Extra Criticum

The Alchemy of Directing

2013-05-22T14:25:03-04:00

Of all the arts and crafts associated with the theatre biz the one I find most confounding is directing. One reason is that the director’s practical work is largely invisible, occurring in private rehearsal spaces with...

Drafting John McPhee's Help

2013-05-15T21:30:21-04:00

Today I wrote what may be the three most satisfying words a dramatist writes: END OF PLAY. They went on the bottom of page 103 in Scene 12 of a new full-length comedy. (One only hopes...

What is Success ?

2013-05-15T21:29:29-04:00

I am grateful for being able to post on Extra Criticum and am sorry I haven't in a long while. I could use the excuse that I now do a weekly internet radio show, work a...

Why I Started Extra Criticum and What I’ve Learned by Doing So

2013-05-13T17:22:28-04:00

For at least two years before the birth of Extra Criticum, it seems that my old pal Robert Sullivan had been prodding me to start blogging. “You need a blog. Every writer should have a blog....

Happy Fifth Anniversary! Or How Extra Criticum Changed My Life

2013-05-11T14:31:07-04:00

Extra Criticum was born on May 24th, 2008 and on June 2nd of that year my first post appeared, a review of the film Reprise. Before I wrote that post I was shy, withdrawn, and weighed...

Poetry and Pathos in Between the Laughs

2013-05-10T09:38:18-04:00

I was laughing out loud throughout both plays. But between the laughs, something else was going on. Dark ideas were bubbling to the surface. Poetry was emerging in the most seemingly mundane bits of dialogue.

Cartoon: Hope Springs Eternal

2013-04-30T16:59:32-04:00

Artist = Helpless Child = Not Charming

2013-04-30T16:58:41-04:00

There are people in this business (You know who you are) who love nothing more than to infantilize the artists they deal with. Sometimes these people are lawyers. Sometimes they're agents or producers or executives. Sometimes...

Letting Go: The Last Picture Show and Me

2013-04-24T18:11:41-04:00

Here's my favorite scene from one of my favorite films, The Last Picture Show. At 56 seconds in, one long take begins. In the DVD extras director Peter Bogdanovich talks about how fortuitous the weather was...

One Of the Best Things I've Ever Done

2013-04-12T16:15:53-04:00

In September, 1991, I showed up at a realtor’s office in Brooklyn. The borough was to be my home for the next 18 years, but it was virgin ground to me then. I had graduated from...

Performer Profile: Dandy Darkly

2013-03-29T17:53:49-04:00

What to say about my new friend, Dandy Darkly? It might be easier to let others... for example, Woman About Town Magazine called him "A Gothic, gay monologist" while the Triskelion Arts Center called him "The...

Our Brain Hungers for Narrative

2013-03-25T17:27:11-04:00

As a storyteller I pay a lot of attention to types of narrative – the various ways stories can be told. Narrative is perhaps the fundamental way our species organizes experience. Event “A” causes event “B”...

"Girls" and the sitcom fantasy of being rescued from yourself

2013-03-20T01:14:14-04:00

Girls is the antithesis of the modern sitcom, most notably in the way it depicts sex as awkward and only intermittently satisfying — as opposed to the happy, off-screen "banging" that's talked about on shows like...

Meanwhile on Filmmaker Magazine: An Article About Web Series

2013-03-19T15:55:31-04:00

An article I wrote for Filmmaker Magazine, Five Different Roads to a Web Series, is now online and ready for your eyeballs. I interviewed five filmmakers who turned their films (and a TV pilot) into web...