Jane McNeill in The Bay.

A horror film by the estimable, sober-minded Barry Levinson? Why not? The veteran director of such earnest endeavors as Rain Man, Diner, Bugsy and Sleepers has always entertained a lighter streak. He began his career writing The Carol Burnett Show, and Wag the Dog was a political satire. But a genuine hair-raising creature feature is a real departure. Say hello to The Bay.

Using the time-tested conceit of “found footage” popularized by films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, the meticulous Mr. Levinson, with the urgency of a naturalistic screenplay by Michael Wallach and appealing performances by a cast of unknowns, has created a chilling sense of cinema-verité panic that keeps you spellbound and enlightened at the same time. The found-footage horror concept is usually restricted to tales of the supernatural, related after the fact. This is the first time I’ve seen it used to reveal an ecological catastrophe, showing the phases of a natural disaster and a government cover-up through multiple media sources, webcams, closed-circuit cameras, cell phone footage, news reports, video coverage by a rookie intern on a morning TV show on her first assignment and various victims whose goal is to tell the surviving world what really happened. The facts that emerge baffle the Coast Guard, the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Homeland Security. Your hair will stand on end. 

What happens is harrowing enough to make tough guys tremble. On a peaceful sunny Fourth of July, at the annual Chesapeake crab-eating spectacular in the quaint bayside town of Claridge, Md., 350 revelers are suddenly stricken with food poisoning. As ambulances form gridlocks to rush people to local hospitals, the victims multiply, their bodies covered with boils, lesions, blisters. The death toll mounts to 700 as what is first believed to be a bacterial plague is unleashed, and the panic spreads, all of it captured by Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue), a naive communications major employed as a summer intern for a local TV station. Dispatched to capture local color of carnival rides and pie-eating contests, Donna gets the scoop of a lifetime. The story is told during the 24-hour period when it is happening, which gives Mr. Levinson leverage from different visual sources—i.e., mobiles, 911 calls, hand-held videos—and is also narrated in retrospect, after Donna has spent three years editing all of her research and defying the authorities who demand she destroy her reportage. Contrasted with the ghastly evidence of a plague that reaches epidemic heights, the movie builds clues to a thrilling mystery even the experts can’t solve.

So what is going on here? While the gruesome physical horrors are shown in unflinching detail, a parallel narrative unfolds involving two oceanographers from the University of Maryland doing environmental research on contaminated water in the bay, which contains enormous levels of toxicity from the sewage from a nearby chicken factory. Just how much pollution lies in the darkness beneath the surface is anybody’s guess, as the researchers’ bodies turn up with teeth marks indicating a shark attack. Theories abound. Is it a terrorist plot? Are drugs and hallucinogens involved? Biological warfare? The highways are gridlocked with terrified motorists trying to evacuate. What emerges in the video diaries of the two dead scientists, suppressed by politicians running for re-election and federal agencies trying to avoid mass hysteria, is worse than any school of tiger sharks.

Slowly, creepily, The Bay grows into a full-out attack on the senses, showing the fate that awaits a doctor who locks himself in the intensive care unit, a group of fishermen who encounter an isopod at sea, a young couple with a baby who arrive in Wilmington to watch the fireworks and encounter empty streets littered with corpses, even the cops who meet violent deaths inside a dark house full of zombies. You thought Jaws was bad. Wait until you meet what’s waiting in this town’s water supply.

The irreparable damage The Bay could do to Chesapeake Bay tourism is yet to be determined, and you may never eat another soft-shell crab as long as you live. Still, the impact of Barry Levinson’s eco-apocalyptic nail-biter is undeniable, especially when you realize some of it is based on fact. Best of all, I applaud the director’s triumph of intimate terror over preposterous puppets and noisy computer-generated effects. In The Bay, the mayhem is both fresh and thrilling.

rreed@observer.com

THE BAY

Running Time 85 minutes

Written by Michael Wallach

Directed by Barry Levinson

Starring Kristen Connolly, Jane McNeill and Christopher Denham

3/4

What are his thoughts on the financial crisis? “I’m not going to comment tonight," he said. "I’ve had a couple, I’m going to leave it at that."

A few minutes earlier, a significant-looking balding man walked by and said very loudly, “Harvey Weinstein will never speak to me again!” Then an 80-pound woman with razor lips and very touchable-looking hair adjusted the tight, thick leather choker around her neck. Nearby, Men’s Health editor in chief Dave Zinczenko was blocking the way by talking with two men. “This bastard always steals things!” one said to the other about Mr. Zinczenko. Har-har-har! Around the corner there was Cybill Shepherd, dress cut low, talking to four men. And Barbara Walters and Steve Buscemi and Peter Dinklage; Roger Waters, Bob Balaban and Jay McInerney.

Earlier, at MoMA, Mr. De Niro was about to walk down the red carpet area that had been set up across from Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #1144. The Daily Transom wanted to speak with him, waiting along with well-wisher Albert Maysles, the documentarian.

Had he seen any De Niro films recently? “I don’t think so, I don’t see many films,” he said.

Mr. De Niro turned around and there was time for one question: Won’t it be good for films if New York tanks and gets gritty again—like in the '70s?

“Well,” he said. He thought for a moment. He looked and sounded a lot like Robert De Niro. “Yeah, except, I guess, it would all be on Wall Street--a free for all. I don’t know.”

Did he mean that filmic grittiness would be good but Wall Street losing all its money would be bad?

“Well, that’s another story, we’ll see what happens.”

What does he predict?

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I hope everything’s O.K.”

Regis Philbin strutted by in a big, bright tie. “It’s a shame. It really is,” he said. “It’s a stupid shame. It all begins with people who want—pigs, really. Greed overcame them. So we wind up with a mess like this,” he said. He was born in 1931 but doesn’t remember the Depression. “Honest to God, I’d be very, very surprised if it’s not going to be fine. It’s just a terrible period to go through. You know, it may take a couple of years.” Isn’t that why movies are so wonderful? They make us happy when times are tough. “I hope it does tonight,” he said.

It didn’t. Mr. De Niro’s character, a fictionalized version of the life of Hollywood director and producer Art Linson, was neither entertainingly hateful nor particularly likable (he has a Bluetooth headset in his ear for most of the film). Most of the film involves a weird, dour slapstick: In a big scene that involves running down a tarmac, chasing a studio executive’s private jet, which has purposefully left without him, he talks on the phone with the ex-wife he still loves. Sad music plays.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the film was re-cut after not selling at Sundance. But it didn’t sell at Cannes, either, so the film’s financiers (including the billionaire Mark Cuban) had to release it themselves through their own distribution vehicle. “No, no,” Mr. Linson, also one of the film’s producers, said at the premiere when asked about those reports. “It was a five-minute standing ovation in Cannes. It was that it did not sell to a major distributor at Sundance. The response was great. The reporter that did that, Patrick Goldstein, wasn’t at either place.”

As these things go, What Just Happened? basically begins with a failed test screening in a movie theater, and, whoa, ends at Cannes. In real life, after the screening at MoMa, people politely clapped a bit and then filed out.

Meanwhile, local nightclub impresario Jesse Morreale wondered if the glamorous crowd would have enough energy to return for another after after party at the Rockbar.

"I'm hoping to use this moment to put Denver on the map," said Mr. Morreale, who owns multiple Lo-Do eateries and event spaces, which he's made available to the Creative Coalition's busy line-up of events.

He's done his best to turn his RockBar on East Colfax, renamed BarackBar for the week, into the safe haven stars at these things need to keep them from being seen and make sure they are seen, depending on the circumstances.

His dreams came true the night before when "like 30 celebs showed up" sometime after midnight. "Bars here close at 2," Mr. Morreale noted. "So we got all the civilians out around then hosted and hosted private party for the VIPs."

New York's favorite lefty activist Susan Sarandon, who has been on her best behavior this week, apparently led the way in an impromptu tequila sampling which lasted until 5:30. "The rawness of it was really amazing," said a wild-eyed Denver local who witnessed the
much-needed merriment.

According to another source, the late night celebration left much of the Creative Coalition posse "too hung over" to do interviews the following morning at the Coalition event—10 in two days—honoring Annette Bening her upcoming film 14 Women, which chronicles the life and times of the 14 female Senators in the 109th Congress.

The scene in the backroom featured a pep talk from a frumpy looking guy with a bad toupee on refining the rhetoric of Democratic talking points, followed by a Q&A among the actors in attendance, including Susan Sarandon, Anne Hathaway, Josh Lucas, Richard Schiff, Giancarlo Esposito and others.

Mr. Levinson wondered how celebrities might change their elitist, out-of-touch image. "The fact is 90 percent of the people in the entertainment business come from the working class," he said. (Not making documentaries about learning how to be better celebrities might be a good place to start!)

Ms. Sarandon recommended an enduring commitment to specific causes and cited a recent poll in that "awful newspaper in LA" (the Los Angeles Times), which she said had vindicated her activism. She went on to scold the lecturer for encouraging them to get passionate. The key, she insisted, is to be genuine in your beliefs.

Ms. Hathaway wore an especially serious, absorbed look for the camera. Mr. Esposito wondered if telling people their own stories, where they've come up from, might help people take actors' opinions more seriously. Ms. Sarandon asserted that asking questions was a better way to get people thinking.

"In other words, talking like a Jew," another audience member chimed.

Mr. Levinson explained that the comment was a reference to the fact that he was Jewish.

This led the lecturer to recall his own Jewish upbringing. Both his mother and rabbi had employed the tactic of answering questions with more questions. "I never got an answer to anything!" he exclaimed, adding that the technique was indeed very effective.

Then the Daily Transom was spotted with a tape recorder and told the taping was off limits to reporters, save the New York Daily News' George Rush, who had gotten the okay from Mr. Levinson himself.

Los Angeles. The air is cool. The nights are chilly. A strange,

spirit-dampening meteorological phenomenon occurs out here that we on the East

Coast might call "weather": There are entire days when the sky is filled with

rain clouds, when the glorious California sun doesn't show itself.

This particular February, however, there is also a newfound

sense of unease in the air. A darkening, if you will, of the usual sunny SoCal

optimism. There are storm clouds on the horizon having more to do with economics

than weather: Although the rolling blackouts

and spiraling energy costs of San Francisco and Silicon Valley haven't visited

L.A. yet (the city produces its own power and hasn't deregulated), the

authorities forecast that the upcoming peak summer demand will push the local

power grid past its limits.

And then there is the threat of entertainment industry

strikes, with the Writers Guild's contract expiring May 2 and the Screen Actors

Guild's on June 30.

Wherever you go in this city, the specter of these labor

actions are Topic A. And not just at The Ivy. You hear the same questions at

Hertz, Kinko's and the dry cleaners: What's going to happen? Do you think

there'll be a strike? Even the most optimistic agent I know-a woman who could

make a death sentence sound like a positive review-is feeling the malaise. "The

business has crawled to a halt," she said. "Everyone is waiting for the other

shoe to drop."

As a working screenwriter, I may not be the most objective

authority on all of this. But at the moment, the studios have rushed dozens of

movies into production, hoping to be finished before the Screen Actors Guild

deadline, when they would be forced to shut down in the event of a strike.

(I'll let you guess the odds on any of these pictures receiving Oscar

nominations next year.)

And for the past month, the writers have been negotiating

with studios and networks-a.k.a. the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television

Producers. As a member of the Guild, I receive daily e-mail updates, but the

information is deliberately vague, detailing the subjects that were discussed

rather than whether any progress was made. We may be living in the Internet

era, but it hasn't changed the theory that collective bargaining is best

conducted out of the spotlight. In either case, it's a long, painful process.

Basically, the screenwriters want money and creative

respect. We want better payments on cable; we want better royalties on DVD's,

video and overseas rebroadcasts; we want to rescind the lower pay scale

negotiated with the Fox network 12 years ago, when the then-new network claimed

it needed to cut costs to survive. And we want some kind of pay structure in

place for whatever the Internet brings. We made a mistake in the 80's,

underestimating the potential revenues, profits and growth of cable and video.

This time, we're determined not to let the profits from new media get away from

us.

From the management

point of view, there is, of course, no money. They claim that overseas

markets for American TV shows are drying up; that all of television-cable and

network-is reaching smaller audiences; and that most American films lose money.

Exactly how much of this is true is up for debate-and the point of the

negotiations. But in fact, advertising revenues are up at the networks, with advertisers

willing to pay more for specific, smaller but highly targeted audiences. New

cable channels are being founded daily, which one can only assume are not

charitable exercises. And, so far as feature-film profitability goes, there are

so many revenue streams at horizontally integrated media corporations-music,

cable, broadcast, merchandising, theme parks-that I defy anyone to figure out

whether or not a movie loses money.

(Of course, the gorilla in the corner of the feature-film

business that no one is going to discuss is the way $20 million star salaries

have thrown the economics of the entire industry out of whack. It's affected

everything from $50,000 character actors demanding and getting $2 million to

the 22-year-old production assistant who sees the excess, says "screw it" and

begins sending Variety to her

boyfriend in Brussels every day via FedEx.)

For the writers, obviously the money is important, but the

more heartfelt issue-and the thing everyone is talking about-is creative

rights. It's a demand for respect. We're tired of being thought of as

disposable; we're tired of being cut out of the movie-making process when the

filming begins, only to be rewritten on the set by actors, producers and

directors, resulting in films that all too often embarrass us. (And before you

ask, "So why put your name on the film?", the answer lies in the fact that

residuals, royalties and production bonuses are tied to having your name on

it.) We're not looking to direct. We're not looking for control. We're only looking

to play a greater role in the oft-cited "collaborative process," which we

honestly believe will make for better, more coherent films.

The flash point for all of this has become the so-called

possessory credit-"A Martin Scorsese film," for example-that appears before the

title in so many American films. When this first came into vogue, in the 60's

and 70's, studios promised that it would only be used in the most rarefied

cases where the director's name helped sell the film. Hitchcock, for example. But

last year, it appeared on almost 70 percent of the movies released by

Hollywood.

Among the working screenwriters I've talked to, there's a

grim sense of determination about this: a belief that it's demeaning, it's

wrong, it's inaccurate. And the fight has put

us at odds with members of the Directors Guild, who insist it's their divine

right and aren't about to give it up.

This is something that I find myself surprisingly adamant

about. I can see the credit for Scorsese. Or Barry Levinson. Or Steven Spielberg,

Spike Lee, Woody Allen, the Coen brothers-even the Farrelly brothers. But not

for someone who's little more than a director for hire.

Recently, a young unknown director-a friend who's picture

I'd worked on gratis-decided to take the credit. I couldn't resist needling him

about it:

"So I see you're an auteur now."

"Hey, I did more than just direct. I supervised everything."

"Isn't that the definition of the director's job?"

"Yes, but it's my film."

"Oh. Pardon me. Did you write it?"

"No."

"Did you create the story?"

"No."

"Did you conceive of the characters?"

"No."

"Did you edit it? Negotiate the talent contracts? Operate

the camera? Did you light it, score it, find the actors by yourself? Were you

sitting on the writer's shoulder when she had the original idea?"

"No."

"So, fool that I am, can you explain how it's your film?"

"It's my vision ,"

he said, laughing as he exaggerated the word, then adding, "You know what this

is about. It's about power. And money. And more control on my next project… You

know, the one you're not going to be writing."

Having worked on enough movies-credited and not-I could

probably fill a book with tales of screenwriter woe. From the ridiculous (being

fired three times from the same picture; working with a star who never read the

script until the night before shooting, but held forth on the publicity junket

about how he worked to create his character) to the merely insulting. (On the

Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies , in

which I created a media-mogul villain, I was left out of the publicity when the

studio decided no one would be interested in anything I might have to say,

despite the fact that the screenwriter was the only one in the production who'd

ever been in proximity to a real, live media mogul.)

So will there be a strike? Is it possible to negotiate

respect?

At a recent dinner party in Los Angeles, a famous

screenwriter told me she thinks this is all Y2K:

The Movie -meaning it's much ado about nothing. And a television writer

opined that a recession will scare the Writers and Screen Actors guilds

off-especially given the less-than-stellar gains in last year's AFTRA strike.

At the same time, there's a feeling that the studios

actually want the strike. Due to the force

majeure (read: act of God) clause in contracts, the studios can use the

strike to nullify lots of bad deals. It's a terrific way of cutting overhead.

(Case in point: Last year, I was hired to write a film for a movie star with a

studio production deal. He couldn't find the two hours to read it. Twelve

months, two bombs and who-knows-how-many millions in overhead later, the

studio's itching for a way to get this person and the entourage off the lot.)

Among most of the writers I've spoken with, there's a

feeling that the creative issues have become something of a now-or-never

proposition. It's not, as the screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky wrote, that "we're

mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore."

But rather, a quiet, determined, resolute feeling that

enough is enough.

Every year, my 86-year-old Orthodox Jewish maternal grandfather, my Zady, takes the Amtrak from Baltimore to New Rochelle, N.Y., arriving around dusk on the night before Thanksgiving. He's easy to spot on the track, with his endearing shuffle and a book-usually by Henry Kissinger or about Israel-weighing down his bag. He's a looker, at 5 feet 3 inches tall, with a little bit of blond hair and manicured nails. He always looks sharp, wearing a suit and a matching fedora with a feather. "Hello, hello!" he shouts as soon as he see us.

On Thursday, as the afternoon football games kick off, we drive to Manhattan for a matinee. Sometimes a neighbor-perhaps bringing logs in to roast chestnuts over his fireplace-will look puzzled as we pile into the car in our holiday best. Maybe his child will ask us if we liked the Macy's parade. "We'll let you know when we read about it in tomorrow's paper," jokes my father as Zady climbs into the passenger seat.

Zady doesn't want to hang around the house in Larchmont all day. He wants to see a movie in the big city. Neither local cinemas-Mamaroneck or Larchmont-will do. He wants the real thing: an Upper West Side multiplex.

One year it was The Piano . Zady fell asleep after a half hour. "Why can't she talk?" was his critique of Holly Hunter. He loved Glory : "very exciting." Malcolm X and Shine didn't go over as well, at least the parts he stayed awake for.

We thought Liberty Heights was a sure bet for this year's choice. Zady lives in Baltimore and thinks that city's No. 1 son, Barry Levinson, is "a genius." But a few weeks ago, he told us that he's tired of Levinson pictures, he wants to see something hip, something "being written about": The Insider .

Also this year, Zady asked for tickets to the new Jackie Mason show, Much Ado About Everything! , for the night before Thanksgiving. He's been talking about it for over a month. "We can probably still get you and your sister a ticket!" he insists. We have politely declined the invitation.

Zady always treats us to the movie and Goldenberg's Peanut Chews. Popcorn is off limits-it would hardly pass any rabbi's kosher test. "Don't even think about it," warns my mother as my sister and I joke about smuggling in the buttery contraband.

One time, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Zady picked up a real looker in a mink coat. But he tossed her phone number once we got to the car because she was a (gasp) shiksa.

Over dinner, we traditionally discuss the year's movie. Our old standard restaurant was Lou G. Siegel's on 38th Street in midtown, until it closed a couple of years ago-an event that Zady hasn't quite gotten over. The-slice-of-Miami-in-Manhattan restaurant had vats of pickles, cole slaw and challah rolls on the table-which often ended up in the napkin-lined purses of frugal patrons.

Much to Zady's delight, there were plenty of lovely bachelorettes in every corner. Sometimes he even got their digits-area codes were usually Atlantic City, Miami, Palm Springs, the occasionally exotic Jerusalem. (Zady has been known to throw a great wedding party-he's been married three times, not including the one in Phoenix, Ariz., which the whole family flew out to attend, but he called off at 6 A.M. But that's another story.)

I spent a good deal of my childhood in the ladies' room of Lou Siegel's. All the mirrors and free cosmetics were enough to keep me entertained during the after-meal praying. As far back as my toddler days, grandmas were scouting out potential future daughter-in-laws: "My grandson is going to be a nice Jewish doctor. I should get your number from your mother!"

After Lou Siegel's closed, we tried the restaurant in the Roosevelt Hotel. My mother remembers it "trying to be upscale" and decorated "in all red."

I remember my dessert being flambéed at Levana Restaurant, on West 69th Street. Zagat's describes it as having "the most imaginative glatt kosher food in New York."

We can all say mazel tov that Moshe Peking, a midtown kosher Chinese restaurant, closed. The experience was really too tasteless to share.

This year, we're returning to our favorite, our very own Le Cirque 2000: Tevere 84 Italian Glatt Kosher on East 84th Street, a restaurant with a little bit of an intimate feeling that's even pricier than Levana. The stone walls and large Renaissance paintings somehow mask the kvetching at a neighboring table. The place feels homey. All the kippas and wigs sort of blend in with the Tuscan countryside atmosphere.

We always order the minestrone soup ("Make it hot!" demands Zady). And the chefs, such good sports, even pad the menu with a "turkey special" including stuffing and sweet potatoes. But who needs it when you've got glatt kosher veal parmigiana without the cheese, and dairy-free tiramisù?

I once attended Thanksgiving dinner at an ex-boyfriend's house in California. His ancestors actually crossed the continent in a covered wagon and they still have the sourdough starter to prove it. His mother made gravy, stuffing and something involving marshmallows that I had never seen before. She even made the crust for the pumpkin pie-with lard. Not a Jew. My mother has once made a cheesecake; it was praised by the dinner party guests for being "low fat," with its cottage cheese and skim milk ingredients.

In early December, my mother often cooks a typical Thanksgiving dinner. She'll even make cranberry sauce from scratch. Maybe she feels residual guilt as she leafs through last week's magazines, thick with holiday recipes.

"Why can't we have Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving like everyone else?" I sometimes ask with Norman Rockwell visions of grandeur. Why can't we have a typical feast? It sure seems to make our friends and neighbors feel comfy and nostalgic on their day off work.

"Why would you want to be like anyone else?" she responds.

Zady always leaves on Friday, in time to be home before sundown, the start of Shabbat. He hops the train around noon for the four-hour ride. He gets back in his huge silver Cadillac, the only make of car he has ever owned, and navigates the deserted streets of Baltimore. Usually, his buddies at his synagogue have missed him while he's been in New York, he's a daily fixture at services. He's also got to get back to work, selling advertisements for Playbill . And there are always ladies waiting.

Levinson Does 1954; Depp Dresses 1799

Barry Levinson is back in Baltimore, and Liberty Heights is the latest in what I call his Baltimore Quartet-four movies about the writer-director's hometown in the 1950's that include Diner , Tin Men and Avalon . There was apparently something darker and campier going on than the working-class stuff Mr. Levinson experienced; elsewhere in town another wannabe filmmaker was also growing up, and his name was John Waters. But that's another story.

In bringing his high school yearbooks, scrapbooks and social observations of the day to life, Mr. Levinson tells what it was like for him in 1954, the year the Baltimore schools were desegregated and members of the Kurtzman family, who were segregated already in a Jewish neighborhood called Liberty Heights, felt the climate of social change hit them like a comet. Liberty Heights is a warm, humorous, soft-heeled stroll down memory lane that deserves a place on the video shelf next to Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs . Mr. Levinson's memory serves him so well that he brings back the time of pink Cadillacs, McCarthy witch hunts, A-bomb tests and James Brown concerts with great relish. So if he's such a perfectionist, why do all the cars in 1954 have 1956 license plates? Just asking.

Ignore such infractions and you will have a lively time with the Kurtzmans: while Nate Kurtzman (Joe Mantegna) grapples with the I.R.S. cracking down on his numbers racket (which he runs behind the seedy but legal facade of a local burlesque house) and his wife Ada (Bebe Neuwirth) wrestles with her meatloaf, eldest son Van (Adrien Brody) falls madly for the richest, blondest and most unattainable WASP Cinderella in school, and youngest son Ben (Ben Foster) scandalizes the entire family by dressing as Adolf Hitler on Halloween.

While most of his friends adjust to desegregation with more curiosity than enmity (wondering about the size of the black students' tools in gym class is a major topic of the day), Ben almost gives his grandmother a stroke by falling for the school's first black student, a nice girl named Sylvia (Rebekah Johnson) who, to the horror of her own parents, teaches Ben a lot about religious, social and racial differences. Events take an even bleaker turn when, on the eve of his high school graduation, Ben and Sylvia are kidnapped by a black drug dealer, Mr. Kurtzman is arrested and sent to prison for income tax evasion and importing girls across the state line for prostitution, and things will never be the same in Baltimore.

Well written, loaded with period atmosphere and especially well served by an excellent cast, Liberty Heights weaves the fates of its characters with sensitivity and perception, and Mr. Levinson knows just when to make you laugh out loud for ballast. Even though we didn't know it at the time, 1954 was a turning point in American history, and for a Jewish family the cross-cultural impact was enormous. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy Liberty Heights ; its universality addresses change and growth in us all. It's a trip back to 1954 that is so wise and sad and funny you won't even notice the 1956 license plates.

Sleepy Hollow , which should have been marketed for Halloween, pretty much wrecks what's left of Washington Irving's reputation, and it won't do much to brighten the Christmas of the caretaker at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Tarrytown, N.Y., either. In the hysterical, over-the-top style director Tim Burton is infamous for, the dozing Dutch farm community Washington Irving described in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" has been turned into an impressionistic landscape of horror on London sets that would scare the cloak off Dracula's back. (Christopher Lee, a latter-day vampire from cheesy British horror flicks, even makes a guest appearance, just to let you know what kind of B-movie shenanigans Mr. Burton is aiming for.)

Ichabod Crane is now Johnny Depp, who is as nervous and out of place in 1799 as a penguin on a Texas freeway, and the Headless Horseman is no longer a joker who leaves behind a jack-o'-lantern head but a monster from the bowels of Hell who litters the village with butchered victims and steals their heads. Mr. Depp plays a constable who is dispatched to the Hudson Valley to track down the fiend, a rather hammy Hessian soldier (Christopher Walken, spewing foam from rotten dentures) who rises from his grave in the haunted forest. To make a short story long, Mr. Burton cranks up the dry ice machines, drags in howling wolves, squeaking hinges and a tree that spouts blood, while heads roll from severed jugulars every time the audience threatens to doze. There's a mystery to be solved, but it doesn't explain why the villagers don't move .

As the dewy-eyed Katrina Van Tassel, object of Ichabod's affection, the woefully miscast Christina Ricci is a riot in innocent blond curls-like a whore dressed like a Shirley Templedoll-but in the laugh department, she's no match for the eye-rolling, scenery-chewing Mr. Depp as a prissy-mouthed sleuth who says, "I am pinioned by a chain of reasoning" and is subject to fainting spells.

The ketchup budget must have been astronomical, the 18th-centurywaistcoats and ruffles seem designed to camouflage the stars' tattoos, and everyone in this numbing disaster looks like they can't wait to head for the nearest disco. The rumbling you hear under Sleepy Hollow is the sound of Irving turning over in his grave.

She's Deaf, But Not Unfunny

Several exciting people are currently making memorable contributions to New York after dark. From humble, impoverished roots in a hick town in Ohio where, in ignorance, her schoolteachers declared her retarded, Kathy Buckley is a hearing-impaired Wunderkind who spent the first 20 years of her life contemplating suicide. She is making up for lost time. From her misfortunes she's managed to mine a rich vein of humor and pathos in Now Hear This! , a one-woman show at the Lamb's Theater on West 44th Street that is entirely mesmerizing.

"I'm not deaf," she says, "I just don't listen." But what fun she is when it's the audience that does the listening. Willowy, attractive and exuding sparks of warmth and love, she makes you laugh even when describing the most harrowing circumstances in a life that would make strong men crumble. She was an abused child, she lived on food stamps, she was fired from an endless array of jobs, she was given last rites five times, the one day she escaped from her travails to sunbathe at the beach she was run over by a Jeep and ended up for five years in a hospital and two years in a wheelchair. (Did I fail to mention her cervical cancer?)

The deck of cards she was dealt seems positively diabolical, but the show is about how she gained control of her life, made peace with her past, got new hearing aids, learned to speak, threw away her prescription drugs and reinvented herself as a standup comic. Now a walking career testimonial to survival and hope, she gets a standing ovation every night and, boy, does she deserve it. In an ugly, disconsolate and unfair world, her way of finding a crucible of humor in everything is an object lesson that is both refreshing and unconventional. (New definition of optimism: When a deaf child steals a blind child's lunch, the blind child never sees the deaf child do it, and the deaf child never hears the blind child complain about it.) Ms. Buckley is the first deaf comedian I have encountered, but I hope to see-and hear-a great deal more of her.

Gary Cooper-lanky, with the pipes of a velvet crooner, singer Douglas Ladnier is knocking them dead at the Firebird Cafe every Thursday night at 11, through Dec. 2, with the support of pianist Randy Klein, Tom DeRenzo on drums and a great guitarist named J. McGeehan who conjures memories of Vincente Gomez, Andrés Segovia and Laurindo Almeida. Instead of the usual dull cabaret material, Mr. Ladnier tackles real gems with matinee-idol looks, range, sensitivity and awesome taste. No dumb songs here. Just lots of Cole Porter, Bronislau Kaper, John Latouche and Lorenz Hart.

From a haunting "Lazy Afternoon" to the most gorgeous arrangement of Anthony Newley's "There's No Such Thing as Love" since Carmen McRae's, this guy's melting baritone could single-handedly revive the art of the ballad, the love song and the heartbreaker. It's hard to believe anyone 28 years old could know, comprehend and convey the sophistication Mr. Ladnier does, but he has the intelligence and talent to create an illusion and draw the listener into the spell of both the singer and the song.

Michael Feinstein has extended his gig at Feinstein's at the Regency, the club that bears his name, through Nov. 27. I know where he'll be eating Thanksgiving turkey. Rosie Clooney's six-piece band has stayed on, too, so expect fireworks-everything from a swinging jazz rendition of "Let Me Off Uptown" to an abridged version of the 3-hour, 20-minute score of Oklahoma! in only 90 seconds.

Singing with more ease and self-assurance than ever, Mr. Feinstein has the musical savvy to skillfully juxtapose George Gershwin and Duke Ellington with seamless audacity in the same arrangement, then delve into obscure songs by the great, underrated saloon singer-pianist-composer Charles DeForest, tying it all together with polish and spruce. When he's in town, the town really jumps.