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PART TWENTY-NINE |
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Our hero's in a rut & his new boss is...from Hell!
of TheColumnists.com
Three years into my San Francisco Chronicle critic hitch, my initial fears kicked in that a steady diet of reviewing theater might wear me down. It had. I’d covered theater wherever there was “a plank and a passion”--from West Alameda to London’s West End, from Oakland to Ashland, from the California Shakespeare Festival to Canada’s Shaw Festival, from the Spindrift Players to the Goodspeed Opera House.
You can see a lot of shows in even just three years--upwards of 500, I would guess, more than anybody, even a diehard theatergoer, should be subjected to. I’d enjoyed the attention, even the catcalls from playgoers and theater people who considered me a bum, unlike Bernard Weiner before me, who had been considered a booster of small theaters. Weiner was coveted; I was tolerated.
Apart from the theater beat, I kept reviewing cabaret shows, which had suddenly mushroomed, partly, I like to think, in response to the coverage I gave them. Since I left The San Francisco Chronicle, in 1993, the cabaret world has shrunk to about two rooms, and really only one major room, the seemingly indestructible Plush Room (finally set to close Dec. 31), site of all sorts of performers, both local and global.
Similarly, musical theater groups flourished partly because I went out of my way to cover shows I didn’t have to, just because I’m a musicals nut, willing to go anywhere to see a rarely done version of, say, “She Loves Me” or “Fanny” or “Dames at Sea” - to San Francisco State College, in that case.
There was a policy that the paper didn’t cover college shows, but something about this production--just the fact that a college would even revive such an unlikely little show, a favorite of mine--made me think it just might be worth seeing. I hadn’t planned to review it but it was so good that I reviewed it in the Sunday column, praising the lead, Anne Tofflemier, and the overall production, directed by a drama department instructor, who also appeared in it.
On the strength of my rave, the show moved to the Plush Room where it had a long run, and Tofflemier wound up in New York and as a singer in Sammy Cahn’s revue. That’s a good example of how a critic can shape a theater scene if he/she cares enough. It’s a joy to help push shows and people along that deserve it. Likewise, a Noel Coward revue, “Coward in a Cardboard Cup,” had a long run after I cheered loudly in print, the sort of thing that happened fairly often, at least in cabaret circles, where, almost by accident, I became a mighty mover and shaker--or as much of a mover and shaker as is possible in the tiny cabaret world.
On the other hand, shows I didn’t
like provoked dirty looks from producers when I encountered them
later. A couple of local producers regularly tried to feel me
out about shows they were considering bringing to town, to give
them a sort of pre-review, but I begged off becoming their private
screening committee in what amounted to a kind of insider trading.
My songwriting friend Morrie once said that he should just preview
his shows for the Chronicle’s critic, the only audience
that mattered, rather than waste time and money opening a show
the lead critic disliked.
Between plays, I squeezed in covering cabaret and writing my
Sunday “Show Biz” column, both of which I enjoyed more
than going to theater three or four nights a week--plus having
to write dreaded “capsules” for the Sunday listings.
For me, a night out was watching TV; I relished every night I
could stay home.
I realized I had to give up the theater critic’s chair and go back to reviewing a little of everything, but I was sort of reviewed out by then, 1991, and decided that it might be interesting to write features and interviews for the arts section, something I hadn’t ever quite done before.
In a sense, it was a step backward, to my feature writer beginnings, but there were a lot of stories I thought would be fun pursuing--like a piece about the people who throw bouquets at the opera and ballet, and, one of my favorite stories, an interview with Seka, the blonde porno goddess who did a strip show to help launch her latest film at the Presidio Theater.
The only place to interview her was in a cramped storeroom she had to use for a dressing room--the two of us face to face amid cans of film as she changed out of her dress into, well, not much; her flesh, mainly. It was warm in there, made more so by my standing a foot from her famous breasts. It seemed a chance of a lifetime, and as Seka was so chatty and nice I figured she wouldn’t mind if I asked if I might, y’ know, touch her. Them, rather. She said, “Sure, go ahead; they’re real.” And indeed they were. The things a reporter must do sometimes just to get the facts.
I might have enjoyed all of these features much more were it not for a sudden dark presence in the department--an editor who proved to be the wicked witch of the west and the bane of all our existences.
Suzanne Clark (not her real name) was a former freelance rock critic who was hired to bring a younger eye to the department. She was in her 30s--most of the critics and editors were in their 40s and 50s--and considered by management to be Plugged into The Scene. This was during the Chronicle’s restructuring phase, when many newspapers were just starting to run scared, fearful of the looming presence of the Internet, of losing young readers, of soaring newsprint costs and diminished advertising, when Craigslist supplanted the classifieds.
It was a different newspaper business than when I had broken in 35 years earlier. Newspapers, once robust and fearless, were now scared of their own shadow and unsure how to keep and attract readers. Instead of putting out better newspaper, they began watering down the product, hiring middle-management types who held meetings and weighed every decision, worried of offending someone. Political correctness, coupled with corporate bureaucratization, ruined newspapers.
Suzanne Clark was a symbol of all that, but beyond that, she trampled all over department tradition, insulting everybody as a matter of course, throwing her weight around and making life miserable for one and all. There was enough tension just getting out a daily arts section without a tyrant giving us the jitters. Suzanne had a unique talent for rudeness, once asking me to get her tickets to a hot show and then calling back to say forget it--“You probably can’t get them, but I should be able to.” Once, redoing my lead, she asked if I’d ever written a feature story before.
I felt my days were numbered when Clark assigned me to review RuPaul, a black transvestite singer, and then began rewriting the leads to all my stories. It wasn’t just me having problems--everyone in the department loathed her. The longtime rock critic was demoted and she began bullying her meek co-department head until he moved to another job to get away from her Machiavellian management style.
Clark seemed to have her eye on the feature editor slot, and her bosses thought she was the answer to the future, or maybe they were also terrified of her. In any case, she moved up to features editor, replacing the woman who had hired her, who moved sideways into a new job and finally quit. It was “All about Eve” but at least Eve was pretty and appealing, unlike the ferret-faced, pear-shaped Suzanne.
The handwriting was on the wall for me after Clark returned from a major editorial meeting about the newly designed Sunday section that she passed around for us all to see. Something was missing--my eight-year-old “Show Biz” column. When I asked about it, she mumbled that this wasn’t the final re-design, but clearly she wanted to get rid of the column, and maybe me. In any case, I wanted to be rid of her and began making plans to leave The Chronicle after 14 terrific years.
I was 55, had been on newspapers for 33 years and it seemed like a good time to leave. The paper was offering buyouts and early retirement, a pretty package, That, plus the bleak prospect of working for Suzanne Clark, made up my mind even though I always assumed I’d be carried out of The Chronicle feet first, like poor Abe Mellinkoff, my old city editor there. Abe was put out to pasture and writing a column when he had a stroke two cubicles away and died a week later. I’d walked past his cubicle, saw him on the floor and assumed he was doing some exercises.
Unlike Melinkoff, I got to walk out of
The Chronicle, but it was a wrenching decision that turned out,
once I’d left, to be far more difficult than I ever suspected.
©2007 by Gerald Nachman. The Nachman caricature is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The photo of Seka is from the DVD "Desperately Seeking Seka." This special extract from a work in progress is published by special arrangement with the author. All inquiries about this work should be directed to the author by use of the Talkback feature below. This excerpt first posted here Oct. 2, 2007.
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