What’s Up, Doc? is a screwball comedy starring Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand, but it has a great supporting cast with Madeline Kahn in her motion picture debut, Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton, Graham Jarvis, and Liam Dunn.  It features a script co-written by Buck Henry, one of the funniest men on the planet in my opinion.  One thing I truly miss is seeing Buck Henry guest hosting Saturday Night Live.  His episodes were always enjoyable.  Of course Buck Henry was also partially responsible for Get Smart!, Quark and Captain Nice as well as The Graduate. 

The plot of What’s Up, Doc? concerns several identical plaid travel cases getting mixed up, but that’s just a tool to set the comedy in motion.  There are so many wonderful scenes in this movie all played out to comic absurdity.  The fire in the hotel, the meeting in the hotel gift shop, the banquet, the party at the Larrabee estate, the chase through the streets of San Francisco, and the court room scene.  But there are also all sorts of smaller gems such as the meaning of propriety or Barbara trying to get a roast beef sandwich.  Of course there’s also a smile to be had in hearing Ryan O’Neal respond to the line “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” with a straight-faced “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard”.  Oh yeah?  Let’s see you tell that to Ali McGraw.

What’s Up, Doc? was directed by Peter Bogdanovich as a tribute to the screwball comedies he grew up watching.  I give What’s Up, Doc? 4 stars.  And in the category of best comedy, it is probably my number 1 choice even if it is not as sharp or as edgy as my other favorites.  The fact of the matter is simply that What’s Up, Doc delivers more laughs consistently, period.

The DVD is a little light on bonus features.  There is a commentary from Bogdanovich, a scene specific commentary from Streisand, a vintage featurette about the movie, and the trailer which is essentially a shortened version of the featurette.  I can only hope for a better retrospective when the film hits Blu-ray, but I’m not holding my breath.

Finding Nemo is a 2003 American computer-animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin, voiced by Albert Brooks, who along with a regal tang called Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, searches for his son Nemo, voiced by Alexander Gould. Along the way he learns to take risks and that his son is capable of taking care of himself.

The film received overwhelmingly positive reviews and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was a financial blockbuster as it grossed over $864 million worldwide.^[1] It is the best-selling DVD of all time, with over 40 million copies sold as of 2006^[2] and is the highest grossing G-rated movie of all time. In 2008, the American Film Institute named it the tenth greatest animated film ever made during their 10 Top 10. It was also the first Pixar animations studio film not to be released in November.

Finding Nemo is a 2003 American computer-animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin, voiced by Albert Brooks, who along with a regal tang called Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, searches for his son Nemo, voiced by Alexander Gould. Along the way he learns to take risks and that his son is capable of taking care of himself.

If this is some kind of practical joke, it’s not funny, and I know funny. I’m a clownfish.

– Marlin

The last couple of Pixar movies that I have reviewed, I had a lukewarm response to most of them. The creators are trying to have the action more grounded, but they always have to cock it up with putting kiddy stuff in it. Finding Nemo is the last great Pixar movie in my opinion. This #149 Move of All-Time on IMDb won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was well deserved.

A clownfish, Marlin (Albert Brooks) moves his wife, Coral (Elizabeth Perkins) and their 400 eggs to the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. When they get there, the community is threatened by a barracuda that takes Coral and almost of all of her 400 eggs, saved one.

Marlin tries everything in his power to protect his son, Nemo, perhaps overprotecting him. It’s understandable. Nemo is eager to go to his first day of school. Marlin is worried that the children are going to make fun of Nemo’s shorter fin, which they call his lucky fin.

His new friends want to explore the open ocean, which is forbidden. When Marlin comes to take Nemo away, Nemo wanted to be on his own. He swims up to a boat near by. Nemo is caught by the swimmers and taken with them.

Frantically searching for Nemo, Marlin bumps into the scatterbrain Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) to tries to take him to where the boat was last seen.

A shark sneaks up to the duo, Bruce (Barry Humphries). He brings the two into a Sharks Anonymous meeting with Anchor (Eric Bana) and Chum (Bruce Spence). Marlin sees a clue to help find Nemo. One of the divers drops his mask with his contact information on it. He needs someone that could read it. That someone is closer then he might think.

Nemo wakes up in a fish tank at a dentist’s office. Nemo meets the creatures that inhabit the tank Bloat (Brad Garrett), Gurgle (Austin Pendleton), Bubbles (Stephen Root), Peach (Alison Janney), Deb (Vicki Lewis), Jacques (Joe Ranft) and Gill (Willem Dafoe). A pelican, Nigel (Geoffrey Rush) pops by the office window to chat about the goings on at the office.

Nemo learns that he is going to be the pet of the dentist’s niece, Darla for her birthday. He has limited time to escape before he is torn away from his father forever.

The look of this movie is absolutely gorgeous. The effects of the water, the sun rays beaming into the water, the vibrant colors of the Great Barrier Reef were fantastic. The textures of the landscape made my jaw drop. I swear, I thought that some scenes were live action. At the end of the movie, I weep like a baby. I hate myself for crying. I’m a sucker to a final reunion. It’s not like I’m spoiling the ending. It’s obvious.

Judgment: If you want to watch the best Pixar movie of the Aughties, watch this .

Rating: ****1/2

I almost had – of all things – an Austin Pendleton double header a few days back. First, there was a benefit for my fellow Villager scribe Jerry Tallmer at the Players Club on Nov. 23^rd. Tallmer is an unjustly neglected institution – the main theatre critic for the Village Voice during the salad days of off-off-Broadway (a term he has reputed to have coined). Pendleton M.C.’d the event. Furthermore, the event featured Edward Albee, Charles Busch and Jules Feiffer, all of whom I’ve met and at least vaguely know my work. A TRULY indefatigable theatre impresario would have gone and plugged Kitsch (and supported Mr. Tallmer)…but I was too pooped to pop.

The next night, however I DID see Mr. Pendleton, and unlike me, he is indefatigable. He always seems to be everywhere. Like most people, I’d initially only known him as a funny Hollywood character actor in films like What’s Up Doc? and Catch 22. That impression changed drastically when I saw him in the title role in Philoctetes about 20 years ago. Since then I notice his name constantly, usually as director (he very recently did the revival of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carre at the Pearl). On Nov. 24^th, at the invitation of my new friend Barbara Maier (voice coach to the Art Stars), I attended Mr. Pendleton’s interpretation of Arthur Kopit’s little known one-act Chamber Music.

I’m a fan of Indians and Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, but Chamber Music doesn’t rank with these. It’s a sort of cross between No Exit, King of Hearts and a special, all-female edition of Steve Allen’s Meeting of Minds. A bunch of female inmates of an insane asylum (each of whom thinks she is a different Great Woman from History) sit and bicker amongst themselves for about 45 minutes, until, inevitably, one of them (ironically the one who actually MIGHT be the person she says she is – the actual Amelia Earheart) is sacrificially murdered.

The acting in the piece ranged from highly capable to not-so. I was relieved when, about a half hour into the piece, my friend Barbara, heretofore mute as Queen Isabella of Spain, suddenly burst into a lengthy monologue and became integral to the proceedings. It felt a little like Lucky’s speech in Godot, wonderfully unexpected, and Barbara did it justice. To date, she’s only been a pen pal (and we’ve seen each others’ shows). Next step is to actually meet her! Other standouts in the cast? H’m, well, there’s an earnest and lovely young sylph of an actress by the name of “Tammy Lang” who looks suspiciously like Tammy Faye Starlight, playing silent movie star Pearl White. And yet…Tammy Faye Starlight?!  Naw! It couldn’t be!

KLINE: Meryl's choice

gave Kline his start. Conceived and directed by Kline, The Lover and the Poet: An Evening of Shakespeare will be held at the 400-seat Florence Gould Hall on November 2. Before that, however, they’ll team up with Daniel Craig, Maggie Gyllenhaal,Mike Nichols and Austin Pendleton in a one-night benefit performance of Courage in Concert at the Public Theatre on October 19. In the meantime some chosen few lucky ticket-buyers will get to see Ms Streep in person tonight at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where she’ll participate in a Q&A with Globe & Mail film analyst Johanna Schneller.

ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID, YES, BUT SUCH A PRETTY ONE: As a presenter she’s handed out hardware to her Star Wars mentor George Lucas and co-star Harrison Ford, but Carrie Fisher says she gave up on hoping for Acting awards a long time ago.

FISHER: wishful winning

She admits she still hoped that she might win “just a little one” for her writing – plaudits for Postcards From The Edge? prizes for The Best Awful or Surrender The Pink? — but alas, no awards have materialized so far.

“I now get awards all the time for being mentally ill,” the bi-polar Fisher notes. “I am apparently very good at it, and I get honoured for it regularly.”

She’s awfully good at writing, too. Which is one of the reasons writers ranging from playwright Terence McNally to novelist Salman Rushdie joined movie stars ranging from Jane Fonda to Harvey Keitel for the opening of Carrie’s one-woman tour-de-force Wishful Drinking last Sunday on Broadway. Fisher made her Broadway debut in 1973 (yessssss, 1973) as part of the chorus backing up her mother Debbie Reynolds in the revival of Irene, but had toured with her even earlier than that, in her mom’s glitzy road show. Those of you with

DEBBIE: still in harness

reeeeally long memories may recall Carrie, still a teenager, standing on stage at the O’Keefe Centre in Toronto in 1970, singing her mom’s hit ballad Tammy while Debbie was backstage making a quick costume change. By the time she played in Irene, Carrie was a seasoned ‘road warrior’ who had seen her MGM-bred mother dump legendary British director Sir John Gielgud (who was still struggling with the musical when it played the Royal Alex for four weeks on its way to New York) for her old studio pal Gower Champion. Champion, a choreographer who lived up to his name, who had already staged a hit musical called Hello, Dolly and pulled Irene into such dazzling shape that it ran for more than 600 performances. (When Debbie grew weary of it, her MGM gal pal Jane Powell took over the rest of the run for her.) Ah yes, them were the days.

STREEP: in Toronto tonight

Debbie, of course, is still alive and high-kicking at 77. This month she and her personal musicians will take her show, An Evening With Debbie Reynolds, to the Julie Rogers Theatre in Beaumont, Texas for a breast cancer fund-raiser. 
Meanwhile, there’s good news for those of us who hunger for more of Carrie’s wickedly witty prose. She’s working on a new book – a collection of stories from movie sets of “films I pretended to act in.” Hope she includes Shampoo.

And speaking of those writing honours that keep eluding her – considering those rave reviews, wouldn’t it be funny if she gets Tony-nominated as both the author of Wishful Drinking and as lead actress in a play?

Stranger things have happened.

-/-

The prestigious Antaeus Academy announces auditions for the fall sessions of Shakespeare Workout and Classical Styles.   Become a part of a vibrant theater community as you tackle material that demands the utmost of your talent!

From A2 (Academy Company) member Chris Pine:

“What I enjoyed about the class was the feeling that good work was demanded of you.  It always felt like a ‘no bullshit’ class.  It wasn’t ‘Hollywood’: didn’t matter how you looked or how many credits you had.  You were being taught great literature, it’s analysis and its performance from people whose credits would make you blush.  And I loved that.  There’s a tremendous respect for the actor as an important artist that’s taught in the academy and reflected in the community as a whole.  I think that’s really it: the academy is a door into a wonderful community of actors who truly, wholeheartedly love what they do, and I am honored to be part of it.”

Our classes open for auditions include…

CLASSICAL STYLES!

An intense excursion in classical scenework, this 14 week workshop focuses on Shakespeare, The Greeks, and Shaw, Coward, or Wilde.

Taught by Artistic Director Jeanie Hackett with Company Member Geoffrey Wade and Artistic Associate Cindy Marie Jenkins, and featuring our usual dazzling array of expert guest moderators! Workshop culminates in a presentation for Antaeus Company members and invited guests.

Meets Tuesdays, 7 – 11pm beginning September 15th
Class fee: $550 for 14 week session
Class size: 24 – 26
Open to actors age 18 – 35

Past Moderators included: Rowena Balos, Annette Bening, Kate Burton, Brian Cox, Olympia Dukakis, Sheldon Epps, Sabin Epstein, Jeanie Hackett, Michael Hackett, Gregory Itzin, Jessica Kubzansky, Jonathan Lynn, Art Manke, Dakin Matthews, Alfred Molina, Tom Moore, Jeffrey Nordling, Stefan Novinski, Austin Pendleton, Andy Robinson, Stephanie Shroyer, Daniel Sullivan, Geoffrey Wade and many others

and SHAKESPEARE WORKOUT!

Experience the challenges and rewards of playing Shakespeare in sessions moderated by a rotating group of L.A.’s top actors, directors and acting teachers. Now an ongoing, year-round program, SW features a different guest moderator every month. Actors new to the workshop commit to an initial 12-week session; returning actors may join the workshop on a by-the-month basis. Open to actors of all ages and levels of experience, the workout focuses on text analysis, monologue and scene work.

Meets Tuesdays 2 – 5 pm, beginning September 8th
Class fee, new actors: $550 for initial 12 week session
Class fee, returning actors: $135 per month
Class size: 16 – 20 actors per class
Open to actors of all ages

Please email your picture and resume with audition request to academy@antaeus.org. Or, mail to:

The Antaeus Company
5114 Lankershim Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601
Attn: Cindy Marie Jenkins

Upon review, you will be contacted for an audition appointment.

Please prepare one classical monologue, no longer than two-minutes.

This is the Pearl Theatre Company’s last show at its very cool theater on St. Marks Place. The troupe is moving to midtown. (Lame.) But at least we’ll still get to see these fine performers.

VIEUX CARRE
Written by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Austin Pendleton
The Pearl Theatre
80 St. Marks Place

 Review by Christopher Zara

Tennessee Williams clearly believed that everybody hurts, and there is plenty of hurting to go around in Vieux Carré. It’s easy to see why this lurching 1977 drama is so seldom performed: Although the piece comes equipped with a dark sensibility that is morbidly enticing to the diehard fatalist, its true purpose is somewhat of a chore to extract. You may leave the cozy confines of the Pearl Theatre wondering what you have just seen. It is a personal work for sure — an autobiographical treatise of Williams’s indigent salad days at a 1930s New Orleans flophouse — but the end result feels more like a yellowed photo album than a fully fleshed-out production.

The play opens on an unnamed young writer, played by Sean McNall, as he breaks the fourth wall with salty descriptions of his dilapidated French Quarter digs. He is a quiet, depressed Southern gentleman, with few employment prospects, a nonexistent social life, and a premature cataract clouding his vision. His neighbors, whom we soon meet, range in disposition from mildly demented to completely delusional. Mrs. Wire, the cranky landlady, is at first standoffish toward her young guest, though she eventually warms to him as though he were her own son. Jane (Rachel Botchan), a transplanted Yankee, battles a degenerative blood disease while trying to ditch her live-in boyfriend, Tye (Joseph Collins), an abusive homophobe. The most pathetic of the bunch, an elderly gay artist named Nightingale (George Morfogen), drools over the young protagonist like a rabid Collie, ultimately forcing him to confront his own sexuality. 

The Pearl’s solid ensemble has always been a goldmine of local talent, and Vieux Carré continues that tradition with some excellent performances. Collins is brilliant as the brash and belligerent Tye: His drunken spills are some of the finest to take place on an off-Broadway stage this year. Botchan, whose subtlety is sometimes lost under the Pearl’s weighty productions, finds her true chance to shine in the role of Jane. Her performance is as sweet as it is sad, drawing our most heartfelt affections for the terminally ill woman on the cusp of abandoning all hope. As the central character, McNall is effective in his technical execution, including his spot-on Southern drawl and appropriately sullen demeanor. As a whole, though, his performance fails to resonate as it should — a fault that may lie with the character himself, whom Williams has written as a disconnected voyeur. McNall, a Pearl regular, has proven himself an infectious stage actor, at his best when diving into animated characters like the foppish Algernon Moncrieff in Oscar Wilde’sThe Importance of Being Earnest.

The meandering storylines of Vieux Carré present director Austin Pendleton with an uphill battle, though he handles the material expertly and even with a touch of grace. Very little actually happens during the play’s three-plus hours, yet the characters somehow manage to work their way into our minds. Vieux Carré is typical of an old photo album: It’s burdensome to flip through every page, but we stick with it in the hope that one or two of the more captivating snapshots will make it all worthwhile.

Marian (Carrie Preston) has a problem: she doesn’t know what happens next. She’s a writer, but her imagination is stuck. Her mentor (Austin Pendleton) thinks her novel needs tragedy. Marian seems to feel even fictional tragedy like a knife. But her mentor persists: kill somebody! Marion’s novel only has two brothers, so one of them has to go. Filled with guilt, and doubt, and good-intentions, Marian tries to write a death scene, but her doomed character escapes. He flees (so it appears) into the real the world, where he meets a car salesman. The car salesman and his daughter are drowning in grief. Perhaps a fictional person can save them. Meantime, Marian searches for her truant creation, blaming herself for his loss.

The key to Carrie Preston’s performance is that, even when she’s happy, you’re worried about her. Maybe it’s the book her character is writing: there are so few people in it. When a writer excludes the world to such an extent, the suspicious mind thinks: something must have happened. It’s to Preston’s credit that you feel the warmth of her character alongside the quirks. Her job in the movie is to let us know the stakes. When she wavers, so does everybody. In a scene where she talks to her father on the phone – and we realise: he’s dead – Preston comes apart like a flare dissipating, leaving us wiser about her and deeply concerned.

Reg Rogers plays a car salesman who speaks with such forgiveness you know he’s at the end of his rope. Only men who are beaten look so tenderly on life. Rogers has a great scene where he talks a man into and then out of buying a car. He loves people too much to be a salesman. His crisis (besides his career) stems from a death in the family. His wife has drowned, leaving him a single parent to a mute daughter. When a man escaped from a novel comes into Rogers’ life, he treats it as a blessing. It turns out: this man can help his daughter speak. Whether the man from the novel is real or not isn’t half as important as what the little girl says.

The most striking image in the movie is a girl standing on a diving board. She’s come back to where one of her parents died. Framed from behind, the girl is like a compass needle, pointed straight at her father. He stands to one side, unsure why she’s brought him back to this place. Perhaps he’s thinking of Raymond Chandler’s line: “Nothing is emptier than an empty swimming pool”. The movie doesn’t over-play this image of the little girl, but when the ending comes – and Marian is stood pool-side – it’s worth keeping in mind that Marian’s father is dead. The car salesman may never meet the writer, but that doesn’t mean they’re unrelated.

People write to edit life. Some people take out the bad parts; some people take out the good. Bad editing is when you leave too much of either. In Lovely By Surprise, a writer wants personal tragedy expunged. The movie is about the fine line between creativity and self-evasion. Every writer needs to draw on slightly exaggerated hopes. But when you don’t know what your story is about – when you don’t even know your story is about you – as a writer, you’re drowning. First novels are about recognising what shapes your writing. For Marian, that means going back to the pool.

You have chosen – wisely.  We know New Jersey folks have been waiting patiently for the premiere of  “the one” – that one great film – the film to solve all of the problems of our current times.  THREE-FIFTY is not that film but it’s in your festival anyway.  Yeah!  Trust us, screening THREE-FIFTY will take the Garden State and it’s  Film Festival to new heights of, ummm -  well, insanity and laughter.  This movie will complete you.

The Garden State Film Festival  will screen THREE-FIFTY sometime between April 2 – 5.  Check here for specific day and time updates.

The artistic philosophy of the Garden State Film Festival is rooted in the celebration of the independent film genre and the creation of a forum where local and other independent filmmakers can exhibit their work.  We would be those “others”.

Since 2003, such industry notables such as Glenn Close, Frank Vincent, Batman producer Michael Uslan, Austin Pendleton, Kurtwood Smith, James Gandolfini, Budd Schulberg and others have lent their support.  And now, those celebrities can say they’ve supported the same festival that screened Maurice Chauvet’s THREE-FIFTY — that hilarious tale of late fees, privacy rights and the easy availability of deeply personal details of your life.  We know they’ve been waiting to be included in the same paragraph with us.

The title, Fifty Words, refers to wife Jan’s fervent wish that there exist fifty words for “love,” much like the Eskimos’ varied verbal selections for “snow.”  This is a rather fitting designation for a work that attempts to explore the infinite depth, complexities, and limitless kinds of love that exist, both realistically and idealistically within marriage.  The kitchen sink dramedy (Neil Patel’s über-realistic set incorporates a working sink and all the other state-of-art trimmings – as well as a fully stocked fridge – of an upper-middle class couple’s home) opens as it closes with the unhappily wedded couple, Jan and Adam (Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz), calmly and evasively discussing the mundane routine of their lives in a superficial attempt to avoid recognition of the tenuousness of their swiftly deteriorating relationship.  The notable change that occurs over the course of director Austin Pendleton’s energized and intermissionless production is that there is no real change.  What does happen, though, is a blunt and rather violent recognition of the myriad problems that have been festering to a boil in Jan and Adam’s not exactly atypical go-through-the-motions American marriage.   And boy, oh boy, the marathon catfight erupts in quite the cathartic explosion midway through the production.  Infidelities are revealed, of course, but there’s also vegetable slinging; glass shattering; angry-but-disturbingly-triumphant, throw-down-on-the-table sex; and yes, even a slap and beating or two (this marriage swings both ways on that account).  While there are some genuinely insightful and moving moments, these are disappointingly outnumbered by the script’s various inherent problems. 

At its core, Fifty Words does not offer an illuminating dissection of marriage, therefore failing as a thoroughly engaging piece of theatre.  Because it takes place over the course of one evening, we are never allowed to know Jan and Adam as they were in the early, wondrous relationship stage of over-the-top affection, or even as they, blissfully content and unknowing, slipped into the happy routine that naturally develops over the course of the first months of a young marriage. Nor do we witness their playful interactions with their (only talked about) son, and we are also denied a single entirely pleasant and affectionate conversation between the two.  Instead, we are proffered two selfish individuals who each possess moments of generosity and heartbreak, but these moments are so few and so brief that we have no time to grasp unto them and offer up our sympathy.  We don’t fully understand what drove them to this breaking point, or even if they were always on this path of self-destruction; the necessary back story and/or exposition simply doesn’t exist in Weller’s text.  We are kept at a distance, watching a marriage viciously breakdown before our eyes, and we never fully engage.  It struck me that Weller’s work here creates a similar effect as much of Neil Labute’s repertoire: an intriguingly difficult situation that ideally challenges one philosophically, but lacks the necessary character likability to create an emotional dimension to the work.  Such an emotional void is particularly significant problem when the work is all about relationships.  After all, what is a relationship if, at its essential core, it’s not based in emotion?

Luckily for Weller and for MCC, Telsey & Company possessedthe fantastic foresight to cast Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz as the emotionally inept and doomed couple.  While the noticeable age gap between the two creates a rather awkward picture of a couple upon first meeting, the clever and incredibly game actors infuse fiery spirit, zany charm, and yes, even some genuine warmth into what could easily verge on caricatures of the brutal George and Martha of Edward Albee’s imaginings.  With two lesser actors, the potential failure of this work seems high, and though it’s still a play about relationships from an obviously male perspective (reminiscent of The Last Five Years, another Butz vehicle attempting an unbiased view of a marriage on the rocks), and is therefore inherently problematic, it is also an exciting 90 minutes of theatre.  If nothing else, this current production is worth the price of admission if only to witness the fierce commitment and sexually – and violently – charged interplay between Marvel and Butz.  Few things are more rewarding than watching the power of a performer to translate a merely average play into a riveting production.  While offering a tighter and overall more engaging piece of theatre than Beast, Weller’s work here demonstrates that sometimes Words just aren’t enough.

You fucking prick, I’m so sick of being asked questions about my taffeta dickeys. I stopped with that shit a long time ago. I haven’t donned a dickey since ’95. Well, once in ’97 I wore a chiffon dickey to a chiffon dickey fund raiser, but that hardly counts. Man, was that a wild party. It was at the Drake. Andie MacDowell was there. Pendleton was there—he got so hopped up on the Steve Coogan moonshine that he tried to take his pants off over his head. Later he ran into Chris Noth and proposed to him. Never seen Austin like that. Anyway, we were raising money for kids in Africa who couldn’t afford chiffon dickeys, so it was for a good cause that I once again wore a false shirt-front. You know, it’s bullshit: do you realize that while 46 percent of Africans have access to potable water, zero percent have access to chiffon dickeys? Well, we did something about that.

Oh, also, Pendleton threw up in Bebe Neuwirth’s big hat.