My Short Modeling Career

Whenever I visit a Target or a Rite-Aid Drugstore, whenever I visit the greeting card store in the local mall, whenever I visit any establishment that sells American Greeting Cards, I always make it my business to check the racks of humorous cards. I'm not looking to make a purchase. I'm not looking for a quick laugh at some clueless remark ballooning out of the mouth of our last president or some eloquent bromide from our present leader. I'm not even looking to kill time while my wife shops (although that is often one of the unintended consequences).

What I am looking for is myself.

Let me explain. Some four years ago in December and then again in May, I drove up from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, a trip many Steeler fans like to make every year, not for football, but for a photo shoot at the official headquarters of the American Greeting Card Company which is located in the home of the Browns. I was on my way to what I hoped would be a lucrative career as a male model—a male model for the geriatric set. It's not that I consider myself particularly photogenic. It's not that I consider myself a senior hunk. It is simply that my agent had sent them my headshot along with more than likely fifty others, and someone who presumably knew what they were doing had picked mine. Whatever they wanted, I had it. Whoever they wanted, I was it. So, who was I to argue.

"Bring some short sleeve shirts," my agent said, "Bring Bermudas," "You got any with loud patterns?"

"It's December," I said.

"You got any with like a Hawaiian print?" he asked in a second phone call.

Hawaiian print and Bermuda shorts, obviously you know they're not looking for Brad Pitt; Sean Connery neither. What they're looking for is one of the old funny looking guys, maybe the one with a suppository in his ear. His friend says to him, "What are you doing with that suppository in your ear?" "Eh," he says. What they're looking for is an old coot with skinny legs and sagging jowls. Like I said, they're looking for me.

In the December shoot, I and another elderly Tyson Beckford wannabe, each dressed in checked Bermuda shorts, shirts from the Waikiki Beach collection, sandals and black socks , are posed sitting on a bench in front of an American Greeting Card store, they have set up either for visitors to the Greeting Card campus or as a set for shoots like ours. They pose us for two hours: him on the left, me on the right; me on the right, him on the left; him smiling, me frowning, him frowning, me smiling; him straight faced, me—well, you get the idea. The captions that will go with these photos, they don't tell us, but it is fairly easy to imagine they aren't going to be very flattering. I've seen the cards with the guys with their bellies hanging out.

When the agent calls in May, he tells me to bring one of those sleeveless undershirts. "You know," he chuckles, "a wife beater."

"They want Marlon Brando?"

This time what we are shooting is a Poker game. There are five of us: me, and four aged lovelies. The ,photographer decides against the wife beater, opting for the shirt from the Waikiki collection—who knew that the Hawaiian shirt was the AARP's equivalent of the little black dress. Again there are two hours of posing: the blue haired ladies and I in a variety of combinations, dealing cards, holding cards close to our chests, grabbing for chips, peeking at each other's hands, and so on. "We're not doing strip poker," the producer quips, "this time." The ladies giggle. The gentleman, yours truly, blushes. Once again, we leave with no idea what they mean to do with the pictures. At least I know that they won't be working with pictures of my sunken chest festooned beneath the wife beater I leave in the dressing room.

And so whenever I visit a Target or a Rite-Aid drug store for over four years now, I search for whatever it was—embarrassing and undignified or cute and cuddly--that might have come out of these photo shoots. Whenever I visit the card shop in the local mall I look for four ladies and an old guy playing poker on somebody's birthday or anniversary. Whenever I go into any store that sells American Greeting Cards, I search for two old farts sitting on a bench in what looks like a mall saying who knows what for Father's Day or maybe telling each other to get well.

It's more than four years now, and I've yet to find them. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps the pictures were so terrible, they were unfit for use, not even good enough to be bad enough to laugh at, but if that were true, I reason, why would they call me back five months later? Why would they pay me to come all the way out to Cleveland for another set of worthless prints?

There is only one answer. They are holding them back, saving them, waiting for the right moment to unleash them on the card buying public. So I keep looking, waiting for the day they send them forth. And when they do, when you see a semi-dignified, elderly gentleman in Bermuda shorts, sandals and socks, and a lush Hawaiian shirt, perhaps with a suppository in his ear, gracing the shelves of your local Target, you may well be looking at America's Next Top Model—Geriatric Male Division.

My Short Modeling Career

Whenever I visit a Target or a Rite-Aid Drugstore, whenever I visit the greeting card store in the local mall, whenever I visit any establishment that sells American Greeting Cards, I always make it my business to check the racks of humorous cards. I'm not looking to make a purchase. I'm not looking for a quick laugh at some clueless remark ballooning out of the mouth of our last president or some eloquent bromide from our present leader. I'm not even looking to kill time while my wife shops (although that is often one of the unintended consequences).

What I am looking for is myself.

Let me explain. Some four years ago in December and then again in May, I drove up from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, a trip many Steeler fans like to make every year, not for football, but for a photo shoot at the official headquarters of the American Greeting Card Company which is located in the home of the Browns. I was on my way to what I hoped would be a lucrative career as a male model—a male model for the geriatric set. It's not that I consider myself particularly photogenic. It's not that I consider myself a senior hunk. It is simply that my agent had sent them my headshot along with more than likely fifty others, and someone who presumably knew what they were doing had picked mine. Whatever they wanted, I had it. Whoever they wanted, I was it. So, who was I to argue.

"Bring some short sleeve shirts," my agent said, "Bring Bermudas," "You got any with loud patterns?"

"It's December," I said.

"You got any with like a Hawaiian print?" he asked in a second phone call.

Hawaiian print and Bermuda shorts, obviously you know they're not looking for Brad Pitt; Sean Connery neither. What they're looking for is one of the old funny looking guys, maybe the one with a suppository in his ear. His friend says to him, "What are you doing with that suppository in your ear?" "Eh," he says. What they're looking for is an old coot with skinny legs and sagging jowls. Like I said, they're looking for me.

In the December shoot, I and another elderly Tyson Beckford wannabe, each dressed in checked Bermuda shorts, shirts from the Waikiki Beach collection, sandals and black socks , are posed sitting on a bench in front of an American Greeting Card store, they have set up either for visitors to the Greeting Card campus or as a set for shoots like ours. They pose us for two hours: him on the left, me on the right; me on the right, him on the left; him smiling, me frowning, him frowning, me smiling; him straight faced, me—well, you get the idea. The captions that will go with these photos, they don't tell us, but it is fairly easy to imagine they aren't going to be very flattering. I've seen the cards with the guys with their bellies hanging out.

When the agent calls in May, he tells me to bring one of those sleeveless undershirts. "You know," he chuckles, "a wife beater."

"They want Marlon Brando?"

This time what we are shooting is a Poker game. There are five of us: me, and four aged lovelies. The ,photographer decides against the wife beater, opting for the shirt from the Waikiki collection—who knew that the Hawaiian shirt was the AARP's equivalent of the little black dress. Again there are two hours of posing: the blue haired ladies and I in a variety of combinations, dealing cards, holding cards close to our chests, grabbing for chips, peeking at each other's hands, and so on. "We're not doing strip poker," the producer quips, "this time." The ladies giggle. The gentleman, yours truly, blushes. Once again, we leave with no idea what they mean to do with the pictures. At least I know that they won't be working with pictures of my sunken chest festooned beneath the wife beater I leave in the dressing room.

And so whenever I visit a Target or a Rite-Aid drug store for over four years now, I search for whatever it was—embarrassing and undignified or cute and cuddly--that might have come out of these photo shoots. Whenever I visit the card shop in the local mall I look for four ladies and an old guy playing poker on somebody's birthday or anniversary. Whenever I go into any store that sells American Greeting Cards, I search for two old farts sitting on a bench in what looks like a mall saying who knows what for Father's Day or maybe telling each other to get well.

It's more than four years now, and I've yet to find them. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps the pictures were so terrible, they were unfit for use, not even good enough to be bad enough to laugh at, but if that were true, I reason, why would they call me back five months later? Why would they pay me to come all the way out to Cleveland for another set of worthless prints?

There is only one answer. They are holding them back, saving them, waiting for the right moment to unleash them on the card buying public. So I keep looking, waiting for the day they send them forth. And when they do, when you see a semi-dignified, elderly gentleman in Bermuda shorts, sandals and socks, and a lush Hawaiian shirt, perhaps with a suppository in his ear, gracing the shelves of your local Target, you may well be looking at America's Next Top Model—Geriatric Male Division.

Book Revjew: Easy For You by Shannan Rouss

An old man sets out on a quixotic quest to protest the erection of a McMansion across from his modest home. A bulimic woman tries therapy to please her top chef boyfriend. An emotionally distant son tries to find a way to cope with his dying father. These are the characters that people the pages of the ten short stories in Shannan Rouss's debut collection, Easy For You.

For the most part they are people who are well off financially. They have white collar jobs, more often than not, very good jobs. They live in the fashionable neighborhoods usually associated with the rich and famous. Often they live in beach houses and condos. Some have pools, some, chairs from Paris, and pillows from Argentina. They travel to Italy and hunt truffles at a thousand dollars a pound. They have Russian immigrants to clean for them. Even when not particularly well off, they have the money to buy a dying horse. They have trophy girl friends and athletic boyfriends. At best they have gotten rich by selling a computer start up, at worst they teach or sell cemetery plots. They have most of the material things that are supposed to add up to happiness and the good life. But,of course, they are not happy. As the philosopher was wont to say, money and the things money can buy don't always make for happiness.

The people in Rouss's stories are either downright miserable or leading empty lives, or miserable because they are leading empty lives. They are emotional cripples who are incapable of communicating with those closest to them, their lovers, their spouses, their parents, their children. They try. They play games—'either/or,' 'who has not.' But games are a poor substitute for meaningful communication. They try to learn to communicate in another language. They flock to therapists. They drink. They lavish affection on animals. Rarely do they get beyond the surface of their relationships.
These are not new themes. Literature is filled with characters that talk and talk, but never seem to understand. Literature is filled with characters that have it all, but still can't find happiness. What Rouss does is to take these stock themes and rework them for the contemporary world. She puts them in a modern context, one that is meaningful for the modern reader.

In "Swans by the Hour," a rich computer executive is letting an old flame use his lavish beach house for her wedding. He seems to have mixed feelings about the wedding and the woman as well. He manages to get through the rehearsal dinner, but on the morning of the wedding, he finds himself almost a stranger in his own house. He puts in a call to his current hot young paramour, and they meet at an isolated little hotel. They spend a decadent afternoon in bed, raid the mini-bar, she licks the salt from a nine dollar jar of cashews. At about twenty five cents a nut, thinks the narrator. She takes a shower, and he hears her singing—"Material Girl," no less. He leaves her a note telling her to order from room service, the more expensive, the better, and he runs off back home in search of something he will surely never find. It seems that whatever you have, you always want something else.

The narrator of "Neither Here Nor There" is burdened with the memory of his son who died a day after birth, a memory his wife is unwilling to share. She simply pretends the child never happened. They go through life, have another child, but the burden haunts him like a ghost. His wife's inability to deal with the loss of the child is like a festering sore on their relationship. "Versailles" looks at a man who finds sincere communication impossible through the eyes of his fourteen year old daughter. "Dog People" examines the complexities created in a relationship by an approaching childbirth. ”Die Meant Enough" deals with a paramour's need to make contact with her lover's estranged wife.

While her themes may not be new, there is no doubt they are universal. Moreover, they are still relevant to the modern world. Rouss is the laureate of the inadequate human beings who speak but do not listen, who hear but do not understand. No doubt the key to these stories is in the quotation from Edna St.Vincent Millay which serves as the book's motto: "Hearing your words, and not a word among them. . . . "

Last Year at Marienbad, Redux

Alain Resnais’ classic Last Year at Marienbad which had been at the bottom of my Netflix queue for years finally became available in June. It is a film that has both fascinated and infuriated viewers and critics since it first played in the art houses back in the sixties. And improbable as it seems, it is more than likely that those very aspects of the film that infuriate some movie goers are the ones that fascinate the others. Count me as one of the fascinated.

Here is an idea of the problem. I had seen the film at least twice when it was shown in theaters in Manhattan in the sixties, and at least once at a film festival in Boston. Sometime around the late seventies, I was team teaching a class in film studies for a communications program at what is now California University of Pennsylvania. Along with the likes of The Bicycle Thief, The Magician,, and Blow Up, we decided to show Last Year at Marienbad. This was in the days of the three reeler and the sixteen millimeter projector. Since we only had one projector, after we watched the first reel, the lights had to be put on while the projectionist changed reels. The lights went out again, and we settled in to watch the second reel. Perhaps ten minutes later, the door to the room opened, the lights went on, and a red faced projectionist announced from the back of the auditorium that he had loaded the third reel by mistake. The reels were changed, and we went back to the film. Now here’s the point of this story: by this time I had already seen this film at least three times. It was a film I liked and thought I remembered very well. Yet here I sat watching it again, and I hadn’t the least clue that the reels were being played out of sequence.

Last Year at Marienbad is, to say the least, an enigmatic film. It is not a chronological narrative. Reviewers who attempt to summarize anything that might be called plot must either over simplify and ignore those things that seem to make little sense or give up in disgust. Take a look at some of the admirable attempts made on Blogcritics. The problem is that viewers understandably want to find some kind of meaning in what they are watching. They expect a film to make some kind of sense in the context of the world, to mirror in some recognizable way the world they see around them. They expect it to reflect some kind of reality, naturalistic, psychological, or symbolic. While such expectations are normal, after all that is what most cinema does, they are the wrong expectations for this film. This is a film that deliberately eschews the aesthetics of art as mimesis.

The film’s screen writer was the French novelist, Alain Robbe-Grillet, who is most famous , if not infamous, for his experimentation with the genre and is usually associated with what is called the ‘New Novel.’ Even a cursory examination of his work, especially his later work, reveals that much of it offers the same kind of frustrations for the reader with traditional expectations as the film does for movie audiences with traditional ideas. There is never any constant against which to measure the events of the story. What appears to be happening turns out to be a description of a painting. Characters morph from photos into action. Sequences of events are repeated with slight changes sometimes, significant changes at other times. Time is fractured. For Robbe-Grillet, realistic representation of the world is the one thing to be avoided at all costs. The key statement of his aesthetic is a little book of essays called For a New Novel. What he has to say about the novel in this book would seem to explain as well what he and Resnais were trying to do in their collaboration on Last Year at Marienbad.

The central point of an essay called “A Future for the Novel” is the insistence that it is a mistake to look for meaning in the new novel. The novelist creates things that are, not things that mean. Here for example is Robbe-Grillet: “Instead of this universe of ‘signification’ (psychological, social, functional), we must try, then, to construct a world both more solid and more immediate. Let it be first by their presence that objects and gestures establish themselves, and let this presence continue to prevail over whatever explanatory theory that may try to enclose them in a system of references, whether emotional, sociological, Freudian, or metaphysical.” What is true for the future of the novel envisioned by Robbe-Grillet is no less true for the screen play he wrote for his collaboration with Resnais. They have created a ‘presence.’

In an introduction he wrote for the Grove Press edition of the screenplay, he suggests that the only people who will have trouble understanding the film will be those who try to find some kind of rationale explanation for what they are seeing. “This spectator,” he writes, will certainly find the film difficult, if not incomprehensible. . . . “ The spectator, on the other hand, who “lets himself be carried along by the extraordinary images in front of him, by the actor’s voices, by the sound track, by the music, by the rhythm of the cutting, by the passion of the characters. . . to this spectator the film will seem the ‘easiest’ he has ever seen. . . .” It is a film, in this sense, that is not meant to be experienced rationally. It is a film that is meant to be experienced, period. It does not mean something. It is something. To paraphrase the poet: a movie should not mean; a movie must be.

Perhaps, one needs to speak of Last Year at Marienbad in the same way one speaks about a string quartet. Don’t ask what it means. Experience what it is.

Spokes(man)person(delbaum)

“A spokesman?”
Kessler looked smugly at the older man across from him. There would be days like this, they had told him at the agency. They were right.
“Spokesperson, Mr. Grossbart. In this day and age,” he winked knowingly, “spokespersons we call them.”
“Spokesperson. Spokesman. It’s all the same thing. Like the guy with the white beard from the fried chickens.”
“Like the guy with the chickens, but we were thinking of someone a little more in touch with the younger demographic. Someone like–.”
“Demographic?”
Days like this, Grossbart chanted silently, days like this, days like–.
“Audience,” he said aloud, “someone to appeal to a younger audience. Oh like a musician perhaps, a rapper, some heavy–.
“A wrapper? What kind of wrapper? What the hell are you talking ‘a wrapper.’”
“Rap is in. They’re very big with the sixteen to–.”
“Big. I’ll bet its big. Sixteen to whatever is just about the right age for a wrapper. For wrapping you don’t need four years in college.”
“The buck some of these guys are making they can buy themselves a college if they want one. Rapping is big money these days. That’s why it makes sense to take advantage of–.”
“Wrapping is big money? Not with Grossbart, it isn’t. With Grossbart Wrappiug is minimum wage. Very minimum minimum wage.”
“You’ve got to look at the big picture, Mr. Grossbart. Sure, rapping isn’t for everyone. Even me personally, it’s not my favorite, but–.”
“This is what I mean, you went to get a big shot business degree, a PH.b–.”
“An MBA.”
“Whatever. An MBA you got so you should listen to a wrapper.”
“You have to keep in mind who you are trying to sell to, Mr. Grossbart. Who are they listening to?”
“To wrappers?”
“On the nose. Rappers. Turn on your radio. Any top forty station.”
“Radio?’
“Any top forty station. And it’s not just black–African Americans.”
“Who said black? Black, white–it’s not this. Who listens to a wrapper? A ball player, maybe. A movie star. But a wrapper? Better a cashier. At least they handle money.”
“A cashier?”
When it finally hit Kessler what the problem was, he figured let it drop. An explanation was going to make somebody feel like a fool, and this was not the best way to do business.
“You know something Mr. Grossbart, you’re right. Who’s going to listen to a wrapper?”

“I’m not in business forty years, because I don’t know something.”
“The wrapper was just an example. What the agency really had in mind was one of the hottest movie stars around.”
“I told you movie star. Did you hear me? I said movie star.”
“You said it. . . .you said it and I heard it. What would you say to the biggest name to come out of Hollywood in a decade.”
“What would I say? I’d say who are we talking about?”
“You are something, Mr. Grossbart. They told me down at the agency. Mr. Grossbart, they said, Grossbart has been in the business forty years, and it’s not because he doesn’t know something.”
“So?”
“So? You saw the remake of ‘Weekend at Bernies?’ Biggest box office of the year.”
“I saw.”
“And who is the actor that made it the biggest box office?”
“Who?”
“And who is the actor who is going to star in the new silent remake of ‘Gone With the Wind?’”
“Silent. You mean–.”
“Who else? Mandelbaum!”
“Mandelbaum? The big guy? The one who doesn’t talk.”
“Mandelbaum.”
“But he doesn’t talk.”
“He doesn’t say anything, but he–.”
“You’ll excuse me, but what you’re telling me is that you want I should have a spokesman for Grossbart’s that doesn’t–.”
“Spokesperson.”
“A spokesperson that doesn’t spokes.”
“This guy is hot. Just his face will sell.”
“What’s the matter, I can’t get a face and a voice too?”
“Some people don’t need a voice to communicate.”
“First a wrapper and then a dummy. Who else you got? A convict maybe, a child molester?”
“He’s not a dummy. He just doesn’t talk. That’s his thing. His. . .schtick. Like Presley’s hips, like–.”
“Good enough, get me Presley. His schtick, I like better.”
“Come on, Presley’s dead.”
“So he doesn’t talk either, right. Dead , dumb, same difference.”
“Alright, Mr. Grossbart, you don’t want Mandelbaum,, you don’t want Mandelbaum. But you’re making a mistake. This guy will make you a fortune. You know what they’re planning on spending on that ‘Gone With the Wind?’ I’m talking about ‘Gone With the Goddamn Wind.’ And Grossbart’s can get in on all of that hype. Mandelbaum! ‘Gone With the Wind.’ Grossbart’s. Think of the billboards. Mandelbaum’s face all over Times Square. All over the country. Think about it.”
“And for a spokesperson without the spokes, what does it cost?”
“Now you’re talking.”
“For a spokesman without the spokes. Half price.”

(originally published on line in Laughter Loaf: http://molyworld.net/laughterloaf/spokespers.htm)

From the Green Room: Children's Theater

Pittsburgh's Gemini Theater opened its production of Beauty and the Beast on the first Saturday of the new decade. Established in 1996, Gemini is an interactive children's theater whose mission is to cultivate creativity, imagination and originality through the performing arts. Children in the audience often come costumed as princesses, pirates, or animal friends, or whatever strikes their fancies, or the fancies of their parents. They are invited to play on the black box stage as they wait for the performance to begin. During the performances, they are encouraged to come to the stage to dance with the actors and join in some of the songs. Whenever possible, the audience is encouraged to take an active part in the theatrical experience and join in the fun.
A number of children ranging in age from about eight to the middle teens are usually cast in each of the theater's productions alongside the adult performers. Beauty and the Beast has five children cast as servants transformed into flowers at Beast's castle, and an eighth grader as one of Belle's sisters. Acting classes are offered at the theater for children on all levels, from introductory courses for those as young as 4 and 5, to advanced workshops for teens as old as seventeen. Summer camp programs are also available. Older children are also encouraged to learn about the technical aspects of theater, and students are used to work sound and lights for each production.
The current production of Beauty and the Beast is an adaptation by Dennis Palko from the Madame Le Prince de Beaumont original. Lani Cataldi composed the original music and wrote the lyrics. Both Palko and Cataldi were the original founders of the theater. Gemini's version of the classic tale should not be confused with either the Disney cartoon or its Broadway manifestation. There are no servants turning into objects. There is no evil in the form of the handsome Gaston. There are enchanted flowers and selfish sisters. There is an indulgent father come upon bad times, who innocently makes the mistake of picking the wrong flower as a gift for his beloved daughter. Above all there is the discovery that true beauty comes from within and that surfaces may well be deceiving.
Interactive children's theater can be a lot of fun for the actor, but it can also be a test of the actor's ability to adapt to the occasional disruption of the best laid plans. Young children encouraged to join in with the actors at specific points in the play, may not always understand that they are not encouraged to join in at any other times. In a small black box theater, children are seated right up at the edge of the stage. It is easy to reach out to the actors. It is easy to get up and investigate the scenery, check out a prop, examine a costume. It is easy to talk to the characters: to warn them of danger, to let them know where someone is hiding, to help them escape from pursuers.
Often the characters will speak directly to the audience. They will ask for their help. "Which way did she go?" the evil witch will ask the children, as she searches for the escaping princess. Some will innocently send her in the right direction; the more astute will send her off the wrong way. Sometimes a child may get up and pull her in one direction or another. One little girl followed an evil fairy off stage, admonishing her loudly that she was going the wrong way. A little boy might well decide to help Snow White get away from the Queen's nasty henchman. Actors must be prepared for anything, because anything that can happen probably will.
Certainly there will be children frightened by the Beast. Certainly there will be children warning Belle's father (Jeremy in this version) not to pick the rose at the Beast's castle. There might be those who would like a close up view of the flower children blocked in the downstage corners of the stage. There might be those that would like to share in the pop corn one of Belle's sisters is pecking away at. The unexpected has to be one of the expected joys of interactive children's theater, and the actor unprepared to deal with it had best stay with the adults.
After the performance, the cast forms a receiving line in the lobby and greets the audience as they depart. They sign autographs in character in children's programs, while parents take pictures of them posing with the children. More often than not it is the Princesses—Aurora, Ariel, and of course Belle—who command the most attention, and who would have it any different.
The current production stars Joey Galvin as Beast and Gemini founder, Lani Cataldi as Belle. Bridget Carey directs.

DVD Review: All About Prints

Back in the day the stereotypical image associated with artistic prints was more than likely that of the rich old roué inviting the naïve young object of his less than honorable intentions to see his etchings. It is a comic image which is very much given the lie by Christopher Noey's new documentary, All About Prints, available on DVD for The Print Research Foundation. Indeed, it is perhaps the central thesis of the film that the essential unifying characteristic of the various forms grouped together in the generic category of print is the democratic appeal of these forms in terms of both their audiences and their messages.

The various print processes gave the artist the ability to replicate his artistic vision over and over again, and since these prints could be produced in multiple copies, they could be made available to many more people. Since they could be produced more economically, they could be made available more cheaply over a wider range of social strata. Art need not cater solely to the wealthy patrons and the upper classes. Moreover as print processes changed and expanded, as new processes developed, they became easier to use, requiring less technical expertise on the part of the artist and assuring that the works could reach ever greater masses.
Expanding audiences, new audiences were more willing to look favorably on new ideas expressed in new ways. They were excited by new ways to look at the celebrity culture as depicted in an Andy Warhol silk screen of a Marilyn Monroe. They were open to Roy Lichtenstein's comic strip panel lithographs. They were not frightened by the revolutionary presentation of working men and women, of the proletariat, in the work of radical Mexican artists like Jose Orozco and Diego Rivera.

While this democratization of the artistic subject matter can be most clearly seen in the twentieth century, it is evident as well in the work of earlier artists. Although not necessarily all discussed in the DVD, one thinks of the engravings of William Hogarth in England; the poster art of Henri Toulouse Lautrec in France, and Hablot Knight Browne's illustrations for Dickens. Prints of all kinds were making great art about the people, often for the people, as well as by the people.

The DVD includes clear explanations of the various processes by which each of the different print genres are produced. These are delivered with authority by Antony Griffiths, the Keeper of Prints at the British Museum in London. For example, woodcuts, the earliest of the print genres, are produced by gouging out a block of wood to leave a relief image which will form the surface to be printed. This surface is covered with ink and that image is transferred to the paper. Etchings, on the other hand, are produced by covering a copper plate with wax and using a steel needle to draw an image through the wax. An acid bath is used to eat away the exposed needle lines. These are then coated with ink and used to print the image. Similar explanations are given for all of the print techniques. The DVD menu conveniently offers a menu to allow the viewer to play individual sections devoted to each of the more important print genres.

Interviews with contemporary artists involved in print creation as well as film footage of earlier artists are complemented by art historians, collectors, and gallery owners. Among those providing commentary are artists Will Barnet, Joanne Greenbaum and Donald Sultan; David Kiehl, Curator of Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Deborah Wye, Chief Curator of Prints at MOMA. There are auctioneers thrilled over the price for a Hopper print fetched at an auction at Christies. There is a gallery owner discussing the importance of Paul Revere's Boston Massacre engraving. There is artist Kiki Smith explaining how she really didn't quite know what she was doing when she made her first print. And not only prints, there is footage of Jackson Pollock tossing paint and Diego Rivera painting murals. Still the glory of the film is the prints: beautifully photographed, it provides high definition views of the work of a litany of the great print makers: Durer and Rembrandt, Whistler and Picasso, Hopper and Rauschenberg, to name a few.

At 54 minutes the film is an ideal introduction to a wide variety of artistic genres, a cornucopia of styles and a bevy of major artists of all types. It is by no means an exhaustive study. It was not meant to be one. It is a film to whet the appetite. It is a film that will send you to the library, to the museum, to your local gallery. It is a film that will get you looking for more. A short excerpt is available at the All About Prrints website.