“It’s kind of a brutal story,” Jerry Hannan says. “Brutal, but beautiful.”
The Marin County musician is describing Mad Hannans, a new documentary about the legendary folk-rock band fronted by Hannan, with his late brother Sean Hannan on drums. Sean passed away in 2013. His battle with cancer—just as the Hannans began recording a new album following a bitter, yearslong separation—is now a major part of the film, sensitively directed by the Hannans’ longtime friend Martin Shore.
Mad Hannans will have its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Considering the enormous popularity of the band in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Hannan expects to see a large number of old fans at each of the movie’s two festival screenings.
A concert at the Sweetwater Music Hall, following the film’s debut on Friday, October 6, is already sold out.
“Can you believe that?” Hannan says. “The concert is kind of a reunion, a reuniting of people who played with us over the years, along with some special guests. But tickets disappeared as soon as we announced the show. I have people calling me up from all over the country saying, ‘Hey, I know the show is sold out, but can you get me in?’” Laughing, Hannan adds, “No. No I can’t get you in. I’m lucky I can get in.”
Taking a short lunchtime break at his Sausalito music studio, Hannan describes what he’s been working on this morning. He’s recording new material to go with tracks that were left unfinished when Sean passed away. It’s part of the album that he hopes to have completed in time for an end-of-the-year release.
“It’s weird, a little, but I’m working on unfinished stuff that my brother played drums on,” Hannan says. “He’d finished recording all of his stuff when he died. For years, I couldn’t even listen to it. It made me really sad. But now, it actually makes me happy to hear him playing, to hear him talking before and after the tracks were recorded. It makes me feel close to him, to be finishing this project that we started together, and had such high hopes for.”
There is footage, in the film, of those final recording sessions with Sean and Jerry. They were filmed as part of the documentary originally conceived as a brief 12-minute short about the Mad Hannans reuniting and recording a new album.
Asked what it was that split the Mad Hannans to begin with, Hannan pauses a moment. “I don’t know; it became impossible to work together, which was a real bummer,” he says. “At first, it was so easy and so fun. The Mad Hannans were just plain fun, because Sean and I had fun together. When people came to see us, it wasn’t just the music, but the whole thing about us being brothers. They liked the love story between us, ’cause that’s what it was. We loved each other, even when we couldn’t stand each other. And that love was infectious.”
But Sean had a drinking problem, and according to Hannan, he often became angry, leading to the deterioration of the band.
“I was probably too controlling,” Hannan says. “I was part of the problem, I guess. Anyway, we split up. I played with other drummers, who were good, but I missed playing with Sean. He was the best drummer for me to play with, by far. I don’t know if it was a genetics thing, or what, but he and I just clicked together when we were playing.”
Eventually, Sean cleaned up, and began sitting in on gigs with his brother. “And then he got a bump in his toe, and it turned out to be cancerous,” Hannan says. Sean’s foot was amputated, but that didn’t stop him.
“He always preferred to drum standing up, anyway,” Hannan says with a laugh.
But the cancer returned, and a few months later, Sean was dead.
“We were on our way to making some amazing things happen, and then we basically get struck by lightning,” Hannan says. “Like I said, it’s a brutal story. It’s a story of heartbreak and loss and brotherhood and love. But it’s great, because it’s a love story, too. And it just happens to have some really great music in it.”
‘Mad Hannans’; Friday, Oct. 6 and Monday, Oct. 9; Sweetwater music performance, Fri., Oct. 6; mvff.com.
Formed in San Francisco 51 years ago, psychedelic funk legends Sly and the Family Stone broke all the rules and revolutionized soul music, and drummer Greg Errico was there on day one.
“It was very exciting—even then, he (Sly Stone) was a very colorful bigger-than-life personality,” says Errico, who played in a band with Stone’s brother Freddie and knew Sly as a radio host in the city before the Family Stone formed. “Literally one night I showed for rehearsal with the group Freddie and I had, and said, ‘Where’s everybody?’ That’s the night we started the new group.”
Groundbreaking not only for their genre-bending sound, Sly and the Family Stone was the first major band in America to integrate races and genders, and the group had already solidified their place in rock ’n’ roll history with huge hits and critical acclaim by the time Errico left in 1971. Yet, drugs and a decline in output turned Sly Stone into a recluse nearly 30 years ago.
Fast forward to 10 years ago, when first-time filmmaker Michael Rubenstone set out on a quest to find the reclusive Stone, chronicled in the recently completed documentary, On the Sly, screening at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) on Friday, October 13.
Errico and other members of the Family Stone are featured prominently in the film, and the Family Stone will be featured prominently onstage after the screening in a live concert performance at the Sweetwater Music Hall as part of the festival’s music lineup. “It’s wonderful to come back into this and get it going again,” Errico says of the band. “As performers, we’re seeing the power of the music, the wave of what we had originally created, still moving.”
Joining the band, which also includes founding saxophonist Jerry Martini, will be Stone and the late Cynthia Robinson’s daughter Phunne Stone. “It’s good to have her,” Errico says. “It’s still a family affair.”
‘On the Sly’; visit mvff.com for film times and info. about the music performance.
Matteo Troncone’s aptly nameddocumentary Arrangiarsi (pizza … and the art of living) takes viewers on an intimate journey from Mill Valley, California through the lively streets of Naples, Italy. Part travelogue and part history lesson, the film, screening at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival, sets out to uncover the secrets of renowned Neapolitan pizza. But along the way, a hearty dose of self-discovery, along with the art of making something out of nothing—or arrangiarsi—are also explored.
As is revealed in the film, Troncone spent five years living in his van, and over a 7 ½-year time span, made multiple trips to Italy. It was during an initial visit to the country that Troncone decided to make a film about pizza, and the place that is widely regarded as the birthplace of the beloved dish.
“Everyone told me that I couldn’t do it—that I didn’t know anything about making movies or pizza,” says the New York native with a twinkle in his eye. Troncone ignored the naysayers and instead fully embraced arrangiarsi.
While this film certainly explores much more than pizza, foodies need not worry. Troncone takes a trip to the famous town of San Marzano outside of Naples, where, in order to make a true Neapolitan pizza (Vera Pizza Napoletana), a Roma tomato variety is the only one that can be used. Likewise the film explores how producers of this famous pizza strictly adhere to the use of only the highest-quality ingredients, and even take into consideration the water that is necessary to create a perfect dough.
Though it’s difficult to resist making comparisons to Eat Pray Love (a male version), there is a buoyancy and vibrant cadence to the film that makes it more a love letter to Naples than a pizza documentary.
‘Arrangiarsi (pizza … and the art of living)’; mvff.com.
The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) just turned 40. Want to know how long that is? If you were born the night of the first festival, you could conceivably be a grandparent today.
So how did this thing get started? Well, in 1976 ceramic artist and potter Mark Fishkin moved from Ouray, Colorado to Mill Valley and bought the Saturday Night Movie series from locals Ben Myron and Don Taylor. In a way, it was a festival unto itself, except that it lasted only one night and featured only one film—on a Saturday night. Fishkin was shrewd enough to realize that festivals were becoming important to our culture and there weren’t many of them. He asked himself if there was a need for one, and viewed Mill Valley “as a perfect location to do a festival.”
“It looked like nobody worked—writers, painters, filmmakers,” he says. “I just [dove] into the local talent (for content). [Carroll] Ballard, [John] Korty, [Francis] Coppola, George Lucas, James Broughton, Larry Jordan—I was talking to a lot of different people—[George] Kuchar, Les Blank … and I was learning as I went along.”
One of the first people he brought on board, Zoe Elton, MVFF’s longtime director of programming, recalls thinking, “What’s a film festival?”
From a modest beginning, a three-day festival with three tributes and a budget of $11,000, MVFF grew to what it is today—an 11-day international cinematic smorgasbord that includes workshops, panels, master classes, more than 200 films, a virtual reality exhibit, four tributes, a variety of spotlights and a centerpiece film.
Tributes honor the career of the recipient—and this year, Sean Penn, Kristin Scott Thomas, Holly Hunter and Todd Haynes will take a few bows for the work they have accomplished. Each of them is expected to engage the audience in a Q&A session following either the unspooling of career clips or a very recent work. Scott Thomas comes with an Opening Night film, The Darkest Hour, and director Haynes puts up Wonderstruck, based on Brian Selznick’s novel about two children, a boy in 1977 and a girl in 1922, whose stories intersect in New York City. Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore are in the cast.
With President Trump playing grade-school level war games with North Korea, war is suddenly breakfast table conversation. Thus, on Opening Night the festival offers the aforementioned World War II drama, Darkest Hour, about Winston Churchill’s rise to power and as human counterpoint to the Nazis’ planned invasion of Great Britain. Headlining director Joe Wright’s cast are Gary Oldman, of all people, playing Churchill in a “you-gotta-see-this-performance” and Scott Thomas as his wife Clementine.
For those looking for something a dash more lighthearted than war on Opening Night, Wait for Your Laughfollows the 90+-year career of singer-actress Rose Marie (she’s 94), who started as a singer at the age of 3 as Baby Rose Marie. Aided in her career by mobsters Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel, among others, she is best known for her role as a TV writer on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Documentary director Jason Wise held the reins on this one.
One of the most unusual films to come along in a while is Loving Vincent, first shot as a live-action film, then frame by frame, painted over in oils in a style resembling Van Gogh’s — 65,000 painted frames by 125 artists. Drawn from meticulous research and inspired by Van Gogh’s masterpieces, subjects and 800 personal letters, this animated film promises to bring viewers closer to the artist in a manner never before even attempted. “ … Because he is so famous, everyone knows a few facts about him,” says co-director Hugh Welchman, “but when you dig into it, it turns out there is so much more to him, he is a very inspiring individual, and frustrating too, because there are so many mysteries still swirling around him.”
If we’re going to celebrate the 40th in true bacchanalian style, the fest would do well to place films about wine, women and song on the table.
For fans of the sommeliers, Andre: The Voice of Wine (narrated by Ralph Fiennes) tells the tale of a Russian aristocrat and émigré who literally turned California wine from something resembling fermented grape juice to something even the French consider a fine gift. Despite being an experienced producer-director, Mark Tchelistcheff spent 10 years on this project about his great uncle because, he says, “his life story reads like a great novel.” Dr. Zhivago in the wine cellar!
Perhaps no one personifies the strong, outspoken, liberated woman better than Wilma Mankiller, the first woman ever elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
“I see Mankiller as so much more than a biography,” says Sunnyvale producer-director Valerie Red-Horse Mohl. “I believe it actually is a wakeup call for positive social change. Wilma lived her life with the philosophy of ‘Ga-Dugi,’ which translated means ‘in a good way.’ I want people leaving the theater to not accept the current divisiveness of our country and to make efforts to demand our elected leaders return to servant leadership.”
First-time filmmaker Michael Rubenstone spent 12 years trekking across the country to unearth the true story of Sly and the Family Stone, and to chronicle how a musical icon fell from grace and disappeared after his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
Reflecting on the time he spent with On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone, Rubenstone says, “I was drawn to the era, the people and the ’60s dream that Woodstock represented.” [A big hit at the first MVFF, the epic documentary Woodstock is reprised at this festival in all of its rock legends glory.] “And then at 3 in the morning, Sly and the Family Stone took the stage and it blew my mind. Sly was able to raise the level of consciousness—he truly took the audience higher. That’s where my fascination began.”
In Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story, another underappreciated music star is brought to the present day by an adoring fan. Executive Producer Sandy Warren quotes Maria Muldaur, who, after hearing Butterfield’s electric blues sound, said, “(He) blew our little folkie minds.” San Rafael’s John Anderson, another Butterfield superfan (and scholar), directed and produced this biopic, a portrait of a complex, enigmatic and brilliant musician, who spent several years living in Marin.
Spotlights honor up-and-coming entertainers, and we could surely make a case for moving Andrew Garfield to the Tribute category, except that he is young. In Breathe, he plays Robin Cavendish opposite Claire Foy’s Diana in the true story of an adventurous couple whose lives are thrown into chaos after Robin is felled by polio. Directed by Andy Serkis, who plays Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Caesar in 2017’s War for thePlanet of the Apes, the story brings to mind The Theory of Everything.
Director Dee Rees brings Mudboundto her Spotlight. The film is about two families—one black, one white—bound together during the Jim Crow era by serving in the military and the hardships of farm life. Her previous film, Pariah, was nominated for seven NAACP Image Awards.
This year’s Centerpiece entry, Last Flag Flying, directed by Richard Linklater, is presumably the sequel to The Last Detail. The cast includes Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne and Steve Carell as a trio of once-inseparable pals; but something happened and they stopped speaking. Now Carell’s Doc needs a favor, as his only son has been killed in combat and he is moved to call on his old buddies.
The curtain comes down on the festival with the Closing Night feature Lady Bird, the story of a rebellious senior in Catholic school. It’s directed by Greta Gerwig, who previously co-directed—so in a sense she’s a first-time director. Saoirse Ronan, who snapped up the title
‘Lady Bird’ will be featured as one of MVFF’s closing night films.
role, was born in the Bronx and was an Oscar nominee for Brooklyn. Following the screening of Lady Bird, Gerwig will take the stage for conversation and questionsand, like all of the other honorees, will be presented with the MVFF Award.
The festival’s campaign to bring women directors to the forefront certainly seems to have taken a foothold. “The goal for our 40th was to have at least 40 percent of this year’s entries from female filmmakers,” Elton says. We came in over 40 percent in every category (World Cinema, US Cinema, Valley of the Docs, filmHood and 5@5 Shorts) without compromising quality.”
Veteran filmmaker Windy Borman’s Mary Janes: The Women of Weedfollows a collective of women focused on “making marijuana legal nationwide, reforming the criminal (in)justice system, empowering disenfranchised communities, and giving lifesaving medicine to children and veterans, all while building gender equality into a billion-dollar industry. We call this the Puffragette Movement.”
Filmmaker Madeleine Gavin follows a Congolese woman named Jane who becomes a poster child for the City of Joyand victims of sexualized violence in a country perpetually torn apart by war and where laws are few and far between.
Jane Goodall’s revolutionary encounters with chimpanzees in Tanzania’s forest in the ’60s is captured in never-before-seen footage in Brett Morgen’s appropriately named documentary Jane.
Ripping a story from her family history that could be splattered on today’s front pages is Frances Causey’s The Long Shadow, which tells a tale about her slave-owning ancestors. “My family’s personal connection to slavery made me part of the story,” she says. “(One of my uncles) was a ‘founding father’ and the revolutionary governor of Virginia and was responsible in large part for codifying slavery into American law.”
“In some ways, (the festival’s) influence and breadth surprise me,” Elton says. “It’s come from solid commitment, a vision of what film is, and what it can do.”
While many festival directors would express astonishment that their brainchild has exploded into an event lasting four decades,” Fishkin says, “I knew from inception that we would have a reach. Commercial films were held over at theaters and there was no place to go for independent film. I had a sense of something important. I knew if I could entertain someone, educate someone, or give a filmmaker a chance to make a buck, and benefit the community, we would be successful.”
At the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley, you can experience what it is like to grow from a seed into a mature tree. The VR exhibit, entitled Tree, is like nothing you’ve seen before. Go see it.
Fairfax director James Redford returns with another conscience-raising environmental film, Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution. Redford tries to determine whether the movement toward clean energy will ultimately be squashed by corporations and utilities. “I embark on a colorful personal journey into the dawn of the clean energy era as it creates jobs, turns profits, and makes communities stronger and healthier,” he says. “Today, most Americans understand and accept the reality of climate change. But as disturbing evidence and imagery continues to mount, many of us feel increasingly uncertain about what we, as individuals, can do.”
San Francisco filmmakers Richard O’Connell and Annelise Wunderlich pooled their energies to open The Corridor to general audiences. Their film follows a San Francisco Sheriff’s Department program to help inmates obtain their graduate equivalency degrees. Be warned: Not all students behave.
The notes in your program about Kim Swims state that open-water swimmer Kim Chambers was determined to become the first female to cover the 30 miles from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge, despite it being “known for frigid temperatures, swirling currents and the world’s largest great white sharks,” says co-producer and first-time director Kate Webber. The notes in our journal at home indicate that we’d prefer a nice warm bath. The San Francisco filmmaker perceives the open-water swimmers as “adventurers who are squeezing every bit out of life!”
That’s what we’re doing at the festival. See you there!
Zero: Dr. Ann Troy, a Terra Linda pediatrician, recognizes the heroes trying to save our healthcare system, but notes that many zeros exist in the industry. Pharmaceutical company Mylan is one of the worst for increasing the price of a box of EpiPens to $600, although it costs less than $10 to produce. This simple device saves lives by reversing allergy symptoms, and some users can no longer afford it. Then there are insurance companies that won’t pay for necessary drugs. Troy spent an hour arguing with one and slogged through five pages of paperwork to get an EpiPen for a child with a life-threatening nut allergy.
Hero: Enter the heroes working to change the broken system. Troy identifies Senator Kamala Harris, Representative Jared Huffman, Ellen Karel and her colleagues at the Marin chapter of Health Care for All. “They are fighting for a single-payer system which would provide healthcare for all Americans (for less than we are currently spending on our fragmented, dysfunctional and very unfair system), result in better health outcomes, and finally give Americans what citizens of every other developed nation take for granted: Access to health care without having to worry about how they are going to pay for it,” Troy says.
Correction: In a recent Hero & Zero column, we referred to the San Rafael Yacht Club as the location where a litter of abandoned kittens was found. It was actually the San Rafael Yacht Harbor. We regret the error.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats likes to play along with the music of nature. On one occasion he collaborated with Mandeville Creek in Montana. He listened and studied the melodies that emanated from its flowing current. Then he moved around some of the underwater rocks, subtly changing the creek’s song. Your assignment, Aries, is to experiment with equally imaginative and exotic collaborations. The coming weeks will be a time when you can make beautiful music together with anyone or anything that tickles your imagination.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Some newspapers publish regular rectifications of the mistakes they’ve made in past editions. For example, the editors of the UK publication The Guardian once apologized to readers for a mistaken statement about Richard Wagner. They said that when the 19th-century German composer had trysts with his chambermaid, he did not in fact ask her to wear purple underpants, as previously reported. They were pink underpants. I tell you this, Taurus, as encouragement to engage in corrective meditations yourself. Before bedtime on the next 10 nights, scan the day’s events and identify any actions that you might have done differently—perhaps with more integrity, focus or creativity. This will have a deeply tonic effect. You are in a phase of your astrological cycle when you’ll flourish as you make amendments and revisions.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): It’s high time to allow your yearnings to overflow … to surrender to the vitalizing pleasures of nonrational joy … to grant love the permission to bless you and confound you with its unruly truths. For inspiration, read these lines of a poem by Caitlyn Siehl: “My love is honey tongue. Thirsty love. My love is peach juice dripping down the neck. Too much sugar love. Sticky sweet, sticky sweat love. My love can’t ride a bike. My love walks everywhere. Wanders through the river. Feeds the fish, skips the stones. Barefoot love. My love stretches itself out on the grass, kisses a nectarine. My love is never waiting. My love is a traveler.”
CANCER (June 21-July 22): One of the oldest houses in Northern Europe is called the Knap of Howar. Built out of stone around 3600 B.C., it faces the wild sea on Papa Westray, an island off the northern coast of Scotland. Although no one has lived there for 5,000 years, some of its stone furniture remains intact. Places like this will have a symbolic power for you in the coming weeks, Cancerian. They’ll tease your imagination and provoke worthwhile fantasies. Why? Because the past will be calling to you more than usual. The old days and old ways will have secrets to reveal and stories to teach. Listen with alert discernment.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The United States has a bizarre system for electing its president. There’s nothing like it in any other democratic nation on Earth. Every four years, the winning candidate needs only to win the electoral college, not the popular vote. So theoretically, it’s possible to garner just 23 percent of all votes actually cast, and yet still ascend to the most powerful political position in the world. For example, in two of the last five elections, the new chief of state has received significantly fewer votes than his main competitor. I suspect that you may soon benefit from a comparable anomaly, Leo. You’ll be able to claim victory on a technicality. Your effort may be “ugly,” yet good enough to succeed.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I found this advertisement for a workshop: “You will learn to do the INCREDIBLE! Smash bricks with your bare hands! Walk on fiery coals unscathed! Leap safely off a roof! No broken bones! No cuts! No pain! Accomplish the impossible first! Then everything else will be a breeze!” I bring this to your attention, Virgo, not because I think you should sign up for this class or anything like it. I hope you don’t. In fact, a very different approach is preferable for you: I recommend that you start with safe, manageable tasks. Master the simple details and practical actions. Work on achieving easy, low-risk victories. In this way, you’ll prepare yourself for more epic efforts in the future.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Be realistic, Libra: Demand the impossible; expect inspiration; visualize yourself being able to express yourself more completely and vividly than you ever have before. Believe me when I tell you that you now have extra power to develop your sleeping potentials, and are capable of accomplishing feats that might seem like miracles. You are braver than you know, as sexy as you need to be and wiser than you were two months ago. I am not exaggerating, nor am I flattering you. It’s time for you to start making your move to the next level.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In accordance with the astrological omens, I invite you to take extra good care of yourself during the next three weeks. Do whatever it takes to feel safe and protected and resilient. Ask for the support you need, and if the people whose help you solicit can’t or won’t give it to you, seek it elsewhere. Provide your body with more than the usual amount of healthy food, deep sleep, tender touch and enlivening movement. Go see a psychotherapist, counselor or good listener every single day if you want. And don’t you dare apologize or feel guilty for being such a connoisseur of self-respect and self-healing.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): A queen bee may keep mating until she gathers 70 million sperm from many different drones. When composing my horoscopes, I aim to cultivate a metaphorically comparable receptivity. Long ago I realized that all of creation is speaking to me all of the time; I recognized that everyone I encounter is potentially a muse or teacher. If I hope to rustle up the oracles that are precisely suitable for your needs, I have to be alert to the possibility that they may arrive from unexpected directions and surprising sources. Can you handle being that open to influence, Sagittarius? Now is a favorable time to expand your capacity to be fertilized.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You’re approaching a rendezvous with prime time. Any minute now you could receive an invitation to live up to your hype or fulfill your promises to yourself—or both. This test is likely to involve an edgy challenge that is both fun and daunting, both liberating and exacting. It will have the potential to either steal a bit of your soul or else heal an ache in your soul. To ensure that the healing occurs rather than the stealing, do your best to understand why the difficulty and the pleasure are both essential.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In 1901, physician Duncan MacDougall carried out experiments that led him to conclude that the average human soul weighs 21 grams. Does his claim have any merit? That question is beyond my level of expertise. But if he was right, then I’m pretty sure that your soul has bulked up to at least 42 grams in the past few weeks. The work you’ve been doing to refine and cultivate your inner state has been heroic. It’s like you’ve been ingesting a healthy version of soul-building steroids. Congrats!
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): There are enough authorities, experts and know-it-alls out there trying to tell you what to think and do. In accordance with current astrological factors, I urge you to utterly ignore them during the next two weeks. And do it gleefully, not angrily. Exult in the power that this declaration of independence gives you to trust your own assessments and heed your own intuitions. Furthermore, regard your rebellion as good practice for dealing with the little voices in your head that speak for those authorities, experts and know-it-alls. Rise up and reject their shaming and criticism, too. Shield yourself from their fearful fantasies.
Homework: Would I enjoy following you on Twitter or Tumblr? Send me links to your tweets or posts at Tr**********@gm***.com.
Q: I’ve been dating this girl for just over a month, and she never offers to pay for anything. I was OK with this in the beginning, as I saw it as a courtship thing. I guess I wonder whether this points to problems down the road with her not being a real partner, pulling her weight, etc. How do I politely broach this without blowing up the blooming relationship?—Feeling Used
A: This woman lives paycheck to paycheck. Unfortunately, it’s your paycheck.
At this point, you’re probably musing on the perfect birthday gift for her—a sparkly little Hello Kitty crowbar that she can use to pry open her wallet. However, mystifying as it is that she has never squeaked out the words, “This one’s on me!” consider that if there’s one thing heterosexual men and women have in common these days, it’s confusion over who exactly is supposed to pay on dates.
The problem driving the confusion is a sort of Godzilla vs. Mothra clash between age-old evolved emotions (still driving us today) and modern-day beliefs about male and female equality. As I explain with some frequency (per big cross-cultural studies by evolutionary psychologist David Buss, among others), women evolved to seek male partners who show that they are willing and able to invest in any children they might have. Whether the particular woman actually wants children is immaterial—as in, of zero interest to her emotions.
Anthropologist John Marshall Townsend observes from his research and others’ that women’s emotions evolved to act as a sort of police force for a man’s level of commitment—making women feel bad when the investment isn’t there. This leads women to either push a man to invest, or ditch him and find a man who will.
Men coevolved to expect this, meaning that men evolved to try to appeal to the ladies by showing (or successfully faking) generosity, high status and earning power. Many people mistakenly assume that evolved adaptations like this will change with the times, but unfortunately, evolution is not a lickety-split process—especially when it comes to our psychological engine panel. In fact, anthropologist Donald Symons explains that “natural selection takes hundreds or thousands of generations” (generations being 20- to 30-year periods) “to fashion any complex cognitive adaptation.” So now even highly successful women who can comfortably pay for their own meals have their emotions pushing them to look for a man who shows generosity, as well as the ability to “provide.”
This is reflected in the findings by sociologist Janet Lever and her colleagues from a survey of heterosexual men and women—17,067 “unmarried and non-cohabitating” heterosexuals, ages 18 to 65—on the extent to which they embrace or reject the traditional “man pays” dating behavior. (Surprisingly, millennials’ responses were generally pretty close percentage-wise to those of older adults—mostly within a few percentage points.)
Overall, 57 percent of women said yes to, “I always offer to help pay, even on the first date.” But check out the mixed feelings: Many women (39 percent) wished men would reject their offer to pay. But many (40 percent of women) said they are bothered when men don’t accept their money. Hello, confusing financial stew!
Men’s responses were similarly contradictory. Overall, more than half of the men—64 percent—said that after the first few dates, the woman should help pay expenses, and nearly half (44 percent) said that they would stop dating a woman who never offers to pay. Yet, 76 percent of men feel guilty if they don’t pay the bill on dates.
Like all of these conflicted men, some women just aren’t sure where the lines are on whether to chip in and when. (Of course, some women are conveniently unsure.) As for this woman you’re seeing, it is possible that she’s waiting until you two are “exclusive” to start picking up the tab. Instead of assuming the worst, do two things: First, observe and reflect on her behavior and attitudes, and see whether they suggest an interest in partnership or princess-ship.
Second, simply ask: “Hey, we’ve been dating for a while, and it seems like we should start sharing the costs. Where do you stand on that?” See what she says and take it from there—tempting as it is to opt for a passive-aggressive approach, like panhandling outside the restaurant where you’re meeting her: “Hey, Amber. You’re early! Meet ya inside. Just trying to beg enough for the tip.”
Doug Nichol’s friendly and ruminative documentary concerns a piece of analog tech that still has an alchemical power. A black-and-white true-crime grabber starts California Typewriter: Artist Ed Ruscha and his buddy, the musician Mason Williams, autopsied a junked typewriter that they threw from a car window at 90 mph on a deserted road, per Ruscha’s 1967 Royal Road Test. From this lonesome “execution,” Nichol heads for the big money. We see the auction of the very typewriter that Cormac McCarthy used to wreak his run-on prose. It appears to be the most beautiful typewriter ever made, an Olivetti Lettera 22, sold to some wealthy culture-vulture for $210,000.
Big names testify: The late Sam Shepard, actor Tom Hanks, historian David McCullough and musician John Mayer. The heart of this film are interviews with ex-IBM employee Herb Permillion III, an expert on the Selectric, the Stratocaster of typewriters. He’s run the California Typewriter shop in Berkeley for many years. Business is uncertain—the question of whether the building will be sold worries Richmond’s Ken Alexander, the store’s head mechanic.
It’s a very local film, not just in the fine cityscapes; the Bay Area is an appropriate place to start the study, as Silicon Valley innovation doomed the typewriter. The idea that these typewriters have souls is argued with tender persuasiveness, as when John Adams’ biographer McCullough points out that we’ll never know the pentimento of today’s historical figures, erased by word processing. The beautiful machine is still craved by the top-knotted urbanite clattering away at his pensées at a local café, or people old enough to remember the satisfying punch of the type on the platen.
On Saturday, September 30, the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center will welcome the team behind the film; 5pm; rafaelfilm.cafilm.org.
The house lights dim. A three-piece band seated stage left begins the first chords of the score and when the lights come up, four provocatively clad chorus girls are dancing seductively in front of a drawn red curtain. Suddenly, a heavily rouged and powdered face emerges where the two halves of the curtain meet, and seconds later, like a satyr, the evening’s emcee prances toward the footlights to deliver his greeting—“Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome … ”
Those are the opening moments of Ross Valley Players’ (RVP) current production of Cabaret, an American musical based on sources that included English writer Christopher Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical fiction, John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera and Bob Fosse’s 1972 film that featured a score by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. No matter how many times you’ve seen the show, the sharply nasal voice and oleaginous smile that Joel Grey so memorably introduced on Broadway and in the film will likely suggest the coiled menace of a serpent as he invites us to join him for the festivities in Berlin’s notorious Kit Kat Klub, circa 1931. We—his audience—know we’re not in Germany on the brink of the Nazi putsch. In this case, we’re safely inside RVP’s familiar old Barn Theatre.Later, we’ll have a drink with friendsor head back to our comfortable suburban homes for sleep that (for most) will be undisturbed by fears of what tomorrow may bring. Nevertheless, some may feel a chill. I did.
The timing couldn’t be better—or worse, depending on how you view it. “Better” because Cabaret reminds us that complacency when threats are building is not a good strategy. “Worse” because it may be too late.
Politics aside, the show is a promising start to the company’s 88th season of producing plays, many of which, like this one, are above the usual quality found in community theaters. Because of their astronomically high royalties, need for live musicians and assorted other items, musicals are costly to produce. In a program note, RVP Board President Vic Revenko breaks down Cabaret’s budget. The total is $36,400. That’s a huge sum for a little company which depends on financial support from its box office and small individual donors. The key is that so many talented artists are willing to work for little or no remuneration.
Director James Dunn managed to secure the services of a phenomenal emcee in the person of Erik Batz, who captures every nuance of that complex role. The Kit Kat Girls (Cindy Head, Mia Camera, Alexa Sakellariou and Jannely Calmell) execute Sandra Tanner’s sexually themed choreography with vigor and precision. Maxine Sattizahn (Fraulein Schneider) and Ian Swift (Herr Schultz) are totally believable as elderly would-be lovers whose burgeoning relationship is destroyed by the latter’s Jewishness and the former’s fear of Nazi reprisals against her modest boarding-house business if she accepts his proposal of marriage. Skylar Collins is convincing as the superficially friendly Ernst, whose business is to smuggle cash to Hitler’s growing movement. Sumi Narendran (Fraulein Kost), Ralph Kalbus (Max) and Jannely Calmell (Lulu) make up the remainder of this talented ensemble.
Well, almost. I haven’t mentioned Cabaret’s two other leads, Isaak Heath (Clifford Bradshaw) and Emily Radosevich (Sally Bowles). Their on-again, off-again romance, his sexual indecision, her unwillingness to exchange the thrill of Berlin’s high life as the Kit Kat Klub’s featured performer for the security of a tranquil existence in the U.S.—for me, all of this poses a problem. I can overlook the robust athleticism of the Kit Kat Girls, but with its multiple iterations over the years, Isherwood’s story has become so Americanized that it’s hard to accept two very homegrown actors playing opposite a sophisticated European interpretation of the emcee by Batz. Multiculturalism has its plusses and minuses, on and off the stage.
Be that as it may, the shiver that went through the audience when most of the cast ended the first act singing the Nazi anthem,“Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” was palpable. Maybe the message was getting through after all.
NOW PLAYING: Cabaret runs through Oct. 22 at the Barn Theatre, Marin Art & Garden Center, Ross; 415/456-9555;rossvalleyplayers.com.
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Doug Nichol’s friendly and ruminative documentary concerns a piece of analog tech that still has an alchemical power. A black-and-white true-crime grabber starts California Typewriter: Artist Ed Ruscha and his buddy, the musician Mason Williams, autopsied a junked typewriter that they threw from a car window at 90 mph on a deserted road, per Ruscha’s 1967 Royal Road Test....
The house lights dim. A three-piece band seated stage left begins the first chords of the score and when the lights come up, four provocatively clad chorus girls are dancing seductively in front of a drawn red curtain. Suddenly, a heavily rouged and powdered face emerges where the two halves of the curtain meet, and seconds later, like a...
