Joe Donnelly

Cod Almighty

Joe Donnelly
Many things go through one’s mind when one is contemplating the eve of destruction. And whether that contemplation is of a personal or more universal nature, I think it’s safe to say a certain primal instinct draws one ineffably toward something that will feed and nourish the soul as it......

Sean Penn, With His Own Two Eyes

Joe Donnelly
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power D’you know that you can use it? —The Clash, “Clampdown” The drive from Oakland to Mill Valley sends you across the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge, worth the $4 toll for its breathtaking views of Mount Tamalpais, the sentinel of Marin County, and......
(Photos by Kevin Scanlon)

Christian Bale and the Art of Extreme Acting

Joe Donnelly
Christian Bale is an actor who may be as well known for what he does to his body as he is for his body of work. He’s done extreme things to that body in the name of art. Turning it as hard and sharp as an ice pick for American......
Here comes the Sun.

Best of Bale

Joe Donnelly
{mosimage} 1. EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987), as Jimmie Graham, the teenager who is separated from his diplomat parents when Japan invades China and whose comfortable life of privilege is turned on its ear. This is the one that started it all, and he was good from the get-go. Plus,......

Davey Latter

Joe Donnelly
Davey Latter isn’t moving to Silver Lake, not yet anyway. But he thinks about it all the time.“I love Silver Lake. I love those mountains and I love those little houses with the yards. I would love to live there,” he tells me over breakfast after we surf his favorite......
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Who's That Girl? Lauren Weedman’s Search for Home

Joe Donnelly
“Did you eat my napkin?” asks Lauren Weedman when I return from dousing myself with cold water in the bathroom. No, but it’s a fair question seeing as how I have eaten all of our bread, plus the calamari-in-marinara-sauce appetizer, my chicken ravioli, some of the better bits of her......
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Night of a Thousand Faces

Joe Donnelly
Running into novelist Bruce Wagner was my first indication that tonight was going to be a bigger deal than I’d expected. The Philip Roth of contemporary L.A. letters, accompanied by a fetching, raven-haired companion, looked resplendent in a smart, no-collar black tux with tails. When I next came upon Ben......

Erased

Joe Donnelly
Things looked a little out of place last Thursday when I got home and walked in the door. “What the hell was she looking for?” I wondered as I spotted open drawers and general chaos. My wife doesn’t usually leave the house in such a mess. Did the dogs somehow......

What a Wreck

Joe Donnelly
So I’m on my way back from my head doc around lunchtime, heading south on the 101 freeway over the Cahuenga Pass after having just paid $80 to learn that my pedestrian anxieties and run-of-the-mill insomnia stem from not feeling in control of things (revelatory!). I didn’t sleep a wink......
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Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Joe Donnelly
It’s 10 a.m. on a Labor Day weekend and already it’s Africa hot. The sun is burning a hole through the parked cars, promising no more than a late-summer day of languid diversion. It’s lazy time, and my friend Robert and I head for Dusty’s. We are greeted at the......