By Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area One of my all-time favorite root vegetables is beets. And not from a can! It was revolutionary when I ate my first fresh beet instead of the too-often-used canned variety. Was this even the same vegetable?! I was probably in my early 20s. What took me so long? I didn’t know any better. Canned vegetables were so prevalent back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. For some reason, many Greek restaurants still get away today with using canned beets in their traditional Greek salad with feta and garbanzo beans. Having been a restauranteur, the reason is simple. Prepping beets is labor-intensive compared to ye olde can opener. Also, they are less expensive. A travesty nonetheless. Why eat beets? Besides being delicious, all-purpose, and a beautiful color, they have many health benefits. According to the Cleveland Clinic, beets contain betalains, which have antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. They are high in fiber and nitrates. “Beets contain nitrates, which help widen blood vessels that can help with blood pressure and may also improve athletic performance and brain function.” Beets also contain potassium, magnesium, Vitamin C, Vitamin B and folate. I’m thinking we should be eating beets more often! Beets originated in prehistoric times in the Mediterranean region and were originally grown for chard, the beet greens. The Romans and Greeks ate the greens during ancient times. Germans and Italians began eating the root in the 1500s. But French chefs didn’t popularize eating the root until the 1800s. Beets generally like a cooler climate and grow biannually in the spring and fall. In the U.S., most beets are grown in North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan and Idaho. Not only do we eat them as a vegetable, they are a major source of processed sugar. And beets are quite versatile, from old world Russian borscht (beet soup) to modern-day beet salad, which has been appearing on just about every tony restaurant’s menu over the past 20 years. They are often paired with goat cheese - a mild chèvre or feta - dark greens, toasted nuts and possibly a fruit. I have to admit, I can rarely pass up one of these salads if I happen to eat out. Beets aren’t just a deep red vegetable anymore either. Beets can also be pickled with onions or served hot as a side dish with fresh lemon or orange juice and butter. There are a variety of colors from yellow to orange. Check out your farmer’s market for an eyeful. Cooking beets is quite simple. One can either roast or boil them. It’s the peeling and slicing afterward that is unpleasant. A brief story here with a lesson learned. Decades ago, when my late sister Cindy was getting married, my other sisters and I decided to throw her an at-home shower. It was summer so we opted for a “chic” salad bar. I had just discovered fresh beets (hey, this was the ‘70s!) and wouldn’t it be nice to have them included? My sister, Marcia was assigned to clean the cooked beets. We didn’t use food grade gloves back then–who knew from gloves? She diligently peeled and sliced a few pounds of beets. You know where this is going, don’t you? Marcia sat through our ladies shower with lovely red hands, because the stain doesn’t go away any time soon. Lesson: handle cooked beets with gloves! Today’s recipe is more to get you inspired, rather than asking you to actually follow ingredient amounts. Before cooking the beets, cut off the tip of the root and the stems at the top of the bunch. I try to select very fresh-looking greens because they are delicious added to soups, sliced thin in salads, or cooked and eaten as a side of greens. I usually boil my beets in a pot of salted water. Depending on their size, this can take 30-45 minutes. When a fork inserted in the center goes in easily, they are done. If you roast them, wrap each beet in foil. Place them on a cookie sheet and roast at 400º for 45-60 minutes. I personally don’t taste the difference between the two methods. When the beets are cool enough to handle, the skins should rub right off. One other tip: try to get same sized beets so they cook evenly. Cooked beets will last for up to a week in the fridge. I have chosen to do an arranged salad to be served before a meal. Certainly it can be a light lunch entrée, but I would increase the volume. When using beets in a mixed tossed salad, I usually serve them separately for two reasons. Some people just don’t like them and more importantly, they dye the whole salad red. I find it very unappealing to eat pink feta! Lastly, about the dressing. I’m suggesting a light sprinkling of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Hint: this is the time to bring out your finest extra virgin oil and imported vinegar. Taste really matters here. Many people enjoy a balsamic glaze instead. A generous sprinkling of coarse salt and fresh ground black pepper is also called for. The beet goes on here at The Insider. Let us know what you decide to put in your beet salad! Beet and Orange Salad Yield: 6 side salads 5-6 medium beets, cooked and peeled (see directions above) 3 navel oranges 3 Cara Cara oranges 1 c. very finely sliced fennel 2 large handfuls of arugula 3 oz. crumbled feta 1/4 c. coarsely chopped pistachio meats (or slivered toasted almonds) extra virgin olive oil balsamic vinegar Slice the beets around the circumference into even widths. Reserve. Using a sharp knife, remove the rind and pith of the oranges. Slice them around the circumference into even widths. Reserve. Put a small handful of arugula on each 7-8” plate. Arrange the beets alternately with the oranges on top of the greens, evenly spaced. Put a pile of fennel in the center or off to the side of the beets/oranges. Sprinkle with the feta and nuts. Gently drizzle on the oil and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. 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 Sienna Beck / New York City Hello, readers. It’s me, Sienna Beck, your new 9-year-old columnist. As you know, it’s February, and we have a couple of important holidays, one just past, and one coming soon: Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day, two of my thousands of favorite holidays. First up—Valentine’s Day, which took place this week on February 14th. On this day, valentines were distributed all over the world. Valentines of all shapes and sizes. This year, my sister Olive chose cupcake valentines with cards, temporary tattoos, and bookmarks. My sister Willa and I are still distributing puppy valentines; included with pencils and pencil sharpeners shaped like hearts, and temporary tattoos plus a card. People also love to give out homemade or store-bought treats, so it’s like a mini-Halloween. Schools do activities on Valentine’s Day. I’m in fourth grade, and from pre-K to my grade, teachers ditch subjects and onto the fun stuff. We eat candy and decorate bags—but I wondered what it would be like during the pandemic, because last year I was all remote, and I did not go into school for the whole year, yet I did go in for the state test. Well, Valentine’s Day was a success this year! We decorated bags, and gave out valentines, and even slipped candy under our masks. We played games like marshmallow toss, and more. Overall, Valentine’s Day was a very special day. Enough about Valentine’s Day. There’s another very special holiday to celebrate very special people, which takes place on the 23rd… PRESIDENTS' DAY!!!!! On this day, people are known to eat cherry pie, because of the cherry tree incident (George Washington’s honesty about cutting down the cherry tree). Most people claim it’s to celebrate George Washington’s birthday on February the 21st. Others claim it’s not only to celebrate him, but to celebrate all the presidents who have served the U.S.A. (even if they didn’t finish a term). Most people don’t even care that this is considered a holiday, but it’s very important to me–maybe because I, Sienna Beck, want to be president when I am older. I believe that it should be as important as Halloween and Christmas. In conclusion, February’s holidays are very important. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!!! See you next month! Sienna Beck is a 9-year-old author who loves writing short stories. She goes to a camp called Writopia, and once entered a play contest and was selected to have her play professionally performed by trained actors. Sienna has two sisters, Willa and Olive, and they all go to P.S. 87 in New York City. Sienna likes animals, including pets and mostly dogs. She also wants to be THE PRESIDENT when she grows up.

February 8, 2022 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate Rather than trying to pretend that one side is a saint and the other a sinner, everyone involved in the latest NATO-Russia conflict should recognize that they have a mutual interest in long-term security. That implies a diplomatic settlement in which Ukraine secures its sovereignty through neutrality. NEW YORK – Ukraine’s Western friends claim that they are protecting the country by defending its right to join NATO. The opposite is true. In defending a theoretical right, they are jeopardizing Ukraine’s security by raising the likelihood of a Russian invasion. Ukraine’s independence could be defended far more effectively by reaching a diplomatic agreement with Russia that guarantees Ukraine’s sovereignty as a non-NATO country, akin to Austria, Finland, and Sweden (all members of the European Union but not of NATO). Specifically, Russia would agree to withdraw its troops from Eastern Ukraine and demobilize near Ukraine’s border; and NATO would foreswear enlargement into Ukraine, provided that Russia respects Ukraine’s sovereignty and that Ukraine respects Russian security interests. Such an agreement is possible because it is in the interest of both sides. To be sure, those advocating Ukrainian membership in NATO consider such a deal naive. They point out that Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014, and that the current crisis arose because Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, threatening a new invasion. The Kremlin has thus violated the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, wherein Russia promised to respect Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty (including over Crimea) in exchange for Ukraine’s surrender of the massive nuclear weapons stockpile that it inherited following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, it is possible that Russia would accept and respect a neutral Ukraine. An offer in which Ukraine acquires that status has never been on the table. In 2008, the United States proposed that Ukraine (and Georgia) be invited to join NATO, and that suggestion has loomed large in the region ever since. Viewing the US move as a provocation to Russia, the governments of France, Germany, and many other European countries prevented the Alliance from extending an immediate invitation to Ukraine; but in a joint statement with Ukraine, NATO leaders made clear that Ukraine “will become a member of NATO.” From the Kremlin’s perspective, NATO’s presence in Ukraine would pose a direct threat to Russia’s security. Much of Soviet statecraft was designed to create a geographical buffer between Russia and the Western powers. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has vociferously opposed NATO’s enlargement into the former Soviet bloc. Yes, Putin’s reasoning reflects a continuation of the Cold War mindset; but that mindset remains active on both sides. The Cold War was marked by a series of local and regional proxy wars to determine whether the US or the Soviet Union would install regimes favorable to its side. While the battleground shifted around the world – from Southeast and Central Asia to Africa, the Western hemisphere, and the Middle East – it was always bloody. But since 1992, most wars in pursuit of regime change have been led or supported by the US, which came to see itself as the sole superpower following the Soviet Union’s collapse. NATO forces bombed Bosnia in 1995 and Belgrade in 1999, invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and bombed Libya in 2011. The US invaded Iraq in 2003; and in 2014, it openly supported the Ukrainian protests that overthrew the country’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Of course, Russia also has pursued regime-change operations. In 2004, it meddled in Ukraine to assist Yanukovych through voter intimidation and electoral fraud. These actions were eventually blocked by Ukraine’s own institutions and mass protests. Russia also continues to impose or prop up friendly regimes in its near periphery, most recently in Kazakhstan and Belarus (which is now fully under Putin’s thumb). But the mutual animosity and distrust between Russia and the West has a very old pedigree. Throughout its history, Russia has feared and, indeed, endured repeated invasions from the West, while Europeans have feared and endured repeated expansionist efforts by Russia from the East. It has been a long, sad, and bloody saga. With statesmanship on both sides, this historic animosity might have and could have subsided following the demise of the Soviet Union. That was possible in the first half of the 1990s, but the opportunity was squandered. The beginning of NATO enlargement played a role. In 1998, George F. Kennan, the long-time diplomat and historian of US-Soviet relations, was prescient and pessimistic. “I think [NATO expansion] is the beginning of a new Cold War,” he said. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.” William Perry, the US Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997, agreed, and even contemplated resigning from President Bill Clinton’s administration over the issue. Neither side can claim innocence at this point. Rather than trying to pretend that one side is a saint and the other a sinner, everyone should be focused on what it will take to achieve security for both sides and the wider world. History suggests that it is best to keep Russian and NATO forces geographically separated, rather than confronting each other directly across a border. European and global insecurity were at their highest when US and Soviet forces faced off against each other at short range – in Berlin in 1961 and in Cuba in 1962. Under those harrowing, world-threatening circumstances, the construction of the Berlin Wall served as a stabilizer, albeit a deeply tragic one. Today, our paramount concern should be Ukraine’s sovereignty and peace in Europe and the world, not NATO’s presence in Ukraine, and certainly not a new wall. Ukraine itself would be much safer if NATO stopped its eastward expansion in exchange for Russia’s withdrawal from eastern Ukraine and its demobilization of forces along Ukraine’s border. Diplomacy along these lines, supported by EU and United Nations involvement, is urgently needed. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-nato-security-through-ukrainian-neutrality-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2022-02 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 Naomi Serviss / New York City My 50th high school reunion celebration was Covid-aborted in 2021. Wait. It’s been 50 years since high school? How’d that happen? It’s bad enough that we’ve been consciously Covid-tethered for two years. But half a century ago, I was the long-haired Joni Mitchell worshipper. Where’d she disappear? It’s rhetorical. My since-second-grade friend Nona is heavy-duty involved with Cheltenham High School’s Class of 1971 reunion plans. Not technically a ’71 CHS grad, I was not eligible for admittance to the esteemed Facebook page. I’m not a big Facebook fan. Only joined to keep up with my daughter Emmy’s shenanigans. As for my CHS legitimacy, I spent 10 years in the school system. Kindergarten at Shoemaker (Mrs. Goldberg), first-through-third grades at Myers, (Miss Rich, Mrs. Whitney) back to Shoemaker for fourth-through-sixth grades, followed by Ogontz Junior High, then three high schools. Same district. Shouldn’t that count a little? It’s complicated. What isn’t? I actually graduated from the first “School Without Walls” in Philadelphia, the Parkway Program. Nona pleaded my CHS case. I was swiftly deigned entrée into the Class of 1971’s Facebook page. Huzzah! Nona reconnected me to Jane, a bosom pal before we had bosoms. Jane’s whippet smart, funny and sharp as aged cheddar. That reconnection segued into my passing the audition for a ’71 Zoom group of unfamiliar classmates. Pre-Covid, they had in-person reunions. “Mini-Chill” is how Jane described them. This past Covid year hasn’t had many highlights. I was psyched to spend time with this gifted and talented batch o’ Boomers. We share not-so-fond school memories, current event perspectives, Netflix intel, family updates and career insight. Every second Tuesday at 5:00 pm we gather laptops, get comfy and spend the next hour-and-a-half with our esteemed, albeit long-in-the-tooth, crew. My well-educated peers are unique and successful. I was a little intimidated at first, feeling like a party crasher. No need. They were my personal Welcome Wagon. Our shared childhood streams created moving collective memories. More precious now than ever. David had a wry sense of humor. With a schmear. His Warrior strength carried him through five hellacious cancer years. Plans B through Z had failed. His last surgery was cancelled. David was so committed to the group he joined with audio during chemo infusions at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. David was an exceptionally active listener. Jane and I had reignited our friendship over email. We shared shiny historical tidbits such as starter husbands (one each) and swoon-worthy devotion to Cheltenham’s divinely decadent fudge brownies. David and Jane had been tight for decades, and had a little email side hustle into which I was soon pledged. Sorority humor. Like I would have been in a sorority. David cajoled me into watching The Americans despite my reservations. When I watched the gruesome body-stuffed-in-the-suitcase episode, I told David, “No way am I watching any more of that violent show. I don’t care how amazing the acting is.” David wasn’t a retired general counsel for nothing. The series was exceptional from soup to nuts, the acting, story lines, characters. The whole big. Frank Langella as a diabolically father figure-y Russian spy! Kerri Russell! Broadway actors! X-rated ingenuity! Poison! What’s not to love? The ending was starkly bittersweet, moving me to tears. David, a University of Pennsylvania and Yale Law School grad, was a pragmatic idealist and money-where-your-mouth-is mensch for all seasons. We Broadway fans shared a willingness to suspend disbelief at magic shows virtual and in person. David passed away January 22. January 23rd would have been his 68th birthday He was most proud of a winning entry in the New York Times’ Metropolitan Diary. Hilarious, brilliant, loving and self-effacing, David’s presence was a joy. His affection for the group virtually palpable. Generosity was second nature. He and Sheryl have gifted numerous nonprofits throughout their lives. Sometimes in friends’ names. He would have been tickled to read the comments written on our class Facebook page. Mitchell Schwartz expressed his: “This is awful news… Dave was blessed with a brilliant intellect, but was never arrogant or treated anyone with anything other than respect. As down to earth as anyone I have known, You could consider yourself very lucky to have him as a friend. I was so hoping to see him at our 50th Reunion. May his memory be a blessing to all who knew him.” David’s brilliance shines in Warrior, a moving play written during his treatment. A Broadway actor portrayed the scribe: His Metropolitan Diary’s public love letter to Sheryl was published February 9, 2020. Two years ago this week: In the Park Dear Diary: I was in Carl Schurz Park facing the East River after playing basketball when a guy stumbled by. “Please buy my last beer,” he yelled drunkenly. I laughed. I noticed that a woman near me was laughing too. We began to talk. Just then, a friend of mine walked by and said hello. Then another friend walked by. ”Are you picking up girls in the park again?” he said. I didn’t think that would help my cause. But the woman did not object when I offered to walk her home. We chatted outside her building. Eventually she gave me her number I proposed exactly two years later, in the exact same spot in the park where we first met, without a beer drinker or my friends interrupting. We have now been together for 37 years. I wish I could buy that guy a beer. — David Machlowitz 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

Fred Plotkin, a pleasure activist and passionate Italy and culinary expert, speaks each Friday with leading people in the arts 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 70 By Laurence Lerman / New York City There’s no surer way to create buzz—and sales—for a book than to ban it. That was proven yet again by the Board of Education of McMinn County, Tenn., which removed the book Maus by Art Spiegelman from its eighth-grade English language arts curriculum in early January. The board voted 10-0 to remove the 30-year-old graphic novel, citing its "rough, objectionable language,” its “depiction of violence and suicide” and the fact that it contains a drawing of a nude woman. The board helpfully added that the book could be replaced with another book without content they deemed objectionable. “I may be wrong, but this guy that created the artwork used to do the graphics for Playboy. You can look at his history, and we’re letting him do graphics in books for students in elementary school,” board member Tony Allman is recorded as saying in the minutes of the January 10 meeting. “If I had a child in the eighth grade, this ain’t happening. If I had to move him out and homeschool him or put him somewhere else, this is not happening.” The graphic novel in question is shocking—just not in the way that the school board found. Maus, written and illustrated in 1991 by Jewish comic artist Spiegelman, was based on the terrifying WWII-era experiences of his parents in Poland, who were eventually sent to Auschwitz. In this unforgettable book, the Jewish people are depicted as mice and the Nazis as cats. It is the only graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer Prize, chosen by a thankfully more-discerning jury for a “Special Award in Letters” prize. Clearly, the school board felt that a significant gulf should be placed between the reality of what happened in the Holocaust and how it should be depicted to 14-year-olds, who are undoubtedly familiar with graphic novels and comic books. I’ve got to wonder if any of these board members have seen a Marvel Comics Universe movie--one of the most popular of which, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, one of the highest-grossing films of all time, found an alien baddie wiping out half of the known life in the universe with the snap of his fingers. Apparently, the board cannot deal with a more “graphic” metaphorical depiction of evil and violence when it’s played out by hand-drawn cats and mice. Fortuitously, the press coverage of the Maus dustup alerted me to a recent pair of animated films concerning and set during those same horrific years. Although my knowledge of homegrown, high-profile animated features is respectable, I was unfamiliar with the imports Charlotte and Where is Anne Frank, until I saw them mentioned in a number of recent stories The 2021 French/Canadian feature Charlotte, directed by veteran storyboard artists Éric Warin and Tahir Rona, tells the true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of WWII. It features the voices of Keira Knightley, Marion Cotillard and Brenda Blethyn and is slated to open in U.S. theaters on April 22. Where is Anne Frank, a 2021 feature by Israel’s Ari Folman, is an historical drama that follows the dreamlike journey of Kitty, the imaginary friend to whom Anne Frank dedicated her famous diary, and how it relates to mistreatment of refugees in today’s Europe. Folman is best known on these shores for the 2008 animated documentary feature Waltz with Bashir, which concerned the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Both films premiered last September at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. While there has been no shortage of Holocaust-themed films made over the last half-century—both documentaries and narratives—and new ones regularly filling the pipeline, I can’t think of any other animated features about the Holocaust. So it’s worth noting that not one but two new ones debuted this past year at one of the world’s leading fests and marketplaces. Meanwhile, it was announced in late 2019 that Michel Hazanavicius, the French-Jewish director of the 2011 Academy Award winner The Artist, is teaming up with StudioCanal for an animated feature film set during the Holocaust. The filmmaker will adapt Jean-Claude Grumberg’s 2019 novel La Plus Precieuse Des Marchandises (The Most Precious Merchandise), which concerns two families, one Jewish and one Catholic, and the terror they endured in in Poland during the Nazi occupation. Currently in production, it’s slated for theatrical release in late 2022 or 2023. As the co-creator and co-curator with Irv Slifkin of FilmShul (www.filmshul.com), a selection of interactive online presentations about cinema and popular culture as reflected by the Jewish-American experience, naturally I have my own thoughts about Holocaust-themed films. FilmShul grew out of the Covid lockdown and our wish to create an entertaining and informative online series that people could tune into during those tougher earlier days of the pandemic. Most of the courses, powered by Zoom, revolve around lighter subjects—Mel Brooks, the Catskills, the mystique of Brooklyn, the nickelodeon era and such—though we would get a little more serious with such presentations as The Hollywood Blacklist and WWII and Hollywood’s Jewish Question. We specifically avoided the Holocaust as we felt that as a FilmShul presentation, it wouldn’t serve our purposes as a more pleasant diversion from everyone’s stress and fatigue of the moment. But with all the positive, proactive ruckus we’re seeing over Maus and the arrival of a pair of respectable animated films about the Holocaust, we’re reconsidering the development of a course on that topic. It feels like we’ve arrived at a place where comic books and cartoon movies can communicate the facts and feelings on a subject that should be remembered and understood by all. And there are people—good people—who want to hear those stories, just as there are those who want to tell them in a fashion that serves them best. And that’s good enough for us. Meanwhile, it looks like the McMinn Country Board of Education’s action is putting Maus into more hands than it’s seen in years. The Complete Maus, which includes both individual Maus I and Maus II volumes, became an Amazon bestseller within a week. As of Sunday, February 6, it holds the No. 1 spot in the online retailer’s fiction-satire and comics-graphic novels categories, as well as the No. 3 spot overall for books. The individual editions have also risen to bestseller status on the Amazon charts. Other results of the backlash include a number of Tennessee comic shops and bookstores announcing they would give away the book free to any interested student and hold discussions on its themes. In North Carolina, a professor at Davidson College is offering McMinn County eighth graders and high school students a free online course on Maus, a four-week-long seminar that will begin next week. We hear that the line of authors waiting to have their books banned in Tennessee is growing by the minute. 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 Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. The closer the House Select Committee on the January 6 Insurrection gets to exposing those who orchestrated the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election, the louder Republicans shout about taking revenge when they control Congress again. And with all their nationwide voter suppression machinations, they understandably believe that this year’s midterm elections will give them that control. On January 23, Newt Gingrich, a former Republican Speaker of the House, told Fox News: “You're going to have a Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate. And all of these people who have been so tough and so mean and so nasty are going to be delivered subpoenas.” In case anyone missed the point of whom he meant, Gingrich called the January 6 Committee a “lynch mob” for “pursuing innocent people.” Gingrich, who knows a thing or two about political lynch mobs, was engaging in the Republicans’ favorite pastime: projecting their own actions and motives onto their opponents. In the 1990s, as Majority House Leader, Gingrich led a patently partisan impeachment investigation into President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. It’s curious how Republicans consider lying about a private affair to be a high crime and misdemeanor, but find fomenting a coup a perfectly appropriate use of presidential power. Gingrich further threatened on Fox News, “I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down. And the wolves are going to find out they are now sheep and they're the ones who are going to face a real risk of, I think, jail for the kind of laws they're breaking." Of course, Gingrich did not name one single law January 6 Committee members have broken. In response, the vice chair of the committee, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, staunchly tweeted, “A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution. This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.” California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, one of the Democrats on the committee, called Gingrich’s statements “bizarre,” saying, “We're not going after anybody. We're going after the truth.” Lofgren told CNN that the committee is uncovering a plot to “essentially overturn our system of government,” and said of Gingrich’s jail threat, "You know, it leaves me speechless. I mean, unless he is assuming that the government does get overthrown and there's no system of justice." Why Gingrich’s statements surprised Lofgren, I do not understand. Overthrowing the government is precisely what those at the top of the Republican Party attempted in fomenting the January 6 insurrection—and they are continuing in that attempt even now. But why should anyone care what Newt Gingrich—who has not been in government since 1998—thinks? Because Gingrich is advising House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Republican plans for the midterm elections and the next congressional term. Apparently, Gingrich is passing on the wisdom of his viperous, scorched-earth tactics, and responding to legitimate investigations with brazen tit-for-tat threats—justice, reason, or evidence be damned. The Republican Threats When Republicans accuse their opposition of something, you won’t lose money betting it is something they themselves are doing—or planning to do. Their tried-and-true maneuver is projection. They also frequently appropriate their opponents’ language to describe their own situation in order to confuse public perception. This often involves claiming they are doing the opposite of what they are actually doing. And of course, there is the outsized, over-the-top nature of the accusations Republicans lodge against those who oppose them. Gingrich’s bullying statements are a classic example of these techniques. In a January 20 op-ed in Newsweek, Gingrich claimed that Democrats seem to think they can “behave like wolves and destroy and intimidate their Republican opponents.” Gingrich shamelessly equated the January 6 Committee’s requests for testimony and documents with Joseph Stalin “killing his rivals,” and the Castro brothers in Cuba “torturing, imprisoning, and exiling political opponents.” On a tear, Gingrich called for Republicans, once they are back in power, to launch the “Select Committee on Congressional Dishonesty and Abuse of Power” to investigate members of the January 6 Committee and Justice Department officials. Then, while again calling the committee members vicious wolves, Gingrich simultaneously appropriated parts of their language in an effort make his threats appear respectable: “This is not about revenge. This is about reinforcing the principle that in America, political wolves who viciously destroy their fellow Americans—and violate the rule of law to do so—will not be tolerated. This is about restoring the core principles of American self-government.” Lesson learned. Following Gingrich’s tutelage, McCarthy and other Republicans have characterized the investigations of wrongdoing on January 6 as “politically motivated.” But as Vanity Fair wrote, “each time Democrats have tried to hold Republicans accountable for flagrant transgressions, their counterparts have responded with threats to return the favor, regardless of whether or not it’s actually warranted.” If Republicans win back the House, Kevin McCarthy has vowed that he will remove Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California, from key committee assignments. No surprise there--both Schiff and Swalwell were prominent in the Trump impeachment investigations. Schiff, the current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is also on the January 6 Committee. The Republicans would also remove from committees, ultra-progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Clearly, this would be done as retribution for the Democrats’ unilateral removal of Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona from their committee assignments. But Greene and Gosar were removed for cause. The duo had seriously threatened the lives of fellow representatives and Minority Leader McCarthy, the head of their caucus, had refused to do anything about it. If these Democrats are removed, it will not be for cause, but as revenge for their efforts to save our democracy or for the policy positions they have taken to represent their constituents. And that’s not all. Republican North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop has, according to The New Republic, also threatened contempt resolutions and criminal referrals of Attorney General Merrick Garland; White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain; President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden; Attorney Marc Elias, who has been challenging voter suppression laws in court; Andrew Weissmann, the chief of DOJ’s fraud section; and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. But the Republicans won’t stop there. As early as May 2021, Elie Mystal presciently wrote in The Nation, “If Democrats prosecute Trump for corruption and tax fraud, Republicans will prosecute Joe Biden for having ice cream before dinner if they have to. That is their way.” Proving Mystal an accurate prophet, last week, Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz, said on his podcast that if the Republicans take over the House, “I think we’ll see serious investigations of the Biden Administration.” Cruz predicted that the Republicans could impeach President Biden “whether it’s justified or not.” Counting on short memories, Cruz claimed that the Democrats have gone after Trump simply ”because they disagree with him.” But the 2019 impeachment was based on Trump’s attempt to force Ukraine to falsely claim it was investigating Biden’s family in order to obtain foreign aid, and the 2021 impeachment was based on his incitement of the January 6 insurrection. As if the threats by Republicans in Congress were not enough, former President Trump still has his finger well in the pot, personally pushing GOP lawmakers, congressional candidates, and operatives to get ready to start investigations and, in particular, to target the FBI for supposedly causing the January 6 violence. Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows has even suggested, reported Vanity Fair, that Trump become speaker if Republicans take the House. Wouldn’t that be fun? The country would have its own version of Robespierre combined with Alice in Wonderland’s Queen of Hearts. Off with everybody’s heads! In addition, Trump is prepping his mobs for massive violence if he is indicted for anything at all. Spreading his vitriol at a Texas rally on January 29, Trump told his crowd, “If these radical, vicious” prosecutors or investigators “do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had…in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta, and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt.” To encourage such mayhem, Trump promised that if he runs and gets elected in 2024, he’ll pardon the January 6 insurrectionists—thus implying that he will do the same for any who attack those who indict him. None of these threats are hyperbolic, and we citizens dismiss them at our peril. When Trump incites violence, he means it. And when Republicans talk of putting their opponents in jail regardless of evidence of wrongdoing—they mean it too. In its determination to stop any investigation that would prevent its creation of a totalitarian state, the Republican Party will even eat its own. On February 4, in a lightning quick voice vote with no debate or discussion, the Republican National Committee voted to censure Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger for participating on the January 6 Committee. The RNC also made plans to fund a primary challenge against Cheney in Wyoming. (Kinzinger is not running for reelection.) Cheney and Kinzinger are standing firm. But if this is what the Republicans will do to their own for trying to defend democracy, one can only imagine what they will do when they have power over their enemies. Unless they are stopped, these authoritarians will take their anti-democratic moves as far as they are allowed to take them. Wake Up, Merrick Garland! The effort to prevent the establishment of a radically authoritarian state is in a race against time. If the Republicans take over the Congress in the 2022 midterm election, the House’s current investigation of the attempted coup will be stopped dead in its tracks and buried. And if the Republicans follow through on their threats, the Justice Department may be paralyzed by impeachment inquiries that prevent it from effectively investigating or prosecuting those who conspired to overturn the 2020 election. So the DOJ has limited time to act. But there is no indication that Attorney General Garland recognizes this. The agency has not yet even decided whether to act on the December 13, 2021, criminal referral of Mark Meadows for contempt of Congress, for his refusal to obey a lawful subpoena. And—despite the enormous amount of public evidence—the DOJ has not given any sign that it has even begun investigating the suspected organizers of the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. As political scientist and MSNBC commentator Jason Johnson recently observed, “the defenders of democracy may end up failing, because while they’re trying to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, you’ve got [the Republicans]… making sure the t’s and i’s don’t matter because they control the alphabet and they control the count in every state.” If only Attorney-General Merrick Garland would take heed of Mr. Johnson’s warning, and let the public know that the DOJ is, at this stage, not still merely considering the legal ifs, ands, and buts, of what to do. Because while the DOJ moves more slowly than a tortoise—if it is acting at all—the impending authoritarian seizure of government may make DOJ’s so-called considerations irrelevant. The January 6 Committee is under even more pressure than DOJ. It has a mere 10 months to complete its work and present its results to the public before the fascists may take over and dismantle it. The committee was supposed to begin public hearings this month or early next month, but Democratic committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, has said that due to new evidence, public hearings now may not occur until April or May. However, according to Salon, Rep. Raskin has also promised that the upcoming hearings “will blow the roof off the House.” Let us hope the hearings do just that, and in a timely fashion—because something needs to rouse DOJ from its reverie and wake the public up to how we almost lost our democracy, and still could if they don’t vote in the midterm elections. 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 Emmy Serviss / Boston Last year for Valentine's Day, I bought two tickets for an at-home Paint Nite for me and my ex. Supplies weren’t included in the price, so I also placed an order at Michael’s for canvases, paints and brushes. We sat together on his couch and painted our complimentary nightscapes, the centerpiece being a giant heart constellation that stretched across both canvases. The paintings came out surprisingly well and I was so relieved that after a year of quarantining together, we had managed to keep the romance alive. Less than a month later, we were broken up and I had moved back home. If this were a TV sitcom, this is where the narrator would chime in with a very dry voice-over saying, “She did not keep the romance alive.” I spent March contemplating my life and wondering how I had failed at yet another relationship. Then in April, I beat myself up for not realizing sooner that my ex was clearly not emotionally available and I had been in denial. Finally, in May I decided that even though breakups are never fun, it was the right thing for us and I was ready to move on. After trying to get back on the horse a little too soon over the summer, I declared that I was going to take the rest of 2021 and focus on MYSELF. And now here we are, in 2022. If anyone has an idea of how one is supposed to date in these unprecedented times, then I would love to hear it. I hated dating apps before, but now the thought of downloading Tinder again makes me break out in a cold sweat. So I did what any sensible, strong, independent woman in her (very) late 30s would do. I reactivated my OK Cupid account. I already regret it. While it can be kind of fun to aimlessly scroll through profiles of single men in a 25-mile radius as though I were browsing through clothes at T.J. Maxx, it can also be mind-numbingly frustrating to read the same inane messages over and over again. “hey what r u doin right now” “what’s up.” “oh you do comedy that’s cool, I’ve seen SNL” “haha bet it would be funny if my name was Oscar or Tony” But even MORE frustrating is the ever popular “hello,” followed by a classic ghosting. So why do I keep going back to online dating? That is an excellent question and I wish I had an answer. Mostly because in the 21st century, there doesn’t seem to be an alternative. It feels like my parents’ generation had an easier time meeting people and settling down with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids. They also had an easier time with college loans, buying a home and making a living wage, but that’s a different article. I imagine that the absence of the Internet and technology made it easier for the Boomers to find real connections. To meet new people, you had to actually venture outside of your apartment and…meet new people. Nowadays, with 50% of the world’s population* plugged into some sort of social app, it’s easy to make up an excuse to stay home binging Squid Games and just keep swiping away. *This number was pulled from thin air and is not based on any actual science, so please don’t quote me. If we were still living in a “normal” society, I could go out to a bar and try to pick someone up. Or ask a friend to set me up on a blind date. Or try speed dating again. (All of these options sound terrible, by the way.) But now that we’re living in a Covid world, all those options carry far more of a risk than I’m willing to take. So back to the apps I go. It hasn’t been too bad so far. I’m having a nice conversation about The Twilight Zone with a real-estate broker from Concord, and no one has asked me if I like to [insert inappropriate act here] on a first date. With Valentine’s Day coming up, it’s hard not to feel a little lonely. I don’t miss my ex, but I miss the intimacy. I miss having a person to snuggle up to on a cold night, or to give the rest of my dinner when I’m full. I miss having a hand to hold in a movie theater or to play with their hair as we fall asleep. I miss the butterflies in my stomach when a relationship is still blossoming, and I miss the quiet contentment when I look over at someone and smile to myself, because not only are they my person, but I’m also theirs. I’d like to believe I’ll find my person for real this time. Maybe I’m about to swipe right on him on OK Cupid. Maybe he’s someone I already know. Or maybe I missed my chance and our paths will never cross. The only thing I know for sure, is that I’d like to finally get off these damn apps. But because I’m a hopeless romantic, I’ll keep hope alive. And for now, I’ll keep swiping. Emmy Serviss is a Boston-based writer, actor and video editor. Once it is safe to return to live theater, you can find her performing with ComedySportz Boston and the sketch group SUZZY. When not on the stage, Emmy enjoys indulging in her new pandemic hobbies, laughing way too loudly and counting the days until Halloween.

By Andy Borowitz February 7, 2022 PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump has produced a letter from his podiatrist to avoid serving with the Russian forces massing on the border of Ukraine. Although Trump has not yet been drafted into the Russian Army, he has been “living in terror” of receiving a draft notice from Vladimir Putin, a source close to the former President said. “It wouldn’t be the first time Putin commanded him to do something,” the source said. According to the source, Trump has sent Putin the podiatrist’s note, which asserted that marching with the Russian Army would cause intolerable pain in his foot region. “He apologized to Putin for being unable to serve in the Russian Army, and recommended that he draft Tucker Carlson instead,” the source said. 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 John Rolfe / Red Hook, NY Not to unduly unnerve you, but the pandemic was custom-made for a paranoid society like America’s. I don’t mean it was cooked up in a lab as part of sinister scheme of world domination. It’s just that in ordinary times, we’re absolutely terrified of germs. We steep ourselves in antibacterial soaps and antibiotics. We fret about every possible malady and resort to screenings and drastic preemptive procedures at the slightest hint of one. We stew about gluten in our food. (I bet most people don’t even know what gluten is. I don’t.) I grew up in an era when making mud pies (and occasionally eating them on a dare) was good for your immune system. Use it or lose it was the received wisdom. Now we bubble wrap kids against all bugs and bruises, consigning them to a virtual world indoors and a strictly supervised one outside. Part of the problem is that we are simply more aware than we’ve ever been of every possible damned thing that can go wrong in this world. Such is life in the Information-Disinformation Age, when anyone can say anything and have it embraced as gospel truth, especially when it’s what we want to believe. It doesn’t help that America is also a Petri dish of political paranoia. Democrats are blood-drinking Satanists who feast on children; Bill Gates and George Soros control the weather; paid actors are staging traumatic events from Sandy Hook to the Capitol; voter fraud determines every election; communists lurk under every bed; microchips are in vaccines. You don’t need proof or even credible evidence of any of this. Just keep saying it and we’re good to go. The prevailing mindset is that nothing is safe, absolutely no one can be trusted and absolutely everyone is lying to you to further their agenda. It’s enough to make you flee the planet screaming. Into this funhouse came Covid-19 and its seemingly endless variants. Naturally, its origin is a matter of fierce dispute. Never mind that it is probably just another case of an illness jumping from animals to humans, as such bugs have done since we started living in close quarters with critters thousands of years ago. Masks have been used for centuries during pandemics, but we still have to fight over their effectiveness. I don’t get the insistence that mask and vaccine mandates are merely efforts to control us. Why? Just so people in power can make us do it? Are they really sitting there chuckling at the sight of us running around with patches of cloth on our scowling mugs? Maybe, I guess. But why go to the trouble of putting tracking chips in vaccines when we are already being tracked by cameras in public places, not to mention our own phones, Internet browsers, GPS devices, credit card purchases, and financial transactions? I do understand distrust of vaccines. Corporations have long been lying to us about dangerous things like opioids and tobacco for the sake of profit. And anyone can commission a study by “experts” that shows jumping out of a plane without a parachute has health benefits. How many studies have you seen proclaiming eggs or apples are good for you, only be followed by others that say eggs or apples will kill you? Is it any wonder climate change is so hotly contested? And now, to add to all this fun, we have reports of humans giving Covid to animals, making it possible for the virus to mutate and be given back to us in a new variant. Apparently the estimated 30 million deer cavorting about this great land of ours present a virtually uncontrollable breeding pool for the virus. “The sheer possibility that these things are happening and it’s unknown makes this very unsettling,” Suresh Kuchipudi, a virologist at Pennsylvania State University, told NBC News. “We could be caught by surprise with a completely different variant.” Gee, thanks. Another thing for your worry list. Even the humble hamster is a looming threat, according to Medpagetoday.com–(“Can We Catch COVID From Our Pets?”) “The hamster happens to encode an ACE2 that looks a lot like the human ACE2, and so the virus essentially chose the ability to infect hamsters by its evolution,” Benjamin tenOever of NYU Langone Health's Departments of Microbiology and Medicine told Medpagetoday. “So even though we most often use mice or rats for our small animal models, hamsters have always been incredibly susceptible to all the variants and they show disease that very much looks like COVID-19 in humans.” In case that doesn’t make you view your furry little friends with alarm, tenOever also mentions this ominous, heartrending possibility: “You know, I have two little girls at home and they have friends that have hamsters, and I have warned their parents. Not that I'm worried that the hamsters are going to contribute to any new dynamics in the pandemic, but more than that, should they get a SARS-CoV-2 infection, if they give it to their hamsters, there's a good possibility that their hamsters will die.” And lest you worry only about Sammy the Hammy’s demise, chew on this statement: “Now, the question of whether or not we should be concerned about it coming back and infecting us, like the situation in Hong Kong, where they're concerned about pets — that's a more real possibility in that people do socialize in very close contact with their pets.” Yes, he’s saying there’s a chance you could give the virus to your pet or your pet could reciprocate simply because you closely interact — rather intimately in some cases, such as when your pooch licks your face or your cat sleeps on your head at night. And even though tenOever says a strain evolving in the wild is “not necessarily” guaranteed to come back to humans, I suspect that there are likely muttonheads out there who will kill wild animals and get rid of their pets. Personally, I’ve been living with my cat Doodle for 18 years and as far as I know all she’s ever gotten from me is cat food, cheese and daily rubs of her chin. She’s never given them back. There are also lots of deer where I live. Fortunately, they seem intent on keeping their distance, so I doubt any Covid-infected people will be getting close enough to breathe on them or invite them into their homes. Unfortunately, calm rationality and common sense are the first victims in a nation of paranoid people in bubbles. Blessedly, one truth remains undisputed: Something will get us in the end. We’re all eventually going to keel over no matter what we do. I never thought I’d find that fact comforting, but it’s kind of liberating now that I think about it. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Andy Borowitz February 2, 2022 MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Offering the diplomatic community a new rationale for his recent actions, Vladimir Putin said that he deserves Ukraine as consolation for losing the White House in 2020. “Losing control of the most powerful nation on earth was a bitter pill for me to swallow, to say the least,” the Russian President said. “Giving me Ukraine would make things somewhat better.” “It’s only fair,” he continued. At the White House, President Biden called Putin’s logic “unacceptable,” but added, “At least he admits he lost.” 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 Laurence Lerman / New York City My first encounter with Monica Vitti took place in the late 1970s in one of Manhattan’s legendary repertory movie houses on the Upper West Side. It was either the Thalia or the Regency—I can’t recall which—but I can clearly remember the impact of seeing Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 drama L’Avventura for the very first time. It made for quite a heady and exotic experience for a teenage cinephile raised in central Jersey, who dared venture into the big city to seek out enticing foreign language fare The same can be said of Monica Vitti, L’Avventura’s cooly alluring leading lady, who died in Rome on Wednesday, February 2. The actress, described by Italy’s Cultural Minister Dario Franceschini as “the Queen of Italian Cinema,” was 90. Back in the day, I was familiar with the likes of a handful of shapely Italian actresses like Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Gina Lollobrigida. Not from foreign film houses, mind you, but rather their Hollywood-produced English-language films of the ‘50s and ‘60s that were in regular rotation on American television. But Ms. Vitti was different—an undeniable beauty who was as icy, detached and cerebral as Sophia and Claudia and Gina were warm, life-loving and earthy. Ms. Vitti was already and established theater star in Italy when she made three films in succession with Antonioni (with whom she was in a relationship for the majority of the decade): L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L’Ecclise (1962). The movies came to be referred to as the filmmaker’s “Alienation Trilogy.” Antonioni’s austere, elegant and sparsely designed portraits of the emotionally isolated and ennui-filled lives of the Italian bourgeoisie found a perfect symbol in Ms. Vitti, whose enigmatic and seemingly disengaged presence was as deliberate and fine-tuned as the filmmaker’s compositions. Dialogue was limited in Antonioni’s films—he preferred his mise-en-scène to do the talking—but when it came time to emote, Ms. Vitti did so in appropriately aloof and hushed Italian tones. Sensual ones, too. “We spent the whole night talking things over. And for what?,” she listlessly asks her lover, Alain Delon, at one point in L’eclisse. “There are times when holding a needle and thread, or a book, or a man—it’s all the same.” Following her international arthouse breakthrough with Antonioni in the 1960s (she also starred in his first color film, 1964’s Red Desert, and, later, in 1980’s The Mystery of Oberwald), Ms. Vitti went on to appear in dozens of commercial Italian productions. A couple of them, like the romantic comedies The Pizza Triangle (1974) and Duck in Orange Sauce (1975), were quite successful abroad, but the majority never made it to stateside theaters. Ms. Vitti’s two major English language endeavors—the candy-colored 1966 James Bond spoof Modesty Blaise, based on the popular British comic strip, and 1979’s An Almost Perfect Affair—were both tepidly received. Reportedly, Vitti didn’t like to travel outside of Europe and believed her English was not good enough for English-language productions, not that Hollywood ever aggressively came knocking on her door. It is Ms. Vitti’s films with Antonioni in the 1960s for which she will always remain best identified and remembered. They were sterling examples of the era’s stylish new kind of European cinema, presented by the latest cycle of young filmmakers and performers. And her work in them, chilly and removed as it was, made a warm and provocative mark on this young cinephile’s openness to all manner of cinematic storytelling. 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.