FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 39 By Laurence Lerman After the deathly quiet summer months of 2020, the summer of ’21 is delivering on the promise of live music, with outdoor festivals, indoor concerts, stadium tours, and nightclub engagements across the country. But even as acts old and new plan to take to the stage (everyone from The Doobie Brothers to Lady Gaga are gearing up), there are still those fans who may want to sit out the live concert season this year in favor of just a few more months of streaming music for their ears in the comfort of their home. For many of those diehards, the prospect of the home viewing of a full-length concert often defeats the allure of a live (and livelier) show, thus opting for a music-themed performance documentary. And there are many, even those who are vaccinated, who are still worried by crowds and the close quarters of a live engagement. Looking back to 1978, Martin Scorsese’s seminal The Last Waltz still represents the best aspects of both the music documentary and concert film genres. Smoothly interlacing dynamic concert footage of The Band’s farewell show at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom with interview footage and clips of the players while tracing the group’s music and history, it has inspired dozens of fine music performance docs ever since. Notably, a handful of artists who performed in The Last Waltz concert in 1975 have live shows scheduled for this summer four-and-half-decades later, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and Emmylou Harris, among them. Even Bob Dylan is getting in on the action with a new concert scheduled to stream on July 18. The last month has seen the release of a trio of intriguing performance-filled music documentaries that are all worthy of streaming consideration. Miss Angela is a lovely new music-infused doc that tells the story of 91-year-old Cuban-American singer-songwriter Angela Alvarez, a woman whose remarkable story found her living her musical dream some 75 years after it first took hold. The film follows Alvarez’s early years in pre-Castro Cuba, followed by her flight from the country in the Sixties and her subsequent life in Florida and Louisiana as a wife and mother. All the while, she hid her childhood ambition to be a singer and songwriter, which was only revealed when her composer-grandson inquired about the traditional Cuban folk songs she had been singing for years, many of them her own original compositions. Fast forward several years, Miss Angela held her debut concert in 2018 at Hollywood’s historical Avalon Theater, accompanied by a group of world-class Cuban musicians and master of ceremonies (and fellow Cuban refugee) Andy Garcia, who also narrated and executive-produced the film. Alvarez’s journey to the Avalon is a compelling one, with directors Paul Toogood and Lloyd Stanton intercutting her life story (led by her harrowing exodus from Cuba) with her preparations for the big show. This method creates a solid foundation for Alvarez’s music to speak for itself, even as her life story and soulful songs underscore and complement each other. Beyond the music and the historical context of Cuba pre-and post-Castro, Miss Angela is a wonderful immigrant story. Watching sequences of the lady performing on the concert stage make for some of the warmest passages I’ve seen in a nonfiction film in a long time. On the far side of the musical spectrum—or, at least, as far away from the stylings of Miss Angela as I can imagine—is the strange and idiosyncratic American pop-rock synth duo Sparks, formed in late Sixties Southern California by siblings Ron and Russell Mael and represented here by the documentary The Sparks Brothers. Helmed by spirited British filmmaker Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver), The Sparks Brothers employs the usual VH1 Behind the Music-styled “rockumentary” approach, albeit in grander style and with an epic running time of nearly two-and-a-half hours. Expertly mixing archival footage, Super 8 home movies, live performances and testimonials from an eclectic pool of friends, admirers and fellow musicians, self-confessed fanboy Wright takes an impressively deep dive into the world of Sparks that’s as entertainingly informative as it is awestruck and loving. A fast-moving and colorful-bordering-on-the-psychedelic trip through the Maels’ 50-year-plus career, Wright gets it right by tracing the brothers’ ever-artistic eye and their formative years during the art and glitter rock movements of the Seventies. He’s also right-on as he tracks Sparks’ musical evolution through the subsequent years’ changing genres. Their hopscotching over the years yielded such radio hits as 1983’s “Cool Places,” 1989’s “Just Got Back From Heaven,” and 1995’s “(When I Kiss You) I Hear Charlie Parker Playing,” all heard here. While interviewed, the enigmatic brothers readily acknowledge their influences from the music world (producer Giorgio Moroder and musician Todd Rundgren, among them) and other art (including French New Wave films, Ingmar Bergman and Williams Shakespeare). But they’re not keen on revealing too much about themselves and the film stops just short of getting up close and personal about their private lives. This all adds up to Wright hatching an investigative query to unlock the essence of Sparks, succeeding in filling in the holes of their long story, but coming up short in solving the mystery. Perhaps that’s the way it was meant to be. Tiny Tim, the one-of-a-kind novelty entertainer who emerged from the Sixties and had an enduring fringe career into the Nineties, receives his very own biographical documentary with Tiny Tim: King for a Day. Born Herbert Buckingham Khaury, Tiny Tim is best remembered as the offbeat-looking, shopping bag-clutching, frizzy-haired fellow with a falsetto voice who played the ukulele and had a surprise mainstream hit with his 1968 rendition of the 1929 song “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” He also made some waves when, at the age of 37, he married a 17-year-old woman known as Miss Vicki in December 1969 on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in front of 40 million people. Of course, there’s a lot more to the story and Swedish filmmaker Johan von Sydow carefully chronicles Tiny’s entire life, beginning with his tough upbringing in Upper Manhattan by a strict Jewish mother and Lebanese father, through his sexually confused teenaged years and into his few years of frenzied, high-profile success. This is followed by the inevitable demise of Tiny’s international celebrity and his marginal existence on the edges of the mainstream entertainment world until his death in 1996 at the age of 64. Filled with numerous clips of Tiny’s appearances on such popular TV shows of the era as Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and The Hollywood Palace, King for a Day is also brimming with stills and wide-ranging interviews of everyone from singer Tommy James to Sixties icon Wavy Gravy. Leading Sixties documentarians Jonas Mekas and D.A. Pennebaker are also on hand, as is “Weird Al” Yankovic, who reads from Tiny’s diary, thus grounding the film in its subject’s own “voice.” Von Sydow smartly keeps his focus on the music, noting Tiny’s strengths as a vocalist and ukulele player and his encyclopedic knowledge and championing of music from the Twenties, Thirties and Forties. His makeup-plastered appearances and mincing stage presence also corroborate von Sydow’s argument that Tiny was a forerunner to such androgynous pop and glam performers as Boy George and Alice Cooper. That’s not a bad legacy. Oh, and speaking of The Last Waltz again, here’s a good one: Both The Band and Dylan himself provided the musical tracks for Tiny Tim’s 1968 rendition of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” (heard in the film), with Tiny singing the Cher parts in his falsetto (think Yoko Ono channeling a theremin) and vocalist Eleanor Barooshian voicing Sonny Bono’s baritone passages. Yes, it’s as bizarre as it sounds. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Bonnie Fishman It’s moving day. Officially. We’ve been moving to California in drips and drabs over the past two years, but this is the real deal. Everything must go. I’m surprisingly not sad. It’s curious to me that in spite of being a sentimental person, I’ve been unemotional about emptying our house of 35 years, the house where we raised both our children, created joyous memories, hosted many parties (especially our ALL-day New Year’s Day party), and suffered through family traumas. We love our lush one-acre yard on a steep hill with towering trees. We love our homey kitchen, where zillions of meals were prepared and eaten. We love our family room that served as a gathering place to watch TV, movies, and Michigan football. We dislike the quad-level stairs, stairs, and more stairs. We dislike our 1950s windows (we were too cheap to replace them!). We dislike our “sticky” doors (no one seemed to be able to fix them right). All in all, it has been a great home for us. But we look forward to getting back to our California house all on one level, completely off the grid, and self-sustaining ,with 100 percent solar energy, our own well, septic, and gas. It’s really quite liberating. Originally, Bob and I were going to be “snowbirds,” six months in Michigan, six months in California. We innocently planned on spending our winter out west in December 2019, moving in with my sister Nancy and her husband Ronnie (no, not the Reagans). But then the pandemic happened. We never left, and eventually decided to build a house next door. We became accustomed to living a slower-paced life in a smaller city. We reevaluated where we wanted to settle. Who needs two houses? After the coast was clear, we drove back to suburban Detroit to move our things, clean the house up, and put it on the market. Many other people have moved as a result of the pandemic, and the unusual situations that have arisen. One huge reason has been people’s ability to work from home and maybe never have to return to an office. This opens up a world of opportunity to live anywhere in the world. Maybe living in crowded, expensive New York City or Los Angeles in order to be near the workplace is not necessary anymore. Leah and Jonny of Brooklyn, NY., temporarily moved their family to Long Island. Lucky them, they had already been managing a cousin’s beach house there as an Airbnb. When the pandemic hit, the existing bookings canceled and they were able to move in to escape the crowded city. Life there has been so pleasant. Both parents can work remotely and the children can attend school online. They met other families fortunate to have the resources to move to the beach as well. A pandemic “pod” formed with this little group. Leah and Jonny still live there. When in-person school begins this fall, the family will return to the city. Circumstances for Breanne, a Los Angeles sales representative for commercial ad talent, were based on timing. Her lease was up on July 1, 2020. After nine years in the same house, ready for a change and having to work remotely, Breanne took the opportunity to travel safely with her sister that summer. The pandemic wasn’t going away any time soon, so she moved in with her mom in suburban Detroit. Breanne soon found herself being a source of support for her mom and her grandmother, who needed help after hospital stays. Fast forward to the present day. Breanne will stay in Michigan at least through the beautiful summer and fall, returning to L.A. in January. She feels that this has been a rare opportunity to be with her family, continue with her great job in California, and save on rent as a bonus. Moving is a Herculean effort by any standards. My husband and I spent a solid month purging and packing. Truth be told, we hadn’t really dug through our stuff for decades. Procrastination has a tendency to sneak up on you and we found ourselves sifting through bills that dated back to the early ‘80s. Hey, I found towels older than my kids, and they’re in the 30s! My friend JoAnn said “Plan on a renting a dumpster but double the size you think that you’ll need.” Good advice! We rented a dumpster the size of many Manhattan studio apartments. We filled that sucker to capacity and then some. We never came up for air and only left the house for provisions. Some nights, I resorted to eating cereal or peanut butter sandwiches. We were committed packers! One bit of advice: if friends offer to help you pack, kindly decline but have them bring you dinner instead, and stay for a visit. Bring the outside world in because you will not see anything but boxes, packing material, and tape. Two generous friends, AnaRuth and Phyllis, actually cooked us dinner. Real food. AnaRuth made a lovely salad and assorted pastries. Phyllis made her tried-and-true brisket with onions, carrots, and potatoes. That sustained us for four days. Phyllis has kindly shared her recipe with us. As you all probably know by now, I’m a “from scratch” cook. That’s always been my style. However Phyllis, like many, chooses to incorporate some packaged and bottled items. Her results were stellar. One last thing: what may have made this brisket oh so special was that she used her Aunt Sadie’s roasting pan! Phyllis’s Brisket in Aunt Sadie’s Roaster Yield: 10-12 servings 1 5-6 lb. brisket 2 lg. onions, sliced thin 2 lbs. baby potatoes, whole or cut in half, depending on the size 1 lb. carrots, peeled and cut into 1” pieces 1 pkg. Goodman’s Onion Soup & Dip mix 1 c. water 1 c. red wine 1 c. ketchup 1 c. BBQ sauce Preheat oven to 350°. Line a large roasting pan with half of the onions. Place the brisket on top. Scatter the potatoes and carrots around the pan. Sprinkle meat with onion soup mix. Pour the water and red wine around the pan. Combine the ketchup and BBQ sauce in a small bowl. “Frost” the brisket with the mixture. Top with remaining onions. Cover tightly with 3 layers of foil, crimping the edges for a secure seal. Roast for 4 hours or until tender. To test for doneness, insert a fork into the thickest part and twist. If there is resistance, cook for another 30-60 minutes. The fork should twist easily. Remove pan from oven. Uncover. Allow to cool on the counter. Pour off as much liquid as possible. Refrigerate the meat and liquid separately overnight. The next day, slice the brisket very thin across the grain. Put in a fresh roasting dish with vegetables. Remove and discard the fat from the top of the liquid. Pour remaining liquid over the meat. Cover, reheat at 350° for @ 35-45 minutes. Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

By Naomi Serviss It’s curtains for Manhattan’s yearlong intermission. Midtown is thrumming with eager tour-bus enthusiasts. Restaurant Row is grateful for the uptick. The Naked Cowboy is strumming in Times Square. I’m mindful of Covid’s variants and have faith in science. Extra masks fill my backpack. My daughter Emmy and I recently visited the Theater District. I told her about the newest addition to my souvenir drink cup collection. Beetlejuice, The Ferryman, Ain’t Too Proud, Hamilton, Tina, Cher and Mean Girls. We wore face coverings walking around. Eighth Avenue was pre-pandemic, like Wednesday matinee rush hour. There were fewer masked than maskless on West 46th Street. Restaurants were doing a brisk business. Stepping into the newly opened Drama Book Shop on West 39th Street was thrilling. Aptly named, the shop has had its share of drama. After flood, fire, rent increase and Covid slammed the doors, the shop was on life support. Until Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda stepped in In the Heights was nurtured to fruition in the shop's storied basement, where burgeoning playwrights and performers honed their craft. A sculptural "bookworm” composed of theater-related tomes meanders above customers. The shop has a museum vibe. A signed first-edition copy of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women is displayed behind glass doors. Broadway isn’t roaring back with a vengeance. It’s baby-stepping on tiptoes, a handful of musicals at a time. I’m nervous about in-person performances. The forest may be thinning, but we’re still in the woods. Diehards thirsting for familiar entertainment will be sated September 14th. Three mighty titans will be seating patrons: Chicago The Lion King Wicked Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, Ain’t Too Proud, Diana and others to follow. Hugh Jackman fans might chance a New York City adventure to catch his performance in The Music Man. Count me in. I had tickets for Broadway’s Six on March 12th, 2020. The day Gotham screeched to a halt like a train emergency. When theaters open, they’ll adhere to CDC regulations. Broadway theaters have said they’ve: ...now upgraded all of their auditorium ventilation systems with MERV 13 filters, created a contactless experience for guests entering the theatre and established rigorous cleaning and sanitation protocols. Based on CDC and New York state guidelines at the time of performance. Protocols may include contact tracing survey, vaccination or negative test verification, limitations on belongings in the theatre. Proper mask usage, assigned entry times, contactless temperature check, social distancing and more. A cynic by nature, I am not reassured. Too soon. The physical safety measures might coax some Jersey folks into day-tripping. Not Long Islanders. Our country has undergone a violent awakening. Racism has long seeped into the cultural institutions. Broadway included. Theatrical power brokers need to admit and re-examine casting biases. We live in a multiracial, ethnically diverse society that should be reflected on stage. A newly released study by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition might shock. The coalition examined New York’s 2018-19 Broadway and non-profit theaters. At the 18 major nonprofit theaters examined, 100 percent of artistic directors were white. Ditto general managers. Eighty-eight percent of board members were also white. The coalition pointed out that Asian-focused narratives remain consistently minimized and overlooked. Another coalition, Counting Together, was founded in 2019. It is researching race, gender and disability in the theater industry. Its website, CountingTogether.org is hosted by the Dramatists Guild and the American Theater Wing. Six years ago, the Public Theater produced Clifford Odets’ Jewish-American classic, Awake and Sing. It was a brilliant production by performers from the National Asian American Theatre Company. More, please! I’m anxiously psyched about Broadway’s rebound. A Six souvenir cup would be nice. Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com

Jun 16, 2021 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate The group’s recent summit in Cornwall should be its last. Political leaders need to stop devoting their energy to an exercise that is unrepresentative of today’s global economy and results in a near-complete disconnect between stated aims and the means adopted to achieve them. NEW YORK – The latest G7 summit was a waste of resources. If it had to be held at all, it should have been conducted online, saving time, logistical costs, and airplane emissions. But, more fundamentally, G7 summits are an anachronism. Political leaders need to stop devoting their energy to an exercise that is unrepresentative of today’s global economy and results in a near-complete disconnect between stated aims and the means adopted to achieve them. There was absolutely nothing at the G7 summit that could not have been accomplished much more cheaply, easily, and routinely by Zoom. The most useful diplomatic meeting this year was President Joe Biden’s online meeting with 40 world leaders in April to discuss climate change. Routine online international meetings by politicians, parliamentarians, scientists, and activists are important. They normalize international discussions. But why should those discussions occur within the G7, which has been superseded by the G20? When the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) began their annual summit meetings in the 1970s, they still dominated the world economy. In 1980, they constituted 51% of world GDP (measured at international prices), whereas the developing countries of Asia accounted for just 8.8%. In 2021, the G7 countries produce a mere 31% of world GDP, while the same Asian countries produce 32.9%. The G20, by including China, India, Indonesia, and other large developing countries, represents around 81% of world output, and balances the interests of its high-income and developing economies. It is not perfect, as it leaves out smaller and poorer countries and should add the African Union (AU) as a member, but at least the G20 offers a fruitful format for discussing global topics covering most of the world economy. The annual EU-US Summit can accomplish much that the G7 originally aimed to cover. The G7 is particularly irrelevant because its leaders don’t deliver on their promises. They like making symbolic statements, not solving problems. Worse, they give the appearance of solving global problems, while really leaving them to fester. This year’s summit was no different. Consider COVID-19 vaccines. The G7 leaders set the goal of vaccinating at least 60% of the global population. They also pledged to share 870 million doses directly over the next year, presumably meaning enough for 435 million fully immunized individuals (with two doses per person). But 60% of the global population comes to 4.7 billion people, or roughly ten times that number. The G7 leaders offered no plan for achieving their stated aim of global coverage, and in fact, have not developed one, even though it would not be hard to do. Estimating the monthly production of every COVID-19 vaccine is straightforward, and allocating those doses fairly and efficiently to all countries is entirely feasible. One reason such a plan has not yet been developed is that the US government so far refuses to sit down with Russian and Chinese leaders to devise such a global allocation. Another reason is that the G7 governments let the vaccine manufacturers negotiate privately and secretly, rather than as part of a global plan. Perhaps a third reason is that the G7 looked at global targets without thinking hard enough about the needs of each recipient country. Yet another example of the G7’s false promises is climate change. At the latest summit, G7 leaders rightly embraced the goal of global decarbonization by 2050, and called on developing countries to do so as well. Yet, rather than laying out a financing plan to enable developing countries to achieve that target, they reiterated a financial pledge first made in 2009 and never fulfilled. “We reaffirm the collective developed country goal,” they averred, “to jointly mobilize $100 billion per year from public and private sources, through to 2025 in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.” It is hard to overstate the cynicism of this oft-repeated pledge. The rich countries missed their own deadline of 2020 for providing the long-promised $100 billion per year – a mere 0.2% of rich countries’ annual GDP. And the promised $100 billion is itself a small fraction of what developing countries need for decarbonization and climate adaptation. The disconnect between the G7’s soaring aims and meager means is apparent on education as well. Hundreds of millions of children in poor countries lack access to primary and secondary education because their governments don’t have the financial means to provide teachers, classrooms, and supplies. In 2020, UNESCO estimated that the low- and lower-middle-income countries need around $504 billion per year up to 2030 to ensure that all kids complete a secondary education, but have only around $356 billion of their own domestic resources, leaving a financing gap of around $148 billion per year. So, what does the G7 propose in this year’s communiqué? The leaders propose “a target to get 40 million more girls into education and with at least $2.75 billion for the Global Partnership for Education.” These are not serious numbers. They are pulled out of thin air and would leave hundreds of millions of children out of school, despite the world’s firm commitment (enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal 4) to universal secondary education. Large-scale solutions are available – such as mobilizing low-interest financing from multilateral development banks – but the G7 leaders didn’t propose such solutions. The world’s problems are far too urgent to leave to empty posturing and to measures that are a mere token of what is needed to achieve stated ends. If politics were a mere spectator sport, to be judged by which politicians mugged best the cameras, the G7 summit would perhaps have a role to play. Yet we have urgent global needs to meet: ending a pandemic, decarbonizing the energy system, getting kids in school, and achieving the SDGs. My recommendations: fewer face-to-face meetings, more serious homework to link means and ends, more routine Zoom meetings to discuss what really needs to be done, and greater reliance on the G20 (plus the AU) as the group that can actually follow through. We need Asia, Africa, and Latin America at the table for any true global problem solving. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/g7-has-become-obsolete-and-ineffective-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-06 Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, and, most recently, The Ages of Globalization.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. This year’s Supreme Court term is coming to an end soon. Some court watchers ardently wish Justice Stephen Breyer would make it his last. In April, a billboard truck circled the Supreme Court building with the blunt message: “Breyer, retire. It’s time for a Black woman Supreme Court Justice. There’s no time to waste.” The liberal advocacy group, Demand Justice, which had employed the truck, also started an online petition that reads in part, “Tell Justice Breyer: Put the country first. Don’t risk your legacy to an uncertain political future. Retire now.” More recently, when asked by CNN whether she thought Breyer should retire, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said she would have to give more thought to it, but that she was inclined to say yes. Justice Breyer will turn 83 in August. But the push to persuade him to retire is not based in age discrimination. No one is arguing that Breyer is slowing down mentally or no longer capable of the adept reasoning required for the job. Nor is it, as the billboard trumpeted, mainly an effort to push him out in favor of a Black female justice. The concern is, rather, a practical one—fear that, while Breyer currently appears to be healthy, what happened with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could happen again soon. Ginsburg, in her early 80s and a cancer survivor, resisted retirement during the first two years of President Obama’s term when he could possibly have appointed her replacement. Justifying that choice, Ginsburg told Elle magazine in 2014, “If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see on the Court. [The Senate Democrats] took off the filibuster for lower federal court appointments, but it remains for [the Supreme Court]. So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided.” Although fighting repeated recurrences of cancer, Ginsburg continued on the Court until the Republicans regained a majority in the Senate and Donald Trump became president. She then tried to wait out the Trump administration, remaining on the Court and fighting the good fight in strong minority dissents, but died in September 2020 at 87 near the end of Trump’s term. This enabled Republicans to install the right-wing judge Amy Coney Barrett in Ginsburg’s place, just a week before Trump’s electoral defeat. This third Trump Supreme Court appointment secured a six to three right-wing majority on the Court. Trump and Mitch McConnell had previously managed, using dubious maneuvers, to install Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh as justices. All middle-aged, Gorsuch (53) Kavanaugh (56), and Barrett, (49) have a long period ahead in which to hold sway over how the interpretation of our laws is shaped. Replacing Breyer now would not gain Democrats a majority on the Court, but it could prevent its movement in an even more rightward direction. It would also allow Biden to bolster the longevity of the liberal side of the court. Unlike Breyer, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are 66 and 60 years old, respectively. President Biden has stated his desire to appoint the first Black female Supreme Court Justice. Among those said to be in the running are just-confimed U.S. Court of Appeals Judge for the D.C. Circuit Ketanji Brown Jackson (50), U.S. District Court Judge Michelle Childs (55), and Leondra Kurger (44), a justice on the California Supreme Court. Because Republicans eliminated the application of the filibuster to Supreme Court justices in 2017, a simple Democratic majority could confirm anyone Biden nominates. However, the Democrats only hold a Senate majority because of Vice President Harris’ power to break tie votes. If the Republicans take the Senate in 2022, McConnell will again be the Majority leader. And if Breyer should leave the Court by death or retirement after that, McConnell would likely refuse to even hold a hearing on any Biden nominee—repeating the performance in which he denied a hearing to Obama’s 2016 nominee, Merrick Garland. McConnell already declared on Monday that he would block anyone nominated in 2024 and, as to 2023, said:, "Well, we have to wait and see what happens." The Democrats could lose the majority even sooner than 2022. If a Democratic senator from a state with a Republican governor must leave office for any reason, the Republican governor would likely appoint a Republican to fill the seat. If Breyer retires now, confirmation of a new justice will still of course be subject to the unpredictable whims of Senator Joe Manchin, the nominal Democrat from West Virginia. Manchin has declared he will not vote for legislation unless the vote is bipartisan; that is, unless some Republicans join in the vote. It is not clear whether he would apply that to Supreme Court confirmations as well. Given McConnell’s recent statements that he is “100 percent” focused on stopping Biden’s administration, and his past history doing exactly that to President Obama concerning Merrick Garland, Obama’s ill-fated Supreme Court nominee, it is unimaginable that there will be any Republican votes to confirm a Biden-nominated replacement for Breyer. McConnell already declared, on Monday, that he would block anyone nominated in 2024 and, as to 2023, said: "Well, we'd have to wait and see what happens." But Breyer could cure the uncertainty of such confirmation process by making his retirement conditional on the confirmation of Biden’s nominee. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor did this in 2005, announcing her intention to retire effective upon the confirmation of a successor. All this brings great urgency to the timing of a Breyer departure from the Supreme Court. If Breyer cares about his liberal legacy and the possibility of rebuilding a liberal majority, he should retire in favor of a new, younger liberal justice now—while it is fairly certain one could be successfully confirmed. But will he? The President appears reluctant to broach the question with Breyer. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in May that Biden believes retirement is a decision the Justice “will make when he decides it’s time to no longer serve on the Supreme Court.” Although past presidents have hinted at the subject with older justices, there seems to be a traditional hesitance to raise the issue directly. Last October, during a session held by the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, MSNBC’s Ari Melber asked Breyer whether “justices do or should think about who will replace them, and their retirement process while they are on the court.” “Of course, from time to time you think about it,” Breyer replied. “It’s part of the aging process. It’s inevitable.” But he then referenced an alleged effort to keep the decision out of politics: “The more the political fray is hot and intense, the more we stay out of it.” Breyer added that the Court makes decisions for 330 million Americans, so the people on both sides have to have the confidence that the judge “is a fair person.” Furthermore, in The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics, a book by Breyer that will be published this fall, the justice argues that though the current Court is more conservative than in the past, it is a mistake to think his colleagues are partisans. Breyer writes, “A judge’s loyalty is to the rule of law, not the political party that helped to secure his or her appointment.” But the fiction that the Supreme Court is above politics has been a sophistic hypocrisy since at least 1803 when Chief Justice John Marshall used sleight of hand in Marbury v. Madison to claim for the courts the power to rule on the legality of actions taken by the other two branches (legislative and executive) of government. Any judge’s legal philosophy, by definition, carries within it a political point of view. As for succession to the Court, what—if not politics—was involved in McConnell blocking any consideration of Garland’s nomination because it occurred eight months before the 2016 presidential election? What, if not cynical politics, was involved in McConnell later rushing through Barrett’s confirmation within one week of the 2020 presidential election? Justice Anthony Kennedy not only timed his retirement to occur during the term of a Republican president, but had a hand in the appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both of whom had formerly clerked for him. The Baltimore Sun reported in September 2020 that Trump’s first White House Counsel Donald McGahn II consulted with Kennedy on his replacement, recommending Gorsuch to take Antonin Scalia’s seat, and Kavanaugh to take Kennedy’s seat when he retired. Kennedy’s resulting retirement aided Trump and a Republican-controlled Senate in locking down his seat for the foreseeable future. To ignore the effect of politics on decisions concerning the Court’s makeup is to lock oneself in an ivory tower away from real world effects—or pretend to. This seems an odd choice for Breyer, who has been described by Oyez as one who considers real world consequences in his legal reasoning on the Court. If Justice Breyer chooses not to retire, no one can make him do so. He has a lifetime appointment. But to act like his choices regarding the Supreme Court—his appointment to it, his decisions made on it, and his retirement from it—are totally nonpolitical and that his decision about retiring should take no notice of the political needs or future of the country—especially at a moment in our history when democracy is fighting for its life—is intellectually dishonest. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Andy Borowitz June 16, 2021 GENEVA (The Borowitz Report)—President Biden has been tormenting Donald J. Trump by being photographed with his ex, associates of the former President report. According to those sources, Trump accidentally saw a photo online of his ex and Biden enjoying a trip to Switzerland and has been inconsolable since. “He’s taking it very hard,” one Trump associate said. “All morning, he was just sitting in his darkened bedroom, listening to Adele songs on Spotify. When Adele got to the part in ‘Someone Like You’ where she sings, ‘For me, it isn’t over,’ he had to turn it off.” The associate said he understood that Trump’s ex was free to see Biden if he wanted, but that posing for photographers “seemed like twisting the knife.” “I get it—they’re enjoying each other’s company,” the source said. “It’s like Ben and J. Lo. But show a little class.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

By Bonnie Fishman It’s almost June 20th, Father’s Day. One of those great summer traditions is seeing dear old dad standing at the grill, lording over his kingdom. Please don’t get too close! He knows it all when it comes to outdoor cooking. Let him have his day in the sun. He’s been cooped up like the rest of us for how many months during the pandemic. Many fathers out there can now cut loose and cook their hearts out. Is it going to be basic like burgers and dogs? Or many something classier like ribeye steaks? How about going all out and making dry rub ribs finished with a spicy glaze? In many households, the father is the king of the grill. Where did this tradition begin? Centuries ago, (and even now in a handful of countries around the world), it was women who cooked the meats over fire. Fast forward to the 20th century. During the ‘50s when suburbs sprang up all over this country, the backyard barbecue became a “thing”. The women stayed indoors and cooked at the stove while the macho man stood at an open flame being, well, macho. As Rebecca Jennings wrote in vox.com June 2019 , “manning the grill is one of our most stubborn stereotypes.” Think about it –“manning the grill” just rolls off our tongues. A gender stereotype indeed that we still perpetuate. Meghan Casserly explained in Forbes magazine 2010 why men love grilling: “Grilling is sort of dangerous (there’s fire!), it lets dudes hang out together.” My dad only knew the basics on the grill. Nothing fancy. He owned a children’s summer camp in northern Michigan, where he flipped burgers and hot dogs by the hundreds at the cookouts. He was a father figure to the campers, but was better known as Uncle Mickey. in the kitchen, his claim to fame was chili. His bragging rights to chili gave Dad license to tell everyone that he had taught me, the chef, everything I knew. I let him have his fun. Ex-Fire Chief Dale’s splendid outdoor kitchen with both a grill and smoker A new friend of mine, Dale, a former fire chief in Gilroy, Calif., became interested in barbecuing when he joined the fire department. In firehouses, firefighters typically rotate cooking duties. Most houses have a grill in their backyard or side yard. Dale says he began grilling at home to “up his game” with the crew. In the early years, he had a smoker, a propane grill, and a briquet grill. But about five years ago, Dale and his wife built a complete beautiful poolside kitchen with a grill, smoker, burners, refrigerator, sink, the works. One can really get year-round use out of this kind of set-up when living in lovely California weather. During the pandemic, grilling has been a relatively safe way to host friends. The importance of its social benefits in an isolated environment was enormous. It was great to get out of the house and visit with people. I was fortunate enough to attend a barbecue at Dale’s home during the pandemic, in fall, 2020. He expertly smoked baby back ribs, grilled vegetables, and grilled fish. That man can cook! Some dads go beyond their outdoor grilling skills. Dr. Eric Greenberg, a cardiologist from Huntington Woods, Mich., moved into a new home last summer. The pièce de résistance for him was the wood-burning pizza oven in the backyard. Don’t get me wrong, Eric knows his way around the kitchen fairly well too. He was inspired as a young teen working for a caterer (that happened to be me!). Through college, he worked in restaurants. Married, with two young daughters, he does the meal planning, shopping and cooking. His wife, well, it’s just not her thing. As Eric tells it “We’d starve to death if it weren’t for me.” He is also quite territorial about his culinary domain. This Father’s Day, Eric will be cooking individual pizzas in his outdoor oven. He has multiple peels, the flat wooden or steel paddles on which you build the pizza and take it in and out of the oven. This requires a multi-rack to set the peels on before they go in the oven. The pizza oven is 800°, so the cooking time is only 3-4 minutes, rotating every 90 seconds. When each guest has his or her own pie, Eric can custom make the topping per their wishes. His children like plain cheese but adults go wild with combinations. Eric’s crowd favorite is caramelized onions, cooked and sliced lamb merguez sausage, topped with shredded smoked Gouda. The garnish is fresh sage leaves from the garden. There is always the classic Margarita pizza with fresh tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil leaves. Who doesn’t love pepperoni? And for the vegetarians in the crowd, anything goes. Eric precooks his vegetables, so he’ll be ready to go when the oven is cranked up 2-3 hours before pizza time. The Insider would like to hear what topping combination you would love to have on your pizza if you are lucky enough to have a dad cook one for you on Sunday. If you are the dad, what’s on the menu this weekend? Basic Pizza Dough Yield: six 6" or four 8” pizzas 1 pkg. active dry yeast 1 tsp. sugar 1-1/3 c. lukewarm water (110°), divided 2 Tbs. olive oil 3 1/2 c. flour 2 tsp. kosher salt In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast and sugar in 1/3 c. lukewarm water. Allow to “sponge” or grow for 15 minutes. Mix in olive oil and remaining water. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, add the flour and salt. Pour in the liquid. Knead on medium until the dough comes together in a ball, about 3-5 minutes. If too dry, add a little more water. If too wet, add more flour. Knead by hand for a minute, adding flour if necessary, to smooth out dough. Grease a clean bowl. Put dough in bowl. Cover with a tea towel and allow to rise in a warm place for at least an hour or until double in bulk. Punch down. Knead lightly in the bowl. Divide dough into 6 or 4 balls, depending on the size of pizza that you want. Allow the balls to rest for 30 minutes before rolling out. This method is for grilling: Roll out dough ball into the desired size. Brush a dinner plate with olive oil. Press and stretch the dough on the plate. Heat the grill to medium. Carefully transfer the dough onto the grill with the oil side down. Leave the lid open. After about 3 minutes or when the bottom crust is firm, turn heat down to low. Brush the top with oil. Using sturdy tongs, flip the pizza. Quickly apply toppings. The pictured pizza has pesto, tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms and onions, topped with grated Parmesan. Close the lid. Cook until heated through and bottom crust is browned, about 5-7 minutes. Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Naomi Serviss I’m done with denim. Bell bottoms, low-rise, cropped, straight, pre-stressed and skinny jeans are dead to me. I have cred. As a blue-jeaned Baby Boomer, I expertly treasure-hunted my high school and college denim wardrobes in myriad Goodwill stores. My designer duds-divination skills bloomed during Cheltenham High School days in Elkins Park, a posh Philadelphia suburb. These skills weren’t honed because of my mother’s commitment to quality clothes and shoes that fit. She was a medical transcriptionist in a Philadelphia radiology office. It was located at Broad Street and Olney Avenue. A dicey neighborhood in the ‘60s and dicier now. There was a subway stop into Center City. My mother trolled cheap clothing stores on her lunch hour. She may have invented layaway. The radiology office was near the Broad Street train. A vividly etched memory imprinted as I descended the filthy Broad Street stairs. I was en route to San Francisco to meet my boyfriend. She rallied her maternal instinct and shouted: Don’t come home pregnant! As a kid, I inherited clothes from two older sisters. A generation older. Poodle-skirt older. I was oblivious to fashion. I just needed tree-climbing and creek-wading clothes. I didn’t care what I looked like. My getaway clothes. I would leave and spend hours away from my toxic family. My mother didn’t speak if she could scream. I left often. I was sensible about poison ivy and continued down the wide gravel path past two public tennis courts. My goal was the well-tended athletic field about a mile away. It contained everything you’d expect in a wealthy school district. I’d lie down on the grass and spin cloud stories. Curiosity saved me from drowning in neglect. Miss Rich was my first and second grade teacher. She visited our apartment near the train tracks. Miss Rich said I had proudly showed off new shoes. That hadn’t happened before. It was a privileged elementary school. Kids wore their bespoke status with style. Mrs. Vinet, my fifth-grade teacher, graded the class on personal appearance. O for Outstanding G for Good S for Satisfactory N for Needs Improvement. Mrs. Vinet gave me an N. My scarlet letter. I started to pay attention to labels. I knew a lot of popular girls. They always seemed dressed up and spotless. I’d get invited to their immense homes. Foyers with mirrors and piano rooms. Housekeepers, landscapers and pool cleaners. Two kitchens. Two parents. When invited, I’d tag along to the Villager Shop with Susie and her strict mother. Her mother ordered seasonal outfits. Circle pins were big one year. I took mental notes. I picked up nomenclature. Stitching, aligned seams, durable, breathable fabrics and tailored hems. Lessons learned and passed on for posterity. As a mother of two on Long Island, I knew which thrift shops were tops. The ones with the most expensive and least-worn castoffs. The pandemic turned my comfort zone into the twilight. There are some upsides to hibernation. I ditched my hold-out jeans. The pair with embroidered hems. I banished confining pants. Harem pants with a decorative flap are my new uniform. Paired with an assortment of colorful crop tops. Easy on, easy off. No more hard pants, ever! I’m Faye Dunaway in the Mommy Dearest wire hanger scene. My outlook has shifted this year. I know what’s essential. Comfort is key! By 6:30 a.m. I’m ready for my daily Central Park walk. Wearing neon-pink biker shorts with side pockets and a Mighty Mouse T-shirt. Biking shorts are surprisingly forgiving. And comfortable! Today I walked with Robert, a new friend and former soap star. I wore my paisley leggings and Modigliani T-shirt. After walking to Summit Rock and back, I savored a redemptive shower. Effortlessly eased into elastic waist harem pants and black crop. I was home. Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 38 By Laurence Lerman On the eve of the release of the U.S. release of his latest film, the 2020 psychological drama Siberia, I caught up with writer/director Abel Ferrara, who spoke with me last week from his home in Rome. Though he’ll always be first regarded as one of New York City’s most ferocious and formidable homegrown filmmakers, the Bronx-born Ferrara has now lived in the Eternal City for close to 20 years. Married to Italian actress Cristina Chiriac and the proud father of a five-year-old girl, Anna, he’s been clean and sober for nearly a decade and has recently embraced Buddhism. His change of address and lifestyle notwithstanding, Ferrara’s output has remained steady and diverse as he moves further and further on from Ms. .45 (1981), King of New York (1990) and Bad Lieutenant (1992), films that previously defined the kind of audacious and forceful Gotham-based moviemaking that garnered him his auteur’s calling card. A couple of movies into the fifth decade of his career, Ferrara has lately been alternating between narrative features (like 2014’s Welcome to New York, a bizarre, fictionalized take on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case) and flavorsome documentaries about both his hometown (2019’s The Projectionist) and his adopted one (2017’s Piazza Vittorio). The 69-year-old Ferrara’s works have also grown increasingly self-reflective and biographically tinted, as can be seen in the recent dramas Tommaso (2019), concerning an American filmmaker in recovery and building a new life for himself in Rome, and Pasolini (2014), about the final week in the life of the controversial Italian filmmaker. Both star Willem Dafoe, Ferrra’s frequent collaborator for the past two decades, who has lately served as an avatar for the filmmaker, most potently in Siberia, their latest film together. In Siberia, Dafoe plays Clint, a bartender in a snowbound roadhouse in the Siberian mountains. He is surrounded by patrons who speak a language he doesn’t understand and who behave with a distinct, Ferrarian weirdness (if Clint and his barking huskies joining a group of little girls in a Maypole dance set to Del Shannon’s “Runaway” can be considered weird). Looking for answers, Clint jumps onto his dogsled and is pulled into the storm, kicking off an hour of strikingly depicted dreams, memories, nightmares and visions. Some of what unfolds on the screen comes from Clint’s past, some from his future and the rest might just be figments of his imagination. Siberia’s narrative is untraditional and dream logic applies, which makes it wholly interpretive, particularly in the context of the film’s transmogrifying, episodic flow and its unending (and seamless) shifting of locales. Although Clint metaphysically confronting his own life may seem like a very vague through-line to hang an entire film on, Siberia remains well-crafted and engaging throughout. So, yeah, Ferrara the filmmaker has definitely mellowed, but he still remains one of the most colorful and rambunctious interviews out there. It took me only minutes to realize that. Laurence Lerman: Before we get going, I wanted to tell you that many years back, you were my first-ever filmmaker interview. It was 1995 and we met at Malatesta, that little Italian place in the West Village–they had great gnocchi. We spoke about Blockbuster Video forcing you and [distributor] Artisan Entertainment to create a tamer R-rated version of Bad Lieutenant as they would not carry the theatrically released NC-17 version in their stores. Not a happy time for you. Abel Ferrara: No, but that was always the whole thing with Blockbuster and it was a given from the beginning. It didn’t come as a shock. The real shock was for people who experienced it on TV for the first time. LL: Well, Blockbuster has been gone now for about 15 years, and you were making films before they were around and you’re still making films today. AF: So, who gets the last laugh, right? I actually miss them, though. I’m nostalgic for video stores. LL: I told a friend I was interviewing Abel Ferrara regarding his latest film—someone who was most familiar with your work from the Nineties—and the first thing he asked was, “What’s the King of New York doing in Siberia?” AF: A good question. Well, where our imagination takes us is where we go. Have gun, will travel, you know what I mean, bro? LL: Is it fair to say that over the past 15, 20 years, since you relocated to Rome and started a family, you’ve been engaged in a distinctly different kind of filmmaking? AF: It’s not a line of demarcation. Your films change. It’s like a journey of learning how to make films, learning how to express yourself. It’s a life journey and part of the journey is moving and being in different places. I lived a lot of my life in Los Angeles and Dangerous Game depicts that. So does Fear City. Now I’m in Rome. Even in the ‘90s, a lot of the financing for our films was European-based. The fact that we had notoriety in Europe is lot of the reason that we could get one leg up [with the financing] and get those movies made. I’m from an Italian-American family, born in the Bronx. Coming to Rome and being here, well…for filmmakers, Rome is a place to be. There’s Los Angeles, there’s New York, there’s Paris—that’s where films are made. So, I was going back and forth for a while, making Pasolini, some documentaries, and then I met Cristina [in the 2010s] and we had a baby. And we’ve been living in the place where we fell in love. LL: You weren’t much of a Roman homebody for Siberia—it was shot in different locations around Italy, also in Germany and Mexico. Where exactly did you shoot all those rugged mountain scenes? AF: That was in the Alps, the Italian Alps in Northern Italy. It was the real deal. LL: It must have been physically challenging. Was it really snowing all the time during those scenes or was it stunt snow? AF: Yeah, it was snowing like a motherfucker! It was cold, it was fucking snowing and it was dangerous—the whole package! LL: For all the large expanses and outdoor trekking across the tundra and even a desert in Siberia, with the huskies and the whole Jack London adventure feel. AF: Jack London, yeah! LL: But with all that, it was still a very interior film, as much as it was an exterior one—a man looking at himself and everything around him, but from deep inside. AF: We were trying to confront the issues of our lives, of our pasts. The idea of memory, our dreams, our fears. We tried to put the camera on things like that, as opposed to physical events. We were trying to focus on the genesis of where those exterior events come from. LL: A reflection from the inside. AF: Reflection is a good word. LL: Let’s talk about your relationship with Mr. Dafoe, which extends back for six films over 20 years. He’s become a kind of avatar for you over the past decade. An alter ego, if I may use that word? AF: What can I say? He lives around the corner from me [in Rome], he is the godfather to my daughter. He’s my bro, you know? Yeah, we were working hard on getting it and those films [Pasolini, Tommaso and Siberia], they’re in that place where he can play them. It’s kind of like the chicken and the egg with [Dafoe]: Are they in a place where he can play them, or am I trying to keep my focus on things he can play? I’m always thinking about things he could play, whether it’s real people or if I’m dreaming up shit. LL: The two of you must have developed a real shorthand with each other over the years. AF: It takes a lifetime to learn how to fucking connect—to make a connection between a director and actor. And it’s constantly changing. The thing that makes it change is the material itself, and every time you present yourself with a different film and a different character, you have to gear up again. [Dafoe] works with a lot of people on a lot of different things. He does this, he does that. He still works onstage, too. So, he brings a lot of fucking experience to what he does. He comes back to whatever we’re doing with a lot to offer, you dig? LL: Since 2008’s Chelsea on the Rocks [about the Chelsea Hotel], you’ve been making documentaries regularly. AF: Every other film, we’ll be shooting documentaries, which is a big turn-on to me. Working with real people who aren’t actors in documentaries, or using real actors in documentaries, which is an interesting way to turn it around. I like to work with what’s in front of me—Siberia isn’t really a good example of that. But otherwise, I like to keep it close to home, close to the vest, close to the people you know. LL: You were many years into your career before you began making documentaries, but once you started, you came out blazing and took no prisoners. You’ve made a half-dozen of them over the past decade. AF: Once I did one, it really opened up my eyes. You don’t need big financing and you don’t need to even know where you’re going. They’re easy. What I like is that it’s a discovery of a subject, of an event or of whatever’s grabbed your interest. The film itself is what allows you to create it—the process of making the film is what brings you to what you’ve got. LL: The film and the filmmaking process feed each other. AF: Yeah, as opposed to having a locked-down script and knowing what’s going to happen next and all that bullshit. LL: Clearly, you’ve been very busy, but have you seen any good movies lately? Anything that’s made an impression over the past year, during the lockdown? AF: I hate to say this, but when you’ve been watching films all day in the editing room—we just edited three films in a row, one is a documentary on Siberia being in the Berlin Film Festival called Sportin’ Life—the last thing you want to do is look at movies or any moving images at all. It feels too much like work. I’ve got my own problems and I don’t want to be looking at somebody else’s problems. My thing is reading, anyway, you know? Siberia opens in select theaters and everywhere movies can be rented on June 18, and on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on June 22 from Lionsgate. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

Opinion by Jeffrey D. Sachs | CNN.com June 10, 2021 Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His most recent book is "The Ages of Globalization" (Columbia University Press, 2020). The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion on CNN (CNN) - The US tax system is rigged, and it is breaking the country in more ways than one. Much of the Republican Party lives and breathes to protect the rich and powerful from paying taxes, and Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia too often side with them. Meanwhile, public opinion -- strongly supporting higher taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations -- counts for little because the rich have undue influence over the political class. But the severity of the problem cannot be overstated. Between 2014 and 2018, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, saw his wealth grow $99 billion (to the level of $191 billion today) while paying a pittance in income taxes, according to an investigation published by ProPublica, which revealed several of America's best-known billionaires paid similarly little in taxes. (Bezos' personal and corporate representatives declined to receive detailed questions on the ProPublica story.) Not only is our tax system not collecting taxes from America's richest individuals -- it's designed not to do so. Suppose that in a given year Bezos' shares rise by $20 billion and, instead of selling those shares, he borrows $1 billion against them to fund his luxurious consumption. He won't owe or pay a penny of income tax. At a conceptual level, Bezos' income in this example is $20 billion, measured by the change of wealth. Yet according to the tax code, his taxable income is $0, because his rise of wealth is counted as taxable income only when he sells the shares. But why should he sell them when he can pay for his $500 million superyacht and other toys by borrowing -- and thereby escape income taxes altogether? By the way, if Bezos actually sells some shares after owning them for more than one year, he would pay a "long-term capital gains tax" of 20%, below the 22% marginal tax rate on wage income paid by an individual earning $41,000! There are actually four interconnected ways that the tax code is designed by and for the rich. The first is the case just noted, by which the richest Americans amass and spend great wealth while paying little or no tax. The applicable rules are that "unrealized capital gains" (that is, price increases on unsold assets) are generally not taxable income, and that long-term capital gains are taxed at a low rate. The second problem is when companies park their assets and international profits in tax havens. As of 2018, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, American multinational companies held an astonishing $1.3 trillion of corporate assets in Bermuda and another $1 trillion in a few tiny British islands in the Caribbean, including the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. Notably, these tiny places have a 0% corporate tax rate. How can more than $2 trillion of corporate assets and some $159 billion of net income end up in these British islands when US companies hardly operate, produce, manufacture or export from them? A company, which parks its money offshore, simply declares that its hugely valuable intangible assets (such as trademarks, patents and other intellectual property) are actually located in the tax haven. How they got there, don't ask. When the company -- that is, the real company -- earns international profits on its actual production and sales, the real company "pays" the shell company, based in some Caribbean island, for the use of its own intellectual property. In short, the international profits are magically assigned for tax purposes to a place with 0% corporate taxes. Lawyers actually earn high fees for facilitating this absurd tax dodge. In 2017, a leak of secretive records from a Bermuda-based law firm showed that several major tech companies were engaged in that kind of aggressive tax avoidance scheme. Though the legality of it is in question, the immorality of a tax system that allows it to happen so easily is not. This trick feeds the first kind of tax dodge. Because of the tax havens, corporate share prices soar, and Bezos and friends enjoy their mega-incomes as "unrealized capital gains" without the need to pay any taxes. The third problem is outright unaffordable tax cuts, such as the 2017 Trump-led tax law that cut the statutory corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%. That was ridiculous and unfair then -- and it remains so now. But Republicans have made crystal clear that they won't touch that cruel tax cut, which was voted on in the middle of the night against the will of the American people. The fourth and final problem is good old-fashioned tax evasion, which now amounts to nearly $600 billion per year. I don't suppose that many Americans are "shocked, shocked" that tax evasion at a massive scale, especially by the rich, is taking place in our hallowed democracy. According to recent estimates, the top 1% of earners account for more than a third of unpaid federal taxes. The International Revenue Service budget to audit companies and wealthy Americans was slashed over the past decade, further enabling this bad behavior. President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are intent on addressing these four problems. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and the 49 other Republican senators stand in their way. When Yellen recently negotiated with the other G-7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK) a minimum corporate tax of at least 15%, thereby blunting the role of tax havens, the Republicans declared that it was "crazy" and "anti-US." In addition, Biden and Yellen want to raise the statutory corporate tax rate back to 28%, halfway to the pre-2017 rate, though they don't propose to tax unrealized capital gains. And they want to fund the IRS properly so that it can resume audits and crack down on tax cheats. Overall, their plan for economic growth could raise the share of government revenues in GDP from 16.3% in 2021 to 19.9% in 2032. The response from 50 Republican senators has been a relentless no to any tax increase on the wealthy, while Manchin has continued to advocate for a bipartisan jobs package. And you wonder about that smirk on McConnell's face. So here we are, fellow Americans, with potholed streets, broken highways and bridges, poisoned urban water systems, poor connectivity, trains that crawl along, hungry Americans -- and superyachts. Long live the Republic! https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/10/opinions/america-tax-system-rigged-protect-rich-sachs/index.html