“Having a guitar is like having a key to the world.” This is what Glen Hansard told me, sitting on the beach in Santa Monica many, many years ago. It was only one part of a bigger philosophy that guided who he was, and who he became. At the end of this tribute, you’ll see where he puts a fine point on the lesson, but before that I want to tell the full story of how he learned it.
As a journalist, I followed the John Carney-directed movie Once all the way from its Sundance roots to its indie blockbuster rollout, and onward to the Oscars, where it won the best song award for “Falling Slowly.” We had many interviews over that time, and when I learned today that Hansard had died at the age of fifty-six in a motorcycle crash, I felt my heart break. I went back to look at our talk on the beach from long ago, which broke it all over again.
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These days, I catch myself checking the mirror before I head over to their house. I make sure my hair is sitting just right. I pull out my better shirts, the ones that fit a little closer to the chest that she always compliments. It’s an involuntary vanity, a quiet preparation for the moment.
I arrive to find Elena wrestling dinner while her husband, Mark, rests upstairs. I’ll slide right into the routine, spooning mashed potatoes and peas into their three-year-old son’s mouth, wiping avocado off his chin, and trading quiet, exhausted nods with Elena over the high chair. Every time we’re in that room together, passing a cutting board or reaching for the same bottle of wine, I feel a spark in the space between us.
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Why Are We Building So Many New Sports Stadiums Right Now?
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More than a billion people watched the World Cup final this month and will forever remember the drama that unfolded at New York New Jersey Stadium—except, wait a second, that’s not the actual name of the venue. As every NFL fan knows, the stadium is, in fact, named after an insurance company: MetLife.
What the hell is going on here?
Selling private companies the right to put their name on a stadium is of course big business. MetLife, for instance, paid a reported $400 million for its naming rights. FIFA’s rebranding of World Cup stadiums, called out in broadcasts all over the world, drew timely attention to the point, and to the even bigger and more complicated business of stadium economics in general. Timely because, as it happens, we’re in a new golden age of stadium building in the U.S.
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Just over a decade ago, when Dior created Sauvage, the world of men’s fragrance was far simpler. Usually, an eau de toilette would do the trick. Things have changed—rather drastically. Scents have become more concentrated, notes more varied. No one knows this better than Francis Kurkdjian, perfume creation director for Dior and one of the industry’s most revered noses.
This year, Kurkdjian was tasked with pushing Sauvage—a modern classic, and one of the most popular fragrances on the market—to its limits. The results is Dior Sauvage Extrait ($205), a new expression that utilizes oud for the very first time and steers the scent into unexpected, sexy (dare I say kinky?) territory.
Sitting down with a master like Kurkdjian to talk about how Sauvage Extrait came to be, I’ll admit I was a little nervous about asking the wrong questions. But, he assured me, “It’s about perfume. You cannot be right or wrong when it is about perfume.”
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When Christopher Nolan began work on his adaption of The Odyssey, he turned to a source he felt could best help him capture the Greek poem for a 21st-century audience: a modern translation by University of Pennsylvania classics professor Emily Wilson. The director praised her work in an interview with Empire magazine, and Wilson later told Esquire that she was excited to see the film because themes of time, memory, “and a man on a quest to get back to a beloved woman” are “Odyssey themes but also Nolan themes.” It seemed like a perfect fit: Two minds (three, if you count Homer), coming together in harmony to make a summer blockbuster for the ages.
But after Wilson saw the film, the professor tore it to shreds. In a review for the London Review of Books, she wrote that she “would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.” Ouch. “Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely,” she continued. “It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display—and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.” Double ouch.
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The guy who plays the Punisher offers to make me a cup of tea. When I decline, Jon Bernthal, forty-nine, reaches for a square tin box and pops off the lid to reveal a pile of purple gummies. I am certain there’s weed in them. “Want one?” he asks, pushing the tin in front of me. I pause, eyeballing them. “They’re soft throat lozenges. Sugar-free. These fuckers are good, dude.” My throat is fine, but I oblige. Bernthal drops one in his mouth and leans back in his chair, assuming the position for a raw and honest talk about life.
An hour earlier, he met me inside the stage door at the August Wilson Theatre in Manhattan—where he’s starring in the Broadway adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon—dressed in blue jeans and an orange hoodie, an American flag on the left breast. Under the flag are the words “We Support the Troops.” He was shirtless beneath the sweatshirt, a tattoo on his left pectoral that says “Lil Bird,” his nickname for his wife, Erin, peeking out. He had the hood pulled over his head, which was already covered in a stocking cap. He wore what looked like wrestling shoes on his feet. They’re not wrestling shoes, although he did wear them to grapple with one of his sons earlier that day.
This is exactly how I expected Bernthal to dress, given the roughneck originality of his work: He transformed The Walking Dead into a show about morality; he blistered the screen with profanity and chaos, opposite Brad Pitt, in Fury; he found the soul of an ultraviolent superhero in The Punisher. The independent film Small Engine Repair, in which he plays a townie from Manchester, New Hampshire, and We Own This City, embodying real-life crooked Baltimore cop Wayne Jenkins, are platonic ideals of a Bernthal performance: He can be charming and funny, pulling hard on a cigarette or sipping on a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, walking the line between tenderness and menace. Against your better judgment, you’re drawn to his characters, mortal flaws and all.
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