Director Bob Yari (pictured, far left) recently shot the first American feature film in Cuba in more than 50 years; 2015 is already shaping up as perhaps the best year for hip-hop music ever; Amber Tamblyn's third book of poetry is about young actresses who died tragically.
How young actresses shaped Amber Tamblyn's latest poetry collection 'Dark Sparkler'
April is Poetry Month, so we're kicking it off with a new collection of poems by Amber Tamblyn.
You might know Amber Tamblyn from starring in the TV series "Joan of Arcadia" or the movie "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." But she's also an accomplished poet. Her third book, "Dark Sparkler," will be published April 7.
The poems in "Dark Sparkler" are about, and inspired by, young actresses who met untimely, tragic deaths. When Tamblyn stopped by The Frame recently, host John Horn asked her about the inspiration for the decidedly morbid project, the blank page given to Lindsay Lohan and the consequences of spending six years working on "Dark Sparkler."
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
How did this collection come about?
This book was a great accident. I started writing it in 2009 and I started with a poem for Brittany Murphy, who was — and is — the only person in this book who was a contemporary of mine. We went on the same auditions, though I never knew her or met her. One time I saw her in passing when we both auditioned for "8 Mile," when she came out of the audition room and I went in.
So I didn't really know her, but she was a peer. And I did see how she had really struggled towards the end of her life, how she was sick and wasn't really getting work any more, and then she died in this very, very mysterious way.
After she died, all these magazines printed these beautiful photos of her. I remember that People magazine put her on the cover in this gorgeous, glamorous dress, and I just thought, No one's really talking about what happened or the experience of being an object for a living. After that poem was written, I sent it to a couple of friends, and someone had published it at a pretty reputable magazine, and two girlfriends of mine who were poets said, You do realize this is the book you're going to write?
One of the poems is called "Untitled Actress," and it's not really about the death of a person so much as it might be about the death of dignity in the Hollywood casting process. Can you read the first paragraph of the poem for us? (Find the full poem below.)
Submission calls for an actress mid-to-late 20s. All ethnicities acceptable. Except Asian-American. Caucasian preferable. Must read teen on-screen. Thin but not gaunt. Lean. Quirky but not unattractive. No brown eyes. Not taller than 5'5". Weight no more than 109. Actress should have great smile. Straight teeth a must. Must be flexible. Small bust a plus. Can do own stunts. Will waive rights to likeness, image, publicity, final cut.
These sound to me like actual phrases from actual casting notices. Did you keep these? Or did they just pop up in your mind?
I've never seen a casting breakdown, so I don't know for sure, but certainly a lot of that is truthful to anything you or I would know even if we weren't in the business. We know that it's a very white business and minorities don't get cast a lot, and there's no market in mainstream Hollywood for Asian-Americans outside of very small circumstances in big-budget action movies. These are things that are common knowledge.
Also, I don't have to tell you or anyone else that there's a major issue with women's weight. I have lots of girlfriends who are actresses and you'd be shocked to think of how often their weight is commented on, or they're told to lose weight for something, and I can say that I've experienced that my entire life. I thought it would be a really cool, interesting way of talking about those things within the body of the poem.
Do you think those concerns, those ideas that are represented in that poem, inform some of the deaths that you write about in other poems?
Oh, 100 percent. Around three years into studying these women, for lack of a better phrase, I started to lose my mind. I had to take a year off from writing them, because it became too personal. It was way too close to home, and I thought that I could study them and feel distant from their experiences. But as you can imagine, it brought up a lot of pain for me and a lot of questions about [whether] I even wanted to act any more. I had been acting since I was 11 years old.
One of your poems is titled "Lindsay Lohan," and it's a blank page. Can you explain what that's about?
What do you think it's about?
I think it's ominous, I think the future is unwritten but it might not end well because this is a collection of actors who have died untimely deaths.
Yeah. It's also a collection about projection and how we project onto other people. For me, that poem is actually not ominous — it's me saying, I'm not going to do what everybody else does to you and project onto you what your ending is going to be. I'm going to put you in the context of this because that's where everybody puts you, but I'm not going to write the poem for you, I'm not going to make it seem as if you're going to die. This is me giving her a blank page and saying, This belongs to you. It doesn't belong to me to write your story.
Then why include her at all?
That's a very good question. In the context of how we see celebrities, how we treat them, and how we're able to define them from an outside existence and say, Your life means this — she is the ultimate of that idea. She's the ultimate media frenzy of everything. The book is about deaths, but it's also about rebirths and it's also about projection and people who are treated like objects for a living. She is the ultimate case of that.
Poetry Excerpts:
"Untitled Actress" poem from Amber Tamblyn's book "Dark Sparkler" by scprweb
"Brittany Murphy" poem from Amber Tamblyn's book "Dark Sparkler" by scprweb
Drake, Kendrick and Tink get 2015 off to a strong start for hip-hop
Hip-hop remains a powerful force in the music industry and pop culture at-large, yet 2014 was a pretty bleak year for the genre. We heard very few thrilling singles, and fewer noteworthy collaborations.
What’s more, none of the top artists besides Eminem and Nicky Minaj had a major release, and their work wasn’t well received. 2015 is already proving to be much better, according to Sean Rameswaram, host of the Sideshow podcast at WNYC. As if acknowledging the disappointment of the preceding 365 days, Kanye West introduced his single, "Only One," to the world on New Year’s Eve.
Since then, things have only improved. Sean Rameswaram spoke with The Frame about which artists are making 2015 hip-hop's best year to date:
DRAKE
On February 12, [Drake] put out this short film that had short snippets of new music. The short was called "Jungle" and people were just going nuts over that. The next day, of course, he releases a totally unannounced mixtape/album called, "If You're Reading This It's Too Late." If you want to hear some of it, all you have to do is go to the busiest street corner in your neighborhood and just wait for a car to pass.
TINK
Tink is this 19-year-old rapper/singer/actress from Illinois. She's appeared on "Empire." She's been releasing mix tapes for three or four years and has done collaborations with this L.A. production unit called Future Brown and with this New York metal-pop duo called Sleigh Bells. Now, Timbaland has admitted to dreaming about her. He said that in a dream, Aaliyah came to him and said, "You have to sign Tink." And now he's sort of taken her under his wing and is producing her first album.
KENDRICK LAMAR
This is the new currency in hip-hop/pop music: releasing an album with zero advanced notice. Kendrick told us about a week or two before "To Pimp A Butterfly" came out — that's the name of his sophomore album — and it's this 80-minute epic, jazzy, funky, genre-bending mess of poetry, politics, anger, frustration and hope.
ACTION BRONSON
If hip-hop had a superhero, in my mind, it would be Action Bronson. He is this extremely overweight Albanian rapper from Queens who — back in 2010 when he was starting out — was a gourmet chef by day and hip-hop lyricist by night. He sounds a lot like [Wu-Tang Clan's] Ghostface Killah. He's been making really awesome mix tapes and independent releases for years, and this year he's finally putting out his first major label release called "Mr. Wonderful."
And The Frame's personal choice:
CAKES DA KILLA
How Cuba opened its doors for an American biopic about Ernest Hemingway
As the long trade embargo between Cuba and the United States is loosening, some of the first Americans headed to Havana are from Hollywood.
Last month, Conan O’Brien came on The Frame to talk about taping his late night talk show there. Now, movie producer Bob Yari has wrapped filming what is believed to be the first U.S. feature shot in Cuba in more than half a century.
Yari, who financed the Oscar-winner “Crash,” recently directed “Papa” — a movie about Ernest Hemingway’s time in Cuba. Yari and the film’s producer, Amanda Harvey, hope to have “Papa” in theaters by the end of the year. When they visited The Frame studios, Yari told host John Horn about their island odyssey.
Interview Highlights
I suspect you have been working on this film before relations thawed between the United States and Cuba. How did your trip come about?
YARI: Well, it was a long saga getting to Cuba. I first came across the script —a producer brought me the script — nine or 10 years ago. I fell in love with the script and the story, which is of a young journalist who is an orphan in the depression era and grows up reading Hemingway and idolizes him. He becomes friends with Hemingway the last two years of his life in Cuba, with the background of the Cuban revolution. It seemed like everyone involved with the project at the time wanted to shoot anywhere but Cuba. Reading [about] the existence of some of those locations, it just occurred to me that there was no other way than to go to Cuba and shoot this film.
So, you tell your producer, Amanda: Let’s go to Cuba. What are the logistical challenges?
HARVEY: First we had to get license from the Department of Treasury to be able to go down there and have Americans be in Cuba for a month or two. And I was all for it, I said, Where do I sign up?
Once you get down there, what kind of infrastructure for movie making is there? Do you have to bring everything in or are there local crews you can hire?
YARI: One of the things most people don’t realize is Cuba actually has a thriving film community and industry. It has a terrific film school that has put out very talented people. There are German companies that have sprung up that have quite a good amount of equipment. But they don't have star vehicles down there, they don't have wagons. So, it's challenging. But with what's down there, which is getting better daily, it's very doable.
The Cuban government is very restrictive in terms of information, in terms of media and what type of Western [influences] get into the country. Did the government have any approval oversight on the script? Did it feel as if you were being watched?
YARI: Not really, although there was a process, especially for our film, because of the access we were requesting to places like an active museum. So, we really had to have cooperation and permission from the government. We did submit the script — I know it was translated and reviewed. They never came back and said, We want things changed. But they were extremely cooperative. Part of the benefit was Hemingway himself — he's such an icon, he's so loved down there that people from the government [on] down, they were all anxious to help us get this done.
He as a famous house on an estate that's preserved near Havana. Were you able to get to Finca Vigía?
YARI: That's one of those things we were just blessed with. When Hemingway left his home, he literally left everything in it. And the Cubans have kept it pristine and the Cuban government, for the first time, allowed us interior access to shoot inside his home.
You actually took the production in there and were able to shoot it.
YARI: Exactly. It was a great privilege to be in the location where this story happened — our story is a true story. Much of the dialogue, much of the occurrences were real events and we got to recreate them, not only in the real location, but almost production-designed from scratch by the real artifacts.
Given that there is still a trade embargo and other limitations, are you hopeful that the film can show in Cuba at the Havana Film Festival in December?
YARI: Very hopeful. I believe one of those exceptions allowed by our government is exhibition of an artistic nature in a film festival. I believe the Cubans would be very happy to have us down there and we'd be very happy to be there and show the film at the Cuban festival in December.