HBO Max’s move came a day after The Los Angeles Times published an opinion piece by John Ridley, the screenwriter of “Twelve Years a Slave,” criticizing “Gone With the Wind” for its racist stereotypes and whitewashing of the horrors of slavery, and calling for it to be presented only with added historical context.
But it also represents a belated reckoning with African-American criticism that started immediately after the 1936 publication of Margaret Mitchell’s novel — even if it was barely noted in the mainstream white press.
In the morning, the cafe — which Hudson and Pride rechristened Dante — serves good coffee, croissants and fresh banana bread, and for lunch, there are prosciutto and provolone or vegetable panini (all currently available for takeout). But it is most glamorous at cocktail time. Dante made its name with its drinks, which include martinis, Manhattans, Pimms, margaritas and spiffy variations on these classics. But the heart of the cocktail menu remains Italian: There are Negronis — some laced with strange but delicious flavors such as lavender or chocolate — Aperol spritzes, Americanos and Garibaldis. (I favor the Bicicletta — Campari, dry sparkling wine, Pellegrino — which resembles a gaudy sunset with its deep pink color and orange slice.) Dante’s opening, in 2015, coincided with a newly acute longing for la dolce vita among New Yorkers. “Around that time, it became especially trendy to go to Rome,” says Melissa Middleburg, a young painter who lives near the cafe. “Everybody was crazy about the aperitivo hour.” That enthusiasm resonated with Hudson and Pride, who were raised in Sydney, where many Italians settled after World War II. “Caffé Dante reminded us of the old coffeehouses we grew up with,” says Pride. “It was the connection to community, the daily rituals that were so important.”
The end credit sequence is an unsexy but still important part of the film-going experience. It can be a key moment of contemplation, to assess, absorb and reflect on everything you have just experienced. It can be a moment of musical resolve. It can be a place to see the countless hundreds of people who worked to create something from nothing (not just the famous ones). Or it can just be an excuse to look for crew members with funny names. But the current trend with virtually all the streaming services is to treat end credits as having the same artistic merit as a DFS Summer Sofa Sale ad. Our entertainment goes from being a work of art that could resonate for years afterwards to “content” that is to be guzzled as fast as possible from an endless bargain bucket.
You have to get up.
That’s the first thing. Don’t just lie there and let it have its way with you. The sea of anxiety loves a horizontal human; it pours over your toes and surges up you like a tide. Is your partner lying next to you, dense with sleep, offensively unconscious? That’s not helping either. So verticalize yourself. Leave the bed. Leave its maddening mammal warmth. Out you go, clammy-footed, into the midnight spaces. The couch. The kitchen.
Deftly weaving literature, science, journalism, philosophy, the history of out-the-way locales, arcane skills like canoe building, and no small number of family secrets, Donovan Hohn offers with The Inner Coast a humane view of a world that, as Ernest Hemingway said, is a fine place worth fighting for. And well worth reading about, too, allowing for a few very unfortunate gastropods along the way.
Barbie Chang’s tears are the lights of
the city that go off on
off on the men walking around the city
move but Barbie Chang