Mark Rylance, after a second standing ovation following the evening performance of Jerusalem at the Music Box Theater, wanted to let the audience know that we had seen this epic length British play on the day of its action, St. George's Day, April 23. The Irish have St. Patrick's, he said, when they get drunk. But all we do for St. George is feel guilt. I began to understand more about the play I had just seen in that epilogue than in the 3 hours it took to present it. Like the set, a back yard of sorts, a vision of a low rent tag sale, in front of an airstream marked Waterloo, strobe lights hanging off trees, sirens, and like the central character portrayed with great brio by Mr. Rylance, Jez Butterworth's brilliant play is a divine mess.
recent posts
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- Raul Esparza and Lily Rabe in The Winter’s Tale: Wet in Central Park
- Authors Night in East Hampton: If it’s Not One Thing It’s Your Mother
- Documentaries: Jocelyn Wildenstein The Lion Queen/ Tovah: How Jewish is It?
- Hamptons Journal: John Waters at Guild Hall: “Gay is not Enough” / “Cagney” at Bay Street/ “Signs” at the Bridgehampton Museum Tractor Barn
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The actress Geena Davis was awarded the Sarasota Film Festival's first “Impact Award” for her work on promoting the visibility of women in the media. Suddenly shy, the tall movie star, “Thelma” of Thelma and Louise, turned her back to diners feasting on shell fish and short ribs on the Sarasota Opera House stage, and, facing the empty seats, sang “Nina,” an Italian art song, a favorite of her singing coach. Just last year, at the same event, Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye walked around the tables like troubadours, strumming and singing. There is just something about being on the stage of that opera house that brings out the inner voice. Or perhaps it is simply the joy of this premiere regional film festival, the brainchild of Board President, Mark Famiglio.
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If you are late to the HBO series Treme, have no fear that you will be at sea. You can jump into the second season, to commence this Sunday, without missing a beat. That's because the series, evocatively set in post-Katrina New Orleans, is so well conceived (David Simon and Eric Overmyer) with syncopated story lines focused on appealing characters, and the assurance that cherished memories of that port city's special place in American life with its music, food, unique language and sensibility have not washed away when those levees broke. Weighing in on the conversation about New Orleans-Why rebuild it? What leadership? What funds? Have Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. sold out?, the show also features sly humor, insider tidbits and some of the best jazz on television. -
In The Motherf**ker With the Hat, the “f” word, along with a panoply of shocking verbiage is deployed, an arsenal of language that makes you titter until the words themselves stop meaning what they mean, becoming pause, punctuation, and, at times, punishment. You are dumbstruck by Stephen Adly Guirgis's script, getting into its poetry. -
Our American democracy is the most fragile of political systems, to be tweaked and twisted into serving injustice and blatant hysteria for revenge. Sound familiar? But this news is not ripped out of the post-9/11 headlines.A new movie directed by Robert Redford, The Conspirator, is set in the aftermath of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Swift 'justice' is meted out to the conspirators, and the innocent (perhaps) widow, Mary Surratt (an understated, nuanced performance by Robin Wright) whose Washington D.C. boarding house served as a meeting place for those who would kill him. James McAvoy plays her lawyer, Frederick Aiken, who works to get justice in the military tribunal where she is tried.
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Catch Me If You Can: The Musical is a con man's story, and the biggest con is the show itself. Like seeing a superbly performed magic trick, we're going to buy it, and happily revel in being duped, or that is what is promised: a conceit that separates this traditional Broadway vehicle from the 2002 caper movie of its inspiration.From the beginning, we see Frank Abagnale, Jr. arrested at a Miami airport for an array of misdeeds and misdirections. He's going to show us how to make “butter out of cream,” in Catch Me lingo. To limn the storyline, as a teen, Frank not only passes bad checks, he passes himself off as a doctor, lawyer, whatever. But hey, self-invention is the ultimate American myth; add to that the Freudian search for the father and you've got what lifts this song and dance vehicle, even if by play's end that father-son pair is united by handcuffs.
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Hollywood's Jerry Weintraub can take a joke, and one of the joys of His Way, an HBO documentary about the famed producer/promoter to air tonight is the amused testimony of family and friends-even George and Barbara Bush–about this Bronx boy's rise from Depression era Brooklyn to a Beverly Hills mansion, where he now resides with his long time companion Susie Ekins while still lovingly married to Jane Morgan.
Working on the recent Oceans movies, George Clooney impersonated Weintraub on the phone with room service, sending mountains of food to his hotel room at 5 A.M. following a late night shoot. The actor also smacked Weintraub's rump during a massage, and, according to co-star Julia Roberts, filled his shoes with M&M's. For a man who is doing it “his way,” that's a lot to suck up, but Jerry Weintraub, the man who revived the careers of Elvis and Sinatra, who produced Robert Altman's Nashville and Barry Levinson's Diner, has a passion for people. He's a “character,” a “rare bird,” says Barbara Bush with comic timing. And, no one who ever met him forgot the experience.
When his father, a jewelry salesman and important influence, came to visit and saw the outsized lifestyle: swimming pool and tennis courts, the champagne and caviar, he was convinced his son was in the mob. But as the film reveals with each Bronx boy-makes-good anecdote, Jerry Weintraub made it the old fashioned American way: persistence, chutzpah, a knack for making money, and luck.
As his brother, Melvyn Douglas Weintraub-named after the movie star–puts it, “He's going to sell you something, you are going to buy it, and you will like it.”
On the eve of the documentary's second “Bar Mitzvah,” a swell party at Porterhouse hosted by Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter and attended by a who's who in media-I caught up with him to talk about the fabulous trajectory of his life.
RW: Your book, When I Stop Talking You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man, is a bestseller. Were you interested in doing a book and movie about yourself?
JW: I didn't want to do a book. Rich Cohen interviewed me for Vanity Fair. He “got” me right away and he wanted to do the book. He got 7 offers. The movie followed.
RW: Are you more Brooklyn or more Bronx?
JW: Brooklyn is more romantic out in the world, so I say that. I was more Bronx because that's where my family lived. But my grandmother lived in Williamsburg, and the whole family congregated at her house: aunts, uncles, cousins. Chickens ran free in the back yard. We killed and cooked them.
Both cultures fed my personality. I grew up at the beginning of the war and women didn't go out and work. They stayed home to take care of the children. A warm familial atmosphere was an important part of my life. I was born in 1937. I am 73 now. And that's why I have such a cadre of friends and people around me. I have that familial side of me.
RW: You had a “Jewish mother,” but the way you describe her she was certainly not like Philip Roth's devouring, oppressive New Jersey mom.
JW: I was extremely lucky. I have warm feelings for my mother. My mother and my father were extraordinary. A lot of people don't have that.
My mother read to me every night. My mother was afraid of everything in the world, everything she couldn't control. She took care of the money; my father gave her the money and she gave everyone an allowance. She loved to read and loved movies. She didn't want to travel so she experienced everything through books and films. And that's how she went to Hawaii and South Africa, in foreign films.
RW: Your life can be read as a study in success. What is your secret?
JW: I am persistent about everything I believe in. If there's a film I want to do, a record, a Broadway show-I do it. Everybody can hate it but I will still do it. I am fearless that way.
Early in my career, Lou Wasserman knew people and as a businessman, he thought he could make a lot of money with me. But I made it for myself.
RW: You also know failure. What did you learn from that?
JW: By the '80's I was too rich and started a company. I learned not to do it again, and made more money after that failure. I learned not be somebody I wasn't. I can do anything-run companies–but that doesn't mean I should do that. I need to enjoy what I do. I enjoy making movies.
RW: Ellen Barkin thinks you rescued her. Did you?
JW: I didn't rescue her because she is a great artist, a great talent. I gave her another opportunity to rescue herself. I love her.
We go way back to Diner. I didn't call her up to say I am going to do you a favor because you're in trouble. I don't do that to people.
She thought she was in trouble but she wasn't because nobody can take her talent away. Talented people have to do what they do. Someone can criticize but you do what you do. Content is king. Ellen is a great actress. I was just giving her the opportunity to do that again at a time when things weren't so good for her. I knew that they weren't and I could have given the part to a lot of girls, but she was great in Oceans Thirteen.
RW: A hilarious bit in the documentary is everyone weighing in on your unusual family life, married to Jane and living with Susie. Is everyone still happy with that arrangement?
JW: It's very simple. I married Jane 50 years ago. I love her as much now as I loved her then. We grew apart at a certain time. We just lived too long.
This monogamous thing that people try to do, to live together for 70 or 80 years, it just doesn't work. When Jane and I started to pull apart I went to her. She could have had a divorce and gotten lots and lots of money. She didn't want that. She didn't want me to mess up my estate. She loves Susie and Susie loves her.
RW: What are your plans?
JW: I have several projects including a film about Liberace with a script by Richard LaGravanese to come out a year from now. He's a great screenwriter. I love him.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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Laurie Metcalf, perhaps best known for her part in the television series Rosanne, is, in New York theater circles, actor's actor supreme. That accolade was well-deserved Monday night at the world premiere of the MCC production of The Other Place at the Lucille Lortel theater. There, in that venerable West Village venue, paired with Dennis Boutsikaris, her co-star from the short lived production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, she plays Juliana Smithton, a well-dressed scientist addressing a meeting of doctors in St. Thomas on the subject of pharmaceuticals who loses composure distracted by a girl in a yellow string bikini, a possible vision caused by a brain tumor.Harrowing as the prospect of cancer is, a question arises as to whether or not she really has that dread disease-or something else. In short order we see that this professional is coping with a personal matter, the disappearance of her 15 year old from the family's second home on Cape Cod. Having created a mental picture of the daughter's life after this cataclysmic event, the inconsolable Juliana suffers delusions, breaking into her former vacation home where the new resident (Aya Cash, fine in a variety of roles) feeds her Chinese food until she is picked up. John Schiappa rounds out the cast.
Sharr White wrote this 75-minute tour de force of narrative ingenuity, successfully accomplishing a description of the deterioration of a demented person's experience. Juliana may not be the delicate Blanche DuBois, but you feel her pain.
Filing out of the Laura Pels were Josh Hamilton, part of the recent Three Sisters ensemble at CSC, Thomas Sadoski of the MCC production of Reasons to be Pretty, and many others. Eric Bogosian, the famed monologist who starred in last year's Time Stands Still said of Metcalf's performance, that was the most powerful I've ever seen anywhere. Joe Mantello deserves high praise for his expert direction. A Broadway fixture, he joins the company of The Normal Heart, when it reopens, but this time as actor to be directed by Joel Grey.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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Taking the stage at the Ziegfeld last Monday for the premiere of the long awaited HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce, director Todd Haynes dedicated the night to mothers, “This is a movie about a mom. Mine passed away while we were making it.”Starting top down, he introduced the cast: Kate Winslet: “She delivers a seismic career defining performance,” he noted, and in her career that's saying a lot. Winslet got up, splendid in a Stella McCartney sheath with polka dots on sheer fabric, her blond waves pinned back in a French twist. The stellar ensemble followed suit: Guy Pearse, James LeGros, Melissa Leo, Mare Winningham, Evan Rachel Wood, her blond tresses done like a long Veronica Lake do. Composer Carter Burwell stood up and bowed, his newborn in a snuggly. The night extended to dads as well.
If you are nostalgic about the James M. Cain's 1941 noir novel, or the 1945 movie starring Joan Crawford in an Oscar winning performance, think again. Haynes makes the material his own, more Far From Heaven with its take on the limitations of American women's lives.
This is an epic 5-part film set in depression era '30's and Mildred Pierce is one resourceful woman in a way that may feel resonant in today's economy. Principled and full of pride, she throws her cheating husband out and takes a job as a waitress in a Hollywood hash house much to the horror of her hoity-toity daughter Veda. In the 2 parts shown, Veda is played by a young actress, Morgan Turner. By part 3, Wood takes over the role as the drama becomes more emblematic of the troubled relationships between mothers and daughters.
Director Lena Dunham, whose debut film, the much acclaimed Tiny Furniture, featuring her own mother playing egad, her own mother, has a bit part in the miniseries, a nurse in a harrowing hospital scene. Ilene S. Landress, a producer of Mildred Pierce is developing an HBO project with her called Girls. You can't believe the sex these young people are having, she said of Dunham's new series, and I don't mean Mildred Pierce kind of sex, referring to the tasteful scenes with Winslet in a slip, or genteel and bare-breasted with Guy Pearce as the gigolo Monty. Added Landress of the film's locations, particularly the Glendale, California house where the Peirce family resides: We imported palm trees to Glen Cove.
The after party at the Plaza Hotel was a riot of New York arts/film people, among them John Waters, John Cameron Mitchell, Mira Nair, Jason Reitman, Paul Haggis, Bob Balaban, Steve Buscemi. Oren Moverman, Stanley Crouch and Harry Evans. And because Mildred Pierce opens a restaurant serving only chicken and waffles, we thought the dinner menu would be a no-brainer. The surprise highlight of the buffet: short ribs.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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Behold the brilliance of Tom Stoppard! His genius is reason enough to see the Broadway revival of Arcadia at the Barrymore, a civilizing relief ably directed by David Leveaux, just as the culture at large focuses on another kind of theater: the wild ravings of Charlie Sheen. Set in the stately Derbyshire estate in two time periods, the Romantic era 1809, and a modern 1993 featuring literary scholars who mine archaic manuscripts and letters in search of evidence to support slim career-making theories, Arcadia takes a sly swipe at the academic world, and tells a much richer story celebrating the life of the mind.“Wanting to know is what makes us matter,” says Hannah Jarvis, a historical novelist researching Arcadia's legendary garden.
The play opens on a scene of privileged education. A precocious teen, one Thomasina Coverly (Bel Powley), inquires as to the nature of “carnal embrace.” Her tutor Septimus Hodge, a classmate of Lord Byron, already famous as poet and rake, answers coyly and soon reveals himself to be the subject of the inquiry, a source for household gossip, having been spotted in the gazebo with the poet Ezra Chater's wife. This scandal unfolds hilariously, and by the time we cut to the present with the heirs of the stately Arcadia, we are awed by the comedy of Byron's time as Stoppard imagines it.
To start with the most famous in this ensemble, Billy Crudup's Bernard Nightingale, an over-the-top academic, is all bravado. Playing a part originated by the wiry Bill Nighy, Crudup had been Septimus in the original American premiere directed by Trevor Nunn. Tom Riley's Septimus is sweet, smart, and worthy of the amorous attentions of the female cast including his ward's mother, Lady Croom (the elegant Margaret Colin). David Turner as the wronged Ezra Chater is hilarious; the character is so fey, you can understand the transgressions of his wife. Of the modern characters, Raul Esparza is understated as Valentin Coverly, even as he sits cross-legged on the table feeding lettuce to a turtle. Lia Williams stands out as Hannah, displaying the nervous energy of a contemporary writer. Grace Gummer as Chloe outstretched on the floor illustrates the physical freedom of the 20th century, as their 19th century counterparts in vests and high bodices are constrained. Still, and to the point, waltzing at the end, the characters of each time seem perfectly attuned.
On the night I attended, Arcadia hit a current events note. Thomasina hates Cleopatra: “The Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria.” Who can think of the famed Queen without remembering Elizabeth Taylor?
You could say that Hamlet as invented by Shakespeare is the first modernist man. Thinker to the point of paralysis, he epitomizes what it means to be human, or better, what we get by receiving the dubious gift of the mind. David Davalos's riff on Hamlet, Wittenberg, now staged at the Pearl Theatre under the direction of J.R. Sullivan, is much in the manner of Tom Stoppard's Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead, a teasing out of the Shakespearean thread.
Set in Wittenberg College just before our hero's life as a student is cut short by the news of his father's demise, the play's conceit has Hamlet as a pawn of his professors, Reverend Martin Luther (Chris Mixon) and Doctor Faustus (Scott Greer). Should he follow the religion of one, or the magic of the other? Sean McNall is simply a delight as the Prince of Denmark. A staple of the Pearl Theatre, McNall was a sight in pink tutu in the Pearl's revival of a Moliere play some years back. Here in tennis whites, lobbing with an imaginary Laertes, McNall looks the part of any college kid, caught in the dilemma of living out his potential, even as it comically spells tragedy.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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Patricia Clarkson looked at her watch at the Chelsea Room, at the after party for the movie Win Win. Co-host with Tony Gilroy of this celebration of the movie Win Win, she would be on a plane in six hours, en route to her hometown of New Orleans to help with a theater fundraiser. All around, well-wishers for this feel-good movie of the season crammed into the small space. No one seemed to mind. The stars Paul Giamatti, a professional curmudgeon, grimaced as he tried to eat a plate of pasta. Amy Ryan who plays his no-nonsense wife with a heart of gold posed gamely with her best pal Clarkson. Scene-stealer Burt Young, Melanie Lynskey. The young actor Alex Shaffer schmoozed with his proud grandmother. Tom McCarthy, writer director of The Station Agent and The Visitor has another hit.Mad Men's John Slattery, and Boardwalk Empire's Vincent Piazza, Tovah Feldshuh just back from starring in Arsenic and Old Lace, Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein, Bob Balaban, Gabourey Sidibe, Andrew and Nancy Zarecki, and others rubbed shoulders. And, not to be overlooked in this eh, winning comedy, Bobby Cannavale came late, fresh off his Broadway show, The Motherf**cker With the Hat.
Say “Congratulations!” to Marshall Brickman, Lifetime Achievement award honoree at Guild Hall's winter gala and you will hear, “Not yet, it's early. They may change their minds.”
No matter that Cipriani at 42nd Street was already filling up with men in formal attire like Mort Zuckerman and Tony Walton, that the other honorees, Dick Cavett for Literary Arts, and Elizabeth Peyton for Visual Arts were filing past a row of television journalists, microphones snaking through the front lobby of this opulent former bank. In the serendipity of these honors, the event featured layers of celebrations including Dick Cavett's October marriage to Martha Rogers, in a private (only her 2 sons attended) ceremony in New Orleans, a few blocks from where they first met 35 years ago. The able M.C. Bob Balaban kept the evening moving with smart quips. Even without jugglers, he kept all the balls in the air.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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“Who would not want to see my film?” asked painter/director Julian Schnabel at the premiere of his new movie Miral. Shown at the UN’s General Assembly, with a quarter of a million dollar screen and sound equipment supplied by Gucci, Miral reflects Schnabel’s scale: out-sized and awesome. Still, his question was provocative and ambiguous, a cry for commerce amidst rumors that the film was not very good and an email campaign by B’nai Brith asking for a boycott, claiming the film is anti-Israel.
In fact, introducing the film in the gigantic space, and for an audience that included Sean Penn, Candice Bergen, Steve Buscemi, Zac Posen, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and many more, Schnabel asserted that he loved Israel and that the film if anything is a plea for peace. Based upon a novel by Rula Jebreal, Miral tells the story of a young Arab girl, an Israeli citizen, caught, in the modern tragedy of the Middle East. No one wants to see children suffer: the film’s narrative underscores the aching longing for a workable solution. And, by the way, this is a good film.
Performances by a Freida Pintos Miral, Haim Abbass as the head mistress of a girls’ school and Alexander Siddiq as Miral’s father are compelling, as are cameos by Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe, who also attended. The director’s daughter Stella Schnabel plays a Jewish girl in love with a Palestinian man. Issues of violence vs. non-violence are weighed. In perhaps the most inflammatory scene, a house is demolished as a helpless family watches –an insensitive and arbitrary power play by a government obsessed with security. The film does not instigate a new critique. Rather, Schnabel enters into an ongoing discourse in Israel with intellectuals and writers like David Grossman, Amos Oz, and Yehuda Amichai.
Afterwards, Dan Rather led a panel in a conversation extolling the fundamental need for dialogue, for finding new ways toward peace. No one could argue with that. Journalist Mona Eltahawy, Rabbi Irwin Kula, former Israeli Yonatan Schapira all agreed with Rula Jabreal and Julian Schnabel, noting the irony that it would take a Jewish man -Schnabel’s mother was active in Hadassah-to tell this story.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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Abe Burrows' 1965 comedy Cactus Flower would not be a likely candidate for revival with its retrograde-if quaintly hilarious-take on matters of the heart. But Burrows' musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize is now in previews on Broadway; maybe there's business in the madness.At the Westside Theater opening Thursday night, director Michael Bush explained, he wanted to do the quintessential 60's comedy. Silly in the manner of a Feydeau-farce set in a dentist's office, a bedroom, a nightclub, with lots of doors slamming, this Cactus Flower still has such charm and good spirit, it makes for a delightful evening of theater. And the crowd that showed up in the teeming rain: Leslie Uggams, Hayley Mills, Penny Fuller, seemed pleased, especially with the performances of soap opera veteran Lois Robbins, Maxwell Caulfield (best known for Grease 2), and an ensemble that includes Jenni Barber, Jeremy Bobb, John Herrera, Anthony Reimer, Robin Skye and Emily Walton.
Of course the play is most memorable for the film starring Goldie Hawn in a blond pixie cut. But Jenni Barber, who did so well in last year's Bridge Project As You Like It and The Tempest at BAM, said at the after party at B. Smith, it was Edie Sedgwick who most influenced her look and performance. The actress went to MoMA and studied the screen test prominent in the Warhol exhibition on the museum's 6th floor. She was so open and vulnerable, without a hint of cynicism, said Barber. How else can you explain a girl who is as gullible and big hearted as her character Toni Simmons, when her deceitful boyfriend tells her he's married and she insists upon meeting his wife, the conceit that sets off the play's mountain of improbabilities. Lois Robbins said she took the role of Stephanie Dickinson, the dutiful nurse who plays along as Dr. Winston's wife, the “cactus flower,” when one of the producers said, it will change your life. Robbins laughed, I guess we will see tomorrow, when the reviews come out.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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By the end of last night's premiere of Limitless, a new movie starring Bradley Cooper, everyone wanted to have what he has: the dream drug for over-achievers that keeps his character so upbeat and so focused, he simply cannot fail. A novelist with chronic writers block and scruffy hair, Eddie pens his book, learns the piano, French, gets a sharp suit and haircut, and speeds forward figuring out corporate finances for himself and for a Wall Street mogul played by Robert DeNiro. Whew! With the strength of superman, he fells the refrigerator-sized mobsters who want his stash. And keeping up with the breakneck speed of his mind, the cinematography takes you for a splendid ride.Bradley Cooper, so good in one of my all-time favorites, Wedding Crashers, is probably best known for The Hangover. He is simply thrilling in this movie, his blue eyes blazing with intensity. And Abbie Cornish, as delicate as a poem in Bright Star, holds her own in this contemporary caper. Next up for her, a film directed by Madonna.
Alas, when the movie's stars Cooper, Cornish, DeNiro, TV Carpio, Tomas Arana, director Neil Burger, caught up with Patricia Clarkson, Denise Rich, Oliver Platt, Jason Bateman, Noah Emmerich, Chaz Palminteri, Ryan Kavanaugh, James Lipton, Giancarlo Esposito, and others at Buddakan for an afterparty, it soon became clear that the pills in cellophane strewn across the restaurant's tables were mere placebo. Fortunately cocktails made with DeLeon tequila were on hand for a quick fix.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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If you ever had a doubt that the French are obsessed with love, or at least have a different mindset about all variations: amour fou, fidelity, passion, adultery than we puritanical Americans, check out their movies. On this matter, the French are consistent.
Even in an epic length period drama like The Princess of Montpensierwith its sweeping battle scenes and violence, the love the young womanof the title experiences for Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), the rakish heartthrob of her youth is what matters most to director Bertrand Tavernier. Adapted from a 16th century 30 page story by Madame de Lafayette, the film also features Lambert Wilson, perhapsthe most appealing of French actors (see the very fine Of Gods and Men), as Chabanne, a soldier who transgresses military code by murdering a pregnant woman, driving his long blade through her belly, for which he renounces violence.Most tender are Marie’s scenes with Chabanne who instructs her in literature, philosophy, and all mattersof the court.
But as the popular Rendez-vous with French Cinema festival screens in the week ahead, love takes many forms: In the opening night film, Francois Ozon’s Potiche, the trophy wife played by Catherine Deneuvein curlers and professing bourgeois bliss, reconnects with an old love, bringing the iconic actress together again with that grand and sexy bear, Gerard Depardieu. When the memory of an old liaison re-ignites their heat, a hilarious moment occurs: she puts him off,“Not at our age.”
Most rendez-vous fare is less prudent. In quiet ways, gems such as Love Like Poison, Katell Quillevere’s coming of age drama about a 14 year old girl and a choirboy, and Martin Provost’s The Long Falling with Yolande Moreau, the story of asmall-town woman who kills her abusive husband, reveal complex shades of the love theme. While Antony Cordier’s Happy Few, about two couples who swap while maintaining their own marriages, offers a rare admission for the French: the psychological damage of mixing and matching partners.
Alas, while it is not always certain that French movies will have a U.S. theatrical release, fortunately, some will. Opening soon, Poticheis very funny, often laugh out loud silly, a fun diversion. I simply would not miss The Princess of Montpensier.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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On a particular Saturday afternoon at the Manhattan Theater Club production of his new play Good People, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire revealed to an exuberant matinee crowd that the compelling characters he created for this play were known to him from his upbringing in South Boston–even down to the detail of the bingo games his mother enjoyed, as well as the googly eyed rabbit figurines. He might have been in Los Angeles that weekend: nominated for an Independent Spirit writing award for the screenplay of his drama, Rabbit Hole, or to support Nicole Kidman who was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar in the film. But obvious to all, Lindsay-Abaire was happy to be at the talk back for Good People.Of course the word good is edgy. When asked which character is good, he said all of them. Or, none of them. Or maybe Stevie at the end if you define a good person, as the play does, as one who will give money to someone who needs it. In this working class environment in tough times, Margie, as perfectly acted by Frances McDormand under the expert direction of Daniel Sullivan is trapped in “Southie”: we see her, boldly honest, loyal, and, as in all great theater going back to Oedipus, proud to a fault; she is the instrument of her own fate. Margaret is a woman of such low expectations, you ask, could she have
gotten out of South Boston.The unwed mother of a mentally challenged grown up daughter, Margie creates some suspense around the father. When Margie loses her job at the convenience store, she goes to see Mike (a fine Tate Donovan), a high school flame who broke away from the neighborhood and became a successful fertility doctor. Now living in Chestnut Hill with a much younger wife (Renee Elise Goldsberry) whose color adds to the layering of discourse in this racially loaded province, Mike has morphed, in Margie’s words, joining the “lace curtain Irish.” Deploying one zinger after another, Margie is especially good at showing those around her exactly who they are. Most people, good and otherwise, can muster more self-preserving diplomacy.
The excellent sets (Jon Lee Beatty) and costumes (David Zinn) especially evoke the noble but worn environs of the bingo crowd: the greedy landlady Dottie played by Estelle Parsons, a neighbor, Jean (Becky Ann Baker), and Stevie, Margie’s former boss (Patrick Carroll) functioning like a Greek chorus, egging Margie on and taking her back, wounded yet strong after her glimpse into Mike’s new life with all its bourgeois grandeur outside Southie. “I thought the house would have columns,” she says giving the place a once-over.
David Lindsay-Adaire mines his hometown frontier well, neatly marking the fault line between white and blue collar. He wanted to write about class in America, he said, a subject the British do so well. Just maybe as Americans continue to feel the effects of recession economics, the subject of class may be all too resonant.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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Co-host with Anne Hathaway at the Academy Awards show in Los Angeles, James Franco picks up his cell phone, a prop for peering into the dreams of the show's prior beloved M.C., Alec Baldwin. The Inception parody is played for laughs, but those in the know were poised to honor Baldwin's career the next night, in New York, at the annual tribute gala for the Museum of the Moving Image. Could this versatile actor be in two places at once?
Ubiquitous in the Hamptons, for example, and loveably so, Baldwin lends his name and talent to many arts projects on Long Island's east end. Starring in last summer's production of Equus at Guild Hall, Baldwin was the engine for mounting the critically acclaimed production, said Tony Walton. The director, along with Richard Gere, Gay Talese, Michael Lynne, Bob Balaban, and jazz documentarian Bruce Ricker, joined the eclectic crowd at Cipriani 42nd Street for good food, clips and speakers.
Mercedes Ruehl, Michael Keaton, Tim Curry, Ben Stiller, Jimmy Fallon, Edie Falco, and Tina Fey spoke about working with Alec, commenting on his professionalism and comic timing. Ruehl who worked with him in Married to the Mob (1988), emphasized his political commitment, cautioning on conflicts in campaign financing. He turned out to be right, she said of her fellow activist. Fey revealed, the role of Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock was written for him: “Alec is a writer's dream,” she noted. “He speaks fast.”
The night-which was also a farewell dinner for Rochelle Slovin, the Museum's director for 30 years– would not have been complete without a clip of that unforgettable moment from It's Complicated, with Alec's leap, naked, onto the bed, his privates covered by a laptop, and Steve Martin's reaction shot as he sees his rival for Meryl Streep on Skype. Noticeably absent though was the SNL skit, Alec with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, and eh, Sarah Palin.Alec Baldwin does seem to be everywhere, but as Patricia Clarkson put it, “You want him everywhere.”
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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When James Franco co-hosts the Oscars this weekend, it won't be as the bespectacled poet Allen Ginsberg he so lovingly portrayed in the movie Howl. Of course, Franco may win the Best Actor Oscar for his work in 127 Hours, but his Ginsberg is spot on.
The multi- talented Franco has good taste in poets, currently immersed in projects involving American literary giants Harte Crane (the Bridge) and William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury). And Allen Ginsberg had good vision: even before Warhol made fame famous, the poet understood fame's power as a marketing tool. He may remain the most famous poet of the Beat Generation literati, but even till the time of his death in 1997, he worked diligently, championing his close associates, Kerouac, Burroughs, Corso, Micheline, Huncke, Whalen, etc. so that they too would be known. Who wants to be the sole famed figure in his coterie, he would say.
Now Allen Ginsberg seems to be everywhere: Witness his moving (literally in motion) portrait on the 6th floor of MoMA, in a fine show featuring Andy Warhol's screen tests. In perfect synergy, his face looms large with those of Dennis Hopper, Edie Sedgwick, and others. James Franco's excellent performance is freshly available on the Howl DVD, along with an audio feature, Franco reading Howl.
And, an exhibition of Ginsberg's photography-yes he was a visual artist too– is displayed at the Howard Greenberg Gallery. A handsome book, Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, accompanies the show. While it is not the first collection of the poet's photos, the book includes many well-known pictures-i.e. Kerouac smoking on a fire escape-as well as lesser known Robert Frank, Peter Orlovsky, and New York back alley takes. A distinct feature of Ginsberg's work is the hand scrawled caption situating those he shot in the historic moment.
Recently, the yearly reading of Howl at Columbia University with music by David Amram attracted crowds to that institution's Philosophy Hall. An irony was not missed: in his days at Columbia he represented rebellious youth, and now more than a decade dead, he is revered as the poet of our time.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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Fashion shows are theater, and some are more theater than most. No Fashion Week is complete without the runway extravaganza presented by The Blonds. Last night at Milk Studios in the meatpacking, a pair of Chinese dancing dragons opened a show that featured the designers' signature corsets bespangled and beaded, sequined and jeweled, tube dresses, cat suits, cinchers and capelets; a black and white “poncho” would be fabulous on say, Liza Minelli. One model sported a gold pagoda headpiece to match her gold corset, a spectacle that is only matched by the attending audience who seize the occasion for theater of their own.
Trends included faux fur headpieces complete with animal ears pointing up, and layers of eyelashes-mainly on men, as well as an array of thigh high platform boots. Kenny Kenny was perhaps the most demure I've ever seen him wearing hats piled on one another. “I couldn't get the right height,” he explained of the fedora styles that gave him extra brims as well. Amanda LaPorte is styled as Marilyn Monroe, except the deep dip of “her” red, sheer cocktail sheath revealed several inches of ass cleavage. You could see a lot of “work” was done.
My favorite outfit was a total python look, boots, pants, corset, worn with great style by Andrea, a stockbroker by day, and a collector of the The Blonds' designs. Each piece is hand crafted, a one of a kind. Where could you wear such an ensemble? By day I wear business suits, she said. I wear this to clubs, to dinner with my husband on the weekends. I was delighted to see The Blonds' art so tastefully put together on a real woman, because it matched my own fashion fantasies. Corey Grant, an interior designer with partner Christopher who has a preppie look except for his necklace, big fans of the Blonds, explained, unlike the shows now in tents at Lincoln Center, “There's not one buyer in the room. This is uptown coming downtown.”
Other fans included singer Kerri Hilson, Nigel Barker, Miss J, and Jay Manuel, stars of America's Next Top Models, as well as dandy Patrick MacDonald, and Larissa in her very own signature cheekbones. I caught up with Justin James, a long drink of water, elegantly attired in gunmetal silk suit and high heels. He had done the show's wigs, glittery head dresses inspired by Japanese anime. Show over by 8:15, he was outside grabbing a cigarette: “Now I can go home to bed.”
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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On a frigid Wednesday last week, an inexplicable friction left my hair standing on end. Good thing I would be meeting Vidal Sassoon tonight, for the premiere of a documentary Vidal Sassoon: The Movie. I could ask this artist whose shapes defined the look of the ’60’s about the electric gravity defying moment, about the taming of frizz, about my lifelong obsession with hair.
Directed by Craig Teper, the documentary did not feature curls, alas, except maybe Vogue’s Grace Coddington, a radiant redhead whose bob in Sassoon’s ’60’s heyday molded well under his expert heated direction. Rather, it offered glimpses of this American success story: A Jew from England, who never really connected with his father, spent many early years in an orphanage, who sang in synagogue, rose to fame as an artist haircutter, a television personality, and a businessman with a well-known product line. The film limned his fitness regime, work ethic, first marriages, and the tragic overdose of his daughter Catya. Impeccable demeanor intact, he is now happily married to Ronnie, a dark haired woman with bangs, 30 year his junior.
“We both finally got it right,” Ronnie said of this successful marriage at the party at Michael’s where cocktails made with Cointreau and Remy Martin were the drinks of the evening. Marisa Berenson said because she keeps it long, Sassoon never styled her hair, but back in the day, she did wear a lot of wigs inspired by his asymmetrical designs. Stylist Phillip Bloch contemplated his murderous Fashion Week schedule. The film’s producer, Michael Gordon, founder of Bumble & Bumble, said he wanted to document Sassoon’s remarkable career in a book and movie because hair dressers, often embarrassed to say what they do, get no respect.
Now 83, Sassoon looks at the exceptional trajectory of his life with pride. He did not tell me much about how to solve my hair issues, but did say that at age 79, when he was approached to make the movie, he demurred, “Don’t you think I’m a bit young?”
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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Is there a “celluloid ceiling?” In this take on the “glass” ceiling, women in the film and entertainment industry can only go so far. That last year's Best Director Oscar went to Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman ever to receive it, says much. So it was with great fanfare on Thursday night in Diana Hall of Barnard College that the brand new Athena Film Festival was launched, founded by Kathryn Kolbert and Melissa Silverstein, focusing on work by and about women and awarding women a newly minted prize for their achievements: Delia Ephron, Chris Hegedus, Tanya Hamilton, Abby Disney, Gini Reticker, Debra Zimmerman, Anne Thompson, Nancy Schreiber, Debra Martin Chase, Leslie Bennetts took the stage. One impressive, talented woman followed the one before, taking home a gorgeous crystal statue.As master of ceremonies Lynn Sherr pointed out: Athena is, after all, a Greek goddess, known for wisdom, intelligence, beauty, and eh, chastity.
Honorees were asked to speak about women who inspired them. While the names of mothers, mentors, and Hilary Clinton were invoked, Leslie Bennetts, Vanity Fair writer spoke about another Greek goddess, Arianna Huffington who that week had sold her unpaid blogger empire to AOL. Huffington had written a book about fearlessness, a necessary component of her personal reinvention. But, Bennetts also said that she did not admire Huffington's “business model.” True, as reported, nearly $300 million cash goes to her for this merger–a staggering fortune by anyone's estimation. One has to wonder at the moral imperative: why not throw some to the writers who write for nothing? That was on the tip of Bill Maher's lips when he had Arianna's face looming large on his show the following night. That question is on the tip of everyone's lips but no one wants to ask it; no one wants to burn that bridge, not even the fearless Maher!
Where is the fearless soul who will acknowledge the elephant in the room?Blogging -like much on the Internet –remains an enterprise like the wild, wild west, a frontier with few parameters. Leaving the stage, Bennetts told me that she has posted on Huffington, but only as a marketing tool, when she has needed to bring attention to a new book: “Why should I write for nothing when I can get paid?” she asked.
At least this ceiling is gender-blind.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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In the midst of the Oscar season tumult, it is reassuring to think of our most poetic and prolific American playwright Tennessee Williams as the author of scripts that became celebrated films. Case in point, Baby Doll (1956), directed by Elia Kazan with gorgeous performances, controversial in their time by Caroll Baker, her brutish husband played by Karl Malden, and introducing a young and suave Eli Wallach. Yes, Baker is a virginal, kittenish coquette on the verge of losing her innocence. The script like much of Williams' work features fragile women, women like Glass Menagerie's Amanda and Streetcar's Blanche, maddened. You imagine them productive and happy under other circumstances, while the men in their lives, sub-conscious, unreflective, with the sensitivity of gnats buzz about noisily doing what they do.This week the 92nd Street Y hosted a Williams celebration co-curated by David Kaplan and Thomas Keith with a sampling of readings and historic performances, a special event much like the tribute at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 2009, when Williams was inducted into the Poet's Corner. The casting was brilliant, bringing onto the Y's stage actresses closely associated with Tennessee Williams' work. Olympia Dukakis currently starring in the Roundabout Theater's production of Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore on Broadway performed the famous speech from that 1964 play about her fourth husband whose demise she occasioned by giving him a car.
Jessica Lange had starred as Amanda in a recent production of Glass Menagerie, but at the Y performed from Night of the Iguana. Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of the famed director, performed a scene from Mister Paradise. Alec Baldwin had starred on Broadway as Stanley, but kissed Angelica Torn long and hard as Mitch to her Blanche. Torn, the daughter of longtime actors associated with Williams, Geraldine Page and Rip Torn, had known the playwright as a young girl. In a particularly poignant moment, Marian Seldes read from a 1947 letter to Elia Kazan.
Another exceptional moment was the legendary Sylvia Miles performing the role of the Princess from Sweet Bird of Youth. Miles originated the character of Mrs. Ware in Vieux Carre. Williams had written a variation of Milk Train just for her, and she performed as Maxine in the 1963 Broadway revival of Night of the Iguana. At the Y, Miles exhibited her famed comic timing, especially intoning the name of her character, the actress Alexandra Del Lago. “I am Alexandra del Lago,” she later said, identifying utterly with the playwright's sensiblity. “Everything that happens to her has happened to me.”
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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As everyone is glued to media, watching a real-life revolution disrupt and otherwise transform Egypt, revolutions of a quieter, less violent but powerful sort erupt off-Broadway in two plays in limited run that I would not miss.
Chekhov is surely the poet of thwarted dreams, of aristocratic manners mutating to modernity. As staged at Classic Stage Company, with a text adapted by Paul Schmidt, and ably directed by Austin Pendleton, Three Sisters, with a dazzling ensemble of actors, invites you to a sumptuous spread: fine china, crystal goblets, white linens on a gigantic table suggest an opulent feast for many guests. But be ware that table, a contrivance (the sets are by Walter Spangler) that turns into the house's upstairs bedrooms. Hoisted aside by play's end, the wooden platform suggests a guillotine, all promise of hope, old world finery, and intellect, cut.Olga (Jessica Hecht), Masha (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Irina (Juliet Rylance), the sisters of the title are situated in the countryside longing to be in Moscow. Their boredom is interrupted by the presence of the military, which for each sister presents, at least temporarily, a way out. Peter Sarsgaard plays Verushnin. Masha, married to someone older and more dull than wise, hopes to leave with him. The youngest, Irina, will settle for marriage with Baron Tuzenbach (a well-cast dreamy Ebon Moss-Bachrach), while Olga follows her path as an unmarried teacher. Their brother Andrey (Josh Hamilton) marries a vulgar village girl Natasha (a spirited Marin Ireland) who dresses garishly and systematically forces the sisters out of the homestead -but alas, not to the Moscow of their dreams. And that promise of a sumptuous feast -well, nourishing soup and warming glasses of tea are served to brooding souls enlivened up by the most crass among them: Natasha and Solyony (a very fine Anson Mount) destroy the order irrevocably, as small town life flows on.
If you were watching last week's SAG awards, you may have noticed too, that when the Best Ensemble award was presented to the Boardwalk Empire group, a dozen or so New York actors stormed the stage but the actor playing Special Agent Nelson Van Alden was missing: Michael Shannon was back east playing a theater producer, Felix Artifex, in Craig Wright's masterfully written almost one-man tour de force called Mistakes Were Made. Shannon's Artifex, a theater producer, juggles buttons on the telephone making conversation with an array of characters as he attempts to make a play set in the French Revolution called “Mistakes Were Made.” His secretary (Mierka Girten) -we see her shadow behind a scrim-announces: “Johnny Bledsoe on line 1,” “Dolores (the ex-wife) on line 2,” as he bellows, argues, playing unseen, unheard characters off one another. Onstage, he speaks to Denise, a large gold fish in a tank (puppeteer Sam Deutsch) who appears to grimace at the audience. Being a New York type, Artifex deploys an arsenal of ironic, gnomic, one-liners: “Life is an opportunity to make things happen,” “What is more important than maintaining one's enthusiasm?” “Thank you for being you,” he bullshits. But here's where the totally contemporary language melds eerily with current events. Trying to get the big star Johnny Bledsoe interested in the project, he suggests a rewrite to the play's author: How about adding a young girl dying on the ground, blood gushing, saying to her heroic brother, Even if I die, the revolution would be worth it. -
On a random Friday afternoon between snowstorms, visitors to Tibor de Nagy's midtown gallery for the “Painters & Poets” exhibit marveled at the small press editions in vitrines (with work by Joe Brainard, Kenward Elmslie, Charles Henri Ford, and Allen Ginsberg) and whimsical black & white films by Rudy Burkhardt starring his artworld buddies: Larry Rivers, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Alex Katz, etc. Playwright Jon Robin Baitz, poet Honore Moore, actor Bob Dishy, and painter Duncan Hannah milled about. Jane Freilicher came by too. Her painting, “The Painting Table” (1954) is perhaps the centerpiece of the show along with Rivers' and O'Hara's “Portrait and Poem Painting” (1961) the art that graces the handsome catalogue. The exhibit includes work by Fairfield Porter, Joan Mitchell, a religious triptych by Red Grooms and poet Anne Waldman. Not an opening or special viewing, the afternoon had the exhilarating spark of a Happening.
The collaboration of artists and poets is of course not new, but the show celebrates a unique New York moment when publications were small, and the cross fertilization of artistic energy gave rise to The New York School of Poetry, the beat and other literary movements. Commerce, though not ignored, was not at the forefront of art. But that of course was pre-Warhol.
Artist George Condo has some literary cred: he collaborated with Burroughs and Ginsberg, and coming from Lowell, Massachusetts, the working class milieu that spawned Jack Kerouac, he wrote a spirited intro for Kerouac's “Book of Sketches.”
George Condo, the artist as Warholian “superstar,” is affirmed at the New Museum's survey of his career, “Mental States,” where Condo posing with Kanye West and Marc Jacobs at the shows' opening, signifying a synergy of arts and marketplace. Just look at those portraits in the show's main gallery on the 4th floor, hung in important frames, the Guston/ Crumb/ Picasso/ Looney Tune inspired, pod heads juxtaposed with abstract riffs on Old Masters oils. Artist Judy Hudson observed, “Here we are at Disney World again.” The whole enterprise is a subversive riff on art history, including the gnarly bronze busts titled “Dionysus,” “The Old Sea Hag,” “Perseus,” “Tristessa,” etc.
Down what feels like a secret staircase to the 3rd floor where smaller spaces house works of various themes, LeeLee Sobieski and others crammed into the largest gallery focused on abstract work. You can say, Condo mines the collaborative; his imagination is keyed in with music, and with celebrity.
Especially the notorious. One room themed, “Manic Society” features finely wrought paintings of a toothy screaming priest, of sex on a striped couch; the figures form a two-headed beast both bizarre and frightening. This unforgettable picture is called “The Return of Client No. 9.”Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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With Oscar nominations close at hand, Frank Rich's New York Times column on the values illustrated in two top movies, True Grit and The Social Network hit home, affirming America's premier art form. Rich's discourse on the unexpected success of the Coen Brothers' western in the time of Facebook suggests another film: The Fighter. This beautifully wrought film is on every critic's select list, but the debate for Oscars centers on The Social Network and The King's Speech, each taking the lead for many awards. Last week's retrospective of David O. Russell's career at The Museum of the Moving Image had me thinking of a new category: Movie with the Biggest Heart. The Fighter may vie with Toy Story 3, but in the end would topple all contenders.First, the real-life location of Lowell, Massachusetts, a red brick urban center with distinct ethnic enclaves, is the perfect breeding ground for the Great American Story. The director has a real feel for such places, having worked for a time in Lewiston, Maine. Then, the performances: at center is Mark Wahlberg in the role of Micky Ward, praised as masterful and understated. Around him swirl some outsized characters, Golden Globe winners Melissa Leo as Alice Ward and Christian Bale as Dicky, over the top as the real life personae are. (By the way, look out for Leo in the upcoming HBO movie, Mildred Pierce.) And when Letterman asked Dustin Hoffman what performance he thought stood out this year, the “Huckabees” veteran picked Amy Adams in this movie, the “MTV girl” and only woman whose hair was not teased out of the frame.
At a luncheon at 21 last week celebrating the director's career, you could see where this movie with heart gets its soul. David O. Russell worked the room focusing on each guest: hosts Spike Jonze and Geoffrey Fletcher, director John Cameron Mitchell, and other movie insiders and well-wishers. Russell said he had never eaten in the legendary restaurant before. When Jeannie Berlin came to say hello, Russell sang her praises for a movie that meant so much to him as a teen, what else? The Heartbreak Kid. The 1972 one. And so it went.
Later that night in Astoria, reported Russell: the kick off to the retrospective week was “particularly great” with about 300 people showing up. Spike Jonze, conducting the Q&A, was “very gracious in his subversive way.” When Russell offered him a cinnamon Altoid, the box got passed around the audience too: “It was very real and alive.” Rosie Perez was there, as was Jonze's mom Sandy who said “the nicest things about me that almost made me cry.”
I'm told that the Academy voters are unpredictable. So maybe those seeking movies that reflect “another America” -in Frank Rich's words– can consider the one that's here. Maybe this is the year of The Fighter that could.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
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