Gypsy Rose Blanchard is now serving a ten-year sentence in prison for conspiring to kill her mother Dee Dee, knifed to death in June 2015 in Springfield, Mo. by Nicholas Godejohn, a boyfriend Gypsy met on the Internet. He will be tried this week, while Gypsy seems twice imprisoned. As Erin Lee Carr’s documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest, to air tonight on HBO tells Gypsy’s story: from the time she was an infant her mother claimed she was sick. The list of illnesses seems impossible to fathom for one person alone, including cancer, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, and mental retardation. Wheel chair bound, her head shaven, Gypsy depended on Dee Dee for everything, and they were inseparable, traveling on a donated trip to Disneyland, living in a free house, a single mom taking advantage of the misfortunes of a child with extreme medical issues. Interviews with doctors, lawyers, sheriffs, and family help to unravel the truth of this tawdry tale, with the added twist of some kinky texts between the young lovers prior to the murder. Even the sight of Dee Dee in bed, in a blood-smeared gown, does not arouse a whit of sympathy.
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Honoring Robert De Niro at this year’s Chaplin Award Celebration at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on Monday, actor after actor acknowledged that he could do anything, referring to drama, comedy, and other film genres. Could Robert De Niro top an already amazing career? By Thursday, another brilliant performance premiered at MoMA: As Bernie Madoff in the HBO movie, The Wizard of Lies, he is the consummate con artist. -
As she accomplished in her stunning debut film Fill the Void, Rama Burshtein’s The Wedding Plan takes the viewer into the marriage practices of a hermetic society, offering an intimate, if fictional view, of how matches are made in Israel’s Haredi community. Yes there are matchmakers at work in The Wedding Plan, but its comedic conceit is that the optimistic, intuitive, and outrageous protagonist, Michal (Noa Koler) attempts to make the match herself, giving herself three weeks till the last day of Chanukah to find her groom.Who should marry whom is an appealing subject for any culture—witness the popularity of all things Jane Austen. The American born writer/director turned deeply religious presents this world without irony, or any filter by which to judge it. I caught up with Rama Burshtein at Locande Verde in the tumult of an Israeli delegation of filmmakers celebrating Israel’s vibrant film industry, part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
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Broadway musical legend Chita Rivera takes the narrow strip of stage at the Café Carlyle, maneuvering her sequined body strategically so she won’t end up in your vodka tonic. Nobody moves like Chita Rivera. The consummate showwoman, she gives a great, not to be missed night, starting with “A Lot of Living to Do.” For her West Side Story medley, in honor of its 60th anniversary, she tells of Leonard Bernstein teaching her the role of Anita, and sings “A Boy Like That,” and “America.” With stories galore, and memories of performers who inspired her, such as Rosemary Clooney from whom she learned she could just stand there and sing, and then of course defying that she shimmies through “Sweet Happy Life,” advising, “It’s great when your spirit and body get together.” When she sings “Where Am I Going?” from Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’ Sweet Charity, you feel grateful to have her right here, coquettish as three hookers, “Camille, Collette, Fifi” and wistful singing the ups and downs of Jacques Brel’s “Carousel.” -
Robert DeNiro’s career is so prolific on any given day you can find one of his iconic films on television. Random today: Casino, in which he stars with Sharon Stone. On Monday night, many friends came to speak about his work at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual tribute, each noting a personal favorite. For Sean Penn, it was The Deer Hunter, and he went on to call Raging Bull a work of art at the level of DaVinci. Meryl Streep recounted a story of her waiting tables while at Yale Drama School and taking a break to see her friend Michael Moriarty in a baseball movie called Bang the Drum Slowly. She liked Moriarty’s work just fine, but everyone fell in love with another actor in the film, one who everyone assumed to be intellectually challenged, his performance was so authentic. That was DeNiro. Then Taxi Driver came out, and everyone realized who Robert DeNiro was, and he was in fact acting. -
Anyone who has heard Sheila Nevins introduce her hand picked documentarians at an HBO preview, knows: she is much of the show. Formidable and funny, even when she intros heart-wrenching work like Cries from Syria with a plea to stop the killing of children in that country, her lively personality blazes forth. Now she’s written a book, You Don’t Look Your Age . . . and Other Fairy Tales, a memoir in short pieces of how she got to where she is, head of documentaries at HBO for decades, all while keeping it real. A tell-all, her book is not shy to un-P.C. revelations, like her views on sleeping with the boss, and plastic surgery, her dicey relation with her mom who had a rare disease, Raynaud’s phenomenon (a lack of circulation in your extremities), and balancing a demanding job with the challenges of raising a son with Tourette’s. Add to that, for a celebrity packed audio book, she just called a few of her nearest and dearest. -
Some years back the filmmaker Oren Moverman was taking meetings with Cate Blanchett, one of the Bob Dylan incarnations in I’m Not There, the 2007 movie he scripted with director Todd Haynes. The actress wanted to direct a film and chose Herman Koch’s 2009 novel, The Dinner, asking Moverman to adapt it for the screen. As these things happen, the directing job fell to Moverman. He had been working with Richard Gere on Time Out of Mind, which he directed, and the movie Norman, which he produced. In The Dinner, Richard Gere plays Stan Lohman, a politician, who has his brother Paul (Steve Coogan) and their wives, Rebecca Hall and Laura Linney to dinner at a restaurant so fancy, the waiters parade the food to the table, each precious plate explained by provenance and preparation. -
While FBI Director James Comey refers to WikiLeaks as “intelligence porn,” and attempts to field questions about his role, and the Russians’ role, in swaying the American election, Laura Poitras’ film about Julian Assange, Risk, opens. It is rare to see a film about a subject who is less revealed and still find the experience deeply satisfying, however unsettling. Assange, a slippery figure, is self-incriminating as he allows Poitras to interview him on matters of women and the sexual abuse charges brought against him. Poitras, the Oscar winner for CitizenFour was already working on a film about Assange and WikiLeaks when the Edward Snowden story became news, and so Poitras followed that thread to Hong Kong. Snowden makes a brief appearance in Risk, as does Bradley/Chelsea Manning. This film dares to ask, how much of your own life are you willing to risk? They are all risk takers and at risk, especially the documentary filmmaker. -
Exhibitions featuring the life and art of women abound in New York at this time, a happy coincidence. Especially fine is the Brooklyn Museum’s “Living Modern,” devoted to the oeuvre and style of Georgia O’Keeffe. The artist had her first solo exhibition at the museum in 1927, organized by Alfred Stieglitz and featuring 15 paintings. The current show, consisting of paintings, sculpture, and photographs of O’Keeffe by some of the most well known photographers of the twentieth century, Stieglitz, Richard Avedon, Bruce Weber, Ansel Adams, Cecil Beaton to name a few, also displays her clothing. An excellent seamstress, as the accompanying catalogue makes clear, she made her own dresses, blouses, shirtwaists, and coats, and also collected simple, architecturally structured designs from the Japanese. Her Lee overalls and plaid shirts are fashionable today. Maria Chabot’s photo of the artist has her posed on a dusty road at Ghost Ranch, hair pulled back, in a woven checked shirt and loose jeans. In Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of O’Keeffe from 1980, she looks stern, her face naturally wrinkled as would befit a woman of unselfconscious, ageless beauty, at 92. -
The great achievement of the Oslo Peace Accords, on which the entertaining drama Oslo is based, was bringing to the table Israelis and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Anyone who has ever been to the Middle East, knows the hostility in the air, with Jews worried about security and the future of the Jewish state, and Arabs enraged at occupation and the loss of autonomy. The eyes and ears of the world have been glued to this unbridgeable divide. For theater, Oslo, now with 7 Tony nominations, defies the expectation that peace talk alone can be highly engrossing rather than morbidly serious and stressful. In fact, J. T. Rogers’ Oslo, directed by Bartlett Sher, is provocative and humorous, because it teases out the personalities of those figures plucked from the news, and finds their humanity and common ground even when the politics don’t match up. -
The new musical Bandstand at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater opens with the sounds of war and a pivotal scene that recurs in the story of Donny Novitzki, a returning soldier who forms a band. Longing to return to life as it was, he is tasked to look in on the wife of a friend who did not make it back. Beset by nightmares and dreams alike, Donny (Corey Cott) looks for work in the Cleveland clubs he used to play. No surprises here. If you know the musical genre to which this play belongs, you know instantly that Donny will make it, especially with Julia (Laura Osnes), the Gold Star widow who happens to sing and write poetry, perfect for lyrics that can swing. But this play does have surprises galore: the talented band Donny forms: they sing, dance, act, joke, and man, they can play. -
Don’t you want to paint a giant picture now? Laurie Anderson asked the audience at a post Tribeca Film Festival screening Q&A following the premiere of the documentary, Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait about the artist well known for his work on outsized canvases and plate paintings. An art star for decades, Schnabel is also well known for his films, especially Basquiat, Before Night Falls, Berlin, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Each one is about the creative process, illuminating fellow artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cuban poet Reinaldo Areinas, rocker and close friend Lou Reed, and writer/editor Jean-Dominique Bauby. Despite the subtitle, A Private Portrait, director Pappi Corsicato never gets beneath the artist’s skin, but in showing his work and the man working, the film shows the breadth of a big career in progress. -
Lucas Hnath’s sequel to Ibsen’s classic of world literature, A Doll’s House, titled A Doll’s House, Part 2, suggests that every work in the canon should have a follow-up. Unless they die at the end, like Anna Karenina, it would be great to catch up, after all the sturm und drang. At the Golden Theater, we have that opportunity with Nora Helmer, the husband she left, Torvald, her faithful femme d’affaires, Anne Marie, and one of the three children she left behind, Emmy. Fifteen years have passed, and Nora (Laurie Metcalf, outstanding) returns to the house. Delivering a diatribe against marriage to Anne Marie (the incomparable Jayne Houdyshell), she needs to ensure that she is indeed divorced, and is dismayed to find her daughter, Emmy (an excellent Condola Rashad), while a new and updated version of her self, is engaged to, what else, a banker just like her dad. Torvald (Chris Cooper, a man any sane woman would be loath to leave) arrives home unexpectedly, and my how he has evolved since the day Nora left! -
It feels perfectly natural to see Bobbi Jene Smith perform naked, grinding on a sandbag in front of an audience in the documentary Bobbi Jene, directed by Elvira Lind, now screening at Tribeca. That’s because there’s nothing risqué about Bobbi Jene’s dance exploration of female sexuality. Naked, in the film is fresh, honest, unselfconscious, and raw, and we can extend that definition to her aesthetic, neither full of artifice nor commercially motivated. We meet her as she explains to Ohad Naharin, director of the prestigious Batsheva Dance Company based in Tel Aviv, why after ten years of success, she is leaving the company. Bobbi Jene was filmed dancing in Mr. Gaga, Tomer Heymann’s documentary about Batsheva, but now in Bobbi Jene, this dancer and choreographer is star of a portrait on her own.On a recent afternoon, I had a chance to speak to Bobbi Jene and film editor Adam Nielsen at the Smyth. I caught up with filmmaker Elvira Lind on the phone. Nine days past her due date for the baby she was having with actor Oscar Isaac, she decided wisely not to venture out. Oscar, for his part, left his own premiere of The Promise, a powerful love story set in the historic moment of the Armenian genocide, at Shun Lee a few days earlier, to be by her side. Several days later, as Bobbi Jene premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, everyone was still waiting.
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In Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, the lives of Southern women don’t look too shabby, but they most certainly have their limits. Regina Giddens (Cynthia Nixon in a recent matinee) and her sister-in-law Birdie Hubbard (Laura Linney—the stars alternate) define the parameters in the superb MTC production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, the first being all grins and fangs, the latter, tipsy and gently nuts. Neither one is quite who she seems, however. I am still not over the effect of Laura Linney’s dimpled smile as she instructs Regina’s daughter Alexandra (Francesca Carpanini) in the family’s history, cautioning her to stay clear of her own son Leo (Michael Benz). Cynthia Nixon broadcasts bad faith with the smallest twitch of her mouth, her eyes fixed on a far horizon. -
By the time Variety’s Power of Women M. C. Vanessa Bayer hit the podium, joking about eh, what a great year for women this has been, I had been treated to one Bellini and a hand massage by Jose in a pop up spa for SheaMoisture in a corner of the spacious Cipriani 42 Street. Feeling no pain, I found out SheaMoisture, a premiere sponsor of this yearly luncheon presented by Lifetime, not only smoothed out every gnarl on my hands, this is a company that sends 10% of its profits to African women.Yes, there were big names featured at this luncheon from Blake Lively to Tina Knowles Lawson, that’s Beyonce’s mom, who was awarded the Commerce Impact Award by SheaMoisture. With its high octane focus on promoting good health, the safety, nourishment, and education of children, women’s right to physical autonomy, this was no ordinary event. Speakers from Cory Booker, who flew in from California just to introduce Gayle King, and then flew back again just after, to Lena Dunham introducing Jessica Chastain, to 16-year-old Hayley Thomas presenting Chelsea Clinton, each one was an inspiration for empowering others.
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Music mogul Clive Davis is so beloved, one of his premiere stars Aretha Franklin, complaining of upper respiratory problems, came out in full vocal force to celebrate him at Radio City Music Hall for the opening of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. What a night! First the screening of the documentary, Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of our Lives, a glorious film directed by Chris Perkel tracing Clive’s genius career, first seeing Janis Joplin at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and signing her up at CBS, which prior to that auspicious recognition of rock and roll as art, was dominated by the sing along sound of Mitch Miller.Through success and scandal, Brooklyn-born Clive Davis comes off as modest, even humble, his passion for music an unpredictable gift. After he was unfairly ousted from CBS, and disbarred, in the midst of a new business rise, he studied for the bar exam, and passed. It was that important to him to bring the karma around. The death of Whitney Houston was as devastating for him as his loss of parents when he was in college, he said, but he soldiered on, as she would have wanted, with his legendary pre-Grammy party.
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Indecent dramatizes the epic journey of the Jews in Europe and America in the early part of the 20th century. Staged with utter brilliance through the story of the staging of a single play, Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance, here is an event at the Cort Theater that brings that controversial 1907 work back to Broadway.Opening with the actors, suitcases in hand on a bare black space, this 100 minute fast-paced tour from Berlin to Constantinople, to New York and back to Lodz and the great beyond, had the star-packed opening night audience –including Joel Grey, Molly Ringwald, Julie Taymor, Tovah Feldshuh, Arianna Huffington,
Mercedes Ruehl, and many more—revealing where their ancestors were from, how they came to America, where they were during the McCarthy period. No small task, however small the venue, Indecent was a breathtaking sweep for the audience, the cast and crew, and the creators, Paula Vogel and director Rebecca Taichman. More than one said, “This is for my grandmother.” -
Upon meeting Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi at the premiere of Norman, Joseph Cedar’s smart new movie starring Richard Gere in the title role, I first looked at his feet. His shoes, elegant leather lace ups, looked remarkably like the ones he, as Micha Eshel, accepts from Norman, before he becomes Prime Minister of Israel in the film, when he is a low level government official and Norman, a self-styled entrepreneur and businessman, is courting him in a Lanvin boutique. The shoes are a benign if expensive gift, a way for Norman to get his foot in, so to speak, believing that the connection to Eshel will pay off. An important person must wear important shoes. -
On the Sarasota Opera House stage last week, where Sarasota Film Festival President Mark Famiglio’s annual swank dinner was well under way, John Henry Summerour entertained a diverse group of writers and actors with a hilarious performance, his lanky limbs moving in every direction at once. Who knew he had this in him? That afternoon I had the opportunity to meet this award winning filmmaker and Saschka Unseld, a pioneer in virtual reality filmmaking, alumni of the prestigious Nantucket Screenwriters Colony, to talk about their residency at the Hermitage Artists Retreat in Manasota Key, Florida, in a newly formed partnership with the Sarasota Screenwriting Colony for developing film projects and virtual reality storytelling. -
Perhaps Frida Kahlo, a singular artist, could only be portrayed in a one-woman show. Voices of her parents, Diego Rivera, Nelson Rockefeller, Georgia O’Keeffe, and others supply the illusion of an outside world. Playing with her dolls and stuffed monkey, or her paints, Brazilian actress and Flamenco dancer Andrea Dantas, who also wrote Fragmented Frida, inhabits this legendary figure at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Fisher Hall under the fine direction of Christine Renee Miller; the outside world, outside the clay house in Coyoacan, Mexico with its vivid red bougainvillea comes alive through the chatter of fascinating art world and political characters, Kia Rogers’ superb lighting, Justin West’s projections of New York City, and evocative Mexican music: “Llorona” fills the room. -
Wearing a red cocktail dress, her hair in elegant chignon, Diane Lane accepted the Sarasota Film Festival’s Award for Excellence in Cinema on Saturday night, introduced by Rosanna Arquette. A screening of her new movie, Eleanor Coppola’s Paris Can Wait, followed, and a few minutes in, Lane as Anne was dressed for dinner in a romantic inn, wearing the same dress and coif, a sly nod, perhaps, to the movie’s realism. Based on Coppola’s true road trip with a business associate of her husband through the gastronomic riches of France, Lane as Coppola’s stand-in portrays the film’s central character, proper but beguiled by a Frenchman who pays more attention to her than does her work-obsessed husband. Alec Baldwin performs that role, almost a reprise of his Hal in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. In the post-screening Q&A, Lane called Baldwin a “hero,” rescuing the production after another actor pulled out. What could be bad? Three days on location in the south of France, a wet dream for any foodie. -
The actress and filmmaker Rosanna Arquette was filling a shopping cart at Whole Foods in Sarasota, Florida. Having just arrived to support her latest film, Born Guilty, written and directed by Max Heller at this year’s Sarasota Film Festival, she realized she had forgotten, well, everything, toothbrush, hairbrush, and other necessities. Cart piled high, she said she had not yet seen the film. Was it okay, she asked, and I was struck by how much this comic market scene could have played in the landmark 1985 Desperately Seeking Susan in which Arquette starred with Madonna. In fact, the next day at Sarasota’s Ritz Carlton, at an interview with Arquette, Heller and executive producer Bill Mahoney, Heller reminded his star that she prepared for the role of Judith, a New York Jewish mom based on his own, imagining herself in “Susan” 20 years later, divorced with a grown son living in LA, on whom she depends for every whim and crisis. -
Kevin Kline descends a staircase, not nude, but hung over, his leg making a fancy ballet over the bannister. As the suave, debonair stage actor in his twilight, Garry Essendine, in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter in a charming production at the St. James Theater, he doesn’t remember the cute fan Daphne (Tedra Millan, truly adorable in her Broadway debut), now ensconced in the study behind a closed door, but for his staff, used to taking care of these nights, it’s nuisance as usual. His ménage includes his secretary Monica (the hilarious Kristine Nielsen), his ex-wife Liz (the formidable Kate Burton), two pals/ business associates Henry Lyppiatt (a prim Peter Francis James) and Morris Dixon (a hysterical Reg Rogers). Under Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s expert direction, characters come and go in comic rhythm. When a visiting—read crashing–would be playwright, Roland Maule (Bhavesh Patel) arrives, doors slam vigorously in the manner of a Feydeau farce. Enter Henry’s wife Joanna (Cobie Smulders) in a seductive, slinky gown, a “predator” and Garry’s equal in witty banter, looking for her latest conquest. -
Based on the 2001 hit movie from France, Amelie, brings original music and distinctive whimsy to the Walter Kerr Theater. (“Hoping to see you/ In Macchu Picchu” is one tickling lyric. What’s not to love?) Characters may don fish heads and in one incredibly silly bit, an Elton John sequined suit, but it’s all to Amelie’s happy theme: love conquers even acute cases of fear of closeness to others. And if this musical’s Paris looks familiar, look to the bridge, reminiscent of the children’s classic, “Linnea in Monet’s Garden” for inspiration. Best of all, Amelie is played by Phillipa Soo, Hamilton’s original Eliza; for the 100 minute, no intermission duration of this show, you are in great company.
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