Artists of the Year

News of Sen. Larry Craig's arrest by an undercover police officer in a public-toilet sex sting at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport exploded in the press in late August. Newscasters were befuddled as they reported the details. Later, Craig's explanation that his "wide stance" in the stall was misunderstood by the officer became a pop euphemism for gay. Public-bathroom sex became fodder for late-night monologues, and the site of Craig's bust turned into a tourist attraction.

All of that gives remarkable weight and context to the work of Los Angeles filmmaker William E. Jones, who exhibited at Walker Art Center last summer, just before the scandal broke. Jones's films often rework footage from the nonsexual moments in gay porn, and addresses the lines between fandom and obsession. In the process of mining images of gay sexuality in film, he uncovered an instructional film called Camera Surveillance, produced by the Highway Safety Foundation, that taught officers techniques to covertly film illegal sexual activity in public toilets. In this case, the footage shot in 1962 in the small town of Mansfield, Ohio, led to charges and convictions of more than 30 men. Jones's reworking of the footage, Mansfield 1962, which showed at the Walker, contains many levels of irony. The surveillance tapes were shot by police hiding in a closet—natch—and the explicit footage shows the sexual abandon and joy, but not the horror and humiliation that soon followed. The restroom in the film is a cultural and social equalizer, ensnaring men of various classes. In this case, most served several years in jail and had their lives ruined.

We will be hearing more from Jones soon. Next up is a spot in the coveted Whitney Biennial—the holy grail of emerging artists—where he will be presenting Tearoom, another found film on gay sex in bathrooms.

Dean Otto is assistant curator of Film/Video at Walker Art Center. He was co-curator of the "Modes of Disclosure" exhibition at the Form + Content Gallery where Mansfield 1962 was exhibited.

Diablo Cody

So what are we to make of the Diablo Cody media frenzy? In the last two months, she may have received more press than any screenwriter in movie history. From the New York Times to the L.A. Times, from NPR to Entertainment Weekly, she and her film Juno were hard to escape.

That's not supposed to happen to screenwriters. They're supposed to toil in obscurity. They don't get asked for interviews. They don't make TV appearances. Even when they win Oscars, they're usually the pasty, sweaty recipients that signal it's time to get more Doritos.

So why Cody? She did write a smart, funny movie, but Lord, it wasn't Citizen Kane. She is a very talented writer, but Fitzgerald wrote movies, too, and he didn't get nearly this much ink.

One reason, of course, is that Cody's impossibly colorful back story—the whole stripper thing—makes good copy. And she's a charming free spirit, with the oversized personality to pull it all off.

It's that, for sure, but that doesn't quite answer it.

Maybe we like Cody's story because it reminds us that the dream is alive for us, too. It tells us that with some talent and a bit of luck, the planets can align, angels can alight, our fairy godmother can whack us with her magic stick. One day we can be puttering on our novel/screenplay/website/business plan, and the next day we can be accepting our Pulitzer/Oscar/Google buyout/IPO stock.

Hey, it happens. Not so long ago, Diablo Cody was working as an insurance adjuster. Now she's a Hollywood superstar.

Good for you, Diablo. And thanks.

Matthew Smith is the managing editor of City Pages.

Matt Sciple

In the messy and maddening collaboration that is live theater, where ego is the raw material and audacity the most recognized credential, directors must play the auteur just to get any attention. So the theaters are filled with increasingly esoteric concepts smacked on top of perfectly good stories, as directors upstage and grandstand to be sure audiences, other artists, and critics know they did something. As a fan of text-based theater, driven by story and character, I want to applaud the under-recognized directors who just direct great shows.

As a playwright himself, Matt Sciple knows how to find a whole universe in the blueprint of a script. And as a damn fine actor himself, he directs great actors to inhabit that universe with living, breathing characters. He's been diligently bringing great stories to life on Twin Cities stages for over a decade now, and if you don't know his name it's because he's got his head buried too deep in good work to wave his arms around with quirky, flashy concepts.

The variety and quality of Sciple's work has always been admirable, but this last year the sheer quantity and back-to-back difficulty of the scripts he's tackled are staggering. He took on the controversial and gut-wrenching Pillowman at the Jon Hassler Theater, well ahead of the Guthrie's production. Then a barking-mad portrayal of Captain Ahab in Or the White Whale in Southern Theater's athletic adaptation of Moby Dick. Followed immediately by directing the most robust and moving version of King Lear I've ever seen, staged in a barebones theater with Starting Gate Productions' scrappy little budget.