#the waverly gallery

[marywoodartdept]

Get Out Your Scrapbooks

On her visit to the Waverly Small Works Gallery, Delayne, our Arts Administration blogger, came across an artists named Zoya Forsberg. Delayne writes about her style, and her different pieces that were included in the gallery. #MarywoodArt #ArtsAdmin

[c-kiddo]

(Follow up on ask) I want to try real hard to hike some part of the highlands, so anywhere up there really that I could get to by train.

And I’m also trying to go into Edinburgh to look around a bit! 🌿💚

(Also no pressure cause that is a big ask, just curious)

ah ok, highlands via train would be like west coast line up to fort william/mallaig, and tbh not super familiar with the areas (except for oban, which you can get a ferry to iona or mull etc from, which mull is vry nice. but check ferry things for that. also if you get off at luss or earlier at balloch you can get boat rides across loch lomond. loch lomond is so <3 i love going into the hills around there, haven't been to the arrochar alps tho which are on the side the train stations are on) Or you can get the train up from glasgow queen street in the inverness direction. i havent been to inverness but dunkeld & birnam on the way is very cute and has rly nice hikes from it (birnam hill!!, the hermitage!!, loch of the lowes). aviemore also has nice hikes going out from it (craigellachie nature reserve, plus steamtrain line up further north to abernethy forest type area maybe??? double check that). i'd stick to those lines rly for highland stuff. dont bother with aberdeen ive been told be so many people at this point (including from there) not to bother lol. its just boring. (unless youre using it to get on a ferry to orkney or shetland). .. hrmrmrmm for edinburgh. i am a bit of an edinburgh hater ,however the botanic gardens, the national gallery of scotland and lighthouse books are all nice. botanics are huge and nicely themed areas (and free except for the glasshouses which i've never been in) (but also out of th way of the city centre). national gallery has good stuff. lighthouse books is a queer-owned indie bookshop and has a rly nice selection of queer and political books but also various other local writers and things like that. its just rly nice. also Hadeel is palestinian gift shop items, so thats cool to go to i havent been tho. One world shop is also a nice fairtrade type shop. also i went to both holy cow cafe and lounge and the food was good . i will say tho that you absolutely can get into the highlands via edinburgh waverly but glasgow central + glasgow queen street have the west coast line + inverness route too, you'll need to go into glasgow for th west coast, in case you want to plan around that.

[msweebyness]

Theater Kid Families

These are the families for my theater kiddos! @artzychic27 @imsparky2002 Enjoy!

Missy:

Axel Rutherford

Raised Missy on his own since his wife died in childbirth

Swimming instructor

Missy's temper comes from him

They argue a lot, but love each other very much

Sees Ondine like another daughter

Jesse:

Imelda Ortega

Possibly the sweetest woman in the world

Except when you hurt her son, ask her ex-husband

Research botanist

Seeing a therapist to work through feelings from her marriage

Good friends with Fred Haprele, Jesse and Mylene ship them

Manolo Ortiz

Massive POS, physically and emotionally abusive

Reason Jesse is blind in one eye

Currently in prison, courtesy of the Tomassians

Involved in a bunch of shady business

Ayesha:

Megan Reynolds

Ray of sunshine gene comes from her

Certified life coach

Talks a bit louder than she needs to

Makes up cheers for household chores

Watches her daughter's cartoons in her free time

Kurt Reynolds

Yoga instructor

Super chill and positive

Serves as a grounding force for his wife and daughter

Likes to doodle with Ayesha

Dot:

Enid Waverly

Could be BFFs with Nathalie, tbh

Event coordinator for a big business

Bun life 24/7, not a hair out of place

Struggles with expressing emotions

Never without her tablet

Orenthal Waverly

Very no nonsense, but more chill than his wife

Prosecuting Attorney for a big law firm

Soft-spoken when not in the courtroom

Keeps fidgets on hand for his older daughter

Dolores Waverly

Much more scatterbrained than her little sister, Dot helps keep her on track

Seriously, would lose her head if it wasn't attached

Deals with some anxiety

Always has at least two books on hand

Petra:

Arlo Markov

Petra's Bio Dad, an old friend was their surrogate

Interior designer, owns a business

VERY energetic, how much coffee does he drink?!

Happy flaps when he's excited

Will smack a bitch for his kid

Dennis Windham

Dad #2, the bear of the group

Junior football coach

Very emotionally intelligent

Usually has his whistle

Preston Manheim

Dad #3, the voice of reason

Very prim, always uses proper grammar. High class boi

Loves him some argyle and tea

Soft-spoken, but people listen to him

Curator of an art gallery

Trent Knapp

Dad #4, the hippie dad

Plays the mandolin, writes songs for his partners

New Age Philosophy teacher

Speaks like a fortune cookie, tbh

Anais:

Olive Ackerman

Celebrated particle physicist

Expects nothing but absolute perfection from her child

Think of Nicole Watterson's parents and Ming Lee, combined

Refuses to believe she's doing anything wrong

Praise is very controlled and limited

Quentin Ackerman

Chemist, very respected in the field

Secretly feels they may be too hard on Anais

Too scared of his wife to say anything, tho

Tries his best to bond with Anais over their shared interests

Roxie:

Richard Richter

Manager of a music store

Gives guitar lessons on the weekends

Actually a pretty chill dude

Good friend of Anarka, they had a band as teens

Can think up lyrics on the spot

Rydel Richter

Contemporary piano teacher

Roxie gets their temper from her

Strong enough to throw a table if needed

HATES Roxie's ex with a burning passion

Mama Bear

Rover Richter

Curious about everything, always has to ask why

Wants to be a drummer, carries around sticks

Has trouble sitting still

Will kick Roxie's ex in the shins on sight

Anthony:

Sylvie Mathis

Diplomat from England

The epitome of a proper British lady

Very supportive of her son, he got her into punk rock

Adores Jesse like her own son

Can play a mean game of foosball

Bradley Mathis

Diplomat from England

A bit more laidback than his wife

MEGA Cockney accent

Knows everything about the Beatles

Makes the best tea ever

Eri:

Hiroshi Tanaka

Screenwriter for an Indie studio

HUGE nerd but also really cool

Has never missed a play by his daughter or wife

Trivia champ, could rival Max

Sasami Tanaka

Celebrated stage actress, has done 215 (and counting) productions throughout her life

Every bit as dramatic as her daughter

Loves to quote plays in everyday life

Dresses to impress, always

Ryuji Tanaka

Eri's twin, just as goth but more subdued

Cosmetology student, attends a different school

Talks with his sister every day

Snark besties with Anthony

Candace:

Laurent Fletcher

Antique dealer, owns several successful branches and establishments

Charmingly British and a bit awkward

Has ridiculously high patience

Loves Candace as much as his bio sons

Sandra Fletcher

Former top-selling musician, now owns her own restaurant

Might spoil her kids a bit

Cried with joy when Candace became head cheerleader

Attends every pep rally

Finnick Fletcher

Ten-year old mechanical genius, looks up to Max

Always needs to have something to do, has ADHD

Always trying to help his stepsister, doesn't always succeed

Very close with his brother

Ferdinand "Ferdie" Fletcher

Rarely ever speaks, and only to his family

Knows FSL and ASL

Artsy kid, always drawing on something

Actually really smart

Soo-Yeon:

Eun-Jeong Park

Professional restorator, has a meticulous eye for detail

Speaks when something needs to be said

INSANELY flexible for some reason

Helps his son practice on their hoop at home, he used to play in high school

Mi Cha Park

Every bit as clumsy as her son, seriously, babyproof that house

Stay-at-home mom who sells her handmade snowglobes on Etsy

Cheering the loudest for her son at his games

Can kick both her husband and son’s butts on the court

Margo:

Leif Jorgensen

Professional contractor

Very jovial and kind to everyone around him

Can have his head in the clouds sometimes

He TALL, but somehow not intimidating

Besties with his daughter

Dagny Jorgensen

Artisan woodcarver, owns a successful business

Loves doing DIY projects with her daughter

Slips into Norwegian when frustrated

Most down-to-earth of the family

Staci:

Bai Kwan

Staci gets her sass from him

Political commentator for TVi, cannot stand Alec. Hates Bourgeois too

It’s a game at the studio to try and get him to laugh

He only laughs or smiles around his family

Yumei Kwan

Owns a local cafe, the fave for quality Chinese food

Takes no one’s shit, but also super perky

A former cheer squad flyer who helps Staci work out

People wonder how they’re related sometimes

Parker:

Col. Levi Beauregard

Big, strong military man

Speaks in all the military jargon

Surprisingly warm with his kids

Does obstacle courses with Parker

Cissy Beauregard

Retired army nurse, now works at DuPont

Meticulously keeps medical records of all students

Rose sees her like an aunt of sorts

Still uses military jargon

Jack Beauregard

Going into the army after high school

Strained, but loving relationship with his younger sister

Very tall and buff

Always trying to impress his father

Taught Parker self-defense

Brecken:

Annie Sutcliffe

Adopts a crap ton of random animals

Owner of a local, accredited shelter

Soft-spoken. Except when animals or her kids are threatened

Queen of the flannels

Rachel Sutcliffe:

Southern Belle with a kickass edge

Pro kickboxing instructor, who slays in sundresses

Will deck you if you call her son stupid

Makes a mean sweet potato pie

Dana & Donna Sutcliffe:

Try to tell these two apart if you’re not their brother. Just try.

Starting at DuPont next year

Have both had crushes on Kim

Aspiring cook and artist

Do the synchronous talking thing

Evie:

Julio Balthazar

Independently successful mosaic artist

His in-laws warmed up to him over time

Proud of his talented kids and boss wife

Always has glass cuts on his hands, poor guy

Carolina Balthazar

Comes from an old Spanish family of wealth

Still the CFO of a Bigshot record company

May put a little too much pressure on her kids, but not maliciously

HATES the stuffy old heiress stereotype

Alma Balthazar

Talented classical musician

Feels like she’s always in Evie’s shadow

Can be a little snippy, but has a soft side

Weak for comedy films

Emilio Balthazar

Snarky and suave lil shit

Can impersonate anyone's voice

Huge prankster

Gets on Evie's nerves 24/7

Jorge Balthazar

The shyest kid you may ever meet

Speaks similarly to Juleka

Loves to put on little puppet shows

Fidgets with his hands a lot

Rosa Balthazar

Baby of the family, and she knows it

Loves to wear her princess dresses

Adores her oldest sister, wants to sing like Evie

May have a little puppy crush on Brecken

Aggie:

Rohan Findlay

Aggie's paternal uncle, gained custody when she was nine, because his brother is a drunk and his sister-in-law is negligent

Mechanic who co-owns a practice

Bought Aggie her first skateboard

Good friends with Aerinn O'Connor

Bit of a jokester

Mona:

Bindi Truffaut

A bit of a helicopter mom to Mona, kinda overprotective

Kindergarten teacher

Has a mild stutter

Will punt an ableist's ass

Darnell Truffaut

Guidance counselor at DuPont

The chill teacher dad, that you don't mind being there

Helps his wife give Mona some space

HATES Damocles with the fires of hell

Cares a LOT about the students

Eloise:

Roerva Matuidi

Teacher of psychology at an elite university

Tutors at a community center on the weekends

Academic mom, but a chill one

SO proud of her daughter's math prowess

Cannot stand Olive Ackerman

Chet Matuidi

Eloise's gaming buddy, has a streaming channel his sister guests on

Really good with lit, but struggles with math

Helps his sister with emotional expression

Has to be forced to sleep

Leave your thoughts in the comments and reblogs!

[cha-melodius]

2022 Fic Year In Review

I created this last year based off a variety of year-in-review posts I've seen and done in the past. Added a few more questions this year, in part based on review memes I was tagged in by @cricketnationrise and @rmd-writes. Feel free you grab it if you want to do your own review! And I'd like to add a hearty thank you to each and every person who's read my fics over the years, y'all continue to make this a joy!

2020 Review | 2021 Review

AO3 Username: chamel  My Page: Link Most Active Fandoms: The Man from UNCLE (2015): 17 works Loki: 8 works Red, White & Royal Blue: 6 works New Fandoms: RWRB, Glass Onion Total Number Of Completed Works/Word Count This Year: 31 works, 282k words All Time: 82 works, 1 million words

Most Popular One Shot (by kudos): This Year: Class(room) Warfare (RWRB, Alex/Henry, T, 7.8k words) All Time: What Makes A Good Man (Loki, Loki/Mobius, T, 8.5k words)

Most Popular Completed Multi-Chapter (by kudos): This Year: A Good Man Is Hard To Find (Loki, Loki/Mobius, M, 81k words) All Time: Do You Promise Not to Tell? (The Mandalorian, Cara/Din, E, 87.7k words)

Events/Challenges: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Gift Exchange 2022, Whumptober, The Brownstone Weekly Drabble Challenge

More reflections and such below the cut!

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? About what I expected I think; I wrote only a bit more than last year. I realized in the last third? I think? of the year I was close to 1 million words, which is definitely more than I ever thought I'd write in total.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? This is tougher to answer this year! Mostly because I wrote a whole bunch of one-shots that I love. I might have to go with A Good Man Is Hard To Find, because I'm always partial to my long AUs.

Do you have any writing goals for the New Year? Last year's—> "Maybe try to produce more one-shots and fics under 15k words." Hey! I did that! Thanks in large part to a couple of times I solicited prompts on tumblr, so thanks to all of you! This year, I don't think I really have any specific goals. I want to complete a few large multichapter fics, which will probably mean my one-shot production goes down, but we'll see.

Did you take any writing risks this year? Same as last year, jumping into an active new fandom, always nerve wracking, etc. I also began drawing and produced an illustration for one of my stories for the first time (Double Dutch with a Hand Grenade).

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Sticking to those published this year, Sun in the Sky (You Know How I Feel) (I really thought that one would gain more traction).

Most fun story to write: Consider the Price to an Elf (Illya as an elf was too much fun), Class(room) Warfare, Loving You is Cherry Pie

Biggest disappointment: I've had some ups and downs with writing this year, but I'm trying to get better about managing my expectations and not getting disappointed when things don't get as many kudos or comments as I was expecting.

Biggest surprise: Very recent, but so far the spike in kudos that The Life You Had in Mind got after Glass Onion got released on Netflix. Crossovers usually are doomed to low kudos overall, so the response is so great! I even had someone read the fic not knowing anything about TMFU, which was a lovely comment to get.

Coming soon/planned (definite):

Finishing up remaining tumblr prompts (holiday and otherwise)

RWRB spy AU

Slightly bleak Napollya fic inspired by All Comes Crashing

Lokius probation AU for MTH winners

Lokius/Napollya spy AU crossover for MTH winner

Less solid plans:

Waverly/Blanc meeting/get together fic

Napollya multichap AU—chefs? bakery owners? writer/critic? art thief/gallery owner? astronauts? hockey?

Napollya multichap non-AU inspired by The Americans

RWRB baking competition AU and/or You've Got Mail AU

Napollya 5+1 saying goodnight

... about a thousand other possibilities, my fic ideas document is endless

[gerbits]

hi!!! i looooove your gameplay with the truffles, I was wondering if you built the fixer-upper for waverly yourself or if you got it off the gallery? thank you :)

hi there! thank you so much, I'm so glad you're enjoying it ;~;

I built the house myself! It's really nothing special, just a couple boxes on top of each other and lots of debug mode decor/clutter!

[merrock]

CHARACTER INFORMATION

face claim: Madelyn Cline

full name: Kaia Waverly

nickname(s) / goes by: Kaia / Kai

pronouns & gender: cis woman || she&her

sexuality: bisexual (lesbian-leaning)

birth date: August, 25, 1996.

birth place: Avalon, CA.

arrival to merrock: June 2024

housing: bungalow at the coast/pier

occupation: surf instructor / treasure hunter

work place: NA.

family: Seychelle Hutchinson - mom (AUS), Mark Waverly - dad (CR)

relationship status: Single Pringle

PERSONALITY

Kaia is extremely fortunate in the fact that she has dumb luck. It's usually this dumb luck that helps her get out of last-second obstacles. Kaia is also good with thinking outside the box; this makes her able to catch onto things that many others may not have thought about, or quickly brushed over. Another aspect that helps her with her line of work is that she knows a little about a lot; Kaia grew up with the ability to quickly get the hang of a new skill or activity, and thus she was easily bored - but, due to this she knows a wide range of info at a scale that can pertain to numerous topics. She's athletic, having had her fair share in sports growing up; soccer, volleyball, softball along with surfing and dance. She's always looking for new experiences and adventures, and is definitely someone who holds some pretty interesting stories. Kaia can easily build connections with others, but is used to keeping people at an arm's length due to the dangers of her job as well as the constant traveling. Her main goal in life is to experience and learn as much as she can about the world around her; as well as just to have fun and live every moment to the fullest. Kaia is super impulsive with her decisions, and this is due to the fact she is easily bored. She has good intentions, but is honestly chaotic in her actions. Is secretive by nature, and good at calling another's bluff; though she doesn't give the impression she's being secretive. Just overall, very fun-loving and here for a good time; always a 'why not?' type of vibe. She's just got her guard up cause of her past with her dad as well as her job.

WRITTEN BY: Ellie (she/her), est.

BACKGROUND / BIO

triggering / sensitive content warning: passive neglect

For as long as Kaia could remember, she was living a double-life. Originally from Avalon, CA - the girl was always split from her mother's condo in Sydney AUS, and her father's shack in Tamarindo CR. Whilst with her mother, Kaia's days were filled with spa treatments and art galleries. With her father, Kaia was always fighting against his job for his attention.

The only times she's genuinely "won" was when the activity took them to the shore. It was through her father that Kaia learned how to dive and boat; also gaining vast knowledge of the ocean and its inhabitants. The love for the water grew to be a constant in both places; both her parents loving to surf. It was amusing to her, that the one thing that ever brought her parents together was the only thing that made her feel centered; like she could breathe.

It was high school when her father ultimately stopped with the beach trips. His job just fully took over, but there was a rift that grew between them. As Kaia grew up, she started to see the extremely hard-to-reach side of her father that drove her mother away; the expectations too high for Kaia to reach in order to gain any sort of attention from him.

By the time she graduated high school with high honors, she was used to her father not showing up. He didn't care for her full ride scholarships, or that prestigious colleges wanted her.Instead of cutting ties and giving up like her mother did, Kaia tried to reach him by delving deep into his work. It was so much so, that she specialized in marine archaeology as well as oceanography in her studies. It was through her research for her thesis, when she stumbled upon a forum regarding an old map for Pirate Benito Bonito's treasure in Cocos Island. Her thesis then surrounding the lost treasure.

Maybe it was how her father scoffed, or maybe it was the discouragement from her preceptor that really had her drilling her life into solving the mystery after all. What was taking years for experts, only took Kaia about two weeks to solve and track down.

The amazing part wasn't having earned her father's attention or proving anyone wrong. It wasn't even how other doors began opening up for her in Costa Rica due to donating the treasure to the CR National Historic Society and Museum. It was the thrill and how similar solving the mystery was to how Kaia could breathe on a surfboard.

Since then, Kaia has been accepting quests from the wealthy, only to turn around and give it all to the museums and researchers. Recently, Kaia was caught straying from the original plan and running off with an artifact she feels is the key to a map she's been separated from. Due to this, she has been on the run and has decided to lay low in Merrock; taking on a cover job and assimilating to the small beach town way of life, to keep up the charade.

[kaiawaverly]

“FORTUNE AND GLORY, KID. FORTUNE AND GLORY.”

INTRODUCING…

NAME: Kaia Adrian Saylor Waverly

GENDER & PREFERRED PRONOUNS: Cis woman {She/Her}

AGE: 27

BIRTHDAY: August 25, 1996

ZODIAC: Virgo Sun, Leo Moon, Libra Rising

SEXUALITY: Bisexual

FACE CLAIM: Madelyn Cline

LABEL: The Wave Babe / The Loveable Rogue

OCCUPATION: Treasure Hunter / Surf Instructor

CURRENT RESIDENCE: The Coast/Pier; Merrock, ME. ( bungalow )

CHARACTER PLAYLIST: HERE.

↪ UP NEXT: “I AM NOT A WOMAN, I AM A GOD” BY HALSEY

BIOGRAPHY: TW PASSIVE NEGLECT

For as long as Kaia could remember, she was living a double-life. Originally from Avalon, CA - the girl was always split from her mother's condo in Sydney AUS, and her father's shack in Tamarindo CR. Whilst with her mother, Kaia's days were filled with spa treatments and art galleries. With her father, Kaia was always fighting against his job for his attention. The only times she's genuinely "won" was when the activity took them to the shore. It was through her father that Kaia learned how to dive and boat; also gaining vast knowledge of the ocean and its inhabitants. The love for the water grew to be a constant in both places; both her parents loving to surf. It was amusing to her, that the one thing that ever brought her parents together was the only thing that made her feel centered; like she could breathe. It was high school when her father ultimately stopped with the beach trips. His job just fully took over, but there was a rift that grew between them. As Kaia grew up, she started to see the extremely hard-to-reach side of her father that drove her mother away; the expectations too high for Kaia to reach in order to gain any sort of attention from him. By the time she graduated high school with high honors, she was used to her father not showing up. He didn't care for her full ride scholarships, or that prestigious colleges wanted her. Instead of cutting ties and giving up like her mother did, Kaia tried to reach him by delving deep into his work. It was so much so, that she specialized in marine archaeology as well as oceanography in her studies. It was through her research for her thesis, when she stumbled upon a forum regarding an old map for Pirate Benito Bonito's treasure in Cocos Island. Her thesis then surrounding the lost treasure. Maybe it was how her father scoffed, or maybe it was the discouragement from her preceptor that really had her drilling her life into solving the mystery after all. What was taking years for experts, only took Kaia about two weeks to solve and track down. The amazing part wasn't having earned her father's attention or proving anyone wrong. It wasn't even how other doors began opening up for her in Costa Rica due to donating the treasure to the CR National Historic Society and Museum. It was the thrill and how similar solving the mystery was to how Kaia could breathe on a surfboard. Since then, Kaia has been accepting quests from the wealthy, only to turn around and give it all to the museums and researchers. Recently, Kaia was caught straying from the original plan and running off with an artifact she feels is the key to a map she's been separated from. Due to this, she has been on the run and has decided to lay low in Merrock; taking on a cover job and assimilating to the small beach town way of life, to keep up the charade.

EXTRA-EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT HER!

Kaia is extremely fortunate in the fact that she has dumb luck. It's usually this dumb luck that helps her get out of last-second obstacles. Kaia is also good with thinking outside the box; this makes her able to catch onto things that many others may not have thought about, or quickly brushed over. Another aspect that helps her with her line of work is that she knows a little about a lot; Kaia grew up with the ability to quickly get the hang of a new skill or activity, and thus she was easily bored - but, due to this she knows a wide range of info at a scale that can pertain to numerous topics. She's athletic, having had her fair share in sports growing up; soccer, volleyball, softball along with surfing and dance. She's always looking for new experiences and adventures, and is definitely someone who holds some pretty interesting stories. Kaia can easily build connections with others, but is used to keeping people at an arm's length due to the dangers of her job as well as the constant traveling. Her main goal in life is to experience and learn as much as she can about the world around her; as well as just to have fun and live every moment to the fullest. Kaia is super impulsive with her decisions, and this is due to the fact she is easily bored. She has good intentions, but is honestly chaotic in her actions. Is secretive by nature, and good at calling another's bluff; though she doesn't give the impression she's being secretive. Just overall, very fun-loving and here for a good time; always a 'why not?' type of vibe. She's just got her guard up cause of her past with her dad as well as her job.

PERSONALITY:

+ Adroit, Enthralling, and Apolaustic

- Enigmatic, Mercurial, and Impetuous

[inapat17]

What happened to Miss May? Ishtar (1987), where it all comes to an end (4/4)

“Ishtar shall rise again!”

Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman trying to tame their blind camel

After Mikey and Nicky, it took Elaine May a decade to be allowed to make another movie, and it only happened because she was backed by the successful movie star, producer, and director Warren Beatty. She had worked with him on the screenplays of Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Reds (1981). Dustin Hoffman also knew Elaine May, as she had worked as a script doctor on Tootsie (1982). Consequently, Columbia – owned at the time by Coca Cola – agreed to finance May’s new project about a duo of untalented singers (Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty) who go to Morocco, convinced that they will find success there when a mysterious woman (Isabelle Adjani) involves them in a geopolitical spiral.

Lyle Rogers (Warren Beatty) and Chuck Clarke (Dustin Hoffman) with their agent

The movie was to be a comedy starring two Oscar-winning serious actors. May cast against type, giving Hoffman the part of the womanizer and Beatty the role of the socially awkward singer. May was inspired by “Road” movies from the forties featuring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, where they embarked on comedic adventures in foreign lands. Once again, May gave the audience a killer opening scene, for which she is the best in the game. The first twenty minutes of Ishtar are incredibly funny (one can only wish it maintained this brilliance throughout), showing the duo as Simon and Garfunkel-esque aspirating songwriters trying to find inspiration in New York. This hilarious part is enhanced by absurdly great songs written by Paul Williams for the film.

Studios thought Ishtar would be an epic picture; instead they got a movie about two losers going to the Middle East and ending up battling against the CIA and USA’s imperialism to put a left-wing government in power, all set to deceptive songs for the audience. Needless to say, May’s humor was not widely understood. Shooting in the Sahara was a difficult operation. Ishtar became synonymous with fiasco in the ‘80s and was known as one of the greatest bombs in Hollywood history. Overall, Columbia lost $60 million (which may raise even more respect for May).

Hoffman, Adjani, and Beatty on set in Morocco

Starting to become a cult classic, Ishtar is often compared to Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) but it has still not been reappraised by critics. The VHS edition went out of print, and there has been no DVD edition. “Ishtar shall rise again!” is what Dustin Hoffman shouted when coming onstage at the AFI Life Achievement Award to honor Warren Beatty’s career, reclaiming the film’s legacy thirty-two years later.

Both because studios would not give her investments and because she felt done with Hollywood, May focused on other works. She turned to Broadway stages with The Waverly Gallery, for which she won a Tony Award, appeared as an actress in Woody Allen’s Crisis in Six Scenes (2016), and gave occasional hilarious speeches at events honoring Mike Nichols, for whom she continued to co-write screenplays.

Eventually, in 2022, May received an Honorary Academy Award. At 92, Elaine May is said to have a project for a new movie called Crackpot starring Dakota Johnson. Let’s hope it gets made.

Long live Miss May!

[guitargallerytn]

Check out 2000 Tippin 000-12T Asian & Brazilian Rosewood Guitar -SALE

[harvardwang]

伊萊恩·梅

美國女演員

伊萊恩·梅（英語：Elaine May，1932年4月21日—），女，美國演員、導演、編劇。曾獲得托尼獎最佳話劇女主角。

家庭：女兒珍妮·伯林。

參考資料

簡介

出生資訊： 1932 年 4 月 21 日（92歲），美國賓夕凡尼亞費城

專輯： An Evening With Mike Nichols And Elaine May

子女： 珍妮·伯林

父母： 艾達·伯林、 傑克·伯林

配偶： 大衛·L·魯賓芬 (結婚於 1964 年–1982 年)、 薛爾登・哈尼克 (結婚於 1962 年–1963 年)， …

Elaine May

American screenwriter, film director, actress, and comedian (born 1932)

Elaine Iva May (née Berlin; born April 21, 1932) is an American comedian, filmmaker, playwright, and actress. She first gained fame in the 1950s for her improvisational comedy routines with Mike Nichols, before transitioning her career regularly breaking the mold as a writer and director of several critically acclaimed films. She has received numerous awards, including a BAFTA Award, a Grammy Award, and a Tony Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013, and an Honorary Academy Award in 2022.

Quick Facts Born, Other names ...

In 1955, May moved to Chicago and became a founding member of the Compass Players, an improvisational theater group. She began working alongside Nichols and in 1957, they both quit the group to form their own stage act, Nichols and May. In New York, they performed nightly in clubs in Greenwich Village alongside Joan Rivers and Woody Allen, as well as on the Broadway stage. They also made regular appearances on television and radio broadcasts. They released multiple comedy albums and received four Grammy Award nominations, winning Best Comedy Album for An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May in 1962. Their collaboration was covered in the PBS documentary Nichols and May: Take Two (1996).

May infrequently acted in films, including Luv, Enter Laughing (both 1967), California Suite (1978), and Small Time Crooks (2000). She became the first female director with a Hollywood deal since Ida Lupino when she directed the 1971 black screwball comedy A New Leaf. Experimenting with genres, she directed the dark romantic comedy The Heartbreak Kid (1972), the gangster film Mikey and Nicky (1976), and adventure comedy Ishtar (1987). May later earned acclaim writing the screenplays for Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait (1978), and Mike Nichols' The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998). Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors each earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, while the latter won her the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

May returned to acting in Woody Allen's Amazon Prime series Crisis in Six Scenes (2016) and on Broadway in the revival of the Kenneth Lonergan play The Waverly Gallery (2018) the later of which earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. The win made May the second-oldest performer behind Lois Smith to win a Tony Award for acting. In 2022, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences gave May an Honorary Academy Award for her "bold, uncompromising approach to filmmaking, as a writer, director, and actress".

Early years and personal life

Elaine Iva Berlin was born on April 21, 1932, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Jewish parents, theater director and actor Jack Berlin and actress Ida (Aaron) Berlin.: 39  As a child, May performed with her father in his traveling Yiddish theater company, which he took around the country. Her stage debut on the road was at the age of three, and she eventually played the character of a generic little boy named Benny.

Because the troupe toured extensively, May had been in over 50 schools by the time she was ten, having spent as little as a few weeks enrolled at any one time. May said she hated school and would spend her free time at home reading fairy tales and mythology.: 331  Her father died when she was 11 years old, and then she and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where May later enrolled in Hollywood High School. She dropped out when she was fourteen years old. Two years later, at the age of sixteen, she married Marvin May, an engineer and toy inventor. They had one child, Jeannie Berlin (born 1949), who became an actress and screenwriter. The couple divorced in 1960, and she married lyricist Sheldon Harnick in 1962; they divorced a year later. In 1964, May married her psychoanalyst, David L. Rubinfine; they remained married until his death in 1982.: 332 

May's longtime companion was director Stanley Donen, from 1999 until his death in 2019. Donen said he proposed marriage "about 172 times".

Career

1950–1957: Stage career and Compass players

After her marriage to Marvin May, she studied acting. She also held odd jobs during that period, such as a roof salesman, and tried to enroll in college. She learned, however, that colleges in California required a high school diploma to apply, which she did not have.: 39  After finding out that the University of Chicago was one of the few colleges that would accept students without diplomas, she set out with seven dollars and hitchhiked to Chicago.

Soon after moving to Chicago in 1950, May began informally taking classes at the university by auditing, sitting in without enrolling. She nevertheless sometimes engaged in discussions with instructors and once started a huge fight after saying that Socrates' apology was a political move. Mike Nichols, who was then an actor in the school's theatrical group, remembers her coming to his philosophy class, making "outrageous" comments, and leaving.: 324  They learned about each other from friends, eventually being introduced after one of his stage shows. The director, Paul Sills, brought May to Nichols and said, "Mike, I want you to meet the only other person on the campus of the University of Chicago who’s as hostile as you are: Elaine May." Six weeks later, they bumped into each other at a train station in Chicago and soon began spending time together over the following weeks as "dead-broke theatre junkies.": 324f 

In 1955, May joined a new, off-campus improvisational theater group in Chicago, The Compass Players, becoming one of its charter members. The group was founded by Sills and David Shepherd. Nichols later joined the group, wherein he resumed his friendship with May. At first he was unable to improvise well on stage, but with inspiration from May, they began developing improvised comedy sketches together.: 333  Nichols remembered this period:

From then on it became mostly pleasure because of Elaine's generosity. The fact of Elaine—her presence—kept me going. She was the only one who had faith in me. I loved it... We had a similar sense of humor and irony... When I was with her I became something more than I had been before.: 333 

Actress Geraldine Page recalled they worked together with great efficiency, "like a juggernaut.": 336  Thanks in part to Nichols and May, the Compass Players became an enormously popular satirical comedy troupe. They helped the group devise new stage techniques to adapt the freedom they had during the workshop.: 16 

May, Nichols and Dorothy Loudon, 1959

May became prominent as a member of the Compass's acting group, a quality others in the group observed. Bobbi Gordon, an actor, remembers that she was often the center of attention: "The first time I met her was at Compass... Elaine was this grande dame of letters. With people sitting around her feet, staring up at her, open-mouthed in awe, waiting for 'The Word'.": 330f  A similar impression struck Compass actor Bob Smith:

May would hold court, discussing her days as a child actor in the Yiddish theater, as men hung on her every word. Every guy who knew her was in love with her. You'd have been stupid not to have been.: 329 

As an integral member of their group, May was open to giving novices a chance, including the hiring of a black actor and generally making the group "more democratic". And by observing her high level of performance creativity, everyone's work was improved. "She was the strongest woman I ever met," adds Compass actor Nancy Ponder.: 330 

In giving all her attention to acting, however, she neglected her home life. Fellow actress Barbara Harris recalled that May lived in a cellar with only one piece of furniture, a ping-pong table. "She wore basic beatnik black and, like her film characters, was a brilliant disheveled klutz.": 330 

Group actor Omar Shapli was "struck by her piercing, dark-eyed, sultry stare. It was really unnerving", he says. Nichols remembers that "everybody wanted Elaine, and the people who got her couldn't keep her." Theater critic John Lahr agrees, noting that "her juicy good looks were a particularly disconcerting contrast to her sharp tongue.": 329 

"Elaine was too formidable, one of the most intelligent, beautiful, and witty women I had ever met. I hoped I would never see her again."

Richard Burton: 331 

May's sense of humor, including what she found funny about everyday life, was different from others' in the group. Novelist Herbert Gold, who dated May, says that "she treated everything funny that men take seriously... She was never serious. Her life was a narrative.": 329  Another ex-boyfriend, James Sacks, says that "Elaine had a genuine beautiful madness." Nevertheless, states Gold, "she was very cute, a lot like Debra Winger, just a pretty Jewish girl.": 329 

May was considered highly intelligent. "She's about fifty percent more brilliant than she needs to be," says actor Eugene Troobnick. Those outside their theater group sometimes noticed that same quality. British actor Richard Burton, who was married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time, agreed with that impression after he first met May while he was starring in Camelot on Broadway.: 331 

1957–1961: Nichols and May comedy team

Nichols and May, 1960

Nichols was personally asked to leave the Compass Players in 1957 because he and May became too good, which threw the company off balance, noted club manager Jay Landsman. Nichols was told he had too much talent.: 338  Nichols then left the group in 1957, with May quitting with him. They next formed their own stand-up comedy team, Nichols and May. After contacting some agents in New York, they were asked to audition for Jack Rollins, who would later become Woody Allen's manager and executive producer. Rollins said he was stunned by how good their act was:

Their work was so startling, so new, as fresh as could be. I was stunned by how really good they were, actually as impressed by their acting technique as by their comedy... They were totally adventurous and totally innocent, in a certain sense. That's why it was accepted. They would uncover little dark niches that you felt but had never expressed... I'd never seen this technique before. I thought, My God, these are two people writing hilarious comedy on their feet!: 340 

By 1960, they made their Broadway debut with An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, which later won a Grammy. After performing their act a number of years in New York's various clubs, and then on Broadway, with most of the shows sold out, Nichols could not believe their success:

We were winging it, making it up as we went along. It never even crossed our minds that it had any value beyond the moment. It was great to study and learn and work there. We were stunned when we got to New York... Never for a moment did we consider that we would do this for a living. It was just a handy way to make some money until we grew up.: 333 

His feelings were shared by May, who was also taken aback by their success, especially having some real income after living in near-poverty. She told a Newsweek interviewer, "When we came to New York, we were practically barefoot. And I still can't get used to walking in high heels.": 343 

The uniqueness of their act made them an immediate success in New York. Their style became the "next big thing" in live comedy. Charles H. Joffe, their producer, remembers that sometimes the line to their show went around the block. That partly explains why Milton Berle, a major television comedy star, tried three times without success to see their act.: 341  Critic Lawrence Christon recalls his first impression after seeing their act: "You just knew it was a defining moment. They caught the urban tempo, like Woody Allen did.": 343  They performed nightly at mostly sold-out shows, in addition to making TV program and commercial appearances and radio broadcasts.: 346  Their relatively brief time together as comedy stars led New York talk show host Dick Cavett to call their act "one of the comic meteors in the sky". Woody Allen said, "the two of them came along and elevated comedy to a brand-new level".

Technique

Theater program from 1961

Among the qualities of their act, which according to one writer made them a rarity, was that they used both "snob and mob appeal", which gave them a wide audience. Nachman explains that they presented a new kind of comedy team, unlike previous comedy duos which had an intelligent member alongside a much less intelligent one, as with Laurel and Hardy, Fibber McGee and Molly, Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, and Martin and Lewis.: 322 

What differentiated their style was the fact that their stage performance created "scenes," a method very unlike the styles of other acting teams. Nor did they rely on fixed gender or comic roles, but instead adapted their own character to fit a sketch idea they came up with. They chose real-life subjects, often from their own life, which were made into satirical and funny vignettes.: 322 

This was accomplished by using subtle joke references which they correctly expected their audiences to recognize, whether through clichés or character types. They thereby indirectly poked fun at the new intellectual culture which they saw growing around them. They felt that young Americans were taking themselves too seriously, which became the subject of much of their satire.: 321 

Nichols structured the material for their skits, and May came up with most of their ideas. Improvisation became a fairly simple art for them, as they portrayed the urban couple's "Age of Anxiety" in their sketches, and did so on their feet. According to May, it was simple: "It's nothing more than quickly creating a situation between two people and throwing up some kind of problem for one of them."

Nichols noted that after coming up with a sketch idea, they would perform it soon after with little extra rehearsal or writing it down. One example he remembered was inspired simply from a phone call from his mother. I called Elaine and I said, "I've got a really good piece for us tonight." They created a six-minute-long, mostly improvised, "mother and son" sketch, which they performed later that night.: 335 

May helped remove the stereotype of women's roles on stage. Producer David Shepherd notes that she accomplished that partly by not choosing traditional 1950s female roles for her characters, which were often housewives or women working at menial jobs. Instead, she often played the character of a sophisticated woman, such as a doctor, a psychiatrist, or an employer.: 337  Shepherd notes that "Elaine broke through the psychological restrictions of playing comedy as a woman.": 322 

May and Nichols had different attitudes toward their improvisations, however. Where Nichols always needed to know where a sketch was going and what its ultimate point would be, May preferred exploring ideas as the scene progressed. May says that even when they repeated their improvisations, it was not rote but came from re-creating her original impulse. Such improvisational techniques allowed her to make slight changes during a performance. Although May had a wider improvisational range than Nichols, he was generally the one to shape the pieces and steer them to their end. For their recordings, he also made the decision of what to delete.: 323 

Team break-up

Nichols and May

Audiences were still discovering May and Nichols in 1961, four years after they arrived. However, at the height of their fame, they decided to discontinue their act that year and took their careers in different directions: Nichols became a leading Broadway stage and film director; May became primarily a screenwriter and playwright, with some acting and directing. Among the reasons they decided to call it quits was that keeping their act fresh was becoming more difficult. Nichols explained:

Several things happened. One was that I, more than Elaine, became more and more afraid of our improvisational material. She was always brave. We never wrote a skit, we just sort of outlined it: I'll try to make you, or we'll fight—whatever it was. We found ourselves doing the same material over and over, especially in our Broadway show. This took a great toll on Elaine.: 349 

"Nichols and May are perhaps the most ardently missed of all the satirical comedians of their era. When Nichols and May split up, they left no imitators, no descendants, no blueprints or footprints to follow. No one could touch them."

Author Gerald Nachman: 319 

Nichols said that for him personally the breakup was "cataclysmic", and he went into a state of depression: "I didn't know what I was or who I was." It was not until 1996, thirty-five years later, that they would work together again as a team, when she wrote the screenplay and he directed The Birdcage. It "was like coming home, like getting a piece of yourself back that you thought you'd lost," he said.: 353  He adds that May had been very important to him from the moment he first saw her,: 325  adding that for her "improv was innate," and few people have that gift.: 359 

Director Arthur Penn said of their sudden breakup, "They set the standard and then they had to move on.": 351  To New York talk show host Dick Cavett, "They were one of the comic meteors in the sky.": 348 

They reunited for a Madison Square Garden benefit for George McGovern for President in June, 1972. The event, titled "Together Again for McGovern," also featured two musical groups that had recently broken up, Simon and Garfunkel and Peter, Paul and Mary, as well as singer Dionne Warwick.[citation needed]

1962–1969: Playwright and actor

May has also acted in comedy films, including Enter Laughing (1967), directed by Carl Reiner, and Luv (1967), costarring Peter Falk and Jack Lemmon. The latter film was not well received by critics, although Lemmon said he enjoyed working alongside May: "She's the finest actress I've ever worked with," he said. "And I've never expressed an opinion about a leading lady before... I think Elaine is touched with genius. She approaches a scene like a director and a writer." Film scholar Gwendolyn Audrey Foster notes that May is drawn to material that borders on dry Yiddish humor. As such, it has not always been well received at the box office. Her style of humor, in writing or acting, often has more to do with traditional Yiddish theater than traditional Hollywood cinema.

Following the break-up, May wrote several plays. Her greatest success was the one-act Adaptation (1969). Other stage plays she has written include Not Enough Rope, Mr Gogol and Mr Preen, Hotline (which was performed off-Broadway in 1995 as part of the anthology play Death Defying Acts), After the Night and the Music, Power Plays, Taller Than A Dwarf, The Way of All Fish, and Adult Entertainment. In 1969, she directed the off-Broadway production of Adaptation/Next.

1970–1999: Career as a writer and director

May made her film writing and directing debut in 1971 with A New Leaf, a black comedy based on a short story which she read in an Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine called The Green Heart which the author Jack Ritchie would later retitle A New Leaf. The unconventional romance with Walter Matthau as a Manhattan bachelor faced with bankruptcy, also starred May herself as the awkward botanist-heiress, Henrietta Lowell, who Matthau cynically woos and marries to salvage an extravagant lifestyle. Director May originally submitted a 180-minute work to Paramount, but the studio cut it back by nearly 80 minutes for release. The film has since become a cult classic. Vincent Canby cited the two-reelers of the 1930s and Depression-era screwball comedies when he called it "a beautifully and gently cockeyed movie that recalls at least two different traditions of American film comedy... The entire project is touched by a fine and knowing madness." May received a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of the shy botanist in the project from which she fought studio exec Robert Evans, unsuccessfully, to have her name removed.

Lead actors John Cassavetes (left) and Peter Falk (right) in 1971

May quickly followed her debut film with 1972's The Heartbreak Kid. She limited her role to directing, using a screenplay by Neil Simon, based on a story by Bruce Jay Friedman. The film starred Charles Grodin, Cybill Shepherd, Eddie Albert, and May's own daughter, Jeannie Berlin. It was a major critical success, and holds a 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2000, it was listed at No. 91 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list. May followed the two comedies by writing and directing the gangster film Mikey and Nicky, starring Peter Falk and John Cassavetes. Budgeted at $1.8 million and scheduled for a summer 1975 release, the film cost $4.3 million and was not released until December 1976. [citation needed] May ended up in a legal battle with Paramount Pictures over post-production costs, at one point hiding reels of the film in her husband's friend's Connecticut garage and later suing the company for $8 million for breach of contract. May worked with Julian Schlossberg to get the rights to the film and released a director's cut in 1980. In 2019, May worked with The Criterion Collection to create the newest director's cut. The film has gained appreciation by many critics and audiences in recent years.

In Herbert Ross's California Suite (1978), written by Neil Simon, she was reunited with A New Leaf co-star Walter Matthau, playing his wife Millie. In addition to writing three of the films she directed, May received an Oscar nomination for updating the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan as Heaven Can Wait (1978). May reunited with Nichols for a stage production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in New Haven in 1980. She contributed (uncredited) to the screenplay for the 1982 megahit Tootsie, notably the scenes involving the character played by Bill Murray.

Warren Beatty worked with May on the comedy Ishtar (1987), starring Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. Largely shot on location in Morocco, the production was beset by creative differences among the principals and had cost overruns. Long before the picture was ready for release, the troubled production had become the subject of numerous press stories, including a long cover article in New York magazine. Some of the opposition to the film came from David Puttnam, the studio head, making Ishtar a prime example of studio suicide. The advance publicity was largely negative and, despite some positive reviews from the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, the film was a box office disaster. The film Ishtar has been positively re-evaluated in the 21st century by multiple publications including the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Indiewire, and The Dissolve. Richard Brody of The New Yorker called Ishtar a "wrongly maligned masterwork" and raved, "There's a level of invention, a depth of reflection, and a tangle of emotions in Ishtar which are reached by few films and few filmmakers."

May acted in the film In the Spirit (1990), in which she played a "shopaholic stripped of consumer power"; Robert Pardi has described her portrayal as a "study of fraying equanimity [that] is a classic comic tour de force." She also contributed to the screenplay for the drama Dangerous Minds (1995). May reunited with her former comic partner, Mike Nichols, for the 1996 film The Birdcage, an American adaptation of the classic French farce La Cage aux Folles. Their film relocated the story from France to South Beach, Miami. It was a major box office hit. May received her second Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay when she again worked with Nichols on the 1998 film Primary Colors.

2000–present: Return to acting and Broadway

She appeared in Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks (2000) where she played the character May Sloane, which Allen named after May when he wrote it, and with May being his first choice for the part. For her acting, she won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Supporting Actress. Allen spoke of her as a genius, and of his ease of working with her: "She shows up on time, she knows her lines, she can ad-lib creatively, and is willing to. If you don't want her to, she won't. She's a dream. She puts herself in your hands. She's a genius, and I don't use that word casually." Nearly 15 years later, Allen ended up casting her to play his wife, Kay Munsinger, in his Amazon limited series, Crisis in Six Scenes, which was released in 2016.

In 2002, Stanley Donen directed her musical play Adult Entertainment with Jeannie Berlin and Danny Aiello at Variety Arts Theater in Manhattan. May wrote the one-act play George is Dead, which starred Marlo Thomas and was performed on Broadway from late 2011 into 2012 as part of the anthology play Relatively Speaking along with two other plays by Woody Allen and Joel Coen, directed by John Turturro. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times praised May's entry describing it as "a delicious study in the bliss of narcissism". David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter concurred describing George is Dead as the "Strongest entry". Before he died in 2019, Donen was reported to be in pre-production for a new film, begun December 2013, to be co-written with May and produced by Nichols. A table reading of the script for potential investors included such actors as Christopher Walken, Charles Grodin, Ron Rifkin, and Jeannie Berlin.

When May's lifelong collaborator Nichols died in 2014, May stepped up to poignantly direct the 2016 TV documentary Mike Nichols: American Masters. That same year, she returned to acting, her first role since 2000, starring alongside her friend Woody Allen in his series Crisis in Six Scenes on Amazon Prime, Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter praised their chemistry together writing, "The best episodes are the last two, when Crisis in Six Scenes becomes a full-blown farce and we get to see Allen and May playing accidental aging radicals, shuffling around Brooklyn".

In 2018, aged 86, May returned to Broadway after 60 years in a Lila Neugebauer-directed revival of Kenneth Lonergan's play The Waverly Gallery opposite Lucas Hedges, Joan Allen, and Michael Cera. The play ran at the John Golden Theatre, the same theatre where Nichols and May had started out almost 60 years earlier. May received rapturous reviews for her performance as the gregarious, dementia-ridden elderly gallery owner Gladys Green, with many critics remarking that she was giving one of the most extraordinary performances they had ever seen onstage. The show received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, while May herself won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance. She became the second oldest performer to win a Tony Award for acting. In 2021 she portrayed Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Paramount+ series The Good Fight.

In 2019, it was announced that May is set to direct her first narrative feature in over 30 years. Little is known about the project other than its title, Crackpot, and that it is set to star Dakota Johnson, who announced the project at the 2019 Governors Awards. In 2024, Johnson stated that the film is still in development and she serves as the film's producer and star with May still set to direct.

Filmography

Film

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Television

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Theatre

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Discography

Improvisations to Music (1958) Mercury ASIN B000W0V9BW

An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May (1960) Mercury ASIN B000W06CCS

Mike Nichols & Elaine May Examine Doctors (1961) Mercury MG 20680/SR 60680 ASIN B000W0AGDY

In Retrospect (1962) Polygram, compilation, re-released as compact disc in 1996 ASIN B000001EKT

Influence and legacy

Nichols and May created a new "Age of Irony" for comedy, which showed actors arguing contemporary banalities as a key part of their routine. That style of comedy was picked up and further developed by later comics such as Steve Martin, Bill Murray, and David Letterman.: 323  According to Martin, Nichols and May were among the first to satirize relationships. The word "relationship," notes Martin, was first used in the early sixties: "It was the first time I ever heard it satirized.": 323  He recalls that soon after discovering their recorded acts, he went to sleep each night listening to them. "They influenced us all and changed the face of comedy.": 324 

In Vanity Fair, Woody Allen declared, "Individually, each one is a genius, and when they worked together, the sum was even greater than the combination of the parts—the two of them came along and elevated comedy to a brand-new level."

Lily Tomlin was also affected by their routines and considers May to be her inspiration as a comedian: "There was nothing like Elaine May, with her voice, her timing, and her attitude," says Tomlin.: 43  "The nuances of the characterizations and the cultured types that they were doing completely appealed to me. They were the first people I saw doing smart, hip character pieces. My brother and I used to keep their 'Improvisations to Music' on the turntable twenty-four hours a day.": 324 

In an interview with Pitchfork Magazine, standup comedian John Mulaney described Mike Nichols & Elaine May Examine Doctors (1961) as one of his favorite comedy albums of all time. Mulaney stated, "I got this album for Christmas when I was in junior high. The last track, 'Nichols and May at Work,' is an outtake from recording the album, they were just improvising dialog in a studio. They’re trying to do a piece where a son goes to his mother and says that he wants to become a registered nurse. It’s something you just have to experience, because two people that funny laughing that hard is really, really, really funny. I think it might be the happiest thing ever recorded."

Filmmaker and film historian Peter Bogdanovich covered Elaine's filmography in his book Movie of the Week (1999). Bogdanovich praised all of her films and concluded with "Long live Elaine! Would that she could act and direct again in pictures. In 1998 I saw her perform off-Broadway in a couple of one-act plays she wrote (Power Plays), and her performances matched the comic genius of the writing." Other admirers of May's work include comedian Patton Oswalt, and directors Ben and Josh Safdie who both detailed their admiration for her and her work, in particular her film Mikey and Nicky (1976) through The Criterion Channel.

May's work as a director has been given a closer look in recent years with David Hudson, a writer for The Criterion Collection declaring her as a "criminally underappreciated moviemaker". In 2017 the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle created an award in her name given "to a deserving person or film that brings awareness to women’s issues".

May's life and career will be profiled in the biography Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius written by Carrie Courogen, which is set to be released in June 2024 published by Macmillan Publishers.

Awards and honors

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Elaine May

May receiving the Medal of Arts award from President Obama, July 13, 2013

For her acting, her accolades include a nomination for a Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a musical or comedy for A New Leaf (1971), and winning the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Small Time Crooks (2000).

May was awarded the National Medal of Arts for her lifetime contributions to American comedy by President Barack Obama, in a ceremony in the White House on July 10, 2013. She was awarded for her "groundbreaking wit and a keen understanding of how humor can illuminate our lives, Ms. May has evoked untold joy, challenged expectations, and elevated spirits across our Nation."

In January 2016, the Writers Guild of America-West announced that May would receive its 2016 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement at the Writers Guild of America Award ceremony in Los Angeles on February 13.

On June 9, 2019, May won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Gladys in the Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery. She also received a Drama League Award nomination and won a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play. That same year, May's film A New Leaf was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In 2021, she was chosen to receive the Honorary Academy Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, receiving the award for her "bold, uncompromising approach to filmmaking, as a writer, director and actress". She was honored at the annual Governors Awards alongside Samuel L. Jackson, Liv Ullman, and Danny Glover on March 25, 2022. Bill Murray presented her with the award crediting her with "saving his life on multiple occasions professionally".

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Mike Nichols

American film and theatre director (1931–2014)

Jeannie Berlin

American actress and screenwriter

Julian Schlossberg

American film producer

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[grilledcheese-aspiration]

📩 Simblr question of the day: You can answer one or both parts of this question!

1️⃣ Part one: If you make Story posts, what do you do for scenes? Do you build them yourself, do you download lots from the gallery or do you download them from someone online?

2️⃣ Part two: If you make Gameplay/Legacy posts, what do you do for a house? Do you build it yourself, download a home from the gallery or do you download them from someone online? Additionally, do you build onto that home or demolish it and rebuild the house when needed? (E.G When another child enters the picture or someone moves in)

❎ If you do none of those for either half, what do you do? Do you use someone else's save file? (WIndbrook by Folking, Willow Creek + Magnolia Promenade by Theneighborhoodsave, Silent Pines by Silentpinessave... etc)

( freely share this SQOTD around, anon or not, and use the hashtag " SQOTD " ~ 💛 )

hiya @melsie-sims, thank you for the SQotD!

(note: all my replies will be for Sims 2) I have a kind of answer for PT1: i mostly do all the building and decorating myself, its quite rare for me to download/install a new lot for something i need in my Waverly rotation unless for some reason i cannot make it happen on my own.

N/A for PT2 (for now!)

my schtick is rotational gameplay for Waverly, an nhood i built myself nearly 5!!! years ago???!! its basically become a lil BACC/uberhood since i play w/ almost all the subhoods i created for Waverly. i have a few challenges incorporated into the rotation such as: uni, rags to riches and the asylum challenge. (i included Uni bc its a bit of a challenge for me personally lol) i have plans to add a few others as more families have been introduced to the rotation for year 2!

[caroleditosti]

'The Ally,' Terrific Performances of a Trenchant Play at the Public

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Josh Radnor in The Ally (Joan Marcus) The Ally, written by Itamar Moses (The Band’s Visit), and directed by Lila Neugebauer (The Waverly Gallery), currently runs in a World Premiere at the Public Theater until March 24th. Moses’ two act play that is largely polemical raises important and controversial questions in its two hours and thirty-five minutes. It is thought-provoking, historically…

[richdadpoor]

Miley Cyrus & Selena Gomez Release Singles Same Day, Show Love – Hollywood Life

View gallery Image Credit: Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock / David Fisher/Shutterstock Wizards of Waverly Place alum Selena Gomez, 31, and Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus, 30, have both announced their dropping singles on Aug. 25th! And rather than competing, they’ve both decided to show each other love ahead of the big day. In a hilarious throwback video of a Hannah Montana episode,…

[xtruss]

In San Francisco’s Chinatown, the commerical thoroughfare Waverly Place includes pagoda-like storefronts and strings of lanterns. Much of the neighborhood’s “exotic” vibe was engineered by 20th-century merchants hoping to lure tourists to the area.

Why Does The U.S. Have So Many Chinatowns?

Rooted in both racism and marketing, historic immigrant enclaves grapple with a crippling pandemic, rising rents, and uncertain futures.

— By Rachel Ng | Photographs By Andria Lo | Published September 14, 2020

Behind an ornate archway with a tiled, curved roof in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, a solemn golden statue of Chinese revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-Sen sits alone. Although it’s a sunny August afternoon, most of the souvenir stores and art galleries surrounding him in the usually busy Central Plaza marketplace are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, doors locked shut behind heavy metal gates. The craggy Wishing Well at the center of the shopping zone is bone dry.

The eerie silence breaks as a figure—spotting me—emerges from underneath an unlit “Phoenix Imports” neon sign. “Come on in!”

Diners eat at New Lun Ting Cafe in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 2016.

Born and raised in Chinatown, Phoenix Imports owner Glenn SooHoo has witnessed the growth, decline, and revitalization of his neighborhood over the past 50 years. Since as early as Lunar New Year in January, L.A.’s Chinatown—and other such enclaves across North America—has been in crisis, buffeted by the twin traumas of xenophobia and a public-health crisis.

“The virus is hampering business and the tourist industry,” says SooHoo. “At New Year’s, we had our 121st Golden Dragon Parade celebration, and only like 10 percent of the people showed up. The virus didn’t have anything to do with Chinatown, but it being associated as an Asian thing by the president, people just got that phobia about it.”

As historic Chinatowns struggle during the pandemic, it’s worth looking at why residents—and visitors—flocked to them in the first place.

A Land of Opportunity—and Gold

Chinatowns have been in the U.S. for more than 170 years. The first one, in San Francisco, served as an unofficial port of entry for Chinese immigrants escaping economic and political chaos in the mid-1800s. Men sought their fortunes in the California Gold Rush, and when mining waned, they found work as farmhands, domestic helpers, and in the 1860s, as workers for the Transcontinental Railroad. These men needed sleeping quarters, clean clothes, and hot meals after long days of grueling labor; this led to a proliferation of housing, laundry services, and restaurants in burgeoning, Chinese-centric neighborhoods.

As the immigrants fanned out around the country seeking more work, Chinatowns mushroomed all over the United States. At one time, there were more than 50 of them.

Left: A chef prepares eggs boiled in tea and spices at Hon’s Wun-Tun House in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Right: Asian immigrants settled in Oakland, California’s Chinatown during the 19th- and early 20th-centuries. The neighborhood still hosts multiple Chinese-run businesses, including one of the oldest fortune-cookie factories in the U.S.

San Francisco’s Chinatown is the oldest one in the U.S., and the largest outside of Asia.

But these Chinatowns were also borne out of growing racial tension and discrimination in housing and employment. After the abolition of slavery, Chinese immigrants provided a cheap source of labor, leading to resentment from the white working class, especially during the Long Depression from 1879 to 1896.

Beginning in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Acts severely limited immigration for more than 60 years. Anti-Chinese sentiment resulted in street brawls, race riots, and even lynching and massacres. During that time, many Chinatowns were destroyed by fire or natural disasters or abandoned by people fleeing the violence.

Immigrant Cities Rising From the Ashes

While the earliest Chinatowns comprised modest wooden and brick buildings, the Asian motifs—pagodas, tiled roofs, bamboo-shaped fonts, and dragon imagery—we see today came about as a way to promote tourism. When the original San Francisco Chinatown was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and the devastating fire that followed, a group of wealthy Chinese merchants saw an opportunity to combat anti-Chinese sentiment by giving their neighborhood a flashy makeover.

Until then, San Francisco’s Chinatown was thought of as a seedy, crime-ridden ghetto, rife with opium dens, gambling, and prostitution. The Chinese merchants hired Scottish-American architect T. Paterson Ross and engineer A.W. Burgren to design a new Chinatown, incorporating religious iconography and architectural elements of the 10th-13th century Song dynasty.

The new neighborhood was a fantasy vision of China, a country neither man had ever visited. A prominent Chinese-American businessman, Look Tin Eli, spearheaded the project as a new city with “veritable fairy palaces filled with the choicest treasures of the Orient.” The strategy worked: San Francisco’s Chinatown was reborn as an “exotic” destination for Western tourists.

Other Chinatowns followed suit, adopting similar aesthetics. After Los Angeles’ original Chinatown was torn down in 1933 to make way for a new Union Station, Chinese community leaders organized efforts to rebuild Chinatown a few miles away. Prolific L.A. architects Erle Webster and Adrian Wilson modeled the open-air Central Plaza in the new Chinatown after the Forbidden City in Beijing, with restaurants, souvenir shops, grocery stores, bakeries, and nightclubs featuring musical performances.

But some Chinatowns took a different tack. Instead of projecting a family-friendly atmosphere, Chinatowns in Chicago and New York City promoted a kind of “slum” tourism, where white tourists were invited to revel in the sights, sounds, and smells of poor, ethnic neighborhoods. Visitors dined at chop suey restaurants, peeked into opium dens, and maybe witnessed a tong (Chinese secret society) gang fight in the alley.

From Bustle to Bust and Back

Chinatowns’ fortunes rose and fell over the ensuing decades. In 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and immigration opened up again. In 1965, the Hart-Celler Act removed quotas based on national origins, which led to an explosion of newcomers from China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Cambodia. Chinatowns, once again, became the first stop for many immigrants.

Peter Ng, CEO of Chinatown Service Center (CSC), moved to L.A. from Hong Kong in the 1970s. “When I first got here, my parents and I lived inside Chinatown,” he says. “Everyone was conducting business inside Chinatown. There were only a couple of authentic Chinese restaurants back then, so everyone came here. It was really a thriving time.” CSC was founded in 1972 to provide health, housing, and advocacy to the growing community.

Kwan Sau Ling, owner of the Lucky Creation Vegetarian restaurant, is pictured in her storefront in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 2016.

The ’60s also marked turbulent times in American history. Washington D.C.’s Chinatown was devasted when Chinese-owned stores were looted and buildings were burned down during the weeklong 1968 riots triggered by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Civil unrest and urban decay, along with the search for more housing and job opportunities, prompted immigrants to move away from Chinatowns in D.C. and other cities, giving rise to new satellite Asian communities in places like L.A.’s San Gabriel Valley and New York’s Flushing, Queens. “The Chinese diaspora is cast so far and wide even within large metros that a single hub for Chinese people is no longer practical or desirable,” says journalist Eddie Lin, who grew up in L.A.’s Chinatown in the ’70s.

But before the pandemic, downtown living in many cities had gained popularity and commercial developers had started paying attention to once-neglected Chinatown real estate. Luxury apartments and trendy restaurants took over rent-controlled buildings and mom-and-pop stores. As a result, gentrified Chinatowns in cities like D.C. and San Jose, California, were reduced to shadows of their formerly vibrant selves, with only a handful of Chinese restaurants and arched gateways left standing.

With the Pandemic, Xenophobia and Hope

Enter President Donald Trump and the coronavirus pandemic. “Unfortunately, Trump’s rhetoric around the virus and beyond has empowered even more horrific and racist acts since COVID,” says Hoi Leung, curator of the Chinese Culture Center (CCC) of San Francisco. California has tallied at least 800 hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders since the pandemic began.

Alarmed by anti-Asian sentiment and the downturn in business, many Chinese Americans are fighting back. This year, CCC partnered with artist Christine Wong Yap for the Art, Culture, and Belonging in Chinatown project, for which people were asked to submit their personal recollections of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Through intentional art and educational programming, CCC hopes visitors and residents view the neighborhood like a museum, “where it becomes an interactive site to deepen their understanding and sense of belonging through engaging with stories, people, and history,” Leung says, cautioning that without care and activism, Chinatowns will eventually disappear.

Left: A Buddha figurine sits inside Hon’s Wun-Tun House in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Right: Open-air produce stands line many blocks in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Pedestrians stroll near New Lun Ting Cafe in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

For millennials Victoria Lee and Jennifer Tam, Manhattan’s Chinatown has always held a special place in their hearts. Growing up, Lee spent weekends with her grandmother who lived in Chinatown, while Tam moved to Chinatown a decade ago from Houston, Texas.

After seeing the economic impact COVID had on the neighborhood, the two friends started Welcome to Chinatown, a nonprofit supporting the area’s small businesses with additional resources and revenue streams. “The business impact happened much earlier in Chinatown than in the rest of New York City, due to the rise of xenophobia,” Tam says. “We’re here to help say, ‘Chinatown will always be open for business.’”

Tam and Lee spotlight various businesses on their Instagram page, raise funds to feed the senior community, and partner with local artists to create merchandise like tote bags and mugs. “Welcome to Chinatown is a love letter to Chinatown, a way to give back to a community that has given so much to us,” Tam says. To Tam and Lee, the neighborhood still embodies much of the Chinese-American experience. “It’s important to us that we preserve the narratives and stories that have been built here,” Tam says.

Hard Work and Resilience

In L.A., sun-bleached red lanterns line the green awning of a brick building. Next door, the concrete parking lot has been converted into an outdoor dining space with potted plants, umbrellas, and string lights. Hop Woo was one of a handful of restaurants that remained open during the pandemic. “We’ve never closed,” says chef-owner Lupe Liang. “During the stay-at-home order, we changed to takeout. And now, we have a beautiful space for outdoor dining.”

When Liang and his wife, Judy Cen, opened Hop Woo in L.A.’s Chinatown in 1993, they started with just eight tables. Hop Woo grew to be a thriving business with more than 150 tables, serving garlicky lobster noodles and barbecued meats to a diverse crowd of tourists and locals. “We’ve been in Chinatown for 27 years and we’ve always been busy,” Cen says, “except for this year.”

A few blocks north of Hop Woo at Phoenix Imports, SooHoo is working to ensure his shop’s future. SooHoo’s grandfather, She Wing SooHoo, launched a gift shop called Chew Yuen Company in 1938, one of the first businesses in Central Plaza. When She Wing retired, Glenn’s father Walter took over the family business, opening a storefront next door and renaming it Phoenix Imports.

“We’ve been here for 80 years,” he says. “We’ve been through everything, good and bad, and whatever it is, we’re still going to be here. I’m not here to make money, I just want to keep this Chinatown alive for the next generation.”

[oldbaton]

But the Golden Theatre is where I have seen the most individual shows: A Delicate Balance, The Gin Game, A Doll's House Part Two x3, Three Tall Women, The Waverly Gallery, Hillary and Clinton, Slave Play, and Hangmen. Hoping to add Prima Facie to the list this year.