John Powers

Liberté, Égalité, Infidélité

John Powers
Illustration by Peter Bennett A FEW YEARS AGO DURING A PRESS CONFERENCE IN CANNES, AN AMERICAN PHOtographer grabbed my arm and led me outside to a patio overlooking the water. Down below in a boat was a buxom woman clad only in skintight short shorts. "Look at those tits!" he......

The Man Show

John Powers
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “and that is not being talked about.” You might try telling that to Mike Piazza, the New York Mets catcher and ex-Dodger who last week felt compelled to call a press conference to announce......

Eyes Wide Open

John Powers
WHILE JAPAN IS RENOWNED FOR TAKING OTHER countries' products and making them smaller and cheaper, America -- especially Hollywood -- is famous for just the opposite. Our movie studios routinely snap up the rights to elegant little foreign films, then stuff the remakes so full of money that they lumber......

Shark Jumping in America

John Powers
Power does not interest me. After victory, I want to go back to my village and just be a lawyer again. --Fidel Castro, 1957 What the hell, maybe he thought he meant it. Of course, by the time Jimmy Carter visited Havana last week, Castro -- or Fidel, as his......

The Good, the Bad and the Rest of Us

John Powers
A couple of weeks ago on Meet the Press, Tim Russert leaned his gargantuan ego toward the camera and asked Benyamin Netanyahu, “Why is the Israeli government refusing to listen to President Bush?” Netanyahu snapped, “Because he’s your president, not ours, you smug, potato-faced putz.” Okay, okay, he didn‘t say......

'This Is a Town Where . . .'

John Powers
ONE OF L.A.'S PECULIAR PLEASURES IS WATCHING NEW YORK journalists cruise into town, spend a couple of days trawling for ironies, then grandly spoon out clichés about the city as if they were beluga caviar. In last Sunday's New York Times, hotshot reporter Alex Kuczynski did a piece on Hollywood's......
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Kama Sutra Journalism

John Powers
Flipping channels the other night, I blundered upon Real Sex, the popular HBO series whose sniggering raciness always makes me want to trade in my genitals. A “multiorgasmic” middle-aged white woman was holding a Kama Sutra class on her living-room floor. After demonstrating a terrific new sexual position, she gushed,......

The Man Who Isn’t There

John Powers
“When I first started working,” says Vincent (Aurelien Recoing), the wayward businessman at the heart of the mesmerizing new psychological thriller Time Out, “driving was my favorite part. The only thing I liked about the job was driving.” The first time we see him, he‘s inside his car, snoozing, as......

March Madness

John Powers
Traveling in Poland a few years ago, I went to Zamenhofa Street to see the monument dedicated to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The memorial is powerful -- statues of oversize resistance fighters loom over you boldly -- but what I remember best are my fellow visitors. A tour bus of......

It Ain’t Cool

John Powers
The other night my wife was grimly washing the dishes. When I asked what was wrong, she smashed a plate on the floor with both hands and screamed, ”EVERYTHING!“ . . . No wait, that was Sissy Spacek‘s big moment from In the Bedroom, which was shown so many times......