As the year’s spectacular parade of cultural events and personalities passed by, we laughed, we cried, we cringed – and we took notes. Without further ado, may we present the most sublime and ridiculous deeds of 1997.
PROVIDING HARD EVIDENCE FOR THE ARGUMENT THAT TV IS BAD FOR YOU
“Jenny”
“The Tony Danza Show”
“Meego”
“World’s Deadliest Swarms”
“Vibe”
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“Pauly”
YOU LOVED THEM AS SONGS, YOU HATE THEM AS ADS:
“Everyday People,” Sly & the Family Stone, for Toyota
“Heroes,” David Bowie, for Microsoft
“Can’t Explain,” The Who, for Ford Taurus
“The `Mary Tyler Moore Show’ theme,” for AT&T
“City of New Orleans,” Arlo Guthrie, for Ex-Lax
AND WHILE YOU’RE AT IT, CAN YOU FIX LEIA’S HAIR?
We’re happy to see the “Star Wars” movies in the theater again, but those new computer effects either added nothing or – in the case of the computer-graphics Jabba the Hut- stuck out like Day-Glo paint on “American Gothic.”
YOU CALL THIS JAZZ?
Orchestra Hall featured the bleatings of jazz-lite saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. on its Ameritech Jazz at Symphony Center series. Can Kenny G be far off?
THANKS, BUT NO THANKS
Some icons of pop culture are better off left alone. Among the year’s dubious resurrections were “The Jackal,” “Flubber,” “That Darn Cat,” “Leave It to Beaver,” “McHale’s Navy” and “Mr. Magoo.” (There’s hope for the future: Bette Midler just pulled out of a dubious plan to star in a “Green Acres” remake. Good for her.)
YO-YO MA NEVER DRAWS CROWDS LIKE THAT
Last summer, Poi Dog Pondering’s appearance at Ravinia clogged highway traffic and public transportation to the outdoor music venue and left thousands of ticketholders stranded outside the gates. Concert organizers accustomed to classical and pop-lite audiences seriously underestimated the band’s drawing power.
IF ONLY POI DOG HAD BEEN ON THE BILL
The ROAR (for Revelation of Alternative Rhythms) Tour, headed by Iggy Pop, was a textbook example of how not to market a summer tour package – thanks to a sponsor, Skoal tobacco, that was more accustomed to endorsing stock car races and pro wrestling. Despite two-page national magazine inserts bragging that “Any tour can rock …this tour roars!”, only a couple of hundred people showed up at the concert in the cavernous New World Music Theatre.
NO COMMENT
Carol Marin. Jerry Springer.
NOW SHOWING: `MAN OF LA MUSTARD’
Candlelight Dinner Playhouse, America’s oldest dinner theater, closed. The property later was purchased by a hot dog purveyor.
DOWNEY AND OUT NEAR BEVERLY HILLS
Robert Downey Jr. was sentenced to 180 days in the Los Angeles County jail for a parole violation after going on another drug binge. The sentencing judge, Lawrence Mira, scolded Downey and his profession: “It may be the very business you are in that is conducive to you continuing this lifestyle.” But on the bright side, the head of marketing for DreamWorks, for which Downey just finished a film, said this should have no negative impact on his career.
SMOOTH MOVES
Dumbest local TV scheduling: WLS-Ch. 7 opted to air the hot cable show “Politically Incorrect” after late-night reruns of Oprah Winfrey. Bill Maher’s irreverent chatfest was easier to find on the Comedy Channel.
Dumbest national network scheduling: NBC relocated “3rd Rock From the Sun” from Sunday to Wednesday. The former ratings champ is now losing its time slot to ABC’s “The Drew Carey Show.”
PERENNIAL NO-SHOW
The Music and Dance Theatre has been promising to break ground without doing so for three years and counting.
OH, MY MAMA AND PAPA
Dubious parents of the year included Michael Jackson and, separately, Madonna.
DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE
The Art Institute of Chicago played host to the painfully thin “Renoir’s Portraits: Impressions of an Age,” a show in which a number of works, such as “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” were not portraits.
RACH ON
In the year’s most bizarre classical music phenomenon, a mentally impaired Australian pianist named David Helfgott sold out the Auditorium Theatre, as well as venues in 17 other U.S. cities, as a result of the success of director David Hicks’ biopic “Shine.” Though any good beginning piano student could have done better at the keyboard, that didn’t stop some audience members from applauding the befuddled-looking Helfgott as if he were the Second Coming.
GUESS THEY FOUND WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING FOR
U2 announced its PopMart Tour at a New York K-mart, a chain that forces bands to change their albums to get them stocked.
PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER
Prehistoric crooner Jerry Vale had the misfortune of coming through town the same weekend as the timeless Tony Bennett. By comparison, Vale sounded about as hip as Nelson Eddy.
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WHY DIDN’T THE MCA THINK OF THIS?
At a SoHo gallery in New York City, Bill Scanga showed taxidermized dead mice propped up in tiny chairs or on the floor, gazing at artwork in miniature rooms that were exact replicas of rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and watching a small TV set that plays “Tom and Jerry” cartoons, and observing live mice in small cages in a zoo-like setting.
MAKE NO LITTLE PLANS, PLEASE
The year left us counting our blessings that calmer minds prevailed when it came to some iffy proposals:
Mayor Daley sought to build a garish, 75-foot-tall decorative pylon just south of the Michigan Avenue Bridge.
Daley’s proposed gay pride district on North Halsted Street originally featured steel gateways with neon rings in the colors of the gay pride flag.
The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the powerful city-state body that operates Navy Pier, wanted to construct a two-theater performing arts complex atop the pier’s new parking garage. The complex would have been nearly as tall as the pier’s Ferris wheel.
DRIPPING FAWCETT
Farrah Fawcett was an incoherent spectacle on “The Late Show With David Letterman.” But she redeemed herself as an artist by using her naked body as a paintbrush on a pay-per-view special.
SHE CAN SING, BUT CAN SHE THINK?
At the MTV Video Music Awards, Fiona Apple rambled on and on with such aphorisms as, “It’s just stupid that I’m in this world, but you’re all very cool to me.”
I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME PURR
Most egregious betrayal of feminism in a band with a purportedly feminist slogan: the Spice Girls.
GO IT’LL PUT YOU RIGHT TO SLEEP
Suicide specialist Jack Kevorkian recorded an album: “The Kevorkian Suite: A Very Still Life.”
OFF WITH HER HEAD
Martha Stewart may have completely lost touch with reality this year. David Letterman got it right recently when, re-enacting a recent Martha Stewart demo on a fruit basket, quoted her as boasting, “It’s good for blueberries, raspberries and even strawberries.” And even strawberries? As Letterman put it, did she eat her first strawberry only the other day?
SAVE THE WALLS
The Hotel Intercontinental allowed its back wall to be painted with an enormous mural of frollicking whales in a blue sea. What’s next, a big green frog on the side of a restaurant?
MAYBE THEY BROKE A LEG
An alarming rash of no-shows for local classical concerts made 1997 the Year of the Cancellation. Missing in action: conductors Christian Thielemann and Gennady Rozhdestvensky at the CSO, singers Jessye Norman and Montserrat Caball at Orchestra Hall, and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky at Grant Park. The usual vague alibis of “indisposition” were offered. However, in several cases it appeared much more likely the artists walked because they found themselves overbooked or concert tickets were not selling. Question: Whatever happened to that showbiz standby, the tireless trouper?
TOPLESS DANCING
Most audacious display of oiled flesh and ego: Michael Flatley in “Lord of the Dance.”
TAKE THAT, RONALD REAGAN
Best unauthorized cameo by a president in a film starring Matthew McConaughey and Jodie Foster: President Clinton in “Contact.”
NO FUN INTENDED
The promotional trailer for “The Postman,” a December release starring Kevin Costner, was so bad that audiences were howling with laughter. The distributors pulled it and made a new one, but couldn’t do much to save the movie itself.