Grammy nominations are out: What did voters get right/wrong?; LACMA curator Franklin Sirmans attends Art Basel Miami and lives to tell the story; Chadwick Boseman has played Jackie Robinson, James Brown and soon will play Marvel’s first black superhero; Robert Downey Sr. on his Cinefamily film retrospective.
Art Basel Miami through the eyes of a LACMA curator
Every year the art world heads to South Beach for Art Basel Miami, an art show/extended party on the beach. This year's festival, which runs from through December 7, features exhibitions of hundreds of artists, concerts and even artist-sponsored nap time.
Franklin Sirmans is the Chief Curator of Contemporary Art at LACMA, and he just returned from Art Basel Miami. When he spoke with The Frame, we asked him about the culture of the event, viewing the art fair through the eyes of a curator, and the artists who stood out.
Interview Highlights:
How is the event in Miami, which started in 2001, different from the Art Basel fairs in Swizerland and Hong Kong?
It's younger and it's probably brasher than the European version, which has been around so much longer. But it's also probably more foundational than the one that's in Hong Kong, which I think has a shorter lifespan thus far.
Describe the scene in Miami for us; it sounds like it's a bit of a mob, and there's a nightlife element as well.
[laughs] I've been going since 2001 or 2002, so there's always a sort of excitement that accompanies it. But at the same time the scene is one of commerce, so as a curator you try to approach it from your own vantage point.
I think that it has become this giant festival thing, although it began more as a way of trying to see the newest things in art created around the world, and I think that's the thing that really is the highlight for us as curators: you get to see so much stuff in one place. It's so fast, maybe even too fast, and it's not in the best context, but there are so many things from so many places all at once. You just can't do that when you're at home.
How does the market aspect of the fair affect your job?
Well, we're still a part of the market. We get priced out of a lot of things, but we have some amazing supporters here that help us function within the marketplace. So we're looking, and we have groups of supporters who come down with us. And while they are looking for themselves, they're also looking with an eye toward what's museum quality and what might end up at LACMA.
You probably don't want to tip your hand, but did you see anything this year that caught your eye? Any discernible trends or emerging artists who you were really impressed by?
For me, going to Art Basel is not like going to the other fairs. You've probably heard references to Nada or Untitled, which I also attended, where you see a lot of younger artists and a lot more artists that you don't know about. Art Basel, on the other hand, features artists that are shown in major galleries all around the world. It's tough ... in that environment, our looking changes a little bit.
I was looking at works that I think could be pivotal for our collection: works by Christian Marclay, for instance. We own "The Clock," which is a signature piece of video work that he created that's made of clips from 24 hours worth of Hollywood film, but there's a 1990 sculpture at the fair this year by him that I think is just amazing, and it would add a really different piece to the conversation around this important artist that we love at the museum.
There was also wonderful work at an L.A. gallery, Blum and Poe, by Lee Ufan, which is something that I've had my eye on for a while. We didn't get this one, but we're looking.
The fair continues through this weekend, but you came back a little bit early. Is there only so much Art Basel that any one person can take?
[laughs] As a curator, I think it's best to see as much as you can early on, just pack it all in, and then try to get out of town.
Chadwick Boseman: from Jackie Robinson to James Brown to Black Panther
In a matter of a couple years, Chadwick Boseman has become one of Hollywood's most versatile and talented stars. He portrayed Jackie Robinson in 2013's "42," which led to a widely-praised role as James Brown in 2014's "Get On Up."
However, it's Boseman's new role that might cement his place at the forefront of today's leading men. At the end of 2014, he was cast as Marvel's Black Panther — the company's first black stand-alone superhero on screen. Boseman makes his debut as Black Panther in "Captain America: Civil War" before starring in a spin-off movie, currently scheduled for release in 2018.
Boseman stopped by The Frame on the heels of the Black Panther announcement. He opened up about having to convince himself that he could play James Brown, the fact that Hollywood isn't quite ready for black actors to play non race-specific roles, and what it means to play a superhero who could one day become an action figure for kids of all races.
Interview Highlights:
What was the audition process for playing James Brown in "Get On Up?"
They had tried to get me to read the script for months. And then we had a conversation on the phone, and the conversation convinced me, like, Oh yeah, of course, what are you thinking? Of course you want to meet [director Tate Taylor], because you do want to work with him one day. Just go in; he'll see who you are as an artist, but he'll also see that this is not right for you. That's what I expected to happen. [laughs]
But I started prepping for it, and I started to see these things about James Brown that I really liked, so once I did that reading, those things came across. I didn't know how much they would come across, but they sent that tape [of a James Brown performance] to my manager and said, "Have him look at this."
So my manager, my agent and I looked at it, and they didn't say anything except, "Well, what do you think about it?" I said, "But I can't! [laughs] I don't know if I can dance like James Brown, I don't know if I could sing, I don't know about the performance." But they said, "What do you think about the tape?" I said, "I see how I could do it." [laughs]
So you're really having to cast yourself! I mean, the person you're trying to sell isn't the studio, it isn't the director — you're really convincing yourself that you can pull this off.
Yeah, but I still wasn't sure. I just saw a couple of things that were the entry points into who he was.
What were those entry points?
Well, the thing I was worried about the most was the caricature of James Brown, the parody of James Brown. So the one thing I tried to do in that initial audition — and I'm not saying it was good or that it was what I ended up doing — [was] to find this really honest place, no matter how old he was.
I had to play him in that audition at 63 and at 35, and from those two scenes I really saw the difference in age, and I also saw a certain honesty there that I didn't realize I had reached until I saw the tape. But once I saw that I was like, "Okay, this is going to be a lot of work, but if you pull it off..."
You've played Jackie Robinson, you've played James Brown, and you're playing Black Panther. Are you at a place now where the parts you're reading for are not race-specific?
Well, yes and no. Some are still race-specific. In a lot of cases they're looking for an African-American guy, or a guy of African descent, who can play this role. I'm one of the people who would pop up for that. In other cases, there are some roles — a few, and it's not as much as I would like though.
We're talking about Hollywood, a town that presents itself as very liberal, open-minded and progressive, and you're saying they're not there yet.
No. No, they're not. "They" or "we"? I should say "we," because I can't separate myself from it. We're not there yet. It's definitely a different road for actors of color in terms of choices that you have, mainly because of the mythologies that are used to make movies are viewed as European or Western mythologies. So people have in their heads, "This is a white actor's role."
It's hard to get that out of people's heads, so for me those roles have come, but in some cases they're still not what you want to do. It still might not be the right movie or the right director for you at that moment. But it's definitely different now than it was before "42."
If "Black Panther" works, in a couple of years there will be kids with their Black Panther action figures next to their beds. How does it make you feel to be part of that?
That's one of the first things I thought about when we left the announcement event with Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans. I saw fans outside with the rendering of Black Panther and [as] I was signing them I was sitting there like, Oh my gosh! And we were close to Halloween, so over that week I saw people with Iron Man costumes, Captain America costumes, Spider-Man costumes, and I was like, That's going to happen [with Black Panther]. It blew my mind.
It's important because there will be black kids who have the Black Panther outfit and action figure, as well as Latino kids and white kids. It's an amazing thought that it helps from the opposite side to do what you were talking about earlier, about the non-specific racial casting; the idea that this person can be a hero. I feel like "42" did the same thing: there are so many kids from various backgrounds that see Jackie Robinson as a hero, and even though the movie is about race, the heroic spirit has no racial boundaries. So it's amazing to be a part of any of that.
This story first aired in December 2014.
Hollywood greats celebrate the irreverent films of Robert Downey Sr.
Robert Downey Sr. is probably best known these days as the father of the biggest movie star in the world, Robert Downey Jr. But among cinefiles and filmmakers, the elder Downey is a hero, and his underground films inspired the likes of “Boogie Nights” director Paul Thomas Anderson.
Cinefamily is putting on a retrospective of Downey’s early films this weekend. It's part of the theater's first ever Friends of Cinefamily fundraiser. The movies are alternately called irreverent, uncommercial and mischievous. One such movie is "Putney Swope." The black-and-white 1969 film satirizes race and advertising.
We spoke with Downey about how New York inspired his filmmaking in the early '60s, what launched "Putney Swope" into a cult classic, and where his son got his sense of humor.
Interview Highlights:
What was the climate like back when you first started making movies?
There was a place called the Charles Theater, where anybody could bring a film and put it up in the projection booth in a rack of stuff. And you could sit there for two or three days before you saw your film, but it was great.
People also gave each other film and editing rooms, and lent stuff around [to] each other; that was a year or two later. And that was going on all the time. There was no organized thing, it was just that everybody knew everybody who was trying to do stuff.
Can you talk about how you went from that to getting "Putney Swope" made?
Well, when that film was done, nobody wanted it. So the money guy went to the last distributor to see the film who owned theaters in New York, and he was a famous guy named Don Rugoff. He owned all the art houses and he had a little distribution company. He came to a screening, and when he came out he came over to me and said, "I don't get it, but I like it. Let's open it."
And what saved the film is Jane Fonda, if you can believe this. She was on the [Johnny] Carson show and she was talking about "Easy Rider" when she said, "There's another film you should see: 'Putney Swope.'" And the next day the box office went up as theaters around the country felt that jolt from her statement.
We should talk a little bit about how you cast your films. Where did you find Stan Gottlieb for "Putney Swope?"
[laughs] I met him in a phone booth outside the Bleecker Street Cinema.
How do you meet somebody in a phone booth?
He was making a call and his face was so original that I said [to myself], When he gets off the phone, I'm going to ask him to be in the film. And that's what happened.
There's a sense of humor that your films have that in some ways mirrors the bizarre sense of humor of a certain actor that you might be related to. Do you think that Robert Downey Jr. inherited a part of your sense of humor? Were you telling the same jokes as you were growing up?
I think the biggest influence on him in that way was his mother. She was a free spirit and loved to laugh and have fun, so as he talks about that time, he always mentions that. He was a quiet kid, but he was watching and listening, so maybe that rubbed off. I don't know. I just know that he makes me laugh all the time.