Tim Appelo was a film critic for The Nation, The Oregonian, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, KCTS and KING-FM.
At EW, he lost a snowball fight to Benicio del Toro, Michael Madsen and John Cusack, who flying-tackled him in a 100-year storm; revealed Brandon Lee’s cause of death, Diane Keaton’s opinion of Annie Hall (“She’s stupid”), and Dr. Evil’s secret identity (he’s a Lorne Michaels impression); survived clubhopping with Julia Phillips the night she knocked out Wes Anderson with an Ecstasy-microwaved joint at Babylon on his first night in Hollywood, earning him a stern lecture from his mom.
He kept up with Uma Thurman and Tim Curry drinking wine at their homes, but couldn’t keep up with Kathleen Turner; kept down-on-his-luck Travolta waiting for hours outside Bruce Willis’s trailer because Bruce would not shut up about Hudson Hawk; and survived a kiss on the cheek from Goldie Hawn, Courtney Love’s phone calls, Stockard Channing’s stab at ending my journalism career, and a mock (but genuinely angry) strangulation by Alan Rudolph right after an exec said, “Alan, you make $8 million look like $30 million! So here’s $7 million.” 

Caricature of Tim Appelo, drawn for the cover of the New York Press by Danny Hellman in 1992
 

Recent Articles

September 2010

Putting Arts in the Mayor’s Mouth

The imaginary speech McGinn should give to the arts community, but never will. Before I make my historic Mayor’s 2010 Promise to the Arts, I have a confession to make. I haven’t really been an arts guy at heart. The arts were second or third from...
Feature

Our Broadway Babies: The Glimmer Twins

Courtesy of Village Theatre A tiny cohort of theatres nationwide braves near-hopeless odds to produce modern musicals: California’s Ahmanson, La Jolla and Old Globe, Chicago’s Goodman – and two local makers of national hits, Seattle’s 5th...
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Tea for Two

What does it take to get seventeen Tony Awards on Broadway? The Village Theatre and 5th Avenue – together. It takes a village to raise a musical – famously, Issaquah’s own Village Theatre. Its Village Originals series has launched fifty new...
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World’s Greenest RV

There are thirty-seven artworks in the Bellwether 2010: Art Walk Bellevue biennial, stretching from City Hall to Downtown Park (on view through October 17), but the one that catches the most eyes is the most improbable: what appears to be an...
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Spray Paint Can

How do you stop graffiti? Call it art. Many people think “graffiti” is the opposite of “clean,” and after July’s massive gangster tagger attack besmirching about a mile of Skinner Avenue, you can’t exactly blame them. On the other hand,...
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Trailblazing Tacoma: Workin’ on the Railroad

A specter is haunting Tacoma: the ghost of the Prairie Line, the defunct railroad that ran through the heart of downtown. “It’s the original corridor around which Tacoma was founded,” says associate city planner Elliott Barnett, who is plotting...
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Divine Judgement? Film Out on a Limb

Somebody up there must not like Jesus4Less, the indie film being shot on a shoestring in Tacoma as part of the Spaceworks downtown storefront arts fest. (See “Joshing Jesus Onscreen,” July). “We have had some setbacks,” says director Aaron...
Feature

The Curator’s Eye: Counterculture Comix

Comic Redux Fantagraphics Books curator Larry Reid is out to raise eyebrows with his Bumbershoot show Counterculture Comix: A 30-Year Survey of Seattle Alternative Cartoonists. “It’s the first comprehensive survey of Seattle alternative cartoons...
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The Curator’s Eye: Kemper Development

Modern Medicis Some of the most influential art people aren’t at museums; they’re at corporations with vision. At Bellevue’s Kemper Development Company, landscape designer Andi Meucci helps shape the Eastside art scene. “My twin passions are...
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You May Already Be A Winner

An artist’s artist inspired a remarkable prize that benefits local artists. Before there were the Neddy Artist Fellowships, whose 2008 winners are on view at the Tacoma Art Museum through August 24, there was an artist named Robert E. “Ned”...
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Finding Freedom Behind Bars

A chorus line of staggering zombies casts huge, dancing shadows on the gym walls at the Washington women’s correctional facility in Gig Harbor. After twice-weekly classes in art, dance and memoir writing and three months of rehearsal, this is the...
Feature

Shock of the New

Bumbershoot blows the library dust off its literature program, and traditionalists are steamed. The Literary Arts program has vanished from this year’s Bumbershoot Festival (September 4–6 at Seattle Center), replaced by the trendy new Words &...