The Kennedy Center’s Unnecessary Immolation
Plus: ‘The late great Hannibal Lecter’?
Hey, first things first: The Bulwark is coming to Texas for a couple of live shows, first at the Texas Theatre in Dallas on March 18 and then at the Paramount Theatre in Austin on March 19. I’ll be onstage at the Dallas show for sure and will likely be lurking on the edges of the Austin show if not on the stage itself.
The Dallas show is at the Texas Theatre, which is this very cool, old-school, cavernous movie theater/event space. (It’s where I saw Francis Ford Coppola present Megalopolis last year!) And it has some historical resonance, as it’s the theater that Lee Harvey Oswald fled to after killing JFK. I could not possibly be more excited to be part of a show at that venue; it’s going to be incredibly fun. Buy your tickets today!
One Last Day at the Kennedy Center
LAST WEEKEND I POPPED INTO D.C. for twenty hours to take in a day’s worth of shows at the Kennedy Center. It was a slightly surreal experience—like saying farewell to an old friend—made all the more surreal by what happened when I put on the winter clothes I’d brought with me but rarely get to use at my new home in Dallas.
Shrugging into my heavy Schott Bros. peacoat as I exited the Watergate Hotel on my way over to the Kennedy Center, I felt something jostle against my chest. Reaching into the inside pocket, I pulled out a Kennedy Center ticket. For a show dated December 2019. “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus: The Musical,” as it happens, which was the last I saw at the Kennedy Center and a nice little pre-Christmas, pre-cross-country-move treat for my (then-4-year-old) daughter.
It was a reminder of a different time: For all the weirdness that surrounded Donald Trump’s first term, the Kennedy Center more or less remained above the fray. The touring troupe of Hamilton performed there in 2018, unlike this time around. That was the same year Philip Glass, who just withdrew his symphony honoring Abraham Lincoln, received the Kennedy Center Honor. And, of course, Mo Willems brought his cherished pigeon to masses of delighted DMV-area children while serving as artist-in-residence beginning in 2019.
As I document in a big piece I wrote for the Bulwark homepage this week, all that has changed, obviously: Trump took a personal interest in the activities of the Kennedy Center. He installed his crony Richard Grenell at the center along with a handpicked board of flunkies, which led to the calamitous decision to slap Trump’s name on the front of the building, which in turn added to the series of defections by performers and an exodus of patrons vexed by the desecration. The Washington National Opera announced it was leaving, dealing another blow to the beleaguered center. This in turn led Trump to petulantly announce that the Kennedy Center would be closed for two years—can’t have disappointing sales if you don’t have any disappointing shows to sell for—for “renovations.”
Anyway, I hope you give the piece below a read. And if you have any memories of the shows you saw at the Kennedy Center that you want to share, please do so in the comments, I know folks would love to hear about them.
Also, if you haven’t yet become a Bulwark+ member, please consider taking the leap. Can’t afford publish pieces like this without the generous support of our members.
Hello, Clarice.
On this week’s Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, I interviewed Brian Raftery, the author of Hannibal Lecter: A Life, about his book and the president’s weird, repeated references to Lecter during the 2024 presidential campaign. It’s a fun chat, and his book is particularly interesting for the deep dive into the life of Thomas Harris, one of the few true literary recluses of our age. I hope you give it a listen and if you enjoy our talk, please pick up his book!
Crime 101 Review
I couldn’t help but feel that Crime 101 was trying to be something a little more than what it is while watching it. It’s not terrible, it’s just . . . a little off. From my review:
Crime 101 is one of those oddly paced movies that either needed to be twenty minutes shorter and lean into the high-concept, elevator-pitch nature of the idea or be twenty minutes longer and really dive into all the side characters, like the deranged and sloppy Ormon (Barry Keoghan) and the fence Money (Nick Nolte). Nolte in particular just kind of disappears from the film despite setting the third-act conflict into motion; one wonders if there isn’t a whole subplot involving Money and Mike’s relationship on the cutting room floor. Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Lou’s wife, also shows up for basically a single scene, in which she informs Lou that she’s been having an affair. It’s a genuine ‘Wait, what?’ moment, the sort of thing that again makes you feel like the movie is missing something.
We spend more time with Sharon Colvin (Halle Berry), an insurance adjuster who is aging up (and therefore out) of her gig as a high-end saleswoman assuaging the egos of billionaires, but she still feels tertiary to all the action, both integral to the schemes cooked up by Lou and Mike and also stuck on the outside looking in. For a movie that seems very concerned about the unfair treatment of women in an industry dependent on looks, she isn’t given much to do but look pretty, and that’s a problem. And I won’t spoil anything except to say that, ultimately, [writer/director Burt] Layton is too forgiving of his lead characters: he likes them all too much and thus ends up giving them passes they don’t deserve, which is a problem for a movie so clearly modeled on something as remorseless as Heat.
You can read the full review here.
Assigned Viewing: Wuthering Heights (1939) (HBO Max, Criterion, Kanopy, and more)
I haven’t yet seen Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation (or “adaptation,” as the scare quotes the studio demands critics use to surround the film’s title in their reviews suggests) of Emily Brontë’s novel. But I get the sense it is . . . not terribly faithful. That doesn’t mean it can’t be great! William Wyler’s 1939 adaptation omits the second half of the book and is considered a classic. It’s streaming all over the place now, so if you want to avoid the opening-weekend crowds (projections are through the roof for this one, it’s going to be a big hit), maybe stay in and watch Wyler’s version.
I saw the Alvin Ailey Dance troupe at the Kennedy Center twice, in the 1970s. I saw my nephew dance there, twice, before he died, as a student with the Washington Ballet School, under the direction of Septime Weber. I was photographed and featured in a Kennedy Center program brochure while I was in high school. I will NEVER go to the Kennedy Center while it bears the current POTUS' name, because his hubris and overreach, his disrespect for iconic monuments is disgraceful, and a smear on the memory of John fitzgerald Kennedy and JFK's stellar service to our country, and to his family's dedication to the arts.
I went back to read the Kennedy Center piece again. It's terrific, even though it feels like a eulogy — which I guess it really is. I only went to the Kennedy Center a few times, but those are good memories, and I'm so sad to see the place abused this way. My favorite line from the article: "There is no reason that Issa Rae and Jeff Foxworthy and the National Symphony Orchestra and Hamilton and Les Miz and George Strait and Philip Glass and whoever else cannot exist under the same roof." Amen.