Ray Pride

The 1970s television life of Charles Nelson Reilly, primarily on "The Match Game" and "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" (as well as "Lidsville"), lingers in memory of anyone old enough, playing a snarky, fey quipster, yet a life as an opera and Tony-nominated theater director accompanied this role (and a recurring bit on "The X-Files"). A long life can have many diversions and digressions, and in "The Life of Reilly," directed by Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson, an October 2004 recording of his one-man show about his real life, small in scale, but large in detail, from hair-raising stories about his awful mother ("Eugene O'Neill would never get near this family") to a television executive telling him early on, "They don't let queers on television." (Reilly's epic summa: "A short meeting.") A genuine raconteur as well as a large presence, Reilly devoted much of his life to teaching, but his poignant and oft-hilarious stories show that a life lived well is the best revenge.
"The Life Of Reilly" opens Friday at Facets.
(2008-03-05)

Also by Ray Pride

Tip of the Week
Stefan Ruzowitzky's Oscar-winning Austrian selection for Best Foreign Language Academy Award, "The Counterfeiters" (Die Falscher), is very good, no matter how much one might have wished a movie like the sterling, startling "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days" (from Romania) to have been in the top five selected through the Academy's arcane processes
(2008-02-26)

The Audacity of Anime
The fanciful documentary intercuts events on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention and a re-creation of the "Chicago Seven" trial of Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin and others
(2008-02-26)

The Hollywood Issue
Glamour takes many forms... "There Will Be Blood" has a reek of "Chinatown" on its breath; "Michael Clayton" is a sleeker edition of movies made by Alan J. Pakula, like "Klute" or "The Parallax View"; "No Country for Old Men" traffics in both nihilism and moralism like movies of another time. More old-fashioned would be "Atonement"’s tragic love story (with a well-chosen vulgarity tossed in) and "Juno" is bumptious and fractious and has three stars under 30: Ellen Page, director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody
(2008-02-19)

Furry Friends
All I know's they're Welsh and not John Cale. Half-past two on Saturday afternoon, two members of Super Furry Animals sneak in the back of Stop Smiling magazine's Milwaukee Avenue HQ for a small secret show on a rare bright sunny afternoon. The Rolling Stones, they did it once at Double Door, and that's a legend; this is more like what guitarist Gruff Rhys calls "bitin' into my breakfast buffet"
(2008-02-19)

Utopian Tourette's
(2008-02-19)

Tip of the Week
(2008-02-19)

Tip of the Week
(2008-02-12)

The Death of Death
(2008-02-12)

Regime Genie
(2008-02-06)

Tip of the Week
(2008-02-06)

Know Your Rights
(2008-02-06)

Tip of the Week
(2008-01-29)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment