Gossip Central

Midtown Movie/ A Diamond is Forever/ Narnia

One never knows the title of the movie he's working on, but Woody Allen stood in the doorway of “the bulldog” carriage house on East 38th Street chatting with Larry David on the set of an up coming film.  Ed Begley Jr. grazed at the sidewalk food tables, and ogling pedestrians stepped over wires. No sign of Evan Rachel Woods, who also stars. After the last few films set in Britain-Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra's Dream--Woody's back to making movies in New York. Also in the neighbs on Tuesday, a luncheon hosted by De Beers “Diamonds are Forever,” on the balcony overlooking Grand Central Terminal in Grand Central Station with great views of the zodiac ceiling and an enormous display of roses to show how diamonds, unlike fragile flowers, endure. Attending in honor of Antony Todd were Helena Christiensen, Diane Kruger (in Balenciaga), Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Lakeand Robin Bell, Tory Burch, and Marghuerita Missoni. Model Maggie Rizer said, “It was a simple, elegant lunch with great people that said, 'Diamonds are for everyone.'” She loves diamonds because each one has its own story: “One was given to my grandmother by my grandfather from his mother, one is so small I can barely see it but my dad gave it to my mom when he couldn't afford to; one I bought on a trip to India, and so on . . . .” Natasha Richardson joined the fashion crowd for that pre-Mother's Day event and then was on hand the next night for the premiere for the new “Chronicles of Narnia” at another neighborhood gem, The New York Public Library on 42nd Street. Her husband Liam Neeson is the voice of Aslan, so the library with its signature stone lions looked Narnia-ready and so are the movie's legions of fans, many of whom watched the jugglers, threaded beads and supped on forest fare in one of the city's most spectacular landmarks.

Regina Weinreich 

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

The invitation to the special screening of a new documentary about Roman Polanski had the imprimatur of 20 directors in solidarity with the exiled Oscar winning director, and then a disclaimer, that the filmmakers, on location, would not be on hand at the Paris Theater. Nevertheless, I spotted Sidney Lumet, Julian Schnabel, Alex Gibney, Taylor Hackford, Barry Levinson, Bennett Miller, Bob Balaban, Lasse Hallstrom, and a slew of actors: Dustin Hoffman, Alec Baldwin, Emmy Rossum, Leelee Sobieski, Gretchen Mol, Julianna Margulies, Lena Olin, for the screening, some staying on for the buffet supper at the newly refurbished Plaza Hotel. It was like the old days, when the Plaza was a haven for fictitious little girls like Eloise, and for movie premieres of the most lavish sort: beef, bass, grilled chicken and veggies fit for kings. Carlos, my waiter, who had worked there for 25 years seemed pleased with lobby level luxury shops, saying that during the renovation, new rooms had been created, pockets of space no one had thought about now gave way to conference rooms on the 4th floor. But I digress.
     Marina Zenovich's  riveting “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" will air on HBO on June 9, and will be shown in theaters thereafter distributed by Mark Urman's ThinkFilm. Reading the papers, Zenovich came upon a story about Polanski's trial for raping a 13 year old in 1977, and thereafter fleeing the country. What is wrong with this picture, she thought and set about finding out. The resulting film uses provocative archival footage and interviews to trace Polanski's life in Hollywood, his unabashed obsession with young girls, the tragic circumstances of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate's murder by the Manson clan, the eerie echoes in his films, his Holocaust back story-mostly investigating the legal matters surrounding the trial, marked by a tricky judge who was out to get the infamous director. The result fascinates, not only in illuminating Polanski as a brilliant and charismatic character but as a revelation of our justice system. Polanski remains wanted in America, and desired in Pariswhere he resides with Emmanuelle Seigner, his wife for 18 years, and two children. Seigner starred most recently in Schnabel's “Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and in “Lou Reed's Berlin,” a hit at the recent Tribeca Film Festival. Though some of the hosting directors were not feasting at the Plaza, the girl in question was, her mother and husband in tow. Now Samantha Geimer (45) lives happily in Hawaii, having settled with Polanski out of court. Her mother Susan, conspicuously not in the film, was the proverbial elephant in the room dwarfing even the grandeur of the Plaza; you wanted to shake her while she glowingly invited everyone to visit in Kuaui.  How she could leave a 13 year old child alone with Polanski remains a mystery, leaving all the celebrity and media moms at the premiere asking, what is wrong with this picture?

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Roman Polanski:Wanted and Desired (promo)

John Waters' Cry Baby/ Tribeca Film Festival

Don't cry for me, John Waters! Your over-the-top tour de gross-out has hit mainstream, proving what your pal William Burroughs used to say about acceptance, if you stick around long enough . . . Commercial success may of course come at the price of losing edge, but in your case, edge may be overrated. On Broadway Hairspray and now Cry Baby are huge hits, showing how edgy meets marketplace: with exuberant choreography, the crinkle of crinolines, slick pompadours, padded rumps. When New York Magazine features you as a subversive gone MOR, your pencil thin mustache loses its twitch. Divine's shit eating ending in “Pink Flamingos,” the stray dog eating a lesbian's discarded “bone” from a botched sex change in “Desperate Living”! Ah, those were moments of high satire. In “Cry Baby,” set in Waters' beloved Baltimore, the outcast, misunderstood teens sing of kissing with tongues, going down in the marshes. Anyone who has seen “Grease” is familiar with this territory of preppies vs. hipsters, with “Cry Baby” adding a bit of social consciousness: not only do the lovers (James Snyder and Elizabeth Stanley) meet at the anti-polio picnic, but the rebel-with-cause cried himself out when his parents were wrongly executed as arsonists. Wow! Talk about the '50's!
               When you become an authority-that's the ultimate acceptance. Where was John Waters the night I saw his play? He was partying at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “Squeezebox!” with directors Steve Saporito and Zach Shaffer, the likes of Debbie Harry,  Lady Bunny, Misstress Formika, Michael Musto, John Cameron Mitchell, and the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. The doc about Don Hill's legendary boite turned trans-sex disco for a night/week is actually quite moving, with lots of heart as the real-life characters finally finding a place to fit in. Waters is also called upon to expound on the art scene in another festival favorite, “Guest of Cindy Sherman” directed by Sherman's ex, Paul H-O. So please, give John Waters an honorary doctorate!

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

PEN World Voices

The French Consulate was chockablock with A-list writers as France conferred upon American author Edmund White the insignia of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters on Tuesday evening. Salman Rushdie joked it was the true kickoff to the six-day PEN World Voices festival even though many of the world renowned authors celebrating in the Fifth Avenue townhouse--among them Ian McEwan, Peter Cary, Michael Ondaatje, Francine du Plessix Gray, Francine Prose, and rocker/poet Patti Smith--attended the gala benefit the night before at the Museum of Natural History, presiding over tables of donors where over a million dollars was raised. The gala is a different matter, said Rushdie, describing how fitting it was to dine under the museum's great whale, where writers could unleash their inner Captain Ahab. Meanwhile, panels, readings, films, performances in venues all over the city and beyond mark the World Voices annual celebration of the written word. The French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy arrived, his wife, a chanteuse in a black cinched leather corset, in tow. But soon we were off to the Alliance Francaise for a session devoted to Darfur. BHL, as he is known, had been traveling to this besieged region of the Sudan, as has the actress Mia Farrow and both presented words and pictures enlightening the packed house on their personal experiences interviewing victims of the genocide. The stories are more heart-wrenching than ones you've heard. The focus of many aid efforts is on China PEN delivered a petition to the Chinese Consulate in New York-100 days before the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies-requesting the release of 38 jailed journalists and writers and seeking an end to restrictions on freedom of expression in China. In addition, we are all urged to take action against the selling of arms by China to the jingaweed, the murderers in Darfur. Go to www.darfurmetro.org and the NYC Coalition for Darfur: interfaitharts@gmail.com

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

George Lois at MOMA/ Jeff Koons Rooftop at the MET

A bald bear of a guy in his '70's, art director George Lois can tell you a story for every cover of Esquire he did in the '60's. He doesn't have to. As exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art: Sonny Liston in a Santa hat, Andy Warhol drowning in a can of Campbell's tomato soup, Mohammed Ali with arrows in his body a la St. Sebastian, Roy Cohn with a halo over his head, a cemetery with John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. photos collaged over gravestones, writers Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern and John Sack in Chicago--each one informs the historic moment, be it about race, anti-war, pop art, the McCarthy era of the 1950's. Overwhelming is the realization that we don't see magazine covers like these any more. We have instead, the top few movie icons that force us to pay attention to things that don't matter. What mattered in George Lois' time were ideas. And people bought Esquire simply to collect the excellent cover art. When did that stop? He says in his heavy Bronx brawl: “Ideas work and have worked from the time of the caveman.”
Three pieces from Jeff Koons' Celebration series compete with the Manhattan skyline rooftop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In stainless steel to withstand the elements, Balloon Dog (Yellow) and Sacred Heart (Red/Gold) in primary color, and Coloring Book in vivid pastel rival the pale buds of spring in Central Park below. Last Monday, Jeff Koons, an artworld giant, fielded questions from foreign journalists in a gray, very smart, sharkskin suit from Gucci, finding it ironic that as an American he mostly shows in Europe and Asia. How fitting that he now is here high up at the MET where Sacred Heart with its resemblance to a giant candy engages in a dialogue with religious themes in medieval and early Catholic painting and sculpture housed below. And Balloon Dog resembling that done by a clown entertaining at children's parties can be seen to reference Greek and Roman myth. Eeyore of Coloring Book rises to meet the challenges posed by Pop where Roy Lichtenstein's sculpture was exhibited just a few seasons before. “The journey of art is acceptance,” said Koons addressing questions related to the seeming simplicity of his subject matter, “first of oneself and then others.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Standard Operating Procedure

You don't want to think of that pixie-ish woman with the shit-eating grin in the famous Abu Ghraib photo as more than a sadistic little bitch as she points to a hooded man on a leash. But, Errol Morris's documentary probe, “Standard Operating Procedure” affirms: that picture, and others: the naked human pyramid as well as the wired figure on the box, is more than meets the eye. Imagine this: the woman in question, Lynndie English, a teen when she enlisted for duty in Iraq, falls in love with MP Charles Graner and simply acts in thrall, a girl with a girlish crush who ends up pregnant (with his child while he is carrying on with another woman involved in the scandal) and facing some serious charges, a Rumsfeldian “bad apple.” Who are these people and why do they have so much time on their hands? That is a question addressed by Morris in the film and in an accompanying book co-authored with Philip Gourevitch. No wonder the Rummy-Cheney-Bush triumvirate, is embarrassed, but, in the words of Desi to Lucy, this administration has some 'splainin' to do. The seven “bad apples” have been prosecuted, for taking the photos but not for their content. That justice will no doubt never be served for these crimes against mostly ordinary Iraqis has been shown in this excellent and disturbing documentary as it was in Alex Gibney's “Taxi to the Dark Side,” the Academy Award winning film investigating the untoward fate of a young man taken to a sister prison, Bagram in Afganistan, and tortured to death. Although he deserved to win the award for his "Thin Blue Line," Errol Morris received his Oscar for “The Fog of War” with its central interview portrait of Robert McNamara, the architect of the Viet Nam War. In this new film, said Morris in a recent interview, he reveals a “crazy war of humiliation.” Here is an interesting tidbit gleaned from “Standard Operating Procedure:” as a method of torment, forget water boarding. Certain music blasted in prisoners' ears proved more torturous. After awhile the victims began to groove to Metallica and Hip Hop. They broke at Country Western.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Standard Operating Procedure (trailer)

Meryl Streep Honored at Film Society of Lincoln Center

Will the real Meryl Streep please stand up! Last night Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center was packed with well-wishers, benefactors, friends and family to pay tribute to the premier actress of our time. As Uma Thurman, a speaker in a string of co-stars and directors that also included Robert Deniro, Christopher Walken, Jonathan Demme, Garrison Keillor, and Stanley Tucci, said of Streep, “There's Meryl and then there is everyone else.” Robert Redford spoke about her commitment to craft. Amy Adams mentioned that she taught her how to knit on the set of the upcoming film of “Doubt.” And Mike Nichols quipped about her perfect nose, so much like his they cannot be onstage together. Between speakers, clips of Streep's performances in one classic after another were projected: the heart-wrenching choice scene in “Sophie's Choice,” as Ethel Rosenberg confronting the dying Al Pacino's Roy Cohn in “Angels in America,” a begoggled blond in a two-seat prop plane with Redford, a red-head in “The French Lieutenant's Woman” with Jeremy Irons, silver coiffed in “The Devil Wears Prada,” a Hillary Clinton clone in “The Manchurian Candidate,” singing in a pub in “Ironweed,” singing in the Tuscan landscape in the upcoming film of “Mamma Mia!” It is clear there is nothing she cannot do, no one she cannot be! Taking the stage in an elegant black silk shirt-waist she kept tugging down Streep flashed her sense of humor. Claiming she dreaded this tribute, she spoke about a time studying acting at Vassar, when in an exercise intended to practice the art of crying the fledgling students each conjured up sad images: mothers, dogs, boyfriends dying. Not la Streep, who imagined herself in tears: approaching 60 (she's 58), the premier actress of her time at a tribute, onstage before her immense body of fans, announcing her retirement. “I am not crying tonight,” she said, “because I am not retiring.” And then she danced and pirouetted off the stage.
     At the elegant supper across the way in the New York State Theater, the celebrants included playwright Tony Kushner, director Robert Benton, Sylvia Miles who played her mother in “She Devil,” wives and widows Kathryn Altman, Rose Styron, Hannah Pakula. I had my own Streep moment: complimenting me on my outfit, she mocked interest in the designer, to wit I countered, who was she wearing. “Oh I just picked this up at the Short Hills mall,” she laughed.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Jellyfish and Other Surreal Tales

This year's excellent New Directors/New Films series, a yearly collaboration of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA that ended last week, had many films you will see in theaters in the coming months. One, “Jellyfish,” directed by Israeli fiction writer Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, his wife and the movie's scriptwriter, is already out: in this fine, intimate film, the dislocation and suffering taking place in their home country among a group of recent immigrants is reflected in water, in places where it is welcome, healing and mysterious, as in the beach in Tel Aviv and unwelcome, as a rising flood in a young woman's apartment caused by a leak. At one point she stands mouth agape, water pouring down from the ceiling quenching her thirst. Such surreal images dominate Keret's fiction. His new book,   “The Girl on the Fridge” features a tale called “Crazy Glue” in which a girl is stuck on that substance “so pretty, and so incongruous, hanging upside down from the ceiling that way. . . . I climbed onto the pile of books and kissed her.” The image brought to mind lovers in a Chagall painting. The stories, some one-pagers, can be selected like bonbons out of a chocolate assortment, each offering a peculiar, offbeat yet surprisingly satisfying center. In the title story, a couple breaks up for no better reason than the girl liked being alone, as when in childhood, she stayed perched atop a refrigerator. Her lover even tried to fuck her there, to no avail. I asked Etgar Keret which he prefers, making film or writing stories. “Writing,” he said, “I have all the control.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura