Christopher Durang, one of American’s most acclaimed and accomplished playwrights whose works like Beyond Therapy, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You and the Tony-winning Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike were as incisive as they were absurdly comic, died Tuesday night at his home in Pipersville, Pa., in Bucks County. He was 75.
His agent, Patrick Herold, confirmed that Durang died as a result complications of his 2016 diagnosis with logopenic primary progressive aphasia (Ppa), a form of Alzheimer’s disease that impedes the ability to process language. He remained out of the public spotlight since his condition was made public in 2022. In February, New York’s Dramatists Guild announced that the playwright would receive its 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award on May 6, placing Durang on a prestigious roster alongside such past awardees as John Guare, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Miller.
Born Christopher Ferdinand Durang on January 2, 1949, Durang soared to...
His agent, Patrick Herold, confirmed that Durang died as a result complications of his 2016 diagnosis with logopenic primary progressive aphasia (Ppa), a form of Alzheimer’s disease that impedes the ability to process language. He remained out of the public spotlight since his condition was made public in 2022. In February, New York’s Dramatists Guild announced that the playwright would receive its 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award on May 6, placing Durang on a prestigious roster alongside such past awardees as John Guare, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Miller.
Born Christopher Ferdinand Durang on January 2, 1949, Durang soared to...
- 4/3/2024
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
It’s been over a year since Quentin Tarantino last spoke publicly about his decision to retire from feature filmmaking after his 10th movie. Is he still planning to fold up the director’s chair as of June 2021? Based on his appearance this week on the “Pure Cinema Podcast,” it sure sounds like it. Tarantino joined the show to discuss five great final movies from his favorite directors (Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” is mentioned), and naturally the conversation turned to Tarantino’s own plan to end his directing career.
“Most directors have horrible last movies,” Tarantino said (via MovieMaker). “Usually their worst movies are their last movies. That’s the case for most of the Golden Age directors that ended up making their last movies in the late ’60s and the ’70s, then that ended up being the case for most of the New Hollywood directors who made their last...
“Most directors have horrible last movies,” Tarantino said (via MovieMaker). “Usually their worst movies are their last movies. That’s the case for most of the Golden Age directors that ended up making their last movies in the late ’60s and the ’70s, then that ended up being the case for most of the New Hollywood directors who made their last...
- 6/3/2021
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Yesterday, amid a crush of sweaty people desperate for last-minute props, I visited a local Halloween superstore with my daughter, looking for a Pikachu mask. Well, there wasn’t much to choose from in the Cute Kid Division. But this particular hall of Halloween hell definitely had the adult sensibility covered. Of course there were the usual skimpy or otherwise outrageous costumes for purchase —ladies, you can dress up like a sexy Kim Kardashian-esque vampire out for a night of Hollywood clubbing, and gents, how about impressing all the sexy Kim Kardashian vampires at your party by dressing up like a walking, talking matched set of cock and balls! It’s been a while since I’ve shopped for fake tools of terror, but it seems there’s been a real advance in sophistication in the market for “Leatherface-approved” (I swear) chainsaws with moving parts and authentic revving noises,...
- 10/30/2016
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
Victoria Beckham's new campaign for her Autumn/Winter 2015 collection is creating quite the stir.
Though you wouldn't know it by the models, who are curiously posed to make them appear lifeless and unconscious.
Check out the eerie shots which has one model lying on the floor with her eyes closed, and another in which she appears slumped over a chair.
Dead funny or corpsing? Victoria Beckham’s new collection looks like death - http://t.co/Gf0MxDNrar pic.twitter.com/9vTS7mDkYC
— Latest news UK (@LatestNews_UK) March 3, 2015
Victoria Beckham's new clothing campaign features 'unconscious' models http://t.co/dUdmhmXAtV pic.twitter.com/PvmSaCfD22
— Daily Mail Femail (@Femail) March 3, 2015
Photo: See the Dress Victoria Beckham Wore on Her First Date with David Beckham
Some critics are comparing the photos to the controversial heroin chic look that was big in the '90s -- you remember.
The Victoria Beckham Collection credits the uncomfortable style of the...
Though you wouldn't know it by the models, who are curiously posed to make them appear lifeless and unconscious.
Check out the eerie shots which has one model lying on the floor with her eyes closed, and another in which she appears slumped over a chair.
Dead funny or corpsing? Victoria Beckham’s new collection looks like death - http://t.co/Gf0MxDNrar pic.twitter.com/9vTS7mDkYC
— Latest news UK (@LatestNews_UK) March 3, 2015
Victoria Beckham's new clothing campaign features 'unconscious' models http://t.co/dUdmhmXAtV pic.twitter.com/PvmSaCfD22
— Daily Mail Femail (@Femail) March 3, 2015
Photo: See the Dress Victoria Beckham Wore on Her First Date with David Beckham
Some critics are comparing the photos to the controversial heroin chic look that was big in the '90s -- you remember.
The Victoria Beckham Collection credits the uncomfortable style of the...
- 3/4/2015
- Entertainment Tonight
Watch trailers for the new Superman movie and the web comedy series, plus a grandmother tries a 3D virtual reality headset
Wonder is the theme of this week's Guardian Viral Video Chart and we start by wondering how many more films can be released in the phenomenally successful Superman series which returns with Man of Steel. We are also in awe of all things zombie – and the latest offering is the new Amazon's web series Zombieland.
Isn't it amazing that you can try to indoctrinate kids into appreciating a favourite sport - but sometimes they just don't get it! Take this little lad, given a prime seat for a top baseball game. He manages to get the match ball after a foul shot – and then throws it back again. Just look at the reaction from the rest of the family …
There's some wonder at the other end of the age...
Wonder is the theme of this week's Guardian Viral Video Chart and we start by wondering how many more films can be released in the phenomenally successful Superman series which returns with Man of Steel. We are also in awe of all things zombie – and the latest offering is the new Amazon's web series Zombieland.
Isn't it amazing that you can try to indoctrinate kids into appreciating a favourite sport - but sometimes they just don't get it! Take this little lad, given a prime seat for a top baseball game. He manages to get the match ball after a foul shot – and then throws it back again. Just look at the reaction from the rest of the family …
There's some wonder at the other end of the age...
- 4/19/2013
- by Janette Owen
- The Guardian - Film News
Dead funny
It won the Panavision Spirit Award for Independent Cinema at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival at now it's about to have its British première at the Glasgow Film Festival. We talk to director Zam Salim about Up There, and ask what's so funny about being dead.
“I wanted to make a film about loneliness, unemployment, misery and death,” says Zam, “but if I'd done that literally I don't think anybody would want to watch it. So I gave it a twist. I wanted to look at the absurdity of it and make more of a genre movie.”
Up There is the story of...
It won the Panavision Spirit Award for Independent Cinema at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival at now it's about to have its British première at the Glasgow Film Festival. We talk to director Zam Salim about Up There, and ask what's so funny about being dead.
“I wanted to make a film about loneliness, unemployment, misery and death,” says Zam, “but if I'd done that literally I don't think anybody would want to watch it. So I gave it a twist. I wanted to look at the absurdity of it and make more of a genre movie.”
Up There is the story of...
- 2/13/2012
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
This week's news in the arts
In 1970, rock critic Lester Bangs wrote a review of the Stooges' album Fun House in which he spent the first 6,000 words musing on the divide between artist and fan. The only real way of judging an artist's worth, he decided, was to fling a custard pie in their face and see how they responded. Alice Cooper, he noted, had reacted to his own on stage pieing by gleefully rubbing the custard into his pores, and Iggy Pop would no doubt similarly thrive off the mayhem. Bangs predicted that most big stars (George Harrison, Richie Havens, Led Zeppelin), however, would simply storm off the stage in a huff.
Pies have been flung in many areas of culture. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow includes a custard pie fight between passengers on a plane and an air balloon. Terry Johnson's play Dead Funny had people flinging pies...
In 1970, rock critic Lester Bangs wrote a review of the Stooges' album Fun House in which he spent the first 6,000 words musing on the divide between artist and fan. The only real way of judging an artist's worth, he decided, was to fling a custard pie in their face and see how they responded. Alice Cooper, he noted, had reacted to his own on stage pieing by gleefully rubbing the custard into his pores, and Iggy Pop would no doubt similarly thrive off the mayhem. Bangs predicted that most big stars (George Harrison, Richie Havens, Led Zeppelin), however, would simply storm off the stage in a huff.
Pies have been flung in many areas of culture. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow includes a custard pie fight between passengers on a plane and an air balloon. Terry Johnson's play Dead Funny had people flinging pies...
- 7/20/2011
- by Tim Jonze
- The Guardian - Film News
A cartoon of Hitler on the cover of a Vanity Fair in November 1932. Rudolph Herzog, son of celebrated filmmaker Werner Herzog, was introduced to American readers this spring as the author of a newly translated book, Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany, a revealing reexamination of the history of joke-telling during the Third Reich. Herzog, 38, is also known as co-creator of the 2004 BBC series The Heist, a reality crime show, and for his 2006 BBC film about popular jokes aimed at Nazis, which, two years later, was the subject of his book for a German publisher. Hitler considered anti-Nazi humor an act of treason, and from 1942 to 1944, the infamous People’s Court of Berlin issued 4,933 death sentences, many of which were linked to “defeatist” jokes. Herzog argues, however, that it wasn’t as dangerous to make fun of Nazis as some have claimed, and that most people executed for...
- 6/22/2011
- Vanity Fair
Rudolph Herzog, son of Werner, tells Geoffrey Macnab what the Nazis did for joke-telling
Hitler and Goering are on the radio tower in Berlin, looking at the crowds below. Hitler wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners' faces. So Goering says: "Why don't you jump?"
It is not the funniest joke, but a German woman, Marianne K, who told it at her workplace during the war was reported to the authorities, and executed as a result. Film-maker and author Rudolph Herzog, son of the German director Werner Herzog, includes the anecdote in his book Dead Funny: Humour in Hitler's Germany, as well as the court documents relating to her death. Published in the UK next month, the book originated with Herzog's documentary on the same subject, Ve Have Vays of Making You Laugh.
Herzog's thesis is that, during the Third Reich, Germans relished jokes about their leaders.
Hitler and Goering are on the radio tower in Berlin, looking at the crowds below. Hitler wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners' faces. So Goering says: "Why don't you jump?"
It is not the funniest joke, but a German woman, Marianne K, who told it at her workplace during the war was reported to the authorities, and executed as a result. Film-maker and author Rudolph Herzog, son of the German director Werner Herzog, includes the anecdote in his book Dead Funny: Humour in Hitler's Germany, as well as the court documents relating to her death. Published in the UK next month, the book originated with Herzog's documentary on the same subject, Ve Have Vays of Making You Laugh.
Herzog's thesis is that, during the Third Reich, Germans relished jokes about their leaders.
- 5/25/2011
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- The Guardian - Film News
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