Did Ben Brantley Give a Smackdown to Aaron Sorkin Because of Robbie Baitz's Smackdown of Charles Isherwood?

The third comment regarding this New York Magazine piece seems to think so.

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The Lynching of Charles Isherwood

Jason Grote, who I recently assigned to be profiled in the pages of Back Stage, has posted a piece called "Bring Me the Head of Charles Isherwood. Or Not."

And I must say that I really like Jason's take on the fracas because it aims to put the whole thing into some sort of respectable and intelligent macro-perspective. To wit:

"I'm a bit late on the Baitz essay, but (despite the fact that a half a dozen people emailed it to me), I didn't feel compelled to comment, because (with all due respect to Baitz), he seems to be missing the point. Maybe he's too nice. What really offended me about the Isherwood piece in question (that is, his plea for TV writers to return to the stage), is not that Isherwood's own fire-breathing criticism makes him something of a hypocrite (though it does); but that playwrights who are writing television scripts for the stage should be in Hollywood making money and not writing plays because TV on stage is fucking boring. Now, I love a lot of TV, and clearly not every writer who pays the bills with TV writing is a hack. But why on earth would I pay anywhere between $20-$200 and drag my ass into midtown to see something I could get at home for free? When theater starts competing with television, it's already lost...."

Jason goes to talk about why he trashes NYT's theatre criticism and culture coverage on his blogs, but I would argue that he, along with Isaac (in his open letter to the Times) and even Matt Freeman, both of whom I greatly like and respect, nevertheless aren't taking much in the way of action to force NYT to make whatever changes -- not fully and specifically articulated, in my view -- they desire.

Everybody seems to be interested in posting 100 sentences about theatre and 20 rules for writing about plays and 100 this and 100 that. How about somebody post 100 ways to improve theatre coverage in New York? How about somebody post 100 reasons why Isherwood and/or Brantley should be let go immediately? How about somebody post 100 other people that could replace them? How about somebody, somewhere, stop the whiny-bitchy-moaning and be fully specific about how to ameliorate the situation and end the immature lynching Charles Friggin' Isherwood? The more you mock him, the more you rake him over the coals, the more you call him names, the more you assail his character, the more you write open letters to the Times that you know full well they're not going to read because they lack any teeth, the more you ascribe power to the Times -- the more that you give the Times precisely what it wants. How about getting some journalists in on the gig? How about putting your money where your mouths are? Jason Grote had the strength of character to create and circulate a petition against New York Theatre Workshop, signed by 939 people, when the workshop did that horrid job of explaining why Rachel Corrie was being postponed-slash-cancelled. Why not make it clear that Times advertisers will be boycotted if this and this and this and this isn't changed immediately? Why not take some kind of really serious action against the Times if you don't like what Isherwood is doing? Do you really believe a blog will affect change? If so, show me how it's happening. I don't think so -- I don't think the Times considers these blogs all that important.

And why does everybody continue to act like Isherwood is some wild renegade who writes whatever he wants without his editors, Rick Lyman and Sam Sifton and who knows who else, knowing anything about it? Are you all suggesting they're not complicit in this mediocrity, if you believe he's vile and vicious and mediocre?

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Jon Robin Baitz -- "JRB" -- Responds

What Mr. Baitz is doing home on a Saturday night, I don't know. Me, I'm getting over a cold and waiting for Ken to get home from Mexico. Flight delays, yadda yadda. Cognac helps cold. Mmm, me like-ee.

Anyway, to my shock, Mr. Baitz posted a response to my post inspired by Moxie's response to Rebeck's response to Baitz's response to Isherwood's story. So now, in the spirit of high-octane Ionesco, I am responding to Baitz's response to my response to Moxie's response to Rebeck's response to Baitz's response to Isherwood's story.

In the spirit of fairness, the response was posted anonymously. But at the end of the post, the person wrote "JRB," so I'm making a big scary leap here and assuming it was him. Of course, now I have a dilemma: do I write a mash note or mash his notes? Here goes:

Jon Robin Baitz writes:

"I remember Walter Kerr rather well, and you, sir, are the prisoner of a verbal machine. I would have thought we were "on the same side", which actually, we are -- you just don't realize it. And you seem to have given a lot of thought to this, which perhaps is flattering, but reveals a slew of predjudices mingled with..oh never mind. But go ahead and talk about 13 year old profiles -my point to Isherwood was simply that as smart as he is, there is a measure of venom which seems to me somewhat -- well - I shrug about it. Anyway, it was the timing of his piece also, and his apparent lack of understanding about the results of the WGA strike on many struggling writers. I know it's useless to respond to these things, but exactly what is it about reminding a critic from the paper of record to be mindful is offensive to you? It seems churlish . And again -- I would ask you to identify exactly where I claim to be one of the Times "victims"????I make no such claim. I am all for being slammed, but at least slam me for what I do write. As for Rich, he championed a lot of people, and he was cruel too. But I never had the sense that he was enduring a tenure as critic -- that's my point. Wow. JRB"

And you, sir, are a victim of your own…oh never mind, indeed. Look, please understand that someone might not reflexively agree with you, or agree with certain specific things you wrote or approaches you took or analyses you presented. And that verbal machine you refer to me being trapped inside—I mean, isn't that rather R.U.R. of you?—is cranked up because your own verbal machinery looped around a bit in your Huffington Post huff-and-puff; you yourself admitted you shouldn't have taken that swipe at Will Eno, for heaven's sake.

And yes, I will absolutely talk about 13-year-old profiles because you know perfectly well, Mr. Baitz, what an important moment that was to gay people, including yours very truly. You know perfectly well how everybody woke up and couldn’t believe the Times had at last done a lifestyle piece of substance on a prominent gay couple. Whatever you might think of that piece today, it was a direct, unmistakable signal of hope for many of us back in that weird, conservative-ascendent 1994 landscape; it was proof that the potential of public societal recognition existed for all of the rest of us. And you know perfectly well what that seal of approval, or endorsement, or whatever you’d want to call it, meant to your career as a result of being in the Times. When you attack the Times institutionally, therefore—and hey, who doesn’t, it’s the blogosphere’s blood sport—it’s really a little disingenuous on your part. That is, unless you're suggesting that the piece did not benefit you or your career at all or, in fact, injured it in some way, which I think most people would find hard to believe. In your response to my post, you wrote “But go ahead and talk about 13-year-old profiles” because what I wrote clearly stung. Sorry. But that wasn't a run-of-the-mill profile and you know it. So the Times has been good to you. That doesn't mean do a dance of hagiography, but it just seems to me that for people at your stage of the career game, things do tend to cut both ways when convenient.

Anyway, is Isherwood’s venom any more poisonous than that of anyone else at the Times? Do you honestly believe that a Brantley pan is less withering? Really? I mean, does the fact that John Simon was finally knocked down a few pegs and booted from New York magazine at all mitigate the fact that he was, and may forever be, the most poisonous snake of them all? Or are we back to the omnipotence of the Times again? (More on that anon.)

Yes, the timing of Isherwood’s piece was, shall we say, unfortunate, but are you suggesting he’s some renegade writer that the Times just publishes without second thought, without editorial oversight? Either way, here enters your criticism of the Times institutionally: if Isherwood's editors knew nothing of the piece, that's institutional neglect; if Isherwood's editors felt it was a good, strong, smart, timely piece for him to pen, I can see why that, too, might upset you. But then you’ve really got to hurl invective at the Times institutionally, and with more specificity and precision, not as a mere afterthought at the bottom of a rant-slash-essay.

I find nothing offensive about cautioning Isherwood to be mindful. What I find offensive -- more like sad -- is how you blithely dismiss all the other critics in New York City (of which I am one, but no one cares about that) as if their voices mean nothing, add nothing, do nothing. That’s old school thinking, and I’ll go to the mat on that one because, sir, the scene is fast changing -- and it has been changing for a long time. I won't blather on about this again because I did so in my earlier post. But that's what I believe. I think it's provable statistically, and I think it's being proved every day in the...ugh, awful word...zeitgeist.

Moreover, by dint of writing what you wrote, by dint of hurling curare-tipped arrows where you did, are you not conferring that power to the Times?

Moving on. You write,

“I would ask you to identify exactly where I claim to be one of the Times ‘victims’???? I make no such claim. I am all for being slammed, but at least slam me for what I do write,"

but this confuses me. Unless you're not an American playwright (I'm not referring to your birthplace), when you mention the struggle of American playwrights “against aging and monochromatic audiences, subscribers who arrive bleary and distracted, and jaded New Yorkers,” I assumed you would include yourself among the list of dramatists who must rally against such distressing demographic disasters. Yes, you do refer to the plight of the “serious young playwright,” but surely you’re not exempt from those same concerns, or are you?

You noted you “went to do my TV show so as to never have to worry about that problem” -- the problem being that Isherwood, et. al., needlessly complicate “the already tendentious struggle that playwrights face in trying to make a life in the theater." Surely we must believe, then, that you, too, have been victimized (strong word) by the Times' tyranny, or at least the icicles of Isherwood, as you see it.

At the end of the day, Mr. Baitz, I do realize that we largely agree. Indeed, I noted at the top of my post that I had been debating what to write in response to your Huffington huff-and-puff, if anything. You know, it also occurs to me that most New York playwrights, critics and writers aren’t exactly afforded the opportunities to contribute to venues such as the Huffington Post anyway, so perhaps that is where some of the “slew of prejudices” you smell are coming from. I'd be more inclined, however, not to call it a slew. It's more like a drip.

To cut to the chase: you’re Jon Robin Baitz. You knew full well that writing that post would get you attention, which it did; you knew full well that it would start dialogues and discussions and debates; artists of your provenance, recognition and acclaim ought to be doing such things. But then you have to be able to handle it when someone argues slightly different positions, and, as you noted, takes the time to sharpen the arguments. You’re flattered that I wrote my essay. To be honest, I’m flattered you responded to my post. Assuming you don't think I'm the enemy, I'd like someday to shake your hand.

With respect (for own commonalities and differences), LJ

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Moxie the Maven Gets it Right and Wrong (and Right?)

I've been debating what to do about Jon Robin Baitz's obnoxious Huffington Post piece about writing for TV and film vs. suffering under the tyranny of Charles Isherwood of the Times (who we are to believe, I suppose, is to the theatre criticism world what Pol Pot was to the 1970s, or maybe it was Idi Amin, or maybe it was Welcome Back, Kotter).

Anyway, I've read Baitz's piece a few times and I've finally decided that it's driving me nuts -- and it's getting a lot of positive rah-rah play on the blogosphere because people on the blogosphere reflexively have orgasms whenever anyone trashes the critics at the New York Times, which as a sport apparently predates bowling and archery.

Then, yesterday, I happened to loop onto Moxie the Maven's blogpost about Baitz's piece, which deals a little more with Theresa Rebeck's response to Baitz's post, followed by Moxie's response to Rebeck's response. The question is: Do I respond to Moxie's response to Rebeck's response to Baitz or let it all blow over?

One guess.

Headlined, "All the Views Fit to Print? Charles Isherwood on Whither the Playwrights (Plus a P.S.)," I should probably explain that Baitz was actually calling Isherwood on his piece about how the writer's strike ought to inspire West Coast-based playwrights -- i.e., film and TV scribes whose original inspiration may have been writing for the stage -- to return east. Here's a small sample:

Whatever the inspiration, you dreamed the dream. And then you lost your way. You got the agent after that first play made a small splash Off Broadway. A spec script for a sitcom followed. Then a move to Los Angeles — just for a year — to see what would come of it. The money was good. No, the money was great. The weather wasn’t bad either. The bagels, not so impressive, but then they outlawed carbs.

But are you truly happy, slouching around that sick-souled city of grimy palms and gridlock? Does earning that co-executive producer credit on that flashy network drama really represent the summit of your writerly ambition? Does all that lovely money truly make up for the punishing grind of pitching series and movies to executives 10 years your junior? Haven’t you read any vintage Joan Didion lately?

To you I say, return to the fold!...

On the one hand, yes, Baitz is right: Isherwood's blithe ignorance is a little bracing -- this idea that making money is somehow bad for a writer (or anyone in the entertainment industry). Isherwood naturally lumbers over to the well of history for examples of New York repatriations he deems honorable, such as that of Clifford Odets, but the whole rhetorical strategy is selective, don't you think? I mean, Isherwood antes up with Odets, but I could easily see his Odets with an Elia Kazan and raise him a Mike Nichols -- two men who segued easily between mediums and coasts without indulging in choosing between them.

What Isherwood is really doing -- especially when he specifically praises David Lindsay-Abaire for rebuffing Hollywood's siren song and implying that Lindsay-Abaire won his Pulitzer Prize, in part, because he stayed in New York -- is deploying the old theatre vs. Hollywood paradigm as a wedge issue, which, as Baitz's correctly notes, shows a complete absence from the reality-based community.

But Baitz, in my view, stumbles, too. With apologies for elisions, here are some selections from his essay:

"And now to the slightly unpleasant part of this essay. Mr. Isherwood, as a critic, will never be noted for his generosity of spirit. He is not Harold Clurman. He tends to be waspish, dismissive, cool, and brittle - as a writer. He can be gratuitously insulting, and his reputation is marred by the general consensus that a good mind is not matched by a particularly big heart. There is a whiff of Grinch in his criticism. Mr. Brantley, more and more seems like a breathless writer of gossip and gush for fan mags, and his intelligence - which again is not in question - seems to fail when it comes down to the big picture. The Times critics present themselves as advocates for consumers, and not as advocates for the theater itself. Unlike Clurman, Ken Tynan, say, or even Frank Rich, who could be withering but always managed to let it be known that he was passionate for new voices, passionate for promise, and uncompromisingly rigorous, as he is as an op-ed writer on Sundays. Speaking of Sundays, the Times used to have a Sunday critic, but have dropped that, thereby handing a monopoly of opinion to Isherwood and Brantley. I would submit that they do not necessarily add incentive to the already tendentious struggle that playwrights
face in trying to make a life in the theater. Nor is that really their job. But there is a slight whiff of disconnection in Charles' essay....

....There are no other critics that matter in NY, other than those of the Times, and when Charles is gratuitously cutting and destructive, and when Brantley is gushy and woozy and adrift in a language derived from OK!, or Teen Beat, it is simply part of the climate now. There are very few playwrights I can think of who won't come back to NY because of the people who sway audiences by their pronouncements about their work.

As a critic, Isherwood is not without value, though many people are still scratching their heads over his almost Olympian celebration of an inscrutable monologue a few years ago at a Union Square theater. All things are connected. The regional theaters now live in a timorous queue, waiting for that which has been granted thumbs up in Gotham. Used to be much more likely that a playwright could go off to say, Seattle Rep for six months, and then come into Playwrights Horizons - now, you start at Playwrights, and if Charles or Ben doesn't respond favorably, the regional theaters do not, generally, come a-calling....

....I suggest that the Times critics re-read Tynan, for instance, who was funny and could be ruthless, but was always on the side of the artist, and never innocently hid behind the pretense of being in the hire of the cultural wing of Consumer Reports. All things are connected, Charles (and Ben). Reading your essay yesterday, it occurred to me that you are suffering from that most modern of diseases - a soul-deep isolation, and a growing dislocation -- a place from which being a critic of the theater, is dangerous, given how communal the art is.

There is one last point I will make -- and it is about the Times itself. I believe that working there can be corrupting on some level, there is a safety in it, and a routine in it, and there is smugness too in the culture pages. Inoculate yourselves with sabbaticals. Maybe some time in Rome, or in LA, before coming back to the Grey Lady with a new understanding of some of the verities in the larger world."

Rather clever and underhanded of Baitz to segue from a gentle, understandable refutation of Isherwood's idea of striking writers "lying on the couch in Hollywood perfecting their video-game scores" to attacking the brand, style, tone and substance of Isherwood's criticism, hm? Rather clever and underhanded, too, of Baitz to imply that it is Isherwood's fault (and Brantley's fault and the fault of the diabolical The New York Times) that playwrights must turn to film and TV in the first place to make a living. It's a cheap shot and irrelevant, ultimately. Isherwood -- for God's sake, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times -- could give everything Baitz has ever written a huge, big, fat kiss of a review and he's still need to work in film and TV. It's just the economics of the scene, and you can't lay that solely at Isherwood -- or Isherwood's brand of criticism, whatever else one may think of it.

And what does citing Harold Clurman have to do with anything? One of the things that people who throw around historical names left and right always, always fail to consider is context. The era that created Clurman easily lent itself to the idea of the critic-as-practitioner, whereas today most critics, to their detriment, find that idea abhorrent -- probably because they fear learning that they lack any theatrical talent of their own. That Isherwood "can be gratuitiously insulting," that there's "a whiff of Grinch in his criticism" strikes me as not germane to Baitz's argument; his description of Brantley as "more and more...like a breathless writer of gossip and gush for fan mags" thereby drags into the fray the chief drama critic of the Times, as if he is responsible for the sins of his second-in-command who wrote the piece Baitz is taking issue with in the first place. No, no, write a separate essay about Brantley -- don't blame Brantley for Isherwood.

Baitz laments the fact that Isherwood and Brantley are advocates for consumers, not "advocates for the theater itself," but then, in a regrettable and insidious swipe at Will Eno's Thom Pain (based on nothing), Baitz says that "Isherwood is not without value, though many people are still scratching their heads over his almost Olympian celebration of an inscrutable monologue a few years ago at a Union Square theater." In other words, if Isherwood advocates for theater Baitz finds inscrutable, Isherwood is a bad critic. If Isherwood advocates for theater Baitz likes, he's..."not without value." That's about as consistent as...mud.

I agree with Baitz that the Times not having a Sunday critic is a terrible thing, but I think the problems at the Times transcend the disappearance of a Sunday view -- and I'd wager that most people, including Baitz, aren't old enough to remember Walter Kerr's Sunday pieces, which in the late 1970s and early 1980s didn't do all that much to leaven the debate. Indeed, it seems to me that everybody's so-called memories of Sunday review pieces are far hazier and far more warmhearted than they were actually received at the time.

What gets me, however, is Baitz's belief that there "are no other critics that matter in NY, other than those of the Times." Here we are again with that same stupid whiny, bitching complaining that the Times is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful. So easy, so wrong. Just how many producers are saying that in New York? Well, some, to be sure. I'd say the old-school producers, which is a rapidly diminishing group, for the most part. In the old days when organizations like the League of American Theatres and Producers encompassed individual Broadway producers, as opposed to corporate entities, yes, the Times had a certain omnipotent power. But Baitz's martyr-like resistance is out of touch. For example, it is common knowledge these days that the Internet -- websites, web marketing, the power of the viral; not to mention the added firepower of the blogosphere -- had accelerated what was already seen as the diminishing power of the Times that began in earnest with Brantley's tenure. (Yes, critics do discuss these things behind closed doors.)

Moreover, Baitz seems not to remember, as he gently lathers up the reader with his fuzzy and kissy-faced hagiography of Frank Rich, that it was Rich who had the power to regularly close shows with his opening-night reviews. Rich was the chief critic for 13 years; Brantley has been at it for 10 or so. Count up the number of Broadway productions that closed in one night, or two nights, or one week during each of their tenures, and I think you'll see the number significantly lower during Brantley's tenure. Is this because the quality of the work on Broadway has gotten so much better since Rich was the top critic? Please, stop laughing. It's because producing and producers, on top of becoming corporatized and in many ways standardized, have also learned how to create shows that are designed to be critic-proof. And this idea isn't even really new -- I remember a play in 1984 called "Whodunnit?" by Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) that was eviscerated by Rich yet still ended up running six months -- I remember the producers giving interviews in which they made it clear that they would run the play regardless of what Rich said. Ask marketers; ask innovative advertising folk in the industry what drives ticket sales, and the New York Times is not going to be the first thing they say. Yes, a Times rave is nice, but not absolutely necessary. Where the Times makes a big difference is OB and OOB, and God knows Baitz's relationship to OOB is non-existent. Baitz writes that Isherwood is "suffering from that most modern of diseases - a soul-deep isolation, and a growing dislocation -- a place from which being a critic of the theater, is dangerous, given how communal the art is," but is that to assure us that Baitz really has a pulse on what's going on? On the basis of what evidence can he possibly say that? On a blogosphere in which we're forever wanting to champion new voices, forever wanting to put an end to workshop and development hell, we're astounded and thrilled when a Jason Grote can have an amazing Off-Broadway run -- and so where is dear Robby in any of those struggles? Has Baitz forgotten that he was anointed the golden boy back in the early 90s?

This last point brings me to the final point I'd like to make about Baitz. He writes that working at the Times "can be corrupting on some level," that "there is smugness...in the culture pages." Well, it certainly didn't seem to bother Baitz in 1994 when the Times published nearly 3,000 words on the happy home life of Baitz and Joe Mantello, the Couple of the Moment in New York Theater. Yep, I'd say the Times was pretty good to Baitz. Maybe he should acknowledge that for a change instead of painting himself as one of many victims.

As for Moxie the Maven taking on Rebeck's comment on Baitz's piece....sigh. I really don't blame Rebeck for writing what she wrote. But at the same time, Moxie shouldn't use Rebeck's agreement with Baitz as a pretext to take another potshot at Rebeck's work. Yes, Rebeck may be a little on the sour grapes side because "The New York Times whacks you on the head because of some utterly inane new rule they've come up with as an excuse to dismiss your play," but many playwrights -- including Baitz -- are struggling to locate coherent aesthetic principles and preferences in Isherwood and Brantley's criticism, and that, not Isherwood's isolation, is the problem. (Not that any writer should write in order to please critics, I should add.)

Then Moxie makes the same mistake -- the same pissy, twisted, innocuous, petty, grouchy, petulent, nyah nyah nyah mistake -- that Baitz makes when Moxie dismisses Rebeck by decrying the fact that "her plays aren't really challenging the form." Is that, or should that be, I ask, the sole determinant for good playwriting? Must everything radicalize? Must everything innovate -- and if so, how, and who says? Is there no more room for solidly constructed plays?

Those who insist that there can only be progress for there to be richness have as limited a view of contemporary American dramaturgy that Baitz so despises in Isherwood.

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