Word: conception
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What I think Mr. Beatty is really talking about is the old American duality of hipness vs. squareness. The words have changed over time--coolness vs. geekiness, fly vs. fool--but the concept is as venerable as the separation between church and state. Growing up, every American boy has to figure out whether he wants to be like Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer, Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris, Dennis Rodman or Michael Jordan, John Lennon or Paul McCartney...
...Titanic of drag musicals. Since opening on Valentine's Day, Hedwig has attracted a mix of uptown theatergoers, kids from the club scene and celebrities like Goldie Hawn, Glenn Close and David Bowie. The show just won an Outer Critics Circle award for best off-Broadway musical, a concept album is in the works, and there's already talk of a movie. Couldn't happen to a nicer girly...
...centuries such calculations were confined to a few learned theorists. In the minds of most people, time was vague; the future was tomorrow's sunrise, the next harvest, the coming winter or the inevitability of death. The more distant future belonged to the realm of religion. The modern concept of the future did not begin to develop until the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, with the gradual consolidation of calendars, the spread of clocks and the stirrings of new forces. Both science and commerce needed to anticipate things, whether a chemical reaction or the expiration of contracts...
Anybody who loves big American popcorn movies should find High Concept and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls thoroughly engrossing. Ultimately, though, both also seem as depressing as a Swedish art-house film. Simpson's fate reflects the shame heaped on his whores: his heart failed while he sat on the toilet reading a biography of Oliver Stone. Biskind's book ends with a death too: the 1988 demise of brilliant but burned-out director Hal Ashby, whose Coming Home, The Last Detail and Shampoo were touchstone films of the '70s. Other directors fared only a little better, ushering...
...luminaries in what was once known as the "New Hollywood," a community of radical directors, snarky executives and gonzo producers who emerged in the 1970s unfettered by the tight controls of the old studio system. Two wild new books by veteran entertainment journalists, Charles Fleming's High Concept (Doubleday; 294 pages; $23.95) and Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Simon & Schuster; 506 pages; $25), chronicle the decadence surrounding these creative eccentrics, offering a rare glimpse at the grime that covers the tinsel...