People & Places

NEWS/FEATURESARAB TIMES, FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016

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NYT secret world

Doc explores‘obit’ writersLOS ANGELES, April 21, (RTRS): There are questions every famous person wonders, like, how many ugly pictures are there of me on the Internet, and has the New York Times already written my obituary?

The answer for most people is no. Although the Times has about 1,700 “advances”, or drafts on fi le, the paper typically starts an obitu-ary if someone is an octogenarian, has been in and out of Cedars-Sinai recently, or has a well-publicized drug problem.

As papers across the country run fewer daily obituaries, those tasked

with summa-rizing a life in 800 words for the history books are be-coming a rarer breed. A new documentary, “Obit”, di-rected by Va-nessa Gould, screening this week at the Tribeca Film

Festival focuses on the New York Times obituary department. Like the 2011 doc “Page One” that cen-tered on the Times media desk, “Obit” offers a fl y-on-the-wall look at the “death beat”.

Director Vanessa Gould stum-bled on the subject when her friend Eric Joisel, a French paper sculptor, and subject of her previous fi lm, “Between the Folds”, died. Gould alerted papers around the country to Joisel’s death, and received a call from the New York Times’ veteran obituary writer, Margalit Fox.

Commit“Margalit asked me guiding ques-

tions about his life and I tried to map out the salient path,” Gould said. “It made me really think about what the New York Times was doing with its obituary page and why they would commit pretty valuable journalistic real estate to an unknown French pa-per artist. Even after the obit ran, it lingered with me.”

Gould approached the Times to see if they would participate in a fi lm, and six years after Joisel’s obituary ran, the documentary pre-miered at Tribeca.

The fi lm explores how writers craft these pieces, and how editors decide what is newsworthy. The pa-per’s general rule of thumb is if you made news in your life, your death will also be news.

“The household names, the Hol-lywood stars, the sports stars, those kinds of people are pretty obvious to us, and their fame alone will get them a large obituary when the time comes,” William McDonald, obitu-aries editor at the Times, said.

But, as the fi lm explores, editors also look for lesser-known fi gures who made a lasting impact.

Attention“We look at people who may not

be as prominent but otherwise did something really important, and meaningful, who may deserve the attention even if they didn’t get a lot of it in their lifetime,” McDon-ald said. “We look for people who changed the way we live.”

Like most major news outlets, the editors prepare advances for prominent people. Which means they are often weighing how likely it is someone could die.

“How old they are is a factor. If they are in the middle of their ca-reer we may not want to do some-thing too soon, especially if they have more years to go, so we tend to write them when they are older and their body of work is done, and we can sit back and assess the full story and not have to go back and touch it up every three months,” McDonald said. “Risk factors, if you are living a kind of life on the edge, maybe doing some things you shouldn’t be doing, or if you are the President of the United States in a high security position, that will be a factor for us.”

The paper gets word someone has died from all sorts of sources including family members, TMZ, agents and publicists.

“For politicians, and especially Hollywood stars, if you had of fl ack in life, they will do this one last act of spin for you in death,” Fox said. “We have literally gotten glossy press kits with 8 x 10 photos for the dearly departed.”

It’s easier to predict the demise of the elderly, but the paper has recently been caught off guard by several deaths like David Bowie, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and de-spite several brushes with death, Amy Winehouse.

“We discovered [Philip Seymour Hoffman’s] death on a Sunday morning — it was Super Bowl Sun-day two years ago, and I was throw-ing a Super Bowl party and I had to leave my own party to write the obit,” Bruce Weber said.

Weber went into the offi ce, and happened to call an acquaintance of Hoffman who had found the body. The paper sent a reporter to the ac-tor’s apartment, and Weber dialed his theater sources.

Gould

This image released by RLJ Entertainment shows Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone (right), and David Oyelowo as Clifton Henderson in a scene from ‘Nina’. (AP)

Actors Sarita Choudhury and Tom Hanks attend ‘A Hologram For The King’ World Premiere at the John Zuccotti Theater at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center on April 20,

in New York City. (AFP)

Chyna Stossel

LOS ANGELES: Chyna, the former WWE wrestler and reality TV star, was found dead in her Redondo Beach home on Wednesday. She was 46.

The offi cial cause of death is unknown.According to local police, the wrestling

personality was found unresponsive in bed after not answering her friend’s calls for a few days.

“There are no indications or signs that her death was the result of foul play,” police said.

Chyna, whose real name is Joanie Laurer, last appeared in an odd YouTube video posted Sunday morning. Her Face-book announced the news late Wednesday.

“It is with deep sadness to inform you today that we lost a true icon, a real life superhero. Joanie Laurer aka Chyna, the 9th wonder of the world has passed away. She will live forever in the memories of her millions of fans and all of us that loved her,” the post read.

Chyna appeared in several TV shows over the last two decades, including VH1’s “Surreal Life” and “Celebrity Rehab”. She also guest starred on “3rd Rock from the Sun” and “The Nick Cannon Show”.

A larger-than-life fi gure, the wrestler and actress later posed for Playboy maga-zine before starring in several adult fi lms, including “She-Hulk XXX”. (RTRS)

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NEW YORK: Fox Business Network personality John Stossel says he’s being treated for lung cancer.

In a commentary posted on the Fox News website Wednesday, Stossel writes that his doctors have told him his cancer was “caught early” and that he’ll be “fi ne”. He says one-fi fth of a lung was removed, but says he was told that soon he’d “barely notice” the loss.

Stossel describes his medical care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital as “excellent”, but speaking in his role as a consumer reporter, adds that “the hospi-

Variety

Olympic swimmer, Missy Franklin, professional tennis player, Serena Williams, ESPN sports broadcaster, Hannah Storm and ESPN MLB commentator, Jes-sica Mendoza attend the DICK’S Sporting Goods fi lm premiere of ‘Keepers of the Game’, an offi cial fi lm of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival directed by Emmy

Award winner Judd Ehrlich, on April 19, in New York. (AP)

UK comedian Wooddies of cancer at 62LONDON, April 21, (AP): Victo-ria Wood, a British comedian who found humor in everyday life and blazed a trail for other female com-ics, has died. She was 62.

Wood died Wednesday at her London home “after a short but brave battle with cancer”, said her publicist, Neil Reading.

Born in Greater Manchester in 1953, Wood got her fi rst break in 1974 winning the TV talent contest “New Faces”. As a woman from northwest England she was an outsider in the world of British comedy, but became a well-known standup, and got her own TV show in the 1980s with “Victoria Wood as Seen on TV”.

One recurring element was “Acorn Antiques”, a spoof soap opera complete with wobbly sets and even wobblier acting that many consider a comic classic.

tal’s customer service stinks”.He spent the bulk of the opinion piece

listing lapses in the hospital’s service in

the absence of a free-market system for healthcare. (AP)

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NEW YORK: “I love it”, Oprah Winfrey shouted, pumping her fi st in the air.

There was no mistaking her feelings

about Harriet Tubman being selected as the next face of the $20 dollar bill.

“That was my fi rst choice. My second choice was Sojourner Truth,” Winfrey told The Associated Press Wednesday on the red carpet for her new series, “Greenleaf”. Like Tubman, Truth also was an abolition-ist during the 19th century.

“I’m not going to cry here for AP, but I think that’s the best choice. That is the choice for America”, Winfrey said.

Tubman, an anti-slavery activist will be the fi rst African-American to appear on an American banknote and the fi rst woman to appear on one in a century. Her portrait will replace former President Andrew Jackson, who will be moved to the back of the redesigned $20 bill. (AP)

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COLUMBUS, Ohio: Writer and activist Gloria Steinem is slated to visit the Ohio Statehouse and meet with Democratic female lawmakers during a stop in the political battleground state.

Steinem, who was born in Toledo, is scheduled to sign books, meet with legislative staff and discuss issues affecting women’s lives at forum on Thursday in Co-lumbus. The afternoon forum and book sing-ing are open to the public. The Ohio House Democratic Women’s Caucus is hosting Steinem’s visit to the capital. Copies of her new memoir, “My Life on the Road”, are being sold at the Statehouse gift shop. (AP)

Museum gets only known fi lm of Armstrong in studio

‘Nina’s’ issues much more than skin-deepBy Jake Coyle

The questionable casting of Zoe Saldana is only one of the many

problems with Cynthia Mort’s limp and misjudged Nina Simone biopic “Nina”. Little of the High Priestess of Soul’s searing clarity of voice or pro-found struggle comes through in this insipid fi lm whose fakeness is writ across Saldana’s dubiously darkened skin.

“Please take Nina’s name out of your mouth. For the rest of your life” was the harsh judgment laid on Saldana by Simone’s estate. Bitter bat-tles over to whom an artist belongs are seldom good for anyone. But it’s rea-sonable to question whether Simone’s story should be in the hands of those who would employ black face to cap-ture a proudly dark-skinned woman.

It should be said: It’s no easy task to gather the multitudes within Simone into a feature fi lm. She was, like her music, unclassifi able. The classically trained pianist was termed a jazz sing-er and a soul diva, but she’s been most identifi ed as a folk singer. As if anoth-er form of resistance in a life full of it, her career refused to bend to the typi-cal arc found in music biopics. She had only one top 20 single (her fi rst, 1959’s “I Loves You, Porgy”) and spent much of her later life in self-imposed exile in Barbados, Liberia and France.

Why Mort, who wrote and direct-ed the fi lm, has chosen to focus on Simone’s troubled 1990s period in France is anyone’s guess. It allows for a fi ery kind of redemption story, go-ing from heavy drinking and medical meltdown to a triumphant Central Park performance. But the fi lm is a sloppily stitching of lethargic scenes between Simone and her assistant, Clifton (a sleepy David Oyelowo), in a French

Riviera villa. Arguments over taking pills are possibly the least dramatic or important moments in a life that pulsed with and provided the impas-sioned tempo to the civil rights move-ment.

LimitedAn increasingly unhinged Simone

meets Clifton in a Los Angeles hospi-tal where she has landed after pulling a gun on a record executive. Clifton, a sympathetic nurse whose awareness of Simone is limited to his mother’s vinyl collection, catches her eye. She plops down a wad of cash and tells him to ac-company her to France as her personal assistant.

The majority of the fi lm plays out between Simone and Clifton, as he tries to clean her up and get her back on the stage. The scenes are almost hermetically sealed, with few other characters of note and scant political or musical context to Simone’s rich story. The deep rage and sorrow of “Mississippi Goddamn” is nowhere to be found here.

Saldana, of “Avatar” and “Guard-ians of the Galaxy”, curiously varies her accent in fl ashback and present day scenes. In numerous song performanc-es she sounds professional enough, but lacks any hint of Simone’s power or gravity. (Simone was in her 60s during the majority of “Nina”).

Seek out instead Liz Garbus’ 2015 documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” which knows enough not to simplify the complex Simone. Or pull up the footage that fi nished that fi lm on YouTube: an extended performance of Simone singing “I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free.”

There, in just over three glorious minutes, is so much more of Simone’s essence. With the band locked in

groove and the crowd chanting “Be-cause I know,” she — in full thrall to the music — slides out from the piano, bobs her head, claps her hands freneti-cally, shakes her body and shouts.

“Nina,” an RLJ Entertainment release, is not rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. It contains adult language and some vio-lence. Running time: 90 minutes. One star out of four.

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The Louis Armstrong House Muse-um has acquired the only known fi lm of the great jazz musician in a record-ing studio, footage that was discovered in a storage facility.

The 33-minute, 16 mm fi lm captures Armstrong recording his 1959 album “Satchmo Plays King Oliver” in Los Angeles for Audio Fidelity. The re-cord producer, Sid Frey, had the fi lm professionally shot but wound up not doing anything with it or telling any-one about it.

Michael Cogswell, the New York City museum’s executive director, called it “a groundbreaking discov-ery.” The museum announced the ac-quisition Wednesday.

“The fi lm has spent the past six decades in private hands or in a stor-age locker. Not even the most diligent Armstrong researchers knew it exist-ed,” he said.

ExistenceFrey’s daughter, Andrea Bass, who

helped the museum acquire the fi lm, said she fi rst learned about its exist-ence in a chatroom discussion of her father’s company.

Frey, the founder and president of Audio Fidelity, was known in the in-dustry as Stereo for being the fi rst to release a commercially distributed ste-

reo recording, she said.Frey died in 1968. Bass said that

after their mother died in 2005, her sister placed the Audio Fidelity tapes, fi lms, albums and personal family items in a storage facility — unbe-knownst to her.

“People were always asking me where the masters were,” said Bass, a former marketing director. “I went on one of these message boards about Audio Fidelity and someone said ‘I have the masters.’” It turned out to be a person who buys the contents of abandoned storage facilities.

Bass said she was unable at that time to purchase the Louis Arm-strong material, but the man contacted her again six months ago, and this time they struck a deal.

The fi lm’s recording session was made just after Armstrong appeared on Bing Crosby’s television special. It shows a relaxed Armstrong in a short-sleeved plaid shirt and shorts blowing his trumpet and singing with his All Stars band. He looks healthy despite a heart attack a few months earlier.

The fi lm opens with two complete takes of “I Ain’t Got Nobody.” After the fi rst attempt, Armstrong signals for “one more,” and then approvingly winks at his bandmates after the sec-ond — master— take.

Much of the fi lm focuses on Arm-strong and the All Stars working out a routine for “I Ain’t Gonna Give No-body None of My Jelly Roll.” Arm-strong didn’t have sheet music for the song so he improvised each take with “a new vocal made up of a mixture of dazzling scat singing,” the museum said.

The fi lm ends with a complete take of “Jelly Roll Blues”, a tribute to jazz composer Jelly Roll Morton.

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