TRAINWRECK

Amy Schumer has been getting a lot of attention lately, and her movie TRAINWRECK even more, some of it because that was what was showing in the most recent deadly movie theater attack, but also because her humor is being touted as outrageous in a new way.

Not so, from my perspective, but nonetheless, this movie, which she wrote and stars in, is full of laughs. Some of the jokes are the kind of frat boy bodily-parts-and-functions humor that the director Judd Apatow has made so popular in his films and since BRIDESMAIDS women have been allowed to do too, occasionally.

But even though some of the jokes made me cringe, others had me doubled over and in tears. Schumer pulls off this feat in a more or less one woman show with not just obvious sex and bathroom humor, but with more subtle scenes that involve a poignantly insightful sense of redemption. And who doesn't like a redemption story with crude humor?

I would have thought the answer would have been me, but turns out I enjoyed this film very much, including the performances by her co-stars Bill Hader, Brie Larson, Colin Quinn and LeBron James. Let me know what you think.

QUICK THOUGHT ABOUT THE GOP "DEBATE" LAST NIGHT

Fox is definitely better at doing news-as-entertainment, which obviously never lets facts get in the way of audience arousal...but for those who saw the questions as pretty hard hitting and "going after the candidates" I would suggest that the questions were mostly hard hitting when it came to any variation from the rightwing wing of the party...there were few if any hard-hitting questions about the lies each candidate was telling on stage in real time and none about their campaign's finances or criminal activities (e.g. Rand Paul's recently indicted campaign managers etc.)...unfortunately the Democratic debates are moderated as if they were a top university's debate forum where logic and reason and factual information are prized whereas last night's Fox "debate" was moderated as if it were a Super Bowl with a halftime show, i.e. disappointingly lopsided with glitches...

ONCE UPON A TIME

my first wife and the mother of my older children, Caitlin and Miles, the late poet Lee Lally in the house we rented on Emory Place in the "Friendship Heights" section of Washington DC c. 1972

 (photo by John Gossage)

ANOTHER WEEKLY BERNIE QUOTE

LYNN MANNING R.I.P.

I just got word that Lynn Manning passed. I don't see it yet on the web but our mutual close friend, Eve Brandstein, texted me a little while ago and my heart sunk. I loved Lynn. That's a photo of him and me in L.A. in the 1980s. I met him through Rutger Hauer who was preparing for a movie role where he had to be a blind martial arts warrior and Lynn was teaching him moves.

Rutger told me Lynn was a poet and we should know each other so he introduced us and we became immediate friends after telling each other our stories. Lynn had grown up in a rough neighborhood in L.A. (if I remember correctly his mother shot the man she was living with there in later years) and standing at a bar one day when he was a young man the guy next to him said something Lynn didn't appreciate so Lynn, at least the way I remember him telling me, said something dismissive back and then as he reached for his drink saw out of the corner of his eye the guy pull out a gun and aim it at Lynn's head.

Lynn only had time to move his head back far enough that the bullet missed his brain but ended up stopping right behind his nose, between his eyes, where it stayed for the rest of his life and left him blind. At first, as he shared with me, he felt sorry for himself and sat around and got fat and depressed. But eventually he realized there was no going back and feeling sorry for himself wasn't getting him anywhere but drunk.

So he got in shape and into judo and within a short time became the blind heavyweight judo champion of the world! That's how Rutger heard of him and got him hired for the movie and then introduced him to me. I loved Lynn's poetry, which in those days he would "write" by dictating lines into a little tape recorder and then at readings would get up to the mic with the reorder plugged into one ear and recite his poems from the tape. Later he learned to recite them from memory. (Eventually he wrote a play about his life that brought him acclaim as well.)

We read often because I cofounded and co-ran a weekly poetry reading in L.A. called POETRY IN MOTION with Eve, and Lynn became a regular, as well as at other events I hosted on my own. I loved hanging out with him, and after I moved to Jersey in '99 stayed in touch through phone calls. Though when I learned of his passing tonight I realized I hadn't spoken with him in a few years and felt bad that I hadn't called. But he may have been unavailable as I learned he'd been suffering from the cancer that ended his life. Rest In Poetry my friend.

Here's a clip from of Lynn reading his masterpiece about his mother shooting her partner (you gotta get past my being in the shot to help with the mic and then his first short goof, but once he starts into the long poem stay with it for a unique ride with a unique man):

ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL BERKSHIRE WEEKEND

Just a Saturday overnight trip to The Berkshires, but I got to see FRANKIE AND JOHNNY AT THE CLAIR DE LUNE at The Berkshire Theater Festival in Stockbridge, under the direction of Karen Allen, another stage triumph as a director for my old friend.

And I got to see old friends I hadn't seen in a while and catch up on their lives and those of their loved ones, and see my Godson who lives up there and has made a life for himself, and I got to make some new friends and do my best to be present for all of it.

And I got to see my oldest son Miles play bass with Jordan Weller and The Feathers at The Gypsy Joynt in Great Barrington for one of the tightest and most driving sets ever, making the joint explode with dancing and cheering and just move-to-the-music energy, including mine.

And I got to see my grandson, whose badly broken arm from a skateboarding accident needed surgery earlier in the week to fix with a plate and screws, already healing and taking it all with his usual humor and aplomb just days before his seventeenth birthday.

Life has its challenges and set backs, and definitely its disappointments but it also has it triumphs and blessings and grace, for which I am eternally grateful, even in the times when I'm not, because I know the power of gratitude-no-matter-what.

IRRATIONAL MAN

I know there's a lot of reasons a lot of people have for not liking Woody Allen, but as I've probably said on this blog before, I've never seen a movie of his I didn't get something out of, and sometimes I got a lot.  His latest, IRRATIONAL MAN, isn't his best by far, but it still was a satisfying movie experience for me.

Set on a college campus it deals with a lot of the stock characters movies in that setting usually present, but as always, Allen has his own take that makes the setting seem newly analyzed through both the humorous and the tragic scenes.

The acting, as always in any Allen film, is a treat to watch, with Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and the always uniquely compelling Parker Posey leading the way. If you hate Woody skip it, but if you appreciate his mastery with set ups and writing and casting, you might find it a worthwhile diversion. I did.