\'Pippin\' Is Returning to Broadway

The memorably tuneful musical “Pippin,” a staple of high school and college theater troupes, will return to Broadway this spring for the first time since its original five-year run ended on Broadway in 1977, the show's producers announced on Thursday night. The approximately $8 million production â€" a transfer of the current “Pippin” revival running at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. â€" will begin performances on March 23 at the Music Box Theater and open on April 25.

The production is directed by Diane Paulus, the artistic director of the A.R.T., who was nominated for Tony Awards for best direction for her last two Broadway shows, “Hair” and “The Ger shwins' Porgy and Bess” â€" both of which won Tonys for best musical revival.

“Pippin,” about the wanderlust of a son of the French King Charlemagne, has music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked”) and a book by Roger O. Hirson; its songs include “Magic to Do,” “Corner of the Sky,” and “Morning Glow.”

The original Broadway production won five Tonys, including for Bob Fosse's direction and choreography. His dances are reflected in the revival, which also features acrobatic and trapeze numbers and other circus acts created by Gypsy Snider of the Montreal-based company 7 Fingers.

Casting for Broadway is not confirmed. Playing the lead roles at the A.R.T. are Matthew James Thomas (“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”) as Pippin, Tony winner Andrea Martin (“My Favorite Year”) as Pippin's exiled grandmother, and Tony nominees Patina Miller (“Sister Act”) as the Leading Player, Terrence Mann (“Les Miserables”) as the king, and Charlotte d'Amboise (“A Chorus Line”) as his wife Fastrada.

The Music Box is usually home to plays because, with only about 1,000 seats to sell for each performance, it can be difficult for bigger-budget musicals to turn a profit there. But the producers - Barry and Fran Weissler (“Chicago”) and Howard and Janet Kagan (the coming Broadway musical “Hands on a Hardbody”).â€" are counting on high demand for “Pippin,” given its popularity as a title and its decades away from Broadway. The advent of premium-priced tickets has made it easier for producers to make money in relatively small Broadway theaters, too.

For Officers, Clip-On Ties a Nod to Practicality and Safety

There's the old joke about why firefighters wear red suspenders (to keep their pants up, of course). Now add to that the query on why police officers wear clip-on neckties.

Why, indeed, when Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly himself favors resplendent tie-it-yourself (a perfect Windsor knot) Charvet, Brioni or Kiton brands, which shun the ready-made variety.

The question is occasioned by an advertisement on Thursday in The City Record, the official government journal, seeking bids for 15,000 to 30,000 “ready made neck ties with metal clip (female and male)” for the Police Department. The bids are due Jan. 30; would-be vendors are advised to enclose a sample of their wares.

Why neckties at all, for that matter? Police fashions have changed, sometimes drastically, over the ye ars, with the current look dating to 1994, when Commissioner William J. Bratton switched the uniform shirt back from a more mellow light blue to navy. “We're getting rid of the Mr. Goodwrench look,” he declared.

Hats have included cork helmets as recently as the 1930s and baseball caps in the early 2000s. But the sober blue or black necktie, with only minor bows to contemporary variations in length and width (no tie-dye versions in the '60s), has been a constant since at least the early 20th century.

“For most officers in big cities, especially Northern ones, wearing ties has been standard for a long time,” said Thomas A. Reppetto, a police historian whose “American Police: A History, 1945-2012” was recently published by Enigma Books.

For a paramilitary force, these are ties that bind. Even a plain cravat, said Michael Solomon, a professor of marketing and director of the Center for Consumer Research at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, “reinforces the social distance between law enforcement and the general population.”

Nowadays, said Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, “as per the N.Y.P.D. Patrol Guide, a ready-made tie is worn with the authorized, long-sleeve uniform shirt. They've been in use for as long as anyone can remember. The ready-made tie is part of the official uniform for which police officers receive a uniform allowance of approximately $1,000 annually to cover expenses and purchases associated with uniforms.”

The city buys uniforms and accessories in bulk and passes on the savings to officers, who purchase the m from the Police Department's equipment section.

While the ties cost a modest $3.99 each at A.D. Meyers Uniforms in Brooklyn, a productive officer can't have too many.

“They break, they get dirty,” said Kevin Winters, a manager at the store.

As to the why of clip-ons - which city officers have worn since at least the early '60s, according to the New York City Police Museum - under ordinary circumstances, their advantages are obvious. “Do you find it hard to always tie the perfect knot?” an ad for ABC Neckties asks online. “Are you usually in a rush to get ready for work or typically running late for a big date? Our Clip On Ties make is easy for you to look your best without spending time and energy creating the perfectly tied necktie.”

For police officers, who routinely stick their necks out on the public's behalf, the clip-on offers an added plus.

“Ready-made ties are spe cified for police as a safety measure because they break away when pulled, depriving a suspect of the opportunity to choke or otherwise injure an officer in a confrontation,” Mr. Browne said.

Or, as Mr. Reppetto, himself a former Chicago police officer, put it: “We were advised to have a clip-on because a regular tie you could get strangled with.”

Time\'s Fleeting for Storm-Displaced Pets\' Free Care

Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Two puppies whose owner was displaced from the Rockaways by Hurricane Sandy played at a temporary shelter set up by the A.S.P.C.A. in Brooklyn in November.

In the comfort of a warm Brooklyn warehouse, they have had free meals, walks, shots, flea removal, behavior therapy and even laser-light shows. But now the party's over for 140 pets still left at the temporary shelter set up by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for owners uprooted by Hurricane Sandy.

Officials with the organization are preparing to close down the facility and are asking pet owners to come claim their animals. Since the boarding center opened on Nov. 17 in a 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, it has provided for nearly 280 pets. The promise was for one month's care, but officials extended that by 30 days due to what they said was overwhelming need.

“We're working with some owners who just want their pets back but still don't have a place to go with them,” Tim Rickey, the senior director of the society's field investigations and response unit, said on Thursday. “And there are a small percentage of pets that we still don't know where they came from.”

He added: “We went through a lot of reunification efforts in the last month and a half. Some folks have claimed animals; others, we don't know if their owners have left the area or didn't want to keep the pets.”

Mr. Rickey said he expected 30 families to claim their cats and dogs this weekend. The shelter will not sponsor an “adoption event,” as it did after the tornadoes in Joplin, Mo., because there are not enough pets remaining. Instead, the organization's officials, Mr. Rickey said, will work with local shelters and animal rescue partners to find foster homes or permanent homes.

“Every one of these operations is different,” he said. “The impact on people is different. The real challenge is the length of time it has taken people to get back into houses. We haven't seen the same struggles in other communities in other disasters I've worked.”

Christie Takes a Swing at His Party, Possibly Hurting His Political Future

Gov. Chris Christie admirably threw himself upon the shoals of national Republican Party politics this week.

The governor, who is a blustery weather front all his own, lashed his party in unrelenting, not to mention thoroughly entertaining, fashion Wednesday.

“The House of Representatives failed the most basic test of public service,” he told the press. “It was disappointing and disgusting to watch.”

He was just warming up.

“New York deserves better than the selfishness we displayed last night; New Jersey deserves better than the duplicity we saw last night,” he said. “There's only one group to blame for the continued suffering: The House majority and their speaker, John Boehner.”

So he firmly planted a tomahawk in the forehead of his national party.

New Jersey's Big Ma n is a complicated political animal. He can be rude and petty and play a mean game of politics. And he engages in more than a touch of magic realism on, say, the subject of his state's flagging economic performance. But he prides himself on being the Jersey guy who speaks his mind. All politicians create, fabricate, a persona, and this is his.

And to give him credit, in big moments he as often stays remarkably true to his belief in pathological candor. He did this with the disaster aid, with gun control after Sandy Hook. And he embraced President Obama during a visit to hurricane-ravaged New Jersey during the home stretch of the presidential campaign.

As Mr. Christie's political appetites are great, liberal commentators are quick to suggest that such moments make him a formidable figure in 2016. Maybe. For all the cheering locally, his national prospects could prove tenuous.

The Republican Party, nationally, continues to edge further and further right, its ideologues dancing and prancing toward the cliff wall of national unelectability. (One Republican congressman from New Jersey, Scott Garrett, could not even decide as of Tuesday if he would vote for the disaster package for his own state - give him credit for perverse consistency, as he voted against the rescue package in the deeply Republican south after Hurricane Katrina).

The Democratic Party had its own near-death experience in the 1970s and 1980s, as the party moved inexorably leftward. The Democratic Leadership Council and such prominent neo-liberal sorts as Senator Al Gore and Gov. Bill Clinton played no small role in taking on the party's liberal lions.

This is not to argue that the council was invariably correct in its policy prescriptions. That subject can spark an ideological barroom brawl in Democratic precincts to this day. But Mr. Clinton and his brethren succeeded in refashionin g their party as one that occupied a perch slightly to the liberal side of center.

Republicans display few signs they are ready for their own night of the political soul. If they are, however, Mr. Christie could play a role. He's no liberal. On fiscal matters, he talks like a Reagan Republican. But he has proved adept at compromising with Democratic leaders, and so siphoning off critical votes.

Mitt Romney displayed a similar dexterity in the Northeast precincts where Mr. Christie has fashioned a career. But he ran a Sybil-like presidential campaign, denouncing the policy positions he had championed as the governor of Massachusetts.

Once Republican governors and senators sat sprinkled across this region, from New York to New Jersey to Connecticut. New Hampshire was hidebound in its allegiance to the Party of the Elephant, and Vermont and Maine weren't far behind.

Now the Northeast is as resolutely blue as Dixie is barnyard red. And it played a critica l role in President Obama's two victories.

All of which has us circling back to the battle over disaster aid, and Mr. Christie's well-earned apoplexy. For decades, Dixiecrats voted to rebuild Rhode Island after northeasters and Northern Brahmins voted to rebuild barrier islands of the Gulf and the Outer Banks.

That sense of the commonweal, and of workaday political horse-trading, is near extinct. A revealing portent came after a tornado nearly leveled Joplin, Mo. Missouri is a Republican-leaning state. Yet Republican leaders began to threaten they would not vote through a full aid package without offsetting cuts.

In this context, House Republicans set to grumbling about Hurricane Sandy aid to the Northeast. Republican ideologues â€" including Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana, whose district benefited from a billion-dollar rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina - argued that the $60-plus-billion package in the House was pork encrusted (I would defy anyone to find a public works project, from Pharaoh Cheops and his pyramids to the present, that comes pared of all pork).

House Republican leaders also complain that our rescue package is too heavy on mitigation.

Mitigation is a bureaucratic word for a rather simple concept: If we're going to rebuild, we probably want to think about the future before we start slapping brick on mortar. So in the South and Midwest, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is building quite expensive and quite sensible hurricane shelters. After Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers built stronger levees, which prevented a more recent hurricane from re-drowning neighborhoods.

In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, governors and mayors have in mind an array of measures to assure that the next globally warmed torrent does not again drown their region. This is anathema to House Republicans, particularly as many take the view that the scientific reality of global warming is so much liberal hogwash.

Bob Hardt, the political director for NY1, lives on the Rockaways peninsula, as wonderfully diverse a set of neighborhoods as you'll find in New York, harboring quite a few Republicans. Hurricane Sandy ran over it like a rough rake.

Mr. Hardt wrote recently in his blog of his thoughts as the Republicans in the House turned their backs on his neighborhood: “The peninsula serves as home to firefighters and surf freaks, millionaires and people on welfare, idiots and geniuses. These are people who in one way or another have served their country well and now deserve some help in return.”

It is to Governor Christie's credit that he has given impassioned voice to that disappointment. Whether such honesty carries a political reward for him in the Republican Party is more uncertain.

From Albany, With Myrrh and Frankincense

In Albany, a lobbying firm offered a holiday card with a message subject to interpretation. See inside of card below.

ALBANY - The lobbyists are now comparing Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to Jesus.

The cover of a Christmas card from the lobbying firm Malkin & Ross says, in ornate script, “'Tis the Season Wise Men Celebrate His Birth.” The words are set against a blue backdrop interspersed with snowflakes and stars. Inside, the card features a smiling picture of the governor, and notes his birthday falls on Dec. 6.

The card, which was distributed to the news media, has drawn its share of eye rolling. As The Times Union of Albany put it in a headline: “Unto Us, a Governor Is Born.”

Of course, if lobbyists and lawmakers publicly sing hallelujahs to the governor, privately they often speak less divinely of his works.

Arthur Malkin, a founder of the lobbying firm, declined in an interview to elaborate on the card.

“We've had a policy for 20 years, since we've been doing cards, that the card speaks for itself, and we leave it at that,” he said.

M.T.A. to Begin Restoring and Expanding Some Bus Services

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times The Bx34 bus in the Bronx will resume weekend service starting Sunday.

Though the Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently lost its chairman, it is poised this week to add several new or restored bus services drafted under his watch.

On Sunday, the authority said, the first round of service increases would begin, including a new extension on the Bx13 from East 161st Street to Bronx Terminal Marke t, the restoration of B39 service over the Williamsburg Bridge, and B57 service into Red Hook, Brooklyn.

The additions (click here or see below) are part of $17.8 million in service investments for New York City Transit, conceived in part to restore routes that were reduced or eliminated during budget cuts in 2010. (The additions may ease the pain slightly of the fare increase set to take effect in March.)

“We are here to provide mass transit service, and that we are able to restore some earlier service cuts while at the same time extending service along several routes is great news for us to share,” Thomas F. Prendergast, the president of New York City Transit, said in a statement. “These enhancements were all a result of listening to our customers and keeping close watch on changing travel trends.”

Other service enhancements will take effect Jan. 20, the authority said, including the restoration of weekend service on the S76 and overnight express bus service from the Eltingville Transit Center on Staten Island to Manhattan.

Later in the year, the authority expects to begin a new route along Manhattan's Far West Side, connecting the West Village, Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen.

MTA NYCT Press Release Bus Service Enhancements 2013[2] (PDF)

MTA NYCT Press Release Bus Service Enhancements 2013[2] (Text)

Theater Talkback: \'Les Misérables,\' Stage to Screen

Universal Pictures Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman in in “Les Misérables.”

When excitement stirs about the latest movie adaptation of a stage musical, I usually find myself surfing a tide of mixed emotions. My inner cheerleader, whose pompoms are sometimes coated in a thick layer of dust, rallies in the excited belief that a once-dominant American art form - the Broadway musical - will gain a little luster in the eyes of a public now mostly glued to screens of various sizes.

But there is always the concomitant dread, confirmed by many a disappointment, that the movie version of the latest (or not so latest) blockbuster musical will be an embarrassing deba cle, confirming the belief of many that the stage musical is a silly, dated or just plain stupid genre, to be appreciated only by those already receiving the AARP magazine. Hence the dust on those pompoms.

Both emotions hit full surge in the weeks before the Christmas Day opening of “Les Misérables,” the movie version of the musical that ran for more than 17 years on Broadway after first storming London. An invitation to an early New York screening had my theater-loving friends texting me with envy and demanding an early assessment.

By this time the Oscar buzz had begun. After all, the movie is front-loaded with A-list talent: a director, Tom Hooper, fresh off an Oscar win for “The King's Speech,” and a cast with bona fide movie stars like Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe. Here, perhaps, would be the first movie musical since “Chicago” to break through to a big movie public and bring home some serious Oscar gold too.

But my dread quotient was possibly higher than ever: In contrast to “Chicago,” a musical I ardently love, “Les Misérables” has never been a particular favorite. Watching it from a dizzyingly high balcony seat in the West End in 1986, I found myself immune to its pop-operatic charms and have remained so ever since. And I feared that the musical's throbbing emotionalism, exemplified in the memorably soaring melodies of Claude-Michel Schönberg, would come across on screen as treacle-clotted and overwrought.

After seeing the movie tw ice - that's a full five hours of immersion in a strife-torn 19th-century France - I still feel torn. I find myself rooting for a movie I don't particularly like.

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times A scene from the 2006 Broadway revival of “Les Misérables.”

Hooray for the $67 million the movie grossed in its first six days of release! Let's use up some leftover bubbly to toast that it held its own at the weekend box office, taking in just a few million less than the highly anticipated “Hobbit.” Anne Hathaway, you go, girl! You can make room on the mantle for that Oscar right now: to play a saint and a whore at th e same time is to up the ante on awards bait. Besides, they did their damnedest to make you look unpretty. Still, even as poor Fantine sang herself to death in that Parisian infirmary, I couldn't banish the thought that you looked so ghoulishly ravishing that you could have leapt to your feet and walked an Alexander McQueen runway with minimal adjustment to the death-throes maquillage.

Maybe now is the time to explain that I saw the movie twice out of a sense of professionalism rather than enthusiasm. The fact is I fell asleep at some point during the first viewing. (It probably didn't help that I was seated in the third row and thus practically supine.) When I went back to give it my full attention, the funny thing was I couldn't pinpoint the moment when I had dozed off before.

Should you too find yourself drifting off to dreamland at some point, rest assured that upon waking you will find that someone is singing, and someone is suffering. Usually it's the same person, with a tear- or sweat-stained face stretched across the screen so that no nuance of misery will go unrecorded.

That's my chief beef with the movie, as it has been with some other critics: Mr. Hooper seems to have filmed it with a magnifying glass ever at the ready. Seeing it onstage you can lean in to the material and let it seduce you; on screen I felt I was being force-fed misery, cruelty, heroism, panting young love and blustery, flag-waving emotionalism. (I think I could now handily draw a map of Eddie Redmayne's fetching freckles.)

Small wonder I succumbed to a postprandial doze halfway through, or somewhere thereabouts. It occurred to me - heretical thought! - that “Les Misérables” may be a movie better appreciated in snippets on YouTube than at the movie theater. Scaled down so that the images aren't bludgeoning you, the individual numbers might be far more appealing.

Of course it is always hard to negotiate the aesthetic distance betwee n the stylized art form of musical theater, in which song is made to seem a natural form of human communication, and the essential realism of the movies. A director must choose between trying to collapse the distance - to make the unreal seem real - or, more challengingly, to heighten it (as Baz Luhrmann did in his “Moulin Rouge,” although that was a movie original.)

Most opt for the easier course, as Mr. Hooper has in “Les Misérables.” But the result, to me, doesn't so much mask as underscore the material's melodramatic excesses. I found myself smirking at the preposterous cascade of coincidences that had the central characters tumbling into one another continually, as if the population of early-19th-century France numbered around 27.

The most gabbed-about aspect of the movie has undoubtedly been the decision by Mr. Hooper to record the vocals live, an unusual and, to hear the actors and director tell it, highly daunting strategy that has rarely been used before in major filmmaking. To which I can only say: big deal. (Michael Cerveris, now on Broadway in “Evita,” wittily tweeted as much: “Inspired by Hollywood,” he wrote, “actors all over town ARE SINGING LIVE today. And tonight. 8 times a week. Every week. No second take.” The implication: They don't expect to be congratulated for it by a fawning press.)

And in the end all the ballyhoo over the live singing draws more attention to the movie's deficiencies in this regard. To be sure, much of the cast is impressive. Ms. Hathaway renders “I Dreamed a Dream,” the musical's big ballad, with lustrous intensity. Mr. Redmayne sings capably, as does, less surprisingly, Aaron Tveit, the star of Broadway's “Next to Normal” and “Catch Me if You Can.” I was particularly impressed by the one comparative unknown among the principals: Samantha Barks as a movingly restrained, vocally assured Éponine.

Laurie Sparham/Universal Pictures Russel Crowe in “Les Misérables.”

Yet when it comes to the lead male roles, the stalwart hero Valjean and the dogged villain Javert, I found myself often yearning for earplugs. Although he fronts a rock band in his spare time, Mr. Crowe huskily declaims his way through his songs, never making anything resembling an appealing sound. (Nor, to my mind, does his rather stolid Javert come across as the obsessed monomaniac he should be.)

That wasn't particularly surprising; the unhappy revelation of the movie was the inadequacy of Mr. Jackman's singing. He, after all, has established himself as a most unusual combo platter: an action-movie hero who is also an established musical theater star. But hearing him sing Valjean made me wonder if his radiant stage charisma had not helped Broadway audiences (and we critics too) overlook the modest nature of his vocal resources.

His singing in “Les Misérables” was sorely lacking in suppleness, sonority and range. For all the talk of live singing, Mr. Jackman's sounded to me as if he'd actually been Auto-tuned by someone who fell asleep at the machine, resulting in a thin, nasal and unpleasantly metallic sound that quickly grew grating.

Maybe Mr. Jackman's vocal performance, and the other irritations of the movie, would have seemed less onerous if they had been supplied with an accouterment of the theater that I have come to appreciate more as movies have been taffy-stretched to interminable lengths in recent years. These days, while many plays have shrunk to less than 90 minutes, even formulaic rom-coms and mindless action movies gobble up a full two hours or more of screen time. Perhaps it's time for the movies to bring back intermission.

The movie of “Les Miserables” has stirred very strong responses both from theater lovers and movie fans alike. Where do you stand on the barricade of public opinion?

W. Eugene Smith on Honesty in Photographs

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By the mid-1950s, W. Eugene Smith had established himself as the premier photo essayist at Life magazine by creating “Country Doctor,” “Spanish Village” and “Nurse Midwife.” In 1955 he left Life, joined the Magnum photo agency and began his exhaustive documentation of Pittsburgh.

The American Society of Media Photographers recently discovered the transcript of an interview of Mr. Smith, conducted by the great portraitist Philippe Halsmann and the society's first president. The interview apparently took place in New York during an American Society of Media Photographers meeting in 1956, although the organization is unsure of the date. The transcri pt has been lightly edited.

Their conversation covered a variety of topics. In particular, however, Mr. Halsmann asked about staging photographs, a then-controversial practice that is now taboo in documentary and journalistic photography. Mr. Smith defended the practice in certain circumstances.

Q.

Where were you born?

A.

Kansas.

Q.

You know that Alfred Adler, the discoverer of the inferiority complex, believes the youngest child has a sense of inferiority which forces him to prove his own value. Do you feel this to be true with your own personality?

A.

Definitely.

Q.

Did you go to school in Kansas?

A.

Frequently.

I had a photographic scholarship at Notre Dame - which they created for me. But after a while, I found I was asked to do only commercial, publicity photos, and so - I had to quit.

Q.

Why are you a photographer?

A.

I discovered that saturated hypo was good for my poison ivy. Now, Groucho.

I fell into photography through my desire to design aircraft. I met a fine news photographer, Frank Knowles, who encouraged me.

I don't think I became a real photographer until I made a real acquaintanceship with music. That's why I make my layouts the way I do. Photography happens to be my means of communication. But I do not feel I am a photographer singular. I feel that my art or my necessity is communication, and this could apply to many branches of the communicative art - whether it be writing or photography.

Since I am somewhat adequate as a photographer, I remain with it. I am probably more in command of it than any other medium. I respect it highly as a medium. It has its own very definite purpose.

Q.

When do you feel that the pho tographer is justified in risking his life to take a picture?

A.

I can't answer that. It depends on the purpose. Reason, belief and purpose are the only determining factors. The subject is not a fair measure.

I think the photographer should have some reason or purpose. I would hate to risk my life to take another bloody picture for the Daily News, but if it might change man's mind against war, then I feel that it would be worth my life. But I would never advise anybody else to make this decision. It would have to be their own decision. For example, when I was on the carrier, I didn't want to fly on Christmas Day because I didn't want to color all the other Chistmases for my children.

Q.

I remember particularly your pictures of a Spanish wake [above], of people looking at the dead man's face - how many exposures did you make?

A.

Two, and one to turn on. I didn't wish to intru de.

Q.

[Piero] Saporiti, the Time-Life correspondent in Spain, told me once that you had used petroleum lamps.

A.

Saporiti has a marvelous memory, so imaginative! This was my version of available light. I used a single flash in the place of a candle.

Q.

Here were people in deep sorrow and you were putting flash bulbs in their eyes, disturbing their sorrow. What's the justification of your intrusion?

A.

I think I would not have been able to do this if I had not been ill the day before. I was ill with stomach cramps in a field and a man who was a stranger to me came up and offered me a drink of wine which I did not want, but which out of the courtesy of his kindness, I accepted. And the next day by coincidence, he came rushing to me and said, “Please, my father has just died, and we must bury him and will you take me to the place where they fill out the papers?” And I went with him to the home and I was terribly involved with the sad and compassionate beauty of the wake and when I saw him come close to the door, I stepped forward and said, “Please sir, I don't want to dishonor this time but may I photograph?” and he said, “I would be honored.”

I don't think a picture for the sake of a picture is justified - only when you consider the purpose. For example, I photographed a woman giving birth, for a story on a midwife. There are at least two gaps of great pictures in my pictures. One is D-Day in the Philippines, of a woman who is struggling giving birth in a village that has just been destroyed by our shelling, and this woman giving birth against this building - my only thought at that time was to help her. If there had been someone else at least as competent to help as I was then, I would have photographed. But as I stood as an altering circumstance - no damn picture is worth it!

Q .

I remember your picture of a Spanish woman throwing water into the street. Was this staged?

A.

I would not have hesitated to ask her to throw the water. (I don't object to staging if and only if I feel that it is an intensification of something that is absolutely authentic to the place.)

Q.

Cartier-Bresson never asks for this…. Why do you break this basic rule of candid photography?

A.

I didn't write the rules - why should I follow them? Since I put a great deal of time and research to know what I am about? I ask and arrange if I feel it is legitimate. The honesty lies in my - the photographer's - ability to understand.

Q.

Why do you print your own pictures?

A.

The same reason a great writer doesn't turn his draft over to a secretary… I will retouch.

Q.

Avedon said that t here are three steps in making a photograph: first the taking of the pictures, then the darkroom work, then the retouching. He showed me one unretouched picture in which the girl's skirt fell straight; in the final version it was flying out.

A.

I would have gotten her skirt up somehow.

Q.

How much did your Pittsburgh Opus cost in time?

A.

It cost the lining of my stomach, and much more beside. … While working on it I resigned (from a certain unnamed picture magazine).

[At this point in the transcript, the Q. and A. format is broken, though it goes on: "After questioning back and forth, Philippe pinned him down to this: Smith had explained that he had worked on the opus for a period of several years, which included three months that he was on staff, which he considered 'stolen.' "

"There's no way to evaluate it,” Smith said. “If I was able to print exclusively, it still would take at least a year. I now have 200 prints from 2,000 negatives….”]

Q.

[The transcript resumes as before.] What would anybody in the world do with 200 prints?

A.

Each print I have made represents a chapter - the 200 represent a synthesis.

Q.

You won't put any time limit on this work?

A.

It was also sidetracked for a period of time for doing an almost equally difficult color project - one of my worst failures, which I consider a going to school.

Q.

How can this be financed? Is there any way, here in America today, to pay a man back for this work?

A.

How long did it take Joyce to do “Ulysses”? I could never be rested within myself without doing this.

Q.

But what if the photographer does not have the financial means?

A.

I will advise them not to do it, and I will hope they do.

Q.

What if nobody sees it? Besides a few friends?

A.

Answer this and you will see how artists have acted throughout the bloody ages. The goal is the work itself.

Follow @asmp and @nytimesphoto Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.

Concert at Carnegie Hall Will Honor the Songs of Prince

An annual concert at Carnegie Hall to raise money for music education will feature Talib Kweli, the Roots and the Blind Boys of Alabama this year as they pay tribute to the songs of Prince.

The concert, on March 7, will mark the ninth year that Michael Dorf, the founder of City Winery, has mounted a show to raise funds for education programs serving the poor. The series has raised more than $700,000 for programs like the Church Street School of Music, Young Audiences New York, Music Unites and the Pinwheel Project. The beneficiaries this year will also include the American Symphony Orchestra's Music Notes, Little Kids Rock and the Center for Arts Education.

Past shows have paid tribute to the Rolling Stones, the Who, R.E.M., Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. This year's concert will follow the usual formula: an eclectic group of musicians will reinterpret the catalog of a master songwriter, though the show this year promises to have a funky R&B edge.

“Prince is one of the most prolific songwriters in my collection, and he makes my Top 10 when I think about the artists who have truly shaped modern music,” Mr. Dorf said in a statement.

The other acts on the bill include Booker T., Living Colour, DeVotchKa and Madeleine Peyroux. The Roots, led by the drummer Questlove, will anchor the show, backing up many of the guest vocalists. Tickets are available at Carnegie Hall's box office and online.

Help Sought for Ground Zero Volunteers Who Lack Proof of Service

Ray Florida Ground zero volunteers seeking compensation for illness are finding it hard to prove they were there. One man, Jaime Hazan, who says he is the man in the dark shirt with his back to the camera, has only this photograph as evidence.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, is calling on the Bloomberg administration to find a formal way of helping people who volunteered at ground zero after the terrorist attacks prove that they were there and are eligible for federal c ompensation.

Ms. Quinn said that because of the difficulty of proving presence at ground zero more than a decade later for volunteers who had gone there on their own, she had asked Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services, to consider using the city's resources to find a way to help.

“We in city government are in a unique position to help these volunteers identify potential witnesses,” she said in a letter Wednesday to Ms. Gibbs.

The letter was sent in response to an article in The New York Times on Wednesday, describing the cases of three people who said they had volunteered at ground zero after the attacks, one for just a day, but were having trouble coming up with the proof required to qualify for a $2.8 billion federal fund to compensate people sickened or injured by the attacks.

“I think anything they cou ld do that would be helpful would be fine, but the problem is, I'm not sure what they can do,” Sheila Birnbaum, the special master for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, said. The fund has already reached out to the city health department, which maintains a registry of people who were exposed to the disaster, as well as other public and private entities, for help in proving that people were there.

Another fund official said the staff would be careful, since disasters often bring forth fraudulent claims. A spokeswoman for Ms. Gibbs said her office had received the letter but had not yet had a chance to review it.

As documentation, the fund requires volunteers to have orders, instructions or confirmation of tasks they performed, or medical records created during the time they were in what is being called the exposure zone, including the area south of Canal Street, and areas where debris w as being taken.

Failing that, it will be enough to submit two sworn statements - meaning the writer swears to its truth, under penalty of perjury - from witnesses describing when the volunteers were there and what they were doing.

Lawsuit Against HBO Claims Cruelty to Animals on \'Luck\'

Gusmano Cesaretti/HBO The filming of a racing scene in the HBO show “Luck.”

A former employee of the American Humane Association has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against that organization and HBO, saying she witnessed the widespread abuse of horses used in the making of the now-canceled HBO series “Luck” and that she was fired to keep her from reporting her findings.

The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 31 in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Barbara Casey, who worked for the American Humane Association for about 13 years, helping to supervise humane officers and animal safety repres entatives on film and television projects.

In a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Ms. Casey said that she observed “ongoing, systematic and unlawful animal abuse and cruelty toward the horses” during the making of “Luck” between 2010 and 2012.

Ms. Casey said in the suit that she had “repeatedly complained” about horses being “abused, neglected and/or mistreated on the set.” But she said her employment was terminated by the American Humane Association last January “in order to prevent her from reporting the Production Defendants' violation of animal abuse and cruelty laws and/or in retaliation for her efforts in reporting same.”

Last March HBO canceled “Luck,” its high-profile drama about gambling and horse-racing, after acknowledging that horses had been injured and euthanized during the filming of the series. Though the network faced scrutiny from advocacy groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, HBO said then that it had “maintained the highest safety standards possible” on “Luck” and had instituted “safety protocols that go above and beyond typical film and TV industry standards and practices.”

Press representatives for HBO and for the American Humane Association did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday morning.

The Creator of \'Justified\' Answers Your Questions

Prashant Gupta/FX From left, Timothy Olyphant, Terry Dale Parks and Patton Oswalt in a scene from the season premiere of “Justified.”

With its colorful mix of dry humor, graphic violence and twisted characters, FX's “Justified” is one of the few Elmore Leonard-inspired projects that has managed to capture some of the flair of the author's crackling prose. The series returns for its fourth season on FX on Jan. 8.

The crime drama, set in Kentucky, stars Timothy Olyphant as a mercurial lawma n, and has won praise for its evocative atmosphere and for performances by Mr. Olyphant, Walton Goggins and others. Margo Martindale won an Emmy in 2011 for her turn as a matronly crime boss. This season will include Patton Oswalt, a longtime “Justified” fan, in a recurring role as a constable.

Graham Yost, the creator and show runner, has agreed to answer questions from Times readers about “Justified” as the new season approaches. Share your queries in the comments below; we will pose a selection of them to Mr. Yost and post his responses here next week, before the season premiere.

Walking Like a New Yorker

Dear Diary:

As I walked from my car to the front of Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, an elderly gentleman with a walker approached me and said, “I saw you walking; you're from New York, aren't you?”

“Yes,” I replied, and we were soon chatting about my plans to return home in the near future.

As we parted, I asked him, “How'd you know I was from New York?”

“I was born in New York and walk fast, just like you do,” he replied, taking off with his walker like an Olympic sprinter.

Apparently, when it comes to New York speed, you can take it with you.

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