another eye opens

On the sad occasion of Jill Clayburgh’s death from leukemia at age 66, I’m reminded of the one time I went to her house. She wasn’t there. I went to interview her husband, the playwright David Rabe (above, with Jill and their daughter Lily), for the Soho News when he was directing his own play Goose and Tom-Tom at the Public Theater. That production never opened, though the Public did later finally put up a different version. This interview catches Rabe before Robert Altman did his excellent film version of Streamers and before Hurlyburly brought Rabe back into mainstream attention, first with the star-studded stage production, then with the Hollywood movie version, and eventually with the revival by the New Group just a couple of years ago. You can read my story online here.