Gossip Central

Kerouac in Cannes: A Road Not Taken

I am pleased that the reports from Cannes about the On the Road, Walter Salles’ film are mainly favorable, although I have taken note that some say there is no inner world for the characters, that the film has no discernable plot, that it is overlong. I have been following this progress for at least a decade. When I interviewed Francis Ford Coppola in 2007 about his film, Youth Without Youth, I inquired as to its status; at that stage, several writers had attempted a screenplay including one by Russell Banks where he, Russell Banks, runs into Jack Kerouac in a bar in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and they spend a drunken week together. Francis looked me in the eye and asked, “Have you read the book? It is impossible to script.” There were titters at the table of critics who were aware that I am a noted Kerouac scholar.

Art Real Estate: February House at the Public Theater

Of the brownstone at 7 Middagh Street, the basis of a new musical, February House at the Public Theater, the composer/ writer Paul Bowles used to say he did not want to live in a place with another composer. He was referring to Lincoln Kirstein. When he heard the rent would be cheap, he moved in. W.H.Auden managed the whole thing, he recalled, collecting money and making dinners. Then Bowles would stick up his nose in perfect Audenesque, and mimic the famed poet, “Tonight there will be a roast, two veg and a savory, and no discussion of religion or politics.” 

Old Jews Telling Jokes at the Westside Theater

Jewish jokes are so plentiful online: who hasn’t been blessed with multiple emails forwarded from friends, or visited the Youtube videos of real-life old Jews telling jokes? Now a fast-paced revue at the Westside Theater—where the beloved Love, Loss, and What I Wore held sway for many seasons-- is unexpectedly fresh. Yes, the familiar tropes: sex before marriage, after, business and money, death, mothers, and kvetching on every foible of life are revived in full force: Do you want a drink? Goes one. No, I don’t want to dull the pain.

Not the Usual Four-Letter Word: Cock at the Duke Theater

On a 42^nd Street block that used to house peep shows, The Duke Theater is a resonant location for a play called Cock. For this four-actor drama, The Duke is entirely reconfigured as an arena where onlookers are up close and personal as if watching a cockfight, taking bets. Four characters spar. You could say, they vie for John’s male member. The sexual politics of Mike Bartlett’s play could be one linear reading: John (Cory Michael Smith) is living with M (Jason Butler Harner) and has sex with W (Amanda Quaid), finding he likes it. This comes as a surprise as he has had so little experience with women. Then, the quandary: each works to lure him from the other, to win and control John. M’s father, F (Cotter Smith) is brought in, rounding out the square. John, as much an Everyman as his name suggests, has to sort out who he is.

Bono Rocks the Apollo

The U2 frontman joined the festivities somewhere in the middle of the Jazz Foundation of America’s annual benefit singing “Angel in Harlem,” assuredly an anthem to the Apollo theater. In rock style, the orchestra audience rushed the stage, Iphones snapping. Bono was simply one of many headliners in “A Great Night in Harlem,” orchestrated by SNL’s Hal Willner. Quincy Jones presented the Dr. Billy Taylor Humanitarian Award to Montreux Jazz Festival’s esteemed Claude Nobs. Macy Gray, Dr. John, Randy Weston, Paquito D’Rivera, David Johansen, the Treme Brass Band, the Kansas City Band with reference to Robert Altman’s great 1996 film, and Essie Mae Brooks, John Dee Holeman, Sweet Georgia Brown, George Wein took the legendary stage. Darrel Hammond and Triumph the Insult Dog lent some comic relief as did the Sopranos veterans Vince Curatola and John Ventimiglia. Wendy Oxenhorn wailed on her harmonica. Macy Gray’s “At Last” was assuredly meant to remember the great Etta James, but no one could have anticipated that music would lose yet another yesterday, Donna Summer, for whom there was a moment of silence.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

 

 

Hugh Dancy Hits the Spot: Hysteria

The new movie Hysteria answers an age old question, what do women want most? Based on a historic moment in the 1880’s when a particular contraption for the alleviation of women’s non specific ailments (unhappiness, indigestion, the desire for equality, the right to vote, freedom) was invented, this romantic comedy features an early feminist Charlotte Dalrymple (Maggie Gyllenhaal), her conventional sister Emily (Felicity Jones), their provincial father (Jonathan Pryce), and a young progressive doctor Mortimer Granville played by Hugh Dancy with an easy touch. In the employ of Dr. Dalrymple, he learns to apply just the right manual pressure to give suffering women “paroxysms,” never to be confused with sexual pleasure. With the help of a nutty inventor (Rupert Everett), an electronic device was made available for home use. Despite the eh, explosive nature of this subject, this delightful movie is titillating, yet chaste.

Hillary Clinton’s Mother’s Day Address at the New York Women’s Foundation Breakfast

Introducing Hillary Clinton to 2300 women --and a sprinkling of men-- gathered in a ballroom at the Marriot Marquis for breakfast celebrating the New York Women’s Foundation’s 25^th year this morning, Abigail Disney recounted where this filmmaker and activist was in her own life at each stage of Clinton’s political career from First Lady to Secretary of State, defying the perceived wisdom that little would come of her. What was so divisive about all the common sense she was making –how dare she have plans for health care, Disney asked. Do you know what history does to women? You know the fabulous bookcase you see at IKEA. You know how when you buy it, you pick it up in a flat box. History casts women in two dimensions. For her, Clinton was a woman who would take no prisoners, unless of course they were political prisoners on her plane, she quipped referring to recent events and Clinton’s trip to China. The Secretary of State gamely took the stage and in the combination of making larger points about women helping women effect change and the intimate personal stories of struggle that marked the speeches, Clinton talked about the lessons learned from her mother who died last November.

Talk to Her: Schiaparelli and Prada at the Metropolitan Museum

The Costume Institute’s new exhibition is a happy collision of fashion titans. Decades apart, Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada are joined in a conceit devised by Met curators, Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda: a filmed dialogue, directed by Baz Luhrman, inspired by Louis Malle’s two-hander, Dinner With Andre--only this is two women talking, both Italian and interested in clothes. Hence “Impossible Conversations:” Judy Davis is cast as Schiaparelli and Prada is, well, her self. Their discourse is projected, heard over the mannequins sporting their shoes, dresses, ensembles, and hats. Provocative pairings make for exhibition as theater.

Portrait of Wally and Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story: Two Faces of Ronald Lauder

Of the atrocities of the Nazi period in Europe, the theft of art may be the least of the horrors, but as the new documentary Portrait of Wally shows, the provenance of art can be infinitely fascinating. “Who owns art?” you might say is the center of the debate concerning art stolen from Jews. But as my mother, an Auschwitz survivor used to say, there is a right and a wrong. Directed by Andrew Shea, this provocative film tells the gripping tale of an Egon Schiele painting, seized from a Vienna art collector’s home, and the drama of restitution. A world premiere screening at the Tribeca Film Festival seemed particularly apt, as part of this painting’s story took place in New York.

PEN World Voices: Kronos Quartet vs. A Trio of Scribes

Wednesday evening at the Metropolitan Museum was meant to be a correspondence, an exploration of words and music featuring the Kronos Quartet and the writers Rula Jebreal, Marjane Satrapi, and Tony Kushner, but to most ears there was a friendly cacophony. Salman Rushdie, president of PEN introduced the much anticipated event noting that the World Voices Festival began in the midst of President Bush’s second administration when the dialogue between this country and others was breaking down. As the world has changed, a new U.S. president seemed to brighten attitudes toward America from all over the world. Still repression prevails: Satrapi’s film which had been shown on Tunisian television is now banned, the station’s head on trial for programming it. Echoing Kushner’s epic Angels in America, so prescient of current events, a Mormon presidential candidate’s gay aide is fired.