Pete Dexter, Redux
I recently wondered out loud (I know my audience is pretty much myself) about Pete Dexter.
I did not like, very much, the recent film "God's Pocket," but I thought I would read Dexter.
I tried "Paris Trout" (they give National Book Awards for that? I read this the same week that I finally read
"Goodbye, Columbus"--Roth's excellent first book), and then I read "The Paperboy," and yet, I read on and
read "God's Pocket."
The version of the book that I borrowed from the library (could not find the book in any store, at all) has a quote on the cover, from Richard Price. This, I thought, is a good sign: Price is one of the best dialogue writers alive today. (Or so I think.)
"God's Pocket" suffers from the same limitations as his other books--the characters are mostly flat, and distant. I find it nearly impossible to understand who they are, what they are thinking or why they do the things they do. But, the dialogue in this book is as good as a Price book, which is saying a lot (or so I think).
At least the book makes a damn bit more sense than the film and it is a good and strange story.
So, until the new Richard Price book comes out, go read Dexter's "God's Pocket."
Monday, June 16, 2014
Friday, June 13, 2014
Rent Regulation: When Is A Building “Completed”?
RENT REGULATION: WHEN IS A BUILDING “COMPLETED”?
Whether or not a building is subject to Rent Regulation can hinge on when that building was completed. If a building was completed prior to January 1, 1974 that building will be rent regulated.
But what does “completed” mean?
Our firm discovered that in a holdover proceeding in which the landlord claimed the building was not rent regulated since the certificate of occupancy was issued after January 1, 1974, a temporary certificate of occupancy had been issued prior to January 1, 1974.
Our firm represented the tenant.
After trial, the trial court ruled that in conformance with prior DHCR rulings (unrelated to this case) and based on related case law, the date of the issuance of the temporary certificate of occupancy was the operative date for determining when a building was complete. The Court ruled that the building was in fact rent regulated, and dismissed the proceeding. (Gaia by the Park LLC v. Near, NY Civ Ct., 69808/2011, NYLJ 1202551386494, April 4, 2012.)
The Appellate Term upheld the trial court: NY Slip Op 23257: July 31, 2013.
…and the Appellate Term just denied the landlord leave to appeal on February 11, 2014.
Poch & Luckow, P.C. has moved
We’ve moved!
As of April 1st, 2014, our new address is:
Poch & Luckow, P.C.
15 Maiden Lane, Suite 1405
New York, New York 10038
The phone number remains the same: 212/344-4184.
HPD is more important than a movie!
Tip of the Week:
If you own a building that contains three legal residential dwelling units or more (and every word outside of these parentheses can involve an essay all its own, but we are keeping it simple today), you MUST register the building every year with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (commonly called “HPD”).
The paperwork will take you under 15 minutes and the fee is less than the price of a movie and popcorn.
If you fail to register your building, not only are you opening yourself up to a fine, but you cannot, legally, collect rent until the building is registered.
So, skip a film if need be, and register your (three-family) building!
YES, AND FILM REVIEWS TOO!
“JOE”
Nicholas Cage is back to acting in the newly released film “Joe.”
Nicholas Cage is back to acting in the newly released film “Joe.”
While it is good to see one of the screen’s once good actors return to form and not mug, pop his eyes and/or laugh insanely,this film is a hard sell. I asked a friend to name one film that ends with an attempted child rape, a triple homicide and a suicide, and he suggested “Heidi.” Good guess, but wrong. “Joe” is so bleak it makes “Out of the Furnace” seem like a Marx Brothers treat.
The film is good and certainly worth seeing, but it is unrelentingly dark.
FILM REVIEW: “LOCKE”
I am not sure if the film is a stylistic trick, or a damn clever film.
Locke stars Tom Hardy ( I guess “Thomas” is too formal and someone in Hollywood was concerned he would be mistaken for a dead British author–it happens, you know.)
The film starts with Hardy’s character (“Locke”) driving to a hospital in London (or “to hospital” as they say across the pond), and saying while on the phone to the woman he is to meet, “I should be there in about 90 minutes” (or words to that effect).
And over the next 90 minutes we watch Locke make and receive numerous calls as he tries his best to keep his world from exploding.
The drama is not played out in images but in sound. We see no one but Locke and except for exterior shots of the road, the camera never leaves Locke, shot in side view and frontal close ups. (One disconcerting aspect of the film is that many shots are done through the windshield and not in the car–I don’t know if the director was trying to create a distance between the viewer and Locke or he had trouble squeezing the camera into the car.)
In any case, oddly, a series of believable and effective dramas (the Locke guy is NOT having a good 90-minute ride, believe me), are carried out on screen, realized by nothing more than Locke’s face and his voice and the voice of others, all via his car phone.
“Locke” is effective as a drama and one hopes it does not inspire a series of knockoffs (Tom Cruise texting his next performance in “Mission Impossible” part whatever).
YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP
I once had a case where my client sold a restaurant to a third party and was to be paid his fee out over a year.
About three years later he retains me to sue on the note.
I asked him why he waited so long.
It turns out he was in Yemen.
This was a few years ago, before the NSA would have put me on their list.
I explained all the pros and cons of the case and the client said, “Get him in court, and I will speak to him and this will settle.”
I managed to get a restraining order, thus stopping the restaurant owner from selling the restaurant.
The first day in court, I pointed to the restaurant owner and said to my client “there he is, go talk.”
No, it seems, for my client to approach the Defendant would have been a sign of weakness: there will be no talking.
The case gets adjourned because opposing counsel wants to file opposition papers.
During the adjournment, the presiding Judge has to step down because of various improprieties.
The Court, not quite knowing what to do, adjourns the case several times. Each time, my restraining order stopping the Defendant from selling the restaurant, remains in effect.
My client, who waited years to sue on his note, is incensed at me because I am somehow responsible for these adjournments, meted out by the court in the form of signs being posted on the door, advising all litigants to come back on the new return date. (In the aggregate, the case was probably adjourned a total of ten weeks.)
I remind the client that I have successfully stopped the Defendant from selling the restaurant and each time the case gets adjourned the Defendant has to carry the expense of owning a restaurant he clearly wants to sell. No, it seems, this is not good because, according to my client, this case must settle and we can’t settle if the case gets adjourned.
At this point, I mention that the portion of the retainer that he never paid was still, well, never paid: could he pay me?
Of course he could—about a month later he wrote me a check on an account that had been closed for years.
Soon thereafter, I was relieved as counsel.
And Yet Another Film Review: “God’s Pocket”
Somewhere toward the merciful ending of Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch,” the narrator muses that sometimes good comes from bad.
I just watched “God’s Pocket” and I am now motivated to read Pete Dexter, the author of the novel on which this film is based. I can only hope for the best.
I should have known better than to watch a film that was released on pay-per-view the same day it was released in the theaters, even if that film stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John Turturro, Richard Jenkins, Christina Hendricks and Eddie Marsan. Sometimes, as I said, you just have to hope for the best.
I know this is a work of fiction and not a documentary; I know that film is a visual art and it is parochial to go on and on about the plot; I know that Coleridge said we should suspend disbelief. I know, I know.
But this film has Hoffman playing a low-level (or perhaps no level) gangster named Scarpato.
Let me repeat that: Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a character named Scarpato.
And he is married to a woman played by a somnambulist Christina Hendricks.
Let me repeat that too: he is married to a woman who looks like Christina Hendricks. Whom he ignores.
Hoffman’s character is involved in hijacking a meat truck. Is he a butcher? Does he own a butcher shop? Does he know anyone who can take the meat off his hands? I don’t know. He does own a refrigerated meat truck.
His borderline psychopath stepson gets (justly) killed at a construction site while opening his mouth to the wrong person.
A kid this crazy gets a job at a construction site in a town where looking at someone the wrong way can get you killed? I don’t know.
His mother (Hendricks) thinks the story about her son’s death is fishy. Why? I don’t know.
She asks her meat-truck-hijacking husband to look into it. He asks his partner in crime (Turturro) to look into it. (Why, I don’t know.)
Turturro asks a violent thug to whom he owes $20,000 to look into it, because, you know, when you owe a violent thug money you can’t pay, you ask the guy to do a favor–not for you, but for your friend’s wife. The thug agrees….why, I don’t know.
The manager of the construction site where the kid was murdered–where several people gave false testimony to cops as to how the kid got killed– would, you think, do as little as possible to attract more police attention.
Instead, he Jew-baits the thugs sent to talk to him (These thugs are Jewish? Who knew?), and then proceeds to gouge out the eye of one of the thugs and beat the hell out of the other, because, as we all know, this is what you do in a close-knit neighborhood where everyone knows everyone and we all know you can maim gangsters with impunity.
The gangsters decide not to kill this guy but instead move to take out Turturro’s character (why…I don’t know), whose Aunt (I had no idea who she was until I read a review of the film) does not merely shoot, but summarily executes the two thugs sent to harm her nephew. I guess if you can gouge out a gangster’s eye with no repercussions, you might just as well have an old lady execute the boss and his henchman, too.
Oh, I am not done.
Hoffman’s character can’t afford the funeral for his stepson, so he gets into an argument with the funeral home director. The director gets tough so Hoffman slaps him around a little. When Hoffman leaves he finds his stepson’s body in the alley–thrown out like so much trash. You’d think Hoffman’s character, who just belted the funeral director for acting up, would go back and have a few words with the guy. No, he puts the corpse into the meat truck.
And Hendricks decides to fall for the advances of a seriously alcoholic newspaper columnist (Jenkins). She is distraught over the death of her only son. So, of course she picks up with Jenkins, who does nothing but mouth platitudes to her while he drinks whisky and describes himself as old, because, clearly, he is a step up from a guy who steals meat for no reason and owns a meat truck.
There’s more, but why bother.
Never has so much talent gone to such ill use.
But I will read Dexter: thanks, guys.
MORE FROM THE “YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP” FILES
When I was a newly minted attorney, my boss asked me to defend a deposition.
Our client had stopped short in his cab and been rear-ended.
I had not done many depositions before and I wanted to read up on it.
I found and read a 50-page booklet that reproduced a deposition of a person who had been struck by car while crossing the street in a small town in Illinois.
After reading it, I gave it to my client. “Read it,” I said, “It will give you some idea of what questions to expect.”
A few days later, at the deposition, opposing counsel screwed his face to the breaking point when my client robotically answered questions which detailed how he had been struck by a car as he crossed the street in a small town in Illinois.
I was temporarily struck dumb with a cocktail mix of horror, anxiety, and complete incomprehension of what was passing through my client’s head.
I asked my opponent if we could take a break, and when I let my client out of a headlock, I asked him to take a breath and confirm that he was parroting the booklet I had given him.
After he confirmed this, I pulled opposing counsel aside and somewhat reluctantly alluded to the reason for the confusion and because God is merciful, this attorney found it funny as hell, and agreed to what we would call in the schoolyards of Brooklyn a “do-over.”
We restarted the deposition as though nothing happened and my client remembered that he had been in cab in New York that stopped short.
I now have a trick, if you will.
I show my client, in preparing for the deposition, my black pen.
“Is my pen red?” I ask the client.
If they say “no, ” I compliment them and if they say “No, your pen is black, ” I chide them. “Answer only the question you are asked,” I tell them.
I fear that one day, while being deposed, one of my clients will be asked which way he/she was looking when they approached the intersection, and he or she will blurt out, “The pen is black.”
I know this will happen.
Theater Too!
I just had the odd experience of seeing a play that I had not seen on stage in 40 years. (Yeah, I am that old.)
When you see a play produced a second (or third, or fourth etc.) time, you see it with two sets of eyes (or minds, brains…choose your metaphor). You see the first production and of course you see the production you are actually experiencing at the time. (Or, rather, you remember, creatively or otherwise, what you have seen before and experience the play as you watch it the second (or third..) time.)
I first saw “Pippin” at age 14. It was the first play that I had ever seen, and holds a special place in my curmudgeonly heart.
While I certainly enjoyed last night’s production of “Pippin” (so glad I finally dragged my aging carcass to the show–it has been out for a little over a year) and would recommend it, I am not so sure my 14-year-old self would be pleased. But then, there was no pleasing that kid.
The story of “Pippin” is very simple and very much a product of the 70′s. A young man is trying to find himself> He tries, then rejects being a scholar, a soldier, a politician, an artist and an ordinary man. What makes this play different is that the story is framed and told to us by a motley theater troupe: they comment on the action, participate in the story and at times direct the course of the play which they freely call a play and the characters actors. If I were wearing my tweed jacket and smoking my pipe while drinking crappy white wine and eating cheese, I might say: “Brechtian.” But am not, so I won’t.
In the end, we see that the troupe, and its insidious leader, wants our callow lead to immolate himself on stage: to do something spectacular and go out with a bang (or a good deal of scream and sizzle). A spectacular finale will give our lead’s life meaning, he is told, and of course, give a jolly good show to the audience. It will be great!
Fortunately, the young man realizes that the while magic and spectacle are all very nice, and a good deal of fun, perhaps an ordinary life of work, raising a family and in general, taking life a day at a time, is preferable to a flameout.
The 14-year-old in me remembers, however (perhaps incorrectly) that the 1974 production featured a troupe of odd characters: they wore thrown-together costumes and garish face paint. They gyrated sensually, but their eyes were still and dead. They leered at us as they danced. They may have been seductive, but they were also seemingly dangerous and not to be trusted.
This production is an odd, Roman Circus/Cirque du Soleil show of well-toned gym rats who smile and mug and do amazing acrobatic stunts. What fun! Again! Again! The magic is very real and we want to see more of it.
Maybe the new production is too subtle for me. Perhaps the point is to co-opt the audience and make them want the magic, only to have the point made that we are all like Pippin, and we want our corner of the sky and don’t want to work every day, and take care of children and be mindful of the needs of our loved ones. And perhaps not. Maybe the people who produced this show were having too much damn fun. Maybe they wanted to give us our money’s worth too. While the tickers in 1974 were a gift, they probably cost under $20, compared to the hundred or so per ticket I paid last night—-half price.
It just seemed to me that the endless stunts and gymnastics and acrobatics (some of which, honestly, were amazing to watch) are not only a distraction but they seem to go against the very idea of the play.
But, that is only what a 14-year-old kid think
IDA: New Film from Poland
Some stories can only be told in a quiet voice.
“Ida” is a new film from Poland. It is shot in black and white and its brief tale unfolds in a series of almost static shots. It has, at times, all the quiet beauty of a Vermeer only with an austereness that is more reminiscent of Dreyer’s “Jeanne D’Arc.” (Wow, two references in one sentence–I can put my Pauline Kael books away for a day or so.)
The film, in its brief but memorable 80 minutes, does something few films ever have: makes the historical personal. Without any histrionics or finger-pointing, this film tells the story of Poland as it passed through Nazi occupation and into the reign of Communism.
It is the early 1960s and Anna is on her way to becoming a nun. She leaves her frozen in time monastery to visit her aunt, whom she has never met. Her aunt, it turns out, was once a high ranking criminal prosecutor who, as she says with a less than amused grin, has, in the past, sent several men to their deaths in political trials. The aunt now seems to spend her time chain-smoking, drinking, picking up men, and presiding over trials concerning minor property damage.
In short order the aunt tells this young woman that she is not named Anna, but Ida, and that she may well be a Catholic now but she was born to a Jewish family and therefore is Jewish. Ida will also come to learn, in a scene in which the past is metaphorically and literally excavated in quiet horror, that her family did not merely die during the war but were murdered, and they don’t have a nice, neat funeral plot to visit.
There are no speeches in this film, little music, no action. The characters don’t even explore the boundaries of the screen–rarely does anyone walk into or out of a frame or walk to or away from the camera. While there are two grim scenes, not much happens in “Ida” but in its own way, we are shown a great deal of what has happened in the past and how that past is always with Ida and her aunt, and us.
I will remember this film.
MORE ON SAMUEL BECKETT
I know, I know, settle down: you all can’t contain yourselves.
The third volume of the collected letters of Samuel Beckett is coming out in……………wait for it…………..September.
I fully intend to review not just the book, but each letter.
Maybe not.
FILM REVIEW: “THE IMMIGRANT”
Imagine if Roman Polanski were to reimagine a Charlie Chaplin two-reeler. (I know, you are all sitting there, squeezing your eyes shut , visualizing this.) So, instead of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, it would be more like boy meets girl and girl gets killed, or boy gets killed…or worse. And so it is with “The Immigrant.”
“The Immigrant” takes place in New York’s Lower East Side around the end of the first World War, in a city where every cop is a criminal, but none of the sinners are saints. It is the story of a young Polish immigrant who will do anything (yes, ANYTHING) to get the money needed to pry her sister off and out of Ellis Island, the man who loves her, yet pimps her out, and the other man who loves her, who does not seem to fear her pimp’s psychopathic rage until it is far too late.
It is a sad and sordid story that makes one wonder just what our grandparents actually had to do to make ends meet down on Hester Street.
My only criticism is that the filmmaker (or cinematographer, or set designer: I have no idea who is culpable…I mean “responsible”) seems to think that no one, prior to the rise of GE, had light in their homes. Yes, prior to the widespread use of light bulbs, there was no sun, no one used lanterns or candles and no one opened the window shades. And everyone wore dark clothes. Our bubbees and zaydas stumbled around in the dark.
The film takes place in the past and is trying to make associations with our memories of the past which are largely based on old, dark photos. Got it, let us move on. Let there be light.
Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner are as good as you would expect them to be and the film, while dour, is worth seeing. Bring a candle.
Film Review: “The Fault in Our Stars”
Those of us who were alive in 1970 will remember (and not fondly) the book and film “Love Story.”
When I recently saw “The Fault in Our Stars” I feared yet another version of young love/rs dying young. While these these literary and cinematic tropes are certainly there and inescapable, like death, they are only distant echoes of the maudlin sounds and images we have come to expect. I have not read the book and so have no comment, but the screenwriters (one of whom is Scott Neustadter, who wrote the excellent screenplay for a film that also stars Shailene Woodley and deserves far more attention than it received–”The Spectacular Now”) avoided (ALMOST) all of the sentimental and maudlin crap that has bedeviled so many lesser works.
To summarize the plot would state the obvious (yeah, young people dying and in love) and be far too simple. Yes, bring the hankies or your sleeve if you must, but the film is intelligent and thoughtful, even if it did not quite seem to know when to end, other than at the obvious stopping point of the grave. (The stuttering ending may well have been faithful to the book: I don’t know.)
While I am a fan of Willem Dafoe and could not help but want to see more of his sneering, dyspeptic drunk, I know the film belongs to the younger stars, all of whom shine (yes, I said “stars” and “shine” and I am tired and am clearly not editing this as I write): Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. Everyone was good–not a false note or flawed performance in the film, although it would be good to see a film or TV performance in which Laura Dern does not look like she has left her house an hour ago, and just realized she left the stove on.
Poch & Luckow, P.C.
15 Maiden Lane, Suite 1405
New York, New York 10038
212/344-4184
info@pochluckow.com
Theater Review: “The Killer”
June 8, 2014
This person was not a friend, but someone I knew through business. His death was sad and seemed pointless and it was not comprehensible to me.
Last night I saw the revival of Ionesco’s “The Killer” and felt the same way.
Theater of the Absurd plays must be read and discussed, and written about, but staged 50-60 years after they were written, when their powers to shock have all but abated? Do we need to sit in the dark for hours and watch and listen to Ionesco (and Genet, whose “The Maids” will be on stage again soon in New York) go on about the meaninglessness of life, moral complacency, the dangers of conformity, the omnipresence of death, all with the requisite slap stick humor? Must it be a three hour and fifteen minute production? (None of this applies to Beckett, who is a giant striding amongst pygmies. I hope that after this world ends and the cockroaches take over, they will find a way to stage Beckett.)
I suppose the denizens of New York’s rent regulated, book lined apartments need a reason to go out when there is no wine and cheese to be had at a local art gallery opening: perhaps there is a need to chortle about how something is both “Kafkaesque” and “Chaplinesque.”
I went to see Michael Shannon, a fine actor whom I would go to see in anything and at least, for said three hours and fifteen minutes, it was a pleasure to watch him act.
I hope the roaches can find a role for him in a Beckett production one day.
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