Gender Fluidity, Turkish Delights, and Richard E. Grant Has a “Lesson” for You: Tribeca 2023
Have you ever wondered why you and your compatriots worldwide are so obsessed with entertainment big and small? Pauline Kael in “Trash, Art, and the Movies” supplied one possibility: “Maybe you just want to look at people on the screen and know they’re not looking back at you, that they’re not going to turn on you and criticize you.”
Or if you are a subway rider, kill you.
Kael’s fellow critic Geoffrey O’Brien’s was paraphrased as saying: “Everyone is born twice, once in the real world, and once again in the movie world.” I guess we should update that to the “streaming planet.”
O’Brien also noted in The Phantom Empire how we’re taught our dating rituals in the dark. For example, on my first date, I took Michelle Goldstein to the Loews American in Parkchester to see Dick Van Dyke and Barbara Feldon in Fitzwilly. Like a gawky teen hero from some black-and-white 50’s musical I saw on WOR-TV’s daily afternoon offering, The Million Dollar Movie, I actually yawned and, mid-yawn, swung my left arm over Michelle’s shoulders. Then I forgot what to do. After 15 minutes or so, my poor limb was so severely cramped, romancing became the last thing on my mind.