Gossip Central

Celebrating Gonzo

When Alex Gibney was cutting his documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” the Academy Award winning investigation of the grim business of a simple Iraqi man tortured to death in Bagram Prison in Afganistan, he would go into the next room to work on his documentary on Hunter S. Thompson for comic relief. Now that film is about to open, appropriately for the 4th of July. Thompson, originator of gonzo journalism, investigated “the American Dream,” embedded himself with the Hell's Angels, reported on American politics for “Rolling Stone,” and wrote one of the funniest books in the language, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Gibney's prismatic biopic (a high just watching), narrated by Johnny Depp and featuring interviews with Pat Buchanan, Jimmy Carter, a diverse who's who in contemporary American culture, reveals Thompson's development as a writer (he obsessively typed out “The Great Gatsy”) as well as the consuming fame that may have contributed to his suicide. Even talking about Hunter brings a tear to editor Jann Wenner's eyes, halting his tribute. Wenner as well as the film's producer Graydon Carter and a duly eclectic group including Meg Ryan, Arianna Huffington, Tom Wolfe, Gail Sheehy, Gay Talese, Lynn Nesbit, Dominic Dunne, Jimmy Buffett, etc. crowded into the hip Waverly Inn for a pre-screening party last week. Graphic designer George Lois who recently had a show of his classic Esquire covers at MoMA pointed out the Waverly Inn's mural, painted by New Yorker Magazine illustrator Edward Sorel: who could be Narcissus? asked Lois, reflecting on the literary/mythological conceit of the painting adorning the restaurant's walls. Norman Mailer is stretched out looking at his reflection in a pond. Near him, Jack Kerouac, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth works a surreal typewriter as Bob Dylan hovers above. Presidential historian and close Thompson ally Douglas Brinkley introduced me to Juan, the writer's son. “Gonzo,” for all its bravado, is also a warmly felt family portrait thanks to Juan and his mother, Thompson's first wife. Then William Kennedy and family piled into Sean MacPherson's jeep for a short trip to the Angelica theater for the screening. Brian Williams, the NBC newsman who sat in for the deceased Tim Russert on last Sunday's Meet the Press modestly explained the secret of a great talk show: get Joe Biden. And then he noted how great it is that Tom Brokaw volunteered to take on the awesome election season, calling from a cell phone, from a spot on his Montana ranch that's not a dead zone, to say he's in.
                  And speaking of dedication in media, Clay Felker, famed New York Magazine editor, has just died. You could say that gonzo is a branch of the New Journalism, the use of novelistic techniques in the reporting of news, much championed by Felker.

Regina Weinreich 

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Gonzo (trailer)

Picture Books

In case you missed the Walter Reade Theatre tribute to photographer/filmmaker Robert Frank last week, you can catch up with his extraordinary career with new editions of his legendary “The Americans” (Steidl). First published in 1959, the photos reveal the flip side of Ozzie-and-Harriet America with an introduction by Frank's friend Jack Kerouac. These artists also collaborated on the movie “Pull My Daisy,” new in DVD, with performances by Larry Rivers, David Amram, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Delphine Seyrig, Alice Neel, Milo O'Shea, and Pablo Frank.
               

Photographer Mellon Tytell's My Lucky Dog (HarperCollins) is a documentary style picture book of the last days of Hunter, her beloved dog. Combining resonant photos of Vermont with text, Tytell's book is an unsentimental meditation on the subject of loss.

In tandem with a show at Staley-Wise Gallery till June 7, notorious paparazzo Ron Galella's “That's Great!” (Monacello Press) features Andy Warhol in the world of glitz and glamour he loved: alongside Lauren Hutton, Sylvia Miles, Bob Colacello, Bianca Jagger, Marisa Berenson, Baryshnikov.
Christine Ebersole may have brought the Edie Beales mother and daughter to life on Broadway last year, based on “Grey Gardens,” the non-fiction film by The Maysles Brothers, but a new scrapbook, “Memorabealeia” is Walter Newkirk's clever collage-like compilation of Little Edie's stuff: clips, letters, etc. that should bring a smile to Edie's legion of fans.
            And “Perpenilsis,” a compilation of “psychopts,” collaborative drawings and prints by Christopher Wool and rocker Richard Hell to accompany an exhibition at Glenn Horowitz Booksellers on East 64th Street till June 4. Here's the inscription: “Mountaineering entails many great penis.” Need I say more?

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

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

Meat Loaf and May Pang: Blasts from the Past

Remember Meat Loaf? A beefy rocker with a mane who in the '70's performed the hit “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” with Karla DeVito. With his hands on her ass, the girl sings “Will you love me forever?,” he sings “Let me sleep on it. I'll give you an answer in the morning.” And in the background a sports announcer's voice calls out their every move. The excitement of that drama was recalled at the premiere of an excellent new documentary “Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise” directed by Bruce David Klein last night at the IFC Center, just a few blocks west of the Bottom Line in the village where Meat Loaf was a headliner in my youth. With a follow-up album to his hugely successful “Bat Out of Hell,” (selling more than the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper according to the film) Meat Loaf at 59 is still a dynamite performer, and the movie follows him and his band through the rigors of missed flights and lost luggage in a world tour starting in Canada. Only this time the girl is singer Aspen Miller, a brunette who seems too young to Meat Loaf critics, making the lovers look like a grandpa in a sweaty and unwanted grope with a teenager. In the process of sleaze control, the film shows Meat Loaf fitted for a wig so he can return to his youthful look as a parody of himself in those heady '70's. Doesn't anybody get, this is theater, asks the film. Overriding all, of course, is the music: a highlight is Dennis Quaid joining Meat in “Gloria,” Meat Loaf himself doing “I'd Do Anything For Love.” Melvin Van Peeples and Debby Harry attended the opening, as did Jerry Della Femina and Judy Licht. The topic of the day came up and Jerry shared that he did not think Eliot Spitzer should have lost his career, his marriage yes, but not his career. Meat Loaf, I might add, now 60, never looked better.
               Meantime further evoking the '70's, on Tuesday May Pang celebrated the publication of her photographs of John Lennon, taken during an 18 month period from 1973 to 1975 when the two were living together while the Beatle took a break from Yoko Ono. Cynthia Lennon, John's first wife, joined the packed crowd at the Cutting Room. Pang had encouraged John to reunite with his son Julian from that first marriage: pictures of father and son abound in this slim yet significant addition to the vast body of Beatles literature. “Instamatic Karma” features Pang's anecdotes and photographs of John relaxing and enjoying friends Mick Jagger, Paul and Linda McCartney, Ringo, Bowie, the much missed Keith Moon of The Who, and the still vivacious May Pang. 

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Albert Maysles for Real

Little Edie Bouvier Beale vamps on the cover photo of “A Maysles Scrapbook” (Steidl/Kasher), a coffee table volume with introduction by Martin Scorsese illustrating the depth and breadth of the legendary Albert Maysles' career from 1955 to the present.  Edie is of course one half of the mother-daughter team celebrated on Broadway last year in “Grey Gardens,” the musical based on the documentary by Albert and his brother David who died in 1987. With her signature shmatte tied around her head, her legs oh so posed to reveal the sexy curve of her hip, and beckoning with a come hither look, Edie stands for Albert Maysles himself inviting you into his world, featuring a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of his most famous works, among them “Salesman” and “Gimme Shelter.” Images of Mick Jagger, Muhammed Ali, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Salvador Dali, and Charlotte Zwerin, peek out from these pages, as do pictures of people in Turkey, Russia and Poland from his travels in the late '50's. All are currently exhibited in a retrospective of his work at the Steven Kasher Gallery. This is a boom time for Albert: HBO is airing the documentary he made about Christo and the Making of “The Gates,” the closing night film of last year's Tribeca Film Festival. On Sunday, friends and family packed Film Forum for a special screening of his 1966 “With Love from Truman,” a forty minute interview with Capote shot on location at Tiffany's and his home in the Hamptons. We may have had excellent feature biopics of the author of “In Cold Blood” in recent years, but as Albert Maysles said in his introduction about nonfiction films, “There's nothing like the real thing.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Park Avenue Potluck

You think catered, posh not “potluck” when you ponder how people entertain above 57th Street. But that's the humble concept behind a new cookbook, “Park Avenue Potluck: Recipes from New York's Savviest Hostesses.” Opening with what you should have in your cupboard (whoa, hold the imported quail eggs), this book has recipes that are doable, unpretentious, and utterly festive. The conceit calls to mind a dinner I once attended on Park Avenue in the early '90's. The hostess served a homey meal of brisket and then suggested the party of 25 take dessert roaming about her ample apartment adorned with surreal art, that is, famously framed in fur. On every surface were giant platters with chocolate cake and white icing filling. The sweet seemed familiar in a Proustian way and the guests were gobbling them down ravenously, much to the joy of our hostess, who, when pressed, confessed they were unwrapped devil dogs. Similarly, the recipes in this new cookbook, while evoking “old money,” are down-to-earth, delicious in a satisfying and far from Dean & Deluca way, yet worthy of any shop featuring fine homemade delicacies. Not that we scorn D&D, a guilty pleasure and huge, if pricy, treat. Better, when you buy this cookbook, the money goes to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. That combo of nurturing and charity compelled women you may recognize from the society pages to give away their hostess-with-the-mostest secrets. Edited by famed NY Times food writer Florence Fabricant and designed by her daughter Patricia Fabricant for Rizzoli, the book is fast becoming the most important tome on my kitchen shelf. Challenged by the impending holidays and the imperative of making it new for my family of regulars, I am freshening up my repertoire with some trial runs: “Pond Water” (from the chapter called “Libations,” for grownups only), “Indulgent Spiced Pecans” (from “Small Bites”), “Avocadoes Argentina” (“Salads of Substance”), “Yanna's Moussaka” (“Casseroles for a Crowd”) “Holiday Pot Roast” (“Mains with Meat and Poultry;” there's one for seafood), and “Perfect Potato Salad” (“Stunning Sides”); I simply can't decide among “The Sweet Life” offerings: “Chocolate Souffle”? “Vera's Farina Halvah”? This past weekend at a book signing at Wines by Morrells in East Hampton, I sampled “Millionaire Turtles,” contributed by Karen May. Each morsel tapped my inner hedonist.  Get “Park Avenue Potluck” for yourself and three for your favorite friends. Eat your way to heaven.

                                                       Regina Weinreich