Word: netherworld
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...next, and the dynamic that fascinates him is why people make excuses, time and again, rather than attempt to be better. The title character, played by Treat Williams, is the conscience-pricked but ultimately expedient movie executive depicted in Mamet's Speed-the-Plow. Gould is called on the netherworld carpet for seduction and abandonment of a woman who, when summoned to testify, proves insufferable even to the great adversary. Mamet may mistrust all women -- his essay "True Stories of Bitches" featured his mother, sister and wife -- but this shrew is a giddyingly specific blend of utter unreason and serene...
Fundamentalist opinion to the contrary, Lewis was not Satan's satrap. Anxious middle-class parents, who saw him as an emissary from a netherworld that was nearer at hand -- trailer-park America -- were possibly a little closer to the truth. Like Presley, Dean and Brando, he was a figure partially shaped by a popular culture that in the '50s was learning to cater almost exclusively to kids and their need for rebel figures. But there was also an element of discomfiting truth in the message he sent. The thing about the young Jerry Lee was that he was all fecklessness...
...railway line ran right by their side of the building. When freights rumbled past, they had to hang blankets over the trailer's windows to dampen the noise while correspondents recorded their voice-overs. After a few days, the ZDF staff put together a lighthearted story comparing the dark netherworld of their trailer with the bright lights and glamour of the Omni Coliseum, where the Democrats were meeting. The story was a hit in West Germany and ran twice in translation on CNN; the ZDF home office ordered a similar story from the Republican Convention...
...like a Twilight Zone set, Wappingers Falls (pop. 5,000) has become the scene of a netherworld nightmare, a place where reality seems as distorted as a fun-house mirror. Last Nov. 24 Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl, got off a bus on Route 9 and disappeared. Four days later the onetime cheerleader was found in a daze, crawling into a garbage bag in the backyard of her family's former apartment complex. Her hair was crudely cropped, her body smeared with dog feces, her chest inscribed in charcoal with the letters KKK and the word NIGGER...
...could build a wonderful life with her; he is absolutely certain of that. They could pass delightful days discussing the netherworld of basketball arenas, talking of crowd control, relish, ramps. Or would it be better to start life over again with the lady cop in the subway? She looked mighty fetching in blue. A life of summonses and judo. Or the solemn woman at the rent-a-car counter? A prospect of long nights spent writing their initials inside little circles. The cashier at the A&P? The jogger with the Westie? The Captain confesses that he is much taken...