fees from the executive program bring in money for medical research that benefits everyone.

Outside of the clinic, what was your impression of Rochester?
You see a lot of sick children around town. It’s sobering to see them, especially if you’re up there with your own small children. It’s a big wake-up. I consider the Mayo one of the most beautiful things that humans have ever invented. Put aside the Mall of America and all the cathedrals; one of the most beautiful things that people can do is put together a great teaching hospital and help people who are sick.
Also, the Arab and Muslim presence was everywhere when I was there. I stayed at the Kahler Hotel, and they had a separate Middle Eastern menu and a huge number of Arab cable channels. But that’s changed; it’s no longer easy for Middle Eastern patients to come here for treatments. When the fact-checkers were going through my book, they called the hotel to verify the cable channels and menu, and they said they don’t have them anymore.

Although you write about how your family history of heart problems haunts you, you seem to be almost more concerned by the same issues when they affect celebrities, particularly David Letterman.
Yeah, Letterman and Bill Clinton. When guys around my age have open-heart surgery–especially guys like Letterman, who runs every day–that really gives you pause. When he talked about what he went through, he saved lots of lives. When celebrities talk about their health, people pay attention in a different way than when their family members experience the same things.

Did you make lasting changes in your lifestyle based on what your doctors told you?
I love these doctors and I deeply respect what they do, and I believed everything they told me about my health–but that doesn’t make it any easier if they tell you not to drink wine or eat pasta, or to get more exercise. I have managed to quit smoking; I haven’t had a cigarette since I was up there. But I still drink too much wine and eat too much dinner.

After your physical, your book turns to the larger issues surrounding American health care. You’re clearly incensed by Bush’s decision on stem-cell research, and say that you’re getting ready to do “something rash” about it. What do you think ordinary citizens can do?
People make jokes that writing letters to congresspeople is ineffective, but right now, this issue is before Congress, and I think many, many congresspeople are teetering between a “yes” and a “no” on America moving forward on this research. It varies state by state. California is very supportive of it. Kansas is very antagonistic; their Senator Sam Brownback is in favor of putting people in prison if they pursue this research.

And yet rapid progress is now being made in this area in South Korea. Do you think the administration is unnerved by the fact that stem cell research is moving forward where we can’t profit from it or be a part of any big cures?
If you base your policy on cynical, faith-based, narrow-minded constructions of the Bible, then it’s not going to make an impression. But enlightened people see that this research is actually advancing rapidly, that no one is cloning babies, and that new cell lines may give people brain or heart or nerve cells to repair damaged organs. That is astounding, and something everyone should want to help happen.

You have to appreciate how the rock ‘n’ roll landmark at Seventh and First has witnessed a total transformation of its surroundings–Target Center, cheesy nightclubs, Block E, the freaking Hard Rock Cafe–while keeping the wrecking ball off its own hallowed but scummy walls. For a few weeks last year, it even looked as if First Avenue had hosted its final show. But it wasn’t going to go down so easily. Now the club is celebrating its thirty-fifth year of business with its first compilation CD of live cuts. So many indelible moments in music history have occurred at First Avenue that this collection barely scratches the surface, but the range of tracks by local heroes (the Suburbs, Husker Du, Trip Shakespeare, the Jayhawks, the Replacements) and visiting dignitaries (Jay Farrar, Ween, Patti Smith, Richard Thompson) remind us how lucky we are to live in such a great rock city.

It seems like there are a number of rock icons these days who, if they haven’t burned out, haven’t really faded away, either. Take Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh. For one thing, the most influential of new wave bands never actually broke up; Devo toured again just this year. And Mothersbaugh is constantly working on new music, for film soundtracks (The Rugrats Movie, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou), videos, and for his own amusement. When we talked with him, he was working on some music he didn’t expect anyone else would ever hear, and having a great time. But we didn’t call to chat him up about music; we wanted to hear about his upcoming Postcard Diaries show at the Ox-Op Gallery, which comprises diminutive artworks that he has produced daily for more than thirty years. We also imagine they’d pack quite nicely into a shirt pocket, should ever Mothersbaugh find himself en route to a desert isle. Here’s what else he’d tote along:

1. Blank paper, cardstock, 3 1/2″ x 5 1/4″ watercolor paper, and Japanese sumi fountain pens made by Pilot. I would definitely spend a lot of time on my art. It’s a response to everything that goes on around me. Although I’d be on that island, so things might be kind of quiet. One of my favorite art shows was by [Hawaii Five-O star] Jack Lord. Devo was playing in Hawaii and I walked into a hotel lobby that had three hundred of his paintings, and every single one of them was the exact same sunset and three palm trees. Each one was a little different, but they were the same landscape.
2. An iPod loaded with every Steve Reich album. I’d like to bring something that I didn’t write, and something that is three dimensional and allows me to walk in and out of my head.
3. Every Dick Tracy comic ever written. Chester Gould is the unparalleled master of black and white in Western art.
4. A collection of spare eyeglasses. The first time I went to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, when I was a little kid, I ran out into the water and lost my glasses–both times. I had to read my comic books about three inches from my face for the rest of the trip. Losing my glasses has been a lifelong fear.
5. One red Devo hat. You can use it for so many things: a cooking pot, a mold for bricks, a flotation device, a weapon, a boomerang, a container to protect small animals. In Devo, we used them to trap the orgone energy that normally humans lose out of the top of their heads. We used the hats to radiate it back down. It would trickle down upon us and make us stronger. We took those hats seriously and wore them seriously.

Mark Mothersbaugh’s Postcard Diaries opens at Ox-Op Gallery on December 3. 1111 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-259-0085; www.ox-op.com

Why rent when you can own? At my neighborhood shop in Shanghai, well-ordered racks are full of the latest Hollywood releases, the Hollywood catalog dating back to the mid-1960s, and a middling selection of Chinese films and television series, most of which sell for between eighty-five cents and two bucks. The majority have English and Chinese subtitles, and all of them, of course, are pirated. On a recent visit, I slipped past a twentyish professional couple considering a boxed set of Desperate Housewives and greeted the store clerk. He’s a helpful guy—he once located a pirated copy of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz for me—but when I pointed to a poster for Chen Kaige’s The Promise, a $35 million martial arts epic that is the most expensive film in Chinese history, and asked if he had it yet, he shook his head no.

Quality pirate copies of Chinese films often circulate in the weeks before an official theatrical release. But in the case of The Promise, which will begin screening internationally this month, unusual precautions have been taken to prevent piracy. “Wait until it is released in the theater,” the clerk said. “You’ll be able to go and see it in English.”

Until recently, Chinese films in English were rare (and, if dubbed, unwanted—in my case, at least). But as Chinese art house filmmakers like Chen Kaige increasingly look to the U.S. for mass audiences and Hollywood-sized money, the option becomes common. China may be the world’s third most prolific filmmaking nation, but its total domestic box office in 2004 was less—by some hundred million dollars—than what Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith brought in on the first weekend of its U.S. release. Indeed, last year China made more money by exporting its films than it did by exhibiting them in its own theaters. Of course, filmmakers there have learned from their American colleagues (and studios) who’ve come to count on foreign box offices to salvage action-film bombs. But in China, foreign sales are essential, which is why in the past five years the country’s erstwhile art-house directors have turned out a host of lush, artsy, martial arts epics geared to please overseas audiences.

Ironically, though, “made for foreigners” is the blackest insult that can be directed at a Chinese film (or any other work of art, for that matter). To an extent, this is a combination of both pride and insecurity in Chinese culture as it opens to, and confronts, the West. The first group of Chinese directors to emerge after the Cultural Revolution was the so-called Fifth Generation, which was concerned with accurate depictions of rural Chinese life. Films such as Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (1989) were quickly compared by foreign cineastes to the work of the Italian neo-realists of the 1940s and 1950s; however, unlike the neo-realists, the Fifth Generation directors never received a populist embrace in their home country. For example, Chen Kaige’s masterpiece, Farewell, My Concubine (1993), is still little known in China. Meanwhile, Zhang Yimou’s films were unpopular there (though this has changed with his recent international success), and heavily criticized for their unflattering portrayal of the Chinese countryside.

However, Fifth Generation films were generating critical raves on the international festival circuit and in art houses, and also doing serious business. Red Sorghum won the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, while Farewell, My Concubine is one of the most successful Chinese films ever released overseas. Yet as the art house filmmakers prospered internationally in the 1990s, China’s domestic film market shrank, overwhelmed by a flood of foreign films (particularly from Hong Kong and Taiwan) that were more technically proficient and entertaining than the country’s own. So Fifth Generation filmmakers focused even more on generating publicity and awards and thus winning audiences and revenues from abroad.

It was a risky strategy. Prior to 2000, the last Asian language film that was a major commercial success in the United States was Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon in 1973—and that was a Hong Kong production. Though most Americans refer to Hong Kong and China interchangeably, the two entities are linguistically, culturally, politically, and cinematically distinct. Known for their superbly choreographed action and fight scenes (as well as an irritating brand of slapstick), Hong Kong films have a highly developed visual style that continues to influence both Chinese and American cinema (The Matrix films were choreographed by a Hong Kong Chinese.) Chinese film, by comparison, is still in its youth, and remains a follower.

That may partly explain the Chinese public’s near-insatiable appetite for imperial martial arts epics. According to Xinhua, China’s state news agency, twenty percent of all Chinese television dramas in 2004 involved “Chinese legends,” and that’s not counting all the imperial martial arts sitcoms, feature films, and documentaries. More so than Westerns in the United States, the martial arts period piece—which involves emperors, lavish period costumes, and lots of kung fu—is a well-worn genre, and one that the Chinese see as very much theirs.

Enter Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Made by Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee (whose retrospective is currently screening at Walker Art Center) and released in 2000, it’s the most successful ”Chinese” film in history, having banked $213 million worldwide and $128 million in the U.S. Made in China with a Hong Kong and Chinese cast, the film appeared on the top ten list of virtually every critic in the U.S., landed ten Oscar nominations, and was declared a “Martial Masterpiece” by Time. In China, however, the reaction was nearly the inverse, with many critics dwelling upon the fact that the film’s story line was utterly hackneyed, even by the perpetually low standards of Chinese network television. Worse still, some of Lee’s Hong Kong cast spoke poor, heavily accented Mandarin that elicited derision in both theaters and reviews. Above all, Chinese critics, audiences, and even some directors seemed to resent the fact that someone from Taiwan—the island is considered a renegade province on the mainland—had profited from an overseas market by exploiting the most Chinese of genres.

Despite the critical scorn, a $128 million U.S. box office is pretty much impossible to ignore in a country where a $5 million domestic box office is respectable. So when Zhang Yimou came out with Hero in 2002, no one in China was surprised that he tailored it for the American audience thrilled by Crouching Tiger. Even more than that film, Hero relied upon the tropes and clichés of Chinese period television; and again, the enthusiasm of Americans for this film was greeted with confusion in China. When I saw the film on Christmas Eve in a Shanghai theater packed with families, there were plenty of moments in which the dialogue elicited groans and snickers. While American critics praised the film’s three-stage retelling of Emperor Qin’s planned assassination, their Chinese colleagues rolled their eyes—for audiences in the country, the tale was as profound as a ride into the sunset at the end of a Gunsmoke episode.

Zhang had also hired a Hong Kong fight choreographer and a sprawling team of foreign special effects artists whose credits range from Titanic to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, while Hero’s U.S. distributor, Miramax, came up with a savvy marketing plan that included a “Quentin Tarantino Presents” tag and targeted both the art house audience and the action-loving cineplex crowd. The result was a $57 million gross in the U.S., helping to make Hero the most lucrative Chinese film ever. “One of Zhang Yimou’s main goals is to recapture the Chinese made film-market share,” said Zhang Weiping, who produced the director’s most recent martial arts epic, House of Flying Daggers (2004).

The inevitable accusations that Zhang had sold out may be fair, but the truth is that Chinese cinema sold out to foreign audiences long before Hero—and it did so only to sustain itself. From the beginning, the careers of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige have been defined by the need to please foreign critics and award committees, which often serve as gatekeepers for directors seeking access to the art-house screens; with their martial arts films they have merely shifted to another, more profitable genre. Hero and The Promise are no more meant for Chinese audiences than Red Sorghum and Farewell, My Concubine. At the least, unlike the gritty plot of Red Sorghum, the martial arts epics are actually representative of the sorts of stories that many Chinese like to watch in their spare time. Ironically, what is new and interesting in these films are the visual innovations that large budgets (and foreign box offices) make possible. The lush cinematography of Hero was unprecedented in the genre, as were its gorgeously choreographed fight scenes. Though I have yet to notice Chinese network television mimicking Hero, there is no question that the film has set a new visual standard in the genre, much as John Ford did for the Western.

Zhang Yimou recently confirmed that he is in pre-production on a contemporary comedy that will star Jackie Chan, the international kung fu/comedy superstar who is also a Hong Kong citizen. Several days after the announcement, Chan wrote in his blog, “When you watch Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern … the most brilliant dialogue might become a YES or NO when translated into English.” Nevertheless, he is optimistic about prospects for genres of Chinese film other than martial arts epics. “If the worldwide audience starts[s] to learn Chinese due to their love of martial arts films,” he continued, “then they would not only appreciate martial arts films in the future, but can also appreciate Chinese dramas.”

With all respect to Jackie Chan, that seems doubtful. My DVD dealer says that the Chinese director most popular with his customers is Feng Xiaogang. He is largely unknown outside of China, because he has made a career (and a small fortune) writing and directing earthy comedies with distinctly Chinese humor. Last year’s domestic hit Cell Phone, for example, documented an illicit affair largely conducted via text messaging. Since text messaging is a national pastime, the film’s humor was so linguistically and culturally specific that even foreigners with vast experience speaking Chinese were simply unable to laugh along. It would be like screening Fargo, in English, for a fluent, English-speaking Shanghai audience.

Even without a foreign box office, Cell Phone grossed $6.3 million in China last year and was considered quite lucrative. But China’s most popular director of comedies seems to have become restless for a larger payout. Following Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, and Ang Lee down the martial arts path to riches, he secured $15 million in financing from Chinese and foreign investors to make The Night Banquet, a martial arts retelling of Hamlet—set in the Tang Dynasty’s imperial court.