11.12.99

    Last night, T. and I did dinner and a show. We also did dinner and a show for his birthday last weekend in which dinner was phenomenal (Ringside Bar & Grill) and the show... not so much. Last night, however, we took in the Theatre! Theatre! (33rd and SE Belmont) production of the Complete Works of Wllm. Shakespeare (Abridged).

    It was good. Really good. I haven't laughed that hard for that long in ages. They kept the audience going for nearly two and a half hours. I can't believe they ever do that show more than once in a week because the energy level was so high as to be unbelievable. They covered all the tragedies starting with Romeo and Juliet to set the atmosphere. The cast is three guys, so of course, one of them had to be the girl all the time. He would've stolen the show if they other two weren't such phenomenally physical actors. They did the sixteen comedies in sixteen minutes. I'm not nearly as familiar with the comedies as I am with the tragedies so some of the references were lost on me -- not that it mattered since you could hardly keep up. They ended with Hamlet which was their longest set and at the end decided to do it faster. And then a third time, even faster. And then backwards. I realized at that point that I hadn't lived until I had seen "Ophelia" un-drown herself.

    Today's title is from one of the actors whose favorite thing to do was think up ways to get each of his characters to feign vomiting on some hapless victim in the front row at some point during each set. (How's that for a run-on sentence?!) He claimed that the reason why no one liked Shakespeare in high school was because that Shakespeare was "dry, boring, vomitless Shakespeare."

    Something from The Onion made me laugh today:

Brutal Gang Rape Gives Screenplay More 'Punch'
HOLLYWOOD, CA -- Screenwriter Justin Weichert "punched up" his screenplay for the action-suspense film Lethal Force, adding a brutal gang-rape scene, it was reported Monday. "The studio asked for a little more oomph, a little more edge," Weichert said of the added scene, in which the sister of lead character Jack Fist is brutally raped in an alley by Fist arch-enemy Ivan Petra and a band of the Russian drug lord's thugs. "So, to give Fist more motivation, I figured I'd put in a crime he'd definitely want revenge for. Only the sickest of freaks would fail to identify with the hero after seeing this rape scene." Weichert also noted that the scene calls for female nudity, which "has never hurt a film's box-office receipts."

Getting raped really is a right of passage for any serious female actor in Hollywood today. I love rape scenes. Every time I see an ad-hype for the upcoming rape scene in the television drama du jour, I jump up and down and clap my hands in anticipation. For each new movie that comes out which promises forced-penetration and violence upon a woman, I yell out, "Whooo-hoooo — we love rape!" I just love the idea of the boys getting all hot and heavy wrapped in these media images and the girls feeling sort of tingly and icky about it all. It's so much fun! It's Hollywood!

    My most favorite rape scene of all time is in G.I. Jane — you know the one I'm talking about. And, in it, we were supposed to think: 'Well, that's what war is all about. I mean, if you're a woman out in the battlefield and you get caught, well, you better be prepared for the rape.' Of course, never mind the fact that men can get raped, too. You didn't see that in the film, did you? Why didn't the sergeant take on one of his male soldiers? Oh, well. Whatever. That wouldn't sell the big bucks and then no one would feel all hot and heavy.

    This entry started out all warm and snuggly, didn't it?