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“Let’s send a signal to the French people that all the contrived anti-French sentiment contrived by the Bush Administration over the past eight years to further their tragic war in Iraq does not and never has reflected the real opinion of the average American,” said Sedaris, who currently spends part of the year living in France. “Americans love the French and French culture, and this seems to me to be an excellent symbolic way to demonstrate this.”
Sedaris is the author of current New York Times best-seller, “When You’re Engulfed in Flames” as well as other works.
Time permitting, Sedaris said he would also like to toot the horns in Times Square on Saturday, as well as in from of the “Today Show” window when he is in New York on Dec. 15, even though that is a full two days after the symphonic anniversary.
Sedaris himself will be performing in New York’s Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center on the evening of the 15th.
For those unfamiliar, “An American in Paris” is a symphonic composition by American composer George Gershwin, composed in 1928. Inspired by time Gershwin had spent in Paris, it is in the form of an extended tone poem evoking the sights and energy of the French capital in the 1920s. It is one of Gershwin's best-known compositions.
Gershwin composed the piece on commission from the New York Philharmonic. He also did the orchestration. Gershwin scored An American in Paris for the standard instruments of the symphony orchestra plus celesta, saxophone, and four French taxi horns. Gershwin brought back some Parisian taxi horns for the New York premiere of the composition which took place on December 13, 1928 in Carnegie Hall with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Philharmonic.
Gershwin collaborated on the original program notes with the critic and composer Deems Taylor, noting that: "My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere." When the tone poem moves into the blues, "our American friend ... has succumbed to a spasm of homesickness." But, "nostalgia is not a fatal disease." The American visitor "once again is an alert spectator of Parisian life" and "the street noises and French atmosphere are triumphant."
In 1951, MGM released a musical comedy, An American in Paris, featuring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. Winner of numerous awards, including the 1951 Best Picture Oscar, the film was directed by Vincente Minnelli, featured many tunes of Gershwin, and concluded with an extensive, elaborate dance sequence built around Gershwin's symphonic poem (arranged for the film by Johnny Green).
The climax is "The American in Paris" ballet, an 18 minute dance featuring Kelly and Caron set to Gershwin's An American in Paris. The ballet alone cost more than half a million dollars, a staggering sum at the time.
A part of Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” is also featured in the Jack Nicholson/Helen Hunt starrer “As Good as It Gets,” released in 1997.
* Sedaris notes that Hayden Rorke, best known for playing "Dr. Bellows" on the TV series I Dream of Jeannie has a small part as a friend of Nina Foch's character in the film, and that Noel Neill, later to portray "Lois Lane" on the TV series The Adventures of Superman, has a small role as an American art student who tries to criticize Jerry Mulligan's paintings.
“In my spare time, I’ve often imagined Dr. Bellows and Lois Lane having a conversation and what that would be like,” said Sedaris wryly. “The common ground that they seem to share is their inability to believe in the impossible – and that’s a topic with endless possibilities.”
About David Sedaris: David Sedaris (born December 26, 1956) is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist, writer, comedian, bestselling author, and radio contributor. Sedaris was first publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "SantaLand Diaries". He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994. Each of his five subsequent essay collections, Naked (1997), Holidays on Ice (1997), Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004), and When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008), have become New York Times Best Sellers. As of 2008[update], his books have collectively sold 7 million copies. Much of Sedaris's humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating, and it often concerns his family life, his middle class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, Greek heritage, various jobs, education, drug use, homosexuality, and his life in France with his boyfriend, Hugh Hamrick.
Posted December 11th, 2008 by TriciaLondon
