A Conversation With Director Walter Hill. And what his latest urban noir thriller The Assignment, starring Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver, may be all about. Pitting the two somewhat masculinized females - whether matriarchal, manufactured or not, and their roles as assassin and surgeon respectively - that may or may not compare in unusual ways. Arts Express interrogates the veteran director phoning in from LA, about possible comparisons between doctors and assassins in The Assignment,  and what all this may have to do with Darwin, Poe, Gore Vidal, and Shakespeare's Richard II, Act 4.

And, delving into the director's preference for unconventional outsiders, rebels and underdogs in his movies that have counted Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ving Rhames - and actors who have passed on including Paul Newman, Richard Pryor, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, John Candy, David Carradine - and most recently Bill Paxton.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

** "Donald thinks climate change was invented by Chinese comedians, and will be forgotten if he just refuses to laugh..."

Poetry Corner: Jersey poet, social justice activist and homeless advocate Eliot Katz reads from his work - a poem about Donald Trump presented at an ACLU benefit. Referencing "Trump's frantic march to disable the pulse of the planet." Chris Butters reports.

** "Walking up Broadway, thinking about all the ghosts, the people I used to know."
Theater Corner: Memories, Truth And Lies At Saint John The Divine. Jack Shalom investigates a highly unusual play 'for two at a time' - Inside - convening on the steps of a Gothic cathedral. While simultaneously chasing down memory lane ghosts from the past, conjuring distant and disturbing images from an earlier life.

And, with a perplexed Shalom navigating the depths of the shrine in question, in pursuing an elusive woman with a red bag, a plate of French fries indistinguishable from 45 years ago, a statue with nine giraffes, a wild eyed woman with white boots, a buried cat - and all the while thinking, "oh no, they're not doing this. But they are!"                      

More information about Inside is online at: Popuptheatrics.com

The Assignment Review

Though mostly known for action thrillers like Red Heat, Geronimo, 48 Hours and The Warriors, Walter Hill and his unconventional signature style and irreverence have challenged Hollywood's repetitive and monotonous norms - and audience expectations as well. No less so than with his latest flamboyant feature, The Assignment. 
In which assassin for hire Frank Kitchen is kidnapped and forced to undergo a sex change operation, by a psycho-surgeon played by Sigourney Weaver. And with the both before and after male and female executioners portrayed by Michelle Rodriguez with astonishing realism. 
But what is The Assignment really all about, and what does it have to do with the director's playful when not pathologically crafted preference for outsiders, rebels and underdogs. And, what this particular unhinged urban noir may have to do in myriad mystifying ways, with masculinzied females, Darwin, Poe, and Shakespeare's Richard II, Act 4. 
And though there has been some controversy surrounding the forced gender reassignment as revenge in the film, as a negative portrayal of transsexuality, perhaps something very different may be at play. And as pondered by Weaver's maniacal medical practitioner, when she expresses disappointment that surgically switching the gangster's gender did not modify his/her aggressive macho personality.
And namely, that women can be just as brutal and ruthless as men. One only has to observe the real world - and both sides of the political aisle. That includes right wing leader Margaret Thatcher, the Tea Party's Michele Bachmann - and a giddy Hillary Clinton cheering on camera the orchestrated murder of Libya's late Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi - while (not unlike Sigourney Weaver's supercilious surgeon) quoting Julius Caesar, and later down the line pushing for the assassination via drone, of Julian Assange.

Prairie Miller