The first thing you need to know about “Race,” the new play by David Mamet currently running at the Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, is that it isn’t really about race.  Well, not entirely about race.

The setting is a conference room of a law firm.  Henry Brown (David Alan Grier) and his white partner Jack Lawson (James Spader) are interviewing a prospective client (Richard Thomas).  The client, a wealthy white man, is standing trial for the rape of a black woman.

Two expert attorneys interviewing a prospective client is the perfect device for Mamet to not only inform the audience of the facts at hand and the idiosyncratic personalities of the characters we will spend the next hour and a half of our lives with, but it also serves as a perfect showcase for the playwright’s legendary use of dialogue, timing, over-lapping speech patterns and no-holds-barred language.  For a Mamet addict, this is heroin.

It is a chance to watch a conversation that anyone outside that room was never meant to hear.  And the language the characters use reflect the comfortable and brazen style reminiscent of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, the unique vernacular often referred to as “Mamet-Speak.” (more…)

Summer is the slow time on Broadway as theatre pros recover from their Tony Award hang-overs and try to rush out to the Island for a few days of R & R before the new season begins.  This year it seems there are a few plays aiming for early fall openings hoping to ride a crest of popularity into the always-lucrative holiday season.

Just as last season brought a record number of plays as well as stellar gross sales (despite doom-sayers in the industry) this season already looks locked and loaded with a huge number of shows scheduled to open between October 1st and the first week of May (the traditional Tony nomination cut-off).  So to help the readers of Big Hollywood plan their trip to the Great White Way (we can still say that, can’t we?), I submit the top 10 things to look for from the center/right perspective:

10.  ”Superior Donuts” – A transfer from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre (one of my personal favorite regional houses in America), the play stars “Spinal Tap”’s Michael McKean as an aging hippie who owns a donut shop in a largely black neighborhood and Jon Michael Hill (do all young Broadway actors HAVE to go by three names now?) as a 21-year-old from the neighborhood who talks his way into a job at the shop.  From the New York Times review:  ”In one of the play’s most amusing exchanges Franco challenges Arthur to name 10 black poets. Arthur names a few, then stands dumb, a look of deep concentration on his face. “It’s like watching George Bush on ‘Jeopardy!’ ” Franco cracks.” (more…)

Hollywood’s neo-blacklist against mainstream conservative values and those who believe in them isn’t an actual list. It’s worse. It’s nothing tangible you can point to, but rather a bullying peer pressure system like a high school in a John Hughes film. And it works something like this…

The big stars and directors are the cool kids – the jocks – the preppies – James Spader in “Pretty in Pink.” They own the school, strut the halls and decide who’s in and who’s out based on one’s ability and willingness to conform into one of them.

The Motion Picture Academy is the Student Council packed with James Spaders who game the system in order to keep the pecking order ordered and to their liking.

Variety and the Hollywood Reporter are the school paper. Both are staffed with wannabes and once-weres who protect the myth and clothe the emperor living for those moments when James Spader gives them a taste of the inside where they can bask in his glow. (more…)

Over the weekend, I was pondering why the low budget, standard genre pic The Haunting in Connecticut (Lionsgate) has become a nifty little box office hit. The film added almost $9.5M over the weekend for a new 10-day cume of $37M, and the only conclusion I have been able to reach is that it’s all about the poster.

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

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Guns have figured frequently in “Boston Legal,” with Denny Crane (William Shatner) using them defensively from time to time.  Recently, in episode 3 of season 5 (“Dances with Wolves“), Denny fired a gun to defend himself from a robber who also had a gun. The robber was not really threatening, and as Denny’s friend and fellow partner Alan Shore (James Spader) asked him: ”Did you absolutely have to shoot [the robber]? Three times? In both feet?”  Obviously the answer to all three questions was, “No.”

I don’t mind the humor in these shows. In fact, I laugh along with everyone else, but it would be interesting if those on the anti-gun side of this television firm (which is everyone else) would have similar fun poked at their own gun control views. Is it just not possible to think of similar jokes? (more…)