The Writer's Life 8/1 - The Right & Wrong Stuff

Cinema has lost two of its most serious artists, Jeanne Moreau, 89, and Sam Shepard, 73. Moreau was a giant internationally, dubbed The French Bette Davis. There are 145 titles listed under her name at IMDb. Her career spanned 1949-2015. She also directed three films, and wrote the screenplay for three. Here are two quotes attributed to her: "I decided my glass would always be half full, never half empty." And something I really relate to as a writer: "While you work, while you create, you have doubts, and this is essential." Well done, madam. Here she is in a still from my favorite of her films, Elevator to the Gallows (1958), in which she played what she did best, a woman obsessed with a lover:

Sam Shepard excelled on both the stage and screen in material that was rarely commercial. He has 68 titles listed under his name at IMDb as an actor, 26 as a writer, two as a director. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Buried Child, and was twice nominated for a Tony. Here's a quote attributed to him: "I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer." Kudos, sir. Here he is as legendary pilot Chuck Yeager, walking away from a crash in the rousing closing scene of The Right Stuff (1983):

From a blurb in the NY Post: The smiley face logo was created by Frenchman Franklin Loufrani 45 years ago. It generates $265 million a year. Tres bien, Monsieur.

And now for those who have the wrong stuff, from the NY Post's Fast Takes column, in my own words: Yahoos are at it again. This past March activists demanded the Whitney Museum remove a painting by Dana Schutz that depicted Emmett Till, a lynching victim, in a coffin. Since she is white, she was accused of cultural appropriation. Now the same bigots are demanding her work be withdrawn from an exhibition in Boston, even though the aforementioned painting is not part of it. SMH, as people write on the web. Here's my reaction to them:

My thanks to the woman who donated about 25 books, most of them in Russian but several interesting ones in English such as Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Joan Didion, a hardcover from 1949 of The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw, and a large paperback edition of Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. Seven of today's sales were of books in Russian. The other was of a translation - Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. My thanks to the kind folks who bought.

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