There have been many productions of his shows here, including a 2003 world premiere. In honor of the late composer and lyricist, a few that stand out the most in memory.
December 16, 2020
Lauren Klein and Ryan Dubin designed menorahs with sensors that communicate via Bluetooth. (Photo/Courtesy of Lauren Klein)
In each of the three years since she started her PhD in computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Lauren Klein has celebrated Hanukkah in Los Angeles with family friend Ryan Dubin, a first-year student at the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy, and his grandparents.
In this annual Jewish Festival of Lights, those who celebrate gather together to light the menorah candles in a specific order. But with COVID-19 still spreading throughout L.A., they didn’t want to take the risk of huddling together too closely. Yelling across the yard from 15 feet apart came with its own challenges, as masks would obscure their invitations to light each candle simultaneously. But the robotics student didn’t want to forgo the tradition, instead deciding to bring technology to bear on the occasion.
Dec 10, 2020 Web Exclusive By Stephen Danay
By the time he directed his first Western in 1973, Clint Eastwood had already starred in nine of them, becoming an international superstar in the mid-1960s with the
Man With No Name Trilogy. This made him something of an expert in a changing genre, one that was forsaking the optimism and myth-making of the Hollywood Golden Age and embracing the violence and moral degradation that came with the Hollywood New Wave, the collapse of the Production Code and the ongoing charnel pit that was the war in Vietnam.
High Plains Drifter isn’t an allegory for any of these sweeping historical movements; it’s a grubby, nasty revenge tale, one that would likely qualify as an exploitation film if it didn’t star a white guy. But Eastwood himself, already a fixture of the genre, knew enough about it to make it his own and twist the genre’s propensity for myth-making in a hellish new direction.