PopSmart

In my interview with Salman Rushdie this week, I talk about how the Satanic Verses author and Emory professor has not just a rock star level of fame, but comes close to being an actual rock star. He’s not a musician (that I know of), but his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet concerns a fictional Indian rock band that becomes as big as The Beatles. U2 took inspiration from the book to pen a song titled “The Ground Beneath Her Feet,” using the words from Rushdie’s own lyrics in the book, and giving him a “writer” credit. Here’s the video for “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” (from the soundtrack of Wim Wenders’ film The Million Dollar Hotel):

But that’s not all…

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On Thursday, July 3, The Process Theatre, Whole World Theatre and Outwrite Books present an evening dedicated to the work of popular playwright Del Shores (pictured). The program features theatrical scenes from Southern Baptist Sissies and Sordid Lives as well as a talk-back session with Shores himself.

The timing couldn’t be better. “Sordid Lives,” Shores’ TV series adaptation of his sleeper hit movie and stage play, debuts on July 23 on Logo. I interviewed Shores last year and he talked about the first time he realized that “Sordid Lives” had a runaway cult following:

The phenomenon started in Palm Springs, where it showed at a movie theater for two years, and people were saying favorite lines or showing up in costume. It was shocking to me! It has been such a wild ride, and I feel blessed for it. I don’t think we really realized how popular it was until we took the play on a national tour with some of the film cast last year. The play usually lasts for two hours and 20 minutes, with the intermission, but opening night in Florida went on for three hours, with people laughing and shouting out lines. I told the actors “You better get your lines right, because they know them, and they’ll correct you!”

The event takes place at Whole World Theatre’s main stage, 1226 Spring Street, and tickets are $35. Here’s a little video fun from the 2000 film, featuring Atlanta’s own Leslie Jordan as “Brother Boy.”

(Photo courtesy Del Shores)

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Essential Theatre celebrates its 10th anniversary with POWER PLAYS FESTIVAL, another triple header of local and world-premiere plays. This year’s lineup, selected by artistic director Peter Hardy, includes Paul Rudnick’s comedy Valhalla, featuring Topher Payne as Mad King Ludwig; Gina Gionfriddo’s heavyweight drama After Ashley, opening Wed., JULY 2, about the media circus surrounding a mother’s murder; and Atlanta playwright Letitia Sweitzer’s award-winning West of Eden, a comedy about Adam and Eve in middle age. Through July 27. $15-$25. In repertory Mon.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.; no 2 p.m. show Sat., July 5; no show Mon., July 7. 7 Stages Backstage Theatre, 1105 Euclid Ave. 404-523-7647. www.essentialtheatre.com.

(Photo by Sonny Knox)

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Last night I attended Valhalla, the kick-off production of Essential Theatre’s 10th anniversary season of local and world premiere plays. Valhalla was kind of an odd duck, juxtaposing the life of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria (Topher Payne) with an impulsive, gay Texan (Matt Felten) in the 1930s and 1940s. Playwright Paul Rudnick tends to be something of a one-liner machine, so the play’s relentless quippiness at times concealed its more complex ideas. It reminds me of the joke in Raising Arizona that was called a “way-homer,” “because you only get it on the way home.” I’ll have more to say about Valhalla later.

For such a small theater company, Essential is particularly proactive about using the viral video powers of the Internet. Just like last year, Essential Theatre’s web site presents video previews (mostly interview-based) for its three shows running in repertory: the time-shifting comedy Valhalla; the crime-and-celebrity drama After Ashley by Gina Gionfriddo (opening July 2); and West of Eden, a comedy about Adam and Eve at middle age by Letitia Sweitzer (opening July 8). Here’s the clip for Valhalla; for the others, just click on the titles.

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In a display of ambition that seems positively, well, Shakespearean, The New American Shakespeare Tavern has announced that it will stage 15 plays between this August and next June for its 2008-2009 season. That’s a staggeringly busy schedule for a company that has no second stage, requiring constant performance.

In prior years the Tavern has staged “August Three-peat” repertory remounts of shows from earlier in the year, a concept tweaked for “Two Months of Four Plays,” with this August seeing returns of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and King John. (I reviewed the 2006 production of Complete here).

After Antony and Cleopatra in October, the Tavern stages the rarely-seen threesome of Henry VI, Parts I, II and III. Incidentally, I happened to see Artistic Director Jeffrey Watkins at Essential Theatre’s Valhalla last night, and asked him if they considered including Richard III with the Henry plays, since it’s basically a sequel to or conclusion of that cycle. Watkins said that they did, but that four plays would be too demanding to put on essentially all at once, but that in the 2009-2010 season, the Tavern might stage Richard III and bring the Henry VIs back.

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One detail I left out of my interview with Andrew Stanton, director of Pixar Studio’s new classics WALL-E and Finding Nemo, was a tidbit about his early days. Before joining Pixar (where he was the second animator and ninth employee), one of Stanton’s first Hollywood jobs was on Ralph Bakshi’s short-lived animated sitcom “Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures.” “Mighty Mouse” offered a clever parody of cartoons, superheroes and pop culture and was a delightful anomaly amid the Saturday morning kiddie fare of the late 1980s. Culturally satirical cartoons are ubiquitous today thanks to “The Simpsons,” Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, etc. that it’s easy to forget how strange and groundbreaking “Mighty Mouse” was for its time. This sample, “Don’t Touch That Dial,” directly takes on other cartoons:

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On Sat., June 28, The Silver Scream Spook Show at The Plaza Theatre presents 1958’s classic technicolor space opera, Forbidden Planet. It looks pretty kitschy these days, especially because The Naked Gun’s Leslie Nielsen (referred to as “talented Leslie Nielsen” in the trailer) plays the heroic starship captain, a clear role model for William Shatner’s James T. Kirk. Forbidden Planet gets extra points, though, for a thoughtful premise and for being an extremely loose remake of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with Robby the Robot substituting for the play’s fairy-servant Ariel. Showtimes are at 1 and 10 p.m. Here’s the vintage trailer: “Sir, we’re being radar-scanned.”

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I want to clarify a little something I wrote in my review of the new Angelina Jolie shoot-em-up, Wanted, which is based on a graphic novel series by Mark Millar, J.G. Jones and Paul Mounts. I remarked that the film’s hyper-stylish portrayal of magical hitmen “proves that graphic novels don’t have to be about superheroes to provide material for silly movies.”

I read the Wanted graphic novel over the weekend, after I’d seen and reviewed the film, and must acknowledge that my last line, though technically correct, deserves elaboration. While the Wanted film depicts a thousand year-old group of assassins called The Fraternity, the graphic novel is about comic book-style supervillains, not hitmen (or superheroes).

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Georgia Shakespeare courts controversy by staging THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, historically one of Shakespeare’s most puzzling plays. Beneath the trappings of light romantic comedy, Merchant features the antagonistic role of bloodthirsty moneylender Shylock (Chris Kayser), one of Shakespeare’s most vivid characters, yet the embodiment of some of the Elizabethan era’s anti-Semitic stereotypes. Frequently Shakespeare’s “problem plays” provide the most interesting productions, and The Merchant of Venice also features the talents of Park Krausen, Tess Malis Kincaid, Joe Knezevich, Allen O’Reilly and others, beginning Thurs., JUNE 26. Through Aug. 2. $15-$40. In repertory Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2 and 8 p.m. Georgia Shakespeare, Conant Performing Arts Center, 4484 Peachtree Road. 404-264-0020. www.gashakespeare.org.

(Photo by Ken Reid)

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I stayed up past my bedtime last night getting caught up on “Battlestar Galactica” episodes on Hulu. “BSG” isn’t as easy to watch on-line as, say “Lost,” which has the full library of its episodes available on demand on the ABC website, with the new ones going up the day after broadcast. Hulu posts the new “BSGs” eight days after air date, and takes them down about three weeks later, so if you snooze, you lose.

“Battlestar Galactica” recently aired its “mid-season” finale for its fourth and final season. The terminology’s a little confusing, but what happened was, the show produced 10 fourth season episodes before the writer’s strike, and just finished broadcasting them. The remaining 10 episodes have apparently been filmed, but Sci Fi may not complete the show’s run until 2009.

The last episode ended with the kind of jaw-dropping, how-will-they-deal-with-THAT twist that’s the show’s speciality, but overall the fourth season has been a head-scratcher. The most critically respected of any space opera TV series, the reboot of the 1970s Star Wars knock-off won over skeptics with its fusion of sci-fi conventions (space ships, killer robots) and sociopolitical themes drawn right from the post-9/11 zeitgeist (abuse of authority, torture, terrorism, paranoia, etc.) A certain amount of spirituality also informed the show, driving the human characters’ quixotic search for the mythic planet “Earth.” The fourth season’s promotional cast photo, shown above, even riffs on “The Last Supper,” and this year the mystical mumbo-jumbo has superceded the political allegories.

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