Alexander Stuart

Insignificance: the new Criterion DVD and Blu-Ray I am very excited by the release of the beautiful new Criterion DVD and Blu-Ray transfer of Nicolas Roeg's Insignificance , a film I was lucky enough to executive produce...without ever really having intended to be a producer. The film, which is about a remarkable (and entirely imagined) meeting between Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joe McCarthy (the characters are never named, other than "The Actress," "The Professor," etc) one hot summer night in New York in 1954, was based on a play by British playwright and director, Terry Johnson. I happened to see the play at London's remarkable - and fairly radical - Royal Court Theatre while I was working on a series of video musicals. I had just finished writing my first novel, Glory B. (a little-known confection, much inspired by Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get The Blues; it came before my more controversial "first novel,&

This was one of the most popular posts I wrote for my blog, originally called A Wolf At The Door  and later renamed, more positively (in the sense of embracing our troubles rather than simply fighting them), Loving The Wolf. It reflects the heady yet deeply disturbing background against which the presidential race in 2008 was fought - and my personal belief that President-Elect Barack Obama offered the best hope for a nation that was already in deep trouble. I still believe that, despite disappointments that he has not taken on Wall Street and much-needed regulation more forcefully, and that he has been unable to change the acid climate in Washington (a task that looks more Herculean by the day). But I am very glad that he is our president. Simply by winning the presidency, he changed forever the face of America, making it more inclusive of all people - and I believe that he has done a pretty good job (given the obstacles he has faced, both from opposition in Congress and from a

As the United States approaches the possibility of defaulting on its debts, on August 2, 2011, according to the Treasury Department, and President Obama's White House works, as best it can, with lawmakers from both sides of Congress to simultaneously deal with the deficit and raise the nation's debt ceiling, the Huffington Post quotes Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as warning that rapidly reducing federal outlays in the event of a default "would likely push us into a double dip recession." At the same time, a Medici -like drama is unfolding in the immensely powerful House of Murdoch (two of his key executives and longtime allies, indeed almost "family members," resigned yesterday, Friday, July 15, 2011 - see The Guardian's Rupert Murdoch's Bloody Friday ) and there is a sense, at least in the case of Murdoch, and by extension his most powerful US "voice," Fox News, that some of the chickens may at last be coming home to roost.

Our American Eskimo, Stoli (newly trimmed for summer), by the lake. One of the reasons I have been so silent on this blog for so long is that our family has made a fairly radical move north in California, from Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles to Sonora, an historical former gold rush town situated between Yosemite National Park and San Francisco (closer to Yosemite). Prompted in part by our young children's wish to live somewhere even more rural than Topanga - and somewhere with snow in winter and more horses close by - we chose Sonora for its stunning natural beauty, its proximity to Yosemite, its warm and welcoming local community, its fascinating gold rush history, and the fact that there is an excellent Waldorf/Steiner school nearby. 19th Century gold mining equipment at neighboring Columbia. We found a house by a lake that offers a beautiful setting, plentiful ducks and geese (we already have our own baby duckling), hopefully the occasional loon (I am pretty certain tha

It has been a long time since I posted to my blog - I'm not entirely sure where the time has gone but I have moved through it, or it through me, in the usual fashion! Soon I will be back posting more regularly. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this photograph of a beautiful and very peaceful dawn, taken with the iPhone Hipstamatic app. I love the dawn and am usually around to see it, especially in summer. It's such a quiet, reflective yet hopeful time of day - and another reminder of our place in this extraordinarily beautiful cosmos.