phantomhampton

Interviews with: Hamptons International Film Festival world premiere of new documentary, “The Panama Papers”, dir. by Alex Winter, (“Trust Machine”, “Deep Web”), produced by Laura Poitras, (“Risk”, “Citizen Four”), about global money laundering; and “To Dust" a darkly comic first feature directed by Shawn Snyder, produced by husband and wife team Alessandro Nivola, (“Disobedience”, “Laurel Canyon”), and Emily Mortimer (“The Newsroom”, “Match Point”), starring Geza Rohri

If you need a raccoon driven across the canal or your family of foxes is mangy or a hedgehog is eating you out of your zinnias and you can’t resort to killing your cousins, there is only one man for the job.Dell Cullum doesn’t kill anything . Hampton Wildlife Removal & Rescue is  for customers who care about what happens to their animal fellows. The main engine under Dell is his undying curiosity, enthusiasm, and imagination for the work. He believes all forms of life have deserve respect.

Ted Rall is a political cartoonist, graphic novelist, journalist, proud Marxist, intellectual, and all around agitator. He’s radicalized and it gets him into trouble with the Alt-Right and of course Isis."We need to define evil and then point to those doing it. The politicians, beaureacrats, corporate executives, media power brokers and environmental exploiters who spend every waking minute thinking of new ways to fuck us over and rape the world we live in to make an extra buck.” 

In his new theatrical adaptation of his graphic novel “The Man in the Ceiling,” opening the 2017 Main Stage season at Bay Street Theatre May 30, he wants the audience “to feel they’ve been dragged up onstage” and are part of the action.“Yes! I want you to experience what I am doing in the present tense! That’s the way it’s always been in whatever medium I’m using,” he says. “It took over 50 years for me to learn to leave my work alone, and not to try and control everything. To be a lack of control freak. Or a loss of control freak.”“The Man In The Ceiling” was first published as a graphic novel in 1993. Both the book and the play, directed by Jeffrey Seller, deal with failure, mostly creative failure, centered around two characters — Jimmy, a boy who only wants to draw cartoons whose father is displeased by his ambition, and his Uncle Lester who lives upstairs and writes “flop musicals.”“ ‘As Jimmy saw it, he had no other choice but to grow up to be a great cartoonist. Only that would make up for the awful burden he bore in the present. Because, in every way that counted, Jimmy was a flop as a boy.’ ”“This passage is completely autobiographical,” he tells me, “completely true of me as a kid! My eyes had different mis-matched sighting, so I couldn’t catch or throw a ball. All the skills you need as a kid growing up during the depression without any money are athletic.” “The Man In The Ceiling” in its new form has been a long time in the works. Seventeen years ago, Andrew Lippa contacted Mr. Feiffer about writing music and lyrics and hopefully collaborating on turning the book into a musical. They had a brief encounter with Disney, who sponsored a reading of the first iteration of the play, but a film was never made.A few years ago Mr. Lippa brought Jeffrey Seller on board to direct. Mr. Feiffer says the chemistry has been magical.“This is a play about how you deal with yourself as a human and your self as an artist when the results aren’t what they’re supposed to be in the world you live in — where if it’s not a commercial success then it’s no good,” he says. “It’s putting together a life that is going to make your adult life livable, despite the fact that you’re not doing it by the rules of the people that seem to count, namely everyone else but you!”After a career of more than 70 years, Jules Feiffer is busier than ever.“As I’m getting older, I’m doing more work,” he says, “but it’s not because I feel time is running out — I mean time is obviously running out — but I’m just having more fun! One of the nice things about age is that you come to terms with how stupid you are. In your 20s and 30s and 40s, there’s the pride of hopefully being smarter than anyone else. But after a while, that stops being important and you gravitate toward the things that really count, or you should be able to. Not everyone can do that. I’m doing more because I’m having a better time!”The Man In The Ceiling, book by Jules Feiffer, Music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, and directed by Jeffrey Seller, producer of Hamilton, will run May 30-June 25 at The Bay Street Theater.

A melange of oral history interviews with Mary Curles, Josephine Craskey, Gina Abetamarco, Vincent Lombardo about Amagansett, New York and their Italian and Sicilian heritage.Photo by Lily Landes.

We Baptize Not Lobotomize! by phantomhampton

Bobby Wonderful is a memoir about coping with dying parents with humor and grace.

The new seed exchanges vs. Monsanto. We visit The Hampton's Seed Exchange's first event and talk with seed sharers about organic growing on Long Island.

Four Stationary Walls by PhantomHampton Podcast

Pilgrim To Greece by PhantomHampton Podcast