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Marc Peyser
Articles by Marc Peyser
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Miami Heat
Whoever coined the phrase “hotter than hell” must have visited the Everglades in July. It’s about 96 degrees on this oppressive morning, with 110 percent humidity because some sadistic guys are walking around pumping extra moisture into the air.
6 min read
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Paging Doctor Phil
Stop Your Whining! Get Off Your Backside And Listen Up To The Tough Talk Of Oprah’s Favorite Shrink, Five Days A Week. He’s Now So Big He’s Got His Own Show.
14 min read
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‘Hairspray’ Hits Broadway
Of all the minor miracles in the Broadway musical “Hairspray,” nothing beats what happens at a place called Mr. Pinky’s Hefty Hideaway. The Hideaway specializes in “quality clothes for quantity gals,” and thank goodness someone’s cornered that market.
4 min read
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So You Wanna Be A Star?
Joseph Negroni has a song he’d like to play. OK, it’s really just the theme to “Jeopardy,” but you’ve never heard it like this. Negroni is a human bongo. He cups his hands over his mouth and makes sounds that pop like a bag of Orville Redenbacher’s, only in tune.
5 min read
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Theater: ‘Hairspray’ Goes On Hot
The buzz on “Hairspray” is so loud, it’s a wonder anyone can hear the orchestra. “Hairspray” is the latest movie turned Broadway musical, this one adapted from the John Waters campy 1988 comedy about a fat girl who triumphs.
2 min read
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The Insiders
The Stock Scandal Involving Martha Stewart Has Pulled Back The Curtain On A World Where The Rich Pass Around Business Gossip The Way The Help Passes Out Canapes
11 min read
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Television: So Bad, It’s Good
American Idol” is the Mae West of TV talent shows: when it’s good, it’s very good, but when it’s bad, it’s better. “Idol” is the first program since “The Gong Show” to understand that talented people are fine, but it’s the terrible performers who are truly entertaining.
2 min read
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Prime Time Crime
Television is not what you’d call the most inventive entertainment medium on the planet. One network strikes gold with a game show, everyone gets one. One program hits it big with corpses, suddenly the bodies start piling up.
5 min read
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Television, Everything Old Is… Even Older
Television has long had an unhealthy appetite for nostalgia–how else do you explain two “Dukes of Hazzard” movies? Even so, the networks are planning a retro feeding frenzy in May, with reunion programs that revisit the good (“M*A*S*H,” “L.A.
2 min read
News
Television: Prairie Home Companions
It takes less than 40 minutes for the first person to start crying on “Frontier House.” That’s not so bad, given that “Frontier” is one of those semisadistic PBS shows where mild-mannered history buffs travel back in time to live just like the natives–in this case, like homesteaders in 1883 Montana.
4 min read
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Theater: Hiss, Family Robinson
I want to say one word about the Broadway production of “The Graduate.” Plastic. Not the plastic that inspired the line in the 1967 movie where Benjamin Braddock received the most hilariously misbegotten career advice ever offered to a young college graduate.
3 min read
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Newsmakers
The Oscars made all kinds of history this year, and not just because they were the first awards where Russell Crowe didn’t pick a fight. It was the longest show (4 hours, 23 minutes) and the first time African-Americans won the top acting awards.
2 min read
News
SIX FEET UNDER OUR SKIN
People die every week on HBO’S “Six Feet Under,” but even the corpses aren’t as brain dead as the family of the next episode’s stiff. Poor Harold Mossback had a heart attack in the back of a bus.
13 min read
News
All Aboard The Crazy Train
Kelly Osbourne just got a tattoo. It’s no big deal–a little heart tucked high on her left hip. “If I show you, you can’t kill me,” she tells her dad. Mr.
4 min read
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If Only It Were Just A Movie
My first thought, when I heard that CBS was making a September 11 movie featuring footage shot inside the World Trade Center, was do I really need to see that?
6 min read
News
Eve Ensler Uses The V Word
Say what you will about “The Vagina Monologues,” it is certainly truth in advertising. Vaginas. Monologues. No intermission. Which is why what happened one night in Boston last month was so surprising.
6 min read
News
A Stritch In Time
It’s not for nothing that Liz Smith describes her friend Elaine Stritch as “divinely difficult.” “If being difficult is part of being true to yourself, then she’s got a point,” says Stritch. “Other than that, f–k her.” Oh, my.
5 min read
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Tops Of The Morning
Tom and Nicole may now be the most famous unmarried couple in America, but Katie Couric and Matt Lauer run a close second. They’ve been cohosting the “Today” show for five years, and if you feel you know them because they come in for coffee every morning, you’re not entirely wrong.
7 min read
News
It Was A Precedent-Setting Year For Tv
Here’s a depressing thought: 2001 may be the first year in recent memory that failed to produce any break-out television shows. That’s right–not a single show that debuted this year seems poised to become a top 10 hit.There were a few modest additions: CBS’s “The Guardian,” the WB’s “Smallville,” Fox’s “Bernie Mac.” But none of them has created the big-ratings buzz that “C.S.I.” or “The West Wing” or “Malcolm in the Middle” generated in their debut years.
6 min read
News
Tales From Behind Enemy Lines
Tony Kushner was in Ireland on September 11, and by the time he got to New York his answering machine was filled with messages. “Are you going to cancel the play?” “You’re not going to do the play now, right?” Talk about a lousy welcome home.
5 min read
News
Raise A Glass For ‘Ab Fab’
The waitress arrives and, along with her, the moment of truth. “What would you like to drink?” she asks Jennifer Saunders. This is what you might call a loaded question.
4 min read
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