John Adams At The Byrd:
Tom Hanks asks us all to be convivial in the dark


Well, watch the trailer here.

Billion-eyed audience I can't tarry here long though I wanted to say that we were able to attend the preview of the HBO John Adams miniseries at the Byrd Theatre and Richmond got to see Tom Hanks hijinks. When the Byrd Theatre lost power-- for quite a brief period--Hanks seized the flashlight from Governor Kaine's security detail and illuminating himself went up to the podium and said, "Virginia has survived 300 years. You can take a power outage. Please, do not just remain calm, but convivial." For the record, Hanks is not shorter in person and can command a room like a stage actor, and he shaved a century off Virginia's founding date. Oh, well. It was Tom Hanks! In the house!

An HBO executive made reference to miniseries shot here--from Finnegan Begin Again to the Lackawanna Blues but it was Hanks who played to the assembly with Governor Kaine and legislators among those in the Byrd. He mentioned that the John Adams set near Mechanicsville was already getting used for another shoot, and that this activity should continue, adding with a wry smile, "Not that Virginia should become known as the Hollywood of the South or anything..." causing a roar from the crowd. Virginia has lost film shoots because the General Assembly stopped using incentives to tax breaks to production companies to lure them here. Hell, back in the late 1990s even I got some film work. Governor Kaine and Hanks acknowledged the effort of Virginia Film Commission director Rita McClenny, through whose good offices I was there.

Speaking of good offices, in the 1,500 or so people who filled the Byrd, I found myself one empty seat away from Joe Walton, a board member and IT guru at the Firehouse Theatre, and also an actual elected representative to the governing body of Powhatan County. We both thought that the fortuity of us ending up next to each other was quite interesting. He also urged me to shout out "Wilson!" at some point, a clever Hanks reference that I didn't get until long afterward. This is why I don't play Movie Trivia on Facebook.

Following remarks by a procession of various dignitaries and executives and a presentation by the Colonial Williamsburg Fife & Drum Corps, there was a brief hesitation about starting the film. Hanks declared, "You need to move the podium or the people up front can't see." Somebody went up and leaned the podium on its side, as Hanks yanked off the HBO decoration and handed it to an audience member in the front row.

Paul Giamatti was there, too, and he didn't say much but waved and looked quite cool with his characteristic dark rimmed glasses. He received compliments from Hanks how with in a script of 50,000 words, and Giamatti says many of them, that he never forgot a line.

We watched Episode Two, which covered a great deal of ground, involving the siege of Boston, the Battle of Concord, and drafting and proclaiming the Declaration of Independence. David Morse is a convincing Washington--stiff, well, unemotional and he seems older than Washington's then-43 years (!) -- which is maybe how we see him in this episode, and Stephen Dillane plays the somewhat dreamy/odd duck Jefferson well, too, except, by no fault of his own, he didn't seem to me as tall as Jefferson was; perhaps this was done with deliberation, so that G.W. looms over everything.

Thing is, I can't see George Washington without seeing Kevin Grantz. Kevin always played the Indispensable Man when I portrayed Jefferson at St. John's Church. That's him, on the right, in this image, from here.

Speaking of actors out of the Richmond region, the one who is most visible in this episode is Ford Flannagan, known from his stage work at TheatreIV/Barksdale here. He portrays a physician inoculating Abigail (Laura Linney) and her kids against smallpox. The long, white
curling white wig Ford wears makes him almost recognizable. Still, it's an important role in a crucial scene that shows how Mrs. Adams had to make decisions for the benefit of her family's safey when Mr. Adams was away--another scene prior to his departure when she's on her knees scrubbing the floor is every effective.

By the way, the use of wigs in this show is more realistic in terms of how people dealt with them--at one point it's so hot in Philadelphia that Adams removes his, then he forgets himself when he chooses to speak without wearing the thing. Though any comments about the Founding Fathers all resembling Vin Diesel should be kept at a minimum.

I got to shake David McCullough's hand and he provided his autograph. He was radiant in his Pultizer-prize winning historian-with-a-mniseries and old school manners. Having experienced in quite a minor way the exhiliration of exaustion of book signings, I appreciated his taking time out, standing there under the Byrd's marquee, poised to enter his limousine, to put his signature on the title page.

He also spoke this evening, in that rich Wurlitzer of a voice, and made the point that Adams advanced Washington to Congress as commander of the Continental Army, put Jefferson in charge of writing the Declaration, and appointed John Marshall Chief Justice of the Supreme Court -- all Virginians. "Adams knew a good thing when he saw it," McCullough quipped.

Much resonance in those formative debates as there are now in the current political season, and we on occasion should be reminded of whence we came. Also, if you've ever sat on a committee for any kind of administrative body, you can understand the frustration of trying to accomplish something like writing a document with the input from a group of very strong personalities.

This isn't the contrivances of The Patriot (in which Tom Wilkinson played Cornwallis, and here is a fine Franklin) or Revolution (Al Pacino! Nastassia Kinski! The white cliffs of Yorktown!--Wha?). Nay, 'tis closest you'll get this generation to an epic pertaining to the War for Independence.

And I just love me some Laura Linney (who wasn't in attendance). In the episode we viewed, she gets to heft a rifle, chop wood, raise the question about slavery and she received rousing applause when suggesting that maybe she should go down to Congress and box some ears, lay upon a bench and weep at John's writing, and play Mother Courage with her smallpox afflicted children.

Maybe the sense is imprinted upon me from my early days at Colonial Williamsburg, but I dunno, those 18th century dresses that give glimpses of women's elbows, and emphasizes their necks and clavicles...something to be said for showing little. The restrictive undergarments were for those who were required to wear them, less than desirable, though I recall one female interpreter who worked at CW when I was there, describing how stays worked something like a sports bra. Though I doubt Abigail Adams would've wanted to run a marathon while trussed up in one.

Those 18th century walk-around woman's fashions weren't as confining as, say, mid-19th century clothes would get, though the Empire period in the early 19th were quite beautiful for the women and men.

Black Out in Richmond
High winds blow out our power, send us to the movies.

Well, billion-eyed audience, many of you reading this in the Lower 48 are dealing with several feet of snow and icy winds. Here, we are flake-free, and sunny, but yesterda howling gusts clocking in at close to 50 mph overtaxed our power system and put some 43,000 people in the dark.

Amie needed wifi to tend to some bid'ness, so I was sent out to find some, and lucked out at Karsen's where I've wanted to go since the place opened. We were accommodated at the bar, plugged in, and drank fulfilling draught Guinness and ate on gourmet mac and cheese and spinach appetizers. Amie was reminded of the time we spent her birthday stranded in a London airport trying to return to Paris.

Then we went to the Byrd Theater see the much touted Charlie Wilson's War, written by my fave Aaron Sorkin, and featuring Tom Hanks and a Texas accent. And there was Julia Roberts, too, who betrayed her big guffaw laugh just once. Problem when Stars try to become Characters. Somehow I can believe her better as Erin Brockovich; a past and quite successful role which made Roberts, playing an ultra-conservative Texas socialite sneering, "Sluts!" at Charlie's partying entourage even more...textured.

Hanks, at certain angles, through no fault of his own, resembles Amie's brother Mark and that pulled us out of the movie's convention. Still, I found him agreeable company. However, a scene of Amy Adams marching in high heels up a corridor, auburn pony tail swishing, was worth seeing and put me in another kind of convention.


I also got a little West Wing rush, with Sorkin's Restoration comedy in- one-door-and-out-the other scene wherein Charlie Wilson is both trying to get weapons to Afghanis battling the Soviets through CIA operative Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and determining with his staff how he can get himself out of a scandal involving a stripper and cocaine charges.

Wilson's office is run by a Greek chorus of muses that careen through the film like Charlie's quadriga -- the point, I think. They include Amy Adams (center, in the image from allmoviephoto.com) This scene was excellent and demonstrated Sorkin's live theater roots.

There's also Sorkin classic walking-and-talking while in the corridors of power scenes. The great Mike Nichols directed; but, I left the theater feeling Charlie Wilson was a bit perfunctory. The brisk, tight scenes just didn't add up for me as a pleasing whole. The film looked a bit and felt like a 1980s made-for-television movie, and seeing a dark-haired Dan Rather and newscast clips of the time completed the sense.

The ending of the film, where Wilson tries then to gin up funds for repairing Afghan infrastructure, and a quote from him saying how the U.S. "fucked up the end game" leaves the audience thinking: oh, that's why there was Osama bin Laden. The movie has gotten critiqued from both political sides as propaganda. Fact is, with a character like Wilson, nuance and ambiguity was part of his political life and personality. Of course, as Amie pointed out to me, at about the same time, Oliver North was running a secret government out of the White House basement to combat the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Sigh. Much work to be done here on Colonial Avenue. Later, dudes.