“I saw Steve Martin talk about art and it didn't stink - Los Angeles Times” plus 1 more

I saw Steve Martin talk about art and it didn't stink - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 03 Dec 2010 10:15 AM PST

On Thursday, the N.Y. Times reported that an onstage conversation between the actor and writer Steve Martin and interviewer Deborah Solomon went so awry that the presenter, the 92nd Street Y, offered $50 gift-certificate refunds to all 900 people who had attended.

The problem, as the paper reported it: "According to Mr. Martin, viewers watching the interview by closed-circuit television from across the country sent e-mails to the Y complaining 'that the evening was not going the way they wished, meaning we were discussing art.'"

Kind readers, I was not at that event at the 92nd Street Y. But I did see Steve Martin discuss art on stage not eight weeks ago, and I can tell you what it was like.

It was terrific.

I admit, the events were different. In New York, Solomon talked alone with Steve Martin on stage. What I saw was an event at the Getty -- an art museum -- and featured two authors, Frederick Tuten and Martin. Tuten read from his already released "Self Portraits: Fictions"; Martin read from his not-yet-released novel, "An Object of Beauty," and then the two of them sat down with Getty Research Institute's Andrew Perchuk, who threw out questions to keep a free-form discussion going. Both books dealt with art; the conversation touched on art, artists and the business of collecting art -- there were slides projected above -- as well as their books and writing.

Here's the thing: There were times when the conversation faltered, or doubled back; once or twice what seemed like an interesting avenue for questioning came and went, unnoticed. But that's OK, it was still terrific -- because it's a conversation. How often, in our public discourse, do we get to hear an intellectual discuss ideas on the fly? How often to we get to see the wheels turning and sparks flying? We don't. We don't get that much at all.

Public conversations are not scripted, and that's what makes them exciting.

You want to see Steve Martin in something scripted? Rent "Parenthood." Or better yet, "The Jerk."

Sure, those movies -- and his wild and crazily successful stand-up career -- are what make Martin the kind of person 900 people will pay $50 to sit and listen to. He's a celebrity, and lucky for us, a smart one. He's a star, and also a public intellectual.

I, for one, am glad that in addition to being an art collector, Martin is on Team Book, in the camp of people who think reading and writing are meaningful. "The greatest joy for me, in writing, is finding the exact word for the exact sentence," he told me that night at the Getty. "I can almost feel the impact on the reader. I can feel them being stopped, when it's just right." His pace slowed. "So they actually take note of what. they. just. read."

Of course, this is also the lesson of the performer, of someone who knows what it feels like to be on stage and read an audience. And that is one of the strangest things about the event in New York: Could someone with Martin's stage experience really not have read the room?

Apparently midway through the interview, someone brought a note to Solomon. She read the note aloud: It indicated that they wanted to hear less about art, the subject of Martin's book, and more about Martin. Were people actually upset that instead of talking about himself, he talked about art?

As someone who has attended hundreds of these events and been the onstage interlocutor at a few, the note-giving sounds awful. The job of the interviewer in circumstances like this one is to showcase the author's personality, open up avenues into their work -- which is often a new book few in the room have had a chance to read -- and to let the audience be part of an event that could never be exactly replicated. (Easy, right?) The note indicated, publicly, that the interviewer was failing. It was gutsy for Solomon to read it out loud, I think. She could have instead shifted gears and given the audience -- or the organizers -- what they wanted.

The 92nd Street Y has a long history of successfully putting on smart and engaging public programs. The space is fantastic, the rosters impressive. The few times I've been able to attend, I never once found myself dissatisfied. But the organization has been in the event business for so long that this isn't their first refund. On Thursday, they confirmed that there have been similar refund offers in the past, although they failed to respond to my request for specifics.

The refund offer makes sense in that people in the audience may not have gotten what they wanted. That means there was a disconnect between the event's marketing and the interviewer's approach, both of which were the Y's responsibility.

But I can't help but be disappointed. A conversation should be a conversation, organic and unpredictable. How could people not expect that?

If, at the Getty, Steve Martin had chosen to talk about staplers or bioluminescence or baking instead of contemporary art, I would have been surprised, but not unhappy. I would have thought, hey, this is slightly insane, and only me and these few hundred people get to be a part of it.

Steve Martin didn't talk about any of those other things. He talked about art. And it didn't disappoint. It didn't disappoint at all.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: From left, Andrew Perchuk, deputy director of the Getty Research Institute, Frederic Tuten and Steve Martin. The image behind them is Roy Lichtenstein's painting that appears on the cover of Tuten's book. Credit: Jobe Benjamin / The Getty Research Institute

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A Novel Way to Sidestep Investor Suits - New York Times

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 05:11 PM PST

One of the great legal fictions of Wall Street is that mutual funds are independent of the companies that create and run them.

It is true such funds have their own boards, nominally elected by fund shareholders, but in practice the funds are run and marketed by the management company. That is a fact that most investors take for granted.

But it is not a fact the courts should pay much attention to, at least in the opinion of Janus Capital Group, which runs the Janus family of funds. On Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear an appeal by Janus, which seeks to avoid responsibility for a fraud committed at several of its funds.

The case stems from a scandal that got a lot of attention seven years ago, one involving "market timing" of funds. Janus told investors it did take steps to prevent such trading, in which big traders buy or sell fund shares based on outdated values, and thereby profit at the expense of other investors in the fund. But Janus secretly cut deals with some hedge funds to allow such trading in order to increase the assets on which it could collect management fees.

The basic facts are not in dispute. Janus settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 and paid $100 million in penalties. At the time, an S.E.C. enforcement official said it was clear to the commission that Janus "violated an investment adviser's fiduciary duty to investors."

In its settlement with the S.E.C., Janus agreed that its Janus Capital Management subsidiary, known as J.C.M., would "cause the Janus funds to operate" in accordance with governance policies that would prevent such violations in the future.

It did not claim that J.C.M. had no control over the funds. But in its brief with the Supreme Court, Janus says that "J.C.M. is neither a primary actor nor a primary violator with respect to the statements" in the prospectuses. "The statements in the Janus Funds' prospectuses were made by the trust comprising the Janus Funds — a separate legal entity, with its own board of trustees and legal counsel — not by J.C.M."

After Janus's actions were disclosed in September 2003 by Eliot Spitzer, then the attorney general of New York, its stock price plunged, and investors who owned the stock sued. Seven years later, an index of money-management company stocks that includes Janus is up about 15 percent from just before the disclosure. Janus, the worst performer in the group, is down about 40 percent.

The suit has moved slowly. A district court judge dismissed the case, agreeing with Janus that the company was not responsible for what was in the prospectuses. The suit was reinstated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. If the Supreme Court upholds that decision, the class-action suit can proceed to trial. It is more likely that it would be settled.

The decision by the Supreme Court to even hear the appeal took some by surprise. The court asked the Justice Department to comment, and the department advised against hearing the case. After the court agreed to hear the case, the S.E.C. and the Justice Department urged the justices to rule against Janus.

That the case could get this far may be an indication of the hostility the courts have shown to securities class-action suits in recent years. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that private suits — as opposed to suits brought by the S.E.C. — could not be filed against those who merely aided and abetted someone else's fraud. In a major case decided in 2008, the court said that two companies that had helped a cable company rig its books could not be sued by investors damaged by the fraud.

The issues presented by the Janus case make clear that it is not always easy to distinguish whether someone is a primary player in a fraud, or simply helped. That distinction is, however, critical under the Supreme Court precedents.

Janus argued in its Supreme Court brief that it was "not a primary actor because it did not issue the securities" offered by the inaccurate prospectuses. Instead, it only "provided investment advisory services" pursuant to a contract. Janus places great reliance on the fact the prospectus speaks of Janus as a contractor, not the principal.

Groups representing accountants and brokerage firms, as well as an insurance company that provides insurance for lawyers, want the court to use the case to make clear that such people as lawyers, underwriters and accountants cannot be viewed as primary actors, and thus are immune from private suits even if they were actively involved in a fraud.

Fiction

Jumat, 03 Desember 2010

“I saw Steve Martin talk about art and it didn't stink - Los Angeles Times” plus 1 more

“I saw Steve Martin talk about art and it didn't stink - Los Angeles Times” plus 1 more

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