The producers of the Public Theater’s loving revival of Hair in Central Park have put aside the reality that most of us recall not the original (and far less linear) 1968 Broadway production, but instead the lean, fun 1979 Milos Forman film adaptation. I left the Delacorte Theater last Saturday night with renewed respect for the Czech movie director who took the Broadway version and re-fashioned it into a tight, endearing movie musical, mostly by cutting songs that stretched out the simple story into an epic rock-opera of emotional uplift.  But by the end of a long night at the Delacorte–one that included actors roaming the aisles for loose change, waving their hair in people’s faces and, at the end, inviting the audience onstage to boogie–I had given in, like everyone else, to the intoxicating power of a natural high. 

There’s really not much point denying the power of the dozen or so songs that make Hair a classic: this production offers near-perfect renditions of “Aquarius,” “Let The Sun Shine In,” “Where Do I Go?” and “Hair” –along with one song wrongly cut from the movie, the spectacular and haunting “Frank Mills.” It’s fun to watch well-trained actors bring to life lyrics imbedded in your brain, and hear melodies that soar; it’s a musical score as good as any ever performed on a Broadway stage, with endlessly brilliant, hilarious lyrics. And the cast assembled to stage for this production has the looks and talent to keep even the most hardened cynic mesmerized. The first act takes off so fast, and forges such a strong emotional connection with an audience who has long ago memorized the melodies, that it’s nearly impossible to let go of its pull.

And yet, to my surprise, boredom sets in quickly after intermission, when an epic hallucination sequence–wisely trimmed in the movie–strings together several songs that stop the show’s heart-stopping pleasures dead in its tracks. It’s no creative crisis–this production will move to Broadway and collect tons of awards, have no doubt–but would it have hurt the cause to cut judiciously from a show with more than two dozen songs and multiple reprises? With so many back-to-back pleasures in Hair, it seemed indulgent to restore every melody removed by Forman in his equally moving interpretation. 

This is a minor quibble with Hair, a long-overdue and mostly-inspired answer to the prayers of those who stand for hours every summer in the hopes of a wonderful bargain in a spectacular setting–and frequently end up disappointed. I loved the performance of Jonathan Groff as Claude Hooper Bukowski; even though I preferred the character’s hick-to-hippie transformation added to Hair by the movie’s screenwriter, Michael Weller, Groff managed to make sense of the original, muddled conception of Claude as a hippie to begin with.  

The point of a nostalgia trip like this is to restore sensations lost or forgotten over time, and even this flawed production succeeds on that level, especially if you’re the type to enjoy making googly eyes with actors when they come visit you at your seat. I’m not, but this show succeeds at making a human connection in other ways, most of them musical. And the epic, thrilling rendition of “Let The Sun Shine In” at the curtain call gives the audience time to revel privately in whatever pleasures they associate with those bygone days–and to enjoy the chance to sing along with the gifted, gorgeous cast under the spell of an August moon. It’s enough to justify the indulgence of brilliant artists who should have known better than to reject some shrewd, delicate editing of their timeless masterpiece.
 



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Radar's next issue features a story by Jessica Pilot that looks into the girls that hang out at the Beatrice Inn and get paid to fuck guys who shouldn't have any problem getting girls anyway. But hey, it's easier (and cheaper) to pay a girl to have sex with you than have to date her. These privileged ladies, including Heather who has a job in fashoin media, are so post-feminist that they studied women's studies and decided to "freelance" in the sex trade instead of pursue loftier pursuits.

"Heather's other partner, a blonde with freckled ivory skin with whom she had some common friends, works under the name Kelly. After graduating from an Ivy League college in 2006, Kelly says she was thinking about going to grad school to become an English professor. She's decided to put that aspiration on hold, though, while she rakes in the equivalent of an investment banker's salary selling sex."

Read more about the hipster hookers here.


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For the past four years, buxom beauty GiGi La Femme has been stripping, teasing, and making waves in the burlesque scene.  Now, she welcomes the beginning of spring at her popular monthly performance Revealed, featuring Peekaboo Pionte, Harvest Moon, Amber Ray, and more, Wednesday, April 15.  Before she takes it all off, GiGi shared a little about what she feels about the show, her burlesque performers, and what she likes to do when not hanging out in her new apartment or professionally taking her clothes off.

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Trevor Moore and his colleagues in the raunchy sketch comedy group Whitest Kids U’Know were early viral sensations, posting videos of their offbeat bits online during the baby days of YouTube. They got a lot of media coverage last year when a Budweiser ad featured a slapping joke that seemed heavily derived from their own work, but that was hardly a hindrance. The group has developed a steady group of fans that allowed their upstart stature to solidify into a career. Now they’re minor television stars, with a movie project that just wrapped and the televised version of their performance beginning its second season on IFC tonight at 11 p.m. Trevor spoke with New York Press about the experiences of then and now.

You started out doing weekly sketch comedy at Pianos in Soho. That’s still a part of your schedule, but now you’ve got the television show and a movie project. How much shameless self-promotion did it take to get to this point?

We weren’t very good at the self-promotion thing. At one point, we spent like fifty bucks to have some cards made that said where our show was. We never handed them out. Everyone still has a pack of cards. We did the Pianos show for three or four years. We wrote a new show every week so we got a lot of repeat people coming back. After we built a crowd that way, TimeOut New York came out and liked the show. They did a really nice piece on us. From there, we started getting really packed crowds.

How did you manage the transition to television?

The first season is a lot of our live sketches from our shows. We had 300-odd sketches on backlog. The one weird thing was working with a crew, instead of just the five of us. We had this really stupid idea for a submarine sketch—it was like a ten second sketch. But we showed up at the set and it was built like a submarine. Somebody spent a long time on this really stupid idea.

Your writing sessions must be pretty wack.

We write in different ways. We’ll sit around, people come in with ideas and we see if they make everybody laugh. IFC has been really awesome about basically making no content notes whatsoever. It’s a big First Amendment channel. They were just like, “Go crazy.” We can do whatever we want. I don’t think they’ve even read all the scripts this season.

The show started out on Fuze, which censored you a little more.

We didn’t have the same freedom. More people watch IFC, so it’s a double bonus. It wasn’t like we were complete idiots. We knew when we would get bleeped [on Fuze]. We’re not going to curb how these characters talk. In some situations, it actually made stuff funnier.

You’ve been away from Pianos for the last four months.

[Fellow Whitest Kids member] Zack [Cregger] and I have been in California doing a movie [called Playboys] for Fox Atomic. We’re almost done with it. We’ll start doing live shows again in March or April.

What’s the deal with your movie?

It’s about two guys in high school. One of them is obsessed with Playboy and girls, and the other one is an abstinence kid. He has a long-term girlfriend who keeps pressuring him to have sex, but he’s not ready. He agrees to have sex with her on prom night, but he’s nervous, so his friend gets him really drunk. He opens the wrong door and falls down a flight of steps and goes into a coma for four years. When he wakes up, all of his friends are gone from his hometown and his girlfriend is now a Playboy playmate. So he takes a roadtrip across the country with his friend to reconnect with the girl. It’s a hard R movie, but it’s innocent at the same time. Since Zack and I wrote and directed it, we had complete control. We’re going through the first round of editing now, so we’ll see how much control we end up having through it. They’re thinking it’ll be a fall release.

Sounds similar to the upcoming Anna Faris movie, I Know What Boys Like.

I don’t that’ll matter. The tones of the two movies will be night and day.

IMDb users are surely dying to know the identity of Horsedick.MPEG.

That’s the name of the gangster rapper in the movie.

Do you want to stay in the movie business?

We want to get a Whitest Kids movie off the ground. We’ve written a script for that. Once the WGA strike is over, we’ll probably see who’s interested in doing it. We’d like to follow the Monty Python formula, where you do a TV show and a movie every couple of years.

Interesting. I had you pegged as Jackass guys.

I think the Jackass movies are really funny, but that’s not sketch comedy.

What’s your take on the state of sketch comedy? Most people think Saturday Night Live is a lost cause.

Personally, I try not to watch other sketch comedy because I don’t want to be influenced by it. As for SNL, people have been saying it’s not good anymore for as long as I can remember, but I don’t know if that’s true. I think it’s aimed for a young group. I loved it when I was fourteen, fifteen—basically before you can drive, because that’s when you’re home on weekends. When you get older, you’re not as attached to it. I think the Adam Sandler/Chris Farley years were way better, but there are kids now who love this cast. In five or six years, they’ll say the same thing. It’s all about what you grow up with.




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At this moment, 30 Rock-star and SNL alum Tina Fey is speaking at the Fieldston School’s graduation ceremonies. Fieldston, one of the city’s private, prestigious “Hill” high schools, counts a diverse menagerie of movers and shakers among its former students: everyone from the late photographer Diane Arbus, to the father of the atom bomb Robert Oppenheimer, to Sean Ono Lennon, the son of John and Yoko, has walked the campus’ grounds at some point or another.

How did Fieldston manage to snag the movie star for the high school commencement assignment? No one’s saying, but it seems worth noting that Upper West Side Fey’s daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond, turns 3 in September, putting her theoretically in line for a spot at one of New York’s prestigious private schools. Fieldston, perhaps?



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It’s time to dust off your rainbow flags, feather boas and multicolored Mardi Gras beads: June is gay month in NYC. Gay Pride starts June 22, kicking off with a rally in Bryant Park, followed by a street fair and dancing on Pier 54, and ending with the march the following Sunday. By way of foreplay, New Fest, the annual celebration of gay movie making continues through June 15.
 
To mark the 20th anniversary of LGBT film festivals in the city, New Fest promises to showcase a bunch of burgeoning talent in gay cinema. Bright wannabe Rose Troche and Kimberly Peirce-type directors will be offering up their latest celluloid and digital masterpieces—in fact, Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) is one of the advisers to the festival).

Movies will be showing at BAM Rose Cinemas, Brooklyn, and the IFC Center in the Village. Of particular note is Italian director Guido Santi’s (Concertino) documentary Chris & Don, an exploration of the relationship between British writer Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, the American artist. Chris & Don includes footage of the couple unearthed by Santi, along with an interview with the queen of camp, Liza Minnelli.

For the girls, there’s Kyle Schickner’s (Strange Fruit) feature film, Steam (June 14), about female bonding in a Turkish bath. Despite the setting, it looks like the bonding is entirely platonic, but look out for some steamy romance between college freshman Elizabeth (Kate Siegel) and a girl at school who turns her on to the ways of Sapphic love. 

Other movies worthy of notice include Johnny Symons’ cleverly titled Ask Not, a documentary about the crappy “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the U.S. military, and Clapham Junction, Adrian Shergold’s feature based on the true story of a hate crime perpetrated against a gay man in London in 2005.

To cheer yourself up after these two, try Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! as antidote. The man who gave the world Another Gay Movie, director Todd Stevens, takes the piss once again, with a spring break saga that includes evil frat boys and nasty venereal diseases (pictured above). Bring sun block—and condoms.


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Gay men have begun speaking out concerning false arrests at video stores since undercover cops have been arresting them for prostitution. DA Robert Morgenthau says most of the cases against the men will probably be thrown out. But where is the public outcry? Leave it to the porn kings to take the idea and turn it on his head. Michael Lucas Entertainment has released a film titled Entrapment. And the guy behind the "script," Mr. Pam speaks to Charlie Vasquez about where he got his inspiration:

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Miss California U.S.A., Carrie Prejean, the runner-up for Miss U.S.A., is making headlines again. Fresh off a heated dispute with Perez Hilton about gay marriage, there are new reports of nude and semi-nude pictures of Ms. Prejean. Yes, these pictures of Prejean sans-jeans (she's wearing underwear and turned away from the camera) break the Miss U.S.A. pageant rules (not the Miss America pageant rules, so don't get them confused).

Thedirty.com, which is currently not loading because of overwhelming traffic, is promising to roll out more pictures. The Miss California U.S.A. runner-up, Miss Malibu, the woman one heartbeat away from Miss California U.S.A., said she is willing and able to step into the role. 

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Mother Nature is such a tease. Just as we begin to relax our winter weariness, languishing in her gift of bizarre 60+ degree March weather, she flips us upside down, slaps our ass and makes us cry—as if we were new born babes and she a zealous doctor. Tomorrow, expect temperatures to be back in the 30s with some snow mixed in—three to six inches accumulation is expected. So get out there and enjoy this humid, sticky weather while you can.

Photo courtesy of Manamanah on Flickr


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Here I was, backstage with Calvin Harris and his band at the Bowery Ballroom after climbing up to the tippity-top of the steep winding staircase where, in spite of the the humidity, he was chilling with his bandmates sipping a brewski in the dressing room before the show. Hmmm. No, there was no party back here.  No posse of arm candy, no illicit substances, no dancing or none of the wild merry-making the 24-year-old Scotsman sings about.

Harris cultivates the persona of a "playah," a heartbreaker and a hipster, getting all the girls, and even creating disco. During his interview he claims it's all part of his act. "I'm not like that at all," he told me, though I wasn't totally convinced. In one of his most popular hits, "Vegas," Harris proclaims, "I've got my car, and my ride, and my wheels (when I go to Vegas), I've got my drugs, and my stuff, and my pills (when I go to Vegas), I've got my girls, and my boys, and my girls (when I go to Vegas)."

Still, they seemed like just regular blokes, a bit shy and polite, standing around in the bright lighting, Harris wearing a goofy pink Fruit Loops T-shirt, another band member in a bright green T-shirt with cartoons of some primeval wolf man and the third sporting a glitzy Ramones shirt, all of them with adorably raffish mops of hair. Harris addresses me with a tentative grin. "Hallo! Right, New York Press.  We spoke on the telephone," he said, recalling his recent interview with me from his hometown, Dumfries, Scotland. "Sorry, my battery went dead," referring to our being cut off. 

"Yes, guys always use that excuse," I joked. Did I mention Harris is 6-foot-5 and, according to his MySpace page, wears a size 12 shoe? Then there's his self-deprecating style flavored by his British accent. Sigh!

Harris, 24 years old, is the newest success story on the electro-dance music scene. Harris and his band had just flown in after a couple of gigs on the West Coast, including the triumphant set prior to Prince's at Coachella. His eponymous CD came out in 2007, and he has another in the works that will be released later this year. The press has labeled him a MySpace sensation, with more than 4 million plays and 2.5 million page views.

"It's not true, I'm not a MySpace sensation – it was just a stroke of luck," he told me. So far, his colorful YouTube videos are approaching 400,000 views, among the top 50 in the UK. Back in 2005, while he was out of work, he put up a few songs on MySpace. Unable to get anyone to listen to the demos he'd sent out, he began staying up all night "friending" everyone in sight, including (luckily) an EMI Publishing executive, who loved his tunes and signed him up, allowing him to quit his job. That was the happiest day of his life.

One of Calvin Harris's most appealing traits is he makes it all look so easy. He claims to have no special talent as a singer nor as a musician and only used his own voice because he couldn't find anyone else at the time. As a teenager, and recuperating from a year-long illness, he spent many hours messing around on his brother's low-tech Amiga music sequencer, creating the sounds which have since made him famous. He considers himself more of a producer and has collaborated and remixed songs with the likes of Kylie Minogue, The Mitchell Brothers, Dizzee Rascal and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Harris is proud he's acquired a huge following among pre-teen girls, tweens and teenyboppers.  "They have just as much right to like music as a banker or anyone else," he says, loyal to his fans. Only a few years ago, he himself was stocking shelves in a department store and when he was 17, he actually packed fish into tin cans for a while. "My hands smelled awful," he confided.

Harris is the model for gawky youth everywhere with a dream, a synthesizer and a video camera. Did he create disco? No, but he has created a danceable blend of electro-funk with simple lyrics his fans chant in the "mosh pit," jumping up and down and singing along with Calvin for the entire two-hour show. Alongside the glammed up girls were many teenaged and early-20-something boys. And there I was, twice their age and mouthing the words to "I Created Disco," as I leapt into the air in my Frye boots.

The kids love him because he's unpretentious, and he's one of THEM, a loser who makes good. He mentions his girlfriend and how he enjoys knocking about at home, but in one of his most popular songs, especially with his female audience, "The Girls," he confesses how he can't help playing around and gets all the girls, but whether it's true or not, there's something very appealing about his all-inclusive taste in women:  "I like them black girls, I like them white girls, I like them Asian girls, I like them mixed-raced girls, I like them Spanish girls, I like them Italian girls, I like the French girls, And I like Scandanavian girls, I like them tall girls, I like them short girls, I like them brown-haired girls, I like them blond-haired girls, I like them big girls, I like them skinny girls, I like them carrying a little bit of weight girls."

In his video, he's shown with a bevy of beauties, all of whom are slender and Caucasian. "Calvin, what's up with that?  I thought you liked all the girls," I asked. "And what about the older girls." Characteristically diplomatic, he replies, "Well, you're white, and you're blonde, so I've included you, too." Was he also thinking I was one of those "carrying a little bit of weight" girls? I didn't ask, but said goodbye since they needed to start the show.

After a brief stop in Glasgow, Harris & Co. are off to Berlin where the band opens for Hot Chip on May  8th.


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