The Roots of Savion Glover

THE latest subject for my Influences column is dance god Savion Glover, who no less than Gregory Hines said may've been the finest tap dancer in history.

Glover came to Broadway as a kid, and broke big with "Noise/Funk" in the mid '90s. He's been an exemplar of removing the Hollywood polish from tap dancing and reconnecting it to a specifically black and African lineage of rhythm.

In my story -- here -- Glover talks about some of the figures who've inspired him. Some, like the dancer who called himself Jimmy Slyde, did not surprise me much. Even John Coltrane I could have seen coming. But others showed me how wide-ranging Glover's interests are.

He's in town to perform Bare Sounds at the Valley Performing Arts Center on Saturday night.

Closing of Laemmle's Sunset 5

IT was one of those places that seemed like it would be there forever. But the Laemmle Sunset 5 -- which always seemed to me the key indie cinema in Los Angeles -- closed last month, largely because of competition from other theaters.

The good news -- or some variation of that -- is that Sundance Cinemas will renovate and reopen the space, and the Laemmle family just opened a seven-screen arthouse on Lankershim in North Hollywood.

HERE is my LA Weekly story on the ups and downs of the local arthouse scene.

I spoke to a number of people, including filmmaker Gregg Araki, dilm critic Bob Koehler and company president Greg Laemmle. One source I didn't have room to include was Rose Kuo, now executive director of Film Society of Lincoln Center, who haunted the theater constantly when she moved to L.A. "I lived near Franklin Avenue  and Gardner so I went to movies there every weekend, sometimes seeing 2 or 3 movies in one day." 

Tim Burton Goes Home to Burbank

I'D say director Tim Burton has done pretty well for himself -- successful cult filmmaker becomes bigtime filmmaker, is subject of a show at MOMA, lives near London's best cemetery, and he sleeps (presumably) with Helena Bonham Carter every night. And he was just announced to head the jury at Cannes this May.


“After spending my early life watching triple features and 48-hour horror movie marathons," he has said, "I’m finally ready for this.”


Pretty good for a guy who grew up a major dork in the most provincial part of Burbank and had his first important art project appear on the side of a garbage truck. (Man, I thought I had a tough high school experience.)

HERE is a large except of my trip around Burbank, The Valley and Hollywood with Burton a few years back -- and HERE the full piece. I found Burton very open and fun to talk to -- and got a strong sense of a wounded guy who'd made the best of things as an adult but was still full of self-doubt. I've also rarely seen a celebrity so naturally warm with his fans -- we were mobbed as soon as we got to Hollywood.

Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland, of course, comes out in March.

Anybody besides me think "Ed Wood" is still his best film?