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Roof-Deck Blaze on a Warm Day Presages Summer Barbecue Fires

One minute, sunshine and spring blossoms were the only things descending from the sky, the next moment it was ashes, soot and fire-hose water cascading from the first roof-deck fire of the year in Lower Manhattan on Sunday afternoon.

The blaze, atop a five-story building on East Seventh Street near Avenue C in the East Village, was quickly put out. Three firefighters were treated for minor injuries, but no one else was hurt and the fire did not spread to neighboring buildings or the floors below, said Deputy Chief Michael McPartland of the New York City Fire Department.

Deputy Chief McPartland said it was the first of its kind in 2013, in the division under his command, south of 42nd Street. He said he did not think it would be the last. “In summertime, this time of year, when the weather starts to get nice, we get more roof-deck fires from barbecues,” he said.

The fire on Sunday did not appear to be related to a barbecue. It was thought to have started near cellphone towers on the roof, officials said. But on Monday, a Firefighter Thomas Schwaber, a spokesman for the department, said the cause was still being investigated by fire marshals.



100 Years Ago, Mayor Had a Ready Trigger Finger

Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, left, being sworn in. It is not known if he is carrying a concealed gun in this photo.Paul Thompson Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, left, being sworn in. It is not known if he is carrying a concealed gun in this photo.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign for stricter gun regulation might have been, well, gun shy about recruiting one of his predecessors, John Purroy Mitchel.

After all, Mitchel not only packed a pistol himself, he brandished it in front of City Hall when he was fired upon by a crazed 71-year-old man a century ago.

Two months after that incident, as Mitchel was returning to his Riverside Drive home from target practice upstate, his gun dislodged from its holster, struck the sidewalk with a thud and accidentally discharged, wounding one of his shooting partners â€" a prominent real estate developer and former Brooklyn state senator.

Mitchel, who was elected in 1913 at the age of 34, said he had carried a gun since succeeding Mayor William F. Gaynor, who was shot by a disgruntled former city employee in 1910. Gaynor died three years later of a heart attack, still suffering from the lingering effects of the wound.

Carrying concealed weapons without a permit had been banned in 1911 under New York State’s Sullivan Act. Within a few years, about 8,000 New Yorkers had carry permits, including Mitchel, who paid $1 for a permit issued by the Police Department.

The New York Tribune's front-page coverage of the assassination attempt against Mayor Mitchel. Click to enlarge. The New York Tribune’s front-page coverage of the assassination attempt against Mayor Mitchel. Click to enlarge.

On April 17, 1914, he and several other officials entered a Police Department car in front of City Hall to go to lunch downtown, when a man identified as Michael P. Mahoney, an unemployed Irish immigrant, fired a bullet that missed the mayor, but wounded the city’s corporation counsel in the cheek.

“Mayor Mitchel himself, leaping up in the automobile, drew a revolver,” The New York Times reported. Mahoney was quickly wrestled to the ground by the police commissioner.

What was originally suspected as an anarchist plot turned out to be the act of a former blacksmith and carpenter who was recovering (and suing) after being hit by a falling brick from two floors up.

“The experience of the last administration teaches us that there are always a few crazy people in every community and no one can foretell what they will do,” Mitchel explained.

A 1914 New York Tribune cartoon invoked  Mayor Mitchel's would-be assassin to rail against the ease with which weapons could be carried in New York even under the Sullivan Law. Click to enlarge. A 1914 New York Tribune cartoon invoked Mayor Mitchel’s would-be assassin to rail against the ease with which weapons could be carried in New York even under the Sullivan Law. Click to enlarge.

Asked about his actions, Mitchel said, “Certainly I drew a gun, for if there was another shot fired, I intended to be first.”

Mitchel believed his marksmanship had saved his life on an earlier trip to South America after he discovered that some of the porters employed by his party were ex-convicts. He slept with a revolver in his robe and took target practice daily to intimidate them.

In the West Indies, according to an article in The Century Magazine, Mitchel learned a lesson in crowd control during “an adventure with a tribe of aboriginal Indians, hostile to the diamond mines which his firm represented”:

“One day they surrounded him and his guide. The chief’s feathered headdress outlined against a large tree-trunk. Mitchel shot it, scattering feathers and tribe. This was brisker than parley and simpler than diplomacy. Doubtless it was more effective than either with frightened savages. And it showed Mitchel a quick method of handling a crowd.”

Mitchel was a staunch advocate for military preparedness before the United States entered World War I and trained upstate with other prospective officers. According to one account, he shot 24 out of 25 on the rifle range. He also created a civilian defense force whose 22,000 volunteers took revolver training so they could supplement the police force in case of an emergency.

But while he was hailed as a champion of progressive government, his experience with weapons was mixed, as was the experience of his father, James Mitchel.

Michael Miscione, Manhattan’s borough historian, recalled that James Mitchel, a captain in the Confederate army, was wounded four times. “You’d think John would have developed distaste for guns,” Mr. Miscione said.

In June 1914, former State Sen. William H. Reynolds, a developer with interests in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, was shot in the thigh when Mayor Mitchel’s gun fell to the sidewalk, snapping the safety lock and causing it to fire. The bullet exited Reynolds’s finger.

The incident was hushed up and the police learned about it only after it was reported in The Times.

After his defeat for re-election in 1917, Mitchel joined the military as an air cadet.

He died the following July during a training exercise when he fell from a plane flying 500 feet over Louisiana, apparently because he had failed to buckle his seat belt.



‘Motown: The Musical’ Surges at Box Office Ahead of Tony Nominations

As Broadway producers and performers gird themselves for the 2013 Tony Award nominations on Tuesday morning, several shows are already fortified by strong ticket sales - so much so that Tony nominations may not make much of a difference.

Case in point: “Motown: The Musical” is the biggest box office hit among the new productions of the 2012-13 season, grossing $1,213,611 last week - better than any other musical except the blockbusters “The Lion King,” “Wicked,” and “The Book of Mormon.” This success comes in spite of “Motown” receiving mixed to negative reviews. It seems likely that fans of Diana Ross, the Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye will keep buying tickets to hear the show’s classic Motown songs regardless of whether the production racks up many Tony nominations.

Among Broadway plays, the top two at the box office last week- “Lucky Guy” ($1,384,178) and “I’ll Eat You Last” ($646,102) - will probably continue selling strongly thanks to audience interest in their stars, Tom Hanks and Bette Midler. While both actors have a good chance of being nominated on Tuesday, no one thinks ticket sales will decline if, say, Ms. Midler is crowded out by the very large field for the five best actress nominations.

The two likely front-runners for the best musical Tony, “Matilda” and “Kinky Boots,” were also in strong shape last week: “Kinky Boots” had its highest gross since performances began in March, taking in $1,112,163, while “Matilda” was not far behind with $1,107,815.

Other shows may benefit from Tony Awards recognition. The one-woman play “Ann,” starring Holland Taylor as former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, grossed a middling 24 percent of its maximum possible amount last week, while “The Testament of Mary,” starring Fiona Shaw as the mother of Christ, grossed about 27 percent of the maximum possible. Each actress drew praise from many critics, and both are seen as contenders for a Tony nomination.

One musical that could use some help - but won’t be receiving any from the Tony Awards - is “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” Its producers are a long way from recouping the show’s record-setting cost of $75 million, and last week’s gross of $1,003,279 was one of its lowest yet. The musical’s weekly running expenses total between $1.1 million and $1.2 million. “Spider-Man” opened in 2011 and was eligible for Tony nominations for the 2011-12 season; the show received two, for costumes and sets, but won neither.

Overall Broadway musicals and plays grossed $24.6 million last week, compared to $24.7 million the previous week and $26.1 million for the comparable week last season.

The Tony Award nominations will be announced on Tuesday at 8:30 a.m.; check back here for updates and analysis through the morning.



‘I Thought I Was Bulletproof’: William Friedkin Looks Back on the ’70s

Gene Hackman, Eddie Egan and William Friedkin during the making of BAMcinématek/Photofest Gene Hackman, Eddie Egan and William Friedkin during the making of “The French Connection.”

No one had a decade of moviemaking quite like William Friedkin did in the 1970s. Starting with his 1970 film adaptation of Mart Crowley’s play “The Boys in the Band,” Mr. Friedkin, the Chicago-born and bred director, went on to make the 1971 crime drama “The French Connection,” which won the Academy Award for best picture and earned Mr. Friedkin the Oscar for best director; and the smash horror hit “The Exorcist,” which brought in nearly $200 million in its original 1973 release, and turned a generation of moviegoers off pea soup. But Mr. Friedkin finished out the decade with misfires and cinematic oddities, like “Sorcerer,” his 1977 remake of Clouzot’s “Wages of Fear”; his comic 1978 crime caper ; and the thriller “Cruising,” released in 1980, which starred Al Pacino as an undercover police officer investigating murders in Manhattan’s gay S&M clubs.

“I thought I was bulletproof,” Mr. Friedkin, 77, said of this era. “And I wasn’t. But I thought I was.”

William Friedkin during the making of BAMcinématek/Photofest William Friedkin during the making of “Bug” in 2006.

All  of these movies will be shown at a  retrospective  “Friedkin 70s,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music beginning Thursday and ending May 7. Mr. Friedkin, who will appear for Thursday’s screening of “Sorcerer” and Friday’s screening of “Cruising,” spoke recently to ArtsBeat about this period of his career. In these edited excerpts from that conversation, he discusses the ups, the downs and the devil-worshipers he met on the Iraqi set of “The Exorcist.”

Q.

Do you see any themes or common threads that connect the movies in this retrospective?

A.

In almost 50 years of directing films, I’ve made only 19. If you look at the films of the directors who worked at the Hollywood studios in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, those guys made four or five films a year. Michael Curtiz, who directed “Casablanca,” he did a couple films every year. And some of them are good and some of them are terrible and forgettable, and maybe one or two is a masterpiece.  I would be a better director if I had been in that system. Most people say it was a kind of slavery contract. You had to do what the studios told you to do. Well, whoever the hell was at the studios telling them to do it, they were geniuses.

Q.

The films that bookend this period of your career, “The Boys in the Band” and “Cruising,” were each controversial in their day, for different reasons. With all the time that has since gone by, do you find those controversies to be petty now?

A.

No, they don’t seem petty at all. I understand how and why they came about. When we released “Boys in the Band,” the guys in the film were still, for the most part, in the closet with their friends, or in the workplace. The gay liberation movement, which had started about a year before with the Stonewall riots, they were not looking to see films about guys who are in the closet.

“Cruising,” was set in the clubs - not the gay clubs, but the S&M clubs, which many gay people had never seen - which to me was just an exotic background. By the time it came out, the gay liberation movement was very strong. And this sort of subject matter was not the best foot forward at that time. So I understood the protests, I really did. But I was not thinking, when I made the film, about how this would affect gay liberation or not. When you’re making a film, you don’t start to think of the social consequences, or whether there will be any. Now, that might have been nearsighted on my part. But that’s the way I felt.

Q.

Were you stunned when “The French Connection” was as successful as it was, given the hardships you had to endure to make it?

A.

I didn’t think of it that way, honestly. I thought of it as golden opportunities that were coming my way for no apparent reason. There are people in this life that have hardships. If you’re a guy who has even a shot at directing a film, you can’t be thinking about hardships. I never really thought in terms of success or failure, other than how far I missed my expectations.

Q.

How so?

A.

I had a whole different idea of casting. I cast a guy to play Frog 1, the drug dealer - he wasn’t the guy I intended! My casting director cast Fernando Rey by mistake. Gene Hackman wasn’t even on my list of choices. But I had to make the film with him because he was the last man standing. Everyone else either turned it down or, as when I auditioned Jimmy Breslin, he couldn’t do it. I had to struggle with Hackman, and it was only after I had finished the editing and saw that it was working, he obviously is the force that ignites that picture.

Q.

Was it hard to keep your perspective when you won the Oscar for best director, and the film won  best picture?

A.

I had no perspective back then. After I won the Oscar, I thought I was bulletproof. And I wasn’t. But I thought I was. You often pay dearly when hubris sets in. I thought, well, I have the formula now. I really know how to reach audiences.

Q.

I’m almost afraid to ask about “The Exorcist.” I feel like you must be sick of talking about it.

A.

I know what you mean. I’d rather now that people talk about my latest films. But I can see that films like “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” and even “To Live and Die in L.A.” are still very much with audiences. I’m very pleased about that. Who wouldn’t be?

Q.

I thought I’d heard every story there was to be told about “The Exorcist,” until I read your account in your memoir, “The Friedkin Connection,” about meeting that group of devil-worshipers when you were filming in Iraq.

A.

They’re a Muslim sect, and their basic belief is that God rules everything in heaven, but the devil rules on earth. So they worship the devil. They had no idea what the hell I was doing there. They had heard that this crazy American was taking raw meat to the statue of the demon Pazuzu. And when I told them it was for a movie, and we had hoped to attract wild dogs and vultures, they were disappointed. And the people from the Baathist party, my handlers, said, “Don’t go.  It’s dangerous. We have no control over that.” I had this wonderful translator who was also my guide, and he took me there. It was a great experience.

Q.

How do you feel about “Sorcerer” today?

A.

It has been extremely difficult and troublesome. I didn’t expect the initial reception that it got, and I didn’t expect that I’d have to fight for it. There is no legal problem anymore, but I had to sue because the two studios, Universal and Paramount, couldn’t find the legal documents of who actually owned it. Both studios had been sold two or three times since I made “Sorcerer.” And what happens then is all the documents disappear. It has been a kind of a burden that I’ve carried with me for 35 years. I guess it’s just stubbornness that keeps me making sure that it comes back for people to see.

Q.

Are you able to see the movie on its own merits, without thinking about how it did at the box office, or how it was received by critics?

A.

Certainly I regret that it wasn’t a critical or a commercial success. The zeitgeist was changing. It came out a week after “Star Wars,” and “Star Wars” really changed the way people think about, What is a movie? Right to this day, and beyond. All these films about the Avengers and the Transformers, video games and comic books, that’s what, for the most part, Hollywood cinema has become. That just automatically opened the floodgates to people wanting pure entertainment that could be seen by people of all ages, basically. Would my film have worked if there was no “Star Wars”? I don’t know. But without “Star Wars,” I think American film would be different today.



‘I Thought I Was Bulletproof’: William Friedkin Looks Back on the ’70s

Gene Hackman, Eddie Egan and William Friedkin during the making of BAMcinématek/Photofest Gene Hackman, Eddie Egan and William Friedkin during the making of “The French Connection.”

No one had a decade of moviemaking quite like William Friedkin did in the 1970s. Starting with his 1970 film adaptation of Mart Crowley’s play “The Boys in the Band,” Mr. Friedkin, the Chicago-born and bred director, went on to make the 1971 crime drama “The French Connection,” which won the Academy Award for best picture and earned Mr. Friedkin the Oscar for best director; and the smash horror hit “The Exorcist,” which brought in nearly $200 million in its original 1973 release, and turned a generation of moviegoers off pea soup. But Mr. Friedkin finished out the decade with misfires and cinematic oddities, like “Sorcerer,” his 1977 remake of Clouzot’s “Wages of Fear”; his comic 1978 crime caper ; and the thriller “Cruising,” released in 1980, which starred Al Pacino as an undercover police officer investigating murders in Manhattan’s gay S&M clubs.

“I thought I was bulletproof,” Mr. Friedkin, 77, said of this era. “And I wasn’t. But I thought I was.”

William Friedkin during the making of BAMcinématek/Photofest William Friedkin during the making of “Bug” in 2006.

All  of these movies will be shown at a  retrospective  “Friedkin 70s,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music beginning Thursday and ending May 7. Mr. Friedkin, who will appear for Thursday’s screening of “Sorcerer” and Friday’s screening of “Cruising,” spoke recently to ArtsBeat about this period of his career. In these edited excerpts from that conversation, he discusses the ups, the downs and the devil-worshipers he met on the Iraqi set of “The Exorcist.”

Q.

Do you see any themes or common threads that connect the movies in this retrospective?

A.

In almost 50 years of directing films, I’ve made only 19. If you look at the films of the directors who worked at the Hollywood studios in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, those guys made four or five films a year. Michael Curtiz, who directed “Casablanca,” he did a couple films every year. And some of them are good and some of them are terrible and forgettable, and maybe one or two is a masterpiece.  I would be a better director if I had been in that system. Most people say it was a kind of slavery contract. You had to do what the studios told you to do. Well, whoever the hell was at the studios telling them to do it, they were geniuses.

Q.

The films that bookend this period of your career, “The Boys in the Band” and “Cruising,” were each controversial in their day, for different reasons. With all the time that has since gone by, do you find those controversies to be petty now?

A.

No, they don’t seem petty at all. I understand how and why they came about. When we released “Boys in the Band,” the guys in the film were still, for the most part, in the closet with their friends, or in the workplace. The gay liberation movement, which had started about a year before with the Stonewall riots, they were not looking to see films about guys who are in the closet.

“Cruising,” was set in the clubs - not the gay clubs, but the S&M clubs, which many gay people had never seen - which to me was just an exotic background. By the time it came out, the gay liberation movement was very strong. And this sort of subject matter was not the best foot forward at that time. So I understood the protests, I really did. But I was not thinking, when I made the film, about how this would affect gay liberation or not. When you’re making a film, you don’t start to think of the social consequences, or whether there will be any. Now, that might have been nearsighted on my part. But that’s the way I felt.

Q.

Were you stunned when “The French Connection” was as successful as it was, given the hardships you had to endure to make it?

A.

I didn’t think of it that way, honestly. I thought of it as golden opportunities that were coming my way for no apparent reason. There are people in this life that have hardships. If you’re a guy who has even a shot at directing a film, you can’t be thinking about hardships. I never really thought in terms of success or failure, other than how far I missed my expectations.

Q.

How so?

A.

I had a whole different idea of casting. I cast a guy to play Frog 1, the drug dealer - he wasn’t the guy I intended! My casting director cast Fernando Rey by mistake. Gene Hackman wasn’t even on my list of choices. But I had to make the film with him because he was the last man standing. Everyone else either turned it down or, as when I auditioned Jimmy Breslin, he couldn’t do it. I had to struggle with Hackman, and it was only after I had finished the editing and saw that it was working, he obviously is the force that ignites that picture.

Q.

Was it hard to keep your perspective when you won the Oscar for best director, and the film won  best picture?

A.

I had no perspective back then. After I won the Oscar, I thought I was bulletproof. And I wasn’t. But I thought I was. You often pay dearly when hubris sets in. I thought, well, I have the formula now. I really know how to reach audiences.

Q.

I’m almost afraid to ask about “The Exorcist.” I feel like you must be sick of talking about it.

A.

I know what you mean. I’d rather now that people talk about my latest films. But I can see that films like “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” and even “To Live and Die in L.A.” are still very much with audiences. I’m very pleased about that. Who wouldn’t be?

Q.

I thought I’d heard every story there was to be told about “The Exorcist,” until I read your account in your memoir, “The Friedkin Connection,” about meeting that group of devil-worshipers when you were filming in Iraq.

A.

They’re a Muslim sect, and their basic belief is that God rules everything in heaven, but the devil rules on earth. So they worship the devil. They had no idea what the hell I was doing there. They had heard that this crazy American was taking raw meat to the statue of the demon Pazuzu. And when I told them it was for a movie, and we had hoped to attract wild dogs and vultures, they were disappointed. And the people from the Baathist party, my handlers, said, “Don’t go.  It’s dangerous. We have no control over that.” I had this wonderful translator who was also my guide, and he took me there. It was a great experience.

Q.

How do you feel about “Sorcerer” today?

A.

It has been extremely difficult and troublesome. I didn’t expect the initial reception that it got, and I didn’t expect that I’d have to fight for it. There is no legal problem anymore, but I had to sue because the two studios, Universal and Paramount, couldn’t find the legal documents of who actually owned it. Both studios had been sold two or three times since I made “Sorcerer.” And what happens then is all the documents disappear. It has been a kind of a burden that I’ve carried with me for 35 years. I guess it’s just stubbornness that keeps me making sure that it comes back for people to see.

Q.

Are you able to see the movie on its own merits, without thinking about how it did at the box office, or how it was received by critics?

A.

Certainly I regret that it wasn’t a critical or a commercial success. The zeitgeist was changing. It came out a week after “Star Wars,” and “Star Wars” really changed the way people think about, What is a movie? Right to this day, and beyond. All these films about the Avengers and the Transformers, video games and comic books, that’s what, for the most part, Hollywood cinema has become. That just automatically opened the floodgates to people wanting pure entertainment that could be seen by people of all ages, basically. Would my film have worked if there was no “Star Wars”? I don’t know. But without “Star Wars,” I think American film would be different today.



‘I Thought I Was Bulletproof’: William Friedkin Looks Back on the ’70s

Gene Hackman, Eddie Egan and William Friedkin during the making of BAMcinématek/Photofest Gene Hackman, Eddie Egan and William Friedkin during the making of “The French Connection.”

No one had a decade of moviemaking quite like William Friedkin did in the 1970s. Starting with his 1970 film adaptation of Mart Crowley’s play “The Boys in the Band,” Mr. Friedkin, the Chicago-born and bred director, went on to make the 1971 crime drama “The French Connection,” which won the Academy Award for best picture and earned Mr. Friedkin the Oscar for best director; and the smash horror hit “The Exorcist,” which brought in nearly $200 million in its original 1973 release, and turned a generation of moviegoers off pea soup. But Mr. Friedkin finished out the decade with misfires and cinematic oddities, like “Sorcerer,” his 1977 remake of Clouzot’s “Wages of Fear”; his comic 1978 crime caper ; and the thriller “Cruising,” released in 1980, which starred Al Pacino as an undercover police officer investigating murders in Manhattan’s gay S&M clubs.

“I thought I was bulletproof,” Mr. Friedkin, 77, said of this era. “And I wasn’t. But I thought I was.”

William Friedkin during the making of BAMcinématek/Photofest William Friedkin during the making of “Bug” in 2006.

All  of these movies will be shown at a  retrospective  “Friedkin 70s,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music beginning Thursday and ending May 7. Mr. Friedkin, who will appear for Thursday’s screening of “Sorcerer” and Friday’s screening of “Cruising,” spoke recently to ArtsBeat about this period of his career. In these edited excerpts from that conversation, he discusses the ups, the downs and the devil-worshipers he met on the Iraqi set of “The Exorcist.”

Q.

Do you see any themes or common threads that connect the movies in this retrospective?

A.

In almost 50 years of directing films, I’ve made only 19. If you look at the films of the directors who worked at the Hollywood studios in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, those guys made four or five films a year. Michael Curtiz, who directed “Casablanca,” he did a couple films every year. And some of them are good and some of them are terrible and forgettable, and maybe one or two is a masterpiece.  I would be a better director if I had been in that system. Most people say it was a kind of slavery contract. You had to do what the studios told you to do. Well, whoever the hell was at the studios telling them to do it, they were geniuses.

Q.

The films that bookend this period of your career, “The Boys in the Band” and “Cruising,” were each controversial in their day, for different reasons. With all the time that has since gone by, do you find those controversies to be petty now?

A.

No, they don’t seem petty at all. I understand how and why they came about. When we released “Boys in the Band,” the guys in the film were still, for the most part, in the closet with their friends, or in the workplace. The gay liberation movement, which had started about a year before with the Stonewall riots, they were not looking to see films about guys who are in the closet.

“Cruising,” was set in the clubs - not the gay clubs, but the S&M clubs, which many gay people had never seen - which to me was just an exotic background. By the time it came out, the gay liberation movement was very strong. And this sort of subject matter was not the best foot forward at that time. So I understood the protests, I really did. But I was not thinking, when I made the film, about how this would affect gay liberation or not. When you’re making a film, you don’t start to think of the social consequences, or whether there will be any. Now, that might have been nearsighted on my part. But that’s the way I felt.

Q.

Were you stunned when “The French Connection” was as successful as it was, given the hardships you had to endure to make it?

A.

I didn’t think of it that way, honestly. I thought of it as golden opportunities that were coming my way for no apparent reason. There are people in this life that have hardships. If you’re a guy who has even a shot at directing a film, you can’t be thinking about hardships. I never really thought in terms of success or failure, other than how far I missed my expectations.

Q.

How so?

A.

I had a whole different idea of casting. I cast a guy to play Frog 1, the drug dealer - he wasn’t the guy I intended! My casting director cast Fernando Rey by mistake. Gene Hackman wasn’t even on my list of choices. But I had to make the film with him because he was the last man standing. Everyone else either turned it down or, as when I auditioned Jimmy Breslin, he couldn’t do it. I had to struggle with Hackman, and it was only after I had finished the editing and saw that it was working, he obviously is the force that ignites that picture.

Q.

Was it hard to keep your perspective when you won the Oscar for best director, and the film won  best picture?

A.

I had no perspective back then. After I won the Oscar, I thought I was bulletproof. And I wasn’t. But I thought I was. You often pay dearly when hubris sets in. I thought, well, I have the formula now. I really know how to reach audiences.

Q.

I’m almost afraid to ask about “The Exorcist.” I feel like you must be sick of talking about it.

A.

I know what you mean. I’d rather now that people talk about my latest films. But I can see that films like “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” and even “To Live and Die in L.A.” are still very much with audiences. I’m very pleased about that. Who wouldn’t be?

Q.

I thought I’d heard every story there was to be told about “The Exorcist,” until I read your account in your memoir, “The Friedkin Connection,” about meeting that group of devil-worshipers when you were filming in Iraq.

A.

They’re a Muslim sect, and their basic belief is that God rules everything in heaven, but the devil rules on earth. So they worship the devil. They had no idea what the hell I was doing there. They had heard that this crazy American was taking raw meat to the statue of the demon Pazuzu. And when I told them it was for a movie, and we had hoped to attract wild dogs and vultures, they were disappointed. And the people from the Baathist party, my handlers, said, “Don’t go.  It’s dangerous. We have no control over that.” I had this wonderful translator who was also my guide, and he took me there. It was a great experience.

Q.

How do you feel about “Sorcerer” today?

A.

It has been extremely difficult and troublesome. I didn’t expect the initial reception that it got, and I didn’t expect that I’d have to fight for it. There is no legal problem anymore, but I had to sue because the two studios, Universal and Paramount, couldn’t find the legal documents of who actually owned it. Both studios had been sold two or three times since I made “Sorcerer.” And what happens then is all the documents disappear. It has been a kind of a burden that I’ve carried with me for 35 years. I guess it’s just stubbornness that keeps me making sure that it comes back for people to see.

Q.

Are you able to see the movie on its own merits, without thinking about how it did at the box office, or how it was received by critics?

A.

Certainly I regret that it wasn’t a critical or a commercial success. The zeitgeist was changing. It came out a week after “Star Wars,” and “Star Wars” really changed the way people think about, What is a movie? Right to this day, and beyond. All these films about the Avengers and the Transformers, video games and comic books, that’s what, for the most part, Hollywood cinema has become. That just automatically opened the floodgates to people wanting pure entertainment that could be seen by people of all ages, basically. Would my film have worked if there was no “Star Wars”? I don’t know. But without “Star Wars,” I think American film would be different today.



Video: A Rescued Beaver Returns to the Water

A beaver named Justine was released into a New York City waterway on Sunday after being nursed back to health.

Here’s a sweet little piece of animal news: a sickly beaver found three weeks ago along the East River was nursed back to health and released Sunday in the city by a animal-rescue group based on Long Island.

The beaver, an adult female dubbed Justine, had a large intestinal blockage and was severely dehydrated, said Cathy Horvath of Wildlife in Need of Rescue and Rehabilitation, also known as Winorr. But after medication, two weeks at the vet and a week of rehab that included practice laps in a kiddie pool, Justine had recovered completely, Ms. Horvath said.

Ms. Horvath said the city had instructed her not to discuss where Justine was released. The Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog, which posted the video above from Winorr’s Facebook page earlier today, reported that Justine was released into the Bronx River.

“She was very happy to get back in the water,” Ms. Horvath told City Room on Monday. “She smacked her tail and paddled around and found a little apartment right away.’

Justine was found by Urban Park Rangers clinging to rocks in the East River, Winorr said on Facebook. The parks department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Justine.

What blocks a beaver’s intestines? “It was like wood and stuff,” Ms. Horvath said. So what emerged “was like sawdust,” she said.

Winorr, run by Ms. Horvath and her husband Robert Horvath, who is known to City Room readers for his efforts to help Violet the red-tailed hawk from the Hawk Cam, has been having a difficult time with the authorities in Oyster Bay, N.Y., lately.

A few weeks ago, town officials were threatening to close Winorr because they said the Horvaths were keeping “dangerous animals” in a residential area. But Robert Horvath reported on Facebook on April 16 that the town had agreed to let Winorr continue to operate out of the Horvaths’ home while they look for a longer-term location.



Ask Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood About the Tonys and the Theater Season

This week Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood, theater critics for The New York Times, are taking readers’ questions about the 2012-13 theater season â€" what worked, what didn’t and why â€" and the Tony Award nominations, which will be announced Tuesday morning. Please post your queries in the comments below â€" we’ll pose some of them to Mr. Brantley and Mr. Isherwood and publish their answers later this week.



Sarah Silverman Comedy Special, ‘We Are Miracles,’ Coming to HBO

Sarah SilvermanKevin Scanlon for The New York Times Sarah Silverman

At this point in her comedy career, there would seem to be few things that Sarah Silverman hasn’t done. Among the remaining items would be starring in her own HBO comedy special, but you can now cross that off: the cable network said on Monday that it had signed up Ms. Silverman to record a comedy performance called “Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles,” which it plans to show in the fall.

Ms. Silverman, a creator of button-pushing viral videos and Twitter posts, has starred in the Comedy Central series “The Sarah Silverman Program,” in movies like “Take This Waltz,” and in a 2005 concert film, “Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic.” Though she has appeared on HBO series like “Mr. Show With Bob and David,” “The Larry Sanders Show” and “Real Time With Bill Maher,” a solo special on that network â€" which has lately featured standup performances from Louis C. K. and George Lopez â€" had somehow eluded her.

HBO said that “Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles” would be filmed in Los Angeles in May and would be directed by Liam Lynch, who also directed “Jesus Is Magic. This special will be presented in association with the comedy Web site Funny Or Die.



Big City Book Club: Building Rockefeller Center

Welcome to the Big City Book Club. Our live discussion about “Great Fortune,” by Daniel Okrent, will take place from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Eastern time in the comments section below, but you can post your thoughts and questions anytime.

Opening thoughts from Ginia Bellafante, the Big City columnist, follow directly. Responses from Mr. Okrent and the novelist and cultural critic Kurt Andersen will be posted this afternoon.

Ginia Bellafante

Ginia Bellafante: At this evening’s convening of the Big City Book Club, we’re going to be talking about Daniel Okrent’s “Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center,” a rich history of the creation of one of New York’s most dramatic landmarks. That description threatens to undersell a book that leaves virtually no New York obsession unmined: made wealth, inherited wealth, real estate, art, design, philanthropy, society, thwarted ambition, realized ambition, eccentricity. (The appearance of a woman at a speakeasy wearing a toilet seat around her neck? Check. And that’s before we get to a chief architect â€" Ray Hood â€" who spent the last year of his life on a diet of brussels sprouts.)

The book chronicles how a sketchy patch of land in Midtown Manhattan owned by Columbia University and given over to vice ultimately became home to a reigning symbol of Deco glamour, media primacy and also the contrarian spirit that animates so much of life in New York: Rockefeller Center went up over the 1930s dismissive of the International Style that had so much emerged as the preferred flavor of the time.

Behind it all is John D. Rockefeller Jr. â€" or Junior, as he was known â€" a man with a feisty wife and few obvious passions beyond the wish to avoid seeming like an idler. I found myself thinking throughout that the book lends itself to a parlor game of alternative history. The unparalleled giving for which the Rockefellers were responsible resulted in the donation of the land on which the United Nations was built, the development of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the Cloisters and Rockefeller University, a premiere research institute. In the absence of that one family, would anyone else have stepped in and provided in this way, and how might New York be different?

Another question this book raises: What is it psychologically that makes New Yorkers â€" maybe human beings in general â€" so often reflexively disparage any new, destined-to-become-iconic building? Rockefeller Center did not by any means get the love it receives today when it went up. There was little sense initially that it would be so cherished.

Speaking of instinctively hating the new: I find myself already cringing at the prospect of Park Avenue in Midtown lined with Shanghai-style skyscrapers. I refer here to the proposed rezoning of Midtown East, which the Bloomberg administration insists must happen so that New York’s commercial real estate market can remain globally competitive. Wouldn’t these buildings shadow Rock Center â€" and should we care if they do? Moreover, is there any argument to be made for New York retaining its New York-ness, however benighted an idea that might seem? Isn’t that the lesson of Rock Center in the end?

Joining our discussion will be Mr. Okrent and the novelist and culture critic Kurt Andersen, author of the best-selling novel “Heyday” and most recently “True Believers.”

Kurt and Dan, take it away.



The Met and Israel Museum Buy Illuminated Torah Before It’s Auctioned

A 15th-century illustrated volume of the Mishneh Torah that was to be the star of a Sotheby’s auction on Monday was withdrawn from the sale and bought jointly by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Widely considered one of the finest illuminated Hebrew manuscripts ever created, it was from the collection of the New York philanthropists Judy and Michael Steinhardt, who are selling their world-class collection of Judaica at Sotheby’s on Monday.

The Mishneh Torah includes six large painted panels decorated with precious pigments and gold leaf as well as 41 smaller illustrations with gold lettering on the opening words of each chapter. Executed in the style of Northern Italian Renaissance miniature painting, the Torah was restored by conservators at the Israel Museum, where it has been on long-term loan since 2007 and on view there since 2010.

Made up of 14 books of the Jewish legal code, the Steinhardts’ volume of the Mishneh Torah includes Books 7 through 14, part of a two-volume set created in Northern Italy and completed in 1457. The first is in the collection of the Vatican library. While the price the museums paid has not been disclosed, Sotheby’s estimated it would sell for $4.5 million to $6 million.



The Met and Israel Museum Buy Illuminated Torah Before It’s Auctioned

A 15th-century illustrated volume of the Mishneh Torah that was to be the star of a Sotheby’s auction on Monday was withdrawn from the sale and bought jointly by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Widely considered one of the finest illuminated Hebrew manuscripts ever created, it was from the collection of the New York philanthropists Judy and Michael Steinhardt, who are selling their world-class collection of Judaica at Sotheby’s on Monday.

The Mishneh Torah includes six large painted panels decorated with precious pigments and gold leaf as well as 41 smaller illustrations with gold lettering on the opening words of each chapter. Executed in the style of Northern Italian Renaissance miniature painting, the Torah was restored by conservators at the Israel Museum, where it has been on long-term loan since 2007 and on view there since 2010.

Made up of 14 books of the Jewish legal code, the Steinhardts’ volume of the Mishneh Torah includes Books 7 through 14, part of a two-volume set created in Northern Italy and completed in 1457. The first is in the collection of the Vatican library. While the price the museums paid has not been disclosed, Sotheby’s estimated it would sell for $4.5 million to $6 million.



The Met and Israel Museum Buy Illuminated Torah Before It’s Auctioned

A 15th-century illustrated volume of the Mishneh Torah that was to be the star of a Sotheby’s auction on Monday was withdrawn from the sale and bought jointly by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Widely considered one of the finest illuminated Hebrew manuscripts ever created, it was from the collection of the New York philanthropists Judy and Michael Steinhardt, who are selling their world-class collection of Judaica at Sotheby’s on Monday.

The Mishneh Torah includes six large painted panels decorated with precious pigments and gold leaf as well as 41 smaller illustrations with gold lettering on the opening words of each chapter. Executed in the style of Northern Italian Renaissance miniature painting, the Torah was restored by conservators at the Israel Museum, where it has been on long-term loan since 2007 and on view there since 2010.

Made up of 14 books of the Jewish legal code, the Steinhardts’ volume of the Mishneh Torah includes Books 7 through 14, part of a two-volume set created in Northern Italy and completed in 1457. The first is in the collection of the Vatican library. While the price the museums paid has not been disclosed, Sotheby’s estimated it would sell for $4.5 million to $6 million.



The Met and Israel Museum Buy Illuminated Torah Before It’s Auctioned

A 15th-century illustrated volume of the Mishneh Torah that was to be the star of a Sotheby’s auction on Monday was withdrawn from the sale and bought jointly by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Widely considered one of the finest illuminated Hebrew manuscripts ever created, it was from the collection of the New York philanthropists Judy and Michael Steinhardt, who are selling their world-class collection of Judaica at Sotheby’s on Monday.

The Mishneh Torah includes six large painted panels decorated with precious pigments and gold leaf as well as 41 smaller illustrations with gold lettering on the opening words of each chapter. Executed in the style of Northern Italian Renaissance miniature painting, the Torah was restored by conservators at the Israel Museum, where it has been on long-term loan since 2007 and on view there since 2010.

Made up of 14 books of the Jewish legal code, the Steinhardts’ volume of the Mishneh Torah includes Books 7 through 14, part of a two-volume set created in Northern Italy and completed in 1457. The first is in the collection of the Vatican library. While the price the museums paid has not been disclosed, Sotheby’s estimated it would sell for $4.5 million to $6 million.



Emeli Sandé Bests a Beatles Chart Record

Emeli Sandé performing in New York.Donald Traill/Invision, via Associated Press Emeli Sandé performing in New York.

The Beatles fended off all contenders for half a century, but the Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé has toppled one of the band’s most tenacious chart records. Ms. Sandé’s debut album, “Our Version of Events,” has spent the last 63 weeks in the British top 10, surpassing the 62 consecutive weeks that the Beatles’ debut, “Please Please Me,” spent in the top 10 in 1963 and 1964.

Ms. Sandé’s status as the new record-holder for the most tenacious debut album was announced on Sunday by the Official Charts Company, a British organization that has been overseeing these records for the last 60 years, and whose charts are broadcast weekly by the BBC, and published in Music Week.

Ms. Sandé, 26, has been writing music inspired by Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill, often with a social or political undercurrent, since she was 11, and had a songwriting contract with EMI Music Publishing before she was signed by Virgin Records as a performer. But she prudently also prepared for a potentially lucrative fallback career, in case making music did not work out: she was a fourth-year medical student at the University of Glasgow in 2009, when one of her songs, “Diamond Rings,” became a hit for the rapper Chipmunk, emboldening her to pursue her musical career.

“I’m completely lost for words and this is something I could only have dreamed of,” Ms. Sandé said in an interview on the chart company’s web page. “The Beatles are the greatest band of all time and their legacy lives on and continues to inspire all of us that make music.  I’m so happy that so many people have connected with the stories and the songs on the record, this really is our version of events now.”



Emeli Sandé Bests a Beatles Chart Record

Emeli Sandé performing in New York.Donald Traill/Invision, via Associated Press Emeli Sandé performing in New York.

The Beatles fended off all contenders for half a century, but the Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé has toppled one of the band’s most tenacious chart records. Ms. Sandé’s debut album, “Our Version of Events,” has spent the last 63 weeks in the British top 10, surpassing the 62 consecutive weeks that the Beatles’ debut, “Please Please Me,” spent in the top 10 in 1963 and 1964.

Ms. Sandé’s status as the new record-holder for the most tenacious debut album was announced on Sunday by the Official Charts Company, a British organization that has been overseeing these records for the last 60 years, and whose charts are broadcast weekly by the BBC, and published in Music Week.

Ms. Sandé, 26, has been writing music inspired by Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill, often with a social or political undercurrent, since she was 11, and had a songwriting contract with EMI Music Publishing before she was signed by Virgin Records as a performer. But she prudently also prepared for a potentially lucrative fallback career, in case making music did not work out: she was a fourth-year medical student at the University of Glasgow in 2009, when one of her songs, “Diamond Rings,” became a hit for the rapper Chipmunk, emboldening her to pursue her musical career.

“I’m completely lost for words and this is something I could only have dreamed of,” Ms. Sandé said in an interview on the chart company’s web page. “The Beatles are the greatest band of all time and their legacy lives on and continues to inspire all of us that make music.  I’m so happy that so many people have connected with the stories and the songs on the record, this really is our version of events now.”



Emeli Sandé Bests a Beatles Chart Record

Emeli Sandé performing in New York.Donald Traill/Invision, via Associated Press Emeli Sandé performing in New York.

The Beatles fended off all contenders for half a century, but the Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé has toppled one of the band’s most tenacious chart records. Ms. Sandé’s debut album, “Our Version of Events,” has spent the last 63 weeks in the British top 10, surpassing the 62 consecutive weeks that the Beatles’ debut, “Please Please Me,” spent in the top 10 in 1963 and 1964.

Ms. Sandé’s status as the new record-holder for the most tenacious debut album was announced on Sunday by the Official Charts Company, a British organization that has been overseeing these records for the last 60 years, and whose charts are broadcast weekly by the BBC, and published in Music Week.

Ms. Sandé, 26, has been writing music inspired by Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill, often with a social or political undercurrent, since she was 11, and had a songwriting contract with EMI Music Publishing before she was signed by Virgin Records as a performer. But she prudently also prepared for a potentially lucrative fallback career, in case making music did not work out: she was a fourth-year medical student at the University of Glasgow in 2009, when one of her songs, “Diamond Rings,” became a hit for the rapper Chipmunk, emboldening her to pursue her musical career.

“I’m completely lost for words and this is something I could only have dreamed of,” Ms. Sandé said in an interview on the chart company’s web page. “The Beatles are the greatest band of all time and their legacy lives on and continues to inspire all of us that make music.  I’m so happy that so many people have connected with the stories and the songs on the record, this really is our version of events now.”



Emeli Sandé Bests a Beatles Chart Record

Emeli Sandé performing in New York.Donald Traill/Invision, via Associated Press Emeli Sandé performing in New York.

The Beatles fended off all contenders for half a century, but the Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé has toppled one of the band’s most tenacious chart records. Ms. Sandé’s debut album, “Our Version of Events,” has spent the last 63 weeks in the British top 10, surpassing the 62 consecutive weeks that the Beatles’ debut, “Please Please Me,” spent in the top 10 in 1963 and 1964.

Ms. Sandé’s status as the new record-holder for the most tenacious debut album was announced on Sunday by the Official Charts Company, a British organization that has been overseeing these records for the last 60 years, and whose charts are broadcast weekly by the BBC, and published in Music Week.

Ms. Sandé, 26, has been writing music inspired by Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill, often with a social or political undercurrent, since she was 11, and had a songwriting contract with EMI Music Publishing before she was signed by Virgin Records as a performer. But she prudently also prepared for a potentially lucrative fallback career, in case making music did not work out: she was a fourth-year medical student at the University of Glasgow in 2009, when one of her songs, “Diamond Rings,” became a hit for the rapper Chipmunk, emboldening her to pursue her musical career.

“I’m completely lost for words and this is something I could only have dreamed of,” Ms. Sandé said in an interview on the chart company’s web page. “The Beatles are the greatest band of all time and their legacy lives on and continues to inspire all of us that make music.  I’m so happy that so many people have connected with the stories and the songs on the record, this really is our version of events now.”



Plane Debris Near Ground Zero Is Identified as Part of a Wing Flap

The jetliner wreckage found last week near ground zero was part of a flap mechanism, not a landing gear as initially reported by the police. This sketch shows the position on a Boeing 767 of the found part.N.Y.P.D. The jetliner wreckage found last week near ground zero was part of a flap mechanism, not a landing gear as initially reported by the police. This sketch shows the position on a Boeing 767 of the found part.

Plane wreckage found last week behind a building in Lower Manhattan and apparently deposited there after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is part of a wing flap â€" not part of the landing gear â€" from a jumbo jet of the same model as those that crashed into the World Trade Center, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said on Monday.

The police had initially described the damaged machinery, wedged into a narrow alley off 51 Park Place, as a piece of the landing gear of a Boeing 767.

The jet part found wedged between two buildings last week.N.Y.P.D. The jet part found wedged between two buildings last week.

But a technician from Boeing told detectives on Sunday that the part was in fact the support structure for a mechanism connected to one wing’s trailing edge flap.

“It is believed to be from one of the two aircraft destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Browne said in a statement, “but it could not be determined which one.”

The police kept the area roped off as a crime scene on Monday, with a mobile command truck from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner parked out front.

Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office, said a process of sifting the area around the plane part for human remains would begin on Tuesday morning.

After that is completed, the police said, the part would be kept by the Police Department’s property clerk until a decision is reached on where it should be permanently housed.


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Video distributed by the police shows the plane part as it appeared when discovered between two buildings in April 2013.


‘Curious Incident’ Dominates at Olivier Awards

Simon Stephens, left, with Mark Haddon, who wrote the 2003 novel Joel Ryan/Invision, via Associated Press Simon Stephens, left, with Mark Haddon, who wrote the 2003 novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”

The London stage adaptation of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” based on the best-selling novel from 2003, has won seven Olivier Awards - Britian’s equivalent of the Tony Awards - tying the record set last year by the musical “Matilda.”

At the annual awards ceremony on Sunday night, “Curious Incident” - which some producers are eyeing for Broadway - won for best play (adapted by Simon Stephens), best actor (Luke Treadaway), best director (Marianne Elliott), best supporting actress (Nicola Walker), and lighting, set, and sound design.

Another play that may be heading to Broadway soon, “The Audience,” drew Olivier honors for lead actress Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II (the same character that won her an Academy Award) and supporting actor Richard McCabe as Prime Minister Harold Wilson. “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” starring Laurie Metcalf and David Suchet, won for best play revival.

As for musicals, an adaptation of “Top Hat,” with a score by Irving Berlin, won the Olivier for best new musical. Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton won for best actor and actress as the leads in “Sweeney Todd,” which itself won for best musical revival. And Leigh Zimmerman won the Olivier for best supporting performance in a musical for “A Chorus Line” (this category is not divided by gender).

“The Audience” will be broadcast at movie theaters and other venues around the United States on June 13, with encore showings to follow, as part of the National Theater Live screening program.



‘Curious Incident’ Dominates at Olivier Awards

Simon Stephens, left, with Mark Haddon, who wrote the 2003 novel Joel Ryan/Invision, via Associated Press Simon Stephens, left, with Mark Haddon, who wrote the 2003 novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”

The London stage adaptation of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” based on the best-selling novel from 2003, has won seven Olivier Awards - Britian’s equivalent of the Tony Awards - tying the record set last year by the musical “Matilda.”

At the annual awards ceremony on Sunday night, “Curious Incident” - which some producers are eyeing for Broadway - won for best play (adapted by Simon Stephens), best actor (Luke Treadaway), best director (Marianne Elliott), best supporting actress (Nicola Walker), and lighting, set, and sound design.

Another play that may be heading to Broadway soon, “The Audience,” drew Olivier honors for lead actress Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II (the same character that won her an Academy Award) and supporting actor Richard McCabe as Prime Minister Harold Wilson. “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” starring Laurie Metcalf and David Suchet, won for best play revival.

As for musicals, an adaptation of “Top Hat,” with a score by Irving Berlin, won the Olivier for best new musical. Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton won for best actor and actress as the leads in “Sweeney Todd,” which itself won for best musical revival. And Leigh Zimmerman won the Olivier for best supporting performance in a musical for “A Chorus Line” (this category is not divided by gender).

“The Audience” will be broadcast at movie theaters and other venues around the United States on June 13, with encore showings to follow, as part of the National Theater Live screening program.



Talking ‘Mad Men’: Was This the Worst Episode Yet?

Every Monday morning, Sloane Crosley and Logan Hill will be offering their post-”Mad Men” analysis here. Read on and in the comments share your reactions to the characters’ reactions to the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.:

Logan Hill: I feel as if I have been defending this show against its critics: “Remember ‘The Suitcase,’” I say. “Remember Season 3,” I say. And then, this? I think this may be the worst episode of a great show.

Sloane Crosley: Wow, coming out of the gate with that, huh? I actually disagree. I think the pipe of “How to Fictionalize a Historical Tragedy” is so deeply laid, the show has painted itself into a trite corner at times. But I demand a GIF of that awkward Joan-Dawn hug.

LH: At its best, “Mad Men” has struck at the core of all these historical nerves â€" but this episode just seemed so scattered and distracted. It sounds like we may disagree, but I felt like the show just struggled to incorporate this enormous moment of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in a way that made dramatic sense.

SC: You couldn’t possibly be talking about the “Have You Hugged a Black Person Today?” undertones, could you? Which is to say yes, I cede the point that there was something tonally off when there didn’t need to be. Remember the Chicago rape-murder case last season? That’s not an event everyone knows and it felt less forced to make it the focal point. Or compare this episode with the stunning Kennedy assassination episode. Actually … Harry wanted to keep watching TV then, too. What do we think? He gets fired any minute, right?

LH: Thanks, Sloane â€" I’m glad you’re noting some of the moments when this show has taken huge historical moments and made something surprising of them. That off-kilter unpredictability is what I love about “Mad Men,” but this episode? I felt it was scrawled onto Sticky Notes. And Harry? Yes, he’s a moron. But I worry that he’s less a human at this point  and more of a straw man stand-in for all that Matt Weiner (aspiring film director) hates about the TV executives who have made him a star.

SC: When he and Pete have that duel-paced fight, I kept thinking of that George Bernard Shaw quote, “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” And up until Pete makes his race-free “King was a family man” argument, I wasn’t even sure which one of them was the pig. But it’s Harry. Which is saying something because Pete can’t even order Chinese food without making us loathe him.

LH: Yes â€" and Roger’s flippant reply was no more respectable. His line about how he thought King could have talked his way out of trouble was almost too typical for Roger, too cutesy and too obvious.

SC: Too in character for an ad guy, right?

LH: Yes, it was like a caricature: Roger, as we’ve seen him develop, is actually smarter than that.

SC: Actually, everyone’s smarter than that. What about Ginsberg?

LH: Why Matt Weiner decided to pair his weak date story line with this moment is beyond me. Narratively, it just felt willfully bizarre to me. I love Ginsberg’s character and I was hoping to see more of him. But not like this.

SC: To your Post-it note point, you know who just came unglued and fell beneath the fridge? Sylvia and Dr. Rosen. Now you see our concern, now you don’t. You’d think she was one of Don’s children. Do we buy that Don started up and loving Bobby because Bobby busted out with Don’s magic word? “Sad.”

SC: Can we talk about Randall, Roger’s insurance friend (played by William Mapother)? Nice insider “Wouldn’t want you to get ‘Lost‘” line, Roger.

LH: Oh, that line …

SC: I would also like a GIF of Stan’s face during that meeting. I’m gonna need several GIFs.

LH: His pseudo-hallucinogenic query was fun, but so rushed. Really, they just skipped right over it. The whole episode seemed scattershot to me. When I love “Mad Men,” the characters are embodying the contradictions of the times. This week, they seemed to be acting them out.

SC: Well, we still have that problem of not caring about the couples that take up the most real estate. Or I do. Do I care if Henry runs for office? If Betty fits into her old dresses? If Megan’s father persists in his Canadianness? Nope. But do I care that Peggy breaks up with Awful Abe for Stan? Very much.

LH: Peggy deserves better. And that reminds me: Are two references to Marx too many for one hourlong drama about King’s assassination? I think one Marx reference is a good rule of thumb.

SC: Or one should be Groucho. Also: two viewings of “Planet of the Apes” in one episode is too much.

LH: True. If half the episode had been performed by Harpo I’d have been happier â€" less ponderous, deliberate talk.

SC: Right now, I’m sensing you’d gladly replace the last line, “Henry’s not that important” with “This whole show is not that important.” Perhaps next week will turn it around for us both?

LH: I hope so, because I am â€" despite appearances  â€" really optimistic about this show: I’ve never loved a show more. But this episode felt like a placeholder: King. dies, characters react. The black characters remain on the fringes. Everyone reiterates what a clueless jerk they’ve become. And it culminates in Don’s mopey monologue to Megan, which I didn’t buy.

SC: Basically, Don’s no longer allowed to have heart-to-hearts with brunettes in bedrooms. Nothing good ever comes of it. I have a feeling that if you’re waiting for suspense to return to this show, the Second Avenue subway line will come quicker. What we’re looking at is an ever-beautiful baby-sitting job on these characters.

LH: Yes, I’m critical, though I’m also bit irritated with all the fans who complain that Don is not changing enough: I mean, he hasn’t changed for five seasons and just because he sells aspirational dreams is no reason to believe that any such aspirational dreams are achievable. It’s just marketing. And that’s just Don.

SC: He’s the control in the experiment, the blank piece in Scrabble. I don’t want to see change in him. I would actually argue that what fans are looking for is a reversion. They want a less watered-down Don. The old Don. But it seems like the price we pay for complexity is … bedroom monologues.

LH: So, commenters, what did you think about Don’s monologue delivered to Megan? About Pete’s fight with Harry? Ginsberg’s date? And about Peggy’s thwarted gentrification dreams? And what did you make of the way the show handled the assassination?

Sloane Crosley is the author of “How Did You Get This Number” and “I Was Told There’d Be Cake“; Logan Hill is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, New York, GQ, Rolling Stone, Wired and others.



Talking ‘Mad Men’: Was This the Worst Episode Yet?

Every Monday morning, Sloane Crosley and Logan Hill will be offering their post-”Mad Men” analysis here. Read on and in the comments share your reactions to the characters’ reactions to the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.:

Logan Hill: I feel as if I have been defending this show against its critics: “Remember ‘The Suitcase,’” I say. “Remember Season 3,” I say. And then, this? I think this may be the worst episode of a great show.

Sloane Crosley: Wow, coming out of the gate with that, huh? I actually disagree. I think the pipe of “How to Fictionalize a Historical Tragedy” is so deeply laid, the show has painted itself into a trite corner at times. But I demand a GIF of that awkward Joan-Dawn hug.

LH: At its best, “Mad Men” has struck at the core of all these historical nerves â€" but this episode just seemed so scattered and distracted. It sounds like we may disagree, but I felt like the show just struggled to incorporate this enormous moment of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in a way that made dramatic sense.

SC: You couldn’t possibly be talking about the “Have You Hugged a Black Person Today?” undertones, could you? Which is to say yes, I cede the point that there was something tonally off when there didn’t need to be. Remember the Chicago rape-murder case last season? That’s not an event everyone knows and it felt less forced to make it the focal point. Or compare this episode with the stunning Kennedy assassination episode. Actually … Harry wanted to keep watching TV then, too. What do we think? He gets fired any minute, right?

LH: Thanks, Sloane â€" I’m glad you’re noting some of the moments when this show has taken huge historical moments and made something surprising of them. That off-kilter unpredictability is what I love about “Mad Men,” but this episode? I felt it was scrawled onto Sticky Notes. And Harry? Yes, he’s a moron. But I worry that he’s less a human at this point  and more of a straw man stand-in for all that Matt Weiner (aspiring film director) hates about the TV executives who have made him a star.

SC: When he and Pete have that duel-paced fight, I kept thinking of that George Bernard Shaw quote, “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” And up until Pete makes his race-free “King was a family man” argument, I wasn’t even sure which one of them was the pig. But it’s Harry. Which is saying something because Pete can’t even order Chinese food without making us loathe him.

LH: Yes â€" and Roger’s flippant reply was no more respectable. His line about how he thought King could have talked his way out of trouble was almost too typical for Roger, too cutesy and too obvious.

SC: Too in character for an ad guy, right?

LH: Yes, it was like a caricature: Roger, as we’ve seen him develop, is actually smarter than that.

SC: Actually, everyone’s smarter than that. What about Ginsberg?

LH: Why Matt Weiner decided to pair his weak date story line with this moment is beyond me. Narratively, it just felt willfully bizarre to me. I love Ginsberg’s character and I was hoping to see more of him. But not like this.

SC: To your Post-it note point, you know who just came unglued and fell beneath the fridge? Sylvia and Dr. Rosen. Now you see our concern, now you don’t. You’d think she was one of Don’s children. Do we buy that Don started up and loving Bobby because Bobby busted out with Don’s magic word? “Sad.”

SC: Can we talk about Randall, Roger’s insurance friend (played by William Mapother)? Nice insider “Wouldn’t want you to get ‘Lost‘” line, Roger.

LH: Oh, that line …

SC: I would also like a GIF of Stan’s face during that meeting. I’m gonna need several GIFs.

LH: His pseudo-hallucinogenic query was fun, but so rushed. Really, they just skipped right over it. The whole episode seemed scattershot to me. When I love “Mad Men,” the characters are embodying the contradictions of the times. This week, they seemed to be acting them out.

SC: Well, we still have that problem of not caring about the couples that take up the most real estate. Or I do. Do I care if Henry runs for office? If Betty fits into her old dresses? If Megan’s father persists in his Canadianness? Nope. But do I care that Peggy breaks up with Awful Abe for Stan? Very much.

LH: Peggy deserves better. And that reminds me: Are two references to Marx too many for one hourlong drama about King’s assassination? I think one Marx reference is a good rule of thumb.

SC: Or one should be Groucho. Also: two viewings of “Planet of the Apes” in one episode is too much.

LH: True. If half the episode had been performed by Harpo I’d have been happier â€" less ponderous, deliberate talk.

SC: Right now, I’m sensing you’d gladly replace the last line, “Henry’s not that important” with “This whole show is not that important.” Perhaps next week will turn it around for us both?

LH: I hope so, because I am â€" despite appearances  â€" really optimistic about this show: I’ve never loved a show more. But this episode felt like a placeholder: King. dies, characters react. The black characters remain on the fringes. Everyone reiterates what a clueless jerk they’ve become. And it culminates in Don’s mopey monologue to Megan, which I didn’t buy.

SC: Basically, Don’s no longer allowed to have heart-to-hearts with brunettes in bedrooms. Nothing good ever comes of it. I have a feeling that if you’re waiting for suspense to return to this show, the Second Avenue subway line will come quicker. What we’re looking at is an ever-beautiful baby-sitting job on these characters.

LH: Yes, I’m critical, though I’m also bit irritated with all the fans who complain that Don is not changing enough: I mean, he hasn’t changed for five seasons and just because he sells aspirational dreams is no reason to believe that any such aspirational dreams are achievable. It’s just marketing. And that’s just Don.

SC: He’s the control in the experiment, the blank piece in Scrabble. I don’t want to see change in him. I would actually argue that what fans are looking for is a reversion. They want a less watered-down Don. The old Don. But it seems like the price we pay for complexity is … bedroom monologues.

LH: So, commenters, what did you think about Don’s monologue delivered to Megan? About Pete’s fight with Harry? Ginsberg’s date? And about Peggy’s thwarted gentrification dreams? And what did you make of the way the show handled the assassination?

Sloane Crosley is the author of “How Did You Get This Number” and “I Was Told There’d Be Cake“; Logan Hill is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, New York, GQ, Rolling Stone, Wired and others.



Talking ‘Mad Men’: Was This the Worst Episode Yet?

Every Monday morning, Sloane Crosley and Logan Hill will be offering their post-”Mad Men” analysis here. Read on and in the comments share your reactions to the characters’ reactions to the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.:

Logan Hill: I feel as if I have been defending this show against its critics: “Remember ‘The Suitcase,’” I say. “Remember Season 3,” I say. And then, this? I think this may be the worst episode of a great show.

Sloane Crosley: Wow, coming out of the gate with that, huh? I actually disagree. I think the pipe of “How to Fictionalize a Historical Tragedy” is so deeply laid, the show has painted itself into a trite corner at times. But I demand a GIF of that awkward Joan-Dawn hug.

LH: At its best, “Mad Men” has struck at the core of all these historical nerves â€" but this episode just seemed so scattered and distracted. It sounds like we may disagree, but I felt like the show just struggled to incorporate this enormous moment of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in a way that made dramatic sense.

SC: You couldn’t possibly be talking about the “Have You Hugged a Black Person Today?” undertones, could you? Which is to say yes, I cede the point that there was something tonally off when there didn’t need to be. Remember the Chicago rape-murder case last season? That’s not an event everyone knows and it felt less forced to make it the focal point. Or compare this episode with the stunning Kennedy assassination episode. Actually … Harry wanted to keep watching TV then, too. What do we think? He gets fired any minute, right?

LH: Thanks, Sloane â€" I’m glad you’re noting some of the moments when this show has taken huge historical moments and made something surprising of them. That off-kilter unpredictability is what I love about “Mad Men,” but this episode? I felt it was scrawled onto Sticky Notes. And Harry? Yes, he’s a moron. But I worry that he’s less a human at this point  and more of a straw man stand-in for all that Matt Weiner (aspiring film director) hates about the TV executives who have made him a star.

SC: When he and Pete have that duel-paced fight, I kept thinking of that George Bernard Shaw quote, “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” And up until Pete makes his race-free “King was a family man” argument, I wasn’t even sure which one of them was the pig. But it’s Harry. Which is saying something because Pete can’t even order Chinese food without making us loathe him.

LH: Yes â€" and Roger’s flippant reply was no more respectable. His line about how he thought King could have talked his way out of trouble was almost too typical for Roger, too cutesy and too obvious.

SC: Too in character for an ad guy, right?

LH: Yes, it was like a caricature: Roger, as we’ve seen him develop, is actually smarter than that.

SC: Actually, everyone’s smarter than that. What about Ginsberg?

LH: Why Matt Weiner decided to pair his weak date story line with this moment is beyond me. Narratively, it just felt willfully bizarre to me. I love Ginsberg’s character and I was hoping to see more of him. But not like this.

SC: To your Post-it note point, you know who just came unglued and fell beneath the fridge? Sylvia and Dr. Rosen. Now you see our concern, now you don’t. You’d think she was one of Don’s children. Do we buy that Don started up and loving Bobby because Bobby busted out with Don’s magic word? “Sad.”

SC: Can we talk about Randall, Roger’s insurance friend (played by William Mapother)? Nice insider “Wouldn’t want you to get ‘Lost‘” line, Roger.

LH: Oh, that line …

SC: I would also like a GIF of Stan’s face during that meeting. I’m gonna need several GIFs.

LH: His pseudo-hallucinogenic query was fun, but so rushed. Really, they just skipped right over it. The whole episode seemed scattershot to me. When I love “Mad Men,” the characters are embodying the contradictions of the times. This week, they seemed to be acting them out.

SC: Well, we still have that problem of not caring about the couples that take up the most real estate. Or I do. Do I care if Henry runs for office? If Betty fits into her old dresses? If Megan’s father persists in his Canadianness? Nope. But do I care that Peggy breaks up with Awful Abe for Stan? Very much.

LH: Peggy deserves better. And that reminds me: Are two references to Marx too many for one hourlong drama about King’s assassination? I think one Marx reference is a good rule of thumb.

SC: Or one should be Groucho. Also: two viewings of “Planet of the Apes” in one episode is too much.

LH: True. If half the episode had been performed by Harpo I’d have been happier â€" less ponderous, deliberate talk.

SC: Right now, I’m sensing you’d gladly replace the last line, “Henry’s not that important” with “This whole show is not that important.” Perhaps next week will turn it around for us both?

LH: I hope so, because I am â€" despite appearances  â€" really optimistic about this show: I’ve never loved a show more. But this episode felt like a placeholder: King. dies, characters react. The black characters remain on the fringes. Everyone reiterates what a clueless jerk they’ve become. And it culminates in Don’s mopey monologue to Megan, which I didn’t buy.

SC: Basically, Don’s no longer allowed to have heart-to-hearts with brunettes in bedrooms. Nothing good ever comes of it. I have a feeling that if you’re waiting for suspense to return to this show, the Second Avenue subway line will come quicker. What we’re looking at is an ever-beautiful baby-sitting job on these characters.

LH: Yes, I’m critical, though I’m also bit irritated with all the fans who complain that Don is not changing enough: I mean, he hasn’t changed for five seasons and just because he sells aspirational dreams is no reason to believe that any such aspirational dreams are achievable. It’s just marketing. And that’s just Don.

SC: He’s the control in the experiment, the blank piece in Scrabble. I don’t want to see change in him. I would actually argue that what fans are looking for is a reversion. They want a less watered-down Don. The old Don. But it seems like the price we pay for complexity is … bedroom monologues.

LH: So, commenters, what did you think about Don’s monologue delivered to Megan? About Pete’s fight with Harry? Ginsberg’s date? And about Peggy’s thwarted gentrification dreams? And what did you make of the way the show handled the assassination?

Sloane Crosley is the author of “How Did You Get This Number” and “I Was Told There’d Be Cake“; Logan Hill is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, New York, GQ, Rolling Stone, Wired and others.