Friday 11/28 – Thursday 12/4
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29 SATURDAY In her seemingly chaotic performance piece Reno–Rebel Without a Pause: Unrestrained Reflections on September 11th, monologuist Reno–who lived five blocks from the World Trade Center–examines the meaning of patriotism after 9/11. Few targets escape her trademark blunt, caustic honesty: everyone from George Bush and Rudy Giuliani to herself and her fellow “nouvelle refugees of Tribecistan” comes in for a skewering. She’ll present an updated version of the show (first performed in October 2001) tonight at 7:30 and 10:30 at HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo. Tickets are $20, and you must be 21 or over or accompanied by a parent or guardian. For more information call 312-362-9707 or see www.citizenreno.com. Nancy Savoca’s 2002 film of the same name, shot during the show’s initial off-Broadway engagement, runs Friday, November 28, through Tuesday, December 2, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State. Reno will introduce the 7:30 Friday screening; for more information call 312-846-2800 or see the movie listings in Section Two.
30 SUNDAY Studs Terkel interviewed the usual cross section of humanity for his latest book, Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times, including undocumented Guatemalan workers, 94-year-old economist John Kenneth Galbraith, pardoned Illinois death row inmate Leroy Orange, and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. “Kucinich,” Terkel recently wrote in In These Times, “is the ideal candidate for president. But he has as much chance of being nominated as the Chicago Bears do of winning the Super Bowl.” So much for hope. Terkel, who’s 91, will discuss and sign copies of his book today at 3 at Barnes & Noble, 1441 W. Webster. It’s free; call 773-871-3610.
3 WEDNESDAY “What I like about The Fog of War is that it has proved possible to make a movie about events–events that are removed from us by 40, 50, 60 years but which are very much about today,” says documentary filmmaker Errol Morris. Morris has had a yen to make a film about former secretary of defense Robert McNamara since reading his 1995 book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. In the film McNamara talks for the first time about his relationship with General Curtis LeMay and their involvement in the World War II firebombing of 67 Japanese cities, raising, says Morris, “deep moral questions” about the Allied effort to win the war in Japan by any means necessary. Morris will give a free lecture today at 4 at Doc Films in the University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th. The Fog of War opens December 19; tonight at 9 there’ll be a special screening of an unnamed Errol Morris film. Tickets are free but must be picked up Tuesday, December 2, after 5 PM in the lobby of the Max Palevsky Cinema at Ida Noyes Hall, where the screening will take place. For more call 773-702-8574 or see www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
