Word: offbeat
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Full Houses, P.D.Q. For four years, Hoffman and Schutz have been producing offbeat concerts successfully on the premise that there is a sizable audience willing to buy programs first and names second. To reach that audience, they adopt tactics that would horrify conventional concert managers, who like to play it safe by riding war horses. Typically, they select the music first, then find accomplished but lesser-known performers to play it. Their first venture, in 1962, was a concert of all six Brandenburg concertos, which one critic forewarned them was nothing but "a lot of Bach and potatoes...
...parks," Hoving found, "have remained lifelessly suspended in time like the Pyramid of Cheops." Says Hoving: " 'Parks are for people' is the most leaden statement, but it's true." And people need recreation. "Recreational facilities should have a flair," Hoving believes. "They should be spontaneous, offbeat, with a slight tinge of potlatch-letting everything go." Under Hoving, the Parks Department sponsored a Happening in which everyone painted anything on yards and yards of white canvas. When he found that a hill left during construction was the favorite area for boys in one park, he ordered it left...
Pacifist Protest. Virtually ignoring the torrent of expensive wedding gifts, White House handouts played up the sentimental, homey and offbeat: from Uncle Tony Taylor in Texas, a set of six silver syllabub cups that had belonged to Grandmother Minnie Lee Patillo Taylor; Texas-shaped cookie cutters from Mrs. Jake Pickle, wife of the Congressman who holds L.B.J.'s old seat; from Mrs. Orville Freeman, a jeweled Pakistani nose ring, symbolizing female submission to her mate (who, vows the bride, will never become "Mister Luci Johnson"). The bipartisan House leadership took up a collection for a congressional gift, but Iowa...
...tell of Cervantes and Don Quixote at the same time. Wasserman decided that it was a failure "because it aimed a little too high and wide for the medium." So he tried to turn it into a play, then a musical. By 1962 he had fashioned an interesting if offbeat script dealing with Cervantes' windmill-tilting life. And tilting a little himself, he started collaborating with a couple of unknowns, Songwriter Mitch Leigh and Lyricist Joe Darion. Albert Marre (Kismet, Milk and Honey) agreed to direct; Singer Joan Diener and Perennial Leading Man Richard Kiley (Redhead, No Strings) signed...
Either way, the dark, scowling observer goes unhindered about his offbeat reporting. He consciously avoids the stereotype of the foreign correspondent who deals only with high officials and sees himself as a minister without portfolio. Rudd concentrates on ordinary matters: synagogues and supermarkets, the horseradish gap, and the maiden voyage of the new luxury liner Alexander Pushkin. "The Russians say the ship is sailing almost empty because she has not been advertised in the Soviet Union," he said about the Pushkin, "but the fact is it's impossible for all but a handful of Russians to leave the country...