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BOOK SMART

An inside look at the upcoming star-studded and celebrated Arts & Letters Live

Kendall Morgan
kendall Morgan
Jan 15, 2013 | 12:25 pm

With the assistance of what she calls a “great team,” Arts & Letters Live director of programming Carolyn Bess has solidified the reputation of Dallas’ premiere performing arts series during her 10-year tenure.

As the scope of Arts & Letters Live has grown, the link between its featured authors and performers and the Dallas Museum of Art’s collections and exhibitions has become stronger, broadening its appeal far beyond the bastion of bookworms who snap up tickets every year.

The 2013 program, which kicks off January 17, is particularly eclectic, offering something for everyone from literary politicos to collectors of artistic pop-up books to fans of such crowd-pleasing authors as Margaret Atwood, George Saunders and David Sedaris. Bess shared a sneak peek at what else to expect in this exciting series.

CultureMap: There seems to be a very careful balance between all of the featured authors and performers this year. Do you schedule each season with this in mind, or is this one unusual in its “something for everyone” approach?


Carolyn Bess: Every year we aim for there to be events that appeal to everyone’s taste and reading preferences — no matter whether you prefer literary fiction, nonfiction, memoir, humor, history, biography, poetry, short stories, art, music or dance.

Woven into all of Arts & Letters Live’s programs is an emphasis on and celebration of the creative process; these experiences allow people to hear the inside scoop from authors and performers about how they came to write a particular book or choreograph a new dance inspired by art.

CM: Who do you anticipate being the year’s hottest ticket and why? Is anything sold out already?

CB: Nothing is sold out yet, though tickets are selling well. Even though David Sedaris has done annual appearances with us for the past five years, he is still very much a hot ticket because he reads new and unpublished material every year.

He loves to test out his new essays in front of live audiences and make notes about what people find funny. We still have tickets available for David Sedaris. This year it is held at the Winspear Opera House.

Other hot tickets this year include Margaret Atwood and Temple Grandin. We’re exploring moving both events to larger venues downtown because we’ve almost surpassed our seating capacity at the DMA. Because they are still at four months away, we don’t want to turn away people who want to attend.

Atwood is a literary icon and an amazing speaker. Many people are interested in hearing Grandin, both for her insights into autism and her work with animals.

CM: Can you talk about how the series has evolved and continues to evolve?

CB: Arts & Letters Live is celebrating its 22nd year in 2013, and we’re so thankful that it has developed a loyal fan base in North Texas. In the early years, the core programs were the Distinguished Writers series and Texas Bound programs. Our founding producer emerita, Kay Cattarulla, co-founded Selected Shorts and got it on public radio when she worked for Symphony Space in New York City.

When she moved to Dallas in 1992 and fell in love with Texas literature, she gave the Selected Shorts model a Texas twist, and our Texas Bound series was born. It features Texas-connected actors reading short fiction by Texas-connected authors. She developed relationships with iconic actors and authors, such as Tommy Lee Jones, Kathy Bates, Doris Roberts, Marcia Gay Harden and many others. That series continues to be popular today, and we’re always finding and featuring new actors with Texas connections.

People won’t want to miss the February 11 Texas Bound event with actors Matt Bomer (who plays Neal Caffrey on the hit series White Collar) and Dallas native Stephen Tobolowsky, who has appeared in over 100 movies and 200 television shows (Glee, Groundhog Day, Seinfeld).

I also think it’s important to commission new work from writers inspired by art in the collections. This year, we’re commissioning two award-winning poets, Paul Muldoon and Nikky Finney, to each write a new poem in response to a work of art that strikes their fancy; they will read them as part of their event for Arts & Letters on April 3 in celebration of National Poetry Month.

I’ve also worked on expanding our programs featuring children’s and young adult authors and illustrators.

CM: What is the most surprising performance you’ve had in recent years?

CB: At radio icon Ira Glass’ event, I was surprised by the intricacy of the production process and the layers of information, stories and music he seams together in such a seemingly effortless way.

In terms of a performance, I was mesmerized when the Booker T. Washington Dance Repertory Company created an original suite of dances inspired by the “Matisse: Painter as Sculptor” exhibition. They worked for a month with artist-in-residence Jessica Lang, a dancer and choreographer; the depth of the students’ understanding of Matisse’s art and their beautiful expression and interpretation of it with their bodies was a night that will stand out in my memory for a long time.

Lastly, here’s the scoop on the most surprising thing that has happened at an Arts & Letters Live book signing: A female fan, who already had a geisha tattooed on her thigh, asked Arthur Golden, author of the bestselling novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, to autograph her thigh alongside the geisha. He blushed a bit but agreed to do it!

Temple Grandin is known as much for overcoming autism as for her love of animals. She speaks May 10 at 7:30 pm.

Temple Grandin
Photo by Joel Benjamin
Temple Grandin is known as much for overcoming autism as for her love of animals. She speaks May 10 at 7:30 pm.
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Animal News

Dallas joins a dozen-plus Texas cities in banning sales of puppy mill pets

Teresa Gubbins
Nov 11, 2022 | 3:00 pm
kittens dog
Photo courtesy of Kuper Sotheby's International Realty

Hetting along like cats and dogs.

A new animal ordinance approved by the Dallas City Council in May goes into effect November 11. Called the humane pet store ordinance, it forbids pet stores in Dallas from selling puppies or kittens from commercial breeders.

Dallas joins Austin, Bryan, College Station, El Paso, Euless, Fort Worth, Houston, New Braunfels, Pasadena, San Antonio, The Colony, Sherman, and Waco among Texas cities that have passed similar ordinances.

The ordinance was recommended by the Dallas Animal Shelter (DAS), as well as groups such as Texas Humane Legislation Network (THLN), which works to promote better treatment of animals.

In Dallas, it affects only one store: Petland. Other pet store chains such as PetSmart, Pet Supplies Plus, Petco, Odyssey, The Upper Paw, Pet Supermarket, and Uptown Pup do not sell puppies or kittens.

Dallas has only one Petland store, at 11909 Preston Rd. #1428 - one that's been plagued by criminal activity including repeated thefts. The chain has been the target of protests for more than a decade and the subject of repeated investigations by the Humane Society of the United States.

The Dallas ordinance is Sec. 7-4.5 "SALE OF DOGS AND CATS" and says that it's "an offense to sell, exchange, barter, give away, transfer, or offer or advertise for sale, a dog or cat four months of age or older unless the dog or cat is currently vaccinated or cannot be vaccinated due to health reasons as verified by a licensed veterinarian, and the person has a current registration receipt and registration tag for the dog or cat."

The only exceptions are animal services, an animal welfare organization, or an animal adoption agency, who charge adoption fees.

“The ordinance will help stop hundreds of puppies from being shipped in from out-of-state puppy mills and sold to unsuspecting consumers,” said Stacy Sutton Kerby, Director of Government Relations at THLN. “We applaud the Dallas City Council for recognizing the importance of halting the sale of commercially-bred animals in retail pet stores."

Over the years, the THLN helpline has regularly received complaints about Dallas retail stores selling sick or unhealthy puppies. Ending the sale of commercially-bred puppies and kittens in retail pet stores will encourage consumers to acquire puppies or kittens from a reputable breeder or shelter, both of which provide full health history, age, and vaccination information.

"Dallas Animal Services is excited to see the Humane Pet Store Ordinance go into effect,” said MeLissa Webber, Director of Dallas Animal Services. “It was a genuine community effort that started with Dallas animal advocates and quickly garnered support from DAS and the City Council. With shelters all over the metroplex struggling with capacity, we are hopeful that more families looking to add another pet to their home will choose to adopt, not shop. After all, there are incredible pets available to adopt at Dallas Animal Services and an estimated 20% of pets in shelters are purebred."

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Texas Tornado

Re-released documentary explores the greatest Texas musician you've probably never heard of

Hannah J. Frías
Nov 11, 2022 | 2:01 pm
Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove explores the life and times of Doug Sahm.
Courtesy of Arts and Labor
Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove explores the life and times of Doug Sahm.

What do Guy Clark, Hank Williams, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, ABBA, and Freddy Fender all have in common? Apart from being icons in their own right, each legend's name has at one time or another been in the same sentence as one Texas musician you may have never heard of. Why? One documentary, Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove, explores this and more, and it's available to stream again this week.

"Has San Antonio lost its soul? Has Austin lost its groove? Dough Sahm is the answer," reads a recent release for the documentary ahead of its re-release.

Born on the same day as Guy Clark in 1941, San Antonio native Dough Sahm started singing at age 5, playing steel guitar at age 6, followed by the fiddle and mandolin at age 8. At 11, he joined Hank Williams at Austin's Skyline Club for what turned out to be Williams' final show before his untimely death. As a teen, Sahm had hit country western radio records before reaching international fame (and a nod from Bob Dylan) with his rock-and-roll, Beatles-inspired band, Sir Douglas Quintet.

Sahm started playing steel guitar at age 6, followed by the fiddle and mandolin at age 8.Sahm started playing steel guitar at age 6, followed by the fiddle and mandolin at age 8.Courtesy of Arts+Labor

A bust up over cannabis possession sent Sahm to California right before the "Summer of Love" in 1967, where the band explored the psychedelic San Francisco scene. Returning to Texas in the '70s, he joined Willie Nelson on his Shotgun Willie record and became an integral part of the new Americana genre emerging out of Austin at that time. He moved to Sweden in the '80s, knocking ABBA off the top charts with the song Meet Me in Stockholm. And in the '90s, his new group, the Texas Tornadoes, featured fellow Texas musicians Freddy Fender, Flaco Jimenez, and Augie Meyers.

Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove explores the enormous variety of genres Sahm absorbed into his own music, and the impact he left behind in each genre in return. Originally screened at South by Southwest in 2015, the film's website summarizes its portrait of Sahm as an "artist who had so much music inside himself that he had to play all the varied sounds he was schooled in in order to satisfy his soul."

Directed by noted historian and author Joe Nick Patoski, who also co-wrote the film along with Jason Wehling, the documentary won multiple awards at film festivals around the world, landing on Amazon Prime before disappearing from circulation altogether in 2020 after initial music and visual licensing rights expired.

Thanks to the Society for the Preservation of Texas Music (SPTM), the documentary was re-released on November 6, 2022, in honor of what would have been Sahm's 81st birthday. For the re-release, SPTM partnered with Austin-based production company Arts+Labor and digital distribution platform seer.la, which also produced the groundbreaking Guy Clark documentary, Without Getting Killed or Caught.

Doug SahmA still from the documentary Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove.Courtesy of Arts+Labor

“The revival of the film comes at a critical moment for Doug’s hometown of San Antonio, and his adopted home of Austin,” says Patoski in the release. “Both cities have grown rapidly and are growing towards each other, becoming a single metropolitan area of five million people touted as America’s next great metroplex. Nowhere else in the United States are two connected metro areas expanding so rapidly. Folks who don’t know Doug Sahm from Houdini need to see this film to better appreciate why San Antonio and Austin are such special, soulful places with a groove that fostered and championed the artistry of the greatest single musician to ever represent the state of Texas.”

The documentary is available for worldwide streaming at sirdougfilm.com.


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Movie Review

Acting generations come together for awkward family drama Sam & Kate

Alex Bentley
Nov 11, 2022 | 1:13 pm
Acting generations come together for awkward family drama Sam & Kate
Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment

Jake Hoffman, Schuyler Fisk, and Sissy Spacek in Sam & Kate.

Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek are two of the most notable actors to ever appear in films, with each winning at least one Academy Award alongside multiple other Oscar nominations. Each has a child – Dustin’s son Jake Hoffman and Spacek’s daughter Schuyler Fisk – who has followed in their parent’s footsteps in the acting profession, although neither has achieved similar success despite respectable careers.

The new film Sam & Kate brings together the two generations in an ill-fated attempt at capitalizing on show biz legacies. Sam (Jake Hoffman) has come back home to live with and take care of his father, Bill (Dustin Hoffman), who is in somewhat ill-health. Sam, who calls his dad Bill instead of Dad, temporarily works at a chocolate factory with his friend Ron (Henry Thomas).

Sam also develops a crush on Kate (Schuyler Fisk), a woman his age who works at a bookstore. A chance encounter with Kate and her mom, Tina (Spacek), at a restaurant brings them all together, and the two would-be couples start a tentative flirtation. But each person has their own set of issues that threaten to prevent a romance before it even starts.

Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Darren Le Gallo, the film features a lot of awkwardness, and not in a good way. It’s clear that both Bill and Tina are supposed to be different types of misanthropes, and that Sam and Kate essentially have to try to make up for their respective parent’s quirky ways. But Bill and Tina’s issues are only lightly explored, never becoming all that interesting.

Worse is the coupling of Sam and Kate. Sam is far from the smoothest flirter in the world, and every attempt he makes at wooing Kate is so cringy that it’s painful. The combination of Le Gallo’s basic dialogue and Jake Hoffman’s less-than-stellar acting defuses any romantic potential, as none of it is cute or endearing. It is said at one point that Kate is way out of Sam’s league, and the film does nothing to dispel that notion.

It’s almost like Le Gallo – who’s married to Amy Adams, an executive producer on the film – had the idea of putting both pairs of parent and child together in a film, and couldn’t figure out what to do from there. The film is competently made, but the story is never involving or convincing in the slightest. The characters merely exist without a compelling reason for telling their stories.

Each of the actors does what they can with the material, with varying degrees of success. Neither Dustin Hoffman or Spacek delivers an Oscar-quality performance, but that seems to have more to do with the filmmaking than them. Fisk has the best role in the film, which isn’t saying much, but she maintains her appeal throughout.

In naming the film Sam & Kate instead of Bill & Tina, Le Gallo seems to have been trying to pass the baton from one generation to the next, but he forgot to come up with a good story in the process. Both the Oscar-winning actors and their progeny deserved a better showcase.

---

Sam & Kate is now playing in select theaters; it will be available on-demand at home starting November 18.

Jake Hoffman, Schuyler Fisk, and Sissy Spacek in Sam & Kate

Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment

Jake Hoffman, Schuyler Fisk, and Sissy Spacek in Sam & Kate.

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