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Get Shorty: Act 3, the Series

The producers of the Epix TV series Get Shorty, about (small) organized crime going to Hollywood for new opportunities, say it is merely “influenced by” the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name. They even suggest that a security guard at the studio in the series, who waves a car onto the lot and says […]

Letters As Legacy: Why Writing Our Children Matters

As a mother, each month I write a letter to my almost 2-year-old daughter Lucinda, a practice I began nine months before her arrival. I am terrible at keeping her baby book up to date, but I am very good at writing Luci her monthly letter. I learned this letter-writing practice from my own mother, […]

Get Shorty: Act Two, the Movie

With the second season of the new Get Shorty TV series now available, I wanted to revisit Elmore Leonard’s 1990 novel (previous post) and the 1995 movie of the same name. What happens when a narrative spine is used to make a new animal? In the case of the Barry Sonnenfeld movie Get Shorty, the […]

Get Shorty: Act 1, The Book

Get Shorty is a TV series with two seasons in the can and rumors of a third. The first season was released by a lesser-known subscription service, Epix, in August 2016 and found its way to Netflix this year. The second season was released by Epix in August 2018 but has not been shared to […]

The Family That Cooks Together

Lately, cooking has done little to bring my husband and I closer. During our hectic weekdays, there is an on-going battle of who will make dinner, which is often me, despite the agreed-upon negotiation that twice a week he will cook. I love making mini-farfalle pasta in a homemade alfredo sauce with crisp broccolini; farro-and-sausage […]

Bread as Myth, Meme, and Sustenance

Bread has always been miraculous—bread serves as a sacrament in Catholicism, as a universal symbol of fertility and abundance, and matzoh’s edible grace during a time of exile. These days the popular meme “Let’s get this bread” mocks the monotony of earning a living (and that most parents have no idea what their children are […]

Babette’s Feast and the Spirit of the Holidays

French actress Stéphane Audran died this year at 85. Audran had a long career and more than 100 film and TV credits. She worked with directors Luis Buñuel, Éric Rohmer, and former husband Claude Chabrol, was in The Big Red One with Lee Marvin, and played the title character in the 1987 Danish film Babette’s […]

The Found Poetry of Internet Browser Tabs

Experts say you should have no more than nine Internet browser tabs open at one time, but I feel much like St. Augustine: “Lord, make me pure, but not yet.” In an attempt to be more virtuous and productive, I just culled 23 browser tabs on my phone to eight (most of them recipes, creative […]

Buster Scruggs and the Watchful Eye of Death

The new Coen Brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, was released on Netflix November 16, after a (very) limited theatrical release. The National Board of Review made it a top-10 pick for 2018, and it won an early award (for best screenplay) in Venice. The Coens are auteurs, so they make Coen movies, which […]