For now, you can dream. A whiff of controversy precedes many fall events, like that wind that reaches the subway station just ahead of the train. After being hailed and picketed in Toronto, Harold Prince’s lavish production of Show Boat floats down to Broadway (somewhere black activists are seething). Andrew Lloyd Webber’s $13 million adaptation of Sunset Boulevard comes to New York with Glenn Close playing the famously coveted lead (somewhere Patti LuPone and Faye Dunaway are seething). And Neil Jordan’s film version of “Interview With the Vampire” arrives with Tom Cruise trying to prove he’s an actor with teeth (somewhere Anne Rice is seething, but at least she’s getting a cut).
Elsewhere in the world of controversy, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Sinead O’Connor will all play Beat the Backlash. Jackson will release a greatest-hits collection that also includes a handful of new songs. O’Connor will deliver an occasionally riveting bit of open-heart surgery called “Universal Mother.” And Madonna will offer up “Bedtime Stories,” purported to be a big, romantic album shot through with hip-hop and R & B. (As her misty-eyed publicist puts it, “Oh, my God.”) Jackson, Madonna and O’Connor have been linked with enough bad behavior to kill the careers of lesser mortals. But our hunch is that, like Tom Cruise, all three are undead.
The trouble with investing your disposable income in scandals or the scandalous is that the word controversial is sometimes used as a synonym for god-awful. What’s a consumer to do? If you like, you can cling to the Sure Thing or to the Sure Thing’s bland little brother, the Known Commodity. This fall, Neil Simon unveils a new comedy, “London Suite,” in Seattle. Eric Clapton plugs in and plays the blues on “From the Cradle.” David E. Kelley, creator of “Picket Fences,” whips up some hospital drama in CBS’s “Chicago Hope.” Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, producers of “thirtysomething,” turn their attention to the weird and wounding teenage years in ABC’s “My So-Called Life.” And Joseph Heller publishes a sequel to “Catch-22,” titled “Closing Time.” Heller picks the action up 50 years later; Yossarian works for Milo, who’s a defense contractor, and he’s still smitten with the chaplain.
Looking for still more comforting faces, more familiar plots? Keep reading. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt can be found in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “No Ordinary Time,” which tracks the First Couple in and out of World War II. A certain blond bombshell appears in M. G. Lord’s “Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll,” which follows the toy wonder from her birth in postwar Germany to her ascendance as a feminist conversation piece. And Elvis Presley turns up in a slew of fall books. There’s a day-to-day journal of his comings and goings. A memoir by a man who was in his entourage. A memoir by a woman who was in his bed. And Peter Guralnick’s “Last Train to Memphis,” part one of a two-volume biography and an affectionate account of the singer’s early years. Joseph Heller’s powers may have diminished over the years, but when have Barbie, FDR or Elvis ever let us down?
If all of the above is too cozy or familiar for your tastes, rest assured that artists known for taking chances are taking them still. The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, whose inspiration has always been the gorgeous possibility of the body, will be at the University of Iowa performing “Still/Here,” derived from workshops with people facing life-threatening diseases. Sam Shepard will be off-Broadway offering “Simpatico,” a long-delayed play about lovers, con artists and the Kentucky Derby. Alternative-rock poster girl Liz Phair will make her breakthrough bid with “Whip-Smart,” another album of catchy, low-fi, NC-17 pop. (Oh, the mouth on her!) And two masters of improvisation – painter Cy Twombly and street photographer king Robert Frank – will get treated to retrospectives at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery in Washington, respectively.
Well, we could go on forever. It may seem as if we already have. The bottom line is that you’ll surely find somebody, or something, to love. In the event you’re peculiarly hard of heart, we’ll elaborate on some of the fall’s most promising offerings (Robert Redford’s movie “Quiz Show,” Laurie Garrett’s book “The Coming Plague”) in the next few pages. If all else fails, proceed directly to R.E.M.’s new album, “Monster,” a wonderfully flashy, trashy bit of rock and a startling follow-up to the elegiac “Automatic for the People.” Or try director Quentin Tarantino’s singularly twisted caper, “Pulp Fiction,” which stars John Travolta and Bruce Willis, among others. Bruce Willis is in a great movie? This must be the fall: we’re starting to believe anything is possible.
