You have to love Nancy Meyers for her happy endings, and her optimism about women’s lives. In her latest film confection, The Intern, a laugh-out-loud, melt-in-your-mouth bonbon, the adorable Anne Hathaway plays Jules Ostin, a workaholic founder of a successful women’s wear Internet business housed in a chic downtown loft. Launching a senior intern program for retirees, her company gets Robert DeNiro as Ben Whitaker to play her right hand man. He’s good: patient, kind, understanding, confident, mature, requiring little maintenance except for a foot massage. He solves all her troubles both in and out of work. She learns, in the ultimate women’s fantasy of our time, how to have it all.
recent posts
- Lorne Premieres at Lincoln Center: Glimpsing Lorne Michaels Backstage at Saturday Night Live
- Alden Ehrenreich and Patrick Ball: The Men in Becky Shaw on Broadway
- Audra McDonald and “Original Nepo Baby” Gwyneth Paltrow: Honorees at the NYWFT Muse Awards 23 March 2026
- Zach Bryan Buys the On the Road Scroll/ Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac!
- William S. Burroughs/ Nova ’78 at MoMA/ Remembering James Grauerholz
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Rifle wielding right-to-lifers hell bent on violence. Sounds like an oxymoron. But as illustrated in a powerful new documentary, The Armor of Light, a directorial debut for Abigail Disney, guns and God can make strange bedfellows. This week at a luncheon at 21, the movie’s key figures, an Evangelical reverend and anti-abortion activist Rob Schenck, and a remarkable grieving mother turned anti-gun activist Lucy McBath, spoke on a panel, raising the film’s issue: can you be both pro-gun and pro-life?
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A consummate showman, the Broadway star, Brian Stokes Mitchell took the stage at Café Carlyle this week as if he were born to perform at the iconic supper club. His debut show there, “Plays With Music,” might be a pun on plays, as in dramas (think Man of La Mancha), or plays as in how he accompanies himself on instruments from simple pipes to one that has piano keys called the melodica. Accomplished as he his on these, his instrument, his voice, is perfection itself. Backed by a first rate band, Mark McClean on drums, Gary Haase on bass, and Tedd Firth’s piano, he began his set with “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and made this Irving Berlin standard sound like you’ve never heard it before. -
By the time I got home from the Sicario premiere at MoMA this week, the film’s star Emily Blunt was trading puke takes with Stephen Colbert on his Late Night Show. The vomiting is not as random as you’d think: the new movie directed by Denis Villeneuve has such grim imagery, the characters, FBI agents raiding a house in the Arizona desert double over in wet heaves in the dry courtyard. That’s just the beginning; when we first see Emily Blunt’s Kate, she’s almost too pretty and too vulnerable to do this job. “This took off layers of skin,” Blunt said at The Modern after party, in her poised British. -
MCC’s production of Matthew Lopez’ The Legend of Georgia McBride at the Lucille Lortel in the village, like Kinky Boots on Broadway, features stunning high heeled footwear and over-the-top pastel wigs. Add to that padded rumps and sequined brassieres, sized triple D! Backstage at the Cleo bar in Florida’s Panhandle, a sweet-faced Elvis impersonator, Casey (David Thomas Brown) re-fashions his studded jumpsuit into a dress and under the tutelage of the divine Tracy Mills (Matt McGrath), transforms. Voila! Dull as “The King,” he’s a dynamite Queen in drag. A Star is Born! -
Out on Eastern Long Island, real food and real estate rule, somebody who knows recently told me. This wisdom was proven at a special dinner at the Pollock-Krasner House on the waterfront Springs site where the artist couple lived, and at Guild Hall’s annual Garden as Art tour featuring vegetable gardens at several spectacular estates. On a late August Thursday chef Michael Rozzi from East Hampton’s 1770 House, riffed on the recipes found in Robyn Lea’s Dinner with Jackson Pollock (Assouline).Taking the steps for the abstract expressionist’s clam pie, he put the filling in a clam shell, like a baked clam, and served it along with Pollock’s home baked white bread spread with salmon to a dozen guests seated around the table Lee Krasner acquired to host Jackson’s dealers and collectors, a paint splattered tablecloth protecting the oak. Arguably, wildly delicious borscht was the highlight of the menu. Helen Harrison, director for the house and study center, led a tour up the stairs to a room used by Krasner as a painting space for a decade, with its view to Accabonac Creek. As a survival tactic for her marriage, Lee, who could not cook, learned the recipes of Jackson’s mother, Stella Mae McClure Pollock, and entertained friends with him on that inspiring site. -
In the movie world you would not expect a smallish screening for a movie like Rock the Kasbah to have a night like this, but Bill Murray has great karma. Rock legends turned out in East Hampton Friday night: Sir Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, to start. Bill Murray plays a down on his luck music manager in Barry Levinson’s new movie, Rock the Kasbah. The premise is simple: he takes his “talent” (Zooey Deschanel) to tour in Kabul, Afghanistan. Arriving after a scary flight to the desolate site—the actual location in Morocco never looked so drab– he says, “Think Aspen in wartime.” Truth is, you take Bill Murray anywhere, and he’s funny as hell. The things he says in anyone else’s mouth might not crack you up as much. But take him to this dangerous desert, and you get comic genius. -
When Michele Lee did her show at 54 Below this past June, celebrating Cy Coleman just a stone’s throw from Broadway, she was secretly planning to return to star in Wicked as Madame Morrible—a schoolmistress cum sorcerer. As the character’s name suggests she’s marvelous as she is horrible. With a look that channels Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games, she could be at home at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, but Madame Morrible has some wizardry all her own. I had an opportunity to chat with Michele Lee by phone after a recent performance of Wicked—stunned by her transformation, I just had to know how the former star of television’s Knots Landing manages to grace this show with a Broadway veteran’s poise, comic timing, a ton of makeup, and her own brand of “wicked.”
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Talk about extreme sports. The new documentary Meru will make you wonder why anyone would want to put themselves so far out of any human comfort zone. That doesn’t mean you won’t want to watch this daring film. Meru, in fact, plays like an action thriller, because the characters’ extreme drive is compelling as are the intense relationships of this group of climbers. As summits go, Meru in the Himalayas is the opposite of Mount Everest, the metaphor for gargantuan peak. But at Everest, you can get a Sherpa to carry your things up the mountain, pitch your tent, and make your food. Meru has a shark fin top, and a reputation: you cannot climb it. So for Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk, Meru, is like Ahab’s Moby Dick, an unconquerable, irresistible force of nature. -
“This story wasn’t going away,” said David Simon explaining his persistence in making the six-part mini series, Show Me a Hero, he co wrote with William F. Zorzi based on Lisa Belkin’s 1999 book. The story in question is about chaos in Yonkers in the late ‘80’s, over desegregation in housing. Yes, the ‘80’s are already fodder for nostalgia–think shoulder pads, but the issue of race remains hot, the headlines continuing to scream injustice. In the Yonkers version of the story, a story of race in America reverberated in other David Simon projects for HBO like “The Wire” and “Treme,” a single character, Nick Wasicsko stands out. Elected mayor at age 28 on his platform against the affordable housing mandated to be built in middle class neighborhoods—read: whites forced to live with blacks—he changes heart. -
Grey Gardens: The Musical was made for a run at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater, just a few miles from the original East Hampton real estate that inspired the Maysles’ Brothers classic documentary film.Starring the two Edies Beale, inseparable mother and daughter, the nonfiction film spawned an HBO movie from the Broadway play, book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie. The evolution from the facts of the mother-daughter symbiosis uncovered by David and Albert Maysles is a story with its own momentum.
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Last week, at Guild Hall’s series, “Stirring the Pot,” featuring conversations with “culinary celebrities,” Geoffrey Zakarian was not expecting to talk politics. Florence Fabricant, New York Times food writer, author of several cookbooks including Park Avenue Pot Luck, a compilation of recipes from friends, and host of this entertaining series—next up Dr. Oz and Lisa Oz, and cronut creator Dominique Ansel— questioned Zakarian about his recent contretemps with Donald Trump. The chef was asked to open a restaurant at the historic Old Post Office Pavilion in Washington D.C., part of Trump’s luxury hotel, and as the story goes, he pulled out when Trump made his unfortunate remarks about Mexicans last month. Rather than talk about this news, Zakarian quipped, his reason to be here was Florence’s invitation to make him clam sauce for lunch. -
High profile authors like Nelson DeMille, Dick Cavett and Dr. Ruth Westheimer had stacks of books to sell under the Authors Night tent. Not surprising, the longest line was for author Ed Burns, yes that Ed Burns. The cover of this week’s Hamptons Magazine, creator of a new television series, Public Morals, for TNT, and author of the memoir, Independent Ed: Inside a Career of Big Dreams, Little Movies, and the Twelve Best Days of my Life, the actor was prime for chats and selfies, and the crowd was having it all.
Then there were the books about the famous: David Browne’s So Many Roads: The Life and Times of The Grateful Dead, and Hope: Entertainer of the Century, Richard Zoglin’s biography of Bob Hope. As writers and their fans moved on to private dinners, Zoglin who would be a guest at Patti Kenner’s with Dr. Ruth told me he had fantasies of discussing Hope’s sex life with the famed pint-sized therapist. The piles of books dwindled. -
By 1996, upon the publication of the gargantuan novel Infinite Jest, its author David Foster Wallace was the envy of writers. Touted in exalted ways, praised as brilliant, his work produced an “anxiety of influence” for the literary. The Rolling Stone reporter, novelist David Lipsky, asked editor-in-chief Jann Wenner to assign him to accompany Wallace who was then teaching in Bloomington, Illinois on the last leg of the writer’s book tour, to Minneapolis. In the convoluted way that life is so much more fascinating than fiction, that road trip is now the basis of a fiction feature, The End of the Tour, with a script by playwright Donald Margulies, who noted when he was offered the possibility of crafting this material for a stage play, that this really had a broader backdrop, the American heartland. -
A place of transformation, where Memory Motel late night drinkers spill onto Montauk Highway, oblivious to traffic, and outsized master-of-the-universe houses have replaced beach shacks, Montauk has been much in the news. Yet, some new comers and longtime residents are unified by a vision of Montauk as Paradise: -
Last week, at a special screening at Guild Hall, Michael Shannon spoke about his work on 99 Homes, a feature directed by Ramin Bahrani about the housing crash, specifically dramatizing the horror to families as their homes are reclaimed by those from whom they were offered home loans in the housing boom. Michael Shannon plays the heavy, his square jaw set as he gives fathers, like Dennis Nash, played by Andrew Garfield, a few minutes to gather wives, kids, belongings, and get out. The results are heart wrenching, with everything they own thrown out onto the street. If the families don’t have a place to go, they might end up in the lowdown motel where Nash, his son and mother (a fierce Laura Dern) end up. The drama plays like a taut thriller arousing your worst nightmares, as these events are based on the true plight of many Americans caught in the 2008 housing crash. -
The visually sumptuous documentary, Listen to Me Marlon, made a big impression at this year’s New Direction/ New Films Festival. Especially noted was director Stevan Riley’s achievement in making a biopic about a great subject, Marlon Brando, who, despite having died in 2004, nevertheless comes fully alive in his own voice. Eschewing most documentary apparatus, talking heads, for example, Listen to Me Marlon is crafted from 300 hours of Brando’s audio tapes, some marked “self hypnosis.” The critics so far have been in thrall. Now about to open in New York, the film’s style was debated at this week’s premiere at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. -
“We don’t do rows,” exclaimed Dr. Alexandra Munroe, curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim, during a preview of the upcoming Guild Hall Garden as Art tour. The Munroe/ Rosenkranz site features nine garden “rooms.” Your eye may focus on the expansive croquet or tennis courts, but guiding visitors past a basket of today’s crop, Dr. Munroe waxed passionate about artichokes from the vegetable garden, ready to steam and savor. -
Introducing the latest in the franchise, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, to an East Hampton audience that included Rudy Guiliani, Lorne Michaels, Matt Lauer, Gayle King, Dan Abrams, Christie Brinkley, Alec Baldwin, who plays it straight as CIA boss Alan Hunley, quipped about how it works to be in a big budget Hollywood movie: they need you to turn your head a different way, and fly you back to London to reshoot. He went six times—and to Casablanca too, said Hilaria Baldwin at the after party at The Blue Parrot. -
Even before we got to the Osteria Salina on route 27 in Wainscot, the reincarnation of the Italian restaurant from School Street in Bridgehampton, the word was owners Tim and Cinzia Gaglia (she is also chef) put in a barroom baby grand for Billy Joel, just in case he popped by for some pasta, as The Piano Man was wont to do. The rumor was firmly denied by Tim with a laugh, before he launched into a tale about the foibles of having music in restaurants. And by the way, he concluded, Billy Joel did drop by last Monday, and he performed. Alan Alda, dining in the porch room overlooking the pond, made his way to where Joel was playing his signature tunes to greet him, reported Tim. -
Woody Allen revealed, at a pre premiere press panel for his new movie, Irrational Man, that he has fantasies of strategizing the perfect murder – in art, of course, as in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy or Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, epic novels or Macbeth and Hitchcock: “I love to see it. It’s fun to make it. Murder is the stuff of drama.” -
“This is the best night of my life,” Amy Schumer addressed the exuberant crowd at Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday for the world premiere of her romantic comedy, Trainwreck. Director Judd Apatow stood nearby feeding the comedienne lines, reminding her to thank Universal and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, hosts of the spectacular launch, including the lavish after party at the refurbished Tavern on the Green. Apatow had introduced Bill Hader, the movie’s nerdy heartthrob. That’s not an oxymoron. Hader did his best to project his goofy appeal onstage, but wow, he’s that sensitive, relatable man of your dreams with the wacky, raunchy Amy in this fresh and true take on love from Amy Schumer’s script based on her personal story. The hundreds gathered for this stellar event whooped with joy. -
Introducing his new movie, Mr. Holmes, at MoMa in which he plays Sherlock Holmes as you have never seen him, Ian McKellan called this the “quintessential” British story, as told by Americans: Jeffrey Hatcher’s screenplay from Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, and directed by Bill Condon. “The British never had a chance.” Fortunately, Americans are just as intrigued by Sherlock Holmes! With Laura Linney, deglamorized to play a frumpy housekeeper Mrs. Munro, and Hiroyuki Sanada as a revenge-bound son, the movie is as British as a crumpet. The fine ensemble swirling around McKellan’s killer performance as the aging Mr. Holmes, now in retirement in the country, is first rate. And in that spirit, the movie’s Monday premiere took advantage of Broadway’s dark night, with theater actors out for drinks and ravioli at Southgate in celebration. -
Even though this is a serious matter, Elizabeth Swados makes you feel the levity of depression. And more, you can handle it. In one scene in the animated HBO documentary, My Depression (The Up and Down and Up of It) based upon her 2005 book, you visit a supermarket stocked with “Fresh Doubt,” “Malaise,” and “Always Rotten.” If you have ever had the dark cloud she describes hovering, you will surely recognize your personal binge. But that’s exactly what this talented theater writer and her artistic partners —David Wachtenheim and Robert Marianetti— had in mind. Aside from medication, talk therapy, and all the remedies needed to fight depression, Swados wants you to know, in the most charming, entertaining way, you are not alone. -
The first of three documentaries in the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Summerdocs series hosted by Alec Baldwin, Best of Enemies was sure to be a hit with the East Hampton crowd. Featuring a historic event of verbal jousting between two well matched public intellectuals, men who could turn a phrase, the conservative William F. Buckley and the leftist Gore Vidal, author of the controversial gender-bending Myra Breckinridge, the movie is perfection for an audience that remembers the media spectacle. That Buckley and Vidal were enemies aided the cause: to boost ratings for ABC, in 1968, when the network was third, or last in the age’s few channel options. In the view of Best of Enemies and its creators, Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon, this televised sparring changed television forever. Ratings for ABC skyrocketed.
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