Flash & Filigree

DOWNTON ABBEY: NOTES FROM TWO FANS

April 26, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

DOWNTON ABBEY: NOTES FROM TWO FANS We began watching the globally popular series DOWNTON ABBEY six months ago. To Larry it can be argued that the pivotal character in this compelling PBS show is undoubtedly the head butler, Carson, who, with his long face, is recognized the world over. It is he, in the great manor house of Downton, who must deal with the aristocrats upstairs and the servants downstairs. Though the exceedingly forceful Carson is not unflappable, now and […]

Categories: Hollywood, Love & Literature • Tags: DOWNTON ABBEY, Lady Mary, MASTERPIECE THEATRE

A NIGHT AT THE WHITEHOUSE

April 10, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

From the first, it was apparent that the evening was going to echo the Marx brothers. Perhaps it wouldn’t have if I had made a more auspicious choice of taxi-drivers; one has growing cause to lament the habit some embassies have of passing out taxi permits to their nationals the minute they arrive from the steppes. My driver was an Afghan, probably one of the few taxi-drivers in Washington who had never heard of the White House. However, once informed […]

Categories: Governance, Hollywood • Tags: Barry Manilow, Baryshnikov, Clint Eastwood, john travolta, Princess Diana, Ronald Reagan, white house

TRUE WESTERNERS

March 14, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

The magazine “True West” has been in publication sixty years, during which time it has published some solid pieces and an immense amount of Western trivia. Its editor, a genial westerner named Bob Boze Bell, is someone I knew from long ago, at which point in life he was a cartoonist for a Phoenix newspaper, and the strip he was producing was called “Honky Tonk Sue,” a cartoon about a feminist cowgirl who went around beating up male chauvinist cowboys […]

Categories: The Magazine World • Tags: Bob Boze Bell, books, Brokeback Mountain, Diana Ossana, Honky Tonk Sue, Larry McMurtry, movies, producer, Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, True West, True Westerner Award, Tucson, westerners, writer

MIXED PICKLES IN HOLLYWOOD – 2011

February 27, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

ReBlogged from the New York Review of Books. Here’s an Oscar conversation we had in 2011. Mixed Pickles in Hollywood by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books.

Categories: Hollywood • Tags: Diana Ossana, Flash & Filigree, Larry McMurtry, NYR Books, Oscars

POST-OSCARS 2013

February 26, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

The Oscars this year were held once again in the spacious Dolby (former Kodak) theatre in Hollywood, a venue that seats over 3,000 people. The host was the versatile Seth McFarlane, tall, boyish, and easy to like. He can sing a little, dance a little, and he moves things along, a virtue when hosting a nearly four-hour show. The joke writers must be top of the line—this is the Oscars, after all—and yet, it seemed that the jokes were not […]

Categories: Hollywood • Tags: Ang Lee, Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry, The Oscars, Writing

THE OSCARS

February 24, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

The Oscars might best be viewed as an annual rite practiced by the American film industry once a year, an anthropology starting with the culture of wranglers, the young people’s job it is to get the right star to the right seat, the right journalists, and the right limo once the event is over. Usually they do, but now and then there’s a catastrophe, as when Larry wandered off to the bathroom during the Golden Globes, leaving Diana to fend […]

Categories: Hollywood • Tags: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain, Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry, Screenplay, The Oscars

KATE MIDDLETON

February 22, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

Let’s agree that the rather unexceptional young woman who was once Kate Middleton and is now the Duchess of Cambridge is, above all, cute, which includes perky. Attractive, sure; appealing, sure; but really cute. And now even pregnant, which is what princesses, recent or remote, essentially hire on to be once they marry into the rather stiff British royal family. They produce an heir, few of them brilliant, and the rest is mostly ribbon cutting. Good for her! Isn’t she […]

Categories: The Magazine World • Tags: Diana Ossana, Hilary Mantel, Kate Middleton, Larry McMurtry, Princess Diana

GREEN FIELDS COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL – COMMENCEMENT 1995

February 8, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

Ladies and gentlemen, teachers and seniors, this is a ritual we’re enacting—a rite of passage, if you will, and a mild and pleasant one, comparatively speaking. None of the seniors will be required to kill a lion singlehandedly, or have a body part removed. All that’s necessary, in our gentle rite, is that the seniors be draped for a bit in these anachronistic vestments, sit with modesty and patience through some brief solemnities, and be handed a piece of sheepskin, […]

Categories: Sweet Reason & Sour • Tags: Graduation, Larry McMurtry, Speech

REFLECTIONS ON QUARTERBACKS

February 3, 2013 by Flash and Filigree

As we suggested already, there is no more high profile position in NFL football than that of quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, America’s team, as they often call themselves; though there are many, including these writers, who think the moniker is a stretch. Just after we finished an earlier blog about the stylistic differences between the Achilles-like Tom Brady and the suburban dad, Hector-like Peyton Manning, we turned on the concluding minutes of a critical game between the Cowboys and […]

Categories: Curve Balls • Tags: Dallas Cowboys, Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry, NFL, Superbowl, Texas Rangers, Tom Brady, Tony Romo