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22 • Bay Area Reporter • February 2-8, 2017
Palo Alto pampering
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Last week there we were at the opening of Cary Leibowitz: Museum Show, the first career survey and solo museum show devoted to the NYbased artist also known as Candyass, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. The exhibition shows 350 artworks from 1987 to the present: paintings, manufactured multiples, works on paper, archival material, and fabric works. Remarks from the artist and museum staff were preceded by a brief spirited performance by the Countess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, who sang a few ditties and confided that after her much older husband the Count died, she converted to “Yoo-daism,” thus now considers herself a “Yoo-ess.” We say welcome to the tribe, Countess, we like your style. Great to see Bay Area art-world types turn out for Candyass. To drop a few names, we saw Kevin Killian, Wayne Smith, Glen Helfand and Sura Wood, among many others. See this week’s Fine Arts review. After the opening we were off Serving the Castro since 1981
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to a screening of director Pablo Larrain’s Neruda, the true story of iconic poet Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco), most famous communist with a public profile in post-WWII Chile. When Chile went fascist, Neruda was forced underground, putting a tenacious police inspector (tiny, hot Gael García Bernal) on his trail. In Europe, the legend of the poet hounded by the policeman grew, and artists led by Pablo Picasso clamored for Neruda’s freedom. Neruda became a symbol for liberty personal as well as literary. Larrain’s film reminded OT that poets, so-called “legislators of the world,” are our first bulwarks against fascism. Important to remember in
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by David Lamble
the towering 1949 work by the iconic American playwright Arthur Miller. Emad learns just how closely the vocational and life-threatening problems of Miller’s Willy Loman will come to parallel his own, both at home and at work. Film buffs will remember Farhadi for his 2011 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner A Separation, an absorbing drama that examined another troubled middle-class family. It’s one of this filmmaker’s strengths that his characters’ foibles resonate both privately and against the landscape of a severely repressive theocratic state. Keenly aware that their creative freedom is hostage to the whims of religious authorities, Iranian film artists like Farhadi are often able to create complex argu-
ments for individual autonomy that put many privileged Western artists he Salesman, an emotionally to shame. provocative family film from one The acting of the leads, Farhadi of Iran’s most notable young filmveteran Shahab Hosseini as Emad 17TH ST makers, Asghar Farhadi, opens in and Taraneh Alidoosti as Rana, chaos as family members scramble demonstrates that even a repressive to evacuate a Tehran apartment patriarchal society like today’s Iran complex rocked by an earthquake. can produce feisty women capable Rana, the outspoken wife and theof giving bullying men a run for their ater partner of the film’s male promoney. While The Salesman mostly tagonist Emad, greets her surviving unfolds in the pressure cooker of spouse with an edgy barb that sets Emad and Rana’s workspace home, the tone for the unraveling of both there is a deft subplot in which we their personal and professional see Emad in his other role as a high relationships. “Still alive then? I school drama teacher, tutor to a thought we’d have to dig you out of rambunctious all-male theater class. the rubble.” The students, hirsute and scruffy, Later her hubby confides his constantly bait their instructor, disappointment to his work buddy, pushing the boundaries of their Babak. upper middle-class privilege to the Emad: “I’d like to limits. bring a loader and ruin Farhadi said in a reall of this city.” cently published interBabak: “They ruined view that the late-1940s this city once, but then NYC setting of Death they built it again, and of a Salesman reminded now this is it.” him of his hometown. The couple moves “Tehran today is very into a second flat, unclose to New York as deaware it was once home scribed by Miller. A town to a prostitute, some whose face is changing of whose clients have at a heady pace, destroyyet to realize their old ing everything that’s old, stomping ground has orchards and gardens, to undergone its own replace them with towseismic change. The iners. This is exactly the trusion of one of them, environment the salesAmazon Studios/Cohen Media Group an overweight working man lives in. Tehran is man, brings matters to a Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) and Emad (Shahab Hosseini) changing in a frenetic, head. The film’s title, The in director Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman. anarchic, irrational way.” Salesman, is homage to Opens Friday.t
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The outdoor terrace (above) and the dining room (below) at the Clement Hotel Palo Alto
Tehran tremblors
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Candyass connects
these days of billionaire kleptocrats, white supremacists, war-mongering generals, and the complacent politicians who enable them. Another timely film about a towering political/literary figure opens this week. Out and proud gay writer James Baldwin told the story of race in modern America in his great novels, plays and essays. Press materials for I Am Not Your Negro (Magnolia Pictures) inform, “In 1979, Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. “At the time of Baldwin’s death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of his manuscript. In this new documentary, filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book Baldwin never finished. The result is an up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin’s original words and flood of rich archival material.” Sounds like a compelling and necessary film. Mainstream media often leaves out that Baldwin was gay, so much a part of his genius and courage.t
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he Clement Hotel Palo Alto generously invited Out There and our bosom buddy Pepi for an overnight stay in the luxurious six-star hotel down the peninsula. It was OT’s first time overnighting in an “all-inclusive luxury” property, which included a personal concierge and meals prepared in an open kitchen served in our choice of the dining room, the outdoor terrace, the privacy of our suite, or in a cabana on the rooftop pool deck that overlooks Stanford University campus. Although we were aware there were other guests around, the Clement’s sense of privacy, peace and quiet was quite extraordinary. We could get used to it. With both living room and bedroom, our suite was bigger than either OT’s or Pepi’s place. Its curated amenities include Matouk linens, Frette towels and robes, 65” Samsung IPTVs, and a Nespresso Vertuoline coffee machine, sleek. The big bathroom boasts two sinks, a TV
zzip!) and Pepi’s blue-gray and black leather lace-ups, both shined to a fare-thee-well and gleaming. We wondered, did the night staff marvel at what stylish gentlemen must be slumbering above, in the luxurious suite? (Clement Palo Alto, 711 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA.) Sauntering around Palo Alto, we showed Pepi the site of our longago stint as waiter in a charming French restaurant. Monique’s was a power-lunch spot across from Palo Alto City Hall. As a teenage girl its venerable proprietess Monique had been a heroine of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation, running communiques behind enemy lines. She also made a mean cream of broccoli soup. So inspiring to remember her example as dark forces close in again.
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built into the mirror, a soaking tub, rainhead shower, and Toto Washlet toilet with heated seat. Pepi enjoyed exploring all of the settings on the high-tech Japanese loo. “Ooo, try this one!” At dinner, we split four enticing appetizers: Poke Nachos (marinated raw Ahi, avocado, cilantro, Serrano, wakame, Sriracha aioli, wontons), Lamb Tartare (raw Australian lamb, mint, garlic, Dijon, crostini and cornichon), baked Oysters Rockefeller with sautéed spinach, roasted garlic, bacon, Parmesan and panko, and Foie Gras Torchon (Stevia leaves, fig puree, toasted brioche bread). For OT, the Ricotta cheese, roasted red pepper-stuffed chicken breast with potato gratin and sautéed greens, for Pepi, the bone-in Rib Eye. Dessert was chocolate molten lava cake for P., and apple pie for OT, both topped with Tin Pot vanilla bean ice cream. Yummy all around. At bedtime we left our shoes outside our door, and at 8 a.m. the next morning there they were, OT’s black English leather zip-up boots (zzip!
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by Roberto Friedman
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