Prologue

Prologue

In 1992 a group of business leaders and theater operators voted to create the NoHo Arts District in North Hollywood, a Los Angeles bedroom community located in the San Fernando Valley. They were led by David Cox, artistic director of the American Renegade Theatre. Shortly after the arts district was founded, I began publishing NoHo Magazine, a monthly devoted to the arts and the NoHo community.

Over its 20-issue run, NoHo Magazine both celebrated and challenged the creative community of the NoHo Arts District. A mainstay was theater reviews that took theater seriously as an art, written by people as passionate about theater as those putting on the shows. While the magazine commented on the art of NoHo, it was also a product of NoHo, giving voice to the creative aspirations of the community.

I started NoHo Magazine with a “good idea and bad credit.” One year later I had created a magazine that was vibrant, smart and passionate. I had grown as a writer and publisher, but my financial condition had become dire. I was destitute, without a car and on the verge of being put out on the streets.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake destroyed my apartment building with me in it. I escaped with a few possessions and minor injury. The miracle came in the form of federal aid money, which I used to buy a car, pay a few months rent, and keep the magazine going. It was a new beginning — but it was also the beginning of the end for NoHo Magazine.

Perhaps the earthquake was a wake-up call — an event that forced me to seriously ask: “What are we doing? Is it meaningful? Is it worthwhile?” It was as if the earthquake demanded answers. Inane, mindless pap could no longer be tolerated — it had to be challenged.

In the months after the earthquake, we published reviews that were honest but harsh. People who had supported the magazine were hurt by what we had to say about their work. They felt betrayed — the magazine that purported to support the creative community had turned against it.

Ten months after the earthquake, NoHo Magazine ceased publication.

Critic’s Dilemma is about the creative impulse in the face of nearly impossible odds and the desperate need to create meaning. It is my story — and the story of NoHo Magazine and the beginning of the NoHo Arts District. It is about a community that harbored the unlikely vision of someday being comparable to the NoHos of New York and London. I was uniquely unqualified to shepherd and champion that community, a community that barely recognized itself. It is about how I, and those around me, discovered ourselves and did not always like what we found, but nonetheless found something closer to the truth.