After losing to Cathedral and Bishop Montgomery in the Del Rey League earlier this week, Cantwell-Sacred Heart knocked off Price, 72-56, in a game from the East L.A. Invitational.
Gligorije Rakocevic scored 19 points and had nine rebounds.
Antonio Cortez added 14 points and Jacob Davison 12 points.
Twitter:@LATSondheimer
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesOn the surface, Melissa Rauch, a New Jersey-raised actress who in recent years has found success as a pint-sized scientist on "The Big Bang Theory," would have little in common with a washed-up Olympic gymnast intent on milking every last drop of her receding fame.
But when Rauch and husband/writing partner Winston Rauch set out to pen their first feature--"The Bronze," about that very subject -- the actress' background came in surprisingly handy.
"When Winston and I would go back to visit my parents when I was just having a little bit of success on TV [years ago], and we'd go to the food court and get a free Wetzel's Pretzel or some garlic knots," Rauch said. "And I was so excited and maybe a little cocky about it And then the show would be canceled and I would go back and there would be a total cut-off on the free pretzels or garlic knots."
FULL COVERAGE: Sundance Film Festival
She added that "the whole idea of putting celebrity up on a pedestal and then chewing them up and spitting them out was really fascinating to us."
Hope Annabelle Gregory -- the tracksuit-wearing, vitriol-spewing former bronze medalist played by Rauch -- isn't on too many pedestals in the new film.
Still living with her postman father (Gary Cole, in mustachioed glory) a decade after her 2004 moment of Olympic triumph, she has all the qualities of an angry old man as she pushes around her father, demands respect from anyone she meets in her small Ohio town and generally demonstrates as much patience as a toddler at a curling competition.
But when a former coach dies and leaves instructions in her will for Hope to coach a rising prodigy--with a massive cash prize as compensation--she sets out to help the young talent as only Hope can.
The Rauches say they were fascinated by the idea of a bronze medal as a symbol of mediocrity.
"The bronze medal to Hope Gregory means everything. She was going for the gold and she ended up with this trophy and she is incredibly proud of it," said Winston Rauch--despite it not meaning nearly as much to everyone else. [You can see the full video of the interview with the Rauches above.]
The movie--directed by Bryan Buckley and seeking distribution in Park City--has plenty of Easter eggs for Olympic fans (including cameos by the likes of Dominique Moceanu). There's also some stellar supporting work from Thomas Middleditch, who proves he can go from comically overwhelmed Silicon Valley entrepreneur to comically anxious gym operator as cleanly as a Mary Lou Retton dismount.
But it's Rauch who steals the show, morphing her lovable network-TV shrillness into something more unrecognizably dark, and more along the lines of her theater and Upright Citizens Brigade forays.
The actress said she knew what a switch it was from the four-eyed truth bombs of her CBS work (though voice and accent are again a factor).
"I hope they're on board for it," she said of her TV fans. "It was definitely a departure," noting the joys of "stepping into someone else's shoes for a little bit and getting to say thing I wouldn't dream of saying [on the show]."
The film's piece de resistance is a very un-"Big Bang"-like sex scene in which two gymnasts act out an R-rated version of the horizontal bar and pommel horse. There's a Borat-like quality to it--just when the naked antics couldn't go any further, they go further than that.
It was catnip to the Rauches, who note their own foot-plus height disparity gave them some experience with bedroom calisthenics--maybe.
"We like to joke around that it's writing what we know," Melissa Rauch said. "But it's all lies."
Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesFrom bikini-clad beachgoer to veiled jihadist fugitive, the partner of Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly underwent a startling metamorphosis that illuminates the dangerous potential behind militant groups' efforts to increase their recruiting of female terrorists.
Although French police initially questioned Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, five years ago, they acknowledge that she was subsequently able to make hundreds of phone calls and arrange meetings for Coulibaly through the wives of fellow assailants. She is then believed to have fled to Turkey just before the rash of killings in Paris this month, and is believed to have crossed into Syria.
"Hayat's case is just the latest example of how governments overlook and understate women's involvement in terrorist groups," said Jayne Huckerby, an associate professor at Duke University law school who studies the groups and advises governments in counter-terrorism strategies.
Female terrorists have a long history of exploiting gender stereotypes to avoid detection, and though counter-terrorism measures have become more effective, experts said the Paris attacks show that more needs to be done to curb the growing number of women like Boumeddiene joining militants in Syria.
Women account for about 10% of those joining Islamic State from Europe and about 20% of those joining from France, Huckerby said.
"What's very striking is that she's not an exception; she's an example of a trend," Huckerby said of Boumeddiene. "There tends to be an assumption with women that they're doing it under influence, they're being forced or tricked. But I think there's a more complicated story here, feelings of alienation."
A childhood friend of Boumeddiene, speaking on condition of anonymity to the newspaper Le Parisien, described her as "impulsive," emotionally fragile, childlike, quick to cry, with little self-confidence, prone to sending religious text messages and venting about her growing sense of alienation as a Muslim.
Like Cherif and Said Kouachi, the brothers who carried out the attack against the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, Boumeddiene spent for years was a ward of the state. One of seven children born in Paris to Algerian parents, she was placed in foster care at 12 after her mother died and her father remarried.
Expelled from foster homes for assaulting social workers, she moved in with a friend in the suburbs, the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche reported, but failed to finish high school.
She met Coulibaly in 2007, soon after he finished serving time for armed robbery at Fleury-Merogis Prison, a breeding ground for extremists, where he converted to Islam and met Cherif Kouachi.
Police monitoring Coulibaly may have assumed that Boumeddiene would have a "taming effect" on him, but more often such couples do the opposite, radicalizing each other, said Erin Marie Saltman, an expert on the role of women in extremism at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
The couple did not initially act like extremists, vacationing in Malaysia and the Dominican Republic, where Boumeddiene wore a bikini and posed for photos in the arms of her shirtless boyfriend.
They married in 2009 in a religious ceremony not recognized by the French government, French police union spokesman Christophe Crepin said. Boumeddiene worked as a cashier at a butcher shop but was fired when she started wearing a veil, according to Le Journal du Dimanche.
She and Coulibaly began visiting a Muslim extremist in central France, according to Le Parisien. While there in 2010, she posed for photos that were a far cry from her glamour shots on the beach. Wearing a veil, she aimed a crossbow at the camera in a menacing pose.
When counter-terrorism investigators brought her in for questioning later that year, Boumeddiene spoke of "innocents killed by the Americans," but insisted that Coulibaly was not a fanatic, telling police, "Amedy isn't really very religious. He likes having fun," according to the French newspaper Le Monde.
Crepin said investigators didn't have enough to charge or monitor Boumeddiene, since she denied having knowledge of criminal activity.
"Until we had proof to the contrary, we had to accept that she felt that way," he said.
Three years later, Coulibaly was convicted of aiding a terrorist's foiled prison break and sentenced to five years in prison. No charges were filed against Boumeddiene, who became friends with Cherif Kouachi's wife, trading more than 500 cellphone calls with her last year, said Crepin.
"They used the women, it's clear," Crepin said of the attackers.
At the same time, he said, it's hard to believe that Kouachi's wife and Boumeddiene were unaware of the men's plans.
"When there's 500 calls going back and forth, they clearly had an idea of what was going on," Crepin said. "We were dealing with people who knew they were being watched and knew how to avoid it. The women were not ignorant."
Still, there may be a difference between Boumeddiene and the other attackers' wives who were probably "being used to keep the veil of a normal life" so their husbands could avoid detection, Saltman said.
"Boumeddiene was obviously very active, wanting to train, wanting to be a part of the violent nature of the jihadist ideology," she said.
It's not clear whether Coulibaly coordinated his attack on a kosher market, where he killed four shoppers and took others hostage, with the Kouachis' assault on Charlie Hebdo. The three men died within minutes of one another in simultaneous raids on the market and on a printing plant where the Kouachis were hiding.
It also appears that they may have had different loyalties: Coulibaly appeared in a video swearing allegiance to Islamic State, while Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the Kouachis' attack. Both groups have carved out roles for women, in subordinate, rather than leadership, positions.
"There is hardly any terrorist group at the moment that does not include women in some capacity," said Mia Bloom, a professor of security studies at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
Women in Al Qaeda have historically played a supportive role, but they have also increasingly become suicide bombers in the Middle East for Al Qaeda affiliates, Bloom said.
In online posts, some female Islamic State volunteers have expressed a willingness to fight, Saltman said. "Many of them would be willing to participate in violence. But once they reach Islamic State territory, they take on a much more passive role" as wives, mothers and recruiters.
Samia Maktouf, a Paris lawyer who represents the worried families of other female Muslim extremists in France, faulted the government for not tracking and arresting Boumeddiene.
"They were aware of the dangerousness of this girl. She was in the hands of the police in 2010. Why didn't they stop her or put her under surveillance? My answer is they were not aware of her Muslim fundamentalism," Maktouf said.
French legislators are considering whether to change laws that may have prevented police from monitoring Boumeddiene and other members of the suspects' entourage.
"It was too difficult to monitor the women before. Now, maybe we will be able," Crepin said.
But it will take more than stepped-up surveillance to stop women like Boumeddiene, experts said.
One Tunisian Muslim mother who asked not to be identified told Maktouf that her daughter became engaged to an extremist in Syria over the Internet.
The mother did the only thing she could think of: She took two days off work to try to reason with her daughter, who has two master's degrees, arguing that she would be unable to use her education. The daughter initially agreed to call off the engagement, but the following day she disappeared.
She sent a text message. "I have to go. I'm sorry. Be happy for me."
Before passing new laws to stop women like her and Boumeddiene, police should cultivate ties to French Muslim families, Maktouf said.
"We should use what we have," she said. "The best tool is human."
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
Twitter: @mollyhf
Special correspondent Aviva Cashmira in Paris contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesOn the surface, Melissa Rauch, a New Jersey-raised actress who in recent years has found success as a pint-sized scientist on "The Big Bang Theory," would have little in common with a washed-up Olympic gymnast intent on milking every last drop of her receding fame.
But when Rauch and husband/writing partner Winston Rauch set out to pen their first feature--"The Bronze," about that very subject -- the actress' background came in surprisingly handy.
"When Winston and I would go back to visit my parents when I was just having a little bit of success on TV [years ago], and we'd go to the food court and get a free Wetzel's Pretzel or some garlic knots," Rauch said. "And I was so excited and maybe a little cocky about it And then the show would be canceled and I would go back and there would be a total cut-off on the free pretzels or garlic knots."
FULL COVERAGE: Sundance Film Festival
She added that "the whole idea of putting celebrity up on a pedestal and then chewing them up and spitting them out was really fascinating to us."
Hope Annabelle Gregory -- the tracksuit-wearing, vitriol-spewing former bronze medalist played by Rauch -- isn't on too many pedestals in the new film.
Still living with her postman father (Gary Cole, in mustachioed glory) a decade after her 2004 moment of Olympic triumph, she has all the qualities of an angry old man as she pushes around her father, demands respect from anyone she meets in her small Ohio town and generally demonstrates as much patience as a toddler at a curling competition.
But when a former coach dies and leaves instructions in her will for Hope to coach a rising prodigy--with a massive cash prize as compensation--she sets out to help the young talent as only Hope can.
The Rauches say they were fascinated by the idea of a bronze medal as a symbol of mediocrity.
"The bronze medal to Hope Gregory means everything. She was going for the gold and she ended up with this trophy and she is incredibly proud of it," said Winston Rauch--despite it not meaning nearly as much to everyone else. [You can see the full video of the interview with the Rauches above.]
The movie--directed by Bryan Buckley and seeking distribution in Park City--has plenty of Easter eggs for Olympic fans (including cameos by the likes of Dominique Moceanu). There's also some stellar supporting work from Thomas Middleditch, who proves he can go from comically overwhelmed Silicon Valley entrepreneur to comically anxious gym operator as cleanly as a Mary Lou Retton dismount.
But it's Rauch who steals the show, morphing her lovable network-TV shrillness into something more unrecognizably dark, and more along the lines of her theater and Upright Citizens Brigade forays.
The actress said she knew what a switch it was from the four-eyed truth bombs of her CBS work (though voice and accent are again a factor).
"I hope they're on board for it," she said of her TV fans. "It was definitely a departure," noting the joys of "stepping into someone else's shoes for a little bit and getting to say thing I wouldn't dream of saying [on the show]."
The film's piece de resistance is a very un-"Big Bang"-like sex scene in which two gymnasts act out an R-rated version of the horizontal bar and pommel horse. There's a Borat-like quality to it--just when the naked antics couldn't go any further, they go further than that.
It was catnip to the Rauches, who note their own foot-plus height disparity gave them some experience with bedroom calisthenics--maybe.
"We like to joke around that it's writing what we know," Melissa Rauch said. "But it's all lies."
Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesAfter losing to Cathedral and Bishop Montgomery in the Del Rey League earlier this week, Cantwell-Sacred Heart knocked off Price, 72-56, in a game from the East L.A. Invitational.
Gligorije Rakocevic scored 19 points and had nine rebounds.
Antonio Cortez added 14 points and Jacob Davison 12 points.
Twitter:@LATSondheimer
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesMy slogan for 2015? "A chicken in every pot." Somebody's already used that? Well, mine comes with recipes to get you started. Take that, Herbert Hoover, and you too, Henry IV!
It's about as basic as cooking can get: chicken cooked slowly in a sauce. Really, this is one of those dishes that is more technique than actual recipe. Once you've run through it a couple of times, you'll find that you can adapt it quite easily to almost anything you have in your refrigerator or pantry.
This is a dish that usually takes about an hour to make, most of it spent daydreaming while the pot bubbles on the stove — just enough work to make you feel like you're actually cooking. The recipe scales up quite nicely, so you can make a double or triple batch for a weekend dinner party and still have enough left over for an after-work survival meal. And, yes, like most stews and soups, it'll actually be better the second (and third) time around.
Go Italian with a spin on chicken cacciatore from the Emilia-Romagna, flavored with pancetta, red wine and tomatoes. Or you can go Cal-Med and make it with fennel, mushrooms and green olives. Or maybe just finish the chickenwith some prepared mole from Grand Central Market.
And, of course, you can make up your own dishes. Here are a few guidelines to follow:
First, use dark meat. There are tricks to cooking breasts this way — arrange the dark meat on the bottom of the pan and stack the breasts on top, out of the sauce so they get less heat — but even with these workarounds, the white meat seems inevitably to dry out. Better to start with thighs and legs, which will stay moist and tender when braised.
Brown the chicken well. This means making sure the skin is completely dry beforehand and getting the pan hot enough to sear — dip a corner of the chicken into the oil; if it sizzles immediately, the temperature is right. Don't crowd the pan. Just face that you're going to have to cook two batches and don't be tempted by shortcuts.
After you've browned the chicken, pour off most of the fat before starting to build the sauce. You don't want the dish to be greasy. But do leave behind all those browned bits that have stuck to the bottom of the pan. Lots of flavor there.
Build the sauce in stages and take your time. Onions first, until they soften. Then carrots and celery if you're using them. Cook the garlic just briefly; it should still be fragrant. Scrape the bottom of the pan while you're cooking; the moisture the vegetables give off will be enough to loosen those flavorful browned bits.
If you're using wine to finish the sauce, add it first and let it cook before adding other liquids. This will evaporate the harsh alcohol flavor. Add the other ingredients and continue cooking until you get the consistency you want (remember that the chicken will release some liquid during cooking, so start with the sauce slightly thicker than you want the final product to be).
Finish cooking the chicken in the sauce. You'll know it's done when the meat plumps and firms, the skin begins to pull away from the joints and there are no pink juices when the meat is pricked with a knife.
I'm not sure exactly what to call this kind of dish. Some folks refer to it as a sauté, but technically that's a different thing — very little sauce that is added just at the last minute. This is kind of a fricassee, but these days that infers a white sauce, which is too limiting. Cookbook author and cooking teacher Anne Willan, who knows more about traditional French cooking than anyone around, suggests that classically this would probably be a ragoût.
Maybe I'll just stick with "chicken in a pot."
Recipe: Chicken braised with fennel, mushrooms and olives
Recipe: Chicken braised with pancetta and tomatoes
russ.parsons@latimes.com
Follow me @russ_parsons1
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesOur family has stayed at Hotel Dauphine St. Germain in Paris repeatedly during the last 12 years. We consider the St. Germain area, situated in the 6th arrondissement, the best, known for its shops, galleries and famous restaurants such as Café de Flore. The lovely boutique hotel is two blocks from the Seine river on one side and two blocks from Boulevard St. Germain on the other. It is walking distance to many landmark sites, including Notre-Dame, the Louvre and Orsay museums and the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens. The hotel staff is warm and helpful; for a nominal cost, a great breakfast is served daily. Room rates vary depending on the season and are reasonable.
Hotel Dauphine St. Germain, 36 Rue Dauphine, Paris; 011-33-1-43-26-74-34, www.dauphine-st-germain.com
Stephanie Ladsous
by email
travel@latimes.com
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesAs movie executives arrived at the Sundance Film Festival this week from places like Beverly Hills and the Upper West Side, Artem Ryzhykov took a more perilous route.
The cinematographer and star of a new documentary titled "The Russian Woodpecker" had flown in to Park City from Ukraine, where as recently as last week he had been at the country's eastern battleground of the Donetsk airport, snapping photos while dodging sniper fire from pro-Russia separatists.
Ryzhykov had come to the festival with Fedor Alexandrovich, a wild-eyed Kiev artist who seems to have stepped straight out of a Dostoevsky novel. The pair was unveiling its new documentary, whose cartoonish-sounding title belies its intensity of purpose.
Directed by the first-timer Chad Gracia, the serious and surreal "Woodpecker" seeks to make a connection between an elaborate Cold War-era communications weapon and the massive Chernobyl disaster.
But almost as important as the film's investigation into that dark chapter is its political message -- that a desperate and militant Vladimir Putin could well wreak havoc in Ukraine and a number of other former Soviet states.
Though a decidedly entertaining effort, overflowing with conspiracy theories and secret cameras, "Woodpecker" also is a deadly dramatic work, a wild tale by way of historical injustice.
"I don't care about the danger to me," said Ryzhykov via a translator as he described his recent activities in the war-torn Donbass region of Ukraine. "I care that a country and a people are losing their freedom because of Russian nationalism."
As he and Alexandrovich sat, somewhat incongruously, in a Sundance lounge Friday afternoon, events thousands of miles away were unfolding that bore out their warning. Military conflict in eastern Ukraine was exploding, shattering a tenuous cease-fire, as indications mounted that the Russian military was vastly increasingly its activity in the region.
And so "The Russian Woodpecker," which debuts at the festival Saturday, had almost overnight become a Sundance rarity -- less another piece in the festival's broad tapestry of issues that can be gazed upon safely amid fashionable parties and beautiful mountain scenery and more an eerie prophecy, told via a movie screen, of global aggression and suffering.
"As I got further into the movie, it became clear it was extremely serious and timely, because it said something not only about Chernobyl but about what's happening right now," said Gracia.
First, the subject of the movie itself. (Hang on, it's a strange one.)
For decades, an odd woodpecker-like sound, at 10 beats per second, would jam Western frequencies in what experts believed was a Cold War communications weapon used by Moscow. As a piece of ammunition, the woodpecker wound up falling short of expectations — the Northern Lights degraded its ability to reach the U.S. effectively — but its origin was a source of great speculation and mystery.
The woodpecker came at Western channels via the Duga, a massive, otherworldly structure the Soviet Union placed suspiciously right near the Chernobyl reactor outside of Kiev years before it melted down.
The Ukrainian duo's argument, assembled as they investigate, is that the increasingly apparent failure of the Duga led to officials' decision to provoke the Chernobyl disaster.
The pair argue that George Kopchinski, a top Russian nuclear regulator, made a call to workers at the plant to carry out a dangerous action that led to the meltdown. That call, the stars of the film say, was made at the behest of the late communications minister Vasily Shamshin, one of the chief architects of the Duga and a man who might have had a lot to lose when the station was discovered not to be working properly.
It is an allegation that, if true, would have incendiary consequences, suggesting that one of the worst disasters of the Cold War was caused by a self-protective Kremlin official.
"If true," though, is a key phrase. Many experts believe Kopchinski placed the call, but they are far from agreed on the reasons for it. The Shamshin theory is considered even further afield, with few scholars subscribing to it. (Much of the documentation from that time is sealed, and other papers are thought falsified.)
But in many ways the truth of the theory is secondary to the story and the political urgency the characters embody — as well as the film's portrayal of a Russia going to disturbing lengths to protect its interests.
As the pair seek information from ex-KGB and Russian military officers, the reticence of the officials, especially when an American like Gracia was present (the director would later come to hide in the closet during interviews, feeding the Ukrainians questions), bolsters the case of a Russian establishment far from ready to make amends.
A similar impression is left by the film's graphic footage, familiar but still compelling, of protesters beaten in Kiev's Independence Square a year ago by forces loyal to the pro-Russian former leader Viktor Yanukovich. As Alexandrovich says in the film, with his characteristic mix of poetic hyperbole, "The undead Soviet ghoul is pushing us toward World War III." Like many in Ukraine, he and Ryzhykov see in events like the Ukrainian Revolution and the Chernobyl disaster not discrete tragedies but a continuum of Russia-led aggression and Ukrainian victimization that stretches back hundreds of years.
The moral turning point of "The Russian Woodpecker" comes about two-thirds of the way through, when Alexandrovich recounts to Ryzhykov that secret police officers working on behalf of Russia have paid him a visit because of the all the poking around they're doing for the film. Alexandrovich, who is animated by a desire to uncover the truth about Chernobyl because the disaster left him with radiation poisoning as a child, suddenly has a change of heart. He recants all his theories and tells his friend the movie must be stopped. (Ryzhykov is filming all this, unbeknown to Alexandrovich.)
"I can't say too much about it, because I still am worried for the safety of me and my family," Alexandrovich said on Friday.
But it's clear there were threats, and he made a choice that, as he said in the interview, "make me the hero and the antihero." (Gracia later gives Alexandrovich a moment of redemption when the latter is seen standing up in front of huge crowds during the Ukrainian revolution and declaring his theories on Chernobyl, slamming the Russian government, an act that was hugely risky at the time.)
Friends and longtime collaborators, the Ukrainian pair hooked up with Gracia when Alexandrovich began talking — fittingly — about the woodpecker with an incessant clamor as the two prepared a play in Ukraine. Gracia, a theater director who improbably helped CIA officers after Sept. 11 with information he had gathered as an English tutor in Saudi Arabia (no one involved with this film, apparently, is just an ordinary citizen), had his own moments of mistrust. He wondered if Ryzhykov and Alexandrovich were secretly Russian officers spying on him, even as they had similar anxieties about the director.
"But then thought he looked so much like Central Casting version of CIA," said Alexandrovich about the middle-aged filmmaker with a fine layer of stubble, "that I knew he couldn't be CIA."
Rhyzkhov's life has followed its own dramatic arc.
An activist and filmmaker during the revolution that ousted Yanukovich a year ago, he was shot at by pro-Yanukovich police officers, saved only by bullets hitting his camera. Though bleeding badly, he couldn't go to the hospital because of reports that demonstrators taken there were later being disappeared in forests by pro-Yanukovich forces.
Fears of that kind persist, especially with the film complete. Gracia said that "even though I think Putin has bigger problems right now, this new climate is worrisome, and I certainly wouldn't feel safe in Russia, or even in a London sushi shop. Things can happen anywhere."
Ryzhykov, who like Alexandrovich will return to Ukraine after the festival, said he still aims to travel to Russia, where he has family, as well as Donetsk. "I know what can happen to me," he said. "But I make films and take photos. Am I going to spend my life worrying about a sniper?"
Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesOn a recent balmy day in Santa Monica, Albert Brooks chuckled about the lengths to which he's gone to reboot his acting career, moving away from the belligerent neurotic of "Broadcast News" fame into playing a believable psychopath in "Drive" and more serious fare in "A Most Violent Year."
So in your 20s, you trained as a dramatic actor and tried to pursue those roles but got detoured.
I was funny, naturally, and when I left college around 19-20, it was very difficult to get any acting parts at that age, but I was able to get on national television shows just making up comedy in my bathroom. I had an agent who said, "Just do that and you'll get all the acting roles you want." … It really didn't happen that way. I just got further and further into comedy.
Then you started writing your own stuff and for a long time your real focus was making your own films.
When I was making my own movies regularly … that's sort of all you could do. Because once you started writing and once you raised the money you couldn't tell the people, "I'm going to stop for two years and go act in this movie." I still have another idea for a movie I might make, but I have to say, I've been enjoying playing different kinds of characters than I've played in the past.
And they're different kinds of roles than you write for yourself.
Absolutely. I wouldn't write a character in "Drive" for myself. Nor even "A Most Violent Year." I just finished a movie that'll be out this year with Will Smith.
The NFL concussion drama.
Yeah. It's a very interesting part. It's a guy that's still living. … I would only do this if I was an actor in it. I wouldn't write it. I certainly wouldn't put myself in it, if I did write it.
And yet you're so effective in these darker roles.
I think people get surprised that someone who's known for comedy can be serious. But my comedy's always been serious. I've never been a zany kind of person. And, you know, I played football in high school. People didn't fool around with me. It looked like I could punch you back. … And when you look at the real people in the world that are the scariest, they're not the overt kind of scary. Those people would get caught. You look at these people that give you the chills and they're smooth and they're quiet. It's just when pushed comes to shove, they can —
Put a fork in an eye.
That's right. The character [lawyer Andrew Walsh] in "A Most Violent Year," he wasn't killing people but he was certainly a guy who was almost suggesting it, who was almost saying, "If you don't play the game, this is how the game is played." That's a kind of seriousness in my gut that I've always had. Even as a kid.
There's always been, in your comedy, and most good comedy, this aggressive bite to it.
Yes, I was most aggressive to my own characters. I beat up my own characters in my comedy, as opposed to beating up society. I put my own characters through the mill. Making them fools.
What is it about comedy that is so hard for the performer, that makes drama less of a challenge?
I think there's some kind of trust that the audience needs if they're going to laugh, that they don't need in a drama. They don't need to trust you as an actor if you're going to scare them. But they need to trust you in some way, if you're going to make them laugh, because that's when people are most vulnerable. …I think my comedy's always been closer to the bone and closer to drama than the average movie comic. I look at a movie like "Modern Romance." It's almost a tragedy, that movie. It's a guy who can't connect and starts acting like an insane, jealous man. That movie, minus a few scenes, could be a very scary stalker movie. That kind of behavior, minus the laughs, is prison behavior!
I heard about your audition for "Drive." Did you really get physically aggressive?
We sat in [director Nicolas Winding Refn's] living room and talked. … I could see there was a doubt because I hadn't done [this kind of role] before. I knew it was going to be one meeting and that was it. He's funny, Nicolas Refn. He makes these extremely violent movies. But he's extremely pale. He looks like he's never been in a fight. Never. So before I left his house, we were standing in the doorway and I pinned him up against the wall. Like this. [Raises his right hand in a pincer-like, grip-to-the-throat gesture.] And I said very quietly, "You should have no doubt in your mind that if I wanted to, I could kill you right now. I'm strong enough to kill you right now." He said, "No, no, no! I have no doubt!"
It was totally spontaneous?
I thought of that as I stood up to leave. I thought, "What can I do?"
Bold choice!
It would have been stupid if, in his mind, he had given me the part and then [laughs] that would have changed his mind — "I don't want him anywhere near me!"
calendar@latimes.com
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles TimesIf you've traveled much in Italy, you probably have an idea of what an Italian steak meal might be like: a small antipasto or two, an unchallenging pasta and then a honking piece of meat, charred salty black in the fireplace but warm and bloody within, portioned out among everybody at the table. If there is a sauce, it is a few drops of harsh, green olive oil. If there is a side dish, it is a handful of potatoes or some beans. You will drink cheap, rough wine. You will still spend more than you expect, but you will be unreasonably happy.
Pistola, the new restaurant from Gusto's Vic Casanova, is another kind of Italian steakhouse, halfway between a pasta house and a luxury steakhouse like Boa or Mastro's.
The risotto, should you choose to order it, is paved with gold leaf and costs $28. The steak tartare, made from dry-aged beef, is essentially a vehicle for truffle oil. The chopped salad, a pretty good one made with radicchio, provolone, salami and a few other things, has been sculpted so thoroughly into a cylinder that not even a stray bit of shaved onion intrudes upon its symmetry. Ayn Rand would have liked it. It is a salad in bondage, molded to its creator's will.
You are not in Tuscany. You are not in Naples. You are neither at Mastro's nor Dan Tana's. You are in a land of big meat and handmade pasta, truffle butter and tomato paste-laced sauces like the ones your mother may have made, vintage soul music and Grey Goose and soda. Most of the wines on the mostly Italian list hover near the top end of the range — the specialty seems to be in blue-chip wines from underrated regions — although there are some perfectly delicious bottles, like Andrea Occhipinti's bright Sicilian Frappato, priced in the mid $50s.
Casanova is an old-school Italian American chef, brought up near Arthur Avenue in the Bronx — thus the chicken Scarpariello on the menu — and a veteran of kitchens run by chefs like Scott Conant and Daniel Boulud. He opened the well-regarded Culina in the Four Seasons Hotel Beverly Hills a few years ago before leaving to open Gusto. (My estimable colleague S. Irene Virbila said "that to anyone who grew up Italian … Gusto feels like home.")
His partner Seth Glassman, formerly of the nightlife-oriented Innovative Dining Group, seems always to be in the dining room, slicked-back hair and tailored suit, counseling his customers on the cocktails (the Rocket Man, made with puréed arugula, is surprisingly good) and confiding that Casanova's meatballs are the best he's ever had. Pistola is dark, masculine and unusually clubby for a space that used to house the sunny cooking of Suzanne Goin's AOC. Glassman and Casanova are clearly after both the high rollers and the Sunday gravy crowd.
So you order those meatballs in Sunday gravy, which is to say, long-simmered tomato sauce with that sharp, mother-in-law taste, and you get the fried calamari and you go for the truffle-butter-drenched seared scallops with their celery root purée.
If you're not much for extremely reduced tomato sauce and fresh pasta used where you'd normally see dried, Casanova's pasta aesthetic may not be your own, but there is a certain charisma to his spicy, tart, tomato-intensive versions of the Roman standard bucatini all'Amatriciana and the nightclub standby rigatoni alla vodka. (You probably want to avoid the ink-black agnolotti filled with mealy lobster and shrimp.) The southern Italian-style savory chocolate-flavored campanelle with braised duck isn't bad — there seems to be a vogue for cocoa-flavored pasta in town at the moment — and the orrecchiete with sausage and broccoli rabe is salty and delicious.
And then, inevitably, comes the steak, big hunks of meat, reasonably well-prepared and luxury-priced. If there are four of you splitting a thick, $125 Fiorentina, you will be happy enough with the porterhouse. The meat is neither as intensely mineral as what you'd find at Sostanza in Florence or Villa Roncalli in Foligno, nor as profoundly marbled as the best steaks at Mastro or Cut, but it is decently juicy, cooked to an accurate medium rare and well-portioned. Is meat-tartness more evident in the biceps-sized dry-aged tomahawk rib-eye? Maybe a little, although if you slather it with an ice cream scoop of truffle butter, a $3 supplement, you probably wouldn't notice if they slipped a pork chop onto your plate instead.
Pistola
One part Sunday gravy, one part big honkin' steak.
LOCATION
8022 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, (323) 951-9800, pistol-la.com
PRICES
Antipasti, $11-$21; pasta and risotto, $17-$28; steaks and chops, $49-$125; sides, $8; desserts, $9-$10.
DETAILS
Open 6 to 11 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays, 6 p.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays, 6 to 10:30 p.m. Sundays. Credit cards accepted. Full bar. Valet parking.
jonathan.gold@latimes.com
Follow me on Twitter @thejgold
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
