Spring is upon us. My allergies have been acting up for weeks. So it seems the right time to talk about cross-pollination, a subject that it is at the heart of important new exhibits in Los Angeles and New York. When Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was running for president in 1988, he often talked about […]
Tommywood is a column that explores the cultural landscape of Los Angeles through a personal lens, taking the reader everywhere from a tour of Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica, to Robert Evan’s bed, with a morning spent in Traffic school and lunch with French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, with time for a game of mah-jong, and a […]
At the end of Woody Allen’s “Melinda and Melinda,†I sat in my seat stunned: Woody Allen had actually made a movie I liked — a good movie that had something to say about life and literature. It felt like a long time since I’d enjoyed one of his films. Many years ago, when Allen […]
Last week, playwright Donald Margulies, The Manhattan Theater Club and The Forward weekly newspaper announced the winners of a contest they sponsored on the topic of “What It’s Like Growing Up Jewish in New York.†You can read the winning entries at www.forward.com. I regret to say you will not find my name among them […]
Read More… from The Way It Was (Growing up Jewish in New York)
The world lost one of its great comic artists last month. I am referring not to Johnny Carson, who was little known outside of the United States, but to Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon, 80, who, although little known in America, was beloved around the world. I read somewhere that his books have sold more than […]
Although Arthur Miller was only 33 when “Death of a Salesman†premiered on Broadway, it was a transformative moment in American drama, and Miller’s impact on successive generations of writers continues to this day. In “Death of a Salesman,†Miller was able to find poetry in the personal that transcended the mundane — while creating […]
A few weeks ago, Sweet Pea Atkinson stood on the stage of the Los Angeles House of Blues, dapper in a red double-breasted, collarless suit, wearing a red fedora and red leather shoes. The occasion was the historic reunion of seminal groove band Was (Not Was) after a 14-year hiatus. Sweet Pea grabbed the microphone […]
Read More… from Was Is Back (Don Was and the return of Was/Not Was)
Does it bother you when a white man sings the blues? Is jazz exclusively an African American art form? When Eminem (who is white) is the most popular rapper, Tiger Woods (who is part African American and part Asian) is the greatest golfer and Serena and Venus Williams (African Americans) dominate women’s tennis, should it […]
Read More… from Whose Culture is it? (Ellen Gruber’s ‘Virtually Jewish”)
As the year ends, many of my correspondents (at least one) have been clamoring for the Tommywood Awards, a list of those defining moments in the past year — the best, the worst, the memorable. Frankly, my mind has already gone on vacation and the rest of me is soon to follow. So although I […]
Read More… from The Award Goes to… (2004’s Funniest moments on screen)
Amid myriad reasons for moving to and living in Los Angeles, let me add one: this is a city where one dedicated individual can still have a major cultural impact. This came to mind recently when I made the acquaintance of Liane Weintraub, a new mother in her mid-30s. Weintraub lives in Malibu and no […]
Read More… from Dancing Queen (Liane Weintraub and Dance in LA)
Today, I am a nephew. Last weekend, the names of more than 3 million persons murdered in the Holocaust were posted on the Internet as part of a searchable database created by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Yad Vashem was established in 1950 by an act of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, as the Holocaust Martyrs’ […]
Read More… from Becoming a Nephew (The Yad Vashem online database)
The most memorable books I’ve read recently have been, ironically enough, three memoirs that stand out for their sensitivity, intelligence and literary quality. Jonathan Schwartz’s “All in Good Time: A Memoir†(Random House) is a particularly well-crafted, deeply felt story of childhood neglect as the child of famed Broadway and movie music composer Arthur Schwartz, […]
Read More… from Literary Journeys (Memoirs by Jonathan Schwartz, Nessa Rapoport and Stefan Zweig)