ANNA MADRIGAL REMEMBERS
Performed by Chanticleer and Frederica von Stade
Written by Jake Heggie
Text by Armistead Maupin
WORLD PREMIERE | 6 August 1999
from the program:
"Chanticleer and Friends" brings together the celebrated mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and Chanticleer together in concert for the first time. The world premier of "Anna Madrigal Remembers," a commissioned work written for Chanticleer by Bay Area composer Jake Heggie, with a new test by author Armistead Maupin.
Armistead: "Anna Madrigal, the transsexual mother figure from my "Tales of the City" novels, turns eighty this year. [1999] So when composer Jake Heggie asked me to collaborate with him, I decided to write a monologue in which the landlady welcomes yet another prospective tenant to 28 Barbary Lane, her apartment house on Russian Hill. Along the way, the earthy octogenarian reflects on her speckled past, her quest for daily astonishment, and that 'mad little dance in the rain' called love."
PRESS LINKS ABOUT "ANNA MADRIGAL REMEMBERS":
Salon.com: "Even more "Tales of the City" Armistead Maupin and the San Francisco Opera's Jake Heggie imagine toking transsexual Anna Madrigal as a mezzo-soprano."
San Francisco Chronicle Review: "Von Stade, Chanticleer Make Beautiful Music Fun premiere of `Anna Madrigal Remembers'"
For more on Chanticleer and a schedule of their upcoming performances, see chanticleer.org.
TEXT OF "ANNA MADRIGAL REMEMBERS"
By Armistead Maupin
Come on in, dear. I'll show you the apartment. Just through the gate and across the garden. And mind the steps on the way up. They're a bit rickety these days -- but, then again, who isn't? I'll be eighty this year, I'm delighted to say, just in time for the millennium.
No -- please don't tell me I don't look it. I want to look it. I want it all to show on my face. Every last goddamn thing. I've lived enough for two people, you see, which is not just a figure of speech. For over half of my life I was -- oh, how can I put this politely? -- a man. And a mess of a man, too. Careless and selfish and full of the cruelty of youth.
What did that boy know?
Nothing at all.
What does the woman know now?
Nothing at all
Except nothing remains.
Nothing endures, not even the pain.
And love is a mad little dance in the rain
To which nothing can ever compare.
Oh, dear, I can see I'm confusing you. Never mind. I'll explain it when you've settled in. Assuming of course that you like the place. We'll have a nice chat and a glass of sherry or smoke something special from the garden. Then, if you like, we can go up on the roof and watch the moon,
Remember what the moon used to be? No, of course you don't, my dear, but I do, I do. When I was a boy, the moon was full of mystery and green cheese, a land for lovers and lunatics, presumed to be more wonderful than anything on earth. And then we went to see for ourselves. And what did we find? A swirl of dust and carbon compounds, a horrid little golf course in Hell. But what would we have done. I wonder, if we'd found a place that was just like this? A moon as blue as a baby's eye with canyons and trees and scarlet butterflies. Would we not have been astonished at the sight?
That's our job, you know: to be astonished. To wake up every morning and see this place anew, as bright and golden the egg in our cup. Our lives are just a flicker in the darkness, and all we ever really have is astonishment and love. Can you do that, my dear? Can you promise to love and be astonished, to taste everything and doubt nothing and cherish every moment as it comes? Tell me yes and the place is yours forever -- no deposit necessary, utilities included. Tell me yes and you're already home.
So what d'ya say? Can we move you in today?
What did that boy know?
Nothing at all?
What does the woman know now?
Nothing at all
Except nothing remains.
Nothing endures, not even the pain
And love is a mad little dance in the rain
To which nothing can ever compare.
Friday, August 6, 1999
Wednesday, August 4, 1999
Even more "Tales of the City"
Armistead Maupin and the San Francisco Opera's Jake Heggie imagine toking transsexual Anna Madrigal as a mezzo-soprano.
By Stacey Kors
August 4, 1999
"Has there ever been a chamber piece written for a transsexual character?" wonders Armistead Maupin. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, the gay author and activist boldly broached previously "taboo" subject matter in his beloved, bestselling "Tales of the City" series, a touching and humorous homage to San Francisco in its hedonistic heyday. Now Maupin braves new territory again with "Anna Madrigal Remembers," a classical composition based on "Tales" and featuring new text by Maupin and music by San Francisco Opera's composer-in-residence Jake Heggie. The work, which was written for mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and the male a cappella choral ensemble Chanticleer, receives its world premiere in San Francisco on Aug. 6 and 7, with additional performances and a recording scheduled for later this year.
Maupin, who describes himself as being a "classical neophyte" with a "music hall sensibility," admits to having felt a bit of trepidation about writing text for a classical composition. "But Jake's music is extremely lyrical, and there's a great deal of heart in what he writes," he tells Salon Arts & Entertainment from his home in San Francisco. "So I thought we might be compatible. Some modern classical music is so atonal that I run screaming from the room; but Jake is not afraid of a tune."
After toying with a number of ideas, Maupin hit on the notion of revisiting Anna Madrigal, the toking transsexual landlady who presides over Babylon-by-the-Bay's most famous fictional address. "I thought I should let people know that Anna is still around and still at 28 Barbary Lane."
When von Stade was approached to sing this unusual role, she was a bit surprised. "I did wonder why, of all people, they thought of me," she says with a laugh. But the renowned mezzo also says that she genuinely enjoys the challenge of portraying Anna onstage. "What's fascinating about this character," says von Stade, speaking from Philadelphia, "is that she spent 25 years as a man and then became a woman, so she has these two different perspectives."
Heggie found Madrigal's transsexuality an interesting challenge as well. "Since she is both a man and a woman, I have the whole chorus of men as sort of her inner life, and Anna herself, in Flicka [von Stade's nickname], as the end result. I sort of played with that in the whole piece, so that sometimes she's having a conversation with herself, and sometimes it's a unified voice."
Maupin's own experiences since first creating Anna Madrigal have had a profound effect on his latest incarnations of her. "She's 80 this year. She was 56 when I was writing 'Tales,' which seems impossibly young now since it's just a year older than I am. It's fascinating. When I was working with Olympia Dukakis on the 'More Tales of the City' miniseries, I found myself madly rewriting scenes because I felt I understood that character for the very first time. I knew what it felt like to be middle-aged and to have lived a life with a lot of ups and downs. So I loved delving into that character now because I'm able to bring a lot of myself to the table."
Nonetheless, Maupin says that he has no plans to write another book for the "Tales" series. "I don't know where I'd start. They'd all be 50 years old and scattered to the four corners of the Earth. I'd have to invent a new cast of characters, and what point would there be in that? It's not inconceivable that one of these days when I'm starving to death I'll write 'Christmas at Barbary Lane,'" he quips, "and they'll all reunite for a small, piquant book."
http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/log/1999/08/04/tales/
By Stacey Kors
August 4, 1999
"Has there ever been a chamber piece written for a transsexual character?" wonders Armistead Maupin. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, the gay author and activist boldly broached previously "taboo" subject matter in his beloved, bestselling "Tales of the City" series, a touching and humorous homage to San Francisco in its hedonistic heyday. Now Maupin braves new territory again with "Anna Madrigal Remembers," a classical composition based on "Tales" and featuring new text by Maupin and music by San Francisco Opera's composer-in-residence Jake Heggie. The work, which was written for mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and the male a cappella choral ensemble Chanticleer, receives its world premiere in San Francisco on Aug. 6 and 7, with additional performances and a recording scheduled for later this year.
Maupin, who describes himself as being a "classical neophyte" with a "music hall sensibility," admits to having felt a bit of trepidation about writing text for a classical composition. "But Jake's music is extremely lyrical, and there's a great deal of heart in what he writes," he tells Salon Arts & Entertainment from his home in San Francisco. "So I thought we might be compatible. Some modern classical music is so atonal that I run screaming from the room; but Jake is not afraid of a tune."
After toying with a number of ideas, Maupin hit on the notion of revisiting Anna Madrigal, the toking transsexual landlady who presides over Babylon-by-the-Bay's most famous fictional address. "I thought I should let people know that Anna is still around and still at 28 Barbary Lane."
When von Stade was approached to sing this unusual role, she was a bit surprised. "I did wonder why, of all people, they thought of me," she says with a laugh. But the renowned mezzo also says that she genuinely enjoys the challenge of portraying Anna onstage. "What's fascinating about this character," says von Stade, speaking from Philadelphia, "is that she spent 25 years as a man and then became a woman, so she has these two different perspectives."
Heggie found Madrigal's transsexuality an interesting challenge as well. "Since she is both a man and a woman, I have the whole chorus of men as sort of her inner life, and Anna herself, in Flicka [von Stade's nickname], as the end result. I sort of played with that in the whole piece, so that sometimes she's having a conversation with herself, and sometimes it's a unified voice."
Maupin's own experiences since first creating Anna Madrigal have had a profound effect on his latest incarnations of her. "She's 80 this year. She was 56 when I was writing 'Tales,' which seems impossibly young now since it's just a year older than I am. It's fascinating. When I was working with Olympia Dukakis on the 'More Tales of the City' miniseries, I found myself madly rewriting scenes because I felt I understood that character for the very first time. I knew what it felt like to be middle-aged and to have lived a life with a lot of ups and downs. So I loved delving into that character now because I'm able to bring a lot of myself to the table."
Nonetheless, Maupin says that he has no plans to write another book for the "Tales" series. "I don't know where I'd start. They'd all be 50 years old and scattered to the four corners of the Earth. I'd have to invent a new cast of characters, and what point would there be in that? It's not inconceivable that one of these days when I'm starving to death I'll write 'Christmas at Barbary Lane,'" he quips, "and they'll all reunite for a small, piquant book."
http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/log/1999/08/04/tales/
Monday, March 29, 1999
An Evening With Armistead Maupin
March 29, 1999
City Arts & Lectures and Berkeley's Bancroft Library
http://fora.tv/1999/03/29/An_Evening_with_Armistead_Maupin
City Arts & Lectures and Berkeley's Bancroft Library
http://fora.tv/1999/03/29/An_Evening_with_Armistead_Maupin
Sunday, November 12, 1995
Two men and a poodle
By ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
Some dogs, I'm told, like to stick around when their owners are making love. They'll sit stone still and watch the proceedings with deadpan intensity, as if collecting evidence for some evil congressional subcommittee. Not Willie. As soon as human passion rears its ugly head -- and he has an uncanny eye for the precise moment -- he flings himself off the bed and skulks away to another room. This is jealousy, I suppose, mingled with mortification, though I'd like to believe there's an element of courtesy involved as well. In any event, he comes rocketing back only seconds after the deed is done, reclaiming his rightful place between us with breathless little yelps of relief and celebration. You'd think we'd just returned from a month in Europe.
Kissing is another matter entirely. If Willie finds us smooching in the kitchen before dinner, he'll proceed to bark indignantly until we've stopped. "Break it up, you jerks," he seems to be saying. "There are three of us here, remember?" I'm sure the late Mrs. Woodhouse would have found something deeply disturbing about this behavior, but Terry and I are rather charmed by it. We've even named it, I'm loathe to admit -- the Kiss Patrol -- and have come to accept these yapping sessions as the poodle's only viable way of asserting his place in the family.
Yes, he's a poodle. We don't broadcast that fact widely, since there are all those lingering stereotypes about homos and their Fifi-dogs. Willie's not a Fifi-dog; he's butch in the way that short men sometimes are, tight as a bedspring and buoyantly scrappy. His color is officially red, the rich brick red of an Irish setter, and since we've never abused him with a topiary haircut, most people see him as a sort of animated Teddy bear, a living Steiff creature. He's quite a manly little dog, really.
Willie and I have been together two years longer than Terry and I have. I bought him 12 years ago from a man who had a serious fixation on Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. Poor Willie -- who's a miniature, not a sturdy standard like Charley -- had spent the first six months of his life touring America in the back of a van, an experience that left him with a lifelong distaste for vehicular travel. His previous owner had called him K-Y, a lame joke I might have retained for the sake of continuity had I not all too vividly pictured myself in Dolores Park yelling out the name of the popular lubricant. So I rechristened him Willie, in part because I Iiked the simplicity of it, in part because the Princess of Wales had recently given birth to a son named William.
The new moniker was fine by him, though of course we never fully obliterated the old one. For a while I would meet strangers on the street, people from Willie's Steinbeckian past, who would recognize that auburn coat and blurt out his maiden name, and he'd be all over them like a cheap suit. Sometimes even today, just for drill, Terry will utter a soft "K-Y" while Willie lies snoozing on the sofa, and Willie will look up and hoist his ears in befuddled recognition, like an old man hearing the nickname his buddies used to call him in the army.
As fate would have it, I met Terry on Willie's third birthday, though I didn't take note of this oddity until a year or so later, when I was studying the dog's family tree. Now October 16 is a big deal at our house, the only high holy day we still observe with any degree of regularity -- our mutual anniversary/birthday. I know this is way too cute for most people to handle, but what the hell. When the universe sends you such a blazingly obvious sign, such a cornball bolt out of the blue, there's not much you can do but acknowledge it.
When Terry moved from Atlanta into my three-room cottage above the Castro, the dog was as thrilled about it as I was. After all, this new guy brought him treats and rubbed the insides of his ears and engaged him in long, intimate conversation. And Willie showed his gratitude by learning a stunning array of new tricks: how to circle the block off the leash, how to sit, how to wait dutifully at the curb until Terry gave the signal to cross the street. It was a new era suddenly, rife with possibilities. A certain easy symmetry had come to our household, and Willie knew it.
We've moved twice since then, first to a walk-up penthouse in the Mission District, where Willie entered middle-age and began to write his memoirs on the upholstery. Then, last year, Terry and I bought a house on the edge of Sutro Forest, thereby adding dirt and shrubbery to Willie's growing roster of urinary pleasures. He's become grumpier with age, I'm afraid. The little Pit Poodle can't walk to the mail-box without attempting, however unsuccessfully, to terrorize the neighbors. At home, though his ursine charm remains intact, he's grown ever more demanding, never satisfied with a two-handed backrub when a four-handed one is possible.
Who knows what's behind all this need? I suspect he never fully recovered from a time in the early '90s when Terry and I spent our winters away from him. On a larky impulse at the end of a long book tour we'd bought a farmhouse on the South Island of New Zealand. Since Willie would never have endured the brutal six-month quarantine required by that country, we decided to leave him home with our friend Steve, who, in spite of serious concerns of his own, had sweetly agreed to house-sit.
Willie adored Steve, and enjoyed his company immensely, but the dog pined for us nightly, Steve said, waiting solemnly at the top of the stairs for our imminent return. We were gone five months the first year, three the second, building our nest on a golden slope above the South Pacific. And though we strung a rope hammock and planted a lemon tree and left saucers of milk for the hedgehogs, the place never seemed completely ours without Willie there. A portrait of our absent companion, sent to us by our artist friend Darryl, became the chief icon of our Kiwi house. In the style of a hokey '50s postcard, its message read: "GREETINGS FROM WILLIE, POODLE OF ENCHANTMENT."
So maybe Willie has a right to be nervous. He knows how much it hurts to be left behind and doesn't plan on letting it happen again. Though we sold the place in New Zealand almost two years ago, Willie still keeps a wary eye on the hall closet, where the dreaded black nylon luggage is stored. And when Terry heads on off on his frequent day-long rounds of shops and doctors and drugstores, and doesn't return by nightfall, the dog will sit anxiously by the door, inventing scenarios.
At times like those, I wish we had a common language. I would tell Willie not to worry, that Terry will be home any minute now, no worse for wear, that the evening will still be ours to share. But I would also have to tell him, as best I could, about the dark constancy that has shaped our lives for the decade the three of us have been together. I would explain why Steve never comes to visit anymore and why, in spite of all the good things we both feel about Terry, we might not always have him with us in the bed.
"Kiss Patrol" is reprinted from Dog People: Writers and Artists on Canine Companionship, recently published by Artisan. © 1995 Armistead Maupin.
http://www.salon.com/12nov1995/feature/armistead.html
Some dogs, I'm told, like to stick around when their owners are making love. They'll sit stone still and watch the proceedings with deadpan intensity, as if collecting evidence for some evil congressional subcommittee. Not Willie. As soon as human passion rears its ugly head -- and he has an uncanny eye for the precise moment -- he flings himself off the bed and skulks away to another room. This is jealousy, I suppose, mingled with mortification, though I'd like to believe there's an element of courtesy involved as well. In any event, he comes rocketing back only seconds after the deed is done, reclaiming his rightful place between us with breathless little yelps of relief and celebration. You'd think we'd just returned from a month in Europe.
Kissing is another matter entirely. If Willie finds us smooching in the kitchen before dinner, he'll proceed to bark indignantly until we've stopped. "Break it up, you jerks," he seems to be saying. "There are three of us here, remember?" I'm sure the late Mrs. Woodhouse would have found something deeply disturbing about this behavior, but Terry and I are rather charmed by it. We've even named it, I'm loathe to admit -- the Kiss Patrol -- and have come to accept these yapping sessions as the poodle's only viable way of asserting his place in the family.
Yes, he's a poodle. We don't broadcast that fact widely, since there are all those lingering stereotypes about homos and their Fifi-dogs. Willie's not a Fifi-dog; he's butch in the way that short men sometimes are, tight as a bedspring and buoyantly scrappy. His color is officially red, the rich brick red of an Irish setter, and since we've never abused him with a topiary haircut, most people see him as a sort of animated Teddy bear, a living Steiff creature. He's quite a manly little dog, really.
Willie and I have been together two years longer than Terry and I have. I bought him 12 years ago from a man who had a serious fixation on Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. Poor Willie -- who's a miniature, not a sturdy standard like Charley -- had spent the first six months of his life touring America in the back of a van, an experience that left him with a lifelong distaste for vehicular travel. His previous owner had called him K-Y, a lame joke I might have retained for the sake of continuity had I not all too vividly pictured myself in Dolores Park yelling out the name of the popular lubricant. So I rechristened him Willie, in part because I Iiked the simplicity of it, in part because the Princess of Wales had recently given birth to a son named William.
The new moniker was fine by him, though of course we never fully obliterated the old one. For a while I would meet strangers on the street, people from Willie's Steinbeckian past, who would recognize that auburn coat and blurt out his maiden name, and he'd be all over them like a cheap suit. Sometimes even today, just for drill, Terry will utter a soft "K-Y" while Willie lies snoozing on the sofa, and Willie will look up and hoist his ears in befuddled recognition, like an old man hearing the nickname his buddies used to call him in the army.
As fate would have it, I met Terry on Willie's third birthday, though I didn't take note of this oddity until a year or so later, when I was studying the dog's family tree. Now October 16 is a big deal at our house, the only high holy day we still observe with any degree of regularity -- our mutual anniversary/birthday. I know this is way too cute for most people to handle, but what the hell. When the universe sends you such a blazingly obvious sign, such a cornball bolt out of the blue, there's not much you can do but acknowledge it.
When Terry moved from Atlanta into my three-room cottage above the Castro, the dog was as thrilled about it as I was. After all, this new guy brought him treats and rubbed the insides of his ears and engaged him in long, intimate conversation. And Willie showed his gratitude by learning a stunning array of new tricks: how to circle the block off the leash, how to sit, how to wait dutifully at the curb until Terry gave the signal to cross the street. It was a new era suddenly, rife with possibilities. A certain easy symmetry had come to our household, and Willie knew it.
We've moved twice since then, first to a walk-up penthouse in the Mission District, where Willie entered middle-age and began to write his memoirs on the upholstery. Then, last year, Terry and I bought a house on the edge of Sutro Forest, thereby adding dirt and shrubbery to Willie's growing roster of urinary pleasures. He's become grumpier with age, I'm afraid. The little Pit Poodle can't walk to the mail-box without attempting, however unsuccessfully, to terrorize the neighbors. At home, though his ursine charm remains intact, he's grown ever more demanding, never satisfied with a two-handed backrub when a four-handed one is possible.
Who knows what's behind all this need? I suspect he never fully recovered from a time in the early '90s when Terry and I spent our winters away from him. On a larky impulse at the end of a long book tour we'd bought a farmhouse on the South Island of New Zealand. Since Willie would never have endured the brutal six-month quarantine required by that country, we decided to leave him home with our friend Steve, who, in spite of serious concerns of his own, had sweetly agreed to house-sit.
Willie adored Steve, and enjoyed his company immensely, but the dog pined for us nightly, Steve said, waiting solemnly at the top of the stairs for our imminent return. We were gone five months the first year, three the second, building our nest on a golden slope above the South Pacific. And though we strung a rope hammock and planted a lemon tree and left saucers of milk for the hedgehogs, the place never seemed completely ours without Willie there. A portrait of our absent companion, sent to us by our artist friend Darryl, became the chief icon of our Kiwi house. In the style of a hokey '50s postcard, its message read: "GREETINGS FROM WILLIE, POODLE OF ENCHANTMENT."
So maybe Willie has a right to be nervous. He knows how much it hurts to be left behind and doesn't plan on letting it happen again. Though we sold the place in New Zealand almost two years ago, Willie still keeps a wary eye on the hall closet, where the dreaded black nylon luggage is stored. And when Terry heads on off on his frequent day-long rounds of shops and doctors and drugstores, and doesn't return by nightfall, the dog will sit anxiously by the door, inventing scenarios.
At times like those, I wish we had a common language. I would tell Willie not to worry, that Terry will be home any minute now, no worse for wear, that the evening will still be ours to share. But I would also have to tell him, as best I could, about the dark constancy that has shaped our lives for the decade the three of us have been together. I would explain why Steve never comes to visit anymore and why, in spite of all the good things we both feel about Terry, we might not always have him with us in the bed.
"Kiss Patrol" is reprinted from Dog People: Writers and Artists on Canine Companionship, recently published by Artisan. © 1995 Armistead Maupin.
http://www.salon.com/12nov1995/feature/armistead.html
Friday, March 31, 1995
"Tales of the City" Peabody Award
The "Tales of the City" miniseries won a Peabody award in 1995. The Award "...recognize(s) distinguished achievement and meritorious public service by TV and radio stations, networks, producing organizations, individuals and the World Wide Web." (http://www.peabody.uga.edu/)
--- Article ---
March 31, 1995
The PBS mini-series "Armistead Maupin's 'Tales of the City' " won a Peabody Award today for its "courageous depiction" of gay life in San Francisco before AIDS.
NBC's "E.R.," "Frasier" and "Mad About You" were also among the 31 winners. NBC was the only network recognized for a prime-time entertainment series.
ABC won for a "Prime Time Live" report about errors at laboratories that test for cervical cancer and for a "20-20" story on a woman's fight to save victims of anorexia.
The six-hour "Tales of the City" depicts the freewheeling sex and drugs of San Francisco in 1976.
The Peabodys, administered by the University of Georgia, honor television excellence.
These are the other winners of the 1994 George Foster Peabody Awards:
"Break the Silence: Kids Against Child Abuse," CBS, New York, and Arnold Shapiro Productions, Santa Monica, Calif.
"CBS Reports: D-Day," CBS News, New York.
"Tobacco Stories," National Public Radio, Washington.
"Wade in the Water: African-American Sacred-Music Traditions," National Public Radio and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
"The Battle of the Bulge," WGBH-TV, Boston, and Lennon Documentary Group for "The American Experience."
"F. D. R," WGBH-TV, Boston, and David Grubin Productions for "The American Experience."
"Malcolm X: Make It Plain," WGBH-TV, Boston, Blackside and Roja for "The American Experience."
"Barbra Streisand: The Concert," J.E.G. Productions, presented on Home Box Office.
"MTV Unplugged," MTV Networks, New York.
"Nick News," Nickelodeon and Lucky Duck Productions, New York, a news magazine for children.
"Schizophrenia: Voices of an Illness," Lichtenstein Creative Media, New York.
"The Rise and Fall of Vee-Jay," WRKS-FM, New York, about one of America's most influential black-owned record companies.
"Fascinatin' Rhythm," WXXI-FM, Rochester, a depiction of American culture through popular music.
"Buddy Check 12," WTLV-TV, Jacksonville, Fla., a public-service program.
"Moon Shot," Turner Original Productions-Varied Directions for Turner Entertainment Networks, Atlanta.
"Normandy: The Great Crusade," Discovery Communications, Bethesda, Md.
"Sewer Solvent Scandal," KGAN-TV, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, an investigation of city government fraud.
"D-Day and 50 Years," WVXU-FM, Cincinnati, Ohio.
"China: Beyond the Clouds," WETA, Washington, and Channel 4, London, a River Films Production for National Geographic Television.
"Reflections on Elephants," National Geographic Television, Washington, for the Public Broadcasting Service.
"Just Because: Tales of Violence, Dreams of Peace," KSBW-TV, Salinas, Calif., a program on youth violence.
"Rwanda," KGO-TV, San Francisco, a report on the Rwandan civil war.
"The Atomic Bombshell," KSEE-TV, Fresno, Calif., an investigative report implicating the Air Forces in a nuclear-weapons accident 40 years ago.
"Fat Chance," National Film Board of Canada, presented on TV-Ontario, a program depicting the problems of being overweight.
"Fourways Farm," a Case TV Production for Channel 4, London, a children's program dealing with complex issues of life and death.
"Maupin's 'Tales' Wins a Peabody Award - New York Times." The New York Times. 1995. HighBeam Research. 13 Dec. 2008
--- Article ---
March 31, 1995
The PBS mini-series "Armistead Maupin's 'Tales of the City' " won a Peabody Award today for its "courageous depiction" of gay life in San Francisco before AIDS.
NBC's "E.R.," "Frasier" and "Mad About You" were also among the 31 winners. NBC was the only network recognized for a prime-time entertainment series.
ABC won for a "Prime Time Live" report about errors at laboratories that test for cervical cancer and for a "20-20" story on a woman's fight to save victims of anorexia.
The six-hour "Tales of the City" depicts the freewheeling sex and drugs of San Francisco in 1976.
The Peabodys, administered by the University of Georgia, honor television excellence.
These are the other winners of the 1994 George Foster Peabody Awards:
"Break the Silence: Kids Against Child Abuse," CBS, New York, and Arnold Shapiro Productions, Santa Monica, Calif.
"CBS Reports: D-Day," CBS News, New York.
"Tobacco Stories," National Public Radio, Washington.
"Wade in the Water: African-American Sacred-Music Traditions," National Public Radio and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
"The Battle of the Bulge," WGBH-TV, Boston, and Lennon Documentary Group for "The American Experience."
"F. D. R," WGBH-TV, Boston, and David Grubin Productions for "The American Experience."
"Malcolm X: Make It Plain," WGBH-TV, Boston, Blackside and Roja for "The American Experience."
"Barbra Streisand: The Concert," J.E.G. Productions, presented on Home Box Office.
"MTV Unplugged," MTV Networks, New York.
"Nick News," Nickelodeon and Lucky Duck Productions, New York, a news magazine for children.
"Schizophrenia: Voices of an Illness," Lichtenstein Creative Media, New York.
"The Rise and Fall of Vee-Jay," WRKS-FM, New York, about one of America's most influential black-owned record companies.
"Fascinatin' Rhythm," WXXI-FM, Rochester, a depiction of American culture through popular music.
"Buddy Check 12," WTLV-TV, Jacksonville, Fla., a public-service program.
"Moon Shot," Turner Original Productions-Varied Directions for Turner Entertainment Networks, Atlanta.
"Normandy: The Great Crusade," Discovery Communications, Bethesda, Md.
"Sewer Solvent Scandal," KGAN-TV, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, an investigation of city government fraud.
"D-Day and 50 Years," WVXU-FM, Cincinnati, Ohio.
"China: Beyond the Clouds," WETA, Washington, and Channel 4, London, a River Films Production for National Geographic Television.
"Reflections on Elephants," National Geographic Television, Washington, for the Public Broadcasting Service.
"Just Because: Tales of Violence, Dreams of Peace," KSBW-TV, Salinas, Calif., a program on youth violence.
"Rwanda," KGO-TV, San Francisco, a report on the Rwandan civil war.
"The Atomic Bombshell," KSEE-TV, Fresno, Calif., an investigative report implicating the Air Forces in a nuclear-weapons accident 40 years ago.
"Fat Chance," National Film Board of Canada, presented on TV-Ontario, a program depicting the problems of being overweight.
"Fourways Farm," a Case TV Production for Channel 4, London, a children's program dealing with complex issues of life and death.
"Maupin's 'Tales' Wins a Peabody Award - New York Times." The New York Times. 1995. HighBeam Research. 13 Dec. 2008
Sunday, April 17, 1994
Journal; The Plot Thickens At PBS
By FRANK RICH
Published: Sunday, April 17, 1994
The continuing soap opera of PBS -- will it survive its cable competition, conservative critics, financial woes? -- is hardly the most thrilling of cliffhangers. It's barely more compelling than the middlebrow "Middlemarch," a profusely illustrated Cliffs Notes version of George Eliot, now airing on a public station near you. But with the new revelation that PBS has, in a cloak of darkness, abruptly abandoned its most successful prime-time dramatic series in more than a decade, the plot thickens most mysteriously. Is PBS heading for a disastrous denouement?
The series in question is "Tales of the City," a six-hour adaptation of the first of Armistead Maupin's six novels about life among a cross-section of San Franciscans. When broadcast in January, "Tales" was greeted with critical acclaim and record-breaking audiences for its touching portrait of the bygone 1970's and its wonderful cast headed by Olympia Dukakis and Donald Moffat. Because the show contained a sprinkling of female breasts and profanities, PBS offered a slightly modified alternative version to its stations. But except for three Southern states in which the religious right predictably exploited "Tales" for political ends, the series was not only broadcast without incident but served as an exceptionally potent tool for local station pledge drives.
"Tales" was a cheap hit for PBS; almost all of the $8 million production cost was picked up by Britain's Channel 4, which originated the project. So happy was PBS with the result that it encouraged Lindsay Law, the producer who brought "Tales" to public television as part of his "American Playhouse" series, to pursue a sequel with Channel 4.
But in late March PBS suddenly started sending Mr. Law what he called "weird signals." When he and Mr. Maupin sought reassurances from the network's programming director, Jennifer Lawson, they discovered that "More Tales" was no longer wanted by PBS. Reporters alerted by Mr. Maupin were stonewalled by PBS spokesmen, who would only answer from a script of "talking points."
As the "talking points" have it, the most concrete reasons for PBS's decision to back away from "More Tales" are that it requires too much funding and that public television, unlike vulgar commercial networks, doesn't sink to sequels. Both explanations are bogus. PBS had told Mr. Law from the start that it had earmarked no money for "More Tales," and he had already been pursuing corporate and private sponsors instead. And PBS does air sequels -- witness "Prime Suspect 3."
So what happened between January and March that made PBS run away from its big hit? To this outsider, two events seem significant. The first is the arrival of a new PBS president, Ervin Duggan. The second is a new all-out campaign against "Tales of the City" by Donald Wildmon's American Family Association: with little fanfare in late March, members of Congress were sent a 12-minute bootleg videotape darkly highlighting the series' four-letter words, fleeting nudity, pot-smoking and one prolonged gay kiss.
Mr. Duggan's pre-PBS job was as a Bush Administration appointee, backed by the National Association of Evangelicals, to the Federal Communications Commission, where he pledged his fealty to "decent family values." Is he now acting as a censor to appease the fundamentalism and homophobia of family-values kooks? Or is the retreat from Mr. Maupin's "Tales" -- tales so benign, by the way, that they originally ran as a serial in the mass-circulation San Francisco Chronicle -- just a dumb programming decision by a television novice?
Repeated efforts to get Mr. Duggan or Ms. Lawson to stop hiding behind flacks and explain their actions were to no avail. Congressmen and benefactors with a hand on public broadcasting purse strings may be more successful in smoking them out. Meanwhile, the millions of viewers who delighted in "Tales" because it is the kind of adult American drama they can't find on commercial television -- and who pledged money to support it -- have reason to feel betrayed. At a time when public television's overall viewership is declining sharply and even its preschool monopoly is facing stiff competition from Nickelodeon, PBS can hardly afford a president who recklessly tells both the gifted creators and discerning audience of the most successful prime-time drama in years to get lost.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/17/opinion/journal-the-plot-thickens-at-pbs.html?scp=85&sq=Tales%20of%20the%20City&st=cse
Published: Sunday, April 17, 1994
The continuing soap opera of PBS -- will it survive its cable competition, conservative critics, financial woes? -- is hardly the most thrilling of cliffhangers. It's barely more compelling than the middlebrow "Middlemarch," a profusely illustrated Cliffs Notes version of George Eliot, now airing on a public station near you. But with the new revelation that PBS has, in a cloak of darkness, abruptly abandoned its most successful prime-time dramatic series in more than a decade, the plot thickens most mysteriously. Is PBS heading for a disastrous denouement?
The series in question is "Tales of the City," a six-hour adaptation of the first of Armistead Maupin's six novels about life among a cross-section of San Franciscans. When broadcast in January, "Tales" was greeted with critical acclaim and record-breaking audiences for its touching portrait of the bygone 1970's and its wonderful cast headed by Olympia Dukakis and Donald Moffat. Because the show contained a sprinkling of female breasts and profanities, PBS offered a slightly modified alternative version to its stations. But except for three Southern states in which the religious right predictably exploited "Tales" for political ends, the series was not only broadcast without incident but served as an exceptionally potent tool for local station pledge drives.
"Tales" was a cheap hit for PBS; almost all of the $8 million production cost was picked up by Britain's Channel 4, which originated the project. So happy was PBS with the result that it encouraged Lindsay Law, the producer who brought "Tales" to public television as part of his "American Playhouse" series, to pursue a sequel with Channel 4.
But in late March PBS suddenly started sending Mr. Law what he called "weird signals." When he and Mr. Maupin sought reassurances from the network's programming director, Jennifer Lawson, they discovered that "More Tales" was no longer wanted by PBS. Reporters alerted by Mr. Maupin were stonewalled by PBS spokesmen, who would only answer from a script of "talking points."
As the "talking points" have it, the most concrete reasons for PBS's decision to back away from "More Tales" are that it requires too much funding and that public television, unlike vulgar commercial networks, doesn't sink to sequels. Both explanations are bogus. PBS had told Mr. Law from the start that it had earmarked no money for "More Tales," and he had already been pursuing corporate and private sponsors instead. And PBS does air sequels -- witness "Prime Suspect 3."
So what happened between January and March that made PBS run away from its big hit? To this outsider, two events seem significant. The first is the arrival of a new PBS president, Ervin Duggan. The second is a new all-out campaign against "Tales of the City" by Donald Wildmon's American Family Association: with little fanfare in late March, members of Congress were sent a 12-minute bootleg videotape darkly highlighting the series' four-letter words, fleeting nudity, pot-smoking and one prolonged gay kiss.
Mr. Duggan's pre-PBS job was as a Bush Administration appointee, backed by the National Association of Evangelicals, to the Federal Communications Commission, where he pledged his fealty to "decent family values." Is he now acting as a censor to appease the fundamentalism and homophobia of family-values kooks? Or is the retreat from Mr. Maupin's "Tales" -- tales so benign, by the way, that they originally ran as a serial in the mass-circulation San Francisco Chronicle -- just a dumb programming decision by a television novice?
Repeated efforts to get Mr. Duggan or Ms. Lawson to stop hiding behind flacks and explain their actions were to no avail. Congressmen and benefactors with a hand on public broadcasting purse strings may be more successful in smoking them out. Meanwhile, the millions of viewers who delighted in "Tales" because it is the kind of adult American drama they can't find on commercial television -- and who pledged money to support it -- have reason to feel betrayed. At a time when public television's overall viewership is declining sharply and even its preschool monopoly is facing stiff competition from Nickelodeon, PBS can hardly afford a president who recklessly tells both the gifted creators and discerning audience of the most successful prime-time drama in years to get lost.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/17/opinion/journal-the-plot-thickens-at-pbs.html?scp=85&sq=Tales%20of%20the%20City&st=cse
Thursday, January 13, 1994
Journal; San Francisco Paradise Lost
The New York Times
Frank Rich
Originally published 1-13-1994
So much sex on television, so little time.
Should I watch a perky animated condom leap into a couple's bed? If I did, I could take sides in the new and rancorous debate about whether the Government should produce commercials promoting safe sex.
Maybe I should turn instead to that courtroom where a young lawyer is telling a jury that "a life is more valuable than a penis." If I studied the arguments about "malicious wounding" on Court TV -- hold the photos, please -- perhaps I would finally figure out whom to root for in the latest battle of the us-vs.-them gender wars, the Bobbitt trial.
Then again, I think not.
So I end up surfing channels to San Francisco in the 1970's, where I find a man and a woman in bed. A man and a man in bed. Men kissing men. Women kissing women. Everyone smoking dope and coupling without benefit of wedlock. This is the mini-series "Tales of the City" on PBS, and why, after a hard day of trying to duck the crossfire about condom ads and the Bobbitts, does it come as a relief?
Technically, "Tales of the City" should plunge a viewer right back into today's sexual hostilities. Adapted from the first of the six Armistead Maupin novels about intersecting lives in a small apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, the six-hour soap opera brings far more explicit bedroom behavior to prime time than any condom ad. It exposes far more flesh than "NYPD Blue." It features feminists and male chauvinist pigs (as the quaint patois once had it) and incipient gay activists. It even has its own severed-penis plot twist.
Yet the series is a tonic. Its opening credits announce tales of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" from "an era of innocence" -- and it makes good on that seeming contradiction.
True, 1976 was not all innocence. By then, Vietnam, Watergate and "American Graffiti" had come and gone, leaving the impression that American innocence had died at least 15 years earlier. The air was thick with such worldly phenomena as discos, "More Joy of Sex," poppers and Jimmy Carter lusting in his heart.
But an innocence pervades "Tales of the City" just the same. Not of the silly "If You're Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair" variety, but a live-and-let-live innocence that looks like democracy.
The people in Mr. Maupin's San Francisco are hardly perfect but they are tolerant. Women and men listen to one another and, if they battle, do so with well-chosen words, however angry, rather than with attitudes, fists or knives. Gay and straight men share dating tips. Parents and adult children agree to disagree.
Even the unhip, unyoung and unliberal are embraced. More erotic than any of the show's many trysts featuring nude young bodies is the affair between a patrician Republican advertising man of 60-something (played by Donald Moffat) and the 56-year-old Barbary Lane landlady, Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis).
Was life really so simple then, so easy? Perhaps not. As Richard Kramer, who wrote the script of "Tales of the City," explained to me, Mr. Maupin's San Francisco "is a tiny little postage stamp of earth that maybe never existed." But it isn't nostalgic sentimentality to believe in Mr. Maupin's ideal. His American city is an extended, improvised and sometimes contentious American family -- an attainable community, not a utopia -- far more loving than most conventional families, including that couple who stepped right off a wedding cake, John and Lorena.
What happened to Mr. Maupin's characters after the 1970's? The specific answers can be found in his sequels to "Tales of the City," which eventually pick up the trail of a deadly intruder. But the larger answer has to do with a virus of the mind, not body. It is not H.I.V. that decimated the family at 28 Barbary Lane, but ideologues who pollute the air by turning words like "condom" and "Bobbitt" into polarizing battle cries for one rigid and exclusionary version or another of family values or sexual orthodoxy.
Mr. Maupin's San Francisco, meanwhile, remains a paradise lost -- or, as his Anna Madrigal puts it, an Atlantis to which "we know we must return together." Cartoon condoms may save lives, but they can't take us back there from here.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/13/opinion/journal-san-francisco-paradise-lost.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Frank Rich
Originally published 1-13-1994
So much sex on television, so little time.
Should I watch a perky animated condom leap into a couple's bed? If I did, I could take sides in the new and rancorous debate about whether the Government should produce commercials promoting safe sex.
Maybe I should turn instead to that courtroom where a young lawyer is telling a jury that "a life is more valuable than a penis." If I studied the arguments about "malicious wounding" on Court TV -- hold the photos, please -- perhaps I would finally figure out whom to root for in the latest battle of the us-vs.-them gender wars, the Bobbitt trial.
Then again, I think not.
So I end up surfing channels to San Francisco in the 1970's, where I find a man and a woman in bed. A man and a man in bed. Men kissing men. Women kissing women. Everyone smoking dope and coupling without benefit of wedlock. This is the mini-series "Tales of the City" on PBS, and why, after a hard day of trying to duck the crossfire about condom ads and the Bobbitts, does it come as a relief?
Technically, "Tales of the City" should plunge a viewer right back into today's sexual hostilities. Adapted from the first of the six Armistead Maupin novels about intersecting lives in a small apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, the six-hour soap opera brings far more explicit bedroom behavior to prime time than any condom ad. It exposes far more flesh than "NYPD Blue." It features feminists and male chauvinist pigs (as the quaint patois once had it) and incipient gay activists. It even has its own severed-penis plot twist.
Yet the series is a tonic. Its opening credits announce tales of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" from "an era of innocence" -- and it makes good on that seeming contradiction.
True, 1976 was not all innocence. By then, Vietnam, Watergate and "American Graffiti" had come and gone, leaving the impression that American innocence had died at least 15 years earlier. The air was thick with such worldly phenomena as discos, "More Joy of Sex," poppers and Jimmy Carter lusting in his heart.
But an innocence pervades "Tales of the City" just the same. Not of the silly "If You're Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair" variety, but a live-and-let-live innocence that looks like democracy.
The people in Mr. Maupin's San Francisco are hardly perfect but they are tolerant. Women and men listen to one another and, if they battle, do so with well-chosen words, however angry, rather than with attitudes, fists or knives. Gay and straight men share dating tips. Parents and adult children agree to disagree.
Even the unhip, unyoung and unliberal are embraced. More erotic than any of the show's many trysts featuring nude young bodies is the affair between a patrician Republican advertising man of 60-something (played by Donald Moffat) and the 56-year-old Barbary Lane landlady, Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis).
Was life really so simple then, so easy? Perhaps not. As Richard Kramer, who wrote the script of "Tales of the City," explained to me, Mr. Maupin's San Francisco "is a tiny little postage stamp of earth that maybe never existed." But it isn't nostalgic sentimentality to believe in Mr. Maupin's ideal. His American city is an extended, improvised and sometimes contentious American family -- an attainable community, not a utopia -- far more loving than most conventional families, including that couple who stepped right off a wedding cake, John and Lorena.
What happened to Mr. Maupin's characters after the 1970's? The specific answers can be found in his sequels to "Tales of the City," which eventually pick up the trail of a deadly intruder. But the larger answer has to do with a virus of the mind, not body. It is not H.I.V. that decimated the family at 28 Barbary Lane, but ideologues who pollute the air by turning words like "condom" and "Bobbitt" into polarizing battle cries for one rigid and exclusionary version or another of family values or sexual orthodoxy.
Mr. Maupin's San Francisco, meanwhile, remains a paradise lost -- or, as his Anna Madrigal puts it, an Atlantis to which "we know we must return together." Cartoon condoms may save lives, but they can't take us back there from here.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/13/opinion/journal-san-francisco-paradise-lost.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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